Chapter III: Part 3

She was a missionary's wife, it turned out, on her way home, with no nurse and much malaria, so, of course, Mother had to stay and nurse the twins until luncheon was ready, when another Good Samaritan came and took a turn. While having luncheon she was hailed by a friend, lately left a widow, who insisted on Mother accompanying her to her compartment, where she wept on her shoulder while telling her all the details of her husband's last illness; then back again to nurse the Russian and the babies until the journey's end, when she emerged almost as hot, and crumpled, and exhausted as if she had run behind all the way.

How heartily, my friend, I agree with you about the tiresomeness of balls. I think it must be old age approaching, but I can't see any use in going off at the hour when, under happier circumstances, I would be thinking of bed, to a hot, crowded ballroom; and just at present Calcutta is simply congested with balls. I don't like things that cost a lot; simple little pleasures please me much more. To drive out to Tollygunge of an afternoon, have tea and a game of croquet, look at the picture papers, and come quietly home again, is to me the height of bliss.

Tollygunge is a club, some miles out of Calcutta, with a race-course, golf-links, croquet-lawns--a very delectable spot. The correct thing is to drive out on Sunday morning and have breakfast out in the open air. Then one sees everyone one knows, and it is very gay; but I think it is much pleasanter to drive out quietly in the afternoon.

The road to Tollygunge lies partly through the jungle, past clusters of native huts where little chocolate-coloured babies roll and chatter in the sunlit dust. You know, the jungle is quite near Calcutta. When I lie at nights and listen to the jackals howling, I remember Kipling's story, and wonder if we were driven out and the jungle were let in, how long it would be before Calcutta became a habitation for the beasts of the field.

Yesterday I drove out with Mrs. Townley and G., and three tired people we were, too tired even to play the gentle game of croquet; glad to sit still in comfortable chairs on the greensward and steep ourselves in the peace and quietness.

At tea, Chil the kite, hovering in mid-air, watched us jealously. Suddenly there was a swoop, a dark flutter of wings, a startled squeak from G., and our cake was gone. That's India!

Tea finished, while we still sat loath to leave, a curious odour forced itself upon our attention. G. sniffed. _I_ sniffed. "Whatever is it?" asked G. Mrs. Townley pointed riverwards to where a thin column of blue-grey smoke rose and hung like a cloud in the hot, still air.

"It's a burning ghat," she said. "They are burning a body."

And _that_ is India!

When one is feeling fairly peaceful and secure, something ghastly, like the smell of burning Hindoo, recalls to one the uncertainty of all things. We rose to go home, feeling depressed, the smell pursuing us.

I have two pieces of news for this letter.

First, Boggley can take a few days' holiday at Christmas, so he means to take me to Darjeeling to see if we can catch a glimpse of the snows. We shall only be there from Saturday afternoon till Monday at noon, and Boggley says that Kangchenjunga is often cloud-covered for weeks, so it is a mere chance whether we shall see it. But surely, surely Kangchenjunga won't be coy with me. I came to India, of course, in the first place to see Boggley, but in the second place to see the snows, and I can't believe that the gods will be so unkind as to deny a humble worshipper of great mountains a sight of the vision glorious.

The other piece of news is quite important.

Boggley has got a new billet. What it is I shan't try to explain, for I don't understand the game of General Post which is played so frequently among Government officials, but it means that he will have to go on a tour of inspection all over everywhere, and, what is more, I shall go too. Isn't it fine?

Boggley actually hesitated about accepting, because he thought I should so hate to leave Calcutta and its gaieties to wander in the jungle. It isn't that I don't enjoy Calcutta; I do, and I am most grateful to the people who have given me such a good time; but I pine to see something of the real India. Calcutta might be a suburb of London. I want to see the native of India, not the fat babu; I want to live in tents and be a gipsy; I want to have Boggley all to myself. We have hardly time at present to pass the time of day with each other.

Boggley tries to frighten me with tales of dâk-bungalows and jungly cooking, but I won't be frightened; I am looking forward to it all too much.

We don't go till the beginning of January, so I shall be able to attend the Drawing-Room and a few other _tamashas_ before we depart.

This will have to do for a letter this week. I must clean some gloves now. That is the only useful thing I do, clean G.'s gloves and my own. We dirty so many pairs of long white gloves, and it is cheaper to clean them at home. You do it with petrol and a small piece of flannel, and the result isn't bad, though somewhat streaky. G's part is to sit on my bed and watch me do it, assisted by Bella on the floor. It reminds me of the inhabitants of the Scilly Islands, who, it is said, earn a precarious livelihood by taking in each other's washings!

_Calcutta, Dec. 26_.

When Kipling wrote his _Christmas in India_ I think he must have been in a dâk-bungalow down with fever, otherwise he would hardly have painted such a very gloomy picture. I, at least, didn't find it a mocking Christmas--but then India isn't my grim stepmother, as Victor Ormonde pointed out to me the other night, I can afford to be home-sick, can afford to let myself think of the "black dividing sea and alien plain," because here I have no continuing city. It is the real exiles, "shackled in a lifelong tether," who may not think, but must go doggedly through their day's darg.

