The Ways of a Maid

By K. NAGARAJAN

If you had gone into the village of Velanadi and asked about Elsie Mary, the daughter of Maria Susai, the ground-nut trader, they would have told you that she was an unschooled tomboy. Her step-mother–the virtuous Vyakula Mary–would have pulled a long face (effortlessly, as her face was naturally long, which made her look like a horse) and wailed that she was a regular hoyden, a trial and an irritation.

Her father–but he was chronically drunk, so it would not have mattered what he said.

But Elsie had her own partisans. The young men of the village–the unsteady ones, of course–swore by her and said she was a phantom of delight. Not in so many words, for they did not know Wordsworth and, moreover, verbal ecstacy about unmarried girls is not allowed, still, they would have conveyed the idea. Old Arokiasami, who is as wise as an owl, would have cleared his throat noisily and classed her definitely as good. But what is Arokiasami? A stone which has rolled over half the known world and come back mossless, moneyless. His opinion, almost certainly, would not have gone down with a Court but I shouldn’t brush it aside. From all of which you will see that Elsie was quite a character.

In any case, she was distinctly upsetting. As Nambikkai Mary, the Bible woman, said, “She even made mass a mummery.” Father Gomez had to speak to the young men very seriously about their behaviour in Church. But Elsie was unabashed. Even the confessional had no terrors for her. She used to come out of Church on Saturday evenings looking less like a repentant sinner than one who has been up to some new devilment.

There was only one thing to do and that was to marry her off. Would that improve matters? asked Sandana Mary, the catechist’s wife, a pale shadow of Vyakula Mary’s. “She would, at any rate, be off our hands,” answered Vyakula.

“That’s true. The responsibility would be someone else’s then.” Sandana Mary would dutifully agree, like one saying the responses at Church.

And Vyakula Mary made her plans. She was rather an expert at them. The schemes of mice and men might miscarry, but never Vyakula Mary’s. They hadn’t, so far. Did she not manage her husband, the ground-nut business, the entire household, all of it, except, of course, Elsie?

She surveyed the village mentally and fixed upon Sani Glass Odayan. (Sani Glass wasn’t a species of glass but only Stanislaus, a more than middle-aged widower, worldly-wise and well-to-do.) But. Elsie laughed so consumedly at the idea that Sani Glass went off in a huff. Vyakula Mary, beside herself with vexation, went to her husband and asked him to speak to Elsie. Maria Susai, good man, tried in a lucid interval, but when did you hear of a piece of cotton-wool moving a slab of granite? That was the beginning and, in one sense, the end. Vyakula Mary, being a virtuous woman, did not complain loudly. She only tugged at her face and went about looking horsier than ever. Other names were proposed by well-meaning neighbours but Elsie only laughed and lollopped off to church, tank or shandy according to the hour. Father Gomez intervened. “You must marry, Elsie,” he urged.

Elsie caught herself with a jerk. Kindly Father Gomez she could not brush aside lightly. She looked around her for a second and made as if to open her heart to him. Then, apparently thinking better of it, she laughed. “No fear, Father, marriage is not for me. I shall probably go into a convent.”

Father Gomez was not misled by the bantering tone. He had noticed the earlier movement and its repression. He stayed his hand, intending to tackle her later.

The strain increased in Maria Susai’s household. Vyakula Mary, for all her reputedly silent suffering, used to say things which burnt into one’s sensibilities like hot cinders. She starved,–or said she did,–kicked her brats without provocation and slanged Maria Susai worse than ever, all in Elsie’s sight. Things got grievously out of gear in the Maria Susai menage and the ground-nut trade languished. “You are making your mother unhappy, Elsie, and she has been more than a mother to you,” the friends of the family would say.

“Hasn’t she?” Elsie would reply with what began as a smile and ended as a glint in the eye.

Arokiasami added his voice; faltering and feeble, he said, “Why don’t you marry and be done with it, Elsie? After all, you must marry some day.” “I suppose I must, uncle. To please mother,” replied Elsie jestingly.

Arokiasami tor-sed his aged head. “Mother be hanged,” he said. “Marry to please yourself and to run your own home, my dear.” He pounded a mouthful of betel and flicked it into his toothless mouth. Then, drawing Elsie to him, he told her in a low voice, “You mustn’t make yourself out to be worse than you are, dear.” “I do not feel virtuous at all, uncle,” said Elsie, smiling.

