# An American Girl in India/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV
SOME ODDITIES AND OTHERS ON BOARD
Why do the passengers who get on board at Marseilles always look down on the passengers who have come round by sea, and those who have come round by sea offer such a frigid reception to those who get on board at Marseilles? I've much more sympathy with the latter, though I was one of the former myself. That boat must have been just about as comfortable and airy and roomy as you could want before we got on. After that it was just about as crowded and tiresome as it could be. The deck was blocked right up with chairs, and unless you got up early and secured a good place you had to sit all day where there wasn't a ghost of a breeze, and you couldn't go on deck early in the morning, because it was crowded with men in pyjamas and towels, and only much-married women dared face them. That was why I made friends with Major Street. He was so useful in getting my chair into good position before I came on deck, and, of course, I couldn't help it if he always did put his chair next to mine.
​Major Street was quite a nice man. He had been in South Africa, played polo in the winning regimental team at Hurlingham or Ranelagh, and also won the Kadir Cup. I don't know what that last is. I must remember to ask someone whom I don't mind knowing how ignorant I am. The Kadir Cup must be something very wonderful, as no less than three men have told me in awed whispers of Major Street's winning it. I do love to hear nice fresh boys talking in awed and admiring whispers of some great deed done by some man whom they look upon as a minor deity in consequence. There were four young subs just straight from Sandhurst on board. We became great friends. Their freshness was wonderful, like their moustaches. One of them had won a sword at Sandhurst, and of course he was the most modest of them all.
They didn't talk much to the other ladies on board, and so people naturally said spiteful things about them, and I don't think I was just exactly popular among the women-folk on board that ship. If I had only been five years younger, and had not had quite such varied experiences, I should have fallen in love with that Sword Boy from Sandhurst right away. He was so gloriously young and loyal and enthusiastic and keen on life. It kind of freshened you up to talk to him. Of course, he hadn't what people call an idea in his head, and he admitted that he didn't know how he passed his exams. Yet if he doesn't get on in the army, and rise to the top of the tree, then all ​I can say is that the British Army isn't run on sound lines. He's just the kind of material you want in war-time—plenty of muscle, plenty of pluck, and a good level head. I would sooner have trusted my safety to him than to any other man on board, and we had two doddery old Generals, hardly able to support the weight of their medals, and half a dozen Colonels, smart and otherwise, with quite a multiplicity of Majors and Captains. Out of them all I would have chosen that Sword Boy from Sandhurst if I had had to go to the Front. He was just the kind of man to inspire you right away with confidence, and unless I'm no good at judging character, he'll go far. Now if the regulations go and pass him over for some bookworm who has mugged up 'How to Scout' or 'Hints on Signalling,' and who hasn't got the backbone to inspire confidence in his men, there's something rotten somewhere in the British Army. I hope they will make my step-father Secretary of State for Army affairs, and then my mother, who has got a good level head, will have something to say to the way that things are run.
I really do think there must be something wrong in the army system, else why are there so many men like Major Duddleton, Captain Focher, and Colonel Trayner, who were prominent figures on deck every day. I suppose they really were nice fresh young subalterns once. Now, I wouldn't trust them to read the Riot Act, whatever that may be. As for the Generals who are supposed to lead them, heaven help the Tommies in the rear! ​One was a perfect old woman, and I'm sure coddled himself no end. He was worse than Aunt Agatha. The other was a bit better, but he was a nasty old man, and I'm glad he came to a sad end. I don't quite mean what you think I mean by that, but you will see later on. It was he who was one of the special admirers of the lady whom we all called 'Fluffy.'
There was only one thing that annoyed me about that Sword-Boy, and I'm not sure that secretly I didn't like him all the better for it sometimes, and that was his admiration for this same lady. Now Mrs. Simpkin-Briston, known irreverently as 'Fluffy,' next to the American authoress, was my pet aversion on board that boat. As luck would have it, she formed the fourth in our cabin, so that I was bound to know much more of her than I ever wanted to know. She was far and away the most dressy woman on board—needless to say, most unsuitably dressy. Her get up was worthy of the Gaiety, and the worst of it was that it had seen its best days. Now nothing is so hopeless and tawdry as finery soiled. It wears such a horribly dissipated sort of look, and it's no use your trying to look nice and sweet and good in it. And then her hair was so dreadfully fluffy. Of course, all the ladies fought shy of her, but some of the men seemed to find her interesting to talk to. But her greatest friend was the less doddery of the two doddery old generals. He seemed to have succumbed to her fascinations somewhere en route to Marseilles, and they sat at the same table on board, much to the disgust of the friends who were with him, and had ​arranged this table beforehand. It seems that there had been one seat vacant, and the General had gaily brought along Fluffy. The other ladies were frightfully indignant when they saw the soiled finery, and it was from them that the questions first began to pass around the ship, 'Who is Mrs. Simpkin-Briston?' and 'Where, and who is, or who was Mr. Simpkin-Briston?' Neither of these questions found an answer, and the lady herself, it seems, had not thrown any light upon the matter, though the ladies who had had to talk to her had done their best. Now, she had taken up my Sword Boy from Sandhurst very warmly from the start, and he was her devoted champion. I questioned him as we neared Port Said.
