Olivia in India Part 2

in fearful hope of seeing a witch, not mounted on a broomstick, but on the respectable household cat, changed for that night into a flying fury; finally, along with my brothers, being captured, washed, and dressed, to join with other spirits worse than ourselves in "dooking"

for apples and eating mashed potatoes in momentary expectation of swallowing a threepenny-bit or a thimble. To-night, far from the other spirits, far from the chill winds and the cabbage-stalks, I have been watching the sunset on the desert making the world a glory of rose and gold and amethyst. Now it is dark; the lights are lit all over the ship; the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold...

"In such a night did young Lorenzo ..."

_Nov. 2, 11.30 a.m_.

Our fellow-pa.s.sengers derive much amus.e.m.e.nt from the way we sit and scribble, and one man asked me if I were writing a book! All this time I haven't mentioned the Port Said letters. We got them before we left the ship, and, determined for once to show myself a well-balanced, sensible young person, I took mine to the cabin and locked them firmly in a trunk, telling myself how nice it would be to read them in peace on my return. The spirit was willing, but--I found I must rush down to take just a peep to see if everyone was well, and the game ended with me sitting uncomfortably on the k.n.o.bby edge of Mrs. Albert Murray's bunk, breathlessly tearing open envelopes.

They were all delightful, and I have read them many times. I have yours beside me now, and to make it like a real talk I shall answer each point as it comes.

You say the sun hasn't shone since I left.

Are you by any chance paying me a compliment? Or are you merely stating a fact? As Pet Marjorie would say, I am primmed up with majestic pride because of the compliments I receive. One lady, whose baby I held for a little this morning, told me I had such a sweet, unspoiled disposition! But what really pleased me and made me feel inches taller was that Captain Gordon told someone who told me that he thought I had great stability of character. It is odd how one loves to be told one has what one hasn't! I, who have no more stability of character than a p.u.s.s.y-cat, felt warm with grat.i.tude. Only--I should like to make my exit now before he discovers how mistaken he is!

Yes, I wish you were sitting by my side racing through the waves.

Indeed, I wish all my dear people were here.

Are you really feeling lonely, you popular young man of many engagements? Lonely and dissatisfied are your words. But why? Why?

Surely no one ever had less reason to feel dissatisfied. There are very many people, my friend, who wouldn't mind being you. And yet you aren't thankful! Not thankful for the interesting life you have, the plays you see, the dinners you eat, the charming women you talk to, the b.a.l.l.s you dance at, the clubs you frequent--though what a man does at his clubs beyond escaping for a brief season from his womenkind I never quite know. Think how nice to be a man and not have to look pleased when one is really bored to extinction! If you are bored you have only to slip away to your most comfortable rooms. Did I tell you how much I liked your rooms that day Margie and I went to tea with you? or were we too busy talking about other things? Now don't be like Peter. He was grumbling about something and I told him to go away and count his blessings. He went obediently, and returned triumphant.

"I've done it!" he said, "and I've six things to be thankful for and nine to be unthankful for--"

One thing for which I think you might feel "unthankful" is your lamentable lack of near relations. It is hard to be quite alone in the world; for, I agree, aunts don't count for much. Weighed in the balance they are generally found woefully wanting.

I remember once, when we were laughing over some escapade of our childhood you said you had no very pleasant recollection of your childish days, that you didn't look forward to holidays and that your happiest time was at school, because then you had companions.

