CHAPTER XXXIII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES
The Parsi Towers of Silence
Ourcompany had divided and respectively gone where all bad actors and where all good actors go,—to Australia and to London.
We lingered on in India for a few months. We were going through the cantonments of the Punjab before we sailed for home. We had engaged two other professionals and had made out programmes that reminded me of our Canton Recital. My husband had me down for a recitation in almost every programme; but when the time came I very rarely did recite.
We were in Bombay for some weeks before we started on our little final tour.
It was in Bombay, on a bright Sabbath day, that I first saw a Tower of Silence. We drove from the sunny Apollo Bundar, through the cool, green park, past the statue of the Queen—the most beautiful statue of Queen Victoria that has ever been executed.
I must own that I felt a little frightened. I had heard so much from Anglo-Indians about the horrors of the Parsi method of entombment that, in spite of my, perhaps, morbid desire to see and understand all the characteristic phases of Eastern life, I was almost nervous as we drove to the outer gate of the beautiful gardens that enclose the last resting-place of the Parsis who die in Bombay.
The dokhma—to give the correct name to the round Parsi sepulchres, that we, in our easy Anglo-Indian fashion call Towers of Silence—the dokhma is always placed on high ground. The sanitary reasons for this are obvious. In Bombay there are three Towers. They were built at different periods and mark the increase in Bombay of Parsi affluence, and of Parsi numbers. The oldest and smallest was built soon after the followers of Zoroaster had fled from Persia to Ind.
These Parsi mortuaries were in every way different from what I had imagined them; but, after seeing what they really are, my utmost philosophy revolts and sickens at the thought of the poor dead body, torn, as it is, by the claws and beaks of the human-flesh-fed vultures. But that the Parsi disposition of the dead is anything but healthy, I dispute; and the surroundings and situation of the Bombay dokhmas are dignified and beautiful in the extreme. When our carriage stopped we walked up a gradual rise, gravel-paved and tree edged, to a vine-covered lodge. Here we were eagerly seized upon by one of the half-dozen gatekeepers, who are glad to act as guides to curious strangers. We went on and up, passing groups of graceful, luxuriant trees, and beds of brilliant, ill-assorted flowers. Our guide took us into a little house, in which is kept a model of the dokhma. From this you learn what the inner construction of every Parsi dokhma is; for into no dokhma are you allowed to look. On the bottom of the Tower is a thick flooring of lime. A few feet above is the grating upon which the bodies are laid. This grating is divided into three tiers; not above each other, but inside each other. Each tier is divided into the same number of sections. These sections are formed by iron rays that spring from the centre of the Tower to its outer circumference or wall; hence, the compartments of the inner tier are smaller than those of the centre tier, those of the centre tier smaller than those of the outer. The outer tier is reserved for the bodies of men, the inner tier for the bodies of children, and on the centre tier the swooping vultures find the bodies of the Parsi women.
Only the attendants of the dokhma are allowed to enter it with the dead. They pass quickly up a narrow aisle that runs from the doorway, and place the dead upon the appointed place; they tear the sheets rapidly from the body; for the vultures are waiting, and they do not wait tamely. Only one article is left upon the corpse: the kusti. The attendants hurry away, and the vultures, with horrid cries, rush down upon their prey.
The kusti is one of the two badges of the followers of Zoroaster. It is a woollen cord, and is hollow. Only the women of the priest caste are allowed to weave it. It must be woven of seventy-two threads and be about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter. It is first woven as a continuous cord, and has, of course, no ends. About a foot of the warp is left unwoven; then it is passed on to a priest. He cuts the unwoven bit in the centre. This makes two ends of loose threads. These he braids to within an inch of their extremities; then he divides each braid into three little braids. All the time he repeats prescribed prayers in Zend, not one word of which he understands. The Parsi prayers are handed down from generation to generation, learned mechanically, and it is very exceptional for even a high priest to understand them.
The kusti is tied loosely about the waist, early in the Parsi life—at or before puberty, I believe. It denotes chastity, which is the chief requirement of the Parsi religion. The kusti is the last garment to leave the Parsi’s body. It is torn off by the devouring vultures.
The vultures are kept and bred, by the attendants of the dokhmas, for the purpose of cleaning the flesh from off the bones of the Parsi dead. They are only a few hours, at the longest, in executing their gruesome task. The dokhma is roofless. When the rain falls, it washes the dust of the crumbling bones down to the lime flooring. From there it gradually drains away, and is absorbed again into the economy of nature, in a way absolutely harmless to the living.
