The slight feeling of awkwardness which attended Fleury’s clumsiness was soon forgotten, however, in the news that Mr Hopkins, the Collector of Krishnapur, and Mrs Hopkins had just then called to pay their respects and to allow Mrs Hopkins to say farewell to her dear friends, the Dunstaples, before embarking for England. Close on the heels of this announcement came Mrs Hopkins herself, and both Fleury and Miriam were concerned to see how harrowed and grief-stricken she looked. She was already sobbing as she advanced to embrace Louise and Mrs Dunstaple.
“Carrie, dear, you must not upset yourself. I shall have to take you away if you continue.” The Collector had followed his wife into the drawing-room with such a silent tread that Fleury jumped at these words, spoken without warning at his elbow. He turned to see a man who looked like a massive cat standing beside him; a faint perfume of verbena drifted from his impressive whiskers.
Mrs Hopkins stood away weakly from Mrs Dunstaple, still weeping but attempting to dry her eyes. Ignoring the introductions that the Doctor was trying to effect, she said to Miriam: “I’m so sorry, you must forgive me … My nerves are very poor, you see, my youngest child, a boy, died just six months ago during the hot weather … ever since then I find that the least thing will upset me. He was just a baby, you see … and when we buried him all we could think of was to put a daguerrotype of his father and myself in his little arms … It was made by one of the native gentlemen and we had been meaning to send it home to England but we decided it would be better to put it in the baby’s coffin with some roses … You know, perhaps you will think me foolish but I feel just as sad to be leaving the country where his grave lies as I am to be leaving all my dearest friends …”
Fleury had the feeling that Mrs Hopkins might have continued for some time in this vein had not the Collector said rather sharply: “Caroline, you must not think about it or you’ll make yourself unwell again. I feel sure that Mrs Lang would prefer to hear of something more cheerful.”
“On the contrary, Mrs Hopkins has my deepest sympathy … and all the more so as I have myself only recently lost someone very dear to me.”
The Collector’s brows gathered up; he looked moody and displeased, but he said nothing further.
Although he generally liked sad things, such as autumn, death, ruins and unhappy love affairs, Fleury was nevertheless dismayed by the morbid turn the conversation had taken. Besides, this was the very thing that he had brought Miriam to India to avoid. But Mrs Hopkins had composed herself and Mrs Dunstaple, too, had dried her eyes, for she was easily affected by the tears of others and only the thought of making her eyes red had prevented her from shedding them as copiously as her friend. As for Louise, although she had allowed herself to be tearfully embraced, she was more self-possessed than her mother and her own eyes had not moistened.
In any case, there was no time left for crying. Large quantities of news had to be exchanged for the Dunstaples had left Krishnapur in October and a great deal had happened since then. And they wanted to know so many things… how was the Padre? and the Magistrate? and had Dr McNab despatched anyone yet? In turn Mrs Dunstaple had to explain everything which had occurred in Calcutta. She would have liked to detail the various suitors who had been attending Louise but she did not like to, in Fleury’s presence, lest he should become discouraged. Moreover, Louise tended to be bad tempered if there was open discussion of her prospects. But while Fleury and Miriam were talking to the Collector Mrs Dunstaple just had time to intimate to Mrs Hopkins that there was one prospect, a certain Lieutenant Stapleton, nephew of a General, who looked very promising indeed.
The Collector was not in a good temper. He found leave-takings harrowing at the best of times and he was concerned for his wife, who had been overtired by the long and arduous journey by dak gharry from Krishnapur to the rail-head; but he was also worried as to what might be happening in Krishnapur during his absence, for his presentiment of approaching disaster grew every day more powerful. In addition, he felt himself to have been ill-used just now by Miriam, who had seemed to rebuke him for lack of feeling. “She cannot know how I myself suffered for the death of the baby! And how was I to know she had lost a husband in the Crimea?” (for the Doctor had enlightened him in a whisper) … ‘How like a woman to take an unfair advantage like that, dragging in a dead husband to put one in the wrong!” And the Collector stroked his side-whiskers against the grain, releasing a further cloud of lemon verbena into the air. “What was that phrase of Tennyson’s? ‘ … the soft and milky rabble of womankind … !’”
But the Collector admired pretty women and could not feel hostile to them for very long. If they were pretty he swiftly found other virtues in them which he would not have noticed had they been ugly. Soon he began to find Miriam sensible and mature, which was only to say that he liked her grey eyes and her smile. “She has a mind of her own,” he decided. “Why can’t all women be widows?” Fleury and Miriam sat opposite the elder Dunstaples in the carriage, beside little Fanny. Their space was confined because the ladies’ crinolines ballooned against each other leaving very little room for a gentleman to stretch his legs with discretion. Even Fanny’s slender legs were lost in mounds of snowy, tiered petticoats.
“How pleasant it is to be ashore again after those five interminable months at sea! How one misses the trees, the fields, the green grass! But, of course, Miss Dunstaple, you yourself must have experienced this very same ordeal by water and here I am speaking as if I were the only person ever to have come out from England!”
Fleury had regarded this as the beginning of a pleasant conversation but somehow his words were not well received. Louise’s lips barely moved in reply and her mother looked quite put out. Had he made a blunder? It surely could not be that Louise was “country born” and had thus never been to England, a condition that he had heard was much misprised in Indian society. But alas, this seemed to be the case.
The carriage had slowed down to pass through a densely populated bazaar. Fleury gazed out at a sea of brown faces, mortified by his mistake. A few inches away two men sat crosslegged in a cupboard, one shaving the skull of the other from a cup of dirty water. A cage containing a hundred tiny trembling birds with black feathers and red beaks crept past. To Fleury India was a mixture of the exotic and the intensely boring, which made it, because of his admiration for Chateaubriand, irresistible. Now there was shouting. They had arrived at the ghat.
The boat which the Doctor had engaged turned out to be a very dubious prospect indeed; a mass of leaky, rotting timbers roughly oblong in shape, manned by Dravidian cut-throats. But never mind, it was not far across the Hooghly; over the water the soaring trees of the Botanical Gardens could be seen.
“Look, there’s Nigel!” cried Louise, just as they were going on board, and clapped her hands with pleasure. A scarlet uniform could be seen glimmering in and out of the white muslin of the crowd and presently a young officer on horseback with a barefoot groom running along beside him clattered up to the ghat. He dismounted hastily and leaving the sais to cope with the horse scrambled on board, saying breathlessly: “Fearfully sorry to be late!”
Mrs Dunstaple greeted him a little coldly. Evidently Louise had not told her that she intended to invite Lieutenant Stapleton and she was not altogether glad to see him. Out of the corner of his eye Fleury saw Mrs Dunstaple frowning at her daughter and nodding surreptitiously in his direction. He remembered then what the Doctor had said about Louise and her prospects. So that was it! Mrs Dunstaple was afraid lest one of these eligible young men should become discouraged by the presence of the other. Fleury was pained to see Louise glance in his direction and then toss her head and look away, as if to say: “Why should I care whether he’s discouraged or not?” Although discouraged, Fleury stared at the river, pretending to admire the view. Lieutenant Stapleton, who had evidently expected to be the only young male on the expedition, seemed himself rather taken aback; when the two young men were introduced he merely mumbled wearily and eyed Fleury’s crumpled but well-cut clothes with sullen envy.