An American Girl in India/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
BERENGARIA
Bandalpur Junction is a wonderful sight when its many platforms are crowded with a native throng as they were when I first saw them. The women with their bright red and blue saris, and jingling ornaments, carrying their bundles on their heads, and moving with typical eastern grace; the children undismayed by the noise and bustle—a dot of three or four struggling along with a mite a few months old astride across her hips, while their like in age in the West are still with the nurse and the perambulator; and the men more soberly clad in white—which is often brown with dirt—but picturesque, with trim and curled black beards or clean-cut, clean-shaven faces and deep brown eyes—all made up a continually changing scene like some kaleidoscope of ever-moving colours. It was all rather odoriferous, though one soon got used to that. But don't wear a skirt with a train on an Indian railway-platform. The native has a habit of arriving hours before his train is timed to start, and camping out upon the platform with all his household goods and chattels. And when a native camps out it isn't very clean just round about there for some time afterwards.
We reached Slumpanugger without any further adventures, though Ermyntrude of course found much to disapprove of. What she complained about most bitterly was the way they rushed her through her meals. Now the gods have seen fit to endow Ermyntrude with a sound and healthy appetite and unsound teeth. It's a bad combination at the best of times, but when you're pressed for time it's doubly to be regretted. If you don't happen to be blessed with a dining-car on board the train—which you only seem to be on the main lines on the express trains in India—you have to get out and gobble what you can in the briefest space of time in a wayside station refreshment-room. But as every train in India is invariably late, and they don't seem to feed the guard and driver at the same places they feed you at, you generally get whisked away long before you've worked through the menu. So Ermyntrude, who eats slowly and was always served last, fared almost as badly as the fox at the stork's dinner-party. The crowning injury was that she never reached the curry stage once throughout the journey.
'And I'd taken such a fancy to the curry, miss,' she said pathetically, as we were whisked away from the last refreshment-room by an excited guard just as the curry appeared.
'Well, never mind,' I replied consolingly, 'you'll get plenty of it during the next few months.'
But Ermyntrude was always a difficult person to console. She always would see the darkest side of life.
'Ah, but it isn't only that, miss,' she said regretfully. 'It's against the grain to think of all those meals you've had to pay in full for and that I haven't half ate.'
As the train drew near to Slumpanugger I began to wonder what Berengaria and her household would be like, and how I should get on with them. I think I'm the kind of person that can get on well with anybody really, but of course sometimes it's an effort, and I get real bored. The number of Anglo-Indians I had come across previously had not been large, and I felt I was about to enter into pastures new. Berengaria's husband I had never seen, and Berengaria herself, though I had known her fairly well ages ago, I had only seen once since her marriage years before.
She was waiting for me on the platform as the train drew up into Slumpanugger station. Fortunately it was obvious that it must be Berengaria, for I confess right away that I couldn't have picked her out in a crowd. She seemed to have grown bigger in every way, and her first words told me she was anxious about it.
'Why, you haven't changed a bit, dear,' she said, kissing me effusively. 'Have I?'
I looked her in the face, and lied boldly. It is no good falling out with your hostess on the station platform as soon as you arrive.
'No, dear, not a bit,' I said, returning her kisses as effusively in order to hide the amusement in my eyes. 'It's marvellous to me how you have stood the climate.'
Berengaria simpered and looked frightfully pleased, and I knew I had made a good impression straight away. But inwardly I trembled to think to what further depths my veracity might still have to descend.
A chaprassi—a gorgeous blaze of red and gold—took charge of Ermyntrude and our belongings, and Berengaria and I mounted the smart tum-tum she had brought to fetch me, and drove away. The last I saw of Ermyntrude she was eyeing doubtfully the tonga, drawn by two huge bullocks, in which she and the luggage were to make the journey to the house.
'It's a five-mile drive,' said Berengaria as we started off, 'but this pony does it in just over half an hour.'
