“Here’s a pretty to-do!” says Mrs Hamlin, as soon as she sees me. “My dear Miss Freyne, your good papa, hearing we could not be in before to-morrow, has taken his journey to Dacca on the Company’s occasions, and won’t return until to-night, and Mrs Freyne han’t thought fit to send to meet you.”
“Why no, my dear,” says Mr Hamlin, “sure you forget what I just told you, that Mrs Freyne desired to use the budgero herself to-day, and asked me to give Miss Freyne a passage in ours as far as the Gott, where she will find a palanqueen waiting for her. You wasn’t grudging the young lady a seat in the boat?”
“No, sir,” says Mrs Hamlin, “and Miss Freyne knows me better than to think so. I am vexed that the lady should treat her daughter’s punctilio so lightly as to deny her their boat, while she goes off on some jaunt of her own.”
“Oh fie, my dear! You’re too hard on a little innocent gaiety. Pray, Miss Freyne, can you tell me why ladies are always so severe when there’s a handsome woman in the case?”
“I don’t know, sir. Are they so?”
“Oh, come, madam, han’t you found it so?” And the man bowed so that I might not fail to perceive he had intended a compliment.
“When you are ready, Mr Hamlin,” said his spouse, “we’ll go into the budgero.”
“Quite so, my dear. Have you bestowed all your buxies[07] on the steward and his mates? Does our Miss Freyne know that word yet? If she don’t, she will soon. Buxies, madam, is a gift of money, made by a man that don’t desire to give it, to a set of rascals that don’t deserve it. No Indian will work that can help it, so that he needs buxie money to enable him to live.”
Talking in this way, so fast that I could scarce understand him, Mr Hamlin accompanied us to wait upon the captain, whom he thanked very genteelly for his care of us during the voyage, and bade visit him at his garden-house on the way to Surmans[08] as often as he should be in Calcutta. Having bid farewell to the mates of the ship and our fellow-passengers, and avoided the importunities of the extraordinary great number of gentlemen that had come aboard in their budgeroes, and would have had Mr Hamlin present them to us, he replying that they should wait till Sunday, we descended into our boat, and so set out with great magnificence. During this second short voyage, Mr Hamlin showed himself very obliging in pointing out to us the places we passed by, as Fultah, where the Dutch have a factory, seated on the most unhealthy spot in the country, and Buzbudgia,[09] which is a fortress belonging to the Moors,[10] as also is the place called Tanners,[11] on the opposite bank. When we were past Tanners, Mr Hamlin bade us look alive, for we should soon find ourselves on British soil, and coming to a piece of water called Govindpoor’s Reach,[12] he showed us on the shore a little pyramid in stonework, which, said he, marked the boundary of the Company’s territory. My dearest friend will comprehend how fast my heart beat at this spectacle. Now at last, Sylvia (I said to myself), thou art to find a parent and a home. But Mr Hamlin, seeing how much I was moved, refused to give me any leisure for meditation, and went on pointing out all the objects we passed, now the garden called Surmans, and the garden-houses of the Company’s servants beyond it, then the Company’s docks and the garden of the Armenians on t’other side of the river, and lastly the town itself, with Fort William and the church. On our exclaiming at the odd aspect of the sacred edifice, which seemed to have lost its upper parts, Mr Hamlin told us that in a great storm near twenty years ago[13] the whole of the steeple, which was of the most elegant proportions imaginable, was blown down by a frightful gust of wind, and driven fifteen feet or so into the earth without breaking. But this I have since seen reason to doubt, for in such a case, sure the gentlemen of the factory would have restored the steeple to its place, or at least have preserved it where it lay, on account of the strangeness of its fate, but there’s no sign of it, wherefore I believe that when it reached the ground ’twas in ruins, and fell speedily into decay. Of the Fort, Mr Hamlin bade us mark the crumbling state of the walls, and the many fine cannons that lay on the ground, without their carriages and useless, outside them, observing that we might now see the trust entertained by the gentlemen of the Presidency in the innocency of their lives and the justice of the Soubah (this was all Greek to me, but I’ll tell you the explanation later).
“We have the felicity, madam and niece Charlotte,” said the good gentleman, “to live under a President that would not with his goodwill hurt a fly. Nay, if a wasp should sting him, he would sooner beseech it to depart than kill it in an angry fit. Sure he should by rights have been born a Quaker, which is the name by which he is known here, for all his tastes lie that way.”[14]