HELEN BROWNE never could be brought to understand that she was not rich
with five hundred rupees a month. Every now and then she reduced the
amount—reduced it indeed, with the rupee at one and twopence!—to pounds,
shillings, and pence, in order to assure herself over again that it was
only a little less than the entire stipend of the Canbury rectory, “and
we all lived upon that,” she would argue, as if she had there somewhat
unanswerable. It was to her a source of continual and lamentable mystery
that they never seemed to find it convenient to open a bank account—it
was so unwise not to have a bank account—and yet there was always what
George Browne called a “negative difficulty,” always something to be
paid first. On the last days of every month when it came to balancing
the accounts and finding nothing over, Mrs. Browne regularly cut the
bawarchi six pice on general principles, for which he as regularly came
prepared. Kali Bagh cooked nothing better than his accounts. Besides
this she had her evening gloves cleaned, and saved the price of a ticca
dhurzie, which is at least eight annas, every Saturday by doing the
family darning, and this, in a memsahib, is saintly. Certainly the
Brownes were not extravagant. Helen used to maintain that the remarkable
part of it was vegetables being so cheap, but there was probably more
force in her reflection that it didn’t really matter much about getting
a cauliflower for a penny when one’s ticca gharries came to three
pounds. It was much more curious to observe how exactly every month the
Brownes’ expenses met their income with perhaps just a trifle now and
then to spare, which they might put away if they liked, unreceipted, to
be a nest-egg for a comfortable debt in the near future—the fact being
that Kasi and Kali Bagh and the rest knew the sahib’s _tulub_ as well as
they knew their own, and were all good at arithmetic to the splitting of
a pi. It is perhaps a tribute to the perfection of their skill that they
never disturbed Helen’s idea that she was very well off. When the rupees
disappeared more quickly than usual, she thought of the price of
vegetables and was convinced that retrenchments were possible and should
soon be effected. Next month Kasi would permit himself to forget various
trifling bills, and there would be great prosperity with the Brownes for
a fortnight. But invariably there came a time of reckoning when Kasi
demonstrated that the income was very nearly equal to the outgo. On the
whole Kasi was contented with the sahib’s present pay, having great
faith in his prospects of promotion. Barring accidents, Kasi’s
speculations upon the financial future of the Brownes were very
perfectly adjusted.
It was the elusive bank account that induced them to listen to the Jack
Lovitts, who lived in Park-street in a bigger house than they could
afford. “We can perfectly well let you have the top flat,” said Mrs.
Jack Lovitt at the end of the cold weather, “and it will be that much
off our rent besides being a lot cheaper for you. You see we could
divide the mallie and the sweeper,” said Mrs. Lovitt, enunciating this
horror quite callously, “and that would be an advantage. Then we might
have one leg of mutton between us, you know, and that sort of thing—save
a lot of bazar.”
“But should you like to have somebody living over your head?” asked
Helen, pondering over the idea.
“Of course not,” replied Mrs. Lovitt candidly, “who would? But if we
mean to go on leave next year we’ve got to do something. Jack’s eight
hundred simply vanishes in our hands. Last month, Helen Browne, our bill
from Peliti alone was a hundred and ten—beast! If Jack wouldn’t insist
on giving ice to his polo ponies I think we might get on. But you can’t
reason with him about it. He’ll come home with a broken neck from that
polo one of these days. And we haven’t earned anything approaching a
decent pension yet, and my complexion’s absolutely gone,” added this
vivacious lady, who liked saying these insincere things to her “young
friend Mrs. Browne,” who began at this time to be amused by them.
“I’ve done my little uttermost,” Mrs. Lovitt continued. “This nougat is
filthy, isn’t it? I’ll never leave my dear Peliti again!” The ladies
were tiffining together in a luxury of solitude. “I’ve sold three
frocks.”
“No!” said Helen. “Which?”
“That vieux rose brocade that I got out from home for the
Drawing-Room—the more fool I!—and that gray shimmery crêpe that you
like; and another, a mouse-coloured sort of thing, with gold bands, that
I don’t think you know—I’ve never had it on. Frifri sent it home with a
bill for a hundred and fifty if you please—and I gave her the
foundation. However, I’ve been paid for it, and Frifri hasn’t, and she
can jolly well wait!”