Now I'm not at all a nervous sort of person in dog-carts generally, but during that five-mile drive I kept getting sort of flashes of my past life like a drowning man. Berengaria's driving just beat hollow anything I've ever seen in that line before or since. She dangled the reins quite loose, talked volubly all the time, and paid no attention to the pony whatsoever. It was purely due to the good nature and consideration of that pony that we reached our destination without mishap. That road seemed just about designed to give you a spill if it possibly could. It ran for the most part along a high embankment, quite narrow, with a good deep drop on either side, and for the fact that we didn't go down it no thanks are due to Berengaria. Now although I own up to getting a bit of a fright sometimes, I always make a point of not showing it. It's so 'Arry and 'Arriet like to squeak. So I clung on to the handrail of that tum-tum, and got my feet free to jump if necessary, and interspersed Berengaria's conversation with 'Yes' and 'No,' 'Did you?' and 'Really' whenever it seemed necessary. But when the pony finally got its tail over the left rein, and the road narrowed with a good twenty-foot drop on my side, and Berengaria went on talking volubly and took no notice whatever, I felt it wouldn't be just right to go silent without a protest to a real right-down smash-up at the bottom of that embankment.
'Berengaria,' I said in as quiet and even a voice as I could, 'don't you think it would be as well to take the reins from under the pony's tail?'
'Oh, that's all right, this pony knows me,' said Berengaria, pausing for a moment in her flow of gossip and then starting off again full tilt. 'And as I was just telling you, the long feud between Mrs. Binks and Mrs. Hicks reached its climax on the chaboutra at the club last night. They had both been playing badminton, and I notice that that's always bad for people's tempers. Mrs. Hicks came out on to the chaboutra flushed and angry, Mrs. Binks followed flushed but triumphant. I saw that there was electricity in the air, but I never thought it would be as bad as it turned out to be. I was just going to say something to try and smooth things over when that stupid little Miss Proudfoot went and said the very worst thing she possibly could have said. "Well, who won?" she asked. It's always such a mistake to ask who won a game when you know one side must have lost, and that nobody likes losing. But Miss Proudfoot never has tact. Well, the consequences were fatal, and there was a row. Mrs. Hicks finally accused Mrs. Binks of cheating, and Mrs. Binks called Mrs. Hicks a——'
'Dear Berengaria,' I interrupted breathlessly, as the pony swerved and almost landed us over the edge of the bank, 'I really do think the pony would be more comfortable if you took the reins from underneath his tail.'
Berengaria leaned forward and viciously drew the reins free. The pony gave a playful kick, and began to canter.
'You never need be nervous with me driving,' said Berengaria, obviously annoyed at being interrupted in the midst of the interesting story of Mrs. Hicks and Mrs. Binks. 'I don't pretend to be able to do many things, but I can drive.'
I gasped, and clung on tighter. Why is it that we always imagine we do best the very thing that we do worst? Nothing about Berengaria surely could be worse than her driving, yet that was the very thing I found out afterwards that she particularly prided herself upon. I guess it's a way we poor deluded mortals have. We all of us have our little weaknesses, and imagine we can do something quite well that we can't do a bit. The things we have and the things we really can do we don't half value, but some pet hobby that Nature never adapted us for we run for all we're worth. Who hasn't come across the otherwise sane and really gifted individual who has deluded himself into the belief that he can sing? or the really clever man who in lighter vein talks drivel, and fondly imagines that it's wit? If only we could see ourselves as others see us! Yet the world would lose half its humour if we hadn't our neighbours' little idiosyncrasies to provide our mirth. So things are doubtless best as they are.
All this time Berengaria was babbling on pleasantly about the ways and doings of station life. She had taken the reins from under the pony's tail, but they really might almost as well have been left there for all the use she made of them. We were approaching a village, and the road narrowed. How we avoided running over innumerable little brown children who ran from their play in the middle of the road shrieking with laughter only just in time, Providence only knows. Through a cloud of dust past a string of heavily-laden bullock-carts we dashed at reckless speed, just shaving the wheels and the bullocks' horns. Old men and older women seemed deaf to the noise of our approach, and only escaped from under the pony's nose at the latest possible minute. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I kept from shouting at them. Berengaria sat sublimely indifferent. They might have been flies for all the notice that she took of them. One old hag with a scream of fright dropped the bundle from her head and only escaped the wheel by a miracle, while the tum-tum bumped over the bundle. Fowls and goats innumerable flew in all directions, and all by good luck escaped alive, though if they didn't have glimpses of their past lives flash up before them then they never will. It was the kind of drive one sees in children's picture-books, and I saw again from another point of view John Gilpin's mad career.
