CHUA.
Helen found great difficulty at first in assimilating this hand-maid into her daily life. She had been told that an ayah was indispensable, and she could accept Chua as a necessary appendage to the lofty state of her Oriental existence, but to find occupation for her became rather a burden to the mind of Mrs. Browne. Things to do were precious, she could not spare them to be done by anybody else, even at ten rupees a month with the alternative of improper idleness. Moreover, the situation was in some respects embarrassing. One could have one’s ribbons straightened and one’s hair brushed with equanimity, but when it came to the bathing of one’s feet and the putting on of one’s stockings Helen was disposed to dispense with the services of her ayah as verging on the indelicate. Chua was still more grieved when her mistress utterly declined to allow herself to be “punched and prodded,” as she expressed it, in the process of gentle massaging in which the ayah species are proficient. Mrs. Browne was young then, and a new-comer, and not of a disposition to brook any interference with her muscular tissues. But the other day she particularly recommended an ayah to me on account of this accomplishment. This to illustrate, of course, not the degeneration of Mrs. Browne’s sense of propriety, but of her muscular tissues.
The comprehension and precise knowledge which Chua at once obtained of her mistress’s wardrobe and effects was wonderful in its way. She knew the exact contents of every box and drawer and wardrobe, the number of pen-nibs in the writing-case, the number of spools in the work-basket. Helen used to feel, in the shock of some disclosure of observation extraordinary, as if the omniscient little woman had made an index of her mistress’s emotions and ideas as well, and could lay her small skinny brown finger upon any one of them, which intuition was very far from being wrong. Chua early induced an admiring confidence in her rectitude by begging Mrs. Browne to make a list of all her possessions so that from time to time she could demonstrate their safety. The ayah felt herself responsible. She knew that upon the provocation of a missing embroidered petticoat there might be unpleasant results connected with the police-wallah and the thana,[[51]] not only for her but for the whole establishment, and she wished to be in a secure position to give evidence, if necessary, against somebody else. It could certainly not be Chua, therefore, Helen announced, when she communicated to her lord at the breakfast table the fact that her very best scissors had been missing for three days. “Isn’t it tedious?” said she.
[51]. Police office.
“Scissors,” said young Browne. “Yes, good new shiny sharp ones, weren’t they, with Rodgers’ name plainly stamped on them—and rather small?”
“All that,” lamented Helen, “and embroidery size—such loves!”
AN ACCIDENT DISCLOSED THEM AT THE BOTTOM OF AN IMPOSSIBLE VASE.
“You are gradually coming within the operation of custom, my dear. Steel is the weakness of the Aryan. He—in this case she—will respect your clothes, take care of your money, and guard your jewellery—they all have a general sense of property in its correct relation, but it does not apply to a small pair of scissors or a neat pocket knife. Such things seem to yield to some superior attraction outside the moral sense connected with these people, and they invariably disappear. It’s inveterate, but it’s a nuisance. One has to make such a row.”