MY AYAH
A THORNLESS, black blossom grew upon the hills that stretch between
Poona and Bombay. When I was domiciled in a bungalow on those hills, I
had the good luck to gather that black blossom into the garland of my
personal retinue. By birth she was a Hindoo, a high-caste Hindoo; by
profession and necessity she was an ayah. I never knew a sweeter-natured
woman. Unlike most of her people, she had learned very little from the
Europeans. Her mental horizon had scarcely widened through her contact
with us. She hadn’t a big mind, but she had a huge heart; I never met so
impersonal a member of my own sex. All she thought or wished for herself
was to bathe at sunrise, and, when she was very hungry, to eat a little.
The only dissipation she ever craved was to sit some moments in the sun.
The only necessity of her nature was to love something.
I broke down at the end of a hard, hot season in Bombay. My husband said
that it was an attack of fever, caught from spending too much time in
the native city. I feared that it was an attack of conscience, brought
on by spending too much money in the native bazaars. But I never told
him so; I never can bring myself to contradict my husband. At all
events, I broke down very thoroughly, and was peremptorily forbidden the
trip to Calcutta, which my husband and our company were about to take.
To remain in Bombay was out of the question. We found a Hindoo gentleman
who had a bungalow at Khandalah, a bungalow he wished to let. Khandalah
is a railway station mid-way between Poona and Bombay. There is a
sanitarium, not far from there, for sick soldiers. Save for their
occasional presence, when convalescent, the place is destitute of
Europeans. We went to look at the bungalow. I must not stop to describe
the wonderful journey up to the top of the high hills, or I shall never
reach Khandalah. I must not stop to tell you of Khandalah (a clump of
many native huts and a few native bungalows, sprinkled like eccentric
fungi on the aromatic hillsides), or I shall never reach the bungalow. I
must not stop to tell you of the bungalow, with all its glory of fruit
and flowers, and all its wealth of dilapidation, or I shall never reach
my ayah. To be brief, I fell in love with Khandalah and with Mr.
Bhaishankar’s bungalow. You would have done the same if you had been
there. We rented the bungalow. In three days we took possession. The
order of our procession when we left Bombay was:
1. My husband and I.
2. Our two children.
3. Our European nurse and housekeeper.
4. My little daughter’s ayah.
5. John, my husband’s Madrassi boy.
6. Mettu, my Mohammedan boy.
7. Abdul, my little son’s chokera.
8. A mistree.
9. A dhursi, who brought his wife, their five children and his
sister (I think the sister was another wife, called a sister out
of deference to my narrow views of matrimony).
10. Three dogs.
11. Twelve boxes (chiefly filled with provisions, for I had
stored most of my chests of raiment at Bombay).
The next day my husband had to leave us. He had an appointment to again
unfurl the Shakespearian banner over the black hole of Calcutta.
Three days after, the ayah we had grew homesick, said she was dying and
wanted to die in Bombay. I sent her back. I grew very ill and another
ayah was a necessity. We took one of the only two who applied. I studied
her for weeks,—I studied a good many things that hot weather. I read a
quantity of English literature that ought to lift me into conversational
pre-eminence for years. I had abundant leisure. For over four months I
saw only five European faces—my two children, the European woman who
has been for years our faithful servant and friend, a doctor (from
Lanauli, the nearest European settlement), and the nurse who came to
help him fight my illness.
Ayah (I have had many ayahs, but only one is enthroned in my
memory)—Ayah was very stupid, I thought, when she first came. She knew
very little English and she didn’t learn a dozen new words all the time
she was with me. But she had the gift of divination. If you were half
kind to her she knew all your wants instinctively, and she had the grace
of giving joyful service.
I have been served more or less—usually less—all over the world, and I
believe that there are only two perfect servant-races left: the Southern
darkies of the United states and the natives of India. The Japanese
servants are deft, but they never love you. And there is no perfection
in service in which there is no affection. If you speak a kind, familiar
word to a Japanese servant he regards you with frigid contempt. Do it to
any other servant in the world and he presumes upon it—unless he is a
native of India or an American darkie. Those two understand it, rejoice
in it, and become your staunch friends, but no whit the less your humble
servants. Even here, in England, the race of servants is dying out; they
have ceased to respect themselves and their work. Consequently they are
ill at ease and make you so.
