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SET IN AUTHORITY

OTHER WORKS BY

MRS. EVERARD COTES.

HIS HONOR AND A LADY.

THE PATH OF A STAR.

THOSE DELIGHTFUL AMERICANS.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE
LATCH.

THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A
MEMSAHIB

ETC

SET m AUTHORITY

BY

/

MRS. EVERARD/COTES

(SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN)

LONDON

ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE

AND COMPANY, LTD.

1906

LP'1

mot

Copynght, 1906, iy Mrs. Everard Cotks, in the
United States of Amerrim.

TO MY HUSBAND

SET IN AUTHORITY

CHAPTER I

It would be hard to contrive a friendly descrip-
tion of Lady Thame's drawing-room. One would
be obliged to do it in perpetual fear of the \
suddenly invidious, the thing said in the real
rage of that pain which furniture and ornament
can so unintentionally inflict. In the end it would
be necessary to deny oneself emotion, and make
it a catalogue raisonne, or perhaps to abandon
it altogether in favour of Lady Thame herself.
There would be relief as well as justice in ac-
knowledging that Lady Thame might sit among
any surroundings, and they would always be
adventitious and trifling, though she had selected
them personally and entirely. They spoke for so
small a part of her. Her drawing-room referred
to Lady Thame in much the same proportion as
it referred to Cavendish Square, outside, or as
Cavendish Square referred to Great Britain, fur-
ther outside. It was quite subordinate, and the
conviction that it was negligible did much to
help one to stay in it.

Lavinia and Frances were both there with her,
giving tea to Mrs. Lawrence Lenox, a lady whose
manner showed excitement, and as plainly the

A

2 SET IN AUTHORITY

wish to conceal it. A little excited both Lavinia
and Frances were, a little roused Lady Thame
was, but none of them betrayed the flutter, half
exulting, half apprehensive, of Mrs. Lenox, who
kept her elbows well beside her on the sofa, but
whose eye, at the least sound from that direction,
flew uncontrollably to the door.

' I have not seen him since he was twelve,' said
Mrs. Lenox, with half a motion, as the handle
turned, to rise ; but it was only a footman with
scones.

' Your mother,' said Lady Thame, ' was one of
the people who used to over-feed him on his
half -holidays at school. Strawberries. / know.'

Mrs. Lenox flushed with happy gratification.

* He used often to come over to us,' she said
timidly. 'We were very fond of him, mother
especially. She used always to say that for a
little fellow he was so wonderfully well informed.
I remember his putting her right on a point of
botany once. We were so amazed.'

Lady Thame looked critically at her visitor,
and Frances begged her to have some more bread
and butter. Frances, though so well turned out,
was pale and serious, and took her duties with
almost an agitated anxiety.

*No, thank you, indeed,' said Mrs. Lenox,
' I 've had such heaps of things. Yes, a little
more tea, please, if it isn't too greedy,' and she
resigned her four-cornered cup. * la it in the
evening papers ? '

'They don't seem to have come,' said Lady

' SET IN AUTHORITY 3

Thame. * Just ring, Lavinia, please, and ask.
But here it is in the Times'

Mrs. Lenox took the proffered paper and read
aloud. ' " The King has been graciously pleased
to approve the appointment of Anthony Andover,
fourth Baron Thame, to be Viceroy and Governor-
General in India, in the place of the Right Hon-
ourable Henry Halifax Waycourt, Earl of Druse,
resigned." They have put it nicely, haven't
they ? Poor Lord Druse ! Wasn't it shocking,
that paralysis! Overwork, pure and simple.
You must warn Lord Thame against overwork,
Miss Thame.' She continued to look at the
announcement, holding it off a little, admiringly,
as if it were something jewelled and lustrous.

* There is a long article, too,' remarked Lavinia.
'Rather over-complimentary, mother thinks it.'
Though Lavinia had grey eyes and a firm chin,
she blushed easily with strangers. She blushed
now, as if she had done something rather daring
in quoting her mother.

' Oh, does she ? * deprecated Mrs. Lenox,
smiling over her fresh cup in the direction indi-
cated.

' I do indeed,' said Lady Thame. * When he
has governed the country for his five years to
some good purpose it will be time enough to pat
him on the back. He 's brought forth nothing
wonderful so far in home politics, though he has
worked hard enough — what can a Radical peer
do ? — and I can't see why it 's so immensely to
his credit that his great-grandfather made a name

4 SET IN AUTHORITY

in Canada. It's quite time, too, that he was
allowed to forget that he did well at Oxford. /
can tell them that he has brains and a conscience.
Now we shall see what use he will make of them.'

Mrs. Lenox's eye ranged vaguely down the
wide column before her. ' I must read this when
I get home,' she said, * I am sure they don't say
a bit too much.'

' Anthony comes honestly by his extraordinary
interest in India,' continued Lady Thame.
' My father spent years there looking into the
religions of the people — he translated some of the
Vedas, and wrote a book called The Laiv of God
in the East, which gave great offence in some
quarters. I have it still — shall I lend it to you ?
Much pleasure. Knowing the natives as you do
you will appreciate it. My husband, too, was
always wildly interested in Orientals. Anything
black. Adored them. He made a great collec-
tion— of books, I mean, not Easterns, though
positively Leighton was simply infested — however,
they were well enough in their way ; and of
course it is a duty to encourage their coming to
Oxford, to absorb our civilisation, as my husband
used to say, at its fountain-head. The one post
in the Government he coveted all his life was the
Secretaryship of State for India, and I always
understood that Mr. Gladstone practically pro-
mised— however, a month before they came in
again his health broke down. After that he
devoted liimsolf to growing trees and slirubs from
that part of the world, with astonishing success.

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" The jungle," we called it at Leighton. Annoyed
Broom, the head gardener, beyond words, to hear
his pet plantation called "the jungle.'" Lady
Thame laughed.

* And mother would ask him, every other day,
how his jungle was getting on,' said Frances.
' But Broom had you there, mother. He would
say " Terminalia Tomentosa'a tryin' to make a
bit of leaf, m' lady, but Ficus Indica is lookin'
pretty sorry for itself." '

' Poor Broom,' said Mrs. Lenox. * Yes, indeed,
it is not surprising that Lord Thame — I suppose
one mustn't say " His Excellency " yet — is inter-
ested in India.'

* He says there 's so much to be done there,'
remarked Lavinia.

' One thing he has very much at heart,' said
Frances, * and that is to reconcile the natives and
the English out there. He says there is no
reason why there shouldn't be a better feeling.
He thinks that if we truly were all that we pre-
tend to be to them they would appreciate it. He
says Orientals have a great capacity for loyalty.
Have they ? '

' Oh yes, indeed,' replied Mrs. Lenox. * He is
perfectly right. We have a kitmutgar — that's a
tablemaid, you know — who has been with us
eleven years, and whenever we go on furlough he
cries like a child.'

* How touching ! ' said Lady Thame. * Poor
creature 1 Oh, I am sure they are a responsive
people. If that can be said of a poor what-did-

6 SET IN AUTHORITY

you-call-him, what may we not expect among
the better classes ? I shall be glad to see Anthony
take hold of that problem of race antagonism.
He is very well fitted for it. To mend a thing
like that there is nothing like example, nothing.
And I am confident that the natives will look up
to Anthony.'

' We will all look up to him,' said Mrs. Lenox
coquettishly. ' The natives aren't everything in
India, you know, Lady Thame.'

' Why, what else is there ? ' said Lady Thame,
and did not wait for an answer. * George Cray-
brooke told me a fortnight ago that things are so
critical out there, what with over-population and
famine and the Amir getting so above himself,
that they simply could not afford to send any
one but a first-class man. He had Anthony in
mind at the time, I suppose, though he gave me
no hint of it. Well, I should quite like to be
going with him.'

* But you ought, Lady Thame,' said Mrs.
Lenox, rising. 'Who will help him with his
entertaining? Viceregal entertaining is such a
tax, even where there is a Vicereine. I can't
imagine how a bachelor Viceroy will cope with
it'

* And pray what would my poor Settlement
do ? And how would my Cliildren of the State
get on ? And my Political Purity League ? No,
if necessary one of his sisters may go out, later
on, but his mother finds enough to do in England.
Parochial, you know,' Lady Thame laughed

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robustly, 'and insular. Parochial and insular,
no doubt. But perhaps you will marry him
off!'

' Marry a Viceroy ! ' cried Mrs. Lenox, honestly
aghast. * Oh no ! '

' Will nobody have one ^ ' cried Lavinia, crim-
soning.

* Is it so unthinkable ? ' said Lady Thame.
' Like a Bishop ? '

' Oh, much worse ! ' Mrs. Lenox told them.
' Like an archangel ! '

On the success of this Mrs. Lenox achieved
her good-bye. ' I hope you don't mind my
coming on the very first day like this,' she said ;
* I felt I simply had to tell you how charmed I
was, and how delighted India will be. It makes
such a difference to us all, you know, who comes
out. It's everything, socially. And Lawrence
having fagged for him at Eton too — it is so
delightful. I hope you really don't mind.*

'Most kind of you, I think it/ said Lady
Thame. ' If your dear mother had been alive, I
am sure I should have had a letter from her, poor
Alicia. Such a good heart ! Dear me, what a
trial it was to her when you ran away to India,
the only one ! Well, well ! You mustn't let it
be so long again. I think it most kind. We
are supposed to be in the country to-day, or we
should have had more visitors. Telegrams and
letters since ten this morning. Two banquets
proposed already, and photographers wanting
sittings. Feed him and photograph him when he

8 SET IN AUTHORITY

comes back, I say. Good-bye. Many thanks.
Most kind.'

* Her husband/ Lady Thame told her daughters,
as the hansom drove away, 'is a very clever
rising man, a judge somewhere out there ; I
forget the' name of the place, but I don't know
how much Anthony will have to do with him.
I was very much impressed by his ability, and so
was your father, once when he and she came
'down to Leighton together. It was the time the
natives were daubing the trees all over the place
— the mango trees, you know — and we were all
in a great fright. He reassured us completely ;
said there was nothing in it ; and the event, of
course, has proved him perfectly right. I hope
he and Anthony will come across each other ;
he could put Anthony up to such a quantity of
things.'

* She is like an Anglo-Indian lady in a book,'
said Frances. * She is a great deal too young,
and I 'm sure she has devotions. I do dislike
women with devotions. I wonder if they 're all
like that ? '

' That kind of Anglo-Indian woman in a book,'
remarked Lavinia, ' is always heroic in an ex-
tremity. They prattle on just to show you how
silly they can be ; and then they set their teeth
and perform miracles of self-sacrifice. Wait till
she gets you alone in the jungle with small-
[)ox ! '

* 1 dare say she would do one very well,'
responded Frances thoughtfully. ' But I should

SET IN AUTHORITY 9

be interested to know if they're all like that.
Mother, how could you give her the impression
that Anthony was going out heart-free to
India!'

Lady Thame stiffened. ' What possible differ-
ence can her impression make ? ' she demanded.
* He is going to rule the country, not to wear his
heart upon his sleeve. Besides, if he is not fancy-
free when he goes, he may be very shortly. It
will be an absorbing task, not a thing to take up
like a book.'

Frances shook her head. ' I am sure he will
be constant,' she said. * When a man like
Anthony makes up his mind — '

* I shall be delighted to hear that he is wedded
to the country,' declared his mother.

* Perhaps,' said Lavinia, * he wdll ask her again
before he goes.'

* It will make absolutely no difference,' Frances
told them.

' Would she refuse the Viceroy of India 1 '
exclaimed Lady Thame.

* Perfectly,' said Frances, ' if she just didn't
want him.'

* I can't imagine that,' said Lady Thame de-
cidedly, * or for that matter that she should refuse
Anthony Thame. For my part, I don't see why
one should fly to the conclusion that he has ever
asked Victoria. Fond of her he may be, admire
her he may — '

' Oh, mother, mother ! * exclaimed Lavinia.
' You know in your heart that he adores her.'

10 SET IN AUTHORITY

* Then,' said Lady Thame, ' it 's simple enough.
He will marry her before he goes. There will be
just time. And an extremely lucky girl I con-
sider Victoria will be. An extremely lucky
girl.'

'No, mother, you'll see — it won't happen,'
Lavinia told her. ' There 's something about
Anthony Victoria doesn't like.'

' And pray what is it ? ' bristled their mother.

' Oh, I don't think any of us can tell exactly —
we 're all chips of the same block, aren't we ? '
and Lavinia regarded the block with a smile of
affection. ' But I shouldn't call Anthony a —
well, a very easily lovable person myself. You
see, he doesn't think of anyt\\mg but the aims
of civilisation. And we all know she hates his
politics.'

' Rubbish,' said Lady Thame. ' A wife's politics
are the same as her husband's.' The late Lord
Thame must often have congratulated himself
that this had been his own good fortune. ' And
it seems to me, if Anthony can swallow Herbert,
Victoria can very well swallow any shade of
Liberalism.'

* That is quite a different thing,' said Lavinia,
and had no more to say.

* There is never any news of Herbert ? ' asked
Frances. * No clue at all ? '

*And never will be,' said Lady Thame de-
cidedly. * Herbert has made away with himself —
that's my firm conviction, though one doesn't, of
course, say it to his sister.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 11

' I don't know why you will think that hor-
rible thing,' said Lavinia, crimsoning deeply;
and Lady Thame, at an appealing look from
Frances, mitigated her reply.

*And I am sincerely sorry for Victoria,' she
added. ' Sincerely sorry. She had much better
give it up, leave it to Providence, and go out
to India to help Anthony to do some good in
the world — if she gets the chance.'

Frances, at an approach in the passage, lifted
her head. ' Here she comes,' she said, and the
footman, with four deliberate steps into the room,
announced 'Miss Tring.'

CHAPTER II

A TALL girl followed her name, in a well-cut,
shabby jacket, with splashes of mud on the hem
of her skirt and not wholly removed from her
boots. The hair about her forehead was damp,
her eyes were dark and enthusiastic. She had
the look of being blown in, and a current did
seem to come with her that lifted the atmosphere
of the room. They all felt it and were quickened ;
you could see that, whether they approved it or
not, hers was a happy approach to them. The
armed neutrality that sat behind their greeting
was the artificial thing ; the reality was the way
they all kindled to her.

' Where is Anthony ? ' she demanded. * I
want, as the Americans say, to shake him by the
hand. I want to shake you all by the hand. I
have been rejoicing steadily since three o'clock,
and I should be glad of some tea, Frances. But
what a cliance! I could have wept — I could
weep now, and I will if you don't give me two
lumps, Lavinia.'

* We thought you would be pleased,' said
Frances.

'Pleased! His Majesty the King is pleased.

12

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I am much more, I am content, I beat the tom-
tom. Why aren't you all beating tom-toms, one
in each corner ? Or Aunt Pamela might occupy
the howdah. That would give it a use ; an
excuse it can't have.'

They looked at the large object so invidiously
designated. It stood, cumbrous, silver -gilt,
fringed, tarnished, near the fireplace ; from the
end of the mantelpiece near it gazed the blind
eyes of a bust of Herbert Spencer.

* What a down you always have on it,' said
Lavinia. ' It wouldn't do in a small room, but
in this great cavern of mother's it's all right.'

* I think it would look better in India.'

' Our grandfather made the pilgrimage to
Benares in it,' said Frances defensively. * He
thought it would be valued on that account.
And we do. Our grandfather once oflfered it to
the British Museum, but they had one already,
they said. We are all very glad they didn't
take it.*

' Oh, I know,' Miss Tring responded absently.
* Coming like that, of course you can't help
having it. And it does explain a lot in
Anthony — ' She checked herself, and looked
at the howdah as if it had betrayed her.

