“FROM THIS EYRIE, IN THE WARM NIGHT, ONE HEARS THE HEART OF CALCUTTA BEATING.”
“The City was of Night—perchance of Death,But certainly of Night.”—The City of Dreadful Night.
“The City was of Night—perchance of Death,But certainly of Night.”—The City of Dreadful Night.
“The City was of Night—perchance of Death,But certainly of Night.”—The City of Dreadful Night.
Inthe beginning, the Police were responsible. They said in a patronizing way that, merely as a matter of convenience, they would prefer to take a wanderer round the great city themselves, sooner than let him contract a broken head on his own account in the slums. They said that there were places and places where a white man, unsupported by the arm of the law, would be robbed and mobbed; and that there were other places where drunken seamen would make it very unpleasant for him. There was a night fixed for the patrol, but apologies were offered beforehand for the comparative insignificance of the tour.
“Come up to the fire lookout in the first place, and then you’ll be able to see the city.” This was at No. 22, Lal Bazar, which is theheadquarters of the Calcutta Police, the centre of the great web of telephone wires where Justice sits all day and all night looking after one million people and a floating population of one hundred thousand. But her work shall be dealt with later on. The fire lookout is a little sentry-box on the top of the three-storied police offices. Here a native watchman waits always, ready to give warning to the brigade below if the smoke rises by day or the flames by night in any ward of the city. From this eyrie, in the warm night, one hears the heart of Calcutta beating. Northward, the city stretches away three long miles, with three more miles of suburbs beyond, to Dum-Dum and Barrackpore. The lamplit dusk on this side is full of noises and shouts and smells. Close to the Police Office, jovial mariners at the sailors’ coffee-shop are roaring hymns. Southerly, the city’s confused lights give place to the orderly lamp-rows of themaidanand Chouringhi, where the respectabilities live and the Police have very little to do. From the east goes up to the sky the clamor of Sealdah, the rumble of the trams, and the voices of all Bow Bazar chaffering and making merry. Westward are the business quarters, hushed now, the lamps of the shipping on the river, and the twinkling lights on the Howrahside. It is a wonderful sight—this Pisgah view of a huge city resting after the labors of the day. “Does the noise of traffic go on all through the hot weather?” “Of course. The hot months are the busiest in the year and money’s tightest. You should see the brokers cutting about at that season. Calcuttacan’tstop, my dear sir.” “What happens then?” “Nothing happens; the death-rate goes up a little. That’s all!” Even in February, the weather would, up-country, be called muggy and stifling, but Calcutta is convinced that it is her cold season. The noises of the city grow perceptibly; it is the night side of Calcutta waking up and going abroad. Jack in the sailors’ coffee-shop is singing joyously: “Shall we gather at the River-the beautiful, the beautiful, the River?” What an incongruity there is about his selections! However, that it amuses before it shocks the listeners, is not to be doubted. An Englishman, far from his native land, is liable to become careless, and it would be remarkable if he did otherwise in ill-smelling Calcutta. There is a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard below. Some of the Mounted Police have come in from somewhere or other out of the great darkness. A clog-dance of iron hoofs follows, and an Englishman’s voice is heard soothing an agitatedhorse who seems to be standing on his hind legs. Some of the Mounted Police are going out into the great darkness. “What’s on?” “Walk-round at Government House. The Reserve men are being formed up below. They’re calling the roll.” The Reserve men are all English, and big English at that. They form up and tramp out of the courtyard to line Government Place, and see that Mrs. Lollipop’s brougham does not get smashed up by Sirdar Chuckerbutty Bahadur’s lumbering C-spring barouche with the two raw walers. Very military men are the Calcutta European Police in their set-up, and he who knows their composition knows some startling stories of gentlemen-rankers and the like. They are, despite the wearing climate they work in and the wearing work they do, as fine five-score of Englishmen as you shall find east of Suez.
Listen for a moment from the fire lookout to the voices of the night, and you will see why they must be so. Two thousand sailors of fifty nationalities are adrift in Calcutta every Sunday, and of these perhaps two hundred are distinctly the worse for liquor. There is a mild row going on, even now, somewhere at the back of Bow Bazar, which at nightfall fills with sailormen who have a wonderful gift of falling foulof the native population. To keep the Queen’s peace is of course only a small portion of Police duty, but it is trying. The burly president of the lock-up for European drunks-Calcutta central lock-up is worth seeing-rejoices in a sprained thumb just now, and has to do his work left-handed in consequence. But his left hand is a marvellously persuasive one, and when on duty his sleeves are turned up to the shoulder that the jovial mariner may see that there is no deception. The president’s labors are handicapped in that the road of sin to the lock-up runs through a grimy little garden-the brick paths are worn deep with the tread of many drunken feet-where a man can give a great deal of trouble by sticking his toes into the ground and getting mixed up with the shrubs. “A straight run in” would be much more convenient both for the president and the drunk. Generally speaking—and here Police experience is pretty much the same all over the civilized world-a woman drunk is a good deal worse than a man drunk. She scratches and bites like a Chinaman and swears like several fiends. Strange people may be unearthed in the lock-ups. Here is a perfectly true story, not three weeks old. A visitor, an unofficial one, wandered into the native side of the spacious accommodation provided for those who have gone or done wrong. A wild-eyed Babu rose from the fixed charpoy and said in the best of English: “Good-morning, sir.” “Good-morning; who are you, and what are you in for?” Then the Babu, in one breath: “I would have you know that I do not go to prison as a criminal but as a reformer. You’ve read theVicar of Wakefield?” “Ye-es.” “Well,Iam the Vicar of Bengal-at least, that’s what I call myself.” The visitor collapsed. He had not nerve enough to continue the conversation. Then said the voice of the authority: “He’s down in connection with a cheating case at Serampore. May be shamming. But he’ll be looked to in time.”
