CHAPTER V.
A bazar had been opened in aid of a Cause. The philanthropic heart ofCalcutta, laid bare, discloses many Causes, and during the cold weathertheir commercial hold upon the community is as briskly maintained as itmay be consistently with the modern doctrine of the liberty of thesubject. The purpose of this bazar was to bring the advantages of thepiano and feather-stitch and Marie Bashkirtseff to young native ladiesof rank. It had been for some time obvious that young native ladies ofrank were painfully behind the van of modern progress. It was known thatthey were not in the habit of spending the golden Oriental hours in thesearch for wisdom as the bee obtains honey from the flowers: they muchpreferred sucking their own fingers, cloyed with sweetmeats from thebazar. Yet a few of them had tasted emancipation. Their husbands allowedthem to show their faces to the world. Of one, who had been educated inLondon, it was whispered that she wore stays, and read books in threelanguages besides Sanscrit, and ate of the pig! These the memsahibsfastened upon and infected with the idea of elevating their sisters byannual appeals to the public based on fancy articles. Future generationsof Aryan lady-voters, hardly as yet visible in the effulgence of allthat is to come, will probably fail to understand that their privilegeswere founded, towards the end of the nineteenth century, on anantimacassar; but thus it will have been.
The wife of the Lieutenant-Governor had opened the bazar. She had doneit in black lace and jet, which became her exceedingly, with a prettylittle speech, which took due account of the piano and feather-stitchand Marie Bashkirtseff under more impressive names. She had driven therewith Lady Scott. The way was very long and very dusty and very native,which includes several other undesirable characteristics; and Lady Scotthad beguiled it with details of an operation she had insisted onwitnessing at the Dufferin Hospital for Women. Lady Scott declared that,holding the position she did on the Board, she really felt theresponsibility of seeing that things were properly done, but thathenceforth the lady-doctor in charge should have her entire confidence.“I only wonder,” said Mrs. Church, “that, holding the position you do onthe Board, you didn’t insist on performing the operation yourself”; andher face was so grave that Lady Scott felt flattered and deprecated theidea.
Then they had arrived and walked with circumstance through the littledesultory crowd of street natives up the strip of red cloth to the door,and there been welcomed by three or four of the very most emancipated,with two beautiful, flat, perfumed bouquets of pink-and-white roses andmany suffused smiles. And then the little speech, which gave Mrs. Gasperof the High Court the most poignant grief, in that men, on account ofthe unemancipated, were excluded from the occasion; she would simplyhave given anything to have had her husband hear it. After which Mrs.Church had gone from counter to counter, with her duty before her eyes.She bought daintily, choosing Dacca muslins and false gods, brassplaques from Persia and embroidered cloths from Kashmir. A dozen or twoof the unemancipated pressed softly upon her, chewing betel, andappraising the value of her investments, and little Mrs. Gasper notedthem too from the other side of the room. Lady Scott was most kind inshowing dear Mrs. Church desirable purchases, and made, herself,conspicuously more than the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor. On everyhand a native lady said, “Buy something!” with an accent less expressiveof entreaty than of resentful expectation. One of the emancipated wentbehind a door and made up the total of Mrs. Church’s expenditure. Shecame out again looking discontented: Lady Spence the year before hadspent half as much again.
Mrs. Church felt as she drove away that she had left behind her aninjury which might properly find redress under a Regulation.
She was alone, Lady Scott having to go on to a meeting of the “Board”with Mrs. Gasper. The disc of pink-and-white roses rolled about with theeasy motion of the barouche, on the opposite seat. It was only half-pastfour, and the sun was still making strong lines with the tawdryflat-roofed yellow shops that huddled along the crowded interminablestreets. She looked out and saw a hundred gold-bellied wasps hoveringover a tray of glistening sweetmeats. Next door a woman with her redcloth pulled over her head, and her naked brown baby on her hip, pausedand bought a measure of parched corn from a bunnia, who lolled among hisgrain heaps a fat invitation to hunger. Then came the square dark holeof Abdul Rahman, where he sat in his spectacles and sewed, with his longlean legs crossed in front of him, and half a dozen red-beakedlove-birds in a wicker cage to keep him company. And then theestablishment of Saddanath Mookerjee, announcing in a dazzling fringe ofblack letters:
??????????????? PAINS FEVERANDISEASES CURED ???????? WHILE YOU WAIT
She looked at it all as she rolled by with a little tender smile ofreconnaissance. The old fascination never failed her; the people andtheir doings never became common facts. Nevertheless she was very tired.The crowd seethed along in the full glare of the afternoon, hawking,disputing, gesticulating. The burden of their talk—the naked coolies,the shrill-jabbering women with loads of bricks upon their heads, thesleek baboos in those European shirts the nether hem of which no canonof propriety has ever taught them to confine—the burden of their talkreached her where she sat, and it was all of _paisa_[A] and _rupia_, theeternal dominant note of the bazar. She closed her eyes and tried to putherself into relation with a life bounded by the rim of a copper coin.She was certainly very tired. When she looked again a woman stooped overone of the city standpipes and made a cup with her hand and gave herlittle son to drink. He was a very beautiful little son, with a stringof blue beads round his neck and a silver anklet on each of his fatbrown legs, and as he caught her hand with his baby fingers the mothersmiled over him in her pride.
