THE HEART OF INDIA
Late that afternoon we were reunited at the Sailors’ Home. As time wore
on the conviction grew that we must shake off Haywood once for all. Go
where we would, he was ever at our heels, bringing disgrace upon us.
Picking pockets was his glee. When other excitement failed he turned to
filching small articles from the booths along the way. The last straw
was added to our burden as we were returning to the Home along the
Strand on our second day in Calcutta. The sophisticated inhabitants of
the metropolis, far from springing aside at the approach of a European,
are more accustomed to push him into the gutter. To be jostled by a
“nigger” was an insult that Haywood could not brook. He resorted to
Bowery tactics; but to little effect, for the Strand was crowded. The
day was hot. The higher caste natives, our chief annoyers, carried
umbrellas that soon suggested to the New Yorker a better means of
retaliation. Opening his pocket knife, he marched boldly through the
throng, slashing viciously at every sunshade whose owner provoked his
ire. An angry murmur rose behind us. Before we had reached the Home, a
screaming mob of tradesmen surged around us, waving ruined umbrellas in
our faces. Decidedly it was time to abandon the perpetrator of such
outrages. Hints had availed nothing, frankness less. Violence against a
“pal” was out of keeping with the code of morals of “the road.” There
was nothing left but strategy.
The New Yorker ate heartily that evening. His plate was still heaped
high with currie and rice when Marten and I retired to a bench in the
garden of the Home. Plan had I none, as yet, for continuing my journey,
for Calcutta was worth a week of sight-seeing. But plans are quickly
made in the vagabond world.
“Look here, mate,” said Marten, in a stage whisper, “we’ve got to ditch
that fellow. The cops’ll be running us in along with him some day.”
I nodded. A seaman came to stretch himself out in the grass near at
hand, and we fell silent. Darkness was striding upon us when a servant
of the Home advanced to close the gate leading into the street. Suddenly
Marten raised a hand and shouted to the gateman.
“Let’s dig out,” he muttered.
“Where?” I queried.
“Up country.”
“Sure,” I answered, springing to my feet.
We slipped out through the gate, stalked across the Maidan among the
statues of sahibs who have made history in India, past old Fort William,
and down to the banks of the Hoogly. The tropical night had fallen, and
above the city behind blazed the brilliant southern cross. For an hour
we tramped along the docks, jostled now and then by black stevedores and
native seamen. The cobble stones under our feet gave way to a soft
country road. A railway crossed our path and we stumbled along it in the
darkness. Out of the night rose a large, two-story bungalow.
“Guards’ shack,” said Marten.
A “goods train” was making up in the yards. A European in the uniform of
a brakeman ran down the steps of the bungalow, a lantern in his hand.
Behind him came a coolie, carrying his lunch-basket.
“Goin’ out soon, mate?” bawled Marten.
“All made up,” answered the Englishman, peering at us a moment with the
lantern high above his head, and hurrying on.
“Think we’ll go along,” shouted Marten.
The guard was already swallowed up in the darkness, but his voice came
back to us out of the night:—
“All right! Lay low!”
A moment later the tiny British engine shrieked, a man in the
neighboring tower opened the block, and the diminutive freight screamed
by us. We grasped the rods of a high, open car and swung ourselves up.
On the floor, folded to the size of a large mattress, lay a tarpaulin
car-cover. A cooling breeze, sweeping over the moving train, lulled us
to sleep. Once we were awakened by the roar of a passing express, and
peered over the edge of the car to find ourselves on a switch. Then the
train rattled on and we stretched out again. A second time we were
aroused by shunting engines, and the guard, passing by, called out that
he had reached the end of his run. We climbed out, and, retreating to a
grassy slope, slept out the night.
The morning sun showed an extensive forest close at hand. A red, sandy
roadway, deep-shaded by thick overhanging branches, led off through the
trees. Here and there in a tiny clearing a scrawny native cooked a
scanty breakfast over a fire of leaves and twigs before his thatch hut.
Above us sounded the note of a tropical bird. The jostling multitudes
and sullen roar of Calcutta seemed innumerable leagues distant.
The forest opened and fell away on either hand; and we paused on the
high, grassy bank of a broad river, glistening in the slanting sunlight.
Below, in two groups, natives, male and female, were bathing. Along a
highway following the course of the river stretched a one-row town, low
hovels of a single story for the most part, above which a government
building and a modest little church stood out conspicuously.
A quaint, old-fashioned spire against the background of an India horizon
is a landmark not easily forgotten.
“Thunder!” snorted Martin. “Is this all we’ve made? That bloody train
must have been side-tracked half the time we was poundin’ our list’ners.
I know this burg. It’s Hoogly, not forty miles from Cally. But there’s a
commish here. He’s a real sport, and ticketed me to Cally four years
ago. Don’t believe he’ll remember my figure-’ead, neither. Come on.”
We strolled on down the highway. Before the government building a score
of prisoners, with belts and heavy anklets of iron connected by two
jointed bars, were piling cobble stones.
“But here!” I cried suddenly; “He’ll only give you a ticket back to
Calcutta if we’re so near there.”
“No bloody fear,” retorted Marten; “he’ll ticket me the way I want to
go. That’s old Lord Curzy’s law.”
“Then you’ll have to drop that yarn about the _Guiseppe Sarto_.”
Marten had thus christened his phantom ship, not because he hoped to win
favor with the Pope, but because he had been hard-pressed for an Italian
name. Commissioners who listened to his “song and dance” had a
disconcerting habit of drawing from a pigeon-hole the latest marine
guide at the mention of an English vessel. But Italian windjammers,
unlisted, might be moved about as freely as pawns on a chessboard.
“Drop nothing,” snapped the ex-pearl fisher. “Think I’m goin’ to let a
good yarn like that go to waste, an’ after me spendin’ a whole bloody
day learnin’ to pronounce that dago name—an’ the skipper’s? Not me! I’m
goin’ to send the Joe Taylor”—in familiar parlance he preferred the
English version of the name—“over to Bombay, this time. I’ll have ’er
due there in four days.”
We turned in at an imposing lodge gate and followed a graveled walk
towards a great, white bungalow with windows commanding a vista of the
sparkling Hoogly and the rolling plains beyond. From the veranda,
curtained by trailing vines, richly-garbed servants watched our approach
with the half-belligerent, half-curious air of faithful house dogs.
Having no personal interest in the proceedings, I dropped into a rustic
bench beside the highway. A chatter of Hindustanee greeted my companion;
a stocky Punjabi rose from his heels and entered the bungalow.
There ensued a scene without precedent in my Indian experience. A tall,
comely Englishman, dressed in the whitest of ducks, stepped briskly out
upon the veranda, and, totally ignoring the awful gulf that separates a
district commissioner from a penniless beachcomber, bawled out:—
“I say, you chaps, come inside and have some breakfast.”
Much less would have been my astonishment had he suddenly opened fire on
us from a masked battery. I looked up to see Marten leaning weakly
against a veranda post.
“I only come with my mate, sir,” I explained. “It’s him as wants the
ticket. I’m only waitin’, sir.”