“What did you get for it?” asked Helen.
“Eighty-five—wasn’t I lucky? That new little Mrs. Niblit—jute or indigo
or something—heaps of money. Lady Blebbins bought the other two for
Julia. She’s up in Allahabad, you know, where the fact of my having
swaggered around in them all season won’t make any difference. What a
pretty little flannel blouse that is of yours, my dear—I wish I could
afford one like it!”
“It cost three eight altogether,” said Mrs. Browne, “the dhurzie made it
last week. He took two days, but I think he dawdled.”
“Three eight’s a good deal, I think, for a blouse,” returned Mrs.
Lovitt, the experienced. “Dear me, what a horrible thing it is to be
poor! And nothing but boxes in that upper flat! Three rooms and two
bath-rooms, going, going, gone—I wish it were! What do you say, Mrs.
Browne? Ninety-five rupees only!”
“It’s cheap,” said Helen; “I’ll ask George.”
She did ask George, at the shortest possible intervals for three days,
and when the subject had been allowed to drop for a quarter of an hour
George asked her. It became the supreme question, and the consideration
they devoted to it might have revised the Permanent Settlement or
decided our right to occupy the Pamirs.
There were more pros and cons than I have patience to go into, and I
daresay they would have been discussing it still, if Mrs. Browne had not
thought fit to decline her breakfast on the morning of the third day.
Whereat young Browne suspected fever—he hoped not typhoid—but the place
certainly smelt feverish, now that he came to smell it—and there was no
doubt that it would be an economy to take Mrs. Lovitt’s flat, and
forthwith they took it.
Moving house in India is a light affliction and but for a moment. The
sahib summoned Kasi, and announced to him that the change would be made
to-morrow, “and in thy hand all things will be.” Kasi received
particulars of the address in Park-street, salaamed, saying “Very good,”
and went away more sorrowful than he seemed, for he was comfortable and
mighty where he was, and change was not often a good thing. Besides, he
knew Lovitt sahib that he had a violent temper and reprehensible modes
of speech—it might not be good to come often under the eye of Lovitt
sahib. And he would be obliged to tell the mallie his friend that it
would be to depart, which would split his heart in two. However, it was
the sahib’s will and there was nothing to say, but a great deal to do.
Moreover, there might be backsheesh, which alleviated all things.
Next morning the Brownes found themselves allowed one table and two
chairs for breakfast purposes, and six coolies sat without, dusty and
expectorant, waiting for those. Kasi, at the gate, directed a departing
train, each balancing some portion of their worldly goods upon his head,
Kasi, watchful and stern, the protector of his master’s property. The
dining-room was dismantled, the drawing-room had become a floor space
enclosed by high white walls with nail marks in them. There was a little
heap of torn paper in one corner, and cobwebs seemed to have been spun
in the night in half the windows.
“It’s pure magic!” Helen exclaimed. “It’s to-day week, and I’ve been
asleep,” and then “We’ve been awfully happy here, George,”—an illogical
statement to accompany wet eyelashes.
Even while they sat on their single chairs at their single table, which
George put his elbows on, to secure it he said, the bedroom furniture
decamped with many footsteps, and after the meal was over there was
nothing left to testify of them but their hats laid conspicuously on a
sheet of paper in the middle of the drawing-room floor. “I suppose,”
said young Browne, “they think we’ve got brains enough to carry those
over ourselves.”
[Illustration: THEIR HATS LAID CONSPICUOUSLY ON A SHEET OF PAPER.]
Mrs. Browne put hers on and drove her husband to office. Then she
shopped for an hour or two, and finished up by coming to tiffin with me.
Then she repaired to Park-street, where she found herself established in
the main, with Kasi still superintending, his locks escaping from his
turban, in a state of extreme perspiration. Then she made a dainty
afternoon toilet with great comfort, and by the time young Browne came
home to tea it was quite ready for him in every respect, even to the
wife behind the teapot, in circumstances which, except for the pictures
and the bric-a-brac, might be described as normal. And of course, being
an insensate sahib, he congratulated his wife—it was prodigious, and all
her doing! Kasi was also commended, however, and the praise of his
master fell pleasantly on the ear of Kasi, who immediately added another
rupee to the amount he meant to charge for coolie-hire. Thus is life
alleviated in India; thus do all its material cares devolve into a
hundred brown hands and leave us free for our exalted occupations or our
noble pleasure. We are unencumbered by the consideration of so much as a
button. Under these beatitudes the average Anglo-Indian career ought to
be one of pure spirit and intellect, but it is not so—not singularly so.