The best place to hear about the Police is the fire lookout. From that eyrie one can see how difficult must be the work of control over the great, growling beast of a city. By all means let us abuse the Police, but let us see what the poor wretches have to do with their three thousand natives and one hundred Englishmen. From Howrah and Bally and the other suburbs at least a hundred thousand people come in to Calcutta for the day and leave at night. Also Chandernagore is handy for the fugitive law-breaker, who can enter in the evening and getaway before the noon of the next day, having marked his house and broken into it.
“But how can the prevalent offence be housebreaking in a place like this?” “Easily enough. When you’ve seen a little of the city you’ll see. Natives sleep and lie about all over the place, and whole quarters are just so many rabbit-warrens. Wait till you see the Machua Bazar. Well, besides the petty theft and burglary, we have heavy cases of forgery and fraud, that leave us with our wits pitted against a Bengali’s. When a Bengali criminal is working a fraud of the sort he loves, he isaboutthe cleverest soul you could wish for. He gives us cases a year long to unravel. Then there are the murders in the low houses—very curious things they are. You’ll see the house where Sheikh Babu was murdered presently, and you’ll understand. The Burra Bazar and Jora Bagan sections are the two worst ones for heavy cases; but Colootollah is the most aggravating. There’s Colootollah over yonder—that patch of darkness beyond the lights. That section is full of tuppenny-ha’penny petty cases, that keep the men up all night and make ’em swear. You’ll see Colootollah, and then perhaps you’ll understand. Bamun Bustee is the quietest of all, and Lal Bazar and Bow Bazar, as you can seefor yourself, are the rowdiest. You’ve no notion what the natives come to thethannahsfor. Anaukarwill come in and want a summons against his master for refusing him half-an-hour’schuti. I suppose itdoesseem rather revolutionary to an up-country man, but they try to do it here. Now wait a minute, before we go down into the city and see the Fire Brigade turned out. Business is slack with them just now, but you time ’em and see.” An order is given, and a bell strikes softly thrice. There is an orderly rush of men, the click of a bolt, a red fire-engine, spitting and swearing with the sparks flying from the furnace, is dragged out of its shelter. A huge brake, which holds supplementary hoses, men, and hatchets, follows, and a hose-cart is the third on the list. The men push the heavy things about as though they were pith toys. Five horses appear. Two are shot into the fire-engine, two—monsters these—into the brake, and the fifth, a powerful beast, warranted to trot fourteen miles an hour, backs into the hose-cart shafts. The men clamber up, some one says softly, “All ready there,” and with an angry whistle the fire-engine, followed by the other two, flies out into Lal Bazar, the sparks trailing behind. Time—1 min. 40 secs. “They’ll find out it’s a false alarm, and comeback again in five minutes.” “Why?” “Because there will be no constables on the road to give ’em the direction of the fire, and because the driver wasn’t told the ward of the outbreak when he went out!” “Do you mean to say that you can from this absurd pigeon-loft locate the wards in the night-time?” “Of course: what would be the good of a lookout if the man couldn’t tell where the fire was?” “But it’s all pitchy black, and the lights are so confusing.”
“Ha! Ha! You’ll be more confused in ten minutes. You’ll have lost your way as you never lost it before. You’re going to go round Bow Bazar section.”
“And the Lord have mercy on my soul!” Calcutta, the darker portion of it, does not look an inviting place to dive into at night.
“And since they cannot spend or use arightThe little time here given them in trust,But lavish it in weary undelightOf foolish toil, and trouble, strife and lust—They naturally claimeth to inheritThe Everlasting Future—that their meritMay have full scope.... As surely is most just.”—The City of Dreadful Night.
“And since they cannot spend or use arightThe little time here given them in trust,But lavish it in weary undelightOf foolish toil, and trouble, strife and lust—They naturally claimeth to inheritThe Everlasting Future—that their meritMay have full scope.... As surely is most just.”—The City of Dreadful Night.
“And since they cannot spend or use arightThe little time here given them in trust,But lavish it in weary undelightOf foolish toil, and trouble, strife and lust—They naturally claimeth to inheritThe Everlasting Future—that their meritMay have full scope.... As surely is most just.”—The City of Dreadful Night.
Thedifficulty is to prevent this account from growing steadily unwholesome. But one cannot rake through a big city without encountering muck.
