CHRISTMAS AT DUSTYPORE.
Truth is the strong thing. Let man's life be true—
And love's the truth of mine—time prove the rest!
Christmas had arrived, and Christmas was a festival observed at Dustypore with all the emphasis proper to men who had carried their Lares and Penates beneath a foreign sky, and were treasuring in alien regions the sacred fire of the paternal hearth.
The weather was cold enough to realise all that English tradition requires as 'seasonable' in the way of climate. For weeks past, great bullock-carts, piled high with gnarled heaps of jungle-wood, had been creaking along the dusty tracks from the outlying villages and supplying the Station with materials for Christmas-fires of appropriate magnificence. The air was deliciously clear, crisp and invigorating: the searching wind came with its breath frozen from the Elysian snows and left a hoary rime on all the country's face. English habits began to resume their sway: people were glad to forego the morning ride, and came down to breakfast at half-past nine with red noses and blue fingers and—romantic reminiscence of European life—extremely bad colds in their heads.
Dustypore surrendered itself to holiday-making. The Salt Board suspended its sittings. The vehement Blunt, finding that no work was to be got out of any one for love or money, started off into the country with his rifle after black-buck and jungle-partridges. The courts were closed for a fortnight, and judges and collectors devoted themselves to sweeping off long arrears of morning calls. Contingents of visitors from all the surrounding out-stations came pouring in to share the festivities: every house was full and more than full; for, by the hospitable usages of India, when your spare rooms are filled you order tents to be pitched in the garden, and enlarge your encampment as each new guest arrives. An Indian house is, therefore, viewed as to its capacities for hospitality, extremely elastic, and just now every house in Dustypore had its elasticity tested to the uttermost. Felicia was renowned as a hostess; and there were half-a-dozen friends whose winter holiday would have lost half its charm if spent anywhere but beneath her roof. There was a mixture of joyousness and pathos in these Christmas gatherings which suited her temperament exactly, and showed her in her sweetest, most attractive mood. Her guests invariably went away with cheered spirits and lightened hearts and a little store of remembered kindness to last them through the dreary months to come. Nor was Felicia alone in her good intentions. Everybody set about keeping Christmas with heroic good-nature. The Agent gave a ball in the state apartments in the Fort. The Dustypore Hunt had a home meet and a lunch. The 'Tent Club' organised a pig-sticking expedition for the keener sportsmen. The volunteers had a gala-day, and were formed into a hollow square and panegyrised by the General of the Division on their loyalty and discipline. Everybody attempted something for the edification of everybody else.
The Vernons gave some private theatricals, and Felicia and Maud made a great success as Portia and Nerissa in the 'Merchant of Venice.' Desvœux, who was entrusted with the part of Shylock, heroically shaved off his moustache and transformed himself into the most frightful of old Israelites, with a hook-nose and beard of diabolical aspect. The way in which he rolled his eyes when Gratiano exclaimed 'Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip!' had twice caused Maud to explode in irrepressible laughter at rehearsals and very nearly caused a break-down among the actors at the final performance. Altogether it was very like home, and very pleasant, as all the party felt.
These Indian festivities are, perhaps, none the less festive, and certainly the more touching, for the fact that at least half the holiday-makers have a dark, sad corner in their hearts which has to be hidden from the world's eye and to be ignored in the common intercourse of life. Separation is the dark cloud which hangs over an Indian existence: husbands and wives, mothers and children, forced asunder, perhaps at the very time when union is most delightful, and living (how maimed and sad a life!) in the absence of all that is best-beloved. They put a brave face upon it, but the heartache is there all the same. What a strong pulse of love and tenderness and sorrow goes throbbing week by week across half the world from the wives and children at home to the lonely exile, struggling bravely with his fate in the far-off Indian station: what dear, ill-spelt, round-hand, stupid letters, which yet are wept over with such passionate pleasure and treasured with such pious care! People have a cheap tariff for telegraphing back to India their safe arrival in England, with a rupee extra for saying that the traveller 'is better.' What a story it tells of anxious men in India toiling over work, with their hearts far away with the shattered, invalid lady or flickering child's life, carried away to cool regions in hopes of saving it!
