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<h2> HIS CHANCE IN LIFE. </h2>
<p>Then a pile of heads be laid—<br/>
Thirty thousand heaped on high—<br/>
All to please the Kafir maid,<br/>
Where the Oxus ripples by.<br/>
Grimly spake Atulla Khan:—<br/>
"Love hath made this thing a Man."<br/>
<br/>
Oatta's Story.<br/></p>
<p>If you go straight away from Levees and Government House Lists, past
Trades' Balls—far beyond everything and everybody you ever knew in
your respectable life—you cross, in time, the Border line where the
last drop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black sets in. It would
be easier to talk to a new made Duchess on the spur of the moment than to
the Borderline folk without violating some of their conventions or hurting
their feelings. The Black and the White mix very quaintly in their ways.
Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childish pride—which
is Pride of Race run crooked—and sometimes the Black in still
fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and strange,
unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, this people—understand
they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the man who imitated
Byron, sprung—will turn out a writer or a poet; and then we shall
know how they live and what they feel. In the meantime, any stories about
them cannot be absolutely correct in fact or inference.</p>
<p>Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline to look after some children
who belonged to a lady until a regularly ordained nurse could come out.
The lady said Miss Vezzis was a bad, dirty nurse and inattentive. It never
struck her that Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead and her own affairs
to worry over, and that these affairs were the most important things in
the world to Miss Vezzis. Very few mistresses admit this sort of
reasoning. Miss Vezzis was as black as a boot, and to our standard of
taste, hideously ugly. She wore cotton-print gowns and bulged shoes; and
when she lost her temper with the children, she abused them in the
language of the Borderline—which is part English, part Portuguese,
and part Native. She was not attractive; but she had her pride, and she
preferred being called "Miss Vezzis."</p>
<p>Every Sunday she dressed herself wonderfully and went to see her Mamma,
who lived, for the most part, on an old cane chair in a greasy tussur-silk
dressing-gown and a big rabbit-warren of a house full of Vezzises,
Pereiras, Ribieras, Lisboas and Gansalveses, and a floating population of
loafers; besides fragments of the day's bazar, garlic, stale incense,
clothes thrown on the floor, petticoats hung on strings for screens, old
bottles, pewter crucifixes, dried immortelles, pariah puppies, plaster
images of the Virgin, and hats without crowns. Miss Vezzis drew twenty
rupees a month for acting as nurse, and she squabbled weekly with her
Mamma as to the percentage to be given towards housekeeping. When the
quarrel was over, Michele D'Cruze used to shamble across the low mud wall
of the compound and make love to Miss Vezzis after the fashion of the
Borderline, which is hedged about with much ceremony. Michele was a poor,
sickly weed and very black; but he had his pride. He would not be seen
smoking a huqa for anything; and he looked down on natives as only a man
with seven-eighths native blood in his veins can. The Vezzis Family had
their pride too. They traced their descent from a mythical plate-layer who
had worked on the Sone Bridge when railways were new in India, and they
valued their English origin. Michele was a Telegraph Signaller on Rs. 35 a
month. The fact that he was in Government employ made Mrs. Vezzis lenient
to the shortcomings of his ancestors.</p>
<p>There was a compromising legend—Dom Anna the tailor brought it from
Poonani—that a black Jew of Cochin had once married into the D'Cruze
family; while it was an open secret that an uncle of Mrs. D'Cruze was at
that very time doing menial work, connected with cooking, for a Club in
Southern India! He sent Mrs D'Cruze seven rupees eight annas a month; but
she felt the disgrace to the family very keenly all the same.</p>
<p>However, in the course of a few Sundays, Mrs. Vezzis brought herself to
overlook these blemishes and gave her consent to the marriage of her
daughter with Michele, on condition that Michele should have at least
fifty rupees a month to start married life upon. This wonderful prudence
must have been a lingering touch of the mythical plate-layer's Yorkshire
blood; for across the Borderline people take a pride in marrying when they
please—not when they can.</p>
<p>Having regard to his departmental prospects, Miss Vezzis might as well
have asked Michele to go away and come back with the Moon in his pocket.
