Olivia in India Part 14

"Cry for help," said G.

"Sister!" we yelled together.

"Sister Anna!"

"Sister Anna Margaret!"

No answer. Sister Anna Margaret slept well.

"Sister!" said G, bitterly. "She's no sister in adversity."

"Get up, G.," I said encouragingly. "Get up and turn on the light.

Perhaps it isn't a tiger, perhaps it's only a musk rat."

G. refused with some curtness. "Get up yourself," she added.

Again we shouted for Sister, with no result.

You have no idea how horrible it was to lie there in the darkness and listen to movements made by we knew not what. We felt bitterly towards Sister Anna, never thinking of what her feelings would be if she came confidingly to our help and was confronted by some fearsome animal.

"If only," said G., "we knew what time it was and when it will be light. I can't _live_ like this long. Let go my arm, can't you?"

"I daren't," I said. "You're all I've got to hold on to."

We lay and listened, and we lay and listened, but the padding footsteps didn't come back; and then I suppose we must have fallen asleep, for the next thing we knew was that the _ayahs_ were standing beside us with tea, and the miserable night was past.

G. and I looked at each other rather shamefacedly.

"Did we dream it?" I asked,

G. was rubbing her arm where I had gripped it.

"I didn't dream this, anyway," she said; "it's black and blue."

At breakfast we knew the bitterness of having our word doubted; no one believed our report. They laughed at us and said we had dreamt it, or that we had heard a mouse, and became so offensive in their unbelief that G. and I rose from the table in a dignified way, and went out to walk in the compound.

We are very busy collecting things to take home with us. (Did I tell you G.'s berth had been booked in the ship I sail in--the _Socotra_--it sails about the 23rd?) The _chicon-wallah_ came this morning and spread his wares on the verandah floor--white rugs from Kashmir, embroidered gaily in red and green and blue; tinsel mats and table centres; pieces of soft bright silk; dainty white sewed work.

We could hardly be dragged from the absorbing sight to the luncheon-table.

The Townleys never change their servants, and now three generations serve together. The old _kitmutgar_ is the grandfather and trains his grandsons in the way which they should go. To-day at luncheon (fortunately we were alone), one of them made a mistake in handing a dish, whereupon his grandfather gave him a resounding box on the ears, knocking off his turban. Instead of going out of the room, the boy went on handing me pudding, sobbing loudly the while, and with tears running down his face. It was very embarra.s.sing, and none of us had enough Hindustani to rebuke the too-stern grandparent.

_Later_.

This afternoon, when we were having tea in the garden and enjoying Peliti's chocolate-cake, a great outcry arose from the house, and we saw the servants running and looking up to the verandah. Mr. Townley called out to know what was the matter, and received such a confused jumble of Hindustani in reply that he went to investigate. He came back shrugging his shoulders. "It's some nonsense about a 'spirit,'

They say it's been appearing suddenly, then disappearing for some time. Now the _chokra_ swears he saw it go up the verandah into a bedroom. To satisfy them, I have sent for my gun, and I'll wait below while they drive the 'spirit' down."

"It's our midnight visitor," G. and I cried together.

We waited, breathless. The servants rushed on to the verandah with sticks--a dark streak slid down the verandah pillar--Mr. Townley fired. It wasn't a tiger, it was a civet cat--a thing rather like a fox, with a long pointed nose and an uncommonly nasty smell.

"Think," said G., as we looked at it lying stretched out stiff,--"think of having that thing under our bed! A mouse indeed!"

We didn't say "I told you so," but we looked it.

Boggley comes back to-morrow, and I am going with him to the Grand Hotel, so that we shall be together for the last little while.

_Agra, April 11_.

... from a chapter in the _Arabian Nights_; from the middle of the most gorgeous fairy-tale the mind of man could invent, I write to you to-night.

Often I have heard of the Taj Mahal, read of its beauty, dreamed of its magic, but never in my dreams did I imagine anything so exquisite, so perfect.

Boggley thought I should not leave India without seeing this "miracle of miracles--the final wonder of the world," so we left Calcutta on Monday night by the Punjab mail and came to Agra, and we have done it all in proper order. Yesterday, in the morning, we motored to the deserted city, the capital of Akbar, the greatest of the Mogul emperors, about twenty miles off. It has battlemented walls and great gates like a fairy-tale city. The bazaar part of it is mostly in ruins, but the royal part is perfectly preserved and could be lived in comfortably now. There is Akbar's Council Chamber, the houses of his wives, the courtyard where they played living chess, the stables, waterworks, the palaces of his chief ministers, the mosque and cloisters, the Gate of Victory. The carving in marble and red sandstone is wonderful. Akbar must have been a broad-minded man, for we found paintings of the Annunciation side by side with pictures of the Hindu G.o.d Ganesh. It is intensely interesting to see the place just as it was hundreds of years ago. In the great Mosque Quadrangle there is a marble mausoleum, delicately carved, a priceless piece of work in mother-of-pearl, erected to Akbar's high priest; and our guide was his lineal descendant, glad to get five rupees for his trouble!

We lunched in the Government bungalow, a comfortable place, not glaringly out of keeping with the surroundings, and then motored to Akbar's tomb--another piece of colossal magnificence. I was awed by it. Out of the glaring sunshine we went down a long dark pa.s.sage to a great vault, where the air was cold with the coldness of death. It was completely dark except for one ray of light falling on the plain marble tomb. An old Mohammedan crooned eerily, impressively, a lament which echoed round and round the vault. The Mohammedans and the Scots have a similar pa.s.sion for deaths and funerals!

