CALCUTTA, in social matters, is a law unto herself, inscrutable,
unevadable. She asks no opinion and permits no suggestion. She proclaims
that it shall be thus, thus it is, and however odd and inconvenient the
custom may be, it lies within the province of no woman—the men need not
be thought of—to change it, or even to discover by what historic whim it
came to be. Calcutta decrees, for example, that from twelve to two, what
time the sun strikes straightest and strongest on the carriage-top, what
time all brown Bengal with sweet reasonableness takes its siesta, in the
very heat and burden of the day—from twelve to two is the proper hour
forsooth for the memsahib to visit and be visited. Thus this usually
tepid form frequently reaches a boiling point of social consideration,
becomes a mark of recognition which is simply perfervid. It is also an
unamiable time of day. The cheering effects of breakfast have worn off,
and tiffin looms distantly, the reward of virtue. It would be impossible
to say for how much malice it is directly responsible. But this is of
the gods; we stew obediently, we do not dream of demurring. Another
honoured principle is that all strangers, except brides, shall make the
first call. Herein is the indolence of Calcutta generous and
unreckoning. All new-comers, of whatever business, jat, or antecedents,
have the fee simple of her drawing-rooms, the right to expect their
calls to be returned, and even to feel slighted if no further
recognition is made of them. Anybody may tacitly request Calcutta to
invite him to dinner, and lay upon Calcutta the disagreeable onus of
refusing to do it. Strangers present themselves on their merits; the
tone of society naturally therefore becomes a little assertive. There
are other methods of indirect compulsion. A man may call—this invariably
at mid-day on Sunday—and thereby invite you to leave cards upon his
wife, and the lady is aggrieved if you decline the invitation. Calcutta
suffers all this. It is the _dustur_.
Mrs. George William Browne of course was a bride, and had made her
appearance at church. It was not an imposing appearance, and probably
did not attract as much attention as the Brownes imagined; they occupied
one of the back seats of a sacred edifice of Calcutta which is known to
be consecrated to official circles, and the Brownes were only
mercantile. But the appearance had been made, whether or not anybody was
aware of it; and Mrs. Browne was assuredly entitled to sit from twelve
to two in the days that followed at the receipt of congratulations.
“All Calcutta won’t come,” remarked young Browne, in a tone of easy
prophecy. “But Mrs. Fisher will probably look you up, and Mrs. Jack
Lovitt, and the Wodenhamers—I’ve known the Wodenhamers a long time. And
Mrs. P. Macintyre”—the person who undertakes this history—“Mrs. P. is
the only lady in the firm just now. She’s sure to call.”
“Where are the rest, George?”
“One of ’em dead. Mrs. J. L. Macintyre’s dead—two of ’em, Mrs. Babcock
and Mrs. Walsh, home in England with their babies.”
“But, George—all the people who came to the wedding?”
“Out of compliment to the Macdonalds. Yes, they’ll probably call—in
their own good time. They’re very busy making other visits just now, my
dear. We mustn’t allow ourselves to forget that we’re popularly known to
be living on five hundred a month. Society bows to five hundred a
month—with possibilities of advance—but it doesn’t hurry about calling.
You see there are so many people with superior claims—fifteen hundred,
three thousand a month. It’s an original place in that respect—Calcutta.
The valuation of society is done by Government. Most people arrive here
invoiced at so much, the amount usually rises as they stay, but they’re
always kept carefully ticketed and published, and Calcutta accepts or
rejects them, religiously and gratefully, at their market rates. It’s
rather an uninteresting social basis—especially from our point of
view—but it has the advantage of simplicity. You have a solemn official
right to expect exactly what you can pay for.”
With which treble cynicism young Browne received a bit of mignonette in
his button-hole, kissed his wife, and departed. They were not really
much concerned, these Brownes, about the conduct and theories of their
fellow-beings at this time. Society was homogeneous, a human mass whose
business it was to inhabit other parts of Calcutta, and do it as
unobtrusively as possible. Even as a subject for conversation, society
was perfunctory, and rather dull. It was a thing apart, it did not
menace them yet, or involve them, or tempt them. They had not arrived at
a point when anything it chose to concern itself with was important to
them. It is charming, this indifference, while it lasts, but it is not
intended to endure.
