INDIA is a country of ameliorations. The punkah is an amelioration. So
is the second-rate theatrical company from Australia, notwithstanding
its twang. So, for those who like it, is the custard-apple. It is our
complaint that our ameliorations are too numerous and too obvious. It is
painful to us that they should obscure everything else in the vision of
the travelling public, and suggest themselves as the main facts of an
idyllic existence which runs sweetly among them to the tinkle of the peg
and the salaams of a loyal and affectionate subject race—which they do.
When the travelling public goes back and represents this to be the case
in the columns of the Home Press we do not like it. The effect is that
we are embittered, and the single one of us who is clever enough writes
the ballad of “Paget M. P.” This is natural and proper. We are none of
us constituted to see our trifling advantages magnified, and our tragic
miseries minimised, especially in the papers, without a sense of the
unpardonable obtuseness of the human race. I do not intend to be drawn
into personal anathema in this chapter though. It will always be so. The
travelling public will continue to arrive and tarry during the months of
November, December, January, and February, and to rejoice in the
realisation of all they have ever read in the Sunday School books. The
travelling public will continue to prefer its own impressions. In
British journalism and Great British Parliamentary opinion there will
always be a stodgy impracticability which the returned Anglo-Indian can
never be strong enough to influence. We are a little leaven, but we
cannot leaven the whole lump.
We die too soon. Besides, it is easier and more comfortable to
philosophise when one is going home next hot weather for good. I am
content, as I write, to think of my ameliorations even with gratitude,
and will only say what so many have said before me, that a protracted
residence under ameliorations is necessary to the full understanding of
how grievous a thing an ameliorated existence may be.
The Brownes were not contented with what Nature does for us in this way
in the cold weather—green peas and cauliflowers, red sunsets, oranges
and guavas at twopence a dozen. Ever since the evening they dined with
Mr. Sayter they had been of opinion that the only people whose existence
was properly ameliorated in Calcutta were the people with the joy of a
fireplace in their houses. As a family young Browne declared they were
entitled to a fireside—it was monstrous that they should lack such an
elemental feature of the domestic habit. True they had a “siggaree,” a
funnel-shaped pot of charcoal, like everybody else—the kitmutgar made
toast with it and the bearer dried damp sheets over it—but one couldn’t
be comforted at the risk of asphyxiation, and besides, it smelled. There
was nothing else, and the Brownes felt that they could not accustom
themselves to gather in a semicircle round a tall Japanese vase, or a
blank space in a white wall fifteen feet high, for anything like
cheerful discourse. They considered that the enduring bliss which they
seemed to have taken with the house lacked this one thing only. It was
impossible to persuade the Spirit of the Hearth to make himself
comfortable in a flower-pot.
It was also impossible to build a chimney—their local tenure being of
that brief and uncertain kind which is popular in Calcutta. A long lease
is not desirable when a neighbourhood may develop typhoid any day, when
beams may take to dropping any night, when one may want six months’
leave just at a season which is unpropitious for sub-letting. All these
conditions obtain in Calcutta, and any of them might be the Brownes’!
Besides, a chimney would cost rupees incalculable.
There were alternatives, however. The Brownes went to the ironmonger’s
to look at them. They were disposed to take an alternative if it could
be had at a moderate price. Most of those they saw were connected with a
length of stove pipe which went through the wall, some of them were
decoratively tiled, some involved a marble mantel, and they all required
an outlay which, for a matter of pure sentiment, seemed large to the
Brownes.
“For forty-nine weeks in the year,” remarked young Browne gloomily, “it
would have to be stored.”
“Wouldn’t it rust?” inquired Helen.
“Inches!”
“I don’t think we can depend on being able to make a new hole in the
wall every time we move,” Mrs. Browne suggested. “The landlord mightn’t
like it.”
“We could always arrange to fill it up with purple glass when we leave.
If we did that the baboos would encourage our perforations. So much do
they love coloured glass that they paper it on one side, and thus
dissimulate.”