I never knew Ayah’s history nor learned to pronounce her name,—though I
used often to see her family and knew all their circumstances. Her most
vivid characteristic was an intense terror of all British soldiers. But
she was with me a long time before I found it out. We were playing in
Mhow; I had taken Ayah to the regimental theatre, as I had no other maid
with me. My husband’s boy called her from my dressing-room when I was
changing. She came back with the first frown I ever saw on her dear,
old, black face. To my utter amazement she spoke sulkily. “Our sahib is
drinking with the Colonel sahib,” she said bitterly, “and the Colonel
sahib say will memsahib have some coffee burruf, or some wine burruf?”
She was openly disappointed with me when I did not decline both. She
went out without a word, and came back with the mess-corporal. When she
had taken the tray from him she closed the door with rude abruptness.
“What is the matter, Ayah?” I asked. (I knew that she never did anything
without a reason.)
She turned to me quickly and I saw that there were tears in her eyes.
Homer says that Athene was cow-eyed. My ayah’s beautiful eyes, too, were
bovine.
“Oh, memsahib, I so sorry our sahib drink with a lal coatie sahib! I so
cross you let Colonel sahib send my memsahib some thing.”
“Why, Ayah?”
“Our sahib is good; my memsahib is good. All lal coatie sahib is bad.”
The next night, as we drove to the theatre, Ayah carried four cubic feet
of something wrapped in a bit of blanket. My husband noticed it, and
asked her—
“In the name of all the native wonders, what have you got there, Ayah?”
“Me got burruf and beer and chickeny for my memsahib. My memsahib not
want drink or eat from Colonel lal coatie!”
Poor Ayah! the longer she stayed with me the more I grieved her, for I
never went into an Indian cantonment without learning to like the
redcoat soldiers more and more. But she never ceased to strive for my
reformation. It was in Allahabad that an officer in the South Wales
Borderers foolishly persisted in becoming very chummy with my small son.
The result was that one day, while we were drinking tea, our
four-year-old contrived to cut a slit, about two inches long, in the
military trousers. Our hotel was a long way from our friend’s quarters
and he looked very miserable. I called to Ayah for needle and thread.
There was a gleam of triumph on her black face when she saw why they
were needed. But, when I moved to repair the damage my baby had done,
she snatched the thimble from my finger almost roughly.
“Don’t touch, memsahib,” she whispered hoarsely, and then, speaking with
the downcast eyes of Oriental humility, “Ayah will serve the sahib.”
And so she took from me what she thought a degradation. But she did the
mending very badly, and my children’s clothes could have told how really
well she could sew.
Ayah was generosity incarnated, and in my moments of hospitality was
always my proud assistant. But if any soldier friend broke bread with
us, she had a horrid habit of keeping tally of all he ate and drank. In
Muttra, a friend of my husband’s, a captain in the 7th Dragoons, knowing
that we must be almost starving at the Dâk Bungalow, drove up, after our
first performance, and sent in to know if he might bring in some supper.
I said, “He might indeed.” The supper was in three baskets, the first
filled with cold jellied meats and dainty supper sundries; the second
held beer, and in the third and largest basket there was more “Perier
Jouet” than we used in our week’s stay. Captain —— shared with us the
supper his kind thoughtfulness had provided. When I said good-night and
left the men free to smoke till daylight, Ayah rose from her post of
vantage on the verandah and followed me into my room. When she had done
all I needed, and I told her to put out the light and go, she paused to
mutter—
“The Captain sahib drink two bottle beer, and eat three piece sanwish.”
That so amused me that I told my husband in the morning. It vexed him,
and he took Ayah to task.
“Your memsahib would have had no supper if Captain —— had not put
himself out to bring it,” he said.
“He is a mean sahib,” was the answer; “he bring my memsahib wine, and
then he drink it. And too he smoke plenty cigarette when memsahib go. I
smell him.”
I never could find out that Ayah had any cause for her dislike of the
military. The disproportion between European men and women in India has
not been without unpleasant results, but I am convinced that none of
those results had ever touched Ayah. I believe that her feeling was the
result of a fierce, protoplasmic hatred that was engermed in the nature
of her ancestors, before the Mutiny. But nothing ever softened it. The
history of my life in India is the history of kindness heaped upon me by
soldier hands. Ayah never let that kindness move her. In Campbellpore
the Colonel’s bungalow was given up to us. We were fed from the
officers’ mess, the Elephants (the Elephant Battery was at Campbellpore)
saluted us, and the regimental drag rushed us up and down the one sandy
street. Ayah took it grimly. All over India, after we had reduced our
company of twenty-seven to four, the officers, and often officers’
wives, played with us, enabling us to play _Caste_, _Our Boys_, etc., to
good business, and to tarry in the pleasant cantonments. And the
men—they used to make my dressing-rooms so cozy, and wait upon me hand
and foot. I could fill a volume with grateful memories of the regiments
in India. Ayah never wavered in her hate, and yet she was so grateful to
any civilian who gave me a rose or my baby a rattle. Only one soldier
ever won her liking or approval. When we went from Calcutta to Rangoon
there was on board a tall, stern man with a fine face and the bearing of
a chief. He was ceaselessly good to our babies, and Ayah always spoke to
me of him as the “big, good sahib.” When we reached Singapore, this
gentleman came one night to my husband’s dressing-room door, to offer us
the first of many kind hospitalities. He was dressed in uniform, but
Ayah, whom I had sent to reclaim my cold cream, knew him. She rushed
back to me—
“Memsahib, memsahib, Warren sahib is a lal coatie.”
