Olivia in India Part 11

"Big!" cried Kittiwake. "Why, they're only _butchas_;" and she lifted the edge of the basket to get a better view, at which one of the _butchas_ made a rush for the opening and made straight at me. With a yell I s.n.a.t.c.hed up my skirts, knocked over Hilda, leapt "like a haa.r.s.e" on to the verandah straight into the astonished Mr. Royle, while the weird beast disappeared like a yellow streak.

"Whatever is the matter?" he asked as I sank to the floor.

"Olivia's afraid of the _butcha_ otter!" squealed Hilda, while she scampered about looking for the truant.

"Otter?" said I.

"Yes," said Mr. Royle; "they are baby otters that the fisherman found at the side of the lake. I thought of sending them to the Calcutta Zoo. They aren't very common in India."

"I'm _so_ glad!" I gasped; and Mr. Royle looked mystified. It didn't seem exactly a reason for fervent gladness, but suppose they _had_ been mongooses? My life, so to speak, was ruined.

Staying in the house with Mr. Royle is rather like being with Colonel Newcome in the flesh. He is such a very "perfect gentil Knight"--as courteous to a native woman as to the L.-G.'s wife. The people round about adore him and his wife; they are a kind of father and mother to the whole district. There would be little heard of disloyalty to the British if all the Sahibs were like Mr. Royle, He is so good--I'd be almost afraid to be so good in case I died--but not the least in a sickly way. He is a teetotaller, a thing almost unheard of in India; and he isn't ashamed to be heard singing hymns with the children before their bed-time; yet (why yet?) he is a crack shot, a fine polo player, an all-round sportsman.

Both he and his wife are very fond of books. Mrs. Royle reads everything she can lay her hands on, but her husband's special subject is philosophy, and last night he lent me a volume of Nietzsche.

I don't think I understood a single word, but between it and the _moorghy-khana_ I had a bad night. I thought I had to make in five minutes a new scheme of the Universe. All the odd-shaped pieces were lying about like a picture-puzzle, and I feverishly tried to make them fit, in the clumsy ineffective way one does things in dreams. Just as I had it almost finished, Mrs. Royle came with a fowl in each hand and said sternly, "These must come into your scheme." I took the two great clucking things and vainly tried to thrust their feet--or is it claws hens have?--into a tiny corner, and they had just wrecked all my efforts when I woke!

I have taken some photographs which I shall send you. The delightful babu b.u.t.toned tightly into the frock-coat is a clerk of Mr. Royle's, called a "Sita-Ram--two-o'clock." The frock-coat was a legacy from a departing Collector, and he is immensely proud of it. He is a great delight to me, and says he will never cease to pray for my _internal_ welfare! Talking of babus, one wrote to Mr. Royle the other day about a pair of riding-breeches, and said, "I have your Honour's measurements, but will be glad to know if there is any improvement in the girth." Don't you think that was a very pretty way of asking if he had put on weight?

When I showed Autolycus and the _chupra.s.sis_ the photographs I had taken of them, the _chupra.s.sis_ said, "_Atcha_" (very good), but Autolycus shook his head violently, and when Boggley asked him what was wrong, he replied in an injured tone that it made him look quite black!

_Feb. 12_.

... Deep snow, hard frost, bright sun--how gloriously sparkling it must be! It dazzles my eyes to think of it. I don't wonder you revel in the skating and the long sleigh rides through the silent forest. Talk about the magic of the East--it could never appeal to me like the magic of the North.

Storks, snow-queens, moor-wives, ell-women--how the names thrill one!

What was your Hans Andersen like? Mine was light blue and gold with wonderful coloured pictures, but it was the frontispiece I studied, and which held me frightened yet fascinated. It was a picture of a pine-wood, with a small girl in a blue frock and white pinafore and red stockings, crying bitterly under a tree, in the branch of which a doll hung limply, thrown there by cruel brothers. Through the trees the sunset sky was pale green melting into rose-colour, and the wicked little gnomes that twilight brings were tweaking the child's hair and jeering at her misfortunes. One felt how cold it was, and how badly the little girl wanted her hood and cloak. The darkness was very near, and worse things than little gnomes would slip from behind the tree-trunk trunks. It never occurred to me that the little girl might have run home to warmth and light and safety. That was no solution--the doll would still have been there. Your letter, with its tale of snow and great quiet forests, and the picture you drew me of the funny little girl with the flaxen plaits and the red stockings, made me remember it. I don't know where my old book is--gone long since from the nursery bookshelf to the dustbin, I expect, for it was much-used and frail when I knew and loved it--but your word-picture gave me the pa.s.sport and enabled me to creep once again inside its cover, so brave in blue and gold, and to greet my friend in the red stockings, and find her as highly coloured as ever, and not a day older. It is nice of you to say I have a courageous outlook on life, but I wish I hadn't told you the story of the mongoose that was an otter. Now you will say, like Boggley, _Funk-stick!_ If I stay much longer in this frightsome land my hair will be white and my nervous system a mere wreck.