“Don’t be silly. The rest of them are not a tenth as good as you, not by a long chalk,” said Arokiasami and he Was seized with a violent fit of coughing.

There was something in Arokiasami’s manner which touched a chord in her. He was her oldest friend; when she was a little girl he used to take her on his knee and tell her long stories about the march to Mandalay, the storming of Theebaw’s Palace and give her his general service medal to wear round her neck. And he had yet another claim to consideration. Was he not the uncle of Moses, the motor-driver, that hefty youth, broad-shouldered and tall, who paid her silent homage with his eyes, so unlike those anaemic, buttockless youths who grinned and jabbered at the sight of her like the monkeys of the Velamalai forest? Moses was not a he-man by any means but he was the sort of man one liked to go about with at the Pasco festival at Eastertide, his broad back and shoulders showing to advantage in his grey flannel–or, was it khaddar?–coat with the twin bands running down the back. Elsie, for all her cool sophistication, was given to much day-dreaming. In her mind’s eye, for some time past, there had been the picture of a house, in fact, the creeper-covered two-roomed cottage at the corner of the Cotton-growers’ Lane. In that Picture was the figure of a man coming home to her with gifts of flowers and fruit and, in special, of slabs of chocolate from the glass-fronted shop at Poppali, not the gummy, sticky stuff they sold at Vazhamangalam. Supper over, they would sit in the starlight and she would listen to the tale of his day’s doings and, by a process of reverie, the steps of which she could not afterwards disentangle, see herself nestling on his broad chest, while he imprinted warm kisses on her all too-responsive lips. The figure was that of Moses, the motor-driver, and her lips would quiver with those phantom kisses, so startlingly real did they seem. To that cherished dream she would revert as to a haven or anchorage whenever–and that was nearly always now–she wanted to escape from her step-mother and that home of theirs which was–well, anything but a home. And now, Arokiasami’s words set her thinking, if the sudden uprising in her mind of the home of her fancy could be called thinking. She seemed to see the Velanadi-Vazhamangalam-Poppali bus careering down the street and drawing up in front of the creeper-covered cottage at the corner of the Cotton-growers’ lane, and Moses coming in to her in that grey flannel–or, was it khaddar?–coat with the broad bands at the back. She was ready with coffee for him–for, were not motor-drivers notoriously fond of coffee?–in a brass tumbler. She knew the very tumbler, the long brass one with the scroll-work which her mother had brought home as a bride.

Her thoughts were interrupted. That cough again. Elsie held Arokiasami’s head and waited till he recovered himself. And, just then, as though her very thoughts had materialised, Moses came driving his bus and Elsie, taking leave of Arokiasami, left. “Think it over, Elsie,” Arokiasami called at parting.

“I will, uncle,” called back Elsie.

And she did think it over. And she acted–as Elsie alone could act. One fine morning in April, when the gold mohur trees in the adjoining Velamalai forest were aflame with pink and yellow flowers, Elsie walked across the fields and joined Moses bus.

“Where are you off to, Elsie?” asked the people in the bus.

“To my aunt’s at Vazhmangalam,” said Elsie cheerily, as Little Red Riding Hood might have said.

She did go to her aunt’s but that was only for an hour.. From her aunt’s she walked to the railway station, where Moses was waiting with tickets and they took the train to Kalparai. There was no reason why it should have been Kalparai; it might have been Kuringi or Kalasamangalam, but Kalparai was the end of the line and the last place where her people would have thought of looking for them.

And they lingered at Kalparai for a week; a week of sunshine and delicious moonlight, of the singing of birds, of the music of the surf in the Bengal Bay and endless lovers’ nonsense.

Moses had his qualms. Man-like, he said, “Let us marry and make it regular, Elsie.

“That isn’t easy, you stupid. Who will marry us here? And there will be questions to answer. Let us go back to Velanadi and good old Father Gomez will marry us.”

“But they won’t let us, darling, once we get home,” pleaded Moses.

“Oh, be sure, they will,” laughed Elsie. “My step-mother is so virtuous, she will insist on our being made honest.”

Which only shows that a woman’s instinct is not always the mathematical certainty which poets and philosophers assert it to be. Moses was not satisfied but, being too much in love, left it there.

