I HAVE no doubt that the present Mrs. Browne would like me to linger
over her first impressions of Calcutta. She has a habit now of stating
that they were keen. That the pillared houses and the palm-shaded
gardens, and the multiplicity of turbaned domestics gave her special
raptures, which she has since outgrown, but still likes to claim. She
said nothing about it at the time, however, and I am disposed to believe
that the impressions came later, after young Browne had become a
familiar object, and all the boxes were unpacked. As they were not
married immediately, but a week after the _Khedive_ arrived, to give
Mrs. Macdonald time to unpack _her_ boxes, the former of these processes
was an agreeably gradual one occupying six morning and evening drives in
Mr. Browne’s dog-cart, and sundry half-hours between. Mrs. Macdonald
wanted to make the house pretty for the wedding. “Really, child,” said
she, “you can’t be married in a barn like this!” and to that end she
drew forth many Liberty muslins, much “art” needlework, and all the
decoration flotsam and jetsam of the season’s summer sales in Oxford
Street. I understand that both the Brownes protested against the plan to
have a wedding; they only wanted to be married, they said, of course in
the Church, regularly, but without unnecessary circumstance. “People can
see it next day in _The Englishman_,” suggested young Browne, urged
privately to this course by Helen. But it was a point upon which Mrs.
Macdonald was inflexible. “Certainly not a _big_ wedding,” said she,
“since you don’t want it, but a few people we must have just to see it
properly done. What would Calcutta think of you”—reproachfully, to young
Browne, “getting the knot tied that way, in a corner! Besides, it will
be a lovely way of letting everybody know we are back. _I’ll_ manage
it—I know exactly who you ought to have!”
Thereupon Helen brought out from among her effects a certain square
wooden box, and besought that it might be opened. “It’s—it’s the cake,”
she explained with blushes; “mother thought I ought to bring it—”
“Oh, of course!” exclaimed Mrs. Macdonald briskly; “everybody does.
There were five altogether on board the _Khedive_. Let us hope it has
carried well!”
They opened the box, and Helen took out layers of silver paper with
nervous fingers. “It seems a good deal crushed,” she said. Then she came
upon a beautiful white sugar bird of Paradise lacking his tail, and
other fragments dotted with little silver pellets, and the petals of a
whole flower-garden in pink icing. “It has _not_ carried well!” she
exclaimed grievously—and it hadn’t. It was the proudest erection of the
Canbury confectioner’s experience, a glory and a wonder when it arrived
at the Rectory, but it certainly had not carried well: it was a
travelled wreck.
“Looks very sorry for itself!” remarked young Browne, who happened to be
present.
“It must have happened in that hateful Bay of Biscay!” said Helen, with
an inclination to tears.
“Oh, never mind!” Mrs. Macdonald put in airily, as if it were a trifle.
“It’s easy enough to get another. I’ll send a chit to Peliti’s this very
afternoon. You can use up this one for five o’clock tea afterwards.”
“But do you think it won’t do at all, Mrs. Macdonald?” Helen begged.
“You see the lower tier isn’t much damaged, and it came all the way from
home, you know.”
“I think it ought to do,” remarked young Browne.
“My _dear_!” cried her hostess, “think of how it would _look_! In the
midst of everything! It would quite spoil your wedding! Oh, no—we’ll
have another from Peliti’s.”
“What could one do?” confided Mrs. Browne to me afterwards. “It was
_her_ affair—not ours in the least. We were getting married, don’t you
see, for her amusement!” But that was in one of Mrs. Browne’s ungrateful
moments. And was private to me. Generally speaking, Mrs. Browne said she
thought the Macdonalds arranged everything charmingly. The Canbury cake
went, however, to the later suburban residence of the Brownes, and was
there consumed by them in the reckless moments of the next six months.
I was one of the people Mrs. Macdonald knew the Brownes ought to have,
and I went to the wedding, in a new heliotrope silk. I remember that
also came out by the _Khedive_. It was in the Cathedral, at four o’clock
in the afternoon, full choral service, quantities of flowers, and two
heads of departments in the company, one ex-Commissioner, and a Member
of Council. None of them were people the Brownes were likely to see much
of afterward, in my opinion, and I wondered at Mrs. Macdonald’s asking
them; but the gown she graced the occasion in would have justified an
invitation to the Viceroy—pale green poplin with silver embroidery.
The bride came very bravely up the aisle upon the arm of her host, all
in the white China silk, a little crushed in places, which the Canbury
dressmaker had been reluctantly persuaded to make unostentatiously. The
bridegroom stood consciously ready with his supporter; we all listened
to the nervous vows, sympathetically thinking back; the little Eurasian
choir-boys sang lustily over the pair. Two inquisitive black crows
perched in the open window and surveyed the ceremony, flying off with
hoarse caws at the point of the blessing; from the world outside came
the hot bright glare of the afternoon sun upon the Maidan, and the
creaking of the ox-gharries,[1] and the chatting of the mynas in the
casuerina[2] trees, and the scent of some waxy heavy-smelling thing of
the country—how like it was to every other Indian wedding where a maid
comes trippingly from over seas to live in a long chair under a punkah,
and be a law unto kitmutgars!
