In a corner of the chapel sat several young ladies and the junior rector of the parish, a handsome English youth, announced on the program as the president of the meeting. We were favored, however, only with a view of his well-tailored back, for the necessity of furnishing giggle motifs for the fair maidens and the consumption of innumerable cigarettes left him no time for sterner duties.
When the last plate had been licked clean, the gathering resolved itself into a soirée musicale. A snub-nosed English miss fell upon the piano beside the pulpit, and every ragged adventurer who could be dragged within pistol-shot of the maltreated instrument inflicted a song on his indulgent mates. More than once the performer, indifferent to memsahib blushes, refused either to expurgate or curtail the ballad of his choice, and it became the duty of a self-appointed committee to drag him back to his seat.
The suppression of a grog-shop ditty had been followed by several moments of fidgety silence when a chorus of hoarse whispers near the back of the chapel relieved the general embarrassment. A tow-headed beachcomber—a Swede by all seeming—was forced to his feet and advanced self-consciously up the aisle. He was the sorriest-looking “vag” in the gathering. His garb was a strange collection of tatters, through which his sunburned skin peeped out here and there; and his hands, calloused evidences of self-supporting days, hung heavily at his sides. The noises thus far produced would have been prohibited by law in a civilized country, and I settled back in my seat prepared to endure some new auditory atrocity. The Swede, ignoring the stairs by which more conventional mortals mounted, stepped from the floor to the rostrum, and strode to the piano. The audience, grinning nervously, waited for him to turn and bellow forth some halyard chantie. He squatted instead on the recently vacated stool and, running his stumpy fingers over the keys, fell to playing with unusual skill—Mendelssohn’s “Frühlingslied.” Such surprises befall, now and then, in the vagabond world. Its denizens are not always the unseeing, unknowing louts that those of a more laundered realm imagine.
“The Swanee River” was suggested as the Swede stalked back to his seat, and the rafters rang with the response; for there was scarcely one of these adventurers, from every corner of the globe, who could not sing it without prompting from beginning to end. During the rendition of “God Save the King,” the youthful rector tore himself away from the entrancing maidens, and puffing at his fortieth cigarette, shook us each by the hand as we passed out into the night. A pleasant evening he had spent, evidently, in spite of our presence.
“After all,” mused the “old timer,” as he hobbled across the Maidan at my side, “Holy Joes is a hell of a lot like other people, ain’t they?”
Of the entertainments of other evenings I may not speak with authority, for on that day I had concluded to take the Eurasian collector at his word and escape from Calcutta before I had outlived my welcome. As I stretched out on the roof of the Institute on my return from the chapel, the man beside me rolled over on his blanket and peered at me through the darkness.
“That you, Franck?” he whispered.
The voice was that of James, the Australian.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Some of the lads,” came the response, “told me you’re going to hit the trail again.”