CHAPTER XIII.
Three days later the Notification appeared. John Church sat tenselythrough the morning, unconsciously preparing himself foremergencies—deputations, petitions, mobs. None of these occurred. Theday wore itself out in the usual routine, and in the evening His Honourwas somewhat surprised to meet at dinner a member of the Viceroy’sCouncil who was not aware that anything had been done. He turned withsome eagerness next morning to the fourth page of his newspaper, andfound its leading article illuminating the subject of an archæologicaldiscovery in Orissa, made some nine months previously. TheLieutenant-Governor was an energetic person, and did not understand thetemper of Bengal. He had published a Notification subversive of theeducational policy of the Government for sixty years, and he expectedthis proceeding to excite immediate attention. He gave it an importancealmost equal to that of the Derby Sweepstakes. This, however, was insome degree excusable, considering the short time he had spent inCalcutta and the persevering neglect he had shown in observing the toneof society.
Even the telegram to the sympathetic Member of Parliament failed ofimmediate transmission. Mohendra Lal Chuckerbutty wrote it out withemotion; then he paused, remembering that the cost of telegrams paid forby enthusiastic private persons was not easily recoverable fromcommittees. Mohendra was a solid man, but there were funds for thispurpose. He decided that he was not justified in speeding the nation’scry for succour at his own expense; so he submitted the telegram to thecommittee, which met at the end of the week. The committee askedMohendra to cut it down and let them see it again. In the end it arrivedat Westminster almost as soon as the mail. Mohendra, besides, had hishands and his paper full, at the moment, with an impassioned attack uponan impulsive judge of the High Court who had shot a bullock with itsback broken. As to the _Word of Truth_, Tarachand Mookerjee wascelebrating his daughter’s wedding, at the time the Notification waspublished, with tom-toms and sweetmeats and a very expensive nautch, andfor three days the paper did not appear at all.
The week lengthened out, and the Lieutenant-Governor’s anxiety grewpalpably less. His confidence had returned to such a degree that whenthe officers of the Education Department absented themselves in a bodyfrom the first of his succeeding entertainments he was seriouslydisturbed. “It’s childish,” he said to Judith. “By my arrangement not aprofessor among them will lose a pice either in pay or pension. If thepeople are anxious enough for higher education to pay twice as much forit as they do now these fellows will go on with their lectures. If not,we’ll turn them into inspectors, or superintendents of the technicalschools.”
“I can understand a certain soreness on the subject of their dignity,”his wife suggested.
Church frowned impatiently. “People might think less of their dignity inthis country and more of their duty, with advantage,” he said, and sheunderstood that the discussion was closed.
The delay irritated Ancram, who was a man of action. He told otherpeople that he feared it was only the ominous lull before the storm, andassured himself that no man could hurry Bengal. Nevertheless, the termsin which he advised Mohendra Lal Chuckerbutty, who came to see him everySunday afternoon, were successful to the point of making that Aryandrive rather faster on his way back to the _Bengal Free Press_ office.At the end of a fortnight Mr. Ancram was able to point to theverification of his prophecy; it had been the lull before the storm,which developed, two days later, in the columns of the native press,into a tornado.
“I tell you,” said he, “you might as well petition Sri Krishna as theViceroy,” when Mohendra Lal Chuckerbutty reverted to this method ofobtaining redress. Mohendra, who was a Hindoo of orthodoxy, may wellhave found this flippant, but he only smiled, and assented, and wentaway and signed the petition. He yielded to the natural necessity of thepathetic temperament of his countrymen—even when they were universitygraduates and political agitators—to implore before they did anythingelse. An appeal was distilled and forwarded. The Viceroy promptlyindicated the nature of his opinions by refusing to receive thisdocument unless it reached him through the proper channel—which was theBengal Government. The prayer of humility then became a shriek ofdefiance, a transition accomplished with remarkable rapidity in Bengal.In one night Calcutta flowered mysteriously into coloured cartoons,depicting the Lieutenant-Governor in the prisoner’s dock, charged by theSecretary of State, on the bench, with the theft of bags of gold marked“College Grants”; while the Director of Education, weeping bitterly,gave evidence against him. The Lieutenant-Governor was represented in agreen frock-coat and the Secretary of State in a coronet, which madesociety laugh, and started a wave of interest in the College GrantsNotification. John Church saw it in people’s faces at his gardenparties, and it added to the discomfort with which he readadvertisements of various mass meetings, in protest, to be heldthroughout the province, and noticed among the speakers invariably theunaccustomed names of the Rev. Professor Porter of the Exeter HallInstitute, the Rev. Dr. MacInnes of the Caledonian Mission, and FatherAmbrose, who ruled St. Dominic’s College, and who certainly insisted, aspart of _his_ curriculum, upon the lives of the Saints.
The afternoon of the first mass meeting in Calcutta closed into theevening of the last ball of the season at Government House. A pettyroyalty from Southern Europe, doing the grand tour, had trailed hisclouds of glory rather indolently late into Calcutta; and, as societyanxiously emphasized, there was practically only a single date availablebefore Lent for a dance in his honour. When it was understood that TheirExcellencies would avail themselves of this somewhat contractedopportunity, society beamed upon itself, and said it knew theywould—they were the essence of hospitality.
There are three square miles of the green Maidan, round which Calcuttasits in a stucco semi-circle, and past which her brown river runs to thesea. Fifteen thousand people, therefore, gathered in one corner of it,made a somewhat unusually large patch of white upon the grass, but werenot otherwise impressive, and in no wise threatening. Society, which hadforgotten about the mass meeting, put up its eye-glass, driving on theRed Road, and said that there was evidently something “goingon”—probably a football team of Tommies from the Fort playing the town.Only two or three elderly officials, taking the evening freshness insolitary walks, looked with anxious irritation at the densely-packedmass; and Judith Church, driving home through the smoky yellow twilight,understood the meaning of the cheers the south wind softened andscattered abroad. They brought her a stricture of the heart with thethought of John Church’s devotion to these people. Ingrates, she namedthem to herself, with compressed lips—ingrates, traitors, hounds! Hereyes filled with the impotent tears of a woman’s pitiful indignation;her heart throbbed with a pang of new recognition of her husband’sworth, and of tenderness for it, and of unrecognised pain beneath thateven this could not constitute him her hero and master. She askedherself bitterly—I fear her politics were not progressive—what thepeople in England meant by encouraging open and ignorant sedition inIndia, and whole passages came eloquently into her mind of the speechshe would make in Parliament if she were but a man and a member. Theybrought her some comfort, but she dismissed them presently to reflectseriously whether something might not be done. She looked courageouslyat the possibility of imprisoning Dr. MacInnes. Then she too thought ofthe ball, and subsided upon the determination of consulting LewisAncram, at the ball, upon this point. She drew a distinct ethicalsatisfaction from her intention. It seemed in the nature of ajustification for the quickly pulsating pleasure with which she lookedforward to the evening.