“Dona praesentis cape laetus
horae, ac
Lingue severa.-Horace.
Leonie’s first long-distance
journey was just like other people’s first long-distance
journey in India.
And being of the type which revels
in the new and unknown, she loved it.
Who wouldn’t!
The seething masses of dusky humanity
enchanted her; she delighted in the glaring colouring,
the clank of the holy man’s chains, the incessant
call of the water carrier and sweetmeat vendor, and
the clang of iron on iron which announces the train’s
departure.
She absolutely thrilled on disrobing
the first night in the little bathroom while her ayah
spread her sheets and pillows and blankets upon the
lower berth; and when her bodywoman disappeared through
the door leading to the servants’ compartment,
she lay for a time watching the stars, and the glimmer
of passing mosque, or temple, or tomb.
Then she laughed aloud in sheer content,
wedged Jan Cuxson’s box of chocolate biscuits
safely into the side of the bunk, and turned to the
side table to look for light literature in the shape
of a magazine.
Having acquired the pernicious habit
of eating biscuits and reading before going to sleep,
she frowned upon the discovery that her ayah appeared
to have left the books upon Howrah Station; and had
stretched her arm to rap upon the wall to summon the
woman, when her eye caught sight of a paper volume
lying under the opposite bunk.
India is certainly a most dusty land,
but a traveller can keep his railway compartment and
boots spotless by distributing a few pice to
the dusky, cheery youngsters, who, salaaming, solicit
the favour of using boot polish, or floor brush, to
the mutual benefit of self and the sahib. Leonie,
therefore, felt no repugnance when, clutching the
table with her left hand, she made a long arm and secured
the book, which proved to be a guide to India’s
most famous beauty spots.
She turned the leaves casually and laughed.
“Why! I’d completely
forgotten it,” she said aloud, turning the book
sideways to look at an illustration. “The
wonderful tomb Guy Dean insisted upon my visiting
if I ever went to Benares. How beautiful!
Must be the tomb of some ancestor of that young prince
he was talking about. Oh! how beautiful, and-oh!
how helpful! I suppose some Englishman must
have left the book in the train by mistake.”
She had picked up a bit of paper which
had fallen from the book; a rough time-table with
directions in English as to the best means of getting
to the world-famed monument.
“That decides it,” she
said sleepily as she switched off the light, pulled
a miniature mosquito net, deftly arranged by the ayah,
over her head, and the sheet up to her neck.
“We get to the station to-morrow-sometime-disembark-put
luggage into cloak-room-find elephant and-and
dak bungalow-and-oh! almost full
moon-how-how delicious –ride
out and see the-the-
She slept, oblivious of the fact that
she was carrying out implicitly the programme mapped
out for her.
Travelling in India is real sport
when the train doors are likely to swing open at no
given spot, soft-footed natives to enter surreptitiously
and disappear as quietly upon sight of your open eyes;
and guards to clamour for your ticket, while a mob
collects outside your door at the junction to look
at the pretty unveiled mem-sahib awakened from her
slumber by a dignified bearer with his offering of
chotar hazri, which means the thrice blessed
early tea-tray.
Her restless spirit was soothed by
the rush of the train through the endless plain; strange
scenes, strange sights wrenched her mind from the
terrible question everlastingly throbbing in her brain;
and her eye was not quick enough to distinguish one
delicate oval face from another, or to notice that
at each stopping place her ayah meandered down the
length of the train to a compartment where, in consequence
of his high caste and rank, a man sat utterly alone-unconcerned
and totally oblivious of the screaming, chattering
crowd upon the platform, of beggars, pilgrims, and
bona fide native travellers.
True, for one moment at the station
where she alighted for the world-famed tomb, she glanced
back hurriedly at a native who placed himself between
her and an unsightly epileptic; and she looked back
once again as her intuition rapped out a message she
did not grasp, and her ayah suddenly besought her
help with the coolies.
A dilapidated tonga, drawn by a pony
of the same description, took her and her servant
to the dak bungalow, built on a concrete platform in
a jungle clearing about two miles outside the village.
There she gave carte blanche
for the arrangement of the evening trip to the guide
who materialised serenely, all smiles and extreme deference.
Bathed, and fed, she had her hair brushed for half
an hour by her ayah; refused the offer of massage,
which process she abhorred, and turned in and slept
the afternoon away upon her own bedding spread on a
charpoy.
Later she bathed again, attired herself
in a simple low-cut, white silk dress, dined, and
wrapping herself in a heavy white Bedouin cloak, wedding
present from Jill Wetherbourne, who had got it from
her godmother in Egypt, seated herself on the verandah
to await the arrival of whatever means of locomotion
the guide had chosen to take her to the tomb.
And down the jungle path loomed the
shape of a great elephant, moving at a gentle shuffle
but an almost incredible speed.
Without audible instructions it stopped
in front of the verandah, threw back its trunk, twined
it gently about the middle of the mahout or
driver, lifted him from his seat behind its ears and
placed him on the ground; then on a word, trumpeted
shrilly in greeting to Leonie.
“Oh!” said she as she
almost sprang from her chair in delight. “Oh!”
The mahout salaamed, standing
in the moonlight at the animal’s head.
