Governor General

For
Primrose and Robin

Chapter I

I

Lady Pigot went to the window. The sky was grey. Great gusts of wind blew the sand in dancing dervish forms along the wide Madras streets. The sea was dark and angry.

Somehow it always rained or stormed for the Governor’s reception. She was glad she had decided against a garden party.

His Excellency cackled. He lay in bed in a dark brown dressing-gown. He was cackling over the Idler, a year old, but brought to India by the latest ship. Dr. Johnson was an amusing old devil.

Lady Pigot went over and felt his head.

“Oh, I’m all right,” he growled and went on reading.

She smoothed the pillow and the coverlet, then glancing at the noisy clock on the mantelpiece, exclaimed “Dear, dear,” and hurried out. His Excellency began to cackle again over his paper. He cackled so much that he started to cough. He crumpled the paper, raised his knees, threw back his head and coughed and coughed. When it was over he tinkled a little bell and a large bearded attendant salaamed in the doorway. Lord Pigot signalled irritably towards the floor. The attendant raised the spittoon and His Excellency spat heartily. The attendant salaamed and bore it off. His Excellency smoothed out his paper again.

Downstairs Lady Pigot bustled about the drawing-room. The flock of servants got into each other’s way as they moved the chairs against tire brocaded walls. Out on the veranda seats were set against the railings.

“Not too close,” she commanded. The rain would spoil the chairs. The sky seemed darker.

There was a clatter of glasses and trays from the dining-room. She bustled in there, flustered. Heaven knew what these hired servants would do. She went over all the orders again, carefully, patiently. Abdul to attend to the wine, Noor to . . .

An A.D.C. stepped in and saluted briskly. He had papers in his hand. Dear, dear, was she never to attend to one thing at a time?

“Your Excellency,” he said.

“Yes, yes. What is it, Captain Jones?”

“The completed list,” he said. “All those who are definitely coming.” He handed her the papers. She stared at them, unseeing. Then Abdul would have to . . . “Here, Abdul . . .” she began, but broke off. She looked at the papers again vaguely. “Dear me! I shall have to go and dress. There is no time, Captain Jones. These papers can keep till to-morrow, can’t they?”

“Certainly, Your Excellency. But they are to-day’s guests.”

She looked at them again. “Well, I’ll see the guests when they come.” She handed the papers back. “Now, Noor—you won’t forget—there’s the chicken and the . . .”

The clock began to strike.

“Oh dear,” she wailed, “well, you’ll have to manage. . . .” She waddled out of the room.

“Your Excellency . . .” He went after her along the corridor.

“What is it now?”

“I wouldn’t have troubled you, Lady Pigot—but it’s urgent.”

“Yes, yes. What is it?”

“The reception. I’d like to see His Excellency.”

“C’hh! Lord Pigot is ill. I told you nobody . . . .”

“But I thought if he was better . . .”

“He is not better.”

“If you’ll forgive my saying so, Lady Pigot, but—well, as far as I can gather it would have been far better if the reception had been postponed. . . .”

“Postpone the reception again? My dear Captain Jones . . .”

“I know, but . . .”

“We’ve postponed it twice already. I don’t think His Excellency will be better until the reception is over. You know how he hates receptions.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.” He bowed stiffly. She began to walk on hurriedly. He followed. “But if Lord Pigot could come down even for a few minutes . . .”

“You must be out of your senses.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Bring His Lordship out of a warm bed just to see a few stupid people bob and curtsy. Why, he’d catch his death of cold. Mr. Hastings can do that—I mean—well, you know what I mean. Now I must dress or . . .”

“Your Excellency may not be aware of the feeling—the intense feeling”—he got the words in breathlessly—”that there is in Madras against Mr. Warren Hastings. He . . .”

“Stuff and nonsense, and Lord Pigot thinks exactly the same thing . . . Mr. Hastings is a very nice young man—no, I don’t believe it.” She turned to go, but stopped. “Er—by the way is she coming, too?”

“Yes, Your Excellency. Her name is on this list. That is why I brought it along.” He turned over the pages quickly.

“H’mm.” Lady Pigot shook her head at it. “H’mm! Well I don’t see what I can do. Her husband ought to look after her. . . . And all Mr. Hastings’s people in the Church, too.”

She stared ahead vaguely.

The A.D.C. clicked his heels.

Slowly, as in a dream, Lady Pigot went up to dress.

II

She was in her underclothes, with two ayahs employed in tightly corseting her, when with dismay Lady Pigot caught sight of her first guest coming up the drive.

She glanced at the clock. What business had people to arrive half an hour before time? Not like Mr. Barwell either. Usually the Monsons were the first. She hoped he would not eat up the refreshments while waiting.

The cord of the stays snapped with a tang. Lady Pigot turned, slapped the ayah’s face, then sat down in a chair and sobbed. Everything seemed to be going wrong to-day.

Barwell meanwhile stamped about the drawing-room. It was hot wearing all this brocade. He puffed and exploded. “But Hastings Sahib must be here!”

The servant bared his teeth and salaamed.

“All right, all right,” Barwell dismissed him.

He was a short, stocky man, hard of breathing. The crinkled lace at his throat and wrists was already moist. His periwinkle blue coat was tight around his paunch.

The A.D.C. peered in.

“I thought I heard someone.”

Barwell glowered at him. “I’m waiting for Mr. Hastings.”

The A.D.C. stepped through the curtains, glanced round over his shoulder and came closer to Barwell.

“May I have a word, sir—it’s about Mr. Hastings.”

“What is it?”

“You, as his oldest friend, sir . . .” He stopped.

“What is it, man?”

“If you have any influence with him, sir . . .”

“I haven’t,” Barwell barked. His coat swooshed as he turned away. With hands behind his back, he stamped up the room. The A.D.C. waited. As he came striding back, the A.D.C. began to speak again, but Barwell waved him out. “Go away. Go away.”

The A.D.C. clicked his heels. “Yes, sir,” he said and went.

Lady Pigot dabbed some perfume under her arms, smoothed the powder on her drawn face and came down. Barwell was still pacing the room, his face hot and moist.

He tried to be hearty in his greeting.

“Well, well, Lady Pigot. I am glad to see Your Excellency is better—I mean, is His Excellency better, and how is it Mr. Hastings isn’t here?”

“I’m sure he ought to be,” she nodded; then, remembering, held out her hand. “How d’you do,” she said.

He shook her hand vigorously. “Well, well well.”

“Yes,” she said, then looked down at her toes. “Mr. Barwell,” her voice was very low, “I want to ask you something.”

“Anything—anything ye like, Lady Pigot.”

“Tell me—you are Mr. Hastings’s closest friend, do you think—er—I mean is there anything in this affair?”

“Nothing at all, Lady Pigot—I assure ye. That is to say nothing serious.”

“But that would make it worse. Dear me. . . .”

The curtains parted and Hastings entered. He was a slight man, narrow shouldered, with high-domed brow and thin, sensitive lips. His eyes were pale and dreamy—the eyes of a poet. His fingers long and delicate. His coat was of a rich lavender, his wig exquisitely curled and powdered. He smiled at them.

“Ah, Warren!” Barwell took his arm and edged him towards the veranda.

But Hastings tarried.

“Lady Pigot. How . . .”

Barwell said quickly: “Oh, he’s better, much better. Will ye excuse us, Lady Pigot, but there’s something I simply must say to . . .” He did not finish. He dragged Hastings off.

“I’m worried, Warren.”

“Worried?”

“Damnably worried.” He jerked his head. “It was indiscreet of ye to say the least.”

“Oh, about Marian.” He frowned. “For a moment I thought . . .”

“For God’s sake, Warren. Ye’ve got the biggest chance . . . ye don’t seem to realize. . . . In the running for Governor of Madras—ye know old Pigot’s going to retire—yet ye ask this married woman . . .”

“But, my dear Dick, she has a right to come to Government House—her husband, you forget, is a German Baron. They are both coming to-day.” He gripped the railing and looked straight in front of him into the darkening garden.

“But y’know, since all this talk about you and her . . .”

Hastings turned slowly. “You did not imagine, Dick, that I would be a party to her humiliation.”

Barwell threw up his hands.

Hastings turned and touched him kindly on the shoulder. “I know, Dick—you mean well, but . . . well, you can’t possibly have any idea what Marian means to me. . . .”

“Yes, yes. But if only she wasn’t married . . . ye know what people are.”

Hastings bit his lip. “To hell with them. I don’t intend to let them live my life for me. A divorce is being arranged, you know that . . .”

“Yes, but meanwhile . . . It all came to a head to-day when they heard ye were to act for the Governor at this reception. Listen, Warren . . .”

He noticed Hastings’s eyes had narrowed and the sun-bronzed skin was taut over the cheekbones. He brought his face closer. “Warren, send her a message, tell her not to come. . .”

Hastings smiled lightly as he turned. “Not to come! My dear Dick, d’you imagine . . . no, I can’t do that.” He moved back towards the drawing-room.

“But . . . but . . . Warren, you must listen to me. Only till the divorce goes through—don’t see her. . . .”

“Not see Marian?”

“Send her away—anywhere—to Calcutta. . . .”

“Away! Are you mad, Dick?”

“Well, look how long the divorce is taking. This has been going on for two years. Always you three together. The Woman with Two Husbands, they call her. . . .”

“I don’t care a damn what they say. I wish they’d mind their own business. The papers have to go to Germany—it takes time, Dick, time—a year’s journey each way.”

“Well, then she won’t have to wait so long in Calcutta. . . .”

“I’m sorry, Dick—but no Calcutta.”

“Warren . . .”

But he wasn’t listening. There was a deep intake of breath and he shut his eyes.

Barwell pursed his Ups and looked into Hastings’s face, in which the eyes, narrowed by his thoughts, looked little more than slits. He noticed the determined set of the head and chin, and with a shrug of his massive shoulders, Barwell turned and walked back to the drawing-room.

Lady Pigot was still bustling about the room, instructing the servants. Barwell flung himself into a chair and produced a cheroot. Lady Pigot stopped and stared at it with alarm.

“Would you mind, Mr. Barwell . . .”

“Oh, I don’t mind anything,” he growled and proceeded to light it.

“Would you mind smoking the cheroot in the garden—you know, just until the guests arrive? It makes the room . . .”

He heaved himself out of the chair and moved back to the veranda, where Hastings still stood by the railing. Barwell went and stood silently beside him.

III

Hastings’s eyes glowed in the slits with intense brilliance. Well, he had to choose. Ever since he had met her two years before, on board the Duke of Grafton, on the voyage out, he had felt that one day he might have to choose between her and the goal that had inspired and guided him for as long as he could remember. He knew then that, for all the sacrifice must mean—and not only the sacrifice of his career but of Daylesford, the house where he was born, the home of the Hastings for seven hundred years, which by an ill fate had had to be sold, but it was his resolve to buy back—he could not hesitate . . . Yet he had hoped that he would never have to choose. To be driven out of your home, to stand bewildered as a child and see it sold up, to see your aged grandfather, the only relative you had, turned out into the streets, to take his hand and together leave the garden in which you had played, in which twenty generations of Hastings had . . . India offered him a way. He had vowed he would buy back Daylesford . . . Sometimes he saw her with him at Daylesford, walking in the lovely park, reclining by the lake. . . .

Barwell, sucking at his cheroot, breathing heavily, was wrapt in thought too. All this talent, all this opportunity . . . funny how a man with so much brilliance and ability should be transformed by a pretty face into a set, stubborn fiend. . . . . Didn’t think she was right for him. Selfish, self-centred, out too much for herself, whereas he was full of fine ideals, unsuspecting, an easy prey. Pity. . . . And not only for Hastings, but for India. . . . Without Hastings, God knows what mess the country would be landed in. Only his tact had prevented a war in the Carnatic. The army was annoyed of course . . . and the merchants, they would fill their own purses, bleed the country white. . . . That was why they snatched at the slenderest excuse to work up this agitation against him. If only Warren could be made to see sense. The others would not give way. It was not to be expected. But with her out of the way until the divorce. . . . He never did believe there would be a divorce. That scoundrel Imhoff would just cling on to her, knowing that Hastings, that any man, would be of service to the husband of the woman he loved. And there was Ferris also in the running. A better catch than Hastings from many points of view. He wished to God Ferris would marry her. Perhaps that was a line to work on.

Hastings, vaguely conscious of him, glanced round slowly.

“Hullo, Dick.”

Barwell placed a large hairy hand over the thin, sensitive fingers on the railing.

Along the drive at that moment they saw snorting bearers come with a heavy palanquin. The first of the guests had arrived. Lady Pigot suddenly stopped her activities and lowered herself into a chair. She assumed an air of leisurely expectancy.

The palanquin doors slid back. A mountain of mottled purple and scarlet wobbled and stirred within and thrust a large round end outwards— wriggled, expanded, and stood in the porch winking with a hundred diamonds. Old Mrs. McNalty had arrived. Nobody could understand why she chose to remain on in India. All her husbands were dead. You could see their names on the stones in the churchyard in Madras. She lived alone, irritable, wealthy, vying with the Indians in splendour.

As she swayed and padded towards the drawing-room, Abdul bowed before Hastings and Barwell on the back veranda to notify them of the arrival.

“Ah, Mr. Hastings—Ah, Your Excellency! I’m a little thinner these days, don’t you think. . . . Ah, Mr. Barwell—don’t you think?”

“Yes,” all three lied in chorus.

She was given her customary large chair in a corner, where she proceeded to rub her stomach. The palanquin always shook her up so. She beckoned to one of the servants with a henna’d finger. He approached. He stooped. He glanced furtively at Lady Pigot. “Yes, yes,” Mrs. McNalty insisted. He left her and returned with a silver hookah which he set down with ceremony. The serpentine pipe, ten yards long, was unfurled and trailed to her mouth. The hookah was crowned with coals that glowed like drowsy eyes. Mrs. McNalty sucked at the pipe. The water in the hookah burbled, the air around was perfumed with rose-water. She drew again. The water purred.

Hastings stood with Lady Pigot at the further end of the room in front of two large chairs that had been set as thrones. The fingers of his right hand were spread nervously upon his lavender coat in readiness for the next arrival.

A carriage was heard in the drive. Into the room swept Lady Anne Monson in an immense green hat, followed by her little shrimp of a husband, the Colonel—pale, narrow-shouldered, dyspeptic. Immediately after them came General Clavering, puffy, surly, in a state of perpetual annoyance, and his wife, a kindly, comfortable woman, unostentatiously dressed.

The General looked Hastings up and down, his eyes glowed. He puffed out his cheeks and shook hands with Lady Pigot. “I had hoped His Excellency would be down,” he growled as he bowed severely to Hastings.

The room began to fill very rapidly to a clatter of horses’ hooves outside, their neighing, the crunching of carriage-wheels, the relieved sighs of palanquin bearers and, within doors, a rising chatter that failed completely to subdue the burbling of Mrs. McNalty’s hookah. All round the room attendants in red and gold liveries, standing a few yards apart, swung immense palm-leaf fans. The women looked frail, as was only to be expected after a tropical summer; the men, gorgeous as foxgloves, but uncomfortable without their light cotton suits. There was whispering, a recurrent glancing at the slender figure of Hastings as it bowed with grace and courtliness at each new arrival. Captain Jones, standing by the doorway, boomed out the names but peered ahead into the porch as though in fearful expectation of one particular visitor. They were saying behind their fluttering fans, “I hear she is coming.” “Oh, no, he wouldn’t dare ask her.”

All the muscles tightened in Captain Jones’s face as he squared his shoulders and bawled out the words: “Baron and Baroness von Imhoff.”

Every head turned swiftly towards the door, framed in which stood a lovely young woman clad in cream and green. The dress alone would have made her ravishing had she not already been the most lovely of all women there. The men gazed with widening eyes and their lips parted with an involuntary catch of their breath; but the women viewed her with severe disapproval, of which General Clavering supplied a solitary masculine endorsement.

The Baroness betrayed not the slenderest trace of self-consciousness. She stood in the doorway for a moment as though to locate her host and hostess and then swept forward to drop an elaborate curtsy. But the Baron hovered for a while at the entrance with an air of supreme satisfaction, his chin raised, his clothes dandified, his head elegantly groomed, his manner disdainful.

General Clavering, scowling formidably, strode up to Colonel Monson and led him out of the room.

“God damn it,” he howled, “are we going to take this lying down?”

Monson made the obvious play on words, alluding to the Baroness, but the General silenced him with a frown.

“Damned young pup—set up in authority above us. Well, Monson, if you . . .”

“No, no, General,” he placated him, “I agree with you entirely. This Hastings . . .”

“We must send a petition—send a petition to the East India Company directors. We must have this feller removed or before we know where we are, God bless my soul, he’ll be Governor and we shall have a harlot lording it over our wives.”

“I don’t think she’s that,” he began timidly.

“Christ, Monson! Are you on their side?”

“No, no. Oh, no.”

“’Course she’s a harlot. Married to one feller, in love with another. What else is that? You don’t suppose we’d allow our wives to do that sort of thing?”

“Certainly not.”

“Good! We’ll send this damned petition and then see where he’ll be. I can’t think what’s come over Pigot letting this feller take his place to-day. Used to be a good man, too.”

“You can count on me, General, to sign that petition.”

“Everyone will sign the petition. We’ll have this upstart feller removed. That’s all he is, no family . .

“They say his home was sold up when he was a child. . . .”

“God! I don’t care about his home. We want to get the feller out of here. That’s what we’re concerned about.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, leave his bloody home out of it. This petition . . .” He heard footsteps behind him. He glanced round and noticed Barwell.

Monson winked, cautioning silence. But Clavering was indifferent.

“I don’t care if Barwell is on his side. Damn it all, we have a right to our opinion—and we’ll have him removed.” He walked up to Barwell and waggled a finger in his face. “Yes,” he growled, “you’ll see.”

Barwell said: “You mean you’ll try.”

“Try? Try? You wait . . .”

The Baron came out on to the veranda. People began to drift out after him: the drawing-room had become crowded and stuffy. To the General, to Monson and to Barwell, the Baron waved an airy hand.

“Hullo!”

The General turned his back on him.

“I wouldn’t paint either side of you,” the Baron said.

“Damn it!” the General swung round, “who asked you to make any observation? If I had my way . . .”

“You never will, General, don’t you worry.”

The Maharajah Nuncomar, fat and sinister, appeared on the veranda like an apparition. Monson blinked at him a few times, unbelieving. The Baron greeted him eagerly.

“My dear Maharajah Sahib, how d’you do?”

Nuncomar turned away. “I’m ill,” he declared.

“What!” howled the General, “Indians at Government House. . . .”

“H’ssh!” Barwell and Monson both strove to silence him. But he stamped back to the drawing-room, pausing only at the door to call Monson—“Why don’t you come along, we’ll soon put a stop to all this—inviting Indians. . . . Bless my soul!”

Monson went meekly in after him. The chattering was distracting. The women talked of the latest ship from home, that had brought letters and newspapers and changes in fashion. The men spoke of the ship too: of the girls who had arrived in the settlement, some of whom were here this afternoon, of the gossip at the Cocotree and at White’s, of the very daring letters to the Press by one who signed himself “Junius.”

“Why don’t they send out somebody like that to govern India?”

“Too outspoken, my dear sir, the Government at Home are already up in arms at his devastating criticisms.”

“Well, he’d be out of their way here.”

“He may come here yet, don’t worry.”

General Clavering stamped into the midst of all this. He brushed past men and women, who turned to glower at him, but noticing that it was the General went on talking as though it was something to which they had grown accustomed. He pushed forward towards Lady Pigot but before he could reach her the servants began to appear with immense trays. At the sight of the chicken and the bright, wobbling jellies his eyes dilated and he abandoned suddenly his resolve to go. He grasped a plate and a fork and began to help himself eagerly.

“Won’t you have something?” he asked an attractive young thing at his elbow.

“Oh, thank you, General.”

“There it is,” he said, “help yourself.”

Chapter II

I

That night in his bedroom, after Barwell had left him, Hastings sat upon the edge of his bed and stared ahead. Tim, the shaggy spaniel Barwell had given him, rose from the floor and peered at him, but he was too tired—too tired to think, to do anything, except undress mechanically. Certain events kept chasing each other in little fragments: faces out of the crowd, the brilliant coloured dresses of the men and women, and stray words, “Junius” for some reason among them, recurring, whirling round and round in his brain. He drew off his shoes, threw his wig onto the table, he was too tired to walk to its stand, and flung himself down half-dressed.

Sleep was insistent yet it would not come, woo it how he would. It was like someone knocking vigorously at a door but refusing, though bidden repeatedly, to enter. He turned over. He went to the window and gazed out at the starless night. The air was very still. There were a few stunted shrubs in the sandy compound below. He could hear the angry sea. He breathed deeply and found himself more awake than ever.

Dick should not have come back and sat there talking. . . . Yet he was right. Clavering and Monson—oh, damn the whole lot of them. Hastings flung himself down on the bed again and with difficulty, after some hours, contrived to sleep, only to awaken a little before dawn to find the word “Junius” still whirling through his brain, and the image of Marian smiling with that tenderness in her eyes which he had first seen during their voyage out to India.

He had told her on board the Duke of Grafton of his dreams and his hopes, of all he would strive one day to accomplish in India. . . . that vast and rich continent, but lately plucked by Clive. It was Clive’s own suggestion that he should guide and mould it. But the East India directors had been hesitant. People were always afraid of youth. Still if his chance ever came, he would try to rouse and inspire the Indians, train them to shoulder again some day the governance of their poor country. For centuries they had been buffeted by conquerors—dispossessed. The bailiffs were in continuous occupation. Always bailiffs, though they changed with the years . . . Linked somehow with his own fate, his own personal problems. He told her of that terrible day when strange men invaded his home wearing hats, gazed up at the pictures, seized the furniture—the carved oaken cupboard in the nursery, the long green beaded stool on which Tony his dog used to sit beside him—and bore them off. . . . They moved into a tiny cottage—really it was only half a cottage in an adjacent village. There was no seclusion, no detachment. The rooms were small. The raucous voices of neighbours invaded their home. His only joy was when his grandfather took him by the hand along the road to Daylesford and just before it dipped, they would pause and gaze down at the old home, which seemed sombre and sad in the valley below.

Down, down they walked, the old man slower than the child wished; and when they came to the tall trees and the rhododendron clumps that bordered the park, the old man would raise him with an unsteady arm to the top of the hedge to gaze at the nodding columbines, at the water-lilies that winked roguishly from the pond and to breathe in the mingled glories of rosemary and thyme and honeysuckle. It was always his grandfather. They lived alone, these two; for his mother had died in childbirth and his father had abandoned her even before.

“Was it a big place?” she asked. Her eyes were large and wonderfully blue in that longish, roguish face.

He nodded and swallowed. “Fairly. About three hundred acres—and twenty-six bedrooms.”

Laughter, which lurked eternally round her large, full-lipped mouth, came lightly into play. “It will cost an awful lot of money.”

He crossed and uncrossed his fingers.

“Perhaps I’m a fool to want it, but . . .” He shrugged, his shoulders and looked down at his fingers.

“Oh no!” She said it with such earnestness that her entire face seemed transformed. “Oh no! Why, if it were my place I—I—I don’t know what I wouldn’t do. Commit murder perhaps. You can’t let a place like that go—with all those family associations and everything.” The hint of German in her voice fascinated him.

“You can see their coats of arms in the hall,” he added eagerly, “just below the gallery—the blue shield and gold stars of Myles de Hastings who fought for King Henry the Second in 1142, and the scarlet markings of John Hastings who was with Charles the First. It was a hopeless cause and when the King was executed everything went. That was the beginning of the end.”

“Yes, we must, we must,” she said, “save and get it back.”

“It will cost a lot—a lot of money. We shall have to deny ourselves lots of things “

“We’ll deny ourselves everything. Nothing else matters.”

He had saved a little: it was impossible in one’s earlier years to save much in India. Only the senior merchants had the opportunity. And when that came at last to him a perverse fate, at that precise moment, had made him fall in love with Marian; so that he must choose—one or the other, but not both.

People used to gossip on board because he and Marian were so much together—he overheard some of it. He wondered himself at first why the Baron did not seem to mind. They said it was the Baron’s way of living on her. He did not believe that. She was not that kind . . . though the Baron, of course, was capable of anything. A scoundrelly fellow, with no money—he had come to India to do some portrait painting . . . and make money from the Maharajahs. But what in the world did she . . .? He was good looking, yes, and amusing, but . . .

Hastings had guessed she was unhappy, though one would not have suspected it from her manner. She was playful, eternally cheerful. She jested, sang German songs—he could hear her voice now, high and melodious, singing Mozart’s lovely air “Das Veilchen.” It was her favourite. . . . Never melancholy, never glum. Her animation—he had wondered what it covered.

But it was not until they were in Indian waters that they talked for the first time of it—and he made his resolve. It was then that they talked of divorce. The Baron, when it was mentioned to him, merely laughed. But a day or two later he said: “If you make it worth my while, I do not mind.”

He had written for divorce papers, soon after their arrival in Madras—or so he said. Meanwhile Hastings gave him endless introductions and the three of them went everywhere together.

II

Marian’s bungalow was small. It was simply but attractively furnished. She was engaged in hanging up the lovely frock she had worn to Government House, when the Baron strode in through the curtained door. He paused as he saw her bared shoulders and noticing with a downward glance, that most of her underclothes had been removed too, exclaimed:

“My beautiful Marian.” He kissed her shoulders eagerly.

She drew away.

“I came in to scold you, but when I see you— oh!” He shook his head, then seized her. But she shook herself free. She fluffed out the sleeves of her dress, put paper in them, smoothed out the creases of the skirt.

“Do you know,” he said, his eyes still dilated, “it is a year since you’ve allowed me to come to you.” He raised her hand to his lips. “To-night, my Marian, eh?”

She did not answer. She surveyed the dress, poised aloft on its hook, then walked up to the dressing-table.

He followed her. “Eh?”

She drew ofF her rings. He seized her hand again. She looked up. There was a blaze in her lovely blue eyes, shadowed heavily by her long dark lashes. Her full lips were parted, the upper highly arched. It made her look lovelier than ever.

“Carl! Please!”

His eyes narrowed too.

“Da-a-a!” he snarled. “It’s always the same. What d’you think I married you for?” He came nearer to her, swung her round.

“Leave me, you’re hurting me.”

“I want to hurt you, damn you.” He pressed his lips to hers. She kept her mouth tight, tried to draw her head away, but his grip was firm. Only when his hands began to grope was she able to wrench herself free again. She swung away from him and with her back to the window faced him.

He came closer, his teeth set.

“I have a right,” he said. “As your husband I have a right.”

Her lips were set too.

His head nodded slowly. “Must we always have this scene? Always?”

“Just leave me alone. Keep to your other women, but don’t expect anything from me too.”

He softened. “But which of them is as lovely as you, Marian? You are maddening, maddeningly beautiful. . . .”

“You should have thought of that before.”

She shut her eyes. She recalled those starlit evenings in Nuremberg when they had walked hand in hand in the garden and exchanged vows that she had believed then. She could feel his breath upon her face. She opened her eyes, he was nearer. His eyes were misted with desire, his lips parted.

“Please, Marian.”

She shook her head.

“I will give them all up—the whole damned lot of them. I swear.”

“You have said that so often. . . .”

“But this time I mean it. I swear I mean it, Marian.” His lips were on her shoulder.

She shrank within herself and shook her head, swinging her tresses.

“All of them—the whole damned lot of them.”

“Even the black women?” she said with bitterness.

“That will be difficult.” He could not resist a jest even at such a moment. “They are such superb artists. . . . But even them, Marian. Come.”

“No!”

“God!”

He was angry. His eyes were afire. He brought his fist down on the dressing-table until every perfume-bottle danced and jangled. “You give me nothing, not even your love. You do not help me. You are rude to my clients. The Maharajah Nuncomar to-night—that is what I came to speak to you about.”

“So long as you make money. . . .”

“Money. Damn it, what chance have I of ever making money if you won’t. . . .”

“You might as well hire out my body—I see no difference. Fat, oily, sensual beast, that Nuncomar, every glance of his filled with desire. Coarsely familiar, pawing at me—and you expect me to put up with it.”

“He has promised to have his portrait painted.”

“Well, let him rely on your talent, not mine.”

The Baron laughed. “Talent! You are a child in such affairs. Any Indian dancing-girl . . .”

She slapped his face.

He grabbed at her wrist and swung her round, flinging her towards the bed. He went after her, but she scrambled down over the far side.

“Come here. Oh God, Marian, let me come to you to-night.”

“Please leave me, Carl, I am too tired.”

“Just to-night.” He gazed at her bared, beautifully-rounded breasts, the pink alluring line of her thighs. “Please, Marian.”

She drew on a dressing-gown and slipped her feet into slippers. She rang a bell. When Hussein appeared, she asked for a glass of water.

The Baron rose and looked at her. His face was flushed.

She took the water. It was cool upon her tongue.

“H’mmh!” he said at last and left her.

She handed the glass back to Hussein, then shut her door and bolted it. But it was a long time before she could compose herself to sleep. She sat at her dressing-table, just staring vaguely at the wall.

III

And the storm that had threatened all afternoon broke with violence during the night. There were rumbling, reverberating echoes from the four corners of the earth, and lightning leapt through the windows to dance before the tall mirrors.

Lady Pigot crept out of bed and slammed every window. She covered the mirrors with large sheets. Lord Pigot began coughing, lit his bedside-candle, coughed it out, lit it again and fished among the bedclothes for his book.

Warren Hastings turned over to woo his elusive slumber once more. His arm ached with handshaking. Round and round his brain, like mice in a cage, words chased each other . . . “Junius . . . “Send her to Calcutta.”

Marian rose from her chair, shut her window and huddled under the bedclothes. But she could not sleep. Nuncomar belching all over the verandah at Government House. The cold, hard glances she had had to endure. Then—that bloody General. She hoped he had a stomach-ache. And the loud-voiced comments made deliberately within her hearing.

“I suppose they draw lots—or do they all three get into bed together? . . .” Her turn would come —or perhaps it wouldn’t. They were talking of petitions. Hastings might never be Governor. There was Ferris, of course. He had a title as well as money. Could give her far more than Hastings. Kindly, like an uncle. She could still say “Yes.” She wanted some of the fruits of life, its little vanities, its luxuries, its fine feathers. Why not? You’re dead a long time. . . . But she was sorry for Warren. When he looked at her with those pathetic eyes. . . . If he became Governor she would show these damned women . . . what did they think they were—plump, dowdy, like cattle dressed up in finery for a show, waddling about the drawing-room with inelegant hips. . . .

The storm tore on. She huddled further under the bedclothes. Large splashes of rain spat at the woodwork, then pattered and at last roared down violently. Soon the gutters were as turbulent as rivers.

Chapter III

I

General Clavering threw down the toast, which splintered into fragments. “Hard, dry, damn’ thing!”

“It’s only to be expected, John,” his wife observed, “if you’re late for breakfast.”

“God Almighty!” he roared, banging the little plate at his side and breaking it, “can’t I have things my way in my own house?” He raised his spoon to his mouth. It dropped on to his plate with a clatter. “Bloody porridge—bloody mess, that’s what it is. Cook will have to go.”

“What again? It’s the fourth cook we’ve had this month.”

“Damn it! We’ll have four hundred more until we get things right. Haven’t I enough to do with the army and this blasted Hastings business, without worrying about household affairs?”

He flicked his napkin towards the bearded retainer who stood behind his chair. “Tell the cook to come along in here.”

“Huzoor!”

The cook entered timidly. His chin was raised in enquiry. His tiny eyes peered through steel spectacles that were held together with dirty strands of string.

The General held the plate out to him on the palm of his large hand.

“Call this porridge?”

The cook peered at it, in doubt for a moment. “Oh yes, that’s porridge,” he said.

“We-ell!” roared the General, “eat the damned stuff yourself, because I can’t,” and with that he shoved the plate into the man’s face. The plate fell to the floor. Porridge hung from the cook’s nose, from his chin and his eyebrows. Mrs. Clavering was disgusted. She rose from her chair.

The cook picked up the water-jug and smashed it deliberately. “ I give notice. I refuse to work for the Sahib any more.”

As he was striding out, the General gripped him by the arm, “Golam, Akbar, Hurreesh! Secure this scoundrel with ropes. We shall soon deal with his insolence.”

They set hands upon him. Without a struggle the cook submitted. He was frog-marched through the door; but out of sight they released him, and cursing and grumbling, the cook collected his scant belongings and vanished.

“He got away, that vile scoundrel,” they wailed to the General later.

“How is it they always get away—always!”

