The English colony heard of the Rajah's project with mingled feelings of amusement and anxiety. As Colonel Carmichael expressed it, it would have been safer to have stirred up a hornet's nest than to attempt any vital reform in the native quarters; and he was firmly convinced that the inhabitants of the Bazaar would cling to their dirt and squalor with the same tenacity with which they clung to their religion. When the first batch of native workers, under the direction of a European overseer, set out on the task of constructing new and sanitary quarters half a mile outside Marut, he announced that it was no more than the calm before the storm, and kept a weather eye open for trouble. But, in spite of these gloomy prognostications, the work proceeded calmly and steadily on its way. The new dwellings were well constructed, broad, clean thoroughfares taking the place of the narrow, dirty passages which had run like an unwholesome labyrinth through the old Bazaar. Water in abundance was laid on from the river. Natives of superior caste, who had proved their capacity for order, were put in charge of the different blocks and made responsible for their condition. Of more value than all this was the energy and willingness with which the people entered into the project. More workers offered themselves than were required, and could only be comforted with the assurance that very soon a new enterprise would be set on foot in which they, too, would find occupation.
A month after the first stone had been laid, Stafford paid a visit of inspection in company with the Rajah and Travers. On his way back he passed the Carys' bungalow, and seeing Beatrice on the verandah, he had ridden up, as he said, to make his salaams. Very little persuasion tempted him into the cool, shady drawing-room. He knew that Lois would be up at the club, and, faute de mieux, Beatrice's company was something to be appreciated after a hot and exhausting afternoon. For a rather curious friendship had sprung up between these two. They had nothing in common. His stiffly honest and orthodox character was oil to the water of her outspoken indifference to the usual codes and morals of ordinary society. And yet he liked her, and, strangely enough, he never found that her supercilious criticisms and daring opinions jarred on him. Perhaps it was his honesty which recognized the honesty in her, just as, on the reverse side, the sanctimonious Philistinisms of Maud Berry left him glowing with irritation because his instincts told him that they were not even sincere.
On this particular afternoon he was more than usually glad to have a few minutes' quiet chat with Beatrice. That which he had seen and heard on his four hours' ride had stirred to life a sudden doubt in himself and in his hitherto firmly rooted principles, and, like a great many men, he felt that he could only regain a clear outlook by an exchange of ideas with some second person.
"You know my standpoint pretty well by now," he said, as, seated in a comfortable lounge chair, he watched Beatrice busy over some patterns which she had just received from London. "It isn't your standpoint, of course, and no doubt you would be fully in your right to say, 'I told you so,' when I confess that I am beginning to waver."
"I never say, 'I told you so,'" she returned, smiling. "That is the war-cry of those accustomed to few triumphs."
"Not that by wavering I mean that I am coming round to your opinions," he went on. "On the contrary, nothing on this earth will shake my theory that a mingling of races is an impossibility. They must and will, with few exceptions, remain separate to all eternity, and one or the other must have the upper hand if there is to be any law or order. No, it's not that. It's my self-satisfaction that is beginning to waver."
"You must be more explicit," Beatrice observed.
"I mean, men like myself—in fact, most Englishmen—are pretty well convinced, even when they have the rare tact of keeping it to themselves, that they are the salt of the earth. They may be, as a whole, but there are exceptions all round, which we are inclined to overlook because of the foregone conclusion. It has struck me lately that there are some of us—well, not up to the mark."
"Has this revelation come to you by force of contrast?" she asked.
"Haven't you been out with the Rajah?"
He looked at her with the pleasure of a man who has been saved the bother of going into explanatory details.