Chapter V
IT was an event this morning when Thalia came whisking along the Mall in her rickshaw and turned in here. The Mall, I should mention, is the only road in Simla that has a name. It is a deplorably inappropriate name, it makes you think of sedan-chairs and elderly beaux and other things that have never appeared upon the Himalayas, and it was doubtless given in derision, but it has stuck fast like many another poor old joke until at last people take it seriously and forget that it ever pretended to be humorous. I don’t even know whether it is more fashionable to live upon the Mall than elsewhere, or whether one can claim to live upon it when it runs past one’s attic windows like an elevated railway; but we have often remarked to one another that if we cannot be said to live upon the Mall we cannot be said to live anywhere andtaken what comfort may be had out of that. Our peculiar situation has at all events the advantage that I can always see Thalia coming, which adds the pleasure of anticipation to her most unexpected visit. Like most of us, Thalia arrives with the season, but it should be added that she brings the season with her. We amuse ourselves a good deal, for a serious community, with a toy theatre, in which we present Mr. Jones and Mr. Pinero so intelligently that I often wonder why neither of these playwrights has yet come out to ascertain what he is really capable of. Thalia is our leading comedienne; you would have guessed that by her name. She is never too soon anywhere, but I had begun to wonder when she was coming up. “Up,” of course, means up from the plains,—up from the Pit, as its present temperature quite permits me to explain. April is the last month in which you can leave the Pit without being actually scorched.
“Whatareyou doing here?” she exclaimed, half-way down the drive. She expected, I suppose, to find me in the housetrying to decide upon the shade of this year’s cheese-cloth curtains. By the way, I have decided—that the old ones will do. Thisbe doesn’t mind, and I’ve got the clouds.
“Oh, I’m just here,” I said with nonchalance. There is nothing like nonchalance to prove superiority to circumstances. “How are you?”
“Thank you,” said Thalia. “Well, come along in. I’ve got quantities of things to talk about.”
“It is very good of you,” I returned, “to press my hospitality upon me, but I don’t go in. I stay out. If Tiglath-Pileser saw me entering the house at this hour,” I continued with the vulgarity which we permit ourselves to the indulgent ear of a friend, “it would be as much as my place is worth. But you see I have a chair ready for emergencies—pray sit down. You are the first emergency that has arisen, I mean that has dropped in, this year.”
When I had fully explained, as I was at once of course compelled to do, with a wealth of detail and much abuse of Tiglath-Pileser,I was not gratified with the effect upon Thalia. “You have simply been spending your time out-of-doors,” said she, “a very ordinary thing to do.”
“Try it,” said I.
“And are you better?”
“I think,” I replied, “that I have possibly gained a little weight. But I might as well admit it cheerfully, they won’t take my word against any pair of scales.”
“That was an excellent prescription I sent you in October,” Thalia continued reproachfully. “You haven’t given it up?”
“It has given me up,” I responded promptly, “after the first three weeks it declined to have anything whatever to say to me. And besides, it had to be taken in decreasing doses. Now if a thing is really calculated to do you good it should be taken in increasing doses. That is why I begin to have some little confidence in this out-of-doors business. Every day I feel equal to a little more of it.”
“Well,” said Thalia, “Mrs. Lyric told me that it had made another woman of her.And Colonel Lyric commands the 10th Pink Hussars.”
Thalia knows it annoys me to be told about a woman, with any sort of significance, what position her husband occupies in the world, and that is the reason she does it. I do not say that it has no weight as a contributory fact in a general description, but I do say that an improper amount of importance is usually attached to it. You ask what kind of a person Mrs. Thom is, and you are told, “Oh, Mr. Thom is Chief Secretary in the Department of Thuggi and Dacoity,” being expected without further ado to dispose yourself to love her if she will let you. One is always inclined to say “But she may be very nice in spite of that,” and one only refrains because one knows how scandal grows in Simla. And there are people in these parts, I assure you, who would run to take a prescription because it had made another woman of the wife of the colonel commanding the 10th Pink Hussars, no matter what kind of a woman she had been before; but I was not goingto gratify Thalia by letting her see that I knew it.
“At all events,” I said calmly, “it had to be taken in decreasing doses and naturally it came to an end. Are you settled in?”
“I have a roof to cover me,” said Thalia sententiously, “and for that,” she added looking round, “I didn’t know how thankful I was. But I am undergoing repairs. They are putting mud into the cracks of my dwelling, paperhangers are impending, and this morning arrived three whitewashers. I wanted to be done with it at once, so I sent for three. I told them I was in a hurry. In one breath, they said, it should be done, and sat down in the verandahto make their brushes. It’s a fact. Of split bamboo. You cannothustle the East. But I found I had to come away.”
“How foolish it all seems!” I sighed with an eye upon the farther hills. “Shouldn’t you like to see my pansies?”
