Read Ebook: His Honour and a Lady by Duncan Sara Jeannette

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Ebook has 737 lines and 63058 words, and 15 pages

"You might send me over something," he said, glancing at his watch. "I won't be able to come back to breakfast. Already I've lost three-quarters of an hour from work. Government doesn't pay me for that. You are pleased, then?" he added, looking round at her in a half shamefaced way from the door.

Mrs. Church had returned to the writing-table, and had again taken up her pen. She leaned back in her chair and lifted her delicate chin with a smile that had custom and patience in it.

"Very pleased indeed," she said; and he went away. The intelligent observer, again, would have wondered how he refrained from going back and kissing her. Perhaps the custom and the patience in her smile would have lent themselves to the explanation. At all events, he went away.

John Church went back to work with his satisfaction sweetened by the fact that his wife had told him that she was very pleased indeed, while Mrs. Church answered the Honourable Mr. Lewis Ancram's letter.

"I have been making my own acquaintance this morning," she said among other things, "as an ambitious woman. It is intoxicating, after this idle, sun-filled, wondering life, with the single supreme care that John does not wear ragged collars to church--as a Commissioner he ought to be extravagant in collars--to be confronted with something to assume and carry out, a part to play, with all India looking on. Don't imagine a lofty intention on my part to inspire my husband's Resolutions. I assure you I see myself differently. Perhaps, after all, it is the foolish anticipation of my state and splendour that has excited my vain imagination as much as anything. Already, prospectively, I murmur lame nothings into the ear of the Viceroy as he takes me down to dinner! But I am preposterously delighted. To-morrow is Sunday--I have an irreverent desire for the prayers of all the churches."

Although Mr. Ancram's lips curved back over his rather prominent teeth in a narrow smile as he put up his eyeglass and looked down at his hostess, Mrs. Daye felt the levity fade out of her expression: she had to put compulsion on herself to keep it in her face. It was as if she, his prospective mother-in-law, had taken the least of liberties with Mr. Ancram.

"Does the only road to forgiveness lie through the church gate?" he asked. His voice was high and agreeable; it expressed discrimination; his tone implied that, if the occasion had required it, he could have said something much cleverer easily--an implication no one who knew him would have found unwarrantable.

"The padres say it does, as a rule, Ancram," put in Colonel Daye. "In this case it lies through the dining-room door. Will you take my wife in?"

In a corner of the room, which she might have chosen for its warm obscurity, Rhoda Daye watched with curious scrutiny the lightest detail of Mr. Lewis Ancram's behaviour. An elderly gentleman, with pulpy red cheeks and an amplitude of white waistcoat, stood beside her chair, swaying out of the perpendicular with well-bred rigidity now and then, in tentative efforts at conversation; to which she replied, "Really?" and "Yes, I know," while her eyes fixed themselves upon Ancram's face, and her little white features gleamed immobile under the halo which the tall lamp behind her made with her fuzz of light-brown hair. "Mother's respect for him is simply outrageous," she reflected, as she assured the elderly gentleman that even for Calcutta the heat was really extraordinary, considering that they were in December. "I wonder--supposing he had not made love to me--if I could have had as much!" She did not answer herself definitely--not from any lack of candour, but because the question presented difficulties. She slipped past him presently on the arm of the elderly gentleman, as Ancram still stood with bent head talking to her mother. His eyes sought hers with a significance that flattered her--there was no time for further greeting--and the bow with which he returned her enigmatic little nod singled her out for consideration. As she went in to dinner the nape of Mr. Lewis Ancram's neck and the parting of his hair remained with her as pictorial facts.

Mrs. Daye always gave composite dinner-parties, and this was one of them. "If you ask nobody but military people to meet each other," she was in the habit of saying, "you hear nothing but the price of chargers and the prospects of the Staff Corps. If you make your list up of civilians, the conversation consists of abuse of their official superiors and the infamous conduct of the Secretary of State about the rupee." On this occasion Mrs. Daye had reason to anticipate that the price of chargers would be varied by the grievances of the Civil Service, and that a touring Member of Parliament would participate in the discussion who knew nothing about either; and she felt that her blend would be successful. She could give herself up to the somewhat fearful enjoyment she experienced in Mr. Ancram's society. Mrs. Daye was convinced that nobody appreciated Mr. Ancram more subtly than she did. She saw a great deal of jealousy of him in Calcutta society, whereas she was wont to declare that, for her part, she found nothing extraordinary in the way he had got in--a man of his brains, you know! And if Calcutta resented this imputation upon its own brains in ever so slight a degree, Mrs. Daye saw therein more jealousy of the fact that her family circle was about to receive him. When it had once opened for that purpose and closed again, Mrs. Daye hoped vaguely that she would be sustained for the new and exacting duty of living up to Mr. Ancram.

Mr. Ancram looked, deliberately, but with appreciation. "She seems to be sufficiently entertained," he said.

