I HAVE hinted, perhaps broadly, how the Government of India assists society in determining the Values of People. But this is not wholly done by columns of figures prepared with great accuracy in the Accounts Department, it is much facilitated by the discriminating indication of official position. I feel that official position should have capitals too—in India it always has. Government determines it profoundly, awfully, and with a microscope. It affixes a tag to each man’s work and person describing him and all that he does. There is probably an office for the manufacture of these, and its head is doubtless known as the Distributor-General of Imperial Tags to the Government of India. With all his own time and energy at his disposal for the purpose he might arrange a designation for himself even more striking than that. He would date his letters from the Imperial Tag Office, and they would be composed by the Sub-Assistant-Deputy-Distributor, who would dictate them to one of the various gentle and oleaginous baboos who are content to sharpen pencils and permit their white nether draperies to fall round tall office stools for moderate remuneration without tags. In the hot weather the Distributor-General would go to Simla and the Assistant-Distributor would act for him, indulging prematurely in the airs which are attached to the office of his superior—borrowing his tag as it were, for the time. And so the days of the Distributor-General of Imperial Tags to the Government of India, and those of the lady who is made comfortable under the same title would be days of great glory and importance, except perhaps those which he spends in England on furlough, when he would be obliged to leave his halo behind him, with his bearer, to be kept in order. After an absence of a year or two the halo is apt to be found a little large, but in such cases it is never cut down, the head is allowed to expand.

I don’t know of the actual existence of such an office in Calcutta, for as I have stated, Mr. Perth Macintyre has never had occasion to apply for a tag—they are comparatively uncommon in what the Simla element is pleased to call the mercantile community here—but if it does not exist I am at a loss to understand how they get on without it. Somewhere and somehow the solemn work of such a Department goes on under the direction of Heaven, and whether gentlemen in Government service wear their tags upon their watch-chains or keep them in their pockets, they are all tagged.

It makes a notable difference. It gives Calcutta for admiration and emulation a great and glorious company, concerning whom the stranger, beholding their red-coated chuprassies and the state which attends them, might well inquire, “Who, who are these?” Then one who knew—and everybody knows—might make answer, “These are the Covenanted Ones. These are the Judges of the High Court and all those who dispense the law of the Raj, the Scions of the Secretariat and other Departments, such people as commissioners and Collectors who are in authority throughout the land, the Army! Bow down!” The stranger would then remember the old saying in the mouths of women concerning those, “Three hundred a year dead or alive,” with reference to pensions, which at one time was distinctly the most important quotation in the matrimonial market for India.

Thereafter follow the great multitude of the Uncovenanted Ones, the men whose business is with education, and science and engineering, and the forests and the police, whose personal usefulness dies with them, probably because they get less pay and less furlough while they live. The human heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and it has lately entered into the Uncovenanted kind of human heart to cavil at this arrangement. It has had the audacity to suggest that it is just as homesick, that it suffers just as much from the climate, and that its work is just as indispensable as can possibly be the Covenanted case. I believe the matter is with the Secretary of State, where so many other matters have tender and indefinite safe keeping. Meanwhile there are certain positions of lustre among the Uncovenanted also, but they are few to count and difficult to attain. It is safe to say that a large proportion of the Uncovenanted Ones keep their tags in their pockets.

I have heard it stated that an expert can tell a Covenanted from an Uncovenanted individual by his back, given a social occasion which would naturally evoke self-consciousness. In the case of their wives, one need not be an expert. Covenanted shoulders are not obviously whiter or more classically moulded than the other kind, but they have a subtle way of establishing their relations with Government that is not to be mistaken even by an amateur. The effect cannot be described, and may be obtained only by contrast. You look at Uncovenanted shoulders, and you will observe that they fall away. You consider a pair of mercantile ones, and however massive and richly girt, you will notice that they suggest a slight depreciation of themselves. It is only the Covenanted neck that can assert itself with that impressive unconsciousness that comes from the knowledge of constant homage—bones, one might say, or no bones. This is in accordance with the will and intention of the Government of India, and therefore is as it should be. It is the Raj that has accorded this lady her consideration, therefore in no quarter is it withheld. The feet of such a one are stayed upon a rock; it has never been hers to pick her anxious way among the quicksands of ordinary social advance. Her invitations are secure. She is acquainted with the number and magnitude of them, she might almost demand them under a specific regulation. I have never heard anybody discuss her brains. She occupies a position which an intellect no doubt adorns, but not indispensably. Her little frivolities are the care of the Government that holds her in the hollow of its hand. Society declines to be Pharisaical about them, and asks her to dinner just the same. The shifting aristocracy of England affords nothing like her security, her remarkable poise. It is difficult to understand how, in spite of all this, she can be as charming as she occasionally is.