“Then come along and have some breakfast while you wait,” retorted the
Englishman. “Early risers have good appetites, and where would you buy
anything fit to eat in Hoogly? I’ve finished, but Maghmoód has covers
laid for you.”
We entered the bungalow on tiptoe and took places at a flower-decked
table. Two turbaned servants slipped noiselessly into the room and
served us viands of other lands. A punkah-wallah on the veranda kept the
great fans in motion. Upon me fell the vague sense of having witnessed
scenes like this in some former existence. Even here, then, on the banks
of the Hoogly, men ate with knives and forks from delicate china ware,
wiping their fingers on snow-white linen rather than on a leg of their
trousers, and left fruit peelings on their plates instead of throwing
them under the table! It seemed anachronistic.
“I told you,” murmured Marten, finishing his steak and a long silence,
and mopping his plate dry with a slice of bread plastered with butter
from far-off Denmark; “I told you he was a real sport. He’s the same
one, an’ give me a swell hand-out four years ago.”
Maghmoód entered bearing cigars and cigarettes on a silver tray, and the
information that we were to follow the commissioner to his office, two
miles distant.
An hour later we were journeying leisurely northwestward in a crowded
train that halted at every hamlet and cross-road. Marten had received a
ticket to Bankipore, far beyond the destination of the local at Burdwan,
where we alighted three hours before the arrival of the night express. A
gaping crowd surrounded us as we halted to purchase sweetmeats in the
bazaars and, flocking at our heels, quickly drew upon us the attention
of the local police.
Dreading Russian spies, the Indian government has, during the few years
past, required its officers to follow closely the trail of foreigners
within the country. The native policeman, however, could not distinguish
a suspicious character from a member of the viceroy’s council, and takes
a childish delight in demonstrating his importance to society by
subjecting every sahib stranger who will suffer it to a lengthy
cross-examination. Half the gendarmes of Burdwan, eager to win from
their superiors reputation for perspicacity, sought to bring us before
the recorders at the police station. Their methods were ludicrous. They
neither commanded nor requested; they invited us in the flowery phrases
of compliment to accompany them, and, when we passed on unheeding,
turned back in sorrow to their posts.
Two lynx-eyed officers, however, hung on our heels, and, following us to
the station as night fell, joined a group of railway gendarmes on the
platform. A lengthy conference ensued; then the squad lined up before
the bench on which we were seated, and a sergeant drew out one of the
small volumes which the government has adopted as a register for
transient Europeans.
“Will the sahibs be pleased to give me their names?” wheedled the
sergeant, in the timid voice of a half-starved Villon addressing his
verses to a noble patron.
I took the book and pencil from his hand and filled out the blanks on a
page.
“And you, sahib?” said the officer, turning to Marten.
“Oh, go to the devil!” growled my companion; “I ain’t no Roossian. You
got no damn business botherin’ Europeans. Go chase yourself.”
“The sahib must give the informations or he cannot go on the train,”
murmured the native.
“How the devil will you stop me from goin’?” demanded Marten.
The officer muttered something in the vernacular to his companions.
“You would, would you?” bellowed Marten.
“Ah! The sahib speaks Hindustanee?” gasped the sergeant. “What is your
name, please, sir?”
“Look here,” growled Marten, “I’ll give you my name if you’ll promise
not to ask any more fool questions.”
The native smiled with delight and poised his pencil.
“And the name, sir?”
“Higgeldy Piggeldy,” said Marten.
“Ah! And how is it spelled, please, sahib?”
The sergeant wrote the words slowly and solemnly at my companion’s
dictation.
“And which is the sahib’s birthplace?” he wheedled.
“You bloody liar,” roared Marten; “didn’t you say you wouldn’t ask
anything else?”
“Ah! Yes, sahib,” bleated the babu; “but we must have the informations.
Please, sir, which is your birthplace?”
“If you don’t chase yourself, I’ll break your neck!” roared Marten,
springing to his feet.
The assembled officers fell over each other in their haste to escape the
onslaught. Marten returned to the bench and sat down in moody silence.
The sergeant, urged forward by his fellow officers, advanced timidly to
within several paces of us and, poised ready to spring, addressed me in
gentle tones:—
“Sahib, the police wish, please, sir, to know why the sahibs have come
to Burdwan.”
“Because the local dropped us here, and we had to wait for the express.”
“But why have you not take the express all the time?”
“We were at Hoogly. It doesn’t stop there.”
“Then, why have you not stay in the station? Why have you walked in the
bazaars and in the temples?”
“To see the sights, of course.”
“But there are not sights in Burdwan. It is a dirty village and very
poor and very small. Europeans are coming to Benares and to Calcutta,
but they are not coming in Burdwan. Why have the sahibs come in Burdwan,
and the sun is very hot?”
“I told you why. The sun doesn’t bother us.”
“Then why have the sahibs bought sweets and chappaties in the bazaars?”
“Because we were hungry.”
“Sahibs are not eating native food; they must have European food. Why
have you bought these?”
“For Lord’s sake, hit that nigger on the head with something!” burst out
Marten. “I want to sleep.”
The sergeant retreated several paces and continued his examination.
“And why have the sahibs gone to the tem—?”
The shriek of an incoming train drowned the rest, and we hastened
towards the European compartment.
“You must not go in the train!” screamed the sergeant, while the squad
danced excitedly around us. “Stop! You must answer—”
We stepped inside and slammed the door.
“The train cannot be allowed to go!” screeched the babu, racing up and
down the platform. “The sahibs are not allowed to go. You must hold the
train, sahib!” he cried to a European guard hurrying by.
“Hold nothing,” answered the official. “Are you crazy? This is the
Bombay mail,” and he blew his whistle.
The sergeant grasped the edge of the open window with one hand and,
waving his notebook wildly in the other, raced along the platform beside
us.
“You must answer the questions, sahibs—”
The train was rapidly gaining headway.
“Get down, sahibs! Come out! You are not allowed—”
He could hold the pace no longer. With a final shriek he released his
hold and we sped on into the night.
Hours afterward we were awakened by a voice at the open window. A native
officer was peering in upon us.
“I have received a telegraph from Burdwan for a sahib who has not
answered some questions,” he smiled, holding up his notebook.
“My name’s Franck,” I yawned.
“Then it must be the other sahib,” said the native. “You are, sir, I
think, Mr. Higgeldy Piggeldy?”
“Naw! Mine’s Marten,” said my companion, drawing out his papers. “Bloody
funny name, that. Can’t be no Englishman. Must be a Roossian.”
We left the express at daybreak. Bankipore was suffering from one of the
long droughts that have ever been the blight of this section of India.
The flat plains of the surrounding country spread out an arid, sun-baked
desert as far as the eye could see. Along the roadway the dust rose in
clouds at every step, the trees stood lifeless in ragged shrouds of
dead, brown leaves. The few low-caste natives still energetic enough to
bestir themselves dragged by at the listless pace of animals turned out
to die, utter hopelessness in their shriveled faces, their tongues
lolling from their mouths. The sear grass of the great Maidan was
crushed to powder under our feet; a half-mile stroll brought on all the
symptoms of physical fatigue; the moistureless, dust-laden air smarted
in our throats and lungs and left our lips and nostrils parched and
cracking.
