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[Footnote 53: Copyright, 1896, by Macmillan & Co.]
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It was the very last place in the world where you would have expected
to hear the notes of a church harmonium; and the old man who, seated
on a reed stool, was playing _God Save the Queen_ with one finger, was
the very last person whom you would have expected to see performing
upon it. But there it stood, quite at home, between, the wooden
pillars which divided the central living-room from the crowd of
latticed closets around it; and there he sat, quite at home, on the
stool, his naked brown legs struggling with the bellows, his brown
fingers patting down the keys with a sort of pompous precision. For
Punoo was a music-master, and that was his pupil who, with a yawn, was
watching his proceedings from the floor while she threaded beads on a
string intermittently. That was also the last place from which one
would expect any one to take a music-lesson; but old Punoo being blind
was fully persuaded that Bahani was dutifully at his elbow. This
blindness of his was, however, far more to his advantage than his
disadvantage as a master. It was, in short, the cause of his being one
at all; since had he had the use of his eyes no mother would have
dreamed of employing a man, who was not more than forty-five at the
outside, in teaching her girls. As it was, his time was fully taken up
in the houses of the clerks, contractors, barristers, and such like,
who for some reason or another desired to impart the exotic
accomplishment of music to their daughters or wives. But of all these
houses Punoo loved the one which contained the harmonium best; not
because of his pupil, since Bahani, who was betrothed to a young man
who might be seen any day on a Hammersmith omnibus over on the other
side of the world, never learned anything; but because of the
instrument itself. To tell truth it had quite a fine tone, especially
when all the wind in its wheezy bellows was sent into one note. And
then the playing of it seemed to satisfy him from head to foot. All
the other instruments, the accordions and concertinas, even his own
fiddle with seven strings, of which he was really very fond, only
employed his head and his hands; but this made his whole body as it
were to toil and labour after melody. As he sat, his forehead bedewed
with perspiration, the expression on his sightless face, turned
upwards all unconscious of the dingy, sordid, smoke-blackened rafters
which limited his vision, was quite sufficient to make up for the lack
of it in the music; it was the expression of a prisoner who, through
the bars of a cage, sees freedom. But the odd little gridiron in the
centre of the dark room, which gave it some light and air from the
roof above, was scarcely large enough to allow even of Punoo's wizened
figure to pass through.
"Lo, it gives one a melting of the liver, and a sinking of the heart
to hear thee, Master-jee," remarked Mai Kishnu, bustling in with a
handful of radishes for the pickle-stew. "Canst not play something
more lively, something that goes not wombling up and down like an
ill-greased wheel, something with a count in it that gives a body time
to catch the beat of it? For sure I could make better music with my
ladle and tray; better music for a bride anyhow; and mark my word,
Bahani, when thou art really one there shall be none of this
_boo-hooing_ and _ow-wowing_, that might set free thoughts of wolves
and God knows what monsters to damage all thy hopes."
"'Tis not likely, Mai," said Punoo, desisting to speak with great
dignity, "that Bahani will have mastered so much. 'Tis not given to
all to play _God Save the Queen_ as I do."
"That is good hearing!" ejaculated the house-mother piously. "But the
girl gets on, I hope, Master Punoo. Her father writes of it often; and
the instrument, as thou knowest, cost fully ten shillings."
In Punoo's account, which he retailed to his other customers, it had
cost five times that amount, and he had a spirited description of the
auction where Colonels and Deputy-Sahibs, and Barrack-Masters had
bidden in vain against Bahani's father Mool Chand, who was municipal
clerk in an outlying district. According to Punoo also it had cost
five hundred times that amount when the Padre Sahib,--sometimes it was
the Lord Padre Sahib--(the Bishop),--had sent for it originally from
England. There was a further legend, vague and misty even to himself,
which he kept holy, as it were, from profane use by locking it away in
his own breast, which hinted that the harmonium had been thrown on the
market from no desire to get rid of it, but simply from pecuniary
necessity; the Chaplain having been forced into selling his greatest
treasure in order to pay the bill for a new one. To tell truth,
Punoo's estimate of the harmonium was vague and misty on more points
than this. He was, in fact, absolutely ignorant of anything concerning
it, save that if you blew persistently at the bellows and pressed the
keys it made a noise which somehow or other seemed to set you free,
and yet kept you longing for something more. Punoo knew not for what,
having not the slightest idea that he had been born with music in his
soul, and that if he had first seen the light in the Western
hemisphere instead of the Eastern, he would most likely have been a
Wagnerite or some other kind of musical enthusiast.
