IN THE BURRA BAZAAR
WE all grumbled when we were put off the boat at Diamond Harbour, and
were told that we must go to Calcutta by train. The treacherous Hooghly
was at the moment unsafe for so large a vessel. Of course, every one
blamed the Steamship Company. But the very _contretemps_ at which we
grumbled gave us a first view of Bengal—a view that was extremely
lovely. Our little train went slowly through the peaceful Bengali
country. It was early sunset. Strange scarlet flowers hung from the tall
trees. Now and again a graceful bending limb almost threw the long vine
trails against our window frames,—for the windows were open, and we
were pressing against the ledge as eagerly as our children. Here and
there, half hidden by the thick green trees and by the deepening
twilight, were square white tanks. Natives were bathing in them. Their
gleaming black shoulders emphasised the silver water and the marble
tanks. We passed cornfields that, with a strange heart-throb, took us
back to Illinois. But the corn was not high for all that, and the
gaily-clad Hindoos, who were working in it, were as unlike American
darkies as they were unlike western farm hands.
“Come, come quickly!” cried my husband, from the other end of the
carriage. I went very quickly, for it takes wondrous much to make him
“cry out.” A few yards to our left lay a smooth sheet of water. It was
quite a purple in the fast-fading sunset; and on its drowsy, blushing
bosom lay great masses of dappled water-lily leaves, and on each leaf a
great pink lily pressed. Thin lines of crimson, great patches of pale
golden green, broke the purple sky. Tropical trees, heavy with white and
yellow bloom, hung over the little lake; and on its white and purple
surface rested the pink water-lilies, amid their green and gleaming
leaves.
We passed great open spaces, and came to small huddled villages. Little
mud huts were squeezed together in marvellous fashion. Men, women, and
children sat outside their low doorways, and the more prosperous of the
family groups included a calf. One had a long wreath of orange marigolds
about his pinky-white neck; and a jet-black baby, who lay asleep a few
feet off, was similarly adorned. The women were cooking the
all-important evening meal; and none of them looked up to see our
unimportant European selves.
What a bedlam when we reached Calcutta! It was dark now, and the station
was badly lighted. Our advance agent met us, of course; and when he had
assured my husband that everything was all right, that he had done
everything he had been told to do, he bundled me and my babies into a
gharri, the native servants clambered on to the box, the roof, or caught
on behind, and we started slowly, if not decorously, for the Great
Eastern Hotel.
A steady drizzling rain had begun, and I could see nothing through the
misty gharri windows save indistinct masses of oddly-clad and unclad
humanity and dim backgrounds of gray walls.
We stopped at a huge white building. The servants at the door took our
arrival as a matter of course—if I can say that they took it at all,
for they paid not the slightest attention to us. Mr. Paulding left his
bearer to wrangle with our charioteer, and we followed him up to our
rooms. An incredible number of coolies followed us, carrying our small
luggage. I remember one great giant who groaned and wiped his brow when
he unloaded himself; and yet he had only carried a cardboard box, and it
was empty but for an apology for a bonnet that was made of two crape
roses and half a yard of Maltese lace.
My first discovery was that our rooms were large and clean and cool.
Then I made myself very comfortable in an immense cane chair, and took
my bairns into it with me, all three of them.
Our native servants did not seem to do anything; but somehow I found my
hat and gloves were off, slippers had replaced my shoes, baby was
drinking hot milk, my boy and girl were munching spongecake, the luggage
seemed rapidly to be unpacking itself, and some one had given me a glass
of port wine and a plate of vanilla wafers.
“I wonder how they knew that I hate tea,” I said to Mr. Paulding. “They
have wonderful intuitions, haven’t they?”
“John told dem,” said my small son briefly, very briefly, for the
spongecake was good.
I have known men more industrious than my husband’s picturesque Madrassi
servant, John; but I never knew any man with a more considerate memory.
He was not indefatigable in doing hard work; but he was infallible in
remembering what I liked to have done, and in making other people do it.
I sipped my wine, and sighed. It was raining now in dense torrents; and
my husband was still at the station, struggling with two of the great
problems of a strolling player’s life—scenery and heavy luggage. I
released Mr. Paulding with the assurance that we were entirely
comfortable, and he rushed off through the storm to help his chief.
