UNCERTAINTIES
There were many people in many parts of Nushapore that Sunday evening
who were echoing Jân-Ali-shân's estimate of the danger and discomforts
of uncertainty.
For, far and near, from Government House, where Grace Arbuthnot
sate at the head of a glittering dinner-table round which half the
empire-making bureaucracy of the province was gathered, to the veriest
hovel on the outcast outskirts of the city, where two women--the lowest
of the low--were grinding at the mill for their daily bread such
sweepings of the corn-dealers' shops as they had been able to gather
during the day, the feeling that none knew what the coming dawn might
bring to hovel and house, home and country, and people, lay heavily,
almost suffocatingly.
It is a feeling which comes to India, none can tell how, or why. It is
in the air like plague and pestilence. There is no remedy for it, and
the fact that we aliens have learnt to recognise its existence is often
the only difference between the vague unrest which dies away, as it
came, irrationally, and that which brought us the mutiny, and which
may, conceivably, bring us one again.
There is only one thing certain about this feeling. Whatever passion,
or injustice, or ignorance, causes the first quickened heart-beat, it
is not long before, however obscurely, the great problem of sex becomes
involved in the quarrel between East and West. For there lies the crux
of toleration, of loyalty.
So, with plague and its inevitable interference with domestic life
looming before them, the hard-worked officials who for six days of the
week had borne the heaviest burden men can bear--absolute executive
responsibility, when the executive authority is limited--knew perfectly
well, as they deliberately tried to forget that burden round the
dinner-table at Government House, that very little would suffice to
upset that unstable equilibrium of law and order, which--taken in
conjunction with the peaceful, law-abiding temperament of the
people--is so remarkable in India.
And there was so much that might conceivably upset it. To begin with,
the tape machine under lock and key in the private secretary's office
next the dining-room! At any moment, in the middle of a jest, or a
_pâté de foie gras_, its electric bell might begin to ring, and the
verdict of British ignorance, embodied in a message from a Secretary of
State, print itself out in obliteration of the verdict of practical
experience. For telegrams had been coming fast and frequent of late;
would inevitably come faster and more frequent every year, every month,
every day, as the lessening length of time between India and England
made the pulsebeats of either audible to the other.
Then, every one round the table knew that those days, those hours were,
also inevitably, bringing nearer and nearer that quarrel as to whether
cleanliness comes next to godliness, or godliness to cleanliness, which
has yet to be settled between East and West. Between a race which
prides itself on asserting the former in its proverb, yet in its
practice insists on sanitation and leaves salvation to take its chance;
and a race which, while asserting that salvation is impossible without
physical purity, practically ignores cleanliness. A quarrel which is
surely the quaintest dissociation of theory and practice which the
world can show! All the quainter in that the Western proverb is a
quotation from the sacred wisdom of the East.
The question therefore, 'When will the plague come?' with its
corollary, 'If it comes, what shall we do?' underlay the laughter of
two-thirds of the guests. For they were men. The remaining third, being
women, were as yet unconcerned; the danger had not yet come within
their horizon of personal good or evil. All except Grace Arbuthnot; and
that it had come into hers was due simply to an enlargement of that
personal horizon; not from any general sense of duty.
Yet, in a way, the men also limited their wonder to their own line of
work. The city magistrate with reference to the back slums of
Nushapore, peopled by the idlest, most dissolute, most depraved
population in India. The Inspector-General of Hospitals thought
of his native doctors, his dispensaries. The police-officer of his
bad-character list, his licences to carry arms. The General-in-command
of the station, again, thought of his garrison, of the four hundred
sick in hospital out of eighteen hundred men, who might be wanted ere
long. His were not pleasant thoughts, and they were urgent. Only
that morning he had driven down from cantonments to catch the
Lieutenant-Governor before he went to church and discuss the doctor's
fiat that nothing short of a complete change, a complete severance from
the bazaars which, crowding round the barracks, placed the troops, as
it were, in the midst of a native town, was likely to do any good. So
they had discussed the question during service hours, while others were
saying 'Good Lord, deliver us' from a variety of evils; with the result
that Sir George had promised to go down to cantonments the very next
day, and see for himself what the state of affairs was.
Yet, despite the fact that all the repressed anxiety present centred
round the one word 'plague,' the first hint of the subject mooted
gravely, brought instant protest from a high-pitched Irish brogue.
