Every day at ten o’clock the south wind came hotter and stronger up from the sea. The sissoo trees on the Maidan trembled into delicate flower, and their faint, fresh fragrance stood like a spell about them. The teak pushed out its awkward rags, tawdry and foolish, but divinely green; and here and there a tamarind by the roadside lifted its gracious head, like a dream-tree in a billow of misty leaf. The days grew long and lovely; the coolies going home at sunset across the burnt grass of the Maidan joined hands and sang, with marigolds round their necks. The white-faced aliens of Calcutta walked there too, but silently, for “exercise.” The crows grew noisier than ever, for it was young crow time; the fever-bird came and told people to put up their punkahs. The Viceroy and all that were officially his departed to Simla, and great houses in Chowringhee were to let. It was announced rather earlier than usual that His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor would go “on tour,” which had no reference to Southern Europe, but meant inspection duty in remote parts of the province. Mrs. Church would accompany the Lieutenant-Governor. The local papers, in making this known, said it was hoped that the change of air would completely restore “one of Calcutta’s most brilliant and popular hostesses,” whose health for the past fortnight had been regrettably unsatisfactory.

The Dayes went to Darjiling, and Dr. MacInnes to England. Dr. MacInnes’ expenses to England, and those of Shib Chunder Bhose, who accompanied him, were met out of a fund which had swelled astonishingly considering that it was fed by Bengali sentiment—the fund established to defeat the College Grants Notification. Dr. MacInnes went home, as one of the noble band of Indian missionaries, to speak to the people of England, and to explain to them how curiously the administrative mind in India became perverted in its conceptions of the mother country’s duty to the heathen masses who look to her for light and guidance. Dr. MacInnes was prepared to say that the cause of Christian missions in India had been put back fifty years by the ill-judged act, so fearful in its ultimate consequences, of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Since that high official could not be brought to consider his responsibility to his Maker, he should be brought to consider his responsibility to the people of England. Dr. MacInnes doubtless did not intend to imply that the latter tribunal was the higher of the two, but he certainly produced the impression that it was the more effective.

Shib Chunder Bhose, in fluent and deferential language, heightened this impression, which did no harm to the cause. Shib Chunder Bhose had been found willing, in consideration of a second-class passage, to accompany Dr. MacInnes in the character of a University graduate who was also a Christian convert. Shib Chunder’s father had married a Mohamedan woman, and so lost his caste, whereafter he embraced Christianity because Father Ambrose’s predecessor had given him four annas every time he came to catechism. Shib Chunder inherited the paternal religion, with contumely added on the score of his mother, and, since he could make no other pretension, figured in the College register as Christian. A young man anxious to keep pace with the times, he had been a Buddhist since, and afterwards professed his faith in the tenets of Theosophy; but whenever he fell ill or lost money he returned irresistibly to the procedure of his youth, and offered rice and marigolds to the Virgin Mary. Dr. MacInnes therefore certainly had the facts on his side when he affectionately referred to his young friend as living testimony to the work of educational missions in India, living proof of the falsity of the charge that the majority of mission colleges were mere secular institutions. As his young friend wore a frock-coat and a humble smile, and was able on occasion to weep like anything, the effect in the provinces was tremendous.

Dr. MacInnes gave himself to the work with a zeal which entirely merited the commendation he received from his conscience. Sometimes he lectured twice a day. He was always freely accessible to interviewers from the religious press. He refrained, in talking to these gentlemen, from all personal malediction of the Lieutenant-Governor—it was the sin he had to do with, not the distinguished sinner—and thereby gained a widespread reputation for unprejudiced views. Portraits of the reverend crusader and Shib Chunder Bhose appeared on the posters which announced Dr. MacInnes’ subject in large letters—“Missions and Mammon. Shall a Lieutenant-Governor Rob God?”—and in all the illustrated papers. The matter arrived regularly with the joint at Hammersmith Sunday dinner-tables. Finally the Times gave it almost a parochial importance, and solemnly, in two columns, with due respect for constituted authority, came to no conclusion at all from every point of view.

The inevitable question was early asked in Parliament, and the Under-Secretary of State said he would “inquire.” Further questions were asked on different and increasingly urgent grounds, with the object of reminding and hastening the Secretary of State. A popular Nonconformist preacher told two thousand people in Exeter Hall that they and he could no longer conscientiously vote to keep a Government in office that would hesitate to demand the instant resignation of an official who had brought such shame upon the name of England. Shortly afterwards one hon. member made a departure in his attack upon Mr. John Church, which completely held the attention of the House while it lasted. The effect was unusual, to be achieved by this particular hon. member, and he did it by reading aloud the whole of an extremely graphic and able article criticising His Honour’s policy from the Bengal Free Press.

“I put it to hon. members,” said he, weightily, in conclusion, “whether any one of us, in our boasted superiority of intellect, has the right to say that people who can thus express themselves do not know what they want!”

That evening, before he went to bed, Lord Strathell, Secretary of State for India, in Eaton Square, London, wrote a note to Lord Scansleigh, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, in Viceregal Lodge, Simla. The note was written on Lady Strathell’s letter-paper, which was delicately scented and bore a monogram and coronet. It was a very private and friendly note, and it ran:—