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Chapter V
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AN UP-COUNTRY STATION
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"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife." – (Gray.)
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I daresay that Remyo is very like other small up-country stations in Burmah, but to me it appeared to be the very end of the earth, so different was it from all I had expected. It stands in a small valley, surrounded by low jungle-clad hills. The clearing is perhaps three miles long by one and-a-half wide, but there always appeared to be more jungle than clearing about the place, so quickly does the former spread.
The Station is traversed crosswise by two rough tracks called by courtesy roads, and is surrounded by what is imposingly termed "The Circular Road." This road, but recently constructed, is six or seven miles long, and passes mostly outside the clearing, being consequently bordered in many places on both sides by thick jungle.
There is something infinitely pathetic to my mind about this poor new road, wandering aimlessly in the jungle, leading nowhere and used by no one. At regular distances there stand by the wayside tall posts bearing numbers. The lonely posts mark the situations of houses which it is hoped will, in the future, be built on the allotments which they represent. In theory, the circular road is lined with houses, for Remyo has a great future before it; but just at present, the future is travelling faster than the station, and consequently the poor road is allowed to run sadly into the jungle alone, its course known only to the dismal representatives of these future houses.
The only finished building near which this road passes is the railway station, a neat wooden erection, possessing all the requirements of a small wayside station, and lacking only one essential feature – a railway, for the railway, like the great future of Remyo, is late in arriving, and so the road and the railway station are left sitting sadly expectant in the jungle, waiting patiently for the arrival of that future which alone is needed to render them famous.
In Remyo itself there is a fair sized native bazaar, consisting of rows of unpleasant looking mat huts, each raised a few feet from the ground, with sloping overhanging roofs, and open sides. The road through the bazaar is always very dusty, crowded with bullock carts, goats, and dogs, and usually alive with naked Burmese babies of every age and size. Not a pleasant resort on a hot day.
Besides the bazaar, the station contains the Court House, the District Bungalow, and the Post Office; half-a-dozen European houses scattered up and down the clearing, and the club.
To the Anglo-Indians the club seems as necessary to existence as the air they breathe. I verily believe that when the white man penetrates into the interior to found a colony, his first act is to clear a space and build a club house.
The Club House at Remyo is a truly imposing looking edifice, perched high on the hill side, standing in a well kept compound, surrounded by its offices, bungalows, and stables. About the interior of the building I must confess ignorance, it being an unpardonable offence for any woman to cross the threshold. It may be that it is but a whited sepulchre, the exterior beautiful beyond description, the interior merely emptiness: I cannot tell.
At the foot of the Club House stands a tiny, one-roomed, mat hut, the most unpretentious building I ever beheld, universally known by the imposing title of "The Ladies Club." Here two or more ladies of the station nightly assemble for an hour before dinner, to read the two months old magazines, to search vainly through the shelves of the "library" for a book they have not read more than three times, to discuss the iniquities of the native cook, and to pass votes of censure on the male sex for condemning them to such an insignificant building.
It has always been a sore point with the ladies of Remyo that their Club House only contains one room. They argue that if half the members wish to play whist, and the other half wished to talk, many inconveniences (to say the least) would arise. As there are but four lady members of the club, this argument does not appear to me to be convincing, but I do not pretend to understand the intricacies of club life.
I have sometimes been tempted to believe that the ladies would really be happier without a club; possessing one, they feel strongly the necessity of using it, and though they would doubtless prefer sometimes to sit comfortably at home, every evening sees them sally forth determinedly to their tiny hut. There they sit night after night till nearly dark, and then, not daring to disturb the lordly occupants of the big house, to demand protection, they steal home nervously along the jungle bordered road, trembling at every sound, but all the time talking and laughing cheerfully, in order to convince everybody (themselves in particular) that they are not at all afraid of meeting a panther or tiger, in fact would rather prefer to do so than not. Truly the precious club is not an unmixed blessing!