“It is certainly pretty,” Helen remarked in a tone of conviction,
looking round her little drawing-room. “It’s charming!” And it was. The
walls were tinted a delicate grey, and the windows were all hung with
Indian saris, pale yellow and white. The fresh matted floor was bespread
in places with blue and white dhurries, and a big beflowered Japanese
vase in a corner held a spiky palm. There were books and
pictures—perhaps neither of the sort to bear the last analysis, but that
at a glance didn’t matter—and bits of old china, and all Aunt Plovtree’s
crewel work, and two or three vases running over with roses. There were
some comfortable wicker chairs from the China bazar, gay with cushions
after Liberty, and there were all the little daintinesses that accompany
the earlier stages of matrimony. Through the windows came in bars and
patches the sunlight of high noon, and the rustling of the palms, and
the cooing of the doves in the veranda.
“It hasn’t much _character_,” said Mrs. Browne, with her head at a
critical angle, “but it’s charming.”
The fact is that it expressed cleanliness and the Brownes’ income. I
fear that Mrs. Browne belonged to that very numerous class of ladies in
whose opinion character is a thing to arrange, just a matter to be
attended to like the ordering of dinner. If you had asked her what
particular character she wanted her room to express I think she would
have been nonplussed. Or she might have said, Oh, she wanted it to be
“artistic,” with a little smile of defiance which would have been an
evasion, not to say an equivocation of the matter. Helen Browne was not
“artistic,” and why she should have wanted her drawing-room to express
what she did not understand is one of those enigmas common to the sex,
as it flowers from day to day into new modern perplexities.
Perhaps it was much more charming of her to be what she was. It led her,
at all events, into no burlesques. Nothing could be less extravagant,
for instance, than that she should presently occupy herself, with amused
concern and mock despair, in turning over a collection of young Browne’s
garments with a view to improving them. The bearer brought them to her
in a basket, laid them deprecatingly at her feet, and retired, doubtless
thinking that though the memsahib might be troublesome in various ways,
she had her advantages. She would perhaps destroy the sahib’s partiality
for old clothes. He himself had struggled with these ancient socks and
shirts a long and fruitless time, had cobbled them until his soul
revolted, especially when the sahib, observing the result of his labour,
had laughed deep laughs. The sahib was in no wise stingy—he would give
new harness to the pony and new _kupra_[73] to the syce, and the bazar
was full of beautiful garments for the apparelling of sahibs, yet
persistently and without sense of dishonour he enrobed himself daily
thus! It was a painful, incomprehensible eccentricity. Now, perhaps,
there would be a new order of things, and a chance for a little
reasonable _dusturi_.[74] And Kasi spent the rest of the morning
discussing contracts in the bazar.
Footnote 73:
Clothes.
Footnote 74:
Profit.
To his wife, however, young Browne was obliged to be explanatory, and
even apologetic, upon this point. He had to tell her it was a way they
had in India of sticking to their old things—it was only the most
hideous swells that ever got anything new. You couldn’t keep up with the
fashion in India anyhow—the thing was to be superior to it altogether.
Oh, she wouldn’t have him discard that hat; he’d had that hat four
years, and he was attached to it. If he might be allowed to keep it
another year or two the shape would very likely “come in” again. Surely
he wasn’t inexorably condemned to a new coat. It would take years to
make another as comfortable as that, and it was only a bit ragged in the
cuffs. But Helen was inflexible over the shortcomings of her husband’s
wardrobe, as it is the first duty of the ladies of Anglo-India to be,
and young Browne shortly paid one penalty of matrimony in being reclad
at vast expense, and suffered much contumely in consequence from his
bachelor contemporaries. This morning Helen smiled over her basket with
content and entertainment.
“What aren’t shreds are patches,” said she to the pigeons. “Dear me!
Fancy having married a person who hasn’t been properly mended since he
left England.” The pigeons replied with suitable sympathy. There was a
roll of wheels under the porch, and the bearer brought up cards, “Mr.
and Mrs. John Lawrence Lovitt.”
“Bearer,” said Helen, mistress of the situation, “all these things
_lejao_![75] Memsahib _salaam do_.”[76]
Footnote 75:
Take away.
Footnote 76:
Give greeting.
“_Bahut atcha_,”[77] said the bearer, whisking them away as he went. Not
for worlds would Kasi have allowed his master’s dilapidations to become
public. And Mrs. Jack Lovitt tripped up.
Footnote 77:
Very good.
“How d’ye do, Mrs. Browne?” she said. “I hope I haven’t come too soon.
Some one told me you’d been seen—somewhere—church, I suppose. People
always do go to church at first, in Calcutta. After a while you won’t—at
least not so regularly. It gets to be rather a bore, don’t you know,
either morning or evening. In the morning it takes it out of you so that
you haven’t energy to receive your callers, and in the evening—well, if
you go in for Sunday tennis you’re too much done for church. But perhaps
you won’t go in for Sunday tennis.”
