But the vulgar crowd must be kept off by walls; and the little oval table in the centre was to receive the privileged few, and to shut out the unprivileged many. Dishes reeking hot, and soup-tureens in a state of vapour, were passed into the room, over the heads of the mob; for there was no forcing a way through them. A long pause, and then some more steaming dishes, and then another pause, and some rice-plates; and at last, struggling and battling amidst the army of relations, the bridegroom made his appearance—very hot and very shiny, evidently reeking from the kitchen. He had slipped on his blue cloth, many-buttoned coat, and smiled at his wife and the assembled company as though he would have us believe he was quite cool and comfortable.
It devolved upon me to hand, or rather drag the bride to one end of the table; opposite to whom sat her culinary lord and master, as dignified and important as though his monthly income had been ten guineas instead of ten rix-dollars. I seated myself next to the lady of the hut, and resigned myself to my fate; escape was out of the question. Nothing short of fire, or the falling in of the roof, could have saved me. Our rickety chairs were rendered firm and secure as the best London-made mahogany-seats by the continuous, unrelenting pressure of the dense mob behind and around us. The little room seemed built of faces; you might have danced a polka or a waltz on the heads of the company with perfect security. As for the window-trap, I could see nothing but bright, shining eyes through it.
The covers were removed, as covers are intended to be; but, instead of curiously-arranged and many-coloured dishes of pure and unadulterated Sinhalese cookery, as I had, in the early part of the day, fondly hoped, there appeared upon them a few overdone, dried up joints a l’Anglaise; a skinny, consumptive baked shoulder of mutton; a hard-looking boiled leg of a goat; a shrivelled spare-rib of beef; a turkey that might have died of jungle-fever; and a wooden kind of dry, lean ham, with sundry vegetables, made up this sad and melancholy show. All my gastronomic hopes, so long cherished amidst that heated assemblage, vanished with the dish-covers, and left me a miserable and dejected being. Ten minutes previously, I had felt the pangs of wholesome hunger, and was prepared to do my utmost; at that moment I only felt empty and sick. Could I have reached the many-buttoned cook, I might have been tempted to have done him some bodily harm; but I could not move. The host had the wretch of a turkey before him. Well up to the knife-and-fork exercise, he whipped off from the breast of the skinny bird two slices of the finest meat—the only really decent cuts about it—and then, pushing the dish on to his next neighbour, begged him to help himself. Of course, I had to attend to the hostess. I gave her a slice of the sinewy, lean ham before me, with two legs of a native fowl, and began to think of an attempt upon the boiled mutton for myself; but there was no peace for me yet. The bride had never before used a knife and fork, and, in her desperate attempts to insert the latter into one of the fowl’s legs, sent it with a bound into my waistcoat, accompanied by a shower of gravy, and a drizzling rain of melted butter and garlic. Feeling more resigned to my fate, I proceeded to cut up her ham and chicken, and then fancied the task was done; but not so. Her dress was so tight, the ornaments so encompassed her as with a suit of armour, that all her attempts to reach her mouth with her fork were abortive. To bend her arm was evidently impossible. Once she managed to get a piece of ham as high as her chin; but it cost her violent fractures in several parts of her dress; so that I became alarmed for what might possibly happen, and begged her not to think of doing it again, offering to feed her myself. Feverish, thirsty, and weary as I felt at that table, I could scarcely suppress a smile when I found myself, spoon in hand, administering portions of food to the newly-made wife. Never having had, at that period of my existence, any experience in feeding babies, or other living creatures, I felt at first much embarrassed, somewhat as a man might feel who, only accustomed to shave himself, tries, for the first time in his life, to remove the beard of some friend in a public assembly. Fortunately for me, the lady was blessed with a rather capacious mouth; and, as I raised, tremblingly and in doubt, a pyramid of fowl, ham, and onions, upon the bowl of the Brittania-metal spoon, my patient distended her jaws in a friendly and hopeful manner.
