CHAPTER XXXV
AT SUBATHU, WHERE THE BAGPIPES PLAY AND THE LEPERS HIDE
We went from Bombay to Mhow,—such a desolate cantonment!—such a dâk bungalow! But we had a charming audience for our first funny little performance. The last time I had played—some months before in Bombay—the bill had been the Merchant of Venice, and we had had ample accessories of scenery and supernumeraries. This was very different; there were only four of us. When we were not on the stage we were rushing madly into another costume and another character; and the less said about the regimental scenery the better. But the regimental audience was ideal. Uncle’s Will, scenes from Hamlet, scenes from Othello, and sprinklings of recitations—they received them all with the greatest good-nature, and beamed upon us with hearty kindness.
Our next halt was at Allahabad, where we felt almost at home. We divided our nights between the Railroad Theatre and the Regimental Theatre, and our days went all too swiftly in the bazaars and in the barracks.
Then we went to Cawnpore. We played there, but for once in my life I felt that acting was a very secondary consideration. One could not think of one’s self, nor even of one’s work, when one stood for the first time upon that sadly sacred ground. I should, in time, no doubt, have grown used to being in Cawnpore, and have taken up right merrily the petty thread of my personal existence; but we were in Cawnpore but a few days, and all the time I seemed to hear the cries of women and children, and see the red-handed natives drunk with butchery.
An army friend went to Cawnpore with us, so that for the nonce our little “troupe” was augmented to five—quite a regiment. In Cawnpore I went through the bazaars very little, but we wandered back each day to the little graveyard that clusters about the Well, and to the Memorial Church. An uncle of my husband’s was killed at the Cawnpore massacre,—that saddened him and saddened me.
Lucknow and Agra were very beautiful, and greatly interesting; and through the streets of both marched the soldiers—our soldiers!
The Residency at Lucknow is a tomb commemorating the fidelity and devotion of English women. At Agra is the Tomb of Tombs—the most beautiful of all tombs. It tells the story of a man’s love and grief—love for a wife, and grief for her death.
On through Meerut and Muttra—through regiments of new friends and companies of old. How pleasant those days were, and how hot! Umballa was a place of horror.
We went to Patiala for a week or two. We were lodged at the State Dâk Bungalow; we were the Maharajah’s guests—and certainly our host was very princely. He is the owner of innumerable horses. We were met at the station by a state carriage—such a state carriage!—and it and another were at our disposal while we remained in Patiala.
Though the Maharajah was surrounded by quite a little coterie of Europeans, Patiala is the most genuinely native place, of any considerable size, that I know in India. The bazaars were absolutely guiltless of European taint. I could have spent years in Patiala, not because of the treasure-rich palace, not because of the wonderful games of Polo, not for the pretty little river, nor for the huge caparisoned elephants, but for the quaint, genuine flavour of native life.
The Sikhs are a splendid race of men. To look into the eyes of the best manner of Sikh is to feel that you can trust him.
We played at Patiala—I forget how many nights. We played merely for the Maharajah and his guests. We played at whatever hour pleased him, and we were paid whether we played or not. We had heard of the Maharajah as a pleasure-loving young fellow, and we expected to please him most with our comediettas and farces, but it was the scenes that we did from Shakespeare that his Highness demanded, over and over. We found him an inveterate and appreciative theatre-goer, and my husband, who came to know the Maharajah much better than I did, was often surprised by a long and correctly quoted passage from Shakespeare. The theatre at Patiala was charming and comfortable.
The Maharajah of Patiala has one of the best bands to which I ever listened. The parks and public grounds are beautifully kept, and Patiala—with its rose gardens and its purdah-hidden harems—is thriving in the heart of modernised Asia.
We met in Patiala, and afterwards in Simla, the European lady who has recently married the Maharajah of Patiala. Such a marriage may, of course, change many old time-honoured Patiala customs.
We went back to Umballa, and then we journeyed up into the Himalayas. Into cantonments where there was not so much as a Dâk Bungalow, and we had to eat and sleep as best we might. We left the railway and civilisation at Kalka. We went up to Dagshai in doolies, and on horseback. Ayah sat with our little luggage on an ekka, and she said she didn’t like it. I could see no earthly reason why she should like it. But I thought that she was beautifully clever to stick on; any ordinary mortal would have tumbled in fragments on the ground.
It was a marvellous ride. Every few hours we stopped and lit a fire by the mountain roadside—a fire of twigs. We made tea, and warmed milk, and ate a little cold lunch, and washed our hands and faces while the coolies lay resting in the shade and smoking their hookahs.
Our road went from beauty into beauty that was greater. At Darjeeling we had seen the Himalayas covered with snow. Now we saw the Himalayas aglow with bloom, perfumed with fruit and athrob with life—the life of bird and of beast.