There are a few wooden houses in Remyo, but the majority are merely built of matting, with over-hanging roofs. They are often raised some twenty feet above the ground, and present the extraordinary appearance of having grown out of their clothes like school boys.
The house in which my sister and her husband lived was a wooden erection of unpretentious appearance. I cannot say who was the architect, but a careful consideration of the construction of the house revealed to us much of his method.
In the first place he was evidently an advocate of the benefits of fresh air and light. The house was all doors and windows, not one of them, apparently, intended to shut, and not satisfied with this, the builder had carefully left wide chinks in the walls, and two or three large holes in the roof. The front door opened directly into the drawing-room, the drawing-room into the dining room, the dining-room into the bedrooms, and the bedrooms on to the compound again. Thus we were enabled in all weathers to have a direct draught through the house, and as Remyo is a remarkably windy place, much of our time was occupied in preventing the furniture from being blown away. Whenever anything was missing we invariably found it in the back compound, whither it had been carried by the wind. Life in such an atmosphere was no doubt healthy, but a trifle wearing to the nerves.
The compactness of the house was delightful. All the rooms led out of one another, and there were no inside doors, consequently one could easily carry on a conversation with those in other parts of the house without leaving one's chair or raising one's voice.
The only occasion on which we found this arrangement of the rooms inconvenient was when we stained the dining room floor. The stain did not dry for three days, and during that time all communication between the drawing room and bedrooms was entirely cut off, for the only way from one to the other was through the dining room, and that was impossible, unless we wished our beautiful floor to be covered with permanent foot marks.
Our architect was evidently a dweller in the plains, and the uses of a fireplace were unknown to him. In each of the small bedrooms he had built large open fireplaces, worthy of a baronial hall, while in neither of the sitting rooms was there the slightest vestige of a fireplace of any sort or kind whatever.
This was a little inconvenient. Naturally an affectionate and gregarious family party, we did not like to spend our evenings, each sitting alone before our own palatial bedroom fireplace; being properly brought up, and proud of our drawing room, we preferred to occupy it, and often, as I sat shivering while the wind tore through the rooms, whistling and shrieking round the furniture, and the rain poured through the roof, I wondered what was supposed to be the use of a house at all; we should have done quite as well without one, except, of course, for the look of the thing.
Modern inventions such as bells appear unknown in Remyo. If you want anything you must shout for it until you get it.
When calling on a neighbour you stand outside the front door, and shout for five minutes, if no one appears in that time, you assume they are not at home, put your cards on the doorstep or through a chink in the wall, and depart. It is a primitive arrangement, but still, not without advantages. If you don't wish to find people at home, you shout softly.
We were superior to all our neighbours in the possession of a bell. We hung it up in the compound near the servants' "go downs," and passed the bell rope through various holes in the walls, etc., to the dining room. I don't know where the bell originally came from, but I think it must have come from a pagoda, for it was undoubtedly bewitched. It rang at all hours of the day and night without provocation. Once it pealed out suddenly at midnight and rang steadily for half-an-hour, when it as suddenly stopped. This was probably caused by some birds swinging on the rope, but it was most uncanny.
The servants used to answer the bell at first when it rang in the day time, until the joke palled on them, and they became suddenly deaf to its call. They never answered it at night: I fancy they thought when they heard it then, that the house was attacked by dacoits or tigers and we were ringing for help, and they deemed it more prudent to remain shut up in their "go downs." When we attempted to ring the bell with a purpose, it invariably stuck somewhere and would not sound. We never ceased to feel proud of the possession of our bell, but ceased at last to expect it to be of any practical use.
When my sister first showed me over her house, my heart sank in spite of my ostensible admiration, for where was the kitchen? Did dwellers in Remyo eat no cooked food; must I be satisfied with rice and fruits? However, my doubts were soon set at rest when we visited the compound, for there stood a tiny tin shed, inside which was a broad brick wall, with three holes for fires, and what looked like a dog kennel, but which I learned was the oven. A fire was lighted inside the oven, and when the walls were red hot the burning logs were pulled out, the bread placed in, and walled up.