I found it an agreeable day, from the morning when I got my presents and various offerings of flowers, to the evening, when we dined with some very kind people, and had an amusing time playing childish games.

I have often seen pictures headed "Christmas in the Tropics," and looked with sentimental eyes at the people grouped among palm-trees on a verandah, while the girl at the piano sang what was evidently a song about "the dear homeland," to judge from the far-away look in the eyes of all present. It seems a pity to disillusion you, but it isn't at all like that. To begin with, it was quite chilly, and we were very glad of the big fire burning in the grate, and we did not look pensive or far-away, but ate our dinner with great content. I think, perhaps, Christmas fare is even more uninteresting in India than at home; turkey tastes more like white flannel, and plum-pudding is stodgier, and there are no white and scarlet berries or robins; but otherwise it is really a nicer day than in England.

Of course I thought a lot about the home people. I imagined Peter waking and groping for his stocking. Oh, _have_ you forgotten what it felt like to waken up and remember it was Christmas morning? I sometimes wish I could still hang up my stocking. There is nothing in Grown-up Land that equals the thrill the delicious bulginess of the stocking, gripped in the darkness, gave one.

I think they would miss me a little at home. I know Mother would often say, "I wonder what Olivia is doing now!"

And what kind of Christmas had you? A very festive one, I hope.

Very many thanks for the book you sent me. You couldn't possibly have given me anything I like better. Somehow, I have never possessed a copy of _A Child's Garden of Verses_, and this one, so exquisitely, specially bound, will be a great treasure. I like, too, your reason for choosing it. It is nice of you to like my childish reminiscences, but it is rash to say you wish you had known us then. Looking at us now, so quiet, so well-behaved, _such_ ornaments to society, you would be surprised what villains we once were--at least on week-days! We had what R.L.S. calls a "covenanting childhood." Looking back, it seems to me that our childhood was a queer mixture of Calvinism and fairy tales. Calvinism, even now, I associate with ham and eggs--I suppose because Sabbath morning was the only time we ever tasted that delicacy. Between bustling Saturday night, when we wistfully watched our toys being locked away, and cheery Monday morning, when things began again, there was a great gulf fixed, and that was the Sabbath Day. What strenuous Sabbath Days we had! First there was worship and the Catechism. (The only time I ever wished to be English was when I thought I might have dallied with "What is your name?" instead of wrestling with such deep things as "What is man's chief end?") After worship was over we were allowed to walk in the garden till it was time for the morning service. That was the Forenoon Diet of Worship, then came the Afternoon Diet of Worship. Having sat like rocks through them both, we proceeded to the Sabbath School, and then went home to tea, and cake, and jam, and an evening filled with bound volumes of _The Christian Treasury_, where we wrestled with tales of religious bigotry and persecution until we seemed to breathe the very atmosphere of dark and mouldy cells; and became daringly familiar with the thumb-screw and the rack, the Inquisition and other devildoms of Spain. I used to wonder pitifully why it had never occurred to the poor victims to say their prayers in bed, and thus save themselves such fiery trials.

I wonder why I pretend we found our Sundays a trial. Looking back, I love every minute of them. Father could make any day delightful; and what a through-the-week Father he was! Sometimes he came to tea with us in the nursery and made believe there was a fairy called Annabel Lee in the teapot, carrying on conversations with her that sent eerie thrills down our several spines. Afterwards he would read out of a little green and gold book that contained for us all the romance of the ages between its elegant covers. From Father we heard of Angus the Subtle, Morag of the Misty Way, and the King of Errin, who rides and rides and whose road is to the End of Days. Sometimes, laying books aside, he told us old tales that he had heard from his mother, who in turn had heard them from hers--of the Red Etain of Ireland who lived in Belligand, and who stole the King's daughter, the King of fair Scotland; and the pathetic tale of the bannock that went to see the world, with its cynical end: "Ah, well! We'll all be in the tod's hole in less than a hunner years."

It was Father who gave us first a love for books, and taught us the magic of lovely words. And it was Father who tried to place our stumbling little childish feet in the Narrow Way, and to turn our eyes ever towards a better country--"that is an heavenly!" I suppose it was the dimly-understood talk of the better country that gave John and me the idea of our Kingdom.

It was a great secret once, but now I may tell without breaking faith. Boggley and the Bird were prosaic people, caring more for bird-nesting and Red Indian hunting than games of make-believe, so they never knew. It was part of the sunny old garden, our Kingdom, and was called Nontland because it was ruled by one Nont. He had once been a common ninepin, but having had a hole bored through his middle with a red-hot wire he became possessed of a mystic power and personality. Even we--his creators, so to speak--stood somewhat in awe of him.

The River Beulah flowed through Nontland, and it was bounded on the north by the Celestial Mountains; on the south by the red brick wall, where the big pears grew; on the west by the Rose of Sharon tree; and on the east by the pig-sty. That last sounds something of a descent, but it wasn't really a pig-sty, and I can't think why it was called so, for, to my knowledge, it had never harboured anything but two innocent white Russian rabbits with pink eyes. It was situated at the foot of the kitchen-garden, next door to the hen-houses; the roof, made of pavement flags, was easy to climb, and, sloping as it did to the top of the wall overlooking the high-road, was greatly prized by us as a watch-tower from which we could see the world go by.