Mrs. Clavering faced her husband. “They’ll have you up one of these days. You know Johnson was fined for striking his servant—and when he refused to pay his fine, they put him in prison.”

“I don’t know what the country’s coming to. Servants cheek you right and left, then leave you to starve. It’s this damned fellow Pigot. Bloody mess all over the floor. Is my horse ready?”

“Huzoor!”

“Good! I’m going to give Pigot a bit of my mind, Governor or no Governor.”

Miraculously, Pigot was better now that the party was out of the way. He had come down in his dressing-gown and slippers and was seated at his desk, sucking a cheroot that was moist at one end and straggly with leaf.

“Hullo, Clavering, what’s brought you along?”

“So you’re up!”

Pigot smiled. “Yes, thanks, I’m much better.”

“So you should be—all this tamashah going on all round.”

“What tamashah?”

“All this”—he swung his arm to embrace the entire room—“Hastings living in sin and my cook giving notice.”

“Oh Hastings ’s all right. What’s this I hear about a petition?”

“We are petitioning the East India Company directors, Pigot. We don’t intend to put up with this even if you do. Too damned slack, that’s what you are.”

Pigot laughed good-humouredly.

“I don’t believe, Clavering, anyone would be just right for you—except, of course, yourself.”

“Well, I’m senior here. First they pass me over for you—and now you pick on this blasted young pup, another bloody merchant like yourself. . . .”

“You forget, Clavering, it was the merchants who blazed the trail to India. Our only excuse here is as merchants, nothing else.”

“Damn it, man, we’re here to govern the place. We can’t let these heathens play ducks and drakes with themselves.”

“Some sort of governing is necessary, of course, if only because the poor devils have been brought to this chaotic pass by the warring factions.”

“Well, it’s a soldier’s job, isn’t it? Clive was a soldier. Where would we have been without Clive?”

“Clive has done his work, Clavering. It is for us to carry on.”

“Us?”

“You forget that Hastings was Clive’s right-hand man.”

“Yes-es, I dare say he’s a good right-hand man. But you need a soldier in command. Left to himself. . . . Do you know he had Indians at the reception here yesterday?”

“And why not? It’s their country, isn’t it?”

“God! You are just as bad, all these bloody new laws—our servants getting out of hand. My cook this morning. . . .”

“Never mind your cook, Clavering. The fact is that I have a right to nominate a successor and I’ve selected Hastings. I have recommended him to the directors. Meanwhile I want him to get into the way of things and damned well he has managed too. That affair in the Carnatic, if it had not been handled with tact—I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have done it as well myself. And Nuncomar. . . .”

“Damned scoundrel.”

“We know he’s a scoundrel. But. . . .”

“I’d have hanged him out of hand.”

“And caused more trouble.”

“What are the soldiers for. Good God!”

“No, Clavering. We want to avoid trouble, and when we can’t. . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “Nuncomar has heaven knows how many allies. He has a whole ring of them round Bengal. If he stirred them up. . . . It was a master-stroke of diplomacy for Hastings to invite him down here.”

“I disagree with you, Pigot, entirely. What I want to know is will you sign our petition?”

“What, against Hastings? Most certainly not.”

“Well, we’ll send it all the same. Yours will be the only name not on it—yours and Barwell’s. We’ve got Anderson, Monson of course, Cantwell, Dawson, Wilkins—oh, the whole damned lot of them.”

“Well, I’m ashamed of all of you.”

“We are God-fearing Christians, Pigot. We can’t shut our eyes to all this—this adultery, even if you choose to.”

“Shut your eyes!” Pigot rose from his chair and raised his dressing-gowned arm like an avenging fury. “There is not a man in Madras who hasn’t had black women as mistresses. I have myself while my wife was up the coast—and Hastings, because he has fallen decently in love. . . .”

“Decently?”

“Yes, decently, Clavering, if you know the meaning of the word.”

“I’d have you know, Pigot, that I’ve had nothing to do with black women. . . .”

“Or any other women. That’s just the trouble with people like you, Clavering. You wouldn’t be so irritable and blare away in that oath-strewn voice of yours all day long if you had. Make me sick!”

“I don’t intend to discuss my sex-life with you, Pigot. I think you are shutting your eyes to an appalling condition of affairs and until somebody decent has been appointed in your place, I intend to apply for a transfer to Bengal.”

“Go! I’ll give you your transfer now. Madras will be the better without you. God help poor Bengal.”

“I’ll be obliged if you’ll send me my transfer papers without delay, Pigot.” He swept the curtain with an immense gesture, bringing it down with a clatter.

Pigot stared after him and placed his cheroot in his mouth. It was out.

II

Soon after breakfast Mrs. Clavering beckoned to her bearer and summoned her palanquin. The heaving attendants bore the litter on their shoulders through the moist Madras streets, wet from the storm of the early morning. They bore her to the edge of the bazaar where the Imhoffs lived.

The Baron was at home, whistling with his feet up on the front veranda rails. The Baroness von Imhoff was in her boudoir busy with her correspondence. She was surprised at this unexpected visit from Mrs. Clavering. Neither of the Claverings had ever come near her house.

Mrs. Clavering sat in a chair and panted for a time.

The Baron followed her in. “It is kind of the good lady,” he said, “to call on us after all these years, isn’t it Marian?”

“I am not calling. It would only have led to unpleasantness with the General. But I’ve come to give you some advice, my dear,” she turned to the Baroness, “that is if you will let me.”

“Advice?”

“Yes. You probably won’t take it—young people never do. I didn’t when I was your age”—she sighed—“but it is . . .” She glanced at the Baron. “I thought I’d prefer to tell the Baroness alone, but there is no harm in your being here.”

“Thank you, Madame,” he said.

“It’s about all this. I suppose you two are arranging a divorce?”

“Yes,” said Marian quietly.

“Well, don’t you think it would be better, until the divorce comes through, if—if . . .”

“We go to Calcutta?” the Baron finished.

“Or anywhere else. So you’ve thought of it?”

“No. Barwell was telling Marian . .

The Baroness flashed round.

“Oh yes,” he continued, “I heard him tell you yesterday. I said nothing because I was not very keen. Away from Hastings—well, we know nobody there, we have no influence. . . .”

“But we are going to Calcutta,” said Mrs. Clavering.

“You?”

“We could not do much . . .”

“If you, Mrs. Clavering, are leaving here,” Marian began, “why do you want us . . .?”

“Oh, don’t think, my dear, that I’m against you. I’m not. I see no harm in it. . . .”

“There isn’t any harm in it,” Marian insisted.

“I can vouch for that,” the Baron laughed.

“I dare say. Only—well, I like Mr. Hastings. I was in Fulta with him—when we were refugees —I suppose you heard all about that?”

Marian nodded. “Yes. He also told me he was married before.”

“Oh,” exclaimed the Baron. “Keeping secrets from me?”

“It’s no secret,” said Marian. “I should think everybody knows.”

“It was after the Black Hole of Calcutta,” Mrs. Clavering explained. “The white population fled from the fury of Suraj-ud-Dowlah and took refuge down-stream at a little fishing village. We had an appalling time there—lived in mud huts, our clothes tattered, not enough food, the water was putrid. It was ghastly.” She shut her eyes for a second. “Hastings joined us a few days later. He had been seized by the Nawab, but escaped . . .”

“You wouldn’t think it was in him. Quiet, studious fellow . . .” the Baron observed.

Mrs. Clavering nodded. “There was quite a sensation when he arrived. We thought we were the only survivors—that the others were dead. Suddenly he came, his hands were torn, his eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow, he had crawled on his hands and knees for days. . . . He lay ill for a long time and Mrs. Buchanan who nursed him . . . it was her he married.”

“Nurses are always dangerous, only people don’t bother to marry them any more.”

“Please, Carl,” Marian reproved him.

“Well, they got married there, Hastings and Mrs. Buchanan, she a widow of a few weeks, for her husband had perished in the Black Hole. They were like two children in adversity, Hastings and she, both extremely young—clinging to each other for comfort.”

“What happened? Divorce?”

“Oh no, Baron. They . . .”

“What I meant was people do things hastily, you know. . . .”

“Warren is not like that,” Marian said.

“No,” went on Mrs. Clavering, “his wife died—there were two children, a boy and a girl. They died too, within a few months of each other, leaving a man who had been happy, with his family around him—suddenly alone, with nothing—you understand, nothing.”

“And he wasn’t with them,” said Marian, “that was the terrible part of it. He was away, up country somewhere on business—no messages, nothing. When his boat returned he was met on the shore and given the terrible news.”

After a moment, in a lowered voice, she added: “If you know that, Mrs. Clavering, you will understand why he does not want me to go away from him. He has a dread, a horror of parting.”

“Yes, I can understand it—of course, I can understand it, but . . .” She fell silent. Nobody said anything. The Baron walked up to the window and gazed out towards the bazaar, in which a temple bell was clanging.

“It’s difficult, I can see,” Mrs. Clavering said at last. “But it’s either that or the end of his career. My husband is a determined man. I can’t do anything with him. He’ll rouse the directors, just as he has roused the people here . . .”

“They didn’t need much rousing. They were all jealous of Warren and the women for some reason hate me.”

“They always hate a woman who happens to be beautiful—and where life is dull and eventless, they will snatch at the slenderest pretext for scandal—that’s what makes it all so impossible to cope with, my dear—impossible.” Mrs. Clavering nodded to the wall. In the window, where he leaned on the sill, the Baron was whistling—a low, melodious whistle. It did not seem to disturb him very much. The clamour of the temple bell had ceased and the whistle floated soft and clear about the room. Marian seemed unaware of it; it was a commonplace in her life. But Mrs Clavering turned her head and glared at his exquisitely tailored back.

“Well,” she said, rising, “you’ll have to decide. It’s this being married to one and engaged to another that . . . It reflects on you, it reflects on your husband . . .”

“If you are trying to imply that Warren and I . . .”

“I am implying nothing, my dear. I’m merely telling you what the others say, and in a small community the opinions of others, unfortunately . . .” She left the remark unfinished.

From the bazaar the sound of a drum reached them, followed by a voice saying something in the native tongue; then the drum began to beat again.

Mrs. Clavering gathered up her things and moved to the door.

“I appreciate it,” Marian said, holding her head erect. After swallowing she added, “Thank you.”

The Baron said: “You must let me paint you, Madame.” But she regarded him coldly and held out her hand.

The drum came nearer. It was the town crier informing the bazaar that an imposter had been receiving pay as a carpenter when actually he was nothing more than a barber. The court had ordered fifty strokes with a slipper.

“Good-bye!” said Mrs. Clavering.

Marian took her hand silently.

A girlish voice called from the front veranda: “Anyone in?” Noelle Worlee entered—young, no more than seventeen or eighteen, a round-eyed, vacant-headed blonde, her figure in sensuous curves. The Baron approached and kissed her hand. Noelle purred at him.

“My dear!” she lisped. “It isn’t true, is it? I’ve been hearing such things!”

“What isn’t true?” Marian asked.

“About yesterday’s party at Government House and all the people who walked out when they saw you there.”

“No,” said Marian.

Mrs. Clavering was thinking: Awful gossiping woman! It will be all over Madras that I’ve been here and John will—-but I don’t care. “Good-bye,” she said again, nodded to Noelle severely and left.

The Baron raised Noelle’s hand once more to his lips. “The women most worth painting haven’t any money,” he said.

“Oh, do you think so?” she purred.

The bazaar drum grew faint and distant. Marian thought: They are drumming him out of the place. Oh God, these damned, meddlesome people. Cruel, crushing, impossible. . . .

Noelle said: “And whom are you painting now?”

“Only Maharajahs,” Carl replied, pulling a face.

For his sake at any rate, Marian felt, she ought to go to Calcutta. Unless she could send Carl—or would that be worse? Oh God, why had this wretched woman come at such a time?

She turned: “Did you want to see me?” she asked.

“What, dear?”

Marian shut here eyes and sighed. “You came to see me about something, I suppose.”

“Oh no. Yes. About the party at Government House. My dear, weren’t you lucky!”

“I’m rather busy this morning, Noelle. So you’ll excuse me, I hope.”

“Certainly. But you look cross. You aren’t. . .”

“No, no,” she said irritably.

“I think you are. We ought to be friends, you know, we two.”

“Of course, you are friends,” the Baron observed.

“Yes, yes,” Marian corroborated.

“Because,” Noelle added “well, they don’t like either of us, do they?”

What did she think of herself, Marian wondered. Comparing herself with me. Loose, unprincipled . . . I suppose if I slept with men too . . . but then it would be for myself, not for Carl. But I couldn’t, no I couldn’t! Not that!

“Oh, for God’s sake go!” she said.

“Marian, my dear,” the Baron reproved her. “Noelle——”

“Yes, yes, I know. She’s very kind. But . . .”

“You come to the studio with me, Noelle.”

“I want to talk to you, Carl,” said Marian.

“All!” said Noelle. “Jealous, jealous!”

“Good-bye,” said Marian.

Noelle stood in the doorway, held her head on one side and smiled flirtatiously at Carl. He blew a kiss to her.

“Poor little Noelle,” he said. “You . . .”

“Listen, Carl. I think if you went to Calcutta . . .”

“What!” He swung round suddenly.

“Well, I think then . . .”

“Don’t be silly, Marian. It would be worse, far worse. At least now I act as chaperone. You two could never meet each other. He could never come here—or he could, but, my God . . . Besides,” he added with a sly glance, “you don’t expect me to abandon you like that—the only asset I’ve got.”

“That’s all you think of—money, money, money.”

“Well, we’ve got to live, haven’t we?”

She tapped her chin with her long slender fingers. “Well, I’m afraid we’ll have to go together then.”

“H’mm.”

She rose.

He shrugged his shoulders. “It may prove for the best. Calcutta is bigger, isn’t it?—more opportunities there.”

Her brows furrowed, her eyes rested on him for a second . . . then she walked to the door.

III

Barwell was round very early in the morning at Lord Ferris’s. He called out without dismounting: “Hullo there. I thought I’d catch ye in and we could go riding together.” But a servant came salaaming to the door. He said Lord Ferris was ill in bed.

“Damn,” said Barwell, leaping off his horse.

He strode in. “Where are ye? Where the devil . . . Ah, I’m sorry, Lord Ferris, ye aren’t so well to-day. This muggy weather, I suppose.” His face brightened suddenly. “Funny, but it’s just what I came to see ye about.”

“See me about?” Lord Ferris was a very tall man. The footboard of the bed had been cut away. He was without his wig. His full head of greying hair was parted at the side and bunched in front in a heavy cluster of curls.

“What I mean,” said Barwell, “is ye should have a talk with the Baroness Imhoff and see if ye can persuade her.”

“Persuade her—what are you talking about?” He raised himself on an elbow.

“Didn’t I tell ye—why, what we’re all trying to persuade her to do—go to Calcutta. It’s playing old Harry with Hastings’s career, her being here and him seeing so much of her.”

“H’nnh!” He lay back, stretched his long arms over his head and yawned. “You don’t imagine I have any influence—with her?”

“I thought ye had—ye’re in love with her, aren’t ye?”

“Most people are—but that doesn’t mean she’s in love with me—unfortunately,” he added.

“Well, that makes a difference, I suppose. But my idea was maybe ye could get her out of here—take her to Calcutta perhaps. Ye know, I’m thinking it will kind of help ye, being with her on board ship on that long voyage.”

“I’ve tried that, Barwell—it didn’t help, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, yes, I’m forgetting, you were on that voyage out with Hastings.”

“Yes.”

“But this time Hastings won’t be there to queer your pitch. Ye’ll have her to yourself.”

“You don’t imagine I wouldn’t like it.” He sat up in bed. “But I have no influence with her, I tell you. I don’t think anyone has.”

“It’s not doing you much good here—ye’re always ill. . . .”

“That’s nonsense, Barwell. I’ve kept as fit as a fiddle.”

“Well, ye didn’t come out to see Madras only.”

“No. No. But it’s been very interesting here. I’ve been making notes about the temples and the tribes here. One day I might publish them.”

“And a hell of a lot of good that would do. Now if ye got the woman ye loved and a spot of happiness with her . . .”

“I thought you were a friend of Hastings’s.”

“That’s exactly what I am, Lord Ferris.” .

“Yet the one woman he loves . . .”

“There’s his career. She’s married and there are too many complications. Ye have more leisure. There’ll be time enough for all that when Hastings has settled down. Then we’ll find him someone else. I’ll find one meself.”

Ferris scowled. “This is no life for her. Damned cad for a husband. Women snubbing her to right and left. In a place like this you’ve either got to be accepted or get out.”

“Ye are right, Lord Ferris.”

“Apart from myself and Hastings—damn it, even you don’t go and see her—only that Noelle Worlee and . . .”

“Ay, Noelle’s no better than a whore, I’m thinking. Men change their sleeping partners as often, but it’s different somehow in a man. I suppose it’s better to give than to receive.”

Ferris rose from his bed. “It’s a shame that Marian should have to associate with her. A more decent, a more proper person there isn’t in all Madras. For all their talk I am certain there has been no—you know what I mean, between Hastings and her.”

“Of course there hasn’t. Hastings swore to me—I had been wondering, d’ye see. No smoke without a fire, I was thinking. But there hasn’t. Of that I am certain. And I’m real sorry at that . . .”

“Sorry?”

“Yes. If there had been, maybe he’d have got over it by now. Y’ see, it’s what ye can’t get that ye want. That’s your trouble too, I’m thinking.”

Barwell nudged him and laughed. But Ferris was displeased.

“And I have no doubt she knows that too,” Barwell added.

Ferris leaned over him angrily. “Do you mean to say . . .”

“The Baroness is no fool, Lord Ferris. She knows a thing or two. . . .”

“By God, Barwell, I’ll break your neck if you . . .”

“I’m saying nothing, but ye can’t stop me thinking. . .”

“Well, if you ever think in my presence . . .”

“All right, all right, calm yourself. And let’s get down to this Calcutta.”

“I’m not prepared to do anything.”

“Ah now, Lord Ferris. I didn’t mean anything. It was only what I had heard . . .”

“And what had you heard?”

“That she was all extravagance and money and after making a good catch . . .”

“Good catch, by God . . .”

“Well, she knew he was to be Governor—all that was known even on board. But ye’re just as good a catch with your title and your money—of course, ye are an older man. . . . Still, if ye go with her to Calcutta . . .”

“I’ve had enough of this, Barwell. You forget that I’m ill.” He rang the bell and lay back in bed again.

“Barwell Sahib’s going,” he said to the salaaming servant.

“I wasn’t,” Barwell replied with raised eyebrows. “Still, I suppose a man has a right to be ill in his own house. All right, good-bye, Lord Ferris. And think it over.”

“Good-bye.”

Chapter IV

I

Hastings threw his pen down in disgust.

It blotched and freckled the paper. The writers outside were unduly noisy to-night: singing, laughing . . . raucous, drunken voices.

He went to the window. Tim followed him. Two of them had mounted the shoulders of other clerks and were engaged in a cock-fight amid much shouting and cheering.

“Come on, Hen-n-n-ry. Get him down.”

It was already difficult to concentrate. He returned to his desk and patted Tim’s head. Pigot had turned more and more of the administrative work over to him; the others waited with seething impatience for the reply of the directors to their petition. But Marian was going—they had prevailed on her to leave—these damned interfering, however well-meaning . . . busybodies.

She would have gone months ago, had there been an earlier ship. There had been but one and that from Calcutta, bound for England; and it had not brought good news of the conditions in Bengal. Nuncomar had apparently been busy there again. All the more reason why he wished Marian should not go now. But . . . and the Claverings had their things packed too. . . . And Lord Ferris, for Heaven alone knew what reason, had decided suddenly to leave Madras at the same time. To be with Marian, he had no doubt. A ship would be in any day now, from Java, from England. Many ships must have been lost in the recent storms. . . .

He snatched up his hat and called from the veranda for his horse. Was it any use?

It was late in the evening and Marian was about to retire. They had not been seeing much of each other for some weeks, but letters passed almost hourly between them.

“My darling! You.” She flung herself into his arms. He passed his hand over her shoulders.

“Marian, you mustn’t go to Calcutta. I have the worst forebodings . . .”

“My dear, but . . .”

“Sit down, sweetest.” He took her by the arm and assisted her to the settee. “Just now while I was writing, I had the most awful feeling. I felt that if we parted . . He looked down at his hands and spread the long thin fingers before him—“we would never meet again.”

“Oh, Warren!”

“Stay.”

“I can’t, my pet.”

“Then let us go away together. I will give up all this. I have a little money saved . . .”

“But we’ve been over that too, my love.”

“Now it’s critical.”

“Just because you’ve had a feeling?”

“Yes. I don’t know why, but . . .”

She placed her hand soothingly against his shaven cheek. “It’s only because . . .” She stopped. She did not wish to remind him again of that. “It’s just your dread, your hate of parting . . .”

“God, how I hate it.” He lowered his head to the hand he was holding and smothered it with kisses.

“What is career, what is anything,” he murmured in a muffled tone, “we have each other only for a short time in life.”

She stroked his hair.

“The time will soon pass while I’m away. We shall be together again. I’ll be with your friends there. All those letters you’re giving me. And we’ll write. I’ll write every . . .”

“What’s the use of that when ships get lost . . .” He buried his face in his hands and sighed. He tried to pull himself together.

She kissed his hands. Her fingers began to intertwine restlessly with his. The world was dark outside. Only the sounds of the bazaar reached them. The Baron was not at home.

They sat together for a long time, saying nothing. Then she got up and lit the candles and, going to the bureau, opened a drawer. She brought him a scroll of paper that she unfurled on his lap and drew the candle nearer.

“Look. I’ve got here a plan of how we’ll decorate and furnish Daylesford, when you buy it back. I’ve drawn it from all you’ve told me of the place. Here in the hall, where the coats of arms are . . .”

“That room is larger and the staircase should be over here.” He indicated it with the nail of his little finger.

“. . . And for our bedroom ivory—ivory walls, they’re cool and bright, reflect the light but not the glare.”

Our bedroom! It would be either Daylesford or her. Not both together. He shut his eyes. The home of his fathers seemed to slip from him for ever. His hand closed on Marian’s and gripped it firmly.

She looked up and smiled into his eyes.

“Won’t the tongues wag,” she said, “when they hear about to-night.”

“Let them. Why should it matter now! I have you for only a few more weeks.” He stared at the bowl of roses. They were large and red and from their midst four long green sprigs of fern sprouted, like whiskers. “H’nnh! We seem to be in a cage, isolated from the rest of mankind, watched, spied on—we are not free. We can’t live our own lives—Let us go away, Marian, away from gossiping.”

“But it will be the same everywhere . . .”

He stared again at the roses. Some petals had fallen onto the table, others onto the floor. As he watched another petal fell.

II

There was intense excitement in Madras. A ship had been sighted. As far as one could tell it was from home. There would be fresh faces—Morgan’s bride, unless she was lost in an earlier ship. There would be newspapers and new fashions and letters—and doubtless the East Lidia Company directors’ ruling on Hastings. After a day or two the ship would go on to Calcutta, taking Marian and her husband, the Claverings, Lord Ferris and one or two more who were making the trip for their health.

Hastings’s distress became acute. He flung discretion to the winds and spent all his spare time at the Imhoffs’. Sometimes the Baron was in, but in any event he was left alone with Marian. Though she was leaving so soon, the colony was relentless. Many women turned their backs when they met Hastings, the men snubbed him openly. They were even more antagonistic towards the Imhoffs, though some of the women had a soft spot for the good-looking Baron. They regarded him as wasted on her.

“By God, if we had anyone less spineless than Pigot for Governor we’d have deported ’em, all three of ’em, long before this,” exploded General Clavering. “Damn it, we needn’t lose all sense of morality and live like the bloody Hindus just because we happen to be thousands of miles from civilization.”

“I agree, General,” said Lady Anne Monson. “I’d hang the lot of them.”

As the ship drew nearer and signalled her name and her date of departure from England, many in the small settlement at Madras began to make calculations. Yes, it was just possible that there was aboard the directors’ reply to their petition. Catamarans put out from the shore. Bare-bodied boatmen, their brown limbs gleaming in the sun, waded ashore with the passengers on their shoulders: fat, screaming women, who held down their skirts, pretty young girls, a faint tinge of pink still on their cheeks, eager-eyed young writers scanning the land with curiosity.

The mail was landed. The official sack was borne off to Government House. There were dispatches for Warren Hastings. The directors never wrote to their employees save through the Governor. Obviously their petition had reached its mark.

Whispers went round the settlement. Warren Hastings dismissed. Home by the next ship. Deportation for the damned German pair. Have you heard? Has the Governor revealed anything?

Hastings was with Marian. They could see the ship from the drawing-room window. The Baron kept coming into the room. He was busy making calculations too. “The passage—that’s paid for, meals on board, ye-es, and—but I’m afraid, Hastings, we are going to run short.”

“My God, Carl, have you no delicacy,” she said.

“Well, as he’s . . .”

“Hasn’t he done enough?”

“Nearly enough, my dear—but not quite.”

“How much more do you want?” Hastings pulled out his purse.

“Let me see—you better give me a draft on Calcutta. You know what these ships are and if we didn’t have something on the first of every month . . .”

Barwell came in. The dispatches had been taken to the Governor, even those addressed to Warren Hastings.

The Baron knit his brows.

“You don’t think it means . . .”

Barwell turned away. “I’m afraid so,” he growled.

The Baron drummed his fingers on the table.

“Well, perhaps it’s as well we’re going to Calcutta.”

Barwell glared at him.

Marian rose and went over to Hastings. “Shut up, Carl—and please leave us.”

“Leave you . . .”

“For God’s sake, go . . .”

“No, I won’t. I have your future to consider. You don’t imagine I’m going to divorce you to—to marry somebody who . . .”

Barwell came forward, his jaw menacing. “Have ye applied for the divorce at all?”

“No,” he said quietly.

“I told ye.”

“And just as well I didn’t, as things have turned out.”

Hastings grew pale. His cheekbones showed through the bronzed skin. There was a quick intake of Marian’s breath. Barwell, who was nearest, seized the Baron by the shoulders and shook him. The Baron freed himself and made flicking motions at his dress. “My dear Barwell, your fingers—please.”

“Ye don’t like fingers? I’ll show ye what then.” He applied his foot to the seat of the Baron’s velvet breeches, kicked him twice, and flung him down.

From the floor the Baron smiled. “You must, my dear Marian,” he said, “be more discriminating in your company.”

He rose. He saw her looking intently at Hastings. He came up and confronted them.

“I’m not going to let her waste her life on you, Hastings,” he said.

“Please, Carl.”

“Damn it, as your husband . . .”

“Go! Go! Go!”

She placed her hand on her brow. Her entire world was reeling. So Warren would not be Governor after all. . . . Ferris. She wondered what Warren would do. He needed . . . Ferris. Ferris. Everything seemed to sway. Ferris would fuss over her, care for her. Wealth, position, title. Warren. What would he do now? He did not coddle and fuss. He expected it from her. Mothering. These headaches and moods. Oh God! help her. Ferris. Perhaps Ferris was best after all.

She said nothing. Just glared at Carl.

The Baron said: “Now listen to me all of you . . .”

Marian turned away from him.

“You . . .” she began, looking intently at Hastings. She swallowed and could not go on. He took her in his arms and she went limp in surrender. Yes. She was sure now. Sure. “Take me away,” she said, “anywhere . . . I’ll come. . . .”

“You will?”

She nodded. Her green pendant ear-rings stressed her assent.

“Have you no ambition, my dear. Hang it all, a woman like you . . .”

“Anywhere, Warren.”

“Ye aren’t going to do that?” Barwell asked in alarm.

They ignored him.

“Ye’ll be outcasts everywhere ye go—without marriage, and this scum I’m thinking won’t divorce ye now.”

“Most certainly I shan’t,” replied the Baron. “More than ever I shall need Marian to help me in my career.”

“So long as we are together,” she whispered to Hastings.

Captain Jones, the A.D.C., was in the hall outside. The Governor desired to see Mr. Hastings, he said.

For a moment Hastings felt quite faint. It marked the end of all that he had hoped and striven for through his maturing years. Though he had feared it, the shock was in no way mitigated now that the hour had come.

He rose as one dazed. He kissed Marian before leaving.

“There’s too much of all this kissing,” the Baron said. “I’m going to put a stop to it.”

“Ye ought to have done so long ago. Ye, ye—toad.”

III

When Hastings emerged from Government House an hour later he found a crowd assembled at the gates. He came hurriedly down the wide stone steps and hade the coachman drive speedily to the Baroness von Imhoff. “Juldi! Juldi!” he called at intervals, putting his head out of the window.

People stood about at the street corners. They glared at him as he drove by and whispered to each other. They had expected to find Hastings pale, distracted, they found him instead flushed and excited. They followed the coach with their eyes. They saw it go in the direction they had expected.

Hastings leapt from the carriage and rushed into the veranda. Marian, hearing him, had come out, and the Baron was standing behind her, with an enquiring air.

Hastings’s face was beaming. “I’m coming with you,” he said.

“Of course,” she smiled.

“I mean,” he said, “to Calcutta—we go together—by this ship.”

“Calcutta?—By this ship?”

“Yes, the directors’ orders.’”

“The directors’ orders?” echoed the Baron. “You mean that you and Mar . . .”

“No, no. They’ve appointed me Governor General, with orders to proceed to Bengal at once. The trouble there, you know.”

“Governor General!” she repeated.

The Baron gave a low whistle. “That’s more than”—he whistled again—“it’s more than being Governor of Madras, eh?”

“I thank God, my love, we are not to be parted.” He was looking at her.

“Listen.” The Baron came up to him. “Do you realize that . . .”

“I don’t want any more words from you. . . .”

“Sir. I’m your friend. You misunderstand me. . . .”

“I don’t even want your friendship. You will take orders from the Governor General of India. The divorce will be put through immediately.”

“Of course, of course. And you won’t forget me, I hope.”

With a look Marian reproved him.

“Leave us please, Carl,” she said.

“Governor General.” He whistled again, as he left; then pausing at the door, he turned and bowed.

“Your Excellency!”

Chapter V

I

The departure of the Lapwing for Calcutta had to be postponed for four days. Hastings had a lot to see to; and another unexpected passenger was Colonel Monson, who by some perverse fate had been appointed to the Governor General’s Council together with General Clavering.

By another ship, they were informed, Philip Francis the writer of the malicious letters signed “Junius,” which railed against every member of Cabinet and every institution, was travelling out to India. Wanting him out of the way, they had appointed him also to the Governor General’s board.

Hastings was given the right to appoint one member of his Council. He chose Barwell. He gave Barwell leave to follow by the next ship, with Mrs. Barwell and their little son. “I don’t like Calcutta at all,” Barwell grumbled, “I hated it when I was there before, but I ought to be with ye—though ye’re all right now, I’m thinking. Governor General—I don’t see how anyone can queer your pitch now, though there’s no doubt that the old General will try.”

Just before they sailed, indeed while Marian was adjusting her hat and the Baron was supervising the removal of their luggage to the ship, there arrived at the house basket-loads of flowers. Carl had some cushions under his arm; he put them down as the flowers were carried in and read the labels—“From Mrs. Russell. Good luck.”—“From Noelle Worlee, bon voyage.”

Marian appeared, she was ready. “What are all these?” Her lips remained parted as she fingered the cards. “Mrs. Adam—Mrs. Grey! Every woman who has ever hated me.”

Then the arch of her upper lip widened. Her eyes sparkled. She threw back her head and laughed.

“Just like a funeral, h’eh?” said the Baron.

“They might have sent lilies, Carl. The joke would have been more expensive then. Send them all back,” she bade the servants.

“No. No,” said the Baron. “Not back, Marian. Even if they hate you, they might be my clients one day—you never know. Customers, my dear!”

“Well, you’ll have to sit down and write them charming letters of thanks.” She turned to the servant. “Throw them out of the window.”

The servant salaamed. She walked on to the carriage.

The voyage began in good weather. But it was by no means pleasant. Hastings recaptured with Marian much of the joy of their long voyage to India, but despite his elevated position, both had to endure the scorn of many of the passengers. In the saloon, in the smoking-room, where they were all huddled together in bad weather, it became almost unendurable.

Ferris showed himself occasionally, but he kept to his cabin mostly. They went together to enquire after his health. He did not say much. He was planning to go on to Burma and China soon after their arrival in Calcutta.

Monson and Clavering spent the time together, the General never out of his uniform.

They talked as though upon their shoulders alone had descended the entire task of governing India. “Young pup. . . . knows nothing,” the General growled, dismissing Hastings, “so it’s left to us, though why the hell they didn’t appoint me in the first place . . .”