Helen thought this ingenious, but it did not alter the fact that the
tiled temptations were expensive. Then the ironmonger’s young man,
rising to the situation, suggested a kerosene stove. You purchased a
kerosene stove, he said, and there it was, your inalienable property, or
words to that effect. It didn’t require no fittings, nor yet being built
into the wall. It would go with you anywheres, it didn’t want a stove
pipe nor yet a hole. It didn’t go in for being to say decorative, not
exactly, but then see how cheerful it was. You never knew till you tried
how cheerful kerosene could be! The young man gave them to understand,
moreover, that its mechanism could be comprehended by a child or a
punkah wallah. And they had no idea to what extent it would reduce the
consumption of coal. The Brownes listened attentively, and when the
young man paused and rested one elbow against a patent punkah machine in
his exhaustion, young Browne made a scientific observation of the stove.
He turned one wick up and the other down. “Seems to work all right,” he
said to Helen.
“Perfectly, sir,” said the ironmonger’s young man.
Young Browne looked at him curiously. “You haven’t been long out?” he
remarked.
“No, sir. Only three weeks, sir. I came from this department in William
W’itely’s, sir.”
“I remember,” said Mr. Browne, “they do like to sell things there. Three
months in Calcutta and you won’t care a blow.”
“That so, sir?” the young man returned, smilingly. “I ’ope not, sir, for
the sake of business.”
“It is. What do you think of this thing, Helen? Shall we have it sent
up?”
“It would be nice for toffee,” said Helen. “And I’m sure I can make
toffee cheaper than the cook does. I dare say it would save us a lot in
toffee, George.”
“I’m sure it would. And it’s only thirty-five rupees—about two pounds
seven, at the current rate of exchange. It isn’t just my ideal of a
fireside, but it seems the best we can do.” And the next morning the
kerosene stove arrived on the heads of four coolies, at the Brownes’
suburban residence.
[Illustration: MRS. LOVITT.]
The night was propitiously and comfortably cold. As they drove home from
tennis at Mrs. Jack Lovitt’s, muffled up in the striped flannel jackets
with which Calcutta protects itself from the inclemency of the weather
after tennis, Helen declared, with the kerosene stove in anticipation,
that it was really almost piercing. “It’s a pity, though, George,” she
said regretfully, “that we were _quite_ in such a hurry about buying the
stove, for I was telling Mrs. Lovitt about it, and she said she was so
sorry she didn’t know we wanted one—we could have had theirs, and it’s
in perfect order, for ten rupees.”
“Oh, next cold weather,” returned her lord, “we’ll have the pleasure of
selling ours for ten rupees instead. It comes to much the same thing,
you see.”
It is almost impossible to persuade a sahib of Calcutta to take his
domestic accounts seriously. If his natural proclivities are in that
direction, he is usually not to be respected.
The Brownes had a hump for dinner, and a hump costs a rupee and several
annas. Nevertheless they hurried through it, the more speedily to avail
themselves of their unaccustomed luxury in kerosene, to “cluster round
the cheerful blaze,” as George Browne put it, which stood solemnly
between two long windows in the drawing-room awaiting a match. Entering,
they found the bearer, the kitmutgar and the mallie kneeling about it,
with varied expressions of concern, the machine still grim and black, in
the midst of a pervasive odour of kerosene. The Brownes felt palled. It
was not what they had expected.
“_Bilcul na hona sucta_,”[81] said the bearer, rising and surveying the
thing as if it were an obdurate Hindu deity.
Footnote 81:
Simply it may not be!
“What does he say?” inquired Mrs. Browne. Mrs. Browne was always
inquiring what the bearer said. Mr. Browne was rapidly becoming a
peripatetic hand-book of Hindustani. He implored his wife to have a
_munshi_,[82] and Helen thought it would be delightful but sternly
declined on the score of economy. So young Browne had no surcease.
Footnote 82:
Instructor.
“_Albut hona sucta!_”[83] said he, going upon his own knees before the
refractory divinity. Helen stood by with superior interest and knitted
brows, after the manner of women.
Footnote 83:
Without doubt it may be!
“_Dya-silai_ HUM _ko-do_!”[84] enunciated the sahib.
