Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. by F. Anstey (books to get back into reading TXT) 📗
- Author: F. Anstey
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And presently he invited me to accompany him to a respectable sort of tavern, and solicited the honour of my having a "peg" at his expense; to which I, perceiving him to be a good-natured, simple fellow, inflated by sudden prosperity, consented, accepting, contrary to my normal habitude, his offer of a brandy panee, or an old Tom.
While we were discoursing of India (concerning which I found that, like most globular trotters, he had not been long enough in the country to be accurately informed), enters a third party, who, it so happened, was an early acquaintance of my companion, though separated by the old lang sign of a longinquity. What followed I shall render in a dialogue form.
The Third party: Why, Tomkins, you have a prosperous appearance, Tomkins. When last met, you suffered from the impecuniosity of a churched mouse. Have you made your fortune, Tomkins?
Mr Tomkins. I am too easy a goer, and there are too many rogues in the world, that I should ever make my own fortune, Johnson! Happily for me, an opulent and ancient avuncular relative has lately departed to reside with the morning stars, and left me wealth outside the dream of an avaricious!
Mr Johnson (enviously). God bless my soul! Some folks have the good luck. (To me, whispering.) A poor ninny-hammer sort of chap, he will soon throw it away on drakes and ducks! (Aloud, to Mr Tomkins.) Splendid! I congratulate you sincerely.
Mr T. (in a tone of dolesomeness). The heart knoweth where the shoe pinches it, Johnson. My lot is not a rose-bed. For my antique and eccentric relative must needs insert a testamentary condition commanding me to forfeit the inheritance, unless, within three calendered months from his last obsequies, I shall have distributed ten thousand pounds amongst young deserving foreigners. To-morrow time is up, and I have still a thousand pounds to give away! But how to discover genuine young deserving foreigners in so short a space? Truly, I go in fear of losing the whole!
Mr J. Let me act as your budli in this and distribute the remaining thousand.
Mr T. From what I remember of you as a youth, I cannot wholly rely on your discretion. Rather would I place my confidence in this gentleman.
[Indicating myself, who turned orange with pleasure.
Mr J. Indeed? And how know you that he may not adhere to the entire thousand?
Mr T. And if he does, it is no matter, if he is a genuine deserving. I can give the whole to him if I am so minded, and he need not give away a penny of it unless inclined.
[At which I was fit to dance with delight.
Mr J. I deny that you possess the power, seeing that he is a British subject, and as such cannot be styled a "foreigner."
Mr T. There you have mooted a knotty point indeed. Alas, that we have no forensic big-wig here to decide it!
Myself (modestly). As a native poor student of English law, I venture to think that, by dint of my legal attainments, I shall be enabled to crack the Gordian nut. I am distinctly of opinion that an individual born of dusky parents in a tropical climate is a foreigner, in the eye of British prejudice, and within the meaning of the testator. [And here I maintained my assertion by a logomachy of such brilliancy and erudition that I completely convinced the minds of both auditors.
Mr J. (grumblingly, to Mr Tomkins). Assuming he is correct, why favour him more than me?
Mr T. Because instinct informs me that a gentleman with such a face as his—however dusky—may be trusted, and with the untold gold!
Mr J. (jealously). And I am not to be trusted! If you were to hand me your portemonnaie now, full of notes and gold, and let me walk into the street with it, do you doubt that I should return? Speak, Tomkins!
Mr T. Assuredly not; but so, too, would this gentleman. (To me, as Mr Johnson sneered a doubt.) Here, you, Sir, take this portemonnaie out into the street for five minutes or so, I trust to your honour to return it intact. (After I had emerged triumphantly from this severe ordeal of my bonâ fide.) Aha, Johnson! am I the judge of men or not?
Mr J. (still seeking, as I could see, to undermine me in his friend's favour). Pish! Who would steal a paltry £50 and lose £1000? If I had so much to give away, I should wish to be sure that the party I was about to endow had corresponding confidence in me. Now, though I have always considered you as a dull, I know you to be strictly honest, and would trust you with all I possess. In proof of which, take these two golden sovereigns and few shillings outside. Stay away as long as you desire. You will return, I know you well!
Myself (penetrating this shallow artifice, and hoisting the engine-driver on his own petard). Who would not risk a paltry £2 to gain £1000? Oh, a magnificent confidence, truly!
Mr J. (to me). Have you the ordinary manly pluck to act likewise? If you are expecting him to trust you with the pot of money, he has a right to expect to be trusted in return. That is logic!
Mr T. (mildly). No, Johnson, you are too hasty, Johnson. The cases are different. I can understand the gentleman's very natural hesitation. I do not ask him to show his confidence in me—enough that I feel I can trust him. If he doubts my honesty, I shall think no worse of him; whichever way I decide eventually.
[Here, terrified lest by hesitation I had wounded him at his quick, and lest, after all, he should decide to entrust the thousand pounds to Mr Johnson, I hastily produced all the specie and bullion I had upon me, including a valuable large golden chronometer and chain of best English make, and besought him to go into the outer air for a while with them, which, after repeated refusals, he at last consented to do, leaving Myself and Mr Johnson to wait.
Mr J. (after tedious lapse of ten minutes). Strange! I expected him back before this. But he is an absent-minded, chuckle-headed chap. Very likely he is staring at a downfallen horse and has forgotten this affair. I had better go in search of him. What? you will come, too. Capital! Then if you go to the right, and I to the left, we cannot miss him!
