Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/The homeward bound and the outward bound
THE HOMEWARD BOUND AND THE OUTWARD BOUND.
The awful lull before the outburst of the thunder-storm is nothing compared to the terrible silence prevailing in Shepherd’s hotel at Cairo this first Friday in October, 18—. The lull is not merely the result of the great heat. No! it is the unnatural calm preceding the arrival of the Overland Mail from India.
This huge stone barracks, once a military college, now an hotel, no longer the home of the “shepherd kings” of Egypt, but the domain of one Zech, an Hungarian, is the celebrated halfway house, as all old Indians know, and it is here those going out to, and those returning from the said country, meet and exchange news and pleasant greetings. This very night, forty or fifty of our rosy cadets fresh from England, will meet forty or fifty old yellow veterans from Calcutta, Delhi, Benares, and the hills. We, the outward bound, are longing for the hour that will bring the homeward bound to Egypt, and the hour is now all but come.
We are already tired of Cairo, and want to push on to our torrid destination. We feel quite at home by this time at Shepherd’s. We call the waiters George and Tom, and Ali and Hassan. We know all the ways of the place, and all the odd English and knavish tricks of the dragomans. The fleas in the floor-mats and the mosquitoes inside the bed-curtains have long ago whispered to each other, “Come along, let us tap this new Englishman; I have tasted him, and can highly recommend him.”
Every morning before breakfast, the flock of donkey-boys have yelled at our approach, and fought for us. We have seen the moon rise four times above the trees of the Usbeekeyeh garden, as we sat smoking our gurgling water-pipes on the stone platform outside the hotel-door. Together we have seen Coptic brides carried in torchlight procession, and together have watched the snake-charmer twine the hissing snakes round his bare arms; together we have seen the dervishes howl and sway, and now together we sit in divan, smoking and waiting for news of the arrival of the mail.
The ink is yet scarcely dry (and it doesn’t take long drying in Cario, I can tell you), on the notice stuck up over the letter-box in the hall,
“The homeward-bound passengers arrived at Suez last night. They will sleep to-night in Cairo, and go on to-morrow evening to Alexandria. The outward-bound passengers must therefore be ready to start to-morrow morning by the 7 a.m. train to Suez—A. Zech.”
The silence of Cairo at four o’clock in the day is intense; it may be busy in the bazaars where the ebb and flow is always as if for life and death, but here the stillness is death-like. The waiters sleep about on benches. The dragomans are all up the Nile, I suppose, fleecing and worrying travellers. There is nothing doing at the bar. No one ascends or descends the great stone staircase. The papers in the reading-room are not being read, and every sofa has an outward-bound dreaming and snoring of home upon it. The donkey-boys rest under the sycamore trees in gipsy-like groups, sleeping or gambling. Our own special boys are gone, I suppose, to their cafés to spend their earnings. Only now and then a poor Arab woman, clad in her lank dark-blue garment, passes, carrying a flapping bundle of long damp sugar-canes upon her head, or a sturdy Nubian groom, arrayed in robes white as sea-froth, struts by on his way to some pacha’s stables. Suddenly a long intense steam-whistle sounds faintly from the direction of the railway-station. Instantly the donkey-boys leap on their donkeys and disappear in a whirl of dust. Then four or five waiters, looking like indigent and rather disreputable curates, regardless of expense, rush into open carriages and tear off also to the station.
The mail has arrived. At once the hotel wakes to life; it swarms suddenly with dragomen—dragomen in shining sable shoes, dazzling scarves and gay turbans; dragomen with turquoise rings for sale on their chapped dirty fingers; dragomen with heavy pocket-books, of greasy testimonials and brass-headed staves; dragomen bowing, chattering, smirking, hopeful, shy and abject.
Presently a cloud of dust flies up the road, and scattering a throng of Arabs, out burst our Indian chivalry. Six homeward-bound appear on gallopping donkeys, the donkey-boys shouting and running for their lives, and calling out:
“This very good donkey, master; this Billy Barlow, master, very good. A-oorah, English donkey!”
And after them tear three open carriages, full of nankeen-coloured, and rather lack-lustre ladies, and after them more donkeys, and more open carriages, and pyramids of luggage, and more dragomen, and then ayahs and children, and Hindoo servants, in a rabble host.
