Mrs. Hunter did not say much to me after that. But the relief was slight. She talked incessantly to some one—to her husband if to no one else, and her sharp little voice pierced to the utmost corner of the deck. Oh! my sisters, can’t we be free without being vulgar? Can’t we travel without becoming a reproach to our beautiful land?
One night I left the dinner table early. If I had stayed longer I should have thrown something at Mrs. Frank Hunter, and that would not have enhanced the women of America in the eyes of that boat-load of people. I went on deck. The gentleman of whom I have spoken—the American soldier who was the peer, at least, of any Englishman on board—was leaning sadly over the rail. “Are you ill, General?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, “but I am ashamed of being an American! Did you hear that dreadful person trying to pick a quarrel with Colonel Montmorency, about the relative merits of West Point and Sandhurst? I stood it until she told him that her Uncle Silas was a major of militia and one of the best soldiers in the States. Then I left.”
We sat down and tried to console each other. We planned to petition Congress to regulate the class of Americans who travel. We have not yet done so, but I do believe that it was a good idea.
Mrs. Hunter kept up her vulgar, impertinent, irritating remarks until we anchored in Diamond Harbour.
The last time I ever saw her, she and her husband were standing on Chowringhee, gazing at the maidan. She was ablaze with gems, as usual. The natives doubtless thought her the European wife of a Rajah. They are, I believe, the only class of European ladies who in India in the day overload themselves with jewels.
“Frank darling,” she was saying, “it ain’t a patch to Central Park, is it? And their old Government House, as they call it—it can’t hold a tallow candle to the Capitol at Washington, can it now?”
I fled down Dhurrumtollah.
CHAPTER V
IN THE BURRA BAZAAR