John had found where the nursery was; and he marshalled the pretty
procession of my babies and their household out with a great deal of
dignity. I sat alone in the dim, cool room, and dreamed, and rested.
Visions of wild American plains came back—memories of Australia, of
Europe, and Canada; I dreamed and dozed; and then I sprang up at the
welcome sound of a footstep I knew, in whatever quarter of the globe I
heard it. America, Europe, Australasia—they were behind me; Asia was
before me. Another phase of our fascinating nomadic life had begun. My
husband came in at one door, very, very wet. John came in at another.
Behind him walked a half-grown Mahommedan boy, carrying a tray of the
steaming tea my husband liked as much as I loathed it.
“Salaam, sahib,” exclaimed the newcomer.
John said something hastily, and the boy added:
“Burra salaam, memsahib.”
In Europe I am more than indifferent to all the woman’s-rights movement.
We have so many more privileges than men; and I am sure that I have all
my rights, for I never missed one of them. But in the East I waged a
long war for the equality of the sexes. Not that I believe that women
are men’s equals—I don’t; my observation has been to the contrary; but
I wish women to be treated as men’s superiors. Clever John had fathomed
my vulnerable narrowness; and so he prompted the boy, and the boy cried,
“Burra salaam, memsahib.”
“His name is Abdul,” said John, as he drew an easy chair near mine. “He
will be our khitmatgar. We will pay him fifteen rupees a month.
To-morrow I will find a bearer, an ayah for the other missie baba, and
an ayah for memsahib.”
“Haven’t we enough servants?” pleaded my husband feebly. John shook his
handsome turbaned head.
“No sir,” he said, “we want many. One does very little here.”
John, like all Madrassis, was a natural linguist. But he spoke unusual
English, even for a Madrassi. He left us to the ministration of Abdul.
More than half the servants we had in the East were called Abdul. This
was our first Abdul. He was a frightened looking child, with long, lean,
awkward legs, and great, lovely, brown eyes. Presently John came back
with three or four nondescript-looking, almost garmentless coolies. They
carried on their heads chattees of steaming water. In a few moments John
came back again.
“The hot bath,” he said. “It will be dinner in an hour.”
When I went to dress I found John laying out a gown for me.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Miss Wadie” (_i.e._ my nurse) “is tired,” was all he said, and he began
to sew a loose bow on to one of my slippers.
They gave us an excellent dinner, for which we were unfeignedly
thankful. The room was crowded, and there was, of course, a babel of
tongues. But the servants were fairly quiet and only fairly slow, and
the gravies were distinctly good. As we left the dining-room, I saw a
strangely familiar black face peering at me through the square window of
a queer house-like place that was erected in the hall. I paused
involuntarily. It was a glimpse of home.
“I’se right proud to see you, lady,” said the dear old black.
I nodded to him and went on without speaking to him. There was a
ridiculous something in my foolish throat. He had found me, and I had
found him. How he knew me for one of the countrywomen of his adoption I
shall never know, but to me every thread of his curly white wool was
eloquent of “de ole Virginie state.”
I made friends with him the next day. His name was “Uncle Peter
Washington,” and he had come to Calcutta, as I had, with a “trabbling
show.” The Ethiopian histrionic combination of which Uncle Pete had been
a bright black star, had, after two brilliant performances, succumbed to
the tropical heat and the non-appreciation of the public. Uncle Pete,
like most Virginian darkies, was versatile, and we found him installed
as a Steward at the Great Eastern. He used to send me dainties, not on
the bill of fare, and beg continually for “passes.”
After dinner, although we were a little tired, we went with Mr. Paulding
to see the Corinthian Theatre, where we were to play. We found it a
surprisingly nice play-house—a little dirty, and rather empty of
scenery; but it could be cleaned; we had brought our scenery with us;
and altogether it was an encouragingly possible place. We went up the
outer stairs of the adjacent house, and met the local manager—a
vivacious Frenchwoman. It was late when we left her, but I coaxed for a
little drive through the streets, like the spoiled woman I was. The rain
had ceased; the stars were almost dancing in the sky; and so, at night,
I had my first good look at Calcutta.