“Er . . . !”

“Of course me! Did you imagine they’d appoint you?”

“Well, I am related to the directors, you know—at least my wife is.”

“H’nnh! Even that counts for nothing these days. She signed the petition too. And see what’s come of it.”

“I don’t think they could have had it. . . . Do you?”

“The less we think about those bloody directors the better. They don’t think, so why should we.”

“Quite!”

“Now that fellow Nuncomar . . .”

“Oh! I’ll have him arrested. Any nonsense and we’ll hang him—understand, hang him.”

“Oh, would you go so far as that?”

“Yes, we will.”

He caught the look in the General’s eye. “Quite,” he agreed.

“And those Mahratta fellers across the border—if they don’t pull themselves together and toe the line, we’ll fight ’em. It falls to us, you and me, Monson. We are soldiers.”

Monson threw out his chest; He felt considerably better, more confident.

“Yes,” he said in an important voice.

The Baron spent his time paying compliments to Lady Anne Monson, who, being fat and ungainly, accepted them with relish. With Mrs. Clavering, the same methods failed. She was aloof, in her gentle way. But Lady Anne sat for her portrait and promised the Baron many introductions upon arrival in Calcutta.

“I had no idea he was such a nice man,” she cooed to the Colonel. “Married beneath him— obviously.”

“Damnit!” howled the General, “they’re all bad, the lot of ’em. I don’t know how you can have any truck with the feller.”

“After all he is a Baron, General.”

“Baron my foot—you don’t imagine those blasted foreign titles count for anything?”

“But—but,” observed Monson timidly, with a glance at his wife, “you don’t see any harm, do you, in his painting her portrait—do you?”

“I do. Most certainly I do. And what the hell d’you want to have your portrait painted for, Anne? You know you won’t make a good picture.”

“Oh! Oh!”

“My dear General . . .”

“God!” he howled at Monson. “Why is it nobody likes listening to the truth. It is the truth—you know it, Monson. That’s why you stand staring with sheep’s eyes after Hastings’s woman, especially when the sun’s on the other side of her dress. I saw you.”

“George, are you going to stand there, and let the General . . .”

“My dear General, you shouldn’t . . .”

“Shut up!”

“Come away, my dear. I don’t think the General’s feeling well to-day.”

“Of course I’m well. Must a feller be ill to speak the truth? You are ill—go and look at your face.”

“You shouldn’t say that, General,” Lady Anne observed. “You know how George suffers from his digestion.”

“So he ought to—eat, eat—the whole bloody time.”

“Come away, George.”

“That’s what I told you.” Then with his mouth twisted he added: “Don’t say anything, the old swine’s bound to get the last word.”

“If I were a man I’d hit him,” she said angrily as they walked on.

“My dear, he’s a lot older than I am.”

“Well, he only takes advantage of it.”

“He does. The old”—and glancing over his shoulder to make sure he was out of earshot—“son of a gun!” he added.

II

As Governor General, Hastings sat at the Captain’s table, a further source of annoyance to the General; and Marian sat beside him. Her husband was there too, for the divorce would not be put through until they reached Calcutta.

Hastings missed Barwell. There was a great deal of work to attend to; the latest reports from Bengal, directions from the East India directors. Marian acted as his secretary, though her spelling was unorthodox and her English a little uncertain. The Captain placed the large round cabin at the Governor General’s disposal; and here with tongue slightly out, she wrote while he walked up and down within the confined space, dictating, Tim following him with his eyes. From time to time they stopped to talk, Tim coming forward to join them.

“This man Francis,” she said, “will be the deciding factor. You are evenly matched now, you and Barwell, the General and Monson. I wonder which side he’ll take.”

“Yes, he’s important. I hope to God he’s with me—after all ‘Junius’—he’s a highly intelligent man.”

“But against everything—against the Government, against all authority. . . .”

“Ah, but now he is the Government. A clever move that, to place him in authority.”

“Yes. But you are the real authority and he might . . .” She stopped. “Do you think I’ll like Calcutta?” she added quickly.

“Yes.” He walked up and then down again. “I think you will. It is much, much larger than Madras. The houses are immense. They call it the City of Palaces.”

“Oh, not much greenery—trees and things,” she remarked breathlessly.

He was staring out of the window. After a moment he turned. “Eh? Oh, more, far more. Madras is sandy, barren, but Calcutta is full of gardens, lovely gardens. You will have oleanders and honeysuckle and jasmine in your garden. Our garden. . . .”

“Somebody said there’s a playhouse there . . .?”

He nodded.

“But who . . .?”

“We used to put on shows ourselves. You’ll have to take charge of that. Will Her Excellency give her patronage . . .?”

They both laughed. It was a cold, and artificial laugh as if both were afraid of something, of which neither would speak.

He came up and smiled at her. “What is it?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Tell me.”

She shook her head.

He sat down beside her and took her hands.

“H’m?”

“I was just wondering . . .”

“What about?”

She put a finger on his nose and pressed it playfully.

“I was wondering what the old General looks like in his bed. . . .”

She threw her head back and laughed at this sudden thought. He loved every movement she made, full of beauty and grace and charm.

He said nothing. She sighed with relief.

The voyage to Calcutta took six and a half weeks. The Lapwing entered the Hughli and Mrs. Clavering pointed across the wide saffron stream to Fulta where she and Hastings and hundreds more had been refugees from the wrath of Suraj-ud-Dowlah.

At the bathing ghats Marian saw Indian men and women disporting themselves without clothes. Little brown bodies, living entirely in boats, came forward to gape at this fresh consignment of white folk who had come from beyond the horizon to dwell in their country.

Then Calcutta. She saw the old battlements in ruins. Men were at work on the new fortress designed by Clive. She saw tall church spires . . . and trees by the thousand, immense trees, not the dwarfed shrubs of Madras. The Maidan, or common, stretched a rich green for miles.

There was a clamour at the wharf. A gun boomed to greet the Governor General. Twenty-one booms. Marian’s face was flushed with excitement. She smiled, watching from a little distance the rotund and pompous officials who came aboard in their best silks and brocades to bow over the hand extended to them by Hastings and to read him loud addresses of welcome.

Chapter VI

I

The city was new-built, most of it, because of the destruction that had attended the Black Hole. Government House stood by the lake known as Lall Diggee. A little to the south a house was found for Marian—a red-brick house, large and a little ungainly, but it was near by. The Baron stayed there with her. There was no alternative, for she could not live alone in a strange city with dacoits¹ prowling the streets after dark and one’s own men folk so addicted to lasciviousness because of the dearth of white women. Here Hastings visited her every day. Calling to take her, and the Baron too, for their evening drive round the Lall Diggee or up the river in his magnificent budgerow with glass windows and sixteen black slaves at the oars.

Francis arrived a month later—a tall, elegant man, witty and foppish. He had a light, jesting manner; but on his arrival he showed considerable annoyance at not being received with a salute of twenty-one guns, for he had left England with the idea that he was to be Governor of Bengal. By a later ship, the Lapwing, which overtook his and got here first, his appointment was cancelled, he was made a Member of Council, the post of Governor in Bengal was abolished and Hastings was appointed Governor General of all India.

When Francis learned this, his fury knew no bounds. He fumed and stamped about the landing-stage, bidding the Captain turn the ship round and take him back to England at once. Clavering, who had come down to receive him, introduced himself and shook hands eagerly. He took Francis home and offered to put him up for a night or two. Hastings sent an A.D.C. to the ship to welcome him officially and offer him accommodation at Government House; but Francis dismissed the man abruptly, saying he was well able to look after himself.

He soon found a large house to the south of the town, enlarged and decorated it with lavishness, so that it should seem a much more imposing and impressive residence than that of the Governor General. He engaged a great horde of servants. All Calcutta was bidden to a party which was held in his garden after dark. Lighted lanterns were suspended from the trees. A stringed orchestra played out of doors all night long. Only the Governor General and the Imhoffs were not invited.

A week later Barwell arrived. From the very first meeting of the Governor General’s Council, Francis made it obvious on which side he intended to range himself. He protested at what he called the lack of courtesy shown him on arrival. He declared that the Governor General should himself have come to receive a member of his Council. There were heated arguments even over such small matters as sanitation, the filling up of the Mahratta Ditch that girt the city as an obsolete line of defence—matters upon which Francis was not yet in a position to speak with knowledge or authority. But he was concerned merely with opposing every suggestion Hastings advanced. He took the lead and was supported eagerly by Monson and Clavering.

“What was the good,” Hastings declared afterwards to Barwell, “what was the good of giving me power with one hand if they were to take it away with the other! Though Governor General I have no authority. The majority rules. My own Council, by banding against me, can veto every suggestion I advance, every decision I make. They can put into effect their own wild-cat schemes, for which I—I, my dear Dick—must in time take full responsibility and blame.”

Barwell’s jaw shot out, he squared his shoulders.

“This fellow Francis, he is the greatest menace, ye understand, far more than the other two. Clavering’s stubborn and stupid, Monson—well, he hardly counts. But Francis is cunning, an unscrupulous swine.”

“Oh, I know what he’s after. He wants my job. He’ll do his best to get me out . . .”

“Don’t ye quit, Warren.”

“Not on your life. The other two are after the same thing. So they are pulling together. Can you imagine, Dick, what would happen, if I didn’t have you. . . .”

“I don’t see that it makes much difference. . . .”

“Well . . .”

“Oh, no. I’m only one vote. That gives ye neither the majority, nor even equality. . . .”

“If only we were two to two, Dick—two to two. Then as Governor General, with my deciding vote . . . God, why did Francis have to come. We could have dealt so easily with the others.”

“Yes,” said Barwell quietly. “The others would not have been difficult.”

II

The Imhoff divorce was put through the Calcutta courts at the end of the year. The Baron opposed it vigorously, but on the evidence of Marian, which was heard in camera, a decree was granted. Marian vacated the red-brick house and went to stay with Mrs. Barwell for a time. Meanwhile Government House was prepared for her. The rooms were attractively redecorated. She was there every day, seeing to curtains and the furniture. Hastings would snatch a half-hour from his work and join her. They watched the Adam green being spread upon the walls, the chandeliers raised into position.

An elaborate wedding was planned. The Rev. William Johnson, Chaplain of St. John’s, the church alongside Government House, was to marry them and a great ball was to be given at the theatre, as Government House was too small. They did not imagine for one moment that the rebellious Councillors desired to come, but they did not see how they could refrain from inviting them, nor on such an official occasion could Francis and the others very well keep away.

The day drew near. Lace-makers were engaged on Marian’s lovely bridal veil and train. Barwell shook his head, swearing that with such heavy expenditure, the maintaining of two establishments until the divorce, the elaborate ball they had planned, the jewels he had bought her—he could not understand that . . . her strange, sensual love for finery, for jewels especially, toying with the stones as though they conveyed warmth and beauty to her touch. Astonishing! He would not have indulged her. . . . Hastings would never have the money for Daylesford, or if he did there would be nothing left to live on. A pity, he moaned, but it was undoubtedly true, that Marian was extravagant—yes, a very extravagant woman.

The Baron, who had been ignored in the invitations, wrote to say that he intended to come to the church, but could not unfortunately attend the reception. He had promised already to go to the ball Francis was giving on the same evening. That was the first intimation Hastings and Marian had of it. By word of mouth, Francis had passed round his invitations. The Claverings, the Monsons, most of the Judges of the Courts, and almost the entire commercial community had accepted.

The wedding could have been postponed. . . .

“Never mind,” said Marian, “we never really wanted Francis and his gang here. . . . Why should they share in our happiness?”

But the theatre would be empty . . . .

They sent out fresh invitations. The rich Indian bankers and merchants were asked . . . one or two Rajahs who happened to be in Bengal . . . all the better placed half-castes. There was room for eight hundred in the theatre. Barely sixty people came. Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice, was there; he had been at school with Warren Hastings. But Lady Impey pleaded illness at the last moment, to Sir Elijah’s annoyance. The Rev. William Johnson, of course, and one or two of the supporting clergy, Walters, one of the Public Works engineers—barely enough for the minuet, The rest watched the dance in silent bewilderment. Marian laughed a great deal, for she would let nothing shadow her happiness. She appeared to be enjoying herself immensely. But Hastings’s gaiety was more apparently assumed. His eyes were on her all the time.

They heard later of the all night revelry at Francis’s. There were minuets and cotillions and noisy country dances. At the gaming tables, in the other rooms, men lost and won immense fortunes at whist and loo and backgammon. Francis himself, it was said, made no less than a lakh of rupees, nearly £10,000, on that night. So, apart from administering the snub he intended, he had profited considerably from it.

The Baron flirted outrageously with the fat and jelly-like Lady Anne, who narrowed her eyes and smiled at him. She had the coarse heavy features of the Stuarts, from whom she was descended, through Charles the Second; but there was, alas, not even a distorted hint of the beauty of Barbara Casdemaine. She jested about Warren Hastings, silly, witless jests, tinged with cynical brutality.

“I hope they don’t suffocate there from the crush,” she laughed. “I suppose Hastings will have to find somebody to keep her—just to help out expenses.”

“If he succeeds, madam, he’ll be a better man than I am,” the Baron replied.

“Well, Nuncomar is there to-night I hear.”

She gave no thought to the beggary that had been brought to the Hastings through battling for the cause of the Stuarts.

Astonishingly Noelle Worlee had also been invited to the party, though Lady Anne insisted that the painted creature was no better than a prostitute. But she had married lately and had come to Calcutta with her husband, a young clerk named Grand. Francis had invited her, for reasons that Calcutta was quick to speculate on in whispers.

III

Every administrative endeavour of Hastings was defeated. He found himself saddled with two wars, brought on by the military element in his Council. General Clavering had been elevated to the position of Commander-in-Chief by the majority. The policing of roads, because it had been suggested by Hastings, was defeated. Dacoits continued to infest the highways. The opening of schools for Indians was vetoed as sheer waste of money. As for sanitation—“God has provided nature’s own scavengers,” boomed the General, “we have jackals and secretary-birds. There are plenty of them here to do the dirty work.”

“But you must not,” Francis reproved him with a smile, “deny Hastings’s relish of his own specialty.”

Hastings clenched his fist and half rose from his chair, but he said nothing. Francis met this half effort with cynical laughter.

For a time Hastings took to advocating measures he did not want, in the hope that by taking an opposite line the Council would do the very thing he wanted them to. Clavering and Monson fell readily into the trap, but Francis was too wise.

“Oh no!” he said. “Oh no! The pig has eyes in its bottom, as you will discover when our Governor General turns round.”

“Up to all sorts of low tricks!” Clavering boomed, when it was explained to him. “Sort of thing a feller like that would do. God!”

Hastings endured it for some months, during which time, for all their official importance, he and Marian lived little more than a hermit existence, invited to few places, receiving as few visits in return, baulked, thwarted, powerless.

He complained bitterly of the position in his dispatches home to the East India Company directors, but it would take two years for his messages to reach them and for their reply—that is if the ships reached their destination, which was not always certain. He had endured more than a year of it already. Everyone knew that the real power lay with the majority. The populace began to take their petitions to Francis or Clavering. It was humiliating, unendurable.

Marian said: “Whatever you do, my sweet, you must never resign. Remember that is precisely what they want you to do.”

“I’ll hang on hard,” he said. “There’s Daylesford to strive for. . . .”

“And more than Daylesford, your work for India. Have you forgotten . . .”

“I despair of that sometimes . . .”

“Remember, we have talked of it often. You want to give positions of authority to Indians, appoint them to the Council . . .”

“They would never agree to that—Clavering and . . .”

“No . . . But your turn will come. . .”

“Our turn? . . We’ve been living in that fool’s paradise for months.”

She took his hand in both hers. “It’s a case now of who can hold out longest.”

“Oh, they will never give in.”

“Nor will you.”

“No!”

“And, you never know—they might quarrel, they probably will. Or one of them might die. The General is not young. You’ll be two to two then and despite Francis . . .”

“I only wish I could be as sanguine about the issue as you. . . .”

“Let’s look at it this way,” she said. “Supposing you did resign, what would you do?”

“Go home and protest vehemently to the directors. . . .”

“They’ll uphold you . . . possibly . . .”

“And send me back, with full power. . . .”

“The long voyages—that’s two years out of your life—and the chances are they won’t do anything of the kind. Remember, Francis was sent here to be kept out of the way. They’ll probably appoint him Governor General—or confirm him, for he’ll seize the position the moment your back’s turned.”

He kissed the tips of her fingers. “How wise you are.”

“A woman’s instinct.”

“I’ll hang on, Marian—till grim death. Meanwhile we are ‘Your Excellencies’—in empty rooms.”

She laughed.

“Well, that’s got them stumped. I wonder what they’ll try and do now.”

Chapter VII

I

In the garden of his home in Alipore, not far from Francis’s house, General Clavering, having dined, sat out with his men friends. They sat round a small low table, on which stood in huddled confusion bottles of port and claret and half-emptied glasses. Mrs. Clavering was away up-country on a visit to the Dutch settlement at Chinsurah.

With the General sat Francis, lightly clad, for the night was hot, Colonel Monson, a Major Grant and one or two more. The moon rode high in the sky. There was scarcely any wind. The General was in his undervest. It was in creases around his immense stomach. His cotton trousers were soaked through with sweat and no longer looked white. He had discarded his wig. His hair drooped in limp strands over his forehead and his spectacles, worn only for reading, had been pushed up towards the crown of his head. From amid his hair, the small pebbles glowed like eyes.

“God! You aren’t having any port, Grant!” He thrust the bottle towards him.

“Oh, I’m doing all right!” But Grant helped himself all the same.

“These damned beetles,” the General growled. “They come and settle on you and sting you! Get out!” He shooshed one away, nearly wrecking the table.

“It’s the bugs I hate so,” said Monson. “They fly past and stink the place out.”

“They aren’t bugs,” said Francis.

“Then what d’you call ’em?”

“It’s the General sweating.”

“Have a little more claret. It’ll help you make a better type of joke,” the General grumbled.

The evening wore on and they nodded over the glasses. The General discussed the hunting: “Don’t you think so, Grant?” he bellowed. But there was no answer. “Damn it! He’s asleep. Wake up, man. This isn’t a church. Wake up!”

“Hun’h? Oh, I’m sorry, General.”

From time to time the General himself dozed. A low, humming sound would come from his chair and the others would drop their voices a little. But, waking up with a start, General Clavering would begin to bellow anew. His outburst had no relation at all to what was being said by the company; he blurted out just whatever happened to be passing through his mind.

They had been talking of wood-pigeons. The humming stopped. The General’s chair creaked a little. “God! These bloody priests. I hate the sight of the lot of ’em.”

“What’s the matter now, General?” Francis enquired smiling.

“Matter? Matter, sir? Damn it, look how they married the feller in a church. That feller what’s his name?”

“Hastings?”

“Damn it! I’m thinking of the priest. You don’t imagine I’d forget Hastings. I’ve got it—er—it’s Something Something. Er . . . Christ!” He smote his forehead in despair. “I’m getting old. I’m losing my memory. What’s his name, Grant, you know!”

But Grant was asleep.

“You mean William Johnson,” said Monson.

“That’s it, William Johnson! Why didn’t you say it before, instead of letting us fish around while you knew all the time. D’you think we’ve got all night, Monson?”

“Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do,” said Francis.

The General glared at him with his eyes and the glasses that sat on his head.

In a few moments he was asleep again. The humming came from the depths of his chair.

“What does he want to learn Indian languages for,” Grant observed. “I’d make ’em learn English. It’s their business to understand us, not ours to mess about with them.”

“Oh, it gives him something to do. He can’t make love to his wife all the time.”

“I dare say you could,” Grant nudged Francis.

“That’s the second thing he envies him,” remarked Carey.

“No. I’d place it first,” said Francis. “A woman is more important than an office.”

“Hasn’t the Baron promised to help you?”

“Who’s been telling tales?”

“Ha! Ha! Ha! What will the good Noelle Grand say?”

The humming stopped. The General flicked a fly away angrily. From a field at the back there came a neighing of horses. “Blast!” he bellowed. “How is it Francis always wins money at cards!” He swung round. “You don’t cheat, do you?”

“Well, of course, General. So would you if you knew how.”

“I don’t think that funny! What’s the matter with you, Francis. If you can’t think of a better type of joke . . .”

“We have the same failing, General . . .”

“Are you being offensive, sir? Did you hear that, Grant?” But Grant was asleep again.

“I don’t know what’s come over you young fellers. Hastings and his woman, and you’ve got God knows how many on your brain. Don’t you ever think of anything else?”

Francis rose from his chair. His lips were thin. Monson began to placate him, glancing sidelong at the General.

“Now, now, Francis. Sit down. You know the General doesn’t mean it, he’s half asleep.”

“I do mean it and I’m not asleep,” the General bellowed.

“Now, now, General. We are all on the same side. We mustn’t fall out, you know. . . .”

“Then why doesn’t he lead a healthy life?”

“But he does—a most healthy life.”

Grant was awake now. He got the drift of the talk. “Francis is a good fellow, I’d forgive a man anything if he’s a good shot with his gun.” He spoke in terms he felt the General would understand.

“I wouldn’t like to take him on,” corroborated Monson quickly.

“The General was very near doing it now,” said Francis.

“If I were younger I’d have shot you down like a dog,” the General growled.

“Now then, please, General!”

“I was a damned good shot myself, you know,” the General persisted.

“I’m hanged,” said Grant, “if anyone was ever as good as Francis—he’s absolutely deadly.”

“Well, that’s no reason why he should go messing around with women. That painted creature what’s her name . . .?”

“Noelle Grand,” said Monson promptly.

“Thank you . . .”

“Now, General, don’t let’s go into all that,” said Francis. “We’ve got other work in hand and we can’t afford to quarrel among ourselves.”

“You mean Hastings?”

“Of course I mean Hastings.”

“And a hell of a lot of good that’s done. The feller’s still there, isn’t he? We’ll have to shoot him or bomb him out.”

“Well, we didn’t bargain on having a limpet as our Governor General. Any decent-minded, self-respecting . . . He doesn’t seem to have any pride, any sensibility. . . .”

Monson said: “My wife always swears that one of her stewards was really his father. . . .”

“Whose father?”

“Hastings’s, of course. . . .”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it. Unless of course Lady Anne . . .”

“You leave my wife out of it, General.”

Grant said drowsily: “I don’t believe that about Hastings. We might as well allow him his own father. We are taking everything else from him.”

“That’s just it,” the General boomed. “We’re not. Christ! We’ve taken nothing from him. The damn feller’s still there.”

“Of course, he’s there, but I’ve got a plan that will shift him.”

“That’s what you said before, Francis.”

“Well, you’ll see this time.”

“What is it this time?”

“Ah ha!” Francis held his finger against his nose and winked. “You wait.”

“God! What are we? Children? Why the hell don’t you come out with it?”

“Now, now, General. Temper, temper.”

“Whose temper? I’m quite calm. Bloody mysterious lot of. . .”

“Who?” Francis peered into his face.

“The lot of you. Wah! Ooo! OOO!”

The General began to wriggle and dance in Inis chair.

“Ooo! Wah-h-h! “

Monson jumped up. “The General! Something’s the matter,” he said.

“I don’t see how you can tell,” said Francis. “He’s always like that.”

“Wah! Ooo! Ooo! Chr—Ga-a-a!”

The General was snatching at his tongue. He disentangled something and flung it on to the ground with a plop. It was a beetle. It lay on its back, wriggling its legs. The General leapt upon it, still holding on to his tongue. His chair fell over. He kicked it viciously.

“Go! Ga! Why don’ you go ’n’ get . . . Chr . . .!”

He picked up his glass of port, took a sip, but his tongue hurt more than ever, so he flung the glass down in exasperation and stamped on the fragments. His tongue hung out. It was red and swollen.

Monson was sent in for some oil. Grant thought it was the best thing. Francis said: “Add a little vinegar and you’ll have a salad.” Carey suggested a bread poultice and went in to make it.

Francis said: “You better go to bed and try not to talk, General.”

The General said: “Wa . . . Ga . . . Ga . . . Chr . . . !”

“All these foul oaths,” said Francis, “the beetle thought it was a fire.”

Monson returned with the oil. They stood around fussing. A bandage was put on the tongue. Grant rode off for a doctor. Most of the servants suggested that the cobwebs of a large black spider would effect the speediest cure; but the General merely flung things at them. He was finally assisted to bed by a dozen men.

Francis filled his glass again, selected a cigar with care and went home.

II

Barwell was on the Maidan when Hastings and Marian rode by. It was very early in the morning. The sun was just peeping above the trees that lined Chowringhee. Pilgrims chanted as they tramped to the temple at Kalighat. Englishmen and women went by on horses.

Barwell was teaching his son to ride. The boy was six years old. He sat astride an over-fat pony and wore a malacca cane at his side, like a sword. He drew it, flashed it in front of him. His father stepped forward and corrected him.

Hastings reined in his horse. “If General Clavering sees you,” he said, “he’ll want you on his side.”

“Never you mind, Johnny,” said Marian, “You’re going to be a great fighter, aren’t you.”

“I wish Daddy had gone to America, ’cos then I could—oo!—have such fights with the Red Indians.”

“But the boys in America, Johnny darling, are wishing that their daddies were here to fight the real Indians.”

“Oh no,” he corrected, “these Indians don’t fight. They merely frighten each other so as they won’t fight. I’ve seen ’em in the bazaars. They shake their fists, then they run away.”

“Oh,” Marian laughed, “isn’t he an observant little fellow. Go on, Dick. Don’t let’s interrupt. I’m sure there’s a lot I could learn too. I’ll have to buy myself a sword. I shall need it when the two factions fight.”

Barwell went on. A crowd had begun to collect. They were pointing to the Governor General, others were whispering about her.

Barwell said: “Look, you charge like this.” He came galloping along, his heavy shoulders high, his short neck, lost from view. He swerved suddenly and pulled up.

The boy tried.

“Excellent,” said Marian.

A Chinaman grinned in the crowd. He was Barwell’s shoemaker. “Good molning!” he called. “Little boy. He learn plenty fine.”

A wrinkled old man with one eye and one tooth growled: “Gam! them ain’t nobody no more. Governor General, me foot!” He essayed a raspberry with his dry lips. He was unsuccessful. A half-caste youth remarked to his companion: “My, but she’s pretty. Real looker!” He shifted over to the other foot. “I wouldn’t mind giving up being Governor General if I got her.”

“No fear of either of that,” said the other.

Two Englishmen reined in their horses.

Barwell was teaching his boy how to lean over on one side. But they weren’t watching him.

“Soft, that’s his trouble,” said one of them, nodding towards Hastings. “Not a man of action. I hear the feller reads poetry.”

“Reads!—he writes the bloody stuff.”

“We have got a Governor General!”

Marian said: “Dick, are you teaching Charlotte to dance too? Well, send her to me. . . .”

“No, no. . .”

“Yes, yes,” she retorted. “Don’t you know that when Her Excellency gives an order, you are the only one in all India who cannot contradict her.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“To-morrow morning then—at ten-thirty.”

“It’s good of you, Marian.”

“Nonsense. As they say, ‘You can do the same for me some day.’ Yes, you teach me to dance and”—she laughed—“ask Mr. Francis to provide the tune.”

They rode off and waved their hands.

The old gentleman with one eye and one tooth, put his tongue between his Ups again and blew. This time he succeeded.

“Let’s pretend we didn’t hear it,” said Marian.

Chapter VIII

I

Francis peeled off his coat and tossed it into a chair. He fluffed his shirt out and undid the lace at his throat.

Noelle came to the bedroom door without any clothes on at all. Her body looked golden in that dim light.

“It’s hot as Satan’s armpit,” she said. “My! You do look fine, Philip.” She came up to him, put her arms about his neck and kissed him.

Francis kissed her and smiled. Bewitching. Quite an artist in bed. He gazed at the vacant look in her eyes, beneath the glitter of belladonna.

“Have a drink,” she said, pouring out some Madeira.

He sat down near the window, but was careful that he should not be seen through it. She smoothed his lap and sat upon it. Already little beads of perspiration were beginning to appear on her shoulders and her nose. The powder on her chin was getting caked.

He touched it with his finger. He enjoyed talking to her. She laughed so readily at everything.

“No gambling to-night?”

“I wanted to be with you.”

She gave him a hug. His wife, he reflected, would have said: “Oh, I suppose you couldn’t get a four to play, that’s why you are here.” A wiser woman would have thought it but said nothing.

“And do you,” asked Noelle, “like a good father, pay all your son’s debts, Philip?”

“Not on your life. There isn’t enough money for two.”

“But you’re always lucky. . . .”

“Not lucky, clever.”

“The boy might be clever too.”

“No, he takes after his mother unfortunately, so I’ve forbidden his gambling.”

“Forbidden it?”

“Yes. I said it was wrong, sinful. They are religious, both of them. So he obeyed me.”

“Ooo! And they would think us sinful too?”

“No, my pet. There’s a special line in the Bible exempting us.”

“In the Bible?”

“Yes. If you had one I’d show it.”

“Francois has one in French. I’ll fetch it.

“Never mind,” he said. “It’s too hot. It must be funny though,” he chuckled, “the Almighty saying ‘Voici la lumière!’ Somehow one does not expect Him to speak other languages.”

“Oh my, but yes. When I was a child God always spoke in French. I was in the French settlement at Chandemagore, you know. Mother used to read it to me. . . .”

“And you never found that clause about us?”

“No—there isn’t really?”

“I’ll write it in then, the next time I come.”

She tossed her head back and laughed. Her raised knees were very near his chin. He kissed them on the creases. They were moist and slightly salty. He kissed them again. Then he raised his head and sniffed the air. It was heavy with the scent of madonna lilies.

She pressed her cheek against his. He talked. His voice sounded so deep, rumbling in her ear, and as his jaw moved, the gentle prickliness of his shaven face tickled her.

He talked about a ballet Lady Anne Monson was arranging. “Can you dance?”

She shook her pretty head.

“Surely—in the chorus . . .”

“But Lady Anne wouldn’t—well . . .” her fingers traced the outline of his collar.

“Oh yes, Lady Anne will—if I tell her.”

“She never liked me, you know.”

“She will—from now on.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.” He kissed her slender throat and drew her closer.

“Come,” he said and slapped her playfully.

They had just risen when a sound was heard in the next room.

“What’s that?”

She listened.

“Nothing,” she said.

“There. Did you hear it? “

“One of the servants, perhaps . . . I’ll go and see. . . .”

“Don’t be a fool, you can’t go like that.”

She snatched at a wrap, he at his trousers.

“Do you think your husband’s back?”

“Oh, no.”

“He may be.”

“No. Francois went to Beliaghatta—it would take a long time. Besides we would hear his horse.”

“He may not have gone.”

She had drawn on her wrap.

“Wait a minute.” He seized her by the wrist. “Do you think he suspects? He is on Hastings’s staff, you know.”

She laughed. “One of his clerks only. What position . . .”

“Hastings might have put him up to it. You and I have been seen together, you know. . . .”

“I’ll go and see.”

As she approached the curtain, they heard cries on the other side of it. Three or four voices speaking Hindustani.

“That’s Munoo,” she whispered, “our chowkidar².”

Munoo said: “You stand on that side and you, Haleem, on that. When I say ‘Go’—with your sticks—wallop.”

She was frightened now. She pressed her knuckles to her teeth. “They mustn’t find you here. There. There.” She pointed at the almirah.

He opened it and stepped in. But it swayed and the wood creaked. He leapt out and made a dash for the window.

“Philip!” She gave a stifled scream.

The voices in the next room were nearer.

“They’ll search every corner,” he said. He stepped carefully over the waist-high Venetian frame of the window and stood on the sill outside. A hell of a jump.

Through the curtains the servants tore in, brandishing heavy sticks.

“Chaur! Chaur! There are thieves. Get ’em.”

“Idiots,” thought Francis.

“Don’t be a fool, Munoo,” said Noelle in a voice that strove to be calm. “I’m alone here. You woke me up with your silly noise.”

“The window,” said Haleem and dashed to it.

Munoo paused just to look at her. The wrap was off her shoulders.

Haleem swung his stick over his shoulders. Francis saw it descending and jumped.

“Down, you fellers, after him,” howled Haleem.

“Down, down,” said Munoo running too. “The bandits have come.”

Francis rubbed his knees. God! He could hardly move now. One of his legs . . . Bandits! Damnation! Perhaps if they had allowed Hastings to police this bloody city . . .

There was a scamper down the stairs. The servants were crying out, making enough noise to wake the dead. Indians poured into the compound from all sides. He tried to rise but could only just sit up. The palms of his hands were grazed.

