[Illustration: Decoration]
IF you have not entirely forgotten your geography you will know that
against the eternal gold and blue of the Indian sky, across and across
the middle of the land, there runs unevenly a high white line. You will
remember it better, perhaps, as “the trend of the Himalayas,” and it may
have a latter-day association in your mind with imprudent subalterns and
middle-aged ladies who consume a great many chocolates and call each
other “my dear girl.” Out here we never forget it for a single instant;
it survives the boundaries of our native counties, and replaces in our
imaginations every height in Europe. We call it “The Snows,” and the
name is as little presumptuous as any other. It is very far off, and the
more like heaven for that reason; moreover, that way Simla lies, which
is heaven’s outer portal, full of knights and angels. They are distant
and imperturbable, the Snows, we can only gaze and wonder and descend
again to earth; we have only the globe-trotter’s word for it that they
do not belong to another world. It is the brown outer ranges that we
climb, the heaving brown outer ranges that stand between the Holy of
Holies and the eye of the profane, the unbeliever, the alien. Because
these brown outer ranges are such very big mountains it is our pleasure
to call them “The Hills”—if you talked of spending three months in the
mountains it would not be clear that you didn’t mean Switzerland. Here
we perch our hill-stations, here once in every year or two we grow fat
and well-liking, here on the brink of a literal precipice the callow
subalterns and the _blasé_ married ladies flirt.
It was by the merest accident, which I helped to precipitate, that the
Brownes went to the Hills in September. A planter in the Doon[124] had
committed suicide—acute dyspepsia—whose business was in our hands, and
somebody had to go to see about it. The junior partner wanted to go, but
the junior partner had just come out from England weighing fourteen
stone, and I got Mr. Perth Macintyre to persuade him that it was
absolutely necessary to spend two months of the rains in Calcutta if he
wished to recover his figure. Thus to the Brownes also came the hope of
the clean breath of the Hills. I went myself down to Howrah station
after dinner to add my blessing to their luggage, but the train was
gone. A fat baboo of Bengal told me so, with a wreath of marigolds round
his neck. I thought, looking at him, how glad they must be to have
turned their faces toward a country where men eat millet and
chapattis,[125] and are lean.
Footnote 124:
Valley.
Footnote 125:
Native cakes of flour and water.
Kasi was there too. Kasi travelled “intermediate,” that is to say
sitting on the floor, quite comfortably, in a wooden box, iron-barred
down the sides to let in light and air. Before the train started Kasi
had unrolled all the rugs and pillows, had made ready soap and towels
and brushes, and had left the sahib who had been very troublesome all
day, and the memsahib who had already unjustly accused him of having
forgotten seven things, with nothing to do but to go to bed and to rise
again. Then he returned to his own place, where his own kind buzzed
about him with flat baskets of sticky brown balls and fried sweetmeats
to sell. Kasi regarded them indifferently and bought nothing; the
kinship was only skin-deep, the lime-marks upon their foreheads were
different, he could not eat from their hands. Secretly, when the shadow
of none fell upon it he took from a little brass box his betel solace,
then as the train whistled he unwound the ten yards of his turban,
wrapped his red chuddar[126] about him, and disposed himself on the
floor to dream of the profit there might be when the sahib took a
journey.
Footnote 126:
Cloth worn over shoulders.
In the morning a dry coolness blew in at the windows. It had been
raining, it would rain again; but here in Behar the earth had been
needy, and her face had grown lovely with the slaking of her great
thirst. The rain had washed the air and the sun had dried it; to these
dwellers in Calcutta it seemed that they were already on the heights.
All night long they had been going through the rice country, where the
pale green shoots stood knee-deep in the glistening water for miles
around, now they rolled through a land where the crops waved tall with
sprouting ears—maize and millet and wheat. The little villages were
almost lost in them. High over the grain the ryot’s sons kept watch and
ward against the thieving parrots in little open thatched houses stuck
on the top of a long pole or in the fork of a dead tree. They were
perched up there to be safe from the leopard’s spring; the leopards like
a maize-fed ryot’s son. They could give warning, too, if the zemindar’s
servant came that way, to ask an extra tax for the wedding expenses of
his master’s second daughter. The little villages seemed of kindly
disposition; here was a precarious crop that wanted shade, and upon this
field every man had set his bed, one beside another, so that it was
covered. They were at ease, the little villages, the crops throve, there
would be enough for the zemindar if they pretended to be _very_ poor;
nobody would starve that year, and perhaps Malita or Alanga would add a
new silver bangle to her wedding portion.
The Brownes were too utterly poor for the railway restaurants. They
brought a tiffin-basket. Young Browne designed the tiffin-basket, a
Chinaman designed the price. It was as big as a small trunk; it would
just go under the seat. There was room in it for everything that has yet
been thought of in connection with a civilized repast. I believe Mrs.
Browne is now using it as a china and linen closet. It held ten rupees’
worth of tinned stores among other things, and a kerosene stove. Mrs.
