It was the first time in history that the town of Bhugsi had been
visited by a Lieutenant-Governor. Bhugsi was small, but it had a
reputation for malodorousness not to be surpassed by any municipality of
Eastern Bengal. Though Bhugsi was small it was full—full of men and
children and crones and monkeys, and dwarfed, lean-ribbed cattle, and
vultures of the vilest appetite. The town squatted round a tank, very
old, very slimy, very sacred. Bhugsi bathed in the tank and so secured
eternal happiness, drank from the tank and so secured it quickly. All
such abominations as are unnameable Bhugsi also preferred to commit in
the vicinity of the tank, and it was possibly for this reason that the
highest death-rate of the last “year under report” had been humbly
submitted by Bhugsi.
Noting this achievement, John Church added Bhugsi to his inspection
list. The inspection list was already sufficiently long for the time at
his disposal, but Church had a way of economising his time that
contributed much to the discipline of provincial Bengal. He accomplished
this by train and boat and saddle; and his staff, with deep inward
objurgations, did its best to keep up. He pressed upon Judith the
advisability of a more leisurely progress by easier routes, with
occasional meeting-places, but found her quietly obstinate in her
determination to come with him. She declared herself the better for the
constant change and the stimulus of quick moves; and this he could
believe, for whenever they made a stay of more than forty-eight hours
anywhere it was always she who was most feverishly anxious to depart.
She filled her waking moments and dulled her pain in the natural way,
with actual physical exertion. While the servants looked on in
consternation she toiled instinctively over packings and unpackings, and
was glad of the weariness they brought her. She invented little new
devotions to her husband—these also soothed her—and became freshly
solicitous about his health, freshly thoughtful about his comfort.
Observing which, Church reflected tenderly on the unselfishness of
women, and said to his wife that he could not have her throwing herself,
this way, before the Juggernaut of his official progress.
There were no Europeans at all at Bhugsi, so the Lieutenant-Governor’s
party put up at the dâk-bungalow, three miles outside the town. Peter
Robertson, the Commissioner of the Division, and the district officer,
who were in attendance upon His Honour, were in camp near by, as their
custom is. The dâk-bungalow had only three rooms, and this made the fact
that two of His Honour’s suite had been left at the last station with
fever less of a misfortune. By this time, indeed, the suite consisted of
Judith and the private secretary and the servants; but as John Church
said, getting into his saddle at six o’clock in the morning, there were
quite enough of them to terrify Bhugsi into certain reforms.
He spent three hours inspecting the work of the native magistrate, and
came back to breakfast with his brows well set together over that
official’s amiable tolerance of a popular way of procuring confessions
among the police, which was by means of needles and the supposed
criminal’s finger-nails. It had been practised in Bhugsi, as the native
magistrate represented, for thousands of years, but it made John Church
angry. He ate with stern eyes upon the table-cloth, and when the meal
was over rode back to Bhugsi. There was only that one day, and beside
the all-important matter of the sanitation he had to look at the
schools, to inspect the gaol, to receive an address and to make a
speech. He reflected on the terms of the speech as he rode, improving
upon their salutary effect. He said to his private secretary, cantering
alongside, that he had never known it so hot in April—the air was like a
whip. It was borne in upon him once that if he could put down the burden
of his work and of his dignity and stretch himself out to sleep beside
the naked coolies who lay on their faces in the shadow of the pipal
trees by the roadside, it would be a pleasant thing, but this he did not
say to his private secretary.
It was half-past five, and the bamboos were all alive with the evening
twitter of hidden sparrows, before the Lieutenant-Governor returned. For
an instant Judith, coming out at the sound of hoofs, failed to recognise
her husband, he looked, with a thick white powder of dust over his beard
and eyebrows, so old a man. He stooped in his saddle, too, and all the
gauntness of his face and figure had a deeper accent.
“Put His Honour to bed, Mrs. Church,” cried the Commissioner, lifting
his hat as he rode on to camp. “He has done the work of six men to-day.”
“You will be glad of some tea,” she said.
He tumbled clumsily out of his saddle and leaned for a moment against
his animal’s shoulder. The mare put her head round whinnying, but when
Church searched in his pocket for her piece of sugar-cane and offered it
to her, she snuffed it and refused it. He dropped the sugar-cane into
the dust at her feet and told the syce to take her away.
“If she will not eat her gram give me word of it,” he said. But she ate
her gram.
“Will you change first, John?” Judith asked with her hand on his
coat-sleeve. “I think you should—you are wet through and through.”