Footnote 1:
Native ox-carts.
Footnote 2:
Australian fir.
The new Mrs. Browne received our congratulations with shy distance after
it was all over. She looked round at the big stucco church with its
white pillars and cane chairs, and at our unfamiliar faces, with a
little pitiful smile. I had, at the moment, a feminine desire to slap
Mrs. Macdonald for having asked us. And all the people of the Rectory,
who ought to have been at the wedding, were going about their ordinary
business, with only now and then a speculative thought of this.
Everybody who really cared was four thousand miles away, and unaware. We
could not expect either of them to think much of our perfunctory
congratulations, although Mr. Browne expressed himself very politely to
the contrary in the valuable sentiments he uttered afterwards in
connection with champagne cup and the Peliti wedding cake, on Mrs.
Macdonald’s veranda.
They had a five days’ honeymoon, so far as the outer world was
concerned, and they spent it at Patapore. Darjiling, as young Browne was
careful to explain to Helen, was the proper place, really the thing to
do, but it took twenty-six hours to get to Darjiling, and twenty-six
hours to get back, and nobody wanted to plan off a five days’ honeymoon
like that. Patapore, on the contrary, was quite accessible, only six
hours by mail.
“Is it a hill-station?” asked Helen, when they discussed it.
“Not precisely a hill-station, darling, but it’s on rising ground—a
thousand feet higher than this.”
“Is it an interesting place?” she inquired.
“I think it ought to be, under the circumstances.”
“_George!_ I mean are there any temples there, or anything?”
“I don’t remember any temples. There is a capital dâk-bungalow.”
“And what is a dâk-bungalow, dear? How short you cut your hair, you dear
old thing!”
“That was provisional against your arrival, darling—so you couldn’t pull
it. A dâk-bungalow is a sort of government hotel, put up in unfrequented
places where there aren’t any others, for the accommodation of
travellers.”
“_Unfrequented_ places! O George! Any snakes or tigers?”
“Snakes—a few, I dare say. Tigers—let me see; you _might_ hear of one
about fifty miles from there.”
“Dreadful!” shuddered Helen, rubbing her cheek upon George’s convict
crop. “But what is the _attraction_, dear?”
“The air,” responded he, promptly substituting his moustache. “Wonderful
air! Think of it, Helen—a thousand feet up!”
But Helen had not been long enough in India to think of it. “Air is a
thing one can get anywhere,” she suggested; “isn’t there anything else?”
“Seclusion, darling—the most perfect seclusion! Lots to eat—there’s
always the railway restaurant if the dâk-bungalow gives out, capital
air, nice country to walk over, and not a soul to speak to but our two
selves!”
“Oh!” said Helen. “It _sounds_ very nice, dear——” And so they agreed.
It was an excellent dâk-bungalow without doubt, quite a wonder in
dâk-bungalows. It was new, for one thing—they are not generally new—and
clean, they are not generally clean. There had been no deserted palace
or disused tomb for the government to utilize at Patapore, so they had
been obliged to build this dâk-bungalow, and they built it very well. It
had a _pukka_[3] roof instead of a thatched one, which was less
comfortable for the karaits but pleasanter to sleep under; and its walls
were straight and high, well raised from the ground, and newly
white-washed. Inside it was divided into three pairs of rooms, one in
the middle and one at each end. You stepped into one of your rooms on
the north side of the house and out of the other on the south side, upon
your share of the south veranda. The arrangement was very simple, each
pair of rooms was separate and independent, and had nothing to say to
any other.
Footnote 3:
Made of brick and mortar.
The furniture was simple too, its simplicity left nothing to be desired.
There were charpoys[4] to sleep on, travellers brought their own
bedding. In one room there were two chairs and a table, in the other a
table and two chairs. There was nothing on the floor and nothing on the
walls. There was ample accommodation for the air of Patapore, and no
other attraction to interfere with it. I don’t know whether we have any
right to accompany the Brownes to Patapore, and to stay with them there;
it is certain that we would not be welcome, if they knew it. It is
equally certain that nobody else did—they were, as young Browne had
predicted, supremely alone. At seven in the morning the old khansamah in
charge of the place gave them chota hazri[5] in the room with the table
in it, bringing tea in a chipped brown teapot, and big thick cups to
drink it out of, one edged with blue and the other with green, and
buttered toast upon a plate which did not match anything. He was a
little brown khansamah, with very bright eyes and a thin white beard and
a trot—he reminded one curiously of a goat. His lips were thin and much
compressed; he took the Brownes solemnly, and charged them only three
rupees a day each for their food, which young Browne found astonishingly
moderate, though Helen, when she worked it out in shillings and pence,
and considered the value received, could not bring herself to agree with
this.