To get into our Kingdom we knocked at the Wicket Gate, murmuring as we did so:

"El Dorado
Yo he trovado,"

and it opened--with a push. We hadn't an idea then, nor have I now, what the words meant. We got them out of a book called _The Spanish Brothers_, and thought them splendidly mysterious.

Besides ourselves, and Nont, and the Russian rabbits, there was only one other denizen of our Kingdom--a turkey with a broken leg, a lonely, lovable fowl which John, out of pity, raised to the peerage and the office of Prime Minister. I have a vivid recollection of riding in hot haste on a rake to tell the King--not in proper fairy fashion that the skies were fallen, but that Lord Turkey of Henhouse was dead.

John, I remember, always carried some fern seed in his trouser-pocket. He said it made him invisible--a delusion I loyally supported. It seems to me the sun always shone in those days, the time was ever three o'clock in the afternoon, and faery lay just adown the road!

It has just occurred to me, and it is an awesome thought, that you must converse every day, and all day, in the German language. I believe I have forgotten all I ever knew of German, though it isn't so very long ago since I wrestled in tears and confused darkness of mind with that uncouth tongue. Don't forget your native tongue, and don't dare write me a letter in German, or, like the Editor of _The Spectator_, I shall say, "This correspondence must now cease!"

Since last I wrote life has been one long changing of garments and moving from one show to another. Tuesday was Viceroy's Cup Day at the races, a very pretty sight. One side of the ground was crowded by pretty women in lovely gowns, and on the other side the natives sat in their hundreds and chattered, not the drab-coloured crowd we produce, but gay and striking as a bed of tulips.

There are three stands--one for the members of the Turf Club, one for the ordinary public, and one for the natives who can afford a seat. The members of the Turf Club may be said to be the sheep; the others the goats. It is more comfortable in every way to be a sheep. You get a better seat and a comfortable tea in an enclosure, with the sight of the goats scrambling wildly for a little refreshment to keep you thankful, for in the heat and dust and glare even a sheep is apt to lose sight of its mercies. I thought G. was the prettiest girl there. She is always such a refreshing sight, pink and white and golden like a morning in May, and tall--"like a king's own daughter."

I was with the Ormondes and, of course, Boggley. Mrs. Ormonde is so charming, she is a great favourite with men, and is always surrounded when she goes anywhere by about half a dozen eager for her smiles. She has the quaintest way of handing her surplus cavaliers on to me, but I really much prefer Victor and Boggley as companions. They don't need to be amused like other men, and are always good-natured and funny.

I am feeling a little pale with all the excitement, and shall be glad of the change to Darjeeling to-morrow. Next mail you shall hear all about it--that is to say, if no person, seditiously inclined, derails the train or does anything horrid. Some very dreadful things have been happening lately, but I don't think there is much danger so long as we keep far from the vicinity of dignitaries.

_Calcutta, New Year's Day_.

Wednesday already, the mail goes to-morrow, and I with so much to write about.

To begin--we left Calcutta on Friday afternoon and got to the Ganges about eight, when we embarked in a ferry-boat to cross the river. It was quite a big steamer, with dinner-tables laid out on deck, decorated for Christmas with palm-branches, Chinese lanterns, and large, deadly-looking iced cakes.

On the other side, the train was waiting that was to take us to Siliguri, and we lost no time in looking for places. Indian trains are rather different from our trains. Each carriage has two broad seats running lengthways, which pull out for sleeping berths, and two other berths that let down from the roof. I found I had to share a carriage with two other females, and an upper berth fell to my share.

The bearer arranged my bed, and Boggley took a glance round, asked if I were all right, and departed to his own place. Isn't it a queer idea to carry one's bedding about with one? Pillows, blankets, and a quilt, all done up in a canvas hold-all, accompany people wherever they travel--in trains, hotels, even when staying with friends.

Well, there was I shut up for the night with two strange women, mother and daughter evidently, American certainly; and the horror of an upper berth staring me in the face! It is quite an experience to sleep in the upper berth of an Indian train. To begin with, it takes an acrobat of no mean order to reach it at all, and once you are in your nose almost touches the roof of the carriage. As I climbed to my lofty perch one of the American ladies remarked, "I guess, child, you ain't going to have the time of your life up there to-night." And I hadn't. Every time the train gave a jolt--which it did every few seconds--I clung wildly to the straps to keep myself from descending suddenly and violently to the floor; and in less than an hour every bone in my body was crying out against the inhuman hardness of my couch. In spite of everything, I fell asleep, and awoke feeling colder than I ever remember feeling before. I started up, banging my head on the roof as I did so, to find that the carriage door was swinging wide open. What was to be done? I carefully felt the bumps beginning to rise on my forehead, and considered. It was, humanly speaking, impossible that I could descend and shut that door, and yet, could I endure lying inadequately covered and exposed to all the winds of heaven? There remained my fellow-travellers--they at least were on the first floor, so to speak; but as I wavered a striking apparition rose, stalked down the carriage, and, leaning far out into the night, seized the door and shut it with a bang. Then arose a shrill protest from beneath me: "Oh, Mommer, how could you be so careless! You might have fallen out, and I should have been left quite alone in this awful heathen country!"

