As Colombo faded from our sight, we planned to return there on our homeward journey. But we said it doubtfully—we had learned that the plans of nomads are uncertain and changeable; and we have not yet seen Colombo again.
The Kaiser-i-Hind was full of English people,—army people, civil servants, and their contingent of memsahibs.
There were three Americans aboard beside myself.
I am often called a bad American. I certainly am not a rabid American. At times I am a bitter American. When I am among a lot of nice English people, and have the misfortune to meet the worst type of travelling American, I wince.
One of the Americans on board was a man of whom all Americans are justly proud; he is a soldier (with a great record), a gentleman, and a scholar. But not all the soldiers that have ever come from West Point, not all the scholars that have ever come from Harvard, not all the gentlemen that have ever come from Virginia, could have wiped out our national disgrace upon a boat that numbered among its passengers Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hunter.
They had been married two months. Whatever inspired Americans of their type to select the Orient as the scene of their honeymoon was, is, and always will be, a dark mystery. But there they were, glittering caricatures of our national life. There they were, amid a boat-load of nice English folk.
Mr. Frank Hunter did not wear quite such loud clothes as many of the Englishmen. But he wore them far more noisily. A magnified chess-board is nothing to a certain type of English officer in “mufti.” But though they make mistakes about their coats, they never blunder in their behaviour, those English officers—English and Irish, Scotch and Welsh, are they. But they are all gentlemen, in public at least.
Mr. Frank Hunter’s tailors were irreproachable; but his manners were simply shocking,—and English people are so easily shocked. The English people on the Kaiser-i-Hind quite forgot that there was a nasty something, called mal-de-mer. They were as sick as sick could be from the unavoidable proximity of the Hunters. I say “sick” advisedly; no other word would convey what I mean. Mrs. Hunter, on the whole, was worse than her husband. He sometimes smoked—rather frequently, in fact. When he smoked he was silent. Mrs. Hunter did not smoke. She was never silent, or, if ever, then only in the still watches of the night, and no one had the benefit of it—no one but Mr. Frank Hunter.
Mrs. Frank Hunter wore more diamonds at breakfast than all the other women in the boat put together wore at dinner. She dressed for dinner, but she dressed very high at the neck, which I thought a great pity,—the dimples in her chin told me that her neck was sweetly pretty. She gazed with prudish horror at the well controlled décollete of the English women. They gazed less openly, but quite as disapprovingly, at her vulgar display of jewelry. The abuse hurled by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hunter upon the Kaiser-i-Hind Commissariat was positively indecent. I have been better fed at sea, several times. But the ceaseless comments of the Hunters were far worse than the food. There was no escape from the perpetual clatter of their tongues; but we were not forced to eat the food. “Won’t I just be glad to see my nice new brown stone bungalow on Fifth Avenue!” exclaimed the bride one night at dinner. “Won’t I have something to eat though! Don’t your mouth water for batter cakes every morning? And aren’t you half dead for butter-milk?” She was speaking to me. I felt very angry, because she had hit upon something we had in common. I am excessively fond of butter-milk; and, when we were housekeeping in Australia, every Sunday morning that was cold enough, my husband used to make me “batter cakes” if I were good. But I could not bring myself to confess that I agreed with that horrid little American in anything. So I said nothing. She persisted, “Isn’t America the nicest place on earth? Don’t you just love it?”
“America is very nice in some respects,” I said softly; “and I should love my native land dearly, if there were fewer Americans.”