Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. The few
instances of blackletter font in the front matter use the ‘~’ as a
delimiter.
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in which they are referenced.
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textual issues encountered in its preparation.
HIS HONOUR, AND A LADY
BOOKS BY MRS. EVERARD COTES
(SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN).
----------
=His Honour, and a Lady.=
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
=The Story of Sonny Sahib.=
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00.
=Vernon’s Aunt.=
With many Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
=A Daughter of To-Day.=
A Novel. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
=A Social Departure.=
HOW ORTHODOCIA AND I WENT ROUND THE WORLD BY OURSELVES. With 111
Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth,
$1.75.
=An American Girl in London.=
With 80 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents;
cloth, $1.50.
=The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib.=
With 37 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
------------------
New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
[Illustration:
The situation made its voiceless demand.
(See page 33.)
]
HIS HONOUR, AND
A LADY
BY
MRS. EVERARD COTES
(SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN)
AUTHOR OF A SOCIAL DEPARTURE, AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON,
A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY, VERNON’S AUNT,
THE STORY OF SONNY SAHIB, ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1895, 1896,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
--------------
FACING
PAGE
The situation made its voiceless demand _Frontispiece_
“She seems to be sufficiently entertained” 21
There was a moment’s pause 83
Notwithstanding, it was gay enough 150
“What do I know about the speech”! 215
She drove back 305
HIS HONOUR, AND A LADY.
CHAPTER I.
“The Sahib _walks_!” said Ram Prasannad, who dusted the office books and
papers, to Bundal Singh the messenger, who wore a long red coat with a
badge of office, and went about the business of the Queen-Empress on his
two lean brown legs.
“What talk is that?” Bundal Singh shifted his betel quid to the other
cheek and lunged upon his feet. This in itself was something. When one
sits habitually upon one’s heels the process of getting up is not
undertaken lightly. The men looked out together between the whitewashed
stucco pillars of the long verandah that interposed between the
Commissioner’s clerks and the glare and publicity of the outer world of
Hassimabad. Overhead, in a pipal tree that threw sharp-cut patterns of
its heart-shaped leaves about their feet, a crow stretched its
grey-black throat in strenuous caws, since it was ten o’clock in the
morning and there was no reason to keep silence. Farther away a chorus
of other crows smote the sunlight, and from the direction of the bazar
came a murmur of the life there, borne higher now and then in the
wailing voice of some hawker of sweetmeats. Nevertheless there was a
boundless stillness, a stillness that might have been commanded. The
prodigal sun intensified it, and the trees stood in it, a red and dusty
road wound through it, and the figure of a man, walking quickly down the
road, seemed to be a concentration of it.
“That signifies,” continued Ram Prasannad, without emotion, “news that
is either very good or very bad. The Government _lât_ had but arrived,
the sahib opened one letter only—which is now with him—and in a breath
he was gone, walking, though the horse was still fast between the
shafts. Myself, I think the news is good, for my cousin—he is a writing
baboo in the Home Office, dost thou understand, thou, runner of
errands!—has sent word to me that the sahib is much in favour with the
_Burra Lat_, and that it would be well to be faithful to him.”
“I will go swiftly after with an umbrella, and from his countenance it
will appear,” remarked Bundal Singh; “and look thou, worthy one, if that
son of mud, Lal Beg, the grain dealer, comes again in my absence to try
to make petition to the sahib, and brings a pice less than one rupee to
me, do thou refuse him admission.”
Bundal Singh ran after his master, as he said. As John Church walked
rapidly, and the habitual pace of a Queen’s messenger in red and gold is
a dignified walk, the umbrella was tendered with a devoted loss of wind.
“It may be that your honour will take harm from the sun,” Bundal Singh
suggested, with the privilege all the Commissioner’s people felt
permitted to use. The Commissioner liked it—could be depended upon to
appreciate any little savour of personal devotion to him, even if it
took the form of a liberty. He had not a servant who was unaware of this
or failed to presume upon it, in his place and degree. This one got a
nod of acknowledgment as his master took the opened umbrella, and
observed, as he fell behind, that the sahib was too much preoccupied to
carry it straight. He went meditatively back to Ram Prasannad in the
verandah, who said, “Well?”
“Simply it does not appear. The sahib’s forehead had twenty wrinkles,
and his mind was a thousand miles hence. Yet it was as if he had lately
smiled and would smile again. What will be, will be. Lal Beg has not
been here?”
John Church walked steadily on, with his near-sighted eyes fixed always
upon the wide space of sunlit road, its red dust thick-printed with bare
feet and hoofs, that lay in front of him—seeing nothing, literally, but
the way home. He met no one who knew him except people from the bazar,
who regarded their vizier with serious wonder as they salaamed, the men
who sat upon low bamboo carts and urged, hand upon flank, the
peaceful-eyed cattle yoked to them, turning to stare as they jogged
indolently past. A brown pariah, curled up in the middle of the road,
lifted his long snout in lazy apology as Church stepped round him,
trusting the sense that told him it would not be necessary to get out of
the way. As he passed the last low wall, mossy and discoloured, that
divided its brilliantly tangled garden from the highway, and turned in
at its own gate, he caught himself out of his abstraction and threw up
his head. He entered his wife’s drawing-room considerately, and a ray of
light, slipping through the curtains and past the azaleas and across the
cool duskness of the place, fell on his spectacles and exaggerated the
triumph in his face.
