Glimpses of Bengal | Page 2

While I was under age they trustfully gave me
credit; it is sad to disappoint them now that I am on the verge of thirty.
But what am I to do? Words of wisdom will not come! I am utterly
incompetent to provide things that may profit the multitude. Beyond a
snatch of song, some tittle-tattle, a little merry fooling, I have been
unable to advance. And as the result, those who held high hopes will
turn their wrath on me; but did any one ever beg them to nurse these
expectations?
Such are the thoughts which assail me since one fine Bysakh morning I
awoke amidst fresh breeze and light, new leaf and flower, to find that I
had stepped into my twenty-seventh year.

SHELIDAH, 1888.
Our house-boat is moored to a sandbank on the farther side of the river.

A vast expanse of sand stretches away out of sight on every side, with
here and there a streak, as of water, running across, though sometimes
what gleams like water is only sand.
Not a village, not a human being, not a tree, not a blade of grass--the
only breaks in the monotonous whiteness are gaping cracks which in
places show the layer of moist, black clay underneath.
Looking towards the East, there is endless blue above, endless white
beneath. Sky empty, earth empty too--the emptiness below hard and
barren, that overhead arched and ethereal--one could hardly find
elsewhere such a picture of stark desolation.
But on turning to the West, there is water, the currentless bend of the
river, fringed with its high bank, up to which spread the village groves
with cottages peeping through--all like an enchanting dream in the
evening light. I say "the evening light," because in the evening we
wander out, and so that aspect is impressed on my mind.

SHAZADPUR, 1890.
The magistrate was sitting in the verandah of his tent dispensing justice
to the crowd awaiting their turns under the shade of a tree. They set my
palanquin down right under his nose, and the young Englishman
received me courteously. He had very light hair, with darker patches
here and there, and a moustache just beginning to show. One might
have taken him for a white-haired old man but for his extremely
youthful face. I asked him over to dinner, but he said he was due
elsewhere to arrange for a pig-sticking party.
As I returned home, great black clouds came up and there was a terrific
storm with torrents of rain. I could not touch a book, it was impossible
to write, so in the I-know-not-what mood I wandered about from room
to room. It had become quite dark, the thunder was continually pealing,
the lightning gleaming flash after flash, and every now and then sudden
gusts of wind would get hold of the big lichi tree by the neck and give

its shaggy top a thorough shaking. The hollow in front of the house
soon filled with water, and as I paced about, it suddenly struck me that
I ought to offer the shelter of the house to the magistrate.
I sent off an invitation; then after investigation I found the only spare
room encumbered with a platform of planks hanging from the beams,
piled with dirty old quilts and bolsters. Servants' belongings, an
excessively grimy mat, hubble-bubble pipes, tobacco, tinder, and two
wooden chests littered the floor, besides sundry packing-cases full of
useless odds and ends, such as a rusty kettle lid, a bottomless iron stove,
a discoloured old nickel teapot, a soup-plate full of treacle blackened
with dust. In a corner was a tub for washing dishes, and from nails in
the wall hung moist dish-clouts and the cook's livery and skull-cap. The
only piece of furniture was a rickety dressing-table with water stains,
oil stains, milk stains, black, brown, and white stains, and all kinds of
mixed stains. The mirror, detached from it, rested against another wall,
and the drawers were receptacles for a miscellaneous assortment of
articles from soiled napkins down to bottle wires and dust.
For a moment I was overwhelmed with dismay; then it was a case
of--send for the manager, send for the storekeeper, call up all the
servants, get hold of extra men, fetch water, put up ladders, unfasten
ropes, pull down planks, take away bedding, pick up broken glass bit
by bit, wrench nails from the wall one by one.--The chandelier falls and
its pieces strew the floor; pick them up again piece by piece.--I myself
whisk the dirty mat off the floor and out of the window, dislodging a
horde of cockroaches, messmates, who dine off my bread, my treacle,
and the polish on my shoes.
The magistrate's reply is brought back; his tent is in an awful state and