Plain Tales from the Hills

  HIS CHANCE IN LIFE.

  Then a pile of heads be laid-- Thirty thousand heaped on high-- All to please the Kafir maid, Where the Oxus ripples by. Grimly spake Atulla Khan:-- "Love hath made this thing a Man."

  Oatta's Story.

  If you go straight away from Levees and Government House Lists, pastTrades' Balls--far beyond everything and everybody you ever knew in yourrespectable life--you cross, in time, the Border line where the lastdrop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black sets in. It would beeasier to talk to a new made Duchess on the spur of the moment thanto the Borderline folk without violating some of their conventions orhurting their feelings. The Black and the White mix very quaintly intheir ways. Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childishpride--which is Pride of Race run crooked--and sometimes the Blackin still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs andstrange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, thispeople--understand they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, theman who imitated Byron, sprung--will turn out a writer or a poet; andthen we shall know how they live and what they feel. In the meantime,any stories about them cannot be absolutely correct in fact orinference.

  Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline to look after some childrenwho belonged to a lady until a regularly ordained nurse could come out.The lady said Miss Vezzis was a bad, dirty nurse and inattentive. Itnever struck her that Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead and her ownaffairs to worry over, and that these affairs were the most importantthings in the world to Miss Vezzis. Very few mistresses admit this sortof reasoning. Miss Vezzis was as black as a boot, and to our standard oftaste, hideously ugly. She wore cotton-print gowns and bulged shoes;and when she lost her temper with the children, she abused them in thelanguage of the Borderline--which is part English, part Portuguese,and part Native. She was not attractive; but she had her pride, and shepreferred being called "Miss Vezzis."

  Every Sunday she dressed herself wonderfully and went to see herMamma, who lived, for the most part, on an old cane chair in a greasytussur-silk dressing-gown and a big rabbit-warren of a house full ofVezzises, Pereiras, Ribieras, Lisboas and Gansalveses, and a floatingpopulation of loafers; besides fragments of the day's bazar, garlic,stale incense, clothes thrown on the floor, petticoats hung on stringsfor screens, old bottles, pewter crucifixes, dried immortelles, pariahpuppies, plaster images of the Virgin, and hats without crowns. MissVezzis drew twenty rupees a month for acting as nurse, and shesquabbled weekly with her Mamma as to the percentage to be given towardshousekeeping. When the quarrel was over, Michele D'Cruze used to shambleacross the low mud wall of the compound and make love to Miss Vezzisafter the fashion of the Borderline, which is hedged about with muchceremony. Michele was a poor, sickly weed and very black; but he had hispride. He would not be seen smoking a huqa for anything; and he lookeddown on natives as only a man with seven-eighths native blood in hisveins can. The Vezzis Family had their pride too. They traced theirdescent from a mythical plate-layer who had worked on the Sone Bridgewhen railways were new in India, and they valued their English origin.Michele was a Telegraph Signaller on Rs. 35 a month. The fact that hewas in Government employ made Mrs. Vezzis lenient to the shortcomings ofhis ancestors.

  There was a compromising legend--Dom Anna the tailor brought it fromPoonani--that a black Jew of Cochin had once married into the D'Cruzefamily; while it was an open secret that an uncle of Mrs. D'Cruze was atthat very time doing menial work, connected with cooking, for a Club inSouthern India! He sent Mrs D'Cruze seven rupees eight annas a month;but she felt the disgrace to the family very keenly all the same.

  However, in the course of a few Sundays, Mrs. Vezzis brought herselfto overlook these blemishes and gave her consent to the marriage of herdaughter with Michele, on condition that Michele should have at leastfifty rupees a month to start married life upon. This wonderful prudencemust have been a lingering touch of the mythical plate-layer's Yorkshireblood; for across the Borderline people take a pride in marrying whenthey please--not when they can.

  Having regard to his departmental prospects, Miss Vezzis might as wellhave asked Michele to go away and come back with the Moon in his pocket.But Michele was deeply in love with Miss Vezzis, and that helped him toendure. He accompanied Miss Vezzis to Mass one Sunday, and after Mass,walking home through the hot stale dust with her hand in his, he sworeby several Saints, whose names would not interest you, never to forgetMiss Vezzis; and she swore by her Honor and the Saints--the oath runsrather curiously; "In nomine Sanctissimae--" (whatever the name of theshe-Saint is) and so forth, ending with a kiss on the forehead, a kisson the left cheek, and a kiss on the mouth--never to forget Michele.

  Next week Michele was transferred, and Miss Vezzis dropped tearsupon the window-sash of the "Intermediate" compartment as he left theStation.

