Chronicles of Dustypore Part 3

'In order, I suppose,' said Desvoeux, 'that we three might meet this morning, and that there might be three Graces and three witches in Macbeth, and three members of the Salt Board. Three is evidently a necessity; but when I am of the trio, and two of us are men, I confess I don't like it. It is so nice to have one's lady all to one's self. But, Miss Vernon, you are alarmed, I know, and naturally; you think that I am going to ask, what I suppose fifty people have been asking you all the week, whether you enjoyed the voyage to India, and how you like the looks of Dustypore. But I will be considerate, and spare you. Enjoyed the voyage, indeed! What a horrid mockery the question seems!'

'But I _did_ enjoy it,' cried Maud; 'so you see that you might have asked me after all. It was very exciting.'

'Yes, all the excitement of wondering every day what new mysteries of horror the s.h.i.+p's cooks will devise for dinner; whether the sinews of Sunday's turkey can rival those of Sat.u.r.day's goose; the excitement of going to bed in the dark and treading on a black-beetle; the excitement of shaving in a gale of wind and cutting one's nose off, as I very nearly did; the excitement of the young ladies who are expecting their lovers at Bombay, and of the young ladies who will not wait till Bombay but manufacture their lovers out of hand. It is too thrilling!'

'Well,' said Maud, 'we had theatricals and readings and dances, and a gentleman who played the most lovely variations on the violin, and I enjoyed it all immensely!'

'Ah,' said Desvoeux, as if suddenly convinced, 'then perhaps you are even capable of liking Dustypore!'

'Poor Mr. Desvoeux!' said Felicia; 'how sorry you must be to have finished your march, and be back again at stupid Dustypore!'

'No place is stupid where Mrs. Vernon is,' said Desvoeux, gallantly; 'or rather no place would be, if she were not so often "not at home."'

'That must be,' Felicia said, 'because you call on mail-days, when I am busy with my home despatches.'

The real truth was that Felicia considered Desvoeux in need of frequent setting down, and closed her door inhospitably against him, whenever he showed the least inclination to be intimate.

'Well,' said Desvoeux, 'the days that you are busy with your despatches and when I have written the Agent's, I do not find it lively, I admit.

Come, Mrs. Vernon, the Fotheringhams, for instance--does not the very thought of them leave a sort of damp upon your mind? It makes one shudder.' Then Desvoeux pa.s.sed on to the other officials, upon whom he poured the most vehement contempt.

The Salt Board, he told Maud, always from time immemorial consisted of the three greatest fogies in the Service; that was the traditionary rule; it was only when you were half-idiotic that you could do the work properly. As for Mr. Fotheringham, he was a lucky fellow; his idiocy had developed early and strong.

'That is why Mrs. Vernon detests him so.'

'I don't detest him at all,' said Felicia; 'but I think him rather dull.'

'Yes,' said Desvoeux, with fervour; 'as Dr. Johnson said of some one, he was, no doubt, dull naturally, but he must have taken a great deal of pains to become as dull as he is now. Now, Miss Vernon, would you like to see what the Board is like? First, you must know that I am the Agent's private secretary, and part of my business is to knock his and their heads together and try to get a spark out. That is how I come to know about them. First I will show you how Vernon puts on his air of Under-Secretary and looks at me with a sort of serious, bored, official air, as if he were a bishop and thought I was going to say something impertinent.'

'As I dare say you generally are,' said Felicia, quite prepared to do battle for her husband.

'Well,' said Desvoeux, 'this is how he sits and looks--gravity and fatigue personified.'

'Yes,' cried Maud, clapping her hands with pleasure; 'I can exactly fancy him.'

'Then,' continued Desvoeux, who was really a good mimic and warming rapidly into the work, 'in comes the Board. First Fotheringham, condescending and serene and wis.h.i.+ng us all "Good-morning," as if he were the Pope dispensing a blessing. You know his way--like this? Then here is c.o.c.kshaw, looking sagacious, but really pondering over his last night's rubber, and wis.h.i.+ng the Board were finished.'

Felicia was forced to burst out laughing at the imitation.

'And now,' cried Maud, 'give us Mr. Blunt.'

Desvoeux put on Blunt's square awkward manner and coughed an imprecatory cough.

'Gentlemen,' he said, 'your figures are wrong, your arguments false and your conclusions childish. I don't want to be offensive or personal, and I have the highest possible opinion of your service; but you must allow me to observe that you are all a pack of fools!'

'Capital,' cried Maud; 'and what do you do all the time, Mr.

Desvoeux?'

'Oh, Vernon and I sit still and wink at each other and hope for the time when we shall have become idiotic enough to be on the Board ourselves.

We are of the new _regime_, and are supposed to have wits, and we have a great deal of intelligence to get over. But you know how the old ones were chosen. All the stupidest sons of the stupidest families in England for several generations, like the pedigree-wheat, you know, on the principle of selection; none but the blockheads of course would have anything to do with India.'

'Don't abuse the bridge that carries you over,' Felicia said: 'No treason to India--it has many advantages.'

'Innumerable,' cried Desvoeux: 'first, a decent excuse for separation between husbands and wives who happen to be uncongenial--no other society has anything to compare with it. You quarrel, you know----'

'No, we don't,' said Felicia, 'thank you. Speak for yourself.'

'Well, I quarrel with Mrs. Desvoeux, we'll say--though, by the way, I could not quarrel even with my wife--but suppose a quarrel, and we become mutually insupportable: there is no trouble, no scandal, no inconvenience. Mrs. Desvoeux's health has long required change of air; I secure a berth for her on the P. & Q., escort her with the utmost politeness to Bombay, have a most affectionate parting, remit once a quarter, write once a fortnight--what can be more perfect?'

