Part 12 (1/2)
From daybreak, after _chota hazri_, the brother-of-the-brush would paint till eleven, then have breakfast proper, a read and loaf--possibly a little closing of the eyes to sleep would be more profitable--and paint again in the afternoon and evening. And if he didn't use all his stock of paints, water-colour, and oils before he left I'd be surprised. A great attraction would be the absence of distractions such as you'd have in larger centres, and very important, is the pleasant air here.
Arsikerry, a little further north the line, is better in this last respect, but I was not through the bazaar there, merely saw the place was fairly good for snipe, as previously remarked in these notes.
We put in here--Channapatna--yesterday afternoon. The sun was glowing on the rain-trees that shelter the station, and we selected a spot shaded by their foliage on a siding midst ”beechen green and shadows numberless.” In a minute the servants were out on the sand track blowing up the fire for tea, which R. had well-earned, as he'd been trollying since daybreak looking at bridges, viaducts, station-buildings, and the line, generally and practically, down to the stationmasters' gardens.
Tiring work both for eyes and mind, for whilst trollying you are quite unsheltered, so the heat in the cuttings, and the glare from the quartz and lines, has to be felt and seen to be believed, and of course the track is the thing that has to be constantly regarded, so blue spectacles are absolutely necessary, but only a partial protection to the eyesight. No wonder R. takes such care to plant trees round stations and to encourage the stationmasters to grow flowers! Apropos, there were once prizes given to stationmasters with the best gardens.
Water being a consideration, the prize was allotted to the best garden in _inverse ratio_ to its distance from a water supply. The stationmaster who got first prize was five miles from a supply, and his exhibit was one, almost dead flower, in a pot of dried earth; so that ”system” was shelved.
We walked round the village after tea and came to the above conclusions, that may possibly be useful to some brother artist. About the pa.s.sage out, just one word more; I met a colonel here who had tried third-cla.s.s home on a Ma.s.sagerie boat, and said it wasn't half bad! He was fortunate in finding an uncrowded cabin.
Outside the little town were charming country scenes, and the village streets, busy on either side with all sorts of trades, were positively fascinating. In Bombay you have all the trades of one kind together, the bra.s.s-workers in one street, and another trade occupies the whole of the next street, and the houses are tall. Here are all sorts of trades side by side, and two-storied and one-storied houses, with the palms leaning over them. We bought for a penny or two an armful of curious grey-black pottery with a silver sheen on its coa.r.s.e surface. The designs were cla.s.sic and familiar; the cruisie, for instance, I saw in use the other day in Kintyre, s.h.i.+ning on a string of fresh herring, and you see it in museums amongst Greek and a.s.syrian remains. At one booth were people engaged making garlands of flowers, petals of roses, and marigolds sewn together, and heavy with added perfume; at the next were a hundred and one kinds of grain in tiny bowls, and at a third vegetables, beans, and fruit.
As we come back to our carriages we pa.s.s a rest house or temple, I don't know which, perhaps both; steps lead up to it, and it is made of square hewn-stone, all dull-white against an orange sky. It forms as it were a triptych. As we pa.s.s we look into its shadowy porch; in the middle panel are two oxen, one black the other white, lying down, and a man standing beyond them, just distinguishable by a little fire-light that comes from the left panel. In it, there is a man sitting with his arms over his knees fanning a little fire. In the right panel another native sits on his heels cooking a meal; a bamboo slopes across the cell behind him, and supports a poor ragged cloth, a purda, I suppose, and behind, are just discernible his wife and child. These wayfarers make me at once think of a new and original treatment for a holy family, but hold! These pa.s.sages of light and colour, form fading into nothingness, are they not worth understanding alone, are they not more pure art without being nailed to some tale from the past?
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Our table looked very pretty in the evening, with our lamp lighting up my companions' faces, and the branches of the trees above us, with warm brown against the night blue sky.
