Her voice was loud and firm, and Sir George glanced uneasily at the door of his secretary's room; for the fear of a certain proverb about grey mares lingered with him. It dies hard in Indian bureaucracy.
'Horribly mean,' she went on, 'for it does not lessen your responsibility; or alter the position, so far as you're concerned.'
Sir George took up his pen a trifle irritably--a sign that he was beginning to weary of the discussion. 'Pardon me, I think it does. So long as these secret instructions were in my confidential box I was bound, in any crisis, to follow them; but now they are destroyed'--he paused at her look, pointed to a pile of grey ashes in the fireplace, and went on heartily--'upon my soul, it's a relief! The contents can't leak out now; and I've been awfully nervous about that ever since Ewebank took to asking questions about a secret plan of campaign in the House. Some one got a hint of it somehow; and, as you know, that pestilent paper here, the Voice of India, has been on the bad-faith tack. And I can't imagine anything more disastrous, just at present when the city is seething about the plague and the withdrawal of municipal powers, than that this policy--which, frankly, subverts all our professions--should be got at. Even at home it would be ruination during the elections; a regular party cry.'
'And yet,' said Lady Arbuthnot with a fine scorn, 'every sane man knows we can't proclaim everything from the housetops in India; knows we must have secret orders. And, paper or no paper, we have them still! If there is a row, Government will expect you----'
A sudden obstinacy came to her husband's face. 'I should telegraph home for orders.'
Her hands closed tighter; she frowned. 'No, you wouldn't, George; everything might depend on accepting the responsibility of immediate action--you----'
He drew his chair close to the table and dipped his pen in the ink--sign that he meant to hear no more.
'I should do what I thought best, of course; but I should also be more cautious to avoid doing'--he changed his phrase, 'to avoid receiving a slap in the face. Anyhow, I'm not exactly sorry the instructions have been withdrawn. Even delay in action seems to me to involve less risk--of permanent injury, I mean--than the upset there would infallibly be if our intention leaked out before the event.'
She paused at the door with a look of tolerant affection. 'But why should it have leaked out? Besides, it did strengthen your hands enormously--that is why I got father to speak to the Council--that is why I was so glad when he succeeded. And he was glad too--he knows the advantage of having it in black and white.'
She said the last words, half to herself, as she went slowly up the wide shallow stairs, so un-English, so still more un-Indian, which led to the upper story of Government House.