IT was clearly impossible to attend Her Excellency’s Drawing-Room in a
tum-tum. The Brownes discussed it with fulness and precision at some
length. Most people resident in Calcutta would have arrived at this
conclusion more rapidly; but as young Browne said, he had never taken a
wife to a Drawing-Room before, and a fellow always went to the levées in
his tum-tum.
“It’s that awful silk tail of yours that’s the difficulty, dear,” said
he. “It might get wound up in the wheels, or Lord knows what. Couldn’t
you take it in a parcel and put it on when you get there?”
I can safely leave Helen’s response to the imagination of all
femininity.
“Then,” said young Browne, “it must be a ticca,” and Helen sighed
compliance, for she hated ticcas.
So does all Calcutta, except the baboos. The ticca is an uncompromising
shuttered wooden box with a door in each side and a seat across each
end. Its springs are primitive, its angles severe. When no man has hired
the ticca, the driver slumbers along the roof and the syce by the
wayside. When the ticca is in action, the driver sits on the top,
loosely connected with a bundle of hay which forms the casual,
infrequent _déjeuner_ of the horses. The syce stands behind, and if the
back shutters are open he is frequently malodorous. There may be some
worldly distinction between the syce and the driver, but it is
imperceptible to the foreign eye. I have never been able to decide which
is the more completely disreputable of the two. Their rags flutter in
competition. There is more variety among the horses. They are large and
gaunt and speckled. They are small and lean and of one colour. They are
fly-bitten, unkempt, knock-kneed, vicious, and nasty. They have bad and
vulgar habits. Some of them have seen Australia and better times, but it
is not evident in their manners. Some of them have been country-bred for
so many generations that the original animal has almost disappeared,
leaving a stricken and nondescript little representative that might more
fitly be harnessed to a wheelbarrow, if wheelbarrows lent themselves to
harness. The ticca-gharry horse is always ridiculous when he is not
pitiful; his gait under pressure is a gallop, and his equipment is made
out in places with pieces of rope and other expediencies. The baboo
loves the ticca-gharry because the baboo knows not mercy and gets a long
ride, yea and seven of his kind with him, for threepence. Calcutta
people hate it for reasons which are perhaps obvious. And for another.
The ticca-gharry directly aids and abets Government in its admirable
system for the valuation of society, represented, as has been seen, by
the Accountant-General. A person who habitually drives in a ticca-gharry
is not likely on the face of it to be in receipt of more than a very
limited income, and is thus twice gazetted as not being a particularly
desirable person to know. It is evident therefore that when the Brownes
decided to go to the Viceregal Drawing-Room in a ticca they bowed to
circumstances.
“Only _don’t_ get one, George,” said Helen, plaintively, “with a pink
rosette on its ear.”
There were a few, a very few, other ticca-gharries in the crowd of
vehicles that blocked the street leading to Government House, and
presently they all found themselves unaccountably in the rear of the
line that was made to preserve order and prevent aggression. The stately
landaus, the snug broughams and the smart victorias rolled naturally
into their places in front. The British policeman whether in Hyde Park
or Imperial India, knows his duty. So that Mr. and Mrs. Browne were not
the first who alighted under the wide porch and made their way with more
trepidation than they allowed to appear, into the crimson-carpeted
precincts of the Burra Lord Sahib.
“Where shall I meet you after—after it’s over, George?” asked Helen
coming out of the cloak-room, very pretty in her soft white silk and the
fresh Wiltshire colour that showed in her cheeks and proclaimed her
newly “out.”
“Oh I’ll find you—I’ll be waiting with the other men outside the door.
Good-bye, dear. Don’t be nervous!”
“I _am_ nervous,” said Mrs. Browne. “But I don’t propose to show it.
