The Path of a Star Part 13

CHAPTER XI

Miss Howe was walking in the business quarter of Calcutta. It was the business quarter, yet the air was gay with the dimpling of piano notes, and looking up one saw the bright sunlight fall on yellow stuccoed flats above the shops and the offices. There the pleasant north wind blew banners of muslin curtains out of wide windows, and little gardens of palms in pots showed behind the bal.u.s.trades of the flat roofs whenever a storey ran short. Everywhere was a subtle contagion of momentary well-being, a sense of lifted burden. The stucco streets were too slovenly to be purely joyous, but a warm satisfaction brooded in them, the pariahs blinked at one genially, there was a note of cheer even in the cheeling of the kites where they sat huddled on the roof-cornices or circled against the high blue sky. It was enjoyable to be abroad, in the brushing fellowship of the pavements, in touch with brown humility half-clad and going afoot, since even brown humility seemed well affected toward the world, alert and content. The air was full of the comfortable flavour of food-stuffs and spiced luxuries, and the incense of wayside trees; it was as if the sun laid a bland compelling hand upon the city, bidding strange flowers bloom and strange fruits increase.

Brokers' gharries rattled past, each holding a pale young man preoccupied with a notebook; where the bullock-carts gathered themselves together and blocked the road the pale young men put excited heads out of the gharry windows and used remarkable imprecations. One of them, as Hilda turned into the compound of the Calcutta Chronicle, leaned out to take off his hat, and sent her up to the office of that journal in the pleasant reflection of his infinite interest in life. "Upon my word,"

she said to herself as she ascended the stairs behind the lean legs of a Mussulman servant in a dirty shirt and an embroidered cap, "he's so lighthearted, so genial, that one doubts the very tremendous effect even of a failure like the one he contemplates."

She sent her card in to the manager-sahib by the lean Mussulman, and followed it past the desks of two or three Bengali clerks, who hardly lifted their well-oiled heads from their account-books to look at her--so many mem sahibs to whose enterprises the Chronicle gave prominence came to see the manager-sahib, and they were so much alike.

At all events they carried a pa.s.sport to indifference in the fact that they all wanted something, and it was clear to the meanest intelligence that they appeared to be more magnificent than they were, visions in dazzling complexions and long kid gloves, rattling up in third-cla.s.s ticca-gharries, with a wisp of fodder clinging to their skirts. It was less interesting still when they belonged to the other cla.s.s, the shabby ladies, nearly always in black, with husbands in the Small Cause Court, or sons before the police magistrate, who came to get it, if possible, "kept out of the paper." Successful or not these always wept on their way out, and nothing could be more depressing. The only gleam of entertainment to be got out of a lady visitor to the manager-sahib occurred when the female form enshrined the majestic personality of a boarding-house madam, whose asylum for respectable young men in leading Calcutta firms had been maliciously traduced in the local columns of the Chronicle--a lady who had never known what a bailiff looked like in the lifetime of her first husband, or her second either. Then at the sound of a pudgy blow upon a table, or high abusive accents in the rapid elaborate cadences of the domiciled East Indian tongue, Hari Babu would glance at Gobind Babu with a careful smile, for the manager-sahib who dispensed so much galli* was now receiving the same, and defenceless.

* Abuse.

The manager sat at his desk when Hilda went in. He did not rise--he was one of those highly sagacious little Scotchmen that Dundee exports in such large numbers to fill small posts in the East, and she had come on business. He gave her a nod, however, and an affectionate smile, and indicated with his blue pencil a chair on the other side of the table.

He had once made three hundred rupees in tea shares, and that gave him the air of a capitalist and speculator gamely shrewd. Tapping the table with his blue pencil he asked Miss Howe how the world was using HER.

"Let me see," said Hilda, a trifle absent-mindedly, "were you here last cold weather--I rather imagine you were, weren't you?"

"I was; I had the pleasure of--"

"To be sure. You got the place in December, when that poor fellow Baker died. Baker was a country-bred I know, but he always kept his contracts, while you got your po-lish in Glesca, and your name is Macphairson--isn't it?"

"I was never in Glasgow in my life, and my name is Macandrew," said the manager, putting with some aggressiveness a paper-weight on a pile of bills.

"Never mind," said Hilda, again wrapped in thought, "don't apologise--it's near enough. Well, Mr. Macandrew,"--her tone came to a point,--"what is the Stanhope Company's advertis.e.m.e.nt worth a month to the Chronicle?"

"A hundred rupees maybe--there or thereabouts;" and Mr. Macandrew, with a vast show of indifference, picked up a letter and began to tear at the end of it.

"One hundred and fifty-five I think, to be precise. That communication will wait, won't it? What is it--Kally Nath Mitter's paper and stores bill? You won't be able to pay it any quicker if we withdraw our advertis.e.m.e.nt."

"Why should ye withdraw it?"

"It was given to you on the understanding that notices should appear of every Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day's performance. For two Wednesdays there has been no notice, and last Sat.u.r.day night you sent a fool."

"So Muster Stanhope thinks o' withdrawin' his advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

"He is very much of that mind."

