“Acting King.”
“It is the same thing—or it will be. Sir Griffiths retires altogether in two years—Lord Scansleigh evidently intends you to succeed him.” The lady spoke with obvious repression, but her gray eyes and the warm whiteness of her oval face seemed to have caught into themselves all the light and shadow of the room.
“Perhaps—perhaps. You always invest in the future at a premium, Judith. I don’t intend to think about that.”
Such an anticipation, based on his own worth, seemed to him unwarrantable, almost indecent.
“I do,” she said, wilfully ignoring the clouding of his face. “There is so much to think about. First the pay—almost ten thousand rupees a month—and we are poor. It may be a material consideration, but I don’t mind confessing that the prospect of never having to cut the khansamah appeals to me. We shall have a palace and a park to live in, with a guard at the gates, and two outriders with swords to follow our carriage. We shall live in Calcutta, where there are trams and theatres and shops and people. The place carries knighthood if you are confirmed in it, and you will be Sir John Church—that gratifies the snob that is latent in me because I am a woman, John.” (She paused and glanced at his face, which had grown almost morose.) “Best of all,” she added lightly, “as Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal you will be practically sole ruler of eighty millions of people. You will be free to carry out your own theories, and to undertake reforms—any number of reforms! Mr. Ancram says,” she went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “that the man and the opportunity have come together.”
John Church blushed, through his beard which was gray, and over the top of his head which was bald, but his look lightened.
“Ancram will be one of my secretaries,” he said. “Does he speak at all—does he mention the way it has been taken in Calcutta?”
Mrs. Church went to her writing-table and came back with the letter. It was luxuriously written, in a rapid hand as full of curves and angles as a woman’s, and covered, from “Dear Lady” to “Always yours sincerely,” several broad-margined sheets.
“I think he does,” she said, deliberately searching the pages. “Yes: ‘Church was not thought precisely in the running—you are so remote in Hassimabad, and his work has always been so unostentatious—and there was some surprise when the news came, but no cavil. It is known that the Viceroy has been looking almost with tears for a man who would be strong enough to redeem a few of Sir Griffiths’ mistakes if possible while he is away—he has been, as you know, ludicrously weak with the natives—and Church’s handling of that religious uproar you had a year ago has not been forgotten. I need not expatiate upon the pleasure your friends feel, but it may gratify you to know that the official mob is less ready with criticism of His Excellency’s choice than usual.’”
John Church listened with the look of putting his satisfaction under constraint. He listened in the official manner, as one who has many things to hear, with his head bent forward and toward his wife, and his eyes consideringly upon the floor.