/# “As you will see, there is abundant intrinsic evidence that no native wrote it. My own idea, which I share with a good many people, is that it came from the pen of the Director of Education, which is as facile as it would very naturally be hostile. Let me know #/ /# what you think. Ancram is non-committal, but he talks of Government’s prosecuting the paper, which looks as if the article had already done harm.” #/
Doyle went through the editorial with interest that increased as his eye travelled down the column. He smiled as he read; it was certainly a telling and a forcible presentation of the case against His Honour’s policy, adorned with gibes that were more damaging than its argument. Suddenly he stopped, with a puzzled look, and read the last part of a sentence once again:—
/# “But he has a noble preference for the ideal of an impeccable Indian administrator, which he goes about contemplating, while his beard grows with the tale of his blunders.” #/
The light of a sudden revelation twinkled in Doyle’s eyes—a revelation which showed the Chief Secretary to the Bengal Government led on by vanity to forgetfulness. He reopened Ancram’s letter, and convinced himself that the words were precisely those he had read there. For further assurance, he glanced at the dates of the letter and the newspaper: the one had been written two days before the other had been printed. Presently he put them down, and instinctively rubbed his thumb and the ends of his fingers together with the light, rapid movement with which people assure themselves that they have touched nothing soiling. He permitted himself no characterisation of the incident—lofty denunciation was not part of Doyle’s habit of mind—beyond what might have been expressed in the somewhat disgusted smile with which he re-lighted his pipe. It was like him that his principal reflection had a personal tinge, and that it was forcible enough to find words. “And I,” he said, with a twinkle at his own expense, “lived nine months in the same house with that skunk!”
CHAPTER XVI.
Every day at ten o’clock the south wind came hotter and stronger up from the sea. The sissoo trees on the Maidan trembled into delicate flower, and their faint, fresh fragrance stood like a spell about them. The teak pushed out its awkward rags, tawdry and foolish, but divinely green; and here and there a tamarind by the roadside lifted its gracious head, like a dream-tree in a billow of misty leaf. The days grew long and lovely; the coolies going home at sunset across the burnt grass of the Maidan joined hands and sang, with marigolds round their necks. The white-faced aliens of Calcutta walked there too, but silently, for “exercise.” The crows grew noisier than ever, for it was young crow time; the fever-bird came and told people to put up their punkahs. The Viceroy and all that were officially his departed to Simla, and great houses in Chowringhee were to let. It was announced rather earlier than usual that His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor would go “on tour,” which had no reference to Southern Europe, but meant inspection duty in remote parts of the province. Mrs. Church would accompany the Lieutenant-Governor. The local papers, in making this known, said it was hoped that the change of air would completely restore “one of Calcutta’s most brilliant and popular hostesses,” whose health for the past fortnight had been regrettably unsatisfactory.
The Dayes went to Darjiling, and Dr. MacInnes to England. Dr. MacInnes’ expenses to England, and those of Shib Chunder Bhose, who accompanied him, were met out of a fund which had swelled astonishingly considering that it was fed by Bengali sentiment—the fund established to defeat the College Grants Notification. Dr. MacInnes went home, as one of the noble band of Indian missionaries, to speak to the people of England, and to explain to them how curiously the administrative mind in India became perverted in its conceptions of the mother country’s duty to the heathen masses who look to her for light and guidance. Dr. MacInnes was prepared to say that the cause of Christian missions in India had been put back fifty years by the ill-judged act, so fearful in its ultimate consequences, of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Since that high official could not be brought to consider his responsibility to his Maker, he should be brought to consider his responsibility to the people of England. Dr. MacInnes doubtless did not intend to imply that the latter tribunal was the higher of the two, but he certainly produced the impression that it was the more effective.
Shib Chunder Bhose, in fluent and deferential language, heightened this impression, which did no harm to the cause. Shib Chunder Bhose had been found willing, in consideration of a second-class passage, to accompany Dr. MacInnes in the character of a University graduate who was also a Christian convert. Shib Chunder’s father had married a Mohamedan woman, and so lost his caste, whereafter he embraced Christianity because Father Ambrose’s predecessor had given him four annas every time he came to catechism. Shib Chunder inherited the paternal religion, with contumely added on the score of his mother, and, since he could make no other pretension, figured in the College register as Christian. A young man anxious to keep pace with the times, he had been a Buddhist since, and afterwards professed his faith in the tenets of Theosophy; but whenever he fell ill or lost money he returned irresistibly to the procedure of his youth, and offered rice and marigolds to the Virgin Mary. Dr. MacInnes therefore certainly had the facts on his side when he affectionately referred to his young friend as living testimony to the work of educational missions in India, living proof of the falsity of the charge that the majority of mission colleges were mere secular institutions. As his young friend wore a frock-coat and a humble smile, and was able on occasion to weep like anything, the effect in the provinces was tremendous.
Dr. MacInnes gave himself to the work with a zeal which entirely merited the commendation he received from his conscience. Sometimes he lectured twice a day. He was always freely accessible to interviewers from the religious press. He refrained, in talking to these gentlemen, from all personal malediction of the Lieutenant-Governor—it was the sin he had to do with, not the distinguished sinner—and thereby gained a widespread reputation for unprejudiced views. Portraits of the reverend crusader and Shib Chunder Bhose appeared on the posters which announced Dr. MacInnes’ subject in large letters—“Missions and Mammon. Shall a Lieutenant-Governor Rob God?”—and in all the illustrated papers. The matter arrived regularly with the joint at Hammersmith Sunday dinner-tables. Finally the Times gave it almost a parochial importance, and solemnly, in two columns, with due respect for constituted authority, came to no conclusion at all from every point of view.
The inevitable question was early asked in Parliament, and the Under-Secretary of State said he would “inquire.” Further questions were asked on different and increasingly urgent grounds, with the object of reminding and hastening the Secretary of State. A popular Nonconformist preacher told two thousand people in Exeter Hall that they and he could no longer conscientiously vote to keep a Government in office that would hesitate to demand the instant resignation of an official who had brought such shame upon the name of England. Shortly afterwards one hon. member made a departure in his attack upon Mr. John Church, which completely held the attention of the House while it lasted. The effect was unusual, to be achieved by this particular hon. member, and he did it by reading aloud the whole of an extremely graphic and able article criticising His Honour’s policy from the Bengal Free Press.