After that there was no more sleep, and when daylight came filtering through the shutters I slid warily to the floor, and having washed and dressed, sat on my dressing-bag and conversed amiably with the Americans. I found them charming and most entertaining, simple, quiet people; not the shrill-voiced tourist _jât_ at all. They had been travelling, so they told me, with a sort of dreary satisfaction, for two years, and they had still about a year to do. It sounded like hard labour! The poor dears! I can't think why they did it. They would have been so much happier at home in their own little corner of the world. I can picture them attending sewing bees, and other quaint things people do attend in old-fashioned New England storybooks. They had a servant with them whom they addressed as Ali, a bearded rascal who evidently cheated them at every turn, and who actually came into their presence with his shoes on!

I didn't know till I met these Americans that I was such a wit--or perhaps wag is a better word. I didn't try to be funny, I didn't even know I was being funny, but every word I said convulsed them.

The "Mommer" said to me:

"Child, are you married?"

"No," I said, surprised. "Why?"

"I was just thinking what a good time your husband must have!"

When we reached Siliguri I was surprised to find everything glistening with frost, and the few natives who were about had their heads wrapped up in shawls as if they were suffering from toothache. We got some breakfast in the waiting-room, and then took our places in the funniest little toy train. This is the Darjeeling-Himalaya Railway. It was all very primitive. A man banged with a stick on a piece of metal by way of a starting-bell, and we set off on our journey to cloudland.

Eagerly looked for, Darjeeling came at last, but alack! no mountains, only piled-up banks of white clouds. It was bitterly cold, and we were glad to get out and stamp up to the hotel, where we found great fires burning in our rooms.

There wasn't much to do in the hotel beyond reading back numbers of _The Lady's Pictorial_, and I went to bed on Saturday night rather low in my mind, fearing, after all, I was not to be accounted worthy to behold the mountains.

Some of the people in the hotel were getting up at 3.30 to go to Tiger Hill to see the sun rise on Everest. Boggley, the lazy one, wouldn't hear of going, and when I awoke in the grey dawning stiff with cold, in spite of a fire and heaps of blankets and rugs, I felt thankful that I hadn't a strenuous brother. If it had been John, I dare not think where he would have made me accompany him to in his efforts to get as near as possible to his beloved mountains. Never shall I forget the first time he took me to Switzerland to climb. I had never climbed before--unless you call scrambling on the hills at home climbing--and I was all eagerness to try till John gave me Whymper's book on Zermatt to amuse me in the train, and I read of the first ascent of the Matterhorn and its tragic sequel. It had the effect of reducing me to a state of abject terror. All through that journey, from Paris to Lausanne, from Lausanne to Visp, from Visp to Zermatt, horror of the Matterhorn hung over me like a pall. I even found something sinister in little Zermatt when we got there--Zermatt that now I love so, with the rushing, icy river, the cheerful smell of wood smoke, the goats that in the early morning wake one with the tinkle-tinkle of the bells through the street, and the quiet-eyed guides that sit on the wall in the twilight and smoke the pipe of peace.

After dinner, that first night, we walked through the village and along the winding path that leads up to the Schwarzsee, and gazed at the mighty peak, so wild, so savage in the pale purple light that follows the sunset glow--gazed at it in silence, John wrapped in adoration, I thinking of the men who had gone up this road to their death.

"Yes," said John, as we turned back, "some very scared men have come down this road."

If he had known what an exceedingly scared girl was at his side he wouldn't, I think, have chosen that moment to turn into the little graveyard that surrounds the village chapel, to look at the graves of the victims--the graves of Croz the guide, of Hudson, and the boy Hadow. The text on one stone caught my eye--"_Be ye therefore also ready..._" It was too much; I fled back to the hotel, locked the door of my room, shuttered the windows so that I should not see the vestige of a mountain--and wept.

It is odd to think how I hated it all that night, how to myself I maligned all climbers, calling them in my haste foolhardy--senseless--imbecile, when I had only to go up my first easy mountain to become as keen as the worst--or the best.

Sometimes in those mountaineering excursions with John to Zermatt, to Chamonix, to Grindelwald, I have found it in my heart to envy the unaspiring people who spend long days pottering about on level ground. But looking back it isn't the quiet, lazy days one likes to think about. No--rather it is the mornings when one rose at 2 a.m. and, thrusting aching feet into nailed boots, tiptoed noisily into the deserted dining-room to be supplied with coffee and rolls by a pitifully sleepy waiter.