  If you look at the telegraph-map of India you will see a long lineskirting the coast from Backergunge to Madras. Michele was ordered toTibasu, a little Sub-office one-third down this line, to send messageson from Berhampur to Chicacola, and to think of Miss Vezzis and hischances of getting fifty rupees a month out of office hours. He had thenoise of the Bay of Bengal and a Bengali Babu for company; nothing more.He sent foolish letters, with crosses tucked inside the flaps of theenvelopes, to Miss Vezzis.

  When he had been at Tibasu for nearly three weeks his chance came.

  Never forget that unless the outward and visible signs of OurAuthority are always before a native he is as incapable as a child ofunderstanding what authority means, or where is the danger of disobeyingit. Tibasu was a forgotten little place with a few Orissa Mohamedansin it. These, hearing nothing of the Collector-Sahib for some time,and heartily despising the Hindu Sub-Judge, arranged to start a littleMohurrum riot of their own. But the Hindus turned out and broke theirheads; when, finding lawlessness pleasant, Hindus and Mahomedanstogether raised an aimless sort of Donnybrook just to see how far theycould go. They looted each other's shops, and paid off private grudgesin the regular way. It was a nasty little riot, but not worth putting inthe newspapers.

  Michele was working in his office when he heard the sound that a mannever forgets all his life--the "ah-yah" of an angry crowd. [When thatsound drops about three tones, and changes to a thick, droning _ut_, theman who hears it had better go away if he is alone.] The Native PoliceInspector ran in and told Michele that the town was in an uproar andcoming to wreck the Telegraph Office. The Babu put on his cap andquietly dropped out of the window; while the Police Inspector, afraid,but obeying the old race-instinct which recognizes a drop of White bloodas far as it can be diluted, said:--"What orders does the Sahib give?"

  The "Sahib" decided Michele. Though horribly frightened, he felt that,for the hour, he, the man with the Cochin Jew and the menial uncle inhis pedigree, was the only representative of English authority in theplace. Then he thought of Miss Vezzis and the fifty rupees, and took thesituation on himself. There were seven native policemen in Tibasu, andfour crazy smooth-bore muskets among them. All the men were gray withfear, but not beyond leading. Michele dropped the key of the telegraphinstrument, and went out, at the head of his army, to meet the mob. Asthe shouting crew came round a corner of the road, he dropped and fired;the men behind him loosing instinctively at the same time.

  The whole crowd--curs to the backbone--yelled and ran; leaving one mandead, and another dying in the road. Michele was sweating with fear, buthe kept his weakness under, and went down into the town, past the housewhere the Sub-Judge had barricaded himself. The streets were empty.Tibasu was more frightened than Michele, for the mob had been taken atthe right time.

  Michele returned to the Telegraph-Office, and sent a message toChicacola asking for help. Before an answer came, he received adeputation of the elders of Tibasu, telling him that the Sub-Judge saidhis actions generally were "unconstitutional," and trying to bully him.But the heart of Michele D'Cruze was big and white in his breast,because of his love for Mi
ss Vezzis, the nurse-girl, and because he hadtasted for the first time Responsibility and Success. Those two makean intoxicating drink, and have ruined more men than ever has Whiskey.Michele answered that the Sub-Judge might say what he pleased, but,until the Assistant Collector came, the Telegraph Signaller was theGovernment of India in Tibasu, and the elders of the town would be heldaccountable for further rioting. Then they bowed their heads and said:"Show mercy!" or words to that effect, and went back in great fear; eachaccusing the other of having begun the rioting.

  Early in the dawn, after a night's patrol with his seven policemen,Michele went down the road, musket in hand, to meet the AssistantCollector, who had ridden in to quell Tibasu. But, in the presence ofthis young Englishman, Michele felt himself slipping back more and moreinto the native, and the tale of the Tibasu Riots ended, with the strainon the teller, in an hysterical outburst of tears, bred by sorrow thathe had killed a man, shame that he could not feel as uplifted as he hadfelt through the night, and childish anger that his tongue could notdo justice to his great deeds. It was the White drop in Michele's veinsdying out, though he did not know it.

  But the Englishman understood; and, after he had schooled those menof Tibasu, and had conferred with the Sub-Judge till that excellentofficial turned green, he found time to draught an official letterdescribing the conduct of Michele. Which letter filtered through theProper Channels, and ended in the transfer of Michele up-country oncemore, on the Imperial salary of sixty-six rupees a month.

  So he and Miss Vezzis were married with great state and ancientry; andnow there are several little D'Cruzes sprawling about the verandahs ofthe Central Telegraph Office.

  But, if the whole revenue of the Department he serves were to be hisreward Michele could never, never repeat what he did at Tibasu for thesake of Miss Vezzis the nurse-girl.

  Which proves that, when a man does good work out of all proportion tohis pay, in seven cases out of nine there is a woman at the back of thevirtue.

  The two exceptions must have suffered from sunstroke.