Mrs. Lovitt sank into a chair and crossed her knees so that one small
high-heeled boot stuck out at a sharp and knowing angle. She was a very
little person, and she wore a very smart gown, though it was only a
spotted cotton, and a very small bonnet. Her long-handled parasol had an
enormous bow on it, and her small hands were buttoned up in an excessive
amount of kid. She had a tiny waist, and her dress fitted her with an
absurd perfection. There was a slight extravagance about Mrs. Jack
Lovitt everywhere. No one could describe her without saying “very” and
“exceedingly” a great many times. Her thin little face hadn’t a shade of
colour—it was absolutely pale, and there were odd little drawn lines
about it that did not interfere with its particular kind of
attractiveness. She wore a _pince nez_ astride her small, sharp
features, and when she sat down it dropped into her lap quite as if it
belonged to a man of fashion.
Helen said, with a conscious effort not to be priggish, that she didn’t
think she would go in for Sunday tennis.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Lovitt, smiling tolerantly, “don’t believe in it, I
suppose? Neither did I when I came out. You’ll soon get over that.
You’ll begin virtuously by doing it for your husband’s sake, and by and
by you’ll find that kind of prejudice doesn’t thrive in India. I played
with your husband the last Sunday before you came out. The other side
completely smashed us up; I don’t think your husband was in his usual
form.”
“Oh, I dare say he was,” said Helen, smiling; “he doesn’t play a very
strong game.”
“Oh, I wasn’t either. I played abominably. But, of course, I blamed it
all upon him; I declared his nerves were affected—on account of you, you
know. He _admitted_ there might be something in it,” and Mrs. Lovitt
laughed casually. “He says you’re a tremendous swell at it,” she
continued inquiringly.
Helen protested, and Mrs. Lovitt went on to say that it didn’t matter
much how one played anyway, for tennis was certainly going out—everybody
went in for golf now—links all over the place. Did Helen go in for golf,
and had she done any cricket before she left England? Mrs. Lovitt had a
cousin, Stella Short, who was in the Wilbarrow Eleven. Perhaps Helen had
seen her photograph—it had been in all the ladies’ papers.
“What do you think of the climate, Mrs. Browne?”
Helen said she thought it perfectly delightful; she found the glare a
little trying.
“Oh, _glare_! Wait till the hot weather comes. It’s all very well now
and will be till March, but the hot weather’s simply beastly; and in the
rains—well, in the rains you feel exactly like a dead rat.”
“That must be an extraordinary feeling,” Helen responded, with some
astonishment at the directness of the lady’s similes.
“It _is_—rather! I suppose you’re going to see the Viceroy’s Cup won
this afternoon?”
“Yes,” said Helen, “are you?”
“Very much so! I’m one of those happy people who have got a tip. Jimmy
Forbes gave me mine. You don’t know Jimmy. He and I are great
chums—we’re always out together.” Mrs. Lovitt spoke with virtuous
candour. “He’s an awfully _pucca_[78] sort of fellow, is Jimmy—you’ll
like him when you know him. He’s a great friend of my husband’s, too,”
Mrs. Lovitt added. “Jack thinks a lot of him. And he’s very knowing
about horses. How do you get on with the servants? They’ll stick you no
end at first—of course you know that. When I began I used to pay three
rupees for a leg of mutton. It used to cost us two hundred a month more
than our income to live!”
Footnote 78:
Genuine.
“Dear me!” said Helen. “Wasn’t that very inconvenient?”
“Inconvenient as the—as possible, sometimes, till Jack got his
promotion. Now we manage all right.”
“Have you any children, Mrs. Lovitt?” Helen ventured, as the bearer
brought up another card.
“Children! Bless me, no, I should think not!” replied Mrs. John Lawrence
Lovitt. “But I’ve got the littlest black and tan in Calcutta. Jimmy
Forbes gave him to me. You must come and see him. Hello, Kitty Toote, so
you’re on the rampage! Good-bye, Mrs. Browne; don’t let her prejudice
you against Calcutta. She’s always running it down, and it’s the
sweetest place in the world!”
Mrs. Toote made polite greetings to Mrs. Browne. “You know it isn’t
really,” she said, disposing her tall figure gracefully among the cotton
cushions of Helen’s little sofa. “But of course it depends upon your
tastes.” Mrs. Toote had fine eyes, and an inclination to _embonpoint_.
Her expression advertised a superior discontent, but there was a more
genuine suggestion of gratified well-being underneath which contradicted
the advertisement. “It’s really awfully frivolous here,” Mrs. Toote
remarked. “Don’t you think so—after England?”
“How can I possibly tell—so soon?” said Helen.
