On the Face of the Waters: A Tale of the Mutiny. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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Gissings' house stood in a large garden; but though it was wreathed with creepers, and set with flowers after the manner of flowerful Lucknow, there was no cult of pansies or such like English treasures here. It was gay with that acclimatized tangle of poppies and larkspur, marigold, mignonette, and corn cockles which Indian gardeners love to sow broadcast in their cartwheel mud-beds; "powder of flowers" they call the mixed seeds they save for it from year to year.
In the big dark dining room also--where Alice Gissing, looking half her years in starch, white muslin, and blue ribbons, sat at the head of the table--there was no cult of England. Everything was frankly, stanchly of the nabob and pagoda-tree style; for the Gissings preferred India, where they were received into society, to England, where they would have been out of it.
It had been one those heavy luncheons, beginning with many meats and much bottled beer, ending with much madeira and many cigars, which sent the insurance rate for India up to war risks in those days.
And there was never any scarcity of the best beer at the Gissings', seeing that he had the contract for supplying it to the British troops. His wife, however, preferred solid-looking porter with a creamy head to it, and a heavy odor which lingered about her pretty smiling lips. It was a most incongruous drink for one of her appearance; but it never seemed to affect either her gay little body or gay little brain; the one remained youthful, slender, the other brightly, uncompromisingly clear.
She had been married twice. Once in extreme youth to a clerk in the Opium Department, who owed the good looks which had attracted her to a trace of dark blood. Then she had chosen wealth in the person of Mr. Gissing. Had he died, she would probably have married for position; since she had a catholic taste for the amenities of life. But he had not died, and she had lived with him for ten years in good-natured toleration of all his claims upon her. As a matter of fact, they did not affect her in the least, and in her clear, high voice, she used to wonder openly why other women worried over matrimonial troubles or fussed over so slight an encumbrance as a husband. In a way she felt equal to more than one, provided they did not squabble over her. That was unpleasant, and she not only liked things to be pleasant, but had the knack of making them so; both to the man whose name she bore, and whose house she used as a convenient spot wherein to give luncheon parties, and to the succession of admirers who came to them and drank her husband's beer.
He was a vulgar creature, but an excellent business man, with a knack of piling up the rupees which made the minor native contractors, whose trade he was gradually absorbing, gnash their teeth in sheer envy. For the Western system of risking all to gain all was too much opposed to the Eastern one of risking nothing to gain little for the hereditary merchants to adopt it at once. They have learned the trick of fence and entered the lists successfully since then; but in 1856 the foe was new. So they fawned on the shrewd despoiler instead, and curried favor by bringing his wife fruits and sweets, with something costlier hidden in the oranges or sugar drops. Alice Gissing accepted everything with a smile; for her husband was not a Government servant. The contracts, however, being for Government supplies, the givers did not discriminate the position so nicely. They used to complain that the Sirkar robbed them both ways, much to Mr. Gissing's amusement, who, as a method of self-glorification, would allude to it at the luncheon parties where many men used to come. Men who, between the intervals of badinage with the gay little hostess, could talk with authority on most affairs. They did not bring their wives with them, but Alice Gissing did not seem to mind; she did not get on with women.
"So they complain I rob them, do they?" he said loudly, complacently, to the men on either side of him. "My dear Colonel! an Englishman is bound to rob a native if that means creaming the market, for they haven't been educated, sir, on those sound commercial principles which have made England the first nation in the world. Take this flour contract they are howling about. I'm beer by rights, of course, and, by George, I'm proud of it. Your men, Colonel, can't do without beer; England can't do without soldiers; so my business is sound. But why shouldn't I have my finger in any other pie which holds money? These hereditary fools think I shouldn't, and they were trying a ring, sir. Ha! ha! an absurd upside-down d----d Oriental ring based on utterly rotten principles. You can't keep up the price of a commodity because your grandfather got that price. They ignored the facility of transport given by roads, etc., ignored the right of government to benefit--er--slightly--by these outlays. Commerce isn't a selfish thing, sir, by gad. If you don't consider your market a bit, you won't find one at all. So I stepped in, and made thousands; for the Commissariat, seeing the saving here, of course asked me to contract for other places. It serves the idiots uncommon well right; but it will benefit them in the end. If they're to face Western nations they must learn--er--the--the morality of speculation." He paused, helped himself to another glass of madeira, and added in an unctuous tone, "but till they do, India's a good place."
"Is that Gissing preaching morality?" asked his wife, in her clear, high voice. The men at her end of the table had had their share of her; those others might be getting bored by her husband.
"Only the morality of business," put in a coarse-looking fellow who, having been betwixt and between the conversations, had been drinking rather heavily. "There's no need for you to join the ladies as yet, Mrs. Gissing."
Major Erlton, at her right hand, scowled, and the boy on her left flushed up to the eyes. He was her latest admirer, and was still in the stage when she seemed an angel incarnate. Only the day before he had wanted to call out a cynical senior who had answered his vehement wonder as to how a woman like she was could have married a little beast like Gissing, with the irreverent suggestion that it might be because the name rhymed with kissing.
In the present instance she heeded neither the scowl nor the flush, and her voice came calmly. "I don't intend to, doctor. I mean to send you into the drawing room instead. That will be quite as effectual to the proprieties."
Amid the laugh, Major Erlton found opportunity for an admiring whisper. She had got the brute well above the belt that time. But the boy's flush deepened; he looked at his goddess with pained, perplexed eyes.
"The morality of speculation or gambling," retorted the doctor, speaking slowly and staring at the delighted Major angrily, "is the art of winning as much money as you can--conveniently. That reminds me, Erlton; you must have raked in a lot over that match."
A sudden dull red showed on the face whose admiration Alice was answering by a smile.
"I won a lot, also," she interrupted hastily, "thanks to your tip, Erlton. You never forget your friends."
"No one could forget you--there is no merit----" began the boy hastily, then pausing before the publicity of his own words, and bewildered by the smile now given to him. Herbert Erlton noted the fact sullenly. He knew that for the time being all the little lady's personal interest was his; but he also knew that was not nearly so much as he gave her. And he wanted more, not understanding that if she had had more to give she would probably have been less generous than she was; being of that class of women who sin because the sin has no appreciable effect on them. It leaves them strangely, inconceivably unsoiled. This imperviousness, however, being, as a rule, considered the man's privilege only, Major Erlton failed to understand the position, and so, feeling aggrieved, turned on the lad.
"I'll remember you the next time if you like, Mainwaring," he said, "but someone has to lose in every game. I'd grasped that fact before I was your age, and made up my mind it shouldn't be me."
"Sound commercial morality!" laughed another guest. "Try it, Mainwaring, at the next Gymkhâna. By the way, I hear that professional, Greyman, is off, so amateurs will have a chance now; he was a devilish fine rider."
"Rode a devilish fine horse, too," put in the unappeased doctor. "You bought it, Erlton, in spite----"
"Yes! for fifteen hundred," interrupted the Major, in unmistakable defiance. "A long price, but there was hanky-panky in that match. Greyman tried fussing to cover it. You never can trust professionals. However, I and my friends won, and I shall win again with the horse. Take you evens in gold mohurs for the next----"
There was always a sledge-hammer method in the Major's fence, and the subject dropped.
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