The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

IN HIS REAR WERE THREE OTHERS MUCH LIKE HIMSELF.

Perhaps it is unnecessary to go into Mr. Batcham’s questions. They were put with the fluency and precision of a man of business. Ambica Nath Mitter understood them perfectly, and explained them admirably. They elicited exactly what Mr. Batcham wanted to know. His fat, red hand trembled with avidity as he set down fact after fact of the most “painful” description—or possibly it was agitated by an indignation which Mr. Batcham doubtless could not wholly suppress. And, indeed, the recital of the wrongs which these three miserable men had suffered under the cruel hand of the tyrannical sirdar,[^[85]] and the indifferent eye of the callous sahib, would have moved an even less susceptible heart than that of a British manufacturer in the same line of business. One had been beaten with stripes—he showed Mr. Batcham the weal on his shoulder, and Mr. Batcham touched it, for the sake of the dramatic effect of saying so afterwards. Another had been compelled to work four hours a day overtime for a week without a pice of extra pay; the third had humbly begged for a day’s leave to attend the burning of his grandmother, and when he returned had been abruptly and unjustly dismissed—the sahib had said he wished to see his face no more. It was useless to complain; the factory sahibs would cut their wages, and the other sahibs did not care. They were all poor men; they could not buy the law. At this point Mr. Batcham grew quite feverish. He unbuttoned his shirt-collar, and interspersed his notes with interjection-points. “This is better,” he said to himself—“I mean worse, than I expected.” The interview took a long time—quite three-quarters of an hour—but Mr. Batcham was distinctly of the opinion that it had not been misspent. And when Mr. Batcham closed his note-book, and said to Mr. Mitter that this was a very sad state of things, but that would do for the present, his three down-trodden Indian fellow-subjects knelt weeping and kissed the uppers of Mr. Batcham’s broad British boots, invoking the secular blessings of heaven upon this “protector of the poor.” Mr. Batcham had to shuffle his feet under his chair so suddenly that he nearly dislocated one of his knees. “Don’t!” said he, “pray don’t, not on any account!” And he raised them with his own hands, very nearly mingled his tears with theirs, and immediately afterwards made a most dramatic note of it.

[85]. Native manager.

Mr. Batcham had not breakfasted the next morning in fact, he was looking at his watch and wondering why the Brownes were always so confoundedly late with their meals when his bearer came up and inquired whether the sahib would see again the three “admi”[^[86]] he had seen the day before, they waited below in the compound. Breakfast was still ten minutes off, and Mr. Batcham said he would go down. He went down, received the men with affability, and learned through his English-speaking bearer that they had been the victims of great injustice at the hands of Ambica Nath Mitter. This one, it seemed, had persuaded them to come to the sahib and leave work for the day on the promise not only of paying them their day’s wages, but of making the matter right with the sirdar at the factory. Instead of which, he had paid them only half a day’s wages, and when they returned that morning they found themselves dismissed. Therefore, knowing the heart of the sahib that it was full of mercy, they had come to cast themselves at his feet. They were all poor men, a very little would satisfy them—two rupees each perhaps.

[86]. Persons.

“That’s six rupees!” said Mr. Batcham seriously, “two rupees each would keep you for nearly a month in idleness. You can get employment much sooner than that.” Mr. Batcham knitted his philanthropic brow. “I’ll see you after breakfast,” he said, as the kitmutgar came to announce it.

The question of his duty in the matter of the six rupees so agitated Mr. Batcham that he consulted young Browne about it at the breakfast-table, and that is the reason why it is I, and not Mr. Batcham, who recount his experience with Ambica Nath Mitter to the public. Young Browne heard his guest politely and sympathetically through before he ventured to express an opinion. Even then he deferred it. “I’ll have a look at your factory-wallahs,” said young Browne. Presently he sent the bearer for them, who came up with two. The other, he said, had been taken with a sudden indisposition and had gone away.

Young Browne put up his eye-glass—he sometimes wore an eye-glass, it was the purest affectation—and looked at the victims of British oppression in India as they stood with their hands behind them in acute discomfort, twining and untwining their dusty toes. As he looked, a smile appeared under the eye-glass, which gradually broadened and broadened until it knocked the eye-glass out, and young Browne laughed until the tears came into his eyes. “It’s too good!” said young Browne brokenly. “It’s too good!” and laughed again until Mr. Batcham’s annoyance became serious and obvious and it was necessary to explain.

“I don’t know what these men may have learned incidentally about jute,” said he wiping his eyes, “but that’s not their occupation, Mr. Batcham, I—I happen to know their faces. They’re both umidwallahs in Watson and Selwyn’s, indigo people, next door to our place.”

“Dear me, are you sure?” asked Mr. Batcham with a judicial contraction of his eyebrows. “What is an umidwallah?”