'Oh, plague take it altogether! for it is becoming a bore of the
fullest dimensions! But I hearrd a fine story about it an' old
Martineau yesterday. There has been a suspected case in one of his
districts. An old Mohammedan woman, travelling alone in a country
gig, died; and the deputy-collector--a Hindoo hungering for
promotion--thought he 'ud curry favour with the powers by bein' prompt.
So he burrnt the cart an' the clothes an' the corpse. They didn't mind
the corpse--bein' a woman--though it's perdition, me dear Mrs.
Carruthers, for a Mohammedan to be burrnt; but the clothes were another
story, and the relatives kicked up a bit of a fuss. So Martineau had to
hold an inquiry. "Did you burrn the corpse?" he roared--ye know his
sucking-dove of a voice. "Sir," says the deputy half blue-funk,
half-elation at his own action, "I did; the rules provide----" "I
didn't ask for the rules, sir," roars Martineau; "did you burrn the
clothes?" "_Huzoor!_" bleats the _baboo_, forgetting his English, "it
is laid down." "I didn't ask what's laid down," comes the roar; "did
you burrn the cart?" "_Ghereeb-na-wâz_" blubbers the deputy, "I
thought----" "Confound you, sir! I didn't ask what you thought; did you
burrn the driver?" "No! no!" shrieked the wretched creature, fallin' on
his knees. "It is a lie! It is malice! It is an invention of my
enemies. I didn't." "Then, sir," thunders Martineau, "you're a d--d
fool, sir, not to have stopped his mouth."'
There was a light-hearted laugh round the table which, for the time
being, focussed all the qualities which go to make empire; not the
least of which is the faculty for such laughter. Laughter which comes
to the West, sometimes, to be celebrated in song and story, like that
of the ball before Waterloo, or of the French _noblesse_ in the
_conciergerie_, but which is ever present in India, giving to its
Anglo-Indian society an almost wistful frivolity, studious in its gay
refusal to take anything _aux grands sérieux_ till the stern necessity
of doing so stares it in the face.
And, with the laugh, the grave, white-coated, dark-faced servants
passed round the table also, ignoring the mirth, ignoring all things
save French dishes and iced champagne.
'Lucky it was a woman, wasn't it!' said a voice. 'If it had been a man,
there would have been real trouble.'
'How rude! Isn't it at least as bad for a woman to be burnt,'
challenged a very pretty one, 'as a man?'
'For the woman, no doubt,' replied the brogue drily; 'but in this case
the men don't care. Ye see, the Mohammedan paradise is already peopled
with _houris_ like yourself, me dear Mrs. Carruthers; so the presence
of the sex isn't important enough to fuss about.'
'Of course not!' retorted the little lady gaily, 'because you men know
we can always make a Paradise for ourselves.'
'Make; an' mar, me dear madam!'
'Oh! I give you Eve! The woman who is fool enough to think she can keep
her husband in one if she gives him a cold lunch of apples, deserves to
lose everything.'
'Except her looks! The world can't spare the pretty women!'
So far the lightness of both voices had been charming; but a new one
coming from the other side of the table had the heavy acidity in it of
wine that should sparkle and does not; for the owner being Mrs.
Carruthers's recognised rival, sinned against the first principles of
_badinage_ by importing spite into it.
'Surely that's been said before. Every one knows cooks are the devil;
mine is, anyhow!'
'The devil!' echoed little Mrs. Carruthers, eyeing her adversary--whose
bad dinners were a byword--with a charming surprise; 'I wonder at
_your_ saying so. Why, the devil tempts you, and you do eat; and--and
_some_ cooks disgust you, and you don't!'
Her antagonist s protest that the quotation applied to Eve, was lost in
the laugh, during which Jack Raymond--who had found it impossible to
evade Sir George Arbuthnot's conscientious gratitude for Jerry's rescue
as embodied in an invitation to dinner-said to his neighbour--
'You think, Miss Drummond, that we Anglo-Indians talk a lot of
rubbish.'
He, himself, had given her small opportunity of judging, for he had
been very silent all through the meal; in fact, a trifle sulky. Why, he
could not decide, and it had annoyed him that he should be conscious at
once of resentment and relief at the etiquette of precedence which sent
the secretary to the club so far from the beautiful face at the head of
the table. And Lesley, for her part, after the manner of modern girls,
had accepted his silence calmly, not troubling herself to amuse one who
did not trouble to amuse her; so she had eaten her dinner peacefully,
without any reference to her neighbour.