A few yards from the Tower of Silence is a white stone. It is kept clean, and shines up from the green grass. Nearer the dokhma than this stone no one may go, save the dead and the professional attendants. It is the Stone of Parting, the Stone of Good-bye, of Everlasting Farewell. Beyond it, the dead must go from those who have loved him, those he has loved; go alone, into the place of death, and into the something after death, which, in Parsi usage, seems to us worse than death itself.
I stood by that white stone one day, with one of the most remarkable men in the East—a Parsi. The birds shrieked angrily as they sat upon the towers. The old attendant said stoically, “We have had no funeral since early yesterday, they are getting——” I drew back that I might not hear the horrid end of his sentence. Then I said to my companion—a liberal-minded man, with whom we had often discussed involved social issues—“Do you not dislike it?”—“No,” was his reply, “my wife was laid there twenty years ago; and I shall lie there in a few years. It is our Parsi custom.”
When a Parsi dies, the body is at once washed, clothed in garments that are clean, white, and old, carried into a room on the lowest floor of the house, and laid on slabs of stone. An iron bier is brought in. The Parsi women sit on carpets, near the dead. The Parsi men sit, in long rows, on benches, outside the house. The priests recite prayers. After they have recited the first seven chapters of the Izashne (a Parsi religious book) the dead is placed upon the bier. Then a dog is brought in and made to look at the body! Then the prayers are continued. The body is carried from the house amid gesticulations of deep respect. A procession is formed and the remains are followed to the dokhma by relatives, friends, and professional attendants, all dressed in old, clean, white clothes. Prayers are again recited at the “Good-bye Stone,” and while the body is being placed in the Tower.
On the third day after the death, all the friends of the dead gather, in the afternoon, at the house of the nearest surviving relative. From thence they go to the Fire Temple, where a commemorative service is held. These services recur at stated intervals; and at the end of the Parsi year are several holidays, sacred to the dead.
I have mentioned the Fire Temple; but the Parsis are not fire worshippers, though it is a common error to call them so.
One of the most eminent of modern Parsis has explained so well the exact attitude concerning the introduction of fire in the religious observances of the devout Parsi, that I quote from him.
“The Parsis are called by others ‘Fire Worshippers,’ and they defend themselves by saying that they do not worship the fire, but regard it and other great natural phenomena and objects as emblems of the divine power. To me it appears that the imputation, on the one hand, is wrong; and the defence, on the other hand, a little over-shot. Though the Parsi ‘remembers, praises, loves, or regards holy’ whatever is beautiful, or wonderful, or harmless, or useful in Nature, he never asks from an unintelligent material object assistance or benefit; he is, therefore, no idolater or worshipper of matter. On the other hand, when the Parsi addresses his prayers to Hormuzd, or God, he never thinks it at all necessary that he should turn his face to any particular object. He would say, and does say, his ‘Hormuzd yasht’ (prayer to Hormuzd) anywhere whatever, without the slightest misgiving. Again, when he addresses the angel of water, or any other but that of fire, he does not stand before the fire. It is only when he addresses the angel of fire that he turns his face to the fire. In short, in addressing any particular angel, he turns his face to the object of that angel’s guardianship as his emblem; but, in his prayers to Hormuzd, he recognises or uses, or turns his face to, no emblems whatever. Since fire only could be brought within the limits of the temple—any of the grand objects of nature (as the sea, the sun, etc.) being unavailable for this purpose—the temples naturally became the sanctuaries of fire alone, and hence has arisen the mistake of the Parsis being regarded as ‘Fire Worshippers.’ ”
This is precisely what I was told by every intelligent Parsi with whom I spoke on the subject; but very few of them expressed it so clearly and ably.
I was asked, in Bombay, to follow a little Parsi baby to the dokhma. I intended doing so—not out of curiosity—but out of sympathy and liking for its mother. I even started; but before we were half-way there I turned back. I thought of that little white stone where the white-robed procession must stop, beyond which the mother might not go. The vultures sometimes scream when the halt is made at the “Farewell Stone.” I could not go. I could not see that little baby’s body carried to the hungry birds, in the presence of the pale, pretty, little Parsi woman, upon whose breast I had seen it the week before.
God help any mother when she parts with her dead child! But I think the glad shrieks of those swooping beast-birds must be even harder to bear than the first fall of the earth on the coffin lid.
Asia is the graveyard of countless millions. Asia is the home of many, many distinct races, all of which have different burial customs. All are more or less interesting.
The Parsis, who rank above most of the Oriental peoples in civilisation, dispose of their dead in the most repulsive manner of any race in Asia. But they break no sanitary law when they throw their dead to the merciless vultures.
The Hindoo disposal of the dead is, more than that of any other Eastern people, save the Burmese, in entire consonance with the health of Asia’s living millions.