I feel quite sad when I think what you missed. We were very lucky, four of us growing up together, and I sometimes wonder if other children had the same full, splendid time we had, and if they employed it getting into as many sc.r.a.pes. The village people, shaking their heads over us and our probable end, used to say, "They're a' bad, but the la.s.sie (meaning me) is the verra deil." We were bad, but we were also extraordinarily happy. I treasure up all sorts of memories, some of them very trivial and absurd, store them away in lavender, and when I feel dreary I take them out and refresh myself with them. One episode I specially remember, though why I should tell you about it I don't quite know, for it is a small thing and "silly sooth." We were staying at the time with our grandmother, the grandmother I am called for, a very stern and stately lady--the only person I have ever really stood in awe of. We had been wandering all day, led by John, searching for hidden treasure at the rainbow's foot, climbing high hills to see if the world came to an end at the other side, or some equally fantastic quest. It was dark and almost supper-time and we had committed the heinous crime of not appearing for tea, so, when we were told to go at once to see our grandmother, and stumbled just as we were, tired and dusty, hair on end and stockings at our ankles into the quiet room where she sat knitting fleecy white things by the table with the lamp, we expected nothing better than to be sent straight to bed, probably supperless. Our grandmother laid down her knitting, took off her spectacles, and instead of the rebuke we expected and deserved said, "Bairns, come away in. I'm sure you must be tired." It had been an unsuccessful day; we had found no treasure, not even the World's End; the night had fallen damp, with an eerily sighing wind which depressed us vaguely as we trudged homewards; but now, the black night shut out, there was the fire-light and the lamp-light, the kind old voice, and the delicious sense of having come home.

All things considered, you are a young man greatly to be envied, also at the present moment to be scolded. How can you possibly allow yourself to think such silly things? You must have a most exaggerated idea of my charms if you think every man on board must be in love with me. Men aren't so impressionable. Did you think that when my well-nigh unearthly beauty burst on them they would fall on their knees and with one voice exclaim, "Be mine!" I a.s.sure you no one has ever even thought of doing anything of the kind, and if they had _I wouldn't tell you_. I know you are only chaffing, but I do so hate all that sort of thing, and to hear people talk of their "conquests" is revolting. One of the nicest things about G. is that she doesn't care a bit to philander about with men. She and I are much happier talking to each other, a fact which people seem to find hard to believe.

My attention is being diverted from my writing by a lady sitting a few yards away--the Candle we call her because so many silly young moths hover round. She is a buxom person, with very golden hair growing darker towards the roots, hard blue eyes, and a powdery white face. G.

and I are intensely interested to know what is the attraction about her, for no one can deny there is one. She isn't young; the G.o.ds have not made her fair, and I doubt of her honesty; yet from the first she has been surrounded by men--most of them, I grant you, unfinished youths bound to offices in Calcutta, but still men. I thought it might be her brilliant conversation, but for the last half-hour I have listened,--indeed we have no choice but to listen, the voices are so strident,--and it can't be that, because it isn't brilliant or even amusing, unless to call men names like Pyjamas, or Fatty, or Tubby, and slap them playfully at intervals is amusing. A few minutes ago Mrs. Crawley came to sit with us looking so fresh in a white linen dress. I don't know why it is--she wears the simplest clothes, and yet she manages to make all the other women look dowdy. She has the gift, too, of knowing the right thing to wear on every occasion. At Port Said, for instance, the costumes were varied. The Candle flopped on sh.o.r.e in a trailing white lace dress and an enormous hat; some broiled in serge coats and skirts; Mrs. Crawley in a soft green muslin and rose-wreathed hat was a cool and dainty vision. Well, to return. As Mrs. Crawley shook up her chintz cushions, she looked across at the Candle--a long look that took in the elaborate golden hair, the much too smart blouse, the abbreviated skirt showing the high-heeled slippers, the crowd of callow youths--and then, smiling slightly to herself, settled down in her chair. I grew hot all over for the Candle. I don't suppose I need trouble myself. I expect she is used to having women look at her like that, and doesn't mind. Does she really like silly boys so much and other women so little, I wonder! There is generally something rather nasty about a woman who declares she can't get on with other women and whom other women don't like. Men have an absurd notion that we can't admire another woman or admit her good points. It isn't so. We admire a pretty woman just as much as you do.

The only difference is you men think that if a woman has a lovely face it follows, as the night the day, that she must have a lovely disposition. We know better that's all.

