And I'd Do It Again

by Crocker, Aimée;

  We returned to the hotel, and Ellen asked me, childishly, not to mention to the Battle-Ax that she had talked so much about the shop-keeper. I promised, and that was that.

  But that night, who should come to my room in a state of nervous hysterics but Mrs. Reginald Benn herself, proclaiming between sniffs of smelling salts and waving of anxious hands, that Little Ellen had vanished, was probably murdered and thrown in the river, or had been sold into white-slavery by “those terrible natives, the horrid beasts.”

  I doubted it. But I wondered if Little Ellen had not somehow escaped the watchfulness of her chaperon and gone off to see the night-life of the city with one of those nice young men I had seen about and with whom I had even flirted mildly myself in the hotel drawing-room.

  I suggested it, but it made matters worse. Evidently white- slavery was bad enough, but running about at night in the wicked city of Bombay with strange young officers or C.S. lads was unspeakably worse. Perhaps because less dramatic and more probable.

  To be brief, days went on, and no Ellen. Investigations of every sort were made, and the hotel was turned into a rendezvous for soldiery, police, and officials, for the next fortnight. And then, exactly one month afterwards, came my part in it all.

  I was again visiting the Consulate, in order to get some long-delayed mail from America. Returning on foot to my hotel and all alone, I passed through the crowd of mixed races with English trimmings, sunk in a brown study, when suddenly I heard my name called.

  “Aimée, Aimée …”

  It was whispered and barely audible. At first I thought it was my imagination. But then it was repeated again, almost in my ear.

  “Aimée, Aimée … wait … listen …”

  Right next to me was a Hindu woman in purdah, and slightly behind me a tall Parsee, and several coolies also were near me in the street, but not an Anglo-Saxon in sight. Then I became conscious that the voice was coming from the Hindu woman.

  “Aimée, it’s I … Ellen …”

  I stopped short. Under the band that concealed the lower part of her face I detected a whiteness that no native could match. Ellen Purling!

  “Walk along with me and don’t say anything,” she said. “I must talk to you. I’ll show you where we can talk freely.”

  You can imagine how I was astounded. But I walked along with her and said nothing. Eventually we came to a densely populated district where Europeans seldom, if ever, penetrate, and then on no good mission.

  “Here we are,” said Ellen, suddenly, and she turned towards a doorway in a very humble and very dirty house in front of which scraggy children, totally naked and totally unwashed, were rolling about and taking shelter from the intense sun under a stretched-out skin. She walked straight in and I followed. There was something that was used for a stairway, very steep and open in the back of each stair like a ladder of flat boards.

  Upstairs was a very decent room (compared, I mean, to the rest of the house) and relatively clean. There were two doors and a window that was partly glass and had its broken panes mended with skin.

  Ellen tore off her veil, and stood with the merriest face in the world, grinning at me and at my obvious puzzlement.

  “Now don’t be stuffy and moral and like the Battle-Ax,” was the first thing she said. “Oh, I’ve tried so hard to see you and to talk to you, Aimée. I have caught glimpses of you when I dared to come near the hotel, but I never have been able to talk to you. I knew all the time you were the only white woman I can tell it to. I’m so happy, Aimée …”

  Disconcerting, all this.

  “Well,” said I, “what’s it all about? I suppose you know that you have the whole government in a state of fever.”

  She only laughed.

  “I know it, and as far as I’m concerned they will have to stay that way. I’m never going to appear again. I’m dead as far as my former life is concerned. Oh, if only you could understand what I’ve suffered for years. I’ve been penned up inside, starving, praying for a miracle. Wanting … somebody, something.”

  “And now …?”

  “I’ve got him …”

  “Him …? Who?” But I knew perfectly well, and she knew that I did.

  “Rabani, the wonderful man we saw together in the birdshop. Oh, Aimée, I can’t tell you what he is like … wonderful.”

