Читать книгу From Edinburgh to India & Burmah - W. G. Burn Murdoch - Страница 9

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There is a frightful crush on board. It would take years to consider all the faces. Numbers of ladies are going out to join their husbands after having taken their children home in spring. By the afternoon all the new comers look much refreshed; they have washed off the travel stains of that dusty journey across France, have tidied up, eaten, and slept a little, and have perhaps met friends of the road. You hear, "Hillo—hillo—you here again! met in Simla last, didn't we—wasn't it cold last night?" "By Jingo it was—rummy spell of cold—coming over all western Europe so suddenly," and they talk of "Cold weathers," and "Rains," and "Monsoons," and places you think you heard about in school days and have forgotten; and you realise something of what there is ahead to learn.

Meantime I watch the lascars taking off the effect of the coaling last night; how blue and sharp the reflections of the sky are on the wet deck and their dark feet. It is my business to paint things, not to write, about them, still, both occupations dissipate the time wonderfully. They are scrubbing down the waist, washing the decks with brushes and squeejees and lashins of blue Mediterranean; they wear dungaree tunics, and trousers of dark blue and faded pale blues, with red cloth round their straw skull-caps, and are all in shadow—that colourful, melting, warm shade you have in the South in the afternoon.

27th Evening.—To what shall I liken this evening on deck? You know a railway carriage on Bank Holiday, and you have heard perhaps of a Newfoundland sealing ship, the crew head and tail and three deep in the bunks, and all about the deck and along the bulwarks for want of room—well, it's worse here, at the price! In the smoking-room there is not an inch to sit on; men lean against the pillars, others against the side of the bar or against each other. A few have got seats for bridge, others sit on sofas round the side, the rest have to stand. There were more passengers when we left Tilbury than allowed any free movement on deck; we made light of that. Now, people are jammed beside each other all the way up the side of the deck that is sheltered from the sweep of the wind, others sit on the rail; those who want to move have to pick a devious and careful course between the lines of chairs. And this is to be to-night, and to-morrow, till we get to India! And it will yet be worse than it is just now, for many passengers from Marseilles are still below, waiting for baths and arranging their crowded cabins.

I have to write letters and sketch on a dining-saloon table amongst waiters clearing dishes. There are four small tables on deck in what I think is called the music room, and they are fully occupied with ladies writing and bridge players, and round them every seat in the room is occupied. It is a crowd of people of the most gentle manners and breeding, or it would be horrible beyond words.

28th.—I suppose there were not more than fifty men in the smoking-room late last night when it became sufficiently empty to allow me to see separate faces. There were civilians, judges, and one or two men of business, but the majority were soldiers of middle age. I confess I am much impressed by the general type and the expression of quiet strength and capability of these men of the Indian Services. They have finely modelled heads on powerful figures, better, I think, than any type of the ancients. Their manners are cheery and kindly, but always in repose the lines show strongly across the brow; faces and lines seem to me to spell D-U-T-Y emphatically. For a nouveau it is difficult to follow their talk, it changes so quickly from the man to his horse, to his seat and powers as cavalry leader or the like, perhaps to his family, his marriage, or his death, and whenever the family interest comes in, there is a note of genuine kindness as if brothers were telling or asking about other brothers and their wives and belongings. They speak rather quickly and cheerily, and then in repose the lines come again, not that they look over-worn; on the contrary they look fit, tremendously and are very abstemious. One speaks near me—"You knew so and so? Good horseman—wasn't he? Curious seat—do you remember the way he rode with his toes out?" "Yes, yes—ha, ha!—it was funny! He led a column with me at Abu Lassin. Very sad his death, poor fellow—never got over the last war—heart always suffered—nice wife." "Yes, yes—gave him pretty bad time though—oughtn't to have married. Where is his boy—Sandhurst? No, he's left—he's coming out next month in a troop ship, I hear." These are the older soldiers, and there are also many young officers, and two judges of the High Courts, one with nimble tongue and expression, the other the reverse. And there are business men with concentrated and perhaps rather narrower expressions than the others—Irish, Scots, and English. As they are all in the same black and white kit in the evening it is easier then to compare the various faces; in the daytime the variety of costume, flannels, and coloured ties and tweeds prevent one doing it so easily; I'd like to make a sketch of each, and superimpose these, and get the average, the type of the thousands who follow this road year after year.

