Mr. Quentin was seriously affronted. Was ever such callousness known? could such indifference be matched? Indifference that would not even take the trouble to ask such a simple question as "What is she like?"
CHAPTER VI.
QUEEN OF THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS.
"An eye like mine,
A lidless watcher of the public weal."
Tennyson.
Perhaps it would be as well, before going further with this story, to dedicate a page or two to a description of that very important lady, Mrs. Creery. The gentleman who occupied a position in the background as "Mrs. Creery's husband," was a hard-working, hard-headed Scotchman, who thoroughly understood domestic politics, and the art of holding his peace. He had come to Port Blair soon after the settlement was opened up, and had subsequently gone home, and returned with a bride, a lady not, strictly speaking, in her first youth—this was twenty years ago. But let no one suppose that Mrs. Creery had spent the whole of that interval on Ross. She had made several trips to England, and had passed like a meteor through the circles in which her sister, Lady Grubb, was as the sun. Oh, how utterly weary were Mrs. Creery's intimates of those brilliant reminiscences—heard for the thousandth time. Did they not, one and all, detest the very name of "Grubb"?
How was it, people asked each other, that Mrs. Creery had reigned so long and so tyrannically at Ross? How came she to occupy a position, from which nothing could dislodge her—there had been mutinies, there had been social risings, but they all had been quelled. Even a lady who had positively refused to go in to dinner, unless she was taken in before Mrs. Creery, had been quenched! Circumstances had placed the latter on the social throne, and not election by ballot, much less the potent power of personal popularity. The General was a widower, the chaplain a bachelor, the next senior officer unmarried also, the wife of another was an invalid, and spent nearly all her time in the south of France (according to Mrs. Creery, for south of France, read lunatic asylum). She herself was a woman of robust constitution, and always ready to say "present," consequently, the position of leading lady in the settlement fell to her happy lot! She "received" at the General's parties and dances, she occupied a chief place at feasts, a front pew in church, and had a whole programme to herself on band nights. After all, there was not much in this, one would imagine; but Mrs. Creery thought otherwise. The General, an urbane and popular elderly gentleman, was governor over the Andamans, in the Queen's name; he was her Majesty's representative, and held the lives of fifteen thousand convicts in the hollow of his hand; his dominions stretched from the Cocos to Havelock, and included even the distant Nicobars. As his social coadjutor, Mrs. Andrew Creery considered that she shared all his other dignities, and had gradually come to look upon herself as a species of crowned head, ruling not merely the settlement, the Europeans, and the convicts, but even the far-away savages of the interior! These royal ideas had developed but gradually—a little germ (sown by the first strains of "God save the Queen," played as she accompanied the General to a presentation of prizes) had thrown out roots and suckers, and planted a sense of her own dignity in her bosom, that nothing but death could eradicate!
Mrs. Creery had no children and ample leisure, and with such a magnificent idea of her social status, no one will be surprised to hear that she condescended to manage the domestic concerns of all within her realms. She had come to look upon this as a sacred duty, and viewed all comings and goings with microscopic scrutiny. The position of her house favoured this self-imposed supervision; it was close to the pier, had a good back view of the bazaar, and the principal road ran by her door, and consequently it is no exaggeration to say that nothing escaped her. From long practice she could tell at a glance where people were going as they ran the gauntlet of her verandah; if the General wore a "regulation" helmet, he was probably en route to an execution at Viper (an island five miles away); if his Terai, he was bound for the new buildings on Aberdeen, or to make semi-official calls; if his old topee, he was merely going out shelling. Ross was a small island, very thickly populated. Mrs. Creery could easily make the circuit of it in twenty minutes, and did so at least thrice in the twenty-four hours.
She had no home ties, no domestic tastes; she did not care for flowers nor work; never opened a book, and looked upon shelling as childish nonsense. Her one taste was for poultry; her one passion, her dog "Nip," and when she had fed her hens, collected their eggs, given out daily stores, scolded her domestics, she had nothing to occupy her for the remainder of the day. After early breakfast she generally donned her well-known topee, and sallied forth on a tour of inspection; to quote Captain Rodney, who could not endure her, she "turned out" each family at least once daily, and never omitted "visiting rounds." She had by this time pretty well exhausted Ross—and the patience of its inhabitants; she knew every one's affairs, and what they paid their servants (and what their servants said of them in the bazaar), and what stores they got in, just as well as they did themselves.