MRS. BROWNE’S ayah was a little Mussulman woman of about thirty-five, with bright eyes and an expression of great worldly wisdom upon her small, square, high-boned face. She dressed somewhat variously, but her official garments were a short jacket and a striped cotton petticoat, a string of beads round her neck, silver bangles on her arms and ankles, hoops in her ears, and a small gold button in her right nostril. This last bit of coquetry affected Helen uncomfortably for some time. Her name was Chua, signifying “a rat,” and her heathen sponsors showed rather a fine discrimination in giving it to her. She was very like one. It would be easy to fancy her nibbling in the dark, or making unwarrantable investigations when honest people were asleep. When Chua was engaged and questioned upon the subject of remuneration, she salaamed very humbly, and said, “What the memsahib pleases,” which was ten rupees. At this Chua’s countenance fell, for most of the ayahs of her acquaintance received twelve. Accepting the fact, however, that her mistress was not a “burra memsahib”^[48] from whom much might be expected, but a “chota memsahib”^[49] from whom little could be extracted, she went away content, and spread her mat in the women’s place in the mosque and bowed many times to the west as the sun went down, and paid at least four annas to the moulvi^[50] who had helped her to this good fortune.

Chua abode in her own house, as is the custom of ayahs with family ties. She was married—her husband was a kitmutgar. They lived in a bustee in the very middle of Calcutta, where dwelt several other kitmutgars and their wives, a dhoby and a number of goats, and Chua walked out every morning to her work. Then home at twelve to cook her food and sleep, then back at four for further duty until after dinner. She never breakfasted before starting in the morning, but she carried with her always a small square tin box from which she refreshed herself surreptitiously at intervals. Inside the box was only a rolled-up betel leaf, and inside the leaf a dab of white paste; but it was to Chua what the hubble-bubble was to Abdul, her husband, a great and comfortable source of meditation upon the goodness of Allah, and the easiest form of extortion to be practised upon her lawful taskmistress.

Helen found great difficulty at first in assimilating this hand-maid into her daily life. She had been told that an ayah was indispensable, and she could accept Chua as a necessary appendage to the lofty state of her Oriental existence, but to find occupation for her became rather a burden to the mind of Mrs. Browne. Things to do were precious, she could not spare them to be done by anybody else, even at ten rupees a month with the alternative of improper idleness. Moreover, the situation was in some respects embarrassing. One could have one’s ribbons straightened and one’s hair brushed with equanimity, but when it came to the bathing of one’s feet and the putting on of one’s stockings Helen was disposed to dispense with the services of her ayah as verging on the indelicate. Chua was still more grieved when her mistress utterly declined to allow herself to be “punched and prodded,” as she expressed it, in the process of gentle massaging in which the ayah species are proficient. Mrs. Browne was young then, and a new-comer, and not of a disposition to brook any interference with her muscular tissues. But the other day she particularly recommended an ayah to me on account of this accomplishment. This to illustrate, of course, not the degeneration of Mrs. Browne’s sense of propriety, but of her muscular tissues.

The comprehension and precise knowledge which Chua at once obtained of her mistress’s wardrobe and effects was wonderful in its way. She knew the exact contents of every box and drawer and wardrobe, the number of pen-nibs in the writing-case, the number of spools in the work-basket. Helen used to feel, in the shock of some disclosure of observation extraordinary, as if the omniscient little woman had made an index of her mistress’s emotions and ideas as well, and could lay her small skinny brown finger upon any one of them, which intuition was very far from being wrong. Chua early induced an admiring confidence in her rectitude by begging Mrs. Browne to make a list of all her possessions so that from time to time she could demonstrate their safety. The ayah felt herself responsible. She knew that upon the provocation of a missing embroidered petticoat there might be unpleasant results connected with the police-wallah and the thana,^[51] not only for her but for the whole establishment, and she wished to be in a secure position to give evidence, if necessary, against somebody else. It could certainly not be Chua, therefore, Helen announced, when she communicated to her lord at the breakfast table the fact that her very best scissors had been missing for three days. “Isn’t it tedious?” said she.

“Scissors,” said young Browne. “Yes, good new shiny sharp ones, weren’t they, with Rodgers’ name plainly stamped on them—and rather small?”

“All that,” lamented Helen, “and embroidery size—such loves!”

“You are gradually coming within the operation of custom, my dear. Steel is the weakness of the Aryan. He—in this case she—will respect your clothes, take care of your money, and guard your jewellery—they all have a general sense of property in its correct relation, but it does not apply to a small pair of scissors or a neat pocket knife. Such things seem to yield to some superior attraction outside the moral sense connected with these people, and they invariably disappear. It’s inveterate, but it’s a nuisance. One has to make such a row.”

“George,” said Helen gravely, “why do you say in this case she?”

