1879
In broad essentials the marryings and givings in marriage of India
nowadays do not greatly differ from these natural phenomena at home;
but to use a florist's phrase, they are more inclined to "sport." The
old days are over when consignments of damsels were made to the Indian
marriage-market, in the assured certainty that the young ladies would
be brides-elect before reaching the landing ghât. The increased
facilities which improved means of transit now offer to bachelors for
running home on short leave have resulted in making the Anglo-Indian
"spin" rather a drug in the market; and operating in the same untoward
direction is the growing predilection on the part of the Anglo-Indian
bachelor for other men's wives, in preference to hampering himself with
the encumbrance of a wife of his own. Among other social products of
India old maids are now occasionally found; and the fair creature who
on her first arrival would smile only on commissioners or colonels has
been fain, after a few--yet too many--hot seasons have impaired her
bloom and lowered her pretensions, to put up with a lieutenant or even
with a dissenting _padre_. Slips between the cup and the lip are more
frequent in India than in England. Loving and riding away is not wholly
unknown in the Anglo-Indian community; and indeed, by both parties to
the contract, engagements are frequently regarded in the mistaken light
of ninepins. Hearts are seldom broken. At Simla during a late season a
gallant captain persistently wore the willow till the war broke out,
because he had been jilted in favour of a colonel; but his appetite
rapidly recovered its tone on campaign, and he was reported to have
reopened relations by correspondence from the tented field with a
former object of his affections. Not long ago there arrived in an
up-country station a box containing a wedding trousseau, which a lady
had ordered out from home as the result of an engagement between her
and a gallant warrior. But in the interval the warrior had departed
elsewhere and had addressed to the lady a pleasant and affable
communication, setting forth that there was insanity in his family and
that he must have been labouring under an access of the family disorder
when he had proposed to her. It was hard to get such a letter, and it
must have been harder still for her to gaze on the abortive
wedding-dress. But the lady did not abandon herself to despair; she
took a practical view of the situation. She determined to keep the
trousseau by her for six months, in case she might within that time
achieve a fresh conquest, when it would come in happily. Should fortune
not favour her thus far she meant to advertise the wedding-gear for
sale.
Miss Priest was no "spin" lingering on in spinsterhood against her
will. It is true that when I saw her first she had already been "out"
three years, but she might have been married a dozen times over had she
chosen. I have seen many pretty faces in the fair Anglo-Indian
sisterhood, but Miss Priest had a brightness and a sparkle that were
all her own. At flirting, at riding, at walking, at dancing, at
performing in amateur theatricals, at making fools of men in an airy,
ruthless, good-hearted fashion, Miss Priest, as an old soldier might
say, "took the right of the line." There was a fresh vitality about the
girl that drew men and women alike to her. You met her at dawn
cantering round Jakko on her pony. Before breakfast she had been
rinking for an hour, with as likely as not a waltz or two thrown in.
She never missed a picnic to Annandale, the Waterfalls, or Mashobra.
Another turn at the Benmore rink before dinner, and for sure a dance
after, rounded off this young lady's normal day during the Simla
season. But if pleasure-loving, capricious, and reckless, she scraped
through the ordeal of Simla gossip without incurring scandal. She was
such a frank, honest girl, that malign tongues might assail her indeed,
but ineffectually. And she had given proof that she knew how to take
care of herself, although her only protectress was a perfectly
inoffensive mother. On the occasion of the Prince of Wales's visit to
Lahore, had she not boxed the ears of a burly and somewhat boorish
swain, who had chosen the outside of an elephant as an eligible
_locale_ for a proposal, the uncouth abruptness of which did not accord
with her notion of the fitness of things?
Miss Priest may be said to have lived in a chronic state of
engagements. The engagements never seemed to come to anything, but that
was on account mostly of the young lady's wilfulness. It bothered her
to be engaged to the same man for more than from a week to ten days on
end. No bones were broken; the gentleman resigned the position at her
behest, and she would genially dance with him the same night. Malice
and heartburning were out of the question with a lissom, winsome,
witching fairy like this, who played with her life as a child does with
soap-bubbles, and who was as elusory and irresponsible as a summer-day
rainbow. But one season at Mussoorie Miss Priest contracted an
engagement somewhat less evanescent. Mussoorie of all Himalayan
hill-stations is the most demure and proper. Simla occasionally is
convulsed by scandals, although dispassionate inquiry invariably proves
that there is nothing in them. The hot blood of the quick and fervid
Punjaub--casual observers have called the Punjaub stupid, but the
remark applies only to its officials--is apt to stir the current of
life at Murree. The chiefs of the North-West are invariably so
intolerably proper that occasional revolt from their austerity is all
but forced on Nynee Tal, the sanatorium of that province. But
Mussoorie, undisturbed by the presence of frolicsome viceroys or
austere lieutenant-governors, is a limpid pool of pleasant propriety.