It was a charming stretch of country through which we passed when I could take my eyes from the fascination of Berengaria's driving to glance around. All up hill and down dale with here and there a level patch, the fields cut out and banked up one above the other tier on tier like seats in some vast amphitheatre, it was a panorama of ever-changing beauty. The reapers were at work amongst the paddy, women as well as men bent double reaping with short sickles, standing often ankle deep in the water and mud of their fields that still remained a grateful legacy of the recent rains. It was just about as unlike an English harvesting as it could be. There was no sign of a hedge anywhere. Only little mounds of earth, grass-grown, a brilliant hue of green, divided the fields, which were so tiny that one could have crossed many of them in a dozen steps. On the higher fields, from which the water had quickly drained, the paddy had been already cut and gathered in. It was only in the hollows where the moisture remained long after the rains had passed, and where the crop grew to its finest and its best, that the harvesting was still in progress.
We arrived safely at the house at last, the pony swinging in at the gate in one last spurt of playful recklessness. It was a long low bungalow, with a splendid veranda running its full length, filled with a magnificent collection of palms and ferns, and an assortment of long wicker chairs and a couple of hammocks that promised everything possible in the way of ease and comfort. Two more gorgeous chaprassis in red and gold added the necessary touch of colour as they hurried out to meet us, salaaming respectfully. In front there was a charming garden ablaze with English flowers, the lawns green and smooth and well-kept, reminding one of home more than anything I had yet seen in Slumpanugger.
Berengaria's husband came out to welcome us. Now, although he is my cousin by marriage, I can't say that he is the kind of man one takes to straight away. My first thought as he helped me out of the tum-tum was, 'Why on earth did Berengaria marry him?' My second thought, as we shook hand, was, 'Having married him, why on earth doesn't she brush him up a bit, and make the best of him?' He had that sort of look as if he had slept all night in his clothes, and the hopeless kind of hair that always will persist in sticking up in the wrong places and never looks well brushed. He was short and dark and sallow, and he wore glasses, and a tennis shirt that had lost all sense of shame and was openly frayed at the edges. In fact, you couldn't have called him a wholesome-looking being, whichever way you looked at him. And as I think I've said before, I've a great weakness for clean wholesome looking people.
I suppose Berengaria's husband had been young once, but I guess he was one of those old young men who never were young. He had done nearly thirty years' service in India, and his chief boast was that he had only been home three times all through. He was something like twenty years older than Berengaria, and again I fell to wondering, as I so often do when I meet a married couple for the first time, why on earth they went and did it.
'John,' said Berengaria, as she went round to feed the pony with a piece of sugar cane that one of the gorgeous red and gold chaprassis had produced, 'this is Nicola's first glimpse of the Mofussil, so we must make Slumpanugger look its best.'
'I'm afraid you'll find it very quiet here,' John said in a meek little voice, turning to me, 'but as the Mofussil will be quite new to you perhaps you may find it interesting.'
Now, I hadn't the remotest idea what the Mofussil meant, but, of course, I smiled and said I was sure to find it perfectly fascinating. I'm always a bit in doubt as to what to do when I don't know what people are talking about, whether it's best to say right out that you don't know what they mean or just to nod and smile and look as intelligent as you can. You see, there are so many objections to either course. Most people aren't just exactly good at explaining things, and they get sort of annoyed if you keep on pulling them up and asking them what they mean. They take it as a kind of reflection on their intelligibility. It's quite surprising, too, how ignorant most people really are, and what lots of words they use they don't a bit know the meaning of, or, at least, can't explain to anybody else. So if you don't want to annoy your friends don't be of too inquiring a turn of mind. But, on the other hand, how can you take an intelligent interest in life and learn things if you don't occasionally become a note of interrogation? I suppose the happy mean in this, as in so many other things, is just to lie low, observe all you can, and then ask a question on the quiet to give you the final clue when there's nobody round about. Now I don't think my best friend could call me curious. I'm just an ordinary intelligent being who likes to know things. So when I arrived in India, being a perfect stranger to the country, I thought I couldn't go far wrong in asking a few questions when I ran up suddenly against something I didn't know anything about. But as I think I mentioned in the case of the Bombay boy, I soon found out that Anglo-Indians have got into the comfortable habit of just accepting things as they are without bothering themselves to ask the why and wherefore, and they expect you to do the same, and they get real annoyed if you won't lie quiet, and begin to nose around.
