“White ants?” The Doctor suffered a moment’s alarm, remembering the violin and the owls. “No, I don’t think so. At least, I suppose there may be, somewhere...”
“I’ve brought a lot of books. I just wondered whether I should take measures to protect them.’
“Oh, I see what you mean,” exclaimed the Doctor with relief. “I don’t think you need worry about that. In Krishnapur, perhaps, but not here.” He had given himself a fright about nothing! He could hardly have been more rattled if Fleury had asked him outright for some white ants steamed in a pie! What an old fool he was becoming, to be sure.
Now at last the ladies could be heard descending and the Doctor and Fleury moved towards the door to greet them. As they did so, the Doctor’s sleeve brushed a vase standing on a small table and it shattered on the floor. The ladies entered with cries of grief and alarm to find the two gentlemen picking up the pieces.
“My dear fellow,” the Doctor was saying consolingly to Fleury. “Please don’t apologize. It wasn’t in the least your fault and, besides, it was an object of small value.” And he smiled benignly at Fleury, who stared back at him in amazement. What on earth did the Doctor mean? Of course it was not his fault. How could it have been?
This accident to the vase would not have particularly mattered, Mrs Dunstaple explained rather stiffly to Fleury, if it had been theirs; unfortunately, it happened to belong to the people who had let the house to them. However, there was no point in worrying about it now.
“I’m frightfully sorry,” murmured Fleury, in spite of himself. He was painfully conscious of the loveliness of Louise who had come forward to watch this regrettable scene.
“Really, Dobbin!” said Miriam crossly. “You’re so clumsy. Why don’t you look what you’re doing?” Fleury blushed and glared at his sister; he had told her a hundred times not to call him “Dobbin”. And this was the worst possible moment for her to forget, with the lovely, slightly disdainful Louise standing there. But perhaps Louise had failed to notice.
The slight feeling of awkwardness which attended Fleury’s clumsiness was soon forgotten, however, in the news that Mr Hopkins, the Collector of Krishnapur, and Mrs Hopkins had just then called to pay their respects and to allow Mrs Hopkins to say farewell to her dear friends, the Dunstaples, before embarking for England. Close on the heels of this announcement came Mrs Hopkins herself, and both Fleury and Miriam were concerned to see how harrowed and grief-stricken she looked. She was already sobbing as she advanced to embrace Louise and Mrs Dunstaple.
“Carrie, dear, you must not upset yourself. I shall have to take you away if you continue.” The Collector had followed his wife into the drawing-room with such a silent tread that Fleury jumped at these words, spoken without warning at his elbow. He turned to see a man who looked like a massive cat standing beside him; a faint perfume of verbena drifted from his impressive whiskers.
Mrs Hopkins stood away weakly from Mrs Dunstaple, still weeping but attempting to dry her eyes. Ignoring the introductions that the Doctor was trying to effect, she said to Miriam: “I’m so sorry, you must forgive me...My nerves are very poor, you see, my youngest child, a boy, died just six months ago during the hot weather...ever since then I find that the least thing will upset me. He was just a baby, you see...and when we buried him all we could think of was to put a daguerrotype of his father and myself in his little arms...It was made by one of the native gentlemen and we had been meaning to send it home to England but we decided it would be better to put it in the baby’s coffin with some roses...You know, perhaps you will think me foolish but I feel just as sad to be leaving the country where his grave lies as I am to be leaving all my dearest friends...”
Fleury had the feeling that Mrs Hopkins might have continued for some time in this vein had not the Collector said rather sharply: “Caroline, you must not think about it or you’ll make yourself unwell again. I feel sure that Mrs Lang would prefer to hear of something more cheerful.”
“On the contrary, Mrs Hopkins has my deepest sympathy...and all the more so as I have myself only recently lost someone very dear to me.”
The Collector’s brows gathered up; he looked moody and displeased, but he said nothing further.