It was in my mind to say much sooner that the Brownes were going out to dinner. They had gone out to dinner on several occasions already among the people who had known young Browne before he was married, but the occasions had been informal, the invitations worded “quite quietly,” and there had been no champagne. This was to be a “burra-khana,” with no lack of circumstance. The invitation ran thus:—“My dear Mrs. Browne—Will you and your husband give Mr. Peckle, Mr. Cran and myself the pleasure of your company at dinner on Tuesday the 27th, at eight o’clock?—Yours sincerely, J. L. Sayter.”

“Old Sayter!” remarked Mr. Browne. “It’s a chummery, Nell. They called, the lot of them, that Sunday we went up the river.”

“A chummery—that’s a lot of bachelors living together,” said Helen.

“Not necessarily bachelors—Sayter’s a bachelor, Cran and Peckle are both married men, wives in England. It’s two years since Mrs. Cran went home, and Mrs. Peckle’s never been out, so far as I know. In fact, we’ve only got Peckle’s bare word for the existence of a Mrs. Peckle; maybe it’s a fiction in self-defence.”

“George!”

“And I don’t know that he doesn’t invent the little Peckles. To hear him groan over their expenses you’d think there was a new one every year, and you know that’s manifestly—”

“George!”

“I was going to say improbable. But I dare say there are a lot of ’em. Peckle goes home once in three or four years and refreshes his memory as to number and size. After that he always has a fit of economy and puts down a horse or two.”

“Poor things!” said Helen, pensively, “an old bachelor and two grass widowers! How wretched their lives must be! Why, if I had to go home for my health, dear, I can’t imagine what would become of you!”

“Y—yes! No, indeed, darling! But you sha’n’t go!” An interruption foolish but inevitable. “As to those old fellows—well, you’ll see. It’s rather a swagger chummery, very decent men,” young Browne went on, “and therefore, my dear,” with mock resignation, “they’ll give us all sorts of unholy indigestibles to eat, and your husband will have liver of the most frightful description for a week.”

“Liver,” however, very seldom ensues in the early days of matrimony, and Helen, unacquainted with this domestic bane, laughed it to scorn. It was her unconscious belief that the idylls of the Brownes could not suffer from such a commonplace.

Mr. Sayter wore a civil tag of considerable size; the other two men were brokers. Mr. Sayter’s tag was not offensively conspicuous, was not in fact to be seen at all unless one took the trouble to observe it by inference. I mean that a critical estimate of Mr. Sayter’s manner would discover the tag; it might be detected behind his attitude and his aphorisms and the free way in which he lifted his voice upon all things. Perhaps it was only observable in the course of time and the progress of one’s acquaintance with tagography. At first sight Mr. Sayter was a little grey gentleman with a look of shrinking modesty and a pair of very bright eyes. Indeed Mr. Sayter bore himself almost with humility, his shoulders had a very unaggressive slope, and he had a way of casting down his eyes as he talked to you which did not suggest a lofty spirit. Custom, however, proved Mr. Sayter’s modesty to be rather like that of the fretful porcupine, his humility to take amused superior standpoints of opinion, and his eyes to be cast down in search of clever jests that were just the least bit wicked. All of which, in Anglo-India, subtly denotes the tag. The untagged or the undertagged are much more careful how they behave.

