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

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  CHRONICLES OF DUSTYPORE

  H. S. CUNNINGHAM

  DUSTYPORE.

  Ballantyne Press, BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON

  CHRONICLES OF DUSTYPORE

  _A TALE OF MODERN ANGLO-INDIAN SOCIETY_

  BY H. S. CUNNINGHAM AUTHOR OF "WHEAT AND TARES," "LATE LAURELS," ETC.

  =A New Edition=

  LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1877 [_All rights reserved_]

  TO R. H. W.

  You promised me once that, if ever the 'Chronicles of Dustypore' shapedthemselves into being, they might be dedicated to you. While writingthem my thoughts have often turned to happy hours passed in yoursociety, and pleasant scenes witnessed beneath your roof. If the storyhas profited thereby, and Felicia has borrowed whatever charms she maypossess from those remembered scenes and hours, forgive me, and let melay the portrait, with all its imperfections, at your feet.

  H. S. C.

  CONTENTS.

  CHAP. PAGE I. THE SANDY TRACTS 1 II. MAUD 10 III. WAR AT THE SALT BOARD 22 IV. FELICIA 29 V. 'SUTTON'S FLYERS' 38 VI. 'A COMPETITION WALLAH' 46 VII. THE RUMBLE CHUNDER GRANT 58 VIII. GOLDEN DAYS 64 IX. THE FIRST BALL 72 X. THE WOES OF A CHAPERON 83 XI. FRIENDS IN COUNCIL 92 XII. A CHAPTER OF DISCLOSURES 108 XIII. DESVOEUX MAKES THE RUNNING 115 XIV. TO THE HILLS! 126 XV. A DISTRICT OFFICER 141 XVI. ELYSIUM 147 XVII. A BATTLE ROYAL 156 XVIII. GAUDIA IN EXCELSIS 163 XIX. A BRUSH ON THE FRONTIER 175 XX. A LAST RIDE 184 XXI. MAUD'S SECRET 192 XXII. LOVE IS BEGUN 201 XXIII. A STRAY SHOT 208 XXIV. THE GULLY 220 XXV. AN INVALID 235 XXVI. DESVOEUX IN DESPAIR 243 XXVII. CHRISTMAS AT DUSTYPORE 256 XXVIII. MORNING CLOUDS 264 XXIX. THE HILL CAMP 273 XXX. TEMPTATION 281 XXXI. BOLDERO ON GUARD 287 XXXII. A GRASS WIDOW 298 XXXIII. FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI 305 XXXIV. BAD TIMES IN THE PLAINS 314 XXXV. AN ELYSIAN PICNIC 320 XXXVI. A KISS 330 XXXVII. ILL NEWS FLY APACE 348 XXXVIII. FLIGHT 359 XXXIX. THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 366 L'ENVOI 373

  CHRONICLES OF DUSTYPORE.[1]

  CHAPTER I.

  THE SANDY TRACTS.

  He seems like one whose footsteps halt, Tolling in immeasurable sand; And o'er a weary, sultry land, Far beneath a blazing vault, Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill, The city sparkles like a grain of salt.

  Any one who knows or cares anything about India--that is, say, oneEnglishman in a hundred thousand--is familiar with the train of eventswhich resulted in the conquest of the Sandy Tracts, the incorporation ofthat unattractive region in the British Indian Empire, and theestablishment of an Agency at Dustypore. The ninety-nine thousand ninehundred and ninety-nine, who neither know nor wish to know, would not begrateful for all account of battles fought at places of which they neverheard, of victories gained by generals whose fame is already forgotten,or of negotiations which nobody but the negotiators understood at thetime, and which a few years have effectually relegated to the oblivionthat awaits all that is at once dull, profitless, and unintelligible.