'But suppose,' said Maud, 'for the sake of argument, that you don't quarrel and don't want to separate?'

'Or suppose,' said Felicia, who knew that the conversation was taking just the turn she hated, 'that we try our duet, Mr. Desvoeux? You know that you are a difficult person to catch.'

'That is one of your unjust speeches,' said Desvoeux, dropping his voice as they approached the piano and becoming suddenly serious: 'You know that I come quite as often as I think I have a chance of being welcome.'

Felicia ignored the remark and began playing the accompaniment with the utmost unconcern. The fact was that Desvoeux, though not quite such a Don Juan as he liked to be thought, had a large amount of affection to dispose of, and had given Felicia to understand upon twenty occasions that he would like to begin a flirtation with her if he dared.

CHAPTER VII.

THE RUMBLE CHUNDER GRANT.

Monstrum horrendum--informe--ingens----

There were many things which a man was expected to know about in official circles at Dustypore, and first and foremost was the 'Rumble Chunder Grant.' Not to know this argued one's self not only unknown but ignorant of the first principles of society and the common basis on which thought and conversation proceeded. It was like not having read Mr. Trollope's novels or knowing nothing about the Tichborne Trial or being in any other way out of tune with the times. One of the things that gave the old civilians such a sense of immeasurable superiority over all outsiders and new-comers was the consciousness that with them rested this priceless secret, this mystery of mysteries.

One inconvenient consequence, however, of everybody being expected to know was, that everybody took for granted that everybody else did know, and that those who did not know veiled their ignorance under a decent mask of familiarity and by talking about it in a vague, shadowy sort of phraseology which conveniently concealed any little inaccuracies. It had to do with salt, moreover, and it was at the Salt Board that the unsearchable depths of the subject were best appreciated and this vagueness of language was most in vogue.

The facts were something of this sort. When the English took the country we found particular families and villages in Rumble Chunder in enjoyment of various rights in connection with salt; some had little monopolies; others might manufacture for themselves at a quit rent, others might quarry for themselves at particular times and places, and so forth.

The Gazette, which announced the annexation of the province, had declared in tones of splendid generosity that the British Government, though inexorable to its foes, would temper justice with mercy so far as to respect existing rights of property and would protect the loyal proprietor in the enjoyment of his own. The sonorous phrases of a rhetorical Viceroy had entailed on his successors a never-ending series of disputes, and had saddled the Empire with an obligation which was all the more burthensome for being undefined. Ever since that unlucky Gazette, officials had been hard at work to find out what it was that the Governor-General had promised to do and how much it would cost to do it. One diligent civilian after another went down to Rumble Chunder and made out a list of people who were or who pretended to be, ent.i.tled to interests in salt. Then these lists had been submitted and discussed, and minuted upon, and objected to, and returned for further investigation, and one set of officers had given place to another, and the chance of clearing up the matter had grown fainter every day.

Meanwhile the Rumble Chunder people had gone their ways, exercising what rights they could, and happy in the possession of an interminable controversy. In course of time most of the original doc.u.ments got destroyed in the Mutiny, or eaten by white ants, and a fresh element of uncertainty was introduced by the question of the authenticity of all existing copies. Then there had come a new Secretary of State at home, whose views as to the grantees were diametrically opposed to all his predecessors, and who sent peremptory orders to carry out the new policy with the least possible delay. Thus the subject had gradually got itself into a sort of hopeless tangle, for which Desvoeux used to say that the only effectual remedy would be the end of the world. No one knew exactly what his rights were, and every one was afraid of endangering his position by too rigid an inquiry or too bold an a.s.sertion.

One peculiarity of this, as of most Indian controversies, was the unnatural bitterness of spirit to which it gave rise. The most amiable officials turned to gall and wormwood at its very mention, and abused each other over it with the vehemence of vexed theologians.

Whether vain attempts to understand it had engendered an artificial spitefulness, or whether discussion, like beer-drinking, is a luxury too strong for natures enfeebled by an Eastern climate, sure enough it was that, directly this wretched question came to the fore, good-nature, moderation and politeness were forgotten, and the antagonists made up for the confusion of their ideas by the violence of the language in which they expressed them.

The last phase of the story was that some of the descendants of the original grantees, thinking the plum was now about ripe for picking, took up the question in a wily, patient, vexatious sort of way, and produced a tremendous lawsuit. Then a Member of Parliament, whose ideas, by some sudden process (on which his banker's book would probably have thrown some light), had been suddenly turned Indiawards, made the most telling speech in the House, depicting in vivid colours the wrongs of the Rumble Chunder people and the satanic ruthlessness of British rule. Then pamphlets began to appear, which showed to demonstration that all the Viceroys had been either liars or thieves, except a few who had been both, and asked how long this Rumble Chunder swindle was to last.

The whole subject, in fact, began to be ventilated. Now, ventilation, though a good thing in its time and place, is bad for such veteran inst.i.tutions as the Salt Board, or controversies as delicate as the Rumble Chunder Grant. Every new ray of daylight let in disclosed an ugly flaw, and the fresh air nearly brought the tottering edifice about the ears of its inhabitants. It needed, as Fotheringham ruefully felt, but the rude, trenchant, uncompromising spirit of a man like Blunt to produce an imbroglio which could neither be endured, concealed, or disposed of in any of the usual methods known to Indian officialdom; and Blunt was known to be hard at work at the statistics, and already to have a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of obtrusive hostility. Fotheringham could only fortify himself with the reflection that the Providence which had seen him through a long series of official sc.r.a.pes would probably not desert him at this last stage of his career. He wished, nevertheless, that he had forestalled c.o.c.kshaw in his application for the Carraways.

CHAPTER VIII.

GOLDEN DAYS.