We had strange half glimpses of odd, weird sights; we caught snatches of
plaintive native songs, sung in the monotonous Hindoo treble.
_Hamlet_ was to be our opening bill, and we were very busy. But I, who
am usually rather lucky, found time to see a great deal of Calcutta. I
ran errands, or rather drove them, and that took me to a number of
strange places. I found my way to the native lumber yards. I learned to
bargain, in the vernacular, for timber. Moreover, I learned that the
only way to ensure its delivery at the theatre, in time for the
carpenters, was to see it loaded myself; to see the bullock carts start,
and to follow them every inch of the way, until we passed up
Dhurrumtollah, and I halted my unique procession triumphantly at the
door of the Corinthian Theatre. I learned to descend into the quarters
of the dhursies and to return to the theatre with a gharri load of
sewing machines and tailors. I even grew so expert in the Calcutta
highways and byways that I more than once pounced upon our dhobie in his
lair, and wrestled with him for the proper laundrying of some treasured
garment.
Best of all, I came to know the Burra Bazaar as few Europeans have ever
known it. We first drove there one brilliant Sunday afternoon. A lady,
who lived in Calcutta, and Jimmie M‘Allister went with me. My husband
refused to go to the place, which he had been told was aswarm with evil
smells and more evil natives. He was rather a dilettante sight-seer was
my lord and master; and he regarded my inveterate prowlings as something
to be permitted on broad principles of personal liberty, but never to be
countenanced, much less encouraged. I was an old _habitué_ of the Burra
Bazaar before I could induce him to go there with me; and he never went
but once.
The Burra Bazaar fascinated me powerfully. Day after day I went there,
when I should have been performing sacred social duties. The more I went
to the Burra Bazaar, the more I wanted to go. It held me—called me in a
thousand ways. What a drive it was from the hotel to the outskirts of
the Bazaar. We started in Europe, and stopped in the heart of Asia!
Through China the liberal into China the conservative, on to India the
wily, into India the tolerant, into India the dense—the real! Through
Bentick Street, where the Chinese shoemakers “most do congregate,” into
“Old China Bazaar,” where Fan Man sold silks that had been made in the
wonderful bamboo looms of Canton, dipped in the huge vats of Chinese
colour, beflowered by the deft needles of the incomprehensible
Mongolians. Fan Man was not the proprietor of the only silk shop in “Old
China Bazaar Street.” He had some dozen rivals. But national
consanguinity is more to a Chinaman than trade vigilance—I can say
nothing more emphatic of Heathen John’s love for his Heathen brother
man. While I sat in one Chinese silk shop, the retainers of all the
other adjacent silk shops clustered about the apparently doorless
doorway; they manifested every appearance of surprise at the
unprecedented bargains offered me by their fellow past grand master of
the brotherhood of selling. When I shook my head, pushed aside the
coveted masses of silken beauty, and returned to my gharri (with a
reluctance that was disgracefully ill-disguised for an actress), they
scurried back to their shops with an agility that was more rabbit-like
than Chinese. A Chinaman does not unduly urge you to enter his shop. He
is too dignified—too Chinese; but once in!—Ah! well, their wares were
very lovely, and very cheap, compared with all my preconceived standards
of price. Silk and such fabrics were not the only commodities of the Old
China Bazaar. Carved ivories, painted porcelains, and bamboo everythings
were in emphatic evidence. And there were lesser stores of many other
articles.
After Old China Bazaar we came upon the stronghold of the nondescript
Parsi merchants. What had they for sale?—What hadn’t they? A few among
many of their for-sale-offered commodities were second-hand American
cook-stoves, tin boxes, topees, cardigan jackets, broken
sewing-machines, pickles, dried-fish, hand punkahs, umbrellas, rusty
music-boxes, artificial orange-blossoms, Bibles, cigars, gin, toys,
lamps, portières, mildewed books in every known and unknown tongue,
cod-liver oil, and a few thousand other things. I even saw a pair of
skates there once, not roller skates, but really true skates.
