I walk alone; the air is sweet,
The white road wanders to the sea,
I dream of those two little feet
That grew so tired in reaching me.
Maybe the story told somewhat of his own life-history;
there was a pathetic lingering over the last lines, and
then he added hastily as I tried to give him a small tip,
“ No, no, I have pension; I was a soldier once, and can
afford snuff and a little for the baba log that will come
Pandits an d Panditanis, Kashmir
and worry an old fellow ” (for a swarm of tiny fat babies
had gradually collected from nowhere seemingly, as
children will at the sound of music), “ but let the Sahib
mind the sun.”
He stood salaaming as I turned away across a
mulberry-shaded green in the direction of the lake, and
I wished I knew more of his history, could speak the
sympathy I felt, and be allowed if for once only to enter
somewhat into the pleasures and troubles of this strange
folk that have so far more of those little emotions, that
we try and believe our own especial property, than we
generally think, and shut themselves off from all
outsiders in their heart sorrows and inner joys.
I took to heart the good advice offered, and spent
the mid-day hours under the shade of some vast walnut
trees growing in a village, whose houses they served to
shade, and watched some men gathering mulberries,
first beating the branches with long bamboos, then
stripping the boughs by climbing into them, putting
the fruit in one basket and the leaves for the silkworms
into the other—with the smaller trees they simply
chopped off the branches. Sharing my laziness were
some well-to-do city folk, the women quite extraordinarily
graceful, and with the beautiful straight
features of Romans, the turned-back white linings
of their head-dress and sleeves looking most becoming
against the deep blues and purples of their pherans.
M