“What we must be thoroughly on our guard against,” said young Browne in
the top flat at his second cup, “is seeing too much of the Lovitts.
They’re not a bad sort if you keep them at a proper distance; I don’t
believe for an instant there’s any harm in little Mrs. Jack; but it
won’t do to be too intimate. They’ll be as troublesome as sparrows if we
are.”
“There’s one thing we’ll have to look out for,” said Mr. Jack Lovitt in
the bottom flat at his third muffin, “and that is being too chummy with
the Brownes; they’re all right so long as they stay upstairs, but we
won’t encourage them to come down too often. We’ll have Mrs. B. gushing
all over the place if we do. They’ll have to understand they’ve only
rented the top flat.”
“They’ll always know what we have for dinner,” remarked the spouse in
the top flat.
“They’ll see every soul that comes to the house,” said the spouse in the
bottom flat.
“It isn’t the slightest concern of theirs,” replied the lord upstairs.
“It’s absolutely none of their business,” returned the lord downstairs.
And they were both “blowed” if they would tolerate the slightest
interest in their respective affairs. The Brownes concluded that
“perhaps once a month” would be often enough to ask the Lovitts to come
up and dine, and the Lovitts thought the Brownes might come in to tea
“once in three weeks or so.” Before this they had been in the habit of
entertaining each other rather oftener, but then they were not under the
same roof, with a supreme reason for establishing distance. Mrs. Browne
believed that on the whole she wouldn’t engage Mrs. Lovitt’s dhurzie—it
might lead to complications; and Mrs. Lovitt fancied she had better not
offer Helen that skirt-pattern—it would necessitate endless discussions
and runnings up and down. Mrs. Lovitt deliberately arranged to go up to
see Helen for the first time with her hat and gloves on, to make it
obvious that the call should be formally returned. Helen sent down a
note, beautifully written and addressed, to ask Mrs. Lovitt to come to
tea on Wednesday afternoon, at a quarter past five. The ladies left no
little thing undone, in fact, that would help to quell a tendency to
effusion; they arranged to live as remotely from each other as the
limits of No. 61, Park-street, permitted. The Brownes had always the
roof and habitually sent chairs up there. “They can’t say we haven’t
rented it,” said Helen.
Their precautions not to be offensive to each other were still more
elaborate. Mr. Browne ascertained at what time Mr. Lovitt went to
office, and made a habit of starting a quarter of an hour earlier. Mrs.
Lovitt, observing that the Brownes were fond of walking in the compound
in the evening, walked there always in the morning. Neither of them
would give any orders to the mallie, whom they jointly paid, for fear of
committing an unwarrantable interference, and that functionary grew fat
and lazy, while the weeds multiplied in the gravel walks. Helen even
went so far as to use the back staircase to avoid a possible encounter
at the front door, but young Browne disapproved of this. He believed in
abating no jot or tittle of their lawful claims. “Use the staircase
freely, my dear,” said he, “but do not engage in conversation at the
foot of it.”
They assumed a bland ignorance of each other’s affairs, more discreet
than veracious. When Mrs. Lovitt mentioned that they had had a lot of
people to dinner the night before, Helen said, “_Had_ you?” as if she
had not heard at least half a dozen carriages drive up at dinner time;
as if she had not decided, she and George, indifferent upon the roof,
that the trap which drove off so _much_ later than the others must have
been Jimmy Forbes’s. And they would be as much surprised, these two
ladies, at meeting anywhere else at dinner as if they had not seen each
other’s name inscribed in the peon book that brought the invitations,
and remarked each of the other, at the time, “It seems to me we see
enough of those people at home.”
They were a little ridiculous, but on the whole they were very wise
indeed, and the relations that ensued were as polite and as amiable as
possible. It was like living on the edge of a volcano, taking the
precaution of throwing a pail or two of water down every day or two. And
nothing happened.
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