The Burmese also practise cremation, and are, therefore, as much as the Hindoos, the guardians of public health. It is the Burmese who most hate death, and who mourn longest for their dead.
The Chinese are, in their funeral rites, the most fantastic, the noisiest, and the most callous. Their custom of keeping the dead unburied for long years, and their mode of interment, which is usually above ground, are a positive menace, not alone to their own health and the health of the stranger within their gates, but also to the health of all Asia.
The Japanese, who are Past Masters of the difficult art of living gracefully, pleasantly, satisfactorily, and with dignity, meet death with more self-control than any of their fellow Asiatics. There is nothing in their funeral customs to offend the most fastidious European or the most prejudiced American. Their cemeteries, if we are to have cemeteries at all, might well be models for the civilised world—models of peaceful, quiet beauty, ideal resting-places surrounded by the everlasting hills, which lift their high, hopeful heads as if in promise of immortality—places full of flowers that live so brightly and die so sweetly that they whisper with their gentle, perfumed lips the only one consolation for death—if death be eternal.
The Cingalese, the Sikhs, the Mohammedans, deserve mention in this little series; but then so do a score of others. May they all rest in peace, the simple native folk, and know no trouble, feel no pain, in that strange land from which is sent us no Book of Travels, and not even a newspaper letter—“The undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns!”
CHAPTER XXXIV
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS
A Parsi Wedding
TheParsi gentlemen are charming. The Parsi women are delicate in appearance, refined and womanly, and, I thought, rather stupid; but very possibly what I was rude enough to think stupidity was reserve. I found it quite impossible to get acquainted with them, or at least to pass beyond the barriers of slight acquaintance. I “made friends” with but one Parsi woman. She was dainty in all her ways, gracious and hospitable to a degree, an ideal housekeeper, from a Parsi point of view, a loved and loving wife, a devoted and happy mother; but she was rather uneducated, and had, I thought, no great mental capacity.
When we were first living in Bombay, I found the Parsi men rather difficult. My husband would tell me that this one was decidedly clever, and the other one highly educated; yet, if I entered the room where he was sitting with both of them, they invariably froze conversationally. One condoled with me about the weather, and the other asked me if I did not find the Bombay shops superior to those in Calcutta. I replied that I never went shopping, that if I really had to have anything, my nurse bought it for me. One of them laughed heartily and evidently thought that I was joking; the other cast down his eyes and looked embarrassed. He went home an hour later and told his wife that I was not quite right in my head, and that my husband had to carry about a nurse for me, who dressed me and undressed me, and that I was not allowed to go into a shop alone.
It was some weeks before I could make those two Parsi men—of whom we saw a great deal—understand that they could discuss in my presence anything of serious importance, not to mention the doings of the French Academy or the writings of Herbert Spencer, without being guilty of a rudeness analogous to that of speaking before me in a language with which I was unacquainted. We became good friends, and they were angels of patience in telling me all I longed to know about the history of their race, its manners and customs, and its belief. But I suspect that they would have liked me better had I thought—as did the wife of a prominent Parsi at Poona—that St. Petersburg was the capital of Italy! I believe that there are no men in the world more kind to their women than the Parsi men; but they do not regard those women as their intellectual fellows; nor do the women aspire to be so regarded. This simplifies the Parsi marriage question amazingly—simplifies it to the loss of the men and to the gain of the women.
The Parsis are in a transition state. The customs that they all rigidly observed fifty years ago are now observed by less than half their number, and rarely with entire rigidity. The Parsi wedding I saw a little over two years ago in Bombay was not the Parsi wedding of the last century; but it was picturesque in the extreme. It was un-European and merits description, I think; for, were I to return to Bombay in 1950, I should expect to find almost all the old Parsi customs quite discarded.
The father of the bridegroom came a few days before the marriage to invite us to the ceremony and to the feast, which was very polite of him, as invitations are usually given by priests, and only when an especial compliment is intended does the father of one of the contracting parties go in person to bid the guest. In this instance it was a love match, which always makes it a bit more interesting to a woman; and the bride was exquisitely pretty, which always makes it more interesting to a man. Both bride and bridegroom belonged to very wealthy and prominent Parsi families. All the Bombay Parsiélitewere there.
Child marriages are still, I believe, a part of the Parsi code, but not of the Parsi custom. Children are still betrothed very young, but not often. The bridegroom of whom I am writing was about twenty-seven, and the bride looked about twenty.
