AT SUBATHU, WHERE THE BAGPIPES PLAY AND THE LEPERS HIDE
WE went from Bombay to Mhow,—such a desolate cantonment!—such a dâk
bungalow! But we had a charming audience for our first funny little
performance. The last time I had played—some months before in
Bombay—the bill had been the _Merchant of Venice_, and we had had ample
accessories of scenery and supernumeraries. This was very different;
there were only four of us. When we were not on the stage we were
rushing madly into another costume and another character; and the less
said about the regimental scenery the better. But the regimental
audience was ideal. _Uncle’s Will_, scenes from _Hamlet_, scenes from
_Othello_, and sprinklings of recitations—they received them all with
the greatest good-nature, and beamed upon us with hearty kindness.
Our next halt was at Allahabad, where we felt almost at home. We divided
our nights between the Railroad Theatre and the Regimental Theatre, and
our days went all too swiftly in the bazaars and in the barracks.
Then we went to Cawnpore. We played there, but for once in my life I
felt that acting was a very secondary consideration. One could not think
of one’s self, nor even of one’s work, when one stood for the first time
upon that sadly sacred ground. I should, in time, no doubt, have grown
used to being in Cawnpore, and have taken up right merrily the petty
thread of my personal existence; but we were in Cawnpore but a few days,
and all the time I seemed to hear the cries of women and children, and
see the red-handed natives drunk with butchery.
An army friend went to Cawnpore with us, so that for the nonce our
little “troupe” was augmented to five—quite a regiment. In Cawnpore I
went through the bazaars very little, but we wandered back each day to
the little graveyard that clusters about the Well, and to the Memorial
Church. An uncle of my husband’s was killed at the Cawnpore
massacre,—that saddened him and saddened me.
Lucknow and Agra were very beautiful, and greatly interesting; and
through the streets of both marched the soldiers—our soldiers!
The Residency at Lucknow is a tomb commemorating the fidelity and
devotion of English women. At Agra is the Tomb of Tombs—the most
beautiful of all tombs. It tells the story of a man’s love and
grief—love for a wife, and grief for her death.
On through Meerut and Muttra—through regiments of new friends and
companies of old. How pleasant those days were, and how hot! Umballa was
a place of horror.
We went to Patiala for a week or two. We were lodged at the State Dâk
Bungalow; we were the Maharajah’s guests—and certainly our host was
very princely. He is the owner of innumerable horses. We were met at the
station by a state carriage—such a state carriage!—and it and another
were at our disposal while we remained in Patiala.
Though the Maharajah was surrounded by quite a little coterie of
Europeans, Patiala is the most genuinely native place, of any
considerable size, that I know in India. The bazaars were absolutely
guiltless of European taint. I could have spent years in Patiala, not
because of the treasure-rich palace, not because of the wonderful games
of Polo, not for the pretty little river, nor for the huge caparisoned
elephants, but for the quaint, genuine flavour of native life.
The Sikhs are a splendid race of men. To look into the eyes of the best
manner of Sikh is to feel that you can trust him.
We played at Patiala—I forget how many nights. We played merely for the
Maharajah and his guests. We played at whatever hour pleased him, and we
were paid whether we played or not. We had heard of the Maharajah as a
pleasure-loving young fellow, and we expected to please him most with
our comediettas and farces, but it was the scenes that we did from
Shakespeare that his Highness demanded, over and over. We found him an
inveterate and appreciative theatre-goer, and my husband, who came to
know the Maharajah much better than I did, was often surprised by a long
and correctly quoted passage from Shakespeare. The theatre at Patiala
was charming and comfortable.
The Maharajah of Patiala has one of the best bands to which I ever
listened. The parks and public grounds are beautifully kept, and
Patiala—with its rose gardens and its purdah-hidden harems—is thriving
in the heart of modernised Asia.
We met in Patiala, and afterwards in Simla, the European lady who has
recently married the Maharajah of Patiala. Such a marriage may, of
course, change many old time-honoured Patiala customs.
We went back to Umballa, and then we journeyed up into the Himalayas.
Into cantonments where there was not so much as a Dâk Bungalow, and we
had to eat and sleep as best we might. We left the railway and
civilisation at Kalka. We went up to Dagshai in doolies, and on
horseback. Ayah sat with our little luggage on an ekka, and she said she
didn’t like it. I could see no earthly reason why she should like it.
But I thought that she was beautifully clever to stick on; any ordinary
mortal would have tumbled in fragments on the ground.
It was a marvellous ride. Every few hours we stopped and lit a fire by
the mountain roadside—a fire of twigs. We made tea, and warmed milk,
and ate a little cold lunch, and washed our hands and faces while the
coolies lay resting in the shade and smoking their hookahs.
Our road went from beauty into beauty that was greater. At Darjeeling we
had seen the Himalayas covered with snow. Now we saw the Himalayas aglow
with bloom, perfumed with fruit and athrob with life—the life of bird
and of beast.