  Nothing I could say would change her mind. I pointed out that Mrs. Benn, who was well-meaning in her stuffy way, would be disgraced. But no. Little Miss Prim was quite a different girl from the one I had known in the hotel. She was alive, aglow. She was in love. She had suddenly discovered that which had been hidden away from her for years by stuffy people and stuffier conventions. We talked very frankly about “him” … in fact so frankly that I was even a little embarrassed, well-schooled though I was in human relations.

  Ellen never returned. She was married to Rabani in a serious Hindu ceremony. She abandoned Christianity and became a believer in the Supreme Being and in the possibility of humans to unite themselves with it. I have a letter from her, not many years old, telling me of her great and continued happiness.

  So that story is finished.

  Now let me tell a serious and tragic adventure, with myself as spectator. I had started one day for a restful fortnight with some amusing English people … some of the few whites who did not believe me an adventuress or a woman of evil … together with Shikapur. We were going to a place between Bombay and Kaiyan, not more than thirty miles from the seaport.

  At the railroad station I learned something amusing about Indian mentality that may explain, in an indirect way, the difficulty the English have had in colonizing them, and in making them like it.

  At the Bombay station – one of the world’s greatest horrors, half Gothic and half Hindu – I saw several hundred natives asleep all over the platform, the green lawn, and every other place where a human creature could possibly lay himself down. It was explained to me that when the low-caste Indians desire to travel, they never think of consulting a time-table, but merely make ready and go to the station. Now trains in India do not run every fifteen minutes, and there are some which do not run more than once in several days. But the natives merely go to the station and wait … for days, if necessary, sleeping or eating or talking, until the train arrives.

  We reached the country place somewhere towards evening and I found myself in a perfect heaven. Date-trees with feathery tops and the sacred fig-trees with their open-air roots were filled with multicolored birds, parakeets, monkeys and all manner of life. Despite the burning sun, it was fresh and vigorous, and the mansion of European design to which I had been invited was situated on an artificial island in the middle of a rectangular artificial pool, banked by hedgerows and flowers. No American millionaire could have built its equal for beauty, for the life about it, the rich jungle green and the gorgeous sky added to the magnificence of the place and made it into a fairy castle.

  In the evening I walked out alone.

  The vista of my friend’s estate lay before me for over one thousand yards and gave into a large, clear field, which, in turn, stretched out towards the heavy forest. There was practically no town, only a few huts and small squat native houses of the agricultural inhabitants. But there was a great peace, a great nearness to that Supreme Being towards whom millions of Indians strive.

  I walked out of the geometrical estate and into nature. Dusk was falling, softly, like a cloud of gray feathers through which the sun poured crimson and cobalt rays.

  At one side of the open field there was a house which seemed to be quite modern and Western in design. Attracted, I made towards it across the tall grass of the field, as though I were swimming in nature’s green. I was elated, ecstatic.

  Then suddenly I heard a rustling in the grass behind me and a magnificent black greyhound leapt past me like a whirlwind. He checked a few yards beyond me and came back sniffing and rather friendly. As I patted his head, I heard a woman’s voice calling in English:

  “Here Crom, here
Crom …”

  I turned and saw a young woman in cork helmet and puttees coming towards me, running, red-faced and out of breath. She was English, I guessed, and very soon confirmed it. I reached for the dog’s collar as he stood to be patted and held him for her.

  “Thanks awfully,” she said, coming up. “He runs rather wild and keeps me out of breath trying to catch him. You’re rather a terror, Cromwell.”

  I asked her if she lived across the field in the house I had noticed, and was surprised to see that her face became very serious in a flash. She admitted that she lived there, and we talked for a brief moment while she smoked a cigarette. Suddenly she excused herself … hastily, I thought, and as though she were not wanting to be seen with me. But that she said she would be glad to see me there again, I would have thought she did not care to know me.

  I followed her through the dusk to the house. There was no light visible in it. In fact it seemed to be closed. Everything seemed a little bit odd.

  Returning to my friends, I asked about the house and was told that nobody lived there at all.

  Another mystery.