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Footnote A:
Halfpence.
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Judith Church suddenly leaned back among her cushions very close totears. “It would have been better,” she said to herself—“so muchbetter,” as she opened her eyes widely and tried to think aboutsomething else. There was her weekly dinner-party of forty that night,and she was to go down with the Bishop. Oh, well! that was better thanSir Peter Bloomsbury. She hoped Captain Thrush had not forgotten to asksome people who could sing—and _not_ Miss Nellie Vansittart. She smileda little as she thought how Captain Thrush had made Nellie Vansittart’spretty voice an excuse for asking her and her people twice already thismonth. She must see that Captain Thrush was not on duty the afternoon ofMrs. Vansittart’s _musicale_. She felt indulgent towards Captain Thrushand Nellie Vansittart; she give that young lady plenary absolution forthe monopoly of her lieutenant on the Belvedere Thursdays; she thoughtof them by their Christian names. Then to-morrow—to-morrow she openedthe _café chantant_ for the Sailors’ Home, and they dined at the Fortwith the General. On Wednesday there was the Eurasian Female Orphans’prize-giving, and the dance on board the _Boetia_. On Friday a “LadyDufferin” meeting—or was it the Dhurrumtollah Self-Help Society, or theSisters’ Mission?—she must look it up in her book. And, sandwiched insomewhere, she knew there was a German bacteriologist and a lecture onastronomy. She put up both her slender hands in her black gloves andyawned; remembering at the same time that it was ten days since she hadseen Lewis Ancram. Her responsibilities, when he mocked at them withher, seemed light and amusing. He gave her strength and stimulus: shewas very frank with herself in confessing how much she depended uponhim.
The carriage drew up on one side of the stately width of Chowringhee.That is putting it foolishly; for Chowringhee has only one side to drawup at—the other is a footpath bordering the great green Maidan, whichstretches on across to the river’s edge, and is fringed with masts fromPortsmouth and Halifax and Ispahan. When the sun goes down behindthem——But the sun had not gone down when Mrs. Church got out of hercarriage and went up the steps of the School of Art: it was stillburnishing the red bricks of that somewhat insignificant building, andlying in yellow sheets over the vast stucco bulk of the Indian Museum o
none side, and playing among the tree-tops in the garden of theCommissioner of Police on the other. Anglo-Indian aspirations, in theirwholly subordinate, artistic form, were gathered together in anexhibition here, and here John Church, who was inspecting a gaol at theother end of Calcutta, had promised to meet his wife at five o’clock.
The Lieutenant-Governor had been looking forward to this: it was soseldom, he said, that he found an opportunity of combining a duty and apleasure. Judith Church remembered other Art Exhibitions she had seen inIndia, and thought that one category was enough.
At the farther end of the room a native gentleman stood transfixed withadmiration before a portrait of himself by his own son. Two or threeladies with catalogues darted hurriedly, like humming-birds, fromwater-colour to water-colour. A cadaverous planter from the Terai, whoturned out sixty thousand pounds of good tea and six yards of badpictures annually, talked with conviction to an assenting broker withhis thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, about the points of his“Sunset View of Kinchinjunga,” that hung among the oils on the otherwall. There was no one else in the room but Mr. Lewis Ancram, who wore astraw hat and an air of non-expectancy, and looked a sophisticatedtwenty-five.
For a moment, although John Church was the soul of punctuality, it didnot seem remarkable to Mrs. Church that her husband had failed to turnup. Ancram had begun to explain, indeed, before it occurred to her toask; and this, when she remembered it, brought a delicate flush to hercheeks which stayed there, and suggested to the Chief Secretary thepleasant recollection of a certain dewy little translucent flower thatgrew among the Himalayan mosses very high up.
“It was a matter His Honour thought really required looking into—clearevidence, you know, that the cholera was actually being communicatedinside the gaol—and when I offered to bring his apologies on to you Ihonestly believe he was delighted to secure another hour ofinvestigation.”
“John works atrociously hard,” she replied; and when he weighed thisafterward, as he had begun to weigh the things she said, he found in itappreciably more concern for John’s regrettable habit of workingatrociously hard than vexation at his failure to keep their engagement.
