CHAPTER XX.
The Honourable Mr. Ancram found himself gratified by Mrs. Church’srefusal to see him in Calcutta. It filled out his idea of her, which wasa delicate one, and it gave him a pleasurable suggestive of the stimuluswhich he should always receive from her in future toward the alternativewhich was most noble and most satisfying. Mr. Ancram had the clearestperception of the value of such stimulus; but the probability that hewas likely to be able to put it permanently at his disposal could hardlybe counted chief among the reasons which made him, at this time, soexceedingly happy. His promotion had even less to do with it. India isknown to be full of people who would rather be a Chief Commissioner thanRudyard Kipling or Saint Michael, but this translation had been in thestraight line of Mr. Ancram’s intention for years; it offered him nofortuitous joy, and if it made a basis for the more refined delightwhich had entered his experience, that is as much as it can be creditedwith. Life had hitherto offered him no satisfaction that did not palebeside the prospect of possessing Judith Church. He gave dreamyhalf-hours to the realisation of how the sordidness of existence wouldvanish when he should regard it through her eyes, of how her goodnesswould sweeten the world to him, and her gaiety brighten it, and herbeauty etherealise it. He tried to analyse the completeness of theirfitness for each other, and invariably gave it up to fall into a littletrance of longing and of anticipation.
He could not be sufficiently grateful to John Church for dying—it was acircumstance upon which he congratulated himself frankly, an accident bywhich he was likely to benefit so vastly that he could indulge in nopretence of regretting it on any altruistic ground. It was so decent ofChurch to take himself out of the way that his former Chief Secretaryexperienced a change of attitude toward him. Ancram still considered himan ass, but hostility had faded out of the opinion, which, when hementioned it, dwelt rather upon that animal’s power of endurance andother excellent qualities. Ancram felt himself distinctly on betterterms with the late Lieutenant-Governor, and his feeling was accented bythe fact that John Church died in time to avoid the necessity for a moreformal resignation. His Chief Secretary felt personally indebted to himfor that, on ethical grounds.
In the long, suggestive, caressing letters which reached Judith by everymail, he made an appearance of respecting her fresh widowhood that wasreally clever, considering the fervency which he contrived to imply. Asthe weeks went by, however, he began to consider this attitude of hers,the note she had struck in going six thousand miles away without seeinghim, rather an extravagant gratification of conscience, and if she hadbeen nearer it may be doubted whether his tolerance would have lasted.But she was in London and he was in Assam, which made restraint easier;and he was able always to send her the assurance of his waiting passionwithout hurting her with open talk of the day when he should come intohis own. Judith, seeing that his pen was in a leash, watered her loveanew with the thought of his innate nobility, and shortened the timethat lay between them.
In spite of her conscience, which was a good one, there were times whenMrs. Church was shocked by the realisation that she was only trying tobelieve herself unhappy. In spite of other things, too, of a morematerial sort. Misfortune had overtaken the family at Stoneborough:ill-health had compelled her father to resign the pulpit of BeulahChurch, and to retire upon a microscopic stipend from the superannuationfund. There was a boy of fourteen, much like his sister, who wanted tobe a soldier, and did not want to wear a dirty apron and sell thecurrants of the leading member of his father’s congregation. For thesereasons Judith’s three hundred a year shrank to a scanty hundred andfifty. The boy went to Clifton, and she to an attic in that south sideof Kensington where they are astonishingly cheap. Here she establishedherself, and grew familiar with the devices of poverty. It was notpicturesque Bohemian poverty; she had little ladylike ideals in glovesand shoes that she pinched herself otherwise to attain, and it is to befeared that she preferred looking shabby-genteel with eternallimitations to looking disreputable with spasmodic extravagances. Butneither the sordidness of her life nor the discomfort she tried toconjure out of the past made her miserable. Rather she extracted asolace from them—they gave her a vague feeling of expiation; she huggedher little miseries for their purgatorial qualities, and felt, thoughshe never put it into a definite thought, that they made a sort ofjustification for her hope of heaven.
Besides, except once a week, on Indian mail day, her life was for thetime in abeyance. She had a curious sense occasionally, in some sordidsituation to which she was driven for the lack of five shillings, of howlittle anything mattered during this little colourless period; and shedeclined kindly invitations from old Anglo-Indian acquaintances in moreexpensive parts of Kensington with almost an ironical appreciation oftheir inconsequence. She accepted existence without movement or charmfor the time, since she could not dispense with it altogether. Sheinvented little monotonous duties and occupied herself with them, andwaited, always with the knowledge that just beyond her dingy horizon laya world, her old world, of full life and vivid colour and long dramaticdays, if she chose to look.
On mail days she did look, over Ancram’s luxurious pages with soft eyesand a little participating smile. They made magic carpets for her—theyhad imaginative touches. They took her to the scent of the food-stuff inthe chaffering bazar; she saw the white hot sunlight sharp-shadowed bydusty palms, and the people, with their gentle ways and their simplicityof guile, the clanking silver anklets of the coolie women, the black_kol_ smudges under the babies’ eye-lashes—the dear people! Sheremembered how she had seen the oxen treading out the corn in the warmleisure of that country, and the women grinding at the mill. Sheremembered their simple talk; how the gardener had told her in his owntongue that the flowers ate much earth; how a syce had once handed her abeautiful bazar-written letter, in which he asked for more wages becausehe could not afford himself. She remembered the jewelled Rajahs, and theragged magicians, and the coolies’ song in the evening, and thehome-trotting little oxen painted in pink spots in honour of a plastergoddess, and realised how she loved India. She realised it even morecompletely, perhaps, when November came and brought fogs which werealways dreary in that they interfered with nothing that she wanted todo, and neuralgia that was especially hard to bear for being her onlyoccupation. The winter dragged itself away. Beside Ancram’s letters andher joy in answering them, she had one experience of pleasure keenenough to make it an episode. She found it in the _Athenian_, which shepicked up on a news-stall, where she had dropped into the class ofcustomers who glance over three or four weeklies and buy one or two. Itwas a review, a review of length and breadth and weight and density, ofthe second volume of the “Modern Influence of the Vedic Books,” by LewisAncram, I.C.S. She bought the paper and took it home, and all that dayher heart beat higher with her woman’s ambition for the man she loved,sweetened with the knowledge that his own had become as nothing to theman who loved her.