An American Girl in India/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
I MEET AN A.D.C.
Now I am not going to write anything like a full and connected account of the great Durbar. I guess that has been done hundreds of times already. I am simply going to jot down some of the impressions it made on an irresponsible sort of spectator like me. I had no time to make anything more than very scrappy jottings in my diary in the rush and hurry of the moment, so if occasionally you find me a bit vague and inaccurate, as I often find Aunt Agatha, you will understand the reason. But please don't get as annoyed with me as I sometimes do with Aunt Agatha.
It was frightfully cold in Delhi. That was really one's first impression when you came to think about it. But it was a delightful crisp sunny sort of cold that bucked you up wonderfully, and you forgave it, though it did try its best to crack your skin and plough deep furrows in your lips. The second impression as you emerged from Delhi Station was that you felt you must have arrived in the Strand by mistake. Not the noisiest, busiest, most crowded street in the world could have beaten Delhi that morning of our arrival. Yet, of course, when the first bewildering glimpse of crowds of vehicles blocking the way and crowds of pedestrians lining the sides of the roads—there didn't seem to be any paths—and darting under the horses' heads, had passed, you saw that, though it had many points in common with the Strand, there was a difference.
A delightful carriage and pair with coachman and groom in gorgeous red and gold had been allotted to us, and we drove away in style, though our stately progress was somewhat marred by all sorts of quaint vehicles that kept getting in our way, and impeding us all along the route. There were tongas which looked as if they had come out of the Ark drawn by bullocks, and tongas drawn by horses—skinny, bony animals, but evidently wiry from the plucky way they rattled and galloped along when they got a clear bit of road to let themselves go upon. Then there were ekkas, quaint little native carts, where you sat sideways like a jolting-car, while the shafts met in a sort of saddle over the pony's back, and the reins were mostly the ubiquitous little bits of string. In one long line at a snail's pace, and oftenest blocking up the road, crept by a never-ending string of bullock-carts, heavily laden with furniture and stores of all sorts piled high, and held on precariously by straw-plaited ropes that occasionally take the place of the little bits of string. Here and there an elephant met us, lumbering along with solemn, stately tread, but alas! too often with an ugly bundle on his back that went ill with his dignified and lordly mien. It reminded me of a smart and well-dressed woman gracefully sailing on unconscious of the little wisp of hair that had escaped behind and marred the whole effect. A camel with his big, ungainly feet that yet fell so noiselessly upon the dusty road, his head held superciliously aloft, and his huge nostrils sniffing the air disdainfully, passed slowly by, obedient to the single guiding-rein that again was nothing more than a little bit of string.
In a flash we caught a glimpse of old Delhi as we swept under a magnificent gateway, time-worn and crumbling, taking one back suddenly out of the hustling present to memories of the long-since silent past. A turn of the road, and all again was modern—a marvellous glimpse of the law and order and precision that the British Raj has imposed upon chaos and disorder. Before us stretched miles and miles of tents shining dazzling white in the morning sun, trim, neat, in orderly lines, like a regiment marshalled for review. It was a marvellous sight, this vast encampment. It made one think of one of those vivid Biblical stories of some beleaguered city on a hill, with the hosts of the enemy encamped over against them on the plains below. The first glimpse of the Ridge is never to be forgotten. All that one has ever heard or read of it seems to flash before one as it rises into view. The very ground is sacred, pulsating with a thousand memories, and the air seems throbbing with the sound of many voices long since hushed. But this is the twentieth century, and we have come to celebrate the Proclamation of a King, and though we fain would linger in the past the all-engulfing present sweeps us on.
The rows and rows of tents seemed never-ending—a vast canvas city of which even India, the land of tents, can hardly have seen the like before. Certainly not a city of tents like these. For above all, even above the vastness of it all, it was the trimness, the neatness, the exact precision, that struck one most. Not a rope was out of line, not a tent diverging by so much as an inch from its appointed place. It was just typical of the Durbar all through—an object-lesson of what the British have done. It has taken the mighty forces of this vast country, and swept them into line. Where all was confusion and disorder, chief against chief, an Empire divided against itself, crumbling to decay, the genius of the British race has slowly but surely imposed its will, welding all the discordant and conflicting elements into one united and harmonious whole—a triumph that has never been before achieved in all the countless ages of the history of Hindustan, Nothing was more striking at the Durbar than to watch the untutored, undrilled crowds gaping at this outward and visible sign of the order and precision that had swept them aside, and so wisely and firmly imposed its rule upon them.