All Hindostan is let loose upon us. English men, Indianised as timber is kyanised, come pouring in with wives, and daughters, and children, all tawny yellow, burnt, pale, dry, lean, or shrivelled. They have all an invalid, exhausted look, and are languid in their movements, and thin as to their voice. They wear wonderful expedients to guard their heads from the sun, and always the smaller the man, the bigger is the hat. There are washing bowls, and firemen’s helmets, and other hideous devices, some of which have tubes like the tubes of a cigar-case, or some horrible musical instrument inside the brim and all round the head, and heavy quilted capes. Other men have brown scarfs, called “puckerees,” or some such name, wound round their wideawakes, and the ends dangling down their backs. They all wear loose paletôts of nankeen-coloured, thin, gauzy stuff, and generally of a neutral, summery, and gossamer character. Surely those yellow men, with the sickly smile and low voices, taking a languid interest in the new place as being a relief after shipboard, and, at all events, one step nearer England, cannot be kinsmen of us outward-bound men, with the strong limbs, pleasant red and white faces, and roaring laugh—men who could actually pinch a Bengalee to death between their arms and their sides.
Yes, they are brothers, and sons, and nephews, and officers of the same regiment—only these are bound to India and those to England.
Observe the three distinct classes among the outward and homeward—the yellow men, who are all in a state of languid pleasure, for though very ill, they are all going home for a holiday, a long furlough.
The glum, yellow men: these are men whose holiday is over, and who are returning to their different presidencies, and fancy themselves ill again, and smell the hot air of the Bed Sea already with morbid anticipation.
Thirdly the rosy bluff men, generally young and noisy. These are cadets, going out for the first time; that colour on their young cheeks is called by some couleur de rose—a colour generally found to be a fugitive one, and one that will not stand much washing, not being a fast colour. They derive no moral from those yellow shadows, but go on their roadway, drinking their four-and-twenty glasses of brandy-and-water daily, and getting into scrapes at mosques, and pulling off the turbans of old Mohammedans, and generally affecting that grand conquering manner that makes this sort of Englishman so popular all over the world; another month and these youths will be scattered never to meet again, some on the hills, some round the Persian Gulf, some in the Punjab, and some among the furthest fortresses towards the Affghan.
By this time the confusion of the new arrival is at its height. The open carriages come dashing in from the station more like war chariots than decent hack vehicles. The bowing and grinning dragomen, who take you in a corner and show you letters drawn from greasy pocket-books, form quite an oriental regiment in the corridors and in the hall of Shepherds. The seedy clerical waiters run and cry “coming” and do not come, and “yes, sir,” when they mean “no, sir,” and are greeted by old friends, who are glad to see even a waiter who reminds them of England. There is much work, too, with curious bamboo boxes, and light abnormal luggage, which the ladies convey upstairs, and much languid laughter, which is but as the echo of English laughter. But the bulk of the passengers, with that true English energy that no solar heat can ever dry up, have already leaped into carriages, and torn off to see the old Eastern city. Indeed, if you happen to be in the bazaars the day the Suez mail arrives, you soon become acquainted with the fact. You are perhaps cheapening an old sword-blade, or buying some striped bornouse, or a leopard’s skin fresh from Nubia, or some rare perfume, or some gold embroidery, when the English appear. The crowd is tremendous under the awning-roof of the narrow bazaar, there is one vast tossing sea of parti-coloured turbans. The grave dealer is imperturbably fraudulent. Every moment you are in danger; now the horns of a bullock threaten you, now the wheels of a dray, or the heels of a soldier’s horse. Suddenly there comes a shout of “Guarde-a-a-a-áah!” a shout, no a yell, then a smart Nubian in snowy robe, well girt up, and with bare, muscular legs, races by, shouting that insolent and reckless warning. The crowd divides, there is a lane quickly made, and through that dashes an open carriage full of Englishmen, all in sun-helmets, all lean, dry, and yellow, and in the thinnest of nankeen-coloured envelopes. They see us and greet us with a smile, a nod, or a shout, according to their age, vivacity, or heartiness. There is no moving without meeting them between the time of their arrival and dusk. They have literally taken possession of the city. They are on the citadel hill looking down on the distant stone tents of the pyramids, and on the Pasha’s encampment of dromedaries. They are peeping into mosques, looking at the pendent ostrich eggs and the chains of lamps. They are riding between the sugar-canes on the old Cairo road: they are looking at the green and red Nile boats at Boulak. They are threading the drug bazaar and the Jews’ quarter: they are rushing about on donkeys on the shady road to the Shoobra gardens. They are buying hatsful of scented, loose-skinned, Mandarin oranges, or sticking crimson pomegranate flowers in their hats. Gay, reckless, careless of Arab public opinion, they are like boys fresh from school, or sailors ashore after a long cruise.