In the center of the Maidan, as far as possible from the human kennels
of the surrounding town, were pitched several sun-bleached tents. A
dun-colored coolie, squatting in a dusty patch, cried out at our
approach; and a native of higher caste pushed aside the flap of the tent
and, shading his eyes under an outstretched hand, gazed towards us. He
was dressed in uniform, his jacket open at the throat, and his bare feet
thrust into a pair of shabby slippers. A figure commonplace enough, yet
at sight of him we gasped with delight. For on his head sat a fez! It
was far from becoming to its wearer; a turban would have offered more
protection against the Indian sun, but it heralded a Mohammedan free
from the fanatical superstitions of the Brahmin faith. We might quench
our thirst at once with no pollution of the cup; and depart without
feeling that creepy sensation of guilt that one experiences at home in
stopping in a saloon for a drink of water—if such things happen. How the
point of view towards one’s fellow men change with every advance to the
eastward! In this superstitious land an Islamite seemed almost a
brother.
But we were thirsty.
“Pawnee hai? Oh! Maghmoód, we would drink,” cried Marten.
The follower of the prophet smiled at the words of the vernacular as he
answered in perfect English:—
“Assuredly, gentlemen. I should be delighted. Step inside, where it is
cooler.”
His was no crude-builded language of the babu. An Oxford fellow could
not have expressed his thoughts more clearly, nor given more immediate
evidence of a sahib point of view.
The tent was furnished with mats and couches. In one corner stood a
chair and a desk littered with papers. The Mohammedan handed us a
chettie of water. When we had drunk our fill, he offered cigarettes and
motioned to a couch.
“Be seated, gentlemen,” he said. “Unless you have urgent business you
may as well rest a bit.”
“Gee!” puffed my companion, leaning back on his elbows; “I’m glad a
Mohammedan’s superstitions don’t make him believe all this tommy-rot
about pollution.”
Marten of Tacoma was not distinguished for tact.
“We try, at any rate,” smiled the officer, “to be sane in our beliefs.”
“Of course,” went on my mate, “you have plenty of fool superstitions,
too; and you put rings in your wives’ noses, to lead ’em around by, I
suppose?”
A flash of fire kindled the eye of our host, but he smiled again as he
replied:
“We try, though, sir, to be sparing of unnecessary insults.”
“Gee!” murmured Marten, without looking up; “This is a good cigarette.”
“Is this an encampment?” I put in, feeling it my duty to lead the
conversation into other channels. “I don’t see any sepoys about.”
“Oh, by no means,” said the Mohammedan; “this is police headquarters.
The smaller tents house the men.”
“Then you are not a soldier?”
“Not in recent years. I am chief of police for Bankipore.”
Marten cast a half-startled glance at the profile of the man he had
taken for a simple sergeant, and assumed a more dignified posture.
“The police, then, live in tents here?” I went on.
“If we didn’t, few of us would be living at all,” replied the chief.
“Early in March, with the famine, the plague broke out, and the
inhabitants have been dying in hundreds ever since. Ten of the force
were carried from their huts to the funeral pyres in the first week.
Then we set up the tents.”
“Doesn’t the government try to check the epidemic?”
“Try! We have been fighting it tooth and nail since the day it began.
But what can we do among ignorant, superstitious Hindus? Our people are
poor. They live in filthy huts with dirt floors, into which rats can dig
easily. If we attempt to fumigate a house, the family abandons it and
sleeps on the ground outside, the surest way of taking the plague. If we
try to purify their water and food we have a riot on our hands. The
huts, too, are so packed together and burdened with filth that the only
way to clean them would be to burn up the town. We have a force of
government doctors. Medicine, also, is free to all. But you know my
people. They would far rather die of plague than run the risk of losing
caste through the doctor’s touch. If a man dies, his family prefers to
scoop a hole in the floor and squat on his grave, rather than to turn
his body over to Christians or Mohammedans. We have strict laws against
concealing sickness and death, but it is difficult to enforce them. To
make things worse, the rumor is always going the rounds that the sahib
government has ordered the doctors to poison their patients or cast a
spell upon them; and among the masses such tales are readily believed.
What can you expect of ignorant, fanatical people who barely realize
that reading and writing exist, and who never learn anything except on
hearsay? Police and doctors and government medicine will never wipe out
the plague. The only thing that can stop it is rain, and until that
comes Bankipore will keep on dying.”
Marvelous was the manner in which this son of the Orient ran on in an
alien tongue, never at a loss for the word to express his meaning
precisely.
“Do all those attacked by the plague die?” I asked.
“I have been keeping tab on the cases,” returned the chief, “and I find
that a fraction of less than ninety-six per cent result fatally. I know
of men who have recovered. Our former district commissioner was one. If
the victim is a European or a well-to-do native he has about one chance
for life to three for death. But among the sudras, the coolies, the
peasants, the poor shopkeepers, there is small hope. They have always
half starved on a rice diet, the drought has left us famine-stricken for
a year; obviously, having no constitutions to fall back upon, they
merely lie down and die, never making an effort unless their religious
superstitions are in danger of violation. No, it is only rain that will
save us,” he concluded, pushing aside the flap of the tent and gazing
hopelessly at the cloudless sky.
We turned away into the town. It needed no word from the chief of police
to call attention to the ravages of plague and famine. The shopkeepers,
humped over their wares, wore the air of dogs ever in the fear of a
beating; the low-caste natives stared greedily at the stale,
dust-covered foodstuffs spread out along the way; fleshless
personifications of misery crawled by, whining for cowries—the
sea-shells that charitable India bestows on her beggar army. The
inhabitants were not hungry. That is their normal condition. They were
starving. Yet the general misery made them none the less slaves of their
omnipresent superstitions. The gaunt, sunken-eyed merchant screamed in
frenzy when our fingers approached his octogenarian rice cakes and
chappaties; he held his bony claw on a level with our knees to catch the
coppers we offered. His stock was plentiful, if grey-bearded; his prices
as low as in the days of abundance. It was, after all, chiefly a famine
of annas.
At the great government bungalow, on a low hill to the eastward of the
town, were few evidences of affliction. The official force, from the
richly-gowned and turbaned judge, holding court on the veranda, to the
punkah-wallah who cooled his court-room, were glossy, well-fed
creatures. The commissioner, who drove up in a dog cart ornamented with
two footmen in scarlet and white livery, and who marched with majestic
tread through a lane of kowtowing inferiors, certainly had not come
without his breakfast. But even he must have known of the famine, for in
the stringy shade of thin-foliaged trees nearby huddled scores of
wretches waiting for leave to appeal for government assistance.
Native starvelings, obviously, should not take precedence over a sahib.
