Hindoo Holiday (24 page)

“You are
quite
right,” he replied with a touch of importance; “it is my cathedral—and also my private chapel,” he added.

“How long has it been building?” I asked.

He did not answer for some time, and peering through gloom, I perceived that he was shaking with merriment.

“Thirty years!” he at last spluttered, and was again convulsed.

Narayan tells me that when I went away he was very unhappy, and sorrowed whenever he looked at my empty house. He could not eat any food that day, and when Sharma asked:

“Why do you not eat? Is it because the Sahib has gone away?” he replied:

“No; I have a pain in my belly.”

“Yet you seldom came to see me when I was here,” I said doubtfully.

“But Mr. Babaji Rao was always with you, or the doors were closed, and I was afraid you would be angry with me.”

He told me this yesterday and stayed three hours with me, taking both my hands in his as he left.

“Sharma a shy boy,” he said; “but I do not know why he is shy of you.”

I asked him how it was that he, a Brahman, could have a friend of the barber caste.

“It does not matter,” he said.

“Can you take food from him?”

“No, I cannot.”

“Betel?”

“Yes, I can take.”

“Why did you choose him for your friend?”

But he only laughed softly at this, and when I repeated it the third time said:

“He was my class-fellow.”

Babaji Rao wrote to me while I was away that Abdul had been sent to Sarwar, a station just outside Chhokrapur, on State business, and hoped to be back before my return, but that if he was delayed (“which alternative,” wrote Babaji Rao, “I believe you will prefer”), he wished to be excused for a few days. Babaji Rao was quite right; my desire never to see Abdul again made it easy to leave him permanently in Sarwar, so I was not altogether agreeably surprised when he was announced to-day as I was finishing lunch. Hashim showed him in. He was all in white, very spick and span, but low-spirited.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Ackerley.”

“Good afternoon, Abdul.”

“Do I bore upon your time?”

“Please sit down.”

He placed his umbrella against the wall and sat down.

“You have had an enjoyable travel?” he asked abruptly.

“Very, thank you.”

“And you returned the day before yesterday, is it not?” I nodded. “But you did not inform me of your return? I think you did not wish me to know of it, is it not? Am I right? I think so.”

“I thought you were in Sarwar,” I said.

“But you did not ask any man? Mr. Babaji Rao would have told you, or Mr. Narayan. But I think you did not wish to see me?” He dropped his head a little to one side, and drew up the corners of his mouth into a subtle smile. “And
thank
you, Mr. Ackerley—thank you
very
much—for the
many letters
you
promised
to write to me while you were away.”

He cleared his throat, which was getting husky, and drawing in his chin, gazed into his lap. Then he cast a rapid glance at me and found me smiling. At once his lips began to tremble.

“Are you pleased, Mr. Ackerley? I think so. You are pleased at my misfortunes. I see. I understand. Every man hates me and wishes to ruin me, but I say to myself, ‘Mr. Ackerley will not forget me; he has given me his promises, and loves me in his heart.' But I was wrong, yes? I think you do not wish to help me. You promise many things, and when nothing is done you mock at me and are pleased. I think so. Is it not?”

“Look here, Abdul,” I said, “let's understand that I didn't write to you because I didn't think about you, but that I don't hate you or wish you any harm. I did my best for you before I went away, and I said I'd try again when I came back; so don't let's have any more of that nonsense.”

He brightened up at once.

“Ah, Mr. Ackerley, then you do not hate me and want to leave me? Ah, Mr. Ackerley, I am happy. But what must I do? For they hate me and will send me to Sarwar. . . .”

“I thought you'd been to Sarwar,” I said.

“Yes, I have been; but that was nothing. Now they say I shall be transferred there to work in the office. They are very angry with me, and so they send me away.”

“But that's absurd,” I said, vexed. “You're my tutor. They can't send you away without my permission.”

“It is what I think; but they say
so
,” said Abdul shrewdly.