II

When Velanadi came to know, they had the sensation of their lives. Elsie was not missed the whole of that August morning. Vyakula Mary noticed that Elsie had not been in for her breakfast of cold rice but that only gave her a pleasant sense of grievance. “Gallivanting, the shameless wanton,” she hissed to herself. At midday, Maria Susai came in, ravening for food. He was very pleased with himself, too, having had an order for ten sacks of ground-nut and the promise of more. He bathed in the backyard well and squatting in front of the tray, from which all the aluminium had vanished, asked, “Where is the child?” meaning Elsie.

“In the mother’s womb,” snapped Vyakula Mary in answer.

Maria Susai was smoked out. He ate his dinner in silence and, lying down on the cowdung-washed floor, fell into a dreamless sleep. When he woke up and found that Elsie had not turned up, he grew anxious and, when a hurried visit to Vazhamangalam elicited the news that Elsie had been there for an hour and then left, anxiety became an assurance of ill. Vyakula Mary, sitting on the pial with her legs hunched up, while a fractious baby tugged at her milkless breasts, shrieked. “She has gone off!”

“Gone off! Where?” asked Maria Susai, as if in a dream. “Ask that waster, the fellow who drives the bus,” replied Vyakula, bringing down Maria Susai’s world crashing about his ears.

And Vyakula Mary told him of many things she had seen and heard. For the first time in many years, Maria Susai allowed a note of complaint to creep into his voice. “Why didn’t you tell me before, Vyakula? Vyakula Mary replied as she alone could reply and Maria Susai’s bewilderment increased. What are we to do now! Oh, my child, my child,” he sobbed.

The news spread and all Velanadi flocked to him in sympathy. Vyakula, the dolorous, her face lengthened to its longest, went to Sani Glass Odayan, her invariable counsellor in times of stress. Sani Glass was ready with advice. “Complain to the police. That is the first thing to do,” he said.

“Will they put Elsie in jail?” asked Maria Susai, in a fright.

“Not her. But they will jail the fellow she ran away with,” comforted Sani Glass.

“But supposing she went with him willingly?” pursued Maria Susai.

“Don’t talk like a defence lawyer. Leave it all to me.”

“Leave it all to him,” snarled Vyakula Mary. “It is this eternal arguing which has brought us all to this pass.”

Maria Susai held his tongue.

They complained; Sani Glass gave the details and added, off his own bat, that Elsie was a minor under sixteen. Maria Susai was going to protest but Sani Glass nudged him under the table in time. He explained later that if they made her out to be a minor, even her consent would not avail Moses. Sani Glass had picked up many odds and ends of law in a lifetime of law agency.

They searched for the runaway pair. Sani Glass and a constable tracked them down to a cinema at Kalparai and brought them home. Elsie was gloriously unrepentant; she faced the curious Velanadi crowd almost hilariously; the sensation and the legal proceedings only added to the zest of the holiday. It was when she looked at her father’s wan face that her mind misgave her. But, recovering herself, she said, “Don’t fret father dear. Let me marry Moses and everything will be right.”

Maria Susai was taken aback; here was an ideal solution of what seemed a hopeless tangle. Moses was a good fellow, upstanding, steady, well-conducted...One might go further and fare worse. A new look came on Maria Susai’s face. But Sani Glass and Vyakula Mary saw that look and did not suffer it to remain there. To overlook the offence and allow the marriage would be the end of the family reputation. So they argued, Sani Glass with subtle craft, and Vyakula Mary with virtuous intakings of breath. And Maria Susai, as usual, gave in.

They made a case of it. The case went up to Sessions. And Velanadi gave itself a holiday. Never since the murder of Meikole, the toll-gate keeper’s wife, had there been a case so rich in sensation.

Old Arokiasami engaged a lawyer for his slandered nephew. The lawyer, who knew his job, told him the case would turn on Elsie’s evidence.

“But they are not examining her,” said Arokiasami.

“They are. They are taking out a summons to her. I hope she will not give her lover away.”

“She will not, sir. Such a thing will never happen.” “It has happened before. No harm in being careful,” replied the lawyer dryly.

The case came on. Vyakula Mary went into the box and swore that Elsie was just under sixteen. There was no birth-certificate–they were not too particular about registering births at Velanadi–and a doctor would not have been of much help seeing that the difference was a matter of only a few weeks. And Vyakula Mary was so virtuous-looking and so palpably distressed that the Judge was impressed. Maria Susai followed his wife into the box and bungled about Elsie’s age.