How anyone managed to cook anything successfully thus was a marvel to me. I had gone out to Remyo, fresh from a course of scientific cooking lectures, intending to rejoice the palates of the poor exiles with the dainty dishes I would cook for their edification. When I saw that kitchen, and when I learned that such a thing as a pair of scales did not exist in the station, all measuring being done by guess work, I gave up all hope of fulfilling my intention, and looked upon the native cook as the most talented gentleman of my acquaintance.
The furniture in Remyo is of the "let-us-pack-up-quickly-and-remove" type. It is of the lightest and most unsubstantial kind, and has the air of having seen many sales and many owners.
The most prominent article in nearly every house is the deck chair, faithful and much travelled chair, which has accompanied its master over the sea from England, and wandered with him into many a dreary little out-of-the-way village, where perchance he sees for months no fellow white man, and where his chair and pipe alone receive his confidences, and solace his soul in the utter loneliness of the jungle. No wonder then that the deck chair wears an important air, and regards other pieces of furniture, which probably change owners every six months, with contemptuous scorn.
The impossibility of having a settled home in Burmah is very pathetic. In Rangoon, the interior of the houses occasionally wear a settled and homelike appearance, but in the jungle, never. Everything is selected with a view to quick packing; pictures, ornaments, and useless decorations are reduced to a minimum, and only articles of furniture which are indispensable are seen. When one is liable to be moved elsewhere at four days' notice, there is no encouragement to take deep root, the frequent uprooting would be too painful.
This spirit of constant change seems to enter into the blood of the Anglo-Indian, for the housewife is perpetually moving her furniture, "turning her rooms round" so to speak, and she never seems to keep anything in the same place for more than a week!
After all, not Burmah, but England is looked upon as "Home." Even the man of twenty-five years service whose family, friends, and interests may be all centred in Burmah, who loves the life he leads there, and is proud of the position he holds, even he talks of what he will do when he "goes home," and in imagination crowns with a halo "this little precious stone set in the silver sea, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England," which no amount of fog, cold, monotony, and dreary oblivion in his after life here, ever dispels. However happy and prosperous the Anglo-Indian may be in his exile, going to England, is "going home."
Our most unique piece of furniture was the piano.
I do not remember who was the maker of this renowned instrument, but its delicate constitution was most unhappily disorganised by the climate. When first it came to us it was quite a nice piano, rather jingling, and not always in tune, but "fit to pass in a crowd with a shove." Alas! the Remyo climate was fatal; the degeneration commenced at once, and proceeded so rapidly, that in three months all was over.
The first indication of trouble was a serious feud between several of the notes, which would persist in making use of one another's tones, and would not work in harmony. For example, when one struck C sharp, it promptly sang out high F's tone, and high F, being deprived of its lawful voice, was forced to adopt a sound like nothing we had ever heard before. Then E flat became officious and conceited, and persisted in sounding its shrill note through the whole of the piece in performance, while G on the contrary was sulky, and wouldn't sound at all.
Now all this was, of course, most disconcerting to other notes which had hitherto behaved in an exemplary manner. Some became flurried and nervous, and sang totally wrong tones, or sounded their own in such a doubtful, apologetic manner that it was of very little effect. Others grew annoyed, sided with various leaders in the quarrels, jangling together noisily, and persisting in sounding discords and interrupting each other. Others again were seized with a mischievous spirit; they mocked and mimicked their companions, and vied with one another in producing the most extraordinary and unpleasant noises.
Chaos and anarchy reigned in the piano case, all laws of sound and harmony were o'erthrown, the bass clef could no longer be trusted to produce a low note, nor the treble a high one, and a chromatic scale produced such an extraordinary conglomeration of sounds, as would certainly have caused a German band to die of envy.
This could not continue for ever, and at last came reaction. Whether caused by the quarterly visit of the Mandalay chaplain, or by the shocked and pained expression on the face of a musical friend who called one day when I was sounding (it could no longer be called playing) the piano, I know not, but certain it is, the piano was suddenly seized with remorse. Notes conquered their thieving propensities, differences were patched up, discord and jangling ceased, and the whole community, as a sign of real repentance, took upon itself the vow of silence.
