Olivia in India | Page 9

she is used to having women look at her like that, and doesn't mind. Does she really like silly boys so much and other women so little, I wonder! There is generally something rather nasty about a woman who declares she can't get on with other women and whom other women don't like. Men have an absurd notion that we can't admire another woman or admit her good points. It isn't so. We admire a pretty woman just as much as you do. The only difference is you men think that if a woman has a lovely face it follows, as the night the day, that she must have a lovely disposition. We know better that's all.
The poor Candle! I feel so mean and guilty writing about her under her very eyes, so to speak. She looked at me just now quite kindly. I have a good mind to tear this up, but after all what does it matter? My silly little observations won't make any impression on your masculine mind. Only don't say "Spiteful little cat," because I don't mean to be, really.
This is much the longest letter I ever wrote. You will have to read a page at a time and then take a long breath and try again.
Mr. Brand has just come up to ask us why a sculptor dies a horrible death? Do you know?
_S.S. Scotia, Nov. 6_.
No one unendowed with the temper of an angel and the patience of a Job should attempt the voyage to India. Mrs. Albert Murray has neither of these qualifications any more than I have, and for two days she hasn't deigned to address a remark to G. or me, all because of a lost pair of stockings; a loss which we treated with unseemly levity. However, the chill haughtiness of our cabin companion is something of a relief in this terrible heat. For it is hot. I am writing in the cabin, and in spite of the fact that there are two electric fans buzzing on either side of me, I am hotter than I can say, and deplorably ill-tempered. Four times this morning, trying to keep out of Mrs. Albert Murray's way, I have fallen over that wretched hat-box, still here despite our hints about the baggage-room, and now in revenge I am sitting on it, though what the owner would say, if she came in suddenly and found to what base uses I had put her treasure, I dare not let myself think. G. has a bad headache, and it is dull for her to be alone, so that is the reason why I am in the cabin at all. To be honest, it is most unpleasant on deck, rainy with a damp, hot wind blowing, and the music-room is crowded and stuffy beyond words, or I might not be unselfish enough to remain with G. I did go up, and a fat person, whose nurse was ill, gave me her baby to hold, a poor white-faced, fretful baby, who pulled down all my hair, and I have had the unpleasant task of doing it up again. If you have ever stood in a very hot greenhouse with the door shut, and wrestled with something above your head, you will know what I felt.
We passed Aden yesterday and stopped for a few hours to coal. That was the limit. The sun beating down on the deck, the absence of the slightest breeze, coal-dust sifting into everything--ouf! Aden's barren rocks reminded me rather of the Skye Coolin. I wonder if they are climbable. I haven't troubled you much, have I, with accounts of the entertainments on board? but I think I must tell you about a whistling competition we had the other day. You must know that we had each a partner, and the women sat at one end of the deck and the men stood at the other and were told the tune they had to whistle, when they rushed to us and each whistled his tune to his partner, who had to write the name on a piece of paper and hand it back, and the man who got back to the umpire first won--at least his partner did. Do you understand? Well, as you know, I haven't much ear for music, and I hoped I would get an easy tune; but when my partner, a long, thin, earnest man, with a stutter, burst on me and whistled wildly in my face, I had the hopeless feeling that I had never heard the tune before. In his earnestness he came nearer and nearer, his contortions every moment becoming more extraordinary, his whistling more piercing; and I, by this time convulsed by awful, helpless laughter, could only shrink farther back in my seat and gasp feebly, "Please