31 DECEMBER 1921, Page 8

LACHMAN.

" Bawal Pindi.

June, 1913.

Lachman has been my beater for ten months. He is an honest and trustworthy boy, and I can confidently recommend him. He leaves me because the death of his grandfather compels him to return to his native place.

R. H. JONES, Capt. R.E." " Bangalore.

October, 1914.

Lachman has been my bearer for nine months. I have found him careful and industrious and thoroughly trustworthy. He is very useful on shikar. He is leaving me because his father is seriously ill and he has to return home.

A. B. Shama, Major I.A."

T READ these chits, and some eight or nine similar, all 1 testifying to the good qualities of the boy. Domestic troubles seem, however, to have beset him, and misfor- tunes befalling brothers, sisters, wife, father, mother, grandfathers, and grandmothers continually checked an apparently very promising career. I commented on this, and was met with a polite and non-committal smile. I doubted if he understood what I meant.

I engaged the little, round Gurkha. He was, I think, the roundest man I have ever seen. His body was round, his legs were round, his face completely round, and he wore a little round black cap on top of his round head. He wore round white trousers and an old black coat of a very round cut belonging to some former sahib. At mess the broad green cammerband round his middle completed his rotundity. The only thing about him that was not round_ were his little, slanting Mongolian eyes. Lachman proved to be thoroughly dependable. He was honest in money matters, and produced elaborate statements of expenditure down to the last pice. In behaviour, he was polite in the manner of an English man- servant of the old school : in habits, essentially orderly. Boots, clothes, brushes, shaving things, all had an allotted place. A blind man would have known exactly where to had everything. The order of the day was likewise defined, or rather would have been but for master's unpunctual habits. Such was Lachman's inherent sense of correctness. This was his hall-mark as a bearer ; the quality for which he invariably acquired credit from successive employers. He saw himself the Lachman of the chits, invariably extolled for his reliability, the trusted servant. And the chits were his stock-in-trade. He built up for himself in them an ideal Lachman, a man who would one day lay them before a very wealthy sahib, who would give him many rupees a month.

His correctness was a fetish. It showed itself in his language. He had assigned a name to everything, and this was the one and only name. Sometimes it was Hindustani, sometimes English. But I do not think that any article had a name in both languages. Thus a horse was " gora," but " beefishteak " always was and always will be " beefishteak," despite the dictionaries. I was once foolish enough to try to correct him. I was politely but firmly reproved. " Master, give me some pice," he said. " What for ? " I asked. " To buy candillyshtick." " To buy what ? " " Canclillyshtick, sahib." " Oh, candlestick ! " " No, 'no, sahib, candilly- shtick."

The lower-caste servants he treated with the exact amount of superiority which was his due. On journeys he was most amusing to watch. He marshalled the coolies who carried the luggage, saw everything correctly stowed, and with an indescribable air would produce small change from the ticket pocket of his round black coat and tip them one by one.

Such was Lachman the imperturbable. " I kill ishnake," he announced, producing the corpse of a Russell's viper with the same expression as when he handed master's clean shirt for dinner. He only once changed colour. One tempestuous afternoon in the Bay of Bengal I stumbled upon him huddled up against a winch, and his customary yellow had given place to a sickly olive green, which would have done credit to the River Irwell.

He had his interests. He was constantly to be seen on the touch line at companki football- matches. I expect he had played the game in his early days as a soldier. Nor had he the parochial mind of the ordinary boy. He followed the events in Europe, at least so far as they con- cerned his fellow Gurkhii. I remember when the first optimistic accounts of the. Battle of Loos were received I hailed-him with joy. "-Lachman, we have won a great victory," I said: He did not understand the word " victory," but when I ekPlained to him what had hap- pened he grinned with delight. " Ah, I see," he said, " the Gurkhas and the British, they beating the Germans."

He was a. patriot heart- and soul,' devoted generally to the Gurkha race, and in pirticular to the little " Lachman " clan at.Lebong, by Darjeeling. I could picture his home : a few huts, probably of baked clay, huddled together in a corner of the bazaar, gleaming white in the sunshine against the dark pines and the snowyeaks far away, very picturesque from a distance and decidedly unpleasant at close quarters. The commune had representatives of some four generations : despite the mortality recorded in the chits grandfathers still probably flourished, fathers and children certainly. Dogs and a goat or two would complete the menage. Meanwhile, the sons were out in the world earning pice, which they dutifully contributed to the family coffers. As Lachman explained to me, " You, sahib, European, your parents keeping you ; me native, me keeping my parents." And so the earnings went home to Lebong month by month, until the desire for home became too great and the worker woke up one day and said to himself " I'm off ! " And so it came about. Some nine or ten months of Burma saw him through. Then the pagodas and the tinkling bells got on his nerves, and a grandfather duly expired. He came with a very long face and broke the news to me. The chits had, I'm certain, already recorded the demise of all that generation, but he assured one that there was still a maternal grandparent whose sad death had now occurred. I was very sorry to let him go, but it was quite obvious that he had made up his mind. I had to agree, and he immediately cast off his air of mourning and hailing a distinguished-looking gentleman who had been loitering in the offing, introduced me to him as the new bearer he had appointed for master. He laid before me a sheet of regimental notepaper, pen and ink, and asked for a chit. I wrote :—

" Rangoon.

November, 1915. Lachman has been with me for nine months. He is a very useful boy in every respect, and thoroughly trustworthy. I am sorry to part from him. He is leaving me because . . .

I paused—after all, so far as I was concerned, the maternal grandfather should have another run : I should hate to give him his quietus. So I ended up—" urgent family affairs compel him to return at once to Lebong."

R. 0. HOBHOUSE.