FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
ALICIA’S was rather a cheerless arrival at home. Her old father-in-law
was asleep on his charpai (small bedstead), and Robin, overcome by
slumber on his arm-chair, was in the midst of a dream, when both were
roused by the sound of Harold’s familiar voice. Up in a moment sprang
Robin, ready to give a warm welcome. After kindly greetings were over,
the lad turned hastily away to see what could be done for the comfort of
those who had arrived in the middle of a cold February night.
“Oh, this is too bad—the fire out, and the lamp all but burned down!”
cried Robin. “That lazy dog Mangal asleep, of course. But I set him the
example.—Mangal! Mangal! bring more logs; fill the kettle—no, I’ll do
that myself.—There is plenty of food in the doli [meat-safe]; we’ll have
it warmed up in ten minutes. I am so provoked at having gone to sleep;
but who would have dreamed of your coming on foot, and at such a late
hour?”
The bride was too weary to wait till a fire could be lighted and food
prepared. “I will go to my room, please,” she faintly said, “and the
ayah will bring me my tea.” The poor girl forgot at the moment that an
ayah’s services was one of the luxuries which she was to forego at
Talwandi.
“I will act as your ayah,” said Harold. “As soon as Robin can coax fire
to burn and water to boil, I will bring you your tea.”
As he spoke, Mr. Hartley, looking, as Alicia thought, haggard and pale
as a ghost, came wrapped in his dressing-gown to welcome his daughter.
It was an effort to Alicia to look pleased and happy on her first
introduction to her new father; she felt something of awe not unmixed
with pity, and wondered whether she could ever venture to be lively in
the presence of such a man.
While the servant was preparing the food, Mr. Hartley proposed united
thanksgiving and prayer. Alicia expressed her wish to join in it, though
she was hardly able to keep her eyes open during the service, brief as
it was. She then retired—if it could be called retiring in a place where
the accommodation was so cramped that every sound could be heard over
the house—and Alicia felt as if she must not only be uncomfortable
herself, but make every one else so. The last sound which fell on her
drowsy ear was that of Robin starting off with all the coolies whom he
could manage to muster at that hour of the night, to go with him to the
place where the bullock-cart had broken down, in order to bring home the
luggage.
Alicia did not awake till very late on the following morning—so late
that Mr. Hartley had gone to his work hours before; and Harold, who had
a crowd of native visitors to welcome him back, was only waiting to give
his wife breakfast before going the round of his station. After his
months of absence, the young missionary’s work was much in arrears.
“Harold, dear Harold, can we not have a little quiet?” murmured Alicia.
“It is very embarrassing to have such a number of black eyes staring
curiously at the new Mem, as if I were some kind of white bear just
imported from the North Pole.”
“I will carry them all off with me to the mango grove; but I must
introduce a few of my boys to you first.—Kripá Dé, Bál Singh, make your
saláms to the lady.”
They did so respectfully and with natural grace. Alicia was puzzled how
to return the politeness, for she had had no intercourse with natives,
except her servants.
“I see that your breakfast is just ready, my love,” said Harold. “Call
for anything that you want; Mangal acts as khitmatgar [table-servant] as
well as cook.”
“But surely you are going to take breakfast with me!” cried Alicia. “I
am not to eat alone, and on the first morning here!”
“Forgive me, darling, for hurrying away. I do not know when I shall be
able to overtake all the work which I find before me.”
“But you must eat breakfast,” began Alicia.
“I took mine hours ago with my father. I only waited to see you, and
look after your little comforts. Indeed I must go,” continued Harold,
vexed to see moisture rising to the eyes of his wife. “I have left my
burden too long on the shoulders of others. You know that a missionary’s
time is not his own;” and in another minute he was off.
“So I am not to have the society of my own husband, or have him always
surrounded by natives!” murmured Alicia, as she sat down disconsolately
to her solitary meal. “It is rather hard—but no! I must remember
Harold’s words, that nothing is hard which is right. And missionaries
should have submissive wills.”
Alicia gave a little sigh. Her eyes were opening to the fact that to be
a good wife to a devoted worker like Harold would require some amount of
self-denial. Time was already beginning to show to the bride that she
needed a great deal of training to be fit for the position which she had
lately thought the most enviable in the world. The conclusion at which
Alicia arrived, as she rather pensively ate her suji, was that she must
in future make her appearance a good deal earlier than ten o’clock in
the morning.
“Already my folly and self-will have involved Harold in trouble,” Alicia
said to herself. “If I had taken his advice, I should have waited
patiently in the gári till the nat-kat’s temper was subdued, and should
not have added the weight of ourselves and our luggage to an already
overladen cart. Had I behaved like a sensible woman and not like a silly
child, the cart might never have stuck in the mud nor the wheel come
off.”
Alicia glanced around her and above, surveying her new habitation. “Very
bare it looks, I must own; no ceiling to hide the rafters; nothing
pretty to adorn the walls. This clearly has never been the residence of
a woman. I will soon make mine look brighter than this. I am glad that
Harold has promised to leave all the decorations to me. Ah, here come
our goods at last!” exclaimed Alicia, springing up joyfully from her
chair as Robin, himself carrying a large portmanteau, appeared at the
head of a band of coolies, who, after the curious native fashion, bore
their heavy loads on their heads instead of their backs. “O Robin, I am
so glad to see you. Let the men set down their burdens here in the
veranda. You will help me, I know, to open the boxes.”