“Yes,” she replied resignedly, “I suppose I must see your pansies,” and where I led she followed me, still babbling of paperhangers.
It is no exaggeration to say that during the months of April, May, and June, there are more pansies than people in this town. (Upon second thoughts why should it be an exaggeration, since in every garden inhabited by two or three persons there are hundreds of pansies.) They seem to like the official atmosphere, doubtless in being so high and dry it suits them; at all events they adapt themselves to it with less fuss than almost any other flower. And certainly they could teach individuality to most of our worthy bureaucrats, who have a way of coming up, they, exactly like each other. Pansies from the same parent root naturally look alike, but if you really scan their features there is not the least resemblance between families. I have been living principally in their fellowship for several days and I quite feel that my knowledge of human nature is extended. There never was such variety of temperament in any community; to describe it would be to write a list of all the adjectives yet invented to bear upon character, a tedious task. It is positively a relief afterthe slight monotony of a society in which everybody is paid by the Queen, to meet persons like pansies, who aren’t paid by anybody, and who express themselves, in consequence, with the utmost facility and freedom. (Thalia, who is the wife of the Head of a Department, here interrupted me to ask what I could possibly mean.) Oh there is no charm like spontaneity, in idea, behaviour, or looks. The Dodos of London society triumph by it, while self-conscious people of vast intellectual resources are considered frumps.
I imparted all this to Thalia, and she agreed with me.
You see these things in a pansy, and a great deal more—station in life, religious convictions almost—but try to focus your impression, try to analyze the blooming countenance that looks up into yours, and the result is fugitive and annoying. Not a feature will bear inspection; instantly they vanish, magically, as if ashamed of the likeness you look for, and leave you contemplating just a flower, with petals. You havenoticed that in a pansy. It is better, if you wish to enjoy yourself among them, to take them with a light and passing regard, and privately add them to the agreeable things of life that will not bear looking into.
I here asked Thalia if she thought they did better from seeds or from roots, and she said she didn’t know.
One often hears the German language complimented on its pretty name for pansies,Stiefmütterchen, but it is very indiscriminating. They are by no means all little stepmothers; some of them wear beards and I wish they wouldn’t, for a beard is a loathly thing in nature or on men. Also the personation that goes on among them is really reprehensible; one can find pansy photographs of any number of people. One irascible and impossible old retired colonel in England is always appearing, to my great satisfaction and delight. The original would be so vastly annoyed to know how often he comes out to see me here, and how amiable and interesting I find him, for we are not good friends, and I amsure he would not dream of calling in the flesh. It is an old story among us, but I was surprised to find Atma, too, impressed with this likeness to the human family. I asked him the other day why some pansies were so big and others so little. He considered for a moment and then he said with the smiling benevolence which we extend to the intelligence of the young, “Like people they come—some are born to be large and some to be small. As Sropo and Masuddi.” Atma is really the interpreter of this garden.
Thalia again interrupted me to ask why it was not possible this season, when purple was so popular, to find in the shops anything as royal as the colour a certain pansy was wearing. I said the reason was probably lost in science, but she immediately supplied it herself, as I have noticed my sex is prone to do in searching for general explanations. “Of course,” she said, “one must remember that they grow their own clothes. If we could only do that! The repose of being quite certain that nobody else had your pattern!”
“They would take too long,” I objected. “This poor thing has spent three-quarters of her life making her frock, and now she can only wear it for about three days.”
But Thalia seemed pleased with the idea. “Think how original I could make my gowns inLady Thermidore,” she said pensively.
“And you would perish with your design!” I exclaimed.
“No,” she cried luminously, “I should reappear in another character!”
I have often noticed how radical is the effect of play-acting upon the human mind. Your play-actress throws herself naturally into every character she meets. I could see that it was giving Thalia hardly any trouble to transform herself into a pansy.
We went back to the chairs and sat down, but not for long. Consulting her watch, my friend announced that she must be off, she was going to lunch at Delia’s. “At Delia’s!” I remarked. “How people are swallowed up in their houses, to be sure!You would be more polite to say ‘at Delia.’ It’s bad habit, this living in houses.”
“I think,” she responded, “that you are losing your social graces. I had quantities of things to tell you, and I am taking them away untold. The garden is too vague a place to receive in. However, never mind, I will try to come again. Your flowers are charming, but it has not been what I call a satisfactory visit. I hope I haven’t bored you.”
“How can you say so!” I cried; “I have enjoyed it immensely,” and I tucked her affectionately into her rickshaw and sped her on her way. When she had well started I remembered something, and ran after her.
“Well?” she demanded, all interest and curiosity.
“It was only to ask you,” I said breathlessly, “if you had noticed what a large number of pansies look like Mr. Asquith?”