Encampment after encampment we passed by, each in its own allotted space, smart sentries at the gates, water-carriers passing up and down the trim gravel paths between the tents with their huge skin water-bottles that again reminded one, as one so often is reminded in the East, of one's early childhood's pictures of the Bible. At last we reached our own camp, and swung in between two pillars innocent of gates, but supported by two smart native sentries, who made one feel delightfully important by saluting as one passed. I suppose one gets accustomed to being saluted and salaamed to in India, but at first it gives one a nice comfortable feeling every time it happens. One passes on feeling that, after all, one really can't be quite the despicable worm one sometimes half-suspects one is.
Our tents were just a revelation of what a tent can rise to if it tries. Mine was just fascinating. First of all it had a fireplace—which one didn't expect of a tent—with a delightful nice red fire of glowing logs that threw out a welcome at you as you entered straight away. I just fairly hugged that fireplace in joy and gratitude. Then the walls were not left bare like the walls of a common or garden tent, but hung with nice warm-coloured purdahs of Cashmir work that made the place real cosy. The boarded floor was an added luxury, and the thick red dhurri that covered it completed the right-down laughing cheerfulness of that tent. Never before or since have I seen a tent to compare with it.
Of course. Aunt Agatha would not have enjoyed it a bit for fear of its catching fire. Aunt Agatha is one of those people who never enjoy anything for fear of something happening. Now I think that is such a mistake. As I said before, I always go on gaily so long as it is light, and there are people about. It is only when it is dark, and there is a nasty creeping feeling in the air, that I get kind of chilled.
The rest of that first day in Delhi we did not do much. We just explored our own camp, and got acclimatised. But later on we went over to the visitors' camp to see if Lady Manifold and Marjory had arrived. We had left the carriage outside, and were wandering about trying to find the Information Bureau to discover which of the maze of tents belonged to them, when we met our first American in Delhi. There was no mistaking her nationality. She just breathed out the States all round. She was alone, and looked as if she were a bit at sea. When she saw us she sailed at once towards us like a ship to port.
'Say,' she began, with that nasal twang that I knew was coming, 'say, can you tell me where the eating-house is?'
Berengaria looked at her as if she had been a walrus at the Zoo, and then passed on, politely disclaiming all knowledge of the eating-house.
'We are quite strangers in this camp,' I said smilingly. 'But if you ask that young man,' I added wickedly, as I saw a shy, prim, typically British young man coming along behind, 'I have no doubt he will be able to tell you.'
'Say, can you tell me where the eating-house is?' we heard her asking the shy young man as we passed on.
My only regret was that we could not linger to hear what that young man replied. Whether he knew where the eating-house was, or whether he did not, anyway he took a long time telling her. I looked round when we got to the end of the road and they were still standing talking. My opinion of that prim young man went up straight away. There must have been something in him to keep a hungry American woman away from an eating-house even that space of time.
'An eating-house!' said Berengaria, with fine scorn. 'Anyone would think we were a lot of animals at the Zoo. What a mercy you don't talk like that, Nicola. But I suppose Americans are not all of one jat, any more than we are?'
'I guess not,' I said, not knowing in the least what a jat was, but knowing full well that we Americans are not just all of one anything.
There are just a few millions of people in the States when they are all totalled up, and I guess we are about the most diversified nation on earth. Pretty well every country on the face of the globe has helped to swell our population, so we are what you might call a mixed race. But it's a very good mixture, and when we shake down a bit a few centuries hence we shall just about head the list among the most thriving and energetic nations on earth. The old nations want new blood. We are all new blood, and we shall be all the better when we have been kept a bit longer.
Lady Manifold and Marjory had not arrived, we discovered, when at last we found the Information Bureau, which turned out to be a tiny tent containing a tiny Babu in white drill, whose information was about all you could expect from the size of him. He was not just born to run the Delhi Durbar. But he showed us the list of expected visitors in that camp. Berengaria read it with great awe. That list contained some of the smartest names in the English peerage, and looked real imposing to any commoner with ambitions that way.