Good-bye!” and Mrs. Browne followed in the wake of other shimmering
trains that were being marshalled from corridor to corridor on their way
to the Throne Room, where Their Excellencies, doubtless very bored, were
returning bows to the curtseys of all feminine Calcutta. How very fine
those trains were, some of them. How elaborate and marvellous—how
effective! And indeed they had come forth straight from Bond-street,
many of them, for this very occasion, and therefore, why not? What use,
pray, in being wives and daughters of thousands a month in the land of
exile, if measures could not be sacredly kept in England and “decent
things” got out at least once a year! And how the trains of thousands a
month rejoiced in their contrast with others representing a smaller
_tulub_. I do not speak of Helen’s, for hers was a flowing credit to the
Canbury dressmaker and quite up to date, but of gowns of an elder
fashion and another day that showed themselves with delightful _naïveté_
among the glittering creations of the season. They had seen, some of
them, a great many December dissipations; they had been carefully packed
away through a great many hot weathers and monsoons; they smelt of
camphor; there was a quaintness in their very creases. One or two of
them even told of trousseaux, Helen thought, that must have come to
India in the old sailing days, round Cape Horn. Doubtless this new
little memsahib felt amused in her trim feathers, but I have worn
creases and smelled of camphor myself in my day, and I could have told
her that with five sons at college and a daughter at school in England,
one becomes necessarily indifferent to the fashions, even if the
daughter does spend the holidays with an aunt in the country, free of
expense. But of course one can’t forecast one’s own camphor and creases,
and Helen Browne may never have any.
The dames who waited or who didn’t wait their turn at the various
barriers that regulated the road to Viceroyalty were chiefly imported
English ladies of the usual pale Anglo-Indian type and pretty, either
intrinsically or with the prettiness that comes of being well spoilt.
Most of them had curtseyed formally to Their Excellencies every December
for several years, yet they were quite as happily a-tremble as the
brides or the _débutantes_—the brides of next season.
“I suppose,” Helen overheard one little woman remark with animation,
“Their Excellencies won’t _bite_!” But she continued to behave as if she
thought they would. There were also a few ladies who had not been
imported. These were noticeable for a slight and not unbecoming Oriental
duskiness under the powder, an unusual softness and blackness of eye,
and an oddity of inflection that struck Helen as so pretty and
“foreign.” These ladies usually wore the feathers in their hair—the
three feathers that compliment Royalty—of the same hue as their gowns,
pink or blue or perhaps yellow, which was doubtless a survival of some
lavish and tropical taste for colour that may have been peculiarly their
own. The Ranees and the Maharanees made no attempt to subdue the
gorgeousness of their natural instincts, but showed undisguisedly in
purple and gold and eccentric gems, disposed according to the fashion
that best liked them; and it was Helen’s lot to proceed into the
Viceregal presence immediately behind a Mohammedan lady of enormous
proportions, who represented matrimonially a great Nawab, and did it
wholly in crimson satin.
Their Excellencies stood upon a daïs, near enough to the Throne chair to
suggest their connection with it. There were two stately lines of the
Body-Guard, imperturbable under the majesty of their turbans; there were
five or six A.-D.-C.’s, and secretaries in uniform with an expression of
solemn self-containment under their immature moustaches. And there were,
gathered together at Their Excellencies’ right, the ladies of the
Private Entrée. These ladies were the wives of gentlemen whose interests
were the special care of Government. It was advisable therefore that
their trains should not be stepped on, nor their tempers disarranged;
and they had been received an hour earlier, with more circumstance,
possibly to slower music, different portals being thrown open for the
approach of their landaus—they all approached in landaus. If you stay in
India long enough, Government will see that you get the Private Entrée
before you go, as a rule. That is if you are a person of any
perseverance, and have objected with sufficient stolidity to getting out
of anybody else’s way. This is not invariably the case, however, or John
Perth Macintyre, my husband, with his success in tea and the knowledge
of Indian commerce he has got in the last twenty years, would have been
in the Viceroy’s Council long ago, and Mrs. Macintyre’s landau
approaching with proper distinction in consequence, which it never has.
I have no objection whatever to this coming out in print, for everybody
knows that we wouldn’t take it now. Moreover I daresay it is one reason
why I always notice that the ladies of the Private Entrée are disposed
to giggle slightly and otherwise forget the caste of Vere de Vere, as
they look on upon the curtseys that come after. On this occasion, though
Helen Browne was much too nervous to observe it, they were politely
convulsed—of course with cast-down eyes and strained lips, and in the
manner of good society—at the genuflections of the Mohammedan lady in
red satin. I have no doubt one wouldn’t observe this to the same extent
if one were amongst them.
When it was over it had been very simple. The first A.-D.-C. had handed
Helen’s card to the second A.-D.-C., and so on, until it reached the
Military Secretary who stood at the end, and he had read distinctly
aloud from it the perfectly inoffensive description, “Mrs. George
Browne.” Whereat Mrs. George Browne had gone down several unsteady
inches first before one Excellency, and then before the other, not at
all able to observe the kindly smile with which they encouraged her
unreliable equilibrium. After which she followed the other ladies whose
ordeal was over, with hurrying footsteps and much relief through sundry
tall pillared apartments to the corridor where Mr. George Browne awaited
her, and took his arm with the greatest satisfaction she had yet
experienced in its protection.
