His Honour, and a Lady

CHAPTER VI

“Mummie,” remarked Miss Daye, as she pushed on the fingers of a new pair of gloves in the drawing-room, “the conviction grows upon me that I shall never become Mrs. Ancram.”

“Rhoda, if you talk like that you will certainly bring on one of my headaches, and it will be the third in a fortnight that I’ll have to thank you for. Did I or did I not send home the order for your wedding dress by last mail?”

“You did, mummie. But you could always advertise it in the local papers, you know. Could you fasten this? ‘By Private Sale – A Wedding Dress originally intended for the Secretariat. Ivory Satin and Lace. Skirt thirty-nine inches, waist twenty-one. Warranted never been worn.’ Thanks so much!”

“Rhoda! you are capable of anything – ”

“Of most things, mummie, I admit. But I begin to fear, not of that!”

“Are you going to break it off? There he is this minute! Don’t let him come in here, dear – he would know instantly that we had been discussing him. You have upset me so!”

“He shan’t.” Miss Daye walked to the door. “You are not to come any farther, my dear sir,” said she to the Honourable Mr. Ancram among the Japanese pots on the landing: “mummie’s going to have a headache, and doesn’t want you. I’m quite ready!” She stood for a moment in the doorway, her pretty shoulders making admirably correct lines, in a clinging grey skirt and silver braided zouave, that showed a charming glimpse of blue silk blouse underneath, buttoning her second glove. Ancram groaned within himself that he must have proposed to her because she was chic. Then she looked back. “Don’t worry, mummie. I’ll let you know within a fortnight. You won’t have to advertise it after all – you can countermand the order by telegraph!” Mrs. Daye, on the sofa, threw up her hands speechlessly, and her eyes when her daughter finally left the room were round with apprehension.

Ancram had come to take his betrothed for a drive in his dog-cart. It is a privilege Calcutta offers to people who are engaged: they are permitted to drive about together in dog-carts. The act has the binding force of a public confession. Mr. Ancram and Miss Daye had taken advantage of it in the beginning. By this time it would be more proper to say that they were taking refuge in it.

He had seen Mrs. Church several times since the evening on which he had put her into her carriage at the gates of Hastings House, and got into his own trap and driven home with a feeling which he analysed as purified but not resigned. She had been very quiet, very self-contained, apparently content to be gracious and effective in the gown of the occasion; but once or twice he fancied he saw a look of waiting, a gleam of expectancy, behind her eyes. It was this that encouraged him to ask her, at the first opportunity, whether she did not think he would be perfectly justified in bringing the thing to an end. She answered him, with an unalterable look, that she could not help him in that decision; and he brought away a sense that he had not obtained the support on which he had depended. This did not prevent him from arriving very definitely at the decision in question unaided. Nothing could be more obvious than that the girl did not care for him; and, granting this, was he morally at liberty, from the girl’s own point of view, to degrade her by a marriage which was, on her side, one of pure ambition? If her affections had been involved in the remotest degree – but he shrugged his shoulders at the idea of Rhoda Daye’s affections. He wished to Heaven, like any schoolboy, that she would fall in love with somebody else, but she was too damned clever to fall in love with anybody. The thing would require a little finessing; of course the rupture must come from her. There were things a man in his position had to be careful about. But with a direct suggestion – Nothing was more obvious than that she did not care for him. He would make her say so. After that, a direct suggestion would be simple – and wholly justifiable. These were Mr. Lewis Ancram’s reflections as he stood, hat in hand, on Mrs. Daye’s landing. They were less involved than usual, but in equations of personal responsibility Mr. Ancram liked a formula. By the intelligent manipulation of a formula one could so often eliminate the personal element and transfer the responsibility to the other side.

The beginning was not auspicious.

“Is that le dernier cri?” he asked, looking at her hat as she came lightly down the steps.