The Police kept their word. In five short minutes, as they had prophesied, their charge was lost as he had never been lost before. “Where are we now?” “Somewhere off the Chitpore Road, but you wouldn’t understand if you were told. Follow now, and step pretty much where we step—there’s a good deal of filth hereabouts.”
The thick, greasy night shuts in everything.We have gone beyond the ancestral houses of the Ghoses of the Boses, beyond the lamps, the smells, and the crowd of Chitpore Road, and have come to a great wilderness of packed houses—just such mysterious, conspiring tenements as Dickens would have loved. There is no breath of breeze here, and the air is perceptibly warmer. There is little regularity in the drift, and the utmost niggardliness in the spacing of what, for want of a better name, we must call the streets. If Calcutta keeps such luxuries as Commissioners of Sewers and Paving, they die before they reach this place. The air is heavy with a faint, sour stench—the essence of long-neglected abominations—and it cannot escape from among the tall, three-storied houses. “This, my dear sir, is aperfectlyrespectable quarter as quarters go. That house at the head of the alley, with the elaborate stucco-work round the top of the door, was built long ago by a celebrated midwife. Great people used to live here once. Now it’s the—Aha! Look out for that carriage.” A big mail-phaeton crashes out of the darkness and, recklessly driven, disappears. The wonder is how it ever got into this maze of narrow streets, where nobody seems to be moving, and where the dull throbbing of the city’s life only comes faintly and by snatches. “Now it’s thewhat?” “St. John’s Wood of Calcutta—for the rich Babus. That ‘fitton’ belonged to one of them.” “Well it’s not much of a place to look at.” “Don’t judge by appearances. About here live the women who have beggared kings. We aren’t going to let you down into unadulterated vice all at once. You must see it first with the gilding on—and mind that rotten board.”
Stand at the bottom of a lift and look upward. Then you will get both the size and the design of the tiny courtyard round which one of these big dark houses is built. The central square may be perhaps ten feet every way, but the balconies that run inside it overhang, and seem to cut away half the available space. To reach the square a man must go round many corners, down a covered-in way, and up and down two or three baffling and confused steps. There are no lamps to guide, and the janitors of the establishment seem to be compelled to sleep in the passages. The central square, thepatioor whatever it must be called, reeks with the faint, sour smell which finds its way impartially into every room. “Now you will understand,” say the Police kindly, as their charge blunders, shin-first, into a well-dark winding staircase, “that these are not the sort of places
“A GLARE OF LIGHT ON THE STAIR-HEAD, A CLINK OF INNUMERABLE BANGLES, A RUSTLE OF MUCH FINE GAUZE, AND THE DAINTY INIQUITY STANDS REVEALED.”
to visit alone.” “Who wants to? Of all the disgusting, inaccessible dens—Holy Cupid, what’s this?”
A glare of light on the stair-head, a clink of innumerable bangles, a rustle of much fine gauze, and the Dainty Iniquity stands revealed, blazing—literally blazing—with jewelry from head to foot. Take one of the fairest miniatures that the Delhi painters draw, and multiply it by ten; throw in one of Angelica Kaufmann’s best portraits, and add anything that you can think of from Beckford to Lalla Rookh, and you will still fall short of the merits of that perfect face. For an instant, even the grim, professional gravity of the Police is relaxed in the presence of the Dainty Iniquity with the gems, who so prettily invites every one to be seated, and proffers such refreshments as she conceives the palates of the barbarians would prefer. Her Abigails are only one degree less gorgeous than she. Half a lakh, or fifty thousand pounds’ worth—it is easier to credit the latter statement than the former—are disposed upon her little body. Each hand carries five jewelled rings which are connected by golden chains to a great jewelled boss of gold in the centre of the back of the hand. Ear-rings weighted with emeralds and pearls, diamond nose-rings, and how many otherhundred articles make up the list of adornments. English furniture of a gorgeous and gimcrack kind, unlimited chandeliers and a collection of atrocious Continental prints—something, but not altogether, like the glazed plaques onbonbonboxes—are scattered about the house, and on every landing—let us trust this is a mistake—lies, squats, or loafs a Bengali who can talk English with unholy fluency. The recurrence suggests—only suggests, mind—a grim possibility of the affectation of excessive virtue by day, tempered with the sort of unwholesome enjoyment after dusk—this loafing and lobbying and chattering and smoking, and, unless the bottles lie tippling among the foul-tongued handmaidens of the Dainty Iniquity. How many men follow this double, deleterious sort of life? The Police are discreetly dumb.
“Nowdon’tgo talking about ‘domiciliary visits’ just because this one happens to be a pretty woman. We’vegotto know these creatures. They make the rich man and the poor spend their money; and when a man can’t get money for ’em honestly, he comes underournotice.Nowdo you see? If there was any domiciliary ‘visit’ about it, the whole houseful would be hidden past our finding as soon as we turned up in the courtyard. We’re friends—to a certainextent.” And, indeed, it seemed no difficult thing to be friends to any extent with the Dainty Iniquity who was so surpassingly different from all that experience taught of the beauty of the East. Here was the face from which a man could writeLalla Rookhsby the dozen, and believe every work that he wrote. Hers was the beauty that Byron sang of when he wrote—
“Remember, if you come here alone, the chances are that you’ll be clubbed, or stuck, or, anyhow, mobbed. You’ll understand that this part of the world is shut to Europeans—absolutely. Mind the steps, and follow on.” The vision dies out in the smells and gross darkness of the night, in evil, time-rotten brickwork, and another wilderness of shut-up houses, wherein it seems that people do continually and feebly strum stringed instruments of a plaintive and wailsome nature.