  Well, I saw the young woman again. We had quite a talk on the second day and we became friendly. She never vouchsafed her name although I gave her mine readily enough, and when I walked right near her house with her, she stopped suddenly and said:

  “I’d better leave you here. You won’t mind, will you? It wouldn’t be understood if you came over with me. But please see me often.”

  I thought there was something wistful about her, and I was able, at the shorter distance, to see quite clearly that the house was boarded up and that there was no sign of life apparent within it.

  Stranger and more strange.

  Then one day towards the end of my stay, the young woman asked me if I would care to come and meet her friend. I was a little surprised that she had never mentioned a friend before, and I concluded that this was some sort of a clandestine love affair where the man in question could not marry and could not live publicly with her because of the “Honor of a gentleman” and that sort of rot.

  Naturally I accepted the invitation. It was for dinner on the following evening. I made my way afoot as usual across the field and came to the door of what was now plainly a house of the Devonshire cottage type. The shutters were on all the windows, but I could see a faint light within and I had scarcely touched the bell when a tall, gaunt butler in livery admitted me with mournful correctitude.

  I was shown into a delightful and beautifully appointed drawing-room, where the young woman received me.

  She was radiant. She was dressed in a low-necked dinner-gown of white satin with tufted sleeves and the bodice effect of the time that might seem a little ridiculous today but then had a sweet character of its own. She was really very handsome, in a strong, ruddy, athletic and Nordic way, with her blond hair pulled tightly back and her blue eyes wide and smiling.

  “I’m so glad. Mrs. Llewellyn will join us in a moment. Do you take cocktails? Or are you shy of these new fads?”

  I took one, served beautifully by the mournful butler. We chatted for a while until a footstep on the threshold and the swish of a portiere interrupted us.

  Then I saw a vision.

  It was a woman of some forty years, whose hair was pure white and seemed like a powdered wig of the Queen Anne period, and she had the most perfectly chiseled features I have ever seen.

  “Miss Crocker?” she enquired, with a soft stateliness and in the moderate, firm voice inbred in the true gentlewoman. “I am so glad you were able to come. Joan has spoken of you often. You will excuse my quiet natural curiosity.”

  Did I detect a certain bitterness? A hardness? Later I wondered about those first words she used.

  “Joan, dear, would you be sweet enough to find my fan?”

  The younger woman fairly leapt for it, vanished, appeared, and sat down again.

  Conversation wiled away the dinner. Mrs. Llewellyn (not her name, and I knew it) was cultured in the extreme, and Joan (whatever her name happened to have been I do not know for I never learned) was vivid and keen. It was an enjoyable evening.

  I left at ten-thirty, and Mrs. Llewellyn insisted that a servant accompany me to my home, although I protested.

  “You’ll come often, now, won’t you? Joan will let you know. You see, for reasons of … health … I never appear. Joan is so robust and vigorous. She takes the exercise for both of us.”

  Again, was she ironical?

  The servant followed me to the very door of the small house which flanked the big mansion which had been assigned to me for privacy’s sake, and scraped the ground, Indian-fashion, as he left. He was a huge Parsee, and very impressive in his Sadaro and kusti.

  I spoke of the people to my friends the next day, but they had no ideas. They were determined that somebody of no particular interest … to them, at least … had taken over an otherwise empty house for the summer and they looked upon them as “intruders.”

  But I never saw either of the women again.

  For three successive nights I wandered about, hoping to see Joan and her dog, Cromwell. Not a sign. I was curious, but naturally not very disturbed. On the evening of the fourth day, I went to bed early and did not bother looking for my friend. It must have been towards midnight when I was suddenly awakened by somebody touching my arm.

  “Memsahib … memsahib …” a voice was saying.

  It was the Parsee servant. He was excited.

  “It would be kind if the Memsahib come now, at once. There is trouble …”

  It was his look rather than his words that startled me. That usually impassive face was holding back more than it could bear. I sat up, and he withdrew while I pulled some clothes on over my nightdress.

