An American Girl in India/Chapter 1
AN AMERICAN GIRL IN INDIA
CHAPTER I
MYSELF, AUNT AGATHA, AND SOME OTHERS
Now if you expect to find this book just chock-a-block with American expressions and reeking with an accent, I guess you will be disappointed. I had best tell you straight away that I am not one of the forge-ahead kind of American, who go about with a twang and a guide book, armed with an umbrella to chip off bits of stone from Westminster Abbey and such like places to carry home west as trophies. And I don't love particularly Paris nor catch right on to people straight away.
You see, it was like this. My father died when I was at the fascinating age of four. He wore a thick gold watch chain, and was very fat—that, I am sorry to say, is all I can remember of him. He was rich, too, though what he made his money in I have never to this day been able to discover. Mother is not just exactly communicative about my father. Perhaps that's because she has married again. My step-father is quite well-known in the political world, and my mother some day, they say, will get him made Secretary of State for something or other—I forget just what—war, I think, but I'm not quite sure. Anyway, he's had enough experience in domestic strife, if that's any use. My mother and he really get on together quite well, but you wouldn't think they did if you lived next door to them in a semi-detached villa with rather thin walls. You see, they are both just gone on argument, and they both appear on platforms—fortunately, both on the same side—in public, and so they like to get all the practice they can at home. My mother was a great social-political light before she married my step-father, and they do say she married him just to get an assured position in the government.
Well, you see, my mother having married an Englishman, we—that's my sister Dorothy, Bob, and myself—have been brought up mostly in England, and so we don't speak much American. I guess it's only at times when I get just wild that I speak any at all.
It was a glorious afternoon in late September, and we—Aunt Agatha, Dorothy, Bob, and myself—were sitting in the drawing-room at Seldon after lunch. Mother and her political appendage, as a facetious member of the opposition once dubbed my step-father, were away shooting up in Scotland, and Aunt Agatha was left in charge of us, and Tony—principally of Tony. If at the obnoxious age of seven one child can be more obnoxious than another, that child is Tony. I had thought of leaving him out of this narrative altogether, but on second thoughts I have decided just to mention him and pass on as quickly as possible. I always think it is best to be candid, and when you have got an obnoxious step-brother, named Tony, aged seven, to own up to him right away. Tony, I am bound to say, has as little love for me as I have for him, though why that should be I am sure I cannot say, since I never slap him or speak severely to him—except when he thoroughly deserves it. Only that very morning he had been particularly provoking.
'Father will be made a peer soon,' he had said jeeringly, as he had said fifty times before, 'then I shall be the Honourable, but you won't,' pointing his finger at me rudely. 'You'll never be Honourable.'
Now owing to the fundamental laws of the British Constitution this was true, and therefore more especially annoying. I don't at all mind confessing that I should dearly love to be the Honourable if I can't get anything better. I am not often, however, provoked into a retort when Tony refers to this, but that morning I had been.
'You forget the proverb "Handsome is as handsome does,"' I said impressively, though feeling that the saying was rather trite.
Tony chuckled.
'Oh my!' he sniggered, retreating first to a safe distance like the little coward he is, 'I'd go and try and do something handsome then if I was you.'
What could one do to a boy like that save ignore him—whenever he would let you. There were times when he made it impossible for you even to do that. This afternoon was certainly one of them.
I had just been reading out a portion of a letter I had received that morning from Berengaria Hugesson-Willoughby, asking me to go out to India to spend the winter with her, including the Great Durbar which even then was beginning to swallow up as a topic of conversation all other events past, present, and to come. Berengaria—so called by her godfather and godmothers in her baptism, for which act she has ever shown marked ingratitude—is a first cousin of ours once removed, and about ten years ago she had married a man who is something or other in India—I forget what, but Aunt Agatha would be sure to know. We were all discussing the advisability of my accepting her invitation.
Aunt Agatha suddenly raised her eyes from the woollen muffler she has been knitting for the last two years for a deep sea fisherman, and looked at me with an air of finality.
'You had best go right away now you have got the chance,' she said, and immediately resumed her work of charity with an air of having once and for all closed the discussion.