Yesterday we left the solitude of Rika and went to polo at a place about seventeen miles away. It was very interesting to meet all the neighbouring Europeans--mostly planters and their wives. There were about twenty people, and everyone very nice. I wish I had time to tell you about them, but I haven't. After polo, which I enjoyed watching, we all had tea together and talked very affably. Then Mr. Royle drove me home while Boggley went with Mrs. Royle. I heard, as we were leaving, Mr. Royle say something to Boggley about the horse being young and skittish, and a faint misgiving pa.s.sed through me, but I forgot it talking to Mr. Royle, and when we reached Rika I went off to dress for dinner, taking it for granted that the others were just behind. Letters were waiting me, and I lingered so long over them I had to dress in a hurry, and ran to the drawing-room expecting to find everyone waiting. But the room was empty. Hungry and puzzled, I waited for another ten minutes, and then went along to Boggley's bedroom, to see what _he_ meant anyway; but there was no one there. More and more puzzled, but distinctly less hungry, I went back to the drawing-room, looked into the dining-room, finally wandered out into the verandah, where I found the children's old nurse Anne tidying away the children's toys.

I said: "Nurse, where's everybody?"

Anne left the toys and lifted both hands to high heaven.

"Och! Miss Douglas dear, it wasn't for nothing I dreamt last night of water-horses. The night before ma sister Maggie's man was killed by a kick from a wicked grey horse (Angus M'Veecar was his name, and a fine young lad he was) I dreamt I saw one. As big as three hills it was, with an awful starin' white face, and a tail on it near as long as from Portree to Sligachen. It give a great screech, and a wallop in the face of me, and jumped into the loch, and by milkin'-time next morning--a Thursday it was--ma sister Maggie came into the door cryin', 'Och and och, ma poor man, and him so kind and so young,' and fell on the floor as stiff as a board."

Anne comes from Skye, and often tells me about water-horses and such-like odd denizens of that far island; and I find her soft Highland speech, with its "a.s.s" for "as" and "ch" for "j," very diverting; but this time I wasn't amused.

"But nothing _has_ happened, Anne. What are you talking about? Where is my brother?"

"Mercy on us all, how can I tell? The mistress and the young gentleman has never come in, and the master says to me, 'Fetch me my flask, Anne,' says he; and fetch it I did, and he drove away, an' I'm sure as I'm sittin' here I didn't see the water-horse for nothing. What does a flask mean but an accident? Och--och, and a nice laughin'-faced young gentleman he was, too."

If life is going to contain many such half-hours I don't see how I am to get through it with any credit. I left Anne--whom at that moment I hated--to seek information from the servants, which she did with a valiant disregard of her entire lack of knowledge of Hindustani, a language she stubbornly refused to learn a word of. The last I saw of her she had seized the _khansamah's_ young a.s.sistant and was shouting at him, "Chokra--ye impident little black deevil, will you tell this moment, has there been an accident?" Backwards and forwards I went in the verandah, then down the steps to the road, straining my eyes to see and my ears to hear something--what I did not know. From the garden the scent of the roses and mignonette came to me in the soft Indian darkness. I ventured a little bit along the road, too anxious to remember, or, remembering, to care, that I had no lantern, and that at any moment I might tread on a snake. I could only think of one thing, and how often I pictured it! Mr. Royle coming back, and the natives carrying someone--someone who didn't laugh any more. The odd thing was I didn't seem to mind at all what happened to kind Mrs.

Royle. It was Boggley, and only Boggley, that mattered to me. Of course nothing did happen to anyone. It isn't when one expects and dreads it that tragedy comes. Tragedy comes quietly, swiftly. I remember going to see a fisherman's widow in a little village on the stormy east coast. She told me of her husband's death. "I had his tea a' ready an' a bit b.u.t.tered toast an' a kipper, but he never cam' in."

That was all--"He never cam' in."

When our wanderers returned they were rather amused than otherwise.

The horse had given trouble and ended by kicking the trap to pieces, and they had to walk part of the way home. Quite simple, you see; but the first opportunity I looked in a mirror to see if my hair had not turned white in a single night, as men's have done through sudden fear. It hadn't; but I did dream of a water-horse with "an awful starin' white face."