“Yes, I will change,” he said; but he dropped into the first chair he
saw. The chair stood on the verandah, and the evening breeze had already
begun to come up. He threw back his head and unfastened his damp collar
and felt its gratefulness. In the intimate neighbourhood of the
dâk-bungalow the private secretary could be heard splashing in his tub.
“Poor Sparks!” said His Honour. “I’m afraid he has had a hard day of it.
Good fellow, Sparks, thoroughly good fellow. I hope he’ll get on. It’s
very disheartening work, this of ours in India,” he went on absently;
“one feels the depression of it always, more or less, but to-night——” He
paused and closed his eyes as if he were too weary to finish the
sentence. A servant appeared with a wicker table and another with a
tray.
“A cup of tea,” said Judith cheerfully, “will often redeem the face of
nature”; but he waved it back.
“I am too hungry for tea. Tell them to bring me a solid meal: cold
beef—no, make it hot—that game pie we had at breakfast—anything there
is, but as soon as possible. How refreshing this wind is!”
“Go and change, John,” his wife urged.
“Yes, I must, immediately: I shall be taking a chill.” As he half rose
from his chair he saw the postman, turbaned, barefooted, crossing the
grass from the road, and dropped back again.
“Here is the dâk,” he said; “I must just have a look first.”
Mrs. Church took her letters, and went into the house to give orders to
the butler. Five minutes afterwards she came back, to find her husband
sitting where she had left him, but upright in his chair and
mechanically stroking his beard, with his face set. He had grown paler,
if that was possible, but had lost every trace of lassitude. He had the
look of being face to face with a realised contingency which his wife
knew well.
“News, John?” she asked nervously; “anything important?”
“The most important—and the worst,” he answered steadily, without
looking at her. His eyes were fixed on the floor, and on his course of
action.
“What do you mean, dear? What has happened? May I see?”
For answer he handed her his private letter from Lord Scansleigh. She
opened it with shaking fingers, and read the first sentence or two
aloud. Then instinctively her voice stopped, and she finished it in
silence. The Viceroy had written:—
“MY DEAR CHURCH: The accompanying official correspondence will show you
our position, when the mail left England, with the Secretary of State. I
fear that nothing has occurred in the meantime to improve it—in fact,
one or two telegrams seem rather to point the other way. I will not
waste your time and mine in idle regrets, if indeed they would be
justifiable, but write only to assure you heartily in private, as I do
formally in my official letter, that if we go we go together. I have
already telegraphed this to Strathell, and will let you know the
substance of his reply as soon as I receive it. I wish I could think
that the prospect of my own resignation is likely to deter them from
demanding yours, but I own to you that I expect our joint immolation
will not be too impressive a sacrifice for the British Public in this
connection.
“With kind regards to Mrs. Church, in which my wife joins,
“Believe me, dear Church, yours sincerely,
“SCANSLEIGH.”
They spoke for a few minutes of the Viceroy’s loyalty and consideration
and appreciation. She dwelt upon that with instinctive tact, and then
Church got up quickly.
“I must write to Scansleigh at once,” he said. “I am afraid he is
determined about this, but I must write. There is a great deal to do.
When Sparks comes out send him to me.” Then he went over to her and
awkwardly kissed her. “You have taken it very well, Judith,” he
said—“better than any woman I know would have done.”
She put a quick detaining hand upon his arm. “Oh, John, it is only for
your sake that I care at all. I—I am so tired of it. I should be only
too glad to go home with you, dear, and find some little place in the
country where we could live quietly——”
“Yes, yes,” he said, hurrying away. “We can discuss that afterwards.
Don’t keep Sparks talking.”
Sparks appeared presently, swinging an embossed silver cylinder half a
yard long. New washed and freshly clad in garments of clean country
silk, with his damp hair brushed crisply off his forehead, there was a
pinkness and a healthiness about Sparks that would have been refreshing
at any other moment. “Have you seen this bauble, Mrs. Church?” he
inquired: “Bhugsi’s tribute, enshrining the address. It makes the
fifth.”
Judith looked at it, and back at Captain Sparks, who saw, with a falling
countenance, that there were tears in her eyes.
“It is the last he will ever receive,” she said, and one of the tears
found its way down her cheek. “They have asked him from England to
resign—they say he must.”
Captain Sparks, private secretary, stood for a moment with his legs
apart in blank astonishment, while Mrs. Church sought among the folds of
her skirt for her pocket-handkerchief.