Browne filled the rest of it up economically with bread and butter and
cold meat, and young Browne added as an after-thought half a dozen pints
of champagne. It was a modest Anglo-Indian tiffin-basket, and they drew
it forth with much joy in the morning, having the carriage to
themselves. It was seven o’clock and the train had stopped. Servants
were running about the platform with cups of tea and slices of toast for
the _chota hazri_ of people who hadn’t brought tiffin-baskets. “Just for
curiosity, George,” said Helen, “ask how much they are charging?”
Young Browne, in the unconventionality of his pyjamas,[127] leaned out
of the window. “Hi, you!” he called, “_dom kitna?_”[128]
Footnote 127:
Night garments worn by men in India.
Footnote 128:
“Price, how much?”
“Aht anna, sahib!”
“Good gracious!” cried Mrs. Browne. “_Eight_ annas for a cup of tea and
two bits of toast! The tiffin-basket _is_ a saving, dear!”
“Oh, it is!” responded Mr. Browne, “for the other meals. But now that I
think of it, I want my chota hazri _now_, don’t you? Hi-ups kitmutgar!
_lao chota hazri_ and _jeldi karo_!”[129]
Footnote 129:
“Bring a little breakfast, and be quick about it!”
“One could so easily boil the water, dear,” objected Mrs. Browne.
“For the other meals. But we can’t cook our chota hazri. Everything’s at
the bottom. We shouldn’t get it ready till midnight. The fact is,” said
young Browne decisively, “we ought to have brought a kitmutgar—that
would have been a saving if you _like_!” And as the steaming tea came
through the window and the price went out, “I don’t think it’s so very
much,” said young Browne.
That is the way they began. The precise number and extent of the
economies effected by the tiffin-basket will never be recorded, but I
believe they drank the champagne.
I doubt either your information or your gratification at being told that
they changed at Mogulsarai. Mogulsarai is on the map, but you will not
find it there because you will not look—which I do not say censoriously;
it is quite enough that Anglo-Indians should be obliged to remember the
names of such places. They are curiously profane, with their crowded
little roofs and their mosque-towers; and they are very hot. The
Brownes’ train lay on a side-track baking, as they entered it, four
coolies bearing the tiffin-basket. The place grilled almost silently,
black and white and grey with converging railway lines encumbered with
trucks; an engine moved about snorting painfully, and nearly naked men
ran in and out under the carriages smiting the wheels. They rolled out
of the place and on for an hour, then over the bridge of the Ganges and
past some old fortifications, and out of the windows they saw Benares,
Benares the impressively filthy, trailing her skirts and her sins in her
great sacred river, but fair, very fair indeed, with the morning
sunlight on the faces of all her gods, and the morning sky behind the
minarets of Aurungzebe.
It was the middle of the night before they reached Lucknow, where they
awoke thirsty. A wide, lighted, orderly station platform, railway
guards walking about in white duck and gold buttons, a single
dissipated-looking little subaltern promenading with his hands in his
pockets. There was no ice, and young Browne sleepily abused the first
railway official that passed the window. “A big station like this, and
the ice allowed to run out in such weather! The thing ought to be
reported.”
“It’s in weather the like o’ this, sir, that the ice _diz_ run out,”
suggested the guard. “Tickets, sir!”
Lucknow, with her tragedy still upon her lips, her rugged walls still
gaping in the white moonlight up yonder, her graves still tenderly
remembered—and the Brownes’ bitter complaint of Lucknow was that they
found no ice there! Ah, little Brownes! I write this of you more in
sorrow than in anger; for I know a soldier’s wife whose husband’s name
you might have read graven on a Lucknow tablet in the moonlight that
night, and when I remember all that she has told me, I find it grievous
that you should even have been aware that there was no ice in Lucknow!
In the morning they were rolling through a lightsome country, all gay
fields and gravelly river-beds, with billows of sunlit air coming in at
the windows, an hour from Saharanpore. A blue hill stood like a cloud on
the edge of the horizon, the Brownes descried it simultaneously and
laughed aloud together. It was so long since they had seen any elevation
greater than their own roof, or a palm-tree, or an umbrella. They got
out at Saharanpore, and Kasi got out at Saharanpore, and the bundles and
the boxes and the bags got out at Saharanpore. They were all as dirty as
they could possibly be, but the people who did not get out at
Saharanpore looked at them enviously, for they had the prospect of being
dirtier still. Arrived at the place of the dâk-bungalow, and the solace
of unlimited ablutions, Mrs. Browne could not imagine in what respect
she had ever found a dâk-bungalow wanting. Could anything be more
delightful than that they should have it entirely to themselves! Between
her first dâk-bungalow and this one Mrs. Browne had made steps towards
the solitary Calcutta ideal. On this occasion she pulled down all the
chicks,[130] and told the solitary box-wallah who had outspread his
wares in the veranda against her arrival to “Jao, jeldi!”
Footnote 130:
Venetian blinds.
