urgently require is a servant--a nice, fat Mussulman _khitmatgar_,
who is not above doing bearer's work on occasion. Such a man I would
go down to Southampton or Tilbury to meet, would usher tenderly into
a first-class carriage (I always go third myself), and wrap in the
warmest of flannel. He should be "_Jenab_" and I would be "_O Tum_."
When he died, as he assuredly would in this weather, I would bury him
in my best back garden and write mortuary verses for publication in the
_Koh-i-Nur_, or whatever vernacular paper he might read. I want, in
short, a servant; and this is why I am writing to you.
The English, who, by the way, are unmitigated barbarians, maintain
cotton-print housemaids to do work which is the manifest portion of a
man. Besides which, no properly constructed person cares to see a white
woman waiting upon his needs, filling coal-scuttles (these are very
mysterious beasts) and tidying rooms. The young homebred Englishman
does not object, and one of the most tantalising sights in the world
is that of the young man of the house--the son newly introduced to
shaving-water and great on the subject of maintaining authority--it is
tantalising, I say, to see this young cub hectoring a miserable little
slavey for not having lighted a fire or put his slippers in their
proper place. The next time a big, bold man from the frontier comes
home I shall hire him to kick a few young gentlemen of my acquaintance
all round their own drawing-rooms while I lecture on my theory that
this sort of thing accounts for the perceptible lack of chivalry in
the modern Englishman. Now, if you or I or anybody else raved over and
lectured at Kadir Baksh, or Ram Singh, or Jagesa on the necessity of
obeying orders and the beauty of reverencing our noble selves, our men
would laugh; or if the lecture struck them as too long-winded would ask
us if our livers were out of order and recommend _dawai_. The housemaid
must stand with her eyes on the ground while the young whelp sticks
his hands under the tail of his dressing-gown and explains her duty to
her. This makes me ill and sick--sick for Kadir Baksh, who rose from
the earth when I called him, who knew the sequence of my papers and
the ordering of my paltry garments, and, I verily believed, loved me
not altogether for the sake of lucre. He said he would come with me to
_Belait_ because, "though the sahib says he will never return to India,
yet I know, and all the other _nauker log_ know, that return is his
fate."
Being a fool, I left Kadir Baksh behind, and now I am alone with
housemaids, who will under no circumstances sleep on the mat outside
the door. Even as I write, one of these persons is cleaning up my room.
Kadir Baksh would have done his work without noise. She tramps and
scuffles; and, what is much worse, snuffles horribly. Kadir Baksh would
have saluted me cheerfully and began some sort of a yarn of the "It
hath reached me, O Auspicious King!" order, and perhaps we should have
debated over the worthlessness of Dunni, the _sais_, or the chances of
a little cold-weather expedition, or the wisdom of retaining a fresh
_chaprassi_--some intimate friend of Kadir Baksh. But now I have no
horses and no _chaprassis_, and this smutty-faced girl glares at me
across the room as though she expected I was going to eat her.
She must have a soul of her own--a life of her own--and perhaps a few
amusements. I can't get at these things. She says: "Ho, yuss," and
"Ho, no," and if I hadn't heard her chattering to the lift-boy on the
stairs I should think that her education stopped at these two phrases.
Now, I knew all about Kadir Baksh, his hopes and his savings--his
experiences in the past, and the health of the little ones. He was a
man--a human man remarkably like myself, and he knew that as well as
I. A housemaid is of course not a man, but she might at least be a
woman. My wanderings about this amazing heathen city have brought me
into contact with very many English _mem sahibs_ who seem to be eaten
up with the fear of letting their servants get "above their position,"
or "presume," or do something which would shake the foundations of the
four-mile cab radius. They seem to carry on a sort of cat-and-mouse war
when the husband is at office and they have nothing much to do. Later,
at places where their friends assemble, they recount the campaign, and
the other women purr approvingly and say: "You did quite right, my
dear. It is evident that she forgets her place."
