IT is time, perhaps, to state a few facts about Mr. George William Browne in addition to those which are in the reader’s possession already. I have mentioned, I think, that he played tennis badly and was fond of privacy; it runs in my mind also that I have in some way conveyed to you that he is a rather short and thickly built young gentleman, with brown eyes and a dark moustache, and a sallow complexion and a broad smile. Helen declares him handsome, and I never considered him unpleasant-looking, but it is undoubtedly the case that he is very like other young men in Calcutta, also clerks in tea and indigo houses on five hundred rupees a month, with the expectation of partnership whenever retirement or fever shall remove a head of the firm. His tastes were common to Calcutta young men also. He liked golf and polo, and regretted that his pony was not up to the paper-chases; in literature he preferred Clark Russell and the Pioneer, with Lord Lytton for serious moments. He complied with the customs of the Cathedral to the extent of a silk hat and a pair of gloves in the cold weather, and usually attended one service every Sunday, invariably contributing eight annas to the offertory. His political creed was simple. He believed in India for the Anglo-Indians, and despised the teaching and hated the influence, with sturdy reasons, of Exeter Hall. Any views that he had of real importance mainly concerned the propagation of tea in distant markets; but his spare ideas had a crispness that gave them value in a society inclined to be intellectually limp, and his nature was sufficiently cheerful and sympathetic to make him popular, in connection with the fact that he was undeniably a good fellow.
When all this has been said, I fear that Mr. Browne will not appear in these pages with the equipment proper for a young man of whom anything is expected in the nature of modern fiction. Perhaps this, however, is not so important as it looks, which will be more evident when we reflect that in marrying Miss Helen Frances Peachey Mr. Browne performed considerably the greater part of what will be required of him in this history.
That Young Browne’s tulub[[10]] was only five hundred rupees a month is, however, a fact of serious importance both to the Brownes and to the readers of these chapters. It must be borne in mind, even as the Brownes bore it in mind, to the proper understanding of the unpretending matters herein referred to. There are parts of the world in which this amount translated into the local currency, would make a plutocrat of its recipient. Even in Calcutta, in the olden golden time when the rupee was worth two invariable shillings and the stockbroker waxed not so fat as now, there was a sweet reasonableness about an income of five hundred that does not exist to-day. There is no doubt, for one thing, that at that time it did not cost so much to live in a house. At the present time, and in view of the degeneracy of the coin, that luxury is not so easy to compass as it used to be.
[10]. Pay.
The Brownes would live in a house, however. Young Browne, when the matter was up for discussion, stated with some vehemence his objection to the Calcutta system of private hostelries. Helen said conclusively that if they had no other reason for housekeeping, there were those lovely dessert knives and forks from Aunt Plovtree, and all the other silver things from people, to say nothing of the complete supply of house and table linen, ready marked with an artistically intertwined “HB.” In the face of this, to use other people’s cutlery and table napkins would be foolish extravagance—didn’t George think so? George thought so, very decidedly, that was quite a strong point. It must be a whole house, too, and not a flat; there was no autonomy in a flat and no proprietorship of the compound; moreover, you were always meeting the other people on the stairs. By all means a house to themselves—“if possible,” added young Browne.
“About what rent does one pay for a house?” Helen inquired.
“You get a fairly good one for three hundred a month, on lease. A visiting Rajah down for the cold weather to try for a ‘C. I. E.’[[11]] sometimes pays a thousand.”
[11]. Companion of the Indian Empire.
“But we,” responded Mrs. Browne blankly, “are not Rajahs, dear!”
“No, thank the Lord,” said Mr. Browne, with what struck his wife as unnecessary piety; “and we’ll make ourselves jolly comfortable notwithstanding. Nellums—you’ll see!” George Browne was always over-optimistic. If those two young people had come to me—but it goes without saying that they went to nobody.