'Do you know who Mrs. Simpkin-Briston is?' I asked.
'Who she is?' he repeated. It only just seemed to have struck him that this was rather a natural question to ask. Then he frowned. 'She's a very charming woman,' was all he said.
I felt crushed, positively crushed, by this boy from Sandhurst, with his loyalty and trust. I was half annoyed, half proud of him.
'And who is Mr. Simpkin-Briston?' I was rash enough to pursue the subject, half to see what he would say.
'She hasn't told me,' was all he said, 'and, of course, I haven't asked.' But the look he turned towards me made me forbear to ask him anything further about the Simpkin-Bristons, and I am not one to be easily put off.
​I just fairly longed to hug that boy. How I should love to hear him defending me like that. If only some nasty, jealous woman would begin asking him insinuating questions about me. For I know that he would have done the same for me, or for anyone else whom he called a friend.
'Boy,' I said—I always called him Boy when we were alone, I think because every time I said the word he turned and gave me such a beautiful smile. 'Boy, always stick to your friends like that, but—but don't make the mistake of thinking them altogether perfect.'
'One must always do that of a real friend,' he said. He was looking out to sea with his elbow resting on his knee and his chin on his hand, in his favourite attitude—the attitude that I shall always remember him in. Poor Boy! he little realised all that life held in store for him. He had learned so much, and yet perhaps they were the hardest lessons of life that still remained unlearned. Why is it that it is oftenest the noblest of men who are just like clay in the hands of a woman?'
I often used to think of what Carlyle wrote when I looked at Boy and wished that it could be done. I should just love to send my Sword-Boy from Sandhurst straight out to govern a dependency. I told him once of what Carlyle had written. He hadn't heard of it, of course, dear Boy. I doubt if he could have told me with any great accuracy anything at all about the great sage and his writings. But what did that matter? Carlyle himself would have been the first to admit that that was no bar ​to his making a capable ruler. Boy was awfully taken with the words, though he was much too modest to think that he would have been the one chosen.
'By Jove,' was all he said, 'if only one had the chance.'
It was just after leaving Port Said that Boy came to me with that serious look on his bright young face that always made me half inclined to smile. It seemed to suit it at once so well and yet so ill.
'What is it, Boy?' I asked as he sat down beside me, and I guessed that he found it hard to begin what he had to say. He turned and smiled at me in his own delightful way.
'Oh, it's only a favour I wanted to ask you,' he said, and then he stopped. It seemed that it was evidently a difficult favour to ask, and yet I should have thought that he had got to know me well enough in the last week to guess that I would have done much at his request.
'What is it?' I asked again, and then he blurted it all out in his own boyish way.
'It's Mrs. Simpkin-Briston,' he said, dropping unconsciously into his favourite attitude, not looking at me but gazing out to sea as if he found it easier to speak that way. 'None of the ladies will have anything to say to her on board, and I'm sure she feels it. I want you to go and talk to her sometimes, will you?'
He turned round and looked me full in the face then. Poor Boy! he little knew to what a test he was putting a woman's friendship. A woman will ​do much, but to make advances to another woman she has once condemned and cut is a hard task that few women are equal to. But I hid what I thought from Boy, though I couldn't meet those honest eyes of his, and I too looked out to sea—to be able to do which is so great a compensation for so many of the trials that life on board ship brings.
'You will do it, won't you?' he said eagerly. 'She's an awfully good sort really, but these people here misunderstand her and don't appreciate her. You see, half of them are officials, who of course keep to themselves and look down on the non-officials, while the other half are Delhi-Durbarites out from home, who don't have much to say to anyone outside their own circle either.'
'And did she know no one when she came on board?' I asked.
'Not a soul, she told me so herself.' Poor Boy! the thought of doubting her word never so much as entered his head.
The end of it was, of course, that I promised, and was straightway perfectly miserable for the next two days. Boy tactfully didn't mention the subject again, but I knew he was wondering when I was going to fulfil my promise. Time after time I wandered round the deck in a restless sort of way, trying to make up my mind to go and speak to her. But always something happened to prevent it. That evil old General was sitting with her mostly, or else her chair was packed in so closely among a crowd of other chairs that it was impossible to get near her. I had hoped to begin by being more ​pleasant to her in the cabin, but even there I hadn't the chance. She always came to bed at the latest possible moment, long after we were in our berths, and she used to get up frantically early in the morning, doubtless in order that we might see as little as possible of her in her unfinished state and of the process of making herself presentable. I know this, as once she overslept herself with fatal results. Lady Manifold, Marjory, and I all confessed afterwards that we should never have recognised her as Fluffy until she had nearly finished.