“Papa’s? Poor dear! yes. It was forty rupees, at Phelps’s. You’ll find me extravagant – but horribly! – especially in hats. I adore hats; they’re such conceptions, such ideas! I mean to insist upon a settlement in hats – three every season, in perpetuity.”

They were well into the street and half-way to Chowringhee before he found the remark, at which he forced himself to smile, that he supposed a time would arrive when her affections in millinery would transfer themselves to bonnets. The occasion was not propitious for suggestions based on emotional confessions. The broad roads that wind over the Maidan were full of gaiety and the definite facts of smart carriages and pretty bowing women. The sun caught the tops of the masts in the river, and twinkled there; it mellowed the pillars of the bathing-ghats, and was also reflected magnificently from the plate-glass mirrors with which Ram Das Mookerjee had adorned the sides of his barouche. A white patch a mile away resolved itself into a mass of black heads and draped bodies watching a cricket match. Mynas chattered by the wayside, stray notes of bugle practice came crisply over the walls of the Fort; there was an effect of cheerfulness even in the tinkle of the tram bells. If the scene had required any further touch of high spirits, it was supplied in the turn-out of the Maharajah of Thuginugger, who drove abroad in a purple velvet dressing gown, with pink outriders. Ancram had a fine susceptibility to atmospheric effect, and it bade him talk about the Maharajah of Thuginugger.

“That chap Ezra, the Simla diamond merchant, told me that he went with the Maharajah through his go-downs once. His Highness likes pearls. Ezra saw them standing about in bucketsful.”

“Common wooden buckets?”

“I believe so.”

“How satisfying! Tell me some more.”

“There isn’t any more. The rest was between Ezra and the Maharajah. I dare say there was a margin of profit somewhere. What queer weather they seem to be having at home!”

“It’s delicious to live in a place that hasn’t any weather – only a permanent fervency. I like this old Calcutta. It’s so wicked and so rich and so cheerful. People are born and burned and born and burned, and nothing in the world matters. Their nice little stone gods are so easy to please, too. A handful of rice, a few marigold chains, a goat or two: hardly any of them ask more than that. And the sun shines every day – on the just man who has offered up his goat, and on the unjust man who has eaten it instead.”

She sat up beside him, her slender figure swaying a little with the motion of the cart, and looked about her with a light in her grey eyes that seemed the reflection of her mood. He thought her chatter artificial; but it was genuine enough. She always felt more than her usual sense of irresponsibility with him in their afternoon drives. The world lay all about them and lightened their relation; he became, as a rule, the person who was driving, and she felt at liberty to become the person who was talking.

“There!” she exclaimed, as three or four coolie women filed, laughing, up to a couple of round stones under a pipal tree by the roadside, and took their brass lotas from their heads and carefully poured water over the stones. “Fancy one’s religious obligations summed up in a cooking-potful of Hughli water! Are those stones sacred?”

“I suppose so.”

“The author of ‘The Modern Influence of the Vedic Books,’” she suggested demurely, “should be quite sure. He should have left no stone unturned.”

She regarded him for a moment, and, observing his preoccupation, just perceptibly lifted her eyebrows. Then she went on: “But perhaps big round stones under pipal trees that like libations come in the second volume. When does the second volume appear?”

“Not until Sir Griffiths Spence comes out again and this lunatic goes back to Hassimabad, I fancy. I want an appropriation for some further researches first.”

The most enthusiastic of Mr. Ancram’s admirers acknowledged that he was not always discreet.

“And he won’t give it to you – this lunatic?”

“Not a pice.”

“Then,” she said, with a ripple of laughter, “he must be a fool!”