The lady, who sat at the other end of the room writing, rose as her
husband came into it, and stepped forward softly to meet him. If you had
known her you would have noticed a slight elation in her step that was
not usual, and made it more graceful, if anything, than it commonly was.
“I think I know what you have come to tell me,” she said. Her voice
matched her personality so perfectly that it might have suggested her,
to a few people, in her darkened drawing-room, as its perfume would
betray some sweet-smelling thing in the evening. Not to John Church. “I
think I know,” she said, as he hesitated for words that would not show
extravagant or undignified gratification. “But tell me yourself. It will
be a pleasure.”
“That Sir Griffiths Spence goes on eighteen months’ sick leave, and——”
“And that you are appointed to officiate for him. Yes.”
“Somebody has written?”
“Yes—Mr. Ancram.”
His wife had come close to him, and he noticed that she was holding out
her hands in her impulse of congratulation. He took one of them—it was
all he felt the occasion required—and shook it lamely. She dropped the
other with a little quick turn of her head and a dash of amusement at
her own expense in the gentle gravity of her expression. “Do sit down,”
she said, almost as if he had been a visitor, “and tell me all about
it.” She dragged a comfortable chair forward out of its relation with a
Burmese carved table, some pots of ferns and a screen, and sat down
herself opposite, leaning forward in a little pose of expectancy. Church
placed himself on the edge of it, grasping his hat with both hands
between his knees.
“I must apologise for my boots,” he said, looking down: “I walked over.
I am very dusty.”
“What does it matter? You are King of Bengal!”
“Acting King.”
“It is the same thing—or it will be. Sir Griffiths retires altogether in
two years—Lord Scansleigh evidently intends you to succeed him.” The
lady spoke with obvious repression, but her gray eyes and the warm
whiteness of her oval face seemed to have caught into themselves all the
light and shadow of the room.
“Perhaps—perhaps. You always invest in the future at a premium, Judith.
I don’t intend to think about that.”
Such an anticipation, based on his own worth, seemed to him
unwarrantable, almost indecent.
“I do,” she said, wilfully ignoring the clouding of his face. “There is
so much to think about. First the pay—almost ten thousand rupees a
month—and we are poor. It may be a material consideration, but I don’t
mind confessing that the prospect of never having to cut the khansamah
appeals to me. We shall have a palace and a park to live in, with a
guard at the gates, and two outriders with swords to follow our
carriage. We shall live in Calcutta, where there are trams and theatres
and shops and people. The place carries knighthood if you are confirmed
in it, and you will be Sir John Church—that gratifies the snob that is
latent in me because I am a woman, John.” (She paused and glanced at his
face, which had grown almost morose.) “Best of all,” she added lightly,
“as Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal you will be practically sole ruler of
eighty millions of people. You will be free to carry out your own
theories, and to undertake reforms—any number of reforms! Mr. Ancram
says,” she went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “that the man and the
opportunity have come together.”
John Church blushed, through his beard which was gray, and over the top
of his head which was bald, but his look lightened.
“Ancram will be one of my secretaries,” he said. “Does he speak at
all—does he mention the way it has been taken in Calcutta?”
Mrs. Church went to her writing-table and came back with the letter. It
was luxuriously written, in a rapid hand as full of curves and angles as
a woman’s, and covered, from “Dear Lady” to “Always yours sincerely,”
several broad-margined sheets.
“I think he does,” she said, deliberately searching the pages. “Yes:
‘Church was not thought precisely in the running—you are so remote in
Hassimabad, and his work has always been so unostentatious—and there was
some surprise when the news came, but no cavil. It is known that the
Viceroy has been looking almost with tears for a man who would be strong
enough to redeem a few of Sir Griffiths’ mistakes if possible while he
is away—he has been, as you know, ludicrously weak with the natives—and
Church’s handling of that religious uproar you had a year ago has not
been forgotten. I need not expatiate upon the pleasure your friends
feel, but it may gratify you to know that the official mob is less ready
with criticism of His Excellency’s choice than usual.’”
John Church listened with the look of putting his satisfaction under
constraint. He listened in the official manner, as one who has many
things to hear, with his head bent forward and toward his wife, and his
eyes consideringly upon the floor.
“I am glad of that,” he said nervously when she had finished—“I am glad
of that. There is a great deal to be done in Bengal, and matters will be
simplified if they recognise it.“
“I think you would find a great deal to do anywhere, John,” remarked
Mrs. Church. It could almost be said that she spoke kindly, and a
sensitive observer with a proper estimate of her husband might have
found this irritating. During the little while that followed, however,
as they talked, in the warmth of this unexpected gratification, of what
his work had been as a Commissioner, and what it might be as a
Lieutenant-Governor, it would have been evident even to an observer who
was not sensitive, that here they touched a high-water mark of their
intercourse, a climax in the cordiality of their mutual understanding.
