How we did eat! There was little doubt that we appreciated the excellent fare set before us, and at the end of it I felt a different being.
Our friend the planter had meanwhile got himself up regardless of expense, and offered to drive me into Sylhet, an offer which I most gladly accepted, leaving the poor Jabberwock in a comfortable stable, with a large bundle of grass in front of him, which he was too tired to eat.
We did not take long to get over the four miles to Sylhet, where I bade farewell to the planter and Mr. A⸺, who returned with him to the garden.
I had the pleasure of lying down on a bed with no bedding, and waiting until my coolies and baggage should arrive, with part of my muddy habit rolled up to serve for a pillow; and very well I slept for three good hours, when at two o’clock in the morning my goods and chattels commenced dropping in, and I was able to go to bed in real, sober earnest.
Next morning the Jabberwock arrived, looking rather miserable, with a very large swelling on his leg, and a bad girthgall; so there was no possibility of our continuing our journey that day, as the servants all said they were dying, and could not move on at any price. However, the day following they had recovered sufficiently to proceed another fifteen miles; and after three more days I arrived at Cachar, where I found my husband, who had come down from Manipur to meet me.
CHAPTER IX.
Return to Manipur—Mr. Heath’s grave—Old Moonia—A quarrel and fight between Moonia and the Chupprassie’s wife—Dignity of the Chupprassies—The Senaputti gets up sports—Manipuri greetings and sports.
It was strange finding myself back in Manipur after nearly nine months’ absence; but though the house had had several improvements made to it, and the grounds were prettier than when we had left in February, I could not settle down in the place as I had done before. Poor Mr. Heath was buried in our own garden, quite close to the house—so close, in fact, that I could see his grave from my bedroom window. There had been two graves there before—one was Major Trotter’s, who was once political agent at Manipur, and died there from wounds which he had received fighting in Burmah; the other was that of a young Lieutenant Beavor, who had also died at the Residency, of fever. But we had never known either of these two men, so that I did not look upon them in the same light as I did on Mr. Heath, and his sudden, sad death seemed to haunt me. Once a friend of mine remarked to my husband, ‘What an unlucky place Manipur is! I have seen so many political agents go up there, and something always seems to happen to them.’ Hearing this gave me a cold shudder, and I longed to get my husband to give up a place so associated with gloomy incidents, and take some other district in the province. Not that I was ever really afraid of anything tangible.
