“I put it to hon. members,” said he, weightily, in conclusion, “whether any one of us, in our boasted superiority of intellect, has the right to say that people who can thus express themselves do not know what they want!”
That evening, before he went to bed, Lord Strathell, Secretary of State for India, in Eaton Square, London, wrote a note to Lord Scansleigh, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, in Viceregal Lodge, Simla. The note was written on Lady Strathell’s letter-paper, which was delicately scented and bore a monogram and coronet. It was a very private and friendly note, and it ran:—
“Dear Scansleigh: I needn’t tell you how much I regret the necessity of my accompanying official letter asking you to arrange Church’s retirement. I can quite understand that it will be most distasteful to you, as I know you have a high opinion of him, both personally and as an administrator. But the Missionary Societies, etc., have got us into the tightest possible place over his educational policy. Already several Nonconformist altars—if there are such things—are crying out for the libation of our blood. Somebody must be offered up. I had a Commission suggested, and it was received with rage and scorn. Nothing will do but Church’s removal from his present office—and the sooner the better. I suppose we must find something else for him.
“Again assuring you of my personal regret, believe me, dear Scansleigh, yours cordially,
”Strathell.
“P.S.—Thus Party doth make Pilates of us all.”
CHAPTER XVII.
It was the first time in history that the town of Bhugsi had been visited by a Lieutenant-Governor. Bhugsi was small, but it had a reputation for malodorousness not to be surpassed by any municipality of Eastern Bengal. Though Bhugsi was small it was full—full of men and children and crones and monkeys, and dwarfed, lean-ribbed cattle, and vultures of the vilest appetite. The town squatted round a tank, very old, very slimy, very sacred. Bhugsi bathed in the tank and so secured eternal happiness, drank from the tank and so secured it quickly. All such abominations as are unnameable Bhugsi also preferred to commit in the vicinity of the tank, and it was possibly for this reason that the highest death-rate of the last “year under report” had been humbly submitted by Bhugsi.
Noting this achievement, John Church added Bhugsi to his inspection list. The inspection list was already sufficiently long for the time at his disposal, but Church had a way of economising his time that contributed much to the discipline of provincial Bengal. He accomplished this by train and boat and saddle; and his staff, with deep inward objurgations, did its best to keep up. He pressed upon Judith the advisability of a more leisurely progress by easier routes, with occasional meeting-places, but found her quietly obstinate in her determination to come with him. She declared herself the better for the constant change and the stimulus of quick moves; and this he could believe, for whenever they made a stay of more than forty-eight hours anywhere it was always she who was most feverishly anxious to depart. She filled her waking moments and dulled her pain in the natural way, with actual physical exertion. While the servants looked on in consternation she toiled instinctively over packings and unpackings, and was glad of the weariness they brought her. She invented little new devotions to her husband—these also soothed her—and became freshly solicitous about his health, freshly thoughtful about his comfort. Observing which, Church reflected tenderly on the unselfishness of women, and said to his wife that he could not have her throwing herself, this way, before the Juggernaut of his official progress.
There were no Europeans at all at Bhugsi, so the Lieutenant-Governor’s party put up at the dâk-bungalow, three miles outside the town. Peter Robertson, the Commissioner of the Division, and the district officer, who were in attendance upon His Honour, were in camp near by, as their custom is. The dâk-bungalow had only three rooms, and this made the fact that two of His Honour’s suite had been left at the last station with fever less of a misfortune. By this time, indeed, the suite consisted of Judith and the private secretary and the servants; but as John Church said, getting into his saddle at six o’clock in the morning, there were quite enough of them to terrify Bhugsi into certain reforms.