At four in the afternoon, the bridegroom and his friends marched to the house of the bride. The men were all dressed in white, and very striking they looked. Almost every well-to-do (i.e.well-fed) Parsi man is handsome. A band of music was with the procession, and played unceasingly. Formerly the Parsi women formed a considerable part of every Parsi marriage procession; but on this occasion there were only men. The bridegroom’s mother had preceded him, inconspicuously, to the house of the bride, bearing with her the prescribed gift of a dress. At the end of the procession walked a score or more of coolies carrying on their heads shallow baskets, heaped with cocoanuts. At every turn of the street, a cocoanut was waved about the bridegroom’s head, then broken and thrown away. Some time before the bride’s house was reached, her only sister met the procession, carrying three silver chattees. Into the upper one the bridegroom dropped a rupee. That was, I believe, symbolical of his determination never to fail to befriend his wife’s family. At the threshold of the house, an aunt of the bride threw rice and water and an uncooked egg beneath the feet of the bridegroom; then she welcomed him in; and he was careful to put his right foot in before his left.
We women—about two hundred Parsis and three Europeans—were waiting in a large, handsomely-furnished room. The bride’s father had spent some time in France when a young man, and Louis XV. cabinets were crowded between black, carved Indian tables, and creamy Chinese ivories. The Parsi ladies sat on small silk carpets that had been placed for them on the floor. I and my two compatriots (whom I did not know) sat in solemn elegance upon a solitary satin sofa. The men all sat about the walls, on low, narrow, backless benches, and I noticed that the European men, of whom there were about twenty, looked neither graceful nor comfortable. The father of the bride and the father of the groom sat down side by side, and the chief priest blessed them. In the centre of the room a low platform of stone had been built; this is called the “wedding booth.” Sometimes a complete booth is erected and richly decorated, but not invariably. The stone foundation, however, must be laid. It denotes purity and chastity. Chastity in the best and broadest sense is the beginning and end of the Parsi religion. Two chairs were placed, side by side, upon the stone foundation. Then the bride came in with her mother.
I caught my breath, she was so pretty! Her skin was fairer than mine, but with a lovely olive tinge in it. Her scarlet lips were trembling with a shy, half smile. She was dressed, or rather wrapped, in a pale-blue satin sari; it was edged with a delicate embroidery of pink and gold. Her little hands were heavy with gems. Her slender throat was hidden by a string of big pearls, and a string of bigger diamonds. There were diamonds at her girdle, and diamonds caught here and there her satin draperies. As she moved slowly forward, her graceful garment half hid, half revealed, the delicate outlines of hersveltefigure. She lifted her big brown eyes for a half instant to the face of the man who was waiting for her, and I thought of Byron’s Zadie.
The contracting couple were seated upon the chairs that were on the stone. They were facing each other. Then the ceremony proper began. A priest tied their right hands together with a soft, silken, bright-red thread. Two younger priests stepped forward, carrying a large piece of yellow cloth. This they held between the bride and bridegroom. The chief priest stood near them, holding in one hand a lit censer and in the other a dish of benjamin. Another priest gave a handful of rice to both the bridegroom and his bride. The chief priest began a long prayer. At a certain word, for which the young couple listened intently, he threw the incense into the fire. At that moment the couple threw their handfuls of rice each into the other’s face. Then their position was changed, and they were placed side by side. Two of the priests stood before them, and two witnesses stood beside them, holding brass plates heaped with rice. The priests began the marriage blessing. This they recited in Zend and Sanscrit, and at every sentence they pelted the couple with rice.
Then the priest put the two questions, “Have you espoused her?” and “Have you espoused him?” He was answered, “Yes, I have espoused her,” and “Yes, I have espoused him.” The questions and the answers were in Persian, of which, I believe, the contracting parties, the priests, and the guests, were equally ignorant.
During the long prayers I looked at the assembled company as often as I could tear my eyes from the bride’s pretty, flushing face. I saw a royal banquet once. It was in Munich, in celebration of the marriage of the King’s brother with the Emperor of Austria’s daughter. I have always remembered it as a gigantic display of diamonds. But it was insignificant beside the display of diamonds at that Parsi wedding. Many of the Parsis in Bombay are very rich. All the Parsis are extravagantly fond of gems; and the Parsi men dearly delight in decking their women to the utmost. A European man, who was more bored than interested with the strange marriage service, told me afterwards that he had tried to compute how many lakhs of rupees were represented there by diamonds,—“But I had to give it up after half an hour,” he said; “the things flashed and danced so, that they made my head ache.” All the women were exquisitely dressed. The Parsis have an almost French abundance of good taste. Indeed they are like the French in many ways. The bride’s mother wore more diamonds than any lady present, excepting only the bridegroom’s mother. It was hard to say which of those two was the most bejewelled, and harder still to understand how they held their heads up, and moved their arms.
