SOCIALLY, as I have said, Mr. Batcham represented one of our cold weather phenomena. They remain phenomena, the globe-trotters, notwithstanding the regularity of their reappearance, flashing like November comets across the tranquil Anglo-Indian mind, which refuses to accustom itself to one class of its heavenly visitors any more than to the other. It is inaccurate, however, to use any figure of speech which represents Mr. Batcham as a meteoric body. He had his prescribed orbit—it is all laid down in Murray—and he circled through it, revolving regularly upon the axis of an excellent digestion with great gravity of demeanor. When he appeared upon Calcutta’s horizon, Calcutta could only put up a helpless eye-glass and writhe wearily until the large red luminary dipped again in the west. Then for a week it set at nought and mocked him. Then it unanimously forgot him, and was only reminded of his unnecessary existence afterward by the acerbity of the Englishman’s comments upon his intelligence, which was entirely deserved.

It was interesting to watch Mr. Batcham in the process of forming an opinion of Anglo-Indian society; that is, of making his observations match the rags and tags of ideas about us which he had gathered together from various popular sources before coming out. They were curious, Mr. Batcham’s impressions, and they led him into even greater discreetness of conduct than would naturally be shown by one of the largest manufacturers of the North of England, of sound evangelical views and inordinate abdominal development, travelling in search of Truth. In the doubtful mazes of the flippant Anglo-Indian capital Mr. Batcham felt that it behoved him to wrap the capacious mantle of his virtue well about him and to be very heedful of his walk and conversation. He kept a sharp eye open for invitations to light and foolish behaviour on the part of possible Mrs. Hawksbees and Mrs. Mallowes whom he met at Government House, and he saw a great many. When Lady Blebbins asked him if Mrs. Batcham were with him, Mr. Batcham said to himself, “There is certainly something behind that!” and when Mrs. Walter Luff, who is as proper as proper can be, proposed to drive him about the Maidan in her barouche, Mr. Batcham said coyly but firmly that Mrs. Luff must excuse him for asking, but was her husband to be of the party? Some such uncompromising front Mr. Batcham showed to temptation in forms even more insidious than these. I need not say that he never in any case failed to make a careful note of it; and I have no doubt that long before this reaches you the glaring facts will have been confided with inculpating initials to the sympathetic British public through the columns of the Times over the bashful signature of Jonas Batcham.

Mr. Batcham saw no reason for concealing his preconceived ideas of Anglo-Indian society from any of the Anglo-Indians he met—our morals embarrassed him as little as he supposed that they embarrassed us. He discussed them with us in candid sorrow, he enquired of us about them, he told us exactly to what extent he considered the deterioration of the ethical sense amongst us was to be ascribed to the climate. He spoke calmly and dispassionately about these things, as an indifferent foreigner might speak about the exchange value of the rupee or the quality of Peliti’s ices. He seemed to think that as a subject of conversation we should rather like it, that his investigations would have a morbid interest for us. It was reported that he approached an A.-D.-C. in uniform with the tentative remark that he believed Simla was a very immoral place, and that the A.-D.-C. in uniform made with great difficulty three wrinkles in his forehead—it is almost impossible for an A.-D.-C. in uniform to wrinkle himself—and said with calm surprise, “We are Simla,” subsequently reporting the matter to the Viceroy and suggesting the bastinado. The story adds that the Viceroy said that nothing could be done, because an M. P. was certain to go home and tell. But this is the merest rumour.

Mr. Batcham found the Brownes disappointing in this respect as he found them disappointing in other respects. They were not extravagant, they were not in debt, and Mrs. Browne neither swore nor smoked cigarettes nor rode in steeplechases. Mr. Batcham investigated them until he found them quite hopelessly proper, when he put them down as the shining and praiseworthy exception that proves the rule, and restricted his enquiries to the private life of their neighbours. Thus, driving upon the Red Road in the evening and encountering a smart young pair in a cabriolet, Mr. Batcham would demand, “Who is that lady?”

“That’s Mrs. Finsley-Jones,” Mrs. Browne would reply.

“And with whom,” Mr. Batcham would continue severely, “is Mrs. Finsley-Jones driving?”

“With Mr. Finsley-Jones.”

“Oh—ah! and who is that lady in the straw hat on the grey cob?”

“Mrs. MacDonald, I think.”

“And the gentleman?”

“Her husband.”

“Really! you are quite sure it is her husband, Mrs. Browne. I understood that in India ladies seldom rode with their husbands.”

