Twenty-One Days in India Part 4

The Empire has done less for Anglo-Indian Babies than for any cla.s.s of the great exile community. Legislation provides them with neither rattle nor coral, privilege leave nor pension. Papa has a Raja and Star of India to play with; Mamma the Warrant of Precedence and the Hill Captains; but Baby has nothing--not even a missionary; Baby is without the amus.e.m.e.nt of the meanest cannibal.

Baby is debarred from the society of his compatriots. His father is cramped and frozen with the chill cares of office; his mother is deadened by the gloomy routine of economy and fashion; custom lies upon her with a weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life; the fountains of natural fancy and mirth are frozen over; so Baby lisps his dawn paeans in soft Oriental accents, wakening harmonious echoes amongst those impulsive and impressionable children of Nature that masque themselves in the black slough of Bearers and Ayahs; and Baby blubbers in Hindustani.

These Ayah and Bearer people sit with Baby in the verandah on a little carpet; broken toys and withered flowers lie around. They croon to Baby some old-world _katabaukalesis_, while beauty, born of murmuring sound, pa.s.ses into Baby's eyes. The squirrel sits chirruping familiarly on the edge of the verandah with his tail in the air and some uncracked pericarp in his uplifted hands, the kite circles aloft and whistles a shrill and mournful note, the sparrows chatter, the crow clears his throat, the minas scream discordantly, and Baby's soft, receptive nature thus absorbs an Indian language. Very soon Baby will think from right to left, and will lisp in the luxuriant bloom of Oriental hyperbole. [Presently, when Baby grows a little older, Baby will say to the Bearer, through his sweet little nose, "Arreh! Ulu ka bacha, tu kya karta hai?" Which being interpreted, is, "Ah! Child of night's sweet bird, what dost thou now?" Afterwards Baby will learn to say many other things which it is not good to repeat here.]

In the evening Baby will go out for an airing with the Bearer and Ayah people, and while they dawdle along the dusty road, or sit on kerb-stones and on culvert parapets, he will listen to the extensile tale of their simple sorrows. He will hear, with a sigh, that the profits of petty larceny are declining; he will be taught to regret the increasing infirmities of his Papa's temper; and portraits in sepia of his Mamma will be observed by him to excite laughter mingled with dark impulsive words. Thus there will pa.s.s into Baby's eyes glances of suspicious questionings, "the blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised."

In the long summer days Baby will patter listlessly about the darkened rooms accompanied by his suite, who will carry a feeding bottle--Maw's Patent Feeding Bottle--just as the Sergeant-at-Arms carries the mace; and, from time to time, little Mister Speaker will squat down on his dear little hams and take a refreshing pull or two. At breakfast and luncheon time little Mister Speaker will straggle into the dining-room, and fond parents will give him a tidbit of many soft dainties, to be washed down with brandy and water, beer, sherry, or other alcoholic draught. On such broken meals Baby is raised.

The little drawn face, etiolated and weary-looking, recommends sleep; but Baby is a bad sleeper. The Bearer-in-waiting carries about a small pillow all day long, and from time to time Baby is applied to it. He frets and cries, and they brood over him humming some old Indian song, ["Keli Blai," or "Hillu Milli Pania"]. Still he turns restlessly and whimpers, though they pat him and shampoo him, and call him fond names and tell him soothing stories of bulbuls and flowers and woolly sheep.

But Baby does not sleep, and even Indian patience is exhausted. Both Ayah and Bearer would like to slip away to their mud houses at the other end of the compound and have a pull at the fragrant _huqqa_ and a gossip with the _saices;_[Q] but while _Sunny Baba_ is at large, and might at any moment make a raid on Mamma, who is dozing over a novel on a spider-chair near the mouth of the thermantidote, the Ayah and Bearer dare not leave their charge. So _Sunny Baba_ must sleep, and the Bearer has in the folds of his waist-cloth a little black fragment of the awful sleep-compeller, and Baby is drugged into a deep uneasy sleep of delirious, racking dreams.