But, alack! we did; and, in a short time, both Misters were invisible to the nude eye, nor have I heard from them since. Certain of my fellow-boarders, on hearing the matter, declared that I had been diddled by a bamboozle-trick; but it is egregiously absurd that my puissance in knowledge of the world should have been so much at fault; and, moreover, why should one who had succeeded to vast riches seek to rob me of my paltry possessions? It is much more probable that they are still diligently seeking for me, having omitted, owing to hurry of moment, to ascertain my name and address; and I hereby request Mr Tomkins, on reading this, to forward the thousand pounds (or so much thereof as in his munificent generosity he may deem sufficient) to me at Porticobello House, Ladbroke Grove, W., or care of his friend, the Editor of Punch, by whom it will (I am sure) be honourably handed over intact.
Nor need Mr Tomkins fear my reproaches for his dilatoriness, for there is a somewhat musty proverb that "Procrastination is preferable to Neverness."
[Pg 60] VIIIHow Mr Jabberjee delivered an Oration at a Ladies' Debating Club.
Miss Spink (whom I have mentioned supra as a feminine inmate of Porticobello House) is in additum a member of a Debating Female Society, which assembles once a week in various private Westbourne Grove parlours, for argumentative intercourse.
So, she expressing an anxious desire that I should attend one of these conclaves, I consented, on ascertaining that I should be afforded the opportunity of parading the gab with which I have been gifted in an extemporised allocution.
On the appointed evening I directed my steps, under the guidance of the said Miss Spink, to a certain imposing stucco residence hard by, wherein were an assortment of female women conversing with vivacious garrulity, in a delicious atmosphere of tea, coffee, and buttered bread.
"A WEEDY, TALL MALE GENTLEMAN."
After having partaken freely of these comestibles, we made the adjournment to a luxuriously upholstered parlour, circled with plush-seated chairs and adorned with countless mirrors, and there we began to beg the question at issue, to-whit, "To what extent has Ibsen (if any) contributed towards the cause of Female Emancipation?" which was opened by a weedy, tall male gentleman, with a lofty and a shining forehead, and round, owlish spectacle-glasses. He read a very voluminous paper, from which I learnt that Ibsen was the writer of innumerable new-fangled dramas of very problematical intentions, exposing the hollow conventionalisms of all established social usages, especially in the matrimonial department.
When he had ceased there was a universal and unanimous silence, due to uncontrollable female bashfulness, for the duration of several minutes, until the chairwoman exhorted someone to have the courage of her opinions. And the ice being once fractured, one Amurath succeeded another in disjointed commentaries, plucking crows in the teeth of the assertions of the Hon'ble Opener and of their precursors, and resumed their seats with abrupt precipitancy, stating that they had no further remarks to make.
Then ensued another interim of golden "Silence and slow Time," as Poet Keats says, which was as if to become Sempiternity, had not I, rushing in where the angels were in fear of slipping up, caught the Speaker in the eye, and tipped the wink of my cacoëthes loquendi.
To prevent disappointment, I shall report my harangue with verbose accuracy.
Myself (assuming a perpendicular attitude, inserting one hand among my vest buttons, and waving the other with a graceful affability). "Hon'ble Miss Chairwoman, Madams, Misses, and Hon'ble Mister Opener, the humble individual now palpitating on his limbs before you is a denizen from a land whose benighted, ignorant inhabitants are accustomed to treat the females of their species as small fry and fiddle faddle. Yes, Madams and Misses, in India the woman is forbidden to eat except in the severest solitude, and after her lord and master has surfeited his pangs of hunger; she may not make the briefest outdoor excursion without permission, and then solely in a covered palkee, or the hermetically sealed interior of a blinded carriage. (Cries of 'Shame.') In the Zenana, she is restricted to the occupation of puerile gossipings, or listening to apocryphal fairy tales of so scandalising an impropriety that I shrink to pollute my ears by the repetition even of the tit-bits. (Subdued groans.)
"Such being the case, you can imagine the astonishment and gratification I have experienced here this evening at the intelligence and forwardness manifested by so many effeminate intellects. (A flattered rustle and prolonged simpering.)
"The late respectable Dr Ben Johnson, gifted author of Boswell's Biography (applause), once rather humorously remarked, on witnessing a nautch performed by canine quadrupeds, that—although their choreographical abilities were of but a mediocre nature—the wonderment was that they should be capable at all to execute such a hind-legged feat and tour de force.
"Similarly, it is to me a gaping marvel that womanish tongues should hold forth upon subjects which are naturally far outside the radius of their comprehensions.
"The subject for our discursiveness to-night is, 'To what extent has Ibsen contributed to the Cause (if any) of Female Emancipation?' and being a total ignoramus up to date of the sheer existence of said hon'ble gentleman, I shall abstain from scratching my head over so Sphinxian a conundrum, and confine myself to knuckling to the obiter diction of sundry lady speakers.
"There was a stout full-blown matron, with grey curl-shavings and a bonnet and plumage, who declaimed her opinionated conviction that it was degrading and infra dig. for any woman to be treated as a doll. (Hear, hear.) Well, I would hatch the questionable egg of a doubt whether any rationalistic masculine could regard the speaker herself in a dollish aspect, and will assure her that in my fatherland every cultivated native gentleman would approach her with
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