IT was clearly impossible to attend Her Excellency’s Drawing-Room in a tum-tum. The Brownes discussed it with fulness and precision at some length. Most people resident in Calcutta would have arrived at this conclusion more rapidly; but as young Browne said, he had never taken a wife to a Drawing-Room before, and a fellow always went to the levÉes in his tum-tum.

“It’s that awful silk tail of yours that’s the difficulty, dear,” said he. “It might get wound up in the wheels, or Lord knows what. Couldn’t you take it in a parcel and put it on when you get there?”

I can safely leave Helen’s response to the imagination of all femininity.

“Then,” said young Browne, “it must be a ticca,” and Helen sighed compliance, for she hated ticcas.

So does all Calcutta, except the baboos. The ticca is an uncompromising shuttered wooden box with a door in each side and a seat across each end. Its springs are primitive, its angles severe. When no man has hired the ticca, the driver slumbers along the roof and the syce by the wayside. When the ticca is in action, the driver sits on the top, loosely connected with a bundle of hay which forms the casual, infrequent dÉjeuner of the horses. The syce stands behind, and if the back shutters are open he is frequently malodorous. There may be some worldly distinction between the syce and the driver, but it is imperceptible to the foreign eye. I have never been able to decide which is the more completely disreputable of the two. Their rags flutter in competition. There is more variety among the horses. They are large and gaunt and speckled. They are small and lean and of one colour. They are fly-bitten, unkempt, knock-kneed, vicious, and nasty. They have bad and vulgar habits. Some of them have seen Australia and better times, but it is not evident in their manners. Some of them have been country-bred for so many generations that the original animal has almost disappeared, leaving a stricken and nondescript little representative that might more fitly be harnessed to a wheelbarrow, if wheelbarrows lent themselves to harness. The ticca-gharry horse is always ridiculous when he is not pitiful; his gait under pressure is a gallop, and his equipment is made out in places with pieces of rope and other expediencies. The baboo loves the ticca-gharry because the baboo knows not mercy and gets a long ride, yea and seven of his kind with him, for threepence. Calcutta people hate it for reasons which are perhaps obvious. And for another. The ticca-gharry directly aids and abets Government in its admirable system for the valuation of society, represented, as has been seen, by the Accountant-General. A person who habitually drives in a ticca-gharry is not likely on the face of it to be in receipt of more than a very limited income, and is thus twice gazetted as not being a particularly desirable person to know. It is evident therefore that when the Brownes decided to go to the Viceregal Drawing-Room in a ticca they bowed to circumstances.

“Only don’t get one, George,” said Helen, plaintively, “with a pink rosette on its ear.”

There were a few, a very few, other ticca-gharries in the crowd of vehicles that blocked the street leading to Government House, and presently they all found themselves unaccountably in the rear of the line that was made to preserve order and prevent aggression. The stately landaus, the snug broughams and the smart victorias rolled naturally into their places in front. The British policeman whether in Hyde Park or Imperial India, knows his duty. So that Mr. and Mrs. Browne were not the first who alighted under the wide porch and made their way with more trepidation than they allowed to appear, into the crimson-carpeted precincts of the Burra Lord Sahib.

“Where shall I meet you after—after it’s over, George?” asked Helen coming out of the cloak-room, very pretty in her soft white silk and the fresh Wiltshire colour that showed in her cheeks and proclaimed her newly “out.”

“Oh I’ll find you—I’ll be waiting with the other men outside the door. Good-bye, dear. Don’t be nervous!”