He, however, had been unable to attain this philosophic standard. This
indifference of the independent girl of the world, who, conscious of an
assured position even as an unmarried woman, treats man as an
unnecessary, if, on the whole a not unpleasant adjunct to a life that
is complete without him, was quite new to Jack Raymond, who had not
been home for fourteen years. He admired it frankly; felt that it
suited her, suited the refined curve of the long throat, the faint
droop at the corners of the mouth, the smooth coils of hair. The chill
dignity of it all, he realised--for he was a quick judge in such
matters--did not mean anything personal. It was not _he_ with whom, as
he phrased it, she desired to have no truck, but with the whole
creation of such as he; or such, rather, as she chose to consider him.
For it was evident that, despite her almost magisterial calm, she still
used the woman's privilege of making her own heroes and villains. In
reality, she could know nothing about him! Should he tell her
something? The question had occurred to him, and had found answer in
his remark.
She answered the challenge with a half-bored smile.
'I suppose you like it; but it does seem odd to an outsider in what is
virtually a picked society. And then there is so much to talk about
seriously in India.'
'We prefer to think about serious things,' he replied coolly. 'I'll
bet you--shall we say your namesake's odds--twenty to one?--that
the men round this table do better work for not wasting time in--in
_talkee-talkee_.'
'I don't bet,' she said, too disdainful for wider notice of his words.
'So I am aware,' he answered quietly, 'and that reminds me! The five
thousand rupees I won off Bonnie Lesley still awaits your
instructions.'
'Mine!' she echoed in surprise. 'Why?'
'As to what charity is to profit by my sin. There is one for the
regeneration of European reprobates--more commonly called the loafers'
fund, Miss Drummond, which, under the circumstances, might suit.'
She looked icebergs. 'Thanks, Mr. Raymond; but your eloquence succeeded
so absolutely in convincing me I was in no way responsible, that I must
decline to interfere. Please do as you choose with your ill-gotten
gains.'
He smiled. 'Then the money, being in thousand-rupee notes, shall stay
where it is--in my pocket-book. It gives a gambler confidence to know
he has some spare cash about him! Besides,' he added hastily, a sudden
shrinking in her eyes warning him that he had really pained her, 'it
might come in for a good deed.'
'Possibly, not probably,' she began, then explained herself hastily: 'I
mean, of course, it is not likely such an occasion will arise----'
'Don't, Miss Drummond,' he interrupted gravely. 'Keep your bad opinion
of me undiluted; you can't go wrong there. But don't condemn the lot of
us for talking rubbish; there is generally a reason for it.'
'There is generally a reason for most things, I believe,' she said
coldly.
Her tone nettled him, and as usual when his temper rose, he went
straight to the point.
'Generally,' he admitted; 'but I don't think you allow for these. That
lady opposite, for instance, is talking nonsense, all she knows, in
order to forget that she sang the hymn for those at sea to-day. The
_padre_ had it because his wife and daughter are on their way out, and
a bad cyclone was telegraphed yesterday off Socotra. Her only son is in
the same boat. Then the man next her,' he went on, for Lesley was
listening with faintly startled, faintly distasteful curiosity, 'is
trying to forget that the doctors tell him it is a toss up whether he
can pull through the next hot weather without leave. He can't afford to
take any, with four boys at school and one at the university. Luckily,
if he doesn't pull through, his wife--she has been bossing the show at
home these five years because the rupees wouldn't run two
establishments--will be better off than if he did. Pensions of a
hundred, and a hundred and fifty, mount up, you see, when there's ten
of a family. Then the pretty woman flirting with the general is trying
to forget there is such a thing as a child in the world. She left four
at home because they telegraphed that her husband wasn't safe alone. He
was in an out-station, and took a double-barrelled gun to shoot
locusts. So he said, but his bearer wetted the cartridges, and sent a
camel _sowar_ to headquarters for the doctor! He has still to use a
hair restorer you'll observe--that's the man over there. Look how he's
watching his wife! He has to take her back to the wilderness to-morrow,
and I shouldn't wonder if he wasn't thinking himself a fool not to have
made sure, for her sake, that his powder was dry! Brain fever plays
tricks with a man's reasoning powers, Miss Drummond.'