Meanwhile, Elsie was being worked upon. Vyakula Mary, with her endless repinings and assertions of readiness to die of shame, drove Elsie mad. Sani Glass said little; more by gestures than by express words he made it clear that if she failed her father, they would certainly run him in for bringing a false charge. The aunt from Vazhamangalam, simple soul, not understanding the drift of it all, begged her with tears in her eyes, to save herself and the family from dishonour. But what played havoc with her resolution was the silent misery in her father’s eyes. Hating it all, wishing she were dead, her mind all in rags, she went into the box and told her tale–a fairy one. The gist of it was–and they dragged it out of her as only lawyers know how to do–that Moses lured her to the station at Vazhamangalam and then took her forcibly to Kalparai. Why did she not shout? She was far too frightened. The words came out slowly and the Judge could hardly hear her. Clever actor, said Moses’ lawyer in a stage whisper. Stage fright, the Judge’s eyes seemed to say. Elsie, the picture of injured innocence, stood with her eyes glued to the ground. The Judge, whom the suspicion of tears on a pretty face was generally enough to knock off his balance, believed her version and gave judgment against Moses. He did not believe Elsie was a minor–“the prosecution case in that regard was an exaggeration,” but he had “no doubts whatever that she had been forcibly abducted by the accused who was a designing scoundrel.” He sentenced Moses to twelve months’ hard labour. And Moses, with one last look at Elsie, sitting under the illuppai tree, walked to the jail looking like a dog that had lost its master.

III

And so the solemn farce was played out. Vyakula Mary, Sani Glass and the rest of them went home triumphant. Vyakula Mary bore herself with restraint; her virtue shone like a shaken torch. But the honours belonged to Sani Glass; he was the conquering hero and hailed as such. Only a heroine was wanting to complete the picture and Sani Glass, bold as brass, went to Vyakula Mary and claimed his reward, Elsie Mary. Would she give her to him?

Vyakula Mary possessed tact. It would never do to hustle Elsie, so she spoke to her husband. Maria Susai could not stomach the idea. “We cannot give her to him, Vyakula, he is old enough to be her father,” he protested. “Beggars cannot be choosers,” replied Vyakula Mary, sententiously.

“Beggars?”

“Worse. Nobody will take Elsie. She is damaged goods, please to remember,” said Vyakula and closed her mouth like a rat-trap.

Elsie, she knew, would be a harder nut to crack. Taunts and shafts of abuse glanced off her like arrows striking a steel corslet. Vyakula changed her modus operandi. She was now sweet to Elsie, called her a wronged girl, a little too trustful, probably, but sound at heart. Just like her, said Velanadi, a mother in a thousand. Whoever would think she was only Elsie’s step-mother?

The gossips were intrigued. What would be the next act in the drama? Would Elsie now cease her tomboyishness and settle down with Sani Glass for a husband, they asked at tank, church and shandy. It seemed she would–and she went down in their estimation; fickle, like a woman, said Velanadi nem con.

“Is it true, Elsie, that you are going to marry Sani Glass Odayan? asked Arokia Mary, the catechist’s daughter.

“Won’t it be jolly?” asked Elsie, beaming.

“Well, you know best. But, is not he a bit old, dear?

“The older, the better, darling,” said Elsie.

“Clever girl. Knows when her game is up,” was Velanadi’s verdict when Arokia Mary reported the conversation.

The case was over in July and Elsie had asked Vyakul to wait till Michaelmas. And when September came round she asked for another couple of months to think it over. Vyakula Mary decided to humour her. At the same time she sounded a note of warning. “Take your own time, dear. But we must strike while the iron is hot.”

“No fear, mother dear. Uncle Sani Glass will never cool off,” said Elsie, not behindhand in sweetness.

December came and Sani Glass grew impatient. Elsie pleaded for another month’s respite. “But, why, Elsie, my child?” asked Maria Susai, one latish evening in December. “What is going to happen in a month?”

“I don’t know, father,” replied Elsie truthfully.

“Then why don’t you take him and be done with it?

“I really don’t know, father.”

Maria Susai, the wool of his mind not being equal to further parley, gave it up.