Mr. Sayter came down to meet them in the hall and give Mrs. Browne his arm up stairs, as is the custom in this place. Helen observed that the wall was very white and high and undecorated, that the floor was tiled with blocks of marble, and that the stairs were of broad polished mahogany. In her host she saw only the unobtrusive Mr. Sayter with a reassuring smile of characteristic sweetness anxiously getting out of the way of her train. Young Browne, temporarily abandoned, followed them up discreetly, and at the top Mrs. Browne was introduced to a Calcutta dinner-party waiting for a Calcutta dinner.

Among the various low-necked ladies Helen was pleased to recognise Mrs. Wodenhamer. The presence of Mrs. Wodenhamer at a dinner given even participially, by Mr. Sayter, indicates as well as anything the inalienable privileges connected with the wife of a Commissariat Colonel; but that is by the way. It is perhaps enough to say that the other ladies were various, one or two young and rather flippant, one or two middle-aged and rather fat, verging toward Mrs. Wodenhamer; all very agreeably dressed, except Mrs. Wodenhamer, who wore crimson and black; all extremely self-possessed, all disposed to be easily conversational. I might itemize their husbands standing about in degrees of eminence and worldly plethora fairly proportioned to their waistbands, and sharing the proud consciousness of having contributed a wife to the occasion. I ought to mention also Mr. Cran and Mr. Peckle, though I need not dwell on Mr. Cran’s bearded baldness, or Mr. Peckle’s rosy expansiveness, as it is quite unlikely that you will have occasion to recognise them out of their own house. They followed Mr. Sayter down stairs with Mrs. Wodenhamer and the lady who most resembled her, when the sound of the gong came up. Helen, as the bride of the occasion, went down on Mr. Sayter’s arm.

“Well, Mrs. Browne,” said Mr. Sayter presently, giving her an amiable glance from his soup, “what do you think of us? Now I know what you’re going to say,” he continued, holding up a bit of crust in a warning manner. “You’re going to say that you haven’t been here long enough to form an opinion, or words to that effect. I’m perfectly right, ain’t I?”

Helen admitted that her answer might have been “something like that.”

“But you don’t mean it, you know. Really and truly, if you think a minute, you’ll find you don’t mean it. You’ve got a lovely opinion of us, all ready for use, in this last month. And very proper too. The very first thing everybody does here is to form an opinion of Anglo-Indians. It can’t be postponed, it’s involuntary. Besides, it’s a duty. We appeal to the moral side. We call out, as it were, for condemnation. Isn’t that so, Wodenhamer?”

“Isn’t what so?” said that gentleman. “Certainly. Na! peg do,”^[79] to the kitmutgar who wanted to give him champagne.

“You should have been listening. I decline to begin again. I was trying to convince Mrs. Browne that India is the only country in the world where people can be properly applied to for their impressions before they leave the ship—the way they do in America with travellers of distinction. But there’s no use asking Wodenhamer. He’s never been to America, and when he does travel he goes incog. to avoid these things.”

Colonel Wodenhamer’s mutton-chop whiskers expanded in recognition of the joke, “People know it when you travel,” he said.

“That’s sarcastic of you, Wodenhamer, and naughty and unkind. I think he refers, Mrs. Browne, to the fact that I was gazetted for duty in Assam last month, and just a fortnight and three days after I came back the Briton announced that I was going. Do you know the Briton? Capital paper in many respects, but erratic occasionally in matters of considerable importance. Delicious paper for description of ball dresses. I revel in the Briton’s ball dresses.”

“Who d’you think does that sort of thing for them?” Mr. Peckle inquired. “Some lady, I suppose.”

“No indeed, Mr. Peckle,” volunteered one in grey bengaline and gold embroidery, on the other side of the table. “It’s Captain Dodge, if you please! I know, because at the Belvedere dance on Friday he came and implored me to tell him what colour Lady Blebbins was wearing. It was hyacinth and daffodil faille—the simplest thing, but he was awfully at a loss, poor fellow! And afterwards I saw him put it down on the back of his dance-card.”

“I daresay they pay for such things,” Mr. Peckle remarked.

“I fancy Dodge gets a polo pony out of it,” observed Mr. Cran.