Then the streets grew narrower; they wound and twisted in and out of
each other and themselves. Great gray houses towered thinly up toward
the glittering sky. Low, narrow doorways led into uninviting, windowless
booths. Fat, greasy babus squatted on the filthy little verandahs,
making up their books. Our gharri caught and stopped. The street was too
narrow. An incredible number of natives were wedged in between our
wheels and the adjacent doorways. Beyond were multitudes of black and
brown humans—seemingly eternal multitudes! The gharri wallah and the
sais got down, and a few dozen of the crowd helped them to extricate our
equipage. The proprietors of the pitiful little shops clung desperately
to the wheels, shouting the praises of their wares into my bewildered
ears, and cursed the charioteers for not leaving me for ever glued where
I was, or, at least, until I had emptied my purse and depleted their
emporiums. We went slowly and difficultly on, through the sickening,
pungent fumes of condiment shops, past great heaps of chillies that made
me sneeze and sneeze again. We saw tons of buttons, miles of tinsel,
crates of cheap wax beads, infinities of shawls. The saries were without
number; the piece-goods shops were numberless, and the varieties of the
other shops were as bewildering as the differing wares they held, and
the differing castes of the tradesmen who shrieked the superiority of
their merchandise with all the frenzy of mad dervishes. Now and anon we
caught, through a narrow gateway, a glimpse of a dirty, spacious
courtway, where liveried servants slept on empty boxes, and snored their
allegiance to His Highness the Rajah.
Pigeons, thousands and tens of thousands, fluttered over our heads, or
flew down to demand the corn which was never refused them. They looked
at me confidently with their clear red eyes. One fat fellow, I vow, was
an old friend of mine, in the days when I spent many _sous_ for corn to
scatter on the Square of St. Mark. Perhaps my head was a little dizzy
with the crowd, the babel, and the stench. I thought the pigeon spoke to
me. This is what I thought he said: “We’re both grown since we met in
Venice. You have changed for the worse. You used to wear bright blue
plumage and bronze feet, and you had long shiny ropes of hair down your
back. Now you’ve black feathers, and you seem a very ordinary sort of
person. But with me, everything has changed for the better. ‘How did I
get here?’ Oh! a missionary brought me over. But the missionary’s wife
was too fond of pigeon-pie, so I flew from Alipore to here, the Burra
Bazaar. I am sacred here; I can do what I like, and have what I like. It
will be a cruel day for me when the missionaries convert all the Burra
Bazaar.” And then the pigeon laughed, and added, as he winged away, “But
it won’t be in my day—oh no!”
When I had penetrated into some two or three of the tall, empty-looking
houses, and learned how packed with treasure they were, I experienced an
added delight in merely driving by them, and thinking what silken,
embroidered, bepearled loveliness lay in great piles within those silent
buildings.
The tortuous complications of the Catacombs at Rome are nothing compared
with the winding mazes of the Burra Bazaar. I believe that I have seen
every corner of the Burra Bazaar. I know my way into it. But my way out
of it I never knew; and I always shall regard the natives who do know
their way out as exceptionally clever.
I have done a great many foolhardy things in Asia. Proper European
memsahibs looked askance at me, and even my long-suffering husband
remonstrated. One of the two exploits which gained me the greatest
disrepute as a wild unladylike woman was going into the Burra Bazaar at
night. My husband was playing _Rob Roy_. I was not quite strong, and my
Scotch accent was not considered safe. Consequently I was out of the
Bill. That was a rare event in my professional life. And I made much of
it. We were preparing for the _Lady of Lyons_. That was a play that my
husband had always declared that he would never under any circumstances
play. He did play it in Calcutta, as a concession to the local
management. He now meanly says that he played it to please me, but that
is not accurate; and, at all events, he was in a fine rage over the
whole business. Claude Melnotte was not a gentleman he admired; and he
used to say some very unkind things _re_ the whole play, which a more
sensitive Pauline might have resented as personal.
“What are you going to wear, dear?” I asked him sweetly, at what I
thought a propitious moment. My gentle husband frowned.