' I have just been telling a little person from
India, whose mother used to be my dearest
friend, how honestly Anthony comes by his great
interest in the country,' said Lady Thame, with-
out suspicion, * but it is an old story to you,
Victoria.'

14 SET IN AUTHORITY

Miss Tring looked prepared for a moment to
hear it again, but Lady Thame spared her.

' How does he take it 1 ' she asked curiously.
The new interest was vivid in her face, and
behind it something personal and undecipherable,
something of herself which had touched and
caught.

' Quietly, to us,' said Frances.

' But any one can see that he is really very
deeply moved,' said his mother. * He only told
us yesterday. Mr. Craybrooke offered it to him
on Monday, and he took three days to make up
his mind. There were one or two things to con-
sider. His journey to Finland he has had, of
course, to give up ; and he had very much set his
heart on investigating and pressing the Finnish
constitutional question — he thinks it intolerable
that England should look calmly on. And his
book, I am sorry to say, will have to be set aside
for the present.'

* TJie Real Empire r

' Yes. Anthony at once submitted the sheets
to Mr. Craybrooke, and though he entirely agrees
with Anthony's views as views, apart from
immediate exigencies, he considers that the
expression of them just now would embarrass
him a good deal as Viceroy — and, of course, one
can understand it.'

' Well, yes,' said Victoria, * since he practi-
cally repudiates all that we hold by the sword,
and confines us, in the world, to the parts we can
plough.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 15

* You have seen them too — the proofs ? ' Lady
Thame concluded rather than inquired.

' Yes, I have seen them too.'

' Well, I don't at all agree with you, Victoria.
He thinks, of course, that the only legitimate
conquest is the soil, and that we have no per-
manent business except where we can take root.
But the finer, higher, and wider conclusion of the
book is that England should govern, and does
govern, by moral force.'

Lady Thame drew herself up in line, as it were,
with her adjectives, which she produced with
elocutionary emphasis and that British play of
the hand which comprises a single gesture. AVith
the other she held her cup at an angle which
spilled her tea.

' Oh, Aunt Pamela ! ' exclaimed Victoria.
Her laugh had a little accent of something that
was not mirth ; and into the eyes of Lavinia and
Frances shot simultaneously the conviction, * She
did refuse him on account of his politics.'

Miss Tring did not pursue the matter. ' They
call us hypocrites in Europe,' she said, * but we
aren't hypocrites — we 're only anomalies.'

' So the publishers have agreed,' continued the
mother of the last anomaly, ' to postpone it until
he comes back. Of course, it has cost him some-
thing.'

'When he comes back,' cried Victoria, *he
will burn it.'

* Not while I have a safe,' said Lady Thame.
* It was got for his grandfather's manuscripts.

16 SET IN AUTHORITY

Many of them are in it still. Then you haven't
seen Anthony himself, Victoria ? '

'Not for days and days,' replied Miss Tring
calmly. 'And I read the papers even, without
seeing it. Mother heard it at her club, and told
me to dash round with her congratulations. She
has a meeting somewhere. She said I was to tell
you, if you hadn't realised it, that Anthony was
going out to preside over the destinies of one-
sixth of the human race.'

* I hope he will improve their lot,' said Lady
Thame ; ' I hear that millions of them live, at
present, on three halfpence a day.'

*I should think,' said Victoria Tring slowly,
' that — to rule an alien people must be one of the
few things in which there is essential glory. To
be a king among one's own is a mere accident,
without, as far as I can see, any compensations,
unless you count not having to catch trains. But
to be imposed that way from above, over strange
races, with different joys and sorrows, and ambi-
tions, whose knees really tremble and whose eyes
really look up — it is like holding a commission
ffom the gods.'

* It would be, Anthony says, if it weren't for
the Secretary of State for India,' interposed
Lavinia. * He says they don't half trust the man
on tlie spot, and lie can't practically do anything
on his own responsibility. But we think Anthony
will do something; at any rate, he's awfully
pleased at getting the chance.'

*I should think so,' said Victoria, '1 sliould

SET IN AUTHORITY 17

think so. Do tell me how it came — the offer.
On a gold-emblazoned scroll, I suppose, with the
royal arms at the top and the rising sun at
the bottom. Carried on a scarlet cushion and
escorted by a detachment of Horse Guards.'

The ladies laughed, looking at one another in
recognition of her lively fancy, and Lavinia
quite rose to the humour of it when she said, ' I
can tell you, Victoria. Mr. Craybrooke met him
somewhere, directly after a Cabinet Council, and
offered it to him. ** Anthony, old fellow, how
would you like India? " he said.'

* Ah, dear Bishop ! ' exclaimed Lady Thame,
as more congratulations took their chance of find-
ing her, after all, in town. Close upon Bishop
Wilmington came Mr. Victor Gabriel, a young
man who had undertaken to explain his race to
the British people. To try to do anything was
a passport to consideration in the Thame family,
and Mr. Gabriel found in their friendship a reward
of the effort he still made and a token of the
success he still hoped for. Before Victoria
slipped away Mr. Craybrooke himself had arrived,
also a retired Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, the
widow of a Commander - in - Chief, and Lady
Deborah Flaxc, who still, at the age of eighty-
two, wrote articles in the magazines upon all
subjects which contained the female interest.
Victoria stayed longer than she intended, but the
door continued to admit congratulations only. * I
will write to Anthony,* she said finally, and went.

This Victoria Tring was the daughter of the

18 SET IN AUTHORITY

late Lord Thame's half-sister. Her mother was
the widow of John Tring, than whom Oxford has
not produced a more brilliant biologist, or apart
from that a more futile individual. He had

\ proved the first, and was convincing his friends
of the second when death cut short the less edify-
ing demonstration. Mrs. Tring had a little money
of her own and the tastes which led her to marry
her husband. She enshrined his books in a house
in Egerton Crescent, where she devoted herself
intermittently to the task of bringing up her son
Herbert Valentia and her daughter Victoria.
For Herbert she trusted to known and expensive
methods ; he had tutors and crammers. Victoria,
Mrs. Tring declared, she could not atford to
educate ; Victoria might just be about and listen

" to people talk.

When she was not disposing of Herbert and

T. Victoria, Deirdre Tring fulfilled the law of her
being, to which she often said that maternity was
an accident. She absorbed London and the
time, consumed much social philosophy, became
a Fabian as strenuously as she might have be-
come a Mahomedan, threw oft' her convictions
in essays and her impressions in poems, rode in
the very van of progress, was, I have no doubt,
the first woman who smoked a cigarette in a
public restaurant. She could do with or with-
out cigarettes, however ; the one stimulant she
required was the evening paper. She called it

I the lyre of London.

One had to believe that Herbert and Victoria

SET IN AUTHORITY 19

were accidents to Mrs. Tring when one saw her
interest in Hfe so bravely hold even through and
after the tragedy of her son's disappearance in
the course of his last term at Oxford. Certainly,
it was a virile thing in her, both to conquer her
passionate widowhood and to survive not only
those visits of too possible identification across
the Channel, but the cruel mystery itself. Debt
and dissolute habits rose like phantoms where
this son had been, but could not point the way he
had taken. If the Vice-Chancellor's Court had
special theories they did not impart them to his
mother. It was six months before the first and
only request for money came, and dispelled, for
the time being, the idea of suicide. The amount
was pathetically small, and suggested to Mrs.
Tring with curious pertinacity the cost of a
steerage passage to America. It was a country,
America, of which Mrs. Tring thought well and
optimistically. To America she could resign her
son with something like confidence. America
would offer him a career whatever he had upon
his conscience ; and in the relief of this conviction
Mrs. Tring's head, as fair and fluffy as ever, was
soon bent with its accustomed absorption over
the evening paper. America, after all, had been
open to him whether he had gone there or not.

So the son ; with the brother it was different.
Victoria accepted nothing, was resigned to

I nothing. To her the place Herbert left remained
€mpty. A little lamp of hope burned steadily
there ; and there, too, were put away the three
I

20 SET m AUTHORITY

or four brilliant, irresponsible, erotic sketches
which had been applauded in one of those
magazines that now and then play with interest-
ing luridity upon the neutral-tinted British con-
sciousness, to be chilled and killed in the end,
apparently by the mere steady regard of the eye
of virtue. They duly helped to extinguish the
venture, but they were thought to point to
literature as the young man's hope, to belles-
lettres as his ladder. They argued now for Mrs.
Tring that he was climbing in America by means
of the periodicals. Victoria could hardly speak
about these efforts. She would look steadily at
people who mentioned them, defying the criticism
that was naturally enough never uttered. She
had her private value for them, her private
apology too, perhaps, but she kept both fervently
to herself. Victoria, more than any one, was
held by her brother's charm. If she magnified
it into something more potential one cannot be
surprised. He had always shown her his charm,
had always found it worth while to be at his
best with her. Indeed, to do him justice, she
represented something valuable to him ; and his
sister, at that age — she was twenty-two when he
disappeared — was not likely to know more of
him than he chose to let her.

Literature, people thought, was his hope. As
a matter of fact, there was no hope, there never
liad been any hope, for Herbert Tring. He had
justified his fatlier's scientific contempt for the
moral sense by coming into the world as far as

SET IN AUTHORITY 21

possible divested of it. As if that had a look of
flippancy he began early to prove its necessity,
as commonly accepted, to the welfare of the race.
Even at Oxford he might have illustrated the
great plan of salvation by natural selection, since
this may also be effectively done by the damned.
He was too young and perhaps too simply bad
to demonstrate more than an axiom of natural
science, but so far as he went he was remarkably
convincing. He had gone, as we know, too far ;
he had been sucked down, with all his capacity
for the embroidery of certain emotions, with all
his allurements of sympathy and tact, to another
plane of activity. That was four years ago.

And it was quite true that Victoria Tring had
more than once been asked by her half- cousin
Anthony Thame to marry him. This by itself
was proof enough that she was completely
equipped with the moral sense ; Lord Thame
could never have been deceived. What we may
gather from her unvarying refusal is perhaps not
so easy to decipher; she herself had probably
never quite deciphered it, since many things and
many people interested her more than Victoria
Tring. The affair had one feature of which she
Avas secretly, perhaps, a little proud ; they
remained excellent friends. She admired him
for a hundred reasons, and could explain every
one of them. She may have seen that it would
have been illogical and un-English not to admire
Anthony Thame, so completely did he realise a
national ideal. There he was, the product of fine

22 SET IN AUTHORITY

principle, almost unalloyed. She would feel for
him every appreciation but the desire to marry
him. That, as she must often have told him,
was such a different thing. But she was very
just to him, and her impatience on the whole
was kind. She admired him, and, in spite of
their differences, he consulted her. This rather
conspicuous occasion was almost the first on
which he had not done it.

So Anthony Andover, fourth Baron Thame,
became in due course Viceroy of India, and
ruled alone over many places and principalities,
among them the city of Pilaghur.

CHAPTER III

C PiLAGHUR is the capital of the province of Ghoom,
which is ruled by a Chief Commissioner, under
the Government of India, under the Parliament
of Great Britain and Ireland, under the King.
Ghoom is, in fact, very far under. The Chief
Commissioner has the glory and the responsi-
bility of power. It is he whose person is decked
with tinsel and marigolds, whose feet are kissed
by petitioning Ghoomatis ; it is also he who is
lectured for plague riots and called to account for
famine returns by His Excellency the Viceroy.
Both the garland and the rein lie upon his neck.
But he administers through his Commissioners,
and they through their deputies and assistants,
and they through their native clerks, their ' ba-
; boos,' and adjunct to the baboo through the
chuprassie, the herald and messenger of Govern-
ment, who is dressed in scarlet and gold, and
has often been known to collect taxes which were
never imposed. The police aiding all. Down
beneath the bare feet of the chuprassie and the
police we may see dimly the province of Ghoom.
Reflecting, we must call Pilaghur two capitals.
There is the Pilaghur which the ladies of the

=• 23

24 SET IN AUTHORITY

station think of, and which figures — it has a
cathedral — in diocesan reports. It has a parade-
ground as well as a cathedral, and a station club
where are tennis-courts and the English illus-
trated papers, and public gardens set with palms
and pointsettias, where the band plays twice a
week in the evenings after polo. Two or three
roads lie fairly parallel in Pilaghur, and two or
three lie more or less across, broad empty roads
named after Indian administrators, bordered
with tamarinds and acacias. There are cer-
tainly lamp-posts, and infrequent in the distance
a bright red letter-box ; but the absence of
everything else gives a queer, quiet, theatrical
look to these highways. You could walk for
nearly a mile on some of them before being lost
again in the incomprehensible agriculture of
Ghoom. You might meet a sowar on a camel
carrying an invitation to the District Judge to
dine at the mess, or a snake-charmer beating
his tom-tom and dragging his mongoose, or a
hobbled donkey or two nibbling the short dry
grass between the road and the footpath; and
you might meet nothing more.

The sun-suffused roads run up into rubbly
banks on either side, and these are crowned with
grey - green cactuses, many - armed and dusty.
Behind them, indeterminately far in, indeter-
minately far apart, are houses, thick-looking low
houses. They stand in the sun as a child might
draw them, on a very simple plan and rather
crooked, with inexplicable excrescences, made

SET IN AUTHORITY 25

too, as a child might perhaps make them, chiefly
of mud, and colour-washed. Some of the roofs
are high-pitched and thatched ; others are flat,
with low balustrades round them like those in
Bible pictures. They are all of one substance,
from the quarters of the Barfordshires to Govern-
ment House, the residence of the Chief Commis-
sioner, which, however, has two stories and a
flag. The plaster balustrading round the second
story of his dwelling gives it an innocent look of
being iced all over like a Christmas cake. All
new comers notice this with a smile, but the im-
pression soon fades away among the realities of
things, which are, after all, very real in Pilaghur.
Most of the other houses, like the Chief Com-
missioner's, are cream-coloured, but some are pink
and some are yellow ; there are even blue ones.
I cannot conceive why they do not give Pilaghur
a more cheerful appearance than it has. Perhaps
it is because they stand, behind their cactus
hedges and their hibiscus bushes, so remote from
one another ; they insist upon their approaches,
they will have their atmosphere, and do not
justify either. Or perhaps Pilaghur is depressed
because it has, properly speaking, no shops. In
one bungalow, standing in a roomy acre of its
own, with three crooked sago palms in a far
corner and nothing else, a photographer does
business, but does so little that his two terriers
bark furiously at any customer. In another, the
small discoloured pink one by the tank, Miss Da
Costa, from a well-known Calcutta firm, is under-

26 SET IN AUTHORITY

stood to make very nice blouses ; and I could
show you where to find Mrs. Burbage, spoken of
lamentably as an officer's widow, who ekes out a
casual and slipshod existence by making bread
and cakes for other people. But all this is hidden
away ; you have to hunt it up in its domestic
seclusion, w^here perhaps it is having tea, with
jam, and biscuits out of a tin box, and half re-
sentful of the opportunity of doing business.
The eye rests comforted on a single sign, the
sign of Ali Bux, General Stores Dealer, who occu-
pies a fortuitous unfenced triangle, and not only
supplies kerosine oil and groceries and children's
toys, but crockery and furniture on the hire
system, a good deal of which, more or less
tumble-down, is exposed outside his premises.
It is all disassociated. Ali Bux seems to be per-
mitted rather than encouraged or relied upon ; we
miss the backbone of life. From a point in mid-
air, far enough up, this Pilaghur would have the
vagueness of a family wash, spread out, in the
manner of the country, to dry upon the ground.