“I think you’ll find it was your virtuous maid, my dear. It wasn’t the bearer—he has permitted me to keep the same knife and nail scissors now for two years and a half, and the rest of the servants, all but the ayah, are the bearer’s creatures, and will reflect exactly his morality in quality and degree. She isn’t—she’s an irresponsible functionary, except to you; you’ll have to keep an eye on her. However, if we make ourselves patiently and unremittingly disagreeable for a week or two they’ll turn up.”

“I haven’t the Hindustani to be disagreeable in,” Helen remarked.

“Oh, you needn’t be violent; just inquire at least three times a day, ‘Hamara kinchi, kidder gia?’^[52] and look forbidding the rest of the time. Never dream for a moment they’re stolen or admit they’re lost. It’s a kind of worry she won’t be able to stand—she’ll never know what you’re going to do. And she’ll conclude it’s cheaper in the end to restore them.”

I don’t know whether the Brownes made themselves as disagreeable as they might about the kinchi, but it was a long time before they were restored. Then an accident disclosed them at the bottom of an impossible vase. Chua, standing by, went through an extravaganza of gratification. Her eyes shone, she laughed and clasped her hands with dramatic effect. “Eggi bat”^[53]—would the memsahib inform the sahib and also the bearer that they had been found?—the latter evidently having resorted lately to some nefarious means of extracting from her what she had done with them. Chua had doubtless had an uncomfortable quarter of an hour before her mistress discovered them, and felt unjustly served in it. For the theft was only a prospective one, to be accomplished in the course of time, if it looked advisable. It did not look advisable and Chua reconsidered it, thereby leaving her Mohammedan conscience void of offence.

As soon as she was able to understand and be understood, Helen thought it her duty to make some kindly enquiries about Chua’s domestic affairs. Had she, for instance, any children?

“Na, memsahib!” she responded, with a look of assumed contempt that could not have sat more emphatically upon the face of any fin de siÈcle lady who does not believe in babies. “Baba hai na! Baba na muncta,”^[54] she went on with a large curl of the lip, “Baba all time cry kurta^[55]—Waow! Waow! atcha na,^[56] memsahib!”

“Oh na, ayah! Baba atcha hai,” laughed Helen, defending the sacredest theory of her sex.

Chua took an attitude of self-effacement, but her reply had a patronising dignity, “Memsahib kawasti baba atcha hai,” said she. “Memsahib kawasti kooch kam hai na! Ayah ka kam hai! Tub baba atcha na—kooch na muncta!”^[57]

Chua occupied quite the modern ground, which was exhilarating in an Oriental, and doubtless testified to the march of truth—that babies were only practicable and advisable when their possible mothers could find nothing better to do. Helen was impressed, and more deeply so when she presently discovered that Chua and Abdul, her husband, lived in different houses in the bustee I have mentioned—different huts, that is, mud-baked and red-tiled and leaking, and offering equal facilities for the intrusion of the ubiquitous goat. Chua spoke of Abdul with an angry flash of contempt. In accommodating himself to circumstances recently, Abdul had offended her very deeply. It was on an occasion when Chua had accompanied a memsahib to England with the usual infant charge. She was very sick, she earned a hundred and fifty rupees, she was away three months—“kali tin mahina,^[58] memsahib!” and when she returned she found Abdul mated to another. She was artful, was Chua—her mistress’s face expressed such a degree of disapprobation that she fancied herself implicated, and instantly laughed to throw a triviality over Abdul’s misconduct. It was a girl he married, a mere child “baba kamafik,^[59] memsahib”—fourteen years old. But her scorn came through the mask of her amusement when she went on to state that the house of Abdul was no longer without its olive branch, but that Abdul’s sahib had gone away and there was very little rice for anybody in that family. The recreant had come to her in his extremity, asking alms, she said with her curled lip. “Rupia do-o!”^[60] she whined, holding out her hand and imitating his suppliance with intensest irony. Then drawing herself up proudly she rehearsed her answer brief, contemptuous, and to the point.

“Daga na!—Jao!”^[61]

She had invested the proceeds of her journey over the “black water” in a ticca-gharry which lent itself all day long to the Calcutta public under her administration and to her profit. The day after Helen had been thus edified, the ayah did not appear until the afternoon. She had been to law about some point in relation to the ticca-gharry. I can’t remember what Mrs. Browne said it was—but she wanted an advance of wages for her legal expenses. She intended to spare nothing to be triumphant—her adversary had trusted his case to a common vakeel,^[62] she would have a gorah-vakeel,^[63] though they came higher. Her witnesses would be properly paid too—a rupee apiece, and eight annas extra for any necessary falsification at present unexpected. The next afternoon she came late, with a tale of undeserved disaster which she lucubrated with indignant tears, after the manner of her sex. It was not that the magistrate sahib was not fair, he was just as the sun at noon, or that Rahim the gharry-wallah had more witnesses than she—indeed, being a poor man, he had only four—but they were four of the five, unhappily, whose services she had engaged. The gharry-wallah had offered them two rupees—a higher bid—and so they spoke jute bat.^[64] But he would never be able to pay! Oh, it was very carab!^[65] and Chua sat in the dust and wrapped her face in her sari^[66] and wept again. Later, she informed her mistress that it was possible she might again be absent to-morrow—it was possible that she might come into contact that evening in the street with these defaulting witnesses—violent contact. It was possible that if they laughed at her she would strike them, and then—with an intensely observing eye always upon Helen—then her memsahib, in the event of her being carried off to the thana for assault, would of course enquire “Hamara ayah, kidder hai?”^[67] and immediately take proceedings to get her out. Chua’s countenance fell, though with instant submission, when Helen informed her sternly that she would on no account institute such proceedings, and she was deprived even of illegal means of satisfaction, taken with impunity.

