A BATTLE ROYAL.
Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer----
Leaving the celestials to their business and pleasures in the upper
regions, the Historic Muse must now descend into the plains and record
the wrath of Blunt and the more than Homeric combats which, stirred by
Até in her most malignant mood, that irrepressible official waged
against his luckless compeers at the Board. The outbreak was horribly
inopportune. The weather was becoming disagreeably hot; Cockshaw was
looking up his rifles and fishing-rods for a month's run into Cashmir;
Fotheringham was preparing to retire behind his cuscus entrenchments and
æstivate in placidity till the moment arrived for going to the Hills.
But the black soul of Blunt was impervious to climatic influences; his
craving for information became more insatiable, his contempt for
Fotheringham's platitudes and Strutt's tall writing less and less
disguised. The further Blunt looked into the Rumble Chunder affair the
keener grew his sense of the feeble, roundabout, inaccurate, unthorough
way in which it had been treated by every one who had essayed to take it
in hand. 'The way to handle nettles,' he said, roughly, 'is to take
tight hold of them and bear what stinging you get and have done with
it.'
Neither Fotheringham nor Cockshaw were in the least disposed to handle
official nettles or to admit the force of Blunt's logic as applied to
themselves.
'Some nettles,' Fotheringham said, with dignified composure, 'will not
bear handling at all. Many of our Indian maladies you will find, Blunt,
require a course of treatment always unpopular with ardent physicians,
that, namely, of being left alone.'
'Ay,' said Cockshaw, blowing a great stream of smoke from his mouth, as
if he wished he could treat Blunt and his schemes in like fashion;
'leave well alone, Blunt. What the deuce is it you are driving at?'
'I'll tell you what I am driving at,' said Blunt, 'I want to be out of
the muddle in which we have been going on all these years, just for want
of a little explicitness and courage.'
'Excuse me,' said Fotheringham testily; 'I am not aware that the
conquerors and administrators of the Sandy Tracts have ever been accused
of deficiency in courage, at any rate.'
'Of course not,' answered the other; 'no one supposes anything of the
sort; but what I mean is that no one has faced the consequences of that
confounded Proclamation of the Governor-General in a plain,
business-like way, and seen what it really comes to.'
Now the Governor-General's Proclamation was regarded in official circles
at Dustypore with a sort of traditional awe, as something almost sacred.
Fotheringham had often spoken of it as the Magna Charta of the Sandy
Tracts, and Strutt generally quoted it in the peroration of his Annual
Report. Nothing, accordingly, could be less congenial to his audience
than Blunt's coarse, offhanded, disrespectful way of referring to it.
Fotheringham's whole nature rose in arms against the idea of this rash,
irreverential intruder handling with such jaunty freedom and contempt
the things which he had all his life been accustomed to treat and to see
treated with profound respect. The moment had now come when to put up
with Blunt any longer would, he thought, be simple weakness; the cup of
Blunt's misdeeds at last was full; and Fotheringham, his patience fairly
at an end, pale and excited, spoke, and spoke in wrath.
'I must beg,' he said, in a tone of aggrieved dignity which Blunt
especially resented, 'to remind our junior colleague that there are some
things of which his inexperience of the country renders it impossible
for him to be a competent judge, and of which, when he knows them
better, he will probably think and speak with more respect. This Rumble
Chunder Grant is one of them. Cockshaw and I have been at work at it for
twenty years: we know the places, the people, the language, the feeling
it excites, the dangers it may provoke. The Proclamation, which Blunt is
pleased to describe as "confounded," was, we know, a high-minded,
well-considered act of a great statesman and has been the foundation
stone of all peace, prosperity, and civilisation in the province. It all
seems clear to you, my good sir, because--forgive me for saying it--you
do not see the intricacies of the matter, and are incapable of
appreciating its bearings. For my part'----
'Come, come, Fotheringham,' said Cockshaw, who had been looking
nervously at his watch and knew that it wanted only seven minutes to the
hour at which his afternoon game of racquets should begin, 'don't let us
drift into a quarrel. As to speaking rudely of the Proclamation, it is
as bad as the man who damned the North Pole, you know--no harm is done
to any one by that. Blunt is not so nervous about the matter as we are,
because he has not had such a deal of bother over it as we have had. My
idea is that we have gone into it of late quite as far as we can just
now. Suppose we drop it for the present and take it up again in the cold
weather?'
'I object altogether,' Blunt said, in a dogged way, which made Cockshaw
give up his chance of racquets that day as desperate. 'That system of
postponements is one of the objectionable practices which I especially
deprecate. Whenever any of us comes across a thing which he does not
fancy, or cannot or will not understand, he puts it into his box and
burkes it, and no more is heard of it for a twelvemonth. I would sooner
take the chance of going wrong than the certainty of doing nothing.'
'And I,' answered Cockshaw, lighting a new cheroot with the remaining
fraction of his old one, 'would sooner take the risk of a little delay
than the certainty of going wrong, as you will do to a moral certainty
if you are in such a devil of a hurry.'
'Please, Cockshaw,' said Fotheringham, to whom his colleague's cheroots
and bad language were a chronic affliction, 'do not lose your temper.
For my part, I was going to observe when you interrupted me just now, I
really do not know what it is that Blunt imagines could be done.'
'This could be done,' Blunt said, 'we could bring things to a head, and
know exactly how we stand; ascertain the claims, the rights, and at what
prices we could buy the owners of them out.'
'My good sir,' Fotheringham exclaimed, by this time fairly in a passion,
'that is exactly what all of us have been trying to do for the last ten
years, and you talk as if it could be done out of hand.'
'And so it could,' cried Blunt, 'if any one would only resolve to do it.
I tell you what: let me have Whisp and a few clerks and translators, and
hold a local commission, and I will go into the District myself and
knock my way through the matter somehow or other.'
'You will find it infernally hot,' said Cockshaw.
'You will have a rising on the frontier,' said Fotheringham, 'mark my
words, and come back deeper in difficulties than ever.'
However, Blunt at last got his way and went off trotting on his cob.
Cockshaw escaped gleefully to the racquet-court, and Fotheringham sat
sadly at the Board-room, conscious of present harassment and impending
disaster. Both he and Blunt used to carry away with them to their
domestic circles the traces of the conflicts in which they had been
engaged: both reached their homes in a truly pitiable state of mind and
body whenever this hateful Rumble Chunder Grant affair was on hand: both
their ladies knew only too well the days when it formed part of the
programme. Blunt used to stamp about and abuse the servants, emphasising
his language with various vehement British expletives, quaffing large
goblets of brandy and soda-water, as if to assuage an inward fury, and
making no secret of his opinion that Fotheringham was a donkey.
Fotheringham, on the other hand, retired to his sofa, called for
sal-volatile, had both the Misses Fotheringham to bathe his temples with
toilet-vinegar, and breathed a hint that poor Blunt was a terribly
uncouth fellow, and that it was extremely disagreeable to have to do
with people who, not being gentlemen themselves, could not understand
what gentlemen felt. Mrs. Fotheringham thought so too, and began, on her
part, not to love Mrs. Blunt.