Now I have long noticed as an indisputable fact that when Aunt Agatha says one should do a thing one generally does it. Not that I am at all of a weak disposition or easily led—my worst enemy could not call me that—but there are some people who have an indefinable air of command about them. My Aunt Agatha certainly has. Unkind people, in fact, don't hesitate to call her domineering, and it has been whispered around that her departed husband, to whom she always now refers as 'poor dear,' deserved that sympathetic appellation much more during his lifetime than he possibly could do now. And they do say that the poor dear man's favourite text was that about there being in Heaven no marrying and giving in marriage. Yet he left Aunt Agatha all that he possessed on condition that she never married again. I'm inclined to believe that he did that out of right-down kindness of heart for his fellow men. Anyway, it has effectively kept Aunt Agatha from entering the bonds of matrimony a second time. Say, though, this is pure gossip, and my Aunt Agatha is really a very good sort—when you know her well.
'I only just wish I had the chance,' said Dorothy languidly. Nobody ever takes any notice of what Dorothy says. Her only claim to fame is that she has married a baronet and got the only title so far in the family. This way—so says the British Constitution—she takes precedence of her own mother, and you can imagine how mother likes that. My step-father is being continually urged to buck up and get something or other to set things right, but baronets have been looking up a lot lately, I'm told, and it isn't so easy to get past them now as it used to be. Anyway, nothing but a peerage or the Privy Council, I am told, will do the trick, and I doubt if my step-father's cute enough for that. So Dorothy remains on top. Dorothy has also had twins twice. I can't think of anything more to say about her. It is always best to begin by being candid, even about one's own sister.
'You'll be a fool if you don't go,' said Bob in his downright way, taking his feet from the mantelshelf and pushing back his chair. Bob also believes in being candid. It's his chief characteristic next to his love for the mantelshelf. If ever my brother Bob sees a mantelshelf anywhere round about he just goes right there for it straight away, and manages to get his feet on to it somehow. All men love mantelshelves, but an Englishman leans his back against them, while an American uses them as a foot-rest. I suppose they both get equally warm in the same way with a difference.
'You go,' said Tony, in his most unflattering manner. He was lying full length on the floor and looking up at me with that rude disconcerting stare of his.
Since they were all so unanimous I began to think there must be something in it. Now I am not really at all an undecided sort of person, but I'm bound to confess here that I did just hesitate. You see, there was so much to be said on either side. Of course, there were disadvantages in leaving home for such a long time. It meant missing a whole host of engagements already booked for the winter, and it was an appallingly long journey, and I am not quite sure that I am a good sailor. And I am bound to confess that I had not had any great weakness for India so far. I'm the sort of person that likes things comfortable, and I rather guessed India was the sort of place where your hair wouldn't curl, and you had to reduce your luggage into a sort of knapsack, where there wasn't any room for frills at all, and where you were hoisted about on elephants and camels and had to be very nippy to escape wild beasts and snakes and all manner of creepy things, and from the pictures I had seen I was quite certain that a topi wouldn't suit me, and I admit that I'm inclined to get freckles in the sun. Still, it wasn't to be denied that going out to India for the winter had its advantages too. I'm a great believer in the power of absence. Of course, it must be discreet and well-timed. You must ring the curtain up and down with all the worldly wisdom that you have. You must disappear exactly at the right moment and with a certain amount of noise, or your exit won't have the desired effect, and, awful and humiliating calamity, it may even pass unnoticed. And as for your reappearance, that requires even more diplomacy. To turn up right down suddenly, like Anne Boleyn, and find Jane Seymour sitting on your husband's knee, would stump most people, and doesn't tend towards a friendly family reunion. Now if Anne Boleyn could have managed to come in soft and melting like when Henry was alone and hadn't seen a skirt for twenty-four hours—though I admit this would have been difficult, Henry being what he was—who knows what a happy, loving couple they might not have been ever afterwards, not to speak of there being four Queens less in history to tax the memory of all the generations that came after. Say, though, I'm shying off the main point.