The other Pilaghur crowds upon the skirts of
this, a thick embroidery. Far out it spreads
imperceptibly into the mustard-fields ; but here
below Dalhousie Gardens and all along to the old
Mosque of Akbar it falls close packed to the
river ; and Ijcyond the reservoir it liives with
indifierence round the upright stone finger of an
old conquest, that still points to history the way
of the Moghuls. Out there the multitudinous
mad huts are like an eruption of the baked and

I

SET IN AUTHORITY 27

liver-coloured earth, low and featureless ; but in
the narrow ways of the crowded city by the river
the houses jostle each other to express themselves.
The upper stories crane over the lower ones, and
all resent their neighbours. They have indeed
something to say with their carved balconies of
wood and even of stone, with the dark-stained
arches, pointed and scalloped, of their shop fronts,
their gods in effigy, their climbing, crumbling
ochres and magentas. They have the stamp of
the racial, the inevitable, the desperately in ear-
nest, which is the grim sign of cities ; there is no
vagueness, nothing superimposed, in Pilaghur-
by-the-river. Never is there room for the tide
of life that beats through it, chaffering and
calling, ox-carts pushing, water-carriers trotting,
vendors hawking, monkeys thieving, and Ganeshi
Lai, who wires a price to London for half the
seed crops of Ghoom, looking out indifferently
from his second-story window upon all. Ganeshi
sits on the floor ; he wears a gold-embroidered
velvet cap, and the scalloped window frames him
to the waist. There are hundreds of such pictures.
Down below squat his kinsmen round the hills of
yellow meal in the shop window, and sell a
measure for a copper ; up above, Ganeshi with
a rusty pen and purple ink writes off half a
lakh of profits on a piece of brown paper. The
Oriental gutter runs along the side, the Oriental
donkey sniffs at the garbage ; there is an all-per-
vasive Oriental clamour and an all-pervasive
Oriental smell. The city by the river trenches

28 SET IN AUTHORITY

hardly anywhere on the station beyond ; only
the Brass Bazar in one place strays across. You
have to drive through it to get to the railway
station. Pariahs dash out at bicycles, there are
one or two haunting lepers, and cholera usually
begins there ; but it has a pictorial twist and a
little white temple under an old banyan tree,
which the ladies of the station always praise and
generally sketch. And there is no other way
of getting to the railway station. These are
Pilaghur.

CHAPTER IV

When Eliot Arden ' got Ghoom,' as the phrase
went, the secretariats commented freely. It was
one of Lord Thame's first appointments, and it
showed the type of man who was likely to appeal
to him, a type of man in some ways rather like
himself, it was noted. There was little criticism ;
the promotion of a Secretary in the Home De-
partment to a Chief Commissionership was quite
to be expected ; but it was by no means the
only possible nomination. Several others seemed
equally likely. There was Beauchamp, of the
Foreign Office, who had just brought olf a great
coup with the Nizam and was a charming fellow
socially ; there was Godfrey, of the Revenue and
Agricultural Department, very sound, who had
really accomplished something in Western Indian
cotton improvement, to name only two. Arden
had, of course, the qualifications that had brought
him so brilliantly along to the Home Office.
Those were understood. But the Viceroy had
been known to say of him that he could read as
well as write, which was not so common, and
after that, of course, his feeling for literature
became part of his reputation.

29

30 SET IN AUTHORITY

* It 's extraordinary/ the stout Staff colonels
would say of him, wiping their foreheads after a
hard set of racquets, * the books that chap finds
time to get through.' This brought him short of
the standard of practical men, who would use
words like 'academic' and 'visionary ' in calculat-
ing his chances of the big successions ; but these
terms were also beginning to be used pretty
freely about Lord Thame, who was at the very
top and far beyond the climbing line. He had
a perception of the more interesting aspects of
life, which does not draw a man into society ;
but persons to whom that general cup of satis-
faction was very full sometimes said that Arden
was not half a bad sort when you knew him,
and his few friends held him in great affection.
He was more intrigued than most men by the
consideration of his own existence ; out of office
hours he frequently possessed his soul. Careless
people gave him the old-fashioned name of atheist
because he did not go to church and had been
known to imply an irreverence for dogma. No
doul)t in England this would have attracted small
attention ; but in India we are far from the
clashes and concessions of science and theology.
The ark, no doubt, originally rested on a peak of
the Himalayas ; and it is there still, with no
apologising bishop looking from the windows.
The charge, however, was a mistake. The Secre-
tary in the Home Department was perhaps more
aware than most of them of divinity in the
world, but he was shy of cheapening his intui-

SET, IN AUTHORITY 31

tions for their instruction ; and, indeed, they
would have been shy, too.

Ghoom was a prize, a plum, a troublesome job
and a great compliment ; no Viceroy would make
the selection in a hurry. That Thame should
have given it to Eliot Arden — well, it threw a
light on Thame. Rulers of India are not able to
permit themselves conspicuous personal friend-
ships ; nor was that kind of imputation made ;
but one man remembered how, in the far round
of a long walk upon the hill beyond Government
House, he had come upon the Viceroy and his
Home Secretary stretched among the pine needles
and arguing like a pair of undergraduates ; and
another had heard His Excellency say, ' For all I
know about the Upanishads I am indebted to
Arden.' There is no recognised official channel
for conveying information about the Upanishads
to anybody; Arden had not sent it in the files.
The uncomfortable hypothesis under it all seemed
to be that this, in His Excellency's view, was the
sort of fellow to give things to, the sort of fellow
who could talk, and who knew about the Upani-
shads. Something like a qualm would naturally
rise at such a conviction within civil and military
uniforms entertaining it ; which might easily
have been dissipated, however^ by the fact that
Simla had no more Ardens, civil or military.

Oftener it was said, * So the Ardens get
Ghoom,' * So the Ardens go to Ghoom.' I
suppose nobody in England would say, * So the
Fitzalberts have got the Colonial Office,' or the

32 SET IN AUTHORITY

Mountstuarts the Woolsack ; but in India we
have a family feeling about these things, and
confer them, at least colloquially, in the plural.
The Hobsons at last attain to the Bench of the
High Court, and the Petersons become Quarter-
Master-General. People will tell you that when
the O'Haras were Commander-in-Chief the phrase
had no idle significance, though generally, of
course, it has. It carries, however, a sense of
the value, in India, of the sparser feminine, and
identifies ladies, however casually, with what their
husbands have to do.

And everybody approved unreservedly of Mrs.
Arden for Ghoom. Mrs. Arden, it was said, was
just the person to * make it pleasant ' in Pilaghur
as the wife of a Chief Commissioner is expected
to make it pleasant. In this further respect
Arden was thought fortunate ; his wife would
* make up for ' his own social disabilities. He
had become engaged to her at Oxford, when she
was a fair intelligent girl with a poet's name,
Jessica Cowpcr ; and they had come out to India
together, with what seemed to be ideals in ideally
common stock. From the very first, and all
through that progress from isolation with a police-
man and a native magistrate to desolation with a
salt inspector, two missionaries, and no doctor,
which makes the early stages of the civilian's
career, Mrs. Arden had been * liked.* She was
felt to bo clever, and not too clever ; superior,
but not too superior, a thing pigstickers were not
quite sure of in the Arden of those days when

SET IN AUTHORITY 33

they found him consoling exile with a pocket
Horace. She was devoted to her husband to an
extent that appealed to those who were least
devoted to theirs ; and there could have been no
more pathetic illustration of the sad Indian
choice between husband and children than she
offered when the boys had to be sent home.

She went with the boys then, and had been a
good deal with them since, but people always felt
for her. As the Ardens grew more senior — she
had managed to be a good deal with Eliot too —
people often described her as * such an interesting
woman ' ; and the stab of surprise with which he
first heard the phrase was one of the things which
her husband resented long and could not quite
forgive himself After all, that had also been
his experience. Remembering how interesting
he had found Jessica Cowper, he should have had
no impulse to criticise the phrase. Once the
Viceroy had caUed her 'bright.' *A bright
woman like you,' he said, and Eliot, when she
repeated it to him blushing, could only say, * I
am sure he meant no offence.'

* Of course he didn't,' returned Mrs. Arden,
astonished.

That was in the second year of their adminis-
tration of Ghoom, when the Viceroy had stayed
with them on tour, as he does stay with Lieuten-
ant-Governors and Chief Commissioners in the
course of his yearly progresses. Mrs. Arden had
not concealed her anxiety about the visit — it was
so nice of her, people thought, not to — but had

34 SET IN AUTHORITY

consulted everybody, and borrowed from several
people. The Lemons' Goanese butler, Mrs.
Lemon proudly declared, never left the place
day or night ; the Lenoxes' candelabra shone on
the dinner-table each evening ; everybody helped
with flowers. Mrs. Arden had spared no effort,
even to reading His Excellency's book on the
Yellow Eaces, which she had always meant to
do before, but had never somehow managed. It
was in this connection, perhaps, that she had the
reward I have quoted, since no one, and least of
all the author, could fail to be impressed with the
intelligence and perseverance involved. It was
a personal thing, her * brightness ' ; she could
wear it in her mind like a Kaiser-i-Hind medal,
and only her husband would wince at its being
of the second class.

Mrs. Arden had also, for more general refer-
ence, the Military Secretary's statement as they
were going away — he was such a nice fellow, so
pleasant to have in the house— that His Excel-
lency had thoroughly enjoyed himself and they
had all had an awfully good time. Mrs. Arden
gave everybody a share of this, mentioning it
particularly to Mrs. Lenox in writing to return
the candelabra, which had done so much to illu-
minate His Excellency's satisfaction. She quite
deserved her popularity.

Eliot Arden had also his definite gratification
in the viceregal visit, though it was naturally
different ; it had nothing to do with the quality
of the cheroots or the champagne. Indeed, if

SET IN AUTHORITY S6

these were particularly good it was probably
owing to somebody else : Arden was no critical
judge of such things. He himself would smoke
any leaf that grew on the earth's surface, and it
would hardly occur to him to ask whether it had
been produced in Turkey or in Trichinopoly. He
was apt to impute a like indifference to other
people. Mrs. Arden came to him early on the
second day with the tragedy that there was no
cream for the Viceroy's coffee. ' Good heavens,
he 's much too busy to mind,' said Eliot. * Give
him milk.'

But the Chief Commissioner had his own sus-
ceptibilities. For a long time past life had given
him one supreme engrossment, his share in the
burden of the administration of India, what he
would have called his ' job.' He was forty-three
years old ; his job had taken the best of his brains
and his energy since he was twenty-five. The
whole worth of the man had gone into it ; and
for some years the chief value of his life had
come out of it. Perhaps it was his nature to
idealise anything that he had to do. He would
have swept a chimney with a thought of the sparks
that made his work ; and India lends itself to
that trick. Ghoom had been, so far, his widest
scope, his most responsible opportunity, and his
most conspicuous trial.

And Ghoom, troublesome Ghoom, under Eliot
Arden had gone well. An Agricultural Hold-
ings Act, which Government had been five years
debating in fear of Ghoom, had slipped quietly

36 SET IN AUTHORITY

into operation because the man who had to put
the new shoe on the province had known just
where and why it would pinch. Coal in Ghoom
had been a long-hidden official speculation ; Arden
had brought it to the surface and provided half a
million people with another industry. In this the
man of no great practical turn naturally had a
special satisfaction ; and Arden had warmed with
the appreciation of the chairman at the great com-
mercial dinner of the Calcutta year, the feast of
St. Andrew, who candidly congratulated Govern-
ment upon the enterprise and freedom from red
tape of what had been done in Ghoom. Other
matters for congratulation there were, more in-
teresting in the resolution embodying them than
they would be here ; and the Viceroy had shown
himself as appreciative a critic over a cigar in
Arden's office as he had been in the views com-
municated by the Home Secretary. Each night
the two separated in the small hours, and each
day the Chief Commissioner kindled into some-
thing more and more diflferent from the rather
silent, generally acquiescent, indwelling Arden of
whom a fimciful person might say that his only
solace lay in his dreams. People remarked that
the Chief Commissioner was really exerting him-
self, making a tremendous effort to entertain His
Excellency ; that was the station's way of putting
it. But it had already been said of Lord Thame
that he was the first Viceroy to approach Indian
problems with a philosophically interested mind ;
and Arden was certainly not aware of any special

SET IN AUTHORITY 37

pains as lie and the Viceroy breasted the dilii-
culties of the moment together, or shared the
outlook upon the irremediable.

* One gets moral support out of that fellow,' he
said, half shyly, to his Revenue Secretary, as they
stood with their hats off on the beflagged Pilaghur
platform while the special steamed out ; and, no
doubt, out of that particular fellow moral support
was to be got. But there was more than moral
support in the heart of the Chief Commissioner
as he drove back to his frosted olHcial residence
with his sowars in blue and khaki cantering and
jingling behind. Whatever happens elsewhere
in these days of triumphant democracies, in India
the Ruler survives. He is the shadow of the
King, but the substance of kingship is curiously
and pathetically his ; and his sovereignty is most
real with those who again represent him. The
city and the hamlet stare apathetic ; they have
always had a conqueror. But in lonely places
which the Viceroy's foot never presses and his
eye never sees, men of his own race find in his
person the authority for the purpose of their
whole lives. He is the judge of all they do, and
the symbol by which they do it. Reward and
censure are in his hand, and he stands for what-
ever there is in the task of men that is sweeter
than praise and more bitter than blame. He
stands for the idea, the scheme, and the intention
to which they are all pledged ; and through the
long sacrifice of the arid years something of their
loyalty and devotion and submission to the idea

38 SET IN AUTHORITY

fathers in the human way about the sign of it.
'he Viceroy may be a simple fellow, but his
effigy is a wonderful accretion.

There is a keen harvest of sensitiveness in this.
Perhaps experience is the only thing that should
attempt to teach it. No doubt it should be read
through the isolation and monotony, the ever-
lowering vitality, the tyranny of the sun and the
prison of the land in which it grows. Eliot
Arden had gathered it all. Choice would have
made him something quite different, but chance
turned him out an Indian Civilian. He had stores
of philosophy, but they could not defend him
that morning against his delight that what he
had done well had been seen to be well done.
The moral support he acknowledged was warmed
by a gratification he said nothing about, and
enhanced by his personal esteem for his Viceroy,
the sixth who had asked in the name of England
for the best that was in him, and had got it.
But the Chief Commissioner's satisfaction was,
after all, the ripple of a good day and some time
past. At the moment to which 1 beg your atten-
tion, Anthony Andover, fourth Baron Thame, had
governed India in the name of his Sovereign, and
Eliot Arden had administered the province of
Ghoom by the authority of the Viceroy and
Governor-General in Council, for three years.