Follows, after another plunge into a passage of a court-yard, and up a staircase, the apparition of a Fat Vice, in whom is no sort of romance, nor beauty, but unlimited coarse humor. She too is studded with jewels, and her house is even finer than the house of the other, and more infested with the extraordinary men who speak such good English and are so deferentialto the Police. The Fat Vice has been a great leader of fashion in her day, and stripped a zemindar Raja to his last acre—insomuch that he ended in the House of Correction for a theft committed for her sake. Native opinion has it that she is a “monstrous well-preserved woman.” On this point, as on some others, the races will agree to differ.
The scene changes suddenly as a slide in a magic lantern. Dainty Iniquity and Fat Vice slide away on a roll of streets and alleys, each more squalid than its predecessor. We are “somewhere at the back of the Machua Bazar,” well in the heart of the city. There are no houses here—nothing but acres and acres, it seems, of foul wattle-and-dab huts, any one of which would be a disgrace to a frontier village. The whole arrangement is a neatly contrived germ and fire trap, reflecting great credit upon the Calcutta Municipality.
“What happens when these pigsties catch fire?” “They’re built up again,” say the Police, as though this were the natural order of things. “Land is immensely valuable here.” All the more reason, then, to turn several Hausmanns loose into the city, with instructions to make barracks for the population that cannot find room in the huts and sleeps in the openways, cherishing dogs and worse, much worse, in its unwashen bosom. “Here is a licensed coffee-shop. This is where yournaukersgo for amusement and to see nautches.” There is a hugechapparshed, ingeniously ornamented with insecure kerosene lamps, and crammed withgharriwans,khitmatgars, small store-keepers and the like. Never a sign of a European. Why? “Because if an Englishman messed about here, he’d get into trouble. Men don’t come here unless they’re drunk or have lost their way.” Thegharriwans—they have the privilege of voting, have they not?—look peaceful enough as they squat on tables or crowd by the doors to watch the nautch that is going forward. Five pitiful draggle-tails are huddled together on a bench under one of the lamps, while the sixth is squirming and shrieking before the impassive crowd. She sings of love as understood by the Oriental—the love that dries the heart and consumes the liver. In this place, the words that would look so well on paper have an evil and ghastly significance. Thegharriwansstare or sup tumblers and cups of a filthy decoction, and thekuncheneehowls with renewed vigor in the presence of the Police. Where the Dainty Iniquity was hung with gold and gems, she is trapped with pewter and glass;and where there was heavy embroidery on the Fat Vice’s dress, defaced, stamped tinsel faithfully reduplicates the pattern on the tawdry robes of thekunchenee. So you see, if one cares to moralize, they are sisters of the same class.
Two or three men, blessed with uneasy consciences, have quietly slipped out of the coffee-shop into the mazes of the huts beyond. The Police laugh, and those nearest in the crowd laugh applausively, as in duty bound. Perhaps the rabbits grin uneasily when the ferret lands at the bottom of the burrow and begins to clear the warren.
“Thechandoo-shops shut up at six, so you’ll have to see opium-smoking before dark some day. No, you won’t, though.” The detective nose sniffs, and the detective body makes for a half-opened door of a hut whence floats the fragrance of the black smoke. Those of the inhabitants who are able to stand promptly clear out—they have no love for the Police—and there remain only four men lying down and one standing up. This latter has a pet mongoose coiled round his neck. He speaks English fluently. Yes, he has no fear. It was a private smoking party and—“No business to-night—show how you smoke opium.” “Aha! Youwant to see. Very good, I show. Hiya! you”—he kicks a man on the floor—“show how opium-smoking.” The kickee grunts lazily and turns on his elbow. The mongoose, always keeping to the man’s neck, erects every hair of its body like an angry cat, and chatters in its owner’s ear. The lamp for the opium-pipe is the only one in the room, and lights a scene as wild as anything in the witches’ revel; the mongoose acting as the familiar spirit. A voice from the ground says, in tones of infinite weariness: “You takeafim, so”—a long, long pause, and another kick from the man possessed of the devil—the mongoose. “You takeafim?” He takes a pellet of the black, treacly stuff on the end of a knitting-needle. “And lightafim.” He plunges the pellet into the night-light, where it swells and fumes greasily. “And then you put it in your pipe.” The smoking pellet is jammed into the tiny bowl of the thick, bamboo-stemmed pipe, and all speech ceases, except the unearthly noise of the mongoose. The man on the ground is sucking at his pipe, and when the smoking pellet has ceased to smoke will be half way toNibhan. “Now you go,” says the man with the mongoose. “I am going smoke.” The hut door closes upon a red-lit view of huddled legs and bodies,and the man with the mongoose sinking, sinking on to his knees, his head bowed forward, and the little hairy devil chattering on the nape of his neck.