As it was, to oblige Mai Kishnu he played _Minnia Punnieya_ as quickly
as he could, though it was a pain and grief to him to give up the
long-drawn notes which sounded so beautiful in _God Save our Gracious
Queen_. But Mai Kishnu stirred the pickle-stew to the new rhythm,
emphasising it properly with little strokes of the ladle upon the
resounding brass pot. Bahani, she said, must learn that tune against
her man's return from being made into a _balester_ (barrister);
whereat Bahani with the utmost decorum giggled and blushed over her
beads. She was a pretty, pert girl, who looked upon the future with
perfect serenity; for being married to her first cousin whose widowed
mother lived in the house, she knew exactly what the amount of
friction between her and her future mother-in-law would be; and knew
also that she would generally be able to escape quietly, as she did
now, from the scene of conflict, and leave the two elder women to have
it out at full length if they chose. They generally did choose,
because they nearly always had an interested audience; for the quaint
rambling old house with its rabbit-warren of tiny rooms opening out to
little bits of roof, was full of relations; chiefly women whose
husbands were away in Government employ. They each had a separate
lodging, as it were, though they were quite as often in some one
else's room as in their own, especially when the sound of shrill
altercation echoed through the wooden partitions. By a recognised
etiquette, however, all serious disputes were carried on in the
well-room where the women bathed. It was more a verandah than a room,
though the arches were filled up breast-high with a screening wall.
But through the hole in the floor, above which the windlass stood, you
could not only see right down into the well on the basement story, but
also see the people in the street coming for their water. It was when
Bahani was discovered lying flat on the floor so as to crane over and
peep into the very street itself, that the fiercest quarrels arose
between Mai Kishnu and her widowed sister-in-law. And no quarrel ever
ran its course without a reference of some sort to the harmonium, and
the iniquity and idiotcy of learning to play tunes as if you were a
bad woman in the bazaar. In her heart of hearts Mai Kishnu agreed with
this view of the question, but she would sooner have died than confess
it, so she invariably carried the war into the enemy's country
instead, by insisting on it that Bahani learned in deference to the
oft-expressed desire of her lawful husband, that husband being the
complainant's own son. And sometimes, but not often, for she was a
faithful defender of the absent municipal clerk, she would clinch the
matter by telling her sister-in-law that if there was iniquity or
idiotcy about, her brother was also to blame. Whereupon Radha, who,
being the widow of an elder brother, really was, in a way, the head of
the house, would retort that in that case it was all the more
necessary for the women-folk of the family to remember that the
salvation of souls lay with them; so she would beg to remind all
present, that this being a dark Saturday or a light Friday, with some
particular event in prospect or some particular event in the past, it
behoved no pious women of that family to eat, say radishes, on that
day. Now, when you have just spent much time and skill in the
preparing of pickles for a large household, it is aggravating to be
told that it is an impious diet. Still there was always the obvious
retort that on such days widows ate nothing at all. So then Radha,
with pharisaical acquiescence, would retire to her own little bit of a
room, with her husband's photograph (he had been a clerk also) hung
between two German prints of the Madonna and Herodias' daughter (which
did duty respectively for the infant Krishna and Durga Devi slaying
the demons) and begin counting her beads with a clatter, and repeating
her texts in an aggressively loud voice; while Mai Kishnu, after
sending the pickle-stew of radishes down in the window-basket as an
alms to the first beggar in the street, would begin to cook something
else; something as nasty as her deft hands could make it, since this,
oddly enough, relieved her feelings.
