[Picture: The Ayah]
I WAS roaming among the flower-beds and bowers of a “Peri’s Paradise,”
known in Bombay as The Ladies Gymkhana, when I was startled by a voice
like the sound of a passionate cart-wheel screaming for grease. “Lub ob
my heart,” it cried, “my eshweet, don’t crei! don’t crei!” The owner of
the voice was a woman with a negro type of countenance, as far as I
remember, but her figure has remained with me better than her face. It
was a portly figure, like that of a domestic duck in high condition, and
her gait was, as Mr. Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee would say, “well
quadrate” to the figure. Engulphed in her voluminous embrace was a
little cherub, with golden curls and blue eyes dewy with passing tears—a
pretty study of sunshine and shower. The great, bare arms of the
pachyderm were loaded with bangles of silver and glass, which jingled
with a warlike sound as she hugged her little charge and plastered its
pretty cheeks with great gurgling kisses, which made one shudder and
think involuntarily of the “slime which the aspic leaves upon the caves
of Nile.” Many of us have been Anglo-Indian babies. Was there a time
when we suffered caresses such as these? What a happy thing it is that
Lethe flows over us as we emerge from infancy, and blots out all that was
before. Another question has been stirring in my mind since that scene.
What feeling or motive prompted those luscious blandishments? Was it
simple hypocrisy? I do not think so. The pure hypocrite is much rarer
than shallow people think, and, in any case, there was no inducement to
make a display in my presence. What influence could I possibly exercise
over the fortunes of that great female? A maternal hippopotamus in the
Zoo would as soon think of hugging a young giraffe to propitiate the
spectators. Of course you may take up the position that the hypocrisy is
practised all day before her mistress, and that the mere momentum of
habit carries it on at other times. This is plausible, but I suspect
that such a case would rather come under the fundamental law that action
and reaction are equal and opposite. Let us be charitable and look for
better reasons. The mere milk of human kindness explains something, but
not enough, and I am inclined to think that the _Ayah_ is the subject of
an indiscriminate maternal emotion, which runs where it can find a
channel. The effect of culture is to specialise our affections and
remove us further and further from the condition of the hen whose
philoprogenitiveness embraces all chicks and ducklings; so it may well be
that the poor _Ayah_, who has not had much culture, is better able than
you or I to feel promiscuously parental towards babies in general, at
least, if she can connect them in any way with herself. Towards babies
in the care of another _Ayah_ she has no charity; they are the brood of a
rival hen and she would like to exterminate them. Again, we must love
and hate, if we live at all. The _Ayah’s_ horizon is not wide, her
sentiments are neither numerous nor complex, and her affections are not
trained to lay hold of the abstract or the historical. If you question
her, you will find that her heart does not bleed for the poor negro, and
she is not in the habit of regarding the Emperor Caligula with
abhorrence. She has one or two brothers or sisters, but they are far
away and have become almost as historical as Caligula. In these
circumstances, if she could not feel motherly towards babies, what
feeling would be left to her? And, perhaps, if we knew her story, baby
has a charm to open up an old channel, long since dry and choked with the
sands of a desert life, in which a gentle stream of tenderness once
flowed, with “flowerets of Eden” on its banks, and fertilised her poor
nature. But we do not know her story. She says her husband is a cook.
More about him she does not say, but she hugs “Sunny Baba” to her breast
and kisses him and says that nothing shall ever part her from him till he
grows to be a great _saheb_, with plenty of pay, when he will pension her
and take care of her in her old age. And her eyes get moist, for she
means it more or less; but next day she catches a cold and refuses food,
saying that all her bones ache and her head is revolving; then the horror
of dying among strangers, “unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,” proves
too much for the faithful creature, and she disappears without notice,
leaving her darling and its mother to look out for another _Ayah_.
It is a fortunate thing for us that the Ayah is able to conceive such a
devouring passion for our children, for it appears, from her own
statements, that but for this strong tie, nothing would induce her to
stay a day in our service where the constant broils with the other
servants, into which she is driven by her determination to be faithful to
her own mistress, make life almost unbearable to a peaceable woman like
her. The chief object of her righteous indignation is the “Bootrail.”
