When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

CHAPTER XXXII

HOW WE KEPT HOUSE ON THE HILLS

We lived for six months absolutely among the natives. Half of that time my husband was not with us at all, but in Calcutta. The latter half he was at home occasionally, but only occasionally, for he was working in Bombay.

Nothing ordinary could have been more complete than our isolation from Europeans. For months we saw no white faces but our own. It was not a thrilling experience, because we were in no danger, we suffered no inconvenience, and we could telegraph to Bombay at any moment. But it was an interesting experience and a pleasant one. It was an experience that taught one the value of books and the value of one’s self—if one had any. It gave one calm and repose—calm and repose one could never afterwards quite lose. For up there on the Indian hills one learned how infinite Nature was, how irrevocable time and fate were, and how finite self was!

The hills about Khandalah were more beautiful than grand. The jungles were inexhaustible mazes of sweetness and beauty. Our own bungalow was a delightful place. But it was not Nature that most satisfied and entertained me. It was the people. The brown people—the common people of Ind.

A woman—a woman whose mind and whose personality were on a larger scale than mine—wrote to me from America, “What a privilege to be alone with the mountains!” I held it more a privilege to be alone with the natives, to study them, and to learn them, as I hope I did a little.

My stay in Khandalah increased wonderfully my already large respect for the natives. My servants behaved beautifully. Each little duty was as exactly performed as if we had been living en régale in Calcutta or Bombay. Every petty little Eastern ceremony was punctiliously performed.

Every meal was as formally served and as carefully prepared as if we had been in Calcutta, and a dozen people coming to dinner. Each morning my favourite flowers were freshly gathered into the vases. None of my likes and dislikes were ever forgotten by my faithful brown friends. Ayah I loved best of all. I used to abuse the dhursies, and fly into a weekly fury with the dhobie. She was a wretch! The cook and I had sundry squabbles, but I adored his dishes, and that made him adore me. Methu, my own boy, was a perfect servant, save for a habit he had of stealing beverage, and the mallie was a perfect mother to me.

I believe that I was once or twice unkind to the dhute wallah, but he was always unkind to me; so I forgive myself.

Sambo crept slowly into my good graces; and I wish I had them, one and all, here in London. I hope they are all hale and hearty in their pretty hillside huts, and I send them my salaams.

We had incredibly little furniture in our bungalow, but we had a wealth of pretty, filmy draperies. We had precious things from China and Japan,—had them in cabinets well above the children’s heads. And our garden was an Oriental paradise—a perfumed dream of plenty and of matchless loveliness. I used to lie for hours in a hammock, watching the stars, listening to the jackals, smelling the fresh ottar of the rose trees, dreaming my woman’s dreams and perhaps companioning myself with a cigarette, or perhaps my pet monkeys lay asleep in my arms. Sometimes my hammock swung low with the added weight of my bairns; but not often at night. They used to fall asleep with the sun; for from sunrise till sunset they chased and rolled through the scented tangles of our wonderful garden. They were always entirely safe, though great green snakes and jackals were common, and panthers and tigers not over rare. Our great dog never left them,—nor did Ayah nor Sambo. All those three were faithful unto death, and Nizam, the dog, was decidedly clever.

I learned to read in Khandalah. I spent a great deal of my childhood in my father’s library. I grew up among books, the spoiled child, the companion of a booky man. But it was in Khandalah—alone on the Indian hills, at the edge of the Indian jungle, that I learned how great is the privilege of reading—that I learned to reverence books and to handle them with devout fingers. I had many books with me. Some were old friends; some had been selected for me by the best read man and the most comprehensively minded I ever knew. But in Khandalah I learned even a greater joy than the joy of reading. I learned the joy of living: I learned what a privilege it is to live.

Yes, I who have always loved life, I across whose life an everlasting shadow had fallen—the shadow of a little grave—learned in my hill solitude what a good thing it was to be alive. I should not have liked it for ever; but for six months it was ideal. “Could you have endured it alone?” a friend has asked me. Ah! I don’t know. I had my babies, and their nurse who is my dear friend, and sometimes I had my husband. I fear that I could endure but little alone. I am not self-reliant. A few nights ago I read in a London paper, “There is nothing on earth so lonely as a lonely woman.” I think that I have never read anything truer. I would rather be a confirmed invalid—yes, and a bedridden one—than a lone woman. But if I were a lone woman (which, to be frank, I can’t for a moment imagine myself) I would rather face my loneliness alone, in just such an Indian bungalow—alone, but for native servants and books and flowers and pet animals. I was not alone in Khandalah; but society in every ordinary sense I had none. Yet I was never once lonely. And when I ought to have gone to Bombay, I sent my nurse, and curled myself up in my hammock.

