MRS. BROWNE was not permitted to know any of her immediate neighbours, which she thought unfortunate. It was a pity in a way, and yet not a great pity, for if I know anything about Helen Browne she would not have been able to assimilate her neighbours comfortably. Unless they live with the great and good in Chowringhee, it is often difficult for Calcutta people to do this. It is said that the missionaries manage it, but about this no one is certain, for between Calcutta people and the missionaries there is a great gulf fixed. Calcutta interprets the missionary position with strict logic. It was not Calcutta—Calcutta proper—that the missionaries came out, second class, to establish intimate spiritual relations with, but the heathen. Calcutta is careful, therefore, not to interfere in any way with this very laudable arrangement; the good work must not be retarded by any worldly distraction. Calcutta contributes to it, in her own peculiar way, by allowing the missionaries the fullest possible opportunity for becoming acquainted with the heathen. If one does not readily suspect the self-denial in this, it is because one is predisposed against society—it is perhaps because one has been snubbed.

I cannot say with accuracy, therefore, whether a missionary in Mrs. Browne’s place would have known Radabullub Mitterjee, Bahadur, who lived next door to the west; doubtless she would have made attempts, at least, to introduce herself to the ladies who divided the matrimonial dignities of his establishment; but it did not occur to Helen that there was any opening for such advances upon her part. Even the slits of windows which commanded the Browne compound were generally shut and always iron-barred; no dangerous communication from an unveiled memsahib who ate with her husband could get in there. It was a little narrow, silent, yellow house, too tall for its width, much overgrown with heavy-hanging trees, and it stood a long way back from the road, looking out on a strip of compound, through a glass door, purple in places and green in places, and altogether brilliant to behold. The strip of compound was a marvel of rectangular crookedness. It was a good deal taken up with a tank, a long narrow tank covered with a generous green slime, dug rather sidewise. The rest of the place was divided into small sharp-angled-beds with rows of stones. They were very much at odds with each other, and nothing grew in them but a few ragged rose-bushes, and flagrant things that came of their own accord. Almost every evening R. Mitterjee, Bahadur, went out to drive. The Brownes used to meet him in the broad Red Road that cleaves the Maidan, where the landaus, and victorias, and tum-tums of Calcutta amuse themselves by passing and repassing, and bowing to each other, in the pleasant part of the day, before the quick darkness comes and sends them all home to dinner. Nobody bowed to Radabullub, and he bowed to nobody, though assuredly no sahib drove in so resplendent a gharry as his. It was built on the most imposing lines, with ornamentation of brass, and a beautiful bunch of flowers painted on either door-panel. And it was pulled by two of the most impetuous prancing steeds in silver mounted harness, that the soul of a Bahadur could desire. The silver mountings were very rusty, and the prancing steeds lamentably weak in their fore legs, but the soul of a Bahadur is not perturbed by little things like that. Radabullub leaned back behind them superciliously, folding his arms over his tight silk coat of pink brocade, or twisting his moustache. With his embroidered yellow turban at a certain angle, this Bahadur was a killing fellow—very much a man of the world indeed, but not enough to know a good horse when he saw it, or to be able to drive it if he did, or to understand what earthly difference it made to a sahib how his servants were dressed. His own sat behind in a cluster—he had more of them than any sahib—in turbans of the colours they most fancied, and alike only in the respect that they were all dirty and down at heels, if the expression, in a shoeless case, is properly applied. But when it was necessary to prepare the way none shouted louder or ran faster than the servants of Radabullub Mitterjee, who probably thought that there ought to be a sensible difference between the apparel of a syce and pink brocade, and approved it. Radabullub did not always drive in the Red Road alone. Sometimes the cushion beside him was occupied by a very small and high-shouldered edition of himself, encased in blue satin with gold edgings. This Bahadur in embryo folded his arms like his father and looked at the Red Road with equal superciliousness; indeed, I fancy he took much the same views of life generally. They are early inherited in Bengal.