Footnote 4:
Native beds.
Footnote 5:
Little breakfast.
After chota hazri they went for walks, long walks, stepping off the
dâk-bungalow veranda, as Helen said, into India as it was before ever
the Sahibs came to rule over it. For they could turn their backs upon
the long straight bank of the railway and wander for miles in any
direction over a country that seemed as empty as if it had just been
made. As far as they could see it rolled in irregular plains and low
broken ridges and round hillocks all covered with short, dry grass, to
the horizon, and there, very far away, the gray outlines of an odd
mountain or two stood against the sky. A few sarl trees were scattered
here and there in clumps, all their lower branches stolen for firewood,
and wherever a mud hut squatted behind a hillock there grew a tall
castor oil bean tree or two, and some plantains. There were tracks of
cattle, there was an occasional tank that had evidently been dug out by
men, and there were footpaths making up and over the hillocks and across
the stony beds of the empty _nullahs_;[6] but it was only in the morning
or in the evening that they met any of the brown people that lived
thereabouts. Then they came in little straggling strings and bands,
looking at these strangers from under inverted baskets, appearing from
nowhere and disappearing in vague and crooked directions. Helen’s
husband told her that they were coolies working in coal mines on the
side of the railway. There were crows, too, and vultures—the crows were
familiar and impertinent, the vultures sailed high and took no notice of
them—and that was all. They went forth and they came back again. Helen
made a few primitive sketches in her husband’s note-book. I do not think
she did the country justice, but her sketches seemed to me to indicate
the character of her impressions of it. They went forth and they came
back again, always to a meal—breakfast, or tiffin, or dinner, as the
case might be. Helen liked dinner best, because then the lamps were
lighted, and she had an excuse for changing her dress. They partook of
these meals with three-tined steel forks, and knives worn down to dagger
points, according to the unfathomable custom of the _mussalchi_.[7] The
courses consisted of variations upon an original leg of mutton which
occurred at one of their earlier repasts, served upon large cracked
plates with metal reservoirs of hot water under them, and embellished by
tinned peas of a suspicious pallor. And always there was
_moorghy_[8]—moorghy boiled and fried and roasted, moorghy cutlets,
moorghy curry, moorghy stew. “Nice old person,” said Helen, the first
time it appeared, “he has given us fowl! Dear old patriarch.” “He may or
may not be a dear old patriarch,” George responded, fixing grim eyes
upon the bird, “but he is tolerably sure to have the characteristics of
one. You aren’t acquainted with the indigenous moorghy yet, Helen. You
regard him in the light of a luxury, as if he were a Christian fowl. He
isn’t a luxury out here upon my word. He stalks up and down all over
India improving his muscular tissues, he doesn’t disdain to pick from a
drain, he costs threepence to buy. He is an inferior creature still. It
may be a prejudice of mine, but if there’s any other form of sustenance
to be had I don’t eat moorghy.”
Footnote 6:
Stream beds.
Footnote 7:
Dishwasher.
Footnote 8:
Fowl.
“He tastes,” said Mrs. Browne after experiment, “like an
‘indestructible’ picture-book.” It was an unwarrantable simile upon Mrs.
Browne’s part, since she could not possibly remember the flavour of the
literature she used to suck as an infant; but her verdict was never
reversed, and so one Indian staple passed out of the domestic
experiences of the Brownes.
These two young people had unlimited conversation, and one of them a
great many more cigars than were good for him. So far as I have been
able to discover, by way of diversion they had nothing else. It had not
occurred to either of them that the equipment of a honeymoon required
any novels; and the dâk-bungalow was not provided with current fiction.
They covered an extensive range of subjects, therefore, as they thought,
exhaustively. As a matter of fact, their conversation was so superficial
in its nature, and led to such trivial conclusions, that I do not
propose to repeat it. They were very unanimous always. Young Browne
declared that if his views had habitually received the unqualified
assent which Helen gave them he would have been a member of the
Viceroy’s Council years before. They could not say enough in praise of
the air of Patapore, and when the wind rose it blew them into an
ecstasy. Frequently they discussed the supreme advantages of a
dâk-bungalow for a honeymoon, and then it was something like this on the
afternoon of the third day.
“The perfect freedom of it, you know—the being able to smoke with one’s
legs on the table——”
“Yes, dear. I love to see you doing it. It’s so—it’s so home-like!” (I
think I see the Rev. Peachey with his legs upon the table!) Then, with
sudden animation, “Do you know, George, I think I heard boxes coming
into the next room!”
