I sought out some of my old ship acquaintances, and having transacted all necessary business, and ordered my bolio to Barrackpore, Tom and I returned in a hired gig by land.
We drove through the native town, alive with its heterogeneous population—paroquets, fakeers, baboos, palkees, &c., and through almost an unbroken avenue of trees, to Barrackpore, sixteen miles distant.
The next day I called on Capt. Belfield, with whom I arranged to depart in two or three days. He proposed that I should take my meals with them on my way up as far as Dinapore, to which I consented; this, besides promising to be agreeable in other respects, saved me the expense of a cook-boat.
The captain introduced me to his sister, who had resided with him for some time in Java.
Miss Belfield was “a lady of a certain age,” once more briefly expressed by the term “old maid;” but she was neither an envious old maid, nor a spiteful old maid, nor an intensely blue old maid, nor a canting old maid; but she was a cheerful, bland, and intellectual woman of thirty-five, with a mind deeply imbued with religious feeling, and not without a dash of sentiment.
Celibacy, which so often in women turns the milk of human kindness to gall, seemed in her, as sometimes happens, to have had the opposite effect, and to have given it additional sweetness; in fact, all the world was her lover, and she had never given her heart to one, from a feeling, perhaps, that “’twas meant for mankind.”
Having lost her last surviving parent, a clergyman, whose income, though large, arose almost solely from his preferment, she had been obliged to change the home of her infancy for a state of galling half-dependence on distant relatives, who made her feel their kindness in the least pleasing manner. From this state she was relieved by an invitation from her only and bachelor brother, Capt. Belfield, to come out and superintend his establishment in India; and, certainly, a happier or more amiable pair were never seen together.
Capt. Belfield told me at what ghaut his budgerow, horse, and cook-boat were lying, and recommended me to send my bolio to the same place, as it was his intention to quit Barrackpore in a couple of days.
The next two days were busily occupied in paying farewell visits, packing up my valuables, as also in hiring one or two additional servants, which swelled my establishment to six.
I here recount the names, occupations, and salaries of the individuals.