Footnote 84:
Give ME the matches.
Deep relief became visible upon the faces of the bearer, the kitmutgar,
and the mallie. The sahib was omnipotent.
Mr. Browne presently discovered that the wicks had dropped into the oil
reservoirs. He proceeded to take the newly imported fireside upon his
lap, so to speak, and unscrew it, his wife remarking meanwhile that she
supposed it was quite safe. He rescued the wicks, but Helen has since
mournfully given me to understand that certain of the garments he had on
were never tenable afterwards.
Then they applied a match to engender the sacred fire upon their hearth,
and it was engendered in two long narrow flames that flared up in
yawning tin chasms on either side and sent before them a wreathing
blackness of smoke which escaped rapidly through the holes on the top
for the saucepan and the gridiron.
“It _is_ cheerful,” said Helen insistently. “But it seems to need a
stove pipe after all,” she added, in doubt.
“Not at all,” said her husband, “only to be turned down.” So he turned
it down to a wavering blue and yellow line, and closed the doors.
“Finish _hai_?” inquired the bearer, and the sahib said yes, it was
finished, so the bearer, the kitmutgar and the mallie repaired to the
simpler solaces of sentimental organisations less subtly devised than
ours.
These two exiled Brownes drew up chairs and tried to feel at least
anticipative appreciation. There were two round transparent holes in the
doors through which they could see a reflection of their glowing hearth.
They leaned towards it and spread out their hands. Young Browne
remarked, with a chill smile, that it was certainly warmer than it had
been. They pulled their chairs closer together, in order, I have no
doubt, to impede the heat that might escape into other quarters of the
room. Helen slipped her hand into her husband’s, and together they
looked thoughtfully into the depths of the burning wick. I think the way
in which they must have regarded this thing, which was to mean for them
the essence of home life in an unhomelike country, and the warm glow of
home love caught and held where it is reputed apt to stray abroad, was
not altogether laughable though. In fact——
“_Nellie!_” exclaimed young Browne, and had occasion to bring his chair
closer still. There was a moist contact of cheeks and a succession of
comforting silences. The kerosene stove continued to burn excellently,
but was disregarded.
“It looks like some kind of—of engine, doesn’t it, George?” Mrs. Browne
recovered herself sufficiently to say.
“Yes. Beastly thing!” concurred young Browne in further disparagement.
Then they began to observe the effect of the heat on the varnish. It
took the form of a hot penetrative unpleasant smell that radiated from
the kerosene stove into every quarter of the room.
“I expect it will wear off,” said young Browne gloomily, “but we’d
better put the thing out in the compound every night until it does.”
It has never worn off, however. Helen, with responsible memory of the
thirty-five rupees, used it conscientiously all last cold weather. She
did serious and light-minded cooking with it while she suffered the
delusion that she was Kali Bagh’s superior—inevitable but short—and she
made almost enough toffee upon it to justify its expense, if it had been
necessary to subsist upon toffee. Whenever anything could be done with
it the Brownes did it. They had it lighted to welcome their return from
burra-khanas and Government House dances, and on one occasion Helen sat
for half an hour before it in her most cherished gown, under a shower of
softly falling black flakes of carbonized kerosene without being aware
of it—the result of an injudicious lighting and forgetting on the part
of the bearer. Many an evening they sat in its presence making efforts
at hilarity and trying to forget the odours of varnish and kerosene—in
the end they always confessed it inadequate. It had a self-contained
moroseness, it never snapped or sparkled or died down. When they went to
bed they turned it out. Through its two round eyes it mocked their
homesick effort after the cheer of other lands. The bearer admired it
and took pride in setting it alight. But the Brownes regarded it with
feelings that grew constantly more “mixed.” It made no ashes and gave no
trouble, and when they didn’t want it it was not there—all of which
seemed additional offences.
The old kite that surveyed them always through the window from his perch
in the sago palm beside the veranda said nothing, but if they had been
intelligent they might have heard the jackals that nightly pillaged the
city’s rubbish heaps, howling derision at the foolishness of a sahib who
tried to plant his hearth-stone in India.
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