She is so reluctant to make any personal complaint, that she would pass
over his grudging her a little sugar in her morning tea, but when he
takes away a whole cupful for his own children, conscience compels her to
tell her mistress. She has often pointed out to him that such conduct is
not right, and tried to reason with him, but he only insults her. The
cook, being a notorious inebriate, plays into the “Bootrail’s” hand, on
condition that the latter will not tell upon him. Why did master send
away the dinner last night without touching it? Because the cook was on
the floor and the _matie_ had to do the work. Chh! Chh! Chh! It is
very shameful and makes her feel so bad. She herself is a teetotaler, as
her mistress knows. That night when she was found with a pillow in her
arms instead of the baby, singing to it and patting it to sleep, she had
been smoking an English cheroot which a friend had given her, and, as she
is accustomed only to country tobacco, it went to her head and stupefied
her. Nothing would induce her to drink spirits, but the other servants
are not like her. The _mussaul_ is not a bad man, but the “Bootrail’s”
example infects him too. He barters the kerosine oil at the petty shop
round the corner for arrack. As for the _hamal_, she is tired of
fighting with him. From this account of herself you will be able to
infer that the _Ayah_ is not a favourite with the other servants; but she
is powerful, and so with oriental prudence they veil their feelings. The
butler indeed, tries to be proud and risks ruin, but the _mussaul_
truckles to her, and the cook, who can spoil her dinner, and has some
control over her, trims between her and the butler. The _hamal_ is
impracticable, and the _chupprassees_ adhere to the party in power for
the time being.
The _Ayah_ is the “society” newspaper of small stations, and is
indispensable. The barber is the general newsagent, and, as we part with
our beards in the morning, we learn from him all particulars of the
dinner at the general’s last night, and of the engagement that resulted
between the pretty Missy Baba and the captain who has been so much about
the house; also when the marriage is to take place, if the captain can
get out of his debts, the exact amount of which Old Tom knows. He can
tell us, too, the reason why she “jawaubed” him so often, being put up to
it by her mother in the interests of a rival suitor, and he has authentic
information as to the real grounds of the mother’s change of tactics.
But Old Tom is himself dependent on _Ayahs_, and there are matters beyond
his range, matters which even in an Indian station cannot reach us by any
male channel. They trickle from _madam_ to _Ayah_, from _Ayah_ to
_Ayah_, and from _Ayah_ to _madam_. Thus they ooze from house to house,
and we are all saved from judging our neighbours by outward appearances.
That scene in the Ladies’ Gymkhana comes back and haunts me. What if the
impress of those swarthy lips on that fair cheek are but an outward
symbol of impressions on a mind still as fair and pure, impressions which
soap and water will not purge away! Yes, it is so. The _Ayah_ hangs
like a black cloud over and around the infant mind, and its earliest
outlooks on the world are tinted by that medium. It lies with wondering
blue eyes watching the coloured toys which she dangles before it, and
takes in the elements of form and colour. She pats it to sleep, and, on
the borders of dream-land, those “sphere-born, harmonious sisters, voice
and verse,” visit it in the form of a plaintive ditty, which has for its
simple burden,
Little, little fish
In bitter, bitter oil.
I will not part with one of them for three pice and a half.
As its mind expands, new mysteries of the universe unfold themselves
through the same interpreter. It learns to see through the hollowness of
promises and threats before it knows the words in which they are framed.
With the knowledge of words comes the knowledge of their use as means of
concealing the truth and gaining its little ends. Then the painful
experience of discipline and punishment reveals the same motherly figure
in the new light of a protector and comforter, and it learns to contrast
her with the stern persons whom she has taught it to call pa-pa and
ma-ma. When they refuse anything on which it has set its childish heart,
it knows to whom to go for sympathy. She will console it and teach
little artifices, by which it may evade or circumvent them. She supplies
discipline of another kind, however, and the yet simple trusting mind of
the little Pantheist lives in terror of papa’s red-faced friend with the
big stomach, who eats up ten or twelve little children every day, and of
the Borah with the great box full of black ants, in which he shuts up
naughty boys till the ants pick the flesh from their disobedient bones.
When it goes to the bandstand, it gazes from a safe distance on the big
drum, full of boys and girls who would not let their hair be combed: it
hears their groans at every stroke of the terrible drumstick. Thus the
religious side of the tender nature is developed, and _Ayah_ is the
priestess. Under the same guidance it will, as it grows older, tread
paths of knowledge which its parents never trod. Whither will they lead
it? We know not who never joined in the familiar chat of _Ayahs_ and
servants, but imagination “bodies forth the forms of things unseen” and
shudders. Let us rejoice that a merciful superstition, which regards the
climate of India as deadly to European children, will step in and save
the little soul. The climate would do it no harm, but there is a moral
miasma more baneful than any which rises from the pestilential swamps of
the Terai, or the Bombay Flats.
[Picture: The Ayah] P. S.—I have just taken another look at our present
_Ayah_. She is a little old woman from Goa, with humorous “crow’s feet”
at the corners of her kind eyes. She is very retiring and modest, and
all the servants seem fond of her. It is evident that nature is various,
and we cannot all be types.