  Suffice it to say that the generally admired air of 'Rule Britannia,'which has been performed on so many occasions for the benefit ofadmiring audiences in different parts of the Indian continent, was onceagain piped and drummed and cannonaded into the ears of a prostratepopulation. The resistless 'red line,' historical on a hundredbattle-fields, once again stood firm against the onset of despairingfanaticism, and once again in its advance moved forward the boundariesof the conquering race. The solid tramp of British soldiers' feetsounded the death-knell of a rule whose hour of doom had struck, and onemore little tyranny--its cup of crime, perfidy, and folly full--wasblotted for ever from the page of the world's story. The sun set into ahorizon lurid with the dust of a flying rabble, and the victoriouscavalry, as it returned, covered with sweat and dirt, from the pursuit,found all the fighting done, an English guard on duty at the city gates,a troop of English artillery drawn up in front of the principal mosque,and a couple of English sentinels plodding up and down with all thestolidity of true Britons in front of the Officers' Quarters. The SandyTracts were ours.

  The next morning at sunrise the British flag was flying on the Fort ofDustypore, and a British General and his staff were busy with maps,orders, and despatches in quarters from which the ladies of a royalseraglio had fled in post-haste the afternoon before. Thenceforwardeverything went on like clockwork. Before the week was out order, suchas had not been dreamed of for many a long year, prevailed in every nookand corner of the captured city. One morning an elderly gentleman, inplain clothes, attended by two or three uniformed lads and a tinycavalry escort, rode in, and a roar of cannon from the Fort announcedthat the 'Agent' had arrived. Then set in the full tide of civiladministration. Courts began to sit, pickpockets and brawlers weretried; sanitary regulations were issued; returns were called for,appointments were made. The 'Dustypore Gazette,' in its first issue,announced with the greatest calmness, and in the curt languageappropriate to an everyday occurrence, the annexation of the SandyTracts; and a gun fired from the Fort every morning, as near as might beto mid-day, announced to the good people of Dustypore that, by order ofQueen Victoria, it was twelve o'clock, and twelve o'clock in a Britishcantonment.

  The new addition to Her Majesty's possessions resembled the Miltonichell in one particular at any rate--in being a region of fierceextremes. On winter mornings a biting wind, fresh from its icy home inthe distant snow-clad range, cut one to the core; and people clustered,with chattering teeth and blue fingers, round blazing hearths, wheregreat logs worthy of an English Christmas tempered the cruel atmosphereto a genial glow. When the 'Rains' came it poured a little deluge.During the eight months of summer the state of things resembled thatprevailing in the interior of a well-constructed and well-suppliedArnott's stove. Then it was that the Sandy Tracts were seen in thecomplete development of their resources and in the fullest glory. Vastplains, a dead level but for an occasional clump of palms or the dome ofsome despoiled and crumbling tomb, stretched away on every side, andended in a hazy quivering horizon that spoke of infinite heat. Overthese ranged herds of cattle and goats, browsing on no one could seewhat, or bewildered buffaloes would lie, panting and contented, in somemuddy pool, with little but horns, eyes, and nostrils exposed above thesurface. Little ill-begotten stunted plants worked hard to live and growand to weather the roaring fierce winds. The crows sat gasping,open-beaked, as if protesting against having been born into sosulphurous an existence. Here and there a well, with its huge lumberingwheel and patient bullocks, went creaking and groaning night and day, asif earth grudged the tiny rivulet, coming so toilfully from her drybreast, and gave it up with sighs of pain. The sky was cloudless,pitiless, brazen. The sun rose into it without a single fleck of vapourto mitigate its
fierceness, and pierced, like a red-hot sword, the rashmortal who dared, unprotected, to meet its ray. All day it shone andglistened and blazed, until the very earth seemed to crack with heat,and the mere thought of it was pain. 'AEgypt,' to use the poet's phrase,'ached in the sun's eye.' The natives tied their heads up in bags,covered their mouths, and carried their clothes between the sun andthemselves. Europeans entrenched themselves behind barriers of moistenedgrass, lay outstretched under monster fans and consoled themselves withwhat cool drinks their means allowed, and with the conviction, whichseemed to spring perennial in each sufferer's breast, that the presentwas by far the hottest summer ever known.