After this the fetid night air seems almost cool, for the hut is as hot as a furnace. “See thepukka chandushops in full blast to-morrow. Now for Colootollah. Come through the huts. There is no decoration aboutthisvice.”
The huts now gave place to houses very tall and spacious and very dark. But for the narrowness of the streets we might have stumbled upon Chouringhi in the dark. An hour and a half has passed, and up to this time we have not crossed our trail once. “You might knock about the city for a night and never cross the same line. Recollect Calcutta isn’t one of your poky up-country cities of a lakh and a half of people.” “How long does it take to know it then?” “About a lifetime, and even then some of the streets puzzle you.” “How much has the head of a ward to know?” “Every house in his ward if he can, who owns it, what sort of character the inhabitants are, who are their friends, who go out and in, who loaf about the place at night, and so on and so on.” “And he knows all this by night as well as by day?” “Of course. Why shouldn’t he?” “No reason in the world. Only it’s pitchy black just now, and I’d like to see where this alley is going to end.” “Round the corner beyond that dead wall. There’s a lamp there. Then you’ll be able to see.” A shadow flits out of a gully and disappears. “Who’s that?” “Sergeant of Police just to see where we’re going in case of accidents.” Another shadow staggers into the darkness. “Who’sthat?” “Man from the fort or a sailor from the ships. I couldn’t quite see.” The Police open a shut door in a high wall, and stumble unceremoniously among a gang of women cooking their food. The floor is of beaten earth, the steps that lead into the upper stories are unspeakably grimy, and the heat is the heat of April. The women rise hastily, and the light of the bull’s eye—for the Police have now lighted a lantern in regular “rounds of London” fashion—shows six bleared faces—one a half native, half Chinese one, and the others Bengali. “There are no men here!” they cry. “The house is empty.” Then they grin and jabber and chewpanand spit, and hurry up the steps into the darkness. A range of three big rooms has been knocked into one here, and there is some sort of arrangement of mats. But an average country-bred is moresumptuously accommodated in an Englishman’s stable. A home horse would snort at the accommodation.
“Nice sort of place, isn’t it?” say the Police, genially. “This is where the sailors get robbed and drunk.” “They must be blind drunk before they come.” “Na—Na! Na sailor men ee—yah!” chorus the women, catching at the one word they understand. “Arl gone!” The Police take no notice, but tramp down the big room with the mat loose-boxes. A woman is shivering in one of these. “What’s the matter?” “Fever. Seek. Vary,varyseek.” She huddles herself into a heap on thecharpoyand groans.
A tiny, pitch-black closet opens out of the long room, and into this the Police plunge. “Hullo! What’s here?” Down flashes the lantern, and a white hand with black nails comes out of the gloom. Somebody is asleep or drunk in the cot. The ring of lantern light travels slowly up and down the body. “A sailor from the ships. He’s got hisdungareeson. He’ll be robbed before the morning most likely.” The man is sleeping like a little child, both arms thrown over his head, and he is not unhandsome. He is shoeless, and there are huge holes in his stockings. He is a pure-blooded white, and carries the flush of innocent sleep on his cheeks.
The light is turned off, and the Police depart; while the woman in the loose-box shivers, and moans that she is “seek: vary,varyseek.” It is not surprising.
I built myself a lordly pleasure-house,Wherein at ease for aye to dwell;I said: “O Soul, make merry and carouse,Dear Soul—for all is well.”—The Palace of Art.
I built myself a lordly pleasure-house,Wherein at ease for aye to dwell;I said: “O Soul, make merry and carouse,Dear Soul—for all is well.”—The Palace of Art.
I built myself a lordly pleasure-house,Wherein at ease for aye to dwell;I said: “O Soul, make merry and carouse,Dear Soul—for all is well.”—The Palace of Art.
“Andwhere next? I don’t like Colootollah.” The Police and their charge are standing in the interminable waste of houses under the starlight. “To the lowest sink of all,” say the Police after the manner of Virgil when he took the Italian with the indigestion to look at the frozen sinners. “And where’s that?” “Somewhere about here; but you wouldn’t know if you were told.” They lead and they lead and they lead, and they cease not from leading till they come to the last circle of the Inferno—a long, long, winding, quiet road. “There you are; you can see for yourself.”
But there is nothing to be seen. On one side are houses—gaunt and dark, naked and devoid of furniture; on the other, low, mean stalls,lighted, and with shamelessly open doors, wherein women stand and lounge, and mutter and whisper one to another. There is a hush here, or at least the busy silence of an officer of counting-house in working hours. One look down the street is sufficient. Lead on, gentlemen of the Calcutta Police. Let us escape from the lines of open doors, the flaring lamps within, the glimpses of the tawdry toilet-tables adorned with little plaster dogs, glass balls from Christmas-trees, and—for religion must not be despised though women be fallen—pictures of the saints and statuettes of the Virgin. The street is a long one, and other streets, full of the same pitiful wares, branch off from it.