“I didn’t give that man Dodge credit for so much imagination,” said Mr. Sayter. “I wonder if I could induce him to put me in! I’d like to be treated poetically in the newspapers, for once. But I’m afraid he won’t,” Mr. Sayter continued sadly, “because I can’t wear mull muslin—isn’t that what you call it?” to Helen. “I can’t wear it because I should suffer from the cold, and yet the baboos do! That’s queer, you know. The baboo is vain enough already, and I’m not vain at all; yet Heaven permits the baboo to disport himself in the sweetest gossamer and threatens me with fever and rheumatism if I should even think of such a thing!”

“But surely, Mr. Sayter,” Helen interposed, “nobody suffers from the cold here!”

“Oh, my dear lady! You don’t know! The cold is the one thing we can’t get acclimatised to in India! To-night it would be Arctic if we weren’t dining. Kitmutgar, bund caro darwaza!^[80] We’ll have a fire up stairs afterwards.”

“A fire!” said Helen in astonishment.

“Yes. And then we’ll be comfortable. He can leave all the doors and windows open, you know, so that you can take a severe cold if you want to. Although this is a country governed by a merciless despotism we don’t compel people to keep well if they’d rather not.”

“I can’t imagine anybody suffering from the cold in Calcutta!” Helen declared. “Why, to-day the thermometer stood at eighty-three!”

“Oh,” said Mr. Sayter, “how I envy you.—What! no Roman punch! You are still warm, you still believe in the thermometer, you still find the baboo picturesque—I know you do! Thank Heaven, I continue to like Roman punch—I retain that innocent taste. But I’ve been cold,” said Mr. Sayter, rubbing his hand, with a shiver, “for years. For years I’ve had no faith in the thermometer. For years I’ve been compelled to separate the oil from the less virtuous principles in the baboo. It’s very sad, Mrs. Browne, but you’ll come to it.”

“I say, Sayter,” remarked young Browne, who was singularly without respect of persons, considering that he lived in Calcutta, “I can’t have you frightening my wife about what she’ll come to in Calcutta. I don’t want her to develop nervous moral apprehensions—based on what you’ve come to!”

Mr. Sayter’s chin sank into his necktie in official deprecation of this liberty on the part of a junior, and a mercantile one, but he allowed himself to find it humorous, and chuckled, if the word does not express too vulgar a demonstration. He leaned back and fingered his empty glass.

“Mrs. Browne,” he said deliberately and engagingly, “will come to nothing that is not entirely charming.” And he smiled at Helen in a way which said, “There, I can’t do better than that.” As a matter of fact he could, and Helen, as she blushed, was blissfully unaware that this was the kind of compliment Mr. Sayter offered, though not invidiously, to the wives of mercantile juniors.

“Moral apprehensions,” repeated Mr. Sayter slowly.—“No! I’ve had you for ten years,”—he apostrophized the kitmutgar—“you’ve grown grey in my service and fat on my income, and you don’t know yet that I never take anything with a hole in it like that—and pink vegetables inside the hole! Mrs. Browne, I’m glad you refrained. That’s the single thing Calcutta dinners teach—the one great lesson of abstinence! I was very clever and learned it early—and you see how many of them I must have survived. But talking of moral apprehensions, I know you’re disappointed in one thing.”

“No,” said Helen, promptly; “I like everything.”

“Then you haven’t anticipated us properly—you haven’t heard about us. You ought to be very much disappointed in our flagrant respectability.”

“But I like respectability,” Helen replied, with honesty.

“Oh! There, I’m obliged to consider that you come short again, Mrs. Browne. You’re not in sympathy with the age. I don’t. I’m very respectable myself, but that’s not my fault. I’ve never had the good luck to be married, for one thing; and that, in India, is essential to a career of any interest. But I was once quite an exceptional, quite an original, character on that account, and I’m not any more. Those were the good old times. And to see a beautiful, well-based, well-deserved reputation for impropriety gradually disappear from a social system it did so much to make entertaining is enough to sadden a man at my time of life.”

“Really,” said Helen; and then, with a little bold shivering plunge, “Were the people out here formerly so very—incorrect?”

