NOTHING happened. Thus for three months, three hot weather months. The
punkah wallahs came and ministered to the sahiblok with creakings and
snorings that cannot be uttered, much less spelled. The mango-crop was
gathered and sold, the _topsy muchies_ swam up the river Hooghly, and
were caught and cooked in their appointed season. The Viceroy and his
shining ones went to Simla, and a wave of flirtation swept over the
Himalayas. The shops put up grass-tatties for the wind to blow through,
and the customers who went in were much cooler than the coolies who
stood outside throwing water over them. The brain-fever bird spoke—he
does not sing—all day long in the banyan-tree—“_Ponk! Ponk!_” all day
long in the thickest part of the banyan-tree, where nobody can see or
shoot him. He comes and stays with the hot weather, a feathered thing
accursed. The morning paper devoted itself exclusively to publishing the
“Gazette” notices of leave and the lists of intending passengers by P.
and O., and week after week the tide bore great ships outward, every
cabin occupied by persons connected with more or less disordered livers,
going home for three or six or twelve months’ repairs. You could count
on your fingers the people you knew in the Red Road. Kasi asked for an
umbrella; respectfully as a right, it was the _dustur_ for the sahib to
provide an umbrella. The ayah begged for an umbrella, humbly as a
favour; she had far to come and the sun was “_ag kamofik_.”[89] The
kitmutgar asked for an umbrella, not because he had the slightest idea
that he would get it, but because it was generally more blessed to ask
than not to ask. The cholera arrived punctually, and increased the
native death-rate, with its customary industry. The Lovitts lost a
bearer from this cause, and a valuable polo pony from heat apoplexy. The
latter bereavement was in the paper. The oil exuded more profusely still
upon the adipose tissue that encloses the soul of a baboo, and Calcutta
flamed with the red flowers of the gold mohur tree, panting nightly,
when they were all put out, under the cool south wind from the sea.
Footnote 89:
Like fire.
Neither the Lovitts nor the Brownes left Calcutta; they were among the
people you counted on your fingers. There is very little to talk about
in the hot weather, and the fact that nothing had happened was discussed
a good deal, in the dead privacy of the roof or the lower veranda. Both
the top flat and the bottom flat thought it had managed admirably, and
congratulated itself accordingly. That nothing should have happened
caused them to rise considerably in each other’s esteem—there were so
few people living under one roof in Calcutta who were able to say it.
They told society how agreeable they found it to live with each other,
and society repeated it, so that the Brownes heard of the Lovitts’
satisfaction, and the Lovitts heard of the Brownes’. Indeed, there came
a time when the Brownes and the Lovitts thought almost as much of each
other as they did before they lived together.
It had been an extinct volcano after all, and they stopped throwing
water down. Mrs. Lovitt, by degrees, became easily confidential again,
and told Helen among other things that edified her, exactly what they
were saying at the club about Mrs. Lushington and the General’s
A.-D.-C., Mrs. Lovitt’s version coming straight from Jimmy Forbes, and
being absolutely correct. Helen being without a confidential male
admirer upon these matters—husbands kept them notoriously to
themselves—had not the wherewithal to exchange; but she borrowed the
Lovitts’ khansamah to make some cocoanut creams, which was going a great
deal further. When the Brownes’ pony was laid up with the sun,
threatening vertigo, Jack Lovitt took young Browne to office very
sociably in his cart; and when the Lovitts ran up to Darjiling on ten
days’ casual leave, the Brownes looked after “the littlest black and tan
in Calcutta,” and took it out for a drive every day. They dined and
lunched and shopped more and more often together, and Mrs. Lovitt knew
exactly how many _topsy muchies_ Mrs. Browne got for eight annas.
It was just at this very favourable point that the difficulty about Mr.
Lovitt’s unmarried sister arose. Mr. Lovitt’s unmarried sister had been
shipped six months before to an up-country relation, and having made no
use whatever of her time in Cawnpore, was now to be transferred to
Calcutta as a final experiment. Mrs. Lovitt wanted a room for her
unmarried sister-in-law, wanted Helen’s dining-room. It was a serious
difficulty, and the Lovitts and the Brownes in the plenitude of their
confidence and good-will agreed to surmount it by “chumming,”—living
together and dividing the bulk of the household expenses—a form of
existence largely supported in Calcutta.
In the beginning, chumming lends itself vastly to expansion, and the
Brownes and the Lovitts expanded to the utmost verge. They forgot the
happy result of past discretions; they became a united family, no longer
a top and a bottom flat. They pooled their domestic resources—the
soup-plates were Mrs. Lovitt’s, the dessert-knives were Mrs. Browne’s.