Lastly, in its fitting order, we drove to the Taj Mahal.

You know the story? I have just been reading about it in Steevens's book. You know how Shah Jehan, grandson of Akbar, first Mogul Emperor of Hindustan, loved and married the beautiful Persian Arjmand Banu,--called Mumtaz-i-Mahal,--and when she died he, in his grief, swore that she should have the loveliest tomb the world ever beheld, and for seventeen years he built the Taj Mahal? You know how after thirty years his son rose up and dethroned him, and kept him a close prisoner for seven years in the Gem Mosque, where his daughter Jehanara attended him and would not leave him. When grown very feeble, he begged to be laid where he could see the Taj Mahal; and, the request being granted, you know how he died with his face towards the tomb of the beautiful Persian, "whose palankeen followed all his campaigns in the days when Empire was still a-winning, whose children called him father--Arjmand Banu, silent and unseen now for four-and-thirty years, the wife of his youth."

Such a pa.s.sionate old story! Such a marvellous love-memorial! Shah Jehan--Mumtaz-i-Mahal--Grape Garden--Golden Pavilion--Jasmine Tower.

As G.W. Steevens says, there is dizzy-magic in the very names. I am no more capable of describing it than I would have been capable of building it; you must see it for yourself. It alone is worth coming to India to see.

Leaving the Taj Mahal dazed and dizzy with beauty, I was hailed by a voice that sounded familiar, and turning round I saw--an incongruous figure in that Arabian Nights garden--our old friend of the _Scotia_, the Rocking Horse Fly. She had another female with her, and Mr. Brand, the funny man who asked conundrums. I'm afraid my eyes had asked what he was doing in this galley, for he hastily said that he had only arrived in Agra that morning, and found our _Scotia_ acquaintance at the hotel. I introduced Boggley, and we stood uncomfortably about, while the Rocking Horse Fly waxed sentimental over our meeting.

"Isn't it odd," she said, "that we should all meet and just part again?"

I thought it would have been much odder (and how infinitely horrible!) if we had all met and never parted. As it happened, we weren't allowed to part with her as soon as we could have wished. She discovered we were staying at the same hotel, so we had to dine together, and she talked the Taj all through dinner, spattering it with adjectives, while Boggley grunted at intervals. It was refreshing to see Mr. Brand again. He seems to be enjoying India vastly, and had three quite new stories, though if he didn't laugh so much telling them it would be easier to see the point. Boggley and he loved each other at once.

After dinner, when the men were smoking, the Rocking Horse Fly began to get arch--don't you hate people when they are arch?--and said surely I was never going home without capturing some heart. I replied stoutly and truthfully that I was.

"Naughty girl!" said the R.H.F. "You haven't made the most of your opportunities. Don't you know what they call girls who come out for the cold weather?"

I said I didn't.

"They are called 'The Fishing Fleet,'" she said sweetly.

I said "Oh," because I didn't know what else to say, feeling as I did so remiss.

I have heard--Mr. Townley told me--that long ago when a ship from England arrived in the Hoogly a cannon was fired, and all the gay bachelors left their offices and went to the docks to appraise the new arrivals. A ball was given on board on the night of arrival, and many of the girls were engaged before they left the ship. I don't object to that. It was a fine, sincere way of doing things; but why the subject of marriage should be made an occasion for archness, for sly looks, for--in extreme cases--nudgings, pa.s.ses my comprehension.

The R.H.F. has a way of making common any subject she touches--even the Taj and marriage--so I thought I would go to bed. As I said goodnight I regarded attentively the friend, wondering much how anyone could, of choice, accompany the R.H.F. in her journeyings. She is a very silent person, large and fat and about forty, and her eyes are small out of all proportion to her face, but they twinkled at me in such an understanding way that I, generally so chary of offering embraces, went up to kiss her. She is kind, but so large that being kissed by her is almost as destroying as being in a railway accident!

Do I ignore what you say in your letter? You see, it is rather difficult. Writing to a friend in a far country is like shouting through a speaking-tube to the moon, and one can't shout very intimate things, can one?

Let us be sensible. Don't be angry, but are you quite sure you really care, and is it wise to care? We are so very different. You are so very English, and I, in spite of a pink and fluffy exterior, am at heart as bitter and dour and prejudiced as any Covenanter that ever whined a psalm. My mind could never have anything but a Scots accent.

You are reserved, and rather cold; I am expansive to a fault. You are terrifyingly clever; my intelligence is of the feeblest. You have a refined sense of humour; the poorest, most obvious joke is good enough for me. But this is only talk. I don't know that I am "in love,"--I don't like the expression anyway,--but this I know, that if you were not in the world it would be an unpeopled waste to me. The place you happen to be in is where all interest centres. Every minute of the time as I go through my days, laughing, talking, enjoying myself vastly, away at the back of my mind the thought of you lies "hidden yet bright," making for me a new heaven and a new earth. Is this caring? Is this what you want to hear me say? I can't write what I would like, I can't weave pretty things, I can only speak straight on, but oh, my dear, I am so glad that in this big, confusing world we have found each other. Poor Rocking Horse Fly! poor fat friend! how dull for them, how dull for all the rest of the people in the world not to have a _you_!