“Why are they so quiet? Why don’t they make a row and sing and shout, and so on?” “Why should they, poor devils?” say the Police, and fall to telling tales of horror, of women decoyed intopalkisand shot into this trap. Then other tales that shatter one’s belief in all things and folk of good repute. “How can you Police have faith in humanity?”
“That’s because you’re seeing it all in a lump for the first time, and it’s not nice that way. Makes a man jump rather, doesn’t it? But, recollect, you’veaskedfor the worst places, and you can’t complain.” “Who’s complaining?Bring on your atrocities. Isn’t that a European woman at that door?” “Yes. Mrs. D——, widow of a soldier, mother of seven children.” “Nine, if you please, and good-evening to you,” shrills Mrs. D——, leaning against the doorpost, her arms folded on her bosom. She is a rather pretty, slightly-made Eurasian, and whatever shame she may have owned she has long since cast behind her. A shapeless Burmo-native trot, with high cheek-bones and mouth like a shark, calls Mrs. D—— “Mem-Sahib.” The word jars unspeakably. Her life is a matter between herself and her Maker, but in that she—the widow of a soldier of the Queen—has stooped to this common foulness in the face of the city, she has offended against the white race. The Police fail to fall in with this righteous indignation. More—they laugh at it out of the wealth of their unholy knowledge. “You’re from up-country, and of course you don’t understand. There are any amount of that lot in the city.” Then the secret of the insolence of Calcutta is made plain. Small wonder the natives fail to respect the Sahib, seeing what they see and knowing what they know. In the good old days, the honorable the directors deported him or her who misbehaved grossly, and the white man preserved hisizzat.He may have been a ruffian, but he was a ruffian on a large scale. He did not sink in the presence of the people. The natives are quite right to take the wall of the Sahib who has been at great pains to prove that he is of the same flesh and blood.
All this time Mrs. D—— stands on the threshold of her room and looks upon the men with unabashed eyes. If the spirit of that English soldier, who married her long ago by the forms of the English Church, be now flitting bat-wise above the roofs, how singularly pleased and proud it must be! Mrs. D—— is a lady with a story. She is not averse to telling it. “What was—ahem—the case in which you were—er—hmn—concerned, Mrs. D——?” “They said I’d poisoned my husband by putting something into his drinking-water.” This is interesting. How much modestyhasthis creature? Let us see. “And—ah—didyou?” “’Twasn’t proved,” says Mrs. D—— with a laugh, a pleasant, lady-like laugh that does infinite credit to her education and upbringing. Worthy Mrs. D——! It would pay a novelist—a French one let us say—to pick you out of the stews and make you talk.
The Police move forward, into a region of Mrs. D——’s. This is horrible; but they are used to it, and evidently consider indignation affectation. Everywhere are the empty houses, and the babbling women in print gowns. The clocks in the city are close upon midnight, but the Police show no signs of stopping. They plunge hither and thither, like wreckers into the surf; and each plunge brings up a sample of misery, filth, and woe.
“Sheikh Babu was murdered just here,” they say, pulling up in one of the most troublesome houses in the ward. It would never do to appear ignorant of the murder of Sheikh Babu. “I only wonder that more aren’t killed.” The houses with their breakneck staircases, their hundred corners, low roofs, hidden courtyards and winding passages, seem specially built for crime of every kind. A woman—Eurasian—rises to a sitting position on a board-charpoy and blinks sleepily at the Police. Then she throws herself down with a grunt. “What’s the matter with you?” “I live in Markiss Lane and”—this with intense gravity—“I’msodrunk.” She has a rather striking gipsy-like face, but her language might be improved.
“Come along,” say the Police, “we’ll head back to Bentinck Street, and put you on the road to the Great Eastern.” They walk long and steadily, and the talk falls on gamblinghells. “You ought to see our men rush one of ’em. They like the work—natives of course. When we’ve marked a hell down, we post men at the entrances and carry it. Sometimes the Chinese bite, but as a rule they fight fair. It’s a pity we hadn’t a hell to show you. Let’s go in here—there may be something forward.” “Here” appears to be in the heart of a Chinese quarter, for the pigtails—do they ever go to bed?—are scuttling about the streets. “Never go into a Chinese place alone,” say the Police, and swing open a postern gate in a strong, green door. Two Chinamen appear.
“What are we going to see?” “Japanese gir—No, we aren’t, by Jove! Catch that Chinaman,quick.” The pigtail is trying to double back across a courtyard into an inner chamber; but a large hand on his shoulder spins him round and puts him in rear of the line of advancing Englishmen, who are, be it observed, making a fair amount of noise with their boots. A second door is thrown open, and the visitors advance into a large, square room blazing with gas. Here thirteen pigtails, deaf and blind to the outer world, are bending over a table. The captured Chinaman dodges uneasily in the rear of the procession. Five—ten—fifteen seconds pass, the Englishmen standing in the full lightless than three paces from the absorbed gang who see nothing. Then burly Superintendent Lamb brings down his hand on his thigh with a crack like a pistol-shot and shouts: “How do, John?” Follows a frantic rush of scared Celestials, almost tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get clear. Gudgeon before the rush of the pike are nothing to John Chinaman detected in the act of gambling. One pigtail scoops up a pile of copper money, another a chinaware soup-bowl, and only a little mound of accusing cowries remains on the white matting that covers the table. In less than half a minute two facts are forcibly brought home to the visitor. First, that a pigtail is largely composed of silk, and rasps the palm of the hand as it slides through; and secondly, that the forearm of a Chinaman is surprisingly muscular and well-developed. “What’s going to be done?” “Nothing. They’re only three of us, and all the ringleaders would get away. Look at the doors. We’ve got ’em safe any time we want to catch ’em, if this little visit doesn’t make ’em shift their quarters. Hi! John. No pidgin to-night. Show how you makee play. That fat youngster there is our informer.”
