Chapter 50 - Page 2

who were
authorized to speak for the zenana ladies. Apparently, the idea was
shocking to the ladies--indeed, it was quite manifestly shocking. Was
that proposition the equivalent of inviting European ladies to assemble
scantily and scandalously clothed in the seclusion of a private park? It
seemed to be about that.

Without doubt modesty is nothing less than a holy feeling; and without
doubt the person whose rule of modesty has been transgressed feels the
same sort of wound that he would feel if something made holy to him by
his religion had suffered a desecration. I say "rule of modesty" because
there are about a million rules in the world, and this makes a million
standards to be looked out for. Major Sleeman mentions the case of some
high-caste veiled ladies who were profoundly scandalized when some
English young ladies passed by with faces bare to the world; so
scandalized that they spoke out with strong indignation and wondered that
people could be so shameless as to expose their persons like that. And
yet "the legs of the objectors were naked to mid-thigh." Both parties
were clean-minded and irreproachably modest, while abiding by their
separate rules, but they couldn't have traded rules for a change without
suffering considerable discomfort. All human rules are more or less
idiotic, I suppose. It is best so, no doubt. The way it is now, the
asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane
we should run out of building materials.

You have a long drive through the outskirts of Benares before you get to
the hotel. And all the aspects are melancholy. It is a vision of dusty
sterility, decaying temples, crumbling tombs, broken mud walls, shabby
huts. The whole region seems to ache with age and penury. It must take
ten thousand years of want to produce such an aspect. We were still
outside of the great native city when we reached the hotel. It was a
quiet and homelike house, inviting, and manifestly comfortable. But we
liked its annex better, and went thither. It was a mile away, perhaps,
and stood in the midst of a large compound, and was built bungalow
fashion, everything on the ground floor, and a veranda all around. They
have doors in India, but I don't know why. They don't fasten, and they
stand open, as a rule, with a curtain hanging in the doorspace to keep
out the glare of the sun. Still, there is plenty of privacy, for no
white person will come in without notice, of course. The native men
servants will, but they don't seem to count. They glide in, barefoot and
noiseless, and are in the midst before one knows it. At first this is a
shock, and sometimes it is an embarrassment; but one has to get used to
it, and does.

There was one tree in the