[89]. Like fire.
Neither the Lovitts nor the Brownes left Calcutta; they were among the people you counted on your fingers. There is very little to talk about in the hot weather, and the fact that nothing had happened was discussed a good deal, in the dead privacy of the roof or the lower veranda. Both the top flat and the bottom flat thought it had managed admirably, and congratulated itself accordingly. That nothing should have happened caused them to rise considerably in each other’s esteem—there were so few people living under one roof in Calcutta who were able to say it. They told society how agreeable they found it to live with each other, and society repeated it, so that the Brownes heard of the Lovitts’ satisfaction, and the Lovitts heard of the Brownes’. Indeed, there came a time when the Brownes and the Lovitts thought almost as much of each other as they did before they lived together.
It had been an extinct volcano after all, and they stopped throwing water down. Mrs. Lovitt, by degrees, became easily confidential again, and told Helen among other things that edified her, exactly what they were saying at the club about Mrs. Lushington and the General’s A.-D.-C., Mrs. Lovitt’s version coming straight from Jimmy Forbes, and being absolutely correct. Helen being without a confidential male admirer upon these matters—husbands kept them notoriously to themselves—had not the wherewithal to exchange; but she borrowed the Lovitts’ khansamah to make some cocoanut creams, which was going a great deal further. When the Brownes’ pony was laid up with the sun, threatening vertigo, Jack Lovitt took young Browne to office very sociably in his cart; and when the Lovitts ran up to Darjiling on ten days’ casual leave, the Brownes looked after “the littlest black and tan in Calcutta,” and took it out for a drive every day. They dined and lunched and shopped more and more often together, and Mrs. Lovitt knew exactly how many topsy muchies Mrs. Browne got for eight annas.
It was just at this very favourable point that the difficulty about Mr. Lovitt’s unmarried sister arose. Mr. Lovitt’s unmarried sister had been shipped six months before to an up-country relation, and having made no use whatever of her time in Cawnpore, was now to be transferred to Calcutta as a final experiment. Mrs. Lovitt wanted a room for her unmarried sister-in-law, wanted Helen’s dining-room. It was a serious difficulty, and the Lovitts and the Brownes in the plenitude of their confidence and good-will agreed to surmount it by “chumming,”—living together and dividing the bulk of the household expenses—a form of existence largely supported in Calcutta.
In the beginning, chumming lends itself vastly to expansion, and the Brownes and the Lovitts expanded to the utmost verge. They forgot the happy result of past discretions; they became a united family, no longer a top and a bottom flat. They pooled their domestic resources—the soup-plates were Mrs. Lovitt’s, the dessert-knives were Mrs. Browne’s. They consulted each other’s tastes pressingly. They had brisket always on Saturday night because “Jack” liked cold brisket for breakfast on Sunday morning, and mutton twice a week because young Browne had a weakness for caper sauce. Mrs. Lovitt sent away her cook—a crowning act of grace—and Kali Bagh reigned in his stead. It was all peace and fraternity, and the sahibs sat together in long praise of each other’s cigars every evening, while the memsahibs upstairs discussed their mutual friends and sank deeper into each other’s affections. Indeed, in little Mrs. Lovitt’s Helen had absolutely no rival except Jimmy Forbes, the black and tan, and Mr. Lovitt.
They saw a good deal of Mr. Forbes naturally, and the interesting and unique position in the house occupied by that gentleman was revealed to Helen with all the force of an Anglo-Indian experience. He was nearly always there, and when he hadn’t been there he was in the habit of giving an account of himself as having been elsewhere. It was expected of him, and much beside. Helen decided that he couldn’t be described as a “tame cat” in the family, because the position of a tame cat is an irresponsible one, and Mr. Forbes had many responsibilities. If Mrs. Lovitt’s racquet went “fut”[[90]] it was Jimmy who had it re-strung for her. When a new theatrical company came sailing up from Ceylon, Jimmy went on its opening night to report, and if it were good enough to waste an evening on, he took the Lovitts—generally both of them—later. If the roof leaked, or the servants misbehaved, Mrs. Lovitt complained to Jimmy quite as often as to Jack, and Jimmy saw to it. When Mrs. Lovitt wanted some Burmese carvings, Jimmy arranged it at the jail, where the captive Burmese carve, and when that lady decided that she would like to sell her victoria and buy a cabriolet, Jimmy advertised it in The Englishman and made the bargain. In fact Mr. Forbes relieved Mr. Lovitt of more than half the duties pertaining to his official position, of which kindness the latter gentleman was not insensible. Nor could anybody say that little Mrs. Lovitt was. She nursed Jimmy Forbes when he was ill, scolded him when he was imprudent, and advised him on the subject of his clothes. I don’t know that she ever put his necktie straight, but she never would allow him to wear anything but blue ones, and made a point of his throwing away all his high collars—the turned down ones suited him so much better. She did not overload him with benefits, but at Christmas and on his birthday she always gave him some little thing with a personal association, a pair of slippers, some initialled handkerchiefs, a new photograph of herself, generally taken with the littlest black and tan in Calcutta.