It is not so much that it is decorous as that it is genuinely good; it
is a favourite resort of clergymen and of clergymen's wives. It was at
Mussoorie that Miss Priest met Captain Hambleton, a gallant gunner.
They danced together at the Assembly Rooms; they rode in company round
the Camel's Back; they went to the same picnics at "The Glen." The
captain proposed and was accepted. For about the nineteenth time Miss
Priest was an engaged young lady. And Captain Hambleton was a lover of
rather a different stamp from the men with whom her name previously had
been nominally coupled. He was in love and he was a gentleman; he had
proposed to the girl, not that he and she should be merely engaged but
that they should be married also. This view of the subject was novel to
Miss Priest and at first she thought it rather a bore; but the captain
pegged away and gradually the lady came rather to relish the situation.
Men and women concurred that the wayward pinions of the fair Bella were
at last trimmed, if not clipped; and to do her justice the general
opinion was that, once married, she would make an excellent wife. As
the close of the Mussoorie season approached the invitations went out
for Bella Priest's wedding, and for "cake and wine afterwards at the
house." The wedding-breakfast is a comparatively rare _tamasha_ in
India; the above is the formula of the usual invitation at the
hill-stations.
It happened that just two days before the day fixed for the marriage of
Miss Priest and Captain Hambleton, there was a fancy-dress ball in the
Assembly Rooms at Mussoorie. I think that as a rule fancy-dress balls
are greater successes in India than at home. People in India give their
minds more to the selection and to the elaboration of costumes; and
there is less of that _mauvaise honte_ when masquerading in fancy
costume, which makes a ball of this description at home so wooden and
wanting in go. At a fancy ball in India "the devil" acts accordingly,
and manages his tail with adroitness and grace. It is a fact that at a
recent fancy-dress ball in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a
lady who appeared as "chess," with the chess-men which had formed her
head-dress. This Mussoorie ball, being the last of the season, was to
excel all its predecessors in inventive variety. A _padre's_ wife
conceived the bright idea of appearing as Eve; and only abandoned the
notion on finding that, no matter what species of thread she used, it
tore the fig-leaves--a result which, besides causing her a
disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by engendering doubts as
to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the creation. Miss Priest
determined to go to this ball, although doing so under the
circumstances was scarcely in accordance with the _convenances_; but
she was a girl very much addicted to having her own way. Captain
Hambleton did not wish her to go, and there was a temporary coolness
between the two on the subject; but he yielded and they made it up. The
principle as to her going once established, Miss Priest's next task was
to set about the invention of a costume. It was to be her last effort
as a "spin"; and she determined it should be worthy of her reputation
for brilliant inventiveness. She had shone as a _Vivandière_, as the
Daughter of the Regiment, as a Greek Slave, Grace Darling, and so
forth, times out of number; but those characters were stale. Miss
Priest had a form of supple rounded grace, nor had Diana shapelier
limbs. A great inspiration came to her as she sauntered pondering on
the Mall. Let her go as Ariel, all gauze, flesh-tints, and natural
curves. She hailed the happy thought and invested in countless yards of
gauze. She had the tights already by her.
Now Miss Priest, knowing the idiosyncrasy of Captain Hambleton, had
little doubt that he would put his foot down upon Ariel. But she knew
he loved her, and with characteristic recklessness determined to trust
to that and to luck. She too loved him, even better, perhaps, than
Ariel; but she hoped to keep both the captain and the character. She
did not, however, tell him of her design, waiting perhaps for a
favourable opportunity. But even in Arcadian Mussoorie there are the
"d----d good-natured friends" of whom Byron wrote; and one of those--of
course it was a woman--told Captain Hambleton of the character in which
Miss Priest intended to appear at the fancy ball. The captain was a
headstrong sort of man--what in India is called _zubburdustee_. Instead
of calling on the girl and talking to her as a wise man would have
done, he sat down and wrote her a terse letter forbidding her to appear
as Ariel, and adding that if she should persist in doing so their
engagement must be considered at an end. Miss Priest naturally fired
up. Strangely enough, being a woman, she did not reply to the captain's
letter; but when the evening of the ball came, she duly appeared as
Ariel with rather less gauze about her shapely limbs than had been her
original intention. She created an immense sensation. Some of the
ladies frowned, others turned up their noses, yet others tucked in
their skirts when she approached; and all vowed that they would decline
to touch Miss Priest's hand in the quadrille. Miss Priest did not care
a jot for these demonstrations, and she never danced square dances.
Among the gentlemen she created a perfect furore.
Captain Hambleton was present at the ball. For the greater part of the
evening he stood near the door with his eye fixed on Miss Priest,
apparently rather in sorrow than in anger. His gaze seemed but to
stimulate her to more vivacious flirtation; and she "carried on above a
bit," as a cynical subaltern remarked, with the gallant major to whom
she had been penultimately engaged. Toward the close of the evening
Captain Hambleton relinquished his post of observation, seemed to
accept the situation, and was observed at supper-time paying marked
attention to a married lady with whom his name had been to some extent
coupled not long before his engagement to Miss Priest.