She was certainly irritating this afternoon. Ancram gave his Waler as smart a cut as he dared, and they dashed past Lord Napier, sitting on his intelligent charger in serious bronze to all eternity, and rounded the bend into the Strand. The brown river tore at its heaving buoys; the tide was racing out. The sun had dipped, and the tall ships lay in the after-glow in twos and threes and congeries along the bank, along the edge of Calcutta, until in the curving distance they became mere suggestions of one another and a twilight of tilted masts. Under their keels slipped great breadths of shining water. Against the glow on it a country-boat, with its unwieldy load of hay, looked like a floating barn. On the indistinct other side the only thing that asserted itself was a factory chimney. They talked of the eternal novelty of the river, and the eternal sameness of the people they met; and then he lapsed again.

Rhoda looked down at the bow of her slipper. “Have you got a headache?” she asked. The interrogation was one of cheerful docility.

“Thanks, no. I beg your pardon: I’m afraid I was inexcusably preoccupied.”

“Would it be indiscreet to ask what about? Don’t you want my opinion? I am longing to give you my opinion.”

“Your opinion would be valuable.”

Miss Daye again glanced down at her slipper. This time her pretty eyelashes shaded a ray of amused perception. “He thinks he can do it himself,” she remarked privately. “He is quite ready to give himself all the credit of getting out of it gracefully. The amount of flattery they demand for themselves, these Secretaries!”

“A premium on my opinion!” she said. “How delightful!”

Ancram turned the Waler sharply into the first road that led to the Casuerina Avenue. The Casuerina Avenue is almost always poetic, and might be imagined to lend itself very effectively, after sunset, to the funeral of a sentiment which Mr. Ancram was fond of describing to himself as still-born. The girl beside him noted the slenderness of his foot and the excellent cut of his grey tweed trousers. Her eyes dwelt upon the nervously vigorous way he handled the reins, and her glance of light bright inquiry ascertained a vertical line between his eyebrows. It was the line that accompanied the Honourable Mr. Ancram’s Bills in Council, and it indicated a disinclination to compromise. Miss Daye, fully apprehending its significance, regarded him with an interest that might almost be described as affectionate. She said to herself that he would bungle. She was rather sorry for him. And he did.

“I should be glad of your opinion of our relation,” he said – which was very crude.

“I think it is charming. I was never more interested in my life!” she declared frankly, bringing her lips together in the pretty composure with which she usually told the vague little lie of her satisfaction with life.

“Does that sum up your idea of – of the possibilities of our situation?” He felt that he was doing better.

“Oh no! There are endless possibilities in our situation – mostly stupid ones. But it is a most agreeable actuality.”

“I wish,” he said desperately, “that you would tell me just what the actuality means to you.”

They were in the Avenue row, and the Waler had been allowed to drop into a walk. The after-glow still lingered in the soft green duskiness over their heads; there was light enough for an old woman to see to pick up the fallen spines in the grass; the nearest tank, darkling in the gathering gloom of the Maidan, had not yet given up his splash of red from over the river. He looked at her intently, and her eyes dropped to the thoughtful consideration of the crone who picked up spines. It might have been that she blushed, or it might have been some effect of the after-glow. Ancram inclined to the latter view, but his judgment could not be said to be impartial.

“Dear Lewis!” she answered softly, “how very difficult that would be!”

In the sudden silence that followed, the new creaking of the Waler’s harness was perceptible. Ancram assured himself hotly that this was simple indecency, but it was a difficult thing to say. He was still guarding against the fatality of irritation when Rhoda added daintily:

“But I don’t see why you should have a monopoly of catechising. Tell me, sir – I’ve wanted to know for ever so long – what was the first, the very first thing you saw in me to fall in love with?”

CHAPTER VII

The Honourable Mr. Ancram’s ideal policy toward the few score million subjects of the Queen-Empress for whose benefit he helped to legislate, was a paternalism somewhat highly tempered with the exercise of discipline. He had already accomplished appreciable things for their advantage, and he intended to accomplish more. It would be difficult to describe intelligibly all that he had done; besides, his tasks live in history. The publications of the Government of India hold them all, and something very similar may be found in the record which every retired civilian of distinction cherishes in leather, behind the glass of his bookcases in Brighton or Bournemouth. It would therefore be unnecessary as well.

