CHAPTER XVII.
A BATTLE ROYAL.
Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer----
Leaving the celestials to their business and pleasures in the upperregions, the Historic Muse must now descend into the plains and recordthe wrath of Blunt and the more than Homeric combats which, stirred byAte in her most malignant mood, that irrepressible official wagedagainst his luckless compeers at the Board. The outbreak was horriblyinopportune. The weather was becoming disagreeably hot; Cockshaw waslooking up his rifles and fishing-rods for a month's run into Cashmir;Fotheringham was preparing to retire behind his cuscus entrenchments andaestivate in placidity till the moment arrived for going to the Hills.But the black soul of Blunt was impervious to climatic influences; hiscraving for information became more insatiable, his contempt forFotheringham's platitudes and Strutt's tall writing less and lessdisguised. The further Blunt looked into the Rumble Chunder affair thekeener grew his sense of the feeble, roundabout, inaccurate, unthoroughway in which it had been treated by every one who had essayed to take itin hand. 'The way to handle nettles,' he said, roughly, 'is to taketight hold of them and bear what stinging you get and have done withit.'
Neither Fotheringham nor Cockshaw were in the least disposed to handleofficial nettles or to admit the force of Blunt's logic as applied tothemselves.
'Some nettles,' Fotheringham said, with dignified composure, 'will notbear handling at all. Many of our Indian maladies you will find, Blunt,require a course of treatment always unpopular with ardent physicians,that, namely, of being left alone.'
'Ay,' said Cockshaw, blowing a great stream of smoke from his mouth, asif he wished he could treat Blunt and his schemes in like fashion;'leave well alone, Blunt. What the deuce is it you are driving at?'
'I'll tell you what I am driving at,' said Blunt, 'I want to be out ofthe muddle in which we have been going on all these years, just for wantof a little explicitness and courage.'
'Excuse me,' said Fotheringham testily; 'I am not aware that theconquerors and administrators of the Sandy Tracts have ever been accusedof deficiency in courage, at any rate.'
'Of course not,' answered the other; 'no one supposes anything of thesort; but what I mean is that no one has faced the consequences of thatconfounded Proclamation of the Governor-General in a plain,business-like way, and seen what it really comes to.'
Now the Governor-General's Proclamation was regarded in official circlesat Dustypore with a sort of traditional awe, as something almost sacred.Fotheringham had often spoken of it as the Magna Charta of the SandyTracts, and Strutt generally quoted it in the peroration of his AnnualReport. Nothing, accordingly, could be less congenial to his audiencethan Blunt's coarse, offhanded, disrespectful way of referring to it.Fotheringham's whole nature rose in arms against the idea of this rash,irreverential intruder handling with such jaunty freedom and contemptthe things which he had all his life been accustomed to treat and to seetreated with profound respect. The moment had now come when to put upwith Blunt any longer would, he thought, be simple weakness; the cup ofBlunt's misdeeds at last was full; and Fotheringham, his patience fairlyat an end, pale and excited, spoke, and spoke in wrath.
'I must beg,' he said, in a tone of aggrieved dignity which Bluntespecially resented, 'to remind our junior colleague that there are somethings of which his inexperience of the country renders it impossiblefor him to be a competent judge, and of which, when he knows thembetter, he will probably think and speak with more respect. This RumbleChunder Grant is one of them. Cockshaw and I have been at work at it fortwenty years: we know the places, the people, the language, the feelingit excites, the dangers it may provoke. The Proclamation, which Blunt ispleased to describe as "confounded," was, we know, a high-minded,well-considered act of a great statesman and has been the foundationstone of all peace, prosperity, and civilisation in the province. It allseems clear to you, my good sir, because--forgive me for saying it--youdo not see the intricacies of the matter, and are incapable ofappreciating its bearings. For my part'----
'Come, come, Fotheringham,' said Cockshaw, who had been lookingnervously at his watch and knew that it wanted only seven minutes to thehour at which his afternoon game of racquets should begin, 'don't let usdrift into a quarrel. As to speaking rudely of the Proclamation, it isas bad as the man who damned the North Pole, you know--no harm is doneto any one by that. Blunt is not so nervous about the matter as we are,because he has not had such a deal of bother over it as we have had. Myidea is that we have gone into it of late quite as far as we can justnow. Suppose we drop it for the present and take it up again in the coldweather?'
'I object altogether,' Blunt said, in a dogged way, which made Cockshawgive up his chance of racquets that day as desperate. 'That system ofpostponements is one of the objectionable practices which I especiallydeprecate. Whenever any of us comes across a thing which he does notfancy, or cannot or will not understand, he puts it into his box andburkes it, and no more is heard of it for a twelvemonth. I would soonertake the chance of going wrong than the certainty of doing nothing.'
'And I,' answered Cockshaw, lighting a new cheroot with the remainingfraction of his old one, 'would sooner take the risk of a little delaythan the certainty of going wrong, as you will do to a moral certaintyif you are in such a devil of a hurry.'
'Please, Cockshaw,' said Fotheringham, to whom his colleague's cherootsand bad language were a chronic affliction, 'do not lose your temper.For my part, I was going to observe when you interrupted me just now, Ireally do not know what it is that Blunt imagines could be done.'
'This could be done,' Blunt said, 'we could bring things to a head, andknow exactly how we stand; ascertain the claims, the rights, and at whatprices we could buy the owners of them out.'
'My good sir,' Fotheringham exclaimed, by this time fairly in a passion,'that is exactly what all of us have been trying to do for the last tenyears, and you talk as if it could be done out of hand.'
'And so it could,' cried Blunt, 'if any one would only resolve to do it.I tell you what: let me have Whisp and a few clerks and translators, andhold a local commission, and I will go into the District myself andknock my way through the matter somehow or other.'
'You will find it infernally hot,' said Cockshaw.
'You will have a rising on the frontier,' said Fotheringham, 'mark mywords, and come back deeper in difficulties than ever.'
However, Blunt at last got his way and went off trotting on his cob.Cockshaw escaped gleefully to the racquet-court, and Fotheringham satsadly at the Board-room, conscious of present harassment and impendingdisaster. Both he and Blunt used to carry away with them to theirdomestic circles the traces of the conflicts in which they had beenengaged: both reached their homes in a truly pitiable state of mind andbody whenever this hateful Rumble Chunder Grant affair was on hand: boththeir ladies knew only too well the days when it formed part of theprogramme. Blunt used to stamp about and abuse the servants, emphasisinghis language with various vehement British expletives, quaffing largegoblets of brandy and soda-water, as if to assuage an inward fury, andmaking no secret of his opinion that Fotheringham was a donkey.Fotheringham, on the other hand, retired to his sofa, called forsal-volatile, had both the Misses Fotheringham to bathe his temples withtoilet-vinegar, and breathed a hint that poor Blunt was a terriblyuncouth fellow, and that it was extremely disagreeable to have to dowith people who, not being gentlemen themselves, could not understandwhat gentlemen felt. Mrs. Fotheringham thought so too, and began, on herpart, not to love Mrs. Blunt.