“I am nervous,” said Mrs. Browne. “But I don’t propose to show it. Good-bye!” and Mrs. Browne followed in the wake of other shimmering trains that were being marshalled from corridor to corridor on their way to the Throne Room, where Their Excellencies, doubtless very bored, were returning bows to the curtseys of all feminine Calcutta. How very fine those trains were, some of them. How elaborate and marvellous—how effective! And indeed they had come forth straight from Bond-street, many of them, for this very occasion, and therefore, why not? What use, pray, in being wives and daughters of thousands a month in the land of exile, if measures could not be sacredly kept in England and “decent things” got out at least once a year! And how the trains of thousands a month rejoiced in their contrast with others representing a smaller tulub. I do not speak of Helen’s, for hers was a flowing credit to the Canbury dressmaker and quite up to date, but of gowns of an elder fashion and another day that showed themselves with delightful naÏvetÉ among the glittering creations of the season. They had seen, some of them, a great many December dissipations; they had been carefully packed away through a great many hot weathers and monsoons; they smelt of camphor; there was a quaintness in their very creases. One or two of them even told of trousseaux, Helen thought, that must have come to India in the old sailing days, round Cape Horn. Doubtless this new little memsahib felt amused in her trim feathers, but I have worn creases and smelled of camphor myself in my day, and I could have told her that with five sons at college and a daughter at school in England, one becomes necessarily indifferent to the fashions, even if the daughter does spend the holidays with an aunt in the country, free of expense. But of course one can’t forecast one’s own camphor and creases, and Helen Browne may never have any.

The dames who waited or who didn’t wait their turn at the various barriers that regulated the road to Viceroyalty were chiefly imported English ladies of the usual pale Anglo-Indian type and pretty, either intrinsically or with the prettiness that comes of being well spoilt. Most of them had curtseyed formally to Their Excellencies every December for several years, yet they were quite as happily a-tremble as the brides or the dÉbutantes—the brides of next season.

“I suppose,” Helen overheard one little woman remark with animation, “Their Excellencies won’t bite!” But she continued to behave as if she thought they would. There were also a few ladies who had not been imported. These were noticeable for a slight and not unbecoming Oriental duskiness under the powder, an unusual softness and blackness of eye, and an oddity of inflection that struck Helen as so pretty and “foreign.” These ladies usually wore the feathers in their hair—the three feathers that compliment Royalty—of the same hue as their gowns, pink or blue or perhaps yellow, which was doubtless a survival of some lavish and tropical taste for colour that may have been peculiarly their own. The Ranees and the Maharanees made no attempt to subdue the gorgeousness of their natural instincts, but showed undisguisedly in purple and gold and eccentric gems, disposed according to the fashion that best liked them; and it was Helen’s lot to proceed into the Viceregal presence immediately behind a Mohammedan lady of enormous proportions, who represented matrimonially a great Nawab, and did it wholly in crimson satin.

Their Excellencies stood upon a daÏs, near enough to the Throne chair to suggest their connection with it. There were two stately lines of the Body-Guard, imperturbable under the majesty of their turbans; there were five or six A.-D.-C.’s, and secretaries in uniform with an expression of solemn self-containment under their immature moustaches. And there were, gathered together at Their Excellencies’ right, the ladies of the Private EntrÉe. These ladies were the wives of gentlemen whose interests were the special care of Government. It was advisable therefore that their trains should not be stepped on, nor their tempers disarranged; and they had been received an hour earlier, with more circumstance, possibly to slower music, different portals being thrown open for the approach of their landaus—they all approached in landaus. If you stay in India long enough, Government will see that you get the Private EntrÉe before you go, as a rule. That is if you are a person of any perseverance, and have objected with sufficient stolidity to getting out of anybody else’s way. This is not invariably the case, however, or John Perth Macintyre, my husband, with his success in tea and the knowledge of Indian commerce he has got in the last twenty years, would have been in the Viceroy’s Council long ago, and Mrs. Macintyre’s landau approaching with proper distinction in consequence, which it never has. I have no objection whatever to this coming out in print, for everybody knows that we wouldn’t take it now. Moreover I daresay it is one reason why I always notice that the ladies of the Private EntrÉe are disposed to giggle slightly and otherwise forget the caste of Vere de Vere, as they look on upon the curtseys that come after. On this occasion, though Helen Browne was much too nervous to observe it, they were politely convulsed—of course with cast-down eyes and strained lips, and in the manner of good society—at the genuflections of the Mohammedan lady in red satin. I have no doubt one wouldn’t observe this to the same extent if one were amongst them.

When it was over it had been very simple. The first A.-D.-C. had handed Helen’s card to the second A.-D.-C., and so on, until it reached the Military Secretary who stood at the end, and he had read distinctly aloud from it the perfectly inoffensive description, “Mrs. George Browne.” Whereat Mrs. George Browne had gone down several unsteady inches first before one Excellency, and then before the other, not at all able to observe the kindly smile with which they encouraged her unreliable equilibrium. After which she followed the other ladies whose ordeal was over, with hurrying footsteps and much relief through sundry tall pillared apartments to the corridor where Mr. George Browne awaited her, and took his arm with the greatest satisfaction she had yet experienced in its protection.