For three days, with my pride and my aversion buried deep in my pocket, I just pursued Mrs. Simpkin-Briston. On the third day I ran her to earth. I found her sitting alone, and a vacant chair within reach. Regardless of whose it might be I drew it towards her, and plunged into conversation as naturally as I could. Mrs. Simpkin-Briston exhibited a polite surprise and was courteously unresponsive. I even began to feel that she was snubbing me. I had to make desperate efforts to keep the conversation up, or it would have flagged hopelessly. I was growing furiously angry under what I trust was a smiling exterior, and I had to think hard of Boy's earnest face to prevent myself getting up indignantly and flouncing—yes, flouncing—away. It was infuriating. People passing and repassing up and down the deck looked at me as I sat talking to Fluffy with undisguised surprise. I even saw people whispering to one another in that ill-bred manner board ship life seems to generate. Why is it that some usually quite ​well-behaved and harmless people suddenly become right-down rude and offensive on board ship? Both men and women are the same. Things they would never dream of doing elsewhere, they do with the greatest nonchalance on a P. and O. steamer. I haven't found Englishwomen rude as a rule except at drawing-rooms and auction sales, but when they get on board ship they seem to fling off their veneer of civilisation and return to something very like barbarism. Rudeness somehow seems in the air itself. I talked all this over with Major Street, and he had some amusing explanations to account for the metamorphosis. His idea was that it was partly the result of evil temper generated by board-ship cooking, partly the result of being caged up with a lot of people you have never seen before and never wish to see again, and partly from a general revulsion of feeling against one's fellow men by seeing too much of them and all their little foibles that board-ship life shows up. But, whatever may be the cause, there it is, and there is no denying it—people lose whatever they had in the way of manners as soon as they get on board. No less than seven people I determined never to speak to again as I sat with Mrs. Simpkin-Briston. They either looked at me with rude, unblushing surprise or spoke to one another with a laugh and a glance in our direction that was unmistakable. Mrs. Simpkin-Briston took no notice. Poor thing! I expect she was used to attracting adverse attention. I was not and I resented it.
There had fallen a pause in our conversation ​while I was trying to swallow my anger Suddenly Mrs. Simpkin-Briston leaned forward, and looked up into my face with a horrible satirical smile.
'What is it you want?' she said contemptuously.
I gazed at her in amazement. Her face grew hard, like the face of a woman fighting for her life, and I shuddered as I lay back in my chair without replying to her impossible question. What was there to say to such a woman as this? Her next words would have brought me to my feet in a fury had I not felt that half a dozen curious eyes were fixed upon us. The knowledge of that fact alone controlled me.
'I suppose you are in love with the Boy,' she said, and laughed softly. It was an evil, mocking little laugh, that made me want to throttle her.
What I should have said I don't know if I had not just then caught sight of Boy at the other end of the deck. He was coming towards us, though he had not seen us yet
'It's no use,' the woman laughed in the same mocking voice. She, too, had seen Boy coming, and so hurried over the next words, perhaps saying more than she had meant to say. 'Do your worst He will marry me at Bombay, if—if somebody else doesn't.'
I was just about staggered at her audacity for the moment, and before I had time to speak Boy joined us. His grateful smile at me as he sat down made me want to laugh and cry at once. Yet for his sake I sat on there for a few minutes longer, and even laughed and spoke to the woman again for his ​sake. Boy was in great spirits, and I knew they were partly due to what I had done. Poor Boy! I sat on as long as I could—quite long enough to see the fascination this woman held for him, and then I slipped away. It was foolish of me, but I went straight down to my cabin and had a good cry. I remember, even as I cried, trying to think when I had cried last. I think it was over a broken doll, and that must have been years and years ago. Crying is such a mistake. It can't possibly do any good, and it's especially foolish on board ship, as you have to stay shut up in your nasty cabin for at least two hours until you look human again. I'm no believer in tears, and though I must cry once more before finishing this book, I do hope no one will put me down as a tearful person. I should hate to be thought that.
As I lay waiting for the traces of the tears to dry away, I made up my mind what to do. As soon as the glass assured me that I didn't look red and nipped about the nose any longer, I went on deck. On the rare occasions when I do cry I do the thing wholesale, and my nose always looks like an overripe cherry for at least two hours after. I can't imagine how that friend of Charles II.—a Duchess of some kind or other I believe she was, too—used to look more beautiful when she cried than when she laughed. I don't think she could ever have cried real hard as I had just done. Anyway, I was still feeling a bit heavy, and was so glad I had put on my big pink chiffon hat, which always takes attention off my face, as I had to go twice round the deck ​before I could find Major Street. I felt I wanted a man's help. Men really are useful sometimes when you want somebody knocked down or given a real good talking to. I remember thinking how useful Lord Hendley would have been. He always looks quite capable of knocking anybody down, and that does give a woman such a safe, confiding, comfortable sort of feeling. As it was, however, I had to confide in Major Street, so I told him all about the Boy, whom I knew he had taken a great fancy to, and all about Fluffy and the wicked General. He listened quite quietly; that's what I always like about a man. He'll hear you out to the end however roundabout you are, and he won't keep interrupting you with idiotic questions as a woman would.