Not a sound could we extract from the once noisy keys, save occasionally a sad whisper from the treble, or a low murmur from the bass. After a time, even these ceased, and the once harmonious and soul-stirring tones of the piano, passed entirely into the Land of Silence.
Chapter VI
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THE EUROPEAN INHABITANTS
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"In spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations
He remains an Englishman" —
"H.M.S. Pinafore."
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The European population of Remyo is small, consisting in fact of but four resident ladies, and some dozen resident males; but despite their limited number they form a very friendly and independent little community. Among them are to be found the usual types of Anglo Indian society, but they display characteristics not met with among the dwellers in larger stations.
Remyo is so entirely cut off from civilisation, that the inhabitants must of necessity depend solely upon themselves for amusement, and as entertainments, at which one would invariably meet the same half-dozen guests are apt to become a trifle monotonous, the ladies, deprived of this usual mode of killing time, are compelled to devote themselves to domestic pursuits rather more than is the custom of most Anglo Indians.
The comparative coolness of the climate (Remyo being 3,500 feet above sea level) is conducive to such occupations, and whereas in Rangoon, or Mandalay, housekeeping duties are reduced to a minimum, in Remyo, the ladies, having nothing else to do, engage themselves thus with a zeal and energy worthy of a Dutch housewife.
But, poor souls, they are terribly handicapped!
In the first place, they are mostly unaccustomed to housekeeping themselves; secondly, the servants and household are quite unaccustomed to being "kept"; and thirdly, it is practically impossible for a mistress to do her own marketing unless she possess an unusual knowledge of the language.
She may resolutely keep accounts, lock up stores, walk about all morning in an apron, with a large bunch of keys, and have long confidential conversations with the cook; but in spite of all these possibilities she can only play at housekeeping; the Cook and Head Boy are the real managers of the establishment, and they regard the well meant efforts of their mistress with the kindly amusement one would extend to a child "keeping house." A Remyo lady's morning interview with her cook, usually a Madrassee, is an amusing interlude.
Neither fish nor joints can be procured in the native bazaar, so the poor housekeeper is often at her wits' end to introduce variety into her evening menu.
She begins cheerfully: "Well cook, what have we for dinner to-night?"
Cook replies laconically, "Chicken."
"Chicken," repeats the mistress doubtfully, "yes, perhaps that will do. Did you kill it yesterday?"
"No! missis, not killed yet."
"Oh cook!" in a tone of stern reproach, "missis told you always to kill it the day before, why have you not done so?"
Cook shelters himself behind an unintelligible answer in a mixture of Hindustani and "Pigeon English," and after an unsuccessful attempt to understand him, his mistress is forced to pass from the subject, with a rebuke which he receives with a reproachful look. "Now," she continues, "what have you for soup?"
"Chicken" is again the prompt reply.
"Is there really nothing else?" demands the mistress uneasily.
"No, there is nothing else."
"Well," hopefully, "you must make a very nice little side dish (entrée), what can we have?"
"Nice bit of grilled chicken," suggests cook cheerfully.
"Oh no cook," she cries in despair, "we can't have more chicken."
"What would missis like then?"
Missis has not the vaguest idea of any possible suggestion, so diffidently agrees that perhaps chicken will be nice. She asks about the savoury, but seeing the word "chicken" again hovering on cook's lips, decides to make the savoury herself, and turns to receive the daily accounts.
Then cook rattles off a long account of his expenditure, which his mistress duly enters in her book, fondly hoping that he isn't charging her more than double the cost of each article, but having no means of discovering the truth.
Once or twice, on visits to the bazaar, we asked the price of various things, and triumphantly confronted the cook with the result of our researches, but he was never in the least disconcerted, and at once entered into a long, unintelligible, and quite irrefutable explanation as to why the article was cheaper on that particular day than on any other. It is quite impossible to upset the cheerful sang froid of a Madrassee.