It is strange how confident you grow in the coolies who carry you up and
down the steep mountain paths of Asia. I have had my bearers go on their
hands and knees to manage some peculiarly difficult bit of road. But I
have never had them stumble or even shake me roughly—save once, which
didn’t count.
Ayah seemed more fearful than I—and she always insisted upon carrying
Baby over the rough parts. That gave her a great deal to do, for most of
the paths over the Himalayas were very rough.
Up—up—up we went, until we reached high Dagshai. That was no place for
European civilians. It was wholly and solely for British soldiers and
bazaar natives. But they were all glad enough to see us. We meant money
to the natives and entertainment to the warriors. We were given an
officer’s empty bungalow. Some one sent us afternoon tea. It was about
six o’clock. By midnight our bungalow was furnished, our larder was
filled, and we had half a dozen servants pottering about as
industriously as if they had been in our employ for years. That could
only happen in India, I think. But it happened in India very
easily—quite as a matter of course. The natives take things as they
come, and they are accustomed to making shift. Their own lives are often
one long make-shift. That makes them very useful in our little domestic
emergencies.
The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and a detachment of the
Derbyshires were in Dagshai. The Derbyshires were old friends of ours.
They had welcomed us to Jubblepore and to Umballa. The Highlanders, too,
we had known in Hong-Kong. It used to give one quite a feeling of having
come home, to go into a strange cantonment and see a familiar uniform or
a well-known tartan.
In the 93rd there were boys whose surnames had been by their fathers
written gloriously upon the history of the Mutiny.
It was some hours’ journey from Dagshai to Subathu. We got into our
chairs in the early morning; it was not far from sunset when we came in
sight of the Subathu barracks. The bagpipes called us a quaint Scotch
welcome, and as we rounded the last khud and passed by the parade
ground, the windy music sounded very sweet to me. And I could have cried
with all my heart, “Bring on the Tartan!”
And again we had come to friends, for we had known the regiment in
Colombo. There is no regiment in the service that we have had cause to
like—yes, to love, more than the Gordon Highlanders. No wonder that
every man in the regiment is proud to be in it.
Again we were domiciled in an empty bungalow. But our housekeeping was
very simple. Our bungalow was near the officers’ mess, and from there
our meals were sent us.
We had expected to be in Subathu some days, but we stayed much longer.
Baby was ill and we dared not travel. But we went on playing, and night
after night we did our work with hopeful hearts and a full house,
because of a regiment’s hospitality. When we had exhausted our own
little repertoire, the regimental amateurs played with us, and that
enabled us to play _Caste_ and several other pieces that are dear to the
heart of Tommy Atkins.
One subaltern played Eccles for us on threes hours’ notice, and played
it splendidly. But Captain Macready was the histrionic genius of the
corps. I have never seen an amateur who compared with him for finish,
artistic breadth, and actor-like exactness. Captain Macready inherits
his dramatic gift, probably, for he is the son of one of the greatest
actors who ever played upon our English stage. There are other names in
the regiment that come back to me warmly. But if I told of them all, it
would read too much like a leaf out of the Army List.
It was at Subathu that I first went freely among the lepers. The wife of
the regimental chaplain gave me a letter to the superintendent of the
leper asylum. I was a little frightened at first, when I passed into the
place of pain, but the terror of the place was too great for petty
feeling to last.
[Illustration: H.H. THE MAHARAJAH OF PATIALA ON HIS FAVOURITE RACER.
_Page 320._]
I have always believed that charity should begin at home. And I believe
it still. But the lepers are a people apart. Their misery cries out
above all other human misery. Science and love should unite their utmost
strength to wipe this great and antique curse off the face of our earth.
If you think I exaggerate, when I say that there is no human misery that
compares with the misery of leprosy, go among the lepers and see.
And what shall I say of the man and woman who are devoting their lives
to those Subathu lepers? They were people of unusual culture—people who
would have been first among almost any of their fellows, and they, who
were not fanatics, but healthy, wholesome human creatures had elected to
live with and for the lepers. I felt, when I saw them last, on the steps
of their bungalow, that I could cover their hands with kisses and bless
them. I feel so still.
There are no words that would even partly describe the agonies of those
lepers. Some of them moaned, some prayed, some wept, some only crouched
on their beds and waited for death.
One poor fellow I shall never forget. He belonged to the highest Brahmin
caste. He would no more have eaten with me, nor have let me touch his
chattee, than he would have jumped into a river of fire. But his Brahmin
courtesy he never laid aside for a moment. When I came to the door of
his hut, he invariably struggled on to his feetless legs and cried me a
smiling “salaam.”
One morning we journeyed on to Kausali. It is a wonderful place, high,
high on the hills. We were there a week or more, and then we came sadly
back to Subathu, for we had left our little baby in the cantonment
cemetery at Kausali.