“Wear!” said he. “I shall wear anything John lays out,—a Roman toga, or
Ingomar’s furs, or Shylock’s gown, or anything else. You didn’t for one
moment suppose I was going to _buy_ anything for that fool of a part,
did you?” I sighed.
“Then let us not play the piece,” I ventured.
“Now look here, Jimmie,” was his answer, “you know you’ve wanted to play
Pauline for years; you know I’ll never have any peace until we do play
it. So don’t let us say any more about it.”
“But I don’t want to play it unless the piece is nicely dressed. I am
having such lovely things made. You must have some as nice.”
“You’re a very foolish girl to buy a lot of new things for that idiotic
piece,” he said.
I went to the other end of the room. I sat down and looked
melancholy—as melancholy as a woman can who has fully determined to
have her own way. My companion preserved a manly silence for at least
three minutes, then he said:
“Look here, Jimmie, how much money do you want?”
“Oh! none, thank you so much,” I said as sadly as I could, “all my
things are paid for.”
“How much money do you want to get my things with?”
“You are a dear, good boy,” I said; “and I’m sure you’ll make a lovely
Claude.”
Strangely the compliment failed to please. My lord and master stalked
out. But at dinner-time he gave me a roll of rupees, on condition that I
would not mention Melnotte’s clothes to him until he had to try them on,
and that he should only try them on once.
It was in connection with _The Lady of Lyons_ finery that I went into
the Burra Bazaar at night, almost at midnight. I had been searching for
days for a certain piece of embroidered pine-apple cloth. One day Caloo,
my head dhursie, said to me, when he went away at sunset—
“Memsahib want me finish Saturday, memsahib must give rest stuff
to-morrow. I not get I cannot make finish.”
I was in despair. That night I drove my husband down to the theatre.
“Are you going home? or are you coming in?”
“I am going to look once more for my pine-apple cloth,” I said meekly.
“Where?”
Ah! that was the question I had hoped to avoid.
“I’ll try at the edge of the Burra Bazaar,” I said. My poor husband
looked at me in despair.
“You must come in with me,” he said. I went with him,—obedient wife
that I am. But when we reached his dressing-room I began to argue with
him gently. At last we compromised; which is about the best thing close
friends can do when they differ. I went to the Bazaar, but a friend went
with me,—a big blond fellow, who looked the soldier he was, and whom
half the natives in Calcutta knew as a fierce “lal-coatie sahib.” Dear
friend, he is dead now! He was, a few months ago, a victim of ignoble
cholera.
I had some difficulty in making the gharri wallah understand that I
really wished him to drive to the Burra Bazaar. But when he did
understand, he drove stolidly across Dhurrumtollah into Bentick Street.
We stopped a moment while my escort bought me an immense bunch of spicy
roses “to smell when we get into the Bazaar”; and while he was paying
for it, a lame boy hobbled up with a huge ridiculous cotton-wool lamb.
That was bought also “for the boy, if we ever come back.” Down Bentick
Street, where the dexterous Chinese shoemakers plied their trade by
lamplight, beyond two noisy “Sailors’ Rests,” then into the dark.
Neither of us spoke. My friend afterwards told me that he was a little
anxious as to the outcome of my mad escapade. I was expectant. Every
door was barred. Every house was dark. Asia was asleep. Where thousands
of chattering natives had crowded about my carriage that very morning,
not even a dog was to be seen. We drove for over two hours. We passed,
here and there, a turbaned, belted policeman. Each looked at us with as
much amazement as a sleepy Oriental can display, and salaamed. It was
brightly, weirdly light now. The moon was up, and the dusty deserted
streets lay before us like snow. We knocked at many doors, oftenest
without response. A few of the doors opened after a long pause. A
drowsy-looking native examined my bit of cloth by the light of our
gharri lamps, and shook his head. He retreated behind his heavy door,
shut and barred it. We went on. Not once, but twenty times, that was our
experience.