"Oh, she is! She's got a globe-trotter. Haven't you found out that Rhoda simply loves globe-trotters? She declares that she renews her youth in them."

"Her first impressions, I suppose she means?"

Mrs. Daye broke off irresolutely, and thoughtfully conveyed a minute piece of roll to her lips. The minute piece of roll was Mr. Ancram's opportunity to complete Mrs. Daye's suggestion of a certain interesting ambiguity in her daughter; but he did not take it. He continued to look attentively at Miss Daye, who appeared, as he said, to be sufficiently entertained, under circumstances which seemed to him inadequate. Her traveller was talking emphatically, with gestures of elderly dogmatism, and she was deferentially listening, an amusement behind her eyes with which the Chief Secretary to the Government at Bengal was not altogether unfamiliar. He had seen it there before, on occasions when there was apparently nothing to explain it.

"It would be satisfactory to see her eating her dinner," he remarked, with what Mrs. Daye felt to be too slight a degree of solicitude. She was obliged to remind herself that at thirty-seven a man was apt to take these things more as matters of fact, especially--and there was a double comfort in this reflection--a man already well up in the Secretariat and known to be ambitious. "Is it possible," Mr. Ancram went on, somewhat absently, "that these are Calcutta roses? You must have a very clever gardener."

The effect could not have been better. Everybody looked at the roses with an interest that might almost be described as respectful; and Mrs. Delaine, whose husband was Captain Delaine of the Durham Rifles, said that she would have known them for Their Excellencies' roses anywhere--they always did the table with that kind for the Thursday dinners at Government House--she had never known them to use any other.

Mrs. St. George, whose husband was the Presidency Magistrate, found this interesting. "Do they really?" she exclaimed. "I've often wondered what those big Thursday affairs were like. Fancy--we've been in Calcutta through three cold weathers now, and have never been asked to anything but little private dinners at Government House--not more than eight or ten, you know!"

"Don't you prefer that?" asked Mrs. Delaine, taking her quenching with noble equanimity.

"They seem to be delightful people," continued the elderly gentleman, earnestly.

"I daresay," Miss Daye replied, with grave deliberation. "They're very decorative," she added absently. "That's a purely Indian vegetable, Mr. Pond. Rather sticky, and without the ghost of a flavour; but you ought to try it, as an experience, don't you think?"

Mr. Ancram was occupied for the moment in scrutinising the contents of a dish which a servant patiently presented to his left elbow. It was an ornate and mottled conception visible through a mass of brown jelly, and the man looked disappointed when so important a guest, after perceptible deliberation, decisively removed his eyeglass and shook his head. Mrs. Daye was in the act of reminding herself of the probably impaired digestion of a Chief Secretary, when he seemed suddenly recalled to the fact that she had spoken.

"Really?" he said, looking fully at her, with a smile that had many qualities of compensation. "My dear Mrs. Daye, that was doing a good deal for friendship, wasn't it?"

"The implication being," returned Mr. Ancram sweetly, "that I have nothing else to do."

Mrs. Daye compressed her lips in the manner of one whose patience is at an end. "It would serve you perfectly right," she exclaimed, "if I didn't tell you what a long review of it I saw the other day in one of the home papers."

Ancram looked up with an almost imperceptible accession of interest.

"How nice!" he said lightly. "A fellow out here always feels himself in luck when his odds and ends get taken up at home. You don't happen to remember the paper--or the date?"

Mr. Ancram's eyebrows underwent a slight contraction. "Notice" did not seem to be a felicitous word.

"Oh, thanks," he said. "Never mind; one generally comes across those things sooner or later."

"I say, Ancram," put in Mr. St. George, who had been listening on Mrs. Daye's left, "you Asiatic Society fellows won't get as much out of Church for your investigations as you did out of Spence."

Ancram looked fixedly at a porcelain cherub that moored a boatful of pink-and-white confectionery to the nearest bank of the Viceregal roses. "Sir Griffiths was certainly generous," he said. "He gave Pierson a quarter of a lakh, for instance, to get his ethnological statistics together. It was easy to persuade him to recognise the value of these things."

"It won't be easy to get this man to recognise it," persisted St. George. "He's the sort of fellow who likes sanitation better than Sanscrit. He's got a great scheme on for improving the village water-supply for Bengal, and I hear he wants to reorganise the vaccination business. Great man for the people!"

"Wants to spend every blessed pice on the bloomin' ryot," remarked Captain Delaine, with humorous resentment.

"Let us hope the people will be grateful," said Ancram vaguely.

"They won't, you know," remarked Rhoda Daye to Mr. Pond. "They'll never know. They are like the cattle--they plough and eat and sleep; and if a tenth of them die of cholera from bad water, they say it was written upon their foreheads; and if Government cleans the tanks and the tenth are spared, they say it is a good year and the gods are favourable."

"Dear me!" said Mr. Pond: "that's very interesting."