The talk of the outward bound to the homeward bound is of everything cockney, conservative, local, and English; how the subterranean railway gets on; how Olmar walks head downwards; how London windows are bristling with knives, daggers, whistles, and knuckle dusters. The talk of the homeward bound is of the surf at Madras, the heat at Peshawar, the pleasant life at the Hills, of Colonel this, and Captain the other, and “our Presidency,” of the 50th, and the 70th, and the 140th, and the 150th; and this unexpected marriage, and that expected death. And on they talk of their mutual hopes, fears, regrets, and anticipations. The poor wife, whose husband died last year at Dum-Dum, looks with interest and sympathy at the young wife, who, bright and hopeful, is going out, for the first time, and knows nothing of the dangers and bereavements she has to encounter. Side by side ride and walk the young cadets, with the peach bloom still on their cheeks, and the old veterans who are about to retire on half-pay, and thankful enough to do it.
And now the dusty carriages come dropping in one by one; and one by one the tired riders dismount painfully from their untameable donkeys. Then comes the refreshing wash, and the pleasant chat with old comrades before dinner. How glad the Englishman is to throw off the officer! I see no epaulettes, no sword, no orders, no medals; yet every second man is a soldier and a hero.
If there is one thing at Shepherd’s that delights the homeward-bound and the outward-bound, it is the old-fashioned bar. Yes, in that great palace ball, far down on the left-hand side, there is actually a counter where bottled beer, lemonade, soda water, and cognac are sold, and where a real barmaid presides—a real, chatty, coquettish barmaid. After years of turbans, and punkah pullers, and helpless creatures in white robes, it is as good as seeing England to see a real barmaid; and this accounts, I suppose, for the enormous quantity of bitter beer drunk on these occasions to wash down the dust of the Suez desert and the recollections of the lurid heat of that horrible Red Sea. Everyone is, in fact, so thirsty that I begin almost to believe the horrible falsehood that Herodotus tells us about the army of Xerxes drinking a river dry on their way to Greece. Poor outward-bound! the Red Sea and India is before them, and who knows when they may taste again bitter beer the least cool. Yes, that vibrating roar is the dinner gong sounding solemn, and warning us of a sacrifice to Juggernaut. The doors are flying open, all down the barrack-like corridors of Shepherd’s. O wonderful art of woman! A short hour has removed all traces of the sea voyage, fatigue, and desert heat. The ladies re-appear floating on muslin clouds, beautiful as day-break in the tropics. Rosy or yellow they blend, and join beautifully by contrast. They are all smiles and pretty babble about “punkawallahs,” and all that sort of “Indian shop-talk,” as an irreverent naval surgeon near me calls it. How the dear creatures enjoy the quiet retirement of the huge hotel after Red Sea and shipboard. They have revived as the rose of Jericho does when it is dipped in water. The thought of dear England has restored them at once to youth. The long home-sickness at the lonely station is forgotten. The whirlwind of the mutiny seems now they are among old friends, and looking towards England, but as a dream when one awakens. Even old rivals on board ship greet each other with good nature. Young ladies going out to India to marry, look with approval on the young married lady returning with her prize to England. Old majors, with leather faces, are preposterously gallant. Blooming striplings blush more even than they were wont to blush; but as for the old residents of the hotel (Rev. Mr. Blaireau, for instance, from Aden), they alone, jostled and disregarded, look forlorn, fallen, and glum; they don’t like this inroad of barbarians into the “caravanserai,” as they rudely call the hotel that has so long been their pleasant retreat. This day they know they will not be waited on well, nor will they get too much to eat if they do not take special care; observe how cruelly they regard the indifferent waiters, and how they scowl on the gallant Major Timpson, who perhaps does savour a little of the pantaloon, which is what we must all come to even if we are statesmen, provided we live long enough. Dreadful are the observations of Blaireau on the Indian wife-market, and scorching his glances at that burly bagsman in the Fez cap and dirty shirt cuffs, who drags all the dishes to him, talks loud, eats with his knife, and roars for a distant joint like a starving giant.
About an hundred and fifty people are dining in one room; there are three long tables full of English people either going to India or returning with livers injured or to be injured; with rupees or without rupees; browned and to be browned; roasted and to be roasted, until further orders.
The dragomen in the gay turbans stand behind their masters’ chairs, securing the food by dexterous dashes at dishes, and subtle swift conveyings, to the infinite wrath of Blaireau, and the other servantless. The champagne corks fly about like bullets, and the pop-pop from left to right of subdivisions is a perfect compliment to the army, and is grateful to the old soldiers’ ears, to judge by the brightening of their old eyes; shouts of congratulations and ship-board jokes pass freely round to the indignation of Blaireau, who is peeling an orange as spitefully as if he was flaying the now rather garrulous Major.
