It became evident very soon after Miss Rhoda Daye’s appearance in
Calcutta that she was not precisely like the other young ladies in
sailor hats and cambric blouses who arrived at the same time. For one
superficial thing, anybody could see that she had less colour; and this
her mother mourned openly—a girl depended so entirely for the first
season on her colour. As other differences became obvious Mrs. Daye had
other regrets, one of them being that Rhoda had been permitted so
absolutely to fashion her own education. Mrs. Daye had not foreseen one
trivial result of this, which was that her daughter, believing herself
devoid of any special talent, refused to ornament herself with any
special accomplishment. This, in Mrs. Daye’s opinion, was carrying
self-depreciation and reverence for achievement and all that sort of
thing a great deal too far: a girl had no right to expect her parents to
present her to the world in a state of artistic nudity. It was not in
the nature of compensation that she understood the situation with the
Amir and the ambitions of the National Congress; such things were almost
unmentionable in Calcutta society. And it was certainly in the nature of
aggravation that she showed, after the first month of it, an
inexplicable indifference to every social opportunity but that of
looking on. Miss Daye had an undoubted talent for looking on; and she
would often exercise it—mutely, motionlessly, half hidden behind a
pillar at a ball, or abandoned in a corner after dinner—until her mother
was mortified enough to take her home. Presently it appeared that she
had looked on sufficiently to know her ground. She made her valuation of
society; she picked out the half-dozen Anglo-Indian types; it may be
presumed that she classified her parents. She still looked on, but with
less concentration: she began to talk. She developed a liking for the
society of elderly gentlemen of eminence, and an abhorrence for that of
their wives, which was considered of doubtful propriety, until the Head
of the Foreign Office once congratulated himself openly upon sitting
next her at dinner. After which she was regarded with indulgence, it was
said in corners that she must be clever, subalterns avoided her, and her
mother, taking her cue unerringly, figuratively threw up her hands and
asked Heaven why she of all people should be given a _fin-de-siècle_
daughter.
Privately Mrs. Daye tried to make herself believe, in the manner of
the Parisian playwright, that a _succès d’estime_ was infinitely to be
preferred to the plaudits of the mob. I need hardly say that she was
wholly successful in doing so, when Mr. Lewis Ancram contributed to
the balance in favour of this opinion. Mr. Ancram was observing too:
he observed in this case from shorter and shorter distances, and
finally allowed himself to be charmed by what he saw. Perhaps that is
not putting it quite strongly enough. He really encouraged himself to
be thus charmed. He was of those who find in the automatic monotony of
the Indian social machine, with its unvarying individual—a machine, he
was fond of saying, the wheels of which are kept oiled with the
essence of British Philistinism—a burden and a complaint. In London he
would have lived with one foot in Mayfair and the other in the Strand;
and there had been times when he talked of the necessity of chaining
his ambition before his eyes to prevent his making the choice of a
career over again, though it must be said that this violent proceeding
was carried out rather as a solace to his defrauded capacity for
culture than in view of any real danger. He had been accustomed to
take the annually fresh young ladies in straw hats and cambric blouses
who appeared in the cold weather much as he took the inevitable
functions at Government House—to be politely avoided, if possible; if
not, to be submitted to with the grace which might be expected from a
person holding his office and drawing his emoluments. When he found
that Rhoda Daye was likely to break up the surface of his blank
indifference to evening parties he fostered the probability. Among all
the young ladies in sailor hats and cambric blouses he saw his single
chance for experience, interest, sensation; and he availed himself of
it with an accumulated energy which Miss Daye found stimulating enough
to induce her to exert herself, to a certain extent, reciprocally. She
was not interested in the Hon. Mr. Lewis Ancram because of his
reputation: other men had reputations—reputations almost as big as
their paybills—who did not excite her imagination in the smallest
degree. It would be easy to multiply accounts upon which Mr. Ancram
did not interest Miss Daye, but it is not clear that any result would
be arrived at that way, and the fact remains that she was interested.