Outside the guides wait, Joseph and Aloys, and away we tramp in single file along the little path that runs through fields full of wild flowers, drenched with dew, into a fairy-tale wood of tall, straight pine-trees. We follow the steady, slow footsteps of Joseph, the chief guide, up the winding path that turns and twists, and turns again, but rises, always rises, until we are clear of the wood, past the rough, stony ground, and on to the snow, firm and hard to the feet before the sun has melted the night's frost. When we reach the rocks, and before we rope, Aloys removes his rücksack and proceeds to lay out our luncheon; for if one breakfasts at two one is ready for the next meal at nine. Crouched in strange attitudes, we munch cold chicken, rolls and hard-boiled eggs, sweet biscuits and apples, with great content. Joseph has buried a bottle of white wine in the snow, and now pours some into a horn tumbler, which he hands to Mademoiselle with an air--a draught of nectar. It is John's turn for the tumbler next, and as he emerges from the long, ice-cold, satisfying drink he declares his firm intention, his unalterable resolve, never to drink anything but white wine again in this world. But doubtless as you know, the white wine of the Lowlands is not the white wine of the mountains. It needs to be buried in the snow by Joseph, and drunk out of a horn tumbler, at the foot of an aiguille, after a six hours' climb, to be at its best. After refreshment comes the hard work. To look at the face of the rock up which Joseph has swarmed; to say hopelessly, "I can't do it, I can't," and then gradually to find here a niche for one hand, here a foothold; to learn to cling to the rock, to use every bit of oneself, to work one's way up delicately as a cat so as not to send loose stones down on the climber below, until, panting, one lands on the ledge appointed by Joseph, there to rest while the next man climbs, it is the best of sports. And at the top to stand in the "stainless eminence of air," to look down eight--ten--a thousand feet to the toy village at the foot while John names all the other angel peaks that soar round us, tell me, you who are also a climber, is it not very good?

But the coming down! Stumbling wearily down the steep paths of the pine-woods with the skin rubbed off one's toes, and giving at the knees like an old and feeble horse, that is not so good. And yet--I don't know. For as we near the valley, puffs of hot, scented air come up to meet us, the tinkle of the cow-bell greets our ears, and we realize that it is only given to those who have braved the perils, who have searched for the deep things of the ancient mountains and found out the precious things of the lasting hills, to thoroughly appreciate the pleasant, homely quietness of the meadow-lands.

But I have wandered miles away from Sunday morning in Darjeeling.

It was still misty when we went out after breakfast, but not so solidly misty, so Boggley held out hopes it would clear.

Darjeeling is a pretty place tucked into the mountain-side. In the middle is the bazaar, and it happened to be market day, which made it more interesting. The village street was lined on both sides with open booths, some piled with fruit and vegetables, others, oddly enough, with lamps and mirrors and other cheap rubbish which bore the legend "Made in Germany," others with all sorts of curios. The place was thronged with people. A few plainsmen and Tibetans Boggley pointed out, but most of the crowd were hill-people, jolly little squat men and women hung with silver chains and heavy ear-rings set with turquoises. Their eyes are very black and all puckered with laughing, and they have actually rosy cheeks.

They crowded round, trying to sell us curios and lumps of rough turquoise. When we asked the price of anything, they replied promptly, "Twenty rupees." We would offer two rupees, and, after a few minutes' bargaining, they took it quite cheerfully, the thing probably not being worth eight annas. I bought a prayer-wheel. It is a round silver thing with a handle rather like a child's rattle, and inside are slips of paper covered with writing. These are the prayers, and at intervals you twirl the wheel round, and the oftener you turn it the more devout you are.

I also purchased some lumps of rough turquoise, though Boggley said they were not a good blue,--too pale,--and was tying them up in my handkerchief when Boggley gripped my arm. "Look!" he said. I looked straight across the valley, "Higher," said Boggley, and I lifted my eyes literally to the skies; and there--"suddenly--behold--beyond"--were the everlasting snows.

All day they stayed with us, and as the sun was setting we climbed to a point of vantage to see the last of them. It has been said they are a snow-white wall barring the whole horizon. They are like a city carved by giants out of eternal ice, a city which lieth four-square. We watched while peak after peak faded into cold greyness; until Kangchenjunga towered, alone, rose-red into the heavens, sublime in its "valorous isolation." Then the light left it too, and we turned and came down from the Hill of God.

We left for Calcutta at noon on Monday, and I had a thoroughly over-eaten, uncomfortable day, all owing to Boggley's forethought. He said as we began breakfast about nine o'clock: "Now eat a good breakfast, for we shall have to leave before lunch, and no man knows when we shall get another meal."

It seemed good common-sense, so I ate an egg and two pieces of toast after I had really finished. That was all very well, but the hotel people thoughtfully provided us with a substantial luncheon before we left. Even then Boggley kept on looking to the future.

"Oh, tuck in," he said. "We shan't get anything more till eight o'clock."

I didn't feel as if I wanted anything ever again, but I hurriedly gobbled some food, and we raced to the station, then sat in the train half an hour before it started.

At the first station we stopped at, the bearer appeared at the carriage window with a breakfast cup of tea and a large "y-sponge-cake," ferreted from no man knows where. He was so pleased with himself that I hadn't the heart to refuse it--so there were three meals that ought to have been spread over the greater part of the day crowded into one morning. I sympathized with the vulture, who

"Eats between his meals,
And that's the reason why
He very, very rarely feels
As well as you and I."

It is never pleasant to come down from the heights, and we had rather a dreary journey to Siliguri.