'Now,' I said to him when I had finished, 'you've just got to save that Boy without too rude a shock to his feelings.'
Major Street didn't seem to think that the feelings of the 'young fool' mattered. But I felt hopeful, because when an older man calls a younger one a 'young fool' in that tone of voice it means he's going to do his best for him.
Two days later the Major came and flung himself down in a chair beside me. 'The young fool!' he muttered between his teeth—'the confounded young fool!'
I waited. When a man speaks in that low, determined sort of voice a woman thinks herself lucky if he doesn't swear outright. So I waited till the danger was past.
​'It's no use,' he said presently. 'There's nothing for it but to let him go his own way and buy his own experience. And, by Jove! he'll buy it dear.'
'He must not be allowed to do that,' I said decidedly. 'I told you—I look to you to save him.'
'My dear Miss Fairfax,' he said mildly, 'believe me, I did my best in the most tactful way I could. But you know what young Tenison is—loyal to the core to anyone he counts a friend.'
I did know, but I wasn't going to admit that I saw it as a reason to excuse his failure.
'Surely,' I said rather stiffly, 'surely you put the case before him in such a light that he couldn't fail to see it.'
'Nothing on earth could move him, I believe,' he returned disgustedly. 'What do you think the young idiot said to me? " "Have you ever been in love?" he asked quietly, when I had put things pretty plainly to him. Well, being a married man with three children, what could I answer him? "And would you listen to anything that anybody told you against the woman you loved?" he went on. Being a married man, again, what could I answer? "And unless you respected the man very much who told you these things," he said finally, with that frank, honest look of his, "wouldn't you feel justified in knocking him down?" Well, after that, what could I do but clear out?'
'You ought not to have allowed him to ask you such questions,' I said severely; 'it was fatally weak.'
'Yes,' said Major Street quite humbly. How I do ​hate a man when he's humble! Let him be modest if you like, but not humble. 'Yes, I admit I've failed. But there is this, Miss Fairfax: I did my best, and I don't believe anybody on earth would have succeeded better.'
I knew he was right, but I wished he was wrong, so I'm afraid I was rather hard on Major Street. One generally is hard on people who tell one unpleasant things that one knows to be true and wishes were not.
So the days passed in blessful happiness for Boy, and we grew gradually near Bombay. I have been so occupied in setting down all this about Boy that I find I haven't said anything at all about most of the other passengers. Some of them really were worth writing about—as freaks. You could scarcely have picked up a more motley and incongruous crew if you had searched all through the English-speaking world. At the head of society on the Arethusa of course were the four Dukes and Duchesses. Duke number one was big and portly and jovial. He talked to everybody. He might have been running for Parliament, and we his constituents. He even went over into the second-class, and report says that he even kissed a baby, though I believe that was only board-ship gossip. Duke number two was the very reverse—cold, self-contained, impenetrable, with rather dreamy eyes and hair like a poet's—if poets really do wear long hair—and a manner calculated to freeze at fifty yards. He used to sit mostly alone, and you would have thought that nobody cared to speak to him if you hadn't ​known that he was a Duke. Duke number three was the little man who looked straight ahead, and whom the churning of the sea had caused to desert his Duchess on the Dover-Calais boat. He was a perfectly harmless little man, quite affable, but he hadn't much of a mind above foreign postage-stamps, which he always brought into the conversation somewhat in the manner of Mr. Dick and poor King Charles's head. Duke and Duchess number four might really just as well have not been Duke and Duchess at all for all the use they made of it. They always sat about in quiet corners, and looked poor and ill-fed, and whenever they were pointed out to people, people always cried 'What!' in a tone of shocked surprise. It must be dreadfully trying to be 'your Graces' when you look so much more like Mr. and Mrs. Brown of Notting Hill. It must be very nice to be able to give your names as the Duke and Duchess, and to hear them rolled out on the tongue of the footman with the beautiful calves as he throws back the folding-doors and announces you, and to hear the pause of expectation in the conversation, but what about getting inside when you know that nobody would ever have believed it if the footman hadn't said so?