The poor Candle! I feel so mean and guilty writing about her under her very eyes, so to speak. She looked at me just now quite kindly. I have a good mind to tear this up, but after all what does it matter? My silly little observations won't make any impression on your masculine mind. Only don't say "Spiteful little cat," because I don't mean to be, really.

This is much the longest letter I ever wrote. You will have to read a page at a time and then take a long breath and try again.

Mr. Brand has just come up to ask us why a sculptor dies a horrible death? Do you know?

_S.S. Scotia, Nov. 6_.

No one unendowed with the temper of an angel and the patience of a Job should attempt the voyage to India. Mrs. Albert Murray has neither of these qualifications any more than I have, and for two days she hasn't deigned to address a remark to G. or me, all because of a lost pair of stockings; a loss which we treated with unseemly levity. However, the chill haughtiness of our cabin companion is something of a relief in this terrible heat. For it _is_ hot. I am writing in the cabin, and in spite of the fact that there are two electric fans buzzing on either side of me, I am hotter than I can say, and deplorably ill-tempered.

Four times this morning, trying to keep out of Mrs. Albert Murray's way, I have fallen over that wretched hat-box, still here despite our hints about the baggage-room, and now in revenge I am sitting on it, though what the owner would say, if she came in suddenly and found to what base uses I had put her treasure, I dare not let myself think. G.

has a bad headache, and it is dull for her to be alone, so that is the reason why I am in the cabin at all. To be honest, it is most unpleasant on deck, rainy with a damp, hot wind blowing, and the music-room is crowded and stuffy beyond words, or I might not be unselfish enough to remain with G. I did go up, and a fat person, whose nurse was ill, gave me her baby to hold, a poor white-faced, fretful baby, who pulled down all my hair, and I have had the unpleasant task of doing it up again. If you have ever stood in a very hot greenhouse with the door shut, and wrestled with something above your head, you will know what I felt.

We pa.s.sed Aden yesterday and stopped for a few hours to coal. That was the limit. The sun beating down on the deck, the absence of the slightest breeze, coal-dust sifting into everything--ouf! Aden's barren rocks reminded me rather of the Skye Coolin. I wonder if they are climbable. I haven't troubled you much, have I, with accounts of the entertainments on board? but I think I must tell you about a whistling compet.i.tion we had the other day. You must know that we had each a partner, and the women sat at one end of the deck and the men stood at the other and were told the tune they had to whistle, when they rushed to us and each whistled his tune to his partner, who had to write the name on a piece of paper and hand it back, and the man who got back to the umpire first won--at least his partner did. Do you understand? Well, as you know, I haven't much ear for music, and I hoped I would get an easy tune; but when my partner, a long, thin, earnest man, with a stutter, burst on me and whistled wildly in my face, I had the hopeless feeling that I had never heard the tune before. In his earnestness he came nearer and nearer, his contortions every moment becoming more extraordinary, his whistling more piercing; and I, by this time convulsed by awful, helpless laughter, could only shrink farther back in my seat and gasp feebly, "Please don't."

Mrs. Crawley was not much better. In my own misery I was aware of her voice saying politely, "I have no idea what the tune is, but you whistle beautifully--quite like a gramophone."

When my disgusted and exhausted partner ceased trying to emulate a steam-engine and began to look human again, I timidly inquired what he had been whistling. "The tune," he replied very stiffly, "was 'Rule, Britannia!'"

"Dear me," I replied meekly, "I thought at least it was something from _Die Meistersinger_;" but he deigned no reply and walked away, evidently hating me quite bitterly. I shan't play that game again, and I can't believe the silly man really whistled "Rule, Britannia,"

for it is a simple tune and one with which I am entirely at home, whereas--but no matter!