All this is edifying to the stranger, and gives him a great idea of
the dignity that has to be bolstered and buttressed, eight hours of
the twenty-four, against the incendiary attacks of an eighteen-pound
including-beer-money sleeps-in-a-garret-at-the-top-of-the-house
servant-girl. There is a fine-crusted, slave-holding instinct in the
hearts of a good many deep-bosomed matrons--a "throw back" to the
times when we trafficked in black ivory. At tea-tables and places
where they eat muffins it is called dignity. Now, your Kadir Baksh or
my Kadir Baksh, who is a downtrodden and oppressed heathen (the young
gentlemen who bullyrag white women assure me that we are in the habit
of kicking our dependents and beating them with umbrellas daily),
would ask for his _chits_, and probably say something sarcastic ere he
drifted out of the compound gate, if you nagged or worried his noble
self. He does not know much about the meaner forms of dignity, but
he is entirely sound on the subject of _izzat_; and the fact of his
cracking an azure and Oriental jest with you in the privacy of your
dressing-room, or seeing you at your incoherent worst when you have an
attack of fever, does not in the least affect his general deportment in
public, where he knows that the honour of his sahib is his own honour,
and dons a new _kummerbund_ on the strength of it.
I have tried to deal with those housemaids in every possible way.
To sling a blunt "Annie" or "Mary" or "Jane" at a girl whose only
fault is that she is a heavy-handed incompetent, strikes me as rather
an insult, seeing that the girl may have a brother, and that if you
had a sister who was a servant you would object to her being howled
at upstairs and downstairs by her given name. But only ladies' maids
are entitled to their surnames. They are not nice people as a caste,
and they regard the housemaids as the _chamar_ regards the _mehter_.
Consequently, I have to call these girls by their Christian names, and
cock my feet up on a chair when they are cleaning the grate, and pass
them in the halls in the morning as though they didn't exist. Now, the
morning salutation of your Kadir Baksh or my Kadir is a performance
which Turveydrop might envy. These persons don't understand a nod; they
think it as bad as a wink, I believe. Respect and courtesy are lost
upon them, and I suppose I must gather my dressing-gown into a tail and
swear at them in the bloodless voice affected by the British female
who--have I mentioned this?--is a highly composite heathen when she
comes in contact with her sister clay downstairs.
The softer methods lay one open to harder suspicions. Not long
ago there was trouble among my shirts. I fancied buttons grew on
neck-bands. Kadir Baksh and the _durzie_ encouraged me in the belief.
When the lead-coloured linen (they cannot wash, by the way, in this
stronghold of infidels) shed its buttons I cast about for a means
of renewal. There was a housemaid, and she was not very ugly, and
I thought she could sew. I knew I could not. Therefore I strove to
ingratiate myself with her, believing that a little interest, combined
with a little capital, would fix those buttons more firmly than
anything else. Subsequently, and after an interval--the buttons were
dropping like autumn leaves--I kissed her. The buttons were attached at
once. So, unluckily, was the housemaid, for I gathered that she looked
forward to a lifetime of shirt-sewing in an official capacity, and my
Revenue Board contemplated no additional establishment. My shirts are
buttonsome, but my character is blasted. Oh, I wish I had Kadir Baksh!
This is only the first instalment of my troubles. The heathen in these
parts do not understand me; so if you will allow I will come to you for
sympathy from time to time. I am a child of calamity.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 29: "Turnovers," Vol. VIII.]
THE NEW DISPENSATION--II[30]
Writing of Kadir Baksh so wrought up my feelings that I could not rest
till I had at least made an attempt to get a _budli_ of some sort.
The black man is essential to my comfort. I fancied I might in this
city of barbarism catch a brokendown native strayed from his home and
friends, who would be my friend and humble pardner--the sort of man, y'
know, who would sleep on a rug somewhere near my chambers (I have forty
things to tell you about chambers, but they come later), and generally
look after my things. In the intervals of labour I would talk to him in
his own tongue, and we would go abroad together and explore London.
Do you know the Albert Docks? The British-India steamers go thence
to the sunshine. They sometimes leave a lascar or two on the wharf,
and, in fact, the general tone of the population thereabouts is brown
and umber. I was in no case to be particular. Anything dusky would do
for me, so long as it could talk Hindustani and sew buttons. I went
to the docks and walked about generally among the railway lines and
packing-cases, till I found a man selling tooth-combs, which is not a
paying trade. He was ragged even to furriness, and very unwashed. But
he came from the East. "What are you?" I said, and the look of the
missionary that steals over me in moments of agitation deluded that
tooth-comb man into answering, "Sar, I am native ki-li-sti-an," but he
put five more syllables into the last word.