“Not at all, Helen. You didn’t, I’m sure you didn’t. And then the
absolute silence of this place——”
“Lovely, George! And that’s how I heard the boxes so distinctly.”
Getting up and going softly to the wall—“George, there are people in
there!”
“Blow the people! However, they haven’t got anything to do with us.”
“But perhaps—perhaps you know them, George!”
“Most piously I hope I don’t. But never mind, darling. We can easily
keep out of the way, in any case. We won’t let them spoil it for us.”
“N-no, dear, we won’t. Certainly not. But you’ll find out who they are,
won’t you, Georgie? Ask the khansamah, just for the sake of knowing!”
“Oh, we’ll find out who they are fast enough. But don’t be distressed,
darling. It will be the simplest thing in the world to avoid them.”
“Of course it will,” Mrs. Browne responded. “But I think, George dear, I
really must put on my tailor-made this afternoon in case we _should_
come in contact with them in any way.”
“We won’t,” replied George, cheerfully lighting another cigar.
To which Mrs. Browne replied without seeming relevance, “I consider it
perfectly SHAMEFUL for dâk-bungalows to have no looking-glasses.”
An hour later Helen flew in from the veranda. “Oh, George, I’ve seen
them: two men and a lady and a black and white dog—spotted! Quite nice,
respectable-looking people, all of them! They walked past our veranda.”
“Confound their impudence! Did they look in?”
“The dog did.”
“None of the rest? Well, dear, which way did they go?”
Helen indicated a south-easterly direction, and the Brownes that evening
walked almost directly north, with perhaps a point or two to the west,
and did not return until it was quite dark.
The fourth day after breakfast, a stranger entered the veranda without
invitation. He was clad chiefly in a turban and loin cloth, and on his
head he bore a large tin box. He had an attendant, much like him, but
wearing a dirtier loin-cloth, and bearing a bigger box.
“Oh! who is it?” Helen cried.
“It’s one of those wretched box-wallahs, dear—a kind of pedlar. I’ll
send him off. _Hujao_,[9] you!”
Footnote 9:
Be off!
“Oh, _no_, George! Let us see what he has to sell,” Helen interposed
with interest; and immediately the man was on the floor untying his
cords.
“My darling, you can’t want anything from him!”
“_Heaps_ of things—I shall know as soon as I see what he’s got, dear!
To begin with, there’s a lead pencil! So far as I know I haven’t a
lead pencil in the world. I’ll take that lead pencil! Soap? No, I
think not, thank you. Do tell me what he says, George. Elastic—the
very thing I wanted. And tape? Please ask him if he’s got any tape.
Tooth-brushes—what do you think, George?”
“_Not_ tooth-brushes!” her lord protested, as one who endures. “They may
be second-hand, dear.”
“_Oh!_ No! Here, take them back, please! Ribbon—have you any narrow pale
blue? That’s _about_ right, if you’ve nothing better. Hooks and eyes are
always useful. So are mixed pins and sewing cotton. I can’t say I think
much of these towels, George, they’re very thin—still we shall _want_
towels.”
Mrs. Browne was quite pink with excitement, and her eyes glistened. She
became all at once animated and eager, a joy of her sex was upon her,
and unexpectedly. The box-wallah was an Event, and an Event is a thing
much to be desired, even in one’s honeymoon. This lady had previously
and has since made purchases much more interesting and considerably more
expensive than those that fell in her way at Patapore; but I doubt
whether any of them afforded her a tenth of the satisfaction. She turned
over every one of the box-wallah’s commonplaces, trusting to find a need
for it. She laid embroidered edging down unwillingly, and put aside
handkerchiefs and hosiery with a sigh, pangs of conscience arising from
a trousseau just unpacked. But it was astonishing how valuably
supplementary that box-wallah’s stores appeared to be. Helen declared,
for instance, that she never would have thought of Persian morning
slippers, which she has never yet been able to wear, if she had not seen
them there, and this I can believe.
The transaction occupied the best part of two hours, during which young
Browne behaved very well, smoking quietly, and only interfering once, on
the score of some neckties for himself. And when Helen remonstrated that
everything seemed to be for her, he begged her to believe that he really
didn’t mind—he didn’t feel acquisitive that morning; she mustn’t
consider him. To which Helen gave regretful compliance, for the
box-wallah had a large stock of gentlemen’s small wares. In the end Mr.
Browne paid the box-wallah, in a masterly manner, something over a third
of his total demand, which he accepted, to Helen’s astonishment, with
only a perfunctory demur, and straight away put his box on his head and
departed. About which time young Browne’s bearer came with respectful
inquiry as to which train he would pack their joint effects for on the
morrow. This is an invariable terminal point for honeymoons in India.
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