Next morning Miss Priest took time by the forelock. She waited for no
further communication from Captain Hambleton; he had already sent his
ultimatum and she had dared her fate. The morrow was the day fixed for
the marriage. Many people had been bidden. Mussoorie, including
Landour, is a large station, and the postal delivery of letters is not
particularly punctual. So she adopted a plan for warning off the
wedding-guests identical with that employed in Indian stations for
circulating notifications as to lawn-tennis gatherings and unimportant
intimations generally. At the head of the paper is written the
notification, underneath are the names of the persons concerned. The
document is intrusted to a messenger known as a _chuprassee_, who goes
away on his circuit; and each person writes "Seen" opposite his or her
name in testimony of being posted in the intelligence conveyed in the
notification. Miss Priest divided the invited guests into four rounds
and despatched four _chuprassees_, each bearing a document curtly
announcing that "Miss Priest's marriage will not come off as arranged,
and the invitations therefore are to be regarded as cancelled."
Miss Priest had no fortune, and her mother was by no means wealthy. It
may seem strange to English readers--not nearly so much so, however, as
to Anglo-Indian ones--that Captain Hambleton had thought it a graceful
and kindly attention to provide the wedding-cake. It had reached him
across the hills from Peliti's the night of the ball, and now here it
was on his hands--a great white elephant. Whether in the hope that it
might be regarded as an olive-branch, whether that he burned to be rid
of it somehow, or whether, knowing that Miss Priest was bound to get
married some day and thinking that it would be a convenience if she had
a bridecake by her handy for the occasion, there is no evidence.
Anyhow, he sent it to Mrs. Priest with his compliments. That very
sensible woman did not send it back with a cutting message, as some
people would have done. Having considerable Indian experience, she had
learned practical wisdom and the short-sighted folly of cutting
messages. She kept the bridecake, and enclosed to the gallant captain
Gosslett's bill for the dozen of simkin that excellent firm had sent in
to wash it down wherewithal.
Bridecakes are bores to carry about from place to place, and Miss
Priest and her mother were rather birds of passage. Peliti declined to
take this particular bridecake back, for all Simla had seen it in his
window and he saw no possibility of "working it in." So the Priests,
mother and daughter, determined to realise on it in a somewhat original
and indeed cynical fashion. The cake was put up to be raffled for.
All the station took tickets for the fun of the thing. Captain
Hambleton was anxious to show that there was no ill-feeling, and did
not find himself so unhappy as he had expected--perhaps from the
_redintegratio amoris_ in another quarter; so he took his ticket in the
raffle like other people. It is needless to say that he won; and the
cake duly came back to him.
Had Captain Hambleton been a superstitious man, he might have regarded
this strange occurrence as indicating that the Fates willed it that he
should compass somehow a union with Miss Priest. But the captain had no
superstition in his nature; and, indeed, had begun to think that he was
well out of it; besides which it was currently reported that Miss
Priest had already re-engaged herself to another man. But the bridecake
was upon him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what
the devil to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody
would take tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the _khud_
(_Anglice_, precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he
reflected that this would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate
soreness on his part. It cost him a good many pegs before he thought
the matter out in all its bearings, for, as has been said, he was a
gunner, but as he sauntered away from the club in the small hours a
happy thought came to him.
He would give a picnic at which the bogey bridecake should figure
conspicuously, and then be laid finally by the process of demolition.
His leave was nearly up; he had experienced much hospitality and a
picnic would be a graceful and genial acknowledgment thereof. And he
would ask the Priests just like other people, and no doubt they would
enter into the spirit of the thing and not send a "decline." Bella, he
knew, liked picnics nearly as well as balls, and it must be a powerful
reason indeed that would keep her away from either.
Captain Hambleton's picnic was the last of the season, and everybody
called it the brightest. "The Glen" resounded to the laughter at
tiffin, and the shades of night were falling ere stray couples turned
up from its more sequestered recesses. Amid loud cheers Miss Priest,
although still Miss Priest, cut up her own bridecake with a serene
equanimity that proved the charming sweetness of her disposition. There
was no marriage-bell yet all went merry as a marriage-bell, which is
occasionally rather a sombre tintinnabulation; and the _débris_ of the
bridecake finally fell to the sweeper.
I would fain that it were possible, having a regard to truth, to round
off this little story prettily by telling how in a glade of "The Glen"
after the demolition of the bridecake, Miss Priest and the captain
"squared matters," were duly married and lived happily ever after, as
the story-books say. But this consummation was not attained. Miss
Priest indeed was in the glade, but it was not with the captain, or at
least this particular captain; and as for him, he spent the afternoon
placidly smoking cigarettes as he lay at the feet of his married
consoler. To the best of my knowledge Miss Priest is Miss Priest still.