Everybody repaired to the ball-room, where, after the last agitated respects had been received, Their Excellencies also appeared, and Helen had the opportunity of taking a lesson in social astronomy, and learning if she chose, how that there is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon, and how dark and unamiable those regions may be where the sun and the moon shine not. Also how an A.-D.-C. may twinkle as a little star in the firmament, and how a Lieutenant-Governor may be the centre of a brilliant constellation. Helen noticed a subtle difference between Their Excellencies and the rest, and put it down in her admiring innocence to aristocratic lineage or some such vague reason. As a matter of fact they were the only people in the room who did not directly or indirectly suggest a life-long interest in pay and promotion, which is quite enough to make a most vital difference, a most violent contrast, though it must take some years to discern this. The pay of a Viceroy is magnificently absolute, and you can’t promote him. I believe that is arranged by Her Majesty, in order that he may have time to think about other things. This may look a trifle caustic, but the Perth Macintyres have out-stayed five Viceroys in Calcutta, and I have found that number at least to be quite human. Although it is a serious fact that the more one comes in contact with them the less one is struck with any idea of their common fallibility, and the more one is inclined to refer to His Excellency as a very superior mind, and to Her Excellency as “a perfectly charming woman,” without cavil. The last two Viceroys for instance have seemed to me to be much more valuable acquaintances than their predecessors. Can it be that circumstances—chiefly viceregal dinners—have thrown us more together?

Little Mrs. Macdonald, sitting alone upon a sofa in a corner, welcomed the Brownes with effusion.

“Do let me go half shares in your husband for a while,” she said to Helen, making room for them. “Mine has gone off with Mrs. Toote, and I know what that means. Half an hour’s desertion at least.”

“What did he go for?” asked young Browne.

“Because Mrs. Toote is charming.”

“Do you think so?”

“Don’t you? I thought all the men grovelled before Mrs. Toote!”

“I don’t grovel,” said young Browne. “I think she’s a bit of a humbug.”

“But she has good eyes,” Mrs. Macdonald protested.

“Lovely eyes,” Helen chimed.

“Though I wish she wouldn’t spoil them with charcoal the way she does,” remarked Mrs. Macdonald with amiable unction. “She doesn’t need to, you know.”

“How do you do, Captain Delytis?” and Mrs. Macdonald bent very much forward on the sofa in recognizing a young man in blue lapels, who suddenly reined himself in as it were, responded profoundly to her salutation, and then hurried on. “That’s Captain Delytis,” she informed Helen. “One of the A.-D.-C.’s. Such a dear! He called on me twice last cold weather, and I was darwaza bund each time. Wasn’t it a shame!”

“I wouldn’t be too remorseful,” remarked young Browne, not without malice. He had found Mrs. Macdonald darwaza bund frequently, and had all a black coat’s aversion to the superior charms of blue lapels. “A.-D.-C.’s have a way, you know, of finding out first.”

“Don’t be nasty, George Browne,” responded Mrs. Macdonald, “besides in this case it doesn’t apply, for Captain Delytis told me himself how sorry he was. I daresay they have to resort to that sort of thing occasionally though, poor things. They have so much to do.”

“Do!” remarked young Browne, with the peculiar contempt mercantile pursuits so often inspire for the army and the civil service in Calcutta. “They order dinner, I believe.”

“They have charge of the invitations to everything, so you’d better just make him properly civil to them,” said Mrs. Macdonald, turning to Helen, who responded, with perfectly feminine appreciation of the advice, that she would indeed.