Native servants have the reputation of being most faithful to their master, and perhaps they deserve the character, for they allow no one else to cheat him (unless they get the lion's share of the spoil), but they consider it their special prerogative to cheat him themselves at every opportunity.
A scolding from a mistress makes little impression on a Madrassee servant, – he receives it with an air of gentle reproach, while he most persistently denies the offence, whatever it may be, from a bad dinner, to a broken plate or an undelivered message. It is only the master, who, by a wealth of strong language, and judiciously directed remarks, concerning the origin, parents, and relations of the guilty one, can hope to make the slightest impression upon the impervious native mind.
A further difficulty for the young and ardent housekeeper is the number of servants in her establishment. One man is engaged to sweep the floor, another to dust the furniture, one to fetch the water, a second to pour it into the bath, one to lay the knives and forks, and a companion to hand the plates, and so on through every department of the household work.
This divided duty is exceedingly convenient to the servants, for if anything be wrong the fault can always be laid on the absent one, or a scolding delivered to one can be passed on almost unlimitedly until everyone has enjoyed an opportunity of relieving his feelings. But it is inconvenient for a mistress; such a delay is caused in carrying out an order. For example, if a jug of water be spilled, a first servant picks up the jug, a second dries the table cloth, a third dries the table, a fourth mops up the water from the floor, a fifth rearranges the furniture, a sixth carries out the empty jug, and a seventh fetches the water to refill it.
All orders are delivered to the Head Boy, a most important and dignified personage, and he transmits them through the various ranks of his underlings until they reach the servant whose duty it is to carry them out. During the transmission through so many channels, of course the orders become hopelessly mixed.
We had only fourteen servants, as our house was not large! A few of them, such as the cook, sais, and butler had definite duties, the remainder seemed to be chiefly engaged in getting in one another's way and quarrelling. But I suppose the work of the house could not have been carried on without them, though their number was distinctly inconvenient.
In Rangoon, where servants abound, it would be easy to dismiss and engage a dozen a day, but not so in the remoter stations. The natives of India will not leave the plains unless a strong inducement be offered, and the Burmese much prefer not to work, if they can live without doing so. Burmans are usually excellent servants, but they are slow to learn to speak English, and the young housekeeper, who has probably been accustomed to English, or at least Hindustani-speaking servants in Rangoon, experiences great difficulty in making herself understood.
All our servants, with the exception of the cook, were Burmese, and when my brother happened to be away, and the cook was not at hand to interpret, we felt particularly helpless. Messages brought at such a time had to go undelivered, and many a struggle have I had to understand Po Sin's wants, or to make him understand mine. Housekeeping under such disadvantages is not a happy undertaking.
Another way of passing time in which we indulged, was cooking. It was cooking under difficulties, for the most important part (the baking) had perforce to be entrusted to the tender mercies of the cook, no one else being capable of understanding his intricate oven. And the cook, jealous of our trespass on his prerogative, almost invariably served up our cakes in the guise, either of soft dough, or of black cinders.
The chief objects of our cooking experiments were cakes and savouries. We neither of us knew very much about cooking, but we had cookery books, and did what we could, supplying the place of the innumerable ingredients we did not possess, with any we happened to have on hand. The result was usually distasteful.
I made cakes with exceeding great vigour and confidence during almost the whole of my stay, but nobody ate them save myself from bravado, the dogs from greed, and unsuspecting strangers from innocence.
Cake making was a fashionable subject of conversation at the ladies' "five o'clocks" in Remyo, and everyone gave everyone else recipes. I was astonished to hear my sister (whom I knew to be almost entirely ignorant upon such subjects) glibly confiding recipes for all sorts of things, on one of these occasions. I taxed her with the matter later, but she explained that it was the fashion to give recipes, and so long as she was careful to include an ingredient or two, impossible to obtain, she could safely trust that no one would find her out.
There is one shop in Remyo in addition to the native Bazaar, and the ladies usually pay it a daily visit, in order, I suppose, to add realism to their pretence of housekeeping.