Although he generally liked sad things, such as autumn, death, ruins and unhappy love affairs, Fleury was nevertheless dismayed by the morbid turn the conversation had taken. Besides, this was the very thing that he had brought Miriam to India to avoid. But Mrs Hopkins had composed herself and Mrs Dunstaple, too, had dried her eyes, for she was easily affected by the tears of others and only the thought of making her eyes red had prevented her from shedding them as copiously as her friend. As for Louise, although she had allowed herself to be tearfully embraced, she was more self-possessed than her mother and her own eyes had not moistened.
In any case, there was no time left for crying. Large quantities of news had to be exchanged for the Dunstaples had left Krishnapur in October and a great deal had happened since then. And they wanted to know so many things...how was the Padre? and the Magistrate? and had Dr McNab despatched anyone yet? In turn Mrs Dunstaple had to explain everything which had occurred in Calcutta. She would have liked to detail the various suitors who had been attending Louise but she did not like to, in Fleury’s presence, lest he should become discouraged. Moreover, Louise tended to be bad tempered if there was open discussion of her prospects. But while Fleury and Miriam were talking to the Collector Mrs Dunstaple just had time to intimate to Mrs Hopkins that there was one prospect, a certain Lieutenant Stapleton, nephew of a General, who looked very promising indeed.
The Collector was not in a good temper. He found leave-takings harrowing at the best of times and he was concerned for his wife, who had been overtired by the long and arduous journey by dak gharry from Krishnapur to the rail-head; but he was also worried as to what might be happening in Krishnapur during his absence, for his presentiment of approaching disaster grew every day more powerful. In addition, he felt himself to have been ill-used just now by Miriam, who had seemed to rebuke him for lack of feeling. “She cannot know how I myself suffered for the death of the baby! And how was I to know she had lost a husband in the Crimea?” (for the Doctor had enlightened him in a whisper)...“How like a woman to take an unfair advantage like that, dragging in a dead husband to put one in the wrong!” And the Collector stroked his side-whiskers against the grain, releasing a further cloud of lemon verbena into the air. “What was that phrase of Tennyson’s? ‘...the soft and milky rabble of woman-kind...!”’
But the Collector admired pretty women and could not feel hostile to them for very long. If they were pretty he swiftly found other virtues in them which he would not have noticed had they been ugly. Soon he began to find Miriam sensible and mature, which was only to say that he liked her grey eyes and her smile. “She has a mind of her own,” he decided. “Why can’t all women be widows?”
Fleury and Miriam sat opposite the elder Dunstaples in the carriage, beside little Fanny. Their space was confined because the ladies’ crinolines ballooned against each other leaving very little room for a gentleman to stretch his legs with discretion. Even Fanny’s slender legs were lost in mounds of snowy, tiered petticoats.
“How pleasant it is to be ashore again after those five interminable months at sea! How one misses the trees, the fields, the green grass! But, of course, Miss Dunstaple, you yourself must have experienced this very same ordeal by water and here I am speaking as if I were the only person ever to have come out from England!”
Fleury had regarded this as the beginning of a pleasant conversation but somehow his words were not well received. Louise’s lips barely moved in reply and her mother looked quite put out. Had he made a blunder? It surely could not be that Louise was “country born” and had thus never been to England, a condition that he had heard was much misprised in Indian society. But alas, this seemed to be the case.
The carriage had slowed down to pass through a densely populated bazaar. Fleury g
azed out at a sea of brown faces, mortified by his mistake. A few inches away two men sat cross-legged in a cupboard, one shaving the skull of the other from a cup of dirty water. A cage containing a hundred tiny trembling birds with black feathers and red beaks crept past. To Fleury India was a mixture of the exotic and the intensely boring, which made it, because of his admiration for Chateaubriand, irresistible. Now there was shouting. They had arrived at the ghat.
The boat which the Doctor had engaged turned out to be a very dubious prospect indeed; a mass of leaky, rotting timbers roughly oblong in shape, manned by Dravidian cut-throats. But never mind, it was not far across the Hooghly; over the water the soaring trees of the Botanical Gardens could be seen.