It is strange how confident you grow in the coolies who carry you up and down the steep mountain paths of Asia. I have had my bearers go on their hands and knees to manage some peculiarly difficult bit of road. But I have never had them stumble or even shake me roughly—save once, which didn’t count.
Ayah seemed more fearful than I—and she always insisted upon carrying Baby over the rough parts. That gave her a great deal to do, for most of the paths over the Himalayas were very rough.
Up—up—up we went, until we reached high Dagshai. That was no place for European civilians. It was wholly and solely for British soldiers and bazaar natives. But they were all glad enough to see us. We meant money to the natives and entertainment to the warriors. We were given an officer’s empty bungalow. Some one sent us afternoon tea. It was about six o’clock. By midnight our bungalow was furnished, our larder was filled, and we had half a dozen servants pottering about as industriously as if they had been in our employ for years. That could only happen in India, I think. But it happened in India very easily—quite as a matter of course. The natives take things as they come, and they are accustomed to making shift. Their own lives are often one long make-shift. That makes them very useful in our little domestic emergencies.
The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and a detachment of the Derbyshires were in Dagshai. The Derbyshires were old friends of ours. They had welcomed us to Jubblepore and to Umballa. The Highlanders, too, we had known in Hong-Kong. It used to give one quite a feeling of having come home, to go into a strange cantonment and see a familiar uniform or a well-known tartan.
In the 93rd there were boys whose surnames had been by their fathers written gloriously upon the history of the Mutiny.
It was some hours’ journey from Dagshai to Subathu. We got into our chairs in the early morning; it was not far from sunset when we came in sight of the Subathu barracks. The bagpipes called us a quaint Scotch welcome, and as we rounded the last khud and passed by the parade ground, the windy music sounded very sweet to me. And I could have cried with all my heart, “Bring on the Tartan!”
And again we had come to friends, for we had known the regiment in Colombo. There is no regiment in the service that we have had cause to like—yes, to love, more than the Gordon Highlanders. No wonder that every man in the regiment is proud to be in it.
Again we were domiciled in an empty bungalow. But our housekeeping was very simple. Our bungalow was near the officers’ mess, and from there our meals were sent us.
We had expected to be in Subathu some days, but we stayed much longer. Baby was ill and we dared not travel. But we went on playing, and night after night we did our work with hopeful hearts and a full house, because of a regiment’s hospitality. When we had exhausted our own little repertoire, the regimental amateurs played with us, and that enabled us to play Caste and several other pieces that are dear to the heart of Tommy Atkins.
One subaltern played Eccles for us on threes hours’ notice, and played it splendidly. But Captain Macready was the histrionic genius of the corps. I have never seen an amateur who compared with him for finish, artistic breadth, and actor-like exactness. Captain Macready inherits his dramatic gift, probably, for he is the son of one of the greatest actors who ever played upon our English stage. There are other names in the regiment that come back to me warmly. But if I told of them all, it would read too much like a leaf out of the Army List.
It was at Subathu that I first went freely among the lepers. The wife of the regimental chaplain gave me a letter to the superintendent of the leper asylum. I was a little frightened at first, when I passed into the place of pain, but the terror of the place was too great for petty feeling to last.
H.H. THE MAHARAJAH OF PATIALA ON HIS FAVOURITE RACER. Page 320.
I have always believed that charity should begin at home. And I believe it still. But the lepers are a people apart. Their misery cries out above all other human misery. Science and love should unite their utmost strength to wipe this great and antique curse off the face of our earth. If you think I exaggerate, when I say that there is no human misery that compares with the misery of leprosy, go among the lepers and see.
And what shall I say of the man and woman who are devoting their lives to those Subathu lepers? They were people of unusual culture—people who would have been first among almost any of their fellows, and they, who were not fanatics, but healthy, wholesome human creatures had elected to live with and for the lepers. I felt, when I saw them last, on the steps of their bungalow, that I could cover their hands with kisses and bless them. I feel so still.
There are no words that would even partly describe the agonies of those lepers. Some of them moaned, some prayed, some wept, some only crouched on their beds and waited for death.
One poor fellow I shall never forget. He belonged to the highest Brahmin caste. He would no more have eaten with me, nor have let me touch his chattee, than he would have jumped into a river of fire. But his Brahmin courtesy he never laid aside for a moment. When I came to the door of his hut, he invariably struggled on to his feetless legs and cried me a smiling “salaam.”
One morning we journeyed on to Kausali. It is a wonderful place, high, high on the hills. We were there a week or more, and then we came sadly back to Subathu, for we had left our little baby in the cantonment cemetery at Kausali.