While I dropped into a proffered seat at the right hand of the judge,
Marten followed the Englishman inside. A long line of prisoners,
shackled in pairs and guarded by many native policemen, awaited
judgment. Two by two they dropped on their knees in the sun-scorched
dust, sat down on their heels, and, raising clasped hands to their
faces, rocked slowly back and forth. The judge muttered a half-dozen
words, which writers behind him jotted down in ponderous volumes, waved
a flabby hand, and the culprits passed on.
“These,” whispered an interpreter in my ear, “are wicked thieves. They
have stolen chappaties in the bazaars. They have prison for three
months. These next escape quickly with six weeks. They have cut a coolie
with knives. Those who kneel now have polluted high-caste food.”
Close to an hour the procession continued. An aged coolie, wrinkled and
creased of skin as if he had been wrung out and hung up to dry, and a
naked, half-grown boy brought up the rear. While they knelt, the
secretary turned over the pages of his book.
“More thieves,” said the interpreter. “The boy has stolen a brass lota;
the man, the lunch of a train guard, three months ago. Their prison is
ended.”
The judge spoke and a policeman produced a large bunch of keys and
removed their shackles. Man and boy fell on their faces in the dust, and
rising, wandered away over the brow of the hill.
A moment later Marten emerged from the bungalow.
“The old song and dance is as good as ever!” he cried, when we were out
of earshot. “I got a boost to Allahabad an’ two days’ batter an’ the
commish’s sympathy. Come on; let’s take in the sights.”
Bankipore’s chief object of interest was a stone granary, in shape an
immense bee-hive or hay-cock, depository in days of plenty for years of
famine. As such things go in India, it was a very modern structure,
having been erected in the time of the American revolution. It was
empty. An outside stairway, winding upward, led to a circular opening in
the apex, through which trains of coolies, in days gone by, poured a
steady stream of grain. Within was Stygian darkness. We were rewarded
for the perspiring ascent by a far-reaching view of the famine-stricken
plains, and off to the eastward I caught my first glimpse of the Ganges.
We halted late that night at Buxar, far short of Allahabad, and took
slower train next morning to Moghul Serai. For to have remained on board
the express would have been to pass in the darkness the holy city of
Benares.
The pilgrim train was densely packed with wildly-excited natives and
their precious bundles. Not once during the seven-mile journey across
the arid plateau did a vista of protruding brown feet greet us as we
looked back along the carriages. The windows of every compartment framed
eager, longing faces, straining for the first glimpse of the sacred
city. To many of our fellow-travelers this twentieth of April had been
in anticipation, and would be in retrospect, the greatest day of their
worldly existence. For the mere sight of holy “Kashi” suffices to wipe
out many sins of past decades. Even the gods of the Brahmin come here to
consummate their purification.
[Illustration: Bankipur’s chief object of interest is a vast granary
built in the time of the American Revolution to keep grain for times of
famine. From its top the traveler catches his first glimpse of the
Ganges]
[Illustration: Women of Delhi near gate forced during the Sepoy
rebellion. One carries water in a Standard Oil can, another a basket of
dung-cakes]
As we rounded a low sand dune, a muffled chorus of exclamations sounded
above the rumble of the train, and called me to the open window. To the
left, a half-mile distant, the sacred river Ganges swept round from the
eastward in a graceful curve and continued southward across our path. On
the opposite shore, bathing its feet in the sparkling stream, sprawled
the holy city. Travelers familiar with all urban dwelling places of man
name three as most distinctive in sky-line,—New York, Constantinople and
Benares. The last, certainly, is not least impressive. Long before
Gautama, seeking truth, journeyed thither, multitudes of Hindus had been
absolved of their sins at the foot of this village on the Ganges. To the
bathing ghats and shrines of the Brahmin the Buddhist added his temples.
Then came the Mohammedan conquerors with new beauties of Saracenic
architecture. In the toleration of British rule Jain and Sihk and even
Christian have contributed their share to this composite monument to the
world’s religions. Through it all, the city has grown without rhyme or
reason. Temples, monasteries, shrines, kiosks, topes, mosques, chapels
have vied with each other and the huts and shops of the inhabitants in a
wild scramble for place close to the absolving waters of the Ganges,
until the crescent-shaped “Kashi” of to-day lies heaped upon itself, as
different from the orderly cities of the western world as a mass of
football players in hot scrimmage from a company of soldiers. From the
very midst of the architectural scramble, giving center to the picture,
rise two slender minarets of the Mosque Aurunzebe, needing but a
connecting bar to suggest two goal posts.
The train rumbled across the railway bridge and halted on the edge of
the city. No engineering genius could have surveyed a line through it.
We plunged into the riot of buildings and were at once engulfed in a
whirlpool of humanity. Damascus and Cairo had seemed over-populated;
compared with Benares, they were deserted. Where the chattering stream
flowed against us, we advanced by short spurts, pausing for breath when
we were tossed aside into the wares of bawling shopkeepers, or against a
façade decorated with bois de vache. Worshipers, massed before outdoor
shrines, blocked the way as effectually as stone walls. Cross currents
of pilgrims, bursting forth from Jain or Hindu temple, bore us away with
them through side streets we had not chosen to explore. Pilgrims there
were everywhere, of every caste, of every shade, from the brass-tinted
hillman to the black Madrasi, representatives of all the land of India
from the snow line of the Himalayas to Tuticorin by the sea. Among them
the inhabitants of Benares were a mere handful.
Sacred bulls shouldered us aside with utter indifference to what had
once been the color of our skins. Twice the vast bulk of a holy elephant
loomed up before us. On the friezes and roofs of Hindu temples monkeys
wearing glittering and apparently costly rings on every finger scampered
and chattered with an audacity that to the natives was an additional
proof of their divinity.
We had been buffeted back and forth through the tortuous channels for
more than an hour when a frenzied beating of drums and a wailing of
pipes bore down upon us.
“Religious procession!” screamed Marten, dragging me after him up the
steps of a Jain temple. “We’ll have to hang out here till it gets by.
How’s them fer glad rags?”
The paraders were, indeed, attired in astonishing costumes, even for
India. The street below us was quickly filled with a screaming of colors
no less discordant than the harrowing “music” to which a thousand
marchers kept uncertain step. Some of the fanatics, not satisfied with
an exaggeration of native garb, masqueraded in the most fantastic of
guises, among which the most amusing was that of a bold fellow
burlesquing a sahib. He was “made up” to emphasize the white man’s
idiosyncrasies, and marched in a hollow square where no point could be
hidden from the view of the delighted bystanders. To the Hindu, he is an
ass who wears jacket and trousers in preference to a cool, flowing robe;
the tenderness of sahib feet is the subject of many a vulgar jest. The
burlesquer was attired in a suit of shrieking checks that fitted his
slender form as tightly as a glove; on his feet were shoes with great
projecting soles in which he might have walked with impunity on red-hot
irons. His flour-powdered face was far paler than that of the latest
subaltern to arrive from England; over his long hair he wore a
close-cropped wig of sickly yellow hue; and his tropical helmet would
have given ample shade for four men. He was smoking a homemade imitation
of a “bulldog” pipe, and swung a small fence rail jauntily back and
forth as he walked. Every dozen yards he feigned to fall into a rage
and, dancing about in a simulation of insanity, rushed upon the
surrounding paraders, striking wildly about him with his clenched fists.