The manager put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, leaned back in his chair, and demonstrated the principle that had given him a gold watch chain--"never be bluffed."

"Ye can withdraw it," he said, with a warily experimental eye upon her.

"How reasonable of you not to make a fuss! We'll have the order to discontinue in writing, please. If you'll give me a pen and paper--thanks--and I'll keep a copy."

"Stanhope has wanted to transfer it to the Market Gazette for some time," she went on as she wrote.

"That's not a newspaper. You'll get no notices there."

"Cheaper on that account, probably."

"They charge like the very deevil. D'ye know the rates of them?"

"I can't say I do."

"There's a man on our staff that doesn't like your show. We'll be able to send him every night now."

"When we withdraw our advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

"Just then."

"All right," said Hilda. "It will be interesting to point out in the Indian Empire the remarkable growth of independent criticism in the Chronicle since Mr. Stanhope no longer uses the s.p.a.ce at his disposal. I hope your man will be very nasty indeed. You might as well hand over the permanent pa.s.ses--the gentleman will expect, I suppose, to pay."

"They'll be in the yeditorial department," said Mr. Macandrew, but he did not summon a messenger to go for them. Instead he raised his eyebrows in a manner that expressed the necessity of making the best of it, and humorously scratched his head.

"We have four hundred pounds of new type coming out in the Almora--she's due on Thursday," he said. "Entirely for the advertis.e.m.e.nts. We'll have a fine display next week. It's grand type--none of your Calcutta-made stuff."

"Pays to bring it out, does it?" asked Hilda inattentively, copying her letter.

"Pays the advertisers." There were ingratiating qualities in the managerial smile. Hilda inspected them coldly.

"There's your notice of withdrawal," she said. "Good-morning."

"Think of that new type, and how lovely Jimmy Finnigan's ad will look in it."

"That's all right. Good-morning." Miss Howe approached the door, the blue glance of Macandrew pursuant.

"No notices for two Wednesdays, eh? We'll have to see about that. I was thinkin' of transferrin' your s.p.a.ce to the third page; it's a more advantageous position--and no extra charge--but ye'll not mention it to Jimmy."

Miss Howe lifted an arrogant chin. "Do I understand you'll do that, and guarantee regular notices, if we leave the advertis.e.m.e.nt with you?"

Mr. Macandrew looked at her expressively, and tore, with a gesture of moderated recklessness, the notice of withdrawal in two.

"Rest easy," he said, "I'll see about it. I'd go the len'th of attendin'

myself to-night, if ye could spare two three extra places."

"Moderate Macandrew!"

"Moderate enough. I've got some frien's stayin' in the same place with me from Behar--indigo people. I was thinkin' I'd give them a treat, if three places c'd be spared next to the Chronicle seats."

"We do Lady Whippleton to-night and the booking's been heavy. Five is too many, Mr. Macandrew, even if you promised not to write the notice yourself."

"I might pay for one;" Macandrew drew red cartwheels on his blotting-pad.

"Those seats are sure to be gone. I'll send you a box. Stanhope's as bad as he can be with dysentery--you might make a local out of that. Be sure to mention he can't see anybody--it's absurd the way Calcutta people want to be paid."

"A box'll be Grand," said Mr. Macandrew. "I'll see ye get plenty of ancores. Can ye manage the door? Good-day, then."

Hilda stepped out on the landing. The heavy, regular thud of the presses came up from below. They were printing the edition that took the world's news to planters' bungalows in the jungle of a.s.sam and the lonely policeman on the edge of Manipore. The smell of the newspaper of to-day and of yesterday, and of a year ago, stood in the air; through an open door she saw the dusty, uneven edges of files of them, piled on the floor. Three or four messengers squatted beside the wall, with slumbrous heads between their knees. Occasionally a shout came from the room inside, and one of them, crying "Hazur!" with instant alacrity, stretched himself mightily, loafed upon his feet and went in, emerging a moment later carrying written sheets, with which he disappeared into the regions below. The staircase took a lazy curve and went up; under it, through an open window, the sun glistened upon the shifting white and green leaves of a pipal tree, and a crow sat on the sill and thrust his grey head in with caws of indignant expostulation. A Government peon in scarlet and gold ascended the stair at his own pace, bearing a packet with an official seal. The place, with its ink-smeared walls and high ceilings, spoke between dusty yawns of the languor and the leisure which might attend the manipulation of the business of life, and Hilda paused for an instant to perceive what it said. Then she walked behind her card into the next room, where a young gentleman, reading proofs in his shirt sleeves, flung himself upon his coat and struggled into it at her approach. He seemed to have the blackest hair and the softest eyes and the neatest moustache available, all set in a complexion frankly olive, amiable English cut, in amiable Oriental colour, and the whole illumined, when once the coat was on and the collar perfectly turned down, by the liveliest, most engaging smile. Standing with his head slightly on one side and one hand resting on the table, while the other saw that nothing was disarranged between collar and top waistcoat b.u.t.ton, he was an interjection point of invitation and attention.