CHAPTER V

A" GOOD many people were dining with the Ardena
— General and Mrs. Lemon, that rising pair Mr.
and Mrs. Lawrence Lenox, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur
Poynder Biscuit, Colonel Vetchley commanding
the Barfordshires, one or two subalterns, and
Miss Ruth Pearce, M.B. Miss Pearce properly
comes last, because she had no quotable position.
The table of precedence does not provide for
demi-official lady-doctors, having Ijeen invented
before they were. It was sometimes a little
embarrassing to dispose of Miss Pearce, and it
was thought very kind of the Ardens to place
her so often, in that rule- defying way, on the
Chief Commissioner's left. It was, in the eyes
of Pilaghur, a recognition little short of nol)le of
a friendship little short of morganatic. ,

General Lemon commanded the district, was
responsible to the Commander-in-Chief in India
for the troops in Ghoom. Mr. Lawrence Lenox
was the District and Sessions Judge. Mr. Arthur
Poynder Biscuit was a junior Civilian, whose wife
had not long come out. Colonel Vetchley had
no wife, but was much wedded to his opinions.
There was, indeed, only one married man in the

39

40 SET IN AUTHORITY

Barfords, Beaufort, and he was on leave. It was
a grave regimental question whether Devine,
Major and second in command, would counte-
nance Beaufort by following his example, or
whether Beaufort would fix up an exchange.
Devine was being closely watched. Tlie sub-
alterns Davidson and Lamb belonged to the
Tenth Guzeratis, of the Indian Army, and were,
naturally, both family men. Mrs. Davidson was
not present for domestic reasons, but Mrs. Lamb
was actually at the party. She was a thin little,
white little thing, who made no pretence of doing
her hair, but put a natural flower in it, and wore
for further ornament a necklace of amber beads
and a very constant smile — the kind of little
thing one was instinctively sorry for until one
saw in her eyes that she not only had any amount
of pluck, but that she enjoyed life as well as
anybody. The ' chota-mem,' the keen little chota-
mem of Anglo-India. I would like to write pages
about her; but there were other ladies at the party.
As some people can be drawn in three lines, so
Mrs. Lemon can be, and always was, described
in three words. Mrs. Lemon was ' a good sort.'
If we in any way lived up to our reputation in
India, Mrs. Lemon would be the leader of the
military half of society in Pilaghur, while Mrs.
Arden championed the civil half, in hostile camps,
with an armed neutrality for garden parties. But
Mrs. Lemon had no notion of her responsibilities
to fiction ; she declared that cliquism was the
ruination of small stations, and her greatest friend

SET IN AUTHORITY 41

was the wife of the District Superintendent of
Police, with whom she shared the enthusiasms
and anxieties involved in raising English fowls.
She owned to fourteen stone, but she rode to
hounds wherever there were any ; with two sons
in the services, she played regularly in tennis
tournaments, and had even been known, when
the General was not looking, to Ijorrow a club
from some exhausted girl and rush gloriously into
hockey. She had an all-embracing interest in
life and a geniality you could warm yourself at.
She would sit down to a gossip as if it were a
meal, and so absorbed she was in what you were
telling her that she would hardly ever let you
finish the sentence. She would race your thought to
its conclusion and invariably be in ahead. Nobody
minded ; it was the most spontaneous flattery.

Mrs. Lenox you will perhaps remember already
to have met at Lady Thame's. Since then her
husband had been able to give her rather a
pretty tiara and some appreciable precedence ;
and she looked younger than ever at the Ardens'
dinner-party. Otherwise only her clothes had
changed. Again, Mrs. Lenox's appearance should
have placed her at once in complications — it
complicated her, if you remember, in the opinion
of the Hon. Lavinia Thame. The tiara alone —
in an Indian plains station — should have involved
her ; to the sophisticated eye she was full of in-
criminating signs. I am sorry to disappoint,
but I must stick to the ladies of Pilaghur as I
know them ; Mrs. Lenox was wholly virtuous.

42 SET IN AUTHORITY

She had not an idea disconnected with Lawrence,
not a desire that wandered from the path of his
preferment. One might as well tell the truth in
the beginning.

Mrs. Biscuit, on the other hand, Mrs. Arthur
Poynder Biscuit, had come out knowing what
was expected of her, and feeling able to meet
any ordinary emergency. She had even looked
forward, I think, to the many interesting situa-
tions from which she should extricate herself
within a hair's breadth of compromise ; but always
with the hair quite visible. Her sense that such
things were inevitable suggested to her that
she might as well make the most of them. But
by this time Mrs. Biscuit had reached the private
conclusion that either Pilaghur was far from
being a * typical ' Indian station, or the novelists
were simply not to be trusted. Somebody asked
her once whether she found Anglo-Indian society
what she expected.

* In some ways,' Mrs. Biscuit replied, ' I think
it has been very much over-rated.'

I am afraid she was thinking of this way. She
was considered clever ; she was clever. You
could find the colonial edition of practically
everything on her drawing-room table ; but she
did not always know how humorous she was.

So you have them : General and Mrs. Lemon,
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Lenox, Colonel Vetchley,
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Poynder Biscuit, Mr. aud
Mrs. Lamb, Mr. Davidson and Miss Pearce, all
of Pilaghur.

SET IN AUTHORITY 43

' Personally,' Colonel Vetchley was saying, ' I
can't stick him.'

Mr. Biscuit, a small, fair, moderate-looking
person, glanced with smiling deprecation at his
chief, as if he would say, * We must excuse a
certain freedom of expression in the army.'
Young Lamb radiated respectful sympathy and
said, 'Hear, hear, sir.' Mr. Lawrence Lenox
looked, above all things, discreet.

' Well,* said Mrs. Lenox, 'one takes people as
one finds them. I must say, when we were in
Simla last year we thought him perfectly charm-
ing. Of course we both knew him as a boy —
Lawrence was his fag two terms at Eton. But
that couldn't have made much difference.* And
Mrs. Lenox looked round appealingly.

' I 've never set eyes on him,' said Colonel
Vetchley, 'and I hope I never may. I don't
deny his ability as a civil administrator, but he *s
made more bad blood between the natives of this
country and the army than can be wiped out in
one generation, or two either.*

* The state of things between the natives of
this country and the army wasn't ideal before he
came, Vetcliley,' said his host.

* I don't say it was ; but at all events we knew
where we were. Tommy was a better man than
the native, and the native jolly well knew it and
kept his place — got soundly kicked if he didn't,
and served him right. And mind you, in the
end it was better for the native.'

'In dealing with such cases,' remarked Mr.

44 SET IN AUTHORITY

Lenox, * Lord Thame has certainly taken a very
definite line.'

* If you said he 'd shown a very definite bias,'
snorted Colonel Vetchley, * I 'd agree with you.
Absolutely unwarrantable interference, with no
excuse and with the worst results. In my young
days — I was out here more years ago than I care
to count — regimental inquiry and the C.O.'s de-
cision were thought good enough. I remember
the case of a fellow who shot a Bengali swimming

^ in the Hooghly — meant no harm, took him for a
■ crocodile. Blind drunk, of course. We held an
inquiry — perfectly clear the man ivas out after
crocodile — got off with confiscation of his shoot-
^ ing pass and a warning. No more of that ! It
would be the courts for a thing like that nowa-
days, and as quick as you can get there, and the
whole business dragged up to Simla and gabbled
over in Council. Ten to one sentence pronounced
inadequate and the regiment packed off to Aden,
or some grey-headed old boy like me told to go
over it.'

* Our notion of our proper relations with these
people does change, doesn't it, as time goes on,'
remarked Miss Pearcc ; and the Chief Commis-
sioner, who had been absently playing with a
salt-cellar, turned to her with a little pleased
start of attention. ' My great-grandmother used
to send her ayah to be whipped. We don't have
our ayahs whipped much now, do we ? '

' It sounds like what might have happened in
a plantation,' said Mrs. Arden. *Was she a

SET IN AUTHORITY 45

planter's wife, Dr. Pearce — indigo or any-
thing r

' She was the wife of a Chief Justice of Bengal,*
said Miss Pearce.

Eliot Arden, beside her, made between his
closed lips a little sound of amusement, and his
long fingers fell again to twisting the salt-
cellar.

' But I always thought the army was in the
hands of the Commander-in-Chief — not the
Viceroy,' observed Mrs. Biscuit to Mr. Davidson
of the Guzeratis.

' So it jolly well ought to be,' Davidson told
her; 'but the present Chief's a weak chap, you
see, and the present Viceroy 's a strong chap.
You 'd think, to look at the orders, that the Chief
did it all off his own bat, but that 's all Thomasina
— he doesn't.'

'The Viceroy is constitutionally the head of
the army in India,' said Mr. Lenox.

• The King is the head of the Church of Eng-
land,' retorted Colonel Vetchley, ' but he doesn't
interfere with the discipline.'

' I don't think you '11 find,' pursued Lawrence
Lenox, carefully selecting a salted almond, * that
Thame has acted ultra vires anywhere in dealing
with these cases.'

* I dare say he takes good care of that. But
it 's pitiable, the way he runs the Chief. I say
Robert Waterbrook should have resigned rather
than put his name to that tar-and-feathering of
the Black Dragoons, a regiment with the best

46 SET IN AUTHORITY

frontier record in the history of this country —
and I wonder he didn't. 'Xtraordinary, the way
administrative work changes a man. I was with
Waterbrook in the second Afghan business — he
wouldn't have stood it then 1 Take a fellow
because he 's a good fellow in the field, and stick
him on an office stool, and it 's sickly the way he
takes it from fellows who have never sat anything
else.'

* I 'm afraid the Black Dragoons hadn't a very
good record in punkah-coolies,' said General
Lemon. 'Three of them, weren't there — one
assault and two deaths 1 '

* Under very different circumstances, sir. And
the only case that was proved was severely dealt
with by the courts. Accused got five years.'

* And at Thame's insistence the regiment got
a new colonel, a new adjutant, and Jacobabad,'
said the General meditatively. * I don't know
about the wholesale punishment of the men, but
I believe in holding officers responsible. And
Tommy 's got to be taught, too, that it's a cowardly
thing to strike a native of this country. It has
gradually soaked into his superiors — perhaps
we're a trifle thinner- skinned — and it's got to
soak into him. I remember the time when it
was the commonest thing in the world for a man
to give his syce a good hiding for stealing gram,
say. And it wasn't at all out of the way to hear
these fellows ' — he looked casually round, but the
servants were for the moment out of the room —
* to hear these fellows spoken of as " niggers."

SET IN AUTHORITY 47

Well, as Dr. Pearce says, those things simply
aren't done now ; they 've become the mark of
the cad. Tommy must learn — approximately,
we don't expect miracles — not to do them either.'

* I don't dispute it for a moment ; but there are
ways of doing things, and I maintain it 's rotten
bad policy for any Viceroy to identify himself
with the natives of this country as against his
own countrymen,' returned Colonel Vetchley.
* It 's bound to do harm ; it 's done an uncommon
lot of harm already. These villagers think they
can knock Tommy about pretty much as they
like. If a case comes up they 've only got to swear
up a lot of false evidence and the " Mulky Lat"
will give them protection. It looks well at home,
of course, where they know nothing about what 's
involved. I dare say it's worth a good many
votes. Thame is too much of a politician to run
this country — that's what's the matter with
him.'

Eliot Arden opened his eyes suddenly wider,
as if the question for the first time demanded his
attention.

' I disagree with you there, Vetchley,' he said.
' Absolutely. When I first came in contact with
Thame I wasn't altogether attracted by him.
There were things — things belonging to the
essence of the man — to become accustomed to.'

'It must be an acquired taste,' interrupted
Colonel Vetchley, and looked as if he would
like to say more, but finished his champagne
instead.

48 SET IN AUTHORITY

* I was put off like everybody else by a certain
aflBrmativeness he has — he 's a bit of a moral
despot — and by what still seems to me his queer
lack of the human interest, the interest in another
fellow. You're very well and very worthy, but
you 're not his affair, I used to think. It was the
abuse or the injustice that was his affair, and for
that he wouldn't spare himself.'

' That 's all right, but he takes too much on
himself,' said Colonel Vetchley. ' He 's Viceroy
of India, but if he were God Almighty there
are some things he couldn't change in this
country.'

' Then when one saw the scope and the motive
of his undertakings,' continued Arden, * and the
courage and devotion he brought to them, and
the way he believed in what he had to do, other
considerations — well, vanished. After all, if a
man consents to sink his own personality in his
work, you can't expect him to waste time playing
about with yours. And the notion that he was
in any way on the make in what he did became
simply impossible to entertain. Whether he's
right or wrong in this idea that the British soldier
in India can be reformed by Resolutions in the
Gazette we shall know better fifty years hence
than \^e do now. Opinion about everything
changes and moves — he may be in the forefront
of it, and we in the discomfort of dragging after.
But there shouldn't be two views, either then or
now, about his motive.'

•What a pity it is that some nice woman

SET IN AUTHORITY 49

doesn't marry him,' proposed Mrs. Lemon, as a
cheery and final solution of the difficulties pre-
sented by His Excellency's temperament.

' Isn't there supposed to be somebody at home?*
asked Mrs. Biscuit.

' I don't think so,' Mrs. Lenox told her, * or
we would have known. We have such quantities
of mutual friends.'

'It seems to me,' said Mrs. Arden thought-
fully, * that he would be a difficult person for any
woman to feel herself a real companion to. It
would be such an efi'ort to keep up.'

Her eyes rested wistfully on her husband as she
spoke. One might have thought that her own
experience, in its less dramatic mould, had been
strenuous. But her sigh, if one escaped her, was
lost in the smile she sent to Mrs. Lemon, at which
Mrs. Lemon, beaming back, led past subservient
chairs to the drawing-room.

There Mrs. Lamb, who had no confidence in
the regimental doctor, had something very special
to ask Dr. Pearce about the baby's diet while it
was teething : for this intrigue they sought a
retired sofa. Mrs. Biscuit drifted about with her
hands locked behind her and her chin at its best
angle, examining engravings, picking up books.
The other three made a social group to which
Mrs. Lenox explained her plan of a bazaar and
cafe chantant in aid of the Pilaghur branch of the
Young Women's Christian Association, of which
she was President.

* We are going to ask you to open it, dear

D

50 SET IN AUTHORITY

Mrs. Arden/ she was saying, * and you 're such a

kind person, I know you wilh'

l..^Mrs. Arden made a little spoiled gesture of

deprecation,

* Not if I have to make a speech,' she said.
Mrs. Lenox seized the hand. ' No speech if

you'd rather not,' she returned affectionately.
' But you know what a difference your name on
the bills will make, dear.'

'We're getting things from everywhere,' she
went on. ' My mother-in-law — she is such a
dear — is sending me out a whole quantity of the
latest penny — '

* Toys ! ' exclaimed Mrs. Lemon breathlessly.
* You '11 be able to sell them easily at a rupee. 1
had them for my Zenana Mission Fair — thirty
shillings' worth. They were every one gone in
half an hour ! '

* And a man I know in Muscat has promised
me — '

' Dates ? ' beamed Mrs. Lemon.

* No — curly daggers. And we 're getting lots
of those lovely, painted leather vases from
Bikanir, and dozens of little brass animals
from Jeypore — they make the sweetest menu-
holders — but we've decided not to have many
crushed turquoise things from Cashmere ; would
you?'

* Perfectly right ; people are tired to death of
them,' Mrs. Lemon assured her. * Now what I
want to know — '

'0 Mrs. Arden,' cut in Mrs. Biscuit, 'is this

SET IN AUTHORITY 51

Herbie ? What a darling \ Aud how like Mr.
Ardeu. The eyes, you know — and the chin.
All the lower part of the face.'

* No, that 's Teddy, the one at Heidelberg, you
know. Herbie is up in my room, the best one
of him. I take them up there by turns — isn't
it silly of me ? ' appealed Mrs. Arden. ' Poor
Tediums has had such a setback with laryngitis,
just as his examinations were coming on too — we
don't know how he'll manage, poor darling.
He's got my throat, I'm afraid. If only he
were as strong as Herbie I Cleverer than Herbie
he certainly is. Such a contrast, the two boys I
Herbie writing of nothing but games, and you
wouldn't believe the spelling for fifteen. I don't
know where he gets that, for both his father and
I can spell. But after all, as it 's to be the Army,
it doesn't really matter, does it ! '

'Not a bit,' said Mrs. Lemon heartily. *I
wouldn't trust the General now without a dic-
tionary. But what I want to know — '

' It is a clever face,' agreed Mrs. Biscuit, * such
a splendid brow.'

