From Edinburgh to India & Burmah Part 10

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December ...--We left "Locksley Hall" at 7.30, and D. came to station to see us off and to give last instructions to the servants about catering for us. We have to train all night till two in the morning, then shoot duck and snipe at an out of the way tank, get back to train at twelve, and then home after another day and night in train. A long journey for a small shoot, but for R. the shoot is only a minor consideration. All along the road he stops at stations and gets reports front contractors and workers on the line, and generally sees that the line is in working order. His a.s.sistant engineer comes with his own carriage. R., as senior, can take the tail of train with our carriage so that he can watch the track as we jog along. It's a nice slow train, and you think you could walk beside it up the hills, but in reality you have to go at a gentle trot.

Bangalore Station was a sight for a tenderfoot--brim full of colour and types. Half in shadow half in light, as if several theatrical companies were on tour in their costumes--a company, say of The Merchant of Venice, another of The Cingalee, and a Variety Show or two. There were sellers of green bananas and soda water and native sweet cakes in all the colours you can think of, and British soldiers in khaki and pith helmets, and everyone running about with properties and luggage on their heads and in their hands.

This is, to my mind, a luxurious way of travelling. Both carriages have berths, bathroom, and kitchen, all very diminutive except the berths.

Our kitchen would hardly hold one European, but holds at least three natives. At five and a half miles an hour you can do all sorts of things, paint or snooze, or, as I prefer to do on this day, sit in a comfortable arm-chair with feet in the sun on the after platform and watch the line running away behind into the vanishing point.

R.'s a.s.sistant, H., is in our carriage, and these two pull out all sorts of doc.u.ments and papers flooded with figures and go into their work, and talk of cement, sleepers, measurements, curve stresses and strains generally, and of the particular bits of business on hand; but occasionally they have a minute or two off and we find ourselves talking of duck and snipe and overhauling decoys, R. and H. discussing the chances of the season at this tank or the other. Then they get to business again, about a native contractor perhaps--is he all right, or is he not?--and every now and then we disembark and have a brief chat with a stationmaster, and look at points or trees and buildings; these matters are gone through pretty quickly, and we get on to the tail of our train again as it slowly moves off.

We are going now through a gravelly red soil, the sun blazing hot. We go so comfortably slowly that we can lean out and see our little narrow gauge train crawling along like a silver grey caterpillar, for the pa.s.senger cars and goods cars are round topped like Saratoga trunks, and their French grey colour harmonises with the hedge of grey-green cactus leaves on the side of the line. Beyond the train we see the lines like curves of blue riband on the yellow and white quartz ballast of the track. Our little engine puffs up little rags of white against the blue sky. Add a touch of bright colour, a flutter of pink drapery, and a brown shoulder, a finely modelled arm and bangle at a carriage window, catching the cool draught, and you have, I think, quite a pleasant colour scheme. The track is so tidy that there are white quartz stones arranged along each side of the yellow quartz ballast, and where there is sand ballast it is patted down as neatly as a pie crust. R. says it is difficult to prevent the native navvy making geometric designs with the coloured quartz.

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By the afternoon we are in a wide-spreading country, only broken with clumps of palms at great distances. The soil is dull red, almost magenta at the edge of cuttings, and above on the plains it is yellow ochre with scrub bushes and many lemon-yellow blossoms. As the sun sets we pa.s.s flocks of sheep and goats collecting for protection within tall zerebas of thorn and palm leaves. The dust they raise catches the sun and hangs over them in a golden mist. Far out on the horizon there is one streak of warm violet where some low hills appear--a simple enough landscape, with not many features, but with the charm that belongs to scenes at sea or in the desert, where there are but two elements to hold the thoughts.

Now we draw up near a village, and women and children watch our train.

I wish they'd keep some one portion of their limbs and draperies still an instant to let me see and draw, but they won't. Two women lean against the wire fence near us, one a tall, small-headed and long-limbed matron in dullish green sari with gold or yellow round its edges in thin and broad lines, and a bodice of orange and crimson. Her neighbour leans and talks, incessantly moving; she is wrapped in vivid crimson, edged with a broad band of poppy blue. Behind them the village is hazy in half tone against the light; across the s.p.a.ce between, there flits a fairy in lemon-yellow or orange drapery slightly blown out so that the sun makes it a transparent blaze of yellow--a dainty Tanagra Figurine come to life and colour again!

... ARSIKERE.--We have our carriage gently shunted at a siding here, and stop under a banyan tree, and have our meal in the moonlight--such moonlight and such a meal! I've heard so much of Indian cooking, of the everlasting chicken and curries, but out of our two tiny kitchens we get a dinner worthy of a moderately good French cafe, fish and beef, and game, and variety of vegetables.--Indian beef is not half bad in my humble opinion, and the Vino Tinto is straight from Lisbon, by Goa, the Portuguese port on this west coast, what better could a man desire?

