“On the — of ⸺ the gay and gallant bachelors of Ootacamund entertained all the beauty and fashion of the station in the magnificent ball-room of the club. The scene was a perfect galaxy of light and loveliness, etc.”
You have now, we will suppose, almost exhausted the short list of public amusements, balls and parties; you have boated on the lake; you have ridden and walked round the lake till every nodule of gravel is deadly familiar to your eye; you have contemplated the lake from every possible point, and can no longer look at it, or hear it named, without a sensation of nausea. You have probably wandered “over the hills and far away” in search of game; your sport was not worth speaking of, but its consequences, the headache, or the attack of liver which resulted from over-exertion, was—. Perhaps you have been induced to ride an untrained Arab at a steeple-chase, and, curious to say, you have not broken an arm or even your collar-bone. What are you to do now? You wish to goodness that you could obtain leave to visit the different stations in the low country, but, unhappily, you forgot to have your sick certificate worded, “For the Neilgherries and the Western Coast.” You find yourself cooped up in the mountains as securely as within the lofty walls of your playground in by-gone days, and if you venture to play truant, you will certainly be dismissed the establishment, which is undesirable:—you are not yet over anxious to return to “duty,” although you are by no means happy away from it.
Suddenly a little occurrence in your household affords you a temporary diversion. You dismissed your Bombay servants, first and foremost the Portuguese, a fortnight after your arrival at Ootacamund, because the fellows grumbled at the climate and the expense:—they could not afford to get drunk half as often as in the plains:—demanded exorbitant wages, and required almost as many comforts and luxuries as you yourself do. So you paid their passage back to their homes, and secured the usual number of Madras domestics, men of the best character, according to their own account, and provided with the highest, though more than dubious testimonials. You found that the change was for the better. Your new blacks worked like horses, and did not refuse to make themselves generally useful. Presently, they, seeing your “softness,” began to presume upon it. You found it necessary to dismiss one of them, summarily, for exaggerated insolence. The man left your presence, and stepped over to the edifice where sits in state the “Officer Commanding the Neilgherries.” About half an hour afterwards you received a note, couched in terms quite the reverse of courteous, ordering you to pay your dismissed servant his wages, and peremptorily forbidding you to take the law into your own hands by kicking him. But should you object to obey, as you probably will do, you are allowed the alternative of appearing at the office the next day.
At the hour specified you prepare to keep your appointment, regretting that you are not a civilian:—you might then have tossed the note into the fire:—but somewhat consoled by a discovery, made in the course of the evening, that the complainant has stolen several articles of clothing from you. You walk into the room, ceremoniously bow and are bowed to, pull a chair towards you unceremoniously, because you are not asked to sit down, wait impatiently enough,—you have promised to ride out with Miss A⸺, who will assuredly confer the honour of her company upon your enemy Mr. B⸺ if you keep her waiting five minutes,—a mortal hour and a half. When the last case has been dismissed, the Commanding officer, after some little time spent in arranging his papers, nibbing his pens and conversationizing with a native clerk about matters more than indifferent to you, turns towards you a countenance in which the severity of justice is somewhat tempered by the hard stereotyped smile of polite inquiry. Stimulated by the look, you forget that you are the defendant, till reminded of your position in a way which makes you feel all its awkwardness. The Commanding officer is a great “stickler for abstract rights,” and is known to be high-principled upon the subjects of black skins and British law. So you, who expected, as a matter of course, that the “word of an officer and gentleman” would be taken against that of a “native rascal,” find yourself notably in the wrong box. Indignant, you send for your butler. And now Pariah meets Pariah with a terrible tussle of tongue. Complainant swears that he was not paid; witness oathes by the score that he was. The former strengthens his position by cursing himself to Patal[161] if he has not been swindled by the “Buttrel” and his Sahib out of two months’ wages. The head servant, not to be outdone, devotes the persons of his Brahman, his wife, and his eldest son, to a very terrible doom indeed, if he did not with his own hands advance complainant three months’ pay,—and so on. At length the Commanding officer, who has carefully and laboriously been taking down the evidence, bids the affidavits cease, and reluctantly dismisses the complaint.
And now for your turn, as you fondly imagine. You also have a charge to make. You do so emphatically. You summon your witnesses, who are standing outside. You prove your assertion triumphantly, conclusively. You inform the Commanding officer, with determination, that you are resolved to do your best to get the thief punished.
The Commanding officer hears you out most patiently, urges you to follow up the case, and remarks, that the prosecution of the affair will be productive of great advantage to the European residents on the Hills. You are puzzled transiently: the words involve an enigma, and the sarcastic smile of the criminal smacks of a mystery. But your mental darkness is soon cleared up; the Commanding officer hints that you will find no difficulty in procuring a fortnight’s leave to Coimbatore, the nearest Civil station, for the purpose of carrying out your public-spirited resolution. As this would involve a land journey of one hundred miles—in India equal to one thousand in Europe—with all the annoyances of law-proceedings, and all the discomforts of a strange station, your determination suddenly melts away, and gentle Pity takes the place of stern Prosecution; you forget your injury, you forgive your enemy.
You must not, however, lay any blame upon the Commanding officer; his hands are tied as well as yours. He is a justice of the peace, but his authority is reduced to nothing in consequence of his being subject to the civil power at Coimbatore. A more uncomfortable position for a military man to be placed in you cannot conceive.
This little bit of excitement concludes your list of public amusements. And now, again, you ask What shall you do? You put the question, wishing to heaven that Echo—Arabian or Hibernian—would but respond with her usual wonted categoricality; but she, poor maid! has quite lost her voice, in consequence of the hard-talking she has had of late years. So you must even reply to and for yourself—no easy matter, we can assure you.
Goethe, it is said, on the death of his son, took up a new study. You have no precise ideas about Goethe or his proceedings, but your mind spontaneously grows the principle that actuated the great German. You are almost persuaded to become a student. You borrow some friend’s Akhlak i Hindi,[162] rummage your trunks till you discover the remnant of a Shakespeare’s Grammar, and purchase, at the first auction, a second-hand copy of Forbes’s Dictionary. You then inquire for a Moonshee—a language-master—and find that there is not a decent one in the place. The local government, in the plenitude of its sagacity, has been pleased to issue an order forbidding examination committees being held at the Sanitarium; so good teachers will not remain at a station where their services are but little required. Your ardour, however, is only damped, not extinguished. You find some clerk in one of the offices who can read Hindostani; you set to—you rub up your acquaintance with certain old friends, called Parts of Speech—you master the Verb, and stand in astonishment to see that you have read through a whole chapter of the interesting ethical composition above alluded to. That pause has ruined you. Like the stiff joints of a wearied pedestrian, who allows himself rest at an inopportune time, your mind refuses to rise again to its task. You find out that Ootacamund is no place for study; that the houses are dark, the rooms cold, and the air so exciting that it is all but impossible to sit down quietly for an hour. Finally, remembering that you are here for health, you send back the Akhlak, restore Shakespeare to his own trunk, and, after coquetting about the conversational part of the language with your Moonshee for a week or two—dismiss him.