  Dew there was none. You stepped from your door in the morning into a bedof sand, which no amount of watering could reduce to the propersolidity of a garden-path. As you came in at night you shook off thedust that had gathered on you in your evening stroll. Miles away thegalloping horseman might be tracked by the little cloud that he stirredup as he went. The weary cattle trudged homeward from their day's workin a sand-storm of their own manufacture. There was sand in the air onebreathed, in the food one tried to eat, in the water that pretended toassuage one's thirst: sand in heaven and sand on earth--and a great dealof sand in the heads of many of the officials.

  This getting of sand into the head, and getting it in in a degreecompatible neither with health, comfort, or efficiency, was a recognisedmalady in the Sandy Tracts. It cost the Government a great deal of moneyand the services of many a useful brain. Officers, when they feltthemselves becoming unendurably sandy and their ideas proportionatelyconfused, used to take furlough, and go home and try to get washed clearagain at Malvern or Wiesbaden: and there was a famous physician inMayfair, renowned for his skill in ridding the heads of those poorgentlemen of the unwelcome deposit, who made a reputation and a fortuneby, so to speak, dredging them.

  There was one official head, however, at Dustypore in which no particleof sand was to be found, and that was Mr. Strutt's. It was for thisreason, probably, amongst others, that he was made Chief Secretary tothe Salt Board, a post which, at the time when this history commences,was one of the most important, responsible, and lucrative in the entireservice. For the Salt Board, as will hereafter be seen, was aninstitution whose dignity and powers had grown and grown until theyalmost overtopped those of the Agency itself. If the Salt Board was theembodiment of what was dignified and powerful in Dustypore, Mr. Strutthad concentrated in his own person the functions and attributes of theBoard. He was prompt, indefatigable, self-satisfied, and, what hissuperiors valued him for especially, lucky.

  A long career had taught him and the world that those who attacked himcame off second-best. His answers were unanswerable, his reportseffective, his explanations convincing. His nervous hand it was thatdepicted the early triumphs of the Dustypore Administration and insonorous periods set forth the glories of the British rule--the roads,the canals, the hospitals and schools--the suppression of crime, thedecreased mortality, the general passion of the inhabitants for femaleeducation. His figures were constantly quoted by people who wished totalk about India to English audiences, and his very name was a pillar ofstrength to the champions of the English rule. Even his enemies wereconstrained to admit that he possessed the art of 'putting it' to adegree of fearful and wonderful perfection.

  The maxim, 'like master like man,' was as far as possible from beingverified in the case of Mr. Strutt and his superiors. Of these Mr.Fotheringham, the Chairman, was lymphatic in temperament, inordinatelyvain, and the victim of an inveterate habit of enunciating platitudes.Cockshaw, who came next, was off-hand, superficial, and positive, withthe positiveness of a man who hates deliberation and despises every formof uncertainty. Blunt, the third member, was a non-civilian, and hadbeen brought out from England on account of his practical acquaintancewith salt-mines, and of his having been a secretary in the Board ofTrade. He was business-like, straightforward, and unconciliating;generally thought differently from his colleagues, and had the roughestpossible manner of saying what he thought.

  Such a trio had sometimes, as may well be imagined, no little trouble inpreserving toward the outer world the aspect of serene, benevolent, andconsistent infallibility, the maintenance of which Fotheringham regardedas the first of duties, Cockshaw did not in the least mind a row, solong as he was not kept too long at office for the purpose of making it.Blunt would have stayed at office till midnight, arguing doggedly,sooner than abandon his point. Happily Fotheringham had a great senseof propriety, concealed the dissensions of his colleagues from thepublic eye, and preserved the Board's dignity from ignominious collapse.

  Under Strutt came a hierarchy of less important subordinates, who pavedthe long descent, so to speak, from the official altitudes in which theSalt Board had its being to the vulgar public who consumed the salt.Chief of these was Vernon, with whom the reader will speedily becomebetter acquainted. Under him, again, came Mr. Whisp, theAssistant-Secretary, a young gentleman whose task it was to draw upminutes of the Board's proceedings, to draft its circulars and tocollect the statistics out of which Strutt concocted his reports. He hadthus, it will be seen, an opportunity of acquiring much usefulinformation and a highly ornamental style, and Whisp was generallyregarded in the service as a rising man.