Robin was hungry, and would far rather have taken his place at the
breakfast table after a night of toil; but without a word he put down
the portmanteau and went off for his tools. Alicia was very eager to
have the cases opened, to ascertain that her goods had sustained no
injury from the jolting or the fall from the cart. But when the wooden
cover of the first large box was raised, and the tin beneath unsoldered
(rather a tedious operation), the examination of the contents, slowly
extricated from the hay in which they had been packed, was not very
satisfactory to their owner.
“Oh, my clock—my beautiful clock! The siren broken to pieces! I daresay
that the works are useless!” exclaimed Alicia.
“I hope not,” said Robin cheerily. “I am a bit of a watchmaker, you
know. I hope to set the clock going again, though I cannot undertake to
patch up the siren. Here, let me help you. That box is too heavy for
your little hands.”
“It is my medicine-chest, and full of bottles,” said Alicia. “Oh,” she
added in a different tone, “what can have happened? Something inside
must have been broken; my hands are all covered with castor-oil! Ugh!”
Not only the fingers of the lady, but a good many things besides, were
moistened with oil and full of its odour. Scarcely a bottle had survived
the shocks of that journey. Alicia looked aghast when she became aware
of the extent of the mischief done.
“Don’t worry about it, dear,” said her brother-in-law, with rough
sympathy. “To have nice things spoilt is a very common experience with
us missionaries, so I have often congratulated myself on having so few
things to be ruined.” Seeing the cloud still on Alicia’s face, Robin
added more seriously, “You know there is something in the Bible about
taking joyfully the spoiling of goods.”
“It is difficult to take it joyfully, but I must try to take it
patiently,” said Harold’s bride. “But where is my beautiful piano?
Surely you have not left it behind!”
“One of the oxen is loaded with—with what remains of it,” said Robin
slowly.
“Oh, surely the piano is not broken! My father’s gift! Don’t say that it
too has come to grief!” cried Alicia.
“Then what am I to say?” replied Robin. “I am sure that I would far
rather tell you something pleasant, but one of the big packing-cases
fell on the poor piano.”
“And smashed it—quite smashed it?” cried Alicia.
Robin gravely nodded his head, then turned a little aside to avoid
seeing the tears gathering in Alicia’s lovely eyes.
“Perhaps the piano is not past mending,” were the first words which she
uttered, after a silence of several minutes.
Robin knew that the instrument was quite past repairing; his silence was
sufficient reply.
“I suppose that missionaries must not let their hearts cling to anything
earthly,” thought poor Alicia. “I must gradually learn _to endure
hardness like a good soldier of Jesus Christ_. After all,” she said
aloud, “one might have worse losses than even that of a new piano.”
So the sad face cleared up a little, and Alicia, with a resolution of
making the best of what remained to her, turned to the second of her
large packing-cases.
“That chiefly contains clothes and linen,” she observed, “and a very
large roll of wall-paper. Nothing there is likely to have been spoiled.
But I can examine nothing in it until I have washed these oily fingers.”
“May I suggest your waiting a little before doing any more unpacking,”
said Robin. “You look tired already, and the first case is not fully
explored. From what you say, it appears that there is little or nothing
liable to be broken in this second box, so you can leave it for a while.
Let these fellows carry both boxes into the bungalow.”
“Not into your bungalow, Robin; they would not leave us standing room,”
said Alicia with decision. “Let everything be put into our empty
house”—the lady glanced at the yet scarcely finished bungalow which
adjoined the one in whose veranda she now was standing,—“there is space
for everything there, and in it I shall gradually unpack all my things.”
“That house, newly built, is damp,” expostulated Robin; “you must put
nothing into it yet.”
“Indeed, but I will,” was Alicia’s playful retort. “I want my own
property in my own home, and it only gives useless trouble to carry it
backwards and forwards. I suspect, Master Robin, that you wish to see
the contents, and so you shall, but not till I have arranged them and
put them into right order.”
“You have been in India so short a time,” began Robin; but the wilful
girl cut him short with a laugh.
“And so you favour me with the results of your long experience. Oh,
grave and reverend signor!” she cried, “I have been a little longer in
the world than you have, and won’t stand like a meek little girl to hear
how, when, and where I should open my boxes. So go to your breakfast,
dear Robin. I have been very selfish to keep you from it so long. I am
sure that I am much obliged to you for all the trouble which you have
taken about my luckless luggage.”
As Robin sat at the breakfast-table drinking cold tea and eating colder
suji, he heard Alicia, as she stood in her yet uncompleted veranda,
ordering the coolies to take away or bring (she constantly confused the
two verbs), eking out her slender amount of Urdu with English, and more
comprehensible signs, and evidently rather pleased at finding herself in
the position of mistress in her own dwelling.
“What father said yesterday was quite right,” reflected Robin. “He and I
had better go out with our tent for some days itinerating in the
district, and leave Harold and Alicia to settle down quietly here. It is
quite natural that they should like to be a little together, with no one
else near. Of course, the bride, accustomed to live in a handsome house
in a city, finds our quarters uncomfortably small when we are all
together. Let her and her husband have the bungalow for a while all to
themselves.”
So in the course of the day this little matter was settled. Soon after
dawn on the following morning, Mr. Hartley and his younger son started
on an itinerating tour amongst the surrounding villages. A camel carried
their tiny tent, a few wraps, and cooking-vessels. The old missionary
rode his pony, and Robin walked. The weather was delightful, as it
usually is at that time of the year. Harold and his bride were left in
sole possession of the bungalow at Talwandi.
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