They came upon him.

“Go away, you fools! Don’t you know I’m a Sahib.”

“It’s a Sahib! Francis Sahib,” said awed voices.

“Of course it’s Francis Sahib. Help me up, come on.”

Two or three men rushed forward and assisted him. Munoo, who had gone for some rope, came up too and began to bind him.

“What are you doing, you fool?” He flicked him across the ears.

“Don’t you hit me, Sahib.”

“I’ll break every bone in your body. Insolent swine! How dare you lay your hands on a Sahib.”

“Bind him up,” Munoo commanded.

The others regarded him with awe.

Munoo applied the rope himself. Francis tried to kick him, but he could not move his leg. “You bloody black . . .”

Munoo had him by the wrist. “Give me a hand, Haleem.”

Haleem came forward and gripped the other wrist.

“Hun’h! Our Sahib’s out. And you come sniffing around here.”

“You black bastards, I’ll . . .”

They tied his wrists together securely. The rope hurt. It was rough and prickly. His wrists seemed to hurt more now than his feet. He tried to swing his foot again, but it would not move.

Haleem dashed off to fetch more rope and they trussed him up and carried him into the hall where they held him prisoner. Noelle came down and pleaded with them, but they insisted on holding him until their master came home.

“You better go back to bed,” Francis said to her at last. “It’s no use . . . and perhaps it will be just as well if you are not with me when he comes.”

Grand, a weedy little man, was frightened when he saw Francis.

“What the hell,” Francis roared, “have your servants been up to? Tell ’em to unbind me.”

Grand’s tongue felt dry. He could hardly swallow. He pointed to the ropes. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Francis. Undo them,” he ordered in a weak voice.

“Sorry? You damn well ought to be. Do you realize that I’m a member of Council?”

“Yes, sir. Undo them quickly.”

“The Sahib was found in the Memsahib’s bedroom—and the Memsahib had no clothes on.”

Grand drew his fingers in and his knuckles hardened.

“Memsahib?”

“I saw with my own eyes.”

“The man’s a liar,” said Francis.

“Then why should the great Sahib have jumped from the window?”

“Jumped! Don’t be silly. Noelle and I were walking in the garden. Damn it, there’s no harm in talking. . . .”

Noelle stood in the doorway. She was fully clothed.

“What is all this,” she said. “I heard noises at night, but I was too frightened to come down. Oh, Mr. Francis! What are you doing here?”

“You come up, Sahib,” said Munoo, “and I will show you where the plaster has fallen from the lady’s window.”

She looked in bewilderment from Francis to her husband and then again at Francis.

Grand was unable to speak.

She went up to him at last and flung her arms around him and sobbed on his neck. “Oh, Francois! I am so sorry. I swear I’m terribly sorry. You won’t do anything, will you, Francois? I swear I’ll never again . . . will you, Francois? Eh, Francois?”

“I don’t know,” he said at last in a dun voice. “You shouldn’t ought to have slept with my wife, Mr. Francis. It isn’t right, you know—me in Government employ and everything.”

“Oh, shut up and tell them to untie me. Do you think it’s fun sitting here trussed up like this?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Francis, but you didn’t ought . . .”

“All right. All right! Tell ’em for God’s sake . . .”

“Undo the Sahib.”

Munoo stared at his master.

“Go on,” said Francis.

“You are going to let the Sahib go?”

“Undo it,” said Grand weakly.

“If it was my wife I’d have strapped the two of ’em together and whipped them through the bazaar—to the beat of the drum. All these shameless goings-on while the Sahib’s out.” He began to undo the ropes.

“I suppose it would have been all right,” Francis smiled, “if the master was at home when it happened.”

Munoo just glowered at him.

Francis rubbed his fingers along the red rope marks. They lifted him up into a chair.

“Fetch me a drink,” he commanded, “and send someone to get my coach. It’s waiting at the Baron’s stable.”

“Send someone,” Grand nodded to Munoo. The chowkidar looked at his master with fiery eyes and left the room.

Noelle fetched the drink. She looked at Francis sheepishly, then glanced at her husband, who just stood with rounded shoulders before them and stared at the floor.

II

Francis, it was said, had met with an accident while out riding. He would have to be in bed for a week or two.

The doctor said: “You jumped, didn’t you? I know the window—hell of a drop!”

“Yes,” said Francis. “How did you hear?”

“Servants talk, you know. You’ll be up soon. No bones broken, fortunately, only sprains.”

Monson came in scowling: “You’re a damn fool,” he said, “getting caught like that!”

“You tell me, O clever One,” Francis asked, “how you avoid it?”

“H’mm! It’s serious, you know.”

“So you got to hear that too.”

“Go on. Give up fooling, Francis, and let’s get down to brass tacks. You know what the General’s like.”

“I’m getting tired of the General. Stuffy old fool.”

“But, man, it’s vital that we should hang together. . .”

“No, I won’t make it . . . it’s too easy.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Francis laughed. “You wouldn’t understand my jests, Monson.”

“Well, what are you going to do about this?”

“I’ve done my share. It’s for you and the General to make the next move.”

Monson walked about the room.

“I don’t know,” he said, “there’ll be a hell of a row when the General gets to hear.”

“Can’t God strike him deaf for a few days.”

“The General . . .”

“Oh, damn the General . . .”

“I can’t understand you, Francis. You know what this place is. Small community—any excuse for scandal. It’ll be all over the place. Heaven knows what Hastings will do . . .”

“What can Hastings do?”

“I don’t know. Demand your resignation . . .”

“But the majority in Council . . .”

“That’s if the General stands by you.”

“Oh God, the bloody General again.”

“There you are . . .”

“I’m not sure Hastings didn’t arrange it all—my being caught, I mean.”

“Couldn’t you find anyone else to carry on with . . .?”

“Ye-es. Hastings’s wife, perhaps. I’m still trying to arrange that.”

“You are hopeless, Francis. And just when it is so essential for us to hang together.”

“No . . . I won’t make it. But don’t tempt me a third time, Monson, I warn you.”

“Damn it . . .”

“By all means. . . .”

“You . . . you . . .”

“Now you mustn’t get angry, Monson. You know it isn’t good for your digestion. All that wind inside. You’ll go up one day like a balloon.”

Monson snatched up his riding crop, as though he were going to use it, but he restrained himself.

“It’s serious—damned serious,” he said. “If the General gets up on his hind legs—well, you see where Hastings will be, don’t you?”

“We can still vote together, surely, in spite of what we think of each other.”

“Do you think the General will see it that way?”

“He’s a damned fool, I admit. But he might have just a glimmering of intelligence.”

“Well, you know how he is about morals. He may demand your resignation. Hastings and Barwell will support it for certain, then you wouldn’t stand a chance. I don’t know how the General and I by ourselves . . . but we’ll manage somehow. Yes, I think we can cope with Hastings.”

“Oh, go to hell,” said Francis. He began to whistle “Schlafe meine Prinzchen.”

III

Marian fumbled with the papers that lay before her. Accounts. Pages of accounts. Running a house was like running an empire. Too many servants. Two hundred and seventeen servants for just Warren and herself. True, it was Government House; but then the Claverings had a hundred and twenty, and Francis, she had heard, had close on three hundred. But, of course, he was all for display. . . . Ostentatious! Still, this blessed caste system assigned to each man one specific job, no more. One man to light your pipe, that’s all. Another to pour water into your basin. A platoon to look after the sanitary arrangements in the closets and carry off everything in covered baskets, from poles slung over the shoulder.

She picked up the papers and walked with them into the clerks’ room. Eight Babus sat at long tables. They had pored over her accounts already. It needed this big clerical staff to deal with the vast army of servants. Heavens, would a day ever come when two people, like herself and Warren, could manage on, say, thirty servants—or if that was expecting too much, say on fifty. But all these . . .

“Joton Babu,” she said.

A short fat man with oily hair stopped jigging his legs and rose.

“Madam.”

“These accounts . .

“Madam?”

“I don’t understand how you get . . .”

“Ah, there ye are!”

It was Barwell’s voice. She turned. He stood hot and breathless by the door.

“Hullo, Dick.”

“Ye come and put some sense into him, Marian. I can;t.”

“Sense? Into whom?”

She put the papers down and went out with him.

“Warren. They caught Francis up in Noelle Grand’s room.”

“Ooo!” she said and clapped her hands with delight.

“Yes, I thought ye’d feel like that.”

“When was this? What did they do?”

“Oh, a night or two ago.”

“Have you told Warren?”

“He knew already.”

“He never told me. Heavens! What a chance.”

“Exactly. Ye tell him. He won’t listen to me.”

“What do you mean—won’t listen?”

“I’ve been trying to talk to him all morning, Marian, but it’s no use. So I’ve come to ye.”

“I must be very stupid to-day, Dick, but I don’t understand you.”

“My dear Marian, this is your great chance . . .”

“Well, of course . . .”

“Well, ye tell Warren. He says he won’t use it.”

“Not use . . . He must be mad. Where is he?”

They walked towards the study.

“But a gift from God,” she went on. “Dropped straight into our laps from heaven.” She drew the curtain and walked in.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Warren?”

He looked at her without rising, then looked at Barwell.

“She’ll put some sense into ye, I hope.”

Hastings rose slowly and took her hands.

“Oh, Warren,” she said. Her face was flushed. “Our chance at last. We’ll drive Francis out of the country, and you’ll . . .”

He shook his head slowly.

“What do you mean—no?” Her lips remained parted. Her face was pale.

“The man’s mad. I told ye. All morning . . .”

“Don’t you see it, darling?” she said.

“I do,” he replied quietly, gazing down at her hands, “but . . .”

“Yes?”

“We can’t, Marian.”

“Can’t?” She whipped her hands out of his.

“My dear, don’t you see . . .”

“See? All I know is that for months he has insulted and baulked and humiliated us and now that Heaven has turned the tables for us . . .”

“Marian, Marian, listen . . .”

“But what is your reason? I don’t see how you can possibly have one.”

“My reason is simple. A man’s private life has nothing to do with his career. I’ve always maintained that—we have . . .”

“Yes, but we were different. We were innocent.”

“That doesn’t matter. You’ve got to be fair. We insisted . . .”

“You can’t apply that, you can’t.”

“Oh yes, Marian, we must. We wanted them to leave our private lives out of the reckoning . . .”

“And did they?”

“That is not the point.”

“It’s very much the point.”

“Anything in his public career, would have been different, but to use . . .”

She stamped her foot. “These people here have always laid such stress on morality. That is the standard by which they judged us—and condemned us.”

“Though ye were innocent,” said Barwell.

“Well, let the community take whatever steps it wishes.”

“But you are Governor General.”

“It’s no good, Marian. You can’t expect me to go to the General and Monson and say this fellow has done so and so, now what about it?”

“Why not?” She was furious.

“Well, it’s for the General . . .”

“Oh, I could shake you. You make me so . . .”

“Listen, Marian.”

“I don’t want to listen.”

“Don’t let’s quarrel, for Heaven’s sake.”

She turned away.

“Hasn’t Francis done enough without coming between ms?”

She swung round. “Exactly. Exactly. And haven’t you enough manliness in you to square your account with him . . .?”

“We must look at it fairly . . .”

“My God! How can you be so calm. Doesn’t your blood boil . . .”

“Personal spite,” he began, “must never be allowed to . . .”

She came forward with eyes ablaze and shook him.

“Marian!”

“Ye are in the wrong,” said Barwell.

“I don’t want to have any thing more from either of you,” he said with firmness.

“And I don’t want to have anything to say to you at all,” she replied, moving resolutely towards the door.

He squared his shoulders. “Please yourself,” he said. “A Governor General must be above spite and prejudice.”

“Ha!” She stopped and turned. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” It was a hysterical laugh. “Governor General! Devil of a lot of governor-generalling you’ve been doing.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“Come away, Dick, it’s no use. If he is so stupid”—She stopped and looked at Barwell—“We could go to the General for that matter.”

“I forbid it,” said Hastings.

“Forbid! You have no power to forbid anyone. You have no power to rule the country, don’t imagine you’re going to make up for it by ruling your wife.”

“Marian . . . Marian . . .”

“Well, here is your chance—to be Governor General at last! Can’t you see it?”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

“Come along, Dick,” she said.

Chapter IX

I

Barwell thought it would be better if he told the General. He did not wish Marian to be brought into it. Oddly enough, while all Calcutta knew, the General had not heard.

The old man’s face became very large and purple. “Curse!” he howled. “I told ’em. I told ’em. The whole bloody lot of you are bad. If you can’t damn well rely on your own side, then where are you, Barwell? Where are you?”

“Exactly.”

“Damn it! You haven’t any right to talk. Your side’s worse. Look at Hastings. He even went and married the girl.”

“Surely that makes it better, General.”

“Better! Better! Marry the bloody girl and expect our wives to receive her. My dear man, it makes it worse—much worse. But I thought Francis had more sense. Member of Council . . .”

He flung down his cheroot case, threw about little things that lay on his table. “All right! All right! You’ll have to leave it to me. God! Every bloody thing has to be left to me. I do all the damned work here. Messing about . . . All right. Good morning, Barwell.”

Barwell stared at him for a moment.

“I said ‘Good morning’ to you.”

“And good morning to ye.”

He went.

The General snatched up his hat and stamped about the veranda, snorting for his horse.

Francis was out when he arrived. But the General was not satisfied until he had stamped through all the rooms. He finally flung himself into a large chair and ordered a drink. “I’ll wait here,” he announced to the servants who were cowering in the doorways. “I said I’ll wait. Where’s the bloody drink? God! What’s the matter with you all to-day!”

“Huzoor!”

“With a master like that,” he grumbled, “I don’t suppose . . . Ah!” He poured it out himself. At intervals he consulted his watch, then he dozed. A low humming sound came from his chair.

“Hullo! Hullo!”

He awakened with a start.

“Ah, there you are, damn you. What’s all this I’m hearing . . . jumping out of windows? Thought you said you had a riding accident. . .”

“Well, it was a riding accident—in a manner of speaking.”

“I want none of your coarse jests, Francis. You listen to me.”

“Yes, General.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Do? What do you want me to do?”

“Resign, of course.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Silly!” he howled. “Do you realize whom you are talking to!”

“You listen to me for a change, Clavering. These accidents happen. I’m not belittling it. It was unfortunate to say the least, but if I resign—have you thought what will become of you two?”

“Are you implying, sir, that I can’t rule India?”

“You may be able to rule India, Clavering. But with someone else as Governor General and the balance so even.”

“Even!”

“Well, of course it’s even.”

“You don’t mean to tell me that young pup . . .”

“He has the casting vote, General, unless you have the majority with you. And I help—in my small way—to provide you with that majority. Remember that.”

“Yes. Yes. But, by God . . . !”

“Yes, General?”

“Yes. Yes. You suppose we couldn’t find someone else to fill your place?”

“Undoubtedly, General—when the directors have made the appointment—two years from now. Meanwhile . . .”

“Yes. H’m . . . But, by God! if you get up to any more tricks . . . Not that you are much good as it is, come to think of it.”

“Not good! You are being silly again, General. Why, Hastings would play ducks and drakes with everything if there weren’t three definite— solid—and emphatic votes against him. Three, General.”

“H’mm!”

“You know yourself that he began to advocate what he did not want so that we, by taking the opposite line, should do just what he wanted. And if it hadn’t been for me, you and Monson would have damned well fallen into the trap. It took me a long time, as it was, to explain it to you and make you see it.”

“Sort of damned trick. . . .”

“Absolutely, General. That’s the sort of cunning brute we have to deal with and so long as he is a menace, we must not—we dare not quarrel, we three.”

“Well, what about this great scheme you had to get the fellow out?”

“All in good time, General.”

“Good time. Damn it, months have gone by. Nothing’s happened yet and the fellow’s still there. You say ‘All in good time’ and go fornicating . . .”

“Your language, General, embarrasses me.”

“What’s wrong with that? It’s in the marriage service.”

“I know. Only mine isn’t.”

“I wish you’d be serious for a minute, Francis. Blast! Is this a circus! I asked ‘What about this plan of yours?’”

“I heard you, Clavering. Rome took at least a fortnight to build and since I told you . . . Well, my plans are maturing nicely. I think I’ll be ready for you one night next week.”

“Well, let me know and I’ll have you and Monson dine with me—and we can talk it over . . . see if it’s any good.”

“All right, General. But avoid sitting in the garden. I would not like any beetles to interrupt our discussions.”

“Keep to the point, damn you! All these bloody jests . . .”

He stamped out of the room.

II

Hastings sat at his desk. In the tray in front of him lay a large pile of papers. He would have to sit up late and finish them. There did not seem to be more than usual to-night; but somehow he wasn’t able to grasp the purport of most of them. Long-winded. Involved. That’s what they were. He must tell these up-country agents to be less wordy. Reports should be brief, to the point, so that one might see at a glance what the position was. He had not the vaguest idea . . . He began the report all over again. It was the third time. Oh yes, he could see it now. From Lucknow; he hadn’t realized that. Money still owing. Nothing they could do. . . . Hell of a big sum, too. That Nawab was a cunning swine. Transferred all his money to his mother and grandmother and blamed them for not paying his just debts . . . would the British dare take any action against women? Women . . . something would have to be done. . . . He wondered whether Marian and Barwell . . . It was four days since she had spoken to him or Barwell had come. . . . He began the report once again.

The two Princesses of Lucknow³ declared that . . . Marian might at least have come to him. He had not been feeling well, and now all this worry and quarrelling. Ridiculous, quarrelling over a man like Francis. It was Barwell put her up to it. Interfering. . . . He must be left to manage his affairs his own way. Damn Dick; damn everybody!

Was that a step outside? Yes. Nearer. He turned in his chair. A woman’s step. No. Gone. He took up his pen idly and toyed with the feather. Tapped it against his nose, then began to scribble. Elephants. Bulldogs, if you left out the trunk. Funny how the Greeks never had half-women, half-elephants—like Lady Anne Monson. Only half-men, half-horses.

Yes, that was a step at the door. He wouldn’t turn. He wouldn’t turn. He drew the report down over the elephants and the large-headed dogs. A heavy step. . . . Now on the carpet. “Have ye . . .” But it was only his fancy. “Excuse me, sir.” It was Elliott. He ought to have known Elliott’s step. He turned. “What is it?”

“The deputation, sir.”

“Deputation? Oh yes, I had forgotten.” Well, it was a change to have a deputation. They generally went direct to Francis. Perhaps the General had acted. Perhaps Marian and Barwell . . .

“Shall I show them in, sir?”

“What? Oh yes. In a minute. I’ll ring.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many are there?”

“Three, sir.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll see them. Send them in.”

“Mahommed Reza Khan,” his secretary announced, returning.

A man with a trim black beard, an eagle nose and sad eyes raised his palm to his forehead. He was dressed in a long black gown starred with gold.

“Sahib.”

They knew each other. Hastings had often seen him. He knew also the two others whose long names and titles Elliott was reading out. He motioned them to be seated.

Mahommed Reza Khan said: “I haf brought these my friends—my two these friends, because we have much that is grievous with us.” He said the last few words hurriedly, as though they were the only ones of which he was sure.

“We are suffering, sir—it is a very real distress. We have already petitioned you three times on such matters and I understand—we understand—from our learned friend Gulam Quahir that other communities of our peoples have also made petition to you—Hindus and what-nots. That sort of thing has been going on quite a long time and we pray Your Excellency Sahib will do your best for us.”

He went on to enumerate their grievances. The East India Company’s trade passes were being used by Englishmen for their own private gain. The Company was losing money—vast sums of money, which were finding their way into the pockets of greedy merchants. And what was more the Indians were being victimized—all except the few who, acting as middlemen, were able to stuff their own pockets also. Monopolies had been made of salt and rice—things on which the poor relied—and the same monopoly grants were sold over again and over again to different traders. Things had become so that the people were no longer able to trust the word of an Englishman.

Well, what could he do? He had written to the directors about it. Two years before he could hope for their answer.

Nothing new really. Up to the same tricks— unscrupulous trading, grab, sale of monopolies as in the time of Vansittart. He had protested bitterly then, but so long as the sons and nephews of directors profited, no action was taken. Not until Clive, emerging from retirement, returned to India was anything done. Clive dealt with them as they deserved. He drove them out of the country, the entire greedy horde of them. Only then did the suffering masses of India feel safe again. And Clive? It meant his doom. The men he had driven out banded together against him. Returning home, they vilified him in the Press, in speeches in public halls, in pamphlets with which they flooded the country. They raised such a popular uproar that Clive was placed on trial before the House of Commons. . . . Still, it was work that had to be done—no matter the consequences. Was he weak when compared with Clive? He wondered. Of course Clive had more power. But then Clive seized power. With this chance of driving out Francis he supposed Clive would . . . The means to an end. Nothing else mattered.

Possibly Marian was right—and Barwell. If he went to the General now—no, he couldn’t do it. Go, hat in hand, begging—acknowledging that the General held the balance . . . had the real power. . . . Yet, if it was true . . . He didn’t suppose the General would do anything anyway. . . . Yes, he was weak he supposed. And Marian was right. Oh God! What was the right thing to do? Use every unscrupulous means . . .?

The droning voice had ceased. The three men were standing before him.

“I thank you, Mahommed Reza Khan and you gentlemen,” he said, “for coming here and for presenting your case so clearly. I have been cognizant for some time of what has been happening, but we have difficulties, of some of which you may be aware, and at the earliest moment you may be sure I shall take such steps as will make impossible—impossible any recurrence of these untoward acts.”

He would have to do something.

The men salaamed and left. He sat down mechanically in his chair. The swift twilight of the East descended and vanished like a flicker while he still stared at the window. The curtains put up by her . . . a soft soothing green. He glanced down at the ivory pen-rack she had given him at Christmas. He thought he heard her singing. He listened. No. It was in his head, whirling round and round in his head, the words of “Das Veilchen,” which he had first heard her sing during that happy voyage out to India.

He got up and walked towards the door. After all it was what they had done to him—and with far less cause. To poor Marian too. . . . But two wrongs do not make a right. . . .

He opened the door. The need of India. These deputations. . . . Two wrongs do not . . . He stopped and slowly walked back. He slumped into his chair.

Tim came in with a wooden doll in his mouth. He set it at Hastings’s feet and looked at the chair in which Marian usually sat. It was their hour for playing together. But the last three nights he and Tim had played alone.

He stooped and picked up the doll.

III

Monson said: “Well, I don’t know.”

“Blast you!” thundered the General. “You never know anything. I said: ‘Francis is late.’ He is either late or he isn’t late. There’s no ‘don’t know’ about it.”

“Well, he said the afternoon.”

“This is the afternoon, isn’t it? What’s the matter with you to-day?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I mean I’m all right. Indigestion a bit worse, I’m afraid.”

“Well you shouldn’t eat so much . . . These damned young pups, no idea of time or anything.”

“I wonder what his plan is.”

“I don’t believe he has any . . . shilly-shallying this way. One would think we had nothing else to do out here in India, except wait for Francis.”

“Well, he said this time he would have Hastings out inside of six weeks.”

“I don’t believe that. We’ll have to do something ourselves. In the end I’ll have to think of something. It always falls on me. Curse. Nobody helps. . . . You just sit there saying ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’”

Monson eyed him cautiously.

“Well, damn it, why don’t you say something. Are you dumb, Monson?”

“I was wondering if—if Francis happens to be right and we do get this fellow out—I was wondering what would happen then?”

“Happen? Damn it, I’m senior here, aren’t I?”

“Oh yes, General; but Francis came out thinking he was to be Governor General.”

“At his age! God bless my soul. What is the country coming to—why he’s no older than Hastings himself.”

“But he’s an able fellow.”

“That’s why he’s on our side. God Almighty!” The General rose fuming.

“Now, General, he’ll be here at any minute . . .”

“I don’t care a hang about that.” He glanced again at the clock on the mantelpiece. “That fellow Francis couldn’t govern a country. . . . Good shot, good-looking and all that, I grant you, but . . . brr . . . brr . . .” He was becoming incoherent with rage.

“Quite!” said Monson. “Ssh! Here he is.”

Francis came in with a smile and a jaunty air. He waved his hand to them.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. And what’s the General upset about now?”

Monson looked from one to the other nervously. Oh God! If he could only keep the peace between them. “His gout is troubling him, I think,” he said.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Francis laughed.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” the General fumed.

Francis laughed again. “What with gout and Warren Hastings, you are having a trying time, General.”

“Is that all you’ve come to tell me?” he bellowed.

“My dear General,” Francis came up to him and slipped a finger through a buttonhole. “If you promise to be a good boy, General, I’ll let you into a secret.”

The General brushed him off angrily. “What is it?” he demanded.

“The ex-husband of the Governor General’s present wife—now tell me, General, what relation does that make the Baron von Imhoff to Warren Hastings?”

“Are we here to answer silly riddles?” he howled.

“Now, now, General. I told you, you must behave yourself. All this is very serious. The Baron is coming here.”

“Here?”

“Yes, here—to your house.”

“Damn it! I . . . !”

“And who do you think is coming with him?”

“Do you mean to tell me you have been inviting people to my house . . .?”

“They’ll be here in a few moments.”

“Who are they?”

“I’ll give you two guesses.”

“Stop all your silly fool acting, Francis, and tell us.”

“It’s our trump card, General.” His voice was an echo of the General’s. He came forward and nudged him.

“Christ damn it! Will you tell us who?”

A turbaned servant entered and salaamed. He announced—“The Baron von Imhoff and the Maharajah Nuncomar.”

“That damned scoundrel in my house. I won’t have it. I tell you, Francis . . .”

The Baron entered. He greeted them airily. “Hullo! Hullo! So all the conspirators are gathered together.”

“What do you want?” bellowed the General.

The Maharajah Nuncomar, who had just come in, glowered at him.

Francis stepped between them.

“Sit down, Maharajah Sahib and you Carl. Now . . . You sure, Clavering, we shan’t be disturbed?”

“Of course not. What d’you think, I keep spies in my house?”

“Good, now the Maharajah here . . .”

“Ah,” said a voice at the curtain, “I thought I heard callers. Come in, Anne . . .”

Mrs. Clavering led the way. The elephantine Lady Anne followed.

“How d’you do, Maharajah Sahib?”

“And the Baron too,” said Lady Anne. “How nice!”

“God! . . . Damn! . . .” The General began to bubble up.

“My dear Baron!” said Lady Anne. “And whom are you painting now? Still Maharajahs?”

“No,” said the Baron, smiling at the others, “my future.”

The General wagged his fists above his head, as though he were swinging heavy bells, to and fro, to and fro. “Curse!” he said, “Can’t you leave us alone for one minute.”

“But, my dear John . . .” his wife began.

“Blast it, this isn’t a social call. They’re here on business.”

“But that’s no reason why we should be rude to our guests. . . .”

“I’m not rude to them. I’m talking to you and to . . .”

“Well, we only came in to say how d’you do—just to be polite.”

“If you wish to be polite, for Heaven’s sake ask them to dinner”—he turned and looked distastefully at Nuncomar—“or anything else you like, but for God’s sake go now.”

“I suppose that applies to me too,” said Lady Anne rising.

“Of course it applies to you.”

“My dear General,” began Monson.

“You shut up. Don’t you come butting in. . . .”

“But my wife . . .”

“Well, you should keep her at home more. Damn it—all this polite nonsense. For Heaven’s sake let’s get down to business.”

“All right. All right,” said Mrs. Clavering, “we are going.”

“Good-bye,” snorted the General.

Nuncomar belched. Lady Anne, who was cross, said severely, “I beg your pardon.”

Nuncomar bowed. “Granted,” he replied.

The Baron seized Lady Anne’s fingers and kissed them. The General strode to the door and shut it sharply after the ladies.

“Now then . . .” began Francis.

“What I want to know,” interrupted the General, “is what the Maharajah has to do with it.”

“I don’t like Mr. Hastings,” said Nuncomar, shutting his eyes, “that is arl.”

“Nobody likes him,” boomed the General, “but I don’t see what that has to do with you.”

“Now then, Clavering,” said Francis firmly, “we want all the help we can get and I think you’d better hear what the Maharajah has to say first. So please don’t interrupt. Now, Maharajah.”

Nuncomar cleared his throat and glanced round the room. “Well, gentlemen . . .”

“Just a minute,” Francis interrupted, “first I’d like to explain—I’ve told Clavering already. It’s no good just out-voting Hastings. We don’t seem to get anywhere. Block him, yes—but he’s still there. The fellow’s a limpet and this time we intend to shift him—with the Maharajah’s help we shall drive him right out of the country.”

“But as the Maharajah is not on the Council,” observed the General, “I can’t for the life of me see how he’s going to help.”

“I’ve got a charge to make,” said Nuncomar.

“A charge?” echoed Monson.

“Against the Governor General,” said Nuncomar.

“Good God!” The General leaned forward in his chair. “Has he been doing anything?”

“I could arrange for witnesses,” said Nuncomar.

“That is not the point,” declared the General.

“I asked—well, what is the charge?”

Nuncomar scowled. He was uneasy, irritated. He drew his flabby mass into a semblance of solidity. “Gentlemen, I am here to help, if you do not want . . .” He rose.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Clavering.” Francis took Nuncomar by the shoulders. “Sit down, Nuncomar.”

“Why can’t we manage this ourselves,” grumbled the General, “bringing in Indians. . . .”

“Go on, Nuncomar,” said Francis.

Nuncomar stared sullenly, with his arms folded.

“Well?” said Monson.

“The idea is,” said Francis, “that Nuncomar should come before the Council and lay his charge before us—for us to deal with. They are damnable charges, gentlemen—as you will hear. Then we, by a majority, shall condemn Hastings for what he has done. We shall be in a position at last, in view of these charges—which can be proved, remember—to demand his resignation. And that, gentlemen, will be the end of Hastings.”

Monson passed his hand over his chin. His eyes were round and large. “Really!” he said. He glanced with a look of pleased expectancy at the General.

“What is it you accuse Hastings of?” growled the General.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Nuncomar, belching.

“Good God!” exploded the General, “I can’t have you doing that here—in front of ladies and everything.”

“Indigestion, General,” explained Francis.

“Well, so has Monson. But he doesn’t go belching . . .”

“Ah!” replied Francis, “but doesn’t he wish he could! Monson would be much better, I assure you, General, if only he could do that too.”

“Making noises like sea-lions all round us,” growled the General.

Nuncomar went on: “The trouble, gentlemen, is this. In previous times I have had great power here in Bengal. But one by one I have been deprived of all my influence and authority. To-day I am nothing—nothing at arl.”

“But you can’t bring that as an accusation . . .”

“My charge is this—Mr. Hastings only deprived me of my power in order to give my high offices to those who were prepared to pay him for it.”

“Pay him?”

“Bribe him if you like, General,” Francis explained.

“Good Heavens! I wouldn’t . . . Do you realize this is a serious charge, Nuncomar, to bring against an Englishman—and the Governor General at that.”

“I told you,” said Francis.

Nuncomar shrugged his shoulders. “All I need say, gentlemen, is I can prove it.”

“Prove it?”

“Yes, General Sahib. Mr. Hastings first accepted a bribe from Mutiny Begum, widow of Mir Jaffar, whom Clive Sahib placed on the throne after the Battle of Plassey.”

“Yes, yes.”

“She paid to Mr. Hastings two—er—three lakhs of rupees, in order that she may be appointed Regent during childhood of the new Nawab.”

“Is she prepared to come and give evidence?” demanded the General.

“And Mr. Hastings Sahib also accepted a bribe from me.”

“From you? But he has given you nothing.”

“Exactly. That was my trap, Sahib. I did it to trap him. I send him the money in the name of my son—and it is my son he appoints to the Diwani.”

“But that appointment was made on the order of the East India Company directors—I saw the order.”

“Er—well, he took money from me all the same. I can prove it.”

“You can prove you bribed the Governor General?”

“Yes, Sahib. I can bring as many witnesses as you like.”

Francis nodded. “You can rely on them, I take it?”

“Absolutely.” Nuncomar stroked his stomach. “One of them is my own uncle—he owes me money. Many of the others are members of my own family. And I can bring witnesses from Government office . . .”

“Government office?”

“Yes, General Sahib. A friend of mine is clerk to the husband of that pretty lady, Noelle Grand—oof! She is so pretty.”

The General turned and glowered at Francis.

“I think we’ll leave that witness out,” said Francis.

“But he’s a good friend. . . .”

“You’d better get somebody else,” said Francis.

“Mr. Francis,” the Baron explained, “has had a little—er—accident with the husband of the oof! so pretty lady.”

“Oh ho!” said Nuncomar. “I had not heard.”

