The Collected Novels. Anna Buchan
jewels and looking so scared, and shy, and sweet. There was a supper-room, and lots to eat if one could have got at it, or had had room to eat it after it had been got. I don't like champagne—"simpkin" they call it here—much to drink, but I like it less when it is shot down my back by a careless man.
There is a fancy-dress ball to-night at Government House, and that is the last of my dissipations for some time to come.
I go on writing, writing all the time about my own affairs and never even mention your letters, and nothing makes me so cross as to have people do that to me. I like my friends to make interested comments on everything I tell them.
I am glad you are so happy in your work and enjoy life. Is the book nearly finished yet? It is nice that you have found such charming friends. Is the Fräulein person you talk about pretty? I can imagine how you enjoy hearing her play and singing to her accompaniment. I always think of you when I hear good music, and of your face when I told you that the only music I really liked was Scots songs played on the pianola! But you know that is really true. I simply hate good music. Once, in Paris, I went with some people to hear Samson et Delilah, and while everyone sat rapt, enchanted by the sweet sounds, I waited with what patience I could till the stage temple fell, in the vain hope that some part would hit the tenor. What would your Fräulein say to such blasphemy?
Forgive me maligning the gods of your idolatry. I think I had better finish this letter before I go on from bad to worse, because I am in an unaccountably perverse and impertinent frame of mind to-day, and there is no saying what I shall say next.
Calcutta, Jan. 8.
Such a scene of confusion! Everything I possess is lying on the floor. All the things I have accumulated on my way out and since I came to Calcutta lie in one heap waiting to be packed; shoes, dresses, hats, books, photographs are scattered madly about, and in the middle, almost reduced to idiocy, and making no effort to reduce chaos to order, sits Bella. I can't help her, for I must get my home letters written and posted before we leave Calcutta, for before I reach my first halting-place the mail will be gone.
Boggley has been in the Mofussil for three days, and I have been staying with the Townleys. I came back last night. It was nice being with G. again, and her sister is extraordinarily kind. We had rather an interesting day on Friday. I have always been asking where are the Missionaries, but I suppose I must have asked the wrong people, for they didn't seem to know. However, the other day I met a lady,—Mrs. Gardner,—the wife of a missionary, who asked us to go to lunch with her, and promised she would show us something of the work among the women. So on Friday we set off in a tikka-gharry.
We left the Calcutta we knew—the European shops, the big, cool houses, the Maidan—and drove through native streets, airless, treeless, drab-coloured places, until we despaired of ever reaching anywhere. When at last our man did stop, we found Mrs. Gardner's cool, English-looking drawing-room a welcome refuge from the glare and the dust; and she was kindness itself. She made a delightful cicerone, for she has a keen sense of humour and a wide knowledge of native life.
We went first to see the girls' school—a quaint sight. All the funny little women with their hair well oiled and plastered down, with iron bangles on their wrists to show that they were married, wrapped in their saris, so demurely chanting their lessons! When we went in they all stood up and, touching their foreheads, said in a queer sing-song drawl, "Salaam, Mees Sahib, salaam!" The teachers were native Bible-women. The schoolrooms opened on to a court with a well like a village pump in the middle. One small girl was brought out to tell us the story of the Prodigal Son in Bengali, which she did at great length with dramatic gestures; but our attention was somewhat diverted from her by a small boy who ran in from the street, hot and dusty, sluiced himself unconcernedly all over at the pump, and raced out again dripping. It did look so inviting.
When we left the school Mrs. Gardner said she would take us to see some purdah nashin women—that is, women who never go out with their faces uncovered, and who never see any men but their own husbands.
I don't quite know what we expected to see—something very Oriental and luxurious anyhow; marble halls and women with veils and scarlet satin trousers dotted about on cushions—and the reality was disappointing. No marble halls, no divans and richly carved tables, no hookahs and languid odours of rich perfumes, but a room with cheap modern furniture, china ornaments, and a round table in the middle of the floor, for all the world like the best parlour of the working classes. Two women lived there with their husbands and families, and they came in and looked G. and me all over, fingered our dresses, examined our hats, and then asked why we weren't married! I could see they didn't like the look of us at all. They said we were like the dolls their little girls got at the fête, and produced two glassy-eyed atrocities with flaxen hair and vivid pink cheeks, and asked if we saw the resemblance. We didn't. They told Mrs. Gardner—who has been many years in India, and looks it—that they thought she was much nicer-looking than we were, her face was all one colour! (They spoke, of course, in Bengali, but Mrs. Gardner translated.) Poor women! what a pitifully dull life is theirs! G. was disappointed to hear they hadn't become Christians. She had an idea that the Missionary had only to appear with the Gospel story and the deed was done. I'm afraid it isn't as easy as that by a long way.
Mrs. Gardner read a chapter from the Bible while we were there, and these women argued with her most intelligently. They are by no means stupid. Before we left G. sang to them, with no accompaniment but a cold stare. When she finished they said they preferred Bengali music, it had more tune. We left, feeling we had been no success.
Having seen a comparatively well-to-do household, Mrs. Gardner said she would show us a really poor one. We followed her through a network of lanes more evil-smelling than anything I ever imagined—London can't compete with Calcutta in the way of odours—until we reached a little hovel with nothing in it but a string-bed, a few cooking-pots, and two women. Caste, it seems, has nothing to do with money, and these women, though as poor as it is possible to be, were thrice-born Brahmins, and received us with the most gracious, charming manners, inviting us to sit on the string-bed while they stood before us with meekly folded hands. The dim interior of the hut with its sun-bleached mud floor, the two gentle brown-eyed women with their saris and silver anklets, looking wonderingly at G. in her white dress sitting enthroned, with her blue eyes shining and her hair a halo, made an unforgettable picture of the East and the West.
We had tea at the Mission House and met several missionary ladies who told us much that was interesting about their work, which they seem to love whole-heartedly. I asked one girl how it compared with work among the poor at home, and she said, "Well, perhaps it is the sunshine, but here it is never sordid." I can't agree. To me the eternal sunshine makes it worse. At home, although the poverty and misery are terrible, still, I comfort myself, the poor have their cosy moments. In winter sometimes, when funds run to a decent fire and a kippered herring to make a savoury smell, a brown teapot on the hob and the children gathered in, they are as happy as possible for the time being; I have seen them. I can't imagine any brightness in the lives of the women we saw.
To be a missionary in Calcutta, I think one would require to have an acute sense of humour and no sense of smell. Am I flippant? I don't mean to be, because I feel I can't sufficiently admire the men and women who are bearing the heat and burden of the day. And now that sounds patronizing, and Heaven knows I don't mean to be that.
Anyway, G. and I were never intended to be missionaries. We drove home very silent, in the only vehicle procurable, a third-class tikka-gharry, feeling as if all the varied smells of the East were lying heavy on our chests. Once G. said gloomily, "How long does typhoid fever take to come out?" which made me laugh weakly most of the way home.
13th.
The day of our departure has come, and Boggley is behaving dreadfully. Having taken time by the forelock, I am packed and ready, but Boggley has done nothing. He remarked airily that I must go to the Stores and get some sheets, a new mosquito-net, and a supply of pots and pans, and then went off to lunch with someone at the Club, leaving me speechless with rage. How can I possibly know what sort of pots and pans are wanted? I never camped out before. I shall calmly finish this letter and pay no attention to his order.
We