Now to tell you the truth—didn't I say I was always candid?—I had just about that time begun to think that a little absence on my part would not be at all a bad thing. You see, it was like this. I was a bit down on my luck just then. I was near about celebrating, or rather trying to hush up as close as an affectionate family would let me, another of those annually recurring nuisances—a birthday, and I was beginning to feel that the time was coming when vulgar-minded people would be talking of me as no 'chicken,' 'getting on,' 'long in the tooth,' 'not so young as she was,' or 'never see this side of thirty again.' Now, no woman can look on calmly and hear herself called things like that. It isn't in the blood. Of course it takes different women different ways. Some descend to charity and the curate straight away. Others hang on and get resigned, while others again take to art and make an uphill fight of it. Now I was still enough of a 'chicken' not to have come to the parting of the ways as yet. But I could see them looming on ahead, and I recognised now that the only chance of escape was by the help of man. But that was just where the difficulty lay. It wasn't that there was any lack of men. I had had at least half a dozen proposals every year for the last—but no, I won't say how many years. It's a mistake to be too candid about a thing like that. One must retain a little reticence somewhere. The fact was that men who proposed, or tried to propose, had long since bored me. It's all very well up to a certain point, but I had got to that stage now that as soon as I saw it in a man's eye that he was going to propose, I lost interest in him right away. Yet illogically I am bound to confess that I was a bit upset by the fact that I had only had two proposals that year—and the month was September. How like a woman, Bob would say. But I had better admit the truth right here and say that it was just the one man I thought I should like to have propose to me who hadn't shown any intention of actually doing it so far. Whether I was really in love with him at this time or not, it beats me to say. Love is a funny elusive sort of thing that I hadn't had much truck with hitherto. Fact was, doubtless, I only felt a bit piqued because he hadn't done what all the others had.
'What!' said Bob, planting himself in front of me in his abrupt way, 'haven't you made up your mind yet?'
'No,' I said hesitatingly, with a horrible feeling that Bob was reading the innermost recesses of my mind, and knew what was there better than I did myself. Bob chuckled.
'Ah,' he said, 'I suppose now it comes to the point you're sorry to leave———'
'Lord Hendley,' announced the footman, throwing open the door.
I am afraid I was weak enough to give a start of surprise. Bob deliberately winked at me, while his face was screwed into an expression of intense amusement. What about I am sure I don't know. But then Bob is only nineteen. One is so easily amused at the age of nineteen.
Aunt Agatha received Lord Hendley graciously, Dorothy shook hands with a society simulation of polite interest, Bob hailed him with boyish heartiness that in another rank of life would have expressed itself in a slap on the back, and I—well I, of course, received him just as I should have done fifty other young men of our acquaintance. Lord Hendley sat down and politely began to talk to Aunt Agatha, who was doing hostess, and then almost at once other visitors were announced. I saw Lord Hendley look over at the sofa where I was sitting, and felt sure he was just going to make straight for it when Bob planted himself right in between us, and began telling him about a model of a yacht he was building, and asking him to go up to his room to see it. And of course Lord Hendley had to go. He and Bob are great friends, but there are times when I feel I have no sisterly love at all for Bob. I'm not at all sure that he didn't carry Lord Hendley off on purpose.
For quite twenty minutes I made myself pleasant to really very uninteresting people, and then at last they returned. I felt that Lord Hendley might reasonably have got away from looking at the model of a yacht in less than twenty minutes, so as the couch where I sat held two, I got up and walked to the other side of the room and took a chair near by Lady Manifold. Lord Hendley came up and joined us without the least hesitation. Dorothy was talking to Marjory Manifold close by, and Bob was hovering round with cakes and things, so we formed quite a little group in that corner of the drawing-room. Suddenly—I don't quite know why—I made up my mind.
'I'm going out to India for the Durbar,' I said. I was looking straight at Lady Manifold, yet I could feel that everyone round gave a movement of surprise.
'My dear, how charming!' said Lady Manifold. 'We are going too. You must come by our boat.'
'I should like that immensely,' I replied, feeling that my decision was quite irrevocable now. 'I was just wondering with whom I should make the journey.'