'That's music, isn't it? AVe really have
seiious hopes of Teddy's music. As a little,
little fellow he would be so rapt and carried
away when anybody played — I was often quite
frightened. It wasn't normal, you know; it
wasn't really. He used to run round the room
on his little bare legs, if people talked, saying
" Sh ! sh ! " with his little fat finger up— I can
see him now. And such a command of English

52 SET IN AUTHORITY

as lie has already. I must j ust read you his last
letter — '

* To-morrow,' said Mrs. Lemon authoritatively,
' To-morrow, when I come about the paper roses,
dear. Now, what I want to know — '

* Oh ! ' exclaimed Mrs. Biscuit, approaching
with a volume. ' Has anybody read the other
one by this person — ifrs. Pilkington and the
Trinity ? Such a brilliant book ! The heroine
is engaged to three men at once, and keeps them
all going — oh, it is brilliantly written ! Makes the
same appointment with each of them to go off
with him in a motor, and they all three meet, and
she in the meantime has gone and quietly married
Q, fourth man — the one she has really cared for all
the time. It 's far the cleverest of hers.'

* We must put it down at the club library,'
said Mrs. Arden. *I hadn't even heard of it.
How dreadfully one gets out of — '

'Touch in India,' nodded Mrs. Lemon, who
had been containing herself with difficulty. * But
what I must know is — what are you paying for
a saddle of mutton ? My cook coolly bills me
ten rupees for every one we have ; and when
I object he says the Commissioner's lady-sahib
pays fifteen 1 "Go along with you ! " I tell him,
"the General-sahib doesn't get half as much pay
as the Commissioner-sahib. How can I afford
this ? " But he makes no end of a fuss. Now
do you ? '

Mrs. Arden took the impeachment with a half-
flattered smile.

SET IN AUTHORITY 53

'Truly, truly, only for very big ones,' she
playfully defended herself.

* But it 's monstrous,' cried little Mrs. Lamb,
who had pulled a chair in. ' One never pays
more than two rupees for the best loin ; and a
saddle — '

* Oh, I wish there were a definite price for
mutton,' sighed Mrs. Biscuit, sinking into the
circle.

* And a saddle is only — ' Mrs. Lamb tried
again, but they were all caught up by Mrs.
Lemon.

*Well, I've had this experience to profit by.
There are the Wickhams. Mrs. Wickham gives
you the best mutton I know, and the best saddles
— and you know what a D.S.P. gets. "Louisa
AVickham," I said, "when we were on your pay
I never saio a saddle. How do you manage it ? "
And I told her what I 'm telling you. " My
dear," she said, " it 's simple robbery. All I ask
you to do is to go one day to the market your-
self— I '11 take you — and we '11 get the best saddle
in Pilaghur for seven- eight." Well, I suppose
I was lazy, but we never went, and my man
kept straight on with his ten rupees and the
tears in his eyes if I said a word. Him and his
tears ! He got ill last week, and Louie AVickham
sent me her cook for my dinner-party on Wednes-
day. You were there. Now I ask you, did you
ever taste better mutton"? Seven rupees was
the bill next day, my dear — ^just seven rupees.*

' I never pay more than two rupees for a loin,'

54 SET IN AUTHORITY

repeated Mrs. Lamb courageously, ' and a saddle
is — '

' But what are you to do when he threatens to
leave "? ' demanded Mrs. Lemon, subsiding on
her triumph, and settling with complacency the
bracelets on one fat arm.

* It does seem extortionate. But their ^deas
of extortion are so different from ours, aren't
they ? ' said Mrs. Arden, rising to welcome the
advent of the gentlemen.

* And a saddle,' produced Mrs. Lamb at last
to nobody, a little disappointed, ' is only two
loins.'

CHAPTER VI

'We don't find Anthony's letters nearly so
interesting as they were,' complained Lavinia
Thame to her friend and half- cousin. The two
sat behind the glass of Lady Thame's motor-
brougham, on its rapid and resistless way from
the Albert Hall to the Aganippe Club, where
Mrs. Tring was to give them tea. Lady Thame
was ever in the forefront of progress. She had
been among the first to abandon the horse, with
the half-formed expectation of living to see his
extinction. Her traction-vehicles had the latest
improvements, the most expensive gear, and the
most remarkable appearance, and were generously
employed in calling to inquire for the victims of
the accidents they occasioned.

* They 're not, really,' repeated Lavinia.

* I find them more so,' Victoria told her.

* You are so keen about his tiresome problems.
Mother is too, in a way, and she says we ought
to be. But I loved his impressions so, in the
beginning, and all the state and pageantry and
guns and salaams, and those delicious native
princes hung with emeralds, and the things they
said.'

65

56 SET IN AUTHORITY

'So did I,' said Miss Tring, 'but after all
they are only the trappings of the situation,
aren't they 1 The best letter I 've had lately
— about his Afghan frontier policy — might have
been written by one of his under-secretaries, for
all the purple and gold there was in it. Don't
you think he soon began to be bored by it — that
sort of thing ? '

' I shouldn't have been bored,' sighed Lavinia,
'if only I had been allowed to go out. But
mother's very annoyed at the line Anthony
has taken with the Amir, Victoria. She says he
assumed the Viceroyalty with the most definite
principles, and now he seems to think of nothing
but making the map of Asia redder. Do you
know, I sometimes think she will go out.'

' Oh,' cried Victoria, with a delighted laugh,
' I wish she would.'

' She says she doesn't see how he can possibly
publish his Real Empire now, in the face of his
frontier policies and things — so you '11 have your
way about that — and she 's sorry he went. Vic-
toria, how far are you responsible ? '

* I ? ' Miss Tring exclaimed. ' Not a hair's
breadth or a feather's weight I Do you think
anybody is responsible for anything Anthony
Thame does except Anthony Thame himself?
Seven times no. India is responsible. Who could
rule India for three years and talk about empires
of the plough ? '

Lavinia looked at her penetratingly. * I believe
if you could influence him a little you would like

SET IN AUTHORITY 67

him better, Victoria/ she said, but Victoria, un-
assailed, sent a calm glance through the glass in
front of her into the riven street. * I like him
as much as ever,' she said, * and I admire him
more — that cab was as nearly as possible over.
Oh — Lavinia — '

Miss Thame changed colour and looked at her
with prescience. A new thing had been conveyed
in her cousin's note, with abrupt transition and
greater seriousness. * You have heard — some-
thing'?' asked Lavinia. Her tone, too, had changed,
and the long gloved hand on her knee stiffened.

* I hardly like to tell anybody — even you.
There have been so many false hopes. But even
a false hope, while it lasts, is better than none.'

* Oh yes.'

' And there does seem to be, this time, a clue.
In San Francisco. Mother was right, you see,
in her certainty that he had gone to the States.
I always thought South Africa and the mines.
Do you remember how he used to talk about
wanting to sink down, down through all the
physical processes that had built him a soul 'i I
thought he would do that in the mines. I used
to see him down there in the dark, at the nadir
of what was so beautiful in him, and I used to
plan the way to bring him back again to the
zenith — and if ever his wonderful book came I
thought perhaps I could forgive the price of it.
Well, it seems I was wrong.'

* Oh, Victoria, I 'm glad you were wrong. I
know he had sometimes dreadful ideas— or in

58 SET IN AUTHORITY

anybody else they would have been dreadful. He
made them harmless somehow, with his charm.
Is he/ Lavinia hastened, ' is he known to be in
San Francisco ? '

' Oh, don't make too much of it — don't believe
in it all at once, Lavinia, or — or you '11 break my
heart. It's only this. Three nights ago, after
one of mother's meetings at Chiswick, a man came
up to her and asked her if she were any relation
to H. V. Tring whom he had lately met in San
Francisco.'

• Victoria ! '

' Mother rushed him into a cab and tore home
with him, and when I came in from the Geidts's
dance there they were in the dining-room with
the siphon on the table and things to eat. I said
at once, *' You have brought news of my brother "
— there was no other way of accounting for him
— and then he began all over again to me.'

*Go on, quick — we are nearly there,' said
Lavinia.

* His name is Kelly, and he 's over here on some
Irish-American business — he made a secret of
that, but one can imagine the sort of thing.
There is no doubt about his having seen Herbert
— and in the ghastliest low lodgings. He said
he got to know him quite well — that creature —
and that Herbert told him he was going to have
one more shot at life, was putting all he had on a
last throw — the Yukon I Kelly says he saw his
kit and tried to persuade him not to go. " You 're
in no shape for the YukoD," he says he told him,

SET IN AUTHORITY SO

and ofifered to get him a place — he apologised for
it to mother — as something in a hotel instead.
But Herbert wouldn't listen, and left by the next
steamer for Dawson City/

Lavinia drew a long breath. * Then he is there
now/ she said. *He must be there, because it
isn't easy to get away.'

* He is there now — with the winter coming on.
This Kelly told us such things of the winter!
Without money — kicked about by stronger men
in some frozen camp — making his last throw.'

* Couldn't he — be got homeT Lavinia faltered.

' Yes, he cotild. Kelly says he would under-
take to find him. It seems he took a great fancy
to Herbert — you know how he aid attach
people.'

* Yes, I know,' said poor Lavinia.

*But of course it w^ould cost. Kelly is ex-
traordinarily kind. He says he would go for
little more than his expenses, and would pay his
own way from here to New York, but beyond
that — well, how could he ? '

* Of course he couldn't.'

' And their expenses, his and Herbert's together,
could not, he says, be less than five hundred
pounds. Mother met that Alaskan traveller,
Brandt, last night and pumped him, and he said
he thought it a low estimate, so there is no
reason to suspect Kelly of trying to make money
out of it.'

'Then how soon does Aunt Deirdre hope to
get him off]'

60 SET IN AUTHORITY

' How soon 1 1 am ashamed to tell you —
mother doesn't see her way. It wouldn't be easy,
but she could if she liked, and she won't. Isn't
it incredible ? Lavinia, I don't understand
mother. She was tremendously excited that
night ; but by the next day she was certain that
Herbert was running a newspaper in Dawson
City. In a week she will be quite happy about
him. Kelly just looks at her.'

'But she hasn't sent him away altogether —
Kelly r

* On the contrary — she is hugely interested in
him. He comes every day and they talk and
talk. She says she is getting for the first time a
conception of the Celt under republican institu-
tions. I hope she will find it valuable. I've
written and telegraphed, on the chance, to the
Emigration Office out there, but Kelly holds out
no hope of reaching him that way. And here is
the man who will give the time — and mother
simply won't pay. I can get, one way and
another, two hundred. Those Cousin Mary
Thame Trust Fund dividends of mine are just
due, and there are one or two things I can sell ;
but Kelly says he wouldn't cheat us by attempt-
ing it on less than five. He 's no fraud, you know
— he showed us letters from Herbert, one borrow-
ing twenty pounds and another acknowledging
it. Mother will pay that, thank heaven.'

The motor halted, trembling, behind a police-
man's hand, and in the motionless carriage, with
the tides of Piccadilly checked a^nd fretting out-

SET IN AUTHORITY «1

side, Lavinia Thame encountered one of those
decisive moments that come to us all and seem to
hold so much for each of us. She took it in
silence, appearing to consider only the impassive
rear of the liveried servant on the other side of
the glass, all that was between her and the void,
between a well-brought-up young Englishwoman
and plunging initiative.

* Victoria,' she said, and drew herself a little
further into her own corner, * I get about five
times as much from that Trust as you do. If I
made up the amount, would anybody have to
know ? '

Victoria caught at her hand. * You dear old
Lavinia,' she cried, and stared with tears in her
eyes and compunction in her voice. 'Herbert
would never forgive me.'

Lavinia drew away her hand. 'Don't you
think he would ? '

'At least — I don't know. Oh, I don't care,
Lavinia, do. I '11 arrange it secretly with Kelly,
any way you like, and if ever I can pay it back I
will, or Herbert will — '

' Oh no ! '

' And I won't pretend to be anything but more
glad and grateful than I 've ever been before in
my life. Lavinia, would you like me to kiss
you ? '

'No, not now. You see, if Aunt Deirdre
knew she might think it something like a criti-
cism— *

' Oh yes.'

62 SET IN AUTHORITY

* Otherwise there is no reason in the world why
any relative, even a half- cousin, shouldn't — '

*No reason in the world, darling Lavinia,'
said the other happy girl, ' but not a soul shall
know. 1 11 simply refuse to tell mother how I
can do it.'

The harassed hall-porter was expecting them
in the office, the shabby little page with the
bulbous forehead was expecting them on the
stair, the patient head-parlourmaid with the
pencil was expecting them at the drawing-room
door. Mrs. Tring in the Aganippe Club was at
the very centre of her sphere of influence ; her
visitors were expected by everybody. She her-
self was there before them, presiding, at one end
of the crowded room, over three little tables that
subserved the convenience of her party, she and
Lady Thame, and Alfred Earle, editor of the
Prospect, and Frayley Sambourne, Parliamentary
Under-Secretary for India, whom people still
called young Frayley Sambourne because of a
distinguished uncle who had retired and an un-
quenchable self-confidence which threatened
never to mature. The men were conspicuous, as
they are beginning to be almost everywhere in
England ; the room was full of the sight and
scent and sound of women. Here and there
another man sat carefully, conscious and furtive,
and assiduously ministered to, but there were
not many. Tea was in great demand. Table-
maids hastened from group to group bearing
trays, both they and the trays charged with the

SET IN AUTHORITY 63

importance of a function. Here and there a maid
hovered, and a lady member pulled out her purse
to pay, when her male guest, if she had one,
tried elaborately to look the other way. j

Mrs. Tring, in somewhat loosely - connected
black, looked haggard and happy. Her eyes
had the heavy lines under them that London
draws, but shone with — well, everything that was
in the evening papers. Her vague black hat had
vague black strings which knotted somewhere on
her opulent bosom. Under it her fair hair seemed
to reach out, in its own way, for some truth to
cling to. A sort of long light wrap lay upon the
chair behind her, with the air of a discarded
theory which she might want again, and as the j
two young ladies joined her she was in the act
of entreating Mr. Earle for the third time to say
whether he took sugar.

Lady Thame had the word. * I never could
endure coalitions,' she said. 'Never. Nothing
can come of them but compromise — blurred prin-
ciple and weakened vitality. Here are we again
in office, we Liberals, not because the kingdom
believes in us and sets us there, but because two
or three dozen of you — and very right, too, as
far as that goes — couldn't stand a new departure
in economics.'

'Mahomet,' said Mr. Frayley Sambourne,
crossing his arms, * had to come to the mountain.
Lady Thame. There was no other way.'

' But what I complain of,' continued Lady
Thame, waving her toasted muffin, *is that we

64 SET IN AUTHORITY

pay altogether too long a price for you. Count
it up. Labour legislation marking time, technical
education paralysed, Chinese slavery — '

* Fine, mother ! ' exclaimed Lavinia. ' We
have been obliged to do it,' she explained to the
rest as Lady Thame mechanically produced a
shilling, * about that particular expression, and
mother consents, because she is trying to learn
a new one. The money goes to the Society for
Befriending Indigent Aliens.'

* Quite true,' said Lady Thame. ' The ex-
pression has become hackneyed, banal, but,
Lavinia — what was the new one ? However,
never mind. Chinese slavery — '

There was a shout of merriment, and Mr.
Earle said, ' Have three for half-a-crown. Lady
Thame?'

' Drop the phrase, dear lady, at all costs,'
advised Mr. Sambourne. ' There never was any
slavery, and now there are no Chinese. They
have become the only unimpeachably loyal
section of the South Africans.'

* Mr. Sambourne,' retorted Lady Thame, * you
may befool the British public with that sort of
thing, but you cannot — believe me, you cannot
— befool me. Nor is that all. Leave South
Africa to her blasted fortunes. Leave the Bri-
tannia Beer Trust to the hands that did not
destroy it — and look abroad. What is our atti-
tude in China? Aggressive. What is our
attitude in Egypt? Aggressive. What is our
attitude on the Red Sea littoral ? Highly

SET IN AUTHORITY 65

aggressive. That is what Liberal principles
have come to — in coalition. I say it's a great
deal to pay, even to save free trade for another
five years/

' On the contrary, dear Lady Thame,* said
Frayley Sambourne musingly, with his hands
thrust deep in his pockets as if to meet her
attack with all his personal concentration, * our
attitude in the directions you have named is so
painfully weak that if anything could tempt me
back to my allegiance — if I were not convinced,'
he said, smiling engagingly, * that the weight of
Empire should not be lightly shifted from one
shoulder to the other — '

' Not a bit of it 1 We shouldn't lose you,' Lady
Thame assured him cheerfully.