After the marriage benediction there were other ceremonies, more fanciful and less interesting. The husband and wife (which they now were) ate out of one dish, and each found in it a ring.
The marriage feast followed in an adjacent room. This was a very European innovation. Among strictly conservative Parsis the marriage feasts are all held at the house of the bridegroom’s father.
Upon the floor of the “dining-room” were laid long silken carpets. They were about a foot and a half wide, and about fifty feet long. Upon them the Parsi guests seated themselves. We Europeans were shown to an elaborately-laid table, in an adjacent room. I asked permission to sit and eat with the Parsis. They made me very welcome, and I ate all sorts of good things, with my fingers. I do not know whether my intrusion was felt a pollution, as it would have been at an orthodox Hindoo feast. My hosts (which they all seemed to feel themselves) were too well bred to let me feel that I wasde trop, and I believe they were far too sensible to resent my respectful curiosity. Indeed the presence of the Parsi ladies was so very improper that they could well afford to wink at the greater enormity of eating with one European woman.
When we were living at Khandalah our nearest neighbours were Parsis. I never grew to know them well. We had very little in common, the graceful feminine women and I, but my bairns became very much at home in their bungalow. My boy used to come home with bulging pockets, and I very often took a surreptitious nibble of the Parsi sweetmeats that had been given him—they were so very good. But I had tasted nothing in Khandalah so nice as many of the dishes given me at this Parsi wedding in Bombay. I had a plantain leaf for a plate, and, as I have said, my fingers for forks. The other Europeans laughed at me, and told me they had oysters and champagne and a score of other conventional dainties at their nicely damasked table. I returned their laugh with something very like a sneer. I had eaten of a hundred unknown delicacies, and I could have oysters and champagne galore any time at the hotel.
Except in the matter of hats and caps, many Parsi men, on ordinary occasions, dress quite like Europeans; but I have never seen a Parsi woman in European dress. In this respect, at least, they are wiser than the Japanese women, whom they are like in being fragile, pretty, and dainty.
Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji said, in a paper read before the Liverpool Philomathic Society in 1861: “There is neither bigamy nor polygamy amongst the Parsis. They are simple monogamists.” When Mr. Naoroji wrote that, it was undoubtedly true. In the strict, narrow sense it is true now, but in the broadest and most beautiful sense, it is, I think, no longer wholly true. Chastity is the great law of Parsi life, and the Parsi women have, I believe, been guarded, not only from any possible infringement of that law, but even from the knowledge that the law is ever broken. But I am disinclined to believe that the Parsi men obey the chief command of their ancestral faith as staunchly as they used to do. Perhaps, alas, when the Parsi women have learned to mingle as freely with the Europeans, and to adopt their ways as fully as the Parsi men do now, they may gain the sad knowledge that there is one law for man and another for woman—that right is of one sex and wrong of another.
Periodically there is an Occidental agitation for the advancement and the emancipation of the women of the Orient. As far as that agitation aims at giving the women of the East medical succour in their hours of pain, as far as it seeks to teach them the best possibilities and the best care of their own bodies and of their children’s, it has my warmest sympathy; but when it attempts their disturbance, mental and moral, I deplore it. Intellectuality, education, enfranchisement, are all very fine, but happiness is far finer. Over-educate, abnormally develop woman’s intellect, create in her a longing for freedom which will gall her, and you destroy half her happiness. We are very learned, you and I who live in the West; we understand quadratic equations and we read Greek; we are man’s equal, or think we are. Let us be satisfied with our own big mental attainments, and let us leave the Marthas of the East their placid content, their sweet, unsophisticated happiness.
CHAPTER XXXV
AT SUBATHU, WHERE THE BAGPIPES PLAY AND THE LEPERS HIDE
Wewent from Bombay to Mhow,—such a desolate cantonment!—such a dâk bungalow! But we had a charming audience for our first funny little performance. The last time I had played—some months before in Bombay—the bill had been theMerchant of Venice, and we had had ample accessories of scenery and supernumeraries. This was very different; there were only four of us. When we were not on the stage we were rushing madly into another costume and another character; and the less said about the regimental scenery the better. But the regimental audience was ideal.Uncle’s Will, scenes fromHamlet, scenes fromOthello, and sprinklings of recitations—they received them all with the greatest good-nature, and beamed upon us with hearty kindness.
Our next halt was at Allahabad, where we felt almost at home. We divided our nights between the Railroad Theatre and the Regimental Theatre, and our days went all too swiftly in the bazaars and in the barracks.