The Duchess who belonged to Duke number one was about the most perfectly fascinating woman I have ever seen. She was tall and divinely fair, and sweet and gracious, and you fell in love with her at first sight. You only had to see her, and you couldn't possibly be a Radical or a Socialist for quite a long time after. The daughter of one Duke and ​the granddaughter of two, she was just born to be a Duchess straight away. Duchess number two was quite the reverse of Duke number two. She was very much Vere de Vere to look at, very handsome, very imposing, but untidy withal, and though I don't like to say it of a Duchess, she didn't always look quite clean. I remember once asking another girl what must be the first thing necessary in the man she would marry, and she had said, 'Oh, that he should be clean.' I had laughed at the time, but when I saw that Duchess I understood. The man I marry too must be clean. Fortunately, a nice fresh cleanliness is the well-bred Englishman's chief characteristic. Duchess number three was my Duchess—that is to say, the Duchess I met on the floor in the ladies' cabin on the Dover-Calais boat. We became great friends. She was a dear, and we shall meet again when we get to Delhi. She isn't one of those people who, when they've got one foot on the ladder, use the other foot to keep everybody else from getting a foot on that ladder too. Instead, she holds out a hand, and says cheerfully: 'Here, come along, I've got one foot on this ladder, and if you buck up I'll try and make room for you too.' Now that's the sort of person I like. But they are rare.
There were lots of other people, oddities and absurdities, on board. There was the travelling M.P., of course, with philanthropic ideas and doubts as to the advisability of the Durbar. There was Lady Truefit and her daughter going out as guests of the Viceroy—they were very select in ​consequence, and only spoke to Dukes and Duchesses. The mother was called 'the Dead Codfish,' because she looked like one, and the daughter was christened 'the Duck'—not because people liked her, but because she had a duck-like beak. I never can understand why English people use the word 'duck' as a term of endearment. I shouldn't think it any compliment to be called a duck myself. A duck waddles, and looks a fool, and quacks—no, please don't call me a duck. Then there was Lady Maria Sandington going out as some big official's guest. She was very clever, but, like so many clever people, she was rather a fool. I mean, for instance, that she allowed my pompous friend of the Durbar train to make up to her, and seemed quite to like it. I believe she was pleased at his open admiration of her title and position, which shows she must have been a fool. Horrid, pompous little man! I found out who he was one day. It was while I was talking to one of a band of four young civilians just going out to take up their posts for the first time. We were sitting together when the pompous man passed by.
'You know who that is, don't you?' said the 'griffin.' I'm told the word 'griffin' has died out, but it ought to be revived. It means what you call a 'fresher' at Oxford—anyone young and green and fertile that you can play tricks upon. 'You know who that is, don't you?' It was not a question at all as he put it, but merely a statement of fact. His voice was almost a whisper in its awe and reverence. I at once felt flippant.
​'Who—that?' I asked contemptuously, glancing at the broad retreating back of my enemy. 'No; who is he?'
'Oh,' he said, shocked and grieved, 'I thought everybody knew who he was. He's a member of the Board of Revenue of——' I quite forget which province he said.
'Indeed,' I said, simulating deep interest, 'and what, pray, is a Board of Revenue?'
To my intense joy I floored that young civilian straight away. He could only tell me that a Board of Revenue was a Board of Revenue, and that a member of it was a great, a very great man.
'Shall you ever become a member of a Board of Revenue?' I asked.
He blushed to the roots of his hair.
'Oh, it will be a long time yet,' he said; and I almost added, 'I should hope it would.' Instead I merely remarked: 'I'm sorry for his wife.'
He was inexpressibly shocked.
'She's devoted to him,' he said reprovingly.
'Yes,' I said, 'I should think she must be devoted to him after living with him for twenty years. If she wasn't, she must have committed suicide long ago.'
That young civilian looked at me sadly, and didn't talk to me much again. I think he thought I was a hopeless Radical and a scoffer at sacred things. So he spent his time in making up to the member of the Board of Revenue, doubtless in anticipation of making him a worthy successor in the days to come.
The other three civilians possessed a much more ​normal bump of veneration, but they were all rather raw. Why is it that men who are quite leaders and bloods in their way at Oxford are so much at sea when they come out to start life in the world at large? A boy from Sandhurst three or four years younger is fifty times more au fait with life. I think it is partly that the Universities are too motherly. They call themselves 'Alma Mater,' I'm told, and undoubtedly they coddle up their sons too much. I know there are an awful lot of restrictions so long as you are in statu pupillari. I got that phrase from Bob, who is just going up to Cambridge, so I don't vouch for its correctness, but anyway, it looks very well. I believe the poor boys have to pay twopence to get into college after nine o'clock at night and a shilling after eleven, while no one has ever dared to stay out after twelve o'clock, the penalties are said to be so awful. Now that would paralyse me all day if I thought I had to be in by nine o'clock at night or else pay twopence. I'm not mean, but I should resent that twopence. It would right down annoy me. As for getting leave to run up to town or anything like that, you have to resort to subterfuge, which is very bad for the character, and kill off every grandmother and aunt you've got, and then invent more—of the latter, of course, I mean—to the number of which a merciful Providence has set no limit.