The method adopted on these occasions is remarkable. No one expects to find anything she really wants in the shop, as it is kept by a native of India, but she begins hopefully asking for various articles, each demand being greeted by a shake of the head. She then asks the shopkeeper what he does happen to sell, at which he appears doubtful, but suggests some useless thing such as antimacassars. The purchaser at length makes a tour of the shop, picks out the least useless article she can find, and bears it home in triumph.
The unwise thing to do, is to order an article from Rangoon or Mandalay. One is indeed lucky if it arrives within twelve months after being ordered, and without an expenditure of all one's powers of sarcasm in letters of remonstrance, and a fortune in stamps.
Firstly, there will be received about a dozen letters, with intervals of four days or so between each, demanding fresh descriptions and explanations of the desired article. Then, when more specific description is an impossibility, letters for money will arrive; a request for a rupee for carriage, another request for five annas for something else, for half a rupee that has been overlooked in the first account, and so on for four weeks more. Then the article is announced to be upon the way, but it does not arrive. More letters bring to light the fact that it is lost; has most mysteriously disappeared; cannot be traced anywhere.
New people come upon the scene. Letters from carriers and agents arrive. Weeks elapse, still the article cannot be found. Another is in course of construction, when it is suddenly discovered that by some strange oversight the original was overlooked, never sent off at all, and is still reposing in the same tiresome shop. At length the once desired purchase arrives, but the purchaser has now long ceased to feel any interest in it whatever.
The inhabitants of Remyo live together in apparent peace and friendliness, but there is between them one never ending source of rivalry, i. e. their gardens.
Gardening is one of the most fashionable employments in Remyo. Everyone has a garden, though the uninitiated would probably not recognise the fact, and the amount of time, thought, and energy expended thereon is worthy of better results than those I beheld.
For the "Remyoans" are ambitious folk, and are not content with the flowers, plants and natural products of the country. Their desire is to have a real English garden, and with this end in view, they sow innumerable seeds, set many bulbs, rake, dig and water (or superintend these operations) till life is a burden both to themselves and to their servants. Possibly, I did not remain long enough, but the results I saw were not satisfactory; it required a great stretch of imagination to mark any resemblance between a large bare compound covered with coarse jungle grass, dotted about with flat grey-soiled beds containing a few withered looking plants (half-a-dozen violets perhaps, and a haggard sunflower), and an English garden. Perhaps long absence from home had dulled their recollection of gardens in England.
We were specially unlucky in our garden. Had we been content to confine our efforts to plants in pots and boxes (as did some of our wiser neighbours) we might have been fairly successful. But visions of rose gardens, artistically laid out beds, and mossy violet covered dells dazzled us, and our ambitions in this direction were boundless.
The coarse grass, the poor soil, and the persistent reappearances of unsightly jungle weeds in all sorts of unexpected places should have daunted us, but we had souls above such trifles. Directly we had formed our plans we set to work, scorning the advice of more experienced people, and disregarding all considerations of prepared beds, manure, and seasons. We marked out several intricately shaped beds, dug them up, lightly scattered some good soil over the top, and proceeded to sow our seed with hearty good will.
The first difficulty we met with was with regard to arrangement. Each of us had a favourite plan, the abandonment of which no arguments on the part of the others could persuade. At length, after much useless discussion, we decided each to go our own way, sow our seed where we chose, and leave it to Nature to settle the difficulty. This was so far satisfactory, tho' we felt anxious when we found that nasturtiums had been sown on the top of daffodil bulbs, and one poor little bed of pansies had a border of sweet peas and sunflowers.
For some days after we had laid out the garden, my sister and I had a wearing time. The first thing in the early mornings we hurried out for an eager search after signs of life in our seeds. We divided the day into watches, that someone might always be at hand to defend the precious seed from the marauding crows and pigeons. The cool of the evening, usually given up to tennis and other amusements, was devoted wholly to the fatiguing task of watering.