But long after I had quite relinquished all hope of getting my
pine-apple cloth, I insisted upon driving on. The moonlight was so
marvellous. It was so wonderful to be one of the three or four awake
among myriad sleepers. One old merchant was more enterprising than the
rest. He had, he said, just what I sought. He went into his house and
was gone some twenty minutes. Then he came out to us again. I leaned
over the gharri with anticipatory excitement. The old Hindoo drew from
his sleeve a piece of pale blue satin, on which two slippers were
heavily embroidered with gold and seed pearls. Very beautiful they were
in the midnight moonlight. I longed to take them back to my good-natured
husband, but I was too vexed with the ancient Brahmin, who had brought
me gold embossed blue satin instead of cream embroidered pine-apple
cloth, to deal with him. “Cedar jao,” I snapped out, and the patient
horses went on. I forgot my petty millinery vexation in looking upon the
magic high lights and the fathomless chiaroscuro made by the white
magnificence of the moonlight and the black splendour of the old gray
walls.
“What—oh! what is that?” I whispered, forgetting my own vague musings
and remembering my companion suddenly.
“That is a fakir chap. He has made a vow, don’t you know. His arm is
paralyzed; he has held it high up above his head for a vow, and now it
has grown that way. It doesn’t hurt him, but it looks jolly queer,
doesn’t it?”
An incongruously European clock struck midnight.
“Are you frightened?” I asked my friend.
“A little,” said the soldier, smiling; “and I am sure your husband is
more so.”
“Not he,” said I; “he’s singing ‘Roy’s Wife of Aldivalloch.’” But I
added to the sais, “Nautch ghât jao.”
Poor sais! He was fast asleep; standing bolt upright behind us. I woke
him, and sent him up to sit with the gharri wallah.
“I wonder why that fakir was the one native out at midnight,” I said, as
we returned out of the unknown moonlight of Asia into the familiar
gaslight of cosmopolitan Dhurrumtollah. My friend smiled involuntarily,
but he said nothing.
“Oh, I know what you think,” I said, with a woman’s swift, safe
impertinence. “You think that he was hunting pine-apple cloth to offer
to a new god.”
“Or something equally important—to him.”
That was a mean remark; so when I saw my husband come from the
Corinthian Theatre archway, I turned ungratefully upon my companion and
said:
“‘Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard!’”
“Are you all right?” said my husband.
“Oh yes,” said I. “Did we have a good house?”
Once afterwards I went into the Burra Bazaar at night. It was Sunday,
and my husband was dining with some men. I ordered the gharri at ten.
Maggie, my pretty little Madrassi ayah, came out to see me into the
carriage.
“Kither, memsahib?” said the salaaming sais.
“Burra Bazaar jao,” I answered.
Maggie caught at the gharri door, “Memsahib, no, no, not go—-must not
go,” she cried. “No safe, much harm.”
“Nonsense, Maggie,” I said rather roughly; “go in to your missie baba.
Cedar jao, Gharri-wallah.”
We had left the hotel, and were living in a bungalow. The drive to the
gate was long and winding. When the durwan swung open the gate, a woman
ran out from the shrubbery. Maggie pulled the gharri door open and
climbed in.
“I go please with memsahib,” said the girl.
“Aren’t you frightened?”
“I more frightened stay safe bungalow, know memsahib gone harm.”
Maggie sat opposite me. Her hands were meekly folded upon her saried
knees. When we passed into the dark, questionable streets of the native
quarter, Maggie did what she had never done before—she came and sat
beside me. The dark grew denser: she covered my miserable, useless
little hand with her great, faithful, black hand. A pigeon cried; and a
sick woman, lying inside one of the tall, mysterious houses, moaned.
Maggie was trembling.
“Bungalow jao, sais,” I said.
A lady, who had lived most of her life in Calcutta, said to me one
night, at a rather crowded dinner table: “Is it true that you went into
the Burra Bazaar with only native servants and at midnight?”
“Almost true,” I replied. “It was an hour or more earlier.”
“What a horrid thing for you to do!” was the frank rejoinder.
I was too sorry for my hostess to answer my gentle critic; but what
tales I could have told of her in Paris! Some people do indeed believe
in the forgiveness of sins, if they are conventional ones.