And Elsie really did not know. She only knew she did not want the egregious Sani Glass. And she did want Moses, she wanted him more than ever. The picture of her fancy, blurred for a while during the horror of the trial, came back to her. With a difference, however. There stood Moses in the back garden, a look of mild reproach in his eyes, and yet he gathered her in his arms, the same as before. The tears welled up within her and she sobbed as she had never sobbed before. Would her day dreams come true? Was it possible that her lover would come back, take her in his arms and say, “I forgive you, child?” He had called her ‘child’ at Kalparai: not child exactly, for the word dissolved in the shower of kisses to which it was the prelude. She seemed to know the answer. It was all a vain hope; it would remain an unrealised dream, an accusing might-have-been. Even supposing, by a miracle, he relented, would they let him marry her? The Church mightn’t allow it. Could she ask Father Gomez? No, she daren’t. In her trouble she prayed to her patron saintess, Mary of Lourdes, to heal her in mind and body, as Mary of Lourdes alone could do.

Meanwhile, Moses languished in jail. His hair was cropped close, they put him into a convict’s uniform, but Moses did not mind all that. There were still six months to run, six weary months of Elsieless dreariness, to be followed by, God alone knew, how many years of Elsieless dreariness.

Early in December there was trouble in the. jail. The reasons for it we need not pause to explore; there was the very devil of a row and the revolting prisoners smashed the jailor’s head. It would have been worse but Moses had intervened and saved the jailor from an untimely end and the prisoners from hanging. Moses was a favourite with the prisoners for he used to help them with their clandestine letters and other enterprises barred by the jail code. The upshot of it all was that a gratified Collector recommended the remission of the unexpired portion of Moses’ sentence. And just before Christmas, Moses was released from jail. And he made a bee-line for Velanadi.

It was Christmas eve and shandy day at Velanadi. All the men were there and all the Maries, the plain and the adjectival ones. Elsie was flitting about from stall to stall, buying brinjals, snake-gourd and bright red tomatoes. Some one asked her when she was going to marry. “Very soon, now,” cheerily responded Elsie, as she stood on a rising bit of ground which overlooked the Poppali-Vazhamsngalam road. Just then she saw a man approaching; there was a forward lurch in his gait which was oddly familiar but no hair clustered round his temples, so it must have been only her imagination. The man came nearer and Elsie saw an all-too-familiar coat of grey flannel–or, was it khaddar?–with the pleated pockets in front. Elsie sprang forward with a glad cry and the man held out his arms, while his lips seemed to frame–for nobody heard–the magic word, ‘Elsie’. And while Elsie snuggled and sobbed in those great big arms of his, there were delighted shouts of ‘Moses, Moses’, ‘our Moses has come.’ And though the good people of Velanadi did not generally approve of public love-making, for once they forgot to be punctilious and looked on, some with tears in their eyes. For Moses, they had remembered, was a man after their own heart, who used to do errands for them on his trips to town. And they had realised with heart-searching that they had not reached out a helping hand to him during his trial. But, thank Heaven, it was all over and done with. Moses, disentangling himself from a closely clinging Elsie, took her basket and moved forward. Elsie, all her modesty cast to the winds, linked her arms to his and walked on as though her man had just returned from the wars. Nambikkai Mary and her brood, censorious to the last, uttered, “Wanton: shameless creature!” and looked so sour that your teeth rattled. Father Gomez came along in his double-bullock bandy, bound for Vazhamangalam which lay in his pangu. And they told him the news.

Father Gomez smiled an understanding smile. He muttered to himself, “Whom God has joined….”

Maria Susai, who had been in the meat-stall came forward on hearing the news. His tread was heavy, his heart heavier. He saw rocks ahead–Vyakula Mary, Sarli Glass, his gang of ready-made witnesses. Dazed, drifting out to sea, beginning to feel helpless, he came forward and bowed low to the priest.

“It is all right, Maria Susai. It is all as it should be. Arrange to have the banns said. You might have gone further and fared worse,” said Father Gomez.

“But Sani Glass–”

“Oh, Sani Glass knows when he has shot his bolt. Don’t worry, Maria Susai, and let me wish you a merry Christmas, said Father Gomez and asked his bandyman to drive on.

And if Maria Susai felt that this was the maddest, merriest Christmas he had ever had, how can you blame, him?

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