Yet when I got into the Mofussil, which I soon discovered meant much what we should call the country as opposed to the town, I found everybody sprinkling the conversation with such an array of Hindustani words that I simply had to ask what they meant if I didn't want to be out of things altogether.
'We'll drive down to the club, if you like afterwards,' said Berengaria, as we sat down to tea in the veranda, 'but you won't find it very interesting, I'm afraid, as they are a very "chichi" lot in Slumpanugger just now.'
'"Chichi",' I exclaimed almost involuntarily, 'what's that?'
Berengaria paused with her tea-cup halfway to her lips, and a look of amused surprise upon her face.
'Oh, you'll soon find out,' she laughed indulgently. 'It means that they are very much of this country, and that they have all the vices of both and none of the virtues of either.'
'Oh,' I said, rather wondering what like these strange beings so sweepingly condemned might be. 'But what a strange thing to call them. Do you know what the origin of the word "chichi" is?'
Berengaria's indulgent smile froze. I saw at once that I had made a mistake. Berengaria did not know what the origin of the word 'chichi' was, and Berengaria was one of those people who never like to have to confess that there is anything they don't know.
'"Chichi",' said Berengaria, recovering at once her usual confidence, 'is a Hindustani word meaning whitey-brown, half black, half white. Let me give you some more tea.'
Berengaria is one of those fortunate beings whose confidence in themselves is supreme, whom nothing ever takes aback. It's a great gift. Now I found out by degrees that there were lots of things that Berengaria knew nothing at all about, yet she never let you guess it at the time. She always had something to say, and whatever she said impressed you. I always did think that cleverness was only the art of hiding ignorance, but I never fully realised it until I met Berengaria. For quite a long time I really believed that 'chichi' did mean whitey-brown. I called all sorts of whitey-brown things 'chichi' in my own mind until one day I made myself a laughing-stock and found out my mistake.
I passed up my cup for more tea.
'Kitmatgar,' called Berengaria, and a boy appeared and disappeared again with the cream jug to get more milk. Now I did want to know why a boy should be called a kitmatgar, but I refrained from asking. I felt sure that Berengaria wouldn't like it. I turned to address Mr. Hugesson-Willoughby.
'My dear Nicola,' said Berengaria, with a charming smile as she handed me my tea, 'you mustn't call him Mr. Hugesson-Willoughby. You must call him John.'
John and I smiled at one another. He blushed and murmured, 'Yes, do.'
'And you, John,' I said laughingly, 'you, of course, must call me Nicola.'
After that we seemed to get on much better somehow. He quite brightened up, and seemed more cheerful. Of course, that may have been owing to the Christian names or it may not. I couldn't tell straight away. It might be that John was one of those men who shine most in the bosoms of their own families, or again it might be that really at heart, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, he was a gay Lothario not unaccustomed to the use of ladies' Christian names. Then I looked at Berengaria, and the second alternative faded out of sight. It must have been the unaccustomed sound of a lady's Christian name upon his lips that woke him up.
'I've made a "bundobast" for a picnic to-morrow,' Berengaria was saying. 'I thought it would be an excellent way for you to get to know all the people.'
I hadn't the remotest idea what a 'bundobast' was, but I smiled sweetly, and duly murmured words of much gratification.
'Of course, I shall take you calling to-morrow morning, but we shall probably find everyone "darwaza bandh",' she added, pouring herself out more tea. 'In Slumpanugger nobody is ever visible when you call. You either get "darwaza bandh" or "Ghussal Karte".'
I was getting a bit dazed, and couldn't quite follow. I think John guessed.
'"Ghussal Karte," you, know means having a bath,' he said. He looked as if he were saying something dreadfully wicked as he said it.
'But at what hour of the day do people have baths in Slumpanugger?' I asked, feeling that it was just as well to know.
'Just whenever you happen to call,' replied Berengaria, looking as if she had said something rather clever.
'But when do you happen to call?' I persisted, feeling horribly dense, but determined to get at least some definite information somewhere.
'Between twelve and two,' said Berengaria, as she sipped her tea. She was looking at me with an amused smile over the edge of her cup. I felt there was something further I ought to understand. But I didn't.
