When it became obvious that the College Grants Notification held fateful
possibilities for John Church personally, and for his wife incidentally,
it rapidly developed into a topic. Ladies, in the course of midday
visits in each other’s cool drawing-rooms, repeated things their
husbands had let fall at dinner the night before, and said they were
awfully sorry for Mrs. Church; it must be too trying for her, poor
thing. If it were only on _her_ account, some of them thought, the
Lieutenant-Governor—the “L.G.,” they called him—ought to let things go
on as they always had. What difference did it make anyway! At the clubs
the matter superseded, for the moment, the case of an army chaplain
accused of improper conduct at Singapore, and bets were freely laid on
the issue—three to one that Church would be “smashed.” If this attitude
seemed less sympathetic than that of the ladies, it betokened at least
no hostility. On the contrary, no small degree of appreciation was
current for His Honour. He would not have heard the matter discussed
often from his own point of view, but that was because his own point of
view was very much his own property. He might have heard himself
commended from a good many others, however, and especially on the ground
of his pluck. Men said between their cigars that very few fellows would
care to put their hands to such a piece of _zubberdusti_[D] at this end
of the century, however much it was wanted. Personally they hoped the
beggar would get it through, and with equal solicitude they proceeded to
bet that he wouldn’t. Among the sentiments the beggar evoked, perhaps
the liveliest was one of gratitude for so undeniable a sensation so near
the end of the cold weather, when sensations were apt to take flight,
with other agreeable things, to the hill stations.
-----
Footnote D:
“High-handed proceeding.”
-----
The storm reached a point when the Bishop felt compelled to put forth an
allaying hand from the pulpit of the Cathedral. As the head of the
Indian Establishment the Bishop felt himself allied in no common way
with the governing power, and His Lordship was known to hold strong
views on the propriety with which lawn sleeves might wave above
questions of public importance. Besides, neither Dr. MacInnes nor
Professor Porter were lecturing on the binomial theorem under
Established guidance, while as to Father Ambrose, he positively invited
criticism, with his lives of the Saints. When, therefore, the Cathedral
congregation heard his Lordship begin his sermon with the sonorous
announcement from Ecclesiastes,
“_For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge
increaseth sorrow. He—that increaseth—knowledge—increaseth—sorrow_,”
it listened, with awakened interest, for a snub to Dr. MacInnes and
Professor Porter, and for a rebuke, full of dignity and austerity, to
Father Ambrose; both of which were duly administered. His Lordship’s
views, supported by the original Preacher, were doubtless more valuable
in his sermon than they would be here, but it is due to him to say that
they formed the happiest combination of fealty and doctrine. The
Honourable Mr. Ancram said to Sir William Scott on the Cathedral steps
after the service—it was like the exit of a London theatre, with people
waiting for their carriages—that while his Lordship’s reference was very
proper and could hardly fail to be of use, public matters looked serious
when they came to be discussed in the pulpit. To which Sir William gave
a deprecating agreement.
Returning to his somewhat oppressively lonely quarters, Ancram felt the
need of further conversation. The Bishop had stirred him to vigorous
dissent, which his Lordship’s advantage of situation made peculiarly
irritating to so skilled an observer of weak points. He bethought
himself that he might write to Philip Doyle. He remembered that Doyle
had not answered the letter in which he had written of his changed
domestic future, frankly asking for congratulation rather than for
condolence; but without resentment, for why should a man trouble himself
under Florentine skies with unnecessary Calcutta correspondents? He
consulted only his own pleasure in writing again: Doyle was so readily
appreciative, he would see the humour in the development of affairs with
His Honour. It was almost a week since Mr. Ancram had observed at the
ball, with acute annoyance, what an unreasonable effect the matter was
having upon Judith Church, and he was again himself able to see the
humour of it. He finally wrote with much facility a graphically
descriptive letter, in which the Bishop came in as a mere picturesque
detail at the end. He seemed to pick his way, as he turned the pages,
out of an embarrassing moral quagmire; he was so obviously high and dry
when he could fix the whole thing in a caricature of effective
paragraphs. He wrote:—
/# “I don’t mind telling you privately that I have no respect whatever
for the scheme, and very little for the author of it. He reminds one of
nothing so #/ /# much as an elderly hen sitting, with the obstinacy of
her kind, on eggs out of which it is easy to see no addled reform will
ever step to crow. He is as blind as a bat to his own deficiencies. I
doubt whether even his downfall will convince him that his proper sphere
of usefulness in life was that of a Radical cobbler. He has a noble
preference for the ideal of an impeccable Indian administrator, which he
goes about contemplating, while his beard grows with the tale of his
blunders. The end, however, cannot be far off. Bengal is howling for his
retirement; and, notwithstanding a fulsome habit he has recently
developed of hanging upon my neck for sympathy, I own to you that, if
circumstances permitted, I would howl too.” #/
Ancram’s first letter had miscarried, a peon in the service of the
Sirkar having abstracted the stamps; and Philip Doyle, when he received
the second, was for the moment overwhelmed with inferences from his
correspondent’s silence regarding the marriage, which should have been
imminent when he wrote. Doyle glanced rapidly through another Calcutta
letter that arrived with Ancram’s for possible news; but the brief
sensation of Miss Daye’s broken engagement had expired long before it
was written, and it contained no reference to the affair. The theory of
a postponement suggested itself irresistibly; and he spent an absorbed
and motionless twenty minutes, sitting on the edge of his bed, while his
pipe went out in his hand, looking fixedly at the floor of his room in
the hotel, and engaged in constructing the tissue of circumstances which
would make such a thing likely. If he did not grow consciously
lighter-hearted with this occupation, at least he turned, at the end of
it, to re-peruse his letters, as if they had brought him good news. He
read them both carefully again, and opened the newspaper that came with
the second. It was a copy of the _Bengal Free Press_, and his friend of
the High Court had called his special attention to its leading article,
as the most caustic and effective attack upon the College Grants
Notification which had yet appeared. Mr. Justice Shears wrote:—
/# “As you will see, there is abundant intrinsic evidence that no native
wrote it. My own idea, which I share with a good many people, is that it
came from the pen of the Director of Education, which is as facile as it
would very naturally be hostile. Let me know #/ /# what you think.
Ancram is non-committal, but he talks of Government’s prosecuting the
paper, which looks as if the article had already done harm.” #/
Doyle went through the editorial with interest that increased as his eye
travelled down the column. He smiled as he read; it was certainly a
telling and a forcible presentation of the case against His Honour’s
policy, adorned with gibes that were more damaging than its argument.
Suddenly he stopped, with a puzzled look, and read the last part of a
sentence once again:—
/# “But he has a noble preference for the ideal of an impeccable Indian
administrator, which he goes about contemplating, while his beard grows
with the tale of his blunders.” #/
The light of a sudden revelation twinkled in Doyle’s eyes—a revelation
which showed the Chief Secretary to the Bengal Government led on by
vanity to forgetfulness. He reopened Ancram’s letter, and convinced
himself that the words were precisely those he had read there. For
further assurance, he glanced at the dates of the letter and the
newspaper: the one had been written two days before the other had been
printed. Presently he put them down, and instinctively rubbed his thumb
and the ends of his fingers together with the light, rapid movement with
which people assure themselves that they have touched nothing soiling.
He permitted himself no characterisation of the incident—lofty
denunciation was not part of Doyle’s habit of mind—beyond what might
have been expressed in the somewhat disgusted smile with which he
re-lighted his pipe. It was like him that his principal reflection had a
personal tinge, and that it was forcible enough to find words. “And I,”
he said, with a twinkle at his own expense, “lived nine months in the
same house with that skunk!”