* I believe that to be as you put it,' said Alfred
Earle, with his mordant modesty, addressing
Sambourne. * But Craybrooke hasn't bluffed at
all badly. He seems to have quite given the
country the notion that Liberal and Imperial are
not spelled so very differently. And in India,'
he said, looking with deference at a Viceroy's
mother, ' there is, of course, something to
point to.'

' Ah, in India,' sighed Lady Thame, ' you have
indeed something to answer for. At least, I hope
it will not all be put down to the account of my
poor son. I do not see, on his return, how he is
to recognise his own convictions. But I shall
show them to him,' she added firmly. 'Never
did I dream that his would be the hand to lay

IL

66 SET IN AUTHORITY

the yoke upon an independent people. I hope it
may be long before I meet a Shan Chief at a
London dinner - table. I would blush to look
him in the face.*

* Please/ protested Frayley Sambourne, ' don't
depreciate Lord Thame's consolidation policy in
Upper Burma. It's the golden apple of his
administration, Lady Thame. He is doing
splendid service out there — splendid service.
We are most indebted to him — as Earle says,
he gives us something tangible to point to. And
he has done it at very small cost.'

* In blood and treasure,' Lady Thame returned
weightily, ' they say it is small. But in principle
— did you see how one of the Paris reviews
described his departures this month ? " Les
eclatantes tentativeSy' it said, *'les eclatantes
tentatives de Lord Thame." I marked it and
sent it out. "Would your grandfather be
flattered VI wrote on the margin.*

• There is nothing,' Mr. Earlc remarked gently,
' like the administration of other people's affairs
to make an Englishman recognise his mission in
the world. Give the most radical of our poli-
ticians a dependency to take care of, and he at
once fulfils the law of his being, forgets all prin-
ciple, and glorifies the God who made him. I
wish there were enough dependencies to go
round. It would help to bring on the reign of
candour, which is coming in any case by force of
circumstances. With our colonies dropping like

^ ripe plums into other people's baskets, we become

SET IN AUTHORITY 67

once more a point in the North Sea ; we recog-
nise once more that we are what we can conquer.
We return to the purely predatory, and continue
to salve our consciences by giving our lives to
administer the trust we have taken.'

* There is still the empire of the race/ put in
Victoria. It had not altogether an original
sound ; and Lady Thame looked sharply at her.

' Which is not the empire of England,' Earle
returned ; and she said, * No — I 've always said
so.'

Mrs. Tring came out of her colloquy with
Lavinia, summoned by the fragment of a phrase.
' *' What we can conquer," ' she repeated dreamily.
* The sword is the true arbiter ; by the sword we
question destiny and hardily invite chance. The
sword is our proof and our warrant, and the ex-
tension, so to speak, of our personality. Maeter-
linck has created — rather has disclosed — quite
new truth about the sword. And who can
escape truth? Not, I hope, the Liberal party.
In the end do not the seers dictate to the poli-
ticians ? ' Mrs. Tring appeared to ask the teapot.
She would seldom, in her rapter moments, en-
counter the human eye. * Feel no alarm, Pamela,
about Anthony's principles. He only bends,
with his party, before the advance of a wind of
revelation.'

*I wish it would blow a little harder,' said
Frayley Sambourne with the admiration he
always expressed for Mrs. Tring. 'I haven't
heard your seer quoted in Council yet, dear

68 SET IN AUTHORITY

lady.' He threw all his common - sense, as it
were, at her feet, and invited her to trample
on it.

' Ah, well,' she replied, ' you may yet. And
now, if nobody will have another cup, I think we
could find a corner in the smoking-room. You
won't mind, Pamela ? '

' I won't smoke,' said Lady Thame decidedly.
* You can't teach an old dog new tricks. But I
don't in the least mind watching you perform.*

*I think,' said Lavinia, rising into a blush,
' that if Victoria doesn't mind sacrificing her
cigarette, we were — weren't we, Victoria, going
on together ? '

'I hope you didn't mind my dragging you
away,' she said to Victoria as they descended the
stairs together. ' I do want to hear so much
more about that fascinating Kelly.'

CHAPTER VII

HiiiiA, Miss Pcarce's ayah, was in her way a
woman of the world. She did her best within
her scope and had a shrug for fate. She was a
mistress of * bundobust ' — arrangement, bargain,
working plan — hers was the genius of bundobust.
She had a capable hand, a good heart, and a
shrewd tongue, her own place in her own com-
munity, definite and unquestioned. There are
states of life in which respectability is not only a
virtue but a distinction. Hiria extracted every
satisfaction from being respectable ; you could
see that by the way she folded her arms. She
accepted the world at par, with its customs, its
chances, and its wonders ; she was a Ghoomati
sweeper's wife with four silver rings on her toes,
but she took life more importantly than many
people from whom it would seem to demand
greater attention.

Hiria was in the verandah, by the yellow
plaster pillar drooping with its purple bougain-
villiers, waiting for her mistress. Miss Pearce
was late, and Hiria's arms were folded over
matter for communication. She shifted from
one foot to the other and stood on the very edge
of the verandah, keeping an expectant eye upon

70 SET IN AUTHORITY

the drive ; the crisp morning shadows of the
creeper, dancing over her, accented her impa-
tience. The miss-sahib had as a rule returned
from the hospital to breakfast before this. At
last, at the bend of the road under the tamarinds,
the dogcart appeared, Miss Pearce driving as
usual, the syce as usual behind holding the
umbrella over her, and beside her the long, free
trot of a big waler and the Chief Commissioner
riding, which Hiria marked also as being at least
not unusual.

Mr. Arden rode on as Ruth turned in at the
entrance ; but in a pace or so the waler dropped
into a walk, stretched his neck, and took the
road contemplatively. Miss Pearce's little
country-bred, too, came in a checked and
thoughtful manner up the drive. His mistress
twisted the reins round the whip-handle and
jumped out as automatically as the syce came to
the pony's head and led it away. She passed
Hiria without seeming to see her, unbuttoning
her gloves, without seeming either to hear her,
though when the ayah said that the bath was
ready she replied, * Is it, Hiria "? ' showing that
she did. Hiria followed dissatisfied, reflecting.
* She comes always thus, walking in her sleep,
from talk with the Burra Sahib. But she de-
ferred to the accustomed fact, and glanced more
than once at the grey eyes that regarded them-
selves with such disconcerting detachment in the
glass, as she stood brushing her mistress's hair,
before she ventured to cross that strong inward

SET IN AUTHORITY 71

current. Then she began. She spoke in the
vernacular, but loved the vanity of an occasional
word of English.

'That Gunga Dass has been here again this
morning, miss-sahib. It is the wife this time.
" 0 ayah-ji," ' she whined in imitation, bringing
both hands to her forehead, ' " implore the
doctor miss-sahib to come quickly. She is tor-
mented with a pain all across the body." " Ah ! "
I said, " she hath been eating too many mangoes "
— she is but fourteen, miss-sahib — ** but I will
give the word." That Gunga Dass would write
nothing on the slate, though I told him that your
honour} being taught by a pundit, could read the
Urdu. " It is always cheaper," he said, '* not to
write." And that is true talk but shameful, for
Gunga Dass has half a lakh and seven houses in
the bazaar. Yet has he never paid we-folk for
the curing of his mother of the rheumitation
last year — and she walks now as straight as a
Brahminy cow^ — and it appears to me that
neither will he pay now for his wife. If she die
he can get another.'

Ruth smiled, but the smile seemed only half
connected with the philosophy of Gunga Dass.
' I will go this afternoon,' she said. ' How do you
know, foolish one, whether he has paid or not ? '

*I know Gunga Dass, that he never pays.
And as to the wife there is no urgency,' Hiria
told her cheerfully. * I myself told him of the
castor-oil. " If after that she still cries," I said,
" you can come again to-morrow." '

72 SET IN AUTHORITY

*Hiria/ said her mistress sternly, 'twenty
times I have told you you are not to give any
advice — '

* Na-ee, miss-sahib/ wheedled the ayah. * I
spoke but of the castor-oil, which the babies, tiny
butchas, drink without harm. And that,' she
added self-respectfully, ' I knew of before I came
to be with your honour. And,' she went on
with increasing self-justification, ' Gopal, syce,
who coughs, begged again yesterday for the
remaining half-bottle with which we cured my
sister's husband of the pain in the back ; but I
told him there was no order for pains in the
chest, and did not give it him. Besides, who
knows how soon I myself may have a pain in the
back?' Then, with sudden lively interest, she
broke off. * Your honour came to-day by the
Larrens road ? '

*No, by the Dalhousie road, Hiria.'

* Then miss-sahib did not see the taking of the
white soldier by the Larrens road. By that road
they took him, and all Pilaghur ran to see. I
also, returning from the washerman — he is now
three days late with your honour's muslin dress
with the chicken-work, and it was necessary to
give abuse — I also saw. This way they fastened
him,' Hiria dropped the brush and crossed her
hands behind her, * tight with iron — what name ?
— padlocks, and here, and here,' she touched her
ankles. Her eyes sparkled. She stood trench-
antly, with her sari over her head, for law and
order.

SET IN AUTHORITY 73

* Go on brushing, Hiria. Some golmal ^ in the
bazaar, I suppose.'

' Great golmal, miss-sahib ! ' attested the ayah,
with a half-tone of indignation. 'Two persons
dead ! And cannot be taken to the burning-ghat
until the magistrate-sahib gives the order. And
the door now locked, till when the doctor-sahib
makes 7'e-port, and the police- wallah giving no
entrance. Burra golmal, miss-sahib ! '

' That is very bad news, ayah. Are you sure
it is true ? '

' With my own eyes I have seen it, miss-sahib.
The house locked — in the beginning of the
mustard fields it is, beyond the Lall Bazar — and
the syce holding the horse of Dr. Murray- sahib —
and the soldier also.*

*Dr. Murray. Yes, of course. Well, it is a
bad business, Hiria.'

The ayah glanced dissatisfied at the face in the
glass, was silent a moment, and tried again.

'How shameful it is, miss-sahib, when these
things are because of a woman.' The manoeuvre
succeeded ; Ruth turned her mind to her maid.

* Without doubt there is often a woman, Hiria.
Have the police taken her, too 1 '

* She is dead, miss-sahib ! Your honour knows
nothing of it ? None had brought the news to
the hospital ? Thus it was. The police-wallah
who forbids the entrance — now he is walking up
and down by the door ! — the wife of that police-
wallah last year was about to die. Gurdit Singh.

• Disorder.

74 SET IN AUTHORITY

There was a coming-one, miss-sahib, and he ran
for me weeping. At first I said " No, no," for
every one has great fear of a policeman's house ;
and then Gurdit Singh came again at night with
a lantern and howled like a dog, " Come, ayah-ji,
for the sake of God," and I went and gave help ;
and it was a boy-baba, miss-sahib. And because
of that he has told me all. The house was the
house of Gobind, watchman. The miss-sahib
knows the Delhi-an'-London Bank? By the
Cat'lik Church ? There was the service of Gobind.
Walking up and down in the manner of chow-
kidars, and making a noise, to frighten thieves.
Twice in the day, from little morning till eleven,
and from five in the afternoon till eleven. For
ten years gone Gobind did this service, and no
thieves came — to the hank.'

Hiria paused significantly, and her mistress
said, ' Ah ! But I know that old fellow. Haven't
we doctored him, Hiria, you and I, for his ele-
phant leg ? '

* Three times, miss-sahib ! And God knows
why we could do him no good. But what an
excellent woman was the first wife of Gobind I
How clever with the spinning and the cooking,
and how instructed she was — like your honour ! —
in medicines and the stopping of blood. She
could sew also like a dhurzie, though she had but
one eye. But she died, poor t'ing, and Gobind
made another marriage. Hoh, huh ! This one —
the day she was born they came for me. What
a smart pritty little g'cl I What luvely aiyes I

SET IN AUTHORITY 75

And what a quick-learuing one of songs and
nautch ! So Gobind took that one — Junia. Oh,
many days since, miss-sahib. Three children she
found, one d'otta, two son. All died but the
littlest. Acchcha} Then the mother of Gobind
died, perhaps five months gone. After that
Gobind had no content. Coming after work,
found no good food. What bad meal cakes —
t'ick, like leather,' Hiria pulled at an imaginary
one with hands and teeth. ' And the wife eating
sweetmeats in bed. That Gobind had not the
strong heart and wept, and said, " Why you don*
make my food?" Then that Junia roll in the
bed,' Hiria twisted her body expressively, *and
said, " I make good anuff ; make youi-self." '
' Don't stop brushing, Hiria. Well ? '
'Miss-sahib, I found five dotta, and to all,
when they burnt the chupatties^ I gave smack-
smack. Thus they learned crying, but now their
husbands are not thin.'

'Then the talk began about the gorah — the
soldier. Not being purdah-'ooman, that day
Junia went to the street-stand to bring water for
the house ; but three soldier men had come before
to drink at the stand. Everybody saw she did
not go back to her house. Back she went not.
Like this she pulled her sari.' Hiria exposed
one eye, into which, middle-aged woman as she
was, she put coquetry. * " Dado!" ^ she said,
and held out her dish — impudent 1 — and they
laughed much and gave it full ; and when they

1 'Very good.' ^ 'Give.'

76 SET IN AUTHORITY

came behind she ran and shut the door. All this
everybody saw, and one told Gobind. " Well,"
he said, " did she not do well to shut the door ?
It is because she is pretty," he said. " They
desire to find harm of her." He would hear
nothing, miss-sahib.'

* But everybody was then looking to his house,
for the three soldiers to come again. Only one
came, miss-sahib. Only one, up and down walk-
ing, looking this way, that way — '

* What a long story, Hiria. Do get on. Who
was murdered ? '

* Yes, miss-sahib, I telling. So he saw what
time Gobind came, and what time went. Then,
in the time of the second watch of Gobind, he
came. The cunning one, miss-sahib ! That time
everybody cooking food. Nobody to see but the
leper-woman at the corner of Krishna Ghat-lane
— your honour knows that no-fingered one ?
Twice a year the Dipty-Commissioner-sahib gives
the order to send her away, but always she comes
back there. " Give one pice! Give one pice^ '
Hiria spread out imaginarily mutilated hands
whining, but quickly grasped the brush again.

' Acchcha. She found profit, sometimes two
annas, sometimes four aunas, miss-sahib ! Always
he paid her something not to see. She is very
sorry for the gohnaJ, that one.'

* He could not conic often without being seen
by others, Hiria.'

* Many times, miss -sahib ! But the last time
— they are digging by the house of Gobind for

SET IN AUTHORITY 77

the new water-pipes, and the ground is all oolta-
poolta there — coming out, he lit a match. Which
was a foolish thing,' she philosophised, * but
doubtless, being a white soldier, at that hour he
was drunk. Ari! Three people saw, and one
was the son of Gobind by the other wife, and ran
to him next day with the shame. Before, only
friend-people and caste-brothers had spoken, and
Gobind would hear nothing ; but his son he
heard. But he was an old man, miss- sahib, and
not iss-strong, so he said, " What to do ? " But
the son is iss-strong. So Gobind made excuse of
fever at the bank, and together they went at the
hour to his house, Gobind greatly fearing. And
the soldier was gone. " I told you," Gobind
said, " it was lies." But Surat was looking here,
looking there, on the ground. "This thing,
what is it ? " he said. A cheroot it was, miss-
sahib, not yet cold ! How frightened then was
that one, saying the dog had brought it in ! '

'Then Gobind killed her?'