They consulted each other’s tastes pressingly. They had brisket always
on Saturday night because “Jack” liked cold brisket for breakfast on
Sunday morning, and mutton twice a week because young Browne had a
weakness for caper sauce. Mrs. Lovitt sent away her cook—a crowning act
of grace—and Kali Bagh reigned in his stead. It was all peace and
fraternity, and the sahibs sat together in long praise of each other’s
cigars every evening, while the memsahibs upstairs discussed their
mutual friends and sank deeper into each other’s affections. Indeed, in
little Mrs. Lovitt’s Helen had absolutely no rival except Jimmy Forbes,
the black and tan, and Mr. Lovitt.
They saw a good deal of Mr. Forbes naturally, and the interesting and
unique position in the house occupied by that gentleman was revealed to
Helen with all the force of an Anglo-Indian experience. He was nearly
always there, and when he hadn’t been there he was in the habit of
giving an account of himself as having been elsewhere. It was expected
of him, and much beside. Helen decided that he couldn’t be described as
a “tame cat” in the family, because the position of a tame cat is an
irresponsible one, and Mr. Forbes had many responsibilities. If Mrs.
Lovitt’s racquet went “_fut_”[90] it was Jimmy who had it re-strung for
her. When a new theatrical company came sailing up from Ceylon, Jimmy
went on its opening night to report, and if it were good enough to waste
an evening on, he took the Lovitts—generally both of them—later. If the
roof leaked, or the servants misbehaved, Mrs. Lovitt complained to Jimmy
quite as often as to Jack, and Jimmy saw to it. When Mrs. Lovitt wanted
some Burmese carvings, Jimmy arranged it at the jail, where the captive
Burmese carve, and when that lady decided that she would like to sell
her victoria and buy a cabriolet, Jimmy advertised it in _The
Englishman_ and made the bargain. In fact Mr. Forbes relieved Mr. Lovitt
of more than half the duties pertaining to his official position, of
which kindness the latter gentleman was not insensible. Nor could
anybody say that little Mrs. Lovitt was. She nursed Jimmy Forbes when he
was ill, scolded him when he was imprudent, and advised him on the
subject of his clothes. I don’t know that she ever put his necktie
straight, but she never would allow him to wear anything but blue ones,
and made a point of his throwing away all his high collars—the turned
down ones suited him so much better. She did not overload him with
benefits, but at Christmas and on his birthday she always gave him some
little thing with a personal association, a pair of slippers, some
initialled handkerchiefs, a new photograph of herself, generally taken
with the littlest black and tan in Calcutta.
Footnote 90:
To ruin.
Thus they made no secret of their affection; it had the candour of high
noon. They called each other Jimmy and Jennie with all publicity. When
Jimmy went home on three months’ leave, Jennie told all her friends that
she was simply desolated. She declared to Jimmy and to the world that
she was a mother to this young man, and no mother could have walked and
danced and driven more self-sacrificingly with her son. Mrs. Lovitt was
at least three years younger than her “Jimmy-boy,” but that, in cases of
adoption, is known to be immaterial. In periods of absence they wrote to
each other regularly twice a week, and Jimmy never forgot to send kind
regards to Jack. Their manner to each other was conspicuous for the
absence of anything foolish or awkward or constrained—it was above
embarrassment, it spoke of a secure footing and an untroubled mind, Mrs.
Lovitt lectured Mr. Forbes, and Mr. Forbes rebuked Mrs. Lovitt with a
simplicity and good humour that produced a kind of astonishment in the
spectator, who looked about her in vain for a formula of criticism.
“No,” Mr. Forbes would say, “you’d better not call on Mrs. Lushington.
It’s all right for me to go, of course, but I’d rather you didn’t know
her.” And Mrs. Lovitt would poutingly acquiesce. When Tertium Quiddism
takes this form, what is there to say?
Mrs. Lovitt’s official lord, at all events, found very little to say. He
liked Forbes himself extremely—capital fellow—awfully clever chap—and
admitted him into full communion as a member of the family in good and
regular standing, with a placidity which many husbands doubtless envied
him. The gentlemen were not brothers or even brothers-in-law, the
relation was one too delicately adjusted to come under any commonly
recognised description; but there was a kind of fraternity in it which
Mrs. Lovitt seemed to establish, with tacit limitations which
established themselves. The limitations were concerned with
impropriety—in the general sense. It is certain that there were no
occasions _a deux_ when Mr. Forbes felt out of it with Mr. and Mrs.