“Oh, deliciously incorrect! Scandals were really artistic in those days. I often wish I had preserved more of them; my memory’s getting old too. I find myself forgetting important incidents even in those concerning my most intimate friends. And how people spent their money then! Big houses—turned into boarding-houses now—heaps of servants, horses—entertained like princes! Nowadays people live in flats, and cut the cook, and save to the uttermost cowrie, so they can retire a year earlier to drink beer with impunity and eat mutton chops with a better appetite in England. Ignoble age! People—these respectable people—go home second-class now, too, and pretend to be comfortable. Disgraceful, I call it.”

“There isn’t the money there used to be, Sayter,” protested Mr. Peckle. “In those days a man got a decent tulub, and carried it away in a bag. And the vile rupee was worth two shillings.”

Mr. Peckle helped himself to pistachios, and passed the port.

“I believe that explains it!” and Mr. Sayter pressed his lips knowingly together. “It never occurred to me before. Economy and scandals don’t go together. Make a man economical, and he becomes righteous in every other respect. So Government’s to blame, as usual. I think, in view of this, we ought to memorialise Government to drop the income-tax. You would sign, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Wodenhamer?”

“Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Wodenhamer returned, placidly. “Government ought to get the income-tax out of those rich natives. I think it’s a shame to make us pay.”

“Quite right, Mrs. Wodenhamer! These, Mrs. Browne, are called promotion nuts! They’re useful to effect the permanent removal of your superiors from office. Very nice and very deadly. You must be sure to have them when you ask any of Browne’s firm to dinner. No, I’ve a prejudice against them ever since they were once offered to me in a pudding. I’ve a sad association with them, too.” And Mr. Sayter looked grave.

“Indeed!” said Helen, not quite sure whether she ought to make her tone sympathetic.

“Yes, they always come on just as the ladies are leaving,” twinkled Mr. Sayter; and Helen became aware that Mrs. Wodenhamer was looking at her with ponderous significance. There was the usual gracious rustle, and presently the ladies were comfortably and critically ensconced in the drawing-room, sipping their coffee, at various distances from the indubitable fire. The conversation was not very general. Mrs. Wodenhamer discussed something in a suppressed voice on the sofa, with the lady who approximated her. Helen wondered if it were jharruns. There was apparently some sympathy between the grey bengaline and gold embroidery and a cream crÊpe de Chine and pearls, with very yellow hair. A little incisive lady in black who happened to be nearest to Helen, asked if she didn’t think for three men the room was awfully pretty. Helen said she did, indeed; and the little lady in black continued, with an entirely unnecessary sigh, that men certainly did know how to make themselves comfortable, there was no doubt about that. Did Mrs. Browne ever see anything more exquisite than that water-colour on the easel? Mr. Peckle had just bought it at the Calcutta Art Exhibition; Mr. Peckle was a great patron of art and that sort of thing, but then he had to be; he was a director, or something.

“My husband says,” remarked Helen, with lamentable indiscretion, “that there isn’t any art in Calcutta.”

“Does he? Oh, I think that’s a mistake. There’s Mrs. Cubblewell, and Colonel Lamb, and Mrs. Tommy Jackson. Mrs. Tommy paints roses beautifully, and I do a little on satin myself!” Then, as if it were a natural outgrowth on the subject, “What is your husband here, Mrs. Browne?”

“He’s in Macintyre and Macintyre’s.”

“Oh, yes!”

Whereafter there fell a silence, during which the little lady in black seemed to be debating young Browne’s probable connection with the firm of Macintyre and Macintyre—it sometimes made such a difference—but before she had properly made up her mind the gentlemen appeared, and there ensued that uncertain form of conversation which betrays the prevalent desire that somebody should “make a move.”

Somebody made one finally, before Mr. Sayter actually yawned. The Brownes drove home rather silently in their ticca-gharry.

“Well?” said young Browne interrogatively, chucking his wife tenderly under the chin in a moonlit space of Chowringhee.

“I was thinking, George,” said she, “that I didn’t see any photographs of their wives about the room.”

“No,” said young Browne.