“By the Lord—impossible!” he burst out; and then, as Judith pointed
mutely to her husband’s room, he turned and shot in that direction,
leaving her, as her sex is usually left, with the teacups and the
situation.
* * * * *
A few hours later Captain Sparks’ dreams of the changed condition of
things were interrupted by a knock. It was Mrs. Church, sleepy-eyed, in
her dressing-gown, with a candle; and she wanted the chlorodyne from the
little travelling medicine chest, which was among the private
secretary’s things.
“My husband seems to have got a chill,” she said. “It must have been
while he sat in the verandah. I am afraid he is in for a wretched
night.”
“Three fingers of brandy,” suggested Sparks concernedly, getting out the
bottle. “Nothing like brandy.”
“He has tried brandy. About twenty drops of this, I suppose?”
“I should think so. Can I be of any use?”
Judith said No, thanks—she hoped her husband would get some sleep
presently. She went away, shielding her flickering candle, and darkness
and silence came again where she had been.
A quarter of an hour later she came back, and it appeared that Captain
Sparks could be of use. The chill seemed obstinate; they must rouse the
servants and get fires made and water heated. Judith wanted to know how
soon one might repeat the dose of chlorodyne. She was very much awake,
and had that serious, pale decision with which women take action in
emergencies of sickness.
Later still they stood outside the door of his room and looked at each
other. “There is a European doctor at Bhai Gunj,” said Captain Sparks.
“He may be here with luck by six o’clock to-morrow afternoon—_this_
afternoon.” He looked at his watch and saw that it was past midnight.
“Bundal Singh has gone for him, and Juddoo for the native apothecary at
Bhugsi—but he will be useless. Robertson will be over immediately. He
has seen cases of it, I know.”
A thick sound came from the room they had left, and they hurried back
into it.
* * * * *
“Water?” repeated the Commissioner; “yes, as much as he likes. I wish to
God we had some ice.”
“Then, sir, I may take leave?” It was the unctuous voice of the native
apothecary.
“No, you may not. Damn you, I suppose you can help to rub him? Quick,
Sparks; the turpentine!”
* * * * *
Next day at noon arrived Hari Lal, who had travelled many hours and many
miles with a petition to the Chota Lât Sahib, wherein he and his village
implored that the goats might eat the young shoots in the forest as
aforetime; for if not—they were all poor men—how should the goats eat at
all? Hari Lal arrived upon his beast, and saw from afar off that there
was a chuprassie in red and gold upon the verandah whose favour would
cost money. So he dismounted at a considerable and respectful distance,
and approached humbly, with salaams and words that were suitable to a
chuprassie in red and gold. The heat stood fiercely about the bungalow,
and it was so silent that a pair of sparrows scolding in the verandah
made the most unseemly wrangle.
Bundal Singh had not the look of business. He sat immovable upon his
haunches, with his hands hanging between his knees. His head fell
forward heavily, his eyes were puffed, and he regarded Hari Lal with
indifference.
“O most excellent, how can a poor man seeking justice speak with the Lât
Sahib? The matter is a matter of goats——”
“_Bus!_ The Lât Sahib died in the little dawn. This place is empty but
for the widow. _Mutti dani wasti gia_—they have gone to give the earth.
It was the bad sickness, and the pain of it lasted only five hours. When
he was dead, worthy one, his face was like a blue puggri that has been
thrice washed, and his hand was no larger than the hand of my woman!
What talk is there of justice? _Bus!_”
Hari Lal heard him through with a countenance that grew ever more
terrified. Then he spat vigorously, and got again upon his animal. “And
you, fool, why do you sit here?” he asked quaveringly, as he sawed at
the creature’s mouth.
“Because the servant-folk of the Sirkar do not run away. Who then would
do justice and collect taxes, _budzat_? _Jao_, you Bengali rice-eater! I
am of a country where those who are not women are men!”
The Bengali rice-eater went as he was bidden, and only a little curling
cloud of white dust, sinking back into the road under the sun, remained
to tell of him. Bundal Singh, hoarse with hours of howling, lifted up
his voice in the silence because of the grief within him, and howled
again.
A little wind stole out from under a clump of mango trees and chased
some new-curled shavings about the verandah, and did its best to blow
them in at the closed shutters of a darkened room. The shavings were too
substantial, but the scent of the fresh-cut planks came through, and
brought the stunned woman on the bed a sickening realisation of one
unalterable fact in the horror of great darkness through which she
groped, babbling prayers.