“On the contrary, Mr. Batcham,” Helen returned innocently, “horses are apt to be so skittish in India that it isn’t really safe to go out without a man, and of course one would rather have one’s husband than anybody else.”

“Not at all, I assure you, Mrs. Browne. I understand that quite the opposite opinion prevails among the ladies of Calcutta, and I can depend upon the source of my information. Now these two people in the dog cart—they are actually flirting with each other in broad daylight! It is impossible,” said Mr. Batcham, with an accent of grave deprecation, “that they can be married.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Tubbs,” said Helen shortly, “they were married about the same time as we were. Why shouldn’t they flirt with each other if they want to?”

“Certainly not,” said young Browne, who was driving. “It leads to incorrect ideas of their relations, you see. Fact is, I caught Tubbs kissing his wife in a dark corner of the Maidan by the Cathedral myself the other evening, and it was such a very dark corner that if I hadn’t happened to be lighting a cheroot at the time, I wouldn’t have believed that Tubbs was Tubbs any more than Mr. Batcham does. Tubbs can’t afford a popular misapprehension that he isn’t Mrs. Tubbs’s husband. I’ll tell Tubbs.”

“I think,” said Helen rebukingly, “that you might have taken some other place to light your cigar in, George.”

“Didn’t light it. Dropped the match, I was so startled. Last match I had, too. I’ve got that against Tubbs. Oh, I must speak to Tubbs!”

“If you speak to Tubbs,” Mr. Batcham put in prudently, “don’t mention my name. I am glad to find myself wrong in this case. But Mr. Banerjee assures me—”

The pony leaped forward under the cut of young Browne’s whip, and Mr. Batcham very nearly tumbled out of the back seat. Young Browne didn’t apologise. “Do you mean to say,” said he in a red fury, “that you have been talking to a beastly baboo about the white women of Calcutta? It—it isn’t usual.”

It was as much for their own amusement as for their guest’s edification that the Brownes asked Mr. Sayter to dinner to meet Mr. Batcham. Mr. Sayter came unsuspectingly, and I have reason to believe that he has not yet forgiven the Brownes. Nobody in Calcutta could hate a large red globe-trotter more ferociously than Mr. Sayter did. And the Brownes failed to palliate their offence by asking anybody else. They were a square party, and Mr. Batcham sat opposite Mr. Sayter, who went about afterwards talking about his recent narrow escape from suffocation.

Mr. Batcham welcomed Mr. Sayter as if he had been in his own house or his own “works.” He shook Mr. Sayter warmly by his slender and frigid hand and said he was delighted to meet him—it was always a pleasure to meet representative men, and his young friends had told him that Mr. Sayter was a very representative man indeed, standing almost at the head of his department.

“Oh, goodness gracious!” exclaimed Mr. Sayter, sinking into a chair. “Fancy being talked about like that now.”

“I have a thousand things to ask you,” continued Mr. Batcham with increasing cordiality, “a thousand questions are surging in my brain at this very moment. This India of yours is a wonderful place, sir!”

“Well,” said Mr. Sayter, “I suppose I can’t help that. But it isn’t as wonderful as it used to be—that’s one comfort.”

“I’m afraid,” Mr. Batcham remarked with seriousness, “that your eyes are blinded. I’ve met numbers of people out here—people of more than average perception—whose eyes seem to me to be blinded to the beauties of Ind.”

“Probably affected by the dust of Ind,” put in young Browne. “Will you take my wife in, Mr. Sayter?”

“No,” said Mr. Sayter, “it’s the perverseness of the Anglo-Indian. He thinks if he talks about the beauties of Ind the Secretary of State will cut his pay.”

“And yet,” said Mr. Batcham, tucking his napkin into his capacious waistcoat, “the average public official in this country seems to me to be pretty fairly remunerated.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Mr. Sayter confidentially, looking up from his soup, “they’re grossly overpaid. They live in luxury. I am one of them. I live in luxury. I have a servant to put on my boots. In England what action should I be obliged to take in regard to my boots? I should be obliged to put them on myself! And for the misfortune of living in a country where I get my boots put on, I’m paid twice as much as I would be in England, and three times as much as I’m worth. Monstrous, isn’t it?”