“Damned young fellows getting into trouble,” grumbled the General; “have you heard whether the husband’s going to do anything?”

“Do anything?” Francis looked surprised. “I offered to meet him any time and anywhere he pleases.”

“That would be murder,” declared the General. “I don’t suppose the fellow’s ever held a gun—any more than Hastings has.”

“Anyway,” said Francis, “let’s forget about that. Nuncomar has all the evidence we require—enough to damn Hastings and drive him out of office.”

“Good,” said Monson, glancing at the General.

Francis glanced at the General too. “And we’ll put him and his wife,” he added, “into the next ship for England and send them packing out of the country.”

“Always said they ought to be shipped home,” agreed the General.

The Baron looked uneasy. “You are not going to send away my Marian?”

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the General. “But she’s his wife—she’s no longer married to you. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”

The Baron rose and looked about him with a troubled frown. “Whatever I have against Hastings, gentlemen—and quite frankly, I don’t think he has done enough for me in the circumstances . . .”

“Oh, sit down, Carl,” said Francis. “When Hastings’s gone, I’ll get you to paint a picture of the new Governor General and all my Council.”

“Your what?” roared the General, “If you imagine, Francis, that you are to be the next Governor General . . “

“I have no wish to discuss that with you.” Francis turned to Nuncomar.

“Damn it, sir . . .”

“One tiring at a time, Clavering—one thing at a time,” Francis insisted. “I take it we are all agreed that Hastings must go.”

“Of course,” said Monson, glancing cautiously at the General.

“Very well, then,” said Francis. “Let’s get that done. We’ll cross the next bridge when we come to it.”

“But, God damn it! if Hastings goes and you imagine . . .”

“Maharajah Nuncomar,” said Francis, “it was kind of you to come. Now how many weeks do you think you will require for the preparation of the evidence?”

“Oh, one or two—three at the most.” The fat Indian face spread into an anticipatory smile.

“Very well then,” said Francis, “arrange it. Although we form the majority we have to be thorough—-for the records, you know.”

“If you think, Francis . . .” the General began.

“I am at your service, gentlemen,” said Nuncomar rising.

“H’mm!” said the General, “H’mm!” and he began walking about the room.

“Good-bye!” said the Baron rising. “And that’s that!”

“Yes, we’ll be rid of Hastings in no time.” Monson, as he spoke, followed the General about the room with his eyes.

“H’mm!” repeated the General ominously.

“Look. Look at the old son of a gun,” whispered the Baron. “He’s walking in his sleep.”

The General stopped and glared at them.

“Don’t like it,” he announced.

“And what, may I ask, don’t you like, General?” Francis’s words were cold and precise.

“All this—after all he’s an Englishman. Bringing in Indians . . .”

“Well, have you any evidence yourself, Clavering?”

“No! No! I didn’t say I have. . . .”

“Very well, then. Nuncomar happens to have enough for everybody.”

“My dear General,” began the Baron.

“Well, we want to get rid of Hastings, observed Monson timidly—“and we get rid of him, don’t we?”

“I don’t like it all the same,” said the General, He was quiet in his manner, nonplussed.

“It will be arl right, gentlemen,” said Nuncomar, raising his hand dramatically. “Arl right. I shall come before you in Council and I shall say: ‘I have a grave and serious charge, to make against our Governor General, Mr. Warren Hastings. . . .’”

“Good! Good!” Francis slapped him heartily on his immense, flabby back. “Good. Get it all ready. Now run along.”

The General muttered something. The words “don’t like” were barely audible.

Chapter X

I

They met at meals and in company. They talked, but there seemed to be a curtain between them. Again and again he was on the verge of saying, “What is all this, Marian? Why should we be kept apart. . . .” But he had not the energy, nor the desire to go over all that wearying ground again. She was still cross or she would have spoken. Meanwhile, things had been happening that left him with no time for reproaches. “If you had . . . then this wouldn’t . . .”

He had heard of Nuncomar’s plot. Elliott had brought him the news. It appeared that Grand, Noelle’s husband, had got wind of it somehow. Of course, he would. It was serious, undoubtedly. Francis and the other two would settle the matter out of hand at a meeting of the Council, condemn him and bring to a close the career that had begun with such high hopes—a close darkened by disgrace and disaster.

How could he combat it?

Denials would not be enough. They would neither be heeded nor accepted. They would be brushed aside, lost and ignored in the general denunciation that, when it got known outside the Council, would swell to a public clamour. A few trumped-up accusations, a horde of witnesses paid to lie foully, and three men seated in judgment with their decisions already made. . . . What chance had he against them? None. . . . None. . . .

He went to see Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice. They had been at school together at Westminster and had picked up again the threads of their boyish acquaintanceship on finding their lives so closely placed in India.

Impey stroked his chin and pushed the port across the table.

“I don’t see how you can appeal from the Council to the Courts,” he said. “It would be like a trial in Parliament—out of the scope of the courts of law.”

Hastings stared at the decanter in silence.

“Of course,” said Impey, “we should have hanged Nuncomar long ago. That forgery and swindle he put through in Bankipore, you remember? He has robbed widows of small sums in his own village. Despicable! Every rupee he has represents some poor wretched woman’s tears and agony.”

“Yes,” said Hastings. “And blood. How many suicides were there? And that poison plot at Patna, you remember. He removed three brothers to come into that inheritance.” He walked to the window and came slowly back.

“Leniency was a mistake, unquestionably.”

“Yes,” said Hastings, “But when Vansittart was Governor he felt—it was before your time. . . .”

“I heard. It was wasted on Nuncomar. Kindness here passes for weakness. . . .”

“I’m afraid so,” said Hastings. “Reluctantly, I am forced to that conclusion.”

“If a man is reasonable, if he has the will to understand and appreciate your point of view, then leniency . . .”

“Exactly,” said Hastings, “but you can’t tell until you try. I hate high-handed action, assuming the worst in the other man without giving him a chance. But,” he added, in a lower voice, “we have given Nuncomar more than one chance . . .”

Impey’s eyes dilated. He leaned across the table and gripped his glass. “I’ve got it,” he said. “I’ve got it.”

Hastings leaned forward and listened. His face was flushed. “We have given him every chance,” he said at last, “but he has continued to he and plot and kill. It is time the law was put into operation.”

Impey nodded. “What a blow it will be for Francis and the others. What a blow!” In relief, he flung himself back in his chair and laughed.

But Hastings’s eyes were narrowed, his mouth was set, and the high dome of his head gleamed in the soft candle-light.

II

He decided not to do anything till the hour arrived—-just in case their information had been incorrect. Nuncomar, he had heard, was to appear at the next meeting of the Council—but not a hint of it had been given in the agenda. He was prepared, however, for the emergency.

When he took the chair for the meeting he found only Francis and Clavering in their places. Barwell arrived a second later and mumbled his apologies. Then with slow, assisted steps and much groaning, Monson, muffled up to the chin, was led to his chair by two attendants. A third followed with a hot brick, that he placed against Monson’s stomach. A glass and a bottle of medicine were set upon the table. Monson’s face was drawn, his eyes were sunken, he coughed uncontrollably.

They proceeded with the ordinary Council business, Monson taking no part in it, save to vote against Hastings. Barwell, as automatically, though they had scarcely spoken in the preceding weeks, voted with Hastings.

They discussed the money due from the Nawab of Oudh. A large sum. Over a million pounds! Francis declared that as the money had been owing for far too long, a stronger British agent should be sent to Lucknow to extort it, if need be, by a show of violence. The General supported this eagerly. Monson groaned his assent and tried, without success, to belch. Hastings said: “Persuasion has failed. I agree that other measures must be applied.”

“Good!” said Francis. “We were beginning to wonder if you had some private arrangement with the Nawab. . . .”

“Private arrangement?” Hastings interrupted.

“It seems,” observed Francis, turning to Clavering and the muffled figure of Monson, “that the Governor General has not been above coming to a private understanding with some of the higher-placed Indians, which may, of course, explain the strange sentiments of friendship he cherishes for them.”

Hastings rose, pale and resolute. He raised his hand. But Francis went on relentlessly.

“I regret to inform the Council that charges—serious charges have been made against the Governor General, which the Council is in duty bound to examine. . . .”

Hastings brought his hand down on the table. The glass and the bottle shivered. Monson opened one eye and groaned again.

“Why was not notice given . . .?” Hastings began.

“If the Governor General, who seems so disconcerted, so ill at ease, feels that notice, however duly given, can minimize in any degree the crimes of which he stands accused . . .”

Hastings gripped the table. Above all else he must be calm. He must not lose his temper.

“. . . The man who makes these charges—no less a person than the Maharajah Nuncomar—is here. I have taken the precaution of inviting him here—in fairness to our Governor General, so that the accusations should not be furtive, behind-the-scene whispers, but brought here, as they should be, out into the full light of our enquiry, with accuser confronting accused. . . . Have I the Council’s permission to bring in the Maharajah?”

“Yes,” roared the General, flashing fire from his eyes.

Monson groaned in agreement. Flies were settling on him. He was too feeble to brush them away.

With a challenging smile Francis glanced at Hastings. Slowly the Governor General nodded his assent.

Both Francis and the General signalled to the attendants to bring in the Maharajah.

As Nuncomar entered, with a malicious, self-satisfied grin upon his face, Francis and the General rose with a studied air of deference and bowed him to a chair.

Nuncomar sat and folded his hands over his immense stomach. His eyes he kept fixed on Hastings, as though unable to withdraw them, and the grin remained on his lips.

“I understand, Maharajah Sahib, that you have a serious charge to lay before this Council.” Francis’s voice was louder than usual. He laid stress on almost every syllable.

Nuncomar half bowed from his chair.

“Will you please tell us, Maharajah Sahib, what these charges are and, remember, we cannot allow charges to come before us that are not substantiated.”

“They are arl—arl subs . . .” He rose, the better to pronounce the word—“they are arl what I can prove. Arl my witnesses I have here in the front of the Government House.”

“Will you make your charges.”

“I accuse Warren Hastings, the Governor General of India, with bribery and corruption. Only those who pay him are promoted. Those who refuse to pay him or have not the money to do so soon find themselves without employment. On one excuse or another they are driven out of their work. Since talking to you, Francis Sahib and the General Sahib, I have found that even from men of small means, like servants and under-clerks he has taken money. I have got my witnesses—some of them were servants here in Government House who were dismissed. . . .”

At the gates of Government House, Hastings could imagine the assembled group of witnesses, with an ever-growing throng of the curious about them, enquiring what was afoot. “Against the Governor General Sahib . . . Oh ho! . . . And Nuncomar! Baba! Who would have thought it!”

Hastings rose. His chin was high. He raised his arm while Nuncomar was still talking, and pointing it severely at the man said: “I will not suffer this scoundrel. . . .”

“You had better listen to him,” said Francis, “it is only fair to yourself that you should do so. You will have the opportunity of replying later and of refuting the charges—if that is possible.”

“No,” said Hastings, “I will not tolerate this farce. If Nuncomar had any but frivolous accusations . . .”

“Frivolous!” Francis caught up the word.

“. . . he would have brought them before the courts instead of bringing them before an assembly that is already divided against me. I suspend this meeting of the Council. . . .”

Francis rose and confronted him. “We insist on examining him here. . . .”

“As Governor General, I have a right to suspend this assembly. . .”

“And we as the majority reassemble it. You won’t get out of it that way, Hastings. You may withdraw if you please, but I should have thought, as your honour is at stake . . .”

Hastings picked up the bell and rang it. Three officers of the law entered. He motioned them towards Nuncomar and they took up their places beside him.

“Nuncomar, there have been outstanding against you a great many charges. You have cheated and lied and robbed your people. Some of them have even lost their lives. We have given you every opportunity to reform and mend your ways, but, shorn of the power you once possessed to work your wicked will, you are desirous now by these false and malicious accusations to win yourself into favour again. But I am as resolved that whatever happens Nuncomar will never again be in a position to rob and cheat and crush the poor people of this land. The law has been set in motion against you, Nuncomar. Justice must take its course.”

The three officers of the law seized Nuncomar.

“You must not touch me.” He shrank from them. “These low-caste men. They will pollute me with their touch.”

“They are men of your own caste, Nuncomar,” said Hastings. “I saw to that specially. It is they who, by your foul record, may be polluted.”

“I protest, I most emphatically protest,” said Francis, “the Council will not allow . . .”

Hastings walked to the door.

“Elliott,” he called, “will you ask Sir Elijah to be so good as to come in.”

Francis and the General exchanged quick glances.

“So that is your game,” said Francis, “old school-friends together.”

The General rose with difficulty. “Curse it,” he roared, “is this Council in authority or isn’t it?”

“It is not above the law,” said Sir Elijah entering. “Nothing is above the law except the King.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” thundered the General, “that as representatives of Parliament. . .”

Sir Elijah nodded. “Yes, General Clavering. Every Member of Parliament is always answerable to the law. If you committed a felony . . .”

“Damn it, sir. I’m Commander-in-Chief.”

“So I’ve heard, General. But only one man here represents the King—and he is the Governor General during the time he is in office.”

“And we as the majority demand his resignation,” said Francis.

Monson shifted in his chair and groaned assent.

“If you could do that, you, as the majority,” said Hastings, “would have done so long ago.”

At a signal the officers of the law moved Nuncomar towards the door.

“Do not touch me. I am coming.” He turned to Hastings. “We shall meet again, Sahib.”

“I do not think so,” said Hastings.

III

After Sir Elijah left, Hastings turned to the Council.

“As for you, gentlemen, the foul depth to which you have sunk in conspiring against me with the worst villain in all India is beneath contempt. You knew the vile record of Nuncomar, yet you had the baseness to plot and whisper with him behind closed doors, merely to indulge a malicious personal grudge, born of nothing but your jealousies. It is unworthy, gentlemen, unworthy. To us, as a Council has been entrusted the soul of a nation, of in fact, a vast congeries of peoples destined, we hope, to become some day a great nation and a vital part of our own Empire; yet you can think of nothing but your own pettiness and your miserable little spites. We have a sacred trust, gentlemen, as guardians of this great heritage.”

He looked at them. Francis was pensive, one eye was cocked, as was his way in deep thought. His brain was plotting anew no doubt. The General studied him, as though waiting for a sign as to their next move. Monson half lay across the table. His face was distorted in his agony.

Hastings went on: “With so much work in hand, with so much that we could have accomplished together, you have sought only to engage in a stubborn vendetta. You have even dragged a sick man out of his bed—and for what? Not for anything noble or heroic; but merely to bring about my humiliation. It is despicable, gentlemen.

“The General, I believe, to be a man of honest and sincere purpose, though with a stubbornness and reactionary zeal that surpass belief. It is when I come to Francis that every instinct in me withdraws the prefix ‘Mr.’ from his name. You have acted throughout with baseness and deceit and cunning—and you alone of them all had the intelligence and ability to achieve so much with me, if you but had the will. . . .”

Francis sprang up and shot his jaw forward savagely.

“Take that back, Hastings, or . . .”

“I will take nothing back,” said Hastings.

“Then you must answer for it.” He turned to Clavering. “Will you be my second?”

The General glanced at Hastings, then nodded slowly.

Barwell rose aghast. “Ye can’t . . .” He turned to Hastings. “Warren, ye mustn’t . . .”

Then again to Francis. “Ye are not going to fight, man?”

Francis swung out of his chair. Barwell rushed up to him.

“It will be murder. Ye cannot fight him. . . .”

Francis bit his lip. “I give you still another chance, Hastings, to take back what you said’.”

They all looked at Hastings, except Monson, who seemed past caring what happened.

But Hastings remained silent, staring only at the table in front of him.

The General put his hand on Francis’s shoulder. “You can’t go on with this,” he said. “You know you are deadly with a gun, and Hastings . . .”

“Do you take it back, Hastings?” Francis persisted.

“No.” The reply was very quiet.

Francis raised a menacing finger. “I will meet you now—out there in the garden.” He turned to an attendant. “Bring in a case of pistols,” he commanded.

Barwell rushed from one to the other like a frightened hen. “Warren, ye mustn’t. Ye mustn’t, ye fool, Francis. Stop ’em, General. Stop ’em.”

Hastings still stared at the table. Barwell came up to him. “He’ll kill ye. D’ye know that? Kill ye.”

Hastings rose slowly. “That, at least, is one way out. We could not go on like this—-outvoted, defeated, humiliated, for ever.”

The case of pistols was brought in.

“Will you be my second, Dick?”

“No,” said Barwell. “No. I will not let ye fight.”

Francis opened the case and fingered the pistols.

“Are you ready, Hastings?”

“Ye realize what ye are doing?”

“I gave him every chance. You don’t imagine I’m going to put up with his insults.”

“Ye started ’em. Do ye know that?”

“Well, he had his remedy.”

“And exactly the same thing that would have come to—ye realize that?”

Monson clasped his head with one hand and signed agitatedly to the attendants: “Gentlemen,” he said, as he strove to rise, “I don’t think I can be of any further service, so may I have your permission to return to my bed?”

“Yes,” roared the General. “Go back to your bed. Damned nice of you to come.”

“Didn’t help much,” growled Francis, “but nice of you all the same.” He turned to Hastings. “I’m ready.”

Examining his pistol, he walked down the few stone steps that led from the Council room to the garden at the back. Barwell dashed desperately after him. He talked wildly. “Where’s Sir Elijah . . .?” Then, dashing back, “I’m going to call Marian. . . “

Hastings put his hand gently on Barwell’s arm. “If anything happens, Dick, just tell Marian this . . .”

“Let me call her. Ye can’t fight without seeing her.”

“There isn’t time.”

“Ye’ll wait, Francis?”

“Yes,” he grunted.

“No,” said Hastings. “No! Just tell her this—my thoughts were with her—always—and”—his voice was all but inaudible—“I send my love.”

The General indicated with his foot where the two men were to stand. They approached and with one final flash of defiance, turned their backs. Francis chuckled softly. Hastings’s mouth was tight-pressed and the glare of the sun lit the high dome of his forehead.

The General counted the paces. The men turned. Their pistols were raised. Barwell bit his finger, his eyes dilated with horror. The General gave the order to fire.

Two shots rang out, first one—which found its mark, then the other, which inevitably went wide. The two spectators rushed towards the fallen man.

IV

Marian sat in her boudoir, her head bowed over her work. Tim sat a few yards away, his large brown shaggy head on his paws. From time to time he glanced up at her and blinked his eyes, satisfied that all was well with the world.

She tapped her lower lip thoughtfully with her needle as she surveyed the design she was working out in silk for a chair-cover. It was a large chair-cover, presumably for the chair that stood in Warren Hastings’s study by the window, the chair in which he was accustomed to sit at his ease when the day’s work was done. The existing cover was very little worn. She had made that too; but this was to replace it.

The design, nearly complete now, showed a secretary-bird leading a pack of jackals; the secretary-bird looked suspiciously like General Clavering; and the jackals were in military formation, armed not with flintlocks but with brooms, engaged in the diverting art of cleansing the streets of Calcutta to his barked orders. The secretary-bird wore many medals and decorations and was attended presumably by poor old Monson, who looked very sick indeed here. She was now engaged upon two timid and raw recruits who had come to enlist in the General’s ranks. One was thick-necked and had the nose of Barwell. The other, shy and feminine, was intended apparently to be herself.

She squared her shoulders—they ached a little—and, raising her head, laughed. Tim looked up. He thought he ought to join in the fun too. He ambled up wagging his tail and looked into her face, as though he expected to find some explanation there of her merriment.

“Here, Tim—look!” She held out the frame to him.

Tim put out a long red tongue and applied it to her work.

“Nooo!” She turned his face gently away and felt his warm moist tongue upon her hand.

“So you approve, Tim?”

He blinked his eyes.

“Do you think he will . . .?”

What was that? A shot . . . A second shot. She leapt from her chair and rushed out. From the direction of the Council room? Yes, there was a meeting of the Council, Elliott had told her.

Through the polished, slippery corridors she hurried. The room strangely enough was empty. There were voices in the garden. The General’s . . .

She dashed to the window. She saw a figure lying upon the parched grass, others kneeling beside it. Suddenly she became cold. She could hardly see. She rushed as in a daze and almost tumbled down the stone steps.

“What has happened? What has happened? Warren, what have they done?”

He gripped her arm. She glanced up at his face and then looked down again at the figure upon the grass.

Francis raised himself on one arm and narrowed one eye. “I’ll get you yet, you swine.”

She flung her arms about Hastings. “My darling. You are safe?”

“Safe,” echoed Francis. “ Only for a time, damn him. God, how this shoulder hurts. How in hell he got in first—must have cheated . . . the swine!”

Some bearers arrived with a stretcher. The General signalled to them. Francis shut his eyes. His face was slightly contorted. “Careful, damn you,” he cried. “I haven’t done with you yet, Hastings. By God, no!”

Marian had his hand in hers. “I wish you had killed him,” she said. “I wish to God you had killed him. You are not hurt, my dear?”

He shook his head and looked at her. Vaguely they were aware that the stretcher was being borne away, that Francis was snarling at the bearers and the General thundering at them. Barwell stood a little distance away, watching Hastings and Marian.

“I am sorry,” she said, “terribly sorry. You were right. You see things much more clearly. It would have made no difference—none at all.”

“No,” he said. “Nothing would have made any difference.”

“And to think that that toad came between ye.” Barwell joined them.

“The General,” she went on, “would have been patronizing in his pompous way. ‘Poh! Poh!’ he would have puffed and Monson would have looked at him with sheep’s eyes. The General would have gone into your own past—unpleasantly—and when he saw Francis, he would have been talked completely round—just as he was after all his blustering to Dick. Yes, I’m glad Dick took on the dirty work alone. . . .”

“I shouldn’t have let you, Dick.”

“Ye didn’t.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Dick isn’t Governor General.”

“Nor am I—really. If only, Dick—-either way. It would have been something decisive, instead of going on like this—indefinitely.”

“But, my sweet,” she arranged the lace at his throat with her little fingers—“you did not want to die and leave your Marian all alone.”

“Ye had amazing luck, ye know, Warren. Amazing.”

“I know.”

“And so had Francis,” she said, “always had—he didn’t even break a leg jumping out of Noelle’s window. I must let him come and visit me. . . .’

Hastings scowled at the jest.

“. . . and I’ll take good care to remove the ledge from the outer side. . . .”

“You mustn’t jest about things like that, darling.”

“But it is true.”

“What is true?”

“He wanted to come, you know.”

“Who wanted . . .?”

“Francis, of course.”

“To your room?”

“Yes. He . . .”

“By Heaven! . . .”

“Now, now. You must always remain calm.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You had enough to worry you and I thought I could deal with it myself. I did, you know.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“He tried through Carl. Oh, lots of times. Let me see, once when . . .”

“My God! I wish I had known this.” Hastings was worked up into a fury.

“I wish I had said yes.”

“You wish?”

“Yes. Then all your troubles would have been at an end.”

He gripped her by the shoulders.

“You mustn’t talk like that.”

“What did he say to ye?” asked Barwell.

“Offered me terms. Said ‘I’ll vote with Hastings if you say yes.’ And I nearly did once . . . when you weren’t speaking to me . . . then I remembered that it was really my fault.”

“I’ll deal with him now,” said Warren. He strode away, taking immense strides.

Barwell went after him. “Take care, Warren. Ye had amazing luck.”

“I don’t care,” he replied.

On the steps he met Elliott.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but . . .”

“Is he dead?” asked Marian. “That’s all we want to know.”

Hastings reproved her with a glance.

“No, Your Excellency. It was only a shoulder wound. But Colonel Monson . . .”

“Worse?” asked Hastings.

“He took a turn for the worse, sir . . .”

“He shouldn’t have been dragged out of bed like that. Is Dr. Hogarth with him and Dr. Green . . .?”

“I regret to say, Your Excellency, that Colonel Monson died a few minutes ago.”

A sudden silence descended.

“I am sorry,” said Hastings.

“So am I,” said Marian, “very sorry. I wish to God”—she shut her eyes—“it had been the other one.”

Chapter XI

I

Hastings was master at last. The battles continued at every meeting of the Council.

The General thumped the table, half-rose from his chair, puffed, sweated, pulled faces and used the name of the Lord with profuse recklessness. Francis was bitter, cynical, cruel in his jests. Only by the exercise of his casting vote was Hastings able to enforce his will.

“Now don’t you, Dick,” said Marian, slipping an affectionate arm through Barwell’s, “go and die on us—just when things are going so nicely.”

“Not on your life, I promise ye. Not on your life.”

“Mind you say your prayers and go to church and everything, so as to be on the right side with the angels.”

“I will, Marian. Morning and evening service, Sundays.”

“At last.” She clapped her hands together.

“At last!”

“Now, Dick,” said Hastings, “we can get some work done. There’s three years of arrears to catch up.”

He established an Indian school in Calcutta for instruction in the vernacular. The General said: “Why the hell they aren’t taught to speak English—misquote Shakespeare and everything.”

“I rather think, General, you’d misquote Shakespeare yourself.”

“I don’t, sir. I don’t quote Shakespeare at all. But these damned Indians. . . .”

“But you would, General, if you tried.”

“Have you considered the expense?” said Francis, “frittering away the directors’ money. And that vast sum still owing from the Nawab of Oudh.”

“I don’t believe it will ever get paid,” said the General. “I’d shoot the feller. That would show ’em.”

“I must remember that, General.” Hastings was in a much better humour now. “You make your protests, you two. Barwell will make a note of them. Dick, it will save time if in the minutes you just bracket the names of Philip Francis and General Clavering and write ‘For comments see earlier entries of preceding three years.’”

“I don’t think that’s funny, sir,” the General boomed.

“It’s tragic,” said Hastings, “when I realize the time wasted and the opportunities lost.”

“I’ve decided to resign,” said Francis. “I’m damned if I’m going to stay on when I’m no longer an effective member of the Council.”

“Have you decided or are you going to?”

“I have decided, sir. I resign now. I’m not a limpet—though the Governor General will find it a little difficult to understand that.”

“Make a note of it, Dick, and write out my “acceptance.”

Francis pushed back his chair and, turning sharply, he strode out of the room.

“And you, General?”

“Damn it! D’you think I’d run away? I’ve been appointed a member of this Council and I’ll fulfil my duty for so long as it pleases the Lord . . .”

“The directors, General, not the Lord.”

“Damn you, sir. Damn you. Damn you.” He half rose, but sat down again more emphatically. “Here I am and here I’ll stay.”

“You might remind me, Dick, to look up the word ‘limpet’ in the dictionary.”

II

They were exciting days for Calcutta. The great Nuncomar was on trial before the courts. And Mr. Grand, finding Francis no longer a member of Council, instituted proceedings for divorce, citing him as co-respondent.

Both courts were thronged every day. People did not know which of them to attend. Someone would tiptoe in and whisper: “Nuncomar is now in the box,” and there would be a stampede out of Francis’s court to the other room, which filled fast to suffocation.

The Francis trial proceeded slowly. Important witnesses were spirited away from day to day. With difficulty they were located, always at some foreign settlement, French or Dutch, from which they could not be recalled by British law. Sir Robert Chambers, the presiding judge, commented sternly on these incidents, noting that the witnesses who disappeared were always those whose evidence was likely to be most damaging to Philip Francis.

Francis declared that the case was nothing more than a crude attempt at blackmail. An impecunious clerk, regarding him as a profitable source of plunder, had conspired with his young and attractive wife, to entice Francis into their home. In a letter, which unfortunately he had not kept, bidding him to dinner with her and her husband, Madame Grand had unfolded a tale of distress and begged for preferment for her husband. They had, she stated, lost all hope of advancement from Hastings, in whose office Grand was employed. From motives of kindliness and charity, Francis had gone to their home, only to find—to his surprise—that the husband was away. The wife, with despicable cunning, appeared before him clad in embarrassing scantiness. She tried to ensnare him, but failing, raised the alarm; at which prearranged signal, the servants came rushing to the scene, to secure and bind him. Money was demanded by the husband as the price of his release, an attempt that Francis resisted with resolution. Hence this case.

Francis produced his own witnesses to substantiate this story. Men were brought into court, mostly his Indian servants and half-caste clerks, to swear that Grand had demanded money with threats from their master. One of them swore that he had seen Madame Grand’s pitiful letter lying on Francis’s desk and had read it out of curiosity. He did not know that his master had destroyed it, but presumed that it must have been mislaid since it was not produced in this case.

Despite this, the case was decided against Francis.

A divorce was granted to the young husband and Francis was ordered to pay him fifty thousand rupees in compensation.

Soon afterwards Noelle went to live with Francis. In her simplicity she forgave him his harsh references to her in court. He blamed his lawyers, explaining that it was no more than a necessary part of the proceedings. To the Baron and to his other friends he said: “I’ve paid for her—so I might as well have the use of her until a ship comes to take me home.”

III

Nuncomar’s case took far longer to decide. The Chief Justice himself presided, attended by two senior judges. Here again important witnesses disappeared and valuable papers were mysteriously destroyed.

Every day to the common gaol where he was lodged, there came throngs of pilgrims, as though to one they revered as a saint. It was cunningly contrived by his agents, to intimidate the British Government and prevent their taking any drastic action against him. In court Nuncomar assumed a contemptuous attitude. He was haughty and defiant in his answers.

But slowly the law proceeded with the disentanglement of the evidence. Slowly guilt was established on enough of the charges to hang him. And sentence was passed accordingly. Nuncomar leaned forward as he heard the sentence of death pronounced. His fat lower lip trembled a little and he grew pale beneath the brown skin. But he said nothing. When the attendants came to take him away, he swooned.

From the condemned cell he wrote pathetic letters to Francis and General Clavering. The General alone raised his voice in protest. Nuncomar wrote also to Hastings and to Barwell, offering untold sums of money as the price of his freedom. Hastings sent a brief and dignified reply. They had shown Nuncomar mercy on many occasions, he said; Nuncomar had not profited from clemency, nor had he ever shown any himself to his enemies.

Calcutta was flabbergasted as the day drew nigh and carpenters began to erect the gallows outside the Town Hall. In awed accents it was recalled how, not so long ago, the Sahibs waited hat in hand for an audience with this same Nuncomar, whose power had been likened in India to that of the gods. But perhaps it was as well; the Sahibs were at any rate not brutal.

It began to be revealed in whispers that Nuncomar used to have spies in every home to report to him what was afoot, that a large band of forgers and counterfeiters had been kept in his employ, that his collection of counterfeit seals had been concealed only just in time by his family when the officers of the law came to search his home. They were never found; but nobody doubted that, had he been released on bail, Nuncomar would have produced a bogus order for his own freedom, bearing the signatures and seals of the Governor General, the Chief Justice and all the senior judges of the Court.

Nuncomar spent his last night seated on the floor of his cell, with heavy account books on his plump knees. He passed the entire night without sleep, examining figures, making fresh calculations, checking the totals. In the morning before sunrise, his family were admitted to take their leave of him.

Meanwhile to the grounds outside the Town Hall eager, clamorous throngs hurried. Many came from distant villages. Some had walked all night. The stalls for sherbet and pan and biddies, breathlessly erected, were already engaged in a brisk trade. Men sold favours—little bronze medals to mark the event. Mostly they wore their festive dresses. The children, tricked out in bright colours, were held up on the men’s shoulders so that they should miss nothing.

Nuncomar was brought in a palanquin. His relatives came in a mournful procession behind it, weeping, wailing and beating their heads. The palanquin was set down. As Nuncomar emerged, a gasp went up. He surveyed the throng. His limp, flabby form stiffened and he raised his chin with hauteur. Turning to the Sheriff he asked that only men of his own caste should attend to him. This had already been arranged. Then, without flinching, he mounted the scaffold and himself gave the signal to the executioner.

Even before the drop, a great many in that close throng turned their heads away and screamed. They tried to get away, but only those on the fringe were able to do so. A weird chant was set up, through the intervals of which could be heard the weeping of Nuncomar’s relatives.

Chapter XII

I

Hastings picked up idly three small silver seals from his desk and placed them on the palm of his hand. He tossed them up and, turning his hand, caught them all on the other side.

“It will be a pleasant surprise for her, I’m thinking,” said Barwell.

“Yes, Dick. You see, she has waited so long. She has had to endure so much humiliation, so many rebuffs and insults.” He tossed the silver seals again and caught them in the palm of his hand.

“Where will it be? The Playhouse again?”

“No, no. Here. I don’t want memories of that Playhouse Ball to spoil this one. Here. . . .”

“And every man jack of ’em will have to say ‘Your Excellency’ and curtsy to her. Ye’ll see . . .” He did not finish, for as Warren tossed the seals once more, Barwell came and thrust the back of his hand out for them. Two landed successfully, the third grazed his little finger and fell off.

