When I awoke, it was broad daylight, and Sunday. The day of rest brings small change to the teeming hordes of India, but conductors and inspectors were permitted to whisper together unobserved, and I took advantage of the holiday to put my wardrobe in the hands of a dhoby. A dhoby, in any language but Hindustanee, is a laundryman. But the word fails dismally as a translation. Within those two syllables lurks a volume of meaning to the sahib who has dwelt in the land of India. The editors of Anglo-Indian newspapers, who may only write and endure, are undecided whether to style him a fiend or a raving maniac. Youthful philosophers and poets, grown eloquent under the inspiration of a newly returned basket, fill more columns than the reporter of the viceroy’s council.
For the dhoby is a man of energy. High above his head, like a flail, he swings each streaming garment and brings it down on his flat stone as if his principal desire in life were to split it to bits. Not once, but as long as strength endures, and when he can swing no more he flings down the tog and jumps fiendishly upon it. His bare feet tread a wild Terpsichorean orgie, and when he can dance no longer he falls upon the unoffending rag and tugs and strains and twists and pulls, as though determined that it shall come to be washed no more. Flying buttons are his glee. If he can reduce the garment to the component parts in which the maker cut it, his joy is complete. When the power to beat and tramp and tug fails him, he tosses the shreds disdainfully into the stream or cistern and attacks the wardrobe of another helpless client. Yet he is strictly honest. At nightfall he bears back to its owner the dirt he carried away, and the threads that hold it together. When all other words of vituperation seem weak and insipid, the Anglo-Indian calls his enemy a dhoby.
The cook of the rendezvous offered, for three annas, to wash all that I owned, save my shoes and the inner workings of my pith helmet. In a more commonplace land the possessor of a single suit would have been bedridden until the task was done. But not in India. A large handkerchief was ample attire within the “bums’ retreat.” The beachcombers gathered in the dining-room saw in the costume cause for envy, not ridicule; for few could boast of as much when wash-day came for them, and the hours that might have been spent under sheets and blankets in a sterner clime passed quickly in the writing of letters.
From the back yard, for a time, came the shrieks of maltreated garments. Then all fell silent. In fear and trembling, I ventured forth to take inventory of my indispensable raiment. But as a dhoby the cook was a bungler. There were a few rents in the gear arrayed on the eaves gutter, a button was missing here and there, and there was no evidence of snowy whiteness. But every garment could still be easily identified, and an hour with a ship’s needle, when the blazing sun had done its work, sufficed to heal the wounds, though not the scars, of combat.
Not a word of Haywood had reached me since the police station had swallowed him up. Evidently he was still forcibly separated from society; but had he escaped with a light sentence or fallen victim to “five years of the lock-step?” When my Monday report had been filed, I set out to find the answer to that question. Such cases, they told me, were tried at a court in a distant section of the city. Its officials knew nothing of the New Yorker however, and I tramped to the suburban station where the “crime” had been committed. Inquiry seemed futile. The vendor was there, as blithesome as ever, and his bananas were hoary with age, but the fourteen words of Hindustanee I had picked up were those he did not know. The policeman on the platform had heard some discussion of the case, but had no definite information to offer. Then came the relief squad, and the officer who had made the arrest directed me to another distant court.
There were several buildings of judicial aspect scattered over the great campus, but they were closed for the night. The door of a hut, such as servants dwell in, stood ajar, and I entered. A high-caste native was gathering together books and papers from the desk of a miniature court room. I made known my errand.
“Haywood?” answered the Hindu, “Ah! Yes, I know about him. I know all about him, for he was tried before me.”
The New Yorker had swallowed his pride, indeed, to consent to being tried by a “nigger” rather than to come into contact with white officers.
“And what did you hand him?” I ventured.
The justice, striving to appear at ease in a pompous dignity that was as much too large for him as the enormous blue and white turban that bellied out above his thin face like an un-reefed mainsail in a stiff breeze, chose a ledger from the desk and turned over the leaves.