G. won by guessing "Annie Laurie." She is splendid at all games, and did I tell you how well she sings? In the cabin, when we are alone, she sings to me s.n.a.t.c.hes of all sorts of songs, grave and gay, but she won't sing in the saloon, where every other woman on board with the smallest pretensions to a voice carols nightly. She is a most attractive person this G., with quaint little whimsical ways that make her very lovable. We are together every minute of the day, and yet we never tire of one another's company. I rather think I do most of the talking. If it is true that to be slow in words is a woman's only virtue, then, indeed, is my state pitiable, for talk I must, and G. is a delightful person to talk to. She listens to my tales of Peter and the others, and asks for more, and shouts with laughter at the smallest joke. I pa.s.s as a wit with G., and have a great success. She is going to stay with a married sister for the cold weather. Quite like me, only I'm going to an unmarried brother. I think we are both getting slightly impertinent to our elders. They tease us so at meals in the saloon we have to answer back in self-defence, and it is very difficult to help trying to be smart; sometimes, at least with me, it degenerates into rudeness. I told you about all the people at our table, but I forgot one--a very aged man with a long white beard, rather like the evil magician in the fairy tales, but most harmless.

"Old Sir Thomas Erpingham," I call him, for I am sure a good soft pillow for that good grey head were better than the churlish turf of India. He is very kind, and calls us Sunshine and Brightness, and pays us the most involved Early Victorian compliments, which we, talking and laughing all the time, seldom ever hear, and it is left to kind Mrs. Wilmot to respond.

_Nov. 7_.

Last night we had an excitement. We got into a thick fog and had to stand still and hoot, while something--a homeward-bound steamer, they say--nearly ran us down. The people sleeping on deck said it was most awesome, but I slept peacefully through it until awakened by an American female running down the corridor and remarking at the top of a singularly piercing voice, "Wal, I am scared!"

To-day it is beautifully calm and bright; the nasty, hot, damp wind has gone; and we are sitting in our own little corner of the deck, Mrs. Crawley, Mrs. Wilmot, G., and I, sometimes reading, sometimes writing, very often talking. It is luck for us to have two such charming women to talk to. Mrs. Crawley is supposed to be my chaperon, I believe I forgot to tell you that. Boggley, who is a great friend of hers, wrote and asked her to look after me. How clever of him to fix on one in every way so desirable! Suppose he had asked the Candle!

We have such splendid talks about books. Mrs. Wilmot has, I think, read everything that has been written, also she is very keen about poetry and has my gift--or is it a vice?--of being able to say great pieces by heart, so between us G. is sometimes just a little bored.

You see, G. hasn't been brought up in a bookish atmosphere and that makes such a difference. The other night she was brushing her hair, unusually silent and evidently thinking deeply. At last she looked up at me in my bunk, with the brush in her hand and all her hair swept over one shoulder, and said in the most puzzled way, "What was that nasty thing Mrs. Wilmot was saying all about dead women?" and do you know what she objected to?

"Dear dead women, with such hair, too-- What's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I Feel chilly and grown old."

We are very much worried by people planting themselves beside us and favouring us with their views on life in general. One woman--rather a tiresome person, a spinster with a curiously horse-like face and large teeth--sometimes stays for hours at a time and leaves us limp. Even gentle Mrs. Wilmot approaches, as nearly as it is possible for her to approach, unkindness in her comments on her. She has such playful, girlish manners, and an irritating way of giving vent to the most utter plat.i.tudes with the air of having just discovered a new truth.

She has been with us this morning and mentioned that her father was four times removed from a peerage. I stifled a childish desire to ask who had removed him, while Mrs. Wilmot murmured, "How interesting!" As she minced away Mrs. Crawley said meditatively, "The Rocking Horse Fly," and with a squeal of delight I realized that that was what she had always vaguely reminded me of. You remember the insect, don't you, in _Through the Looking-Gla.s.s_? It lived on sawdust. One lesson one has every opportunity of learning on board ship is to suffer fools, if not gladly, at least with patience. The curious people who stray across one's path! One woman came on at Port Said--a globe-trotter, globe-trotting alone. Can you imagine anything more ghastly? She is very tall, dark and mysterious-looking, and last night when G. and I were in the music saloon before dinner, she sat down beside us and began to talk of spiritualism and other weird things. To bring her to homelier subjects I asked if she liked games. "Games" she said, "what sort of games? I can ride anything that has four legs and I can hold my own with a sword." She looked so fierce that if the bugle hadn't sounded at that moment I think I should have crept under a table.