He made a vivid eastern picture, dressed
as he was from head to foot in white, with two pleated
side-pieces to the turban, hanging in suchwise as
to conceal half the face; and the guide, who had been
squatting on the edge of the path, also salaamed,
smiling in glee at the mem-sahib’s delight.
“Behold, mem-sahib,” he
said, “is the elephant even Rama, the pearl of
the prince’s stables.” His English
was not quite as intelligible as these printed words,
but Leonie made shift to understand.
“I have never seen such a beautiful
elephant,” she said, walking up to the great
beast, followed by the guide, the ayah and the bungalow
factotum.
The mem’s statement was quite
within the range of possibility seeing that her elephant
lore had been gathered from the Zoo and other low-caste
specimens with their straight backs, mean tails, and
long stringy legs.
“Does the-the mahout
speak English, because my Hindustani is not very good.
I would like to have the-the beauty of
the animal explained to me, and why it has its face
and body painted; and why does he, the mahout,
I mean, wear those side pieces to the turban, they
are very unusual.”
A moment’s pause, during which
the mahout stood like a rock, and then the guide, shuffling his feet,
answered to the effect that the driver could not speak English, but that her
humble servant would translate if the mem-sahib would deign to listen to his
mean speech; that the man was the princes best beloved-mahout,
he added after a second’s pause, and that the
side pieces were part of the uniform worn by the prince’s
head-mahouts.
Not a bit of which information was
true, maïs que voulez vous?
So they all walked round Rama the
beautiful, the guide translating the soft Hindustani
into lamentable English.
Rama, it seemed, was a koomeriah,
a royal or high-caste elephant, and still a youth,
being but forty years of age, vide his ears.
His height was ten feet at the shoulder, and would
the mem-sahib note the perfect slope of the back down
to the beautiful, long, feathery tail. Also the
massive chest and head, with the prominent lump between
the eyes so bright and kind, and full of knowledge.
Notice also the deep barrel, and short, so very short,
hind legs, the heaviness of the trunk, the plump cheeks
which would indeed grace a comely elephant maiden;
count the eighteen nails upon the lovely feet, and
place her hand upon the soft skin which fell in folds
about the tail.
Leonie did as she was bid and ran
her hand also down the nearest magnificent tusk, with
tip cut off and ringed about the middle with bands
of gold inlaid with precious stones.
“Perfect ivory,” continued
the guide, “five feet in length with tip, curving
upwards with the curve of the sickle moon, and sloping
slightly from each other as though in anger.”
Leonie smiled at the guide’s
verbal imagery, and put her hand upon a cream coloured
mark near the base of the broad trunk.
“Why, I thought it was paint!”
she said, speaking over her shoulder to the mahout,
who, unperceived, held a fold of her white cloak in
his hand. “This is paint, surely,”
she added, running a finger-tip down the vermilion
and white lines which covered the great beast’s
face and sides.
It seemed that the yellowy-white blotches
raised the animal’s value above that of sacksful
of rubies, and the painting of the face and sides
served two purposes; one to render it easier for the
animal to find favour in the eyes of the gods, the
other to bring about the same result in the eyes of
man; even as does woman when she accentuates the night
blackness of her eyes with antimony; and the slenderness
of her finger-tips with henna.
In state procession it seemed that
Rama the perfect carried a gold and jewel encrusted
howdah upon his beautiful sloping back; that what was
left uncovered of his anatomy was hung with a net of
silver, with tassels of pearls; that strings of seed
pearls were entwined in the glorious meshes of hair
in the beautiful tail; and that his nails were manicured,
bracelets of golden bells hung about the ankles, and
buckets of perfume poured into his bath.
“The mahout has placed
the humble cushioned seat this night upon the back,
mem-sahib, so that nothing shall be between the mem-sahib
and the light of the moon.”
Leonie gave orders that a succulent
cake full of currants and flavour should be brought
forthwith from her hamper, and having pushed it as
far back into the mouth as possible, where it was demolished
to the accompaniment of the most disgusting masticatory
noises, laughed aloud when the elephant stood on its
short hind legs to show its appreciation, and said
thank you by means of a soft purring sound in the
throat.
The process of getting to the knees
reminded Leonie somewhat of a sailing vessel she had
seen rolling in a rough sea, but she settled herself
comfortably in the cushioned seat and waited with glee
for the mahout to get into position upon the
animal’s neck and order it to rise.
“What is he waiting for?”
she asked, as he made no movement.
“He wishes to know where the
ayah is to sit,” answered the guide.
“Ayah!” said Leonie,
and laughed gently. “But I am going alone!”
The mahout said something swiftly.
“The way is many miles through
the jungle, mem-sahib; there is no dak bungalow, no
people, the mem-Sahibs and also the sahibs go always
accompanied.”
“I am going alone,” said
Leonie quietly. “Tell the mahout
to get up.”
Upon a word of command the elephant
got to its feet, and raised one knee; the mahout
placed one foot upon it and swung himself up to his
seat upon the short neck, said something to the elephant,
who moved off up the jungle path, while the servants
salaamed deeply to Leonie, and again even more deeply
in the direction of the elephant’s head.