'What an extraordinary time to have a bath,' I murmured.
John rose to put down my cup.
'But they are not really having baths,' he explained diffidently.
'Then why on earth do they say they are?' I cried, refusing more tea and feeling real puzzled.
'Well, you see, you can't exactly expect to see anyone in a bath,' Berengaria said. John quite blushed.
'Naturally,' I laughed. 'But if they are not really in their baths?'
'It comes to much the same thing if they say they are. You can't persist in seeing them.'
Berengaria was evidently a logician of sorts.
'But don't people want to see you when you call in Slumpanugger?' I asked surprised, having heard so much of Indian hospitality. To say that you are in a bath in order to avoid seeing people struck me as being so very inhospitable.
Then Berengaria explained.
'It isn't exactly that they don't want to see you,' she said. 'They are probably very curious to do that.' She paused and chose a finger rusk carefully. Berengaria knew the value of an effective pause in imparting information. 'It's that they are not always quite prepared.'
'Oh,' I said, a light suddenly dawning in upon me. I had visions of curl papers and dressing-gowns.
'India is a slack sort of place in that way,' Berengaria went on, 'and it's easy to get slouchy and potter about the house and garden in something that you wouldn't dare be seen in outside.'
'I see,' I said. 'Hence the fiction of the bath to avoid being seen if the visitor is not persistent, or to give one time to change if she is.'
'It's a terrible Indian habit,' discoursed Berengaria, as she drank her third cup of tea. 'You will be surprised. Some really quite nice people who ought to know better seem scarcely ever to be visible in their own homes. I don't believe they trouble to put on anything but a dressing-gown until it's time to go out.'
'How dreadful,' I said. I soon found that Berengaria preferred to do all the talking, just giving you time for an interjection now and then.
'It's so rough on their husbands, I always think,' she went on gaily. 'No husband likes to see his wife going about in a dressing-gown. It's a poor sort of compliment to pay him to appear before him like that all day, and then deck one's self out in one's best for other people at the club at night. Besides, it's a thing that grows on one out here. Once get to the dressing-gown stage and you're lost. You get soft and lazy, and you end by letting everything go. The house goes, the affection of your husband and your children goes, and, worst of all, your figure goes. I know my figure is going,' added Berengaria quickly, 'but it isn't because I've got to the dressing-gown stage.'
I longed to ask her why, then, it was, but again I thought I'd better not.
Then I suddenly remembered. It was a beautiful pink silk dressing-gown, lined of course with flannel, that Aunt Agatha had sent by me for Berengaria. How unfortunate that we should have got on to the subject of dressing-gowns in an abusive sort of style straight away. Still, it was such a very fascinating dressing-gown that lay reposing in one of my trunks that I felt it capable of turning any woman's heart of stone.
'Now I confess a great weakness for dressing-gowns,' I put out as a sort of feeler, 'provided, of course, they are worn at the right time and in the right place.'
But Berengaria was firm.
'I don't think there is any right time or right place for such a thing,' she said.
I felt that things were getting bad. How was I to fulfil Aunt Agatha's trust, and duly present the dressing-gown after that?
'Oh, but surely,' I said desperately, 'you, too, must have a weakness for a real nice chic one to slip on for a nice cosy talk or read before the fire in your own room just before you go to bed.'
'No,' said Berengaria, 'we don't have fires in our bedrooms here—there aren't any fireplaces—and I never read in my room at night. Besides, John never will——'
But I never heard what John never would. It was John who created the diversion.
'Ah, there is your luggage,' he said, jumping up. 'I'll go and see to it.'
There, coming up the drive, was the tonga. It moved at a snail's pace, the bullocks swaying from side to side with slow, easy-going steps, their mild, plaintive faces seeming to protest against the heavy yoke and the burden that lay behind. Beside the driver, yet as far from him as possible, with the air of an early Christian martyr, sat Ermyntrude almost buried beneath the luggage that seemed tied on with string in every conceivable place all round. Oh, those little bits of string! Surely nowhere in the world do they play the important parts they do in India. They're quite ubiquitous. Every native seems to carry them in his pocket, and no emergency so great but the little bit of string can meet it. Say you're driving miles from anywhere and the harness breaks. Are you stranded? Oh, dear no, that sort of thing often happens. Promptly the syce produces from somewhere concealed about his body the little bit of string, and all is well again. The harness may break once again or even twice upon the homeward way, but that little bit of string gets you home at last. It's the same if you break a shaft or a wheel or a lamp. You never need worry, for the syce is sure to have a little bit of string. I've known people out in India drive regularly to the club every night with a tum-tum and harness that were only kept from a speedy dissolution by those useful little bits of string. Once I had to fall back on a little bit of string for my own personal use. But that's another story.