A friend, who knows me well, said to me recently: “How can a woman, who
is so over-timid about most things, do so many foolhardy things?” As a
matter of fact, I am a great physical coward. But I have never felt
afraid of the natives among whom I have gone so peculiarly; nor do I
believe that I have ever been in the slightest danger. As far as the
Burra Bazaar was concerned, I am sure that I was as safe as a queen
surrounded by a loyal army. The Orientals are not prone to kill the
geese that lay golden eggs. I spent too many rupees and too constantly
for the thrifty storekeepers to have seen harm come to me. Then think of
the hubbub that would have been raised if one European woman had been
murdered, as I was often told I would be! A terrible punishment would
have been meted out to my gharri wallah and sais. They were bound to
protect me, and so was every Hindoo of their caste. I often left the
gharri, and went where it could not go; but I noticed that, unless I had
my ayah with me, the sais always followed me. I was inveterate and
tireless in my prowlings in the Burra Bazaar. I saw strange sights
there, and smelled strange smells. I never received an uncivil look,
much less a rude word.
I had great fun several times in the Burra Bazaar. Where the press of
humanity was most dense, I used to take a rupee from my purse, and,
holding it up, ask, “What will you sell for this?” Oh! how they rushed
about me! What strange bargains they offered me! And how good-natured
they were. They whined and begged and prayed, they pushed and jambed
each other against the gharri door. They called me “Mamma” in the most
persuasive tones. But when my choice was made, they fell back and
salaamed and laughed gleefully as I drove away.
My husband went with me to the Burra Bazaar once—once only. We were
going to play _Our Boys_. To my horror, my husband elected to play
Perkyn Middlewick. I begged him to play Talbot; but he was caught by the
idea of playing a part so entirely new, in every way, as Middlewick
would be to him. The rehearsals began, and he grew quite infatuated with
his part. He began to plan elaborate costumes for poor old Mr.
Middlewick. I pretended to not quite understand the kind of brocade that
he wanted for a beautifully brilliant vest. In that way I inveigled him
into going with me into the Burra Bazaar. He sniffed at Bentick Street;
but he had been there before. With the Bazaar itself he was
unmitigatedly disgusted. When we reached the silk shop he broke into
open rebellion.
“How do you get in?” Sais pushed open a narrow door. A flight of steep,
shallow, almost perpendicular steps were all that we could see, and we
could only half see them. They were innocent of railing; they went
through space in the simplest way; and the only concession to
light-headed mortals was a questionable-looking rope that dangled from
the floor above.
He caught my arm: “You are not going up there! We’ll get our necks
broken, or, at the very least, be robbed.”
“I have been up there very often,” I urged; “and there is no other shop
where we are so likely to get what you want.”
I went up, and he followed me gingerly. The room, into which we crawled
rather than walked, was about ten feet by twelve. Four Brahmins sat upon
the floor; and the glass cases that lined the walls from ceiling to
floor must have contained some thousands of pounds worth of silk, of
crepe, and of embroideries. There was a chair in the room; it had not
been there when I paid my first visit,—I flatter myself it had been
bought for me, and doubtless out of my money. The proprietor of the shop
pushed the chair an inch in our direction; he placed a mat beside it,
and left us to decide how we would divide them.
We stayed a long time in the tiny room. The presence of a man inspired
them to bring out their choicest treasures. What exquisitely beautiful
things they showed us,—soft priceless crêpes, thick pliant satins,
matchless embroideries; they tempted my companion even more than they
did me. We found the very piece of pathetically ridiculous brocade that
he wanted, and he was as pleased as a boy.
Getting down the stairs was more than getting up them had been; but we
accomplished it with assistance. Our drive home was very slow. My
comrade stopped every few moments to buy some outrageous article. “I
shall never come here again in all my life,” he said; “do let me enjoy
myself.” It was a quaint gharri load of merchandise we carried back to
the Great Eastern. Even the stolid durwan looked amazed.
A few hours later my husband said to me, “Tell me truly, do you really,
honestly like to go into that place?”
“Honestly, I love it.”
He gazed intently at me for a few moments; then he said, “You are a
wonderful woman.”
Which showed that the Burra Bazaar had enriched his understanding even
more than it had impoverished his purse.