There is no Christianity in the docks worth a tooth-comb. "I don't want
your beliefs. I want your _jat_," said I.
"I am Tamil," said he, "and my name is Ramasawmy."
It was an awful thing to lower oneself to the level of a Colonel of
the Madras Army, and come down to being tended by a Ramasawmy; but
beggars cannot be choosers. I pointed out to him that the tooth-comb
trade was a thing lightly to be dropped and taken up. He might injure
his health by a washing, but he could not much hurt his prospects by
coming along with me and trying his hand at bearer's work. "Could he
work?" Oh, yes, he didn't mind work. He had been a servant in his time.
Several servants, in fact.
"Could he wash himself?"
"Ye-es," he might do that if I gave him a coat--a thick
coat--afterwards, and especially took care of the tooth-combs, for they
were his little all.
"Had he any character of any kind?"
He thought for a minute and then said cheerfully: "Not a little dam."
Thereat I loved him, because a man who can speak the truth in minor
matters may be trusted with important things, such as shirts.
We went home together till we struck a public bath, mercifully divided
into three classes. I got him to go into the third without much
difficulty. When he came out he was in the way of cleanliness, and
before he had time to expostulate I ran him into the second. Into the
first he would not go till I had bought him a cheap ulster. He came
out almost clean. That cost me three shillings altogether. The ulster
was half a sovereign, and some other clothes were thirty shillings.
Even these things could not hide from me that he looked an unusually
villainous creature.
At the chambers the trouble began. The people in charge had race
prejudices very strongly, and I had to point out that he was a
civilised native Christian anxious to improve his English--it was
fluent but unchastened--before they would give him some sort of a crib
to lie down in. The housemaids called him the Camel. I introduced him
as "the Tamil," but they knew nothing of the ethnological sub-divisions
of India. They called him "that there beastly camel," and I saw by the
light in his eye he understood only too well.
Coming up the staircase he confided to me his views about the
housemaids. He had lived at the docks too long. I said they weren't. He
said they were.
Then I showed him his duties, and he stood long in thought before
the wardrobe. He evidently knew more than a little of the work, but
whenever he came to a more than unusually dilapidated garment, he said:
"No good for you, _I_ take"; and he took. Then he put all the buttons
on in the smoking of a pipe, and asked if there was anything else. I
weakly said "No." He said: "Good-bye," and faded out of the house. The
housekeeper of the chambers said he would never return.
But he did. At three in the morning home he came, and, naturally,
possessing no latch-key, rang the bell. A policeman interfered, taking
him for a burglar, and I was roused by the racket. I explained he was
my servant, and the policeman said: "He do swear wonderful. 'Tain't
any language. I know most of it, but some I've heard at Poplar." Then
I dragged the Camel upstairs. He was quite sober, and said he had
been waiting at the docks. He must wait at the docks every time a
British-India steamer came in. A lascar on the _Rewah_ had stabbed him
in the side three voyages ago, and he was waiting for his man. "Maybe
he have died," he said; "but if he have not died I catch him and cut
his liver out." Then he curled himself up on the mat, and slept as
noiselessly as a child.
Next morning he inspected the humble breakfast bloater, which did not
meet with his approval, for he instantly cut it in two pieces, fried
it with butter, dusted it with pepper, and miraculously made of it a
dish fit for a king. When the shock-headed boy came to take away the
breakfast things, he counted every piece of crockery into his quaking
hand and said: "If you break one dam thing I cut your dam liver out and
fly _him_ with butter." Consequently, the housemaids said they were not
going to clean the rooms as long as the Camel abode within. The Camel
put his head out of the door and said they need not. He cleaned the
rooms with his own hand and without noise, filled my pipe, made the
bed, filled a pipe for himself, and sat down on the hearth-rug while
I worked. When thought carried him away to the lascar of the _Rewah_,
he would brandish the poker or take out his knife and whet it on the
brickwork of the grate. It was a soothing sound to work to. At one
o'clock he said that the _Chyebassa_ would be in, and he must go. He
demanded no money, saw that my tiffin was served, and fled. He returned
at six o'clock singing a hymn. A lascar on the _Chyebassa_ had told
him that the _Rewah_ was due in four days, and that his friend was not
dead, but ripe for the knife. That night he got very drunk while I was
out, and frightened the housemaids. All the chambers were in an uproar,
but he crawled out of the skylight on the roof, and sat there till I
came home.
