"Otter?" said I.
"Yes," said Mr. Royle; "they are baby otters that the fisherman found at the side of the lake. I thought of sending them to the Calcutta Zoo. They aren't very common in India."
"I'm so glad!" I gasped; and Mr. Royle looked mystified. It didn't seem exactly a reason for fervent gladness, but suppose they had been mongooses? My life, so to speak, was ruined.
Staying in the house with Mr. Royle is rather like being with Colonel Newcome in the flesh. He is such a very "perfect gentil Knight"—as courteous to a native woman as to the L.-G.'s wife. The people round about adore him and his wife; they are a kind of father and mother to the whole district. There would be little heard of disloyalty to the British if all the Sahibs were like Mr. Royle, He is so good—I'd be almost afraid to be so good in case I died—but not the least in a sickly way. He is a teetotaller, a thing almost unheard of in India; and he isn't ashamed to be heard singing hymns with the children before their bed-time; yet (why yet?) he is a crack shot, a fine polo player, an all-round sportsman.
Both he and his wife are very fond of books. Mrs. Royle reads everything she can lay her hands on, but her husband's special subject is philosophy, and last night he lent me a volume of Nietzsche. I don't think I understood a single word, but between it and the moorghy-khana I had a bad night. I thought I had to make in five minutes a new scheme of the Universe. All the odd-shaped pieces were lying about like a picture-puzzle, and I feverishly tried to make them fit, in the clumsy ineffective way one does things in dreams. Just as I had it almost finished, Mrs. Royle came with a fowl in each hand and said sternly, "These must come into your scheme." I took the two great clucking things and vainly tried to thrust their feet—or is it claws hens have?—into a tiny corner, and they had just wrecked all my efforts when I woke!
I have taken some photographs which I shall send you. The delightful babu buttoned tightly into the frock-coat is a clerk of Mr. Royle's, called a "Sita-Ram—two-o'clock." The frock-coat was a legacy from a departing Collector, and he is immensely proud of it. He is a great delight to me, and says he will never cease to pray for my internal welfare! Talking of babus, one wrote to Mr. Royle the other day about a pair of riding-breeches, and said, "I have your Honour's measurements, but will be glad to know if there is any improvement in the girth." Don't you think that was a very pretty way of asking if he had put on weight?
When I showed Autolycus and the chuprassis the photographs I had taken of them, the chuprassis said, "Atcha" (very good), but Autolycus shook his head violently, and when Boggley asked him what was wrong, he replied in an injured tone that it made him look quite black!
Feb. 12.
… Deep snow, hard frost, bright sun—how gloriously sparkling it must be! It dazzles my eyes to think of it. I don't wonder you revel in the skating and the long sleigh rides through the silent forest. Talk about the magic of the East—it could never appeal to me like the magic of the North.
Storks, snow-queens, moor-wives, ell-women—how the names thrill one! What was your Hans Andersen like? Mine was light blue and gold with wonderful coloured pictures, but it was the frontispiece I studied, and which held me frightened yet fascinated. It was a picture of a pine-wood, with a small girl in a blue frock and white pinafore and red stockings, crying bitterly under a tree, in the branch of which a doll hung limply, thrown there by cruel brothers. Through the trees the sunset sky was pale green melting into rose-colour, and the wicked little gnomes that twilight brings were tweaking the child's hair and jeering at her misfortunes. One felt how cold it was, and how badly the little girl wanted her hood and cloak. The darkness was very near, and worse things than little gnomes would slip from behind the tree-trunk trunks. It never occurred to me that the little girl might have run home to warmth and light and safety. That was no solution—the doll would still have been there. Your letter, with its tale of snow and great quiet forests, and the picture you drew me of the funny little girl with the flaxen plaits and the red stockings, made me remember it. I don't know where my old book is—gone long since from the nursery bookshelf to the dustbin, I expect, for it was much-used and frail when I knew and loved it—but your word-picture gave me the passport and enabled me to creep once again inside its cover, so brave in blue and gold, and to greet my friend in the red stockings, and find her as highly coloured as ever, and not a day older. It is nice of you to say I have a courageous outlook on life, but I wish I hadn't told you the story of the mongoose that was an otter. Now you will say, like Boggley, Funk-stick! If I stay much longer in this frightsome land my hair will be white and my nervous system a mere wreck.