Complete Works. Anna Buchan
in the verandah looking out on the Maidan, and flat-faced hill-waiters bring us an excellent breakfast. Our own servants are with us—Autolycus and Bella. When we arrived very early in the morning and the coolies were carrying up our luggage, a servant sleeping outside his master's door held up his hand for quietness, saying something quite gently about not waking his master, "Beat him," said Autolycus to the coolies quite without heat, as he hurried on.
The air gets hotter, and everything looks more and more tired every day. Even proud-pied April dressed in all its trim can't put a spirit of youth into anything.
But these last days in Calcutta, in spite of fears and heat, are very pleasant. I don't know how I could have said the Calcutta women were horrid! Now that I am going to leave them they seem so kind and attractive. Every minute of my time is filled up with river-picnics, garden-parties, tennis tournaments, dinners and theatre parties; and my mornings are spent with G. raking in queer shops for curiosities. I am insatiable for things to take home, and Autolycus has packed and roped three large wooden boxes containing my treasures.
I wish life weren't such a mixed thing. Just when I am tiptoeing on the heights of joy because I am going home, I am brought to common earth with a thud by the miserable thought that I must leave Boggley. (How pleasant it would be to have a sort of spiritual whipping-boy to bear the nasty things in life for one—the disappointments, the worries, the times of illness and sorrow, the partings.) Boggley says it will be all right once I am away. As a rule he only feels pleasantly home-sick. Now, with the preparations for departure constantly before him, helping to address boxes to the familiar old places, going with me in imagination from port to port till we reach cool Western lands, I'm afraid he has many a pang.
I am so sorry you are so worried. You will almost have got my letter by this time, but I wish I had cabled as you asked, only, somehow, I didn't like the idea. I thought you knew I cared; but, after all, how could you? I didn't know myself when I left England. Looking back I seem always to have cared immensely. How could I help it? What I can't understand is how every woman of your acquaintance doesn't care as I do; you seem to me so lovable. I am so glad (though it seems an odd thing to be glad about!) that you have no mother and no sister. I don't feel such a marauder as I would have done if, by taking you, I had robbed some other woman. And I am glad of your lonely life. I shall be able to show you what a nice thing a home is. A quiet, safe place we shall make it, where worldly cares may not enter. Boggley says I can make an hotel room look home-like, and, indeed, it is almost my only accomplishment, this talent for home-making. There is one thing I want to say to you. You know what Robert Louis says about married men?—that there is no wandering in pleasant bypaths for them, that the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. It dulls me to think of it. Don't feel that. Don't let it be true. We mustn't let our lives get dusty and straight and narrow. We shall love whimsies and we shall laugh. So long as laughter isn't heartless and doesn't hurt anyone it is good to laugh. Life will see to it that there are tears—at least I'm told so. But suppose in years to come, after we have grown used to each other (though it does amaze me that people should talk about things losing their charm because one gets used to them. Does a child tire of its mother because it is used to her? Is Spring any the less wonderful because we are used to her coming? God grant we have many years to get used to each other!)—suppose one fine morning you find that life has lost its savour, you are tired of the accustomed round, you are tired of the house, you are tired of the look of the furniture, you want to get away for a time—in a word, to be free. Well, remember, you are not to feel that the road isn't clear before you. I promise you not to feel aggrieved. I shan't wonder how my infinite variety could have palled. I know that all men—men who are men—at times hear the Red Gods call them (women hear them too, you know, only they have more self-control; they find their peace in fearful innocence and household laws), and I shall be waiting on the doorstep when you return from climbing Kangchenjunga, or exploring the Bramahputra Gorges, ready to say, "Come away in, for I'm sure you must be tired."