Mr. Batcham smiled a benign smile of approbation. “I assure you, sir, that is not the way the situation has been represented to me thus far. I hope that before I leave India I may meet other gentlemen who like yourself have the moral rectitude to rise above mere considerations of gain—I may say of plunder—and state the case frankly as it is. With regard to yourself I have no doubt you exaggerate, but I will tell you candidly that I have myself for some time held the same opinion precisely with regard to—with regard to—”

“The Indian services generally. Exactly,” responded Mr. Sayter, “and when you get home you mean to bring it under the consideration of Lord Kimberley. Quite so. I wouldn’t be too sanguine about popularising your view among the Europeans out here—the Anglo-Indian is a sordid person—but all the baboos will be very pleased. You will of course endeavour to extend the employment of baboos in the higher branches of the Covenanted service—the judicial and administrative. They come much cheaper, and their feelings are very deeply hurt at being overlooked in favour of the alien Englishman. You could get an excellent baboo for any purpose on earth for thirty rupees a month. And yet,” continued Mr. Sayter absently, “they pay me two thousand.”

Mr. Batcham looked reflective, and young Browne said, “Cheap and nasty.”

“Oh, dear no!” remarked Mr. Sayter, “A nice fat wholesome baboo who could write a beautiful hand—probably a graduate of the Calcutta University. Talking of universities reminds me to add, Mr. Batcham, that the university baboo is not quite so cheap as he used to be. He is still very plentiful and very inexpensive, but his price is going up since the new regulations.”

“Regulations!” said Mr. Batcham. “You people will regulate these unfortunate natives off the face of the earth.”

“We should love to,” replied Mr. Sayter, “but we can’t. You have no idea of their rate of multiplication. These particular regulations were a frightful blow to the baboo.”

“May I ask their nature?” Mr. Batcham inquired.

“Oh yes. They were connected with the examinations for degrees. It was thought remarkable for some time how universally the baboos passed them, and how singularly similar the answers were. The charitable put it down to the extraordinary aptitude of the Bengali for the retention of printed matter and the known tendency of his mind to run in grooves. The uncharitable put the other baboos in charge of printing the examination papers under a mean system of espionage. I regret to say that it was only too successful; they caught a whole batch of baboos taking the means of earning an honest living a little prematurely.”

“Then what happened?” asked young Browne. “I haven’t heard this story.”

“I don’t remember whether they suppressed that lot of baboos or not. But they put an end to the extra edition of examination papers system. They had the lithographing stone brought into an office where there was only one man, a European, and they shut the shutters and they locked the door—oh, they took stringent measures!—and they had the papers turned off by a coolie, in solemn secrecy, the day before the examination.”

“That must have been entirely satisfactory,” Mr. Batcham remarked.

“It was not. The baboos passed in great numbers that year and sent in their papers with a smile. Then I believe they stopped up the key-hole and blindfolded the coolie. It made no difference whatever.”

“How did they find out?” Helen asked.

“In the end they took to watching this simple, ignorant coolie. And they observed that when he had finished his work he invariably sat down and rested on the lithographing stone. So that he went away charged, one might say, with the wisdom of the examiners, and published himself in the bazar for I daresay four annas a copy.”

“That boy, if he lived in the United States, would rise to be president,” remarked Mr. Batcham oracularly.

“He was of great assistance to the B.A.’s of that year. Though I believe they found him rather bony for a satisfactory proof, and they complained that the sense of the questions was a little disconnected.”

“Mrs. Browne, have you seen anything of the Tootes lately?”

“Nobody has, Mr. Sayter. Mr. Toote has fever.”

“Temperature one hundred and five this morning,” said Mrs. Browne. “The third attack this year.”

“And the Archie Campbells are going home on sick leave,” added Helen. “Poor Mr. Campbell is down with abscess of the liver. There’s a great deal of sickness about.”

“Not more than usual; it’s a deadly time of year,” Mr. Sayter remarked. “You heard about Bobby Hamilton?”

“Hamilton seedy?” inquired young Browne. “I saw him riding a fine beast the day before yesterday—he looked fairly fit. Hamilton’s a very knowing chap about horses, he’s promised to look after a pony for my wife.”

“You’ll have to get somebody else, I’m afraid.”

“Hamilton’s not——”

“Yes. Went to the funeral this morning. Fine chap. Awful pity. Cholera.”

“And Mrs. Hamilton is at home!” exclaimed Helen.

“With another baby. Yes. Four now, Hamilton told me last hot weather. He’d been seedy, and I was urging him to take furlough.”

“Why didn’t he? It might have saved him,” asked Helen.