It was Mr. Ancram’s desire to be a conspicuous benefactor – this among Indian administrators is a matter of business, and must not be smiled at as a weakness – and in very great part he had succeeded. The fact should be remembered in connection with his expressed opinion – it has been said that he was not always discreet – that the relatives in the subordinate services of troublesome natives should be sent, on provocation, to the most remote and unpleasant posts in the province. To those who understand the ramifications of cousinly connection in the humbler service of the sircar, the detestation of exile and the claims of family affection in Bengal, the efficacy of this idea for promoting loyalty will appear. It was Mr. Ancram’s idea, but he despaired of getting it adopted. Therefore he talked about it. Perhaps upon this charge he was not so very indiscreet after all.

It will be observed that Mr. Ancram’s policy was one of exalted expediency. This will be even more evident when it is understood that, in default of the opportunity of coercing the subject Aryan for his highest welfare, Mr. Ancram conciliated him. The Chief Secretary had many distinguished native friends. They were always trying to make him valuable presents. When he returned the presents he did it in such a way that the bond of their mutual regard was cemented rather than otherwise – cemented by the tears of impulsive Bengali affection. He had other native friends who were more influential than distinguished. They spoke English and wrote it, most of them. They created the thing which is quoted in Westminster as “Indian Public Opinion.” They were in the van of progress, and understood all the tricks for moving the wheels. The Government of India in its acknowledged capacity as brake found these gentlemen annoying; but Mr. Ancram, since he could not imprison them, offered them a measure of his sympathy. They quite understood that it was a small measure, but there is a fascination about the friendship of a Chief Secretary, and they often came to see him. They did not bring him presents, however; they knew very much better than that.

Mohendra Lall Chuckerbutty was one of these inconspicuously influential friends. Mohendra was not a maharajah: he was only a baboo, which stands, like “Mr.” for hardly anything at all. To say that he was a graduate of the Calcutta University is to acknowledge very little; he was as clever before he matriculated as he was after he took his degree. But it should not be forgotten that he was the editor and proprietor of the Bengal Free Press; that was the distinction upon which, for the moment, he was insisting himself. The Bengal Free Press was a voice of the people – a particularly aggressive and pertinacious voice. It sold for two pice in the bazar, and was read by University students at the rate of twenty-five to each copy. It was regularly translated for the benefit of the Amir of Afghanistan, the Khan of Kelat, and such other people as were interested in knowing how insolent sedition could be in Bengal with safety; and it lay on the desk of every high official in the Province. Its advertisements were very funny, and its editorial English was more fluent than veracious: but when it threw mud at the Viceroy, and called the Lieutenant-Governor a contemptible tyrant, and reminded the people that their galls were of the yoke of the stranger, there was no mistaking the direction of its sentiment.

Mohendra Lall Chuckerbutty sat in the room the Chief Secretary called his workshop, looking, in a pause of their conversation, at the Chief Secretary. No one familiar with that journal would have discovered in his amiable individuality the incarnation of the Bengal Free Press. On his head he wore a white turban, and on his countenance an expression of benign intelligence just tinged with uncertainty as to what to say next. His person was buttoned up to his perspiring neck in a tight black surtout, which represented his compromise with European fashions, and across its most pronounced rotundity hung a substantial gold watch-chain. From the coat downwards he fell away, so to speak, into Aryanism: the indefinite white draperies of his race were visible, and his brown hairy legs emerged from them bare. He had made progress, however, with his feet, on which he wore patent leather shoes, almost American in their neatness, with three buttons at the sides. He sat leaning forward a little, with his elbows on his knees, and his plump hands, their dimpled fingers spread apart, hanging down between them. Mohendra Lall Chuckerbutty’s attitude expressed his very genuine anxiety to make the most of his visit.

Ancram leaned back in his tilted chair, with his feet on his desk, sharpening a lead pencil. “And that’s my advice to you,” he said, with his eyes on the knife.

