“Why didn’t he? It might have saved him,” asked Helen.
“I believe the fourth baby was the reason. He couldn’t afford it. Had to stay and grill, poor chap.”
“How very distressing,” said Mr. Batcham. “I suppose the widow will be able to live on her pension?”
“She will receive no pension, sir. Mr. Hamilton belonged to the Education Department, which is uncovenanted. In the uncovenanted service it is necessary to live in order to enjoy one’s pension, and that is the reason why its departments add so little to the taxes.”
“Ah, well,” said Mr. Batcham rather vaguely, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too. I should consider marriage under those conditions an improvidence, and I don’t understand people being ill in this climate. I think it must be largely due to the imagination. So far as my testimony is worth anything, I find myself much benefited by it. Thanks, Browne, I’ll have Bass. I’m not afraid of it.”
Young Browne smiled and wistfully drank half the unsatisfactory contents of the long glass by his plate.
“To say nothing,” said he, in mournful reference to the climate, “of the magnificent thirst it engenders.”
Mr. Sayter joined his hands together at the finger tips and looked at Mr. Jonas Batcham, M. P., from under his eyebrows in a way which was certainly impertinent, oblivious of the kitmutgar at his elbow who patiently offered him iced asparagus.
“I’m perfectly certain,” said he, with a crispness in every syllable, “that Mr. Batcham has been benefited by staying six weeks in India. If he stayed six years he would doubtless be more benefited still. I daresay, as he says, we would all be benefited if it were not for our imaginations. It’s a climate that leaves only one thing to be desired, and if some people say that’s a coffin, that is clearly their imagination. Uncovenanted people have a way of dying pretty freely, but that’s out of sheer perverseness to get more furlough. Most of them go for ever because they can’t arrange it any other way. And as for cholera, I give you my word not one man in ten dies of cholera out here; they go off with typhoid or dysentery, or in some comfortable way like that, and probably have a punkah the whole time they’re ill.”
The half-past nine gun boomed from the fort, and Mr. Batcham started nervously. “I don’t know why it is,” said he, “that one doesn’t accustom one’s self to hearing guns in India. I suppose it is some association with the Mutiny.”