In the dawn he was very penitent. He had misarranged his drink: the
original intention being to sleep it off on my hearth-rug, but a
housemaid had invited a friend up to the chambers to look at him, and
the whispered comments and giggles made him angry. All next day he was
restless but attentive. He urged me to fly to foreign shores, and take
him with me. When other inducements failed, he reiterated that he was a
"native ki-lis-ti-an," and whetted his knife more furiously than ever.
"You do not like this place. _I_ do not like this place. Let us travel
_dam_ quick. Let us go on the sea. _I_ cook blotters." I told him this
was impossible, but that if he stayed in my service we might later go
abroad and enjoy ourselves.
But he would not rest and sleep on the rug and tend my shirts. On the
morning of the _Rewah's_ arrival he went away, and from his absence I
fancied he had fallen into the hands of the law. But at midnight he
came back, weak and husky.
"Have got him," said he simply, and dragged his ulster down from the
wall, wrapping it very tightly round him. "Now I go 'way."
He went into the bedroom, and began counting over the tale of the
week's wash, the boots, and so forth. "All right," he called into the
other room. Then came in to say good-bye, walking slowly.
"What's your name, marshter?" said he. I told him. He bowed and
descended the staircase painfully. I had not paid him a penny, and
since he did not ask for it, counted on his returning at least for
wages.
It was not till next morning that I found big dark drops on most of my
clean shirts, and the housemaid complained of a trail of blood all down
the staircase.
"The Camel" had received payment in full from other hands than mine.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 30: "Turnovers," Vol. VIII.]
THE LAST OF THE STORIES[31]
_Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man
should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion._
--_Ecc._ iii, 22.
"Kench with a long hand, lazy one," I said to the punkah coolie. "But
I am tired," said the coolie. "Then go to Jehannum and get another man
to pull," I replied, which was rude and, when you come to think of it,
unnecessary.
"Happy thought--go to Jehannum!" said a voice at my elbow. I turned
and saw, seated on the edge of my bed, a large and luminous Devil.
"I'm not afraid," I said. "You're an illusion bred by too much tobacco
and not enough sleep. If I look at you steadily for a minute you will
disappear. You are an _ignis fatuus_."
"Fatuous yourself!" answered the Devil blandly. "Do you mean to say
you don't know _me_?" He shrivelled up to the size of a blob of
sediment on the end of a pen, and I recognised my old friend the Devil
of Discontent, who lived in the bottom of the inkpot, but emerges
half a day after each story has been printed with a host of useless
suggestions for its betterment.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" I said. "You're not due till next week. Get back
to your inkpot."
"Hush!" said the Devil. "I have an idea."
"Too late, as usual. I know your ways."
"No. It's a perfectly practicable one. Your swearing at the coolie
suggested it. Did you ever hear of a man called Dante--charmin' fellow,
friend o' mine?"
"'Dante once prepared to paint a picture,'" I quoted.
"Yes. I inspired that notion--but never mind. Are you willing to play
Dante to my Virgil? I can't guarantee a nine-circle Inferno, any more
than _you_ can turn out a cantoed epic, but there's absolutely no risk
and--it will run to three columns at least."
"But what sort of Hell do you own?" I said. "I fancied your operations
were mostly above ground. You have no jurisdiction over the dead."
"Sainted Leopardi!" rapped the Devil, resuming natural size. "Is
_that_ all you know? I'm proprietor of one of the largest Hells in
existence--the Limbo of Lost Endeavor, where the souls of all the
Characters go."
"Characters? What Characters?"
"All the characters that are drawn in books, painted in novels,
sketched in magazine articles, thumb-nailed in _feuilletons_ or in
any way created by anybody and everybody who has had the fortune or
misfortune to put his or her writings into print."
"That sounds like a quotation from a prospectus. What do you herd
Characters for? Aren't there enough souls in the Universe?"
"Who possess souls and who do not? For aught you can prove, man may be
soulless and the creatures he writes about immortal. Anyhow, about a
hundred years after printing became an established nuisance, the loose
Characters used to blow about interplanetary space in legions which
interfered with traffic. So they were collected, and their charge
became mine by right. Would you care to see them? _Your own are there._"
"That decides me. But _is_ it hotter than Northern India?"