But the ladies, the Mesdames Mitterjee, when they issued forth from the little silent yellow house, which they did but seldom, went most securely in charge and under cover, and Mrs. Browne might look in vain for any glimpse of their fascinations behind the purple curtains of their palanquins, as they passed her gate.

I don’t know the name of the people on the other side, and neither does Mrs. Browne. They seemed to live a good deal in the veranda in an untidy way. Helen could always command a man asleep there in pyjamas from her drawing-room window, up to eleven o’clock in the morning. They paid no more attention to their compound than Radabullub did, but they had a leggy bay colt tied up there upon which the family lavished the tenderest affection. When the Brownes drove home in the early darkness from tennis, they could usually see a casual meal going on through an open window at which the discourse was very cheerful and general, the men in shirt-sleeves, the ladies posed negligently with their arms upon the table. There was a baby, a cracked piano, and a violin in the house, but the baby had a good constitution and went to bed at eight o’clock, and it did not seem to the Brownes, as they listened to the songs their neighbours sang after dinner, that the piano was very much out of tune. They were old old songs that everybody knew, sung with great spirit and energy, chiefly in chorus, and Mrs. Browne’s slipper kept time to them with great enjoyment. A boisterous old song in Calcutta was a pleasant anomaly and struck through the mango trees like a voice from home. The hearts of the Brownes warmed towards their neighbours as they smote the languid air with “Do ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?” and as it came again and again, Mr. and Mrs. Browne smiled at each other and joined softly in the chorus, being comforted thereby. It was rather an additional attraction that these harmonies grew a little beery later in the evening. Young Browne could drink beer in Calcutta only under pain of his own later displeasure—a bitter thing for an Englishman.

They were jockeys, these neighbours of the Brownes’—from Australia very likely, with the last batch of Waler horses. They belonged to the class Calcutta knows collectively, as a sub-social element, that nevertheless has its indeterminate value, being white, or nearly so, as a rule. The aristocracy of the class is probably represented by the commissariat sergeants and the local police, and I have no doubt it observes its rules of precedence, though it is unlikely that Mrs. Browne’s neighbours had much regard for them. On certain days of the year Calcutta makes brief acquaintance with “Light Blue and Canary,” or “Green Pink Sleeves,” but his wife and baby go on, one might say, without official sanction of any sort; they are permitted. So it doesn’t matter to anybody what Light Blue and Canary’s Christian name is—his cap and sleeves are enough. Occasionally the reporters are obliged to find it out when Light Blue and Canary breaks his wretched neck and half ruins a beautiful horse, and the public have to be informed of it. Then his friends dress Light Blue and Canary in mufti and bury him early next morning in Circular Road Cemetery, and there is the most annoying confusion when both he and his horse have to be scratched for the afternoon’s races. As to the wife and baby under these circumstances, they still go on, it is supposed.

I regret to say that the Brownes were bounded on the north by a bustee. It is not necessary to explain that a bustee is an unsavoury place, the word has a taste and a smell of its own. One is always aware of the vicinity of a bustee, chiefly because of the bovine nature of the fuel it consumes. It is impossible to put it less vulgarly than that. All over Calcutta, in the cold weather, there hangs at set of sun a blue cloud of smoke with an acrid smell. It offends the nostrils of the very Viceroy, yet it is not in the power of any municipal Commissioner to put out the fires that send it up. It curls through a thousand roofs, the tiled roofs of the country, representing much humble comfort and many humble dinners, and every morning on the Maidan you may see ugly old women stooping to collect the material for it. Bustees, moreover, are never drained. They and their inhabitants fester comfortably through the long blue and green Indian days unconscious that their proximity does not enhance rents.