Everybody repaired to the ball-room, where, after the last agitated
respects had been received, Their Excellencies also appeared, and Helen
had the opportunity of taking a lesson in social astronomy, and learning
if she chose, how that there is one glory of the sun and another glory
of the moon, and how dark and unamiable those regions may be where the
sun and the moon shine not. Also how an A.-D.-C. may twinkle as a little
star in the firmament, and how a Lieutenant-Governor may be the centre
of a brilliant constellation. Helen noticed a subtle difference between
Their Excellencies and the rest, and put it down in her admiring
innocence to aristocratic lineage or some such vague reason. As a matter
of fact they were the only people in the room who did not directly or
indirectly suggest a life-long interest in pay and promotion, which is
quite enough to make a most vital difference, a most violent contrast,
though it must take some years to discern this. The pay of a Viceroy is
magnificently absolute, and you can’t promote him. I believe that is
arranged by Her Majesty, in order that he may have time to think about
other things. This may look a trifle caustic, but the Perth Macintyres
have out-stayed five Viceroys in Calcutta, and I have found that number
at least to be quite human. Although it is a serious fact that the more
one comes in contact with them the less one is struck with any idea of
their common fallibility, and the more one is inclined to refer to His
Excellency as a very superior mind, and to Her Excellency as “a
perfectly charming woman,” without cavil. The last two Viceroys for
instance have seemed to me to be much more valuable acquaintances than
their predecessors. Can it be that circumstances—chiefly viceregal
dinners—have thrown us more together?
Little Mrs. Macdonald, sitting alone upon a sofa in a corner, welcomed
the Brownes with effusion.
“Do let me go half shares in your husband for a while,” she said to
Helen, making room for them. “Mine has gone off with Mrs. Toote, and I
know what _that_ means. Half an hour’s desertion at least.”
“What did he go for?” asked young Browne.
“Because Mrs. Toote is charming.”
“Do you think so?”
“Don’t _you_? I thought all the men grovelled before Mrs. Toote!”
“I don’t grovel,” said young Browne. “I think she’s a bit of a humbug.”
“But she _has_ good eyes,” Mrs. Macdonald protested.
“Lovely eyes,” Helen chimed.
“Though _I wish_ she wouldn’t spoil them with charcoal the way she
does,” remarked Mrs. Macdonald with amiable unction. “She doesn’t _need_
to, you know.”
“How do you _do_, Captain Delytis?” and Mrs. Macdonald bent very much
forward on the sofa in recognizing a young man in blue lapels, who
suddenly reined himself in as it were, responded profoundly to her
salutation, and then hurried on. “That’s Captain Delytis,” she informed
Helen. “One of the A.-D.-C.’s. Such a dear! He called on me twice last
cold weather, and I was _darwaza bund_ each time. Wasn’t it a shame!”
“I wouldn’t be too remorseful,” remarked young Browne, not without
malice. He had found Mrs. Macdonald _darwaza bund_ frequently, and had
all a black coat’s aversion to the superior charms of blue lapels.
“A.-D.-C.’s have a way, you know, of finding out first.”
“Don’t be nasty, George Browne,” responded Mrs. Macdonald, “besides in
this case it doesn’t apply, for Captain Delytis told me himself how
sorry he was. I daresay they have to resort to that sort of thing
occasionally though, poor things. They have so much to do.”
“Do!” remarked young Browne, with the peculiar contempt mercantile
pursuits so often inspire for the army and the civil service in
Calcutta. “They order dinner, I believe.”
“They have charge of the invitations to everything, so you’d better just
make him properly civil to them,” said Mrs. Macdonald, turning to Helen,
who responded, with perfectly feminine appreciation of the advice, that
she would indeed.
“I wonder,” continued Mrs. Macdonald thoughtfully, “why Mrs. Alec Forbes
didn’t see me just now. Did you notice her?—that tall woman in the
pompadourish gown that passed just now. They say she’s getting too
swagger to see lots of people now that the Simlaites have taken her up
so tremendously, but she’s generally as sweet as possible to me. They
tell a funny story about Mrs. Forbes and Mrs. Perth Macintyre—you’ve
seen Mrs. Perth Macintyre: perhaps you can imagine how patronising and
interfering the old lady is! Well, it was when Mrs. Forbes first came
out, and Calcutta wasn’t at all disposed to take to her—a little of the
tar-brush, you know, and that doesn’t go down here. But everybody liked
Alec Forbes, and she had a lot of money, and people came round. Mrs.