That night at dinner I saw the whole of our camp collected together for the first time. Then I met Sir Henry and Lady Mullins. Sir Henry was a short little man with a parchment face and twinkling grey eyes. He was quite wonderfully alert considering he had done thirty-five years' service. Lady Mullins was tall and big, and just made to be a great official's wife. You could see straight away that she liked to move around and boss things, and that she would do it pleasantly when she could, but you mustn't get in the way. She was rather like Berengaria. There is no doubt that Berengaria would make an excellent Lieutenant-Governor's wife.
Now I can't say that that camp was just exactly lovely. 'It's dull,' Berengaria declared in her outspoken way later on, 'very dull, and it's a great consolation that it isn't costing us a penny.' You see, the young element was rather lacking. In India you don't become a very important personage until you get on in life—not important enough, I mean, to be asked up as a government guest to a state thing like the Delhi Durbar. Unless, of course, you happen to be an A.D.C., when you can do and expect and get anything. I had heard so much of the Indian A.D.C. that I was quite curious to meet him. I saw him that night—no less than four of him. Lieutenant-Governors are not attended like that generally, I believe, but this being a special occasion, everything red and gold and ornamental was doubled. I was a bit disappointed in those A.D.C.'s—not so much individually as collectively. I expected them to be much more of a type. But I am afraid that is rather like the Englishman who expects to find every American young woman a reproduction of the Gibson Girl—in which expectation, I guess, he is generally mightily disappointed. If those A.D.C.'s had not been in uniform you never would have picked them out as belonging to the same jat. By the way, I have discovered the meaning of that word jat, and I used it then quite unconsciously. That is the result of having lived with Berengaria. Like lots of Indian words it is most useful and expressive, and Berengaria having a store of such expressions, one finds one's self slipping quite naturally into the use of them. Jat means caste, and you use it in the sense of birth or rank. If you want to say anything nasty of anybody in a lady-like way you say, 'Oh, she's no jat, and the poor thing is condemned straight away.
But about those A.D.C.'s. They were very young. They were very clean as only Englishmen can be. They were very pleased with themselves. They looked rather like over-grown schoolboys in absurd Eton jackets. But there all points of similarity ended. I rather hoped that the one with the nice strong face, and who looked as if he could play polo, might take me in to dinner; but I fell to the lot of someone much more important, and consequently ever so much more dull. Why is it that the more important you get the duller you become? But I had another of the A D.C.'s on my right. He was the smallest of the lot, so, of course, the most conceited. Why is it that small men always are the most conceited? I suppose it is a kind of inverse ratio—the less there is of you the more you must prize it and make the most of it. I am glad there is quite a lot of me. But that little A.D.C. was quite amusing. Conceited people often are in a way they don't quite think.
'Awful joke, have you heard?' he said as soon as I could escape from the dulness of the Revenue Secretary, who had taken me in.
'No,' I said, feeling after five minutes of the Secretary's conversation as if I had not heard a joke for years, 'What is it?'