Mrs. Browne found her bustee neighbours more approachable. Her dressing-room window overlooked the place and gave her a point of speculation which she enjoyed quite shamelessly. A young papoia tree flourished in a corner of the roof she looked down upon, and various forms of vegetables fringed it. It was the daily promenade of the family cock, and occasionally a black goat took the air there. The cock flew up, but the goat always made use of the family staircase. The family lived mostly in the yard—three old women and five babies. The old women wore various kinds of rags, the babies were uniformly dressed in a string. The biggest baby carried the littlest about, astride her hip, and they all played together in one corner, where they made marvels in mud, just as children who wear clothes do. The old women scolded them severally and collectively, especially when they came and teased for breakfast with pathetic hands upon their little round stomachs. The oldest of the old women cooked the breakfast, and she would not have it hurried. She cooked it in a single pot that stood on a mud fireplace in the middle of the yard, squatting before it, feeding the flames with one hand and stirring the mess with the other. Helen could see what she put in it—rice, and more rice, and yellow dhol, and last of all pieces of fish. As she cooked the woman looked up at Helen now and then and smiled, amused that she should be interested in so poor an occupation—a memsahib! And the babies, when they discovered her, stood open-mouthed and gazed, forgetting the pot. In the house they divided it upon plantain leaves, a popular dinner service in Bengal; and when the babies issued forth again, in file, their appearance was quite aldermanic. The old women perhaps reposed, the sun grew hot on the window-ledge, and Helen thought of other things to do. In the evening, though, when the hibiscus bushes threw long shadows across the garden path, and Helen waited for her lord by the gate as a bride will, the babies came round through devious lanes to assert themselves as the same babies of the morning and eligible for pice. Helen felt an elementary joy in bestowing it, and the babies received it solemnly, as entirely their due, with little salaams for form’s sake. There was tremendous interest on both sides, but beyond the statement that the babies lived in the little house, and the memsahib in the big one, conversation was difficult, and Helen thought with concern of the vocabulary that would be necessary in order to teach them about man’s chief end. They came every day to watch the going forth of the Brownes in the tum-tum, and made a silent, open eyed, admiring little group beside the gate, at which the pony usually shied. Then young Browne would crack his whip in the air very fiercely indeed, and address them in language that sounded severe, though it had no perceptible effect. Even the babies in Bengal accept the sahib as a blustering, impolite person of whom nobody need be afraid.

And then opposite, across the weedy road and the stagnant ditch, a riotous Rajah resided, in a wonderful castellated place with four or five abandoned acres around it. The Rajah was very splendid and important. He had a slouching guard at his gate with a gun, who probably bullied the dhoby; and when he went abroad in the evenings, four badly uniformed horsemen, and no less, pranced uncertainly behind his carriage. The Rajah gave entertainments to European gentlemen of circumstance, whereat I do not think any single variety of food or drink procurable in Calcutta was omitted; but ladies did not participate, except, of course, those who contributed to the entertainment—the ladies of the nautch, or those of a stray theatrical company whose performances the Rajah fancied. In return the Rajah was invited to evening parties at Government House, where he appeared in a turban and diamonds, supremely oiled and scented, stood about in corners with his hands behind his back, and never for an instant dreamed in his disdainful Hindu soul of eating at the Viceroy’s supper-table. At the end of the cold weather he went back to his own state, where he sat on the floor and hatched treason against the British with both majesty and comfort. In the evening his domain was dotted with the cooking-fires of his people, who made a sort of tented field of it. The wind blew the smoke across the Brownes’ compound, causing young Browne to use language uncomplimentary to Rajahs, and that was all they ever had to do with this one.

I mention the local isolation of these young people because it is typical of Calcutta, where nobody by any chance ever leans over anybody else’s garden gate. Doubtless this has its advantages—they are probably official—but Helen, not being official, found it cramping.

There was always the garden, though; she had that much liberty. The garden had begun with the Brownes, it was a contemporary success. There had been desolation, but you have heard how they engaged a mallie. Desolation fled before the mallie by daily degrees, though he was seldom seen in pursuit of it. When gardeners work in Christendom, this one sought repose and the balmy hubble-bubble, or bathed and oiled and ate in his little mud house under the pipal tree. It was very early in the morning, at crow-caw one might say in poetic reference to the dawn in India, that the mallie scratched and scraped along the garden beds with his wonderful little trowel, and spoke to the flowers so that they sprang up to answer him. When the shadow of the house fell on the hibiscus bushes he came out again, and slaked the hot beds with water from the tank in many buckets. Here and there he stooped over them like a glistening brown toad-stool, but Helen never knew what he did or his reason for doing it—that was hid with the mallie-lok.