It was Chua’s aptitude for assault that led to her final expulsion from the service of the Brownes and from the pages of these annals. Her manner toward the bearer had been propitiatory from the beginning. She called him “Sirdar,”^[68] she paid him florid Oriental compliments; by the effacement of her own status and personality she tried to establish a friendly understanding with him. She undertook small services on his behalf. She attempted to owe him allegiance as the other servants did. It is impossible to say that she did not press upon him a percentage of her tulub, to ensure his omnipotent good-will. But Kasi was for some dark reason unreciprocal—young Browne believed he thought she was storming his affections—and at best consented only to preserve an armed neutrality. Whereat Chua became resentful and angry, carried her head high, and exchanged remarks with Kasi which were not in the nature of amenities. The crisis came one afternoon when the Brownes were out.

“I have something to tell you after dinner,” said Mrs. Browne significantly later, across the joint.

“And I have something to tell you,” young Browne responded with equal meaning.

Mrs. Browne had the first word, in order, her husband said, that she shouldn’t have the last. She explained that she had found the ayah in tears, quite extinguished upon the floor, the cause being insult. Chua had forgotten at noon the little bright shawl which she wrapped about her head in the streets—had left it upon the memsahib’s veranda. Seeing it, the bearer had done a deadly thing. He had not touched it himself, but he had sent for the sweeper—the sweeper!—and bade him fenk-do^[69] it to his own unclean place of living. And there, after much search, had Chua found it. Therefore was she deeply abased, and therefore did she tender her resignation. The bearer had behaved Rajah kamafik!^[70] and had, moreover, spoken to her in bat that was carab, very carab.

“Yes,” said the sahib, judicially, “and the bearer came to me also weeping with joined hands to supplicate. His tale of woe is a little different. He declares he never saw the shawl and never gave the order—I’ve no doubt he did both—but that the sweeper acted upon his own responsibility. And what do you think the ayah did in revenge? She slippered him!—all round the compound! The bearer, poor chap, fled in disorder, but couldn’t escape. He has undoubtedly been slippered. And in the presence of the whole compound! It’s worse—infinitely worse—than having his puggri^[71] knocked off in ribaldry. And now he says that though he has served me faithfully all these years, and I am his father and his mother, his honour has been damaged in this place, and he prays to be allowed to depart.”

“Slippered him, George! but he’s such a big man and she such a little woman! All round the compound! Oh,” said George’s wife, giving way to unseemly hilarity, “I should like to have seen that!”

“Little termagant! Oh, it was the insult he ran from, my dear—not the blow. That she—an ayah and the wife of a kitmutgar, should have touched him with the sole of her shoe! Don’t laugh, dear—they’ll hear you, and I’d rather they didn’t.”

The Brownes held further debate, and took all the circumstances into consideration. Young Browne had evidently arrived immediately at a judicial view of the case, though he professed himself willing to let the bearer go if Helen wanted to retain Chua. “Though in that case there’ll be anarchy, my dear, I warn you,” said he. The result was a solemn gathering of the servants next morning upon the veranda, addressed by young Browne, while the memsahib sat up straight in another chair and looked serious. He took no evidence, there would have been too much, but he spoke thus:

“There was yesterday a great disturbance in the compound, which is a shameful thing. Those who thus made great noises, and used bad language and were without self-respect, were the bearer and the ayah. The bearer has served me many years in many places and with many other servants, and I have never before known him to act without shame or to quarrel. The ayah has been known a few weeks only. Both the bearer and the ayah wish to go away. The ayah may go. Bus!”^[72]

After this simple and direct delivery no word was said. The servants dispersed to the compound, the bearer, reinstated in his self-esteem and justified before the world, applied himself to forget his wrongs and was more diligent than ever in his master’s service. Chua stated to her mistress that if she had any more trouble she would die and the wind would blow through her bones, and many other things in grief-stricken Hindustani which Helen did not understand. But her mistress permitted her this balm to her wounded feelings, that when she departed she left the dishonoured shawl scornfully behind her, having privately received sufficient backsheesh to buy three like it.