WAR AT THE SALT BOARD.
Hos motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta--
The Salt Board had excessively respectable traditions. Its commencement
dated far back in Indian history, long before the conquest of the Sandy
Tracts, and its _prestige_ had been maintained by a series of officials
all of whom had been in the habit of speaking of one another with the
utmost respect. The 'illustrious Jones,' 'the great administrator
Brown,' the 'sagacious and statesmanlike Robinson,' all threw the lustre
of their abilities over the institution, and were appealed to with
unhesitating faith by their successors in the department. When one
member referred to another he spoke of himself as 'sitting at his feet,'
or as 'formed in his school,' or as 'guided by his principles,' in
language that was perhaps a little unnecessarily grandiloquent, but
which had, at any rate, the effect of investing the Board with a sort of
moral grandeur with the uninitiated. Even the mistakes of the Board
acquired a sort of dignity and were not to be spoken of in an off-hand
or irreverential manner. They might seem mistakes, but it was not
prudent to be too sure that they were so. Many other decisions of the
Board had been cavilled at by rash critics, and time had shown their
wisdom. The Board, moreover, had a certain grand, misty way of its own
of talking, which made its proceedings somewhat hard to criticise.
Indeed, all outside criticism was resented as an impertinence, and those
rash critics who had the temerity to attempt it were put down with the
contemptuous decisiveness appropriate to ill-judged advisers. There was
a regular conventional way of crushing them: first it was contended
that, being outsiders, they could not, in the nature of things,
understand the matter; as if there was a sort of inner and spiritual
sense, by which the affairs of the Salt Board must be apprehended. Then
there were stereotyped phrases, which really meant nothing, but which
were understood and accepted in the Sandy Tracts as implying that the
Board considered the subject disposed of and did not want further
discussion. Arguments which could not be otherwise met were smothered in
an array of big names, or parried by pathetic references to the zeal of
the Salt officials and the conscientious manner in which they worked in
the sun. Whatever line was adopted, it was the invariable tradition that
Government should express its concurrence, and so the whole thing ended
comfortably to all parties concerned. All this was naturally regarded as
being highly satisfactory. But the maintenance of this agreeable
equilibrium depended on the persons concerned being tempered of the
right metal, imbued with the right spirit, and what Strutt used to call
'loyal.' The intrusion of an alien spirit could not fail to produce
deplorable disturbance, disquiet and the dissipation of all sorts of
agreeable illusions. And this was what happened when Blunt--who was an
outsider, the hardest, roughest, most matter-of-fact of commercial
Englishmen--was appointed to the Board. Blunt violated every tradition
in the most ruthless fashion, was unimpressed by all the solemnities
which awed conventional beholders, and had the most inconvenient way of
asking what things meant, and (as he used to say with a sort of horrid
glee) 'of picking out the heart of a thing.' Now, the Board did not at
all relish having its heart picked out in this unceremonious fashion,
and resented it with a sort of passionate dislike. Fotheringham felt
that he had indeed fallen on very evil times, and that the pleasant days
of peace were numbered. Cockshaw, when he found that Blunt would
neither smoke nor play whist, gave him up as a bore. The very clerks in
the office became agitated and depressed. When Blunt pulled out his
spectacles and produced his papers, and went ruthlessly into figures,
looking rigid and tough, and implacable and indefatigable, both
Fotheringham and Cockshaw knew that their places were not worth having
and that they must look for comfortable quarters elsewhere. Fotheringham
counted the months to the time when his pension would be due. Cockshaw,
who was a man of action, applied forthwith for the Chief
Commissionership of the Carraway Islands, which was just then in the
market.
Blunt had not been many weeks at Dustypore before he showed to
demonstration at the Board that the accounts were kept on an entirely
wrong footing, and that a vast sum of money, five or six lakhs, was not
traceable.
'It is the floating balance,' said Fotheringham, with an air of quiet
assurance, arising from his having given the same reply frequently
before, and always found it answer.
'Perhaps you will trace it, then,' said Blunt, pushing the papers across
to Fotheringham in the most unfeeling way. '_I_ cannot.'
'We had better send for Strutt,' said Cockshaw, who knew nothing about
the accounts himself, and had a nervous distrust of Fotheringham's
explanations. Thereupon Strutt appeared, radiant and self-satisfied, and
cleared up everything with the easy air of a man who is and who feels
himself thoroughly master of the situation.
'No,' he said, in reply to Fotheringham's inquiry, 'not in the floating
balance, but in Suspense Account A: here it is, you see: one item, 2
lakhs--85,000 rs. 15 annas 3 pie.'
'Of course,' said Fotheringham, ignoring his blunder with an air of
placid dignity, 'there, you see, it is!'
'Well,' said Blunt, insatiable of explanation, 'but you said it was in
the floating balance; and pray where are the other items, and what is
Suspense Account A, and how many other Suspense Accounts have you? Pray
go on, Mr. Strutt.'
So Mr. Strutt had to go on, and then it was sad to see the brightness
fade out of his face, and his pleasant swagger disappear, and his
answers get wilder and wilder as Blunt led him from figure to figure,
puzzled him by putting things in all sorts of new lights, and finally
took him completely out of his depth.
This was not the sort of treatment to which Strutt had been accustomed,
or for which he was constitutionally fitted. At last, in despair, he
sent down for Vernon and the Head Accountant, and these two brought up a
pile of ledgers, and traced the missing sums from one account into
another in a manner which baffled all Fotheringham's attempts to follow
them, and proved at last to their own satisfaction that all was right.
Still the horrible Blunt was only half convinced.
'All _may_ be right,' he said, 'and I will take your words that it _is_
so. But the figures do not prove it; nor do they prove anything except
that the system of accounts is deplorable. Any amount of fraud might be
perpetrated under them. I can't understand them: Strutt does not
understand them: not one of you gentlemen understands them. This may
suit you; but, as for me, I hate what I cannot understand.'
So no doubt did Fotheringham, and this was one reason why he so
cordially hated Blunt.
Another thing about Blunt that irritated his colleagues was his way of
coughing--a loud, harsh, strident cough--whenever he was vexed.
'His coughs are quite like oaths,' Fotheringham said with a shudder; and
it must be confessed that Blunt could throw an expression that sounded
horribly like 'damn it' into his mode of clearing his throat; and that
when Fotheringham was arguing with him he cleared his throat oftener and
more vigorously than can have been necessary.