Lovitt—they had no privacy to speak of which Jimmy was not welcome to
share. In family matters Mr. Lovitt treated Mr. Forbes much as a valued
Under-Secretary. The two men were calling upon me one Sunday, and I
inquired of Mr. Lovitt whether his wife were going to Mrs. Walter Luff’s
concert for the East Indian Self-Help Association. “’Pon my word,” he
said, “I don’t know. Forbes will tell you.” Mrs. Lovitt had frequent
occasion to mention these amicable conditions to her friends. “My
husband thinks the world of Jimmy Forbes,” she often said, “and Jimmy is
perfectly devoted to him.” In moments of intimacy after tiffin with Mrs.
Browne, she was fond of comparing the two. “Jimmy is a good deal the
cleverer,” she would say judicially, “but Jack is much the better
tempered, poor dear, and his looks leave _nothing_ to be desired, in my
opinion. But then I always did spoil Jack.”
When Miss Josephine Lovitt arrived, tall and vigorous, with a complexion
fresh from the school-room, full of bubbling laughter, and already made
fully aware of herself by six months’ diligent spurning of nice little
subalterns, who thought her a Juno of tremendously good form, these
ladies had further confidences. Mrs. Lovitt initiated them by asking
Helen if she didn’t think it would be just the thing for Jimmy, and in
the discussion which followed it appeared that Mrs. Lovitt had often
tried to marry Jimmy off—she was sure he would be much happier
married—but hitherto unavailingly. No one knew the trouble she had
taken, the efforts she had made. Mrs. Lovitt couldn’t understand it, for
it was only a matter of picking and choosing, and Jimmy wasn’t shy.
“I’ve argued it out with him a score of times,” she said, “but I can’t
get the least satisfaction. Men are queer animals.”
Helen agreed that Mr. Forbes ought to be married. It was so much her
opinion that she had to be careful not to argue too emphatically. It
seemed to Mrs. Browne that there were particular as well as general
grounds for approving such an idea, and Miss Josephine Lovitt struck her
also as its brilliant apotheosis. “Josie’s a nice girl,” declared Mrs.
Lovitt, “and a great deal cleverer than she pretends to be. And Jack
would like it above all things. But it’s too nice to hope for,” and Mrs.
Lovitt sighed with the resignation that is born of hope deferred.
Helen reported the matter duly to George, who laughed in a ribald manner
about Mrs. Lovitt’s intentions, and would hear nothing of the
advisability of the match, as men never will. So she was not encouraged
to suggest anything of co-operation on her own part. Indeed, she was
hardly conscious of such an idea, but the married woman’s instinct was
already awake in her, and she was quite prepared to do anything she
could to further Mrs. Lovitt’s benevolent design. It should be
furthered, Helen thought, in the interests of the normal and the
orthodox.
Opportunities did not immediately occur, because Mrs. Lovitt took them
all herself. She gave tennis parties at the Saturday club, and made up
sets so that Mr. Forbes and Miss Lovitt played together. When Mr. Forbes
sang “The Bogie Man” to them all after dinner she made Josephine play
his accompaniment to save her “rheumatic” finger-joints. Josephine might
teach Jimmy “Halma”—she was much too stupid to learn—she would talk to
Mr. Browne. All this quite shamelessly, rather with an air of conscious
rectitude, of child-like _naïveté_. It was the old thing, Jimmy Forbes
thought, over his peaceful private cigar; it amused her to do it, it
always had amused her to do it. Before he had generally resented it a
good deal; this time he resented it too, by Jove, but not so much. After
all, why should he resent it—deuced bad policy; it only encouraged the
little woman to go on with this sort of game. And for the first time in
Mr. Forbes’s dawning experience of womankind it occurred to him that it
might be advisable under some circumstances not to sulk. He wouldn’t
sulk—he would teach the little woman a lesson. It wouldn’t be a bad
thing to do. Besides, Miss Lovitt was rather amusing, and no fool
either; she wouldn’t misunderstand things. And Mr. Forbes finished his
cigar with the conviction that such an experiment would be absolutely
safe so far as the girl was concerned—of course, he was bound to think
of the girl—and more or less agreeable.
[Illustration: JOSEPHINE MIGHT TEACH JIMMY “HALMA.”]
A little later Helen confided to George that she really wouldn’t be one
bit surprised if something came of it; Jack Lovitt remarked to his wife
that Forbes seemed rather taken with Josie, and he was quite prepared to
give them his blessing; and Mrs. Lovitt replied that it _would_ be
lovely, wouldn’t it, but she was afraid it was only temporary, adding
rather vaguely that Jimmy Forbes wasn’t a bit like other men. On the
whole it wouldn’t be unsuitable, but it was a pity Josie was so tall—she
overtopped him by about a foot—a tall woman and a little man did look so
idiotic together. That evening Mrs. Lovitt accompanied “The Bogie Man”
without any reference to her rheumatic finger-joints.