"Isn't it? And there's lots more of it--all in the Calcutta newspapers, Mr. Pond: you should read them if you wish to be informed." And Mr. Pond thought that an excellent idea.

When a Lieutenant-Governor drops into the conversational vortex of a Calcutta dinner-party he circles on indefinitely. The measure of his hospitality, the nature of his tastes, the direction of his policy, his quality as a master, and the measure of his popularity, are only a few of the heads under which he is discussed; while his wife is made the most of separately, with equal thoroughness and precision. Just before Mrs. Daye looked smilingly at Mrs. St. George, and the ladies flocked away, some one asked who Mrs. Church's friends were in Calcutta, anyway: she seemed to know hardly any one person more than another--a delightful impartiality, the lady added, of course, after Lady Spence's favouritism. The remark fell lightly enough upon the air, but Lewis Ancram did not let it pass. He looked at nobody in particular, but into space: it was a way he had when he let fall anything definite.

"Well," he said, "I hope I may claim to be one. My pretension dates back five years--I used to know them in Kaligurh. I fancy Mrs. Church will be appreciated in Calcutta. She is that combination which is so much less rare than it used to be--a woman who is as fine as she is clever, and as clever as she is charming."

"My dear mummie," exclaimed Rhoda, as Mrs. St. George expressed her entire concurrence, "don't be stupid! He didn't mean that."

Later Ancram stepped out of one of the open French windows and found her alone on the broad verandah, where orchids hung from the roof and big plants in pots made a spiky gloom in the corners. A tank in the garden glistened motionless below; the heavy fronds of a clump of sago palms waved up and down uncertainly in the moonlight. Now and then in the moist, soft air the scent of some hidden temple tree made itself felt. A cluster of huts to the right in the street they looked down upon stood half-concealed in a hanging blue cloud of smoke and fog. Far away in the suburbs the wailing cry of the jackals rose and fell and recommenced; nearer the drub-drubbing of a tom-tom announced that somewhere in the bazar they kept a marriage festival. But for themselves and the moonlight and the shadow of the creeper round the pillars, the verandah was quite empty, and through the windows came a song of Mrs. Delaine's about love's little hour. The situation made its voiceless demand, and neither of them were unconscious of it. Nevertheless he, lighting a cigarette, asked her if she would not come in and hear the music; and she said no--she liked it better there; whereat they both kept the silence that was necessary for the appreciation of Mrs. Delaine's song. When it was over, Rhoda's terrier, Buzz, came out with inquiring cordiality, and they talked of the growth of his accomplishments since Ancram had given him to her; and then, as if it were a development of the subject, Rhoda said:

"Mrs. Church has a very interesting face, don't you think?"

"Very," Ancram replied unhesitatingly.

"She looks as if she cared for beautiful things. Not only pictures and things, but beautiful conceptions--ideas, characteristics."

"I understand," Ancram returned: "she does."

There was a pause, while they listened to the wail of the jackals, which had grown wild and high and tumultuous. As it died away, Rhoda looked up with a little smile.

"I like that," she said; "it is about the only thing out here that is quite irrepressible. And--you knew her well at Kaligurh?"

"I think I may say I did," Ancram replied, tossing the end of his cigarette down among the hibiscus bushes. "My dear girl, you must come in. There is nothing like a seductive moonlight night in India to give one fever."

"I congratulate you," said Miss Daye--and her tone had a defiance which she did not intend, though one could not say that she was unaware of its cynicism--"I congratulate you upon knowing her well. It is always an advantage to know the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor well. The most delightful things come of it--Commissionerships, and all sorts of things. I hope you will make her understand the importance of the Vedic Books in their bearing upon the modern problems of government."

"You are always asking me to make acknowledgments--you want almost too many; but since it amuses you, I don't mind." Rhoda noted the little gleam in his eyes that contradicted this. "Sanscrit is to me now exactly what Greek was at Oxford--a stepping-stone, and nothing more. One must do something to distinguish oneself from the herd; and in India, thank fortune, it's easy enough. There's an enormous field, and next to nobody to beat. Bless you, a Commissariat Colonel can give himself an aureole of scientific discovery out here if he cares to try! If I hadn't taken up Sanscrit and Hinduism, I should have gone in for palaeontology, or conchology, or folk-lore, or ferns. Anything does: only the less other people know about it the better; so I took Sanscrit." A combined suggestion of humour and candour gradually accumulated in Mr. Ancram's sentences, which came to a climax when he added, "You don't think it very original to discover that!"

"And the result of being distinguished from the herd?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, they don't send one to administer the Andamans or Lower Burmah," he said. "They conserve one's intellectual achievements to adorn social centres of some importance, which is more agreeable. And then, if a valuable post falls vacant, one is not considered disqualified for it by being a little wiser than other people. Come now--there's a very big confession for you! But you mustn't tell. We scientists must take ourselves with awful seriousness if we want to be impressive. That's the part that bores one."

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