Chronicles of Dustypore: A Tale of Modern Anglo-Indian Society Read online

  CHAPTER II.

  MAUD.

  Nature said, 'A lovelier flower On earth was never sown: This child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own.'

  When Vernon was appointed Under-Secretary to the Salt Board, he no doubtimagined that it was in connection with that august body that he wouldbe known to fame and (as Strutt would grandiloquently have put it) leavehis mark on his epoch. He was destined, however, as the reader of thesepages will presently perceive, to become remarkable on the less unusualground of relationship to an extremely pretty girl. His cousin Maud, ofwhom years before, in a rash moment of benevolence, he had consented tobecome guardian and trustee, had been suddenly thrown upon his hands.She was no longer a remote anxiety which could be disposed of bycheques, letters to governesses, and instructions to solicitors, but animmediate, living reality, with a highly effective pair of eyes, goodlooks--as to which women might cavil, but every man would be a firmbeliever--the manner of an eager child, and a joyousness which Vernonwas obliged to admit was at once deliciously infectious to the world atlarge, and a very agreeable alternative to the state of mind produced byIndian summers, salt statistics, letters polished by Whisp orcommonplaces enunciated by Fotheringham. With the timidity of indolencehe shuddered to think of the social entanglements and disturbances whichso new an element in his household was calculated to produce.

  Maud, on the other hand, had come out to India with a very low opinionof herself and of her claims upon the good-will of society. At MissGoodenough's establishment for young ladies, where her education hadbeen completed, her shortcomings had been impressed upon her in a mannerwholesome, perhaps, and necessary, but decidedly depressing. She hadbeen haunted by the awful consciousness that she was a 'Tomboy.' Hergeneral demeanour, her mode of expressing herself, her ignorance of manythings with which no one ought to be unfamiliar, had been the object ofthe most unflattering comment. The elder Miss Goodenough--between whomand Maud there existed a real though somewhat fitful attachment--used tohave her into a solemn little chamber and administer the most awfullectures on her sins of commission and omission, and the disgrace andsuffering which they would justly entail. These interviews weregenerally tearful and tender; for Miss Goodenough, to whom Maud had beenconsigned as a child on her first arrival from India, loved her with asort of rapture which made itself felt amid all the vehementfault-finding which Maud's delinquencies necessitated. Maud had alwaysregarded the old lady in something of a maternal light, and never couldbe brought to abandon the familiar abbreviation of 'Goody,' by which shehad been allowed, as a child, to address her instructress. She acceptedher instructress's sentences accordingly with unquestioning faith andsubmission. The two used to weep together over Maud's shortcomings. Shelooked upon Miss Goodenough as a friend whose heart it was her unluckyfate to lacerate. Miss Goodenough regarded Maud as a creature whosealarming impulses and irregularities justified the darkest forebodingsas to her future, and succeeded in infecting her pupil with some of herown apprehensions. Some judgment must, so both agreed, sooner or laterovertake one whose shoulders seemed guided by a hidden law to unequalaltitudes, whose toes defied every endeavour to keep them pointed in theconventional direction, and whose impetuous behaviour was constantlyproducing a scandal of more or less gravity.

  'Dearest child,' Miss Goodenough would say, with an air of profoundcommiseration, 'if you could see how you look, with one shoulder up toyour ears and the other near to what should be your waist!'

  This taunt particularly grieved Maud, for she felt bitterly that herform was unromantically plump, and not at all of the refined tenuity ofseveral of her companions.

  'My shoulders!' she would exclaim, with the tears in her eyes; 'I wishthey were both at Jericho. I am sure I am made wrong, dearest Goody,indeed I am.'

  'Then, my dear,' Miss Goodenough would say, not encouragingly, 'weshould try all the more to remedy natural defects; at any rate, youmight know your Bible. Now, dear Maud, your ignorance is, you know,simply shocking.'

  'Yes I know,' said Maud, 'but I can't help it. Those horrid kings ofIsrael and Judah! They made Israel to sin, they make me to sin, indeedthey do. Jehoshaphat, Jehoiakim, Jonadab, Jehu--all wicked--allbeginning with J--how can any one remember them?'

  'Then, my dear,' her inexorable monitress would reply, 'you can neverknow what every well-educated young lady, what every mere school-child,is acquainted with. How can you be fit to go into the world?'