'Na, miss-sahib. Gobind w^as afraid for the
hanging. Always now Government gives the
"hanging for killing the unfaithful ones. But
Gobind said, " On this account she shall have a
little trouble as the custom is,' and he and Surat
" tied her in the bed and cut off her nose. It is
the smallest punishment, but Gobind had a good
heart. There are already two noseless in the
bazaar, miss- sahib, and one is married again.
But without the nose-ring, who can marry ? ' and
Hiria chuckled once more at the familiar query.

78 SET IN AUTHORITY

*Theii, Gobind being frightened, they went
away, taking the hutcha} But next day Gobind
said he would go back and make her food, so he
went, having done no work that day because of
grief Acchcha, he is sitting there weeping, and
the soldier comes hack ! Thus he comes,' Hiria
made a swaggering, familiar stride. * And inside
what has been ! Ari! He sees the noseless one,
and in one breath — what fear, miss-sahib, in such
a thing — quick he takes off his gun and shoots
Gobind ! How angry are the gorahs when they
are angry ! '

' No, Hiria, that is not possible. He would
not have his gun in the bazaar.'

' True talk, miss-sahib ; but he came from
shooting in the jungle! Have they not the
order to shoot in the jungle, those soldier
people ? '

'Well— and then?'

* Acchcha. And hearing the noise, then comes
Surat running and three others, and they make a
great fight in the house, and they try to hold the
soldier. But how hold these strong ones, miss-
sahib ? " Dam soor ! " he said, and tore them
like leaves, swearing very bad in English. Also
he shot Bundoo in the shoulder, but perhaps he
does not die. Surat only took no harm. And
Surat is the cunning one, miss-sahib. It appears
to him that soldier will get away quick, and he
lias only a chuckoo.*^ So very quick he cuts the
l)elt of the gornh, miss-sahib, thinking he will
» Child. 3 Clasp-knife.

SET IN AUTHORITY 79

have something. This Surat did not know,
but inside is the lumbra, that marks all the
gorah-log — '

' His equipment number — yes.'

' And runs like a dog to his house. But what
a golmal, miss-sahib ! And that Junia also dead
— from fright. Nobody can look on them, it is
said. Three days they are lying there, and half
the head of Gobind is gone — '

* Three days ? But why were the police not
told at once ? '

* God knows, your honour. Who tells any-
thing to the police before it is necessary ? Already
do they not know too much ? But in three
days Surat found courage, and went with the
others to the magistrate-sahib and told all. Then
the magistrate-sahib sent the order and all was as
I have said. It is a pity your honour did not
come by the Larrens road.

^ Ari! miss-sahib, how they work evil and
nutkuttie^^ the gorah people ! Yet I was sorry,
too. The driving of the white man like an ox is
not a good sight. And it is said in the bazaar
that the punishment of this one will be heavy,
because the Burra Lat is the enemy of all gorah-
log who work e\^, though they be of his o\vn
village even. And Surat was the
to cut the coat lumbra ! '

^ Naughtiness.

CHAPTER VIII

HiRiA had the substantial truth. There had
been the murder of a man and the death of a
woman, both natives, and suspicion pointed
strongly to a British private soldier as the author.
Evil and wrong were plain, inflicted on a helpless
and subject household by one of a particularly
obnoxious caste of the ruling race. One more
had been added to the long series of off'ences
which seemed the inevitable accidents of British
prestige. The thing had happened, moreover, at
a time which might have been thought critical.
Government, in the hardly disguised person and
by the hardly disguised hand of Lord Thame, had
been taking stern cognisance and vigorous initia-
tive towards this class of cases, thus raising them,
in a manner, out of the plane of common crimin-
ality to more conspicuous reprobation and wider
publicity. The official attitude had not been
taken and held without criticism, and public
sentiment was still hot and sore. The Storey
case, where a tea- planter had used his revolver
upon rioting coolies ; the White case, in which a
young merchant of Calcutta had kicked a punkha-
puller with a diseased spleen, and the man dropped

80

SET IN AUTHORITY 81

dead ; the Mir Bux case of a native forest-ranger,
damaged so that he died, by a shooting party of
three soldiers to whom he had forbidden certain
tracts, were fresh in the minds of all Englishmen,
and it might be supposed of all natives too, since
the vernacular press rang even louder with the
claims of equality than the Anglo-Indian news-
papers with other considerations in each in-
stance.

Pilaghur, for these reasons, might be imagined
in a state of high excitement over the stain upon
her skirts, indignant and inflamed. It might be
supposed a subject of vivid concern in both
Pilaghurs. Perhaps it did make a day's matter
in the bazaar and in the quarters. Little caste-
companies of servants talked it over as they ate
together : one or two gossiping women, like
Hiria, carried the tale. They deplored the mur-
der in the conventional way ; but the thing that
touched their imaginations was the taking of the
soldier by European constables and a regimental
escort. The crime was quickly accepted and
passed into the book of fate, the women lingering
to point the end of an erring sister ; but the
spectacle of the ' gorah ' in handcuffs, submissive
to the law — that was a tamasha — they all wished
they had seen that. And presently the talk was
of pice again, and the price of meal.

In wealthy and instructed Pilaghur, among the
grain merchants and the jewel merchants, and
the pleaders and the clerks, the event had hardly
more than the importance of its victims, for

82 SET IN AUTHORITY

the moment. A night-watchman had let his wife
get into trouble of a very disgraceful kind, and
they had both lost their lives over it — such people
dwelt remoter from Ganeshi Lai in his balconied
upper story over the grain shop than they did
from the Chief Commissioner himself, to whom,
indeed, their affairs were of painful and critical
interest. Ganeshi Lai commented with a perfunc-
tory headshake upon the laxity in social customs
that had crept in among the common people, and
drew his own shutters closer ; and so by him the
matter was dismissed — for the moment. Later
on it might attract his more excited attention.
A touchstone for inter-racial justice is one thing,
a mere crime is another, and Ganeshi Lai found,
at present, no need to rouse himself.

In Pilaghur of cantonments the affair, of
course, had its official weight. It was talked of
with irritation at the Barfordshires' mess, where
* the old man,' who was absent, was said to be in a
poisonous temper about it. Little Tighe-Pender,
the adjutant, with his yellow moustache much
pulled down at the corners, said it would probably
cost him his job, which, in view of the loss
of two polo ponies within a month, would be
damned inconvenient. Major Devine, who was
always fussing about the regiment, remarked that
one thing was certain — it meant the stoppage
of shooting-passes for the whole cold weather, an
infernal shame ; he had never known the men
so keen. Captain Kemp said, * Don't be in such
a hurry ; the thing isn't proved yet.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 83

' No,' said Devine gloomily, ' it isn't, and may-
be it won't be, but we don't wait for anything so
silly as proof nowadays. Suspicion 's all they
want in Simla. Dead rats that don't explain
near a bazaar mean plague in the bazaar, and
dead natives that don't explain near a regiment
mean murder in the regiment, whatever the
courts say. I '11 bet you fifty dibs the passes are
stopped.'

From which the conversation slipped naturally
round to the afternoon's polo.

The ajffair was reported promptly, according
to regulations, to the Chief Commissioner, the
General Commanding, and the divisional officers.
Beyond that it travelled to the Adjutant-General
for India and to the Military Secretary to the
Viceroy, but we need not follow it at present
further than Pilaghur. Eliot Arden received it
with heavy concern, but it came in the catalogue
of the day's business. He put it in the back of
his mind, and did not take it out after office
hours. Charles Cox, a young assistant-magis-
trate, newly arrived from England, whom the
country still appealed to and the mosquitoes still
bit, drove to the club full of the scandal, but
found a languid interest in it ; though some-
body did say that Vetchley would probably get
it hot for not keeping his men in better order,
and somebody else suggested a rock in the Red
Sea as the probable luck of the regiment. Cox
was amazed at the apathy he encountered, and
wrote a letter to Oxford that night full of dis-

84 SET IN AUTHORITY

mayed criticism of the service he had joined.
Pilaghur had no newspaper, and it was quite
three days before the matter was reported in the

f- public press. Then Cox saw it in a Calcutta
journal, under the heading, * Unfortunate Occur-
rence at Pilaghur.' Naturally he cut it out, and
sent it, with sarcastic comments, to Oxford. Ten
years hence Cox will be deploring the necessity
of such things getting into the papers at all, and
inclined to the conviction that it would much
conduce to the good government of India if there
were no papers. This will be the work of time,
promotion, and responsibility. Meanwhile he
may be left to his indignation, which he will

^enjoy about as long as the mosquitoes enjoy him.

CHAPTER IX

The Lenoxes were not at Mrs. Lemon's garden-
party, which took place, indeed, on the very day
on which Mr. Lawrence Lenox became tempor-
arily the Honourable Mr. Justice Lenox, and
took his seat upon the bench of the Calcutta
High Court. One of their lordships had been
invalided home, and the District and Sessions
Judge of Ghoom had been selected to fill the
acting appointment. It was promotion, but not
more distinguished promotion than had always
been predicted for Lawrence Lenox. He was
one of those who climb with every capacity they
possess ; his very moral faculties seemed to have
been given him to assist him to mount. He
owed his post in Pilaghur to the great discretion
and ability with which he had handled a case in
which Government had prosecuted for corrupt
practices ; but nature had long before that
selected him for preferment in any line along
which he saw the chance of it. People said of
him, contemplating his unfaltering steps upwards,
that he would be a Chief Judge before he was
forty-five ; he was already, at forty, well on the
way to it. They observed Lawrence Lenox

85

86 SET IN AUTHORITY

without malice, as they would a public event ;
he excited little feeling of any kind among his
contemporaries. The fulfilment of manifest des-
tiny does attract, sometimes, this philosophic
regard. Even regret at his departure from
Pilaghur, where he certainly gave excellent
dinners, was obscured by its inevitableness.
Some time or other such men must go.

Sir Ahmed Hossein had succeeded Mr. Lenox
as District and Sessions Judge, and he was at
Mrs. Lemon's party. He was a Mahomedan
civilian, differing, necessarily, in complexion and
creed from the rest of official Pilaghur ; and he
brought with him a social interrogation. His
official status was clear, but how far he would
expect its recognition was not. Social India is
nowhere yet upon Arcadian terms with native
gentlemen, however Government may have
decked them in the Gazette. The crucial question,
when Pilaghur heard, with a somewhat fallen
countenance, that it was to have a Mahomedan
District Judge, was, 'Is there a Lady Ahmed
Hossein ? ' Mrs. Lemon laid down the law.

' The General says,' said she, * that if there 's a
Lady Hossein and he lets her go out to dinner,
well and good, we will ask them and dine with
them. But if he keeps her behind the purdah,
I am neither to invite them to our liouse nor will
the General let me set foot in theirs — Judge or
no Judge.'

Pilaghur felt an embarrassment lessened when
it transpired that although there was a Lady

SET IN AUTHORITY 87

Ahmed Hossein — ' Probably three/ observed
Colonel Vetchley — she preferred to live in her
own native state, lacking courage to take with
her husband his alarming strides of progress.
The poor lady would not make a problem any-
where ; she would stay where she was normal.
She always had stayed there, and Sir Ahmed,
between his achievements, had made devoted
pilgrimages back into her life.

So, to begin with, Sir Ahmed had come to Mrs.
Lemon's garden-party. He was the only native
there, and he was distinguished in other ways.
His fez marked him out, and his long black coat
buttoned tightly from the neck, which gave a
queer, clerical masque to a personality clearly
very much of this world. His face was highly,
keenly, broadly intelligent ; a black beard grew
well up toward his wide and salient cheek-bones,
and his eyes, which looked with searching inquiry
at what they encountered, were luminous with
that naive impulse of the mind which Orientals do
not yet think it worth while to disguise.

Mrs. Lemon took cheerful charge of the new
official, and introduced him freely. It could
never be said of Mrs. Lemon that she shirked
things ; but it was plain enough, behind her
smiling activity, that she was tackling a weighty
duty. He was received on all sides civilly :
there was a general sense of conduct toward him,
a general desire to be as polite as any regulation
could require. One lady even, in her zeal to
back up her hostess, offered him a chair

88 SET IN AUTHORITY

Sir Ahmed bowed with dignity and made grate-
fully appreciative response. It was marked, the
note of gratitude, the smile of goodwill that came
so much more than half-way — marked and full,
to the observer, of the under-pathos of things.
These among whom he had come were not his
people ; his ways were not their ways nor his
thoughts their thoughts. Yet he had to take
his place and find his comfort among them.
The drift and change in the tide of events had
brought him there, and he had to make the best
appeal he could. In every eye he saw the barrier
of race, forbidding natural motions. He would
commend himself, but could not do it from the
heart ; he was forced to take the task upon the
high and sterile ground of pure intelligence. He
acquitted himself with every propriety, but relief
came where he moved away, and perhaps he knew
it ; he walked about curiously alone. The after-
noon was half over and Sir Ahmed was discussing
the outside of something with Mr. Arthur Poynder.
Biscuit, who was lending himself to the subject
with an exaggerated aspect of consideration, when
between the rows of verbenas in pots bordering
the path to the lawn appeared Eliot Arden.

* Ah — my friend ! ' exclaimed the Judge, and
made a step forward. Then he hesitated and
waited until he caught the Chief Commissioner's
eye, when he went rapidly towards Arden, leav-
ing little Biscuit balancing a sentence. The two
men greeted cordially ; the new comer was here
clearly on another footing of acceptance.

SET IN AUTHORITY 89

* Already to-day I have come/ Sir Ahmed told
him with glistening eyes, ' to write my name in
your visitors' book ; but I know your occupations
and could not dream to see you at that hour.'

* No/ said the Chief Commissioner simply, ' I
would have been glad to see you. But I hope
there will be many more opportunities. Let me
think — it is three years, isn't it — more — since
you were in Simla keeping the other fellows
straight on that Mahomedan Education Com-
mission ? What has become of your project for
a Chair in Zend at Calcutta ? Has it moved at
all ? I ought to know, but one gets withdrawn
in a special job like this — it 's hard to see beyond
the boundaries of one's own province,' Arden
added, with his acknowledging smile. Half
regretful, half humorous, and wholly modest, it
was a charm of his, this smile ; people liked to
provoke it. Ahmed Hossein seemed literally for
the moment to rejoice in it.

. * They say to me, " Endow it ! " ' he said,
smiling back. 'Well, I am comparatively poor
man ; alone I cannot endow anything. But I
have some promises — about half a lakh already
— and there is always the Nizam ! ' he jested
frankly. ' But we have fallen upon the inevitable
difficulty of administration. Only yesterday a
friend of mine — Parsee gentleman — said to me,
"I will give you twenty-five thousand rupees,
but on condition that your Professor of Zend is
of this country." Now I am against that. We
want a European scholar with a systematic.

90 SET IN AUTHORITY

critical knowledge of the literature, not a pundit
with his head stuffed with the precepts of the
Yazna.'

' I think I agree with you, but of course it is
easy to understand the feeling. You had the
Viceroy with you, I believe ? '

' Oh yes ! Is His Excellency not always with
the country — past, present, and future ^ ' replied
Sir Ahmed enthusiastically. 'He said to me
himself, " I wish I were young enough to attend
the first lecture." '

'Then eventually, no doubt it will come
through,' Arden observed. They were standing
a little apart from Mrs. Lemon's assembly, over
which the Chief Commissioner's eye now began
to travel with careful negligence. ' He seeks
some one,' thought the Oriental beside him, ' for
whom he would not look,' and Ahmed Hossein's
own gaze rested carefully upon the blossoming
verbenas.