The fact that he never opened his lips during this performance brought
great delight to the natives, accustomed to give vent to their anger by
taxing their vocal organs to the utmost.
There were other suggestions of the Hindu’s hatred of his rulers, the
boldest of which brought up the rear of the procession. Two natives bore
aloft a rough wooden cross on which a monkey was crucified—with cords
rather than with nails. How widespread are the teachings of Christian
missionaries was suggested by the fact that the most illiterate
countryman “saw the point,” and twisted his lean features into the ugly
grimace that is the low-caste Hindu’s manner of expressing mirth.
[Illustration: One of the many flights of steps leading down to the
bathing ghats and funeral pyres of Benares]
We fought our way onward to the center of the town and descended a great
stone stairway beneath the slender minarets. Up and down the embankment
groups of thinly-clad pilgrims, dripping from their ablutions, smoked
vile-smelling cigarettes in the shadow of temple walls or purchased holy
food at the straw-thatched booths. Here and there members of the most
despised caste in India stood before ponderous scales, weighing out the
wood that must be used in the cremation of the Hindu dead who hope to
attain salvation. The abhorrence of their fellow-beings hung lightly
upon the wood-sellers, tempered as it was by the enjoyment of a monopoly
compared with which an American trust is a benevolent institution.
In the bathing ghats, segregation of sexes prevailed. The men wore loin
clothes, the women white winding sheets through which the contour and
hue of their brown bodies shone plainly as they rose from the water.
From time to time bands of natives, covered with the dust of travel,
tumbled down the stairways and plunged eagerly into the purging river.
There is no sin so vile, says the Hindu, that it cannot be washed away
in the Ganges at the foot of Benares. Let us hope so, for its waters
certainly have no other virtues. Gladly would I, for one, bear away any
portable burden of peccadillos in preference to descending into that
fever-infected flow of mud. A ray of sunlight will not pass through a
wineglassful of Ganges water. Yet pilgrims not only splashed about in
it, ducking their heads beneath the surface and dashing it over their
faces, they rinsed their mouths in it, scraped their tongues with sticks
dipped in it, spat it out in great jets, as if bent on dislodging some
tenacious sin from between their back molars.
Our circuit of the city brought us back to the station long enough
before train time to give opportunity for a duty that falls often to the
roadster in India,—a general “wash up.” Twice that day we had been taken
for Eurasians. Benares ends abruptly at the railway line; beyond,
stretches a flat, monotonous landscape of arid, unpeopled moorland.
Armed with a two-pice lump of soap of the hue of maple sugar, we slid
down the steep bank below the railway bridge in an avalanche of sand and
rubble. Once there, Marten decided that he was “too tired” to turn
dhoby, and stretched out in the shade of the bank. I approached the
stream, sinking halfway to my knees in the slime. There would have been
no Indian impropriety in disrobing at once, but there would certainly
have been a sadly sunburned sahib ten minutes afterward. Ordinary
beachcombers, like my companion, being possessed of but two cotton
garments, must have retired unlaundered or blistered. I, however, was no
ordinary vagabond. My wardrobe included three pieces. It was the
simplest matter in the world, therefore, to scrub the jacket while
wearing the shirt and the shirt while wearing the jacket, and to wrap
the garment de luxe around my legs while I soaked the third in the
accumulation of Hindu sins.
“Say, mate,” drawled Marten, while I daubed my trousers with the
maple-sugar soap, “you’ll sure go to heaven fer scrubbin’ your rags in
that mud. There’s always a bunch of Hindu gods hangin’ around here. I
don’t want to disturb a honest laborin’ man, o’ course, but I’d be so
lonesome if you was gone that I’m goin’ to tell you that there’s one
comin’ to take you to heaven now, an’ if you’re finished with livin’—”
I looked up suddenly. Barely ten feet away the ugly snout of a crocodile
was moving towards me.
“Stand still!” shouted Marten, as I struggled to pull my legs from the
clinging mud. “He’s a god, I tell you. Besides, he’s probably hungry.
Don’t be so damn selfish.”
The trouser, well aimed, ended his speech abruptly as I reached dry
land. I worked, thereafter, with wide-open eyes; and before the task was
ended, caught sight of no less than fourteen of the river gods of India.
We regained the station in time for the train to Moghul Serai, and,
catching the northwest express, arrived in Allahabad late at night. The
Strangers’ Rest, vagabonds’ retreat a half mile from the station, was
long since closed; but the Irish superintendent was a light sleeper, and
we were soon weighing down two charpoys under the trees of the inner
courtyard.
The jangling of the breakfast bell awakened us. The Allahabad “Rest” was
famed far and wide for its “European chow.” All through the night we had
embraced ourselves in joyful anticipation of reviving our flagging
memories on the subject of the taste of meat. Marten had even dared to
dream a wondrous dream, wherein he had pursued a Gargantuan beefsteak as
broad as the arid plain below Benares, in thickness like unto a native
hut, across half the land of India, only to wake as he was falling upon
it in the foothills of the Himalayas.
“An’ the bloomin’ thing was steamin’ hot,” he driveled, as we raced for
the dining-room with a mob of ordinarily phlegmatic roadsters, “an’ the
juice was runnin’ out all over the fields”—we dropped into places at the
table—“an’ it was that bloody rare that—ah—er—wha—what the devil’s
this?” he gasped, pointing at the plate before him.
“Eh?” cried the superintendent, from the doorway.
“I was askin’,” murmured Marten, “what kind o’ meat this might be.”
“That?” smiled our portly host. “Why, ’tis dhried fish, to be sure. The
day’s Good Friday, you’ll be remimberin’.”
So we were glad rather than sorry that the piety of the English rector,
to whom that power was deputed, forbade him issuing tickets to stranded
seamen until the next day.
Nothing short of a promise to set up a bottle of arrack would have
enticed another sojourner at the Rest outside its shady grove. I set off
to explore the city of Allah alone. Life moved sluggishly in its broad,
straight streets; for the day’s inactivity of Europeans and Eurasians
had clogged the wheels of industry. Lepers swarmed under the trees along
the boulevard passing the Rest—lepers male and female, without fingers,
or lips, or eyelids, some with stumps for feet, and others with great
running sores where their faces should have been. Still others had lost
their vocal cords, so that their speech, as they crept close up behind
the passing sahib to solicit alms, was an inarticulate gurgle.
Great credit should be given to the Mohammedan women of Allahabad and
beyond, who, with no Worth to do them service, display individuality of
dress sufficient to attract a flagging attention. To be exact, it isn’t
a dress at all, being merely a jacket and a pair of thin, cotton
trousers, full above the knee and close-fitting below, like
riding-breeches. The costume originated with its wearers, no doubt. Far
be it from me, at least, to accuse them of copying the garb of the
sahibs who gallop along the broader thoroughfares.
