Complete Works. Anna Buchan
piece of work in mother-of-pearl, erected to Akbar's high priest; and our guide was his lineal descendant, glad to get five rupees for his trouble! We lunched in the Government bungalow, a comfortable place, not glaringly out of keeping with the surroundings, and then motored to Akbar's tomb—another piece of colossal magnificence. I was awed by it. Out of the glaring sunshine we went down a long dark passage to a great vault, where the air was cold with the coldness of death. It was completely dark except for one ray of light falling on the plain marble tomb. An old Mohammedan crooned eerily, impressively, a lament which echoed round and round the vault. The Mohammedans and the Scots have a similar passion for deaths and funerals!
Lastly, in its fitting order, we drove to the Taj Mahal.
You know the story? I have just been reading about it in Steevens's book. You know how Shah Jehan, grandson of Akbar, first Mogul Emperor of Hindustan, loved and married the beautiful Persian Arjmand Banu,—called Mumtaz-i-Mahal,—and when she died he, in his grief, swore that she should have the loveliest tomb the world ever beheld, and for seventeen years he built the Taj Mahal? You know how after thirty years his son rose up and dethroned him, and kept him a close prisoner for seven years in the Gem Mosque, where his daughter Jehanara attended him and would not leave him. When grown very feeble, he begged to be laid where he could see the Taj Mahal; and, the request being granted, you know how he died with his face towards the tomb of the beautiful Persian, "whose palankeen followed all his campaigns in the days when Empire was still a-winning, whose children called him father—Arjmand Banu, silent and unseen now for four-and-thirty years, the wife of his youth."
Such a passionate old story! Such a marvellous love-memorial! Shah Jehan—Mumtaz-i-Mahal—Grape Garden—Golden Pavilion—Jasmine Tower. As G. W. Steevens says, there is dizzy-magic in the very names. I am no more capable of describing it than I would have been capable of building it; you must see it for yourself. It alone is worth coming to India to see.
Leaving the Taj Mahal dazed and dizzy with beauty, I was hailed by a voice that sounded familiar, and turning round I saw—an incongruous figure in that Arabian Nights garden—our old friend of the Scotia, the Rocking Horse Fly. She had another female with her, and Mr. Brand, the funny man who asked conundrums. I'm afraid my eyes had asked what he was doing in this galley, for he hastily said that he had only arrived in Agra that morning, and found our Scotia acquaintance at the hotel. I introduced Boggley, and we stood uncomfortably about, while the Rocking Horse Fly waxed sentimental over our meeting.
"Isn't it odd," she said, "that we should all meet and just part again?"
I thought it would have been much odder (and how infinitely horrible!) if we had all met and never parted. As it happened, we weren't allowed to part with her as soon as we could have wished. She discovered we were staying at the same hotel, so we had to dine together, and she talked the Taj all through dinner, spattering it with adjectives, while Boggley grunted at intervals. It was refreshing to see Mr. Brand again. He seems to be enjoying India vastly, and had three quite new stories, though if he didn't laugh so much telling them it would be easier to see the point. Boggley and he loved each other at once. After dinner, when the men were smoking, the Rocking Horse Fly began to get arch—don't you hate people when they are arch?—and said surely I was never going home without capturing some heart. I replied stoutly and truthfully that I was.
"Naughty girl!" said the R.H.F. "You haven't made the most of your opportunities. Don't you know what they call girls who come out for the cold weather?"
I said I didn't.
"They are called 'The Fishing Fleet,'" she said sweetly.
I said "Oh," because I didn't know what else to say, feeling as I did so remiss.
I have heard—Mr. Townley told me—that long ago when a ship from England arrived in the Hoogly a cannon was fired, and all the gay bachelors left their offices and went to the docks to appraise the new arrivals. A ball was given on board on the night of arrival, and many of the girls were engaged before they left the ship. I don't object to that. It was a fine, sincere way of doing things; but why the subject of marriage should be made an occasion for archness, for sly looks, for—in extreme cases—nudgings, passes my comprehension.
The R.H.F. has a way of making common any subject she touches—even the Taj and marriage—so I thought I would go to bed. As I said goodnight I regarded attentively the friend, wondering much how anyone could, of choice, accompany the R.H.F. in her journeyings. She is a very silent person, large and fat and about forty, and her eyes are small out of all proportion to her face, but they twinkled at me in such an understanding way that I, generally so chary of offering embraces, went up to kiss her. She is kind, but so large that being kissed by her is almost as destroying as being in a railway accident!
Do I ignore what you say in your letter? You see, it is rather difficult. Writing to a friend in a far country is like shouting through a speaking-tube to the moon, and one can't shout very intimate things, can one?
Let us be sensible. Don't be angry, but are you quite sure you really care, and is it wise to care? We are so very different. You are so very English, and I, in spite of a pink and fluffy exterior, am at heart as bitter and dour and prejudiced as any Covenanter that ever whined a psalm. My mind could never have anything but a Scots accent. You are reserved, and rather cold; I am expansive to a fault. You are terrifyingly clever; my intelligence is of the feeblest. You have a refined sense of humour; the poorest, most obvious joke is good enough for me. But this is only talk. I don't know that I am "in love,"—I don't like the expression anyway,—but this I know, that if you were not in the world it would be an unpeopled waste to me. The place you happen to be in is where all interest centres. Every minute of the time as I go through my days, laughing, talking, enjoying myself vastly, away at the back of my mind the thought of you lies "hidden yet bright," making for me a new heaven and a new earth. Is this caring? Is this what you want to hear me say? I can't write what I would like, I can't weave pretty things, I can only speak straight on, but oh, my dear, I am so glad that in this big, confusing world we have found each other. Poor Rocking Horse Fly! poor fat friend! how dull for them, how dull for all the rest of the people in the world not to have a you!
I am not going to write any more, not because I haven't lots to say, but because writing much or talking much about a thing—being queer and Scots, it is hard for me to say love—seems somehow to cheapen it, profane it.
* * * * *
I have opened this just to say again, My dear, my dear!
Calcutta, April 21.
… Only three more days in India, and I don't know whether I am horribly sorry to go or profoundly relieved to get away. There is no doubt it is a sudden and dangerous country. Three people we knew have died suddenly of cholera, and two others have had bombs thrown at them. I shall be thankful to find myself safely on board the steamer, but even if I escape I am leaving Boggley in the midst of these perils. Not that he lets the thought of them vex his soul. You learn, he says, to look upon death in a different way in India, but I am sure I never could learn to regard with equanimity the thought of being quite well one day and being hurried away to the Circular Road Cemetery early the next. It is sad to die in a foreign land, and it is somehow specially sad, at least I think so, for a home-loving Scot to lie away from home.
"Tell me not the good and wise
Care not where their dust reposes.
That to him who sleeping lies
Desert rocks shall seem as roses.
I've been happy above ground,
I could ne'er be happy under,
Out of Teviot's gentle sound.
Part us, then, not far asunder."
Yesterday I saw a pathetic sight. A couple in a tikka-gharry; the man a soldier, a Gordon Highlander, and on the front seat a tiny coffin. The man's arm was round the woman's shoulder, and she was crying bitterly. A bit of shabby crape was tied round her hat, and she carried a sad little wreath.
Since coming back from Agra we have stayed at the Grand Hotel. It is a comfortable, airy place, wonderfully pleasant in the morning