CHAPTER XXX
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.
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!