Then we went to Cawnpore. We played there, but for once in my life I felt that acting was a very secondary consideration. One could not think of one’s self, nor even of one’s work, when one stood for the first time upon that sadly sacred ground. I should, in time, no doubt, have grown used to being in Cawnpore, and have taken up right merrily the petty thread of my personal existence; but we were in Cawnpore but a few days, and all the time I seemed to hear the cries of women and children, and see the red-handed natives drunk with butchery.
An army friend went to Cawnpore with us, so that for the nonce our little “troupe” was augmented to five—quite a regiment. In Cawnpore I went through the bazaars very little, but we wandered back each day to the little graveyard that clusters about the Well, and to the Memorial Church. An uncle of my husband’s was killed at the Cawnpore massacre,—that saddened him and saddened me.
Lucknow and Agra were very beautiful, and greatly interesting; and through the streets of both marched the soldiers—our soldiers!
The Residency at Lucknow is a tomb commemorating the fidelity and devotion of English women. At Agra is the Tomb of Tombs—the most beautiful of all tombs. It tells the story of a man’s love and grief—love for a wife, and grief for her death.
On through Meerut and Muttra—through regiments of new friends and companies of old. How pleasant those days were, and how hot! Umballa was a place of horror.
We went to Patiala for a week or two. We were lodged at the State Dâk Bungalow; we were the Maharajah’s guests—and certainly our host was very princely. He is the owner of innumerable horses. We were met at the station by a state carriage—such a state carriage!—and it and another were at our disposal while we remained in Patiala.
Though the Maharajah was surrounded by quite a little coterie of Europeans, Patiala is the most genuinely native place, of any considerable size, that I know in India. The bazaars were absolutely guiltless of European taint. I could have spent years in Patiala, not because of the treasure-rich palace, not because of the wonderful games of Polo, not for the pretty little river, nor for the huge caparisoned elephants, but for the quaint, genuine flavour of native life.
The Sikhs are a splendid race of men. To look into the eyes of the best manner of Sikh is to feel that you can trust him.
We played at Patiala—I forget how many nights. We played merely for the Maharajah and his guests. We played at whatever hour pleased him, and we were paid whether we played or not. We had heard of the Maharajah as a pleasure-loving young fellow, and we expected to please him most with our comediettas and farces, but it was the scenes that we did from Shakespeare that his Highness demanded, over and over. We found him an inveterate and appreciative theatre-goer, and my husband, who came to know the Maharajah much better than I did, was often surprised by a long and correctly quoted passage from Shakespeare. The theatre at Patiala was charming and comfortable.
The Maharajah of Patiala has one of the best bands to which I ever listened. The parks and public grounds are beautifully kept, and Patiala—with its rose gardens and its purdah-hidden harems—is thriving in the heart of modernised Asia.
We met in Patiala, and afterwards in Simla, the European lady who has recently married the Maharajah of Patiala. Such a marriage may, of course, change many old time-honoured Patiala customs.
We went back to Umballa, and then we journeyed up into the Himalayas. Into cantonments where there was not so much as a Dâk Bungalow, and we had to eat and sleep as best we might. We left the railway and civilisation at Kalka. We went up to Dagshai in doolies, and on horseback. Ayah sat with our little luggage on an ekka, and she said she didn’t like it. I could see no earthly reason why she should like it. But I thought that she was beautifully clever to stick on; any ordinary mortal would have tumbled in fragments on the ground.
It was a marvellous ride. Every few hours we stopped and lit a fire by the mountain roadside—a fire of twigs. We made tea, and warmed milk, and ate a little cold lunch, and washed our hands and faces while the coolies lay resting in the shade and smoking their hookahs.
Our road went from beauty into beauty that was greater. At Darjeeling we had seen the Himalayas covered with snow. Now we saw the Himalayas aglow with bloom, perfumed with fruit and athrob with life—the life of bird and of beast.
It is strange how confident you grow in the coolies who carry you up and down the steep mountain paths of Asia. I have had my bearers go on their hands and knees to manage some peculiarly difficult bit of road. But I have never had them stumble or even shake me roughly—save once, which didn’t count.
Ayah seemed more fearful than I—and she always insisted upon carrying Baby over the rough parts. That gave her a great deal to do, for most of the paths over the Himalayas were very rough.
Up—up—up we went, until we reached high Dagshai. That was no place for European civilians. It was wholly and solely for British soldiers and bazaar natives. But they were all glad enough to see us. We meant money to the natives and entertainment to the warriors. We were given an officer’s empty bungalow. Some one sent us afternoon tea. It was about six o’clock. By midnight our bungalow was furnished, our larder was filled, and we had half a dozen servants pottering about as industriously as if they had been in our employ for years. That could only happen in India, I think. But it happened in India very easily—quite as a matter of course. The natives take things as they come, and they are accustomed to making shift. Their own lives are often one long make-shift. That makes them very useful in our little domestic emergencies.
