“LET’S have them up!” said Mr. Browne.
Mr. Browne was smoking a cigar after breakfast in his own house. There
had been a time when Mr. Browne smoked his morning cigar on his way to
office, but that was formerly. The department of the tea interest
entrusted to Mr. Browne by his firm did not receive his active personal
superintendence to the usual extent during the early months of the cold
weather of ’91. I am aware of this because my husband is a senior
partner. Not that the firm minded particularly—they liked young Browne,
and I know that we were rather pleased at the time that he had
discovered something in the world besides tea.
The Brownes had been settled some two or three days, and the wheels of
their domestic arrangements had been running with that perfection of
unobtrusive smoothness that can be fully experienced only in India, so
far as I know. The meals had appeared and disappeared as by magic, the
rooms had been swept and dusted and garnished while there was no eye to
see, their wishes had been anticipated, their orders had been carried
out in the night, as it seemed.
“Let’s have ’em up!” suggested Mr. Browne, with reference to the
mysterious agents of all this circumstance. Helen wanted to see her
servants.
“Bear-_er_!” shouted the sahib, young Browne.
“_Hazur!_”[21] came the answer, in deep tones, from regions below, with
a sound of bare feet hastily ascending the stair.
Footnote 21:
Your honour.
“_Hazur bolya?_”[22] enquired the bearer in a subdued voice, partially
presenting himself at the door.
Footnote 22:
Your honour called.
“Ha!” said young Browne, “_Dekko_,[23] bearer! You may _sub nokar lao.
Sumja? Memsahib dekna muncta!_”[24]
Footnote 23:
Look!
Footnote 24:
Bring all the servants. Do you understand? The memsahib wants to see
them.
“_Bahut atcha!_”[25] responded the bearer, and retired.
Footnote 25:
Very good.
Helen sat up very straight, a little nervous air of apprehension mingled
with her dignity. It had been no flippant business in her experience, to
interview even a prospective under-housemaid, and presently she would be
confronted by a whole retinue. “Why are they so long?” she asked.
“They’re putting on their clean clothes, and perhaps a little oil in
your honour, my dear. They wish to make as radiant an appearance as
possible.” And in a few minutes later the Brownes’ domestic staff
followed its leader into the room, where it stood abashed, hands hanging
down, looking at the floor. The bearer made a respectful showman’s
gesture and awaited the pleasure of the sahib.
The sahib regarded them quizzically, and softly smoked on, with crossed
legs.
“Dear me!” said Helen; “what a lot!”
“They are people of infinite leisure, my dear. The accomplishment of any
one thing requires a great many of them. Above all it is necessary that
they have peace and long hours to sleep, and an uninterrupted period in
which to cook their rice and wash and anoint themselves. You will soon
find out their little ways. Now let me explain. They don’t understand a
word of English.
“The bearer you know. The bearer brought all the rest and is responsible
for them. I have no doubt that he is in honoured receipt of at least
half their first month’s wages for securing their situations for them.
He is their superior officer, and is a person of weight and influence
among them, and he’s a very intelligent man. I’ve had him four years. In
that time he has looked after me very well, I consider, very well
indeed. He knows all about my clothes and keeps them tidy—buys a good
many of ’em—socks and ties and things,—takes care of my room, rubs me
down every evening before dinner,—keeps my money.”
“Keeps your _money_, George!”
“Oh, yes! one can’t be bothered with money in this country.”
“Well!” said his wife. “I think it’s quite _time_ you were married,
George. Go on!”
George said something irrelevantly foolish and went on.
“He’s perfectly honest, my dear—entirely so. It would be altogether
beneath his dignity to misappropriate. And I’ve always found him
moderate in his overcharges. I took him partly because he had good chits
and good manners, and partly because of his ingenuousness. I wanted a
man for nine rupees—this chap stood out for ten. By way of argument he
remarked that he would probably be purchasing a great many things for
the sahib in the bazar—that the sahib might as well give ten in the
first place! I thought there was a logical acumen about that that one
didn’t come across every day, and engaged him on the spot.”
“But, George—it’s—it’s almost immoral!”
“Very, my dear! But you’ll find it saves a lot of trouble.”
Helen compressed her pretty lips in a way that spoke of a stern
determination to adhere to the principles in vogue in Canbury.