The noise of clattering plates and falling spoons is deafening. All at once “twang-twang” goes a harp; “zoon-zoon” goes a bass violin. It is a German band from an Alexandria café—three women and two men—come on purpose to cheer and welcome the Overland Mail, for Indians returning to England are notoriously generous even to lavishness. They play that pretty regretful “Che faro senza Euridice,” then a Bohemian dance, and a Varsoviana; then a polka. The “punkawallah,” and “Indian shop talk,” blends with the music, together with all sorts of utterances that reach one by fits,—as “Major Timpson, your health.” “My dear boy, I never felt better in my life.” “How were the Neversages when you last heard?” “The tide at Madras, sir, rises fourteen.” “The climate up the country is charming.” “Is the Dromedary a fast boat.” “Captain Plunger has got his step.” “Rum hole this,” and so on. “Waiter, more champagne; and, waiter, a pomegranate,” &c. &c.
Finally the soup, flabby Nile fish, meat, gazelle, turkey, grapes, pomegranates, &c., disappear, and “God save the Queen” is played, as the prettiest of the band comes round with a bottle stand, artfully sprinkled with silver bait, and smiling, shakes it before you. But at that tune, so suggestive of old times and the old country, Major Timpson rises, all rise and cheer the pompous good old time; and the cadets, exhilarated with champagne, go on cheering till Blaireau goes nearly mad, and the proprietor has to come in and stop them.
Then the ladies sweep off with conquering Parthian smiles, and more champagne is drunk; and lastly in cluster, the homeward-bound and outward-bound retire to the platform outside the hotel, and though it is October, sit out and smoke in the white moonlight, or stroll up and down across the silver striped shadows of the trees, discussing the past or guessing at the future.
It will be near midnight, and the moon half across the square, before the last tired waiter will take in the last chair, and water-pipe and charcoal-stand, and sleepily bar the great doors of Shepherd’s Hotel. But long before those doors are shut, and long after when they are, will steal in with the thin moonbeams, through every window, spite of curtains, shutters, and mosquito nets, dreams of dear old English places, beloved by those homeward-bound and outward-bound sleepers—dreams of quiet close shaven lawns, and ivied terraces, and little cottages, smiling through roses and coverts of dwarf oak, alive with restless dogs, and sloping downs where the greyhounds sweep and twist, and solemn old churches and rustic bridges, and chocolate coloured fallows smelling sweetly of fresh turned earth, and summer meadows rank with flowers, and everywhere round and among these scenes some loved face will move in the dark shadow of fear, or in the happy sunshine of hope.
To-morrow the relentless gong sounds soon after daybreak, and the great caravanserai will again return to life. The happy will awake to the reality of their happiness. The unhappy to the gloom of renewed misery. There will be a wailing of children, hurried dressing, hurried packing,—and much of that small anxiety about stray hat-boxes and runaway dressing-cases that tends to lessen the sorrow of a traveller’s parting. The breakfast is swiftly eaten. The carriages and horses are at the door. The homeward-bound and outward-bound part with good wishes and hand-shaking and touching of hats.
In half an hour more the train plunges into the desert, and Cairo’s minarets and palm-tree domes grow smaller and smaller till they disappear from the eyes of the outward-bound. Soon all will be desert on either side, and nothing living but an Indian file of gazelles seen till they reach the first station. That night they will be borne across the Red Sea in a steamer that is as hot as if it was a floating furnace—and so they go to India.
In the meanwhile a reserve train will bear off the happier homeward-bound in fire and vapour of smoke towards Alexandria, through cotton-fields downy-white, and roods of Indian corn, and bunchy sesame, and past myriads of mud huts, and plumed palm-trees.
There is a scamper to Pompey’s pillar; much falling off donkeys, then a hurried dinner, and a scuffling embarkation. The oars dip and drip, and feather and splash. The great steamer looms out larger and larger, and slowly grows to a stupendous reality. Hearty English faces smile over the bulwarks, and from the pendent steps and the grated platform on to which the homeward-bound, tawny and of a curry powder colour, will contrive to leap, with again something of the old vigour. Now the sailors stamp round and get up the anchor. The fife plays “The Roast Beef of Old England.” The busy Captain touches his hat, and welcomes them. The great ship moves, it begins to breathe hard and fierce. The glaring sand-hills on shore recede. The lighthouse is now but a white bodkin. Hurrah! we’re out of the harbour and on our way to dear old England.