But Punoo would go on playing _God Save our Gracious Queen_ on the old
harmonium with perfect serenity, all unconscious of the fact that two
women were cursing it in their hearts as a malevolent demon bent on
ruining the household. It was a quaint household when all was said and
done, this colony of women, whose husbands were for the most part away
serving the Government in remote stations. Quaintest of all it was,
perhaps, when in the afternoon the boys belonging to it (and there
were many, thank Heaven! despite the demon) came home from school;
embryo clerks full of classes and examinations, yet with a word or two
for "crickets" and a desire for pickled radishes on every day in the
calendar.
"Ask your Aunt Radha," Mai Kishnu would say shortly to their
remonstrances over the nasty substitute for the delicacy. "'Twas she
forced me into giving your stomachsful of my best pickles to some
dirty beast of a beggar in the street. God forgive me if he was a holy
man, but he may have been a Mohammedan for all I know, and what good
will that do to my soul?"
But despite the "crickets" and the examinations, despite the vague
leavening of Western freethought, the boys fought shy of their Aunt
Radha, perhaps from the veil of uncertainty which their education was
necessarily throwing over all things. There were so many ideas, and
one must be right; it might be this one. In a way they were more
afraid of her and her views than Mai Kishnu was, who never doubted at
all. But then Mai Kishnu knew that she could always have the upper
hand over her sister-in-law in the matter of cold baths in the winter
mornings; for Radha thought twice about interfering with the beams in
other folks' eyes, when the mote of her own about warm water for
religious ablutions was ready to her adversary's hand.
The boys, however, though they ate the nasty substitute for pickles
without more ado, were not so biddable in the matter of _God Save
the Queen_. As they sat on the dark flight of steps between the
living-room and the well-verandah they used to pipe away at it in
English in the oddest falsetto. And Bahani, who was a bit of a tomboy,
would imitate them, and then go into fits of shrill laughter at her
own gibberish.
Altogether it was a very quaint household, and it was a very quaint
noise indeed which went up to high Heaven from it; the boys' voices,
Bahani's mocking laugh, Radha's muttered texts, Mai Kishnu's vexed
clattering of her ladles and pots, and blind Punoo's perspiring
efforts after melody on the old harmonium. For he never attempted
harmony; that was beyond his self-taught execution altogether. But the
sense of it was there, showing itself in sheer delight at pulling out
all the stops that still existed, and blowing away till he could no
more from sheer exhaustion.
So the years had passed contentedly enough for every one; especially
for the old music-master who every day went away with the unleavened
cake, which was his only fee, knowing that even such payment was in
excess of his desires, since it was enough for him to have the honour
and glory of playing on the harmonium, and of boasting about his
proficiency on that instrument to his other pupils who were forced to
be content with an accordion or some such ignoble instrument.
And then one day the funny, old rambling house was in a perfect
ferment of preparation, and even Radha's face was beaming; for her son
was coming home. He was coming from the Hammersmith omnibus and the
boarding-house in Notting Hill, coming from the rush and roar of
London to take up the threads of life again in the dark latticed rooms
where Mai Kishnu made pickles and his mother said her prayers; above
all where Bahani waited for him, all dyed with turmeric and henna, and
clothed in tinselled garments. The little household temple up on the
roof, where there were more German prints doing duty as various gods
and goddesses, had scarcely an instant's respite from the
multitudinous rituals; and if there was a minute or two to spare, the
women downstairs were sure to remember something else which if left
undone would bring the most direful misfortune on the young couple.
There was no quarrelling now, only a babel of shrill kindly voices.
And there was no music, save of a kind to which Mai Kishnu could
clatter her ladles and pans; drubbings of drums and endless tinklings
of _sutaras_--for the good lady had set her foot down as regards the
harmonium, even to the extent of showing off Bahani's accomplishment.