Half the pigtails have fled into the darkness, but the remainder, assured and trebly assuredthat the Police really mean “no pidgin,” return to the table and stand round while the croupier proceeds to manipulate the cowries, the little curved slip of bamboo and the soup-bowl. They never gamble, these innocents. They only come to look on, and smoke opium in the next room. Yet as the game progresses their eyes light up, and one by one they drop in to deposit their pice on odd or even—the number of the cowries that are covered and left uncovered by the little soup-bowl.Mythanis the name of the amusement, and, whatever may be its demerits, it isclean. The Police look on while their charge plays and loots a parchment-skinned horror—one of Swift’s Struldbrugs, strayed from Laputa—of the enormous sum of two annas. The return of this wealth, doubled, sets the loser beating his forehead against the table from sheer gratitude.
“Mostimmoral game this. A man might drop five whole rupees, if he began playing at sundown and kept it up all night. Don’tyouever play whist occasionally?”
“Now, we didn’t bring you round to make fun of this department. A man can lose as much as ever he likes and he can fight as well, and if he loses all his money he steals to get more. A Chinaman is insane about gambling,and half his crime comes from it. Itmustbe kept down.” “And the other business. Any sort of supervision there?” “No; so long as they keep outside the penal code. Ask Dr.—— about that. It’s outside our department. Here we are in Bentinck Street and you can be driven to the Great Eastern in a few minutes. Joss houses? Oh, yes. If you want more horrors, Superintendent Lamb will take you round with him to-morrow afternoon at five. Report yourself at the Bow Bazar Thanna at five minutes to. Good-night.”
The Police depart, and in a few minutes the silent, well-ordered respectability of Old Council House Street, with the grim Free Kirk at the end of it, is reached. All good Calcutta has gone to bed, the last tram has passed, and the peace of the night is upon the world. Would it be wise and rational to climb the spire of that kirk, and shout after the fashion of the great Lion-slayer of Tarescon: “O true believers! Decency is a fraud and a sham. There is nothing clean or pure or wholesome under the stars, and we are all going to perdition together. Amen!” On second thoughts it would not; for the spire is slippery, the night is hot, and the Police have been specially careful to warn their charge that he must not be carried away bythe sight of horrors that cannot be written or hinted at.
“Good-morning,” says the Policeman tramping the pavement in front of the Great Eastern, and he nods his head pleasantly to show that he is the representative of Law and Peace, and that the city of Calcutta is safe from itself for the present.
“Was a woman such a woman—cheeks so round and lips so red?On the neck the small head buoyant like the bellflower in its bed.”
“Was a woman such a woman—cheeks so round and lips so red?On the neck the small head buoyant like the bellflower in its bed.”
“Was a woman such a woman—cheeks so round and lips so red?On the neck the small head buoyant like the bellflower in its bed.”
Timemust be filled in somehow till five this afternoon, when Superintendent Lamb will reveal more horrors. Why not, the trams aiding, go to the Old Park Street Cemetery? It is presumption, of course, because none other than the great Sir W. W. Hunter once went there, and wove from his visit certain fascinating articles for theEnglishman; the memory of which lingers even to this day, though they were written fully two years since.
But the great Sir W. W. went in his Legislative Consular brougham and never in an unbridled tram-car which pulled up somewhere in the middle of Dhurrumtollah. “You want go Park Street? No trams going Park Street. You get out here.” Calcutta tram conductors are not polite. Some day one of them will be hurt.The car shuffles unsympathetically down the street, and the evicted is stranded in Dhurrumtollah, which may be the Hammersmith Highway of Calcutta. Providence arranged this mistake, and paved the way to a Great Discovery now published for the first time. Dhurrumtollah is full of the People of India, walking in family parties and groups and confidential couples. And the people of India are neither Hindu nor Mussulman—Jew, Ethiop, Gueber, or expatriated British. They are the Eurasians, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them in Dhurrumtollah now. There is Papa with a shining black hat fit for a counsellor of the Queen, and Mamma, whose silken attire is tight upon her portly figure, and The Brood made up of straw-hatted, olive-cheeked, sharp-eyed little boys, and leggy maidens wearing white, open-work stockings calculated to show dust. There are the young men who smoke bad cigars and carry themselves lordily—such as have incomes. There are also the young women with the beautiful eyes and the wonderful dresses which always fit so badly across the shoulders. And they carry prayer-books or baskets, because they are either going to mass or the market. Without doubt, these are the people of India. They were born in it, bredin it, and will die in it. The Englishman only comes to the country, and the natives of course were there from the first, but these people have been made here, and no one has done anything for them except talk and write about them. Yet they belong, some of them, to old and honorable families, hold “houses, messuages, and tenements” in Sealdah, and are rich, a few of them. They all look prosperous and contented, and they chatter eternally in that curious dialect that no one has yet reduced to print. Beyond what little they please to reveal now and again in the newspapers, we know nothing about their life which touches so intimately the white on the one hand and the black on the other. It must be interesting—more interesting than the colorless Anglo-Indian article; but who has treated of it? There was one novel once in which the second heroine was an Eurasienne. She was a strictly subordinate character, and came to a sad end. The poet of the race, Henry Derozio—he of whom Mr. Thomas Edwards wrote a history—was bitten with Keats and Scott and Shelley, and overlooked in his search for material things that lay nearest to him. All this mass of humanity in Dhurrumtollah is unexploited and almost unknown. Wanted, therefore, a writer from among the Eurasians, whoshall write so that men shall be pleased to read a story of Eurasian life; then outsiders will be interested in the People of India, and will admit that the race has possibilities.
