Yesterday we left the solitude of Rika and went to polo at a place about seventeen miles away. It was very interesting to meet all the neighbouring Europeans—mostly planters and their wives. There were about twenty people, and everyone very nice. I wish I had time to tell you about them, but I haven't. After polo, which I enjoyed watching, we all had tea together and talked very affably. Then Mr. Royle drove me home while Boggley went with Mrs. Royle. I heard, as we were leaving, Mr. Royle say something to Boggley about the horse being young and skittish, and a faint misgiving passed through me, but I forgot it talking to Mr. Royle, and when we reached Rika I went off to dress for dinner, taking it for granted that the others were just behind. Letters were waiting me, and I lingered so long over them I had to dress in a hurry, and ran to the drawing-room expecting to find everyone waiting. But the room was empty. Hungry and puzzled, I waited for another ten minutes, and then went along to Boggley's bedroom, to see what he meant anyway; but there was no one there. More and more puzzled, but distinctly less hungry, I went back to the drawing-room, looked into the dining-room, finally wandered out into the verandah, where I found the children's old nurse Anne tidying away the children's toys.
I said: "Nurse, where's everybody?"
Anne left the toys and lifted both hands to high heaven.
"Och! Miss Douglas dear, it wasn't for nothing I dreamt last night of water-horses. The night before ma sister Maggie's man was killed by a kick from a wicked grey horse (Angus M'Veecar was his name, and a fine young lad he was) I dreamt I saw one. As big as three hills it was, with an awful starin' white face, and a tail on it near as long as from Portree to Sligachen. It give a great screech, and a wallop in the face of me, and jumped into the loch, and by milkin'-time next morning—a Thursday it was—ma sister Maggie came into the door cryin', 'Och and och, ma poor man, and him so kind and so young,' and fell on the floor as stiff as a board."
Anne comes from Skye, and often tells me about water-horses and such-like odd denizens of that far island; and I find her soft Highland speech, with its "ass" for "as" and "ch" for "j," very diverting; but this time I wasn't amused.
"But nothing has happened, Anne. What are you talking about? Where is my brother?"
"Mercy on us all, how can I tell? The mistress and the young gentleman has never come in, and the master says to me, 'Fetch me my flask, Anne,' says he; and fetch it I did, and he drove away, an' I'm sure as I'm sittin' here I didn't see the water-horse for nothing. What does a flask mean but an accident? Och—och, and a nice laughin'-faced young gentleman he was, too."
If life is going to contain many such half-hours I don't see how I am to get through it with any credit. I left Anne—whom at that moment I hated—to seek information from the servants, which she did with a valiant disregard of her entire lack of knowledge of Hindustani, a language she stubbornly refused to learn a word of. The last I saw of her she had seized the khansamah's young assistant and was shouting at him, "Chokra—ye impident little black deevil, will you tell this moment, has there been an accident?" Backwards and forwards I went in the verandah, then down the steps to the road, straining my eyes to see and my ears to hear something—what I did not know. From the garden the scent of the roses and mignonette came to me in the soft Indian darkness. I ventured a little bit along the road, too anxious to remember, or, remembering, to care, that I had no lantern, and that at any moment I might tread on a snake. I could only think of one thing, and how often I pictured it! Mr. Royle coming back, and the natives carrying someone—someone who didn't laugh any more. The odd thing was I didn't seem to mind at all what happened to kind Mrs. Royle. It was Boggley, and only Boggley, that mattered to me. Of course nothing did happen to anyone. It isn't when one expects and dreads it that tragedy comes. Tragedy comes quietly, swiftly. I remember going to see a fisherman's widow in a little village on the stormy east coast. She told me of her husband's death. "I had his tea a' ready an' a bit buttered toast an' a kipper, but he never cam' in." That was all—"He never cam' in."
When our wanderers returned they were rather amused than otherwise. The horse had given trouble and ended by kicking the trap to pieces, and they had to walk part of the way home. Quite simple, you see; but the first opportunity I looked in a mirror to see if my hair had not turned white in a single night, as men's have done through sudden fear. It hadn't; but I did dream of a water-horse with "an awful starin' white face."
This morning Mrs. Royle took me to the village to get some brass to take home. The shop was a little hut with an earthen floor, a pair of scales, and one shelf crowded with brass things, made, not for the European market, but for the daily use of the people, such as drinking-vessels—lota is the pretty name—and big brass plates out of which they eat their rice and dhalbat. They keep them beautifully polished with sand, and I think they ought to be rather decorative; much more attractive certainly than the candlesticks and pots and cheap rough silver-work which is the usual loot carried away by the cold-weather visitor.