Still, all this doesn't quite explain why a subaltern of twenty has a bigger outlook on life than a Varsity man of twenty-four. Of course, as a rule, the latter has much more in the way of brains, everyone will ​admit that. But I'm not just willing to admit that too much brain is an unmixed blessing, especially when it only runs to books. If it's a question of books against action, give me the latter. The ideal is to find the two together, and that's rare. Certainly not one of those subs. on board had it, and not even one of the four civilians, though of course they may develop the action part later. For the present one of them had a weak chest, and looked as if he ought to be going to the Canary Islands for his health instead of going to swelter on the Indian plains and fight a battle to the death with plague, pestilence, and famine. Another was a student pure and simple. He should have been a Don in his Alma Mater, and never come out into the storm and stress of life. The third was the man who admired the member of the Board of Revenue. If only we had adopted conscription as a nation, there might have been some hope for him. I used to long to tell him to hold himself up, and not hang together like a scarecrow on a prop. As I said before, a woman does like a man who looks capable of knocking another man down for her should the need arise. The need probably never will arise; still, it's a comfortable feeling just to have about you. Now civilian number four was a man, but he wasn't a gentleman. It was a pity, because I've a great weakness for the latter, and so, I guess, has India. No part of the British dominions needs gentlemen to rule it so much as India. I mean gentlemen in the good old-fashioned sense. I realised that most later on when I saw the pride ​and glory of all India pass before the Viceroy. None but the pick of Englishmen should be sent to rule these princes of high descent and great traditions, beside which our own traditions and descent pale into insignificance. These men are quick to recognise the differences of class among Englishmen, and one cannot but sympathise with them if they resent it when one whom they consider an inferior is sent to rule over them. Send out not bookworms, not soulless pedants, but men and gentlemen to govern India.
I've run off the lines, a bit right here. That last page ought to have figured in one of my step-father's political speeches. He might have rolled it out with great effect somewhere among the platitudes that his secretary had written out beforehand. But this is a manifest digression, and I'm still on board the Arethusa.
I had almost forgotten shy Mr. Colson. He was not going to the Durbar like everybody else, but to shoot lions in Somaliland. He looked quite the least capable person on board of shooting a lion, but of course that was a detail. Things are not always what they seem, or people either, and I believe he already had a lioness to his credit. However, he was rather nice and very modest. He was interesting, because he didn't tell you all about himself in the first five minutes. You felt there was a lot more to be discovered about him after the first time you met him, and a woman, being by nature curious, is attracted by that in a man. And he could keep a secret too, which is a ​rare virtue in anyone. For I had a most embarrassing adventure in the Red Sea.
Now I thought at the outset how delightful it would be if one could write a book for women only. One could say so much more what one really meant, and confide all one's little weaknesses and sentimentalities that one couldn't possibly expose before the rude and unsympathetic gaze of man. But I am afraid that book for women only is an impossible dream. You see, if it were written, you never could trust men not to read it. Even if it were forbidden to sell it to any but women, curious man would manage to get it somehow. The servant-maid in every suburban villa would be stealthily bribed to steal out surreptitiously and buy it at the bookstall round the corner. In fact, the circulation of that book for women only would be huge among the men. I'm not quite so sure the women would be very keen about it.
Now I am telling this adventure that happened to me in the Red Sea as a warning to travellers of my own sex when voyaging in tropical seas. Mere men may skip the next few pages, as they can't possibly be of any interest to them. It was the second night in the Red Sea, and the heat was appalling. About half a dozen ladies had slept on deck the night before, and as a lot of us determined to follow suit on the second night, one side of the deck was reserved for us. It would certainly be much better than sweltering in one's cabin. If there was a breeze to be got one would get it, and I grew quite enthusiastic thinking how wonderfully fascinating it would be ​lying out in the open gazing at the stars and the sea. Now, on which side of the deck we ladies slept, even after all that happened, I can't remember. In fact, I never can remember which is the port and which the starboard side. And it was this that led to my undoing.
'Yours is the second bed from the cabin-door on the starboard side, miss,' my nice polite young steward said, as I met him on my way up the companion stairs. 'The second from the cabin-door on the starboard side,' I repeated to myself as I hesitated at the top of the stairs. Outside all the lights were out, and no one was about. I couldn't in the least remember which was the starboard side. I cannot understand why sailors will make life more complicated by the use of outlandish nautical terms. Why on earth can't they talk simply and straight-forwardly about the right and left of the boat? Most people do remember their right hand from their left, though Aunt Agatha always gets muddled if you ask her suddenly.
I knew it was no use trying to remember which was the starboard side, so I cautiously peeped out of the nearest door. It was very dark, but by peering round I was just able to make out the second bed. To my joy it was empty. Of course, I hadn't any further doubt. That must be mine. So I quietly slipped round the first sleeping form and got into it. I had just made myself comfortable, and was preparing to enjoy the stars and the sea for a while before I went to sleep, when, to my horror, from close above me came a deep gruff voice.