“Well, I am grateful foritt! I am very much obliged foritt!” Mohendra paused to relieve his nerves by an amiable, somewhat inconsequent laugh. “It iss my wish offcourse to be guided as far as possible by your opinion.” Mohendra glanced deprecatingly at the matting. “But this is a sirrious grievance. And there are others who are always spikking with me and pushing me – ”

“No grievance was ever mended in a day or a night, or a session, Baboo. Government moves slowly. Ref – changes are made by inches, not by ells. If you are wise, you’ll be content with one inch this year and another next. It’s the only way.”

Mohendra smiled in sad agreement, and nodded two or three times, with his head rather on one side. It was an attitude so expressive of submission that the Chief Secretary’s tone seemed unnecessarily decisive.

“The article on that admirable Waterways Bill off yours I hope you recivved. I sent isspecial marked copy.”

“Yes,” replied Ancram, in cordial admission: “I noticed it. Very much to the point. The writer thoroughly grasped my idea. Very grammatical too – and all that.” Mr. Ancram yawned a little. “But you’d better keep my name out of your paper, Baboo – unless you want to abuse me. I’m a modest man, you know. That leader you speak of made me blush, I assure you.”

It required all Mohendra’s agility to arrive at the conclusion that if the Honourable Mr. Ancram really considered the influence of the Bengal Free Press of no importance, he would not take the trouble to say so. He arrived at it safely, though, while apparently he was only shaking his head and respectfully enjoying Mr. Ancram’s humour, and saying, “Oh, no, no! If sometimes we blame, we must also often praise. Oh yess, certainlie. And efery one says it iss a good piece off work.”

Ancram looked at his watch. The afternoon was mellowing. If Mohendra Lall Chuckerbutty had come for the purpose of discussing His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor’s intentions towards the University Colleges, he had better begin. Mr. Ancram was aware that in so far as so joyous and auspicious an event as a visit to a Chief Secretary could be dominated by a purpose, Mohendra’s was dominated by this one; and he had been for some time reflecting upon the extent to which he would allow himself to be drawn. He was at variance with John Church’s administration – now that three months had made its direction manifest – at almost every point. He was at variance with John Church himself – that he admitted to be a matter of temperament. But Church had involved the Government of Bengal in blunders from which the advice of his Chief Secretary, if he had taken it, would have saved him. He had not merely ignored the advice: he had rejected it somewhat pointedly, being a candid man and no diplomat. If he had acknowledged his mistakes ever so privately, his Chief Secretary would have taken a fine ethical pleasure in forgiving them; but the Lieutenant-Governor appeared to think that where principle was concerned the consideration of expediency was wholly superfluous, and continued to defend them instead, even after he could plainly see, in the Bengal Free Press and elsewhere, that they had begun to make him unpopular. Ancram’s vanity had never troubled him till now. It had grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength, under the happiest circumstances, and he had been as little aware of it as of his arterial system. John Church had made him unpleasantly conscious of it, and he was as deeply resentful as if John Church had invested him with it. The Honourable Mr. Ancram had never been discounted before, and that this experience should come to him through an official superior whom he did not consider his equal in many points of administrative sagacity, was a circumstance that had its peculiar irritation. Mohendra Lall Chuckerbutty was very well aware of this; and yet he did not feel confident in approaching the matter of His Honour and the higher culture. It was a magnificent grievance. Mohendra had it very much at heart, the Free Press would have it very much at heart, and nothing was more important than the private probing of the Chief Secretary’s sentiment regarding it; yet Mohendra hesitated. He wished very much that there were some tangible reason why Ancram should take sides against the Lieutenant-Governor, some reason that could be expressed in rupees: then he would have had more confidence in hoping for an adverse criticism. But for a mere dislike, a mere personal antagonism, it would be so foolish. Thus Mohendra vacillated, stroking his fat cheek with his fingers, and looking at the matting. Ancram saw that his visitor would end by abandoning his intention, and became aware that he would prefer that this should not happen.