“Damn it! . . .”

“Now, now, Dick. You mustn’t make General-like noises. . . .”

“Here, wait a minute.” Barwell drew up a chair. He picked up the seals firmly and set them in the hollow of his hand. “Now, one, two . . .”

He stopped counting and placed them more carefully in the centre. “Three!” Up they went a few inches and landed again, one perilously near the edge. His face was flushed and wreathed in an immense smile. “I’ll do it again. Who will ye ask?”

“What, to the Ball—or to see you do this?”

“The Ball, of course, ye chump. . . .” “H’ssh! It’s supposed to be a secret!”

“What’s supposed to be a secret?” They both turned at the sound of her voice. Marian stood in the doorway.

“Oh, aye! This, my dear Marian. Have ye seen . . .?”

“Are you going to give a Ball for me?”

“No,” said Barwell.

“Yes, you are! Oh, won’t that be a lovely surprise. When, Warren? When, Dick?”

“You’re not supposed to know, you should go out of the room.”

She sat in the large chair she had covered. “No, tell me. H’mh?”

“See what you’ve done now, Dick.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell her.”

“Don’t be silly, you two. How can you have a Ball here without my knowing?”

“That’s true, ye know.”

“Ooo! So it is a Ball.” She clapped her hands, like a schoolgirl.

“I told ye she’d be pleased,” said Barwell and resumed the tossing of the silver seals. Marian rose and watched him.

“Not so high, silly,” she said. “You’ll never catch ’em. . . . There. What did I say!”

“Ye shouldn’t have spoken, Marian. It disturbed me. It’s like chess, I’m thinking.”

“Look,” she said, pulling up a chair. “Let me show you.”

“I better order an extra supply of seals,” observed Hastings.

With an unsteady hand, both her lips drawn in, her eyes dilated, Marian tossed them up a little way and caught them again.

“The other side. Ye must turn your hand over.”

“Wait a minute, Dick. I was going to do that.”

“I’m thinking, we’re not getting much further with the Ball, are we?”

“Well, leave that to me,” said Marian, “and I’ll make it a surprise for you.”

“But ye don’t know the date or anything.”

“Date? On our wedding anniversary, of course.”

“What a woman ye are!”

“My dear Dick. With the wedding anniversary staring us in the face. . . . What a Ball! We’ll have ’em all here!”

“Bowing to ye . . . scraping to ye . . .”

“And look! There! All three of ’em on the other side of my hand.”

II

The ballroom at Government House was hung with flags. A dais had been set up at the far end. It was announced that a levee would precede the Ball, with the Governor General representing the King for the first time in the history of the country. Two thrones had been set up.

Upon Marian’s bed, delicately laid, was her evening-gown, buff-coloured with touches of pale green at the waist and at the shoulders. The hairdresser had been summoned for seven o’clock.

By the simple but exquisite mantelpiece of her boudoir she waited. Elliott came in answer to her summons.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Seven hundred and fifty acceptances, Your Excellency. Captain and Mrs. MacGregor are coming in from Murshidabad, Mrs. Halwell from Dacca—and this afternoon the General wrote in, accepting on behalf of his wife and himself.”

“General Clavering!”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

Hastings came in. “Am I breaking in on a surprise?” he asked. “You see how tactful I am, Marian.”

“Yes,” she said. “What d’you think—General Clavering and his wife are coming.”

“I didn’t know they had been asked.”

“No.” she said. “As a matter of fact it wasn’t till yesterday that I asked them. I thought it would look well—besides I had a sneaking idea that . . .”

“Woman’s intuition, again.”

She smiled at him, then turned to Elliott. “Thank you, Mr. Elliott.”

“Anything else, Your Excellency?”

Hastings glanced at the clock. “No thanks. You’d better run along and dress now, Elliott.”

Elliott bowed and withdrew.

She turned to Hastings and flung her arms around him. Pressing her head against his chest, she said to his lapels and his lace cravat; “Oh, I am so happy—so happy, darling!”

“So am I that at last . . .”

“A royal reception. . . . And our wedding anniversary.” She led him to the window. It was windy outside. “All day the trees have been bowing to me and every rose-bush bobs and curtsies. Look!”

“To-night all Calcutta will do that.”

She kissed him.

“Are ye in to me?” Barwell thrust the curtains aside and came in with some papers.

“Now, now, Dick,” she said. “This is no time for work.” She took the papers from him.

“Don’t ye crush ’em. Here. Look here, Marian, I want ’em.”

“Not now.”

“Just some reports, Warren. The war in Bombay has not been going too well . . .”

Marian put her fingers on his lips. “Not now, I told you.”

“Well,” said Hastings, “now that we have power, Dick, we shall soon be able to deal with it.”

“Oh, aye. Everything else is quiet.”

“Thank God for that,” said Marian.

“Oh, except in Oudh, ye understand. I was forgetting. Bristow hasn’t had much success there. . . .”

“He’s the wrong man, Dick. The wrong man. We’ll have to replace him to-morrow.”

“A lot of money to still be owing us.”

“My dear Dick, we can’t invade a harem and turn over the cushions with a sword in order to find where the gold is hidden.”

“Clavering would,” Marian remarked.

“Aye. He wanted to. That’s why they appointed Bristow,” declared Barwell.

“That’s why we are going to recall him tomorrow. I think we might send . . .”

“Not to-night, please, darling.”

“All right, Dick. To-night is hers.”

She took Barwell by the shoulders and marched him towards the door. “Go and dress,” she ordered.

“All right, all right! Do ye know, Marian, I’ve got a new suit for to-night. It’s all . . .”

“If you stay much longer to tell me you won’t have a chance to get into it. . . .”

“Aye, but . . . oh, and another thing, Warren, I’m thinking . . .”

“Now be off.” She put him firmly through the door. Then turning him round there, she flung her arms about him and gave him a kiss.

“Au revoir. I won’t be late, I promise ye.”

Marian came tripping back and sat on the arm of his chair. She passed her fingers gently through his hair.

“Just for two minutes. I just want two minutes of peace and detachment. Just as though nothing was on to-night, as though we were to sit like this all through the evening—as we shall have to, you know, at Daylesford.”

“Nonsense,” he said, toying with a lovely diamond brooch she was wearing. “We’ll have parties and dances even at Daylesford.”

“And you’ll have a vast staff of secretaries and things, and you’ll raise your head like this and say, ‘Do this—Do that—Do the other thing!’ And they’ll salute and say ‘Yes, sir’—or will it be ‘Yes, Your Lordship!’?”

A lady-in-waiting tapped at the door.

“The hairdresser, Your Excellency.”

She leapt down from the arm of his chair. “I must fly.” She kissed him on the forehead, then pressed her face against his, making a pleased, purring sound, like an affectionate child. For a moment she did that, then she hurried from the room.

Hastings stood gazing after her. As he turned to leave there came a knock on the further door.

“I thought ye might be here still,” said Barwell, entering.

“Dick? Haven’t you . . .?”

Barwell motioned to somebody at the door and a young bronzed officer entered.

“Captain Graham’s just back from Lucknow.”

“Oh yes. You are Major Bristow’s assistant there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought ye’d like to have news.”

“Yes, of course. Has Major Bristow got the money that’s owing?”

“Not yet, sir—but he’s confident of doing so within the next twenty-four hours.”

“That sounds good. But what makes him so confident? We’ve tried for years without success.”

“The position is a little different now, sir—if you don’t mind my saying so. You see, sir, the Begums, very foolishly from their point of view, have transferred all their money to two eunuchs in the palace.”

“I don’t see how that helps us,” said Hastings.

“Nor I,” agreed Barwell.

“Well, if you’ll forgive me, sir, Major Bristow felt that while we couldn’t deal with women very easily—especially princesses—it should be a simple matter to wring the money out of two old men—all the more so as they are eunuchs.”

“Nonsense,” said Hastings. “He won’t find it easy at all. Eunuchs are as a rule intensely loyal and faithful. I’m afraid he’ll find that they’ll reveal nothing—and surrender nothing.”

“He has found that, sir,” said Captain Graham.

“I thought so. Then what makes him so hopeful?”

“He tried at first to bribe them, sir. But it didn’t work. Then he thought a bit of harsh speaking “

“H’mm! Well?”

“He threatened ’em, sir—and they seemed more reasonable.”

“How d’you mean, reasonable?”

“More frightened, I mean, sir. And Major Bristow told them he’d get that money out of them, even if he’s got to wring their bloody necks. You’ll pardon the language, sir.”

Hastings tapped the table with his fingers. “Yes. Yes,” he said and turned to Barwell. “You see . . . I think, Captain Graham, you had better wait for a few moments in the outer room.”

Captain Graham saluted and withdrew.

Hastings paced the room uneasily. “He has no business . . . no business to bully and browbeat them. . . .”

“Ye always did say Bristow was the wrong man for the job.”

“Of course, he’s the wrong man. You remember what he did at Patna.”

“Impetuous a bit. . . .”

“A bit? He’s hard-headed, assertive—with a vicious, cruel streak in him. God knows what he’ll do to the eunuchs.”

“I don’t think . . .”

“My dear Dick. At Patna—whipped a groom to within an inch of his life. Then that man he put in red-hot irons. My God, we must . . . Graham!”

“Yes, sir.”

“First thing in the morning . . . It might be too late. It might be too late.”

They watched him in silence as he paced the room. Suddenly he swung round.

“Order some horses,” he said. “I want you to ride with me to Lucknow.”

“To Lucknow, sir?”

“Yes. To-night.”

“Ye are not going . . .”

“At once, Graham. There is no time.”

“Yes, sir.” He saluted and left.

“Ye are not going to-night, Warren?”

“I must.”

“What d’ye think ye’ll do?”

“Stop Bristow going too far. I pray to God it isn’t too late.”

“But look at the night.” Barwell went to the window and opened it. A stern gust of wind shot the muslin curtains inwards. They lashed and cracked like whips.

“It’s a foul night,” Barwell repeated, shutting the window again.

“I can’t help that,” said Hastings curtly.

“And there’s Marian . . . to-night of all nights.”

Hastings stared at the edge of the table. “Yes,” he said, “Yes,” and added in almost a whisper— “I know. . . .”

For some moments he stared at the table, as though expecting from it some solution. “Yet if I waited till the morning it might be . . .”

Barwell laid his hand gently on the silken sleeves of Hastings’s long purple coat. “He has probably, Warren, done his worst already.”

Hastings covered his eyes. “I must go, Dick. I must stop him. I pray God I may still be in time. Oh! I hate to disappoint Marian—it would happen to-night. . .

“I shouldn’t have come back. Marian will never forgive me, I’m thinking.”

“Will you take my place at the reception to-night, Dick? I deputized myself once, you remember.”

“Ye are still resolved on going?”

“I must, Dick. . . . But I don’t want to disappoint Marian. So, will you?”

“Aye,” he nodded.

“I don’t know what I shall say to her.” He came closer to Barwell. “Will you explain it, Dick?”

“Oh aye . . .”

“No, I better see her.” He walked briskly to the bell and rang it. He stood silent and still, like one in a trance, while he awaited the answer to his summons.

“Find one of the ladies-in-waiting and say I should like a word with Her Excellency.”

The man salaamed.

“At once—it’s urgent.”

“Sahib.”

“Then bring me my hat and coat,” he called after the hurrying servant.

“Every Indian life should be precious to us, Dick—every one of them, however humble.”

“You know, I don’t think Bristow would . . .”

“I tell you, Dick, he will stop at nothing. He has already gone too far—threatening, browbeating—and you heard what he told Graham— ‘Wring their bloody necks.’ I tell you a man like that . . .”

One of the ladies-in-waiting entered.

“Her Excellency is having her hair done, sir. She won’t be very long now.”

“How long?”

“About twenty minutes, sir.”

“H’mm! All right. Thank you.”

The lady-in-waiting bowed, glanced sidelong at Barwell and withdrew. She wondered what was afoot.

“Dick, I can’t wait. You will have to tell her after all. Tell her I would sooner anything had happened than—than that I should disappoint her, yet I have no choice.” He raised his arms a little and let them drop again to his side.

“I shall . . .”

The servant returned with his hat and coat.

“Good-bye,” said Hastings.

“Good-bye, Warren. Ye wouldn’t want me to come with ye . . .?”

“No. No. No. You stay and see this through for Marian. Good-bye.”

He strode briskly to the door, but stopped as he reached it. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a flat case which he held out to Barwell.

“I got this for her,” he said. He released the catch. A lovely diamond tiara lay upon the velvet. “Tell her to wear it to-night and tell her—tell her I’ll be thinking of her. . . .”

“I shall. I’m thinking maybe it’s as well ye didn’t see her. . . .”

He turned. “Why?”

“Well, it would have been harder and I’m thinking maybe she would not have let ye go.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Well, good-bye, Dick.”

“And good luck, Warren.”

Their clasped hands lingered for a moment and then, as Warren hurried out, Marian came breathlessly in through the opposite door.

“Warren! Warren!” She noticed his hat and coat. “Where are you going?”

“Oh, my dear.” He came back to her and took both her hands. He was like a shamefaced child, not knowing what to say.

“What’s happened?” There was alarm in her voice.

“I have to go to Oudh . . . Bristow.”

“But to-night?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Marian.”

“Oh, Warren . . .”

“You know if it could be avoided . . .”

“To-night?”

“Dick will deputize. I’ve arranged all that. It will all go through splendidly, you’ll see.”

She turned and noticed the open jewel case with the diamond tiara, lying on the table.

“But you will not be there.” She said it almost to herself.

“Marian, a grave situation has arisen in Oudh. I have reason to fear the worst from Bristow. . . . If anything happened . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m terribly, terribly sorry, my dear.”

She stared at him in silence and then very slowly came a pace or two nearer.

“You must not be sorry. Go.”

Barwell’s eyes widened. Hastings looked at her puzzled.

“Go?” he repeated mechanically.

She nodded. “Yes. Your work—India must always come first. This—this is just a silly little Ball. Vanity! Duty must come before everything else.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I’ll be back in five days. And to-night, Dick will deputize. . . .”

“No,” she said firmly. “Thank you, Dick, but there will be no Ball to-night. Tell Elliott to inform the guests as they arrive that the Ball has been postponed. Urgent business of State.”

She picked up the tiara that she had been gazing at and shut her eyes. “I’ll wear this when you return. Good-bye, my dear.”

He came to her and took her in his arms. It was a hurried embrace. She stared at the door after him and as she heard his brisk feet on the stairs, she went quickly to the window and flung it wide open.

The night was as dark as ink. The wind howled weirdly through the trees and from the river an angry murmur came to her.

She put her head out. The wind tossed the tresses that the hairdresser had so laboriously curled. “And God bless you,” she called. Only the raging elements heard her.

She turned away. Barwell noticed that her eyes were wet with tears.

Chapter XIII

I

Despite hard riding all through that night and a prolonged journey by boat next day accomplished with the greatest expedition, Hastings and Captain Graham arrived too late to prevent the torture of the ill-fated eunuchs. Bristow had them strapped to a post and whipped. No longer young, the men, though haggard and infirm, were given a hundred lashes each; then they were placed in irons that had first been made red hot. Their wrists and ankles were scorched and blistered. Their mouths writhed in agony. From time to time they uttered screams. But nothing that was done to them brought any revelation of where the wealth of the Begums was hidden.

“I’m beginning to think the bastards don’t know themselves,” Bristow muttered. “I’ll give ’em one more chance.”

He ordered that sharp metal points should be driven under the nails of their hands.

Still they would not speak.

“Nothing short of shooting the swines will do,” he said, “and that won’t help much. Take ’em away.”

When Hastings arrived the men were weak and ill, too faint even to move their limbs. He interviewed Bristow alone. The man was insolent. He spoke as though the Governor General was still subject to the authority of a hostile majority in Council. Even his dismissal he received with irony and contempt. “I wouldn’t work for you, Hastings. I’m used to working with gentlemen. It was a sad day for India when Mr. Francis resigned.”

Captain Graham was tentatively placed in charge. Bristow was ordered to Calcutta to wait his ship there. Hastings went to see the eunuchs and gave orders for their care and treatment. He interviewed the Nawab and then returned to Calcutta.

A ship had come in from England during his absence. The directors, learning of the two wars to which the majority in Council had committed the Government, gave orders for their instant termination. “The shareholders’ money cannot be frittered away in wild-goose schemes of expansion. The military ambitions and hankerings of the Government are viewed with disfavour by the Honourable Company’s directors, who demand the immediate cessation of all hostilities.”

“H’mm!”

Barwell said: “I tried to put these orders into effect and make a truce, but the General wouldn’t hear of it. As we were one to one, I had no alternative but to wait till your return.”

“We shall go on, Dick, as I intended on the eve of my departure for Lucknow. I did not want war. It was wished on me by the others, as you know. But, once in it, I think it would be madness for us to withdraw without a definite settlement. To call a halt now would be to tempt the Mahrattas, the Pathans—to invite every roving band of brigands to try conclusions with us. We would have then not one or two wars but a dozen on our hands. Whereas if we settle these two decisively, once and for all, they will serve as a warning to the others and we may reasonably look forward to years of peace and prosperity.”

“But the directors . . .”

“There are some things the man on the spot is alone able to decide. Those at home in England have not the knowledge, they cannot know all the issues that hang on any one act. . . .”

“Ye aren’t going to back the General?”

“I’m sorry to say that for once we shall have to be on the same side.”

“Well, I’d never have . . . He’ll get a hold of ye and kiss ye on the forehead when he knows.”

“Tell him if he does that I shan’t back him.”

“I’m not sure, ye know, if the old General won’t be disappointed at finding ye on his side. He’s been counting on being the only one to hold the fort, sitting there, the sole bulwark, with the world against him, the only one, ye understand, to say No every time ye say Yes. . . .”

“Oh, of course—unless he opposes his own war just because I happen to be backing it.”

“Ye oughtn’t to do it, Warren, ye oughtn’t to do it. In a day or so he won’t know which side of the compass his own head is facing.”

Hastings went to the table by the wall and took a map from the drawer. He unfurled and studied it.

“Dick—no, ring the bell for Elliott. I’m going to send reinforcements to Bombay to bring the war to a speedy conclusion. But we must win, Dick—we must win. Oh, Elliott—will you sit down a moment and take down these instructions. The Fourth and Fifth Companies of Infantry and the Seventh Cavalry are to proceed to-morrow to Bombay . . .”

“But ye understand, Warren, they’ll be months getting there—and we haven’t any ships. . . .”

“We won’t wait for ships.”

“Not wait for . . .?”

“No. They are to march, Elliott, right across India. . . .”

“Across the jungles, sir?”

“Why not?”

“There are jungles and mountains, Warren, where no man has ever been. . . .”

“You mean no white man.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“It isn’t. Get some native guides, order the companies to travel light and to proceed tomorrow.”

“If you get through . . .”

“We shall get through. It will be the most impressive thing that has ever happened in India. It will show that no part of the country can any longer provide a refuge for the disorderly and the lawless. . . . I wish I hadn’t to do all this. If there was but one orderly government in the whole of India it wouldn’t be necessary. But so long as bandits rove the countryside . . .” His eye was already ahead of his thought. His finger traced the names around Madras. “It is different,” he said, “at Madras. Too big a thing for us to have taken on—and with a war already in hand at Bombay, it was madness.”

“Would ye call that one off?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. It would have a bad effect. Do us more harm . . .”

“Not so much harm, I’m drinking, as a defeat.”

“That’s true. And yet . . .”

“Ye see, from these reports, that Hyder Ali and the Nizam have joined forces and are preparing to invade Madras.”

“I know. Yet we can’t, Dick, we can’t throw up the sponge. What’s the good of sending troops to Bombay to make an impression if we are to wipe it out with an ignominious surrender on the other side of India. . . .”

“Well, ye haven’t any more troops. . . .”

“No. But—yes . . . yes . . . I have it, we can send money. Send money and Sir Eyre Coote to take command. With the money he can raise native levies and swell the forces. We must hold on, Dick—hold on until the effect of the march to Bombay can be felt throughout India. Then there will be peace.”

“And where’s all the money coming from?”

“If there’s none to spare, well then the directors can’t have their dividends, that’s all. India must come first Dick, always. See to those orders at once, Elliott.”

“Yes, sir.”

II

The General came up to him before the next Council meeting.

“You’re a surprising feller,” he said, “Damn it—for years you were against me and now suddenly you’ve turned completely over. Something you want me to do for you?”

“No, General. It’s the one time in all these years when I’ve needed your help least.”

“Oh! You know,” he added, “I never liked you, Hastings; but I’m beginning to think that there’s something in you after all.”

“Thank you, Clavering.”

“We misjudged you. Quiet, subtle feller . . . . never lose your temper or anything. I felt you were the sort one couldn’t trust. But, by God!”—he stopped and blew his nose violently—“the way you’re dealing with Madras and Bombay . . .”

“Thank you again, Clavering. Now shall we get on with the meeting?”

“I wanted to say just this, Hastings. If there’s something you especially want to put through I’ll support it.”

“The measures that are needed, Clavering, will be put through—anyway. Thanks all the same.”

“Humph!”

“It’s a pity,” Hastings went on, “Francis could not remain to give us a hand with the work he helped to accumulate. The treasury is exhausted, yet these wars must be carried on; and the emptiness of the treasury is due, you at least must be aware of that, General, to the reckless scramble for private gain that went on while this country was ruled by an ignorant and spiteful majority in Council. Multitudes of dependents have been given positions of trust—those among them who are incompetent will have to be displaced. I shall have no scruples in shouldering that task. The country has been oppressed. . . . Private rapacity—that too must be brought to an end. And the vast quantities of jewels and gold being remitted as private fortunes will have to be stopped too. The whole administration, in fact, will have to be reconstructed, built up anew on more solid foundations. And it will take years to undo the harm that has already been accomplished. But we will not shirk it. You may rely upon that, General.”

“Damn it! If you conquer the whole country—leave it all in the hands of the army, there won’t be any bother at all.”

“Your naïveté, General, is singularly lacking in charm because of the seriousness of this juncture. Now let us proceed with the work in hand.”

“A larger army to keep the fellows quiet would settle everything. . . .”

“I suppose, Dick, when the directors know there’ll be an unholy row. . . .”

“Oh, aye . . .”

“And you may be sure that Francis and fellows like Bristow and the others we shall have to discharge, will keep on fanning the flame. Still, the work must be done.”

III

Fresh invitations were issued for the Ball that had been deferred. It proved a brilliant affair. Marian wore the diamond tiara that Hastings had bought for her. The Claverings came. Many of those who used to turn their head away when they saw Hastings and Marian out riding on the Maidan were the most eager to catch their eye in the ballroom and to curtsy before them.

Marian’s eyes glittered. Her heart palpitated excitedly under the tight corsage of her lovely dress as, with Hastings’s hand in hers, she acknowledged their tributes or moved with stately paces through the minuet. Only Lady Anne Monson, still in the country for some reason, stayed away. She sent no reply to their invitation. Apparently there was to be no peace between them. But Marian gave her no thought, and when a few months later Lady Anne died of a sudden and swift illness, Marian and the Governor General followed the funeral procession to the little cemetery in Park Street.

They were not able to save so much now “for Daylesford.” With popularity had come a greater need for entertaining. “We were better off,” Marian observed, “when we were snubbed. But I’m not going to have any more jewels. No, darling. Nothing more—much though I like them. So if I admire anything, for Heaven’s sake don’t you go and buy it. I’d never forgive myself if you don’t have Daylesford.”

Her dresses, as became the wife of the Governor General, were the most attractive and becoming in the entire Settlement and her beauty and dignity gave them an added elegance. The women tried to emulate her. She led the social life with a courtliness that made even those who had sneered at her unjustly as “that harlot,” concede that she had an air about her of refinement and breeding. “After all, she was a Baroness,” they recalled.

The Baron had left Calcutta. He went with Francis in the ship that had arrived while Hastings was in Lucknow; and surprisingly, Noelle Grand also went by the same ship. It was assumed that they continued to live together on board—perhaps all three of them together, though what would happen when they arrived in England and encountered Mrs. Francis was a matter of conjectural amusement. “Perhaps the Baron will take Noelle on.” Marian, though she said nothing, thought it a not unlikely development. Then at last would Carl be able to live on the proceeds of a woman who understood and practised the true art of love.

With Barwell to assist him and the General to swear and explode according to his own crude interpretation of what was afoot, Hastings was able to accomplish a great deal. He worked far into the night, at times until dawn, with Marian tiptoeing into the room to give him coffee or a cool drink of lemon and to run her fingers through his papers just to see how much longer he would be.

“You’ll break down, my love,” she would say.

But it was she who fell ill. The delayed monsoon, the intense heat, proved too much for her. Hastings bought a house at Dum Dum, five miles out of Calcutta, as a country residence. To this he took her. The excitement and joy of decorating the new home and cultivating the garden, aided her convalescence. It proved a great expense, but her health benefited . . . and it was all that mattered.

At times he had to leave her and return to Calcutta. He would be restless. Twice every day he would despatch couriers to Dum Dum with messages . . . and to bring him news of her.

“I count the days as lost to my existence, till the blessed moment that shall restore my Marian to me,” he wrote.

He would send her little tokens—an exquisite bracelet he had seen at an Indian jeweller’s or a necklace of immense pearls.

“They are lovely—lovely, but, my dear, what about Daylesford?” she wrote back.

Barwell would shake his head and mumble to himself.

In the afternoons when the air was cooler she would be busy in the garden, pulling out weeds, snipping off the heads of spent champak and the dying trumpets of the datura flower.

Then she would sit and rest on a bench under the oleander and the seven sister thrushes, never separated, would fly past overhead. “Honk! Honk!” the crow-pheasants would call and the brain-fever bird, in a soaring scale would repeat those ominous words—”Brain fever, brain fever, brain fever, brain fever,” very quickly, and after a pause, in a deep, emphatic monotone—”Brain Fever!” and she would be worried for thought of Warren and the work that kept him in Calcutta.

Then the evening courier would arrive. “My Marian, I love you far more than my life, for that is only valuable as you make it so. Oh, ever love me, and may the God of infinite goodness bless and support and protect you! Amen! Amen! Amen!”

And her little finger-tips would wander with sensuous and contented pleasure over the large round satiny pearls at her throat, caress their gloss, fondle each curve—like morning dew crystallized —warm and silken like the hands of a child.

When he was with her they used to link their arms and walk to the end of the garden where, through a gap in the trees, they could see the flaming sunset. And they would watch breathlessly for what might follow as the colours began to drain out of the sky. A lake—yes, there was a lake to-night above the trees with a thick, dark wood on the distant shore . . . and an island—she pointed to it—right in the middle of the lake. . . . To-morrow they might see an armada of Spanish ships riding up the Main through these self-same trees. . . .

And as he watched her fingers stray to her throat, he was happy too. Jewels were really not so costly in India—and who could tell if the future would ever come. . . .

Chapter XIV

I

They sat at breakfast on the veranda of Government House.

“No, Tim, no,” said Marian, but the General persisted in flinging morsels off his plate to the dog. He flung quite large pieces of meat, often right across the table, missing Marian’s hair by an inch, coming perilously near Hastings’s chin or nose.

“For goodness’ sake, John,” his wife said, “this is not our home!”

“Sorry, Hastings. I’ll try and remember;” but a moment later a further large chunk of meat would come flying by. “There, Tim, catch it, man! You haven’t brought up your dog properly. He should catch it in mid-air, not let it fall on the ground.”

“Tim,” said Marian, “prefers to sit and eat as we do, General, with a napkin on his lap.”

“There, John, you mustn’t do it. You know Marian doesn’t like it.”

But with her hand under the table, when nobody was looking, Mrs. Clavering herself fed the dog, because no meal-time was a meal-time to the Claverings unless the dogs ate too.

“All seven of ours—well you have seen them . . .” she began.

“Yes,” laughed Marian, “and what a good shot the General is, too.”

“Praise the dogs, madam, not me.”

Barwell said: “Ye mustn’t dawdle—-the deputations will be here, I’m thinking, before ye are done.”

“Curse!” exclaimed the General.

Mrs. Clavering motioned to the servants, who promptly substituted one of the cheaper plates she had brought with her for the more attractive Government House china at the General’s elbow.

“All right. All right!” he roared. “I’m not losing my temper, but I hate this bloody business. Dragged into it—Barwell, I suppose.”

“I don’t like deputations either, ye understand,” declared Barwell. “It’s you they want to congratulate really, Warren. . . .”

“I dare say—but all we have achieved has been the united work of the Council. So you must share in the praise—or the blame—whatever is coming.”

“Yes,” said the General, eyeing him suspiciously. He was not yet sure what to make of Hastings.

“Do you hear at all from Francis?” Marian asked.

“God, no! And I don’t want to hear from him either. Finished with the feller for good and all. Damned coward . . . yellow—that’s what he was—ran away.”

“I was wondering,” said Barwell, “if he had got the promotion he was so sure of. Place in the Cabinet, he was thinking.”

“No,” said the General shortly. “I heard about that—Bristow wrote. The two are working together at something. Up to no good, what I know of Francis.”

“Oh, Bristow wrote to you,” observed Hastings.

“Yes,” said the General, “thinks I’m still on the other side—and by God, I would be too if you did anything I didn’t like. But I’ve written to tell him that I won’t be a party to any of their tricks. Damned pack of barking hounds. . . .”

“Bristow deserved to be hanged for the way he treated those eunuchs.”

“Well, what else they’re up to ye ought to hear to-day,” said Barwell, “I see a ship’s been sighted.”

“Yes,” said Hastings.

“The fellow’s up to no good, I tell you,” roared the General, “sending petitions to the directors, drawing up protests. . . .”

“Don’t let’s worry about them,” said Hastings. “Our work is here—and though we have accomplished much, a great deal still remains to be done.”

He rose.

“Ah. Are ye ready for the deputations?”

“Must I face them, Dick? In Heaven’s name what have I done? . . . Only my job. . . .”

“Ye agreed, ye know.”

“I know, but I’m no good at blushing.”

“Well,” said the General, throwing out his chest, “we are here to back you, aren’t we? Show them in, Barwell.”

“Not here, Dick.” He turned to the ladies: “Will you excuse us?” He led the way to his study.

Barwell motioned to Elliott and the first of the deputations was brought in.

Six Indians of assorted shapes and sizes and dressed in a great variety of garments, bobbed before them.

“What!” roared the General, “the Indians first! The English deputation will be furious!”

“You forget, General,” observed Hastings, “that the Indians arrived before us in this country.”

The six Indians bowed again. They looked at one another, with a puzzled air; then their spokesman took a pace forward and cleared his throat.

“Your Excellencies,” he said, “oh! I see that Her Excellency is not here. Not ill, I hope?”

“She is well, I thank you,” said Hastings.

“We would prefer,” said the spokesman, the handsome, bearded Nawab Saidar Ali, “to honour her too—for if she had not kept Your Excellency in good health and happiness, we should not have had such good government.”

“True. Elliott, will you ask Her Excellency and Mrs. Clavering . . .”

Elliott hurried out.

While they waited, the entire deputation began chattering . . . to the Nawab, to one another; and they kept shrugging their shoulders at each other. At last the Nawab said: “May we have Your Excellency’s permission to invite an interpreter, yes?”

“Certainly.”

The Nawab went to the doorway and signalled.

Two interpreters, very simply dressed in long white coats, came in.

“Two!” exclaimed the General.

“A spare, I suppose,” said Barwell, “in case one of them breaks down.”

Two more interpreters trooped in.

“Good God! What is this? A comic opera!” roared the General.

“My dear Nawab Sahib . . .” said Barwell.

Still another interpreter entered.

“I am the only one,” the Nawab explained, “what can speak Ee-nglish. The others—they do not understand themselves nor one another. They come from different parts of India—and they arl speak different languages.”

Marian and Mrs. Clavering came in. The delegation bowed two or three times. Then the Nawab cleared his throat again.

“Honoured sir and honoured lady, we, the peoples of India, through these our representatives, do humbly pray you to beseech and beseech you to accept these our most representatives of India—er—ha! grateful thanks for the manifold services which you have rendered to our country.”

The Nawab stopped to applaud himself and signalled to the others to do so too. They did—very heartily, grinning as they did so. He then had to signal to them to stop.

“You have given us peace, sir—peace. For four thousand years through the passes of the North-West, conquering hordes have poured in, despoiling our country, trampling down our fields, looting our temples and outraging our womens. But you have treated neither our fields nor our womens so. Instead you have given us trade which is bringing prosperity to this country.”

Once more he stopped to applaud himself. The rest of the deputation who had been waiting for the opportunity with hands eagerly poised, needed no signal. They joined him heartily, chortling and showing large white teeth.