“I wonder,” continued Mrs. Macdonald thoughtfully, “why Mrs. Alec Forbes didn’t see me just now. Did you notice her?—that tall woman in the pompadourish gown that passed just now. They say she’s getting too swagger to see lots of people now that the Simlaites have taken her up so tremendously, but she’s generally as sweet as possible to me. They tell a funny story about Mrs. Forbes and Mrs. Perth Macintyre—you’ve seen Mrs. Perth Macintyre: perhaps you can imagine how patronising and interfering the old lady is! Well, it was when Mrs. Forbes first came out, and Calcutta wasn’t at all disposed to take to her—a little of the tar-brush, you know, and that doesn’t go down here. But everybody liked Alec Forbes, and she had a lot of money, and people came round. Mrs. Perth Macintyre decided to come round too, and one night at dinner, when people were discussing this very function, she undertook to encourage Mrs. Forbes about it. ‘I daresay you’ll be a bit timid, my dear,’ said she, ‘but you’ll just have to go through it like the rest of us.’ ‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Forbes casually, ‘I daresay it’s nothing to St. James’s!’ Mrs. Perth Macintyre was sat on for once—she had never been presented at home. Wasn’t it good?”

“I can’t see what earthly difference it made,” said young Browne, but his wife could, and turned another page in Part II., Feminine: of the Book of Anglo-India.

“Why, George,” she said presently, “who’s that?” her husband having emitted a gruff “How do!” as a gentleman passed them.

“That? Oh, nobody much! Sir William Peete.”

“What did Sir William get his K for?” asked Mrs. Macdonald. “I’ve forgotten.”

“For trimming up Calcutta the time some Royalty or other came out. He made a very good municipal milliner, got out a most unusual amount of bunting. They had to recognise it. The man who drained the place got nothing, so far as I remember.”

“George, you don’t like him,” Mrs. Browne remarked astutely.

“Oh, yes, I do, for two months in the year, when he likes me. They occur in the rains. Then he’s passionately fond of everybody who will speak to him. For the rest of the time he’s exclusively occupied with Sir William Peete and a few other people of similar standing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Macdonald.

“About August and September,” young Browne continued suavely, “Sir William comes out in boils—comes out copiously. He gets ’em on his neck and on his face and in the middle of his forehead. He becomes an awful spectacle. He fawns on his fellow-beings then. As soon as they leave him he returns to the sublime consideration of the social eminence of Sir William Peete. Boils are the only known method of reminding him that he belongs to the human race, so Providence takes it.”

Mr. Macdonald came up at this moment and carried off his wife, leaving these young Brownes alone on the sofa in the corner of the room, looking on. They seemed to themselves as they sat there to have drifted into some tranquil place from which they could watch the steady current passing, the current that changes every year and yet is always the same, of English life in India. The old, old ambitions, the stereotyped political aims, the worn competitions, the social appraisements—how they have repeated themselves through what illustrations of the great British average, even in my time! How little more than illustrations the men and women have been, as one looks back, pictures in a magic lantern, shadows on a wall! Good illustrations, though sharp reflections of the narrow conditions they lived in, solemn warnings to those that are so eager to come after, if only the glamour of India left people with eyes to see. How gay they were and how luxurious, and how important in their little day! How gorgeous were the attendants of their circumstance, on the box with a crest upon their turbans—there is a firm in Calcutta that supplies beautiful crests. And now—let me think!—some of them in Circular Road Cemetery—cholera, fever, heat—apoplexy; some of them under the Christian daisies of England—probably abscess of the liver; the rest grey-faced Cheltenham pensioners, dull and obscure, with uncertain tempers and an acquired detestation of the climate of Great Britain. And soon, very soon, long before the Brownes appear in print, the Perth Macintyres also will have gone over to the great majority who have forgotten their Hindustani and regret their khansamahs. Our brief day too will have died in a red sunset behind clustering palms, and all its little doings and graspings and pushings, all its pretty scandals and surmises and sensations, will echo further and further back into the night.

Of course the Brownes did not moralize thus unpardonably. Why should they? They sat in their corner and looked at the brilliant scene before them, and young Browne talked with more or less good-natured cynicism about everybody he saw, and Helen quite failed to understand why George should take such ridiculous views of things. And by and by they went down the broad stairs, past the brown men that stood aside in their garments of crimson and gold, and the Browne’s ticca-gharry rolled home with as light-hearted a sahib and memsahib as left Government House that night. As they had forgotten all about refreshments it was perhaps fortunate that they were able to find two mutton cutlets cold from the hands of Kali Bagh and some biscuits and marmalade, when they arrived, which afforded them keen satisfaction. They could still, poor dears, with the solace of a cold cutlet enjoy seeing the world go by.