“The wonder is,” Ancram replied, “that it has not been acknowledged a beastly shame long ago. The vested interest has never been very strong.”
“Ah well,” Church said more cheerfully, “we have provided for the vested interest; and my technical schools will, I hope, go some little way toward providing for the cultivators. At all events they will teach him to get more out of his fields. It’s a tremendous problem, that,” he added, refolding the pages with a last glance, and slipping them into their cover: “the ratio at which population is increasing out here and the limited resources of the soil.”
He had reassumed the slightly pedantic manner that was characteristic of him; he was again dependent upon himself, and resolved.
“Send it off at once, will you?” he said; and Ancram gave the packet to a waiting messenger. “A weighty business off my mind,” he added, with a sigh of relief. “Upon my word, Ancram, I am surprised to find you so completely in accord with me. I fancied you would have objections to make at the last moment, and that I should have to convince you. I rather wanted to convince somebody. But I am very pleased indeed to be disappointed!”
“It is a piece of work which has my sincerest admiration, sir,” Ancram answered; and as the two men descended the staircases from the Bengal Council Chamber to the street, the Lieutenant-Governor’s hand rested upon the arm of his Chief Secretary in a way that was almost affectionate.
CHAPTER XIII.
Three days later the Notification appeared. John Church sat tensely through the morning, unconsciously preparing himself for emergencies—deputations, petitions, mobs. None of these occurred. The day wore itself out in the usual routine, and in the evening His Honour was somewhat surprised to meet at dinner a member of the Viceroy’s Council who was not aware that anything had been done. He turned with some eagerness next morning to the fourth page of his newspaper, and found its leading article illuminating the subject of an archæological discovery in Orissa, made some nine months previously. The Lieutenant-Governor was an energetic person, and did not understand the temper of Bengal. He had published a Notification subversive of the educational policy of the Government for sixty years, and he expected this proceeding to excite immediate attention. He gave it an importance almost equal to that of the Derby Sweepstakes. This, however, was in some degree excusable, considering the short time he had spent in Calcutta and the persevering neglect he had shown in observing the tone of society.
Even the telegram to the sympathetic Member of Parliament failed of immediate transmission. Mohendra Lal Chuckerbutty wrote it out with emotion; then he paused, remembering that the cost of telegrams paid for by enthusiastic private persons was not easily recoverable from committees. Mohendra was a solid man, but there were funds for this purpose. He decided that he was not justified in speeding the nation’s cry for succour at his own expense; so he submitted the telegram to the committee, which met at the end of the week. The committee asked Mohendra to cut it down and let them see it again. In the end it arrived at Westminster almost as soon as the mail. Mohendra, besides, had his hands and his paper full, at the moment, with an impassioned attack upon an impulsive judge of the High Court who had shot a bullock with its back broken. As to the Word of Truth, Tarachand Mookerjee was celebrating his daughter’s wedding, at the time the Notification was published, with tom-toms and sweetmeats and a very expensive nautch, and for three days the paper did not appear at all.
The week lengthened out, and the Lieutenant-Governor’s anxiety grew palpably less. His confidence had returned to such a degree that when the officers of the Education Department absented themselves in a body from the first of his succeeding entertainments he was seriously disturbed. “It’s childish,” he said to Judith. “By my arrangement not a professor among them will lose a pice either in pay or pension. If the people are anxious enough for higher education to pay twice as much for it as they do now these fellows will go on with their lectures. If not, we’ll turn them into inspectors, or superintendents of the technical schools.”
“I can understand a certain soreness on the subject of their dignity,” his wife suggested.