Here they tarried till the following day, when the blowing of a trumpet
aroused them at what they considered an excessively early hour of the
morning. It was their trumpet; they had bought the exclusive right to it
for twelve hours. It belonged to the dâk-gharry that was to take them
from Saharanpore to Dehra, “a distance,” as any guide-book will tell
you, of “forty-two miles.” If you could see a dâk-gharry you would
probably inquire with Mrs. Browne if there wasn’t any other way of
going. There is no other way of going. There are large numbers of places
in India to which there is no other way of going. And if one had
answered you thus, you would have said that if you had known that you
wouldn’t have come. Mrs. Browne said that when she saw the
travelling-carriage of this Orient land of dreamy luxury, but she didn’t
particularly mean it, and neither would you.
In appearance the Browne’s dâk-gharry was a cross between a sun-bonnet
and a blue hearse. This may be a little difficult to imagine; but I
don’t appeal to your imagination, I state facts. It was the shape of a
hearse, and you were supposed to lie down in it, which completed the
suggestion. To counteract the gloomy apprehension of this idea, it was
painted blue inside and out—distinctly a _foncée_ blue. This superficial
cheerfulness was accentuated by shutters in the back and sliding doors
at the sides, and the whole thing was trimmed from the roof with canvas
wings. The top would take as much luggage as the hold of a ship—a small
ship. Inside there was nothing at all, and a place to put your feet.
Kasi condoned this austerity with rugs and pillows, and took his seat
beside the driver, with whom he conversed as affably as his superior
social position would admit. The two Brownes were carefully extended
inside like modern mummies; four native persons of ambiguous appearance
and a persuasive odour fastened themselves on behind. The driver cracked
his whip, and the two meek brown spotted down-trodden horses stood
promptly upon their hind legs pawing the air. They came down in time,
and then they began to back into the dâk-bungalow dining-room. Dissuaded
from this they walked across the road with the intention of putting
themselves in the ditch; and finally, after a terrific expenditure of
language on the part of the driver, they broke into a gallop, which
brought each of the recumbent Brownes inside to a right angle by the
action of some mechanical principle containing a very large element of
alarm. This was not at all a remarkable demonstration. It is the
invincible _dustur_ of every animal in the dâk-gharry business, and is
perfectly understood, locally. The animals attached to the Brownes
galloped their three miles and arrived reeking at the next dâk-stable
without another thought of anything but their business. In the meantime
the local understanding spread to the Brownes, who specified it
afterwards with liniment.
To this impetuous way of going it was a relief, Mrs. Browne told me
afterwards, to hang one’s feet out of the door. The picturesque conduct
of the fresh dâk-ponies every three or four miles displayed novel forms
of vice, interesting to the uninitiated. They bit and strove and kicked,
and one of them attempted to get inside. Helen said it was very wearing
to one’s nerves. But when they had accomplished the little earthquake of
starting there were compensations. The road was green and shaded, as it
would be in England; squirrels frisked from one trunk to another,
silvery doves with burnished breasts cooed in the bamboo branches, and
ever the gracious hills drew nearer and a little nearer.
“These are only the Siwalliks,” remarked young Browne, in a pause of
their jubilant conversation. “Wait till you see the Himalayas on the
other side! The Siwalliks are only rubble. They’re rapidly crumbling
away.”
“If they were in England,” replied Mrs. Browne, watching the little
topmost turrets grow greener, “we wouldn’t admit that they were rubble.
And I don’t believe they’ll crumble away very soon.”
“In a few æons,” returned Mr. Browne superiorly. “It won’t matter to us.
We’re getting regularly up amongst them. This is the beginning of the
pass.”
They had journeyed four hours and had come to a little white bungalow
perched high upon the flank of the nearest hill. Here the khansamah had
a red beard, and swore by it that the sahib had not forewarned him; how
should there be beef and potatoes! Milk and moorghy might be, but eggs
no—the eggs were a little bad.
“For that saying, son of the Prophet,” said young Browne, “backsheesh
will be to you. In Bengal there is no true talk regarding eggs. And now
hasten with the milk and the warmed moorghy curry of the traveller of
yesterday, and dekko, Kasi, tiffin-basket, lao!”
Broad is the road that leads over the Mohun Pass, and beautiful are the
summits that look down on it, but it cannot be climbed with the unaided
strength of horses. It was dull driving but for the sunset behind the
hills, when they put oxen on in the bad places; and still duller when
the sulky, long-haired black buffaloes lent a leg; but there was a
certain picturesqueness in being pulled by the three varieties of beasts
at once, especially when a gang of road-coolies turned in and pushed
behind.
They had always the trumpet, too, which enlivened the whole of that part
of Asia. And wild white balsams grew high on the rocks, and naked little
children, in blue necklaces, played about the road.
There was the blackness of a tunnel, and then the vision of a fair
valley mightily walled in, with the softness of evening still in her
face, and the smoke of her hearth-fires curling up to a purple sky. They
rattled across a quarter of a mile of dry riverbed full of stones, and
were in Dehra, Dehra Doon, where all the hedges drop pink rose-petals,
and the bul-bul sings love songs in Persian, and the sahib lives in a
little white house in a garden which is almost home.
------------------------------------------------------------------------