sniffed. "Whatever is it?" asked G. Mrs. Townley pointed riverwards to where a thin column of blue-grey smoke rose and hung like a cloud in the hot, still air.
"It's a burning ghat," she said. "They are burning a body."
And that is India!
When one is feeling fairly peaceful and secure, something ghastly, like the smell of burning Hindoo, recalls to one the uncertainty of all things. We rose to go home, feeling depressed, the smell pursuing us.
I have two pieces of news for this letter.
First, Boggley can take a few days' holiday at Christmas, so he means to take me to Darjeeling to see if we can catch a glimpse of the snows. We shall only be there from Saturday afternoon till Monday at noon, and Boggley says that Kangchenjunga is often cloud-covered for weeks, so it is a mere chance whether we shall see it. But surely, surely Kangchenjunga won't be coy with me. I came to India, of course, in the first place to see Boggley, but in the second place to see the snows, and I can't believe that the gods will be so unkind as to deny a humble worshipper of great mountains a sight of the vision glorious.
The other piece of news is quite important.
Boggley has got a new billet. What it is I shan't try to explain, for I don't understand the game of General Post which is played so frequently among Government officials, but it means that he will have to go on a tour of inspection all over everywhere, and, what is more, I shall go too. Isn't it fine?
Boggley actually hesitated about accepting, because he thought I should so hate to leave Calcutta and its gaieties to wander in the jungle. It isn't that I don't enjoy Calcutta; I do, and I am most grateful to the people who have given me such a good time; but I pine to see something of the real India. Calcutta might be a suburb of London. I want to see the native of India, not the fat babu; I want to live in tents and be a gipsy; I want to have Boggley all to myself. We have hardly time at present to pass the time of day with each other.
Boggley tries to frighten me with tales of dâk-bungalows and jungly cooking, but I won't be frightened; I am looking forward to it all too much.
We don't go till the beginning of January, so I shall be able to attend the Drawing-Room and a few other tamashas before we depart.
This will have to do for a letter this week. I must clean some gloves now. That is the only useful thing I do, clean G.'s gloves and my own. We dirty so many pairs of long white gloves, and it is cheaper to clean them at home. You do it with petrol and a small piece of flannel, and the result isn't bad, though somewhat streaky. G's part is to sit on my bed and watch me do it, assisted by Bella on the floor. It reminds me of the inhabitants of the Scilly Islands, who, it is said, earn a precarious livelihood by taking in each other's washings!
Calcutta, Dec. 26.
When Kipling wrote his Christmas in India I think he must have been in a dâk-bungalow down with fever, otherwise he would hardly have painted such a very gloomy picture. I, at least, didn't find it a mocking Christmas—but then India isn't my grim stepmother, as Victor Ormonde pointed out to me the other night, I can afford to be home-sick, can afford to let myself think of the "black dividing sea and alien plain," because here I have no continuing city. It is the real exiles, "shackled in a lifelong tether," who may not think, but must go doggedly through their day's darg.
I found it an agreeable day, from the morning when I got my presents and various offerings of flowers, to the evening, when we dined with some very kind people, and had an amusing time playing childish games.
I have often seen pictures headed "Christmas in the Tropics," and looked with sentimental eyes at the people grouped among palm-trees on a verandah, while the girl at the piano sang what was evidently a song about "the dear homeland," to judge from the far-away look in the eyes of all present. It seems a pity to disillusion you, but it isn't at all like that. To begin with, it was quite chilly, and we were very glad of the big fire burning in the grate, and we did not look pensive or far-away, but ate our dinner with great content. I think, perhaps, Christmas fare is even more uninteresting in India than at home; turkey tastes more like white flannel, and plum-pudding is stodgier, and there are no white and scarlet berries or robins; but otherwise it is really a nicer day than in England.
Of course I thought a lot about the home people. I imagined Peter waking and groping for his stocking. Oh, have you forgotten what it felt like to waken up and remember it was Christmas morning? I sometimes wish I could still hang up my stocking. There is nothing in Grown-up Land that equals the thrill the delicious bulginess of the stocking, gripped in the darkness, gave one.
I think they would miss me a little at home. I know Mother would often say, "I wonder what Olivia is doing now!"
And what kind of Christmas had you? A very festive one, I hope.
Very many thanks for the book you sent me. You couldn't possibly have given me anything I like better. Somehow, I have never possessed a copy of A Child's Garden of Verses, and this one, so exquisitely, specially bound, will be a great treasure. I like, too, your reason for choosing it. It is nice of you to like my childish reminiscences, but it is rash to say you wish you had known us then. Looking at us now, so quiet, so well-behaved, such ornaments to society, you would be surprised what villains we once were—at least on week-days! We had what R. L. S. calls a "covenanting childhood." Looking back, it seems to me that our childhood was a queer mixture of Calvinism and fairy tales. Calvinism, even now, I associate with ham and eggs—I suppose because Sabbath morning was the only time we ever tasted that delicacy. Between bustling Saturday night, when we wistfully watched our toys being locked away, and cheery Monday morning, when things began again, there was a great gulf fixed, and that was the Sabbath Day. What strenuous Sabbath Days we had! First there was worship and the Catechism. (The only time I ever wished to be English was when I thought I might have dallied with "What is your name?" instead of wrestling with such deep things as "What is man's chief end?") After worship was over we were allowed to walk in the garden till it was time for the morning service. That was the Forenoon Diet of Worship, then came the Afternoon Diet of Worship. Having sat like rocks through them both, we proceeded to the Sabbath School, and then went home to tea, and cake, and jam, and an evening filled with bound volumes of The Christian Treasury, where we wrestled with tales of religious bigotry and persecution until we seemed to breathe the very atmosphere of dark and mouldy cells; and became daringly familiar with the thumb-screw and the rack, the Inquisition and other devildoms of Spain. I used to wonder pitifully why it had never occurred to the poor victims to say their prayers in bed, and thus save themselves such fiery trials.
I wonder why I pretend we found our Sundays a trial. Looking back, I love every minute of them. Father could make any day delightful; and what a through-the-week Father he was! Sometimes he came to tea with us in the nursery and made believe there was a fairy called Annabel Lee in the teapot, carrying on conversations with her that sent eerie thrills down our several spines. Afterwards he would read out of a little green and gold book that contained for us all the romance of the ages between its elegant covers. From Father we heard of Angus the Subtle, Morag of the Misty Way, and the King of Errin, who rides and rides and whose road is to the End of Days. Sometimes, laying books aside, he told us old tales that he had heard from his mother, who in turn had heard them from hers—of the Red Etain of Ireland who lived in Belligand, and who stole the King's daughter, the King of fair Scotland; and the pathetic tale of the bannock that went to see the world, with its cynical end: "Ah, well! We'll all be in the tod's hole in less than a hunner years."
It was Father who gave us first a love for books, and taught us the magic of lovely words. And it was Father who tried to place our stumbling little childish feet in the Narrow Way, and to turn our eyes ever towards a better country—"that is an heavenly!" I suppose it was the dimly-understood talk of the better