This morning Mrs. Royle took me to the village to get some bra.s.s to take home. The shop was a little hut with an earthen floor, a pair of scales, and one shelf crowded with bra.s.s things, made, not for the European market, but for the daily use of the people, such as drinking-vessels--_lota_ is the pretty name--and big bra.s.s plates out of which they eat their rice and _dhalbat_. They keep them beautifully polished with sand, and I think they ought to be rather decorative; much more attractive certainly than the candlesticks and pots and cheap rough silver-work which is the usual loot carried away by the cold-weather visitor.

_16th_.

Another mail-day will soon be upon us; they simply pounce on one.

We have to get letters away by Tuesday from the Mofussil instead of Thursday as in Calcutta. I look forward with great distaste to leaving this place next week. When with the Royles one can't imagine oneself happy anywhere else. The days pa.s.s so quickly; breakfast seems hardly over when it is time for luncheon, and before one has really settled down to read or write it is four o'clock, and time to go to tea, which is spread down by the lake among the roses, the sun having lost its fierceness and begun to think of going to bed. We all sit at a round table and eat brown bread and b.u.t.ter and jam, all home-made. The china we use is very pretty and came from Ireland, but Mrs. Royle has been greatly troubled by its discoloured appearance, which the servants a.s.sured her there was no cure for. I suggested rough salt and lemon-juice, and after tea yesterday afternoon they brought it, and we each set to work on our own cup and saucer, and behold! in a very short time they were like new. Boggley made his particularly beautiful, but unfortunately broke it immediately afterwards, at which Kittiwake laughed so immoderately she fell on her saucer and sent it to its long home.

I have learned to take a most intelligent interest in fowls and Nietzsche; and more and more as the days pa.s.s do I like and admire our host and hostess. I never met people I felt so _affectionately_ towards.

Here come the children flying, followed patiently by the old _khansamah_ with a spoon in one hand and a bottle of cod-liver-oil emulsion in the other. I had better finish this letter and get the ink out of their reach.

_Baratah, Thursday, Feb. 21_.

... Now we are really camping out, and I sit outside my tent even as Abraham did of old. I have a whole long day before me to write.

Boggley was up and away long before I was awake, and won't be back till evening.

We left Rika on Monday afternoon, very sad indeed. Mrs. Royle, as is her way, heaped us with benefits, and, mindful of our starvation on the way to Rika, had a luncheon-basket packed with cold fowl, home-made bread, tomatoes, and a big cake. As we drove off the children pursued us down the drive crying, "Don't go away. Stay with us always."

At the station we were told that the train was two hours late, and Boggley thought it would be an excellent plan to spend the time calling on the Blackies, who live near; so, leaving Autolycus and the _chupra.s.sis_ with the luggage, we set out. We had been shown the flower-garden and a crocodile that Mr. Blackie had shot, and were about to drink a dish of tea in the drawing-room, when we heard the whistle of an engine. "The train!" cried Boggley, bounding to his feet, and spurning the cup of tea Mrs. Blackie was offering to him. It was no moment for ceremony. With a shrieked good-bye we leapt out of the window and across the compound, and set off on our half-mile run to the station. There is something peculiarly nasty about the nature of Indian trains. Simply because we left the station it chose to be up to time. It must have been an amusing incident to the people in the station, but I would have enjoyed it more had I been one of the natives watching from a third-cla.s.s carriage instead of, so to speak, one of the princ.i.p.al actors. There was the engine shrieking in its anxiety to start; there was our luggage neatly spread all over an empty compartment; there was Autolycus protesting shrilly that the train could not leave without his sahib, who was a very _burra_ sahib; and finally there _we_ were with scarlet faces, topis on the backs of our heads, surrounded by a thick cloud of dust, careering wildly into the station.

After all the fuss, we had only about thirty miles to travel, when we got out and drove three miles in a kind of native cart to a dak-bungalow, a very poor and uncomfortable specimen of its kind. It didn't uplift us to hear that plague was very bad all round, and after a somewhat jungly dinner during which we were very thoughtful and disinclined for conversation, we sought our mildewed couches, to rise again at skreich of day and continue our journey, till late on Tuesday night we got out finally at Baratah station and drove out to our present camping-ground. The people knew we were coming, and the tents were up; but they hadn't expected us till the next day, so nothing was ready, not even a lamp. It was the oddest experience to stumble about in black darkness in entirely unknown surroundings. You know how Boggley tumbles over things in the broad light of day, so you can imagine what tosses he took over dressing-tables and chairs in the darkness. It didn't last long, however, for an important fat _khansamah_ hurried in, shocked at our plight, and, explaining that his sahib, Mr. Lister, was away for a few days, brought us a lamp and other necessaries. Dinner was not possible under the circ.u.mstances--the box with our forks and knives had not arrived--so the remains of Mrs. Royle's luncheon-basket coldly furnished forth our evening meal While we sat there, uncomfortably poised on dressing-bags, gnawing legs of fowl and hunches of bread, I thought of you probably dining at the Ritz or the Savoy, with soft lights and music, and lovely food, and probably not half as merry as Boggley and I.