They walked about for five minutes and looked at the aspirations. Ancramremembered Rhoda Daye’s hard little sayings on the opening day, andreflected that some women could laugh with a difference. Mrs. Church didit with greatest freedom, he noticed, at the prize pictures. For theothers she had compunction, and she regarded the “Sunset View ofKinchinjunga” with a smile that she plainly atoned for by an inwardtear. “Don’t!” she said, looking round the walls, as he invested thatpeak with the character of a strawberry ice. “It means all the bloom oftheir lives, poor things. At all events it’s ideality, it isn’t——”
“Pig-sticking!”
“Yes,” she said softly. “If I knew what in the world to do with it, Iwould buy that ‘Kinchin.’ But its ultimate disposal does presentdifficulties.”
“I don’t think you would have any right to do that, you know. Youcouldn’t be so dishonest with the artist. Who would sell the work of hishand to be burned!”
He was successful in provoking her appreciation. “You are quite right,”she said. “The patronage of my pity! You always see!”
“I _have_ bought a picture,” Ancram went on, “by a fellow named Martin,who seems to have sent it out from England. It’s nothing great, but Ithought it was a pity to let it go back. That narrow one, nearest to thecorner.”
“It is good enough to escape getting a prize,” she laughed. “Yes, I likeit rather—a good deal—very much indeed. I wish I were a critic and couldtell you why. It will be a pleasure to you; it is so green and cool andstill.”
Mr. Ancram’s purchase was of the type that is growing common enough atthe May exhibitions—a bit of English landscape on a dull day towardsevening, fields and a bank with trees on it, a pool with water-weeds init, the sky crowding down behind and standing out in front in the quietwater. Perhaps it lacked imagination—there was no young woman leaningout of the canoe to gather water-lilies—but it had been painted with agood deal of knowledge.
Mr. James Springgrove at the moment was talking about it to anothergentleman. Mr. Springgrove was one of Calcutta’s humourists. He was alsoa member of the Board of Revenue; and for these reasons, combined withhis subscription, it was originally presumed that Mr. Springgroveunderstood Art. People generally thought he did, because he was aDirector and a member of the Hanging Committee, but this was a mistake.Mr. Springgrove brought his head as nearly as possible into a line withthe other gentleman’s head, from which had issued, in weak commendation,the statement that No. 223 reminded it of home.
There was a moment’s pause.]
“If you asked what it reminded _me_ of,” said Mr. Springgrove, clappingthe other on the back, “I should say verdigris, sir—verdigris.” Mrs.Church and the Honourable Mr. Lewis Ancram looked into each other’s eyesand smiled as long as there was any excuse for smiling.
“I am glad you are not a critic,” he said. She was verging toward thedoor. “What are you going to do now?”
“Afterward—we meant to drive to Hastings House. John thought there wouldbe time. It is quite near Belvedere, you know. But——And I shall not haveanother free afternoon for a fortnight.”
They went out in silence, past the baboo who sat behind a table at thereceipt of entrance money, and down the steps. The syce opened thecarriage door, and Mrs. Church got in. There was a moment’s pause, whilethe man looked questioningly at Ancram, still holding open the door.
“If he invites himself,” said Judith inwardly, with the intention ofself-discipline; and the rest was hope.
“Is there any reason——?” he asked, with his foot on the step; and it wasquite unnecessary that he should add “against my coming?”
“No—there is no reason.” Then she added, with a visible effort to makeit the commonplace thing it was not, “Then you will drive out with me,and I shall see the place after all? How nice!”
They rolled out into the gold-and-green afternoon life of the Maidan,along wide pipal-shadowed roads, across a bridge, through a lane or twowhere the pariahs barked after the carriage and the people about thehuts stared, shading their eyes. There seemed very little to say. Theythought themselves under the spell of the pleasantness of it—the liftingof the burden and the heat of the day, the little wind that shook thefronds of the date palms and stole about bringing odours from where thepeople were cooking, the unyoked oxen, the hoarse home-going talk of thecrows that flew city-ward against the yellow sky with a purple light ontheir wings.
“Let the carriage stay here,” Judith said, as they stopped beside adilapidated barred gate. “I want to walk to the house.”
A salaaming creature in a _dhoty_ hurried out of a clump of bamboos inthe corner and flung open the gate. It seemed to close again upon theworld. They were in an undulating waste that had once been a statelypleasure-ground, and it had a visible soul that lived upon its memoriesand was content in its abandonment. It was so still that the great teakleaves, twisted and discoloured and full of holes like battered bronze,dropping singly and slowly through the mellow air, fell at their feetwith little rustling cracks.