'Awful joke,' he repeated, chuckling—he was the kind of man who, when he thought he had a good phrase, just worried it to death—'just heard it from one of the Viceroy's staff. Ever heard of the Nawab of Chandalpur? What? No? Why, bless my soul, he's an awful bug. Thinks no end of himself. Allied state, you know, not a dependency—all that sort of rot. Tommy-rot I call it. Well, old Nawab of Chandalpur arrives outside Delhi Station one a.m. Christmas mornin'. Should have been there ten p.m. Christmas Eve. Devil of a row because he wasn't. Anyway, there he was, one a.m. Christmas Day drawin' up outside Delhi Station—the very last thing in special trains—blue and gold—all that sort of rot—waitin' until his salute began to descend in state, a twenty-one gunner he is, no end of a swell. Awful joke, the salutes didn't begin. There he sat inside, all ready dressed up in gold lace, any number of big bugs waitin' to receive him. But no salutes. For why? Because the order had gone out—no salutes on Christmas Day. Poor devils at the guns must have a rest sometimes. So, knowing that, that old Johnny of Chandalpur had timed his arrival two hours before Christmas Day began. But a block on the line and there he was—just one hour too late. Big officials yawnin' on the platform at one a.m., all dressed up in uniform, just wild. But what could do? Can't disobey orders. Orders were no salutes on Christmas Day. Yet was that old Johnny of Chandalpur going to get down without 'em? Not he. There he sat. Station-master just mad. Hundreds of other trains waitin' to come in, shriekin' themselves hoarse to know why the devil they were kept waitin'. Big political bug gets into the train, explains, puts it nicely, implores, beseeches, expostulates—that's what politicals are made for, just to coax Rajas and pat 'em on the back—but all no good. Has that old Johnny of Chandalpur travelled two thousand miles and spent fifty lacs to go hoppin' into Delhi without his twenty-one guns? Not he. Station-master at last won't stand it. Shunts Nawab of Chandalpur on to a siding, and what do you think? There he stays the whole blessed day, cursin' and swearin' somethin' awful till just one minute past twelve o'clock next night. Then he descends in state with his twenty-one guns, fifty politicals bowin' down before him and apologisin'. Old fool, we're too kind to 'em by half.'
I felt a bit breathless as he came to a pause, as if I had just done the hundred yards on a motor. He had been going the pace like clockwork that wasn't quite in order and had got jerky.
'Do you know many other stories like that?' I asked him.
He looked round at me seriously.
'Let's see, do I?' he said thoughtfully, fixing his eye-glass and looking at me as if considering whether I was worth another. He seemed to make up his mind that I was.
'By jove, yes,' he said, refreshing himself before starting off again with a drink of champagne, 'of course I do. Ever heard of the Khan of Kotchibad? What, no again? Bless my soul, thought everybody had heard of the Khan of Kotchibad. Awful old buster. Always grousin' about somethin'. Files of correspondence in the F.O. all about nothin'. Never happy without a grievance. Well, he hears about Delhi. Pretends he's in an awful funk. Sets up for bein' orthodox, and frightened to death he'll be asked to do somethin' up here that no good Mussulman should. Hears about arrangements for the Durbar. Viceroy and Duke to stand on a dais—island sort of place—and all the chiefs to walk round it as they come up to make their salaams. Old Kotchibad frightfully excited. Wires up to F.O. post haste: "Strictly forbidden by Koran to circumambulate anything save father's tomb and tomb of the Prophet—can't possibly circumambulate Viceroy." Awful joke. I say, won't you have any simpkin?'
I gasped. That little A.D.C. was so unexpected.
'Simpkin?' I said. 'What's that?'
He looked round at me as if I were very young or else trying to pull his leg, I don't think he could quite make up his mind which.
'What, not know what simpkin is? Well, I'm blest. Don't know why you should know, though, if you've not been in India. Don't call it simpkin at home, do you? Haven't been home for so long, blest if I don't almost forget. Call it fizz there, though, I believe. Simpkin's what the natives call it. Can't say champagne, you know, can't get it round their tongues—the sound, I mean, not the drink, you know, they can do that fast enough—so they call it simpkin. Just the same stuff, though. Have some, won't you?'
I had some simpkin while that little A.D.C. took what I guess he would call a 'breather.'
'Know the Begum of Ghosain?' he went on again. 'What, not know her? Thought everybody knew the Begum of Ghosain—the lady who's really purdah, but can't stop gadding about, so goes about with a table-cloth on her head—thought everybody knew the Begum of Ghosain. Well, she was comin' up to Delhi—catch the Begum missin' a show like this. Train due yesterday. But didn't arrive. Everybody here wirin' all over the place—couldn't be found. And what do you think had happened? Why, the Begum——What, you ladies off? Oh, tell you another time. Awful joke!'
Alas! Lady Mullins had caught the eye of the wife of the member of the Board of Revenue. So regretfully I left my little A.D.C. with the story of the Begum still untold. And what happened to the Begum, or what the Begum did, remains hidden from me until this day. For that poor little A.D.C. got fever in the night and never appeared again. I always wonder if it was the fever coming on that made him talk to me the way he did at dinner.