Part 23 (1/2)
We were sitting together on the edge of his bedstead, for he owned no chairs, watching the horses being watered for the night, while the native woman was preparing dinner. I did not like being patronized by a loafer, but I was his guest for the time being, though he owned only one very torn alpaca-coat and a pair of trousers made out of gunny-bags.
He took the pipe out of his mouth, and went on judicially:--”All things considered, I doubt whether you are the luckier. I do not refer to your extremely limited cla.s.sical attainments, or your excruciating quant.i.ties, but to your gross ignorance of matters more immediately under your notice. That for instance.”--He pointed to a woman cleaning a samovar near the well in the centre of the Serai. She was flicking the water out of the spout in regular cadenced jerks.
”There are ways and ways of cleaning samovars. If you knew why she was doing her work in that particular fas.h.i.+on, you would know what the Spanish Monk meant when he said--
'I the Trinity ill.u.s.trate, Drinking watered orange-pulp-- In three sips the Aryan frustrate, While he drains his at one gulp.--'
and many other things which now are hidden from your eyes. However, Mrs.
McIntosh has prepared dinner. Let us come and eat after the fas.h.i.+on of the people of the country--of whom, by the way, you know nothing.”
The native woman dipped her hand in the dish with us. This was wrong.
The wife should always wait until the husband has eaten. McIntosh Jellaludin apologized, saying:--
”It is an English prejudice which I have not been able to overcome; and she loves me. Why, I have never been able to understand. I fore-gathered with her at Jullundur, three years ago, and she has remained with me ever since. I believe her to be moral, and know her to be skilled in cookery.”
He patted the woman's head as he spoke, and she cooed softly. She was not pretty to look at.
McIntosh never told me what position he had held before his fall. He was, when sober, a scholar and a gentleman. When drunk, he was rather more of the first than the second. He used to get drunk about once a week for two days. On those occasions the native woman tended him while he raved in all tongues except his own. One day, indeed, he began reciting Atalanta in Calydon, and went through it to the end, beating time to the swing of the verse with a bedstead-leg. But he did most of his ravings in Greek or German. The man's mind was a perfect rag-bag of useless things. Once, when he was beginning to get sober, he told me that I was the only rational being in the Inferno into which he had descended--a Virgil in the Shades, he said--and that, in return for my tobacco, he would, before he died, give me the materials of a new Inferno that should make me greater than Dante. Then he fell asleep on a horse-blanket and woke up quite calm.
”Man,” said he, ”when you have reached the uttermost depths of degradation, little incidents which would vex a higher life, are to you of no consequence. Last night, my soul was among the G.o.ds; but I make no doubt that my b.e.s.t.i.a.l body was writhing down here in the garbage.”
”You were abominably drunk if that's what you mean,” I said.
”I WAS drunk--filthy drunk. I who am the son of a man with whom you have no concern--I who was once Fellow of a College whose b.u.t.tery-hatch you have not seen. I was loathsomely drunk. But consider how lightly I am touched. It is nothing to me. Less than nothing; for I do not even feel the headache which should be my portion. Now, in a higher life, how ghastly would have been my punishment, how bitter my repentance! Believe me, my friend with the neglected education, the highest is as the lowest--always supposing each degree extreme.”
He turned round on the blanket, put his head between his fists and continued:--
”On the Soul which I have lost and on the Conscience which I have killed, I tell you that I CANNOT feel! I am as the G.o.ds, knowing good and evil, but untouched by either. Is this enviable or is it not?”
When a man has lost the warning of ”next morning's head,” he must be in a bad state, I answered, looking at McIntosh on the blanket, with his hair over his eyes and his lips blue-white, that I did not think the insensibility good enough.
”For pity's sake, don't say that! I tell you, it IS good and most enviable. Think of my consolations!”
”Have you so many, then, McIntosh?”
”Certainly; your attempts at sarcasm which is essentially the weapon of a cultured man, are crude. First, my attainments, my cla.s.sical and literary knowledge, blurred, perhaps, by immoderate drinking--which reminds me that before my soul went to the G.o.ds last night, I sold the Pickering Horace you so kindly lent me. Ditta Mull the Clothesman has it. It fetched ten annas, and may be redeemed for a rupee--but still infinitely superior to yours. Secondly, the abiding affection of Mrs.
McIntosh, best of wives. Thirdly, a monument, more enduring than bra.s.s, which I have built up in the seven years of my degradation.”
He stopped here, and crawled across the room for a drink of water. He was very shaky and sick.
He referred several times to his ”treasure”--some great possession that he owned--but I held this to be the raving of drink. He was as poor and as proud as he could be. His manner was not pleasant, but he knew enough about the natives, among whom seven years of his life had been spent, to make his acquaintance worth having. He used actually to laugh at Strickland as an ignorant man--”ignorant West and East”--he said. His boast was, first, that he was an Oxford Man of rare and s.h.i.+ning parts, which may or may not have been true--I did not know enough to check his statements--and, secondly, that he ”had his hand on the pulse of native life”--which was a fact. As an Oxford man, he struck me as a prig: he was always throwing his education about. As a Mahommedan faquir--as McIntosh Jellaludin--he was all that I wanted for my own ends. He smoked several pounds of my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of things worth knowing; but he would never accept any gifts, not even when the cold weather came, and gripped the poor thin chest under the poor thin alpaca-coat. He grew very angry, and said that I had insulted him, and that he was not going into hospital. He had lived like a beast and he would die rationally, like a man.