Day by day Baby grows paler, day by day thinner, day by day a stranger light burns in his bonny eyes. Weird thoughts sweep through Baby's brain, weird questions startle Mamma out of the golden languors in which she is steeped, weird words frighten the gentle Ayah as she fondles her darling. The current of babble and laughter has almost ceased to flow. Baby lies silent in the Ayah's lap staring at the ceiling. He clasps a broken toy with wasted fingers. His Bearer comes with some old watchword of fun; Baby smiles faintly, but makes no response. The old man takes him tenderly in his arms and carries him to the verandah; Baby's head falls heavily on his shoulder.

The outer world lies dimly round Baby; within, strange shadows are flitting by. The wee body is pressing heavily upon the spirit; Baby is becoming conscious of the burthen. He will be quiet for hours on his little cot; he does not sleep, but he dreams. Earth's joys and lights are fast fading out of those resilient eyes; Baby's spirit is waiting on the sh.o.r.es of eternity, and already hears "the mighty waters rolling evermore."

The broken toys are swept away into a corner, a silence and fear has fallen upon the household, black servants weep, their mistress seeks refuge in headache and smelling salts, the hard father feels a strange, an irrepressible welling up of little memories. He loves the golden haired boy; he hardly knew it before. If he could only hear once more the merry laugh, the chatter and the shouting! But he cannot hear it any more; he will never hear his child's voice again. Baby has pa.s.sed into the far-away Thought-World. Baby is now only a dream and a memory, only the recollection of a music that is heard no more. Baby has crossed that cloudy, storm-driven bourn of speculation and fear whither we are all tending.

A few white bones upon a lonely sand, A rotting corpse beneath the meadow gra.s.s, That cannot hear the footsteps as they pa.s.s, Memorial urns pressed by some foolish hand Have been for all the goal of troublous fears, Ah! breaking hearts and faint eyes dim with tears, And momentary hope by breezes framed To flame that ever fading falls again, And leaves but blacker night and deeper pain, Have been the mould of life in every land.

Baby is planted out for evermore in the dank and weedy little cemetery that lies on the outskirts of the station where he lived and died.

Those golden curls, those soft and rounded limbs, and that laughing mouth, are given up to darkness and the eternal hunger of corruption.

Through sunshine and rain, through the long days of summer, through the long nights of winter, for ever, for ever, Baby lies silent and dreamless under that waving gra.s.s. The bee will hum overhead for evermore, and the swallow glance among the cypress. The b.u.t.terfly will flutter for ages and ages among the rank flowers--Baby will still lie there. Come away, come away; your cheeks are pale; it cannot be, we cannot believe it, we must not remember it; other Baby voices will kindle our life and love, Baby's toys will pa.s.s to other Baby hands.

All will change; we will change.

Yet, darling, but come back to me; Whatever change the years have wrought, I find not yet one lonely thought That cries against my wish for thee.

ALI BABA, K.C.B.

No. XI

THE RED CHUPRa.s.sIE

OR, THE CORRUPT LICTOR[R]

[October 18, 1879.]

The red chupra.s.sie is our Colorado beetle, our potato disease, our Home ruler, our cupboard skeleton, the little rift in our lute. The red-coated chupra.s.sie is a cancer in our Administration. To be rid of it there is hardly any surgical operation we would not cheerfully undergo. You might extract the Bishop of Bombay, amputate the Governor of Madras, put a seton in the pay and allowances of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and we should smile.

The red chupra.s.sie is ubiquitous; he is in the verandah of every official's house in India, from the Governor-General downwards; he is in the portico of every Court of Justice, every Treasury, every Public Office, every Government School, every Government Dispensary in the country. He walks behind the Collector; he follows the conservancy carts; he prowls about the candidate for employment; he hovers over the accused and accuser; he haunts the Raja; he infests the tax-payer.

He wears the Imperial livery; he is to the entire population of India the exponent of British Rule; he is the mother-in-law of liars, the high-priest of extortioners, and the receiver-general of bribes.

Through this refracting medium the people of India see their rulers.

The chupra.s.sie paints his master in colours drawn from his own black heart. Every lie he tells, every insinuation he throws out, every demand he makes, is endorsed with his master's name. He is the arch-slanderer of our name in India.

[He is not an individual--he is a member of a widely rammified society.] There is no city in India, no mofussil-station, no little settlement of officials far up country, in which the chupra.s.sie does not find sworn brothers and confederates. The cutcherry clerks and the police are with him everywhere; higher native officials are often on his side.