From this quiet point—she was entirely aware of its advantage—she
contemplated Mr. Ancram’s gradual advance along the lines of
attraction with a feeling very like satisfaction. She had only to
contemplate it. Ancram contributed his own impetus, and reached the
point where he believed his affections involved with an artistic shock
which he had anticipated for weeks as quite divinely enjoyable. She
behaved amusingly when they were engaged: she made a little comedy of
it, would be coaxed to no confessions and only one vow—that, as they
were to go through life together, she would try always to be
agreeable. If she had private questionings and secret alarms, she hid
them with intrepidity; and if it seemed to her to be anything
ridiculous that the wayward god should present himself behind the
careful countenance and the well-starched shirt-front of early
middle-age, holding an eyeglass in attenuated fingers, and mutely
implying that he had been bored for years, she did not betray her
impression. The thrall of their engagement made no change in her; she
continued to be the same demure, slender creature, who said unexpected
things, that she had been before. That he had covetable new privileges
did not seem to make much difference; her chief value was still that
of a clever acquaintance. She would grow more expensive in time, he
thought vaguely; but several months had passed, as we have seen,
without this result. On the other hand, there had been occasions when
he fancied that she deliberately disassociated herself from him in
that favourite pursuit of observation, in order to obtain a point of
view which should command certain intellectual privacies of his. He
wondered whether she would take this liberty with greater freedom when
they were one and indivisible; and, while he felt it absurd to object,
he wished she would be a little more communicative about what she saw.
They were to be married in March, when Ancram would take a year’s
furlough, and she would help him to lave his stiffened powers of
artistic enjoyment in the beauties of the Parthenon and the inspirations
of the Viennese galleries and the charms of Como and Maggiore. They
talked a great deal of the satisfaction they expected to realise in this
way. They went over it in detail, realising again and again that it must
represent to him compensation for years of aridity and to her a store
against the future likely to be drawn upon largely. Besides, it was a
topic upon which they were quite sure of finding mutual understanding,
even mutual congratulation—an excellent topic.
Meanwhile Ancram lived with Philip Doyle in Hungerford Street under the
ordinary circumstances which govern Calcutta bachelors. Doyle was a
barrister. He stood, in Calcutta, upon his ability and his
individuality, and as these had been observed to place him in familiar
relations with Heads of Departments, it may be gathered that they gave
him a sufficient elevation. People called him a “strong” man because he
refused their invitations to dinner, but the statement might have had a
more intelligent basis and been equally true. It would have surprised
him immensely if he could have weighed the value of his own opinions, or
observed the trouble which men who appropriated them took to give them a
tinge of originality. He was a survival of an older school,
certainly—people were right in saying that. He had preserved a
courtliness of manner and a sincerity of behaviour which suggested an
Anglo-India that is mostly lying under pillars and pyramids in rank
Calcutta cemeteries now. He was hospitable and select—so much of both
that he often experienced ridiculous annoyance at having asked men to
dinner who were essentially unpalatable to him. His sensitiveness to
qualities in personal contact was so great as to be a conspicuous
indication, to the discerning eye, of Lewis Ancram’s unbounded tact.
Circumstances had thrown the men under one roof, and even if the younger
of them had not made himself so thoroughly agreeable, it would have been
difficult to alter the arrangement.
It could never be said of Lewis Ancram that he did not choose his
friends with taste, and in this case his discrimination had a foundation
of respect which he was in the habit of freely mentioning. His
admiration of Doyle was generous and frank, so generous and frank that
one might have suspected a virtue in the expression of it.
Notwithstanding this implication, it was entirely sincere, though he
would occasionally qualify it.
“I often tell Doyle,” he said once to Rhoda, “that his independence is
purely a matter of circumstance. If he had the official yoke upon his
neck he would kow-tow like the rest of us.”
“I don’t believe that,” she answered quickly.
“Ah well, now that I think of it I don’t particularly believe it myself.
Doyle’s the salt of the earth anyhow. He makes it just possible for
officials like myself to swallow officialdom.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” she asked slowly, “to wonder what he thinks
of you?”
“Oh, I daresay he likes me well enough. Irishmen never go in for
analysing their friends. At all events we live together, and there are
no rows.”
They were driving, and the dogcart flew past the ships along the
Strand—Ancram liked a fast horse—for a few minutes in silence. Then she
had another question.
“Have you succeeded in persuading Mr. Doyle to—what do the newspapers
say?—support you at the altar, yet?”
“No, confound him. He says it would be preposterous at his age—he’s not
a year older than I am! I wonder if he expects me to ask Baby Bramble,
or one of those little boys in the Buffs! Anyway it won’t be Doyle, for
he goes to England, end of February—to get out of it, I believe.”
“I’m not sorry,” Rhoda answered; but it would have been difficult for
her to explain, at the moment, why she was not sorry.