“Yes,” I said, “Sir Charles Warren is the Commander-in-Chief here. The
burra lal coatie sahib, Ayah.”
She almost wept. But her intuitive recognition of a great and noble man
triumphed over her prejudice. A month later, when we were leaving
Singapore, I heard her tell John, the Madrassi—
“In England the Rajah make some sahibs be lal coaties. English Rajah
make Warren sahib be lal coatie. Warren sahib very sorry. Warren sahib
very good sahib.”
I meant to tell his Excellency, when I saw him next, but I forgot to do
so. That’s a pity, for he would have had such a splendid laugh.
Ayah was not a great respecter of rank _per se_. The presence of a Rajah
threw our other native servants into great excitement. Ayah took it very
calmly.
She broke her caste repeatedly. She ate whatever I gave her to eat. She
literally feasted on bread I had broken. My dhursi would have died
first. But the Hindoo loathing of pork never left Ayah. When we went to
Khandalah we took too much bacon. The population was entirely native and
we couldn’t give it away. Finally, I told Ayah to put it in a basket and
take it down to one of the gullies, and throw it away. She flatly
refused to touch it, directly or indirectly. It was the only time she
ever demurred at any order of mine.
When we were travelling she lay or sat at my feet. On the seat she would
not sit, unless to hold one of the children. We always gave her what was
left from our lunch when we ate in the train. Nothing would induce her
to eat one crumb until we had entirely finished. As my children ate most
of the time, she often suffered a long self-inflicted fast.
Her favourite drink was the liquor of tinned asparagus. She learned to
make a French salad dressing, as I like it. I have never been able to
teach a white servant that!
She would fan me for unbroken hours. How often I have fallen asleep
under the wonderful soothing of her touch! She would make the fortune of
a Turkish bath.
Her love for children and animals never failed. There was a really
passionate attachment between her and my monkey, “Ned.” I think that
both their hearts answered to the throb of some distant kinship.
[Illustration: A THORNLESS BLACK BLOSSOM. _Page 273._]
She grew to be very deft in my dressing-room. Her wonderful anticipation
of my slightest wish made her invaluable in the excitement of a “first
night.” She never spoke in the theatre unnecessarily. I used often to
let her stand in the wings and watch the play. She liked that, but she
always looked on with an expression of disapproval until I came on to
the stage. Then she appeared delighted. No matter how badly I did my
work, no matter what the audience thought, Ayah thought me splendid and
ignored the other actors. I have often thought what a dramatic critic
she would make.
We sent her to the circus in Bombay. She had never seen anything of the
kind before. She was so moved by fright and delight that she lost her
way and was brought home to the hotel, very late, by two policemen. She
was ill with terror, and for weeks didn’t get over her shame, which I
fear was added to by my husband’s teasing.
I took her to see the Taj Mahal, when we were in Agra,—a monument of
human love and accomplishment of human art so supreme that I would
scarcely dare to write about it. I showed Ayah all over it, and she
said, “It’s a big bungalow!”
She was genuinely and deeply grateful. She was strictly honest. She took
the greatest pleasure in all my baby’s pretty clothes. I hoped never to
part with her. Her children were married, and she would have gone
anywhere with me. But her poor old mother, to whom she was devoted, was
ill, and I was obliged to say, “Go to her, Ayah, if you think you
ought.” My husband took her from Karachi to Bombay in August of 1892,
and I never saw her again.
A friend, who was our guest in Karachi, and who had come from Mooltan to
spend with us our last days in India, went with me to see them off. He
was very angry because I took my ayah in my arms and kissed her when we
parted. Dear soldier boy! I liked him immensely, but I loved my ayah
better than any living thing I left in India. I had proved her worth,
and I knew it. She loved me and I loved her. We had stood together
beside a baby’s cradle and fought a long fight with the Angel of Death.
I shall never forget her; and I never remember her without feeling in my
heart what Rudyard Kipling had the genius to say—
By the living God that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!