OUR DAY OUT
Three Grecian cities strove for Homer dead
Where Homer living begged his daily bread.
AND the locale of the Garden of Eden is claimed by at least three of the
Eastern islands that we have visited. The island of Penang appealed the
most seductively to my credulity; but before I saw Penang, I was
convinced that Ceylon was in reality the site of the Garden of Eden.
Colombo impressed me; Mount Lavinia convinced me.
Mount Lavinia is the Richmond of Colombo. The Mount Lavinia Hotel is the
Star and Garter of Ceylon. But ’Arry and ’Arriet never go there. The
demi-monde never goes there. The world and his wife don’t flock there.
The European population of Colombo is so limited that it does not
embrace either ’Arry or ’Arriet—it has no demi-monde, at least no
palpable one; and the world and his wife are not numerous enough to
flock. Mount Lavinia is a Paradise _à deux_. Nature is superlatively
beautiful there. At the hotel there is an ideal _chef_.
For years we have had a habit of periodically escaping from every one
and everything. Our life has been a busy one; it has been full of
friction; but when the friction has threatened to make us forget each
other a bit, we have usually managed to shake the dust of the high road
from our tired feet, and to snatch a quiet breathing spell, alone, and
together.
The second Sunday we were in Colombo we were up very early,—we were
going to Mount Lavinia for the day. When we left the hotel the sun was
just rising. I had a new frock on, and my husband was good enough to say
that it was pretty. I tore it badly getting into the gharri, but it
didn’t matter—he found a pin and pinned it for me. We had a long wait
at the little station. We stood outside, and tried to guess which of the
hieroglyphics painted in black on the white station was “Colombo” in
Tamul, and which was “Colombo” in Cingalese.
The funny little train came sizzing into the station; in five minutes we
had started. We looked at each other and smiled; our little holiday had
begun. Critics might rail, and actors might snarl; it was nothing to us;
this was our day out.
We sped through miles of cocoanut trees. Except near the little
settlements, through which we passed every ten or fifteen minutes, we
saw nothing but cocoanuts. Here and there the natives were gathering the
ripe nuts. Here and there agile boys were stealing them, slipping up and
down the trees like squirrels. The thousands, nay tens of thousands, of
tall straight trees became impressive from their very numbers. It was
very Oriental, very graphic; and just before it became the least bit
monotonous, the train slackened a little. Then we passed a broken line
of native huts.
Every Cingalese mother bathes her children on Sunday. Weather permitting
(and in Ceylon the weather almost always does permit), every Cingalese
ablution takes place out of doors, and in as conspicuous a place as
possible. We must have seen some hundreds of native children drenched
with soapsuds, swashed with icy water, or rubbed with oil that morning.
Many of the adults bathe as publicly, but not so often. We saw one woman
bathing eleven children, and they were all crying. The huts thickened,
and we had reached a station. It was a pretty low brown building. It
reminded me—though I don’t know why—of Anne Hathaway’s cottage.
Brilliant flowering vines hung from the sloping roof. In the doorway was
gathered a motley group. Two dirty Buddhist priests sat on the ground
counting pice. A group of Cingalese women were eating cocoanuts,
drinking the milk, and scraping the soft young meat out with their nails
and teeth. The Cingalese women are most beautifully formed. They are
upright and supple, and every beauty-line of the human figure is
emphasised upon their persons. Their invariable white jackets contrast
so splendidly with their dusky skin that one almost catches oneself
wondering if black is not the desirable complexion-colour after all.
Their brilliant lips, their tawny eyes, their gay petticoats, save the
sharp black and white contrast from being too abrupt or too emphatic. A
few feet from the women stood a group of Cingalese men, doing nothing.
Their long hair was in every instance nicely pinned up with a big
tortoise-shell comb, and their parti-coloured skirts hung in straight,
listless folds.
A small detachment of the Salvation Army was singing “From Greenland’s
icy mountains, From India’s coral strand,” very badly. No one was paying
the least attention to them, however. The women were dressed in the
Cingalese costume, with some slight additions where the genuine
Cingalese dress is rather abbreviated. I thought it rather nice of them
not to disfigure the picture by the introduction of clumsy blue frocks
and big pokebonnets.
We went slowly on, passing a quaint string of native carts. The oxen
were necklaced with roses, and most of them were surmounted by at least
one small black boy. The carts were peculiarly shaped of course, gaily
painted, and more or less embellished by nondescript draperies. Each
cart was incredibly full. But the oxen were crawling along and seemed
very comfortable. None of the natives seemed in the least hurry.
When we reached Mount Lavinia, Andrew, whom we had thought in Colombo,
opened the carriage door. We gave him a rupee and told him to go home.
He looked very indignant; but he went away.
What a day of days! The air was sweet and strong—you could drink it.
Indeed, breathing was drinking in this paradise place. A few steps on,
and the blue water laughed at our feet. A few yards up, and we saw the
rambling old hotel, where we had been told that we would get the best
dinner in India.
