Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. by F. Anstey (books to get back into reading TXT) 📗
- Author: F. Anstey
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Now, begone dull care! for I am to dismiss all litigious thoughts till October or November next, and become a Dolce far niente, chasing the deer with my heart in the Highlands.
My volunteering acquaintance, by the way, has declined to lend me his rifle, on the transparent pretence that it was contrary to regulations, and that it was not the bon ton to pursue grouse-birds and the like with so war-like a weapon.
So, on young Howard's advice, I made the purchase from a pawnbroker of a lethal instrument, provided with a duplicate bore, so that, should a bird happen by any chance to escape my first barrel, the second will infallibly make him bite the dust.
I have also purchased some cartridges of a very pleasing colour, a hunting knife, and a shot belt and pouch, and if I can only procure some inexpensive kind of sporting hound from the Dogs' Home, I shall be forewarned and forearmed cap à pie for the perils and pleasures of the chase.
Miss Wee-Wee did earnestly advise me, inasmuch as I was about to go amongst the savage hill tribes of canny Scotians, to previously make myself acquainted with their idioms, &c., for which purpose she lent me some romances written entirely in Caledonian dialects, also the compositions of Hon. Poet Burns.
But hoity-toity! after much diligent perusal, I arrived at the conclusion that such works were sealed books to the most intelligent foreigner, unless he is furnished with a good Scotch grammar and dictionary.
And mirabile dictu! though I have made diligent inquiries of various London booksellers, I have found it utterly impossible to obtain such works in England—a haughty and arrogantly dispositioned country, more inclined to teach than to learn!
How many of your boasted British Cabinet, supposed to rule our countless millions of so-called Indian subjects, would be capable to sit down and read and translate—correctly—a single sentence from the Mahábhárat in the original?
Not more, I shrewdly suspect, than half a dozen at most!
So it is not to be expected that any more interest would be displayed in the language and literature of a country like Scotland, which is notoriously wild and barren and less densely populated and productive than the most ordinary districts of Bengal.
Oh, you pusillanimous Highland chiefs and other misters! how long will you tamely submit to such offhanded treatment? Will the day never come when, with whirling sporrans and flashing pibrochs you will rise against the alien oppressor, and demand Home Rule, together with the total abolition of present disdainful British insouciance?
When that day dawns—if ever—please note this piece of private intelligence from an authorised source: Young Bengal will be with you in your struggle for Autonomy. If not in body, assuredly in spirit. Possibly in both.
I say no more, in case I should be accused of trying to stir up seditious feelings; but, as a patriotic Baboo gentleman, my blood will boil occasionally at instances of stuck-up English self-sufficiency, and the worm in the bud, if nipped too severely, may blossom into a rather formidable serpent!
"I AM ADDRESSED BY AN UNDERBRED STREET-URCHIN AS A 'BLOOMING BLACKY!'"
As, for instance, when, in the course of an inoffensive promenade, I am addressed by an underbred street-urchin as a "blooming blacky," and cannot induce a policeman to compel my aggressor to furnish me with his name and address or that of his parents, or even to offer the most ordinary apology.
Enough of these rather bitter reflections, however. I omitted to mention that I am also the proprietor (at the same pawnbroker's where I bought my breeches-loader gun) of a very fine second-hand salmon-rod, a great bargain and immense value, with which I hope to be able to catch a great quantity of fishes.
For there is, according to young Howard, good fishing in a burn adjoining the Manse, so I shall follow King Solomon's injunctions, and not spare the rod and spoil the salmons, though if I should happen to "spoil" my rod, the salmons would inevitably in consequence be "spared."
This is a sample of the kind of verbal pleasantries in which, when in exhilarated high spirits, I sometimes facetiously indulge.
[Pg 190] XXIVMr Jabberjee relates his experiences upon the Moors.
I am now an acclimatised denizen of Caledonia stern and wild; which, however, turns out to be milder and tamer than depicted by the jaundiced hand of national jealousy.
For, since my arrival at this hamlet of Kilpaitrick, N.B., I have not once beheld any species of savage hill-man; moreover, the adult inhabitants are clothed with irreproachable decency, and, if the juveniles run about with denuded feet and heads, where is the shocking scandal?
Mr Allbutt-Innett, sen., did me the honour to appear in person upon the Kilpaitrick platform, and welcome me with outspread arms to his temporary hearth and home, but I shall have the candour of confessing my disappointment with the size and appearance of the same. It appears that a "Manse" is not at all a palatial edifice, furnished with a plethora of marble halls and vassals and serfs, &c., but simply the very so-so and two-storied abode of some local priest!
My gracious hostess was to tender profuse apologies for its homeliness, on the plea that it is refreshing at times to lay aside ceremonial magnificence and unbend in rural simplicity, though it is not humanly possible to unbend oneself upon the thorny bosoms of chairs and couches severely upholstered with the prickling hairs of an extinct horse.
Still, as I assured Miss Wee-Wee, she is the happy owner of a magical knack to transform, by her sheer apparition, the humblest hovel into the first-class family residence with every modern improvement.
With the said Miss I continue on terms of hand and gloveship, with mutual harmless jokes, which would perhaps be as caviare on toast to a general, though I shall venture to recount some examples.
"OF INCREDIBLE BASHFULNESS AND BUCOLICAL APPEARANCE."