The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and a detachment of the Derbyshires were in Dagshai. The Derbyshires were old friends of ours. They had welcomed us to Jubblepore and to Umballa. The Highlanders, too, we had known in Hong-Kong. It used to give one quite a feeling of having come home, to go into a strange cantonment and see a familiar uniform or a well-known tartan.
In the 93rd there were boys whose surnames had been by their fathers written gloriously upon the history of the Mutiny.
It was some hours’ journey from Dagshai to Subathu. We got into our chairs in the early morning; it was not far from sunset when we came in sight of the Subathu barracks. The bagpipes called us a quaint Scotch welcome, and as we rounded the last khud and passed by the parade ground, the windy music sounded very sweet to me. And I could have cried with all my heart, “Bring on the Tartan!”
And again we had come to friends, for we had known the regiment in Colombo. There is no regiment in the service that we have had cause to like—yes, to love, more than the Gordon Highlanders. No wonder that every man in the regiment is proud to be in it.
Again we were domiciled in an empty bungalow. But our housekeeping was very simple. Our bungalow was near the officers’ mess, and from there our meals were sent us.
We had expected to be in Subathu some days, but we stayed much longer. Baby was ill and we dared not travel. But we went on playing, and night after night we did our work with hopeful hearts and a full house, because of a regiment’s hospitality. When we had exhausted our own little repertoire, the regimental amateurs played with us, and that enabled us to playCasteand several other pieces that are dear to the heart of Tommy Atkins.
One subaltern played Eccles for us on threes hours’ notice, and played it splendidly. But Captain Macready was the histrionic genius of the corps. I have never seen an amateur who compared with him for finish, artistic breadth, and actor-like exactness. Captain Macready inherits his dramatic gift, probably, for he is the son of one of the greatest actors who ever played upon our English stage. There are other names in the regiment that come back to me warmly. But if I told of them all, it would read too much like a leaf out of the Army List.
It was at Subathu that I first went freely among the lepers. The wife of the regimental chaplain gave me a letter to the superintendent of the leper asylum. I was a little frightened at first, when I passed into the place of pain, but the terror of the place was too great for petty feeling to last.
H.H. THE MAHARAJAH OF PATIALA ON HIS FAVOURITE RACER.Page 320.
H.H. THE MAHARAJAH OF PATIALA ON HIS FAVOURITE RACER.Page 320.
I have always believed that charity should begin at home. And I believe it still. But the lepers are a people apart. Their misery cries out above all other human misery. Science and love should unite their utmost strength to wipe this great and antique curse off the face of our earth. If you think I exaggerate, when I say that there is no human misery that compares with the misery of leprosy, go among the lepers and see.
And what shall I say of the man and woman who are devoting their lives to those Subathu lepers? They were people of unusual culture—people who would have been first among almost any of their fellows, and they, who were not fanatics, but healthy, wholesome human creatures had elected to live with and for the lepers. I felt, when I saw them last, on the steps of their bungalow, that I could cover their hands with kisses and bless them. I feel so still.
There are no words that would even partly describe the agonies of those lepers. Some of them moaned, some prayed, some wept, some only crouched on their beds and waited for death.
One poor fellow I shall never forget. He belonged to the highest Brahmin caste. He would no more have eaten with me, nor have let me touch his chattee, than he would have jumped into a river of fire. But his Brahmin courtesy he never laid aside for a moment. When I came to the door of his hut, he invariably struggled on to his feetless legs and cried me a smiling “salaam.”
One morning we journeyed on to Kausali. It is a wonderful place, high, high on the hills. We were there a week or more, and then we came sadly back to Subathu, for we had left our little baby in the cantonment cemetery at Kausali.
CHAPTER XXXVI
IN THE OFFICERS’ MESS
Peoplewho have seen both tell me that my performance of Polly Eccles is inferior to that of Mrs. Bancroft. But I have, I fancy, excelled Mrs. Bancroft in one particular: I have doubled Polly and the Marquise. I did it in Simla—did it withéclat.
The generous friend who was coming from Subathu to play the Marquise was detained at the last moment. We were in despair. The house was beautifully sold for that, our first night in Simla, and we could ill afford to return the money; we could still less afford to postpone our opening and break faith with our public.
“I will double the part with Polly,” I said as we sat mournfully on the stage at two in the afternoon.
“It’s an impossible double,” said Sam Gerridge.
“It’s a very ugly double,” I said. “But if you like, I’ll try it.”
