Part 32 (1/2)
It seemed a long and expensive journey to take for so short a stay; but doubtless he had business reasons, and the matter dropped from my mind.
When we returned, three or four weeks later, he was no longer in Rangoon apparently, and I did not expect to come upon his tracks again.
The Burmese lady explained the Grone mystery with some bitterness, and no wonder!
Having come out free, upon the understanding with her, already mentioned, she had taken a room for him at the hotel, and had busied herself in buying blankets and a carpet and other small luxuries, to break the Mandalay monastery to him as gently as possible.
When three days pa.s.sed and he made no sign of moving on, she quietly intimated that it might be as well to begin the new life without delay, and said she had written to her brother, himself a priest in the monastery, to meet Dr Grone at Mandalay and present him to the authorities at the monastery.
This must probably have been about the time that I asked him innocently how long he would be staying in Rangoon.
His plan had doubtless been to go to Mandalay in a dilettante sort of fas.h.i.+on, and to live in the monastery for a time, with the hope of getting access to some valuable and little known MSS.; but it did not suit his plans at all to be met at once by the brother of his benefactress, and kept under the eye of this priest, who knew exactly the circ.u.mstances under which he had been enabled to take the long journey from Ma.r.s.eilles.
Being evidently a prudent man, he determined to seize the first opportunity for retreat from an impossible situation. How he raised enough money for the return voyage is not known. My Burmese acquaintance thought he must have applied to one of the Consulates, and that his university position would doubtless ensure his raising a loan.
Anyway, he s.h.i.+pped himself surrept.i.tiously once more on board the _Devons.h.i.+re_, and arranged that the letter, containing the usual excuse of a ”sudden telegram from Ma.r.s.eilles announcing the unexpected death of a near relation,” should not be handed to his benefactress until the anchor was safely weighed.
It was not a pleasant story, and treachery is no less perfidious for having an intellectual motive. I felt glad that Dr Grone was not a fellow-countryman.
Having disburdened herself on this one point of righteous indignation, our little Burmese lady became as bright and cheery as a child, wearing her collection of pretty native dresses, which could all have been packed easily into a fair-sized doll's trunk, with singular grace and charm. When the tender arrived to disembark us in Calcutta, her husband came with it, and was speedily introduced.
We had tea with them a few days later in their handsome Calcutta flat, and this gave me the opportunity for a long and interesting talk with the husband, who proved to be a most intelligent and open-minded man.
He spoke of Fielding Hall's delightful book with appreciation tinged by kindly amus.e.m.e.nt.
”He has been many years in the country, but he still judges us as a foreigner.”
When I suggested that the judgment was at least very flattering to the Burmese, this Burmese gentleman laughed, and said:
”Flattering? Yes--but not always quite true. One must see from _inside_, not from outside, to be quite true in one's judgments; and no foreigner can see from outside. It is a question of race and heredity, not of having spent twenty or thirty years, or even a lifetime, in a foreign land.”
I suggested that those who saw from _inside_ only, might also lack some essential factor in forming an accurate judgment.
He agreed heartily to this, adding: ”Yes, indeed. The ideal critic must have lived neither too near nor too far--mentally as well as physically; also he must have intuition. Now Mr Fielding Hall is an artist as well as a poet, but in judging my country he lets his intuition run riot sometimes, as well as his imagination.”
After reporting this conversation, it is unnecessary to add that my Burmese friend spoke English rather better than I did myself.
We then talked about the position of woman in Burmah, and how much this had been extolled and held up as a object lesson to the rest of the world.
If the position of woman is the true test of a nation's civilisation, as has been so often affirmed, then certainly Burmah must be in the van of the nations! Yet this is scarcely borne out by facts.
I put this point as politely as I could, and my mind was at once set at ease by the purely impersonal way in which he met my remark.
”Of course, we are not in the van of the nations, and yet it is quite true that our women have an exceptional position--quite a good enough one for an election cry for the Woman's Suffrage! Ah, yes! I have been in England,” he added, with a merry twinkle in his little black eyes.
”But you must realise that the unique position of woman with us is somewhat accidental. It is not the result of philosophical or moral conviction on the part of our men; it has been the natural outcome of circ.u.mstances, and a question of expediency rather than of ethics. So it was not really a 'test paper' for us at all! Our frequent wars in the past have taken the men out of their homes, and the women, at such times, were left alone to cope with not only the domestic, but the agricultural problems. All business of this kind pa.s.sed through their hands, and in time they developed the qualities of industry, good judgment and power of taking responsibility, necessary for success in such a life. Then when the husbands came back and found everything going on so well and without trouble to themselves, they were only too glad to fall in with the existing state of things. We Burmese are lazy fellows after all. We can rise to a big call, but if our women will look after our business for us, we are quite content to smoke our pipes in peace and look on--and, of course, the one who makes the wheels go round is the one who really drives the coach. Believe me, there is more of expediency than n.o.bility in the att.i.tude of our men towards our women, and more of laziness than either, perhaps! But Fielding Hall would call this blasphemy, I am afraid!”
And so, with a joking word, our interesting talk came to an end, leaving me with a sincere hope that I might some day meet again both the intelligent husband and the charming wife.
I found the air at Simla quite marvellous for psychic possibilities, and this was certainly a great surprise to me; nor was it only a question of alt.i.tude and a dry atmosphere. Missouri and the Dhera Doon are celebrated for the purity of air and climate generally, but the influences there were quite different.