We slept again under the spreading trees, and might have slept well, had
not the spot chanced to be the rendezvous of all the mosquitoes of the
northwest provinces. With morning our host marched away at the head of a
band of wandering minstrels to carry entertainment to the English
rector. The performance endured beyond all precedent. One by one the
artists straggled back to the grove, some glad, some sorrowful; and
among the latter was Marten. In accordance with our plan to continue
towards the Punjab, he had promised to send the “_Guiseppe Sarto_” from
the harbor of Bombay, where it had ridden at anchor since the day that
we entered Hoogly, to Kurachee at the mouth of the Indus. The classic
tale had aroused the old-time sympathy; the rector had listened gravely;
the story must surely have brought its reward had not the teller, too
cock-sure of his lines, forgotten momentarily the contemplated revision
of the text and blurted out the familiar name so distinctly that
correction was impossible. He had drawn, therefore, when the division of
lots fell, a ticket to Bombay.
There were two reasons why Marten had no desire to visit that port:
first, because I had refused to accompany him; second, because the
commissioners of that uncharitable presidency have contracted the
reprehensible habit of committing to the workhouse the penniless white
man taken within their borders. But the die was cast. The law required
that the holder of a government ticket depart by the first train, and
even had it not, there was no one else in Allahabad to whom to appeal.
The grief of the former pearl fisher was acute, lachrymose, in fact. To
dry his tears I consented to accompany him to the capital of the next
district.
We took leave of the Irishman as darkness fell and before the night was
well on its wane had sought a sharp-cornered repose at the station of
Jubbulpore. The commissioner of that district, moved by a more carefully
constructed tale, granted the stranded mariner a ticket to Jhansi. The
route mapped out for him led southward to the junction with the main
line, which I, anxious to explore a territory off the beaten track,
chose to gain by an unimportant branch. We separated, therefore,
promising to meet again next day at Bina.
Returning northward to the village of Khatni, I spent the night on a
station settee, and boarded the mixed train that sallies forth daily
from that rural terminal. It was in charge of a Eurasian driver and
guard, of whom the latter gave me full possession of a roomy compartment
adjoining his own. The country was rolling in outline, a series of broad
ridges across which the train rose and fell regularly. To right and left
stretched jungle, uninhabited and apparently impenetrable. The villages
rarely comprised more than a cluster of huts behind the railway
bungalow, to which the inhabitants flocked to greet the arrival of the
train, the one event that enlivened a monotonous daily existence. Now
and then I caught sight of some species of deer bounding away through
the low tropical shrubbery, and once of that dreaded beast of India—a
tiger. He was a gaunt, agile creature, more dingy in color than those in
captivity, who advanced rapidly, yet almost cautiously, clearing the low
jungle growth in long, easy bounds. On the track he halted a moment,
gazed scornfully at the sluggard locomotive, then sprang into the
thicket and was gone.
We halted at midday at the station of Damoh. Certain that my private
carriage could not be invaded in a district where Europeans were almost
unknown, I left my knapsack on a bench and retreated to the station
buffet. At my exit a strange sight greeted my eyes. Before the door of
my compartment was grouped the population of Damoh. Inside stood a
native policeman, in khaki and red turban. Under one arm he held the
guidebook, a tobacco box, a pipe, a spool of film, and the leaf-wrapped
lunch that had made up the contents of my knapsack. The sack itself, a
half-dozen letters, and the kodak-cover lay on the floor under his feet.
By some stroke of genius he had found the springs that released the back
of the kodak, and having laid that on the bench beside him, was
complacently turning the screw that unwound the ruined film, to the
delight of his admiring fellow-countrymen.
The natives fled at my approach, and the officer, dropping my
possessions on the floor, dashed for the shelter of the station-master’s
office. I followed after to make complaint, and came upon him cowering
behind a heap of baggage, his hands tightly clasped over the badge that
bore his number.
“He says,” interpreted the Eurasian agent, when I had demanded an
explanation, “that it is his duty to look in empty compartments for lost
articles, but that he has not taken the littlest thing, not even a box
of matches, and asks that you forgive him. If you cannot put the queer
machine together again, he will.”
“These fellows are always prying into things like monkeys,” put in the
guard, “I’d make complaint to the inspector at Bina.”
A change came over the face of the policeman. Till then he had been the
picture of contrition; now he advanced boldly and poured forth a deluge
of incomprehensible lingo.
“Why, what’s this?” cried the station-master. “He says you assaulted
him.”
“Does he look like it?” I demanded.
“No,” admitted the agent, “most sahibs leave marks.”
“Oh! That’s the old trick,” snorted the guard. “He understood the word
‘inspector’ and thinks he’ll keep out of hot water by making a counter
accusation.”
“I don’t believe the tale,” said the agent, “but he insists on making a
complaint, and I shall have to telegraph it to the inspector at the end
of the line.”
The train went on. There being no European officers in the district I
could not be placed under arrest, but it was not long before I found the
police drag-net drawing close around me. The first station beyond Damoh
was a populous town, and among the natives who crowded the platform my
attention was drawn to two sturdy fellows in the garb of countrymen who
elbowed their way through the throng and stared boldly in upon me.
Apparently they had designs on my depleted pocketbook, but, indifferent
to so slight a loss, I returned their scowls and settled back in my
seat. We were well under way again when I turned from my contemplation
of the distant landscape and glanced along the swaying cars. From the
next compartment, his eyes glued on my own, hung one of the countrymen.
Annoyed, I moved to the opposite side of the car. The head and shoulders
of the second rascal protruded from the window ahead. The situation
burst upon me. These, then, were “plain-clothes guys” assigned the duty
of shadowing me to my destination.
As long as the journey lasted, the detectives sat motionless in their
places, their heads twisted halfway round on their shoulders, staring
like observant owls at the only means of exit from my compartment. I
descended at Bina as twilight fell, and they hung on my heels until I
had been accosted by a young Englishman in khaki uniform.
“The station-master at Damoh,” began the Briton, “reports that you
assaulted a native officer. Will you come with me, please?”
He led the way to the waiting-room, and, producing a notebook, jotted
down my story.
“He needed a good drubbing whether he got it or not,” he admitted, when
I had concluded. “Unfortunately I cannot release you until the inspector
comes.”
“When will that be?”
“To-morrow, probably, on this same train.”
“But I can’t afford to be delayed twenty-four hours,” I protested. “I’m
short on cash and I’ve got to meet a mate.”
“I am sorry,” returned the Englishman, “but as deputy inspector I have
no power in the matter. I do not want to lock you up if you will promise
not to leave the station precincts. You may sleep in the first-class
waiting-room.”
Whether he relied entirely on my promise, I did not learn. At any rate,
he ordered the agent to arrange a cane couch for me, and not long after
his departure a coolie arrived from the barracks with such a dinner as I
did not often enjoy during my days of liberty. The next day the fare was
even more generous, and was supplemented by several delicacies which the
Eurasian guard sent from the messroom of the railway bungalow. The
latter had not neglected to make public my story, and every hour brought
Englishmen, Eurasians, or babus to express their conviction that I was
being grossly mistreated. Among them was a leathery little Irishman, a
traveling photographer with headquarters in Agra, and a discussion of
our common interests ended with his writing me a “chit” to his employer,
whom he represented as in need of an assistant.