Accomplishment forsooth! What need was there of such fools' talk
between a newly-met young couple? And though Gunesha had come back
from the other side of the world dressed like a real Sahib, that did
not prevent his being a young man, and knowing a pretty bride when he
saw one. So, thank heaven! there they were at last, in the pleasant
cool upper room on the roof, which had been all newly whitewashed and
painted and strewn with flowers for the auspicious occasion, looking
into each other's eyes as young people should. It was all so proper,
so touching, so infinitely satisfactory, that for once Kishnu and
Radha fell on each other's necks and wept tears of sympathy.
But Punoo wandered in and out as a privileged guest among the
merry-making and the bustle, sidling up to his closed treasure,
feeling it all over in sightless fashion, and longing for the time
when he should be called upon, as the bride's master, to display her
accomplishment; for by this time she could play _Minnia Punnieya_ and
a few other tunes quite correctly. But the days passed, and those two
on the roof, despite music and culture, despite all the sciences and
all the 'ologies, were quite content with those things which had
contented their fathers and mothers before them. It was not so with
old Punoo. Even his fiddle afforded him no comfort; and though his
other pupils' accordions and concertinas gave him the correct musical
intervals which his ear approved instinctively, but which his hand was
too unpractised to reproduce with the accuracy which satisfied him,
they were poor substitutes for that splendid tone which was born of
vehement pumping and perspiration. Perhaps it was really the latter he
craved; that feeling of labouring body and soul to give expression to
something within him.
Even billing and cooing like a couple of pigeons on the roof, however,
must come to an end, and after some three weeks of it, the barrister
one day discovered that there was a harmonium in the dark arches of
the living-room. He was beginning by this time to think that he had
perhaps drifted a little too far back into the old life, and that as
he had every intention, when this first very natural and inevitable
relapse was over, of setting up house on more civilised lines, it
might be as well to show off his new habits a little, and so emphasise
the difference which he meant to draw between his life and the life
led in the quaint old ancestral house. So without more ado, without
any asking of how it came there, or who played on it, he whisked his
coat-tails (for he had resumed European dress on his descent from the
roof) over the music-stool with the consummate air of a performer and
set his feet to the pedals and his hands to the keys.
"What a wheezy old thing!" he cried, when a sort of agonised moo as
from a sick cow came in response. Bahani, standing decorously in the
shadow with her veil down in most alluring bashfulness, tittered, and
old Punoo, who had stood still in sheer surprise, moved forward with a
superior smile.
The barrister heard and saw, and a frown came to his self-satisfied
face. "The bellows are leaking," he cried again; "but never mind, it
shall do something; I'll make it!"
Something indeed! The women giggled and stopped their ears, but old
Punoo stood transfixed, a great pain, a great joy coming to his
sightless face. Was that the harmonium? Was that _God Save the Queen_,
that paeon of melody and harmony together, coming in great waves of
sound and bearing him away, further and further and further into some
unknown land that was yet a Land of Promise? And all these years he
had lived in ignorance; he had boasted, he had said that he could play
it, his priceless treasure! Priceless! ay, he had been right there.
Listen to it! Was it not priceless? A sort of passion of pride surged
up in him overpowering all thought of himself.
Then there was a loud crack, a wheeze, a sudden silence; and the
barrister stood up wiping his forehead, for he had worked hard. "That
has done for the old thing," he said with a laugh; "but it was past
work anyhow, and I prefer a piano any day of the week. Don't stand in
the corner, Bahani. You must learn to behave like an English lady now,
and there is nothing to be ashamed of in your husband, I assure you."
Mai Kishnu and Radha looked at each other as if for support, and the
vague affright and sheer surprise of their faces made them once more
sympathetic. "It is a new world, sister," whispered the one to the
other as they moved off respectively to their prayers and their
pickles, leaving the barrister making love to his bride over the
prospect of the piano he was going to give her.
But Punoo moved softly, blindly, over to his old seat and set his feet
to the pedals and his fingers to the keys. But no sound came from
them, not even that poor travesty of _God Save the Queen_ which had
once filled him with pride. And as he sat fingering the dumb keys,
idly, a dim content that it should be so came into the old musician's
soul. The swan-song had been beautiful, but it had been a song of
death. He, after all, had known the harmonium best.