It was at this juncture—when any lady of discretion living in the same
house would have been looking on in silent joy, without lifting a
finger—that Helen found herself yielding to the temptation of furthering
matters, so successfully, you understand, was Mr. Forbes making his
experiment. Here a little and there a little Mrs. Browne permitted
herself to do what she could, and opportunities occurred to an extent
which inspired and delighted her. She discovered herself to be a person
of wonderful tact, and the discovery no doubt stimulated her, though it
must be said that circumstances put themselves very readily at her
disposal. Mrs. Lovitt, for one thing, had gradually retired from the
generalship of the situation, becoming less and less sanguine of its
issue as Helen became more and more hopeful. She even had a little
confidential conversation with Josephine, in which she told that young
lady that though Jimmy was a dear good fellow and she had always been
able to depend upon him to be kind to any friends of hers, she was
afraid he was not a person to be taken altogether _seriously_. Josie
would understand. And Josie did understand quite well.
As to Mr. Forbes himself, his experiment had succeeded. There was no
doubt whatever that the little woman had been taught a lesson; anyone
could see that she had learnt it remarkably well. Yet he continued to
instruct her, he did not withdraw the experiment. He found it
interesting, and not exclusively in its effect upon Mrs. Lovitt. Miss
Josephine found it interesting too. She thought she would like to hand
Mr. Forbes back to her little sister-in-law, to hand him back a little
damaged, perhaps. This was doubtless very naughty of Miss Josephine, but
not unnatural under the circumstances. It was only, after all, that she
did not make a good cat’s paw.
And thus it went on, to be brief—for this is not a chronicle of the
affair of Jimmy Forbes and Mrs. Lovitt’s sister-in-law, the which any
gossip of Calcutta will give you at great length and detail—until the
Brownes asked Miss Josephine Lovitt and Mr. Forbes to go with them to
see Mr. Wylde de Vinton, assisted by a scratch company, perform _Hamlet_
in the opera house, on a Saturday evening. Hitherto Mr. Forbes’s
Saturday evenings had not been his own, they had been Mrs. Lovitt’s. She
had established a peculiar claim to be amused on Saturday evenings—they
were usually consecrated to long talks of a semi-sentimental order,
which Jack Lovitt could not possibly have understood even if he had been
there. Therefore when Mr. Forbes showed Mrs. Lovitt Helen’s note and
stated his intention of accepting, it was in the nature of a finality.
[Illustration: MISS JOSEPHINE LOVITT REFRAINED FROM HANDING HIM BACK TO
MRS. LOVITT.]
I am not interested in deciding whether it was from purely conscientious
motives that Miss Josephine Lovitt, having discovered Mr. Forbes to have
sustained considerable damage, refrained from handing him back to Mrs.
Lovitt. All I wish to establish is that the Brownes did not leave No.
61, Park-street until quite three weeks after the engagement was
announced. Mrs. Lovitt was obliged to wait until they found a house. And
of course their going had nothing whatever to do with dear Josie’s
engagement—Mrs. Lovitt made that match, and was very proud of it. The
incident that brought about their misunderstanding with the Brownes was
the merest trifle, Mrs. Lovitt would tell you if you knew her well
enough, the merest trifle. They, the Lovitts, had asked the Honourable
Mr. Justice Lamb of the High Court to dinner on, say, Friday of next
week. His lordship was suffering very much from the weather when the
invitation came, and declined it, fabricating another engagement as even
their lordships will. Mrs. Browne and Mrs. Lovitt had then reached that
point in the development of the chumming system—hastened a little by
circumstances—when one thinks it isn’t absolutely necessary for those
people to concern themselves in _all_ one’s affairs, and the
circumstance was not mentioned. As it happened, therefore, the Brownes
two days later invited Mr. Justice Lamb to dinner on the same Friday,
the old gentleman being a second cousin of young Browne’s, and in the
habit of dining with them once in six months or so. The thermometer
having gone down a few degrees, his lordship, who was a person of absent
mind, accepted with much pleasure, putting the note in his pocket-book
so that he wouldn’t forget the youngster’s address.
“We have a man coming to dinner to-night,” Helen remarked casually at
breakfast, and Mrs. Lovitt was of course not sufficiently interested to
inquire who it was, if Mrs. Browne didn’t choose to say. The man came,
ate his dinner with a good conscience and a better appetite, and being
as amiable as he was forgetful, mentioned particularly to Mrs. Lovitt
how sorry he was not to have been able to accept her kind invitation of
last week.
It was a little thing, but Mrs. Lovitt foresaw that it might lead to
complications. And so the Brownes departed from No. 61, Park-street, not
without thanksgiving.
------------------------------------------------------------------------