Lesley's lip curled slightly with the indifferent distaste so many
girls have nowadays, for the least sentimentality, the faintest claim
on emotion.
'Is it _all_ tragedy?' she began critically.
'All!' he interrupted her cheerfully. 'Even Mrs. Carruthers has one.
They fumigated her last Paris frock at the quarantine station, and took
the colour out of it! But that's enough. I don't want to have to find a
reason for the nonsense that is in _me_. Are you going to the Artillery
sports to-morrow?'
She gave no answer, but she sat looking at him with an appreciative
smile. 'You do it very well, though----' she said, then paused. 'I
wonder why you gave up the civil service? Lady Arbuthnot told me you
did, but she didn't say why. I expect you lost your temper, didn't
you?'
It was exactly what he had done, but the only person who had ever told
him so before had been Grace Arbuthnot. And she had made it a personal
matter; her eyes had given and claimed so much when she told him; while
the ones opposite him, now, were absolutely self-absorbed.
'Possibly,' he admitted curtly, nettled by her cool curiosity. 'You can
judge for yourself. There was a row in the native city of which I had
charge. I fired on the mob. Government thought it was unnecessary, and
stopped my promotion. I resigned.
'And the row?' she asked quickly.
'That stopped also, of course. Excuse me, but Lady Arbuthnot has made
the move.'
Lesley stood up, tall, slender, almost conventual in her clinging white
dress, in the reserved yet absolutely self-reliant look on her face.
But she paused, ere leaving him, to say judicially--
'Then that proves that you were right to fire; and if you were in the
right, as you were, when----?'
'Are you not coming, Lesley? You can finish your discussion
afterwards,' came Lady Arbuthnot's voice in a half-playful,
half-impatient appeal, as she stopped beside them to include the girl
in the contingent she was marshalling towards the door. The servants
had gone. From one end to the other of the big room there was no hint
or sign of the east. It might have been a London dinner-party. Grace
herself, in her pale green draperies and flashing diamonds, might have
been the London hostess whose only care was to get rid of her guests
gracefully and so find freedom to be one herself, elsewhere.
'It is my fault,' put in Jack Raymond quickly. 'It is so seldom any one
tells me I do right, that I must be excused for delaying a young lady
who is kind enough to perjure herself to say so.'
'I didn't perjure myself,' said Lesley, with a frown. 'I don't as a
rule. I really think you were right.'
He knew, absolutely, that her praise was--as her blame had been--quite
impersonal, that he was forgotten in her sense of abstract justice and
injustice, but he appropriated the commendation with a bow, because he
felt that to do so was a challenge to both the women before him; to
Grace, of the older type, with her cult of sentiment deliberately
overlaying her intellect, and Lesley, of the newer type, with her
dislike to sentimentality as deliberately overlaying her heart. He
felt, with a certain irritation, that there ought to be some middle
standpoint, as he said--
'Thank you, Miss Drummond!'
Lady Arbuthnot recognised the personal challenge instantly.
'What was the virtue, Lesley?' she asked proudly.
'Only firing on a mob,' he answered for the girl. 'It is lucky, Lady
Arbuthnot, that I have no chance of doing so again, or the consequences
of Miss Drummond's approval might be more disastrous than that of other
people's blame.'
The sense of something uncomprehended, coming to Lesley uncomfortably,
as it always comes, made her forbear to squash the maker of the bow,
and say hastily in half-unconscious effort after the purely
commonplace--
'Then I hope there won't be a chance; but one can never tell, can one?'
She blushed at her own inane words when she heard them, but Grace
Arbuthnot as she moved on, gave a little hard laugh. 'Never, my dear!
So long as there are men and women in the world, it will be as Stephen
Hargraves said, "all a muddle."'
She broke off abruptly to look round; for, through the closed doors of
the secretary's room came the imperative ring of an electric bell,
making more than one keen face follow her example. But at the open door
where the private secretary was holding up the _portière_ on one side,
while Nevill Lloyd as A.D.C. held up the other, the former shrugged his
shoulders.
'Bother that bell!' he said to little Mrs. Carruthers who was passing.