The deputy inspector hovered about the station, and during one of his
visits I asked for a book with which to while away the time. He must
have pondered long over the shelves in his bungalow in quest of a volume
that would appeal to a sailor of slight education, of American
nationality, who was ostensibly suffering severe depression of spirits.
His choice demonstrated the unfailing perspicacity of the Briton. He
came back bearing a thumb-worn copy of “Bill Nye’s History of the United
States.”
With nightfall came the inspector to listen to a repetition of my story.
“Your account,” he announced, “agrees entirely with that of the Eurasian
guard. I shall release you at once.”
An hour afterward I left Bina and, halting at Jhansi and the free state
of Gwalior, arrived in Agra three days later. Until then I had fancied
that Marten had passed me during the night of my captivity. But as I
alighted, I was surprised to see, in a letter-rack such as is maintained
at most Indian stations for the convenience of travelers, a post card
across which my name was misspelled in bold, blue letters. On the back
was scrawled this simple message:—
GODAWARA, INDIA—April 25th.
FELOW BEECHCOMER:—
Missed the train to Bina becaze I knoked the block off a nigger
polisman. They draged me down hear and the comish finned me 15 dibs
and then payed the fine and put me rite as far as Agra. I wil pick
you up ther on the 27th.
Yours,
BUSTED HEAD.
The twenty-seventh was past. The ex-pearl-fisher had evidently gone on,
and I saw him no more.
Reduced now to a handful of coppers, I lost no time in seeking out the
photographer to whom my “chit” was addressed. He was a Parsee of slender
build, dressed in European garb, the trousers of which, fitting his long
legs all too snugly, gave him a strangely spiderlike appearance. A small
velvet skull-cap, embroidered in red and pink with representations of
flowers and leaves, sat imperturbable on the top of his head, holding
its place with every movement of his lithe body as if nailed there.
Suggestion was there none, in his mien, of strange religious beliefs.
His English was fluent, his manner affable, yet tempered with a
ceremonial coldness, as of one convinced of the necessity of being ever
on his dignity.
We came quickly to terms. The shop, well stocked with photographic
supplies, was in charge of a Eurasian clerk, and my new duties confined
me within the narrow limits of the dark-room. He who would taste
purgatory has but to find employment in a photographer’s workshop in
India. As the door closed behind me, I muttered a determination to hold
my new-found position for a fortnight. Before the first set of plates
had been transferred to the fixing-bath, the resolution weakened; when
an hour had passed, a voice within me whispered that three days’ wages
would be amply sufficient for all present needs. There were new elements
of the photographer’s craft to be learned in the Parsee’s laboratory,
too, such as the use of ice in every process, and during the learning I
conducted, all unintentionally, a series of researches in the action of
NaCl on the various chemicals in my charge. In short, the stoke-hole of
an ocean-liner would have been hibernal by comparison. My employer’s tap
on the door, with the suggestion that it was time to set up the
shutters, did not need to be repeated.
Once in the street, the Parsee hailed a Hindu hansom, a sort of stranded
ferryboat set up on two circular table-tops and attached to what had
once been a pair of bullocks, and we were driven off. That we reached
the residence of my employer before morning and in good health was
reason for self-congratulation, for it was nearly a mile distant. The
axle-grooves in the misapplied table-tops were as near the center as if
they had been bored by a musket in the hands of a blind man at one
hundred paces. The driver was with great difficulty inspired to action,
and was totally incapable of transmitting such inspiration to his
animals. Along the boulevard the craft moved at the cumbersome gait of a
land crab; in the rougher streets it pitched and rolled like a derelict
in the trough of the waves.
[Illustration: The Taj Mahal, Agra, India]
The Parsee, accustomed to this fancied solution of the transit problem
of Agra, fell into that half doze of dreamy contentment typical of the
home-coming suburbanite the world over, and roused himself only when the
rattle of the cobble stones of his own courtyard disturbed his
ruminations. We alighted equi-distant from two squat bungalows, of which
the fire-worshiper gave me leave to enter the former, ere he retired to
the bosom of his family in the other. My new home housed a band of
servants and a lodger. The deep veranda was curtained by a network of
creeping vines that the drought had touched with autumn colors. As I
mounted the steps, a long-drawn groan sounded from the semi-darkness,
and I was greeted by the sight of the lodger tossing deliriously on one
of two dilapidated willow armchairs with which the piazza was furnished.
A fever raged within him—the first symptoms, he was convinced, of the
plague that would carry him off before dawn. Plainly he did not care to
go. The charpoys within were all occupied. I preëmpted the unoccupied
chair and listened through the night to the Eurasian’s frenzied endeavor
to frighten off the grim visitor.
To the grief of the Parsee, I fled from his sweat-box the next
afternoon, and, having visited Agra and her incomparable Taj Mahal, took
night train to Delhi. The traveler who journeys slowly northward through
this land of strange scenes and superstitions loses sight, oftentimes,
of the fact that no other political entity includes within its borders
so many heterogeneous elements. India is not the dwelling place of one
people. The Punjabi of the north differs as much from the Maduran as the
Scotchman from the Neapolitan. The hillman and the man of the plains
prove on close acquaintance to have little more in common than their
brown skins and their misery. Shake your fist at a Madrasi and he will
take to his heels. Deny a Gurka the privilege of fighting and you have
robbed him of all that makes life worth living.
The casual tourist, noting only slight changes from day to day, may not
realize this diversity of population. But let him push on to
Shahjehanabad, the city of King John, which they who dwell elsewhere
call Delhi. Here is a different world, an Arab world almost, to remind
him that Islam once held vast sway in the land of Hind. Easily might he
fancy himself again in Damascus. As in “Shaam,” here are labyrinthian
streets, each given up to a single trade. In shaded nooks and corners
the black-bearded scribe plies his art; from many a minaret sounds the
chant of the muezzin; the fez vies with the turban for supremacy.
Lean-faced Bedouins and files of cushion-shod camels bring with them a
suggestion of the wild sweep of the desert; and, if another touch is
needed, over all hovers those crowning symbols of Mohammedan
civilization,—filth and pariah dogs.
But with the squalor came new privileges to sahib wanderers. Of
Mohammedan eating-shops there were plenty, and never a protest rose
against me when I paused to choose from the steaming kettles framed in
the doorway. The messes, if the blear-eyed Islamite who stirred the
fires under them was to be believed, contained no other flesh than
mutton. There were bones in more than one dish that looked suspiciously
small for those of the sheep; and the rabbit is not indigenous to India.
But quién sabe? The light-skinned vagrant is too thankful, certainly,
for an opportunity to satisfy his carnivorous tastes to appoint himself
a committee of investigation or to inquire into the status of the pure
food law.
It was this scent of a more western world perhaps, which soon brought
upon me the realization that our unplanned excursion “up country” had
carried me a thousand miles afield. I awoke one morning resolved to turn
eastward once more. Unfortunately the turning lacked impetus, for in my
pocket were four lonely coppers. A half-day’s search in the native city
failed to bring to light any demand for white-skinned labor, and I
concluded to make public my offer of services through the district
commissioner.