[90]. To ruin.
Thus they made no secret of their affection; it had the candour of high noon. They called each other Jimmy and Jennie with all publicity. When Jimmy went home on three months’ leave, Jennie told all her friends that she was simply desolated. She declared to Jimmy and to the world that she was a mother to this young man, and no mother could have walked and danced and driven more self-sacrificingly with her son. Mrs. Lovitt was at least three years younger than her “Jimmy-boy,” but that, in cases of adoption, is known to be immaterial. In periods of absence they wrote to each other regularly twice a week, and Jimmy never forgot to send kind regards to Jack. Their manner to each other was conspicuous for the absence of anything foolish or awkward or constrained—it was above embarrassment, it spoke of a secure footing and an untroubled mind, Mrs. Lovitt lectured Mr. Forbes, and Mr. Forbes rebuked Mrs. Lovitt with a simplicity and good humour that produced a kind of astonishment in the spectator, who looked about her in vain for a formula of criticism. “No,” Mr. Forbes would say, “you’d better not call on Mrs. Lushington. It’s all right for me to go, of course, but I’d rather you didn’t know her.” And Mrs. Lovitt would poutingly acquiesce. When Tertium Quiddism takes this form, what is there to say?
Mrs. Lovitt’s official lord, at all events, found very little to say. He liked Forbes himself extremely—capital fellow—awfully clever chap—and admitted him into full communion as a member of the family in good and regular standing, with a placidity which many husbands doubtless envied him. The gentlemen were not brothers or even brothers-in-law, the relation was one too delicately adjusted to come under any commonly recognised description; but there was a kind of fraternity in it which Mrs. Lovitt seemed to establish, with tacit limitations which established themselves. The limitations were concerned with impropriety—in the general sense. It is certain that there were no occasions a deux when Mr. Forbes felt out of it with Mr. and Mrs. Lovitt—they had no privacy to speak of which Jimmy was not welcome to share. In family matters Mr. Lovitt treated Mr. Forbes much as a valued Under-Secretary. The two men were calling upon me one Sunday, and I inquired of Mr. Lovitt whether his wife were going to Mrs. Walter Luff’s concert for the East Indian Self-Help Association. “’Pon my word,” he said, “I don’t know. Forbes will tell you.” Mrs. Lovitt had frequent occasion to mention these amicable conditions to her friends. “My husband thinks the world of Jimmy Forbes,” she often said, “and Jimmy is perfectly devoted to him.” In moments of intimacy after tiffin with Mrs. Browne, she was fond of comparing the two. “Jimmy is a good deal the cleverer,” she would say judicially, “but Jack is much the better tempered, poor dear, and his looks leave nothing to be desired, in my opinion. But then I always did spoil Jack.”
When Miss Josephine Lovitt arrived, tall and vigorous, with a complexion fresh from the school-room, full of bubbling laughter, and already made fully aware of herself by six months’ diligent spurning of nice little subalterns, who thought her a Juno of tremendously good form, these ladies had further confidences. Mrs. Lovitt initiated them by asking Helen if she didn’t think it would be just the thing for Jimmy, and in the discussion which followed it appeared that Mrs. Lovitt had often tried to marry Jimmy off—she was sure he would be much happier married—but hitherto unavailingly. No one knew the trouble she had taken, the efforts she had made. Mrs. Lovitt couldn’t understand it, for it was only a matter of picking and choosing, and Jimmy wasn’t shy. “I’ve argued it out with him a score of times,” she said, “but I can’t get the least satisfaction. Men are queer animals.”