'I shall be delighted,' said Lady Manifold, and Marjory expressed herself duly pleased also. We at once entered into details.
'Everyone seems to be going to the great Durbar,' said Lord Hendley, leaning forward, and taking advantage of the first pause in the conversation. 'It will be very jolly meeting so many old friends there.'
Everyone looked round at Lord Hendley.
'Are you going too?' asked Lady Manifold, with what I thought undue animation. I always had suspected that Lady Manifold had designs for Marjory upon Lord Hendley, though I knew quite well that Marjory's affections were engaged elsewhere.
'Oh yes, I'm going,' said Lord Hendley. I glanced at him quickly. I felt certain that he looked a bit self-conscious. I wondered if his decision to go to the great Durbar had been as suddenly taken as mine had been.
'What boat are you going by?' I asked casually.
'We're going by the Arethusa,' said Lady Manifold promptly, again I thought with an undue show of interest. It was practically suggesting that he should take the same boat.
'Really, how strange,' said Lord Hendley, with his pleasant smile. 'I have decided to go by the Arethusa too.'
'Have you booked your passage?' asked Bob, pausing with a plate of cakes in his hand and a sinister gleam of mischief in his eyes.
Lord Hendley shot a murderous glance in his direction.
'No,' he said hurriedly; 'but there will be no difficulty.'
'The boats are very full, I believe,' I remarked, showing no particular interest.
'One can always get in somewhere,' he said, still with an eye on Bob, whom he also doubtless felt to be designing pitfalls for the unwary.
The conversation seemed somehow to me to be fraught with danger, and I wondered if the others noticed it. I looked at the twinkle in Bob's eyes and felt that a brotherless state has its compensations. I began to have that uncomfortable feeling known as 'hot all over.' But there was a new danger advancing in the rear that I hadn't noticed up till then. Tony, after watching me with solemn eyes from a distance, had crawled along the floor and established himself beside my chair almost hidden from the rest of the group.
'Beetroot,' I heard him say suddenly in a sort of chuckling whisper.
I half turned and looked down at him.
'Beetroot,' he said again, regarding me solemnly. 'Beetroot.'
I frowned at him under cover of the general conversation, not grasping in the least what he meant, but from long experience of him suspicious of something evil.
'Tomatoes?' He shook his head gravely. 'No, deeper than that.' He placed a finger first on one side of his face and then on the other, fixing me with his eyes. 'Beetroot,' he nodded meaningly, 'beetroot.'
Then I saw what he meant, and if I had slain him straight away no jury of twelve honest British shopkeepers would have called it anything but justifiable homicide. Now, I admit that I do get hot at times. It's one of my great grievances. But I had always tried to delude myself into the belief that I only got a becoming colour, though secretly conscious all the time that rude people might have called it 'flushed.' But to be told straight out that you looked like beetroot! What woman could take calmly being told that her complexion was an awful colour like that? Of course it was only Tony. But, still, I knew that wretched little children of that age do somehow often manage to strike the truth. I was so dreadfully overcome that I took no notice of what people were saying until I suddenly heard Bob's voice with that particularly innocent, guileless note in it that I always knew meant mischief. He was smiling, too, in a nasty will-you-walk-into-my-parlour sort of way.
'When does the Arethusa sail?' he asked, looking straight at Lord Hendley, pinning him down to an answer, as it were.
Lord Hendley almost lost his presence of mind, and got up to go.
'The beginning of November,' he said hastily, as he went across to shake hands with Lady Manifold.
'Oh no,' the latter said, retaining his hand in hers in her surprise. 'The Arethusa doesn't sail till the 29th.'
There was a pause. Then I created a diversion. I upset my cup of tea. It was very foolish of me, but Tony and Bob together had been too much for me. I was rather glad that some of the tea did fall on my dress, so that no one could say that I had upset the cup on purpose to cover Lord Hendley's confusion.
Lord Hendley helped me to remove the stains, then he held out his hand to say good-bye.
'We ought to have a very jolly voyage,' he said.
'Yes,' I murmured demurely, 'at the beginning of November.'