CHAPTER II
ANDREW
We are poor sometimes, we two Nomads, but we are never without a retinue. There are two reasons for this. I am a helpless, incapable woman, with an acute need of servants. My husband, on the other hand, is phenomenally good to servants. They seem to know this instinctively. They flock to him, and install themselves in his service, and he always feels it difficult to dislodge them. We went into Colombo a party of six. I am not speaking of our company of twenty odd artists (more or less), but of our family party, in which were ourselves, our three children, and their European nurse. We left Colombo a party of eight. A Madrassi boy had attached himself to my husband, and I took the Cingalese ayah for Baby. We left Andrew weeping and wailing on the wharf, and doing it in the most approved and vigorous style. My husband was half inclined to take Andrew with him, but we did not need him; and I had rather discouraged the idea for two other reasons. I should perhaps be ashamed of them both; but this is a true history as far as it goes; so here they are:—Andrew was not good-looking. Now one must put up with ill-looking relatives, but I can never bring myself to be contented with positively plain servants. My other objection to Andrew was that he was a “Cold Water Baptist.” I don’t in the least know what cold water Baptists are. Were I to meet them in Europe, it is of course possible that I should like and respect them intensely; but I must own to a prejudice against native converts. Not so much because I believe that they are usually insincere, as because they are almost invariably hybrid. I believe in the suitability of all things, even in the suitability of religion. Andrew was lank and hungry-looking; he wrapped the native skirt about his legs; he pinned his long hair up with the orthodox tortoise-shell comb; but he wore a European coat over a dirty European shirt. Could anything have looked worse? I think not.
Andrew called himself a guide. He discovered my husband before we had fairly arrived, and insisted upon being engaged. We found him very useful, because he could speak English. And that was a comfort, though he never had any exact information and very rarely spoke the rigid truth. He never lost sight of his master for an instant, unless he was peremptorily sent on an errand to the other end of the town. My husband used to try to escape him. Once or twice we would really have enjoyed a short walk or a drive, alone. But we never had either. There were many exits from our hotel. We tried them all. Sometimes we would get as far as the corner. Then we would hear the plunk—plunk—plunk—of Andrew’s flying feet. “Salaam, sahib,” he would gasp breathlessly, “where are we going?”
He never would tell us his real name. I used to try to bribe him. His master would threaten him. He had but one reply for threat or bribe: “Andrew is my Christian name. I am a Cold Water Baptist.” He never seemed able to lessen my dense ignorance re the interesting subject of Cold Water Baptists. But he could talk glibly enough about the faith he had forsworn. And I observed that he seemed on intimate terms with the priests at all the native temples, and never failed to drop a copper in the temple box. I concluded that his conversion had been purely commercial. He told me that the “Padre Sahib” had given him three coats. It is easier to give a native a coat than a belief.
When we drove in the chill early morning, Andrew used to wrap his head in a Gordon tartan. If we chanced to pass the barracks, he promptly unwound his shawl, folded it up, and sat upon it. Doubtless he did not wish to embarrass me by having the sentry mistake him for the Colonel.
My husband often used, when he was too busy to go with me on my long afternoon drives, to send Andrew—partly for my convenience, as I always went into the densest native quarters, where English was not spoken, and partly, I think, to get rid of Andrew.
One afternoon I looked behind to speak to Andrew, who with the sais was perched on the back of the gharri. He was smoking a not bad cigar. I flew at him, verbally.
“No harm,” he said, with insolence that was, I am sure, unconscious. “No harm. The sahib is not here. I no smoke before my master.”
“You won’t smoke before me!” I said with undignified warmth. “Your master would not smoke in a gharri with me. And I won’t allow any other man to do so—black or white.”
Andrew looked at me stupidly and smiled. Then a thought flashed from my eyes to his. He knocked the fire from his cigar, and put the stump in his pocket. I had recognised my husband’s favourite Havanna, and Andrew knew it.
One day I bought some trifle from an itinerant native. We were driving, and I was wearing a pocketless dress.
“Give the man six annas for me, Andrew,” I said; “I have no money.”
“No,” he said smoothly, “a woman wouldn’t.”
I had one other experience with Andrew, when driving. My husband sent me to capture a scene-painter, and bring him, if possible, to the theatre. The man was that despised unhappy thing, a Eurasian. He was poor; and he drank too much. But I had seen a fan he had painted, and some water-colour sketches of Kandy which he had done. I knew that he was—in part at least—a genius. We found him after a great deal of trouble. He came out to my gharri, and I greeted him, as I would always greet an artist, and stated my business. He took off his shabby sombrero and climbed up to the seat I indicated beside me. Andrew broke into excited vernacular. The man beside me flushed, and started to move.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“I tell him I no let Eurasian man sit beside my master’s wife. He must come back here with me and Sais.”