'There's my evening gone! They might spare us Sunday--especially when
_you_ are dining here. I've a great mind to keep them ringing till
you've gone.'
'Don't,' she laughed. 'Supposing it were a mutiny!' She made the
suggestion out of pure wickedness, because her rival, who owned to
never sleeping a wink if the bazaar near her house was noisy and let
off fireworks, was within hearing.
'Surely you don't think'--began the timorous lady.
'Certainly not,' consoled the secretary. 'And if it was, Mrs.
Carruthers, that's no reason for breaking the Sabbath.'
'They don't,' retorted the gay little lady. 'Sunday is over with them
ages ago. They are six hours before----'
'Behind, you mean! The West is absolutely, hopelessly behind.'
Mrs. Carruthers nodded airily. 'How do you know? you never can be
certain, can you? which is before and which is behind in a circle! It
all depends on where _you_ are.'
With which piece of wisdom, the last Paris frock but one trailed off
into the drawing-room, and deposited itself comfortably and becomingly
by the side of a dowdy black one, for the sake of contrast and
monopoly, by-and-by, when the men should return to their allegiance.
They lingered over their wine, however, that evening. So long that
Grace Arbuthnot grew pale over the strain of waiting to know what that
electric bell had meant. She was given to worrying herself quite
needlessly. Lesley under similar conditions would have taken the
situation in more manly fashion, but then she was far more assured of
her position, curiously enough, than Grace Arbuthnot was of hers. For
the simple reason that the latter had won it, in her generation, by her
personal and exceptional capability, while Lesley took hers by right of
the ordinary woman's new claim to be heard as well as seen.
And then Grace Arbuthnot was at another disadvantage. Her sentiment
was a heavier weight to carry than Lesley's lack of it; and Jack
Raymond's words had set her nerves jarring. So, at last, on the
mother's excuse of going to see if Jerry were comfortably asleep, she
left the drawing-room, and on her way upstairs, paused to listen at the
dining-room door. As she stood there in her diamonds, her sea-green
garments, trying to catch anything definite in the muffled voices
within, she felt a sudden vast impatience at her sex; felt, as Lesley
would not have felt, that it was a disadvantage. For the old revolt of
womanhood used to be against nature; now it is against the custom which
shackles nature.
As she passed on up the wide stairs, the strange silence and solitude
of an Indian house in which all service comes from outside, lay about
her; but in Jerry's room the open window let in a sound. The most
restless sound in the world, the rhythmic yet hurried beat of the
little hour-glass drum used by the natives in their amusements.
Rhythmic yet hurried, like the quickened throb of a heart. It came
faintly, indefinitely, from the distance and darkness of the city; but
Grace had been too long in India not to be able to picture for herself
the environment whence it rose. She could see the murk of smoke and
shadow, the light of flicker and flare on the circling faces round the
shrilling voice or posturing figure of a woman. Was it a wedding? Or
was it--the other thing? It might be either; for that intermittent
noise of fireworks, which echoed at intervals like the report of guns,
belonged to both.
This time it was a fear of her own self that came to Grace Arbuthnot as
she listened--a fear of her own sex--a fear of the hundreds of
thousands of hearts beating away in the darkness around her; beating
perhaps in rhythm to that restless sound.
And so little might bring the restlessness to a heart! Her own gave
quick assent as she looked down on the sleeping childish face, seen
dimly by the rushlight set on the floor beside the muffled, sleeping
figure of the child's bearer.
For the sight brought back, in a second, that other sleeping face she
had seen a few days before. Not that the two were outwardly alike; the
likeness lay within. She took a step nearer, and then stood looking
curiously, almost fearfully, at the child she had borne. She was
one of the ninety and nine out of every hundred good women who pass
through wifehood and motherhood thinking it their duty to ignore its
problems--the problems which only good women can solve--and so it gave
her a certain shock to realise that she had passed on that old love of
hers to this child of another man. Yet, when one came to think of it,
what else was heredity--if there was such a thing in the mind--but the
passing on of one's admirations, one's ideals? The passing on from
generation to generation of one's own affinity for good or evil; the
slow evolution of the spirit of a race.
The spirit of a race! She stooped suddenly and kissed the little
sleeping face. And the kiss had in it the thought of another sleeping
face, and an almost fierce pride of possession. But the child's face
frowned, and a little white nightgowned arm curved itself to shield the
cheek from further caresses.