'What lots of luggage,' said Berengaria, as we watched the tonga slowly approach. 'And what lots of delightful smart clothes I expect you've got inside.'
Berengaria looked my travelling costume up and down appreciatively as if things seen augured well for the things as yet unseen.
'I've given you two big almirahs in your room, so that you'll be able to hang all your dresses up,' she said. 'I expect you'll want to unpack them at once;' and being a woman I knew by that that Berengaria was just dying to see what they were like.
Suddenly my thoughts went back to that dreadful pink dressing-gown. If Berengaria was going to see the unpacking, as I knew she would, it would have to come to light.
'Talking of dressing-gowns,' I said enthusiastically, 'I've the very sweetest thing you've ever seen.'
'Oh,' said Berengaria, not much interested, 'I never wear them now.'
'In pink,' I said, ignoring her remark, 'a glorious, delicious rose-pink.'
'Rose-pink,' said Berengaria, growing interested in spite of herself. 'It's my favourite colour.'
That was good. I grew more enthusiastic.
'Rose-pink,' I repeated thoughtfully and mendaciously. 'Yes, of course it's just your colour.'
Berengaria looked pleased because, of course, rose-pink is not her colour. Why is it that we all of us long to be told the things that we would like to be true about ourselves, but which we secretly know full well are not?
'All in silk,' I went on, 'with the most delicious ruching all round, and dear little bits of cream lace insertion round the bottom, and lined with the softest and most delicate pink flannel you ever saw.'
If anybody's mouth ever did such a horrid thing as 'water' Berengaria's did then.
'Perhaps I did wrong to abuse dressing-gowns to you as I did,' she said regretfully, watching the tonga disappear round the side of the bungalow, 'but I always make a point of abusing the things I haven't got. It makes one feel so much more comfortable and contented with what one has.'
Berengaria paused. But I knew that confidences were coming, and that my time, though near, was not yet.
'What with the children and expenses one way and another,' she went on, 'I determined last month to try and economise. I looked all round, but I couldn't really find anywhere to begin.
Sugar in one's tea and all that sort of thing is so very feeble, and, besides, I never take sugar, so I found it hard to think of anything. Well, at last I thought of dressing-gowns and sponges. They are things that are never seen unless you go away to spend the night—which I never do—and it happened at the time that mine were both perfect rags—my sponge and dressing-gown, I mean. My wretched ayah had let the dogs get hold of the sponge, and it was difficult to know afterwards which was the sponge and which were the pieces, and as for the dressing-gown, well, I was only waiting to go down to Calcutta to get a new one. So I took the opportunity to economise. One can get on quite well with a hand-glove and a bath-towel.'
But Berengaria sighed even as she said it, evidently for the lost delights of a sponge and a dressing-gown. I felt quite a glow of satisfaction at having worked her up to a pitch to appreciate Aunt Agatha's present to the full.
'How very fortunate,' I said, 'that real sweet rose-pink dressing-gown I've been describing is yours.'
'Mine?' cried Berengaria, delight and incredulity in her voice.
'Aunt Agatha thought you would like it,' I said, smiling. 'She is so great on dressing-gowns herself that she thinks no present could possibly be more welcome.'
'Welcome,' cried Berengaria ecstatically, 'I'm just pining for it. Do you know,' she added confidentially, 'I don't think I've ever wanted anything so much in my life as I've wanted a sponge and a dressing-gown.'
I privately determined to give Berengaria a sponge for a Christmas present. It would be such a nice cheap present, and there's nothing like the satisfaction of giving people just what they want at the lowest possible cost to one's self.
'Come,' I said, 'let's go and unpack that dressing-gown.'
'You dear,' cried Berengaria. She kissed me effusively, and I felt that I had created a real good impression straight away, and after all there's nothing in life quite equal to a good beginning.