I was in a fine rage. I made Andrew get out and walk the several miles that stretched between us and the theatre. That night I had my husband tell him that, when he went out with me, he was, under no circumstances, to speak, unless I spoke to him.
But it was the day of our first performance that I really established myself in Andrew’s mind as a person of importance. I went to the theatre about four o’clock to see if the ayah I had engaged to help me at the theatre had put my dressing-room into proper trim. As I passed in, I noticed Andrew sitting on the lowest rung of a bamboo ladder. He was looking very vicious. He muttered “Salaam” rather than said it, and didn’t rise. I went into my dressing-room, and then marched on to the stage, to attack the poor stage manager.
“Am I to dress in that fearful hole?” I asked him sweetly.
Some one laughed. I turned round.
“I beg your pardon,” said Jimmie M‘Allister, “but do come and see the governor’s quarters.” Jimmie was, of all the boys in our company, my first favourite.
I followed him downstairs, and the stage manager followed me. I looked into my husband’s quarters.
“Do you want to see where the other ladies dress?” asked the stage manager softly.
“I say, do come and see our palace behind the scenes,” cried Jimmie triumphantly.
But I had seen quite enough. The artists’ quarters at the Colombo theatre did not compare favourably with the front of the house. I went meekly back to my dressing-room, wondering what could be done to make my husband’s den a little more comfortable.
“Would you mind speaking to this young imp of your husband’s?” said the stage manager. “He won’t let us take the governor’s things into the dressing-room.” My heart warmed to Andrew.
“Quite right,” I said; “the room certainly must be cleaned out first.”
“Oh! he doesn’t in the least mind the dirt,” explained Jimmie. “He’s offended because your dressing-room is better than the governor’s.”
I had known a prominent actor in—well never mind where—who used to dress luxuriously off the stage, while his wife climbed up a flight of narrow stairs, and wandered down a dark corridor to a gruesome little closet. But that any one would ever expect my husband to be brute enough to allow me to do anything of that kind had never occurred to me. I felt vexed for the moment. Then we came upon Andrew, sitting on the ladder, doggedly guarding his master’s luggage. I realised that Andrew was quite right from his point of view; and for a moment I felt tempted to gratify him by ordering my things to be put into my husband’s room. Then I remembered that we were to play the Merchant of Venice that night. Shylock wore one dress; Portia wore five. And then too, had I changed rooms, my husband would have changed back again. I sent for some coolies; I called my ayah, and superintended the cleaning of that room myself. Jimmie M‘Allister and the stage manager helped me. Andrew stood by sullenly. His master came in. Andrew sprang to him.
“The memsahib has a more nice room,” he said impressively.
“The memsahib has a beastly hole. Go and tell that Madrassi out in front that I want a carpet and a sofa and some nice chairs, here in half an hour, for the memsahib’s room—mind you.”
Poor Andrew gasped and went out. But his manner to me changed from that moment. An hour later Jimmie and I went to the bazaar and got the furniture for my husband’s room. I think Andrew forgave me when I came back with it. I took some curtains from a property box, and told him to tack them up at his master’s window. He answered me quite pleasantly.
I never had another encounter with Andrew; but I never could teach him to knock. He would walk into my dressing-room, and coolly pick up my hare’s-foot, or my scissors, without vouchsafing me one poor word of explanation. If I ventured to ask “What are you doing?” he replied, “Master want,” and went out. I used to beg him to knock; but I don’t remember that he ever did knock. Nor did he ever beat a retreat, no matter in what state of deshabille he found me. Finally, we used to turn the key in the door, if I had an entire change to make. Then he would pound on the door and cry so loudly that the people in front heard—“Open, open; Master want your red paint.”
Andrew and I grew better friends. He used to bring me some little present every morning. Three or four flowers, or a basket of cocoanuts, or a spray of cinnamon.
He said one day to my nurse—“The master like the memsahib. I want please the master—I must please the memsahib. When the memsahib grow old and her teeth drop out, the master will sell her and buy a new wife.” We overheard this remark of Andrew’s. My husband was delighted, and to this day often holds the threat over my silvering head. But I grew to really like Andrew, he was so unmistakably fond of his master. I believe that he grew to really like me, for the same reason.