'Don't bov'ver, mum; I'm all 'wight,' came a sleepy protest.
Grace stood straight again, feeling baffled, helpless; for that dislike
to any display of affection had never been to her liking. It had been,
in fact, partly responsible for her refusal to fulfil her engagement
when Jack Raymond had lost his temper and threatened to throw up his
career. She had dared him to do it, and, being high-spirited, he had
done it. And then, with bitter regret, infinite pain, and a vast amount
of conventional virtue, she had withdrawn her promise to marry him
because----?
For the first time in twelve years of steady conviction that she had
done right, the suggestion that the only justification for such refusal
must lie in the inability of one or the other to perform their part of
the contract, and that that, again, must depend on what the contract of
marriage is essentially, came to disturb her. But she turned from it
impatiently, telling herself she was a fool, at three-and-thirty, to
puzzle over past problems, when the present was full of them, and far
more interesting ones.
Yet, as she went downstairs again, that insistent throbbing from the
dark distant heart of the city seemed to go with her, rousing a perfect
passion of reckless unrest in her own.
Was anything certain except present pleasure or pain? Was it worth
while, even, to _be_ certain? Was it not better to let that heart-throb
quicken or slacken as it chose?
She felt her face pale, her eyes bright, as she re-entered the
drawing-room, to see instantly, first of all, that Jack Raymond was
talking to Lesley.
It required quite an effort for her to remember her real anxiety, and
with a certain sense of duty seek out her husband, who was standing
with the commissioner in a quiet corner.
'It was nothing serious, I hope, George,' she said.
He turned to her, perplexed but kindly.
'Serious, my dear? Oh! you mean the telegram. No! nothing really
important, though they seem to think it so over there. They want me to
promulgate some sort of official denial of there being any secret
programme in the event of a plague outbreak. It is weak, of course--in
a way, a mistake; but I don't think it will do actual harm--do you,
Kenyon?'
The commissioner shrugged his shoulders. He was not in the secret; but
had his suspicions. 'No, sir,' he replied; 'not unless there _was_ one,
and the fact were to leak out. It is difficult to prevent this with
native clerks, especially when the idea of it is present, as it
certainly is----'
'But the reality isn't,' put in Sir George decisively, 'in spite of
what that scurrilous fellow says to-day in the _Voice of India_.'
Grace caught in her breath sharply.
'What does it say?' she asked.
'Only that such a paper does exist, and that it can be produced--which
is, of course, absurd----' His glance at his wife for the comprehension
she alone could give made him pause. 'My dear,' he went on concernedly,
'how pale you are! There is really nothing to be anxious about--is
there, Kenyon? For myself, I'm glad of the definite lead over. For one
thing, it makes it feasible for us to do what the doctors have been
urging on the General for some time back--send both regiments out to a
health camp at Morâdki. They seem to have gone to bits altogether.
Sullivan told me to-day he had forty-eight cases of enteric alone,
and that he had never known the men so reckless and hard to
manage--breaking out of hospital every night.'
'I wonder why?' began Lady Arbuthnot, when the commissioner interrupted
her.
'Why, it's simplicity itself! Don't you know the story? Well, this is
it. The first battalion of the --th Regiment here was under home orders
from Burmah, and the men, of course, saved up every penny they could.
At the last moment, however, the second battalion could only produce
three hundred boys who could by any possibility pass muster as
twenty-one, the age-limit for India. So the authorities wired out to
draft every possible man from the first for an extra year's foreign
service with the second battalion--virtually a strange regiment. The
men drew out every halfpenny of their savings the day the order came,
and have been spending it ever since--and teaching the three hundred
boys to spend theirs too. It's the record of a big blunder.'
'Just so,' assented Sir George; 'but these mistakes will occur. It was
unfortunate, however, that they sent the second battalion here; for the
first was nearly decimated by cholera at Nushapore about three years
ago. Sullivan says he thinks it is largely that. They hate the place,
are in a bit of a funk about it; and when that is the case they will do
anything for the sake of a distraction.'
Grace, listening, seemed to hear once more that restless throbbing in
the air. She saw the murk of smoke and shadow, the light of flicker and
flare, the shrilling voice, the posturing figure.
And the encircling faces?
She clasped her mother's hands tight, and thought of her own boy--of
the spirit of the race.