​'My bed, I think.'
I turned, and there was a figure, evidently a man's, clad in a bath-towel dressing-gown, standing beside me. Imagine my horror!
'My bed, I think,' he repeated.
'Oh no,' I said timidly but confidently. 'I'm sure it's mine. The second from the cabin door.'
'Well, it's my rug, anyway,' was the laconic reply.
I looked down, and there, neatly folded beside the bed, was a rug that certainly wasn't mine. I suddenly realised what had happened: this must be the port side. With a muffled apology and my head ducked down I scrambled out and fled. Fortunately, I congratulated myself, it was much too dark to be recognised, and no one, I thought, had even seen me except the owner of bed number two on the port side. I hadn't identified him by his voice, which didn't seem at all familiar, and I could only trust that he hadn't recognised me. I thought he was probably one of the crowd of uninteresting men on board whom I had never spoken to. I consoled myself with these thoughts as I got into my own bed number two on the starboard side.
Of course, next morning the story was all over the ship. Anything is welcome to relieve the monotony of life on board, and this, with a few exaggerations that soon got tacked on, made quite a good story. But no one knew who the lady was who had trespassed on the port side. Speculation was rife. I sat and trembled, but expressed the greatest interest and curiosity, like everybody else. ​But when two days had passed, and nobody knew, I smiled again, and felt quite safe.
It was on the third day that I was sitting talking to the man who was going to hunt lions in Somaliland. I had succeeded in getting him to talk in quite an interesting way about his travels, but I thought that he seemed more shy even than usual. At last the dressing gong went, and I rose to go to my cabin. He rose too, and confronted me in an agitated, desperate sort of way. He thrust his hand in his coat-pocket, and then seemed to hesitate about pulling it out again. It was obvious that he had something to say, so I looked at him and waited. With a violent blush he pulled his hand out of his pocket.
'I think this is yours,' he stammered, holding out a crumpled ball that was—yes, that was my pocket-handkerchief with my name blazing in the corner of it. Suddenly it flashed upon me: I always put my handkerchief under the pillow at night. I must have put this wretched handkerchief under the pillow of bed number two on the port side, and forgotten it in my flight.
'Oh, thank you,' I said, as I took it, thanking him especially with a look of gratitude for not having given me away. 'Oh, thank you so much.'
Then I hurried away, vowing that nothing on earth would ever induce me to have any of my clothes marked with my full name again. I would never commit myself to more than one initial in future. That could always be disowned if need arose. I felt real grateful to that lion-hunter man. ​I admired him immensely for not having given me away. Only a man could have kept a secret like that when everybody was wanting to know it. A woman would have told it to everyone she met all in the strictest confidence, you know—not out of malice a bit, but simply out of sheer impossibility to keep a secret. The momentary importance gained by imparting eagerly desired news is so very pleasant. Don't think I'm too hard on my own sex. I don't say anything against them in general that I wouldn't say against myself in particular. I admit I find it hard to keep a secret, and just hoard up news that nobody else knows and everybody wants to know. And don't think I'm praising up the opposite sex. It isn't strength of mind that enables a man to keep a secret. It's simply the fact that the desire to tell isn't a part of his nature. Anyway, I advise everybody not on any account to have their clothes marked with their names in full.
We drew near Bombay at last. I was heartily sick of the journey. I was just about getting to feel that I had a right-down horrible nature. A great loathing for my fellow-creatures, of which I had never suspected myself capable, had sprung up within me. To have seen the 'Pompous Man' prance up and down the deck before you a hundred times a day for a whole fortnight; to have shared a cabin with Mrs. Simpkin-Briston—not to speak of Lady Manifold and Marjory, who in all conscience were trying enough; to have had to put oneself to horrible inconveniences to escape the authoress and other atrocious bores; to have seen Boy falling ​day by day more and more into the clutches of Fluffy; and to have quarrelled, most unreasonably, I admit, with Major Street because he couldn't stop it—all these things combined were enough to make the most cheerful person pessimistic, and to bring one to the conclusion that it was better that the human race should speedily die out. That was exactly what I felt those last few days in the Indian Ocean. Everybody's little peculiarities and idiosyncrasies that one had smiled upon indulgently at the start grew quite unpardonably blatant and absurd when one had seen them daily many days. And, of course, the most amazing people were always the most prominent. That's the way of life. The 'Pompous Man' paraded the deck much more than anybody else. You saw the untidy Duchess much more often than the other three, while the authoress seemed to be everywhere at once. She had a nasty habit of parading the deck at all hours of the day, doubtless taking exercise and making copy out of us at the same time in the two-things-at-a-time sort of way that would appeal to her bustling nature. If people who paraded the deck unseasonably only knew how the other people they passed and repassed loathed them; if the men only knew what absurd figures they had, and how badly their coats fitted them, and how baggy their trousers were