When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

Ayah seemed more fearful than I—and she always insisted upon carrying Baby over the rough parts. That gave her a great deal to do, for most of the paths over the Himalayas were very rough.

Up—up—up we went, until we reached high Dagshai. That was no place for European civilians. It was wholly and solely for British soldiers and bazaar natives. But they were all glad enough to see us. We meant money to the natives and entertainment to the warriors. We were given an officer’s empty bungalow. Some one sent us afternoon tea. It was about six o’clock. By midnight our bungalow was furnished, our larder was filled, and we had half a dozen servants pottering about as industriously as if they had been in our employ for years. That could only happen in India, I think. But it happened in India very easily—quite as a matter of course. The natives take things as they come, and they are accustomed to making shift. Their own lives are often one long make-shift. That makes them very useful in our little domestic emergencies.

The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and a detachment of the Derbyshires were in Dagshai. The Derbyshires were old friends of ours. They had welcomed us to Jubblepore and to Umballa. The Highlanders, too, we had known in Hong-Kong. It used to give one quite a feeling of having come home, to go into a strange cantonment and see a familiar uniform or a well-known tartan.

In the 93rd there were boys whose surnames had been by their fathers written gloriously upon the history of the Mutiny.

It was some hours’ journey from Dagshai to Subathu. We got into our chairs in the early morning; it was not far from sunset when we came in sight of the Subathu barracks. The bagpipes called us a quaint Scotch welcome, and as we rounded the last khud and passed by the parade ground, the windy music sounded very sweet to me. And I could have cried with all my heart, “Bring on the Tartan!”

And again we had come to friends, for we had known the regiment in Colombo. There is no regiment in the service that we have had cause to like—yes, to love, more than the Gordon Highlanders. No wonder that every man in the regiment is proud to be in it.

Again we were domiciled in an empty bungalow. But our housekeeping was very simple. Our bungalow was near the officers’ mess, and from there our meals were sent us.

We had expected to be in Subathu some days, but we stayed much longer. Baby was ill and we dared not travel. But we went on playing, and night after night we did our work with hopeful hearts and a full house, because of a regiment’s hospitality. When we had exhausted our own little repertoire, the regimental amateurs played with us, and that enabled us to play Caste and several other pieces that are dear to the heart of Tommy Atkins.

One subaltern played Eccles for us on threes hours’ notice, and played it splendidly. But Captain Macready was the histrionic genius of the corps. I have never seen an amateur who compared with him for finish, artistic breadth, and actor-like exactness. Captain Macready inherits his dramatic gift, probably, for he is the son of one of the greatest actors who ever played upon our English stage. There are other names in the regiment that come back to me warmly. But if I told of them all, it would read too much like a leaf out of the Army List.

It was at Subathu that I first went freely among the lepers. The wife of the regimental chaplain gave me a letter to the superintendent of the leper asylum. I was a little frightened at first, when I passed into the place of pain, but the terror of the place was too great for petty feeling to last.