Boggley had taken care to wire for a lower berth in the train for me, but it seems ordained that I shall ascend in Indian trains. I again found myself in a carriage with my Americans, and the daughter had such bad toothache, and seemed so much to dread the prospect of mounting to the eyrie, that I had to say that I would rather like it for myself.

Toothache kept Miss America awake and made her talkative, which was unfortunate for me. She wanted to know all about the manners and customs of the British. She only knew us from the outside, so to speak. Incidentally she shed a lurid light on the habits of the American male. It seems that young men in America are expected to carry offerings of fruit and flowers and candy to young women--not when they are engaged, mark you; what is expected of them then I daren't think--but to quite irrelevant young women. "Don't young gentlemen do so in England?" asked Miss America. "No," I said, feeling that I was making out my countrymen poor, mean creatures indeed, but feeling also how much more complicated life would become for these "gentlemen of England now abed" if they had to carry crates of oranges, drums of figs, and pounds of candies to every casual young woman whose acquaintance they enjoyed.

"You don't say!" said Miss America. "And don't they take you out driving in their buggies?"

"_Never_," I replied firmly. "They haven't got them."

"You don't say! And how does a young gentleman show he admires you?"

"Well, he doesn't as a rule," I murmured feebly.

"I guess," she said, "we manage things better in America." And, indeed, perhaps they do.

This conversation so exhausted us that we fell very sound asleep, and knew nothing till we arrived at the station where we had to get out and change into the ferry-boat. Then there was a terrible scurry. The servants waiting to pack up the bedding and strap bags--they said they had wakened us at the previous station, but they must have wakened someone else instead--while we threw on various articles of clothing, stuck hats on undone hair, and feet into unlaced shoes, all the while, like a Greek chorus, the "Mommer" moaning reproachfully, "Oh, Ali, you might have woke us," while outside on the platform bounded the irate Boggley speaking wingéd words.

We did get on to the boat, so after all there was no harm done.

I was quite sorry to part with my Americans when we reached Calcutta. They and their Ali were going on to Benares that night, tired and spiritless. They shook us both violently by the hand, vowing we were just "lovely people" and that I was a "real little John Bull!"

The home mail was waiting us when we got back, and I read my letters, slept for an hour or two, and then got up and went to a big New Year's dinner-party, where we had fireworks in our crackers, and sang what G. calls "Oldlangzine."

Thanks so much for your delightfully long letter.

My wrist aches so I can't write another word.

_Calcutta, Jan. 8_.

One more week and we start for the Mofussil and the Simple Life. The Mofussil, I may remark in passing, is not, as at first I thought, some sort of prophet, but means simply the country districts.

I have been standing over Bella while she laid out all my dresses, telling her which are to be packed carefully and left in Calcutta, and which are to accompany me. I don't want to take any more luggage than I can help; as it is, I foresee we shall have a mountain. Boggley has been begging everyone for the loan of books, as he does not see how I am to be kept in reading matter when there are no libraries within reach. He accuses me of being capable of finishing two fat volumes in a day, but I shan't have time to read much if I carry out my great project. _I am going to write a book_. You are surprised? But why? Other members of the family can write, why not I? I read in a review lately that John has great distinction of style, so perhaps I have too. Anyway, I have bought a pile of essay-paper and sixpenny-worth of J nibs, and I mean to find out. It is to be a book about the Mutiny, the information to be derived from Trevelyan's book on Cawnpore. There is room, don't you think, for a really good book on the Mutiny?

Last night the Drawing-Room was held by the Vicereine, a function that everyone, more or less, is expected to attend. I went with G. and her sister (one needn't go with the lady who presents one), and found it most entertaining. Not being the wives or daughters of Members of Council or anything _burra_, we hadn't the private entrée, and had to wait our turn in pens, like dumb driven cattle.

It is a much simpler affair than a presentation at home; one need not even wear veils and feathers, and the trains of our white satin gowns were modest as to length. It was silly to be nervous about such a little thing, but I quite shook with terror. I think it was the being passed along by A.D.C.'s that unnerved me, but when I reached the last and heard "To be presented," and my name shouted out, I stotted (do you know the Scots word to stot? It means to walk blindly--to stumble--that and much more; oh! a very expressive word) over a length of red carpet that seemed to stretch for miles, feeling exactly as a Dutch wooden doll looks; saw, as in a glass darkly, familiar faces that smiled jeeringly, or encouragingly, I could not be sure which; ducked feebly and uncertainly before the two centre figures; and, gasping relief, found myself going out of the doorway walking on G.'s train.

Afterwards, when we were all gathered upstairs, the many pretty gowns and uniforms made a gay sight. I saw the dearest little Maharanee blazing in magnificent jewels and looking so scared, and shy, and sweet. There was a supper-room, and lots to eat if one could have got at it, or had had room to eat it after it had been got. I don't like champagne--"simpkin" they call it here--much to drink, but I like it less when it is shot down my back by a careless man.

There is a fancy-dress ball to-night at Government House, and that is the last of my dissipations for some time to come.

I go on writing, writing all the time about my own affairs and never even mention your letters, and nothing makes me so cross as to have people do that to me. I like my friends to make interested comments on everything I tell them.