“And I wouldn’t advise you to interfere with him too much, Helen, or
he’ll pray to be allowed to go to his _mulluk_,[26] and we shall lose a
good servant. Of course, I’m obliged to jump down his throat once a
month or so—they all need that—but I consider him a gentleman, and I
never hurt his feelings. You observe the size of his turban, and the
dignity of his bearing generally? Well, so much for the bearer—he gets
ten rupees.”
Footnote 26:
Own country.
“I’ve put it down, George.”
“Now the kitmutgar—he’s another old servant of mine—the gentleman who
has just salaamed to you. You see by his dress that he’s a Mussulman. No
self-respecting Hindu, as you’ve read in books of travel which
occasionally contain a truth—will wait on you at table. Observe his
nether garments how they differ from the bearer’s. The B. you see wears
a dhoty.”
“A kind of twisted sheet,” remarked Helen.
“Precisely. And this man a regular divided skirt. The thing he wears on
his head is not a dinner plate covered with white cotton, as one
naturally imagines, but another form of Mussulman millinery—I’m sure I
don’t know what. But you’re never to let him appear in your presence
without it. It would be rank disrespect.
“He is also an old servant,” Mr. Browne went on, “because servants do
get old in the course of time if one doesn’t get rid of them, and I’ve
given up trying to get rid of this one. He’s a regular old granny, as
you can see from his face; he’s infuriatingly incompetent—always poking
things at a man that a man doesn’t want when a man’s got a liver. But he
doesn’t understand being told to go. I dismissed him every day for a
week last hot weather: he didn’t allow it to interfere with him in the
least—turned up behind my chair next morning as regularly as ever—chose
to regard it as a pleasantry of the sahib’s. When I went to England, to
get engaged to you, my dear, I told him I desired never to look upon his
face again. It was the first one I saw when the ship reached the P. and
O. jetty. And there was a smile on it! What could I do! And that very
night he shot me in the shirt-front with a soda-water bottle. I hand him
over to you, my dear—you’ll find he’ll stay.”
“I like him,” said Mrs. Browne, “and I think his conduct has been very
devoted, George. And he doesn’t cheat?”
“He has no particular opportunity. Now for the cook. This is the cook, I
take it. You see he wears nothing on his head but his hair, and that’s
cut short. Also he wears his particular strip of muslin draped about his
shoulders, toga-wise. Also he is of a different cast of countenance,
broader, higher cheek-bones, more benevolent. Remotely he’s got a strain
of Chinese blood in him—he’s probably Moog from Chittagong.”
“_Tum bawarchi hai, eh?_”[27]
Footnote 27:
You are the cook?
“_Gee-ha!_”[28]
Footnote 28:
Worthy one, yes.
“_Tum Moog hai?_”[29]
Footnote 29:
You are a Moog?
“_Gee-ha!_”
“He is, you see. Most of the cooks are, and all of them pretend to be.”
“_Tum sub cheese junta, eh, bawarchi!_”[30]
Footnote 30:
You know everything?
“_Gee-ha, hazur! Hum atcha issoup sumja—atcha si’dish sumja, atcha
eepudin sumja—subcheese khana kawasti teke sumja! Chittie hai
hazur._”[31]
Footnote 31:
I know good soup, good sidedishes, good puddings. Everything for
dinner I know well. Here are recommendations, your honour.
“He says he’s a treasure, my dear, but that’s a modest statement they
all make. And he wishes to show you his chits; will you condescend to
look at them?”
“What are his chits?” Helen inquired.
“His certificates from other people whose digestions he has ruined from
time to time. Let’s see—‘Kali Bagh, cook’—that’s his name apparently,
but you needn’t remember it, he’ll always answer to ‘Bawarchi!’—‘has
been in my service eighteen months, and has generally given
satisfaction. He is as clean as any I have ever had, fairly honest, and
not inclined to be wasteful. He is dismissed for no fault, but because I
am leaving India.’ H’m! I don’t think much of chits! This one probably
ought to read, ‘He doesn’t get drunk often, but he’s lazy, unpunctual,
and beats his wife. He has cooked for me eighteen months, because I have
been too weak-minded to dismiss him. He now goes by force of
circumstances!’ But it’s not a bad chit.”
“I don’t consider it a very good one,” said Helen. “As clean as any I
have ever had!”
“That’s his profoundest recommendation, my dear! He probably does _not_
make toast with his toes.