“No, I suppose not. Personally, I wouldn’t mind the _frivolity_. The
frivolity’s all right—if there were only anything _else_, but there
isn’t.”
“Anything else?” Helen inquired.
“Yes, anything really elevating, you know—anything that one could devote
one’s self to. I haven’t a word to say against frivolity; I like it
myself as well as anybody,” said Mrs. Toote with engaging _naïveté_,
“but there ought to be something behind it to back it up, you know.”
Mrs. Toote spoke as if she were objecting to dining exclusively upon
ortolans. But the objection was a matter of pure dietetic theory. In
practice, Mrs. Toote throve upon ortolans.
“Nobody reads,” said Mrs. Toote.
“Nobody?” asked Helen.
“Nobody that _I_ know—except novels, of course.”
“And you prefer other kinds of books,” Helen said, impressed. “More
solid reading?”
“Oh, I enjoy a good novel,” Mrs. Toote conceded; “but I don’t think
people ought to confine themselves to fiction. There’s biography and
philosophy, and—and social economy. All very interesting—to me.”
“Which are your favorite authors?” asked Helen, with deference.
Mrs. Toote thought a minute. “John Stuart Mill,” said she, “is a very
fine writer. My husband has all his books. So is Herbert Spencer; we
have all his, too. So is Sir Henry Cunninghame. _Have_ you read _The
Chronicles of Dustypore_?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Helen. “Is it very good?”
“Oh, awfully. You _must_ read it. Then, of course, there’s Kipling. I’m
devoted to Kipling.”
“Do you think he’s nice?” asked Mrs. Browne, doubtfully.
“I think he’s everything. And I must say for the people here they do
read their Kipling. But they don’t talk about him. I don’t believe they
know the difference between Kipling and anybody else.”
“Perhaps,” Helen ventured, “they’re tired of him.”
“That’s just where it is. How could anybody get tired of Kipling! You’ll
find plenty of gaiety in Calcutta, Mrs. Browne; but you won’t find
much—culture!” And Mrs. Toote lifted her eyebrows and twisted her lips
into a look of critical resignation.
“Aren’t there any societies?”
“Oh, if you mean the Asiatic, that’s for scientists and people of that
sort, you know, and they read awful papers there about monoliths and
ancient dynasties and things. You can’t consider that the Asiatic
represents any popular tendency. _I_ don’t know anybody that’s fond of
Sanskrit. Of course,” Mrs. Toote continued, “I’m speaking generally, and
I mean particularly the women out here. There are some clever men in the
departments, naturally. One or two of them are my greatest friends, and
it _is_ refreshing to talk to them.”
“But are the ladies _all_ frivolous?” Helen asked.
“Oh, dear, no!”
“And the unfrivolous ones—what do they do?”
“They mess about charities, and keep their husbands in their pockets,
and write eternal letters to their children in England. I’ve less
patience with them than with the other kind,” Mrs. Toote avowed.
“Well,” said Helen, smiling, “I’m not very literary, so I daresay it
won’t matter much to me.”
“Then you’ll either go in for society or philanthropy—that’s the way
everybody ends up. You are going to the Drawing-Room next Thursday?”
“I think so.”
“Well, immediately after you must write your names down in the
Government House books. Then they ask you to everything, you see. Don’t
put it off,” advised Mrs. Toote, on the point of departure. “Don’t put
it off _a day_.”
In a quarter of an hour the Wodenhamers came—Colonel and Mrs.
Wodenhamer, a large lady and a generously planned gentleman. The
smallest and slightest of Helen’s wicker chairs creaked ominously, as
Colonel Wodenhamer sat down in it with an air of asserting that he
wasn’t the weight you might think him. As to Mrs. Wodenhamer, her
draperies completely submerged Helen’s cotton cushions upon the sofa.
Colonel Wodenhamer had mutton-chop whiskers and a double chin and a look
of rotund respectability that couldn’t be surpassed in Hyde Park on
Sunday. He was not a fighting colonel, and in the adding up of
commissariat accounts there is time and opportunity to develop these
amplitudes. Mrs. Wodenhamer matched him more perfectly than is customary
in the odd luck of matrimony, and had a complexion besides, which the
Colonel couldn’t boast. The complexion spread over features generously
planned, and a smile that contained many of the qualities of a warm
sunset, spread over both. Helen wondered in vain to which of Mrs.
Toote’s two social orders they belonged, for as soon as Colonel
Wodenhamer had explained how it was he had come to call on a
week-day—Colonel Wodenhamer made this a point of serious importance—Mrs.
Wodenhamer led the conversation into domestic details. It wandered for a
time among pots and pans—enamelled ones were so much the best—it
embraced all the servants, took a turn in the direction of the bazar,
and finally settled upon _jharruns_.