… As usual, these Bayards, in dressing gowns of various cuts and colours, stood outside the bathrooms this morning and waited their turn, and if the atmosphere was not murky with swear words, it was not to the P. & O.'s credit. To most men tub time is the jolliest in the day; here it is one of evil temper, for after you have waited say twenty minutes in a passage for your chance, you get into a little wet steamy place over the engines, with possibly no port and poorly ventilated, and have your tub in a hurry for you know other fellows are waiting outside, and instead of gaily carolling your morning song you feel angry and cuss cusses, not loud, but profound as Tuscarora Deep. "Oh! Mummie, do come and see all the men waiting for their baths," said a little angel this morning, as she pointed at the solemn row of bare-footed men holding on to their towels and sponge-bags and tempers—we actually grinned. Like some others I give up the attempt to get a morning tub, and trust to sneak one in during the day; better to have no bath than to start the day cross—"better to smash your damned clubs than to lose your damned temper," as the golfer in a bunker was overheard muttering as he broke each club across his knee. The ladies, some hundreds, have I think five baths between them, and they wait for these a great part of the day. If you pass their waiting-room you get a glimpse of wonderful morning toilettes of every tint, muslins, laces, a black boy with red turbash bustling about to get the bath ready makes rather a good note of colour.

… Notwithstanding all the above grievance we hadn't such a bad day yesterday; it was calm and not too cold, with a soft pigeon grey sea and sky. … Put in a long day's painting in the corner of the after-well, and overhauling sketches done so far on the road—they are mounting up now, and I feel fortunate in having my apology for existence in such a handy shape as a paint box.

But how dull this log-writing becomes! How on earth can I find an incident to pad up this journal; what is there to write about in a route so monotonously first class! Here is absolutely the most risque exciting story I have heard for days; I must say the lady who told it has such an infectious laugh, that at the time I really thought it was very amusing.

You know the cabins on the P. & O. steamers are all exactly like each other, except the number above each door. So once upon a time she related, a certain lady tripped along to her cabin as she thought, to hurry up her husband for dinner and found him pulling on a shirt; she plumped into a seat, saying, "John, John, you are always too late for dinner, and there's no use trying to struggle into your shirt with the studs fastened?" Whereon the neck stud flew and revealed an astonished face—and it was not "John's." After lunch I told this to my barrister acquaintance; he smiled gently and said he had always thought it such an amusing story.

How I wish I was back at sea again on a whaler, with a swinging hammock, a tow net, and microscope, and opportunities any day to study the fairy beauties in drops of sea water, and with human interest too, so much more varied than on this P. & O. Hotel; there, would be all kinds of men, jolly, devil-may-care fellows, and even disreputable characters, mixed with canny, pawky, canting Scotties, and talk of all the corners of the world; ranting rollicking Balzacian yarns, rich in language, in poetry, and tenderness; any minute in the day amongst such people you might strike a yarn that would bear publication; the picturesque interest of life does not seem to be on the high plains, or low levels, but as it were between wind and water, where plain meets mountain, the poor the rich, between happiness and sorrow, and light and shade; and the fun of painting between one colour and the next. It is all very respectably drab here, and we talk of intellectual and proper things. For an hour to-day—no, two hours I am sure—I laboured at Indian sociology and history and Vedas and things, with the barrister, and I was tired! The barrister knows many books on these subjects, and recommends me to read Sir W. W. Hunter's "History of India" in its abridged form of only 700 pages; I suppose I must!—told my cousin I'd been trying to talk Indian sociology and he shouted: said he knew a man who had lived in India and studied the native life for twenty-eight years, and confessed he knew as little about it at the end as at the beginning; but R. admitted that whenever he had a knotty question of native affairs to settle he always went to this man, and the decision was invariably right. R. has qualified admiration for the Indians honesty. Once, he said, he had to leave his house at a moment's notice, to take home a sick relation, and left all standing, and on coming back months after found every single stick of furniture just as he left it, and not a single article stolen, except one door-mat; his night watchman had taken it with him to another situation, leaving a humble message to the effect that he had got so accustomed to it that he couldn't sleep without it! Their honesty must run in grooves for R. gave a heavy overcoat to one of his men in a cold station, and when he and his servants went to a very hot station, he noticed this man still wearing the thick coat and sweating like anything, so he asked him why he did so, and the man replied that he dared not put it off for a minute or it would be stolen.