“What a perfection of silence!” Judith exclaimed softly; and then somevague perception impelled her to talk of other things—of herdinner-party and Nellie Vansittart.
Ancram looked on, as it were, at her conversation for a moment or twowith his charming smile. Then, “Oh, dear lady,” he broke in, “let themgo—those people. They are the vulgar considerations of the time whichhas been—which will be again. But this is a pause—made for _us_.”
She looked down at the rusty teak-leaves, and he almost told her, as heknocked them aside, how poetic a shadow clung round her eyelids. Thecurve of the drive brought them to the old stucco mansion, dreamingquietly and open-eyed over its great square porch of the Calcutta ofNuncomar and Philip Francis.
“It broods, doesn’t it?” said Judith Church, standing under
the yellowhoneysuckle of the porch. “Don’t you wish you could see the ghost!”
The gatekeeper reappeared, and stood offering them each a rose.
“This gentleman,” replied Ancram, “will know all about the ghost. Heprobably makes his living out of Warren Hastings, in the tourist season.Without doubt, he says, there is a _bhut_, a very terrible _bhut_, whichlives in the room directly over our heads and wears iron boots. Shall wego and look for it?”
Half way up the stairs Ancram turned and saw the gatekeeper followingthem. “You have leave to go,” he said in Hindustani.
At the top he turned again, and found the man still salaaming at theirheels. “_Jao!_” he shouted, with a threatening movement, and the nativefled.
“It is preposterous,” he said apologetically to Mrs. Church, “that oneshould be dogged everywhere by these people.”
They explored the echoing rooms, and looked down the well of the ruinedstaircase, and decided that no ghost with the shadow of a title to theproperty could let such desirable premises go unhaunted. They were inabsurdly good spirits. They had not been alone together for a fortnight.The sky was all red in the west as they stepped out upon the wide flatroof, and the warm light that was left seemed to hang in mid-air. Thespires and domes of Calcutta lay under a sulphur-coloured haze, and thepalms on the horizon stood in filmy clouds. The beautiful tropical daywas going out.
“We must go in ten minutes,” said Judith, sitting down on the low mossyparapet.
“Back into the world.” He reflected hastily and decided. Up to this timeRhoda Daye had been a conventionality between them. He had a suddendesire to make her the subject of a confidence—to explain, perhaps todiscuss, anyhow to explain.
“Tell me, my friend,” he said, making a pattern on the lichen of theroof with his stick, “what do you think of my engagement?”
She looked up startled. It was as if the question had sprung at her. Shetoo felt the need of a temporary occupation, and fell upon her rose.
“You had my congratulations a long time ago,” she said, carefullyshredding each petal into three.
“Don’t!” he exclaimed impatiently: “I’m serious!”
“Well, then—it is not a fair thing that you are asking me. I don’t knowMiss Daye. I never shall know her. To me she is a little marble imagewith a very pretty polish.”
“And to me also,” he repeated, seizing her words: “she is a littlemarble image with a very pretty polish.” He put an unconscious demandfor commiseration into his tone. Doubtless he did not mean to go so far,but his inflection added, “And I’ve got to marry her!”
“To you—to you!” She plucked aimlessly at her rose, and searched vainlyfor something which would improve the look of his situation. But therush of this confidence had torn up commonplaces by the roots. She feltit beating somewhere about her heart; and her concern, for the moment,in hearing of his misfortune, was for herself.
“The ironical part of it is,” he went on, very pale with the effort ofhis candour, “that I was blindly certain of finding her sympathetic. Youknow what one means by that in a woman. I wanted it, just then. I seemedto have arrived at a crisis of wanting it. I made ludicrously sure ofit. If you had been here,” he added with conviction, “it would neverhave happened.”
She opened her lips to say “Then I wish I had been here,” but the wordshe heard were, “People tell me she is very clever.”
“Oh,” he said bitterly, “she has the qualities of her defects, no doubt.But she isn’t a woman—she’s an intelligence. Conceive, I beg of you, theprospect of passing one’s life in conjugal relations with anintelligence!”
Judith assured herself vaguely that this brutality of language had itsexcuse. She could have told him very fluently that he ought not to marryRhoda Daye under any circumstances, but something made it impossiblethat she should say anything of the sort. She strove with the instinctfor a moment, and then, as it overthrew her, she looked about hershivering. The evening chill of December had crept in and up from themarshes; one or two street lamps twinkled out in the direction of thecity; light white levels of mist had begun to spread themselves amongthe trees in the garden below them.
“We must go,” she said, rising hurriedly: “how suddenly it has growncold!” And as she passed before him into the empty house he saw that herface was so drawn that even he could scarcely find it beautiful.