Take, for instance, little Major Storks, who was stage-manager for the Vernons' theatricals and sang a comic song between the acts. He is a grizzly, wizen, well-tanned, wiry little fellow, but has, under that rough exterior, as brave and tender a heart as ever beat. He is in charge of the Rumble Chunder Canal and bestows on it all a lover's assiduity: for it he thinks, he writes, he plans, he labours early and late: he rides about in the most demented fashion until the sun has dried him up into a perfect mummy. He knows the Canal's ways and manners—how much water it ought to pour per second; how much it does pour; which of the bridges are infirm; where the silt is accumulating; where the water is being wasted or stolen. He drives his subordinates frantic by a zeal in which they cannot participate and a thoroughness which they cannot shirk. To the world outside he seems the merest drudge. To-day, however, he is in paradise. It is Christmas morning and the mail has brought him a goodly budget of letters, all redolent of home and tender conjugal love, and—precious alleviation of exile—photographs of half-a-dozen little Storks. He sits now, with all his family before him, with tears of joyful satisfaction in his eyes. What comely lads! what sweet, ingenuous little girls! what dear, familiar looks, the legacy of a youth that has passed away, greeting him from every little portrait! In a moment Storks' soul quits its shabby tenement of clay and its hot surroundings, and is away in England with wife and children—the wife, whose heart has ached for many a dreary year of separation—the children, who have been taught to love him with a sort of romantic piety, all the more for being far away—the pleasant, cool, idle life in England, which lies afar off, a sort of Promised Land, if ever his long, rough task in India can get itself performed. Then, in the fulness of his heart, he will put on his shabby uniform and order round his shabby dogcart, and go and show his treasures to Felicia, who will, he knows, have a quick sympathy for his pleasure and his pain; and when the two act in a charade that night, each will know that all is not as merry as it seems, but that, under a stoical calmness, lie thoughts and hopes and pangs which stir the very depths of man's being, and which require all the help that sympathy and kindliness can give.
The last and most interesting occasion of the holidays was one in which Sutton and Maud played a leading part. Sutton had a two months' Inspection march before him, and no better sort of honeymoon could be desired. The country through which they were to go was wild but very picturesque. Sutton's duties would never take him away for more than a few hours; and camp life is idyllic in its freedom, unconstraint and tranquillity. Existence has something charming about it when each morning's ride takes you through new scenes to a new home, in which you live as comfortably for the next twenty-four hours as if you had been there all your life. Maud was in rapture at the prospect, nor was her happiness lessened by the arrival of the most perfect Arab to be found in Bombay—her husband's wedding gift to her—on which her long journey was to be performed. To Sutton these weeks seemed the fitting threshold of the new and brighter existence into which he was about to pass. Each day Maud bound herself closer to his heart by some sweet act or word, some unstudied outpouring of devotion, childish in its simplicity and unconsciousness, but womanly in its serious strength; some sympathetic note which vibrated harmoniously to his inmost soul. 'To be with you, dear,' he said, 'is like travelling through a lovely mountain country, where each turn in the road opens up a fresh delight: you charm me in some new fashion every hour.'
To this sort of remark Maud had no need of any other reply than that easiest and most natural of all to feminine lips, which dispenses with the necessity of spoken words. Her kisses were, we may be certain, eloquent enough to Sutton's heart, irradiated for the first time with a woman's love and beating high with a courageous joyfulness and hope.
By the end of January Sutton was well enough to be emancipated from the pleasant thraldom of an invalid's sofa; nor could his march be any longer delayed. One afternoon, accordingly, the little world of Dustypore assembled to see the brave soldier and the beautiful girl made man and wife. Boldero came in from the District and performed his part as groomsman with creditable stoicism. No one—Maud and Sutton least of all—had the least idea that he was assisting at the sacrifice of all his hopes.
Desvœux preserved his tragic demeanour to the last, presented Maud with a diamond pendant which must have gone far into his quarter's income, and refused obstinately to return thanks for the bridesmaids—a task which was traditionally assigned to him in Dustypore, and which, on all ordinary occasions, he accepted with alacrity and performed with success.