During my spoon performances I was much startled at hearing, close to our door, the loud report of several guns fired in quick succession. I imagined at first that the military had been called out to disperse the mob, but as nobody gave signs of any alarm or uneasiness, that could not have been the case; so I settled in my mind that the friends of the family were shooting some game for the evening’s supper. All that I partook of at that bridal party was a small portion of very lean, dry beef, and some badly boiled potatoes, washed down by a draught of hard, sour beer. I essayed some of the pastry, for it had a bright and cheerful look, and was evidently very light. I took a mouthful of some description of sugared puff, light to the feel, and pleasant to look at, but in reality a most heartless deception—a sickly piece of deceit: it was evidently a composition of bean-flour, brown sugar, stale eggs, and cocoanut oil—the latter, although burning very brilliantly in lamps, and serviceable as a dressing to the hair, not being quite equal to Lucca oil when fried or baked. To swallow such an abomination was impossible, and, watching my opportunity, I contrived at length to convey my savoury mouthful beneath the table. This vile pastry was succeeded by a plentiful crop of fruit of all kinds, from pine-apples to dates. Hecatombs of oranges, pyramids of plantains, shoals of sour-sops, mounds of mangoes, to say nothing of alligator pears, rhambatams, custard apples, guavas, jamboes, and other fruit, as varied in name and taste as in hue and form, graced that hitherto graceless board. I had marked for immediate incorporation a brace of custard apples, and a glowing, corpulent alligator-pear, and was even on the point of securing them before attending to my dark neighbour, when a loud shout, followed by a confused hubbub, was heard outside in front. There was a cracking of whips and a rattling of carriage-wheels, and altogether a huge commotion in the street, which at once put an end to our dessert, and attracted attention from the inside to the exterior of the house. My spirits revived from zero to summer-heat, and thence up to blood-heat, when I learnt that the arrivals were a batch of “Europe gentlemen,” friends of the cook’s master, who had come just to have a passing peep at the bride and the fun. Their approach was made known by sundry explanations in the English language, and a noise as of scuffling at the door. How our new friends were to get in was a mystery to me, nor did the host appear to have any very distinct ideas upon the subject. He rose from his seat, and, with his mouth full of juicy pine apple, ordered a way to be cleared for the “great masters;” but he might as well have requested his auditory to become suddenly invisible, or to pass out through the key-hole. There was no such thing as giving way. A few of the first cousins grinned, and one or two maternal uncles coughed audibly, while the eyes of the distant relations at the window were glistening more intensely, and in greater numbers than ever. The stock of British patience, as I rather expected, was quickly exhausted, and in a minute or two I perceived near the door some white faces that were familiar to me at a certain regimental mess-table. Uncles and brothers-in-law were rapidly at a discount, and there appeared every prospect of mere connexions by marriage becoming relations by blood. Some giant of a native ventured upon the hazardous speculation of collaring an officer who was squeezing past him, and received a friendly and admonitory tap in return, which at once put him hors de combat. The cook, enraged at the rudeness of his countryman, dealt a shower of knocks amongst his family circle; the visitors stormed the approaches, and at last carried the covered way; Singalese gentry struggled and pushed, and tried in vain to repel the invaders; the fair sex screamed, and tried to escape; the mêlée became general and furious. I gave my whole attention to the bride, who kept her seat in the utmost alarm; her husband was the centre of attraction to the combatants, and in the midst of a sort of “forlorn hope” of the native forces, the heavily loaded table was forced from its centre of gravity. Staggering and groaning beneath the united pressure from fruit and fighting, the wooden fabric reeled and tottered, and at last went toppling over, amidst a thunder-storm of vegetable productions. It was in vain I pulled at the unhappy bride to save her—she was a doomed woman, and was swept away with the fruity flood. When I sought her amidst the wreck and confusion, I could only discover heaps of damaged oranges, sour-sops, and custard-apples, her white satin shoes, the Chinese fan, and the four silver meat-skewers. By dint of sundry excavations, the lady was fairly dug out of the ruins and carried off by her female friends; the room was cleared of the rebellious Singalese, and a resolution carried unanimously that the meeting be adjourned to the compound or garden at the back. Under the pleasant shade of a tope of beautiful palms, we sat and partook of the remains of the feast. The relations, once more restored to good humour, amused themselves in their own fashion, preparing for the dancing, and festivity, and illuminations that were to take place in the evening. We sat there until some time after sunset, and when I had seen the great cocoa-nut shells, with their flaring wicks, lighted up, and the tom-toms begin to assemble, I deemed it prudent to retire and seek a wholesome meal at the hotel.
VI.
THE TREE OF LIFE.