"On my Devildom, no. Put your arms round my neck and sit tight. I'm
going to dive!"
He plunged from the bed headfirst into the floor. There was a smell of
jail-_durrie_ and damp earth; and then fell the black darkness of night.
* * * * *
We stood before a door in a topless wall, from the further side of
which came faintly the roar of infernal fires.
"But you said there was no danger!" I cried in an extremity of terror.
"No more there is," said the Devil. "That's only the Furnace of First
Edition. Will you go on? No other human being has set foot here in the
flesh. Let me bring the door to your notice. Pretty design, isn't it? A
joke of the Master's."
I shuddered, for the door was nothing more than a coffin, the backboard
knocked out, set on end in the thickness of the wall. As I hesitated,
the silence of space was cut by a sharp, shrill whistle, like that of
a live shell, which rapidly grew louder and louder. "Get away from the
door," said the Devil of Discontent quickly. "Here's a soul coming to
its place." I took refuge under the broad vans of the Devil's wings.
The whistle rose to an ear-splitting shriek and a naked soul flashed
past me.
"Always the same," said the Devil quietly. "These little writers
are _so_ anxious to reach their reward. H'm, I don't think he likes
_his'n_, though." A yell of despair reached my ears and I shuddered
afresh. "Who was he?" I asked. "Hack-writer for a pornographic firm in
Belgium, exporting to London, you'll understand presently--and now
we'll go in," said the Devil. "I must apologise for that creature's
rudeness. He should have stopped at the distance-signal for line-clear.
You can hear the souls whistling there now."
"Are they the souls of men?" I whispered.
"Yes--writer-men. That's why they are so shrill and querulous. Welcome
to the Limbo of Lost Endeavour!"
They passed into a domed hall, more vast than visions could embrace,
crowded to its limit by men, women and children. Round the eye of the
dome ran, a flickering fire, that terrible quotation from Job: "Oh,
that mine enemy had written a book!"
"Neat, isn't it?" said the Devil, following my glance. "Another joke
of the Master's. Man of _Us_, y' know. In the old days we used to put
the Characters into a disused circle of Dante's Inferno, but they grew
overcrowded. So Balzac and Théophile Gautier were commissioned to write
up this building. It took them three years to complete, and is one of
the finest under earth. Don't attempt to describe it unless you are
_quite_ sure you are equal to Balzac and Gautier in collaboration. Look
at the crowds and tell me what you think of them."
I looked long and earnestly, and saw that many of the multitude were
cripples. They walked on their heels or their toes, or with a list to
the right or left. A few of them possessed odd eyes and parti-coloured
hair; more threw themselves into absurd and impossible attitudes; and
every fourth woman seemed to be weeping.
"Who are these?" I said.
"Mainly the population of three-volume novels that never reach the
six-shilling stage. See that beautiful girl with one grey eye and one
brown, and the black and yellow hair? Let her be an awful warning to
you how you correct your proofs. She was created by a careless writer a
month ago, and he changed all colours in the second volume. So she came
here as you see her. There will be trouble when she meets her author.
He can't alter her now, and she says she'll accept no apology."
"But when will she meet her author?"
"Not in _my_ department. Do you notice a general air of expectancy
among all the Characters? They are waiting for their authors. Look!
That explains the system better than I can."
A lovely maiden, at whose feet I would willingly have fallen and
worshipped, detached herself from the crowd and hastened to the door
through which I had just come. There was a prolonged whistle without,
a soul dashed through the coffin and fell upon her neck. The girl with
the parti-coloured hair eyed the couple enviously as they departed arm
in arm to the other side of the hall.
"That man," said the Devil, "wrote one magazine story, of twenty-four
pages, ten years ago when he was desperately in love with a flesh and
blood woman. He put all his heart into the work, and created the girl
you have just seen. The flesh and blood woman married some one else and
died--it's a way they have--but the man has this girl for his very
own, and she will everlastingly grow sweeter."
"Then the Characters are independent?"
"Slightly! Have you never known one of your Characters--even yours--get
beyond control as soon as they are made?"
"That's true. Where are those two happy creatures going?"
"To the Levels. You've heard of authors finding their levels? We keep
all the Levels here. As each writer enters, he picks up his Characters,
or they pick _him_ up, as the case may be, and to the Levels he goes."