It is a privilege to be alone with Nature. Yes, and it is also a privilege, a great privilege, sometimes to be alone with one’s self.

Yes, it was a charming existence—ours at Khandalah. We were as free, as untrammelled by artificialities, as out of the world, as if we had been gipsies living in a tent. And yet we were as comfortable, our little ménage was as well ordered, as if we had been domiciled in the best of hotels. Our omelets were always perfect; our gravies were never insipid; our pièce de résistance was always done to a turn; our entrées were always pretty, as well as toothsome; and our table was invariably a thing of beauty.

If I raised my voice and said, “Boy,” some one answered, “Memsahib,” and in a moment stood before me ready to obey. That was the acme of civilisation, was it not? And yet all day I might lie on the grass if I liked, and burrow in the sweet-scented ferns, and romp and roll with my babies and our dog and our monkeys, forgetting that I was a matron and ought to behave.

Oh, those days and those nights! We had no social obligations, no duties save to satisfy our own natures and to love and cuddle and cherish two babies. No care, save the care of trying to forget sorrow. No pain, but the sweet pain, the pain sweeter than joy—the pain of remembering.

It was a selfish life—the life I led there. Sometimes my conscience, which is usually the least troublesome friend I have, pricked me; then I tumbled out of my hammock and trudged off, on charity intent, to the little bazaar. In Khandalah, you can be a great philanthropist for half-a-crown.

That is one of the chief joys of living in Asia. You can be so very good at such a small cost.

We left our Khandalah bungalow even more suddenly than we had gone into it. I lost my temper because the landlord sent a servant from Bombay to strip one of the lemon trees, and omitted to say, “By your leave.” I believe that the landlord was legally right; but the garden-wealth of flower and fruit had been one of the great inducements to us when we took the place, and the landlord broke his moral if not his legal bond when he helped himself to his own lemons. At the time I was as nearly an invalid as so aggressive a woman can be, and I had an invalid’s selfish liking for those lemons. We had the only lemon trees in fruit for miles. Limes are the common tart fruit in that part of the world. But limes are one of the very few things tropical that I have never learned to love. I detest them; and I heartily grudged my landlord his lemons. Our month was almost “up.” “We’ll move,” I said.

“Where to?” asked my housekeeper.

“Anywhere,” I said. “But we’ll move to-morrow.”

And move we did. She, not I, accomplished it. I shall never know how she did it. At daylight she left in a gharri. At noon she returned triumphant. She had rented a bungalow at Lanaulie.

We packed in three hours; at least, every one but I packed. Packing is a useful occupation, and I never, by any chance, do anything useful. It was a wonderful day. My lucky husband was in Bombay. Three big bullock carts were loaded with our goods and chattels. When the last blanket load of et ceteras had been more or less securely fastened on to the cart, when our last chicken had been caught and placed a crowing crown upon the apex of the highest load, we started amid the wailings of the mallie and the metrani, who were the only servants who were not to accompany us. The mallie belonged body and soul to the landlord, and the metrani was not a favourite of mine. I led the procession. I was in a rather inelegant barouche, and my four-year-old son accompanied me. “Wadie” and baby and Ayah brought up the rear in another and more inelegant barouche. They were guarding the luggage—or thought they were. The men servants walked beside the bullock carts and were supposed also to protect my belongings.

Our new domicile was about three miles from our old. We arrived at our destination about six. The others arrived about eight. My son and I spent the interim in gazing upon our new domain, in being fairly decent to the extremely civil Goanese house-agent, and in getting preposterously hungry.

At eight o’clock the train drew near the bungalow gate. Ned and Cissy, my pet monkeys, were screaming wrathfully, my baby was asleep, and my aforesaid goods and chattels looked very dilapidated and shaken. We extemporised a bed for baby, and found a loaf of bread for the monkeys. The coolies hurled my ignominious parcels ignominiously to the ground; and the patient oxen stood placidly in the flood of swiftly come moonlight, which magnified and silvered their big, white beauty.

Our new abode was far more elegant—far less picturesque—than our old. Our new garden was a young, methodical thing. Our bungalow was systematically divided into proportional rooms, and over every door were panoramas of coloured glass. They were sectioned into monotonous squares, but the cruel reds, the crude greens, the impossible purples, and the magnificent yellows, would have told us that we were in Asia, had we not already known it.