A hitch in our arrangements occurred here. Our plans were to tie on to a north-going train at two in the morning, and cut off again at a tank some miles up the line where the duck-shooting is sublime. But my host got a wire from the head engineer of the whole line about matters connected with the royal visit to Mysore, and he must now go down south, to stamp on the bridges and see that the line is all firm and safe, so the wanderer from home again realises that there is a Prince in the land! And we feel loyally resigned, especially as there happens to be good snipe ground where we are, and we can't return before midday to-morrow, and so can have a long half-day's shooting before we hitch on to the south mail train.

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As we sit at table on the side of the track, the village dogs steal into the moonlight and come gradually nearer us; masterless dogs of any colour betwixt the collie and fox-terrier. No one feeds them or owns them, so there's plenty of appet.i.te and unclaimed affection going. One old lady takes her position beside us for the night, and its poor bony sides are filled for once, and its brown eyes in the morning look grateful and eager for more. R. says he thinks the most miserable are those with fox-terrier blood; and they do not outlive their second litters. It lay on the sand a little way off the greater part of the night, the shyer dogs still farther off, scarcely seen in the darkness.

Perhaps these half-breds have inherited thoughts of former better days, which brings me back to that freckled, sandy-haired Eurasian boy at the Bundar, with his black eyelashes, and the blue-eyed, curly-haired girl in the native throng.

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Now we are coming to the snipe, "little by little," our nurse used to say, "as the lawyers get to Heaven," and I put in notes about them here from a letter written to my friend W. B., but not yet posted.

"MY DEAR W. B.,--You ask me about sport, and if I've got near a tiger? So far as I am aware I have not been in the immediate proximity of a tiger, though I have been in what is, at times, a tiger country--about Dharwar, and where I'd very probably have got one if I'd taken many men and months and much money to secure it.

But to-day I've had funnier shooting than I've ever had--fancy snipe, my dear man, amongst palm trees! tall cocoa-nut palms, betel nuts, and toddy palms, and banana trees--big snipe, and decently tame. Fancy them dodging like woodc.o.c.k at home, from a blaze of sun into the deep shadows of subtropical palm groves!

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"We trollied to our shooting ground, R. and I and four trolley men--such a nice way of getting along--with palms on either side of the track, some of them covered with creepers from their very tops to the ground in cascades--Niagaras, I mean, of green leaves and lilac blossoms; and through this jungle the sun streamed across the yellow quartz track and glittered on the lines. Two men at a time ran barefooted behind, one on each rail, and shoved the trolley and jumped on going down hill. We went at just a nice rate, which gave us time to note the birds and flowers along the side of the line.

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"About two miles down the line we struck off to the east on foot, and crossed rice stubbles with clear rills of water running through them, the first clear water we have seen here so far--any we have seen has been red or yellow with mud. Then we came to woods of all sorts of palms, mostly low growing on white sand, and here and there pools and marshes over which the palms stood and were reflected and threw sharp shadows across the blue reflection from the sky. Fancy shooting common snipe in such a botanical garden!

The last I shot were with S. in Ayrshire in cold, and wind and wet and a grey light on high moorland, about the 1st of last October.

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"We spread out, R. and I and his merry men, and waded; his butler and cook apparently as keen about shikar as cooking, and promptly three snipe got up, jolly slow flyers, in front of me, and I let off and hit one of the palm tree trunks and the snipe disappeared in the gloom of their shade. I saw R. on my right out in the full blaze of the sun get one of the three, then wisp after wisp got up and we began to bag them and to fear our cartridges would run out.

But imagine the difficulty of hitting even those slow waterfowl with an eagle or vulture or a group of them, huge fellows, looking at you from fifteen to twenty yards off from the top of a low palm, or a kingfisher of vivid cerulean quivering in front of your nose, so fixed in its poise and so dazzling in colour that you saw a pink spot for minutes after, and so got in to your waist. And there were many kinds of doves and pigeons, which almost fanned our faces as they swooped past, and hanging weaver birds' nests, that I tried not to look at, and a roller bird I'd defy anyone not to look at--the size of a jay, irridescent pale blue and green all over, with just a touch of brown to set off the blues. I'd fain have shot one but for the bother of skinning and curing. You can imagine how distracting at first was this free run in a natural aviary and botanical garden combined, and how difficult to concentrate on the 'commoner' garden snipe.