“People are utterly devoid of scruple about chits,” Mr. Browne went on,
running over the dirty envelopes and long-folded half-sheets of
letter-paper. “I’ve known men, who wouldn’t tell a lie under any other
circumstances to—to save their souls, calmly sit down and write fervent
recommendations of the most whopping blackguards, in the joyful moment
of their deliverance, over their own names, perfectly regardless of the
immorality of the thing. It’s a curious example of the way the natives’
desire to be obliging at any cost comes off on us. Now here’s a memsahib
who ought to be ashamed of herself—‘Kali Bagh is a capital cook. His
entrées are delicious, and he always sends up a joint done to
perfection. His puddings are perhaps his best point, but his vegetables
are quite French. I can thoroughly recommend him to anyone wanting a
really first-rate chef.—Mary L. Johnson.’ Now we don’t want a chef, this
man isn’t a chef, and Mary L. Johnson never had a chef. I knew the
lady—she was the wife of Bob Johnson of the Jumna Bank—and they hadn’t a
pice more to live on than we have! _Chef_—upon my word. And yet,” said
young Browne thoughtfully, “I’ve had some very decent plain dinners at
Bob Johnson’s.”
“But what’s the use of chits, George, if people don’t believe in them?”
“Oh, they do believe in ’em implicitly, till they find out the horrible
mendacity of ’em. Then they rage about it and send the fellow off, with
another excellent chit! And one would never engage a servant _without_
chits, you know. You see how they value them—this man’s date back to
‘79. Here’s a break, two years ago.—What sahib’s cook were you two years
ago, Bawarchi?” asked Mr. Browne.
“Exactly! I thought so, he paid a visit to his mulluk two years
ago—that’s his own country. In other words, he got a bad chit from that
sahib and was compelled to destroy it. They have always visited their
mulluks under those circumstances, for the length of time corresponding
to the break. But I guess he’ll do—we mustn’t expect too much. Twelve
rupees.”
The cook took his chits back and salaamed. Helen looked as if she
thought a great deal more might be desired in a cook, but could not
bring herself to the point of discussing it in his immediate presence.
“He seems so very intelligent,” she said to herself with a qualm.
“Now then, for the mussalchi! _Tum mussalchi hai_, eh?”
“Gee-ha, hazur!”
The mussalchi wore a short cotton coat, a dhoty, and an expression of
dejection. On his head was a mere suggestion of a turban—an abject rag.
Written upon his face was a hopeless longing to become a bawarchi, which
fate forbade. Once a mussalchi, the son of a mussalchi, always a
mussalchi, the bearer of hot water and a dish-cloth, the receiver of
orders from kitmutgars.
“Consider your mussalchi, Helen! He is engaged to wash the dishes, to
keep the silver clean, and the pots and pans. His real mission is to
break as many as possible, and to levy large illegal charges upon you
monthly for knife-polish and mops. In addition he’ll carry the basket
home from the market every morning on his head—the cook, you know, is
much too swagger for that! Think he’ll do?”
“I don’t know,” said Helen in unhappy indecision. “What do _you_ think,
George?”
“Oh we’ll try him, and I suppose he’ll have to get seven rupees. This is
the mallie, the gardener—this gentleman with his hair done up neatly
behind.”
“Nice clean-looking man,” remarked Helen, “but oughtn’t he to wear more
clothes.”
“Looks like a decent chap. No, I should say not; I never saw a mallie
with more on. You see he’s a very superior person, a Brahmin in fact. He
wears the sacred string, as well as his beads and his dhoty; do you see
it, over his right shoulder and under his left arm. He claims to have
been ‘twice born.’ They’re generally of a very respectable _jat_[32] the
mallies.”
Footnote 32:
Caste.
“He will take care of the garden,” remarked Helen.
“As we happen to have a garden, yes. But his business is to produce
flowers. You want flowers, you engage a mallie. You get flowers. This
process of logic is perfectly simple to the native mind. It is nothing
but justice and sweet reason. A mallie is a person who causes flowers to
appear.”
“But where does he get them?”
“Oh, my dear, that is one of the secrets of his profession. But I
understand that there’s a very wise and liberal understanding amongst
mallies—and quite a number of mallies have gardens attached to them.
There’s a very old story about a mallie’s chit which you haven’t heard
yet. His departing master gave him an excellent character and summed up
by saying: ‘This mallie has been with me fifteen years. I have had no
garden, I have never lacked flowers, and he has never had a
conviction.’”
“George—do you mean to say they steal!”