I am glad you are so happy in your work and enjoy life. Is the book nearly finished yet? It is nice that you have found such charming friends. Is the Fräulein person you talk about pretty? I can imagine how you enjoy hearing her play and singing to her accompaniment. I always think of you when I hear good music, and of your face when I told you that the only music I really liked was Scots songs played on the pianola! But you know that is really true. I simply hate good music.

Once, in Paris, I went with some people to hear _Samson et Delilah_, and while everyone sat rapt, enchanted by the sweet sounds, I waited with what patience I could till the stage temple fell, in the vain hope that some part would hit the tenor. What would your Fräulein say to such blasphemy?

Forgive me maligning the gods of your idolatry. I think I had better finish this letter before I go on from bad to worse, because I am in an unaccountably perverse and impertinent frame of mind to-day, and there is no saying what I shall say next.

_Calcutta, Jan. 8_.

Such a scene of confusion! Everything I possess is lying on the floor. All the things I have accumulated on my way out and since I came to Calcutta lie in one heap waiting to be packed; shoes, dresses, hats, books, photographs are scattered madly about, and in the middle, almost reduced to idiocy, and making no effort to reduce chaos to order, sits Bella. I can't help her, for I must get my home letters written and posted before we leave Calcutta, for before I reach my first halting-place the mail will be gone.

Boggley has been in the Mofussil for three days, and I have been staying with the Townleys. I came back last night. It was nice being with G. again, and her sister is extraordinarily kind. We had rather an interesting day on Friday. I have always been asking where are the Missionaries, but I suppose I must have asked the wrong people, for they didn't seem to know. However, the other day I met a lady,--Mrs. Gardner,--the wife of a missionary, who asked us to go to lunch with her, and promised she would show us something of the work among the women. So on Friday we set off in a _tikka-gharry_.

We left the Calcutta we knew--the European shops, the big, cool houses, the Maidan--and drove through native streets, airless, treeless, drab-coloured places, until we despaired of ever reaching anywhere. When at last our man did stop, we found Mrs. Gardner's cool, English-looking drawing-room a welcome refuge from the glare and the dust; and she was kindness itself. She made a delightful cicerone, for she has a keen sense of humour and a wide knowledge of native life.

We went first to see the girls' school--a quaint sight. All the funny little women with their hair well oiled and plastered down, with iron bangles on their wrists to show that they were married, wrapped in their _saris_, so demurely chanting their lessons! When we went in they all stood up and, touching their foreheads, said in a queer sing-song drawl, "Salaam, Mees Sahib, salaam!" The teachers were native Bible-women. The schoolrooms opened on to a court with a well like a village pump in the middle. One small girl was brought out to tell us the story of the Prodigal Son in Bengali, which she did at great length with dramatic gestures; but our attention was somewhat diverted from her by a small boy who ran in from the street, hot and dusty, sluiced himself unconcernedly all over at the pump, and raced out again dripping. It did look so inviting.

When we left the school Mrs. Gardner said she would take us to see some _purdah nashin_ women--that is, women who never go out with their faces uncovered, and who never see any men but their own husbands.

I don't quite know what we expected to see--something very Oriental and luxurious anyhow; marble halls and women with veils and scarlet satin trousers dotted about on cushions--and the reality was disappointing. No marble halls, no divans and richly carved tables, no hookahs and languid odours of rich perfumes, but a room with cheap modern furniture, china ornaments, and a round table in the middle of the floor, for all the world like the best parlour of the working classes. Two women lived there with their husbands and families, and they came in and looked G. and me all over, fingered our dresses, examined our hats, and then asked why we weren't married! I could see they didn't like the look of us at all. They said we were like the dolls their little girls got at the fête, and produced two glassy-eyed atrocities with flaxen hair and vivid pink cheeks, and asked if we saw the resemblance. We didn't. They told Mrs. Gardner--who has been many years in India, and looks it--that they thought she was much nicer-looking than we were, her face was all one colour! (They spoke, of course, in Bengali, but Mrs. Gardner translated.) Poor women! what a pitifully dull life is theirs! G. was disappointed to hear they hadn't become Christians. She had an idea that the Missionary had only to appear with the Gospel story and the deed was done. I'm afraid it isn't as easy as that by a long way.

Mrs. Gardner read a chapter from the Bible while we were there, and these women argued with her most intelligently. They are by no means stupid. Before we left G. sang to them, with no accompaniment but a cold stare. When she finished they said they preferred Bengali music, it had more tune. We left, feeling we had been no success.

Having seen a comparatively well-to-do household, Mrs. Gardner said she would show us a really poor one. We followed her through a network of lanes more evil-smelling than anything I ever imagined--London can't compete with Calcutta in the way of odours--until we reached a little hovel with nothing in it but a string-bed, a few cooking-pots, and two women. Caste, it seems, has nothing to do with money, and these women, though as poor as it is possible to be, were thrice-born Brahmins, and received us with the most gracious, charming manners, inviting us to sit on the string-bed while they stood before us with meekly folded hands. The dim interior of the hut with its sun-bleached mud floor, the two gentle brown-eyed women with their _saris_ and silver anklets, looking wonderingly at G. in her white dress sitting enthroned, with her blue eyes shining and her hair a halo, made an unforgettable picture of the East and the West.