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"Very soon each of the men had a bundle of snipe and we had to return; but we had not many cartridges left, which consoled us. We went back pretty wet all over, for it was piping hot and airless under the palms, but on the fields outside the air was delicious and dry. We crossed the line to a beautiful lake with level gra.s.sy banks and found it alive with thousands of duck. They were very wary though, and kept far out of range and wouldn't rise. We had not time for rafting or boating, so got on to the trolly again, and back to our home on the siding; and some snipe were plucked before I'd found my pencil. You should see how neat these servants are with their fingers. Here is a jotting of the operation--I think I've got the movement of their rather weak-looking hands. They are sitting on the track beside the kitchen part of the carriage.

"I wish very much both R. and I could spare a little more time for this pastime, "but one canna dae a' thing," as they say at St.

Abbs, and R. has to attend to Royal preparations south--thus has the honour and glory of serving his country and his King--I am trying to see where my Ego scores, but don't--I miss a half-day's shooting. But the little we had, was astonishingly interesting though it wasn't very long. Now we have a day and a night home again--a hundred miles to a snipe shoot, my longest journey in proportion to the size of the shoot; but no distance at all compared with its novelty and interest.

... Drew most of the way home, cows, aloes, trees, women's figures, men's ditto, dogs, goats, palms, etc., etc. It pa.s.ses the time and does no harm that I wot of.

All pleasures but the Artist's bring "I' th' tail repentance like a sting."

"Home to Bangalore and the rehearsal of our adventures to our better halves, and talk--well into the night, which means here about 11.30! Then to bed at once, for R. has to start early with his Chief in the morning, he is coming from the Central Office at Dharwar; to test bridges and things in Mysore, to see they are strong enough, for they say there are twenty English valets coming in the Royal train!"

It rained heavily all night, and this morning the sky was overcast, and already we, who have been in India only a few weeks, feel almost vexed that it is not sunny. In the morning we went to the Residency to call--a strange hour to call at, one of the things in India n.o.body can understand--as reasonable as top hats and frock coats in Calcutta. It is a very fine Emba.s.sy indeed--palace, perhaps, you might almost call it, with a nice air of official dignity that comes from the Lion and the Unicorn in the front of the house above the entrance, and the little khaki clad native soldiers, mounted orderlies, and Red Chupra.s.sis in groups about the grounds.

Mrs Fraser, wife of the Resident, was at home, and wore a very pretty dress of soft grey and black muslin(?) with touches of dull rose bows--but how can you describe a dress of the present period, they are such subtle things; a Romney or a Reynolds dress would be easy enough--something white hitched up here or there would be near enough, but nowadays the colours of various materials tell through each other so delicately and the shapes suggest faintly so many periods that I question if it is in the power of words to describe a modern frock.

Our hostess, I gathered, is deeply engrossed in making the bundabast[15]

for the entertainment of the Prince and his retainers--If twenty valets require so many napkins, for so many days, how many cups and saucers will be needed for a Royal Procession for a week, and so on?

[15] I think the context explains the meaning of Bundabast--an invaluable word. I take it, it is used correctly as above. You can make "bundabast" for a campaign, I believe, or for a picnic; _i.e._, order the carriages, food, and things, and the right people, and generally take all responsibilities therefor.

15th. Dec.--This ought to be a date to remember in our lives. My neice and I went to jail to-day, both for the first time, and I am not anxious to go again. It is immediately across the road from Locksley Hall. We pa.s.sed through a double archway, guarded inside by native soldiers.

Facing us as we entered, the walls were decorated with trophies of chains and fetters, which the man in the street might see as he pa.s.sed.

The Governor very kindly went round with us, and we saw a distinctly stronger type of man than those outside; here and there a trifle too much cheek bone and queer eyes, mostly murderers, many with faces one would pick for choice as manly men. Famine times account for some of the murders, and overstocking I should say; it's done everywhere, in trout ponds, deer forests, and sheep runs. India, I expect, is over preserved; a bad season comes, and famine, and one starving fellow chips in with another, and knocks a third party on the head because he has a meal on him, and the first parties' children are crying for food--and by the prophets, we'd each try to do the same under similar circ.u.mstances, and the result would be the survival of the fittest. Government now catches the would-be "fittest" and sets him hanging to a piece of rope, or makes him wear beautiful bright chains and weave beautiful carpets, as they do here, in all the colours of Joseph's coat, in silk or cotton; with everything he wants except liberty and the sun on the road outside--and the children and wife. The carpets are exquisitely made in hand-looms.