But before dinner, we had a long lounge on the vined verandah. We didn’t
talk; we rested. My companion was very radiant over a cigar, and I
sipped bravely at a glass of sherry. I don’t like sherry; but we had
been advised to leave ourselves absolutely in the hands of the
khansamah. He, I think, had spied the rent in my frock, for he eyed us
rather dubiously and asked sadly, but evidently without hope, if we
wanted champagne with our tiffin. We confessed that we did, and he
brightened up wonderfully. He gave me a long verandah chair, and my
husband another, and trotted off, without waiting for any further
orders. He came back soon, with a tray of cigars, two glasses, and some
milk biscuits. He gave my husband the cigars and the wee glass that held
a thimbleful of something that looked deadly. Upon me he bestowed the
glass of sherry and the innocent milk biscuits. I am no more devoted to
milk biscuits than I am to sherry, but I nibbled and sipped obediently.
It was my day out, and I meant to enjoy it, and everything it brought.
My comrade was very happy with his cigar, and said that the mysterious
thimbleful was very good, but he didn’t think I’d better taste it. That
was apparently the opinion also of the khansamah; so I abode by the
united decision of two superior intellects.
I felt a soft tug at my gown. I looked down. An ayah was seated at my
feet; she was calmly taking the pin from my rent skirt. Then she
produced needle and cotton and mended my tatters. Verily, the khansamah
had taken us in hand.
The tiffin, even as a pale memory, defies description. We had a little
flower-decked table in a window; we could look across the gorgeous
garden to the purple sea; sea and garden were shimmering with golden
glints of sunshine.
The khansamah waited upon us himself. He apparently knew that the tiffin
was perfect, for he allowed us to decline nothing. He gave us soft-shell
crabs, as I had never hoped to eat them out of Boston; and the memory of
the mayonnaise haunts me still. I often dream of the curry. Some day I
am going all the way to Ceylon to get such another tiffin; and if the
cook is dead—“I’ll have a suit of sables.”
When the khansamah thought that we had had enough to eat, he marched us
out on to one of the terraces of the garden. There he brought us our
coffee and liqueurs. He brought out three cigarettes; and my husband,
who doesn’t care for cigarettes, took them meekly.
We lazed a bit, and then employed a young gentleman of about five, to
roll down hill at an anna a roll. He was really very interesting. The
hill was steep but grassy. He started at the top, and brought up in the
surf. He swam about for a few moments, and then came back to us, and did
it over again. He did not wet his garments, for he wore none. We grew
satiated before he grew tired. We paid him, and he carried his dripping
person off, to offer his services to some officer sahibs that were in
another part of the gardens.
We went for a long, slow walk. I went into three or four native huts,
while my husband smoked outside and called in to me what wild risks I
was running. The huts were built of mud, of dried banana stalks, of bits
of wood, and of white-washed manure. The interiors were very clean. The
Cingalese are scrupulously clean. The only exceptions are the priests
and the lepers. I bought a piece of coarse embroidery from one woman. I
did not want it, but she had given us milk and plantains. I bought
sweetmeats from a wayside seller, and sat under a banyan tree to eat
them. While we were there, an old decrepit man hobbled to us. He untied
his well-worn pouch and took out a gray soapy-looking stone, about the
size of a small marble. He laid it in my lap and asked for bukshish. We
gave him a rupee, to get rid of him. I quite forgot about the stone
until a year or more after, when I came across it one day. We were in
Patiala at the time, and a famous lapidarian was there from Calcutta. I
showed him the bit of stone. It was an uncut sapphire. And it turned out
a very fair gem.
We concluded to be very extravagant, and drive back to Colombo through
the moonlit cocoanut groves. We went back to the hotel to order a gharri
and to pay our bill. Our happy holiday was nearly over; but still the
best of it was to come,—the long delightful drive was to come.
That drive home was so beautiful that I almost forgot to be sorry that
our pleasant jaunt was ending.
[Illustration: NATIVES WEAVING MATS IN CEYLON. _Page 25._]
The weird shadows of the cocoanut trees fell softly on the white road.
The native huts we passed were dark and silent. The natives, one and
all, had eaten their evening rice, and gone to sleep. The Cingalese have
not learned that it is sometimes economy to burn night oil. In their
cities, torches of splintered wood sometimes help them to lengthen their
day’s work; but in the country they go to bed with the birds.
I looked behind me, to impress my memory with the outlines of some
unusually peculiar hut. Andrew was clinging to the back of the gharri
with the sais.
As we neared Colombo, we drove through unbroken miles of pungent
cinnamon groves. The moonlight was vivid. We were content and silent.
Colombo was wide awake. The officers’ mess was aflame with light.
Government House showed a hundred lights through the mass of surrounding
shrubberies.
“What a perfect night it is!” said one of us.
“What a perfect day it has been!” sighed the other.
“We will try to go to Mount Lavinia again before we leave,” said my
companion.
“I wonder if the children have been good,” said I, as we drew up at our
hotel door.