But Michele was deeply in love with Miss Vezzis, and that helped him to
endure. He accompanied Miss Vezzis to Mass one Sunday, and after Mass,
walking home through the hot stale dust with her hand in his, he swore by
several Saints, whose names would not interest you, never to forget Miss
Vezzis; and she swore by her Honor and the Saints—the oath runs
rather curiously; "In nomine Sanctissimae—" (whatever the name of
the she-Saint is) and so forth, ending with a kiss on the forehead, a kiss
on the left cheek, and a kiss on the mouth—never to forget Michele.</p>
<p>Next week Michele was transferred, and Miss Vezzis dropped tears upon the
window-sash of the "Intermediate" compartment as he left the Station.</p>
<p>If you look at the telegraph-map of India you will see a long line
skirting the coast from Backergunge to Madras. Michele was ordered to
Tibasu, a little Sub-office one-third down this line, to send messages on
from Berhampur to Chicacola, and to think of Miss Vezzis and his chances
of getting fifty rupees a month out of office hours. He had the noise of
the Bay of Bengal and a Bengali Babu for company; nothing more. He sent
foolish letters, with crosses tucked inside the flaps of the envelopes, to
Miss Vezzis.</p>
<p>When he had been at Tibasu for nearly three weeks his chance came.</p>
<p>Never forget that unless the outward and visible signs of Our Authority
are always before a native he is as incapable as a child of understanding
what authority means, or where is the danger of disobeying it. Tibasu was
a forgotten little place with a few Orissa Mohamedans in it. These,
hearing nothing of the Collector-Sahib for some time, and heartily
despising the Hindu Sub-Judge, arranged to start a little Mohurrum riot of
their own. But the Hindus turned out and broke their heads; when, finding
lawlessness pleasant, Hindus and Mahomedans together raised an aimless
sort of Donnybrook just to see how far they could go. They looted each
other's shops, and paid off private grudges in the regular way. It was a
nasty little riot, but not worth putting in the newspapers.</p>
<p>Michele was working in his office when he heard the sound that a man never
forgets all his life—the "ah-yah" of an angry crowd. [When that
sound drops about three tones, and changes to a thick, droning ut, the man
who hears it had better go away if he is alone.] The Native Police
Inspector ran in and told Michele that the town was in an uproar and
coming to wreck the Telegraph Office. The Babu put on his cap and quietly
dropped out of the window; while the Police Inspector, afraid, but obeying
the old race-instinct which recognizes a drop of White blood as far as it
can be diluted, said:—"What orders does the Sahib give?"</p>
<p>The "Sahib" decided Michele. Though horribly frightened, he felt that, for
the hour, he, the man with the Cochin Jew and the menial uncle in his
pedigree, was the only representative of English authority in the place.
Then he thought of Miss Vezzis and the fifty rupees, and took the
situation on himself. There were seven native policemen in Tibasu, and
four crazy smooth-bore muskets among them. All the men were gray with
fear, but not beyond leading. Michele dropped the key of the telegraph
instrument, and went out, at the head of his army, to meet the mob. As the
shouting crew came round a corner of the road, he dropped and fired; the
men behind him loosing instinctively at the same time.</p>
<p>The whole crowd—curs to the backbone—yelled and ran; leaving
one man dead, and another dying in the road. Michele was sweating with
fear, but he kept his weakness under, and went down into the town, past
the house where the Sub-Judge had barricaded himself. The streets were
empty. Tibasu was more frightened than Michele, for the mob had been taken
at the right time.</p>
<p>Michele returned to the Telegraph-Office, and sent a message to Chicacola
asking for help. Before an answer came, he received a deputation of the
elders of Tibasu, telling him that the Sub-Judge said his actions
generally were "unconstitional," and trying to bully him. But the heart of
Michele D'Cruze was big and white in his breast, because of his love for
Miss Vezzis, the nurse-girl, and because he had tasted for the first time
Responsibility and Success. Those two make an intoxicating drink, and have
ruined more men than ever has Whiskey. Michele answered that the Sub-Judge
might say what he pleased, but, until the Assistant Collector came, the
Telegraph Signaller was the Government of India in Tibasu, and the elders
of the town would be held accountable for further rioting. Then they bowed
their heads and said: "Show mercy!" or words to that effect, and went back
in great fear; each accusing the other of having begun the rioting.</p>
<p>Early in the dawn, after a night's patrol with his seven policemen,
Michele went down the road, musket in hand, to meet the Assistant
Collector, who had ridden in to quell Tibasu. But, in the presence of this
young Englishman, Michele felt himself slipping back more and more into
the native, and the tale of the Tibasu Riots ended, with the strain on the
teller, in an hysterical outburst of tears, bred by sorrow that he had
killed a man, shame that he could not feel as uplifted as he had felt
through the night, and childish anger that his tongue could not do justice
to his great deeds. It was the White drop in Michele's veins dying out,
though he did not know it.</p>
<p>But the Englishman understood; and, after he had schooled those men of
Tibasu, and had conferred with the Sub-Judge till that excellent official
turned green, he found time to draught an official letter describing the
conduct of Michele. Which letter filtered through the Proper Channels, and
ended in the transfer of Michele up-country once more, on the Imperial
salary of sixty-six rupees a month.</p>
<p>So he and Miss Vezzis were married with great state and ancientry; and now
there are several little D'Cruzes sprawling about the verandahs of the
Central Telegraph Office.</p>
<p>But, if the whole revenue of the Department he serves were to be his
reward Michele could never, never repeat what he did at Tibasu for the
sake of Miss Vezzis the nurse-girl.</p>
<p>Which proves that, when a man does good work out of all proportion to his
pay, in seven cases out of nine there is a woman at the back of the
virtue.</p>
<p>The two exceptions must have suffered from sunstroke.</p>
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