He sits at the receipt of custom in the Collector's verandah, and no native visitor dare approach who has not conciliated him with money.

The candidate for employment, educated in our schools, and pregnant with words about purity, equality, justice, political economy, and all the rest of it, addresses him with joined hands as "Maharaj," and slips silver into his itching palm. The successful place-hunter pays him a feudal relief on receiving office or promotion, and benevolences flow in from all who have anything to hope or fear from those in power.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RED CHUPRa.s.sIE--"The corrupt lictor."]

In the Native States the chupra.s.sie flourishes rampantly. He receives a regular salary through their representatives or vakils at the agencies, from all the native chiefs round about, and on all occasions of visits or return visits, durbars, religious festivals, or public ceremonials, he claims and receives preposterous fees. The Rajas, whose dignity is always exceedingly delicate, stand in great fear of the chupra.s.sies. They believe that on public occasions the chupra.s.sies have sometimes the power of sicklying them o'er with the pale cast of neglect.

English officers who have become de-Europeanised from long residence among undomesticated natives, or by the habitual performance of petty ceremonial duties of an Oriental hue, employ chupra.s.sies to aggrandise their importance. They always figure on a background of red chupra.s.sies. Such officials are what Lord Lytton calls White Baboos.

[Mr. Whitley Stokes, in his own artless way, once proposed legislating against chupra.s.sies, I am told. His plan was to include them among the criminal cla.s.ses, and hand them over to Major Henderson, the Director-General of Thuggee and Dacoity; but this functionary, viewing the matter in a different light, made some demi-official representation to the Legal Member under the pseudonym of "Walker,"

and the subject dropped.]

A great Maharaja once told me that it was the tyranny of the Government chupra.s.sies that made him take to drink. He spoke of them as "the Pindarries of modern India." He had a theory that the small pay we gave them accounted for their evil courses. A chupra.s.sie gets about eight pounds sterling a year. He added that if we saw a chupra.s.sie on seven rupees a month living overtly at the rate of a thousand, we ought immediately to appoint him an _attache_ or put him in gaol.

I make a simple rule in my own establishment of dismissing a chupra.s.sie as soon as he begins to wax fat. A native cannot become rich without waxing fat, because wealth is primarily enjoyed by the mild Gentoo as a means of procuring greasy food in large quant.i.ties.

His secondary enjoyment is to sit upon it. He digs a hole in the ground for his rupees, and broods over them, like a great obscene fowl. If you see a native sitting very hard on the same place day after day, you will find it worth your while to dig him up. Shares in this are better than the Madras gold mines.

In early Company days, when the Empire was a baby, the European writers[S] regarded with a kindly eye those profuse Orientals who went about bearing gifts; but Lord Clive closed this branch of the business, and it has been taken up by our scarlet runners or verandah parasites, in our name. Now, dear Vanity, you may call me a Russophile, or by any other marine term of endearment you like, if I don't think the old plan was the better of the two. We ourselves could conduct corruption decently; but to be responsible for corruption over which we exercise no control is to lose the credit of a good name and the profits of a bad one.

[Old qui-hyes tell you that there are three things you cannot separate from an "Indian"--venality, perjury, and rupees. Now I totally disagree with the old qui-hyes. In secret I am a great admirer of the Indian, and publicly I always treat him with respect. I have such a regard for him that I never expose him to temptation. I pay him well, I explain to him my eccentric opinions about receiving bribes, and I remind him of the moral and electrifying properties of the different species of cane which Nature has so thoughtfully provided nearly everywhere in India. The consequence is that my chupra.s.sies do not soil their hands with spurious gratifications, and figuratively describe me as their father and mother.]

I hear that the Government of India proposes to form a mixed committee of Rajas and chupra.s.sies to discuss the question as to whether native chiefs ever give bribes and native servants ever take them. It is expected that a report favourable to Indian morality will be the result. Of course Raja Joe Hookham will preside.--ALI BABA, K.C.B.

No. XII

THE PLANTER

A FARMER PRINCE

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PLANTER--"A farmer prince."]

[October 25, 1879]