An American Girl in India/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
CHRISTMAS DAY IN SLUMPANUGGER
Christmas Day in India was just like tobogganing in June. You all sat round and smiled, and pretended you were doing it and enjoying it real fine, though all the time you knew quite well it was a farce. Faith, as the little boy defined it, is the power that makes you believe things you know aren't true. It needs a lot of faith to make believe it's a real Christmas out in India.
Just imagine trying to celebrate Christmas on a perfect summer's day in June. Doesn't the imagination of the stay-at-home reel at it straight away? It was a glorious day, that twenty-fifth of December I spent in Slumpanugger. But it wasn't Christmas Day. It was all just exquisite when you let yourself forget how inappropriate it all was. From dawn till sunset the sun shone gloriously in a cloudless blue sky, and it was warm like an English summer's day.
We had a fire, it is true, but as Berengaria said, it was much more to look at than to sit by. That fire certainly made things look much more appropriate to the day than anything else had done, It was a real good fire too, on a big, wide open hearth, no coal, all great glowing logs of wood that crackled and scattered sparks in quite the proper orthodox way. It looked right down cheerful and homelike, and it made you think of absent friends. The only objection to it was its warmth. You liked it very much, but you edged away from it by degrees until at last you had backed into the furthest wall. If only one could have had the fire without the warmth it would have been just perfect.
In the morning everybody went to church. It was a nice little church that most of us had helped to decorate the day before. India certainly is a place where things grow, and there's no difficulty when you want to make a church look dressed. In fact, that service where we sang the Christmas hymns and heard the old familiar service was as much like home as it could be when once you forgot the glorious sunlight that streamed in through the open windows, and the row of giant palms that stood like sentinels without.
I had no idea there were as many people in Slumpunugger as turned up to that service. They were of all sorts and conditions, and of many colours. I mentioned my surprise to Berengaria as we drove home.
'There are lots of people one never sees in every Indian station,' Berengaria informed me. 'You see, if you are not a member of the Club, you may live in a place for years and never be seen.'
That seemed rather an unhappy fate, and I guessed that to be a member of the Club is the first thing needful in India. It's a kind of hall mark that you can't well do without. Membership may not mean that you are anybody very much, but non-membership certainly means that you are nobody at all.
'It is not that our Mofussil Clubs are at all exclusive,' Berengaria went on, 'in fact, they generally err far too much the other way. But even they have to draw the line somewhere. Why, actually only the other day, there was a talk of proposing the Penincs.'
The Peninos, I found, claimed to be Portuguese. It's wonderful how many Portuguese there are in India. Considering the fewness of the original Portuguese adventurers they must have been a wonderful race.
"Mrs. Penino is large and fat,' discoursed Berengaria. 'All Eurasians grow large and fat very soon if they don't get skinny and wizened. It's hard to know which is the lesser evil of the two.' Berengaria sighed as if she had a personal interest in the question. 'Which would you rather be, Nicola, large and fat or skinny and wizened?'
Of course I was diplomatic.
'Oh, large and fat,' I said decidedly. 'I never could stand people who looked as if they were starved.'
Berengaria smiled with delight. Though she is not a Eurasian it cannot be denied that she has already developed a tendency towards the large and fat.
'So would I,' she agreed. 'Now the Miss Peninos—there are three of them—will, I think, be of the lean kind. They are frightfully skinny so far, very long and very brown, and they love bright colours, especially peacock blue. That's really all there is to say about them.'
Berengaria dismissed the Peninos with a wave of the hand as we reached home, and began to talk of the dinner-party she was giving that night. She told me that it was the 'dustur' of Slumpanugger for the Commissioner mem-sahib to give a big dinner to all the station on Christmas Day, and she always did it, as she believed in keeping up 'dusturs,' because they linked one up with the past. The 'dustur,' as you will have guessed, means the custom of the country, and when you meet one of them, Berengaria once solemnly warned me, it's always best to give in to it straight away. India is a place with any number of 'dusturs' knocking around, and the people have an affection for them. You can fight against them if you like, but if you want a peaceful life take Berengaria's advice and don't.
It was a great event in Slumpanugger—that Christmas dinner. Everybody who was anybody was invited to it, and, as Berengaria put it, the company was 'a bit mixed.' The difficulty was how to send them down, because they all imagined they had precedence of some kind, and the less they had the more huffy they were if they didn't get it. So Berengaria had discarded that bugbear of the Indian hostess—the table of precedence— for the occasion, and had decided to make people draw lots in a cheery happy-go-lucky way.