“By the way,” said John Church, getting up to go, “when is Ancram to be
married?”
“I don’t know!” Mrs. Church threw some interest into the words. Her
inflection said that she was surprised that she didn’t know. “He only
mentions Miss Daye to call her a ‘study in femininity,’ which looks as
if he might be submitting to a protracted process of education at her
hands. Certainly not soon, I should think.”
“Ancram must be close on forty, with good pay, good position, good
prospects. He shouldn’t put it off any longer: a man has no business to
grow old alone in this country. He deteriorates.”
Church pulled himself together with a shake—he was a loose-hung
creature—and put a nervous hand up to his necktie. Then he pulled down
his cuffs, considered his hat with the effect of making quite sure that
there was nothing more to say, and turned to go.
“You might send me over something,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I
won’t be able to come back to breakfast. Already I’ve lost
three-quarters of an hour from work. Government doesn’t pay me for that.
You are pleased, then?” he added, looking round at her in a half
shamefaced way from the door.
Mrs. Church had returned to the writing-table, and had again taken up
her pen. She leaned back in her chair and lifted her delicate chin with
a smile that had custom and patience in it.
“Very pleased indeed,” she said; and he went away. The intelligent
observer, again, would have wondered how he refrained from going back
and kissing her. Perhaps the custom and the patience in her smile would
have lent themselves to the explanation. At all events, he went away.
He was forty-two, exactly double her age, when he married Judith
Strange, eight years before, in Stoneborough, a small manufacturing town
in the north of England, where her father was a Nonconformist minister.
He was her opportunity, and she had taken him, with private
congratulation that she could respect him and private qualms as to
whether her respect was her crucial test of him—considered in the light
of an opportunity. Not in any sordid sense; she would be more inclined
perhaps to apologise for herself than I am to apologise for her. But
with an inordinately hungry capacity for life she had the narrowest
conditions to live in. She knew by intuition that the world was full of
colour and passion, and when one is tormented with this sort of
knowledge it becomes more than ever grievous to inhabit one of its
small, dull, grimy blind alleys, with the single anticipation of
enduring to a smoke-blackened old age, like one of Stoneborough’s lesser
chimneys. There was nothing ideal about John Church except his
honesty,—already he stooped, already he was grey, sallow and serious,
with the slenderest interest in questions that could not express their
utility in unquestionable facts,—but when he asked her to marry him, the
wall at the end of the alley fell down, and a breeze stole in from the
far East, with a vision of palms and pomegranates. She accepted him for
the sake of her imagination, wishing profoundly that he was not so much
like her father, with what her mother thought almost improper
promptitude; and for a long time, although he still stood outside it,
her imagination loyally rewarded her. She felt the East to her
fingertips, and her mere physical life there became a thing of vivid
experience, to be valued for itself. If her husband confounded this joy
in her expansion with the orthodox happiness of a devoted wife, it
cannot be said that he was particularly to blame for his mistake, for
numbers of other people made it also. And when, after eight years of his
companionship, and that of the sunburned policeman, the anæmic
magistrate, the agreeable doctor, their wives, the odd colonel, and the
stray subalterns that constituted society in the stations they lived in,
she began to show a little lassitude of spirit, he put it down not
unnaturally to the climate, and wished he could conscientiously take a
few months’ leave, since nothing would induce her to go to England
without him. By this time India had become a resource, India that lay
all about her, glowing, profuse, mysterious, fascinating, a place in
which she felt that she had no part, could never have any part, but that
of a spectator. The gesture of a fakir, the red masses of the gold-mohur
trees against the blue intensity of the sky, the heavy sweetness of the
evening wind, the soft colour and curves of the homeward driven cattle,
the little naked babies with their jingling anklets in the bazar—she had
begun to turn to these things seeking their gift of pleasure jealously,
consciously thankful that, in spite of the Amusement Club, she could
never be altogether bored.
John Church went back to work with his satisfaction sweetened by the
fact that his wife had told him that she was very pleased indeed, while
Mrs. Church answered the Honourable Mr. Lewis Ancram’s letter.
“I have been making my own acquaintance this morning,” she said among
other things, “as an ambitious woman. It is intoxicating, after this
idle, sun-filled, wondering life, with the single supreme care that John
does not wear ragged collars to church—as a Commissioner he ought to be
extravagant in collars—to be confronted with something to assume and
carry out, a part to play, with all India looking on. Don’t imagine a
lofty intention on my part to inspire my husband’s Resolutions. I assure
you I see myself differently. Perhaps, after all, it is the foolish
anticipation of my state and splendour that has excited my vain
imagination as much as anything. Already, prospectively, I murmur lame
nothings into the ear of the Viceroy as he takes me down to dinner! But
I am preposterously delighted. To-morrow is Sunday—I have an irreverent
desire for the prayers of all the churches.”