“Look, there’s Nigel!” cried Louise, just as they were going on board, and clapped her hands with pleasure. A scarlet uniform could be seen glimmering in and out of the white muslin of the crowd and presently a young officer on horseback with a barefoot groom running along beside him clattered up to the ghat. He dismounted hastily and leaving the sais to cope with the horse scrambled on board, saying breathlessly: “Fearfully sorry to be late!”
Mrs Dunstaple greeted him a little coldly. Evidently Louise had not told her that she intended to invite Lieutenant Stapleton and she was not altogether glad to see him. Out of the corner of his eye Fleury saw Mrs Dunstaple frowning at her daughter and nodding surreptitiously in his direction. He remembered then what the Doctor had said about Louise and her prospects. So that was it! Mrs Dunstaple was afraid lest one of these eligible young men should become discouraged by the presence of the other. Fleury was pained to see Louise glance in his direction and then toss her head and look away, as if to say: “Why should I care whether he’s discouraged or not?” Although discouraged, Fleury stared at the river, pretending to admire the view. Lieutenant Stapleton, who had evidently expected to be the only young male on the expedition, seemed himself rather taken aback; when the two young men were introduced he merely mumbled wearily and eyed Fleury’s crumpled but well-cut clothes with sullen envy.
No sooner had they reached the mud banks on the other side than a commotion ensued; the ladies discovered that while sitting in the boat the hems of their dresses had sopped up a certain amount of bilge water. With many moans and complaints they retired to a glade at a discreet distance with a maidservant to wring them out. When at last they returned, the party moved off, trailing a crowd of grinning servants. The gardens displayed few flowers but many enormous trees and shrubs. Their way led past the Great Banyan and Fleury was filled with awe at the sight of its many trunks joined together by branches into a series of spectacular gothic arches. He had never seen a banyan tree before.
“It’s like a ruined church made by Nature!” he exclaimed with excitement as they passed by; but the Dunstaples failed to respond to this insight and, while they were all trying to decide on a suitable place for their picnic, he thought he saw Louise and Lieutenant Stapleton exchanging a sly smile.
From time to time, as they progressed through the trees, they crossed green glades where young officers were already picnicking with their ladies; but when at last they found a glade that was uninhabited Mrs Dunstaple declared it to be too sunny. In the next glade there was yet another party of young officers drinking Moselle cup with what the Doctor clearly took to be vivacious young widows. Fleury saw him look at them wistfully as he prepared to pass on with his own party...but the young officers hailed him, laughing, and asked did he not recognize them? And it turned out that they were not only acquaintances but even the best of friends, for these young men were normally stationed at Captainganj; they had been to the musketry school at Barrackpur to learn about the new Enfield rifles that were making the sepoys so cross, and had taken the opportunity of visiting Calcutta for a bit of civilization, and were naturally delighted at bumping into Dr and Mrs Dunstaple and, of course, Miss Louise, and what about that young rotter Lieutenant Harry Dunstaple who had faithfully promised to write but had not put pen to paper? They would deal with the rascal when they got back to Krishnapur in a few days...and nothing would suit them but that the Dunstaples’ party should join them.
Their ladies, it turned out, were not vivacious young widows at all, but girls of the most respectable kind, the sisters of one or other of the officers; so everything was taking place with the utmost propriety.
The officers had already made several dashing assaults on their own hamper, a converted linen basket which seemed to contain nothing but Moselle cup in a variety of bottles and jars. The Dunstaples had brought several hampers, more than one of which bore the proud label of Wilson’s “Hall of All Nations” (purveyors by appointment to the Rt. Honourable Viscount Canning), for the Doctor obviously believed in doing things properly. The young men could hardly restrain themselves as the Dunstaples’ bearers unpacked before their eyes a real York ham, as smooth and pink as little Fanny’s cheeks, oysters, pickles, mutton pies, Cheddar cheese, ox tongue, cold chickens, chocolate, candied and crystallized fruits, and biscuits of all kinds made from the finest fresh Cape flour: Abernethy’s crackers, Tops and Bottoms, spice nuts and every other delicious biscuit you could imagine.
