A Bottle in the Smoke Part 10

"Yes, I saw from your manner to him that you had not heard. Well, the poor young man is actually a half-caste! Does not even deny it, I'm told--speaks of his shame quite openly."

"H'm, has he confided in you, madam?"

"Now you know, Mr. Worsley, that is not possible, seeing I saw him for the first time only five minutes ago. But, believe me, I have the information first hand----"

"Would you believe it, madam, so have I? Would you be surprised to learn that I heard it from the young man himself? I suppose I must accept that as 'first hand'; and I must further tell you he has rather scored in my eyes in making this avowal!"

"What! Do you mean to say you are to be satisfied with a half-caste?"

cried Mrs. Goldring, retreating a step, her face purple with indignation. "You are surely not going to expose us to such a situation. I reckoned, Collector, you had only to be told the fact to see it to be your duty as head of this station to try at least and arrange a transference as soon as possible," she gasped, hoping that even if no practicable step could be taken she could at least set the Collector against the young man.

"You reckoned without your host, I fear, madam. You will require to rearrange your views as to the acceptance of this new servant of the Government for Puranapore--that's all. I also am only a servant."

"Pooh, as if you hadn't got young Printer spirited away quickly enough because he didn't hit it off with you----"

"That remark of yours, madam, implies a liberty to which I am unused,"

said the Collector, drawing himself up with a haughty air. After a moment's silence he lifted his hat, and was about to move away when Mrs.

Samptor came hurrying up.

"Oh, Mr. Worsley, I've found you at last! Why ever did you take him to the most forsaken part of the garden, Mrs. Goldring?--especially seeing he comes so seldom; I'm always anxious to impress the Collector favourably----"

"Which you succeed in doing," said Mr. Worsley, with a courtly bow, relieved that his _tete-a-tete_ was having such a definite interruption, for he was doubtful if he had attained his end in getting rid of the irate lady.

"I've just come to ask you if you will take dinner with Samptor and me to-night, and bring that charming Mr. Cheveril with you. The Judge has just been saying what an acquisition he will be to our little circle, and I'm sure we're all of the same mind--now we've seen him," wound up the audacious little lady, stealing a glance at Mrs. Goldring's discomfited countenance.

The Collector was inwardly much gratified that Mrs. Samptor should have bestowed on his new a.s.sistant such a timely and hearty certificate in the hearing of his detractor, but not even his sense of gratification could induce him to accept her proposal of dining out. He was too wedded to his own surroundings either in camp or bungalow to be persuaded to exchange them of an evening, but he softened his refusal by saying: "Mr.

Cheveril will no doubt be delighted to be your guest one evening before long, meanwhile, till his luggage arrives, he has consented to be mine."

"Oh, well, I shall wait till he takes possession of his own solitary bungalow, then I shall secure him! Oh dear, if that isn't a big goat trespa.s.sing among my precious crotons," and, tucking up her skirts, the little lady darted after the intruder.

The Collector stood watching her with a comical smile on his face, while Mrs. Goldring gazed with sullen contempt on what she afterwards described as "Mrs. Samptor's vulgar antics."

Not content with protecting the crotons, the agile lady was bent on chasing the trespa.s.ser from the compound, but the Indian black goat was more than a match for her. Scrambling up a tree, he clung there, looking down triumphantly; but the owner of the trampled crotons was not to be outdone. Up she scrambled after him, though it was only on receiving some stinging cuffs that the goat acknowledged himself beaten and made off.

"Wonderful person that! When would you or I have energy to perform such a feat, Mrs. Goldring?" said the Collector, shaking with laughter as he went forward to proffer a.s.sistance. Mrs. Samptor, however, disclaimed his help and alighted airily on the ground, making him an elegant curtsey with outspread skirts.

"Well done, Mrs. Samptor! My only regret is that your husband did not witness the acrobatic performance. Mrs. Goldring and I were too small an audience."

The Judge's wife scorned the imputation of being one of the spectators of such a scene. In fact, she afterwards explained, she tried to shut her eyes during its progress. She moved off in majestic solitude, filled with even more resentment against the little woman than she felt against the Collector for his scathing rebuke.

Mrs. Samptor, meanwhile, was unconscious of treachery. Of the chameleon type, she had no scruples in changing her point of view when brought face to face with the frank young civilian; moreover, his gracious acceptance of her hospitality had quite won her heart.

"Let Mrs. Pate say what she likes, that boy is not an East Indian, Harry!" she whispered to her husband. "Anyhow, I'll not believe it! I'm off to warn Mrs. Goldring not to say a word about it to the Collector.

She'll catch it if she does, if I'm not mistaken. I can see from the look of his eyelids that he has taken a fancy to the young man already"; and off she had bounded to the croton walk, to perceive, however, that she had come too late. "The fat was in the fire," she narrated to her husband that evening as they sat in the verandah after dinner. "I couldn't help the woman mismanaging him, could I now, Harry? If she'd had eyes in her head she could have seen the Collector was as pleased with the boy as a child with its latest toy. It really wasn't my fault if she brought down his wrath upon herself, was it now?"

