And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Shall entwine itself verdantly still.
“Captain Marpeet,” said I, one day, after breakfast, “I shall to-morrow have been just one year in the country, and according to the Lex Griffiniensis I shall be no longer a greenhorn.”
“Have you, my boy? Why bless my life! so you have, I declare; then by the piper that played before Moses, I’ll have a few friends to meet you, and we’ll make a day of it. You’ve never seen a nautch, I believe; we’ll have Chumbailie and Goolabie[[60]] and all that set—a devilled turkey, and a glorious blow-out.”
Marpeet was as good as his word; he posted off chits (invitations) to a dozen choice spirits; ordered a fat sheep to be killed, which had been six months on gram; bought the best ham to be had in cantonments, and a turkey for its vis-a-vis; ordered half a chest of claret, and beer to be tundakurred (cooled); sent his bearer to bespeak a tip-top set of nautch-girls, and then, slapping me on the back, exclaimed,
“Now, Frank, my boy, we are all right and tight, and your griffinage shall close with a flourish of trumpets.”
On the following day the guests assembled at dinner, and the old mosque resounded with the echoes of our revelry and mirth. Marpeet certainly boxed the kansamah[[61]] for omitting the pigeon-pie, and ordered the cook half a dozen rattans for underboiling the ham; but, on the whole, he was in splendid key.
Evening at length approached; more young officers came in; the wall shades were lighted, and chairs arranged in a semicircle; teapoys, port, mint, claret, were all moojood (present), when the curtain was rolled up, and a bevy of as pretty gazelle-eyed damsels, arrayed in robes of sky-blue, crimson and gold, bedecked with rings and chains, and redolent of oil of Chumbailie, as I ever saw, entered the apartment in stately guise, followed by sundry old duennas, and four or five rakish looking musicians, with embroidered skull-caps, long raven ringlets, and slender ungirdled waists, bearing some of the funniest looking musical instruments ever seen since the days of Orpheus.
After some excruciating tuning, thrumming, and twisting of keys, a couple of young sirens, fair Mogulanees, whose languishing eyes shone brightly through their antimonial borders, broke forth into a song, advancing with hands extended and slow movements of the feet, their anklet-bells jingling harmoniously the “goongroo ka awaz,” by the way, a music on which the Indian poet loves to expatiate. As the song and the movement quickened, the heads of the fiddlers worked ecstatically, whilst they sawed away at their outlandish fiddles with surprising energy and vigour.
Marpeet was in raptures; he considered nautches superior to all the operas in the universe, and thought he could hardly ever have enough of them.