  'I wish,' said Maud, passionately, in despair at the difficulties ofexistence, 'that when the tribes got lost they had taken their historieswith them, and lost them too. Darling Goody, let me learn texts, hymns,all the Sermon on the Mount, as much poetry as you please, only notthose dreadful Chronicles!' Maud used on these occasions to throw herarms round Goody's neck in an outbreak of affectionate repentance, in away that the elder lady, who was absurdly impressionable, found itdifficult to resist.

  But Miss Goodenough's kindness made Maud's conscience all the less atease. Calmness, self-restraint, composure, a well-stocked mind, andsensible judgment were, Miss Goodenough told her, the great excellenciesof character to be aimed at. Maud looked into herself, and felt, withagonies of self-reproach, that in every particular she fell miserablyshort; that she was the very reverse of calm; the least thing roused herinto passion, or sent her spinning from the summit of serene highspirits to the lowest depths of despair; as for self-restraint, Maudfelt she was just as capable of it as of flying to the moon.

  From time to time she made violent efforts to be diligent, and set towork with sudden zeal upon books which her instructress assured her weremost interesting and improving. These attempts, for the most part,collapsed in grievous failure. Improvement, Maud felt ruefully, theremight be, though unbeknown to herself; interest, she was certain, therewas none. On the other hand, a chance novel, which had somehow or otherpassed scatheless through the rigid blockade which Miss Goodenoughestablished around her young ladies, had filled her with a sort ofecstacy of excitement; and no amount of poetry--no such amount, at anyrate, as came within the narrow limits of her mistress's literaryhorizon--seemed capable of fatiguing or even of satisfying her.Displaying the most complete inaptitude for every other form ofdiligence, she was ready enough to learn any amount that any one likedto give her. She even signalised her zeal by the spasmodic transcriptionof her favourite passages into a precious volume marked with a solemn'Private,' protected from profane eyes by a golden padlock and destinedby its proprietress to be the depository of all her intellectualtreasures.

  Miss Goodenough, however, though admitting perforce the merits of thegreat masters of English song, regarded the claims of poetry asgenerally subordinate to those of history, geography, arithmetic, andvarious other branches of useful and ornamental learning, and treatedMaud's passion for Sir Walter Scott as but another alarming symptom ofan excitable disposition and ill-regulated mind.

  A crisis came at last. It happened at church, where Miss Goodenough'syoung ladies used to sit just under the gallery, while the boys of 'TheCrescent House Academy' performed their devotions overhead. One fatalSunday in February, just as the Service was over, and the two MissesGoodenough had already turned their backs to lead the way out, and theyoung ladies were preparing to follow, a little missive came flutteringdown and fell almost into Maud's hands; at any rate, she slipped it intoher Prayer-book; and all would have gone well but for that horridMademoiselle de Vert, who, turning sharply round, detected theoccurrence, and the moment Maud was outside the church demanded herPrayer-book.

  Maud turned fiery red in an instant, and surrendered her book.

  'And the note,' said Mademoiselle de Vert.

  'What note?' said Maud. But alas! her telltale cheeks rendered thequestion useless, and made all evasion impossible. Maud was speedilydriven to open resistance.

  'No, thank you,' she said, with an air that told Mademoiselle de Vertthat further attempts at coercion would be labour thrown away; 'it wasnot intended for you; it was a valen
tine.'

  After this appalling disclosure there was, of course, when they gothome, an explanation to be had with Miss Goodenough, who professedherself, and probably really was, terrified at so new a phase of humandepravity.

  Maud was presently in floods of tears, and was obliged to confess thatshe and the offending culprit had on more than one occasion let eachother's eyes meet, had in fact exchanged looks, and even smiles; sothat, perhaps, she was the real occasion for this unhallowed act oftemerity.

  'Forgive me, forgive me!' she cried; 'it was nothing wrong; it was onlya heart with an arrow and a Cupid!'

  'A Cupid!' cried Miss Goodenough, in horror at each new revelation, 'andsome writing too, I suppose?'

  'Yes,' said Maud, whose pleasure in the valentine was rapidlysurmounting the disgrace into which it had got her; 'really prettyverses. Here it is!' And thereupon she produced the offending billet,and proceeded to read with effusion:--

  I would thou wert a summer rose, And I a bird to hover o'er thee; And from the dawn to evening's close To warble only, 'I adore thee!'