The Nawab cleared his throat ominously.

“At the sacrifice of much time and energy and very much of money, you have on behalf of your East India Company made for us roads—many roads, laid out for us parks, policed our streets, stamped out banditry. These matters, sir, go beyond trade and conquest—they come from a great and kindly heart. You, Sahib, you personally are our father and our mother—and you madam, are our father and our mother also.”

The deputation in applauding, slapped their thighs, thumped each other cheerfully and gave vent to weird cries to express their wholehearted appreciation—like schoolboys suddenly called out to play.

But the Nawab motioned them to silence. He looked gravely concerned. He seemed to have mislaid something. He began searching. They all began searching. Some of them, unaware of what was being sought, turned out their pockets to be helpful; but the Nawab hurried out and returned with a small and lovely casket of gold, engraved with scenes from Indian history and lit with rich and rare rubies.

“Here it is, Sahib—here it is.” He was a little out of breath. “The whole of my eloquent speech is written here on this parchment inside. And the inscription from the peoples of India is here”—he turned the casket round—“written on the backside.”

“I drank you, gentlemen . . .” said Hastings.

He had barely begun when the entire battery of interpreters got going. They jabbered, all at the same time, each addressing the one man for whom he was interpreting the speech.

“Speaking for my wife as well as myself,” Hastings went on, “I should like to say . . .”

The interpreters got going again. One of them, Hastings noticed, finished considerably behind the others.

“. . . that without the help of my Council and the excellent co-operation of the peoples of India, who were ready for peace and eager for peace, who welcomed us with enthusiasm and themselves assisted us to depose the tyrants— descendants mostly of the early conquerers of whom you have spoken—but for them, gentlemen, with the best will in the world we could have achieved nothing.”

The laggardly interpreter, though out of breath, was by now far behind the rest. He kept a corner of his eye on Hastings, poured out more words than them all, but still seemed unable to keep up.

The Nawab, noticing Hastings’s glance, explained: “In Mahrathi you need more words to say less, than in any other language. Is it not so?” he asked the interpreter.

The Mahrathi member sought an explanation. He poured out in reply a torrent of words. It was like a fresh address, full of mouthing and

gesticulation. There seemed to be no end. Hastings turned in despair to the interpreter. When the speaker had done, the interpreter said very calmly: “He say Yes.”

The Nawab bowed. His companions copied him in a ragged, disorderly fashion.

“Have we Your Excellencies’ permission to leave?”

“I thank you again, gentlemen,” said Hastings.

The Nawab signalled to the others, then, chancing to blow his nose, he had them all blowing theirs, noisily, as they trooped out.

The General mopped his forehead. “God!” he exclaimed, “these blasted deputations. . . .”

“H’ssh! John.”

Marian took the casket and turned it over admiringly.

“And that’s that,” said Hastings.

“Now the English deputation,” Barwell announced.

“Must we?” asked Hastings.

“Damn it,” roared the General, “you don’t mean to tell me they’ve been waiting all this time. They must be stamping with fury.”

“Irritable and quarrelling among themselves be now, I’m thinking,” said Barwell.

“I’m sorry,” said Hastings, “bring them in.”

The English deputation was much more elegantly dressed. They held themselves erect, as though with self-conscious dignity. Their leader was a thin and short-sighted man, Sir Philip Gillett, but most of the others were fat and pompous.

“I apologize, gentlemen,” Hastings began, “for keeping you waiting. . . .”

“No, no,” said Sir Philip gallantly, raising his wrinkled hand.

“No, no, Your Excellency,” the deputation chorused humbly.

Sir Philip unfurled his scroll of parchment. “We are at your service.” He bowed. It was a slight inclination of the head and shoulders. The others followed suit, with military precision. Far from being quarrelsome and hostile, their attitude was one of great deference.

“Your Excellency—cies,” Sir Philip began, glancing at the other members of the Council. He thought he had better include them, though it was really Hastings they had wanted to address.

“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about the others,” growled Mr. Fenwick, who had a plump hand upon his immense stomach, as though to keep it from bursting.

“Your Excellency—cies! We, the English community of Calcutta, representing the officials, merchants and traders, do humbly offer to you our heartfelt thanks for the great services you have rendered our community and this country. We congratulate you on your courage and resolution in driving out all those who by their cunning and lack of scruple brought the name of England near to contempt among the Indians. You have by a stern and inflexible insistence made honest trade possible whereas until you were able to—able to . . . “ He glanced at General Clavering and cleared his throat.

“I would have said it,” growled Fenwick. “To hell with them.” He hugged his stomach.

“You have driven out the criminal gangs who infested our high roads, making both life and fortune at last secure. And by improving the condition of the roads and by opening up waterways, you have contributed to the progress of transport and communication, for whereas it was impossible until lately to maintain a consistent speed of four miles an hour, you have enabled us to attain the incredibly high one of eight miles an hour. All this, we are mindful, has bitten deep into the resources of the Company, but the foresight that Your Excellency has brought to our problems will enrich the country in the years that he ahead with the fruits of your wisdom and your statesmanship.”

His voice ceased. He bowed. The men standing around applauded. One or two among them had until lately, been Hastings’s relentless opponents. . . . His head swam. Involuntarily a slight smile essayed to reach his lips, more from nervousness than design. He rose.

“Your generous tribute to me, gentlemen . . .” The members of the deputation began to nudge Sir Philip.

“Forgive me, Your Excellency,” he said, “but there is to be a presentation . . .”

“A presentation?”

“As a small token of our esteem,” Sir Philip went on, “these signatories here”—he turned over the pages he had in his hands—“would be honoured —deeply honoured—if Your Excellency would accept this. It is but a small mark of our personal regard and affection.”

He held out the papers. His voice was a little shaken. Hastings took the list. It stated that a sum of money had been subscribed amounting to twenty-five thousand pounds. The entries danced before his eyes. He glanced again at the total . . . twenty-five thousand pounds. . . . It brought Daylesford nearer. His heart beat rapidly. In his nostrils was the scent of rosemary hedges, of thyme and lavender. With one covert glance at Marian he turned to Sir Philip.

“I am deeply touched, gentlemen, by the great honour you have done me, but—but I can accept no gift. I am sorry and I beg you not to think me discourteous if I decline it—Indeed, I shall not decline it, but with your permission I should like to accept it and apply it to a cause that is in more urgent need of it than myself. I should like, if you agree, to form a fund with it—a fund to provide pensions for the widows and orphans of our civil servants—the military already have one,” he added, glancing at General Clavering.

“Yes, yes,” the General nodded.

“As Your Excellency pleases,” said Sir Philip. He turned to the others, who corroborated the remark.

“I thank you, gentlemen.”

They bowed, one by one, and withdrew.

For some moments after the deputation had gone, nobody said anything. The General was the first to speak.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t see that it matters. . . . You can please yourself, of course . . .”

Marian’s eyes were misted. She placed her hand on her husband’s. “You were perfectly right, darling,” she said.

“God! I would have taken it. You don’t imagine the East India Company will give you anything . . .”

“They ought to,” observed Mrs. Clavering. “After all, you have given the country peace—both those wars were concluded on our terms, and the people are contented and prosperous.”

“I’m afraid,” said Hastings, “they would be aware only of the cost—yet when you are laying foundations . . . Don’t let’s worry about it anyway.”

“They should buy Daylesford and give it to you,” said Mrs. Clavering.

Hastings laughed. “They are not likely to do that.”

“They’ll probably give you a peerage instead,” said the General, “not that that’s much use these days. . . .”

Marian was strangely silent. She was trying hard not to cry.

“They won’t do even that,” said Hastings.

“Well, I would. They gave Clive a peerage, didn’t they? I know you’re not a soldier, but damn it . . .”

Barwell raised an arm. “H’ssh!”

“What’s the matter with you?” the General roared. “You give me the jumps.”

“Listen,” said Barwell.

There was a rumbling undertone of sound, as of human voices outside the windows that had been shuttered against the glare.

“Can’t ye hear ’em?”

The General strode to the window and cocked an eye at the Venetian slats.

“Heavens! Crowds of ’em. What the devil do they want? You Hastings, I suppose. . . .”

“First the deputations—then the cheering throng”—Barwell touched his friend’s elbow affectionately. “This is indeed a great day for ye, Warren.”

“Listen to them,” said Mrs. Clavering.

Marian came closer to him. Their shoulders touched. He looked at her and there read words that could never be spoken. “At last,” she breathed. “Everything. . . . Everything. . . .”

The cheering came nearer.

“They are calling for ye.”

“Hasteen ki jai!⁴” the mob was crying.

“Go to them. Go to them,” Barwell urged him.

“Go on, Hastings,” the General roared. “What’s the matter with you?”

Hastings stared fixedly ahead.

The voices were now just below the window, clamorous, insistent.

Marian urged him forward. Slowly he moved to the window, but had not yet reached it when Elliott, hearing a sound at the door, rushed to it and took a sealed packet from a messenger.

Hastings turned at the sound.

“The dispatches,” Elliott explained, “from the Duchess of Kingston. She was sighted in the river this morning, Your Excellency will remember.”

He moved to the table, but Hastings held out his hand for them automatically, and, as automatically, broke the seals.

“That can wait. That can wait,” said Barwell.

Hastings’s fingers were still busy. It was as though he snatched at every trifling excuse to delay appearing at the window. He hated all this fuss. . . . Damn it he had only done his job. But Marian, with her teeth biting on her forefinger, by some strange presentiment seemed to sense something.

The cords got knotted. He tried to tear them apart. She picked up a knife from the table and went to him. . . .

The cheering went on.

Hastings unfurled the papers and cast his eyes hurriedly over them. Marian stood beside him, reading too.

“What’s the matter?” said Barwell, studying their faces. He sprang to the other side of Hastings and looked at the papers. “Good God!” he burst out.

Clavering strode up. He snatched the papers from Barwell. Hastings and Marian stood, with hands clasped, like children who, being lost, are desperately afraid they will lose each other too.

“Recalled,” roared Clavering. “Recalled! What the devil do they think they’re playing at!”

“I’m sorry, Warren,” said Barwell. He found it impossible to say more.

“I bet,” roared the General, stamping up and down the room, “I bet that feller Francis had something to do with this. All the lies—pamphlets—what-nots—and that other scoundrel—what’s his name, Bristow.”

“I don’t doubt ye,” said Barwell.

“God! It makes me mad.” He snatched up the despatches again. “’Did not serve the best interests of the Company.’ Pah! ‘You are there to safeguard our trade and profits, protect the interests of our shareholders. But vast sums, we see, have been poured out on wild-cat schemes.’ Hunh! ‘Opening schools for Indians, making roads, developing the waterways. . . .’” He threw down the dispatches in disgust. “Interested not in the Empire, but their own miserable profits! God!” He strode up to Hastings and held out his hand.

“You can count on me,” he said.

Hastings took the hand and nodded his gratitude.

“He will need your help,” said Marian. She turned over a page. “You have not read this,” she said.

The General snatched the paper from her. He read it slowly. “What!” he bellowed. “Trial! What are they going to try you about? ‘There have been,’” he read aloud, “‘too many allegations and charges brought against you by men who were lately in your own service. They allege that those who had the interests of the Company most truly at heart you dismissed, because they opposed your fantastic schemes, which you launched upon a scale that only Governments can undertake, but is entirely beyond the scope of a trading corporation, that exists chiefly, as we have so often impressed on you, to secure profit from their trading enterprises! And moreover’ . . . It is iniquitous!” he broke off.

“It is,” said Marian.

“Yes,” said Hastings vaguely.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, her face close to his; then suddenly, as though a spring had been touched by something she saw there, she swung round and burst out furiously: “How dare they! How dare they! After all he has done. He has all but killed himself for India and yet . . .” Slowly she came closer to the General and to Barwell, like one about to pounce. “Oh God! the things you’ve done to him. All of you. Yes, all of you. . . . I should have gone away with you, my love, when you asked me to in Madras. Then you would have been spared this—-this ingratitude— these years of suffering and quarrelling. . . .”

He put his arms about her. “H’ssh, my dear. H’ssh!”

As though eager to cling to anything, she buried her face in his coat and her shoulders heaved with sobbing.

“H’ssh!” he repeated.

The cheering grew louder.

“I’m sorry,” Marian said at last, brushing her handkerchief against her eyes. “I was ungrateful to you, Dick—and to you, General.”

“You can count on me, madam.” He turned away. He could not bear to look upon tears.

“I know,” she said.

Barwell tiptoed to the window and opened it. The call was deafening. People threw up their caps in expectation.

“Won’t ye go to them?”

“What’s the use—now.”

“They don’t know,” said Dick.

“Yes, go to them,” said Marian, trying to smile through her tears.

For a second or two Hastings stared in silence at the window, then slowly he walked to it. There was a thunderous outburst: “Hoo-ooray! Hasteen ki jai!”

He bowed, as in a dream and said, “Thank you!” in a whisper nobody could hear.

Chapter XV

I

We did not know,” he said, “when the Duchess of Kingston was sighted in the river that we should be going home in her.”

She smiled at him, her hand on the deck rails. On the receding shore, the General still waved his hand, Barwell stood with Tim, who was unhappily not fit to travel, but was to be sent home later. The dog’s snout was raised and at intervals wailed a farewell. Indian throngs had brought banners and a band, which could still be heard, distorting familiar English melodies such as “Drink to me only with thine eyes” and “God Save the King,” which they played again and again, with many variations, the pipes rarely in accord with the horns, and the drum thudding in absolute independence.

“I always thought,” he said, “that our farewell might be from an angry crowd pursuing us to the shore. We were very near it once or twice in the earlier days; and my only solace during such awful nightmares was that the directors might uphold my point of view. But this”—he indicated it with an incredulous hand—”and the directors still to face. The worst is still to come.”

She raised his hand and made him wave it. The figures on the shore were slowly becoming specks, but the band could still be heard—“Just leave a kiss with-i-in the cup and I—I——”

Brown, glistening bodies swam alongside the ship and salaamed from the water. The sails flapped overhead.

“Will there . . .” she began, but stopped.

“H’mm?”

“I was just wondering.”

“What?” He lifted each of her fingers in turn and let them fall again on the rail.

“Whether there is enough for—Daylesford.”

A cloud crossed his brow.

“Possibly—to buy it. But scarcely to live in it.”

“Not if I worked very hard? I’ll be your cook general and you be my butler. Then we’ll change our clothes and be mistress and master.”

He laughed.

“There’s the case still to pay for.”

“The case?”

“The trial.”

“Good Heavens, they don’t expect you to pay for that.”

“If I want to defend myself—I must.”

“But they’ve forced it on you.”

“Even so. The defence has to be prepared. Lawyers will have to be paid.”

“There will be nothing left then . . .”

“That depends on how long the trial lasts.”

“Do you suppose it will last three months?”

“Six at least; it may even run longer.”

“But Nuncomar’s trial . . .”

“One can never tell with these things.”

“If it lasts a year . . .” There was a terrible fear in her eyes.

“I don’t think it will,” he said comfortingly.

“I shouldn’t have,” she said, “I shouldn’t have. All this extravagance. . . . You ought to have smacked me hard every time. . . .”

“My dear!”

“All these jewels. My God! I should throw them away. The money that I’ve . . . You shouldn’t have indulged me. Even when I said ‘No, no, Warren,’ you . . .”

“Don’t you like your jewels?”

“You know I simply love them, but . . .”

“I wanted you to be happy.”

“But . . . What do I know about money?” She stamped her foot. “You should have . . .”

He stopped her. “Listen, my dear. Our nerves are frayed with all this. We are irritable, both of us. Don’t let’s turn against each other now. You realize it’s all we have left.”

“I’m sorry.” She took up his hand and kissed it. “I’m sorry.”

The setting sun cast a glow upon the immense dome of his head. His eyes shone. The shore was out of sight now. Even the band could not be heard.

II

It was a slow and tedious voyage. The weather, fortunately, was good, but Mrs. Fowkes, who came aboard at Madras, was far too talkative. She had lost her husband suddenly, just before sailing and, overwhelmed by her grief, she persisted in telling everyone. Again and again she talked of it—how they had planned this trip—and now! His sympathetic attention made Hastings her victim. Little happy memories of her courtship, her remorse at quarrels over such trifles. . . .

“You should not encourage her,” Marian said. “She tires you. . . .”

“She makes me grateful for the major mercies which in the midst of distress one is apt to overlook. I drank God a million times every day that I have you, Marian. . . .”

“And I too. That is why I do not wish you to be tired.”

“But I am not tired.”

She nodded. She knew he would not tell her.

It was always “I slept well last night, my dear,” even when he had tossed restlessly and had got up once or twice to stare out of the porthole at the uneasy sea. His body was not very strong. It was his mind that gave it energy, that whipped and drove it unto breaking point; then suddenly he would crumple up and hold his head, smiling with difficulty as she bent over him and saying: “Just slight—it’s just slight. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

He spent the bulk of the day writing. She sat with him. They went into it all together. His case had to be prepared. He knew what line the attack would take. He had asked Barwell to assemble all the evidence he could in India and dispatch it by the following ship. But Barwell intended to bring it himself. He remained behind only to await the arrival of the new Governor General, Lord Cornwallis. He had wanted to leave India years before, and would have done so, but for Hastings’s need of him.

The men he had dismissed—they would be his chief accusers—Bristow, Abingham, Thomson . . . led, of course, by Francis, with as many more allies of influence and distinction as Francis could attach to the cause. He could be relied upon to do that. Money expended on improvements—that would be the directors’ case against him, though surely in the eyes of public opinion . . .

“Oh, don’t you worry,” Marian said, “they’ll bring up everything but that. They’ll hang you for the other things and not mention the good work. . . .”

“Well, we must then.”

“Of course. At least that’s what we must pay those lawyers for.”

“It seems that always—always whatever one does must be done not so much for its own sake, however good or worth while that might be, as for the opinion of some looker-on, an interested third party—jealous colleagues—influential directors—any one of whom by lies and malice can ruin and break you. They did it to Clive—to Dupleix—to Cortez, and who am I . . .”

“They won’t break you, darling. You are too calm, too philosophical for that. You have always been, otherwise we could not have come through so much. Still, I know just a little of what goes on behind that calm exterior, that façade you wear for the world—and wear often even for your wife. . . .”

“For my wife?”

“‘I slept perfectly last night, darling!’ ‘Oh! I’m feeling fine and fit to-day!’ Never mind, darling. You are like that—and I fell in love with what you are, not with what I want to make you.”

“If only every wife thought like that.”

III

They were met at the wharf at Greenwich by just a few friends and by his lawyers, who knowing of the trial, had done some preliminary work on their own account. The Baron astonishingly was there too. He had married again—not Noelle Grand, as everyone had expected, but a young and attractive German girl, whom he brought with him, so that his second wife should meet his first.

He spoke of Francis. What he said was really alarming. Francis, it seemed, had won over to his cause no less a person than Edmund Burke, who intended to use Hastings’s activities in the East as a text for the cleansing and reform of British colonization. Sheridan, the popular young playwright and an able political campaigner, had also joined forces with Francis. These two, stern champions of liberty, were entrusted with the task of his denunciation.

The Baron began to talk of Noelle. . . . It was difficult to give their thoughts to any thing. It seemed that she had gone to France because of the scene Mrs. Francis had made. Francis somehow had explained it away with that amazing faculty he had. . . . And in France, Noelle had got in with the Cabinet, climbed from Minister to Minister. Done pretty well, all in all. Noelle was like that—knew how to play her cards. “Even when you did pick a Governor General,” the Baron whispered and laughed behind his gloved hand. . . .

“Thank you, Carl,” she said abruptly. “I think you have seen enough now to go back and report to Francis. . . .”

“Still the same Marian!”

“Francis will expect you to report to him. Tell him that whatever he does will make not the slightest difference—it never did. Goodbye.”

She turned to the others—Thornhill, who had been with Hastings in India during Clive’s time, Carew and Hilton. An idle, curious throng had collected to gape at them. She walked with the others to Thornhill’s coach and returned with him to his home in St. James’s, where Mrs. Thornhill had prepared for their stay.

It was the opening of a gay London season. Wherever they appeared, Marian and Hastings were sought and stared at. People stood up on chairs to see them and placed their fans against their mouths to whisper. The Thornhill house was inundated with callers, who hurried away to speak against him to their friends. What was she like? Really pretty? And fast, I suppose. . . . They say in Calcutta . . .

Their curiosity satisfied, they dropped the Thornhills, snubbed them in public. Nobody who associated with, let alone housed, such a generally execrated person as Warren Hastings could possibly be accepted in company. The news-sheets were full of extravagant attacks on him. Every day there were fresh revelations. He was accused of cruelty, even murder. Crimes more horrible than Nuncomar had ever committed were imputed to him. He became a monster. Mothers used his name to frighten their children. “Warren Hastings will get you”—and the little ones would cower terrified under their bedclothes. Burke delivered speeches almost daily to large assemblies in public halls, insisting that the cry of agonized India should be heard and this evil creature punished by the law. It became unbearable to remain in London, and yet they had to be there, in touch with the lawyers, with developments and plans for the trial.

They went away for a few days and travelled by coach to Chipping Norton where they put up at an inn. A mile and a half away, at Churchill, he showed her the half-cottage in which he had lived with his grandfather . . . the church with the avenue of sombre yews leading to it from the gate . . . the simple little school where he had sat with the village children. He took her along the familiar walk to Daylesford, less than two miles away, where the house was scarcely visible now for the trees. They stood by the hedge and breathed in the heavy perfume of the rosemary, watched a little wagtail take its lunch upon the sloping lawn. . . .

His heart beat faster. His face was flushed. He showed her the hedge into which he used to creep as a cliild. It was thick, the green lane inside, completely hidden. He led her in by the hand. They had to keep their heads down. It was cool, deliciously cool, with the fierce summer sun outside. They could hear the whirr of a cutting machine. . . . All the familiar scents, all the familiar sights, all the familiar sounds. . . .

They crept out. There were farms all round. Every one of them he knew—Edwards farm, where the men were stacking the hay, two by two leaning the tufts together so that in any wind the stacks should still be standing. The cutter going in Harvey’s meadow on the other side. They walked up to it across the coarse stubble, which he remembered used to prick and scratch his little legs. . . . The men paused to look at them . . . and called a greeting. They were friendly. It was like coming home.

They stood there a long time. Grandfather would feel for his hand presently and take him back for supper. . . . With Burke against him—that champion of liberty, of the rights of the down-trodden . . . did he stand a chance? . . .

“Isn’t the scent of the hay glorious?” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed. Yes. Francis had been clever. Burke and Sheridan and the rest. . . . A matter of days now and then he would know the best or the worst.

Chapter XVI

I

They were not able to see the house. Mr. Knight, son of the man who had purchased it, was away in Bristol. So she could not see the famous hall of which he had talked so much. But by peering through the windows Hastings noticed how different the place looked, with its strange new furniture, its altered rooms. . . . Still, it was Daylesford . . . home. . . .

On returning to London, he wrote to Mr. Knight, expressing his desire to purchase the place; after a long delay, Mr. Knight replied, refusing absolutely to part with it. Hastings wrote again, he pleaded, but Knight still refused—for no sum of money at all would he be tempted to sell it. His father had bought it—he had himself grown up in it. . . .

That was something they had not counted on—as they toiled and saved and dreamed through those long years in India, yearning only to return one day and spend the evening of their lives at the old home. . . . Now, this adamant refusal. . . .

With a heavy heart Hastings tried to resign himself to this fresh and far more severe blow. He could not remain on in London—it was too confined. . . . He went with Marian to see Beaumont Lodge, a house on the edge of Windsor Forest, which had just come into the market. It was comfortable. It offered them complete detachment. He agreed to take it . . . and relieved the Thornhills, who were reluctant that they should go, of the embarrassment their presence was undoubtedly causing.

Within a day or two of their move to Beaumont the Queen, to their surprise, drove round from Windsor Castle to see them. Herself a German, from the same district of the Rhine as Mrs. Hastings, she felt drawn towards them in their affliction. She said the King, like herself, was most distressed at the trial that Parliament had planned. They had done their best to dissuade the House of Commons from proceeding with it, but in these democratic times, with loud-lunged demagogues courting popular favour, it was no longer possible for even Kings to do much. It preyed on His Majesty a great deal, she said, this and the recent troubles in America, which had led to the loss of those colonies . . . and now a Revolution was brewing in France . . . It was enough to drive anyone out of his mind.

The Queen came often. She brought a cake with her sometimes . . . and sent round baskets of vegetables from the royal garden. Once they were asked round to the Castle, but it got known and there was a great deal of comment about it in the Press.

The lawyers spent much of their time down at Beaumont, assembling the evidence that Barwell had sent home from India. Some months later Barwell came home himself, bringing Tim with him. How eagerly the dog wagged his tail, how forgiving, interested not in the new house, not in anything, save them. . . .

All that summer and autumn Parliament haggled over the charges on which Hastings was to be impeached. The following spring General Clavering came home and visited the Hastings at Beaumont, resolved on securing an acquittal. “Monstrous! Monstrous!” the General kept roaring. “I’d hang Francis. By God, I would. Shooting’s too good. . . .”

Barwell had brought home testimonies and depositions and sworn affidavits from almost everyone in Calcutta. The various native communities declared their affection for Hastings and affirmed that, far from ill-treating them, he had rendered them many great services. The General, in his firm and simple faith that right must triumph, had brought back no papers, nothing— despite his wife’s urgings. “I’m not going to ask them . . . beg of them. . . . The feller wouldn’t do the things they accuse him of. . . . You’ve only got to look at him to see that, no matter what Francis or anyone else says.”

They stayed from time to time at Beaumont, Mrs. Clavering bringing her own supply of cheap plates in case the General had a fit of temper.

Though the trial was expected to begin within a few days the whole of that year too went by without any developments . . . but all the time the dread fingered of the awful ordeal poised perilously above him.

Early the following summer, on May 21st to be exact, Hastings was arrested. He was taken by the Serjeant-at-arms to the bar of the House of Lords to hear the lengthy and involved list of the articles of his impeachment. On the application of his friends he was released on bail and allowed to return to Beaumont with Marian.

It became clear now that Hastings was to be put on trial for his life. The charges brought against him were of so serious a nature, that to be proved guilty of them would inevitably involve the extreme penalty.

II

Instantly every festive event became of secondary importance in the social calendar. Not the opera, not even Drury Lane could vie with Westminster Hall, where a Governor General, but lately returned from the mystic East, was to fight for his life. All the greatest orators were ranged against each other. There would be talk of Maharajahs, of rubies and diamonds, of elephants and nautch girls and of Nawabs. The words had, to Western ears, a magical ring.

Countesses and duchesses fought for places in the Hall. Many stood in an all-night queue in Parliament Square, though an icy wind tore through their muffs and wraps and made their eyes red long before morning. A troop of horse guards and three hundred foot guards had difficulty in keeping back the crowds. Women wore their most elegant dresses, as though for Ascot. They had their cloaks torn, their shoes wrenched off in the rush. The agony of a man was likely to furnish an intenser joy than the baiting of bears at Southwark or the cock-fighting in Spring Gardens just off Whitehall.

“Gawd!” said one of the attendants. “They do enjoy it. The pore man. . . .”

“Pore man? What abaut the tortures wot ’e’s done,” declared his companion.

“All! But that was in Injia. They’re ’eathens there.”

“’Strue. I suppose it does make some difference.”

“My dear,” cooed the Countess of Lisbourne. “They tell me no woman was safe in India.”

Her companion, the gaunt, angular Lady Dorothea Taylor, smirked gawkishly. “I wish I was there,” she purred with ecstasy.

“Do you think they’ll hang him?” asked Lord Wentworth idly.

Lord Ferris did not answer. He looked round the room eagerly. He had not seen Marian since he took leave of her and Hastings in Calcutta. That was nine years ago. Since their return he had called and left his cards, but had heard nothing from them.

No, they were not yet here.

Lord Wentworth asked Sir Charles Edgcumbe: “Do you think they’ll hang him?”

“I would,” said Sir Charles. He emphasized the remark with a nod.

Burke came in. The crowd in the lobby cheered.

“Will you take your places, please,” the attendants urged. But very few moved.

“Will it last through the season?” people asked. That was their chief concern. Some talked of deferring their visit to Bath if the trial continued.

Suddenly, without any signal, the babble of talk was hushed. One or two voices soared for an instant and ceased. Every head was turned towards the entrance. Hastings and his wife walked in, striving with difficulty to appear unaware of the hundreds of eyes upon them. With them were Barwell, the General and Mrs. Clavering, the Thornhills and one or two more. Lord Ferris tried to approach them, but though he had lingered near the entrance in expectation, it was impossible; he was wedged hard against the wall.

“Will you take your places, please. All take your places.”

The elegant throng was herded in by the foot-guards and the attendants.

At a call from the principal King-at-arms, two hundred peers came in procession into the Hall. Up in the gallery, Marian noticed, the Queen was seated with three of her daughters, the Princesses Elizabeth, Augusta and Mary. The Queen was in fawn-coloured satin and wore a simple headdress. In the royal box sat Mrs. Fitzherbert, mistress of the gay young Prince of Wales, and the Duchess of Gloucester. The Prince and his brothers, the Dukes of Cumberland, York and Gloucester, were among the peers in the procession. The rest of the gallery was filled with members of the House of Commons.

The Serjeant-at-arms then summoned Hastings before the bar. “Warren Hastings,” he called, “come forth and save thee and thy bail, otherwise the recognizance of thee and thy bail will be forfeited.”

He stepped forward. They told him to drop to his knees before the Lord Chancellor. He was then instructed to rise. He stared at a patch of the floor just in front of his buckled shoes . . . dared not lift his eyes in case he encountered Marian’s.

A sonorous voice was reading a proclamation: “Whereas charges of high crimes and misdemeanours have been exhibited by the knights, citizens and burgesses in Parliament assembled, in the names of themselves and of all the Commons of Great Britain, against Warren Hastings, Esq. . . . all persons concerned are to take notice that he now stands on his trial, and they may come forth in order to make good the said charges.”

The melody of “Das Veilchen” murmured behind the drums of his ears as he had first heard her sing it on board the Duke of Grafton . . . her large blue eyes upon him.

The Lord Chancellor seemed to have risen. He was saying something. “Warren Hastings, you are called upon, after every expedient allowance, for your defence. You have had bail. You have counsel. Much time has also been granted you, becoming well the circumstances of your case. For the matter in the charges is most momentous. . . .” He could hear his grandfather scream as he lay dying in his bed in the upper front room and there was no one in the house save himself, terrified at the foot of the narrow dark stairs. . . . “Conduct your defence therefore in a manner that may befit your station and the magnitude of the charges against you and estimate rightly the high character of those you have to answer. . . .”

Marian, seated beside Mrs. Clavering, was biting her lower lip. Her chin would keep quivering. . . . He was speaking. Yes. She saw his slight scarlet-clad figure standing erect before them. She heard his voice—so strange in the large hall. . . .

“My Lords, I am come before this high tribunal, equally impressed with a confidence in my own integrity and in the justice of the Court before which I stand.”

That was all he said. The scarlet-clad figure sat down again. The accusers came forward, Burke, Sheridan, an over-dressed plump young man—Charles James Fox, she was told—Francis, yes, Francis, a little older, but with that ever insolent, challenging air, Bristow. . . . She shut her eyes and prayed. . . . Please God, he would come through all this.

The case was opened with a great deal of personal acrimony. Once or twice appeals were made by Hastings’s counsel against the vituperation and malignity of the attack, but Lord Loughborough, the Lord Chancellor, dismissed the protests.

“It turns on the personality of the man. . . .”

“Yes, my lord, but if they would keep to facts and incidents rather than to ugly adjectives . . .”

The objection was disallowed. It was apparent to Marian as to Hastings and his friends, which way the sympathies of the Lord Chancellor leaned. . . .

Day after day fashionable throngs filled that immense hall. Marian saw new faces in their midst. She caught a glimpse of the Baron and his wife. Once she caught sight of Noelle with a bearded Frenchman beside her.

When the session ended the prosecution had not yet done. They would take up the whole of the following session, that at least was clear. Hastings and Marian went home to Beaumont. Marian was not sleeping so well now, though she too bed bravely. But her face was pale and shrunken and her eyes, in spite of all her efforts at being cheerful, had lost their lustre. All night he was up, leaning over her, applying bandages to her head, pacing the balcony restlessly outside when she dozed, his mind tossed and tormented, more for what had been done to her than for the personal issues at stake. No Daylesford, not even England . . . but they could still go away together. Together: that was all that mattered.

Up and down, up and down the balcony he paced, restlessly.