I asked him whether he had received his salary during my absence, and he said he had—the usual twelve rupees, without increment; but he did not wish me to do any more about that, he said; nothing mattered so long as I did not hate him and send him away. The Dewan hated him, and his officer hated him; that was all that my strong recommendation and His Highness's promises had done, but—

“Do not talk of it! Let it be! What about it? I am a poor man and cannot provide my family members; but what about it? Every one hates me, and wishes to injure me; but what about it? Let it be. . . .”

I said it was all nonsense to talk about people hating him and wishing to injure him; but he contradicted this, in a confused, trembling voice. Two pleaders had died suddenly while I was away, he said, and he had twice visited the Dewan to ask to be appointed to their places—for which he must have found a good deal of courage, I thought. And this was not like asking for an increment, he explained; for a pleader's life is a precarious one and depends entirely upon personal ability. But the Dewan had practically told him that if there was no one else in Chhokrapur to fill a vacant post he would not give it to him. This, apart from anything else, seemed to me stupidity in the Dewan, for Abdul would surely make an excellent pleader, if he “bored upon” the judge's time as much as he has “bored upon” mine.

But perhaps the Dewan is the judge.

I sat on my verandah this afternoon and watched the squirrels play. They are small and of a light tan color, with four darkbrown stripes running down their backs from head to tail. Every tree seems full of them, and what a commotion they make, bickering and flying about the branches and up and down the trunks!

Whimsical, electric creatures! Two of them had a fight—malicious, I think—one leaping upon the other from behind whilst he was enjoying a peaceful tea of bullock-dung. What a scuffle ensued! They whirled round and round like a Catherine-wheel, so that one could not tell where one squirrel began and the other left off. Then having produced, I dare say, acute indigestion in his indignant victim, the attacker beat a hasty retreat, fleeing in long, curving leaps to an adjacent tree-trunk. Pretty, restless, mischievous little people; gluttonous and incontinent; neglectful parents, I feel sure, and saucy, perverse children.

Abdul called on me again this afternoon in great distress. The blow had fallen; his officer had ordered him to make ready to proceed to Sarwar to-morrow for a month.

What was he to do? I told him to go away and not to worry, for I would see to it that he was not sent to Sarwar. But I myself was worried—and rather angry. Later on Babaji Rao arrived, and I unloaded my annoyance on to him.

I said that if this ill-treatment to which Abdul was being subjected was still part of “the little scene” that had been got up between him and his officer, it had gone far enough. Although I did not expect the officer to consult me before giving orders to his subordinate, I felt I was entitled, at the very least, to notification before being deprived of my tutor, and since Abdul's visit to me was not official this had not been done. Also the promise of increment, from which I had not withdrawn my support, had not been made good. I said I was sorry I had ever interfered on Abdul's behalf, but that having done so I must now go on, and suggested that I had better call on the Dewan myself.

“Perhaps that would be best,” said Babaji Rao, gazing at the carpet, and promised, meanwhile, to write a letter to the officer requesting that, if convenient, Abdul should not be sent away. After this we spoke for a few moments of His Highness's pilgrimage, which was regrettable, I said, coming at this particular time. Might not His Highness be persuaded to postpone it again, I suggested tentatively, so that we could all go and enjoy ourselves at Garha?

But now it was Babaji Rao's turn to be angry.

He retorted, with some heat, against my selfishness, and said that His Highness's religious duties were not to be compared in importance with such things as Garha festivals—indeed with anything else in his life; that they should have been performed years ago, but that His Highness was not a strong man, and owing to his ill-health they had had unfortunately (he coughed) to be postponed more than once; but that now His Highness was determined to delay no longer, and would not, of course, consider putting off a matter of such vital importance for such comparatively trivial reasons.

When he had finished I took his photograph with a camera I had borrowed from a Rajgarh lady.

His Highness has a sore throat, and I found him this evening looking a little dejected with a piece of white muslin wrapped round it. I saw in this a good omen, better than any mongoose, and told him of my remarks to Babaji Rao and of the latter's heated reply.

“He bullies
me
, too,” said the little man, chuckling; “I am quite afraid of him.”