With his hands palpitating his coat tails the Doctor surveyed his bearers at work and pretended to be unaware of the young men’s interest, waiting until the last moment before declaring with mock diffidence: “I’m sure you young fellows don’t feel like a bite to eat, but if you do...” at which a mighty cheer rang out, causing Mrs Dunstaple to look round in case they were drawing attention to themselves, but similar gay sounds were echoing from the glades around them; only a few ragged-looking natives had made an appearance and were sitting on their heels at the edge of the clearing, gazing at the white sahibs.
The young officers, in return, insisted that everyone should share their Moselle, of which they had an over-supply; indeed, sufficient to render themselves and their ladies insensible several times over. Soon a general merriment prevailed.
As for Louise, she looked quite ethereal in the dappled sunlight and shade, but it made Fleury sad to see her surrounded by gluttony and laughter; she was holding up the thigh of a duck one end of which had been wrapped in a napkin, not to be nibbled at by herself but to be wolfed at in an exaggerated and droll manner by the heavily mustached lips and somewhat yellow teeth of one of the officers, whose name was Lieutenant Cutter and who had been one of her particular favourites the year before in Krishnapur, it seemed. And not content with having everyone helpless with laughter by this behaviour Lieutenant Cutter became more droll than ever and threw back his head to howl like a wolf between bites.
Meanwhile, the Doctor was asking Captain Hudson about something which had been on his mind for a few days: namely, what was all this about there having been trouble with the sepoys at Barrackpur in January? Had he and the other officers been there at the time?
“No, that had all quietened down by the time we got there. But it didn’t amount to much in any case...one or two fires set in the native lines and some rumours spread about defilement from the new cartridges. But General Hearsey handled things pretty skilfully, even though some people thought he should have been more severe.”
Here Mrs Dunstaple cried out petulantly that she wanted an explanation, because nobody ever explained to her about things like defilement and cartridges; she could remain as ignorant as a maidservant for all anyone cared, and she smiled to indicate that she was being more coquettish than cross. So Hudson kindly set himself to explain. “As you know, we load a gun by pouring a charge of powder down the barrel into the powder chamber and after that we ram a ball down on top of it. Well, the powder comes in a little paper packet which we call a cartridge...in order to get at the powder we have to tear the end off and in army drill we teach the men to do this with their teeth.”
“And so the natives feel themselves defiled...well, good gracious!”
“No, not by that, Mrs Dunstaple, but by the grease on the cartridges...it’s only on balled cartridges of course...t
hat is, a cartridge with a ball in it. You empty in the powder and then instead of throwing it away you ram the rest of the cartridge in on top of it. But because it’s rather a tight fit you have to grease it, otherwise the ball would get stuck. With the new Enfield rifles, which have grooves in the barrel, the balled cartridge would certainly get stuck if it wasn’t greased.”
“Bless my soul, so it was the grease!”
“Of course it was, that’s what worried Jack Sepoy! Somehow he got the idea that the grease comes from pork or beef tallow and he didn’t like it touching his lips because it’s against his religion. That’s why there was trouble at Barrackpur. But now Major Bontein has suggested a change of drill...in future, instead of biting off the end we’ll simply tear it off. That way the sepoys won’t have to worry what the grease is made of. As it is, the stuff smells disgusting enough to start an epidemic, let alone a mutiny.”
Hudson added that there had been yet another spot of bother on the twenty-seventh of February, at Berhampur, a hundred miles to the north where the 19th Bengal Infantry had refused to take percussion caps on parade; the absence of any European regiment had made it impossible to deal with this mutinous act on the spot...Now the defaulting regiment was slowly being marched down to Barrackpur for disbandment. But there was no cause for alarm and, besides, now that everyone had finished eating, a game of blind man’s buff was being called for.
The Empire Trilogy Page 50