At last I induced my Cingalese friend to carry his sapphires to a more hopeful port-hole. I dressed and went on deck. One of my little ones crept to me. She had a huge bunch of blossom in her wee hands. Some of the flowers I had seen in famous conservatories. Half of them I had never seen. They were massed together—white, red and yellow, no half colours! They were tightly bound into a stupid graceless bunch, stiffly bordered by thick leaves, but from them rose a perfume heavy as incense, sweet as sandal-wood. One of my baby’s many admirers had given them to her. He had bought them for two annas. The vendor had cheated him into paying double price.
The deck was thronged with native merchants and was vocal with hubbub. At a short distance from the Valetta a dozen native boys were paddling a frail little craft. “Throw away, sir; throw money, sir. I dive, sir—I dive.” And dive they did, invariably bringing up the silver in their triumphant mouths. They dived and swam and rose like nimble, black flying-fish. Hundreds of coolies were bringing big baskets of coal up the ship’s sides. They were as quick as monkeys and far noisier.
I sank into my steamer chair. In a moment I was surrounded. Three Cingalese men planted themselves complacently at my feet. Their attendant coolies followed with their wares. One man had photographs. One had Point de Galle lace and chicken work. One had tortoise-shell and ebony. All had sapphires, cat’s-eyes, and moonstones. Every passenger on deck was surrounded by just such a brown coterie.
Colombo itself we saw but indifferently. A few houses and myriad cocoanut trees, that was all; but around us were anchored the ships of a dozen flags. If I remember, the only men-of-war were three or four funny little Japanese warships.
After a hasty breakfast, which even the children were too excited to eat, we went on shore. What a wonderland! The grass was the crisp green of eternal summer. The intense sunshine was pouring mercilessly down. But native men and women were walking leisurely along, with bare heads, and apparently cool skins. A horribly deformed boy rushed at us with a prayer for bukshish. My husband sprang between him and me. But, though I did not know it, I had, for the first time, seen a leper. I was destined to see lepers all over India, and a year or more later, in Subathu, I learned to go among them quietly if not quite calmly. As for the cry of bukshish, which was the first native word I heard in the East, it was also the last. I heard it incessantly for two years and more. The peoples among whom we went spoke Hindustani, Gujarati, Tamul, Marahti, and a dozen other tongues, but they all cried “Salaam, memsahib. Bukshish! Bukshish!”
It was only a stone’s throw to the large, pleasant hotel. The manager was waiting for us; and with him was an ayah, who had been engaged as an assistant nurse, by our advance agent. What a splendidly handsome woman she was! A long, straight piece of striped silk was wrapped about her hips and fell nearly to her ankles. A short Cingalese jacket, made of white lawn and edged with lace, covered her bosom. Her arms and neck and feet were gleaming, black and bare. And between her short white jacket and her low red skirt was an interspace of four or more inches of black plumpness. Her magnificent black hair was carefully braided, and the long braids were artistically gathered together by a beautiful silver pin, which also fastened a red rose. She wore a string of big gold beads about her neck. She gave a shrewd look at my sturdy little flock. “Salaam, memsahib,” she cried, showing all her large perfect teeth. “Two baba not walk!” She seized upon the smaller of the two and led the way to our rooms. That very afternoon the elder baby walked, for the first time, and after that very rarely asked to be carried. If the ayah repented her choice of babies she gave no sign, but abode by her first selection.
It was in Colombo that I first ate curry that was nearly perfect. In Colombo I ate a dozen fruits I had never eaten before. The hotel was very pleasant. The rooms were large and shady, and they were—what, alas! we were not always to find them in the East—sweetly clean. There was a wonderful garden at the back of the hotel, from which the mallie used to gather me a great bunch of strange, graceful, scarlet flowers. And yet there never seemed a flower the less. Alas! the flowers of the East
spring up, bloom, bear, and wither
In the same hour.
The quiet, respectful, ready Oriental service was delightful. And it was adequate, which Eastern service is not always, for it was under efficient European supervision.