  'Stop!' cried Miss Goodenough, with great decision, and white withindignation; 'do you know what you are reading? Do you know that thatvulgar rubbish is the sort of odious impertinence that shop-boys send totheir sweethearts, but which it is an insult to let a lady even see, andwhich, transmitted in a church, is little less than sacrilege?'

  So saying, Miss Goodenough took the offending letter and consigned it tothe flames, and poor Maud stood ruefully by, watching the conflagrationof the silver Cupid, mourning over Miss Goodenough's hard-heartedness,and consoling herself with the reflection that at any rate sheremembered the verses.

  'I must write to your aunt Felicia to remove you. What an example forother girls!'

  'Well,' said Maud resignedly, and blushing in anticipation at thethought of such an exposure; 'do not, at any rate, tell her about thevalentine. Dear Goody, did you never have one sent to you when you weremy age?'

  Miss Goodenough quite declined to gratify this audacious inquiry, andmade up her mind that it was high time for Maud to be under moremasterful guidance than her own. The result was that in the followingNovember Maud was a passenger on the P. & O. steamship 'Cockatrice,'from Southampton to Calcutta, where her cousin Vernon was to meet herand escort her to her new home in Dustypore.

  She had been, it must be acknowledged, to a certain degree reassured bythe experience of her voyage. She found that the kings of Israel andJudah did not occupy a prominent place in general conversation; that aprecise acquaintance with the queens of England was not expected of her;and that nobody resented the impetuosity of her movements or her want ofself-restraint. On the contrary, several of her fellow-voyagers hadevinced the liveliest sympathy and interest in her, and had devotedthemselves successfully to keeping her amused. Maud, in fact, had gonedown to her cabin on more occasions than one during the voyage and shedsome tears at the approaching separation from friends, whom even thosefew weeks of chance companionship had carried close to her heart. It hadbeen in truth a happy time. The captain, to whose special care she wascommitted, had watched over her with a more than paternal interest. Thedoctor insisted on her having champagne. The purser set all his occultinfluences at work to increase her comfort. The stewards conspired tospoil her. Maud felt that nothing she could do would at all adequatelyexpress her feelings to all these good people who had ministered to herwants and tried, with so much success, to please her. There are people,no doubt, to whom a voyage to India is the height of boredom; but thereare other happier natures to whom it presents a continuous series ofexcitements, interests, and joys. Maud, at any rate, enjoyed it with asort of rapture, and trembled to think how faintly Miss Goodenough'sadmonitions even now began to fall upon her conscience's ear.

  Then there had been some very charming fellow-passengers on board, withwhom she had formed the warmest friendship. There was a certain Mr.Mowbray, for instance--a comely, curly-headed, beardless boy, on his wayto join his regiment--whom she found extremely interesting, and who lostno time in becoming confidential. It was very pleasant to sit on deckthrough long lazy mornings and play besique with Mr. Mowbray; andpleasant too, when the day was done, to sit with him in the moonlightand watch the Southern Cross slowly wheeling up and the waves all ablazewith phosphoric splendour, and to talk about home and Mr. Mowbray'ssisters, and the stations to which each of them were bound, never,probably, to meet again. There was something mysterious about it, Maudfelt, and impressive, and very, very charming.

  And then, on some evenings, the stewardess would declare that Maudlooked pale, or had a headache, and that she should have a littledinner on deck; 'Just a bit of chicken, miss,' this benevolent beingwould say, 'and a slice of ham, and the doctor will give you a glass ofchampagne. The cabin is a deal too hot for you.' And then, by some happyfatality, Mr. Mowbray would also have a headache that very afternoon,and nothing but dining on deck would do for him; and so there would be avery pleasant little repast going on over the heads of the hot, noisycrowd who were gobbling up their food below; and the two invalids wouldforget their maladies, fancied or real, in the innocent excitement of acongenial _tete-a-tete_. On the whole, Maud had arrived at Dustyporewith the conviction that existence, though beset with almost innumerabledifficulties and dangers, was replete with enjoyments, which made it,despite every drawback, most thoroughly well worth while to be alive.