The men sit in a sort of rifle pit and weave on an upright hand-loom, and the patterns on great carpets or the finest of silk rugs grow out of their wicked brains only; there's no pattern in front of them to copy from; they do it by heart. You know a "Lifer" from a "Timer" by the colour of their skull caps; one is white, the other brown--I think the brown is the "Lifer." All is beautifully kept, and the men look at you when ordered to do so, also when they are not ordered and your back is turned. They give their names too when ordered, and crimes, and terms of imprisonment, so gently. Oh! how I'd love to kick the blessed wall all down and let the lot out! then I'd have to sit up all night, I suppose, with a gun, looking after our silver-plated spoons.

The princ.i.p.al individual who caused most trouble in the prison was a "Lifer," I think, a most remarkably long, thin man, actually eel-like.

He had escaped three times. The last hole he escaped by he made with a nail, and it had just been bricked up and plastered over. He was not allowed to work, merely stood bolt upright, a head and shoulder higher than his two, armed jailers, who were chained to him. He was motionless as a statue, but I never saw such unrest as there was in his eyes; there was the look of the eye of a bird in the hand, one simple concentrated expression of watchfulness for a chance to escape. He is a bit of a wag, I am told. Once when he escaped he borrowed a carriage and livery and engaged himself to the services of a lady in Bangalore, and actually drove the lady to prison to call on the Governor. But when he gathered the Governor was coming to return the call, he thought it time to go; I don't know how he was captured again, and I wonder very much if he will escape once more. His four companions who stood beside him in the blaze of joyous sun were just going to be released in half an hour from all their joys and troubles. Two of them looked very murderous specimens, two looked good, I don't know why, but one felt curiously shy about looking at them. One or two of the murderers' faces wore a quiet half-smiling expression, barely human, and that seemed to me to spell "killing" quite distinctly and without any evil intent, like the expression on a Greek head I have only once seen, a youthful combatant--a cheery unintrospective look, a tough round neck, raised chin, oblique eyes, and the least smile on lips just parted. One young woman had that kind of face too; the rest were just as good in expression as outsiders. They were employed grinding millets in hand quirns, hard work, I'd think; the top stone they turn round, weighs two stone and they put it round fairly quickly. I'd so much have liked to have drawn this particular woman's face. I think it is the only handsomely shaped face I've seen in India so far, and yet that queer inhuman look ought to have prevented a child closing its eyes near her.

She had killed a child for its bangle and dropped it into a well, and in prison nearly killed another for another bangle. She was fourteen and had a look of complete ignorance of good or evil. This good-looking girl they tell me is to go into a nunnery--by my Hostie! I'd like to hear the end of the story.

We came back from the jail and found a tableau arranged on our verandah.

It was well done, whether by accident or design. The two princ.i.p.al actors sat in the middle of the verandah with neat bundles arranged round them, and behind them sat their two slaves or henchmen in garments of complimentary tints. The Memsahibs came and were salaamed, and sat in front of the traders. Then the bundles were opened and blossomed into colours and fabrics. Within ten minutes the verandah was covered with silks of every hue, gorgeous colours and the delicate colours of moonlight, so that the matting was completely covered with a veritable riot of colours and textures--a much more wonderful effect than any tricks with baskets or mangoes grown under sheets. I tried to put this down in colour, and here is a pen and ink jotting of the subject.

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Sunday.--Walked round the outside of the prison grounds amongst little patches of highly-cultivated market gardens and clumps of palms, and these long pumps like the ancient catapult with bronze men sweating at them pulling down the long arm of the balanced yard to let the bucket down the well, then tipping the water out into gutters of mud to irrigate. They do it pretty much the same way up the Nile. The cottages have low mud walls, and are thatched with dried palm leaves and sc.r.a.ps of corrugated iron, and the naked children, with their coal-black mops of hair, play about in the dust with the hens, and seem to have a good time. They are chubby and jolly, and don't quarrel so much, or speak so harshly as school board children in our Bonnie Lowlands. Here and there are quaint little temples, stone built, under the palms between the patches of cultivated ground. There are p.r.i.c.kly pears, and hedges of different th.o.r.n.y creepers with flowers of pink, cinnamon, deep orange, and violet. I pa.s.s a group of goats feeding on one of these hedges, black, white, and brown--a pleasant motley of moving colour. The piece of hedge near me has pink flowers, and behind it you see a little lapis-lazuli sky. The black goat's coat is almost blue with reflected sky. Near me a boy stands in the shadow of a tree herding a cow. The leaves throw deep shadows on the rusty red path and a tracery of leaf shadows, on the cow's back and sides--deeper in colour than the velvety black of the hide itself.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: A Street Corner, Bangalore]

In the evening my hostess drives me to another part of the bazaar, and we scribble, and try hard to remember a street corner and prevent other scenes obliterating our impressions and come straight home to get it down.