Baboo Jabberjee, B.A Part 4

_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 a.s.sertion by a logomachy of such brilliancy and erudition that I completely convinced the minds of both auditors._

_Mr J._ (_grumblingly, to ~Mr TOMKINS~_). a.s.suming 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._ a.s.suredly 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 ~bona 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_). Pis.h.!.+ 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 s.h.i.+llings 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."

VIII

_How 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 a.s.sembles 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 a.s.sortment of female women conversing with vivacious garrulity, in a delicious atmosphere of tea, coffee, and b.u.t.tered bread.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 Emanc.i.p.ation?_"

which was opened by a weedy, tall male gentleman, with a lofty and a s.h.i.+ning forehead, and round, owlish spectacle-gla.s.ses. 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 a.s.sertions 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, rus.h.i.+ng in where the angels were in fear of slipping up, caught the Speaker in the eye, and tipped the wink of my _cacoethes loquendi_.

To prevent disappointment, I shall report my harangue with verbose accuracy.

_Myself_ (_a.s.suming a perpendicular att.i.tude, inserting one hand among my vest b.u.t.tons, 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 repet.i.tion even of the t.i.t-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 ch.o.r.eographical 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 Emanc.i.p.ation?_' 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 a.s.sure her that in my fatherland every cultivated native gentleman would approach her with the cold shoulder of apprehensive respectfulness. (_The bonneted matron becomes ruddier than the cherry with complacency, and fans herself vigorously._)

"Next I shall deal with the tall, meagre female near the fire-hearth, in abbreviated hair and a nose-pinch, who set up the claim that her s.e.x were in all essentials the equals, if not the superiors, of man. Now, without any gairish of words, I will proceed baldly to enumerate various important physical differentiations which---- (_Intervention by Hon'ble Chairwoman, reminding me that these were not in disputation._) I bow to correction, and kiss the rod by summing up the gist of my argument, viz., that it is nonsensical idiotcy to suppose that a woman can be the equivalent of a man either in intellectual gripe, in bodily robustiousness, or in physical courage. Of the last, I shall afford an unanswerable proof from my own person. It is notorious, _urbi et orbi_, that every feminine person will flee in panicstricken dismay from the approach of the smallest mouse.

"I am a Bengali, and, as such, profusely endowed with the fugacious instinct, and yet, shall I quake in appalling consternation if a mouse is to invade my vicinity?

"Certainly I shall not; and why? Because, though not racially a temerarious, I nevertheless appertain to the masculine s.e.x, and consequentially my heart is not capable of contracting at the mere aspect of a rodent. This is not to blow the triumphant trumpet of s.e.xual superiority, but to prove a simple undenied fact by dint of an _a fortiori_.

"Having pulverised my pinched-nose predecessor, I pa.s.s on to a speaker of a very very opposite personality--the well-proportioned, beauteous maiden with azure starry eyes, gilded hair, and teeth like the seeds of a pomegranate (oh, _si sic omnes!_), who vaunted, in the musical accents of a cuckoo, her right to work out her own life, independently of masculine companions.h.i.+p or a.s.sistance, and declared that the saccharine element of courts.h.i.+p and connubiality was but the exploded mask of man's tyrannical selfishness.

"Had such shocking sentiments been aired by some of the other lady orators in this room, I must facetiously have recalled them to a certain fabular fox which criticised the unattainable grapes as too immature to merit mastication; but the particular speaker cannot justly be said to be on all fours with such an animal. Understand, please, I am no prejudiced, narrow-minded chap. I would freely and generously permit plainfaced, antiquated, unmarriageable madams and misses to undertake the manufacture of their own careers _ad nauseam_; but when I behold a maiden of such excessive pulchritude---- (_Second intervention by Hon'ble Chairwoman desiring me to abstain from personal references._) I a.s.sure the Hon'ble Miss CHAIRWOMAN that I was not alluding to herself, but since she has spoken in my wheel with such severity, I will conclude with my peroration on the subject for debate, namely, the theatrical dramas of Hon'ble IBSEN. When, Madams and Misses, I make the odious comparison of these works, with which I am completely unacquainted, to the productions of Poet SHAKSPEARE, where I may boast the familiarity that is a breeder of contempt, I find that, in _Hamlet's_ own words, it is the 'Criterion of a Satire,' and I shall a.s.sert the unalterable _a priori_ of my belief that the melodious Swan of Stony Stratford, whether judged by his longitude, his versical blankness, or the profoundly of his attainments in Chronology, Theology, Phrenology, Palmistry, Metallurgy, Zoography, Nosology, Chiropody, or the Musical Gla.s.ses, has outnumbered every subsequent contemporary and succ.u.mbed them all!"

With this, I sat down, leaving my audience as _sotto voce_ as fishes with admiration and amazement at the facundity of my eloquence, and should indubitably have been the recipient of innumerable felicitations but for the fact that Miss SPINK, suddenly experiencing sensations of insalubriousness, requested me, without delay, to conduct her from the a.s.semblage.

I would willingly make a repet.i.tion of my visit and rhetorical triumphs, only Miss SPINK informs me that she has recently terminated her members.h.i.+p with the above society.