... Now we are off again to Bangalore, loath to leave our leafy siding and the gentle faces at Channapatna, but R. has to be about business in the south again, so we go back planning our next move, and we think we will decide on Madras! We have been a long way and a long time from the sea, and would like to get a glimpse of it again; the thought of it is refres.h.i.+ng, even though it is but a tepid eastern sea which we will have to cross if we decide on going to Burmah or the Straits.
BANGALORE, 20th December.--Back to ”Locksley Hall” and big rooms, chairs, verandahs, everything feeling s.p.a.cious and ample after our quarters in the train. The three days on the line feels like weeks, so much and so constantly have we been looking at interesting figures and scenes.
To-night, when cheroots were going, we talked of railway matters, big things and little things. A little thing was a dispute amongst natives on the line, settled satisfactorily the other day. Persons involved; gatekeepers, police, native carters and witnesses galore. The gatekeeper, long resident in a hut of railway sleepers roofed with red soil, surrounded by aloes, heated by the sun, and watered by nothing.
Behold his portrait in day dress; at night he envelopes his n.o.ble form in ample, even voluminous draperies.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
One night, he said, two carters lifted his level-crossing gates and took them away. Mysore State police investigate.--Report to R.; no witnesses could be got to bear out gatekeeper's statement, and suggest gatekeeper had been demanding toll, _i.e._ blackmail, to put into his own pocket!
_R_. asks _G.-K._!--”Why didn't you stop them taking the gates?” _G.-K._ replies, ”We did!”
_R._--”Who was 'we'?”
_G.-K._--”Me and my friends and my cousins and my aunts; certainly we stopped them--and we drubbed them too, and took them to the police station!”
British justice makes further inquiry--finds possibly sixty rupees were expended somewhere, to produce the ”No witnesses.” Action taken--gatekeeper removed to more important trust--honesty established.
From strength of girders, cement _v_. lime, foundations of piers and curves of lines, we come to ghosts at night! These too, the engineer has to consider in his day's work. Only yesterday a ghost was reported on the line! And R. told me he came down the line in a trolley in the grey of morning lately, he vouched for this, and found on the line a patroller's lamp and no one holding it, then a turban, then top cloth, then a waist cloth, and finally the owner at station, collapsed, palpitating. R. asked him what he had seen. ”It was a ghost” came after him. ”What was it like,” said R.; ”had it arms?” ”No;” ”Legs?” ”No.”
”How did it get along?” He couldn't tell. It was _a shape_ came after him. So these ghosts are positive facts here to be dealt with by superintendents and workman between them.
_R._--Spoke as follows:--
”Now, my man, what I have to tell you about ghosts is this--you must remember, it is very important. These ghosts you see here that frighten you and your friends, as they have frightened you this morning, cannot so much as touch you, or even be seen by you at all _if you walk between the railway lines_! The _iron_ on each side of you prevents their having the least influence over you; I will not say this about tigers or bears, but ghosts--on the word of the Sahib, they cannot touch you between the rails!” So they go away and believe in the Sahib's magic, just as they believe his magic turns out the cholera devil when he pulls their tiles down and disinfects their houses. Also they stick between the lines and consequently to their patrol work, and don't go smoking pipes by little cosy fires beside the aloes. I think R.'s prescription was fairly shrewd. Many men would merely have laughed at the men's fears, and would neither have shaken their beliefs nor given them something new to think of. That was the way the great Columba scored off the Druids and Picts.
”I don't know about your astronomy or your fine music, or tales of ancestors and heroes, but I'm telling you, old Baal himself, with all his thunder and lightning, will not be so much as touching the least hair on your head if you were just to hold up this trifle of two sticks of wood. And if you do not believe me you will be burning for ever, and for evermore!”
Sat.u.r.day, 23rd.--Wrote to a friend in Madras to engage rooms and walked to the European Stores; they are excellent, you can get pretty nearly everything--I even found sketch books to my taste. The roads are the things to be remembered, their breadth and splendid trees are delightful, but their length is terrible. Not again will I take a long walk in cantonments! ”The 'ard 'igh road” in the west is bad enough, but when it's glaring sun on this red, hard soil, however bright and light the air, you soon get fatigued on foot.