The afternoon siesta was ended and the élite of Delhi were awakening to
new life when I crossed the bridge spanning the railway yards and
entered the cantonment and the European section. Over miles of rolling
country, thinly streaked by the shade of those few withered trees that
had outlived the drought, were scattered the barracks, government
offices, and the bungalows of white residents. At the district court a
lonely babu clerk welcomed me with the information that the government
force was enjoying a Mohammedan holiday, that the next day was sacred to
some Hindu saint or sacred ape, and the third, the Christian day of
rest. The road to the commissioner’s residence passed those of a score
of English officials, each situated in a private park, on the lodge gate
of which an ensign set forth the name of the owner and the titles which
a grateful monarch permitted him to attach thereto. An hour beyond the
court, I was confronted by the astonishing pedigree of the ruler of the
district and turned aside with bated breath into his estate. The
honorable commissioner sahib was not at home, asserted the native butler
who was whitewashing canvas shoes on the back veranda; he had gone to
the honorable Englishmen’s club.
[Illustration: A market-day in Delhi, India. Many castes of Hindus and
Mohammedans are represented]
[Illustration: The Hindu street-sprinkler does not lay much dust]
A score of smart traps and dog carts, in charge of gorgeously liveried
saïs were drawn up about the long, two-story club-house. On the
neighboring courts four pairs of linen-clad Englishmen, surrounded by a
select audience of admiring memsahibs and a hundred wondering servants,
were playing tennis with that deliberate, dispassionate energy which the
Briton of the “clawsses” puts into everything from a casual greeting to
a suicide. The honorable commissioner sahib K. C. B., M. A., V. C, Bart,
etc., was stretched out in a reclining chair in the smoking-room of the
club, his attention divided between a cigarette and cooling beverage and
the activities of several other distinguished preservers of the
alphabet, who were driving a red and two white balls about a green table
with characteristic vim and vigor. The native who pointed out the mighty
man from the shelter of a veranda fern refused in an awe-struck whisper
to deliver my message until I had threatened to enter this sanctum of
social superiority unannounced. The Englishman bellowed a protest at
being disturbed, but rose and advanced to the door, glass in hand.
“I say, you know,” he cried, in a voice having its domicile in the pit
of his stomach, “this isn’t my office, my man. I cawn’t be attending to
official duties day and night. Come to the high-court to-morrow and I
will look into your case.”
“If any of the gentlemen inside, sir, or you, could put me onto a job
where I could earn the price of a tick—”
“A job! In Delhi? Do you fawncy there are full-rigged ships on the
Jumna? Come to my office at ten-thirty or eleven in the morning.”
“But to-morrow is a holiday.”
“Hah! By Jove, so it is! Well, come to my bungalow instead.”
“How about some work about the club? Anything at all.”
“See here, my man,” protested the commissioner, turning away, “this is
no employment bureau. I’m going over for a game of tennis and I’ll bid
you good day.”
“Then you’ll need someone to chase tennis balls for you,” I called after
him, “I’m fairly fast on my feet.”
“Chase tennis balls!” cried the governor, coming back. “Do you mean you
would run around before a crowd of native servants—you—a white man—and—”
“Sure. Won’t you?”
“Eh—er—wha—I? When I play tennis? Why, of course, for exercise; but you
were talking about work.”
“Well, let’s call it exercise if you’d rather.”
He stared at me a moment in silence, but, being an unusually
quick-witted Englishman, grinned as he turned away.
“Very well,” he said, over his shoulder, “wait for me over at the second
court. I’ll give you a rupee a set—in railway fare—to-morrow.”
I was perspiringly engaged as official ball-chaser of the Delhi tennis
club until twilight put an end to the sport, fagging three games for the
commissioner and as many more for his friends. The reward, however, was
not immediately forthcoming; and I turned back as penniless as I had
come, towards Delhi, four miles distant. The half-audible melody of a
summer night was broken now and then by the patter of native feet along
the dusty roadway, but I tramped on for the most part in silence. Once I
was startled by a lusty chorus of male voices that burst out suddenly
from the darkness ahead in words of my own tongue; and a moment later a
squad of red-coats, bound barrack-ward after a merry afternoon on leave,
trooped by me, arm in arm, singing at the top of their lungs, “The Place
where the Punkah-wallah Died.” It is a sorrowful ditty, this favorite
ballad of the Tommy Atkins of India, bearing as it does the final word
on the infernal calidity of the peninsula. The punkah-wallah is as
insensible to the sun’s rays as any living mortal, his station is a
shaded veranda, his labor the languid moving of a weightless fan. He of
the ballad died of the heat at his post.
Bent on finding lodging in a deserted coach, I slid down the steep slope
at the edge of the European section into the broad railway yards. A
policeman patrolled the bank above; detectives lurked in the narrow
alleyways between the long rows of side-tracked cars; and the headlights
of puffing switch-engines turned streaks of the night into broad day. I
escaped detection only by vigilant dodging. There were goods’ vans
without number, an endless forest of them, but they were sealed or
loaded with some vile-smelling cargo; passenger coach was there none. I
struck off boldly across the tracks towards the lighted station. The
glare of a head-light was turned full upon me and without the slightest
warning I felt myself launched into space so suddenly that I did not
lose my upright posture. The sensation of falling seemed of several
minutes’ duration, as one experiences in a dream of being thrown from a
high building. Long after the world above had disappeared, I landed in
utter darkness, all unhurt except for the barking of my nose. Near at
hand several live coals gleamed like watching eyes. I had walked into a
cinder-pit on the round-house track.
[Illustration: A lady of quality of Delhi out for a drive]
[Illustration: Hindu women drinking cocoanut-milk]
By dint of a cat-like spring from the top of the largest heap of ashes,
I grasped the rail above and drew myself out, to find the engine crew
preparing to descend into the pit to recover my body. The station
platform was crowded. Beyond, surrounded on all sides by the teeming
bazaars, lay a thick-wooded park known as Queen’s Gardens. Placards on
the ten-foot picket fence forbade trespassing after nightfall; but
though I climbed the barrier in full sight of strollers and shopkeepers
they held their peace, convinced, no doubt, that the sahib who entered
at that hour was called thither by official duties. I stretched out in
the long grass, but the foliage overhead offered no such shelter as the
trees of equatorial Ceylon, and I awoke in the morning dripping wet from
the fallen dew.
Again that afternoon I did service at the tennis court, earning two
rupees more than the sum required to carry me back to Calcutta, and,
returning to the city, boarded the Saturday night express. The European
compartment was commodious and furnished not only with a wash-room but
with two wooden shelves on which I slept by night, undisturbed by
Eurasian collectors. Following the direct line through Cawnpore and
Allahabad, the train drew into Howrah on Monday morning. Not once during
the journey had my box-stall been invaded. Nine hundred and fifty-four
miles I had traveled, in a private car on an express—and the ticket had
cost $2.82! Truly, impecunious victims of the Wanderlust should look
upon India as the promised land.