The jailer was too deep in his after dinner nap to make any response, but Mrs. Samptor was used to forego responses, and frequently counted them as spoken when the only reply was a snore.

CHAPTER XI.

Mrs. Samptor divined rightly. The Collector's first impressions of his new a.s.sistant were deeply favourable, and they arose partly from the very point which Mrs. Goldring deemed would prove fatal--the disclosure of his alleged social disabilities. Mark Cheveril had not been in Madras for more than three days without hearing remarks concerning his future chief which would have caused some natures to have a.s.sumed from the outset a defensive att.i.tude. But no sooner had he entered the Collector's bungalow than he felt drawn to the lonely man, careless in dress and manner, hardly rising to greet his visitor from the long armed chair where he lounged, smoking a cheroot, surrounded by two faithful dogs. In a few moments Mark was occupying a similar chair by his side, being introduced to his dogs and his cheroots, and feeling completely at home.

Crotchety, querulous, quarrelsome, Felix Worsley might be, as alleged; but somehow the young man felt instinctively that whatever his faults of manner and circ.u.mstances, "in him there nothing common was or mean." The man was a n.o.ble English gentleman to the core. Mistakes he might have made in governing his allotted territory, but they would prove mistakes of head not of heart. Before his Trichy smouldered in ashes, Mark's heart had already gone out to his chief with the liking of quick magnetism meeting a response, and it brought a light into Felix Worsley's eyes seldom visible there in these later days.

How different, for instance, had been Alfred Rayner's reception of his avowal of mixed blood from that of the man by whose side he sat, telling him that his link with the country had already fostered sympathy with the people of his native land!

"Well, it begins to dawn on me now that I'm very near the end," was the Collector's slowly enunciated reply. "A downright enthusiast like you is what we need here. No doubt, Cheveril, I'll often be for your holding the reins tight, but I'll try to give you as much rope as I can, my boy.

I'm weary and baffled--dead tired of the whole game of life long ago.

But it must go on--even Mrs. Samptor's tea-party."

With that he had risen from his chair, and on the way thither had shared with the new-comer kindly but illuminating comments on the little circle, so that when Mark stood on Mrs. Samptor's lawn he seemed to know them all.

The game of croquet, which he had been playing with Mrs. Samptor as partner, was triumphantly finished, much to the little lady's satisfaction; and Mark was now eager to avail himself of his freedom to listen to the Judge's conversation. This was followed by the Superintendent's annals of the jail, which he undertook to show him over one day before long.

"We must get you interested in your nearest surroundings before the Collector carries you off on tour through his territory," he said, with a good-natured smile.

"Yes, charity begins at home, as I try to remind the Collector sometimes when he turns a deaf ear to my pet.i.tions for the town," rejoined the doctor, who stood by his side. He was a short man with broad shoulders, though hollow-chested, and with an eager face, deep set eyes, and high cheek-bones--a typical Celt, thought Mark, glancing at him, noting the air of feverish energy with which he spoke, and contrasting it with Samptor's Saxon calm.

"I tell you what it is--our Collector is too fond of the far-away bits of his district, and inclined to belittle his nearest plot--our teeming town down there."

"Is your work in the town, Dr. Campbell?" asked Mark.

"He does plenty there, anyhow. Morning, noon, and night he's at work among the Puranapore people," interrupted Mr. Samptor, looking down with a kindly smile upon the eager little man.

"As District Surgeon my work is ostensibly among the English, but you see, Mr. Cheveril, what a little flock we have here since they've taken our regiment away. Of course I'd be delighted to have the chance of attending this big man here, but he never even sneezes; 'so what I do?'

as the servants say. I try my hand at a little work among the Indians, and have got a dispensary in the heart of the town."

"Ah, thereby hangs a tale, doesn't it, Dr. Campbell?" broke in Mrs.

Samptor, always with ears alert.

"I'll tell you how it is, Mr. Cheveril, this man spends his time, his money, and himself in fact, over these ungrateful black creatures. Came here for an easy post because his health wasn't good, and does more work than any other doctor on the plains of India!"

"All Mrs. Samptor's embroidery, I hope you understand," said Dr.

Campbell, smiling.

"Well, if it were English folk he was helping I shouldn't so much mind, but these treacherous, seditious natives, I cannot away with! And there are such swarms of them, I try to suggest to the doctor that his time would be well occupied in helping to get rid of scores."

"Hardly a doctor's point of view, Mrs. Samptor! Unfortunately there is too much of that among the people themselves. The mortality is awful, even when there is no epidemic or plague, not to speak of their own feuds, which are decimating at times."

"The balance of power seems always wavering between the Hindus and Mahomedans in the most curious way," remarked Mr. Meakin, the young engineer. "Which is uppermost just now? Which is your jail full of at the present moment, Samptor?"

"That's an official question the jailer may not be disposed to answer,"

said the doctor. "However, I happen to know too well who has the upper hand--and why"; and the doctor began pulling his black moustache furiously.

"Come now, Campbell, we must not talk shop with the new a.s.sistant on the very evening of his arrival," returned Samptor.

"If I thought the Collector would dose him well with it in office hours I would forbear, but----" The doctor shook his head doubtfully.