I don't know if I really like a tent to live in. The floor is covered with straw, and then a carpet is stretched over it, which makes a particularly bulgy, uneven surface to stand dressing-tables and things on. The straw, too, is apt to stick out where it is least expected, and gives one rather the feeling of being a tinker sleeping in a barn.

At night a tent is an awesome place. It is terrible to have no door to lock, and to be entirely at the mercy of anything that creeps and crawls; to have only a mosquito-net between you and an awful end.

I woke last night to hear something sniffing outside the tent. It sc.r.a.ped and sc.r.a.ped, and I was sure that it was digging a hole and creeping underneath the canvas. I sat up in bed and in a quavering voice said "Go away," and the noise stopped, but only to begin again--sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe, snuffle, snuffle, in the most eerie way. Then something worse happened. At my very ear, as it seemed, the most blood-curdling yell rent the astonished air. It was only a jackal, Boggley says, but it sounded as if all the forces of evil had been let loose at once. You can laugh if you like, but I think it was enough to frighten a very Daniel. As for me, in one moment I was well under the blankets, with fingers in both ears, and I suppose even in the midst of my terror I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew was daylight and the cheerful sound of voices. To-night I shall have a lamp burning and a _chokidar_ (watchman) to sleep outside my tent.

Baratah is quite a large town, and has a Roman Catholic Mission and two lady doctors. We are camping about a mile from the town in a corner of Mr. Lister's compound. It is pretty, with well-kept gra.s.s and flower-beds, and opposite is the Guest House of the Raj, where we would be staying now were it not that its roof is not quite safe, and it cannot be used. I went through it, and a great neglected place it is, with tawdry Early Victorian furniture and awful oleographs.

When the sun had gone down yesterday, we went for a walk to explore, along an avenue of peepul trees, across a fine polo-ground, and then we lighted on a big tank. A tiny native boy was perched on the bank watching something in the water, so we sat down beside him and watched too. The something was very large and black, and we were puzzled to know what it was, till, at a word from the child, it heaved itself out of the water and revealed itself an elephant. Up it came to where we were, laid its trunk down so that the small boy could walk up, and off he went proudly riding on its head. It was the nicest thing to watch I ever saw.

We got the home mail the night we arrived here, but couldn't see to read it till the next morning. So you are back in London--sloppy, muggy, February London! How you will miss the cold clear North and all the ice-fun; but you will be so busy finishing the book that surroundings won't matter much. It seemed quite home-like to see the familiar address on the note-paper.

To-day I am going to devote entirely to writing. Surely my book will make some progress now. How many words should there be in a book? I've got 18,000 now; "ragged incompetent words" they are, too. I wonder what makes a writer of books! Would knowing all the words in the dictionary help me? My statements are so bald, somehow. It doesn't seem an interesting tale to me, so I'm afraid I can't expect an unprejudiced reader to find it thrilling. The Mutiny is perhaps too large a subject for me--though, mind you, there is one bit that sounds rather well. I have taken great pains with it, and, as Viola said of her declaration, "'tis poetical!" The worst of it is, when I write poetically I am never quite sure that I am writing sense. I dare say I would be wise to take the Moorwife's advice. You remember in _The Will-o'-the Wisps are in Town_, when the man had listened to the Moorwife's tale he said, "I might write a book about that, a novel in twelve volumes, or better, a popular play."

"Or better still," said the Moorwife, "you might let it alone,"

"Ah," said the man, "that would be pleasanter and easier."

How true!

_Baratah, Thursday, Feb. 28_.

We are still in Baratah, as you see, and shall be till Tuesday. It is a very nice life this nomadic existence, and one gets nearer the people. They come in little groups and talk to Boggley outside his tent, and I must say he is most patient with them and tries to do his very best for each one of them. They make my heart ache, these natives, they are so gentle and so desperately poor. Isn't it Steevens who says the Indian ryot has been starving for thirty centuries and sees no reason why he should be filled?

The Listers are home now and we have been seeing a lot of them.

They are delightful people. Mrs. Lister is quite a girl, and so good-looking and cheery. She has the prettiest house I think I ever saw. When we went to call the first time and were shown into the white-panelled drawing-room with its great open blue-tiled fireplace and cupboards of blue china, I suppose it was the contrast with our own rather sordid surroundings, but it seemed to me like fairyland.

The hall is lovely, with a gallery all round and most exquisite carving; rose-red velvet curtains, Persian rugs glowing with rich, soft colours, and everywhere great silver bowls of flowers. They are the most hospitable people, and ask us to dinner every night, and to every other meal as well. Mr. Lister told me babu stories last night.