III

The second session came to an end and still the prosecution kept producing fresh charges. Despite its protracted length the interest of the populace was sustained. They bought season tickets now for Westminster Hall, as they did for the opera, and went often from one to the other without changing.

“Sheridan is speaking to-day. Sheridan!”

“If this goes on it will ruin us. Fifty guineas a seat, my dear Fanshaw!”

“It will go on for years,” said Fanshaw. “It’s the greatest show on earth.”

“They talk too much. . . . Everybody talks too much,” the General grumbled. “They’ll never be done.”

“They’ll damn ye without hearing ye,” said Barwell.

“They have searched and scavenged in my past,” said Hastings, “every secret has been prized open. They will ask the uninformed who sit in judgment to pass sentence upon me for having pared my nails or not having pared my nails, for shaving my beard, for bringing about—Heaven alone knows how, yet they will prove it—-the secession of the American Colonies and the Revolution that has just broken out in France. I am to blame for all—Burke and Sheridan and Fox will prove it to my own astonishment. They have drunk too well of the poisoned cup of Francis, and his hate of me. . .”

“So that is how he spent the intervening years at home,” said the General.

“Oh, aye. He has done his vile work thoroughly.”

“Every charge has been brought against me—fraud—forgery—robbery—treachery—murder—even murder. I begin, my dear Dick, by God, I begin to wonder myself if I can really be innocent.”

On Hastings’s behalf his counsel begged that the trial should be conducted with all speed and expedition so as to save costs or he would be ruined financially. But Burke refused to be hurried. He declared that every ship from India brought fresh revelations which could not be ignored. He made a great many speeches. He declaimed. He gesticulated. He went on for hours—for days. Nothing seemed to exhaust him. Those who had been in India were astonished at the fantastic notions he had of the place, never having seen it. He recounted its history with hysteria and with rage. He smote his breast. He denounced Hastings “as the common enemy and oppressor of all—in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every rank, in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden underfoot and whose country he has turned into a desert, in the name of the English nation whose honour he has sullied, whose trust he has betrayed. Oh miserable state of the East India Company to have such a man as its chief agent in the country. Oh fallen lot of England!”

He accused Hastings of accepting bribes—the charge Nuncomar had made at Francis’s prompting. He accused Hastings of the murder of Nuncomar. He declared without advancing any proof, that Hastings had reduced fourteen hundred nobles of Bengal to beggary. “He cannot so much as dine without creating a famine. He lies down in his sty of infamy, wallowing in the filth of disgrace—and fattening upon the offals and excrements of dishonour. The crimes I lay to his charge are those that are hatched out in dunghills.”

Wearying of this ceaseless vituperation, Hastings consoled himself in rhyme. He scribbled some lines on a pad and pushed it towards his counsel. The man read:

“Oft have I wondered that on Irish ground
No poisonous reptiles ever yet were found;
Reveal’d the secret stands of Nature’s work
She saved her venom to create a Burke.”

One day Clive’s son, now Lord Clive himself, came up to them in the foyer.

“Even your father,” the General roared, “wasn’t spared this, was he? These damned lawyers and politicians—they always get you in the end.”

“But they spared him,” said young Clive, “this slow, dragging trial—I am sorry, sir,” he added to Hastings.

“Ah!” Somebody came up to them gushingly. “If it isn’t—the General! After all these years!” Noelle purred—“and you, my dear—I am so sorry for His Excellency.”

Marian said “Thank you!” She had heard that Noelle was married now—after living with most of the politicians of France. The Princess Talleyrand—married to France’s greatest Foreign Minister.

“You, my dear,” Noelle said in an aside, “should have found a Prince too—they are safer—and you have your title whatever happens.”

To think that Noelle! Such was the reward of virtue!

“I hope,” Noelle turned to Clive, “I hope to-day is going to be exciting. You would think that in the fourth year seats would be easier to get—but they’re not. If it had not been for my husband—the Prince, you know . . .”

“Pah!” said the General in exasperation.

“You know, General, I think it’s just like old times, don’t you?—meeting your friends and all these Hindustani words and everything. And I didn’t know His Excellency had committed murders. They wouldn’t say so if he hadn’t.”

“You go to your seat,” he ordered her, “or you’ll lose it, Prince or no Prince.”

“Oh, my dear! No, General, you’re joking, though it’s not like you. . . .”

“Go away,” he roared, “for God’s sake.”

She went, smiling back at him over her shoulder.

IV

“Tell them, tell them,” said Hastings to his lawyers, “tell them I plead guilty. I can’t go on. Five years have gone and still they haven’t done. It is more than flesh and blood can endure.”

He was but a shadow of himself. Below the immense dome of his forehead his face had shrunken to all but nothingness. The mouth, the nose were infinitesimal. Marian was showing the strain, too.

“Heaven knows how many years more. . . .”

“H’ssh, darling!” she said.

“No monster in history was ever painted worse. For years the world has seen me only as they chose to paint me. . . . I have not yet had a chance to say one word in my defence. . . .”

“Your turn will come,” she took his hand. “It always does.”

“I don’t care any more.”

“You must. You must.”

“Is this all I promised you?”

“We have been together.”

“And the money—Daylesford. . . .”

“We will begin again.”

He wanted to bury his face on her shoulder and give vent to all that was surging within him. He dared not. He dared not. Thank God, the lawyers were here.

Lord Ferris sometimes exchanged a word with her. “You know if I could do anything . . .”

“I know.”

“If only—anything, just to help you—and him.”

“Thank you, Lord Ferris. I know.”

The prosecution finished at last. Nearly six years had gone by since they opened their attack. Hastings was too weary to say much, too indifferent by now as to the result. He had suffered enough already. Could any penalty they imposed be worse?

He spoke briefly in his defence—and with dignity. “I received the Government of Bengal,” he said, “with encumbrances, which might have intimidated a firmer spirit than mine; and I felt the perilous situation in which it placed me. I found myself the titular head of a numerous, and not always accordant Council, appointed to manage the affairs of a great State, which was of recent acquisition and had neither form nor system, nor had I orders or instructions which could enable me to give it either.

“I attempted, and with the aid of my colleagues, I gave the country both form and system. Every institution and order that exists and functions in that country to-day received its origin from me.

“Under such circumstances, since it is not the lot of human nature to be exempt from error, I have wondered what calamity can have affected the interests I had in charge. What losses has the nation sustained through my mismanagement? Have provinces been dismembered? Have its armies been defeated? Or war and famine wasted the country during my jurisdiction? No. The reverse is true. So little ground have I afforded from the notoriety of my character for such an inquisition into it, that I dare affirm even at this hour that I stand guiltless and deign to ask only of this honourable House a fair trial.”

One of the major issues of the prosecution was the ill-treatment of the eunuchs of Oudh. Major Bristow declared without blushing in the course of his evidence that the severity he had applied was at the orders of the Governor General, and his only reward for obedience had been dismissal, so that, should there be an enquiry, the Governor General’s hands should appear clean.

In order to damn him the more the two Begums, whose anger at the treatment of the eunuchs was understandable, were ordered to come before the Court and make their complaint. These Princesses had never before left India, nor had their countenances been bared to any gaze outside the innermost circle of their home. But their arrival was so long delayed that the prosecution’s case had to be closed without their evidence being heard.

At last they came. Special permission was obtained for these important witnesses of the prosecution to be heard at this stage. There was a sensation in the foyer when the two shrouded little figures were led in.

“Should have brought the eunuchs,” said Francis.

“You would not have heard their voices,” jested Sheridan.

“Yes,” agreed Burke, absently.

The surging fashionable crowd pointed with awe and spoke with bated breath as the two slight figures, with heads bowed, crept past. Suddenly they stopped. They said something to one another and then turned. One of them hurried back and seemed to fall. No, she was on her knees and the other Princess joined her in the same attitude. Each held a thin, shrivelled hand. They noticed that the hand was the ex-Governor General’s. The two women muttered something the others could not understand, it may have been in Hindustani or one of the hundred fantastic dialects of the country.

But Hastings nodded.

“That things should have come to this, Sahib,” one of the Princesses wailed.

The other said: “You have done us no wrong, we shall swear it by the Holy Prophet. It was that man.” She looked around. “He has gone now. But it was that man. God is our witness it was not you.”

Hastings urged them to rise. “I thank you,” he said.

“Come along, please,” the attendants urged.

“You were in India a man without equal,” the elder of the Begums said.

“Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, if you please.”

The attendants bustled the Begums on.

“May God keep you in His holy protection,” the elder of them cried.

“Thank you,” said Marian.

The throng were hurried forward. Then the slow procession of the peers filed in as it had done for seven years. It was frightening in its solemnity and its grandeur, the sombre clothes, the majestic wigs.

V

When at last judgment was pronounced and Hastings was acquitted by an overwhelming majority on all counts, the public were for the most part weary and indifferent. Some felt that a grave injustice had been done a good man, others that it was a grossly mistaken verdict. Nothing short of hanging would satisfy them, though one or two did concede in the Press that the weary length of the trial was perhaps sufficient punishment.

But the interest of most now was absorbed by the great war that had lately broken out with France. Napoleon’s armies, it was said, were planning to land in England. A ring of towers was being erected on the eastern and southern coasts. Every day there was fresh alarm. Fishing-boats were mistaken for the enemy, fired upon and sunk.

Mr. Knight, whose trade in Bristol had been severely affected by the war, wrote to Hastings expressing his warmest sympathy with “the most ill-used man in the dominions of the Crown.” He said the least he could do in reparation was to allow Hastings to acquire Daylesford, as he had once wished. He reminded Hastings of the price he had offered. . . . But alas! it was no longer possible to pay it. The costs of the trial had taken almost every penny he possessed.

He had given up Beaumont long before the end. They had been staying with the Thornhills again in St. James’s Place. But they would have to move—they could not impose upon the kindness of friends for ever.

Barwell said: “But ye were acquitted. They should compensate ye.”

“They should,” he repeated.

“Curse!” roared the General. “They compensated Dundas when he was acquitted, didn’t they?”

The lawyers applied on Hastings’s behalf. The letter was acknowledged and filed. They wrote again. The correspondence was referred to various departments. In the end the Government declined absolutely to make any reparation. They had themselves, they declared, been put to great expense. Hastings had ample opportunities while in the East to acquire wealth beyond measure. The lawyers wrote again and still again—but it proved of no avail.

Hastings, who had written to thank Mr. Knight and to ask him for a little time in which to decide “as the recent proceedings have been a severe tax upon my resources,” sat at his desk now and expressed bis intense regret at having to decline his very kind offer.

Marian came in as he was sprinkling sand upon the letter. She watched him fold it slowly. She took it from him, read it and tore it in two.

“I have already bought Daylesford,” she said.

“You. But how . . .?”

He noticed that she was wearing no jewels.

“Dick sold them for me in London.”

“But, Marian . . .”

“You can’t imagine what a lot they fetched. All those rubies and turquoises . . . they had never seen anything like them.”

“Dick shouldn’t have.” He rose. “This conspiracy. . . . You know I would sooner you had your jewels.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You know you would sooner have Daylesford—and so would I. We shall both be much happier there.”

“But, my dear . . .” He was stooping over her hands, kissing them. She felt something warm fall and trickle towards her fingers. “My dear . . .”

She raised his face and kissed it. She passed her cool hand over the high bronzed dome of his head.

“But how . . . we have no money to . . .”

“We can do our own work. It will cost no more than anywhere else.”

He kissed her again. He was unable to speak. And she could say nothing too.

Chapter XVII

I

Excitement overpowered their doubts and their fears. With flushed faces they set out for Daylesford. The front door was opened to them by the butler, who had the keys in readiness. He began to lead the way, to show them the rooms. . . . But Marian dismissed him.

“Mr. Hastings was born here,” she said. “He has hidden in every crack of the wall when he was a child.”

“Madam,” he bowed and handed over the keys.

The rooms looked neglected. The plaster had crumbled. Where the furniture had been, there were marks upon floor and wall. Every picture had left its imprint. They would never have the money to do it up.

Both realized that silently.

They returned to the hall. Without the butler there, they could now stand and gaze at the old shields that lined it—miniature shields, the paint only just discernible—blue with gold stars, the shield of Myles de Hastings, who had fought for Henry II . . . the scarlet markings of John Hastings who had fought for Charles I.

Hastings was opening the doors of cupboards and gazing in reminiscently. “We had a bureau here and an immense high-backed chair against the wall . . . at the foot of the stairs stood a suit of armour. . . .”

She slipped her arm through his. “It’s home,” she said, “at last.”

He turned and hugged her arm. “Daylesford and you.”

“We’ll have to shut up most of the rooms,” she said. “We shan’t really want more than two or three to live in . . . this room, we’ll sit here . . . because this—it has always been Daylesford to me.”

“We always used to sit here,” he said.

“Well, you’ll have to make up for lost time. Then the room above—our bedroom. You’ll want a study . . .”

“If I’ll have time to . . .”

“Time . . .?”

“I want to help you and we have the garden to see to. It will take all our time. . . .”

“Well, that’s one room saved—for just now at any rate. I’ll give you the study as a present for Christmas. One spare bedroom in case friends come down to stay.”

“Dick will love the garden.”

“And the General will for once not disturb the neighbours with his swearing.”

They smiled at each other. They seemed to have been doing that most of the time since they were let in by the butler. Through the few rooms they had selected, they wandered, planning—“the table here—the one we brought home from Calcutta—the Chippendale chairs . . .”

They were tired, there was nowhere to sit. They went into the garden and sat on the grass under the large cedar in front of the house. Benches, sundials, urns, had been taken away from the garden. It was very different from their last visit. But the shrubs . . . and the trees . . . and the flowers. . . .

“Thank God,” he said, “that you were extravagant about jewels.”

II

They went back in the coach to Chipping Norton, where they put up for the night at the inn. The furniture took days to arrive, but every morning Marian and he walked the three and a half miles to Daylesford, taking a basketful of things to eat under the cedar when it was lunch-time. The grass was overgrown, there was so much to be done.

“Let’s shut our eyes,” she said, “and wander—just to know where to begin on the weeds. . . .”

“It is impossible,” he said, “and all this grass . . . I shall never be able to cut it. . . .”

“I saw a scythe down in the village.”

“How do you use a scythe?” he asked.

“The same as a razor, I suppose, only under-arm instead of over. . . . Oooo!” she added, “how I wish I could shave Francis with a scythe. We might then have had lots of furniture, gardens, servants . . . Never mind,” she added quickly. “No cook we ever had could fry onions exactly the way I like them—and I’ve been longing for years—well, I couldn’t do it while you were the Governor General.” She smacked her lips and winked at him. But he was thinking, as she had thought just a second before, whether after all they would not have been better off, much better off, if they had taken a cottage which they could run with ease, without servants, and a garden that was within their managing. This . . . all these acres . . . and bedrooms. . . . But it was Daylesford.

When he saw the furniture being borne in again, something icy cold stirred within him and welled up towards his heart. He knew that the vague dream that he had hugged since childhood, since that fateful day in childhood when he saw the furniture being carried out, had been realized at last. At last! It was happening and he could hardly believe it. He would wake up, he felt vaguely, and find himself in bed, with the trial still on, as so often since it had ended he had awakened at night in alarm. . . . Yes, it was happening. She came and stood beside him and he felt somehow it was his grandfather standing there, watching with him, as all those years ago he had watched stick in hand.

“Come away, son.”

He turned. “Eh?”

“I said nothing,” Marian answered.

The Cotswolds sloped above them, the fields were golden with dandelions and the air heavy with the scent of rosemary and thyme and lavender, that strove to mingle, but could be told apart if you paused a moment. In the distance, he had just remembered, the three Scotch pines that formed an immense stork with a long beak. The beak was longer . . . the head was a little bald. . . . Still a stork, or was he aided by memory?

He pointed to them.

“See those trees. . . . Don’t they look like a stork?”

“Where?”

“Those pines—in the distance. A stork.”

She looked at him and smiled. “Yes, dear,” she said. . . .

He was out on a long walk, panting as he plodded up the hill to Churchill, when he saw a man swinging a scythe near the hedge. He stopped and watched him. The man was old and wrinkled. There were a million wrinkles on the sun-bronzed skin. He must have been close on ninety, yet he had a full head of hair, dirty white hair. He swung the scythe with an easy grace.

“Good mornin’, sir,” the man said, finding an audience. They had greeted each other often before. It was old Cole. He looked different active. Usually he sat against the wall outside the inn, a mug of beer in his unsteady hand.

“Goin’ to be hot t’day,” he said.

“Yes,” Hastings agreed. “Very hot. How d’you use those things?”

“This ’ere scythe? Like this, sir.” He used it with exaggerated emphasis. “Like this.”

All sorts of things happened to the shoulder, then the arm. First . . . but it was impossible to follow.

“Could I try?”

“Don’t cut your feet, sir. One mistake and your toes come right off. The gate’s over there, sir.”

Hastings took off his coat and placed it on the hedge. He pushed back his hat. Old Cole put the scythe in his hands. How large and unwieldy. “Now how do you place your hands?”

He seemed to cut no more than one blade of grass at a time. The man used it like a butterknife. The long grass fell before it with grace, in even golden strands.

“Like this, sir. Keep its heel down, the tip up.”

Hastings tried again. He wiped the perspiration from his brow. Hang it all, if a man of over eighty . . .

“Curve your arm round and carry the stroke right through. You’ll need practice, sir.”

“Eighty years of practice?”

Old Cole bared his gums and his one large yellow horse tooth. “Qgha, qgha,” he laughed. “No, no. You come along o’ me. Auld Tom, ’e’ll fix ye up with a scythe like this.””

They plodded along together. Cole looking more his old self, despite the immense scythe on his shoulder that was like part of some monstrous spider become petrified.

Tom promised to carry it to Daylesford himself. Oh, no, the master couldn’t carry, not such a gert big thing. They walked back together. Marian was in the garden. She saw them coming across the lawn through the little gate, instead of up the drive.

Tom stood by. He watched for a moment, then took the scythe into his own hands.

“Look, Marian, you’ll be able to remember little points that escape me.”

“Why, it’s easy.” She took it. “Well—er—if I was your size . . .” Yet, woman-like, she was managing much better than he did.

“That’s it,” said Tom. “That’s it, miss . . . ma’am.”

“Thank you, Tom—for the miss as well as the that’s it.”

He looked down at his toes, then touched his cap and left.

“Come,” she said, “now you try.”

It was coming—slowly. The birds twittered in the wistaria outside the library window. Inside, the room was all but empty, but the tranquillity of the countryside and the great beauty of the Cotswolds entered his soul.

Yes, here was peace. The land was your only enemy—no that was too harsh a term. It seemed intractable; yet if you treated it well, it became your friend and gave you food and flowers and perfume. . . . No Francis. No stab in the back. And the villagers—the women who stopped to talk on the road, the children you watched at play, the men who bade you good morning and were eager to perform some little service. . . .

Marian said: “In the autumn I think I’ll move those briars there. That old fence will look better covered up and when the roses are out . . .”

“And what about here, by the pond?”

“Oh, here I thought . . . I thought we’ll plant two semi-circles of yew—you know dipping towards the middle, with beds of azaleas and ivy- leafed geraniums. . . .”

III

The villagers were very helpful. Mrs. Boscombe who had the cottage by the church, used to come in every afternoon on the pretext that she would like, if m’m didn’t mind, just a few flowers, or some vegetables; and she would go into the kitchen and assist in all manner of ways.

“No, no, no, Mrs. Boscombe . . .”

“Lor’ love me, m’m. But a grand lady like you, it isn’t right. ’Sides you pay me in things if not in money. It comes to the same thing now, don’t it?”

“No.”

Some of the village men helped with the harder work in the garden, in return for cuttings from plants and some firewood. . . .

Barwell came down often. He generally brought something.

Marian would say when he wasn’t there: “We need a corner cupboard, but for goodness’ sake don’t look at that corner or Dick will see the empty space and bring it along under his arm next time.”

“Well, if we stare at the opposite corner, just to play safe, Heaven knows what that will prompt him to bring us.”

“We’ll have to sit blindfolded when Dick’s here—that’s all.”

“And furniture makers for miles around keep on sending us catalogues. They seem to think we haven’t enough.”

“I don’t know how they could have got such an idea. Oh, Warren, I saw the loveliest—I wish I had been greedy and got more jewellery out of you in India.”

“What did you see?”

“A Sheraton suite—two settees and four chairs. Shield-backed and the inlay is . . . Don’t you wish you had given me more jewellery?”

“Well, when Dick comes we must try not to look like Sheraton chairs.”

“The General’s due next—but he always brings wine—drinks most of it himself too while he’s here. They are kind to us, aren’t they, my love?”

The General came at the end of the month. He brought nothing. Seemed doleful. Talked about a brother who had died. A mysterious brother of whom they had never heard. The next day a van arrived and delivered a corner cupboard and a wine cooler that they had seen announced in the same catalogue as the Sheraton chairs. There was no mistaking them.

The General said: “Harold left me these. Been in the family a hell of a long time. I said, ‘God! What will we do with ’em!’ So I said: ‘Christ, just the thing for the Hastings.’ So we brought ’em along. Like ’em?”

“Oh, General, they’re lovely. But . . .”

“But—what?”

“So expensive!”

“Damnit. I tell you, I didn’t pay for them. What d’you think my brother died for; didn’t he?” he enquired of his wife.

She said: “I’m glad you like them, dear.”

“Oh, I love them,” Marian replied. “And now we can look anywhere we like when Dick’s next here.”

“And why couldn’t you look wherever . . .”

“You wouldn’t understand, General,” she smiled.

Chapter XVIII

I

Marian, wearing a patterned apron, was washing some cups and glasses in a bowl. Hastings kneeling on a settee near by was applying a brush carefully to his clothes. The pale spring sunlight gleamed through the southern windows of the panelled hall. A gentle breeze played with the young green shoots on the less indolent trees.

“The daffodils will soon be out.”

“Oh, they come out by the thousand,” he said. “The fields are golden with them. Grandfather and I used to come to look.”

“Our first spring, Warren. The birds, the flowers, everything—oh! I am so happy!”

“Be this enough for me,”

he quoted from something he had scribbled,

“To bear contented my accomplished lot,
Impeached, reviled, acquitted and forgot.”

There was a tinkle of glass in the bowl.

“If we don’t get any frost,” he said, “the peaches ought to do well.”

“Um!” She bit her lower lip, “Peaches!” There was the ring of a bell, faint and distant. Both looked up.

“I wonder who that can be?”

She began to wipe her hands.

“I’ll go,” he said.

She dipped her hands in the water again and went on washing. She heard Hastings’s voice enquiring haughtily: “And may I ask what you want here?”

The answer, soft and fault, sounded like—it couldn’t be. What would he be . . .?

Through the door strode a tall elegant figure.

“I hope I do not intrude.” He bowed to her.

Yes, it was Sheridan.

Hastings, coming in after him, repeated: “I asked you what you want here?”

“Hastings——” Sheridan seemed uneasy for a moment, fumbling for a word, he who was never at a loss for words: “I’ve been wanting for some time, Hastings, to come and—but I . . . Well, to be perfectly frank, I had not the courage.”

“Well?” enquired Hastings.

Sheridan hesitated again.

Marian came nearer, a delicate china jug in her wet hand. “What do you want—coming here?”

“Burke, as you know,” went on Sheridan, “is dead. There are only you and I and Francis left. I bear you no grudge, Hastings. It was nothing personal. I’ve just come to say that my part in it—I mean in the trial—was prompted purely by party politics. . . .”

“Politics!” Marian interrupted. “Politics! You think a man of flesh and blood, with feelings and memories”—she was trembling— “is just something to be bent to political needs and ambitions. . .”

“I am sorry, Mrs. Hastings, I did not realize . . . I believed that . . .”

“All England believed all sorts of things, thanks to you and Burke and Francis. But they were not true. They were not true. Not one of them was true, you know that.”

“I was glad, Mrs. Hastings, to be proved wrong. Every witness—I’ve never known anything like it—testified for you—even the Begums on whom we had counted most. I want to congratulate you, Hastings, on your triumph.”

He held out his hand to Hastings, but Marian thrust herself between them.

“No,” she said. “No. Not now. You politicians—set party before truth—vote only as the others command. . . . No.”

Sheridan shrugged his shoulders.

“Go back to your party,” she said, pointing to the door.

“I thought,” said Sheridan, “we might as well make peace, but . . .”

“It does not matter now,” said Hastings. “We have ceased fretting our souls, you can take nothing more from us. India—politics—we never even . . .

He looked away. He did not finish what he had begun to say.

“If I could make good in any way, Hastings, if I could take back those awful years of trial . . .”

“I want nothing,” he replied.

“I am sorry.”

“Not even that,” said Hastings.

Sheridan looked from one to the other, then shrugged his elegant shoulders once more. He bowed stiffly to both and walked briskly back to his waiting coach.

Hastings began to fold away the clothes he had been brushing. Marian tried to hum a gay air as she wiped the cups and glasses.

“Let’s go out and enjoy the sunshine,” she said, glancing again at him. “Let’s lie by the pond and feed the goldfish.”

But he went on folding his clothes. He said nothing.

II

He was restless for some days. She tried to engage his interest in other things, but though he did not talk of it, she knew what was occupying his mind.

Why, she asked herself, why had this to happen now—just as we had put it all behind us—the old, searing memories—why?

She noticed in The Times, which Barwell posted to them from London, that Francis had been given a knighthood. She tried to keep the paper from him, but she knew he would ask for it. Could she tear out the page? Sir Philip Francis. They had all got something. Elliott, who had been with them in India, was the Earl of Minto. Young Shore had been raised to the peerage too—Lord Teignmouth. They had all got something. He remained Mister Hastings. . . .

He did not refer to what he had read in the paper. He must have read it. She saw he was pale. He put it down, walked to the window and stared out. . . .

She came to him. He turned slowly. “The grass needs cutting,” he said. “I think I’ll go out and do it.”

He had cut it a day or two before.

“I’ll come along and help you.”

Would it do any good to talk it out?

They walked in silence to the shed for the scythe. She said: “I don’t know how Francis gets these things. . . .”

He said: “Oh, Francis! I’d forgotten that. . .”

She knew he hadn’t.

He said after a while: “They couldn’t have made us happier, not really happier—I mean if they had given me something. Or could they?”

“No,” she said. She saw he was relieved, as though he had shed something from his mind.

“No happier,” she repeated.

“You are right.” He slipped his arm about her. “I’m glad to hear you say that. No happier—not really.”

“Let us go out,” she said, “and lie by the Kingham brook, just as you used to as a child—and then you’ll know that most of the impossible, unattainable things you dreamed of . . .”

“Yes, the best of them have come true. And things of which I never dreamed—for I never imagined there was a you in the world. . . . No happier,” he repeated softly.

III

Mrs. Boscombe crept into the hall just as Marian was folding her chequered apron.

“Oh, m’m,” she said, “I told you I was comin’. You shouldn’t ought to let me not give you a ’and.”

“You are a kind friend, Mrs. Boscombe. But you see—we’ve done it all.”

“Dear, dear! And you with Nabobs and Rajahs and palanquins to wait on you at mealtimes!”

“And elephants,” added Marian.

“Well I never. I’ll go and clean out the bedroom.”

“Done that too.”

“Wear yourself out, that you will. Not much of yer as it is.”

Marian hugged her. She was feeling particularly happy to-day. Hastings had shed his gloom and his moodiness. She told herself that never, never were they so happy as now.

“There’s nothing then? All right, I’ll go now, m’m. But I’ll come again in the evenin’—and I’ll be real cross if you don’t let me do nothin’!”

“You won’t really be cross with me, Mrs. Boscombe?”

“I will too—see if I don’t.”

She turned towards the door. Hastings got up and opened it for her.

Marian followed her, put the apron away in the kitchen and returned. Hastings was reading in a large arm-chair by the window. She settled down beside him with her sewing.

After a time they heard a faint tinkle of the bell, ringing in the kitchen.

“I’ll go.” She rose.

“Who can that be? We don’t expect Dick till the evening.”

“He may have got here earlier.”

“I’ll go.”

“No, no.” She thrust him back into his chair.

When she returned four important looking men followed her into the hall.

Hastings rose. They bowed to him.

“I don’t suppose you remember me,” said a moon-faced little man, “but we met once many years ago. My name’s Glanville. I recently became Chairman of the East India Company. These are my colleagues. May I present Mr. Thomas, Mr. Crawford, Mr. Swinley?”

Panic seized her. Just as he was forgetting. Again this. Why? What did they want?

“And to what, may I ask,” he was saying slowly in his Governor General manner, “do I owe this unexpected visit from the East India Company directors?”

“You have no cause to be grateful to us,” said Glanville. “You have been treated abominably—yes, abominably. This new board has no compunction in saying so. We have come to apologize to you in person—and to make amends.”

“More apologies! Please, gentlemen,” said Marian. “Sheridan was here not many weeks ago”

“Sheridan?”

“We don’t want your apologies,” she said. It’s too late. Apologies don’t matter any more. We bear you no ill will, we prefer not to talk of it—that’s all.”

“But, madam . . .”

“Won’t you sit down, gentlemen, and . . .”

“But our mission, Mr. Hastings . . .” Glanville began again.

She was becoming desperate. In a frenzy she searched her mind. “Let me show you the garden. The dwarf red maples by the pond. . . . Do you know this part of the country, gentlemen?”

Glanville bowed. “Our mission, madam, is a happy one. At the very first meeting of this new board, we as directors of the East India Company decided, unanimously decided, that recognition should at last be made of the great services rendered by you, sir . . .”

She did not know if she was hearing aright.

“The directors have great pleasure in informing you that you have been voted an annual grant . . .”

They would wake up and find the room empty. “An annual grant.” She said it to hear her own voice. It surprised her when she heard herself.

“Yes, madam. An annual grant of £4,000 will be paid to Mr. Hastings for the rest of his days. It is, we recognize, but a poor recompense for the years of anguish you have had to endure—for the fortune you have sacrificed in defending your honour from a charge that we as a board have no hesitation in saying, should never have been brought.”

“That’s the sort of board we’ve been looking for all our lives,” she said. “Where have you been, gentlemen, where have you been? Let us have some wine.”

She rose, but one of the directors—Crawford was it?—being nearest the bell, leaned forward and rang it.

She and Hastings looked at each other . . . then they laughed at the echoing sound in the empty kitchen, the servantless house.

With mock importance Marian said: “Oh, never mind the servants to-day. On this great occasion I should like to wait on you myself, gentlemen. . . .”

But the door opened behind her and, turning, she saw to her surprise Mrs. Boscombe arrayed in her chequered apron, bearing a tray with glasses and a decanter upon it.

“Heavens!”

“I saw ’em come up the drive,” Mrs. Boscombe explained in a hoarse whisper, “so I come back. I knew as how you’d be wantin’ somethink to drink.”

Hastings filled the glasses. Swinley handed them round.

“One more glass,” said Marian. She handed her own to Mrs. Boscombe. But there were no more glasses.

Marian went to the corner cupboard the General had given them and brought from it a small, delicate tea-cup. She held it out to be filled.

“A toast,” said Glanville, “I give you the toast of Mr. Hastings.”

“Mr. Hastings,” they repeated lifting their glasses.

She looked over her cup at him. He was looking at her, his glass to his lips.

The End

Governor General

R. J. Minney

The author of “Clive of India” and “Distant Drums” has a theme after his own heart in the intensely moving and dramatic story of Warren Hastings, which he is treating simultaneously as a play and as a novel. It is not a biography but a romance. Mr. Minney has used the facts of history as Dumas and Sir Walter Scott used them.

The verdict of historians upon the career of Hastings has differed radically; but his bitterest critic has never denied the human and sympathetic appeal of his story, nor the despicable nature of the intrigues to which he was exposed. In “Governor General” it is exactly this aspect of the tale that is given full rein; and the result is a gallant and romantic tale of courage and endurance. We see Warren Hastings struggling with his passion for the lovely Baroness von Imhoff; dogged by the treachery of his fellow-councillors; belied by a corrupt native prince; rushed into a duel with one of his colleagues; rewarded by the confidence of all India; acclaimed the country’s saviour; and then, in the very hour of triumph, recalled to England, to stand trial upon a tissue of hastily-collected charges. And all through his career the innate simplicity of his nature is revealed in the abiding ambition, dearer to his heart than all the honour of office, to recover his old family home at Daylesford, and to end his days, like Waller’s stag, in the dell where he was roused. That he is at last enabled to do so, adds the final touch of romantic satisfaction to a story of broad human interest, a very real revitalising of the flesh and bone of history.

(Publisher’s description. First edition, 1935)