"Quite mad," said G. placidly as we left her.

We are going to have a dance to-night.

_S.S. Scotia, Nov. 11_.

... Now we approach a conclusion. We have pa.s.sed Colombo, and in three or four days ought to reach Calcutta.

Colombo was rather nice, warm and green and moist; but I failed to detect the spicy breeze blowing soft o'er Ceylon's isle, that the hymn led me to expect. The shops are good and full of interesting things, like small ivory elephants, silver ornaments, bangles, kimonos, and moonstones. We bought various things, and as we staggered with our purchases into the cabin, which now resembles nothing so much as an overcrowded p.a.w.nshop, Mrs. Murray remarked (we are on speaking terms again) "I suppose you thought the cabin looked rather empty that you bought so much rubbish to fill it up."

We were dumb under the deserved rebuke. We had bought her a fan as a peace-offering, rather a pretty one too, but she thanked us with no enthusiasm.

In Colombo we got rickshaws and drove out to the Galle Face Hotel, a beautiful place with the surf thundering on the beach outside. If I were rich I would always ride in a rickshaw. It is a delightful way of getting about, and as we were trotted along a fine broad road, small brown boys ran alongside and pelted us with big waxy, sweet-smelling blossoms. We did enjoy it so. At the Galle Face, in a cool and lofty dining-hall, we had an excellent and varied breakfast, and ate real proper Eastern curry for the first time. Another new experience! I don't like curry at home, curry as English cooks know it--a greasy make-up of cold joint served with sodden rice; but this was different.

First, rice was handed round, every particle firm and separate and white, and then a rich brown mixture with prawns and other interesting ingredients, which was the curry. You mix the curry with the rice, when a whole trayful of condiments is offered to eat with it, things like very thin water biscuits, Bombay duck--all sorts of chutney, and when you have mixed everything up together the result is one of the nicest dishes it has been my lot to taste. Note also, you eat it with a fork and spoon, not with a fork alone as mere provincials do!

I begin to feel so excited about seeing Boggley. It is two years since he was home last. Will he have changed much, I wonder? There was a letter from him at Colombo, and he hadn't left Darjeeling and had no house to take me to in Calcutta, so it would appear that when I do land my lodging will be the cold ground. It sounds as if he were still the same casual old Boggley. Who began that name? John, I think. He had two names for him--"Lo-the-poor-Indian" and "Boggley-Wallah"--and in time we all slipped into calling him Boggley. I like to think you two men were such friends at Oxford. Long before I knew you I had heard many tales of your doings, and I think that was one reason why, when we did meet, we liked each other and became friends, because we were both so fond of Boggley. I am filled with qualms as to whether he will be glad to see me. It must be rather a nuisance in lots of ways to have a sister to look after, but he was so keen that I should come that surely he won't think me a bother. Besides, when you think of it, it was really very good of me to leave my home and all my friends and brave the perils of the deep, to visit a brother in exile.

I wish I knew exactly when we shall arrive; this suspense is wearing.

One man told me we would be in on Wednesday, another said we would miss the tide and not be in till Sat.u.r.day. I asked the captain, but he directed me to the barber, who, he said, knew everything--and indeed there are very few things he doesn't know. He is a dignified figure with a shiny curl on his forehead, and a rich c.o.c.kney accent, full of information, generally, I must admit, strikingly inaccurate, but bestowed with such an air. "I do believe him though I know he lies."

_13th_.

We are in the Hooghly and shall be in Kidderpore Dock to-morrow morning early. Actually the voyage is at an end. I may as well finish this letter and send it with the mail which leaves Calcutta to-morrow.