'It's wonderful what a difference it makes to the success of a dinner,' Berengaria told me. 'Now, every time I dine out I have to go down with the host, and he is generally without exception the dullest man in the room, and when we give a dinner there is bound to be some old fogey we have to invite, and of course I have to go down with him. It's dreadfully dull, and I have never been down to dinner yet with the nicest men in the station except when I've had them to dine in a quiet informal sort of way. Now about this Christmas dinner there is such a delightful uncertainty. It's just a lottery. You never know your luck. You may get somebody nice to go in with, or you may not. I always make people draw names like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Ophelia, etc. A Juliet fat and forty adds to the merriment of things.'
After breakfast Berengaria asked me to write out names like those on little slips of paper to be drawn when the time came. I was sitting racking my brains and trying to remember how famous people ran in couples when several callers were announced. Young Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere was one of them, and he at once attached himself to me, and of course saw what I was doing. Now, Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere had been honouring me with his attentions quite markedly during the few days I had been in Slumpanugger, to the entire neglect of his old love, Miss Proudfoot. He was one of those dreadfully self-satisfied young men with no brains to speak of, a fine moustache, and a blasé air. Needless to say, he was not my style at all.
'What luck!' he said in his tired haw-haw voice as he sat down beside me. 'Arrived in the nick of time. Can't stand these dinners where you have to draw. Ten to one you draw something awful.' He searched among the little slips of paper I had already written. Then he picked up one and put it in his pocket. He handed me another with what he evidently thought a killing air.
'Why should we draw?' he said looking at me as if I were a prize sheep in a lottery. 'Let's consider that fixed up, shall we?'
Before I could say anything someone came up and began to talk to us. The little slip of paper lay on my lap. It bore the name of 'Juliet.' 'Romeo,' I presumed, reposed in the pocket of Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere. I was furious, justly and properly furious.
I got hold of Berengaria quietly when the last of the callers had gone.
'Who of all those coming to-night,' I asked her, 'would you say that a conceited young man who fancies himself greatly would least like to take down to dinner.'
'Oh, Mrs. Tomasino,' laughed Berengaria promptly. 'She's quite the plainest woman I have ever seen. She's quite black, and she will insist on talking though she never talks sense. We have to ask her to a dinner like this, you know, because her husband is an official of sorts and actually on the table of precedence itself.'
'An ideal 'Juliet' for Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere,'I said. I told Berengaria what had happened, and she, loving Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere no more, fully entered into the spirit of the thing. It was arranged that for once in her life, at least, Mrs. Tomasino should know what it was to have a 'Romeo.'
Dinner-time came, and with it the guests. Mrs. Tomasino was amongst the first to arrive. She was appalling in tight pink satin. I even felt a passing wave of pity for Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere as I gazed at her. But it quickly fled as that young man swaggered in with his cocksure air. I took round the little silver bowl with the ladies' names in, dropping in 'Juliet' before handing it to Mrs. Tomasino last of all. I saw a pleased look flash across her face as she read it. In a moment the gong sounded. The men were rushing round trying to find their affinities, and leading them off to the dining-room as they found them. Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere sauntered up with his self-satisfied air, pulling 'Romeo' from his waistcoat pocket.
'Juliet, I think,' he said with a killing smile and bow. He crooked his arm to lead me away.
'Steady on there, steady on there,' I said mockingly, 'you must have made a mistake. I'm Mrs. 'Arris.'
Mr. de Vere-Smith-de-Vere's wooden face expressed a mild surprise. It expressed something stronger a moment later.
'Oh, Romeo,' said a harsh and would-be playful voice behind us, 'Oh, Romeo, I'm Juliet. Wherefore art thou, Romeo?'
Mrs. Tomasino in the tight pink satin was positively wriggling with delight and satisfaction. Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere stood aghast. In a trice he was appropriated. A big, fat brown arm was thrust through his, and he was led away.
All of us who were still left in the room paused to watch them pass. It was Mrs. Tomasino's night out. She was conscious that for the moment she held the stage. It intoxicated her. But the doorway loomed near. She could not let her triumph rest, she must add to it. Beaming round she stopped and tapped the unhappy Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere playfully on the arm with her fan.
'Oh, Romeo,' she smirked, wriggling horribly inside the pink satin, 'do you really wish you were thy Juliet's bird?'
After that they kind of shot through the doorway. I guess it was Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere who put the impetus on. Anything more complete than that young man's discomfiture one couldn't wish to see. He crumpled up and got limp straight away. It was as if you had suddenly sprinkled a nice starched collar and shirt front with water. It was a dreadful warning to all would-be Romeos. However charming you may think yourselves, young men, don't make too sure of Juliet.