The Collected Novels. Anna Buchan
another trots gaily off with a cushion or a kodak. We are allowed to take hand-luggage into the carriage, and we take such a broad view of the word that it means with us dressing-bags, suit-cases, tennis-rackets, gun-cases, polo-sticks, golf-clubs, and as much more as the compartment will hold.
The station, when we reached it yesterday, was crammed with natives squatting so thick on the platform one could hardly move without treading on them. A great festival is going on which only happens once in a long time—fifty years I think—and if they bathe in the holy Ganges while the festival lasts all their sins are washed away. They are flocking from all parts, eagerly boarding every train that stops, regardless of the direction it is going in. The festival ends to-day at twelve, so I greatly fear many will be disappointed. At all times the native loves railway travelling, and, as he has no notion of time-tables, he often arrives at the station the night before, sleeps peacefully on the ground, and is in comfortable time for the first train in the morning. Also, he has no idea of fixed charges, and when he goes to the ticket-office and asks for his "tickut," and the babu in charge tells him the price, he offers half. When that is refused he goes away, and returns in an hour or so and offers a little more. It may take a whole day to convince a native that he can't beat down the Railway Company.
This festival had so disarranged the trains that our train which should have left at ten didn't come in till twelve. Then we had to change at the next station and wait for the connection, and we actually sat there till eight in the evening, when our train sauntered in. They say of a certain cold and draughty station in Scotland that in it there is neither man's meat, nor dog's meat, nor a place to sit down, and it is equally true of the Indian junction. We had nothing to eat all day except ginger snaps, and they pall after a time, especially in a dry and dusty land where no water is. There were two other travellers in the same plight, a Mr. and Mrs. Blackie, and we sat together through that long hot day, too utterly hungry and bored even to pretend interest in each other. When the train did come in, something had gone wrong with the engine, and they lost more time pottering about with it—tying it up with string probably. It was then that my temper, and I do think I behaved with great fortitude up to that time, gave way, and I tried to bully the officials. It was no use. They merely smiled and said, "Cer-tain-lee," and Boggley irritated me more and more by solemnly repeating:
"It is not good for the Christian soul to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles and the heathen smiles
And it weareth the Christian down.
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
With the name of the dear deceased;
And the epitaph drear—'A fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the East.'"
We had nothing to look forward to at the end of the journey except a dâk-bungalow's cold welcome, but the Blackies, who live at Madhabad, insisted we should go home with them to dinner; so, instead of the tinned ham-and-egg meal we had expected, we had a dainty, well-cooked dinner in a cosy dining-room. Warmed and fed, we retired to our present resting-place, and found little comfort here. Autolycus and his coolies had only just arrived, and Autolycus was searching vainly for a lamp—a bati he called it. The floors are stone and as cold as the tomb. Mr. Blackie begged us to go back to his place for the night, but we wouldn't hear of it. Autolycus ran a lamp to earth; we explored for bedrooms and found two, in which he hastily made up beds. They are damp, and far from clean; but one learns to put up with a lot in the Mofussil, and in a very short time we had forgotten our troubles in sleep.
This morning I rose betimes and went out to the verandah, and there I found—quite suddenly—a handsome young man. It seems he too is staying in this eligible mansion. He is an engineer—a bridge-builder, I think—and this is convenient for his present work. He was in bed and asleep, and didn't hear us arrive last night; so he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. When Boggley appeared we had breakfast together. It was interesting hearing about the kind of life this young man leads. He says although Madhabad is not gay, it is Piccadilly compared to where he often is, out in camp, forty miles from another European, with not a soul to speak to from week to week. The evenings are the dreariest times, and he often goes to bed immediately after dinner. He was quite cheerful, and said he liked the life. Madhabad is a large village, but the Blackies are the only Europeans. There are a lot of planters, however, living round about. We had callers this morning. Mr. Royle, to whose place we go on Monday, rode over with his two small daughters, to say they would expect us to stay with them. We meant to camp, but it will be much pleasanter to stay with the Royles; everyone says they are charming people.
Boggley and I went for a walk after tea to see the country. There isn't much to see except a long, straight brown road and a most insanitary-looking tank. The village is more interesting with its queer booths. I do think it is an incongruous sight to see, as I saw this afternoon, a native, naked but for a loin cloth, plying a Singer's sewing-machine. The natives looked sullen and rather suspicious, or is it only that I imagine it because they are so unlike the broad-smiling Santals with their cheerful johar? There are four trees before this bungalow, and at present two vultures are perching on each—horrible creatures, with long, scraggy necks. I pointed them out to Boggley, who was immediately reminded of a tale of a bumptious young civilian, new to the country, who was told, by one who had suffered many things at his hands, that the birds were wild turkeys, a much-valued delicacy; hearing which the youth promptly shot some and sent them round to the ladies of the station. Do you believe that tale? I don't.
… We have just finished dinner—much the most amusing dinner I ever ate. There is an intense rivalry, it seems, between our cook and the engineer-man's cook; and although we dined together, our bills-of-fare were kept jealously apart. Autolycus, of course, waited on us, and when he handed me the fish, and I helped myself to one of the four pieces, he said sternly, "Two, please," and I meekly took the other. The engineer had no fish, but on the other hand he had an entrée which was denied us. Both cooks rose to a savoury. (They will give you the savoury before the sweet. If you insist on anything else, it so demoralizes them that the dinner is a ruin.) Our savoury was rather ambitious—stuffed eggs rolled in vermicelli. It tasted rather like a bird's-nest, and one felt it had taken a lot of making and rolling in brown hands. I envied the simpler poached egg on tomato of the engineer. You can't pat a poached egg!
Rika, Feb. 9.
I have no home letters to answer this week. We forgot to give the Calcutta people the new address, so on Monday night the dâk-runner with his bells would jingle with my precious home mail into the Takai verandah; Mrs. Russel, having no other address, would re-direct them back to Calcutta, and they may reach us here about Sunday, It is tantalizing, but I don't pine for news in Rika so much as in most places. I am so thoroughly at home. I find the Mofussil is simply full of nice people. When we rode out here on Monday morning, and Mrs. Royle, with a shy small girl on either side, came down the verandah steps to meet us, I knew I was going to love staying here. There is an atmosphere about that makes for peace and happiness, and every day I like the place and the people more.
Rika was rather a revelation. The civilians' bungalows have a here-we-have-no-continuing-city look about them; their owners are constantly being moved, and pitching their moving tents elsewhere; but the Royles have been at Rika for fifteen years, and have made a delightful home. The bungalow is built on a slightly rising ground with a verandah all round—a verandah made pleasant with comfortable chairs, rugs, writing-tables, books, and flowers. At one end a dirzee squats with a sewing-machine, surrounded by white stuff in various stages of progress for the Mem Sahib and the children. From the middle of the verandah a broad flight of steps, flanked on either side by growing plants in pots, leads down to the road, and across the road lie the tennis-lawns and the flower-garden. I have read that one of the most pathetic things about this Land of Exile is the useless effort to make English flowers grow. In Rika they must feel at home, for the whole air is scented with roses and mignonette. When Mrs. Royle took us to see her flowers, Boggley pulled a sprig of mignonette, sniffed it appreciatively, and handing it to me said:
"What does that remind you of?"
"Miss Aitken's teas!" I said promptly.
Always that scent takes me straight back to sunny summer