The keeper refused angrily to talk to me when I offered to buy the whole dish, and we went on.
Wherever we went, the people were afraid to come near us. The peddler of green cocoanuts begged us to carry away the shells when we had drunk the milk; passing natives sprang aside in terror when we tossed a banana-skin on the ground. When we bought slices of watermelon of a fruit-seller, he watched anxiously to make sure that we didn’t drop a seed on his stand. If we had done so he would have thrown away his entire stock to save himself from losing caste.
As we turned a corner in the crowded market-place, Haywood, who was smoking, and who was not at all neat in his habits, carelessly spat upon the flowing gown of a turbaned passer-by.
“Oh, sahib!” screamed the native in excellent English. “See what you have done! You have made me lose caste. For weeks, now, I may not go among my friends or see my family. I must stop my business, and wear rags, and sit in the street, and pour ashes on my head, and go often to the temple to purify myself.”
“Stuff!” said Haywood.
But the weeping Hindu turned back the way he had come.
This strange belief makes India a land of unusual hardship for a man who cannot afford to stop at the great European hotels. He not only has difficulty in buying food and lodging, but, worse than that, he cannot get water. And in a hot country like India water is an absolute necessity. For this reason the English rulers have made a law to help travelers who find themselves stranded far in the interior of the peninsula. India is divided into states or districts, and each district is ruled by a governor, called a commissioner, who lives in the largest city of his district. The law provides that if a European finds himself penniless and unable to buy food, he may apply to any commissioner, who must give him a third-class ticket to the capital of the next district, and enough money, called batter, to buy food on the way.
We had not been in Trichinopoly long when Marten, who had tossed his last anna to a beggar, decided to pay a visit to the district commissioner. I agreed to accompany him, for I wanted to see a commissioner’s bungalow and to make the acquaintance of so important a personage as the governor himself; and wherever we went Haywood was sure to follow. Thus it happened that, as noonday fell over Trichinopoly, three cotton-clad Americans walked out of the native town and turned northward toward the governor’s bungalow.
Heat-waves hovered like a fog before us. Here and there a tree cast its slender shadow, like a splash of ink, across the white highway. A few coolies, whose skins were safe from sunburn, shuffled through the sand on their way to the town. We spoke to one to ask our way; but he sprang with a side jump to the farthest edge of the roadway, in terror of our touch.
“Commissioner sahib keh bungalow kéhdereh?” (“Where is the commissioner’s bungalow?”) asked Marten.