“POOR CAVAGNARI.”
There are many Hindoos engaged on the Natal sugar plantations, and in that particularly one-horse Colony, every native of India is known indiscriminately by the term of “coolie.” John, it is true, was a native of India, but he was no “coolie”; he could read, write, and speak English, and was altogether a superior person. I would not take him up country to be bullied and demeaned as a “coolie,” and I made for him an arrangement with the proprietor of my hotel that during my absence John should help to wait in his restaurant. During the Zulu campaign I was abominably served by a lazy Africander and a lazier St. Helena boy. When Ulundi was fought, and Cetewayo’s kraal was burned, I was glad to return to Durban, and take passage for India. John, I found, had during my absence become one of the prominent inhabitants of Durban. He had now the full charge of the hotel restaurant—he was the centurion of the dinner-table, with men under him, to whom he said “do this,” and they did it. His skill in dishes new to Natal, especially in curries, had crowded the restaurant, and the landlord had taken the opportunity of raising his tariff. He came to me privily, and said frankly that John was making his fortune for him, that he was willing to give him a share in his business in a year’s time if he would but stay, and meantime was ready to pay him a stipend of twenty dollars a week. The wages at which John served me, and I had been told I was paying him extravagantly, was eleven dollars a month. I told the landlord that I should not think of standing in the way of my man’s prosperity, but would rather influence him in favour of an opportunity so promising. Then I sent for John, explained to him the hotel-keeper’s proposal, and suggested that he should take time to think the matter over. John wept. “I no stay here, master, not if it was hundred rupees a day! I go with master; I no stop in Durban!" Nothing would shake his resolve, and so John and I came to England together.
“JOHN BEHAVED MAGNIFICENTLY.”
The only thing John did not like in England was that the street boys insisted on regarding him as a Zulu, and treating him contumeliously accordingly. His great delight was when I went on a round of visits to country houses, and took him with me as valet. Then he was the hero of the servants’ hall. I will not say that he lied, but from anecdotes of him that occasionally came to my ears, it would seem he created the impression that he habitually waded in knee-deep gore, and that he was in the habit of contemplating with equanimity battle-fields littered with the slaughtered combatants. John was quite the small lion of the hour. He had very graceful ways, and great skill in making tasteful bouquets. These he would present to the ladies of the household when they came downstairs of a morning, with a graceful salaam, and the expression of a hope that they had slept well. The spectacle of John, seen from the drawing-room windows of Chevening, Lord Stanhope’s seat in Kent, as he swaggered across the park to church one Sunday morning in frock coat and silk hat, with a buxom cook on one arm and a tall and lean lady’s maid on the other, will never be effaced from the recollection of those who witnessed it with shrieks of laughter.
“A BUXOM COOK ON ONE ARM AND LEAN LADY’S MAID ON THE OTHER.”
In those days I lived in a flat, my modest establishment consisting of an old female housekeeper and John. For the most part my two domestics were good friends, but there were periods of estrangement during which they were not on speaking terms; and then they sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table, and communicated with each other exclusively by written notes of an excessively formal character, passed across the table. This stiffness of etiquette had its amusing side, but was occasionally embarrassing, since neither was uniformly intelligible with the pen. The result was that sometimes I got no dinner at all, and at other times, when I was dining alone, the board groaned with the profusion, and when I had company there would not be enough to go round; these awkwardnesses arising from the absence of a good understanding between my two domestics. I could not part with the old female servant, and I began rather to tire of John, whose head had become considerably swollen because of the notice which had been taken of him. It was all very well to be in a position to gratify ladies who were giving dinner parties, and who wrote me little notes asking for the loan for a few hours of John, to make that wonderful prawn curry of which he had the sole recipe. But John used to return from that culinary operation very late, and with indications that his beverage during his exertions had not been wholly confined to water. To my knowledge he had a wife in Goa, yet I feared he had his flirtations here in London. Once I charged him with inconstancy to the lady in Goa, but he repudiated the aspersion with the quaint denial: “No, master, many ladies are loving me, but I don’t love no ladies!”
However, I had in view to spend a winter in the States, and resolved to send John home. He wept copiously when I told him of this resolve, and professed his anxiety to die in my service. But I remained firm, and reminded him that he had not seen his wife in Goa for nearly three years. That argument appeared to carry little weight with him; but he tearfully submitted to the inevitable. I made him a good present, and obtained for him from the Peninsular and Oriental people a free passage to Bombay, and wages besides in the capacity of a saloon steward. I saw him off from Southampton; at the moment of parting he emitted lugubrious howls. He never fulfilled his promise of writing to me, and I gave up the expectation of hearing of him any more.