We had tea at the Mission House and met several missionary ladies who told us much that was interesting about their work, which they seem to love whole-heartedly. I asked one girl how it compared with work among the poor at home, and she said, "Well, perhaps it is the sunshine, but here it is never sordid." I can't agree. To me the eternal sunshine makes it worse. At home, although the poverty and misery are terrible, still, I comfort myself, the poor have their cosy moments. In winter sometimes, when funds run to a decent fire and a kippered herring to make a savoury smell, a brown teapot on the hob and the children gathered in, they are as happy as possible for the time being; I have seen them. I can't imagine any brightness in the lives of the women we saw.

To be a missionary in Calcutta, I think one would require to have an acute sense of humour and no sense of smell. Am I flippant? I don't mean to be, because I feel I can't sufficiently admire the men and women who are bearing the heat and burden of the day. And now that sounds patronizing, and Heaven knows I don't mean to be that.

Anyway, G. and I were never intended to be missionaries. We drove home very silent, in the only vehicle procurable, a third-class _tikka-gharry_, feeling as if all the varied smells of the East were lying heavy on our chests. Once G. said gloomily, "How long does typhoid fever take to come out?" which made me laugh weakly most of the way home.

_13th_.

The day of our departure has come, and Boggley is behaving dreadfully. Having taken time by the forelock, I am packed and ready, but Boggley has done nothing. He remarked airily that I must go to the Stores and get some sheets, a new mosquito-net, and a supply of pots and pans, and then went off to lunch with someone at the Club, leaving me speechless with rage. How can I possibly know what sort of pots and pans are wanted? I never camped out before. I shall calmly finish this letter and pay no attention to his order.

We had a farewell dinner last night, the Ormondes and one or two others. We came into this dismantled room afterwards and talked till midnight, and amused ourselves vastly. I happened to say that I was rather scared at the thought of the wild beasts I might encounter, probably under my camp-bed, in the jungle; so a man, Captain Rawson, drew out a table for me to take with me into camp. One heave and a wriggle means a boa-constrictor, two heaves and a growl a tiger--and so on. So you can imagine me in a tent, in the dead of night, sitting up, anxiously striking matches and consulting my table as to what is attacking me.

Mrs. Ormonde, who is so nervous that if a cracker goes off in her hearing she thinks it is another Mutiny, is anxious that we should take guns with us into the Mofussil in case we are attacked. Picture to yourself Boggley and me setting out "with a little hoard of Maxims." Armed, I should be a menace alike to friend and foe!

My first stopping-place is Takai. Boggley is going to some very far-away place where it wouldn't be convenient to take a female, so when Dr. and Mrs. Russel asked me to come to them while he is there I very gladly accepted the invitation. Dr. Russel is a medical missionary. I don't know him, but his wife, a very clever, interesting woman, I met when she was last home, and she told me about her home in the jungle until I longed to see it. Boggley will come for me in about ten days. Bella I shall leave in Calcutta. It would be a nuisance carting her about from place to place, and I am not so helpless that I can't manage for myself.

Expect next mail to receive a budget of prodigious size.

THE SUNBURNED EARTH

_Takai, Jan. 19_.

There is no doubt this is the ideal place for letter-writing. I sit here, in the verandah, with long, quiet hours stretching out before me and nothing to do but write and write, and I suppose that is why for the last thirty minutes I have sat nibbling the end of my pen and dreaming--without putting pen to paper.

Where did I leave off? The Monday we left Calcutta, wasn't it? To continue. The said Monday was a strenuous day. Boggley absented himself till late afternoon, while I wrestled with wild beasts at Ephesus in the shape of bearers and coolies, my Hindustani deserting me utterly, as it always does at a crisis. G., desolated at the thought of the coming separation, hovered round all day and did her best to help.

About tea-time Boggley walked in, serenely regardless of the fact that we were still devoid of bed and table linen, crockery and cooking utensils. In the end the bearer was dispatched to the Stores with a list, but the result of his shopping I haven't yet seen. G. stayed till nearly dinner-time, and sang to us for a last time. It was horrid parting from her, my dear old G. Do I write too much about her? I thought from something you said in a letter that perhaps I rather bored you talking of her. You see, I like her so much, and you can hardly understand how much she has meant to me since we left England together that showery October day.

After dinner we said good-bye to our friends in what Boggley irreverently calls "the hash-house," and at nine o'clock departed to the station. The bearer was there with all the luggage, and the _syces_ with the ponies, for we are taking the ponies in case there is a chance of polo. In the end we nearly missed the train. At the booking-office, when we tried to book the ponies, the babu in charge lost his presence of mind and turned round and round like a teetotum. I was amazed at Boggley's patience. For myself, I was conscious of an intense, and most unladylike, desire to slap the poor babu. I, who have constantly protested against any want of consideration in the treatment of natives!

As I was the only lady travelling, the guard was much against giving me a carriage to myself, but a man who spoke with authority, hearing us argue, came up and told him to put a "Ladies Only" placard on my carriage, so I travelled in lonely splendour.