A certain local young laird, of incredible bashfulness and bucolical appearance, is a frequent visitor at the manse, and the fervent admirer of Miss Wee-Wee, who cannot endure the tedium of his society, and is constantly endeavouring to escape therefrom.
Now his name is Mr Crum, and I have frequently entertained her in private by play upon the word, alluding to him as "Mister Crust," "Mister Oatcake," or "the Scotch Bun," and the like; but he informed me that he preferred to be addressed as "Balbannock," and upon my inquiring his reasons for selecting such an alias, he answered that it was because he inhabited a house of that name.
Whereupon I facetiously requested that he would address myself in future as "Mister Seventy-nine, Hereford Road, Bayswater," which stroke of wit occasioned inextinguishable merriment from Miss Wee-Wee, though it did not excite from the aforesaid laird so much as the smallest simper!
From an ingrained love of teasing, and also the natural desire to stimulate her appreciation of my superior fertility in small talk and l'art de plaire, I do often slyly contrive to inflict his sole society upon her—to the huge entertainment of her father and mother, who carry on the joke by assisting my manœuvrings; but, although it affords me a flattering gratification to be plaintively upbraided by Miss Wee-Wee for my cruel desertion, I am resolved not to persist in such heartless pranks beyond her natural endurance.
Shortly after my arrival I heard from my host that he was the recipient of an invitation from a Mister Bagshot, Q.C., that he and his son Howard would accompany him to a shooting expedition upon some adjacent moors, and that, being now immoderately plump, and past his prime as a potshot, he had requested leave to nominate myself as his budli or substitute, explaining that I was a young Indian prince of great prowess at every kind of big games.
Accordingly, to my great delight, it was arranged that I should take his place.
My young friend Howard, beholding me appear at the breakfast-table arrayed in my short kilt and superincumbent belly-purse with tassels, did entreat me to change myself into ordinary knickerbockers, lest I should catch death with a cold.
But I declined, disdaining such dangers, and assuring him that I did not at all dislike the excessive ventilation of my knees.
We drove to Mr Bagshot's residence, Rowans Castle, in a hired machine, and found the gentlemen-shooters gathered outside the portico. Amongst the party I was pleased to observe Hon'ble Justice Cummerbund, who, when we were all ascended into the waggonette-break, did rally me very good-humouredly upon some mixed bag of elephants and tigers he had heard (or so he said) I had accomplished in some up-country jungle.
At first, knowing that this was the utter impossibility, I perspired with terror that he was making me the fool, but apparently he was himself under a misunderstanding, for when we had left the vehicle and were preparing to advance, he paid me the distinguished compliment of entreating that I might be awarded the command of one extremity of the line, while he himself was to preside over the opposite end!
And thus we commenced to climb a steep hill, thickly covered with a very pricklesome heather, and black slimy bogs, wherein the varnish of my patent-leather shoes did soon become totally dimmed. So, being gravely incommoded by the shortness of my wind, I entrusted my musket to an under-keeper, begging him to inform me of the early approach of any stag or deer.
However, we saw nothing to shoot at except various sorts of wild poultry, and when some of these flew up immediately in front of me, I was too late, owing to the carriage of my gun by an underling, to do more than fire off a couple of barrels as a declaration of hostility.
But profiting by this lesson in being semper paratus, I refused to part again with my deadly instrument, and stumbled manfully onwards with finger upon the triggers, letting them fly instantaneously at the first appearance of any animals feræ naturæ.
It is not customary, I was assured, to slay the wild sheep in these districts, though horned, and of an excessively ferocious appearance, and even when firing my bullets at birds, I was subjected to continual reproofs from some officious keeper or other.
For example, I was not to shoot into a flock of partridges, for the superstitious reason, forsooth! that it was still the month of August, which is supposed to be unlucky!
Again, I was rebuked for burning powder at a grey hen, because it is the wife of a black-cock, which may be shot with impunity. Although a highly chivalrous chap in questions of the fairer sex, I am yet to see why it is allowable to render the female bird a bereaved widow, but totally forbidden to make the male a widower! Or why it is permissible to slay a minute bird such as a snipe, while a titlark is on no account to be touched.
Being eventually exasperated by these unreasonable faultfindings, seeing that I had merely emptied my gun-barrels without actually destroying any of these sacred volatiles, I addressed the keeper in the withering tones of a sarcasm: "Mister Keeper," I said, "as I am not the ornithologist or soothsayer to distinguish infallibly every species of bird by instinct when flying with incredible velocity, would it not be better that I should discharge no shots in future?"
To which, abashed by my severity, he replied that he could not just say that it would make any considerable difference whether I fired at all or none.
My fellow-shooters, however, could not refrain from shouting with irrepressible admiration at the intrepidity with which, forestalling the fleetest dogs, I did rush forward to pick up the fallen grouse-birds, and repeatedly exhorted me to take greater care for my own safety.
I cannot say that they exhibited equivalent courageousness, seeing that, so often as I raised my gun to fire, they flung themselves upon their stomachs in the heather until I had finished, upon which I rallied them mercilessly upon their timidity, assuring them repeatedly that they had nothing to fear.
Yet English and Scotch alike accuse us Bengalees of being subject to excessive funkiness. What about the Pot and the Kettle, Misters?
I am to reserve the conclusion of my shooting experiences until a future occasion.
[Pg 199] XXVMr Jabberjee concludes the thrilling
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