A few hours later my husband said to me, “Tell me truly, do you really, honestly like to go into that place?”
“Honestly, I love it.”
He gazed intently at me for a few moments; then he said, “You are a wonderful woman.”
Which showed that the Burra Bazaar had enriched his understanding even more than it had impoverished his purse.
CHAPTER VI
A CHRISTMAS DINNER ON A ROOF
Is it only three years ago that we ate our Christmas dinner on the roof of an old Calcutta palace? How hot it was! The starlit sky was murky and shimmering. The air trembled and throbbed with the electrical heat. But when the plum-puddings came in we had to stop the punkah wallahs; the swing of their big hand punkahs blew the flaming brandy out. The Major had been saying nice things to me through all the courses. He was so polite and attentive that he only had one of his Bombay oysters,—the khitmatgar thought that his master did not want the others, and whipped up the plate. He was a Madrassi, was the Major’s khitmatgar; he liked oysters, and he had no stupid, superstitious theories about Europeans defiling food. The Major never touched his sweetbread; and he missed most of his biscuit glacé. Yes; he was self-sacrificingly courteous. But when the hand punkahs stopped, he leaned back in his chair and drew his handkerchief across his brow, with the air of a man who would continue his polite attentions if he could, but really could not.
It was rather a home-sick little Christmas party. English people are very apt to be home-sick when Christmas finds them out of England. We two were not home-sick; we were the two strangers—the two newcomers; and yet we were the most content of any there. We were nomads, gipsies, strolling players. We had learned to carry our home in our hand-satchels, and in our hearts. Our wandering life had broadened and deepened our cosmopolitanism as much as it had sharpened and quickened our patriotism. We had lived so often in a tent! and we thought that palm-decked, star-canopied old roof the pleasantest possible place to eat our Christmas dinner. I was especially happy. I always love to eat in the open; and this old roof that lifted me high above the crooning Calcutta streets, and seemingly half-way to the stars, had lifted me into a warm, spicy atmosphere of high delight. It was a pretty scene. The white-clad servants moved softly; the adjacent houses were very quaint with minarets and intricate arches, strange latticed windows and droll roof-gardens; the deep perfumes of Oriental flowers came up from our host’s garden. Everything was richly Oriental except the table at which we sat and feasted. That was as English as a very ingenious hostess could make it. Great satin roses were woven in the damask of the table linen; in the centre of the cloth lay a large silken Union Jack; on it crouched a bronze lion; he was resting on a bed of roses. Around the flag was a loose wreath of holly and mistletoe, and we each had a bit of mistletoe at our plates. I saw the subaltern’s lip tremble a bit when he put his sprig in his button-hole,—that was very weak and babyish of him, was it not? Yet strangely enough that boy has won high military honours since then. I was greatly interested in him at the time, because he was the first subaltern I had met in India; and I had heard so much about subalterns before I reached the East.