A futile attempt to get to Park Street from Dhurrumtollah ends in the market—the Hogg Market men call it. Perhaps a knight of that name built it. It is not one-half as pretty as the Crawford Market, in Bombay, but ... it appears to be the trysting-place of Young Calcutta. The natural inclination of youth is to lie abed late, and to let the seniors do all the hard work. Why, therefore, should Pyramus who has to be ruling account forms at ten, and Thisbe, whocannotbe interested in the price of second quality beef, wander, in studiously correct raiment, round and about the stalls before the sun is well clear of the earth? Pyramus carries a walking-stick with imitation silver straps upon it, and there are cloth tops to his boots; but his collar has been two days worn. Thisbe crowns her dark head with a blue velvet Tam-o’-Shanter; but one of her boots lacks a button, and there is a tear in the left-hand glove. Mamma, who despises gloves, is rapidly filling a shallow basket, that the coolie-boy carries, with vegetables, potatoes, purple brinjals, and—Oh, Pyramus! Do you ever kiss Thisbewhen Mamma is not near?—garlic—yea,lussonof the bazar. Mamma is generous in her views on garlic. Pyramus comes round the corner of the stall looking for nobody in particular—not he—and is elaborately polite to Mamma. Somehow, he and Thisbe drift off together, and Mamma, very portly and very voluble, is left to chaffer and sort and select alone. In the name of the Sacred Unities do not, young people, retire to the meat-stalls to exchange confidences! Come up to this end, where the roses are arriving in great flat baskets, where the air is heavy with the fragrance of flowers, and the young buds and greenery are littering all the floor. They won’t—they prefer talking by the dead, unromantic muttons, where there are not so many buyers. How they babble! There must have been a quarrel to make up. Thisbe shakes the blue velvet Tam-o’-Shanter and says: “O yess!” scornfully. Pyramus answers: “No-a, no-a. Do-ant say thatt.” Mamma’s basket is full and she picks up Thisbe hastily. Pyramus departs.Henever came here to do any marketing. He came to meet Thisbe, who in ten years will own a figure very much like Mamma’s. May their ways be smooth before them, and after honest service of the Government, may Pyramus retire on Rs. 250 per mensen, into anice little house somewhere in Monghyr or Chunar.
From love by natural sequence to death. Whereisthe Park Street Cemetery? A hundredgharriwansleap from their boxes and invade the market, and after a short struggle one of them uncarts his capture in a burial-ground—a ghastly new place, close to a tramway. This is not what is wanted. The living dead are here—the people whose names are not yet altogether perished and whose tombstones are tended. “Where are theolddead?” “Nobody goes there,” says thegharriwan. “It is up that road.” He points up a long and utterly deserted thoroughfare, running between high walls. This is the place, and the entrance to it, with itsmalleewaiting with one brown, battered rose, its grilled door and its professional notices, bears a hideous likeness to the entrance of Simla churchyard. But, once inside, the sightseer stands in the heart of utter desolation—all the more forlorn for being swept up. Lower Park Street cuts a great graveyard in two. The guide-books will tell you when the place was opened and when it was closed. The eye is ready to swear that it is as old as Herculaneum and Pompeii. The tombs are small houses. It is as though we walked down the streets of atown, so tall axe they and so closely do they stand—a town shrivelled by fire, and scarred by frost and siege. They must have been afraid of their friends rising up before the due time that they weighted them with such cruel mounds of masonry. Strong man, weak woman, or somebody’s “infant son aged fifteen months”—it is all the same. For each the squat obelisk, the defaced classic temple, the cellaret of chunam, or the candlestick of brickwork—the heavy slab, the rust-eaten railings, the whopper-jawed cherubs and the apoplectic angels. Men were rich in those days and could afford to put a hundred cubic feet of masonry into the grave of even so humble a person as “Jno. Clements, Captain of the Country Service, 1820.” When the “dearly beloved” had held rank answering to that of Commissioner, the efforts are still more sumptuous and the verse.... Well, the following speaks for itself: