or ’68, I forget which.”
“Try ’67,” I suggested.
“It was not ’67,” he exclaimed angrily, “it was either ’66 or ’68.”
“Or some other date. However, that’s but a detail. Proceed.”
“Sir, you can make sport of me, but what I am telling you is God’s truth. May I
be struck dead if one lie passes my lips. I came out to plant coffee; I thought,
like many others, that I had only to cut down the jungle and put in coffee plants,
and make my everlasting fortune.”
“And didn’t you?” I asked, glancing at his dilapidated old helmet that hung over
the corner of the sideboard.
“Look at me!” he burst forth, springing upon his feet, his breast heaving under
his blue pajamas.
“Pardon the question,” I answered. “Go on, you are doing bravely.”
He sank back into his chair with a commendable air of dignity.
“I had a little money of my own,” he continued, “and opened up an estate. It
promised well, but I soon came to the end of my small capital. I thought I could
go to Calcutta and Bombay and Simla, and cultivate my mind by travel and
society, while the bushes were growing. Well it ended in the same old way. I got
into the chitties’ hands—they are worse than Jews—at two per cent a month on a
mortgage on my estate. Then I went back to it with a determination to pay up my
debt, make my estate a success, and after that to see the world. I worked, sir, like
a nigger, and for a time was able to meet my naked creditor, from month to
month, hoping all the time against hope for a bumper crop.”
“I understand,” I said. “Your bumper crop did not come, and your chitty did.
Where does she come in?” I nodded in the direction of the little sleeper.
He glanced uneasily in the same direction, and a tear gathered in his eye.
“I married on credit, sir, the daughter of an English army officer. It was infernal.