It was nearly ten o’clock when the last cart had been unloaded and driven away. Then we discovered that we had almost nothing to eat. The hampers that had been hastily filled from our Khandalah larder had disappeared. It was too late to send to the bazaar. Fortunately one of the gharries was still waiting, as the gharri wallah and I had had a slight difference of opinion re remuneration. When I found that we stood upon the verge of midnight and famine, I yielded to the charioteer, on condition that he should drive, and drive quickly, with the house-agent, who had volunteered to see what he could gather together for us in the way of food. He came back in about three-quarters of an hour with several loaves of bread, two dozen eggs, and seven or eight seers of rice. In the meantime, the mistree had borrowed “curry stuff” from the mallie, and had killed a chicken. We had put the babies to bed, after giving them a huge supper of bread and milk and bananas. It was almost midnight when they called me to dinner. “I’m almost starved, Wadie,” I said, “and so thirsty. I hope they have cooled the beer.” Alas, they had not—for the very good reason that there was no beer to cool! It had been stolen with the baskets of food. I had to drink water with my curry, and water does not go well with curry. I was very angry that night, and vowed European vengeance upon the coolies who had stolen all our fresh vegetables, a cask of oysters, a pigeon pie, a dozen other viands, and, worse than all, my beer. But in the morning, when we found that they had taken nothing but food and drink, I forgave them. To confess the whole depth of my moral obliquity, I have never been able to regard the stealing of food as wrong. Good people have often told me that my moral sense is diseased. Perhaps it is, for I am far more apt to regard the man who goes hungry a fool, than to regard the man who steals bread a thief. So I laughed in the morning, and wired to my husband, who was in Bombay, “Have moved to Lanaulie. All food has been stolen. Send everything on next train.”

The night of our arrival, when we had finished our midnight dinner, I told the servants that they could have all the food in the house. They ate until daylight—caste or no caste. Sambo told me the next morning—told me with tears in his eyes—that he had never before had three eggs at once. I remember how much rice and how many plantains they ate, for it was really phenomenal. But I will not tell you, for you might not credit it. I venture to mention the little item of bread. The five ate eight loaves of bread!

Lanaulie was not so pretty a place as Khandalah, but it was very lovely. There were a few Europeans in Lanaulie, but we lived some distance from any one. My nearest European neighbour and my only European friend was my physician—a charming man.

We had been in Lanaulie only a few days when my landlord came from Bombay to see me. He was a high-caste Hindoo gentleman, and will always remain my beau ideal of a landlord. I thought that he had come for his rent when the boy brought me his card, but he had not. He had come to ask if we were comfortable, and to bring up a car-load of things that would, he thought, make the bungalow more home-like to Europeans. Wasn’t that nice of him? I believe that the place we had rented was his chief pride. We were only able to get it, because the death of a prominent member of his family having occurred in Bombay, Hindoo etiquette obliged the entire family to remain in Bombay through a long period of mourning. My landlord was a most interesting man and a large-minded one. His wife, whom I never met, was a strict observer of caste. She felt rather badly that Europeans were in their country house. Her dining-room was not in the house; but, in the Hindoo fashion, in an outer house. This room was locked from us by the mistress’s order, and in this dining-room were stored her Lares and Penates, namely, their cooking utensils and their chattees and their silk robes. Rigid high-caste Hindoos put on a silk garment before they eat. My landlord was far less conservative than his wife. He often had afternoon tea with us, and was kindly ready to explain to me any of their puzzling customs.

No strict Brahmin eats meat. I know a prominent Hindoo gentleman who used, with his son, to steal into the Lanaulie Hotel or even to the Dâk Bungalow, and in a private room have a hearty meal of meat. Father and son did it slyly, not because of public opinion, which they valued at about its real worth, but to save the feelings of the Hindoo wife and mother, who would have been in despair had she known that they ever ate meat.

I often shut my eyes and dream that I am back on my verandah at Lanaulie. I see the bhistie and his bullock come through the flowers to beg. The bhistie wants pice and the pretty bullock wants bread and fruit. They get both. The bhistie salaams—the bullock rubs his nose against my shoulder, and they go slowly, patiently back to their never-ending work. I see the sun set behind the splendid hills, I smell the world of roses that stretches about my door. A thousand fire-flies glitter in the grass. The big stars come out, the jackals call in the jungle, and now and then they scurry across our garden. I am holding a baby in my arms—a little baby that was born in Lanaulie.