“I believe the fourth baby was the reason. He couldn’t afford it. Had to stay and grill, poor chap.”

“How very distressing,” said Mr. Batcham. “I suppose the widow will be able to live on her pension?”

“She will receive no pension, sir. Mr. Hamilton belonged to the Education Department, which is uncovenanted. In the uncovenanted service it is necessary to live in order to enjoy one’s pension, and that is the reason why its departments add so little to the taxes.”

“Ah, well,” said Mr. Batcham rather vaguely, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too. I should consider marriage under those conditions an improvidence, and I don’t understand people being ill in this climate. I think it must be largely due to the imagination. So far as my testimony is worth anything, I find myself much benefited by it. Thanks, Browne, I’ll have Bass. I’m not afraid of it.”

Young Browne smiled and wistfully drank half the unsatisfactory contents of the long glass by his plate.

“To say nothing,” said he, in mournful reference to the climate, “of the magnificent thirst it engenders.”

Mr. Sayter joined his hands together at the finger tips and looked at Mr. Jonas Batcham, M. P., from under his eyebrows in a way which was certainly impertinent, oblivious of the kitmutgar at his elbow who patiently offered him iced asparagus.

“I’m perfectly certain,” said he, with a crispness in every syllable, “that Mr. Batcham has been benefited by staying six weeks in India. If he stayed six years he would doubtless be more benefited still. I daresay, as he says, we would all be benefited if it were not for our imaginations. It’s a climate that leaves only one thing to be desired, and if some people say that’s a coffin, that is clearly their imagination. Uncovenanted people have a way of dying pretty freely, but that’s out of sheer perverseness to get more furlough. Most of them go for ever because they can’t arrange it any other way. And as for cholera, I give you my word not one man in ten dies of cholera out here; they go off with typhoid or dysentery, or in some comfortable way like that, and probably have a punkah the whole time they’re ill.”

The half-past nine gun boomed from the fort, and Mr. Batcham started nervously. “I don’t know why it is,” said he, “that one doesn’t accustom one’s self to hearing guns in India. I suppose it is some association with the Mutiny.”

“Oh, we’ll have another mutiny,” Mr. Sayter remarked; “it’s quite on the cards. But you must not be alarmed, Mr. Batcham. It won’t be,” he added irrepressibly, “till after you go home.”

The conversation turned upon light literature, and Mr. Batcham contributed to it the fact that he understood that man Besant was making a lot of money. Helen had been reading the memoirs of Mdlle. Bashkirtseff, and had to say that one half she didn’t understand, and the other half she didn’t like. “And when,” said Mr. Sayter, “does your book come out, Mr. Batcham?”

“I haven’t said that I was writing one,” Mr. Batcham replied, smiling coyly.

“It isn’t necessary,” declared young Browne, “we should expect a book from you, Mr. Batcham, as a matter of course.”

“Oh, well, I expect I shall have to own to some little account of my experience,” confessed Mr. Batcham. “My friends have urged me to do something of the kind. If the illustrations can be got ready, I daresay it will be out in time to catch the spring market.”

“Don’t forget the illustration of the cobra milking the cow,” said George Browne, infected by Mr. Sayter; “it will add a great deal to the interest of the volume without detracting seriously from its reliability.”

“No,” said Mr. Batcham, “I haven’t got a photograph of that, I’m sorry to say. The illustrations will be entirely reproduced from photographs. I’ve got a beauty of the Taj, taken by magnesium light.”

“Have you decided on a title, Mr. Batcham?” Helen inquired, playing with the orange-blossom in her finger-bowl.

Mr. Batcham looked carefully round him, and observed that the kitmutgars had left the room. “Don’t mention it,” he said, “because somebody else may get hold of it, but I think I’ll christen the book either ‘My Trot Through India,’ or ‘India, Its Past, Present, and Future.’”

“Capital!” exclaimed Mr. Sayter, skipping nimbly to hold back the purdah for the exit of Mrs. Browne. “You can’t really dispense with either title, and if I were you I should use them both!”

A little later, before Mr. Sayter disappeared into his brougham, exploding a vast yawn among the wreaths of his Trichinopoly, Mr. Batcham shook him warmly by the hand, and re-expressed his gratification at the opportunity of meeting so representative a gentleman, to whose opinions such great importance would naturally attach itself. “Joking apart,” said Mr. Batcham, “the candid statement of your views upon many points this evening will be very useful to me.”

“I’m so glad!” said Mr. Sayter.