“You’ll find them _so_ troublesome!” said Mrs. Wodenhamer.
“I don’t know what they are,” said Mrs. Browne, reflecting upon the
insect pests of India.
“Don’t you, really! It’s a wonder you haven’t found out! They’re towels
or dust-cloths—anything of that sort. Almost every servant must have his
_jharruns_. You have no idea how they mount up.”
“I suppose they must,” returned Helen, and turned to Colonel Wodenhamer
with intent to venture something about the weather.
“I don’t see how you’ve got on without them so long!” Mrs. Wodenhamer
remarked, glancing round with involuntary criticism. “I assure you I
give out weekly in my house no less than five dozen—five _dozen_!”
“That’s a great many,” Helen agreed. “A very fair passage, I believe,
Colonel Wodenhamer—thirty-one days.”
“It’s just a question whether they’re better made in the house,” Mrs.
Wodenhamer went on placidly; “I don’t know that I wouldn’t advise you to
go to the Women’s Friendly—they work very neatly there.”
“For the _jharruns_. Oh, yes!” said Helen. “The captain’s name? I’m
_afraid_ I forget, Colonel Wodenhamer. He was a little man.”
“They wear out so frightfully fast,” his lady remarked.
“P. and O. captains? But consider the life, my dear!”
“_Jharruns_, John! Mrs. Browne really shouldn’t begin with less than six
dozen.”
“I must see about them at once,” Helen said. “I’m sure they are very
important.”
“The whole comfort of your life depends upon them,” her visitor replied,
rather ambiguously, and at that moment Mrs. Macdonald came up, and the
conversation became so general that nobody noticed Mrs. Wodenhamer’s
being lost in thought. As she and her husband rose to go, “Your house is
smaller than mine,” said Mrs. Wodenhamer, “I forgot that. I think
“—conscientiously—” you _might_ do with four dozen.”
Neither could Helen bring Mrs. Macdonald under Mrs. Toote’s
classification, for Mrs. Macdonald certainly did not give one the idea
of a serious person, and yet she talked a great deal about committees.
Mrs. Macdonald expressly advised Helen to “go in for” philanthropy, and
in the next breath declared that of course she and young Browne must get
themselves put up at the Saturday Club, where a proportion of Calcutta
banded itself together for purposes of dancing and amateur theatricals,
tennis and light literature. It was puzzling, this combination of good
works and fashionable recreation, until Mrs. Macdonald explained, the
explanation being inferential.
“You see,” said Mrs. Macdonald, “you must take up something, you know,
and then you will get to be known, and it will make all the difference.
Of course if you came out as the wife of a major-general or a
commissioner or a bishop it wouldn’t matter—you could be independent.
But as it is,” continued Mrs. Macdonald with delicate vagueness,
indicating the Brownes’ five hundred a month, “it would be better for
you to take an interest in something, you know. There’s the Home for
Sailors’ Orphans—Mrs. Leek and Mrs. Vondermore—they’re not very
important, though. And there’s Lady Blebbin’s Hindu Widow
Institute—that’s overcrowded now. I believe the very best thing for
you”—with an increase of business-like emphasis—“would be the East
Indian Self-Help Society! Mrs. Walter Luff runs that, and she’s just the
woman to appreciate anybody fresh and energetic like you! I’ve got
influence there too—I’ll get you nominated.”
“But,” said Helen, in some dismay, “it’s not at all likely that I should
be able to be of any use.”
“Use? Of course you will. You’ll be driven to death, but if Mrs. Walter
Luff takes you up, you won’t mind that! Besides,” said Mrs. Macdonald
with an effect of awakened conscience, “the East Indian Self-Helps do a
lot of good. You’re interested in the East Indians, aren’t you—the
Eurasians?”
“I don’t know them when I see them,” said Helen. “I always confuse them
with the Jews and the Greeks.”
“Oh, well, you soon will. As a rule they’re awfully poor, you know, and
give us a lot of trouble in Calcutta. Dear me!” Mrs. Macdonald
ejaculated, looking round, “how pretty you are! But if I were you I’d
have a Mirzapore rug for the middle of the floor; it makes the room so
much richer, you know—shows up everything. And you ought to get two or
three good engravings—there are some lovely new French things at
Thacker’s—only fifty rupees each. Go and see them. But I must be off,”
said this sprightly lady, and Helen was presently again alone, with a
delicate disappearing odour of jessamine and her reflections.
I dropped in that morning too, after all the rest; but it is not
essential to the progress of this narrative that you should be allowed
to gather from my conversation the sort of person that I am.
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