Arthur, dear, am I a disappointing person, do you find? Ought I to be able to write you different sorts of letters, tenderer, more loving letters? But, you see, it wouldn't be me if I could. My heart may be, indeed, I think it is, full of the warmest instincts, but they have been unwinged from birth so they can't fly to you. One of the most talkative people living, in some ways I am strangely speechless. Why! I haven't even told Boggley, though if he had eyes to see instead of being the blindest of dear old bats, my shining face would betray me. I keep on smiling in a perfectly imbecile manner, so that people exclaim, "Well, you are indecently glad to get away," and when they ask Why? I point them to the scene in the Old Testament where Hadad said unto Pharaoh, "Let me depart, that I may go to mine own country." Then Pharaoh said unto him, "But what hast thou lacked with me, that, behold, thou seekest to go to thine own country?" And he answered, "Nothing: howbeit let me go in any wise." So it is with me. India has given me the best of good times. I have lacked for nothing—"howbeit let me go in any wise." You needn't think I am changed. I'm not. I'm afraid I'm not. One would think that a new environment would make a difference, but it really does not. A person with a suburban mind would be as suburban in the wilds of Nepal as in the wilds of Tooting. The illuminating thought has come to me that it isn't a man's environment that matters, it's his mind. Haven't you often noticed in an evening in London all the City men hurrying home like rabbits to their burrows (not the prosperous City men, but the lesser ones, whose frock-coats are rather shiny and their silk hats rather dull), and haven't you often thought how narrow their lives are, how cramping their environment? But suppose one of those clerks loves books and is something of a poet. What does it matter to him though his rooms in Clapham or Brixton are grimy, almost squalid, and filled with the worst kind of Victorian furniture? "Minds innocent and quiet take such for an hermitage." Once inside, the long day at the office over, and the door shut on the world, an arm-chair drawn up to the fire and his books around him he is as happy as a king, for his mind to him is a Kingdom. He may be a puny little man, in bodily presence contemptible, but he will feel no physical disabilities as he clambers on the wall of Jerusalem with Count Raymond, or thrills as he sets forth with Drake to fight Spaniards one against ten. Instead of the raucous cries of the milk or the coal man, he hears the horns of Elfland faintly blowing, and instead of a window which can show him nothing but a sodden plot planted with wearied-looking shrubs, he has the key of that magic casement which opens on perilous seas in fairylands forlorn. He will never do anything great in the world, he will never lead a forlorn hope, or marry the Princess, or see far lands; he will never be anything but a poor, shabby clerk, but he is of such stuff as dreams are made of, and God has given to him His fairyland.
No, I don't think a new environment changes people, and it is foolish to think it makes them forget. Sometimes in the Eden Gardens at sunset, when we draw up to listen to the band, I watch the faces of the youths—Scots boys come out from Glasgow and Dundee—dreaming there in the Indian twilight while the pipers play the tunes familiar to them since childhood. They are sahibs out here, they have a horse to ride and a servant to look after them, things they never would have had had they stayed in Dundee or Glasgow, but though they are proud they are lonely. What does grandeur matter if "the Quothquan folk" can't see it? The peepul trees rustle softly overhead, the languorous soft air laps them round, the scent of the East is in their nostrils, but their eyes are with their hearts, and is this what they see? A night of drizzling rain, a street of tall, dingy, grey houses, and a boy, his day's work done, bounding upstairs three steps at a time to a cosy kitchen where the tea is spread, where work-roughened hands at his coming lift the brown teapot from the hob, and a kind mother's voice welcomes him home at the end of the day….
Autolycus has knocked at the door to say "Master's come" (he likes to be very European with me so doesn't call him Sahib), and I must go to tea. To-morrow Boggley is taking the whole day off and we have got it all planned out, every minute of it. In the morning we shall drive in a tikka-gharry to the Stores to buy some final necessaries (such as soap and tooth-powder), then to Peliti's to eat ices, then to the shop in Park Street so that Boggley may get me a delayed birthday present, then round and round the Maidan. Then we shall go to luncheon at the Townleys and go on with them to Tollygunge for golf. Then we are going to tea with some people who are taking us a motor run. Then we go to a farewell dinner at the Ormondes'. Then we shall go to bed.
Bless you, my dear.
S.S.