“And what do you think,” he said casually, “of our proposal to make you all pay for your Greek?”

Mohendra beamed. “I think, sir, that it cannot be your proposal.”

“It isn’t,” said Ancram sententiously.

“If it becomes law, it will be the signal for a great disturbance. I mean, off course,” the Baboo hastened to add, “of a pacific kind. No violence, of course! Morally speaking the community is already up in arms —morally speaking! It is destructive legislation, sir; we must protest.”

“I don’t blame you for that.”

“Then you do not yourself approve off it?”

“I think it’s a mistake. Well-intentioned, but a mistake.”

“Oh, the intention, that iss good! But impracticable,” Mohendra ventured vaguely: “a bubble in the air – that is all; but the question i – iz,” he went on, “will it become law? Yesterday only I first heard offitt. Mentally I said, ‘I will go to my noble friend and find out for myself the rights offitt!’ Then I will act.”

“Oh, His Honour intends to put it through. If you mean to do anything there’s no time to lose.” Ancram assured himself afterwards that between his duty as an administrator and his private sentiment toward his chief there could be no choice.

“We will petition the Viceroy.”

Ancram shook his head. “Time wasted. The Viceroy will stick to Church.”

“Then we can petition the Secretary-off-State.”

“That might be useful, if you get the right names.”

“We will have it fought out in Parliament. Mr. Dadabhai – ”

“Yes,” Ancram responded with a smile, “Mr. Dadabhai – ”

“There will be mass meetings on the Maidan.”

“Get them photographed and send them to the Illustrated London News.”

“And every paper will be agitating it. The Free Press the Hindu Patriot, the Bengalee– all offthem will be writing about it – ”

“There is one thing you must remember if the business goes to England – the converts of these colleges from which State aid is to be withdrawn.”

“Christians?” Mohendra shook his head with a smile of contempt. “There are none. It iss not to change their religion that the Hindus go to college.”

“Ah!” returned Ancram. “There are none? That is a pity. Otherwise you might have got them photographed too, for the illustrated papers.”

“Yes. It iss a pity.”

Mohendra reflected profoundly for a moment. “But I will remember what you say about the fottograff – if any can be found.”

“Well, let me know how you get on. In my private capacity – in my private capacity, remember – as the friend and well-wisher of the people, I shall be interested in what you do. Of course I talk rather freely to you, Baboo, because we know each other well. I have not concealed my opinion in this matter at any time, but for all that it mustn’t be known that I have active sympathies. You understand. This is entirely confidential.”

“Oh, offcourse! my gracious goodness, yes!”

Mohendra’s eyes were moist – with gratification. He was still trying to express it when he withdrew, ten minutes later, backing toward the door. Ancram shut it upon him somewhat brusquely, and sent a servant for a whisky-and-soda. It could not be said that he was in the least nervous, but he was depressed. It always depressed him to be compelled to take up an attitude which did not invite criticism from every point of view. His present attitude had one aspect in which he was compelled to see himself driving a nail into the acting Lieutenant-Governor’s political coffin. Ancram would have much preferred to see all the nails driven in without the necessity for his personal assistance. His reflections excluded Judith Church as completely as if the matter were no concern of hers. He considered her separately. The strengthening of the bond between them was a pleasure which had detached itself from all the other interests of his life; he thought of it tenderly, but the tenderness was rather for his sentimental property in her than for her in any material sense. She stood, with the dear treasure of her sympathy, apart from the Calcutta world, and as far apart from John Church as from the rest.

That evening, at dinner, Ancram told Philip Doyle and another man that he had been drawing Mohendra Lall Chuckerbutty on the University College question, and he was convinced that feeling was running very high.

“The fellow had the cheek to boast about the row they were going to make,” said Mr. Ancram.