  We fairly flew across the sunken gardens, the hedge-bound paths of the estate, into the open fields and across to the house of mystery. The Parsee said nothing. He maintained an obstinate silence in answer to all the breathless questions I flung at him, and I was forced to satisfy my curiosity with my own imagination.

  At the door, the mournful butler in his shirtsleeves and liveried vest met us. His hair was a rat’s nest from a recent pillow, his face absolutely expressionless save for its habitual gloom. But he showed a certain lack of ceremony.

  “I trust you are not too late, Madam,” he said, and that was all. He walked ahead of my hurrying footsteps up the stairs.

  At the door he stopped and listened. I nearly fainted from excitement and curiosity. There was no sound within. He tried the door. It would not open. Other servants, whose presence in the house I had not even suspected, crowded round. The butler drew himself up with real dignity, and, by a single, crushing look, dismissed them all. That man was a power.

  “It would perhaps be wise to break open the door, Madam, but I preferred not to assume that responsibility myself. Does Madam suggest …”

  I certainly did suggest that he do it. I have no idea why, for I had absolutely no suspicion of what had happened in that room, or what I was about to see.

  By nature no man of violence, the butler. First he produced several keys, chose one carefully, tried to fit it to the door. It fitted, but another key was in the lock on the inside. He turned to me, and as though pained to utilize force, said:

  “With your permission, Madam,” and proceeded to hurl his very large body against the door with unsuspected strength. It was a good solid door, too, and although I thought the house would go down in the crash, it did not yield. He shouldered it again, and this time the lock snapped and the door burst open.

  I can promise you that never in my life have I had such a shock as awaited me within that room. A lamp was burning and gave its flickering luminosity to an interior of perfect beauty, perfect femininity and perfect strangeness. The room and everything in it was blue. Blue … I mean every detail, every single object, the walls, the curtains, the little things on the dressing stand … everything was blue, from the deep marine of the lacquered flooring, its rugs, to t
he pale hues of the bed linen, the rich ultramarine of the velvet curtains that shut out day or night, and the delicate blue of the enameled furniture.

  But on the bed, shockingly and indecently white against all this blue, and looking even more ghastly than the death they symbolized, were the naked bodies of Mrs. Llewellyn and my young athletic friend Joan, tangled, still writhing in death, they seemed, the hands of the older woman still gripping the throat of the young girl, her face still contracted, her muscles still straining, her head caught under the clasping arm of Joan, their bodies woven together. Not a motion. They were as dead as dead. Their beauty had fled before expressions of agony and the struggle that appeared to have taken place.

  The butler kept muttering, “My God, my God …”

  He remained motionless. He stared at those lovely bodies, still rhythmic, still perfect. The white hair of Mrs. Llewellyn, rich as a girl’s, fell over her immaculate breasts and was in turn covered by the curls of silk that were Joan’s, almost like stains of blood they seemed so red. And the blue light, the blue atmosphere over this tableau created an impression I have never in my whole life been able to forget.

  “What does it mean?” I whispered at last to the butler.

  He looked at me blankly and shook his head.

  I pressed him for an explanation.

  “It would be better for you to return, Madam, and may I … er … suggest that it will not be necessary to mention these circumstances to anyone,” was all he said. “I will do what is right, you may be sure.”

  I nodded. I was incapable of coherent thought. I turned toward the door, and there I saw the Parsee servant standing like a pillar of stone, expressionless, fixed, staring … not at the sight on the bed … but at the butler.

  As I turned he bowed low.

  “If the Memsahib will return …”

  “Oh, yes, Madam, he will accompany you,” said the butler in back of me. I thought his voice sounded slightly strained.

  I followed the Parsee down the stairs, out the door, across the fields. Always in silence. He remained just behind me, never making a sound. In a way, he frightened me. He knew something. There was something between him and the butler. He was anxious to get me out of the house. So was the butler. But there was something between them and I could feel it, and it wasn’t something friendly or pleasant.