“Oh, no, my dear! It’s a matter of arrangement. This man could never
take flowers out of another sahib’s garden without consulting the other
sahib’s mallie—that would be very wrong. But we’ll see if he can’t grow
us some for ourselves.”
“But the other sahib.”
“The other sahib is similarly obliged from somebody else’s garden, and
doesn’t know anything about it. Eight rupees for the mallie.”
Helen put it down with inquietude of spirit.
“Now for the syce, who looks after the pony. I’ve had the syce two or
three years, too. He’s a very good servant now, but he used to give me a
lot of trouble by pure laziness. Once he let a pony of mine get a sore
back, and never told me, and I licked him. I licked him well, and I
consider that licking made a man of him. He realized gradually—he’s a
stupid chap—that it was undesirable to be licked, especially in the
compound with the other servants looking on, and instead of throwing up
his place and bringing me before the magistrate for assault, he
concluded that he wouldn’t let it happen again. It never has, and he has
respected himself and me more ever since.”
“Do you often ‘lick’ them, George?”
“Except this once I never have. Neither does anybody else, except a few
ill-conditioned young cubs, who haven’t been out long enough to
understand the native and think they can kick him about to advantage.
But decent servants never stay with such men. Indeed they can’t get ’em.
You’ve got to have a good character to get good servants, and there
isn’t a sahib in Calcutta that hasn’t a reputation in the bazar. The
bearer knows perfectly well I wouldn’t touch a hair of his head, and if
the bearer went out with cholera to-morrow I could get half a dozen as
good in his place. On the other hand, probably all the kitmutgar-lok
despise me for keeping such a poor servant as the Kit, and I’d have a
difficulty in getting a better one.”
“Curious!” said Helen.
“Yes. The syce, my dear, will desire you to pay for quite twice as much
grain and grass as the pony consumes, and for a time you will do it.
Bye-and-bye you will acquire the wisdom of a serpent and cut him
accordingly. In the meantime he’s bound to have as much sugar-cane on
hand as you want to feed the pony with, at a fixed charge of four annas
a month. Don’t forget that the syce’s tulub is eight rupees.
“This very smug and smiling person is the dhoby, the washerwoman. He is
an unmitigated rascal. There is no palliation for anything he does. He
carries off your dirty linen every week in a very big pack on a very
little donkey, and brings it home on the same, beating the donkey all
the way there and all the way back. He mismatches your garments with
other people’s, he washes them with country soap that smells to heaven
if you don’t watch him. His custom in cleaning them is to beat them
violently between two large and jagged stones. He combines all the vices
of his profession upon the civilized globe; but I’m afraid you’ll have
to find out for yourself, dear. Put down the dhoby at ten.
“This excessively modest person is the bheesty, who brings us water
every day in a goat-skin. He isn’t used to polite society, but he’s a
very worthy and hard-working sort. He’s only a ticca-bheesty. I fancy
several people about here use him. You see his sole business in life is
carrying water about in goat-skins. So we only give him three rupees.
“The sweeper is out on the veranda. Very properly he doesn’t venture
into our presence. He is of very low caste—does the sweeping and all the
menial work, you know. You are never to see or speak to him, or you’ll
be lowered in the respect of the compound. The sweeper is a very poor
sort of person—he is the only servant in the place that will eat the
remains of our food. He gets six rupees.”
“Is that all?” asked Helen. “I’m sure I don’t know them apart.”
“That’s all, except your ayah, who isn’t here, and a _durwan_ to keep
the door, whom we’ll get when we’re richer, and a _dhurzie_ to mend our
clothes, whom we’ll get when they begin to wear out. May they be
dismissed now?”
[Illustration: A VERY WORTHY AND HARD-WORKING SORT.]
“Oh, yes, _please_!” said Helen, and “_Bahut atcha? Tum jane
sucta_,”[33] remarked her husband, whereat they salaamed and departed in
single file.
Footnote 33:
You may go.
“But George,” said Helen, “they come, with my ayah at eleven, to
eighty-five rupees a month! Almost seven pounds! I thought servants were
cheap in India!”
“No, dear, they’re not; at least, not in Calcutta. And these are the
very least we can have to be at all comfortable.”
The two Brownes looked at each other with a slight shade of domestic
anxiety. This was dispelled by the foolish old consideration of how
little anything really mattered, now that they were one Browne, and
presently they were disporting themselves behind the pony on the Maidan,
leaving the cares of their household to those who were most concerned in
them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------