at the knees; and if the women only knew how badly they walked, and how atrociously they put their clothes on, I'm sure they would be content to sit down much more and parade less. I don't want to condemn ​everybody to sit down all day. I'm an eminently reasonable person. It's quite legitimate to walk about for a while after breakfast, which I never do, and before dinner, which I nearly always do; but just as I expect people to dress suitably, so I expect them to parade seasonably. I can't read with people passing up and down in front of me. I always feel an irresistible fascination to look up, which I immediately regret as I see some figure which I have seen a hundred times before, and of which I know by sight every angle and peculiarity, prancing, doddering, or slouching past me as the case might be. Oh, if we could only see ourselves as others see us! I'm not sure, though, Perhaps it's just as well we can't, since if we could, the number of suicides among sensitive people would be awful. They never would survive the first shock. Full knowledge would be fatal, I fear, but half the truth, I think, would be most salutary. I did once when I was young try to start a society for benefiting mankind by telling people exactly what you thought of them in the hope that it might lead to the improvement of the race. I remember mentioning the idea to an Irish R. M. who was staying with us at the time. He got quite excited, and wanted to know all about the society, as he said he felt it would lead to murder, and that he had quite enough work to do already. I'm inclined to think that Irish R. M. was about right. However, the idea never got any farther than Dorothy, Bob, and myself. We agreed to tell each other exactly what we thought of one another whenever occasion arose. ​But when, the very first day, I told Bob that he was a nasty, ill-bred, ill-mannered little boy, and Dorothy that she was a silly little fool, they became quite rude, and told me about things that I couldn't possibly help. Dorothy even referred to my nose, which has always been rather a tender subject with me. Though, of course, one knows that great men always have big noses; yet one would so much rather be great without having a big nose too. So my early attempts at benefiting humanity by starting a mutual cirticism society died a speedy death.
It was horribly hot in the Indian Ocean, and I guess that accounted a good deal for one's feeling of irritation and dissatisfaction with things in general. I began to wonder what they were doing at home—which is always a fatal sign—and to feel that I had never appreciated even Aunt Agatha. I smiled as I thought of the many things flannel lying peaceably at the bottom of my trunks. One had required nothing but the lightest of garments since Port Said, and I scoffed again at the warnings that we should find it cold in India. This was the beginning of December, and there wasn't the sign of a cold breeze even. Of course, India would be much hotter. Ermyntrude, suffering greatly in the second-class, told daily the tale of yet another garment perforce discarded.
The day before we reached Bombay I was thinking chiefly of Boy. He had not been to sit beside me nearly so often since my talk with Mrs. Simpkin-Briston, and I felt certain that that horrible woman ​was the cause of it. But I never let Boy see that I noticed. It's always such a mistake to let a man know that you miss him. Let him guess that, and he will stay away, hugging himself and thinking how important he is, and how much he's being missed, and enjoying himself much more somewhere else than he would have done if he had been kept in doubt as to whether he was being missed or not. So I just smiled on Boy as usual whenever he did come, and never let him see I noticed how seldom he had come lately.
It was just before dinner on the last night. They had been playing cricket, and Boy was in his cricketing things, rather flushed, but very happy. He came and sat down beside me just in the old way.
'Well,' he said cheerily, 'are you glad we land to-morrow?'
'Yes, very,' I said; 'aren't you?'
'I don't know,' he answered after a second's pause, as he unconsciously slipped into his old familiar attitude. 'I've had such an awfully good time on board; I'm half sorry it's over.'
Perhaps it is as well that people's ideas of a good time vary.
'What are you going to do as soon as you land?' I asked warily, knowing that I was treading on dangerous ground.
'I expect I shall find orders awaiting me,' he said. 'I'm still uncertain where I shall be sent. It may be Anundpur, or, again, it may be Bandanager. It's rather exciting not knowing whether it may ​be a thousand miles north or a thousand miles south.'
But he hadn't really answered my question, and I think he knew it.
'We are putting up at The Grand until we leave Bombay,' I said. 'You will come and see us, and tell us where you are sent to, won't you?'
'I'm staying with a friend in the fort,' he said, 'but I shall be sure to come round and see you before I go.' He looked round at me with his fresh, cheery smile. How I longed to take him by the shoulders and shake him, and tell him what a stupid, dear stupid young fool he was. He was suddenly in great spirits.
'I was going to ask you to do something I want very much,' he said, cheerily.
Now it may have been that I winced, remembering that last thing he had asked me to do for him and what had come of it, or it may have been that he really did change his mind.
'But I don't think I'll ask you now,' he continued, laughing as he watched my face. 'I'll put it off till a more convenient season. Good-bye.' And he went off, smiling back at me, while I sat there, wondering what it was he wanted of me, and what it was that had made me suddenly afraid to ask him what it was then and there.