We took the prompt-book and we did some remarkable things to it. But I am sure that Robertson himself would have forgiven us—under all the circumstances—had he been there.
Then we had a flying rehearsal of the changes, and I went back to the hotel to face the grave difficulty of dresses for Madame la Marquise. I had frocks enough that would do for the part at a pinch. But the great desideratum was to contrive something into which and out of which I could get with very great rapidity. I think that we did well, Ayah and I. She didn’t in the least know what it was all about, but she did what she was told—and did it exactly. Dear old black treasure! How calm, how helpful she was!
Fortunately there had been no question of studying for me. I had played so many times inCaste, I had rehearsed so many Marquises, and my “study,” as we play-folks call the memory of words, has always been a blessed and useful one. It never fails or betrays me.
The first act went as well as I had ever known it to do. We were all just enough nervous to be rather brilliant. There were three Gordon Highlanders in the caste, and well as they had played their parts in their own regimental theatre, they excelled themselves at Simla.
Captain Macready’s “George D’Alroy” was a masterly performance. Surgeon-Captain Barratt’s “Hawtree” was really fine.
The second act came. I went on, more pins than anything else. When the Marquise was announced I cried, “Oh, let me see her!” D’Alroy picked me up and carried me through the folding doors at the back. I pulled out pins as we went. Ayah was there at her post. Screens had been arranged for me and, while I made a change, I called out that I greatly desired to see a “real live Marchioness.” Ayah never spoke, but she worked like the heroine she was, and I went back on to the stage, as La Marquise de St. Maur, in less than one minute after I left it as Polly.
How they cheered me! I had heard that Simla audiences were cold, and that they looked unkindly upon professionals, whom they regarded as intruders in Simla. But we must speak of people as we find them, even if we find them in Simla. And I found that audience kind to a fault. My professional experience has been very varied, and it was no great thing for me to change frock and wig inside of a minute. But I suppose they thought it quick work, and they applauded and commended as if I had done something very plucky. I made seven “changes” that night, and they greeted each in the heartiest way. It was brisk work, but on the whole it was rather good fun and left one no time to think. Poor Ayah was rather puzzled. But the next night it all dawned upon her and she exclaimed, “I now see, lal coatie memsahib no come. My memsahib do two piece—her proper piece, and lal coatie memsahib’s piece. Now lal coatie memsahib yes come, my memsahib do one piece, her proper piece.”
Strangely enough I have since then doubled Polly and the Marquise not once but thrice: once at Murree, twice at Rawal Pindi.
There is no spot in India lovelier than Simla. We went on “off nights” to play at the regimental theatre at Jutogh, a tiny cantonment a few miles from Simla. Several companies of different regiments were stationed there for rifle practice. We went and came in ’rickshaws. I often dream of those rides. Simla seemed very near heaven when the stars came up over the big trees and the moon hung low over the mountains. And the birds thought it was day, and called to their mates. The ride was long—but to me it never seemed half long enough. I could have leaned back in my ’rickshaw and let the coolies pull me on into eternity, up to the infinite. One felt very near Nature up there in the hills. I often thought of home as we went slowly on through the night and the great silence. But I never was home-sick, save for the past, and I knew in my heart that I should feel it bitterly when we came to say a last good-bye to India. And I did feel it, very bitterly indeed.
But it was the grandest of grandeur when the storms broke up there in the mountains. Then one could hold one’s breath and think what an atom one was, and how little anything mattered.
I shall never cease to regret India. The country itself appealed to me; the people delighted me. But, above all, it was India that taught me how staunch, how kind, how true, how generous, how altogether noble our race is,—I learned that in the cantonments of India.
There are a hundred little midnight hospitalities that I wish I might chronicle. Perhaps some day I may. One I remember with especial gratitude, because it was offered us by men whom we did not know. I have had many a cosy little after-the-play supper in an Officers’ Mess, and many a hamper of goodies sent from the same bountiful quarter, but one night, when the rain poured down as if it would wash Simla away, we were urged into the mess at Jutogh by hosts who were to us entire strangers. Even now I don’t remember their names, though they all, if I remember, exchanged cards with my husband. But I remember the kind hands that pulled us in out of the rain, into the warmth and good cheer. We had just finished playing at the desolate little cantonment theatre, and were facing, with what grace we could, the long ride back to Simla. When they came for us, we were abominably dishevelled, but the invitation into comfort and good cheer was irresistibly pleasant. It was a charmingly pretty place. But I believe that the interiors of all officers’ messes are that,—all have been that I have ever seen. I was vulgarly hungry, and would have been delighted with a sandwich and a mug of milk; but with a great courage which is the birthright of men—