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!”