Perth Macintyre decided to come round too, and one night at dinner, when
people were discussing this very function, she undertook to encourage
Mrs. Forbes about it. ‘I daresay you’ll be a bit timid, my dear,’ said
she, ‘but you’ll just have to go through it like the rest of us.’ ‘Oh,’
said Mrs. Forbes casually, ‘I daresay it’s nothing to St. James’s!’ Mrs.
Perth Macintyre was sat on for once—_she_ had never been presented at
home. Wasn’t it good?”
“I can’t see what earthly difference it made,” said young Browne, but
his wife could, and turned another page in Part II., Feminine: of the
Book of Anglo-India.
“Why, George,” she said presently, “who’s that?” her husband having
emitted a gruff “How do!” as a gentleman passed them.
“That? Oh, nobody much! Sir William Peete.”
“What did Sir William get his K for?” asked Mrs. Macdonald. “I’ve
forgotten.”
“For trimming up Calcutta the time some Royalty or other came out. He
made a very good municipal milliner, got out a most unusual amount of
bunting. They had to recognise it. The man who drained the place got
nothing, so far as I remember.”
“George, you don’t like him,” Mrs. Browne remarked astutely.
“Oh, yes, I do, for two months in the year, when he likes me. They occur
in the rains. Then he’s passionately fond of everybody who will speak to
him. For the rest of the time he’s exclusively occupied with Sir William
Peete and a few other people of similar standing.”
“What _do_ you mean?” asked Mrs. Macdonald.
“About August and September,” young Browne continued suavely, “Sir
William comes out in boils—comes out copiously. He gets ’em on his neck
and on his face and in the middle of his forehead. He becomes an awful
spectacle. He fawns on his fellow-beings then. As soon as they leave him
he returns to the sublime consideration of the social eminence of Sir
William Peete. Boils are the only known method of reminding him that he
belongs to the human race, so Providence takes it.”
Mr. Macdonald came up at this moment and carried off his wife, leaving
these young Brownes alone on the sofa in the corner of the room, looking
on. They seemed to themselves as they sat there to have drifted into
some tranquil place from which they could watch the steady current
passing, the current that changes every year and yet is always the same,
of English life in India. The old, old ambitions, the stereotyped
political aims, the worn competitions, the social appraisements—how they
have repeated themselves through what illustrations of the great British
average, even in my time! How little more than illustrations the men and
women have been, as one looks back, pictures in a magic lantern, shadows
on a wall! Good illustrations, though sharp reflections of the narrow
conditions they lived in, solemn warnings to those that are so eager to
come after, if only the glamour of India left people with eyes to see.
How gay they were and how luxurious, and how important in their little
day! How gorgeous were the attendants of their circumstance, on the box
with a crest upon their turbans—there is a firm in Calcutta that
supplies beautiful crests. And now—let me think!—some of them in
Circular Road Cemetery—cholera, fever, heat—apoplexy; some of them under
the Christian daisies of England—probably abscess of the liver; the rest
grey-faced Cheltenham pensioners, dull and obscure, with uncertain
tempers and an acquired detestation of the climate of Great Britain. And
soon, very soon, long before the Brownes appear in print, the Perth
Macintyres also will have gone over to the great majority who have
forgotten their Hindustani and regret their khansamahs. Our brief day
too will have died in a red sunset behind clustering palms, and all its
little doings and graspings and pushings, all its pretty scandals and
surmises and sensations, will echo further and further back into the
night.
Of course the Brownes did not moralize thus unpardonably. Why should
they? They sat in their corner and looked at the brilliant scene before
them, and young Browne talked with more or less good-natured cynicism
about everybody he saw, and Helen quite failed to understand why George
should take such ridiculous views of things. And by and by they went
down the broad stairs, past the brown men that stood aside in their
garments of crimson and gold, and the Browne’s ticca-gharry rolled home
with as light-hearted a sahib and memsahib as left Government House that
night. As they had forgotten all about refreshments it was perhaps
fortunate that they were able to find two mutton cutlets cold from the
hands of Kali Bagh and some biscuits and marmalade, when they arrived,
which afforded them keen satisfaction. They could still, poor dears,
with the solace of a cold cutlet enjoy seeing the world go by.
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