As to the garden, there was not a tropical seed in it, they were all English flowers, which made the mallie’s excellent understanding with them more remarkable, for they spoke a different language. It was not much of a garden, there was absolutely no order or arrangement—it would have worried me—but the Brownes planted a vast amount of interest and affection and expectation in it; and it all grew. There were such nasturtiums as Helen longed to show her mother, there were phloxes white and purple, pansies too, and pinks, and not a quiet corner but was fragrant with mignonette. A row of sunflowers tilted tall against the side of the house, and they actually had corn-bottles, and balsams and daisies. Violets too—violets in exile, violets in pots, with the peculiar property that violets sometimes have in India, of bringing tears to the eyes if one bends over them.

The Brownes began by counting them—the first pansy-bud was an event, and I have heard references between them to “the day the sunflower came out.” They chronicled daily at breakfast: “Two nasturtiums and a pink,” “two pinks, three nasturtiums, and the monthly rose,” with great gratulation, while I am convinced neither of them looked twice at the fine bunch I sent round occasionally from my garden while their garden was growing. It grew so fast, their garden, that presently, if you met them in society, they could talk of nothing else. It was new to them, this friendly solace of the flowers of home. One would have thought it specially invented for their honeymoon, whereas the rest of us demanded it every cold weather, as regularly as the punkah on the fifteenth of March. Mrs. Browne used to go about saying what a wonderful amount of comfort one could get out of a verbena, if it were only the right colour, without the slightest suspicion of the triteness of the remark; and young Browne would show you his home-grown button-hole, as if no other man in the place possessed one. It was eminently good for them, as it is for all of us. To some of us, you know, England at last becomes a place where one dies daily of bronchitis, and is obliged to do without a kitmutgar; but this never happens if every cold weather one plants one’s self round about with English flowers. They preserve the remnant of grace which is left in the Anglo-Indian soul, and keep it homesick, which is its one chance of salvation. Young Browne seldom said anything cynical in the garden, and as for Helen, it was simply Canbury to her. She could always go down and talk of home to her friends in the flower-beds, who were so steadfastly gay, and tell them, as she often did, how brave and true it was of them to come so far from England, forgetting, perhaps, that from a climatic point of view nasturtiums like heathendom. And in the evening the smoke of the hubble-bubble was lost in the fragrance of the garden.

Mrs. Browne says that if I am writing about their compound, I ought not to omit to mention the fowl-yard, which was situated at one end of it, near the stable. It was another experiment in economy—the cook used such a quantity of eggs that the Brownes saw no reason why they should not be produced on the premises. So they enclosed a fowl-yard and stocked it, and the cock vied with the crows in informing them of the earliest hint of daylight. But the Brownes do not now advise the keeping of fowls on the ground of economy; they say, indeed, that only the very rich can afford to keep them. It seems that the syce kindly supplied their food out of the pony’s gram, charging the deficit to the memsahib, who also paid liberally for barley, a visionary provision at which her birds had never a pick. They were, notwithstanding, sound healthy hens, and the marvel was that they did not lay—except an egg or two a week for pure ostentation. Kali Bagh was doing a good business with the rest, supplying them to Mrs. Browne at full market rates, and to Mrs. Green Pink Sleeves at about half, to secure her custom. The hens in the meantime clucked cheerfully, and Helen was in a parlous state when in the end they had to be cut off untimely and stewed. “But with ruin staring us in the face,” she said, “what else could we do!”

This will serve as an explanation to posterity, if any should inquire why it was that toward the end of the nineteenth century in Bengal only Members of Council were in the habit of keeping hens.