But, he added, suddenly assuming a grave expression, although his inclinations were to go with me to Garha, his conscience pointed him the other way. It was his duty to go, and besides, all the arrangements for accommodation and transport had been made, for there had to be special trains to carry him and his suite.

I asked how many people accompanied him. Seventy-five, he said; which included guards, pundits, cooks, water-carriers, washermen, servants and barbers, etc., and they were all quite indispensable.

Promptly at his appointed time to-day Abdul arrived to give me a lesson. The order to remove to Sarwar had been canceled, so he was in excellent spirits, and wished to show me his gratitude by feasting me. Would I grant his feast? I said I wouldn't. Never mind then, he would come and take me for walks in the evenings when I had leisure from my writings, and we would go wherever I wished and talk nothing but Urdu so that I should come to speak the language
very
well.

“No, Abdul,” I said, “one hour a day is quite enough.”

“Very well,” he replied; “I do not want to bore upon your time. So I will come to you whenever I wish in the evenings and we will not talk a word of Urdu.”

“What I
meant
,” I said, “was that one hour a day of
you
was quite enough.”

This seemed to amuse him, and he tittered into the pages of his book.

I sallied forth to call on the Dewan in the later afternoon. He lives in a big bungalow surrounded by the pleasant garden which was one of the first things I was shown when I arrived in Chhokrapur. It is situated just beyond the tennis-courts on the outskirts of the “city.” The Dewan frequently plays tennis himself, sometimes in brown leather slippers and
dhoti
, with his shirt hanging outside; sometimes in European flannels, when he tucks his shirt in. He is excessively fat, and hopes to decrease it in this way; but at the same time he is nervous about his heart and fears to overtax it, so that if he cannot get the doctor (who lives close by) to join in, he likes to have him among the spectators. They all play a very flabby game.

There were some servants sitting on the verandah of the house when I arrived, and I sent one of them in to ask the Dewan if he would speak to me.

Some little time afterwards he came waddling out, excusing the delay on account of massage treatment he had been receiving.

“So kind of you to call,” he said, in a voice that bubbled with politeness. “Very kind. Delighted. Please to seat yourself.”

I did so, and he sat beside me on a large heavy chair, rubbing his knees with his small brown hands, and uttering breathless, merry, exclamatory sounds. A servant came forward to put on his sandals.

We talked for some time of trivialities, and then I brought out the real object of my visit—the treatment of Abdul. No doubt he was expecting it, for as soon as I said that I should like to know more or less what the position was, he laid it unhesitatingly before me in a high-pitched, excitable voice. Of course, he said, he would be very pleased to do what I wished and instruct Abdul's officer to give him an increment of eight rupees monthly; but the result would be very bad for Abdul, for as soon as I left he would lose his job, his officer would dismiss him, and no other officer would take him on. He (the Dewan) had told all this to His Highness, he said, and His Highness had replied, “But you must do this for Abdul. What will Mr. Ackerley say to me if you do not?” Well, he was perfectly ready to do it; it made no difference to him; he had merely to sign a paper, any one could do that; I had only to say the word, and Abdul would at once receive twenty rupees a month salary, but it would be the ultimate ruin of him. What was my wish? Please to instruct him.

But, I said with dismay, this would be a grave injustice to Abdul, and surely he, as Dewan, would prevent it.

But he was perfectly clear about what he would do; perfectly clear and outspoken. How he talked! It is quite impossible to reproduce it, his vigorous volubility, rising to shrillness as he emphasized his definite, unswerving policy, and accompanied by abrupt gestures of his small hands.

He would
not
prevent it. Perhaps he could, but he would not. He never interfered with his officers. They were good men; he had chosen them all carefully, without favoritism, with only one end in view—the efficient working of the State; and so long as that went forward smoothly and well, he was satisfied and asked no questions.

Efficiency—that was all that concerned him: the efficiency of each department combining for the efficiency of the whole. His officers were answerable to him personally for that; they had full powers to organize and work their separate departments as they thought fit; so long as they produced efficiency it was his policy never to interfere. Sometimes he himself would recommend men to them; but if they said they did not want them, he would at once reply, “Very well, then; do not have them.”