' Let me introduce you,' said Arden presently,
' to a lady, a friend of mine, who is sitting alone
just now — it is an opportunity. This way.'

They found their way to the lady, who lifted
her grey eyes to meet their approach just an
instant too late to suggest that she was not
aware of their progress across the grass. But
her smile was accustomed enough. ' Miss
Pearce,' said Mr. Arden, ' I should like to intro-
duce to you my friend Sir Ahmed Hossein. Dr.
Pearce, Sir Ahmed.'

* I am very glad indeed,' said Rutli. ' I have

SET IN AUTHORITY 91

heard of you for a long time, Sir Ahmed, through
one or two friends of your community here.
You are a connection, are you not, of Syed
Mahomed Ali ? I mean the gentleman who has
just received a decoration from the Sultan for
his researches in early Islamic history. I know
the Syed and his family very well.'

The men placed themselves in chairs beside
her, and she bent slightly, with graceful, collected
dignity, toward the stranger. He, with perfect
respect and even appreciation, saw that she was
about thirty, and too pale, her hair too black,
the shadows about her face too deep, that she
had as a woman no amplitude of charm. He
became aware of these things in a detached and
impersonal way, because he could not help it ;
any woman presented herself so to him. This
one was of another race, and therefore remote,
but she fell at the first glance into his instinc-
tive category of the zenana. Then, as she
spoke, he became aware of secondary qualities,
which one must consider apart. ' Pundita,' he
reflected, as he replied to her question about
Syed Mahomed Ali, and lent himself willingly
to the satisfactions which a pundita could give.
Arden, for the moment, took no part in the con-
versation. He seemed absorbed in observing
the attitude of his friend toward the person
whom he had brought to her. That alone per-
haps would have been enough to single her out
from among the other women, so right it was,
so adjusted and considerate ; but that alone was

92 SET IN AUTHORITY

hardly enough to account for his absorption in it.
He remained for some moments outside their
talk, until a word of it reached and wakened him.

* And the reason we now know that there was
Greek foolishness/ Sir Ahmed was saying, *is
that two thousand years ago we believed Pytha-
goras. '

* In heaven's name,' said Arden, astonished,
' how have you got there 1 '

*I don't know,' Ruth told him. *We are
there. Then you think,' she went on to the
other, ' that in passing from existence to exist-
ence we forget nothing ? '

' Nothing valuable. We have not now to be
taught that numbers are not beings. But I
think,' he said, with a double modesty drawn
from Arden's attention, fit is not most impor-
I tantly knowledge that we gather, or even philo-
sophy. It is the soul that grows, and spiritual
experience that makes the sum of what we are.
We go from plane to plane.'

Arden turned eyes upon Ruth Pearce which
said, * How have you brought this out of him ? '
and she just answered by a glance, of delight in
her own achievement and in his understanding
of it.

* We go from plane to plane,' she repeated,
• 'and we are the sum of what we have appre-
hended and conquered. Then the only real
superiority lies there.'

' ff we could count our planes we could estab-
lish our quarterings,' said Arden smilingly.

SET IN AUTHORITY 93

* And if we had an archangel at the Heralds'
Office/ he added.

' Oh, that is not possible,' jested Sir Ahmed,
probing the depth of seriousness in the other's
eye.

' I hope you see,' Ruth said to the Chief
Commissioner, ' what becomes of merely official
rank. But these successive birth-planes are
delightful — they explain so much. Our under-
standing of some people, for instance, and not of
others. One understands those who are behind
- one, I suppose, but not those who are ahead of
one.'

* I think so,' said the Judge.

* So that the most arrogant thing in the world
to say is, " I know you very well," ' she drew him
on.

He went even further than she expected. ' By
a kind of cultivation of sympathy, which is
memory,' he said, * we can think ourselves back,
not only into planes of other people — that is easy
; — but of animals as well. We plunge again into
' the life-current of all things. I can feel the im-
pulse that makes this beetle move its limbs ; and
that crow cawing — he caws to me across seons of
time. I hear his spirit in his cry, bound, far
behind, and calling, as best it can. And I under-
stand. You perceive ? '

The raucous note struck on the air again. * I
believe I know what you mean,' said Arden, and
Ruth, seeming to listen interiorly for the uncouth
echo, said, * I believe I could know.'

94 SET IN AUTHORITY

' But, Sir Ahmed/ said the Chief Commissioner,

* surely this is the kind of theory, isn't it, that we
get at the other shop ? These things are not
written in the Koran.'

' The Koran is a good old fighting book,' replied
the Judge, and his smile was a half-regretful
mixture of pride and submission, ' but, sir, to
which of us in the East is left his religion ? ' He
pulled his beard meditatively. ' I myself am but
half believer in my casual creed,' he told them,
and Ruth, who was listening again to the crows,
cried, ' Oh, don't spoil it.'

A lady left a neighbouring group and came
toward them across the grass. It was Mrs.
Arden, with a very pretty parasol. She ap-
proached with the little significant steps of a
person whose motions one way or another are
observed, and she said as she joined them,

* What are you all talking about ? *

*We were talking about our past lives,' said
her husband.

* Some people can remember back to the age
of two,' she told them.

* Sir Ahmed Hossein thinks he can remember
back to the age of a beetle,' said Arden,
smiling ; and at her puzzled look Ruth hastened
to explain, ' We were talking of previous lives,
Mrs. Arden.'

* Oh,' she said. ' Now I understand. The
thing Mrs. Besant believes in so tremendously.
Did you ever meet Mrs. Besant, Sir Ahmed ? I
can't say I have, but I have heard her lecture

SET IN AUTHORITY 95

on that subject Wonderfully eloquent — I shall
never forget it. But do go on.'

There was an instant's silence. Then Ahmed
Hossein, at whom she was looking, said politely,
' I am afraid I do not remember just where we
were in our discussion.'

* Oh, don't let me interrupt you,' begged Mrs.
Arden.

Ruth made an effort. * Do you think we have
any ground for supposing previous existences,
Mrs. Arden ? '

Mrs. Arden looked serious. ' Well, only that
feeling of having done something or seen some-
thing somewhere before, you know, when you
know you haven't — we 've all had that, haven't
we? '

* I 'm sure we have,' said Ruth gently.

* Or of having known some one that you
couldn't possibly have ever seen before. When
my husband and I were first engaged I used to
have that feeling about him most strongly — that
we had met in some previous existence. But it
wore off.'

'Upon further acquaintance,' laughed Arden,
and took out his watch. ' I think we ought to
be saying good night,' he suggested, and his wife
rose with an effect of punctilio which showed her
well aware of the exigencies of public appear-
ances. They made their way to Mrs. Lemon,
who advanced genially on her part, holding out
a tiny glass.

'Have some pumelo gin,' she advised them.

96 SET IN AUTHORITY

' It 's warming. So cold when the sun goes.
Won't you ? Mj own make.'

The sun had gone when the General finally
accompanied them across the lawn to their car-
riage ; and the Indian world lay chill about them
as they drove along the dusty road in the twi-
light to the cream-coloured house with the guard
at the gate, where the Imperial flag, floating
above, told all comers at what an enviable point
they had arrived.

CHAPTER X

The indifference of society in Pilaghur to the
offence of Henry Morgan, private in the Fifth
Barfordshires, so culpable in the eyes of Mr. Cox,
and so noticeable even in ours, did not, naturally,
extend to his regiment. No doubt if the crime
had been committed by Colonel Vetchley instead
of by a person practically non-existent except as
a fighting unit and a number, we should not have
had to complain with Mr. Cox, at all events not
so loudly. But even then the feeling of the
station about the affair would have been a poor
and faint demonstration compared with the
interest aroused by the Morgan case among the
friends and fellow units of Morgan. It takes
more than India to stamp his robust concern
with life out of the British soldier. He may be
bored, but he is never hlaae. The sophistications
of the canteen are not enough. Nothing is
enough, except beef and beer, and they are too
much ; perhaps there we find the problem of
him.

The Barfords were an average regiment with
an average record. General officers had reported
of them a hundred times that discipline * on the

98 SET IN AUTHORITY

whole was good/ the Colonel was popular ; and
the regimental team held the Northern India
football championship. They had put in eighteen
months' service in the country, just long enough
to give them the usual superficial dislike and
contempt for the people, which more than one
unlucky incident had aggravated. They were a
keen sporting lot, and not one of them held the
wild peacock sacred, or in his heart respected the
regulation that forbade the shooting of it. They
had vague ideas about trespass in a country
without hedges or keepers, and to meet the
voluble protest of the peasants they had only the
lingua franca of the fist. In the eyes of a good
many of them the villagers existed to show the
way to good shooting, to supply country spirit
on demand, and such other amenities as the
neighbourhood might produce, and generally to
take orders. The villagers thought difierently.
The Sahib might command these things ; but the
'gorah' was a man without authority, without
money, who frequently extracted that for which
he would not pay, a person of no understanding
and much ofl'encc. They were therefore con-
tumacious to every demand, sullenly, sometimes
actively, hostile to everything in uniform ; and
the Barfordshires were so occupied with the fuU-
tougued expression of their scorn and indignation
that they altogether failed to measure how nmch
they themselves were disliked.

Ono would be foolish to look in the regiment
for an unprejudiced view of Morgan's otfcnce.

SET IN AUTHORITY 99

As constated by the regiment, Morgan was * in
trouble' — black trouble. Morgan's trouble was
a visitation which might come upon any one at
any time. He was widely and picturesquely
condemned for foolishness in getting into it, but
the general study was as to how he should get
-out of it. Morgan was not a favourite. He had
no intimate friends. His speech betrayed him a
'gentleman ranker,' though never in so many
words : and he was thought none the better of
for being plainly a gentleman ranker without
ambition — not so much as a stripe on him. A
deserted wife and family, though that of course
was nobody's business, were generally attributed
to him ; the lady lived in Bournemouth and gave
dancing lessons, the colour-sergeant remembered
having taken them from her. If Morgan had
been liked, this would have been less disgraceful
than it was — part simply of that ambiguous fate
that draws the British private into enlistment.
As it was, it made a thing to quote about him.
A man who keeps his personality to himself but
cannot disguise his vices provides no charitable
reception for them ; and Morgan's company
would have picked them out with pleasure as
the likeliest among them to bring disgrace on his
fellows. They had no acquaintance with his
past, and as little as he could give them with
his present ; but the man was among them,
and the man was known as * Scum o' the
Earth.'

This had to do with Morgan, but not, it should

100 SET IN AUTHORITY

be understood, with Morgan's case. That became,
as fast as sentiment could crystallise, a family
affair. Morgan was a sweep, but he wasn't the
only one, and whatever he was, he was integral.
6575 comes, apart from all other considerations,
between 6574 and 6576 ; that may not be much
of a virtue, but it is a considerable claim. Indi-
vidual offence generally means, in a regiment,
corporate discipline. The Barfordshires took the
curtailment of their shooting parties with glum
philosophy, and bore no special malice to Morgan.
But since Morgan's punishment lay upon every
man, Morgan's defence was the concern of every
man ; he was merged in the regiment, and his sin
had no more individuality than his uniform.
We cannot find it so illogical ; the race is thus
identified with Adam, suffers for the family like-
ness, and makes the best of it.

Sir Ahmed Hossein had taken over his duties
from Mr. Lawrence Lenox the day before the
police were notified of the murder ; and this was
recognised, as soon as the sensation of Morgan's
arrest had somewhat subsided, to bear heavily on
the case. The police investigation took two
days and the magisterial inquiry a fortnight :
there was plenty of time to discuss the judicial
chances, and the general feeling both in the can-
teen and the * A. T. A.* was that it was san-
guinary rotten luck that the case should come
before a sanguinary black nigger.

Thomas Ames, Private, was of opinion that
this could not happen. Ames was secretary to

SET IN AUTHORITY 101

the football club, organised the sing-songs, and
owned a bicycle. ' Is Henry Morgan a Euro-
pean British subject, or is he not?' demanded
Ames.

' Yus, most decidedly,* replied more than one.

' Then I say that no native of this country can
try such a European British subject for his life,*
said Ames. ' Not if he was Chief Justice, which
they aren't and never will be. That *s one of the
things that gives them the 'ump ; the law don't
allow 'em to do any hanging — any white hanging,
be it understood.*

' That bein',* said Truthful James Symes,
sharpening his knife on his boot- heel, * the only
kind calculated to give 'em any pleasure.'

'That may or may not be,' remarked Flynn,
known as ' the Mugger ' from a saurian aspect
he had, extended on a bench, comfortably un-
buttoned, with a restful cutty pipe, ' but 'ow do
you or I or anybody know that murder 's got to be
the tune ? AVhy not culpable 'omicide ? Why
not grievous 'urt ? '

* It depends on how the magistrate frames the
charge,' said Symes, trying the blade on his little
finger-nail. ' And that 's as much a matter of
prejudice as anything else.'

* Prejudice be blowed,' Ames told them. * It 's
a matter of form. He'll go up on all of 'em,
and I shouldn't wonder if they 'd sling in simple
hurt to make certain of lagging 'im on some-
thing. The Court that tries him can amend the
charges, too. I remember a case — '

102 SET IN AUTHORITY

* Famb'ly affair ? ' inquired Symes, with affa-
bility.

' You shut your head, you bloomin' illiterate.
I remember a case where the High Court down
in Calcutta had the remarkable cheek to amend
a sentence, let alone a charge. They amended it
for the worse, too — seven years instead o' five.
The next time that chap's lawyer advises him to
appeal I don't think he '11 be taking any.'

* I suppose old Scum 's gettin' advice all right,'
inquired the Mugger, removing his pipe for the
answer.

' Armenian pleader by the name of Agabeg,'
Ames told him, spitting with precision to empha-
sise the point. ' Moses Agabeg. And as sharp
as they make 'em. Quite a crimin'l repitation.
Been had down to Calcutta an' over to Allahabad,
before this, on cases. Lives here. I 've seen
him drivin' about with his missis, but I 'm damned
if I can tell an Armenian from a Parsee or either
of 'em from a black an' tan, when they wear
Europe clothes.'

' Ow 's he to be paid ? ' asked Symes.

* Wait an' you '11 find out, my son. Our friend
the pris'ner's income is exactly fourteen annas
three pies a day, him lookin' down, as we know 'e
does, on efHcient allowances botli first cmd second.
An' he don't get many remittances, as far as I
can judge.'

' Wot 1 should be pleased to know,' remarked
Flynn, * is wot view Anthony Andover 's goin' to
take of this business.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 103

' If he 's wise he 11 keep his snout out of it/
said Ames, * an' let justice take its course. Are
the courts of this country able to take care of the
crime of this country or are they not, that 's what
I 'umbly ask. But he won't risk it again, not
after the LafFan case. He got it between the
eyes that time. The Bombay High Court dis-
charged the prisoner " without a stain on 'is
character." In so many words. Pretty sickly
business for Anthony.'

' You think 'e won't, eh ? '

'That's my information.'

'The little tin gods 'aven't bin 'card from
yet '? ' inquired the Mugger with an air of cyni-
cism.

'Ain't been time,' replied Ames. 'Besides
they 're on the move just now, from their anyoual
summer picnic in Simla to their anyoual winter
blow out in Calcutta. They '11 be 'card from all
right. Don't you be impatient, sweet'art.'

Flynn knocked the ash out of his pipe and sat
up. ' Oh, give us a rest,' he remarked. ' 'As any
one here present seen young James Moon this
last day or so ? '

'I've had to get along without it,' said
Ames.

'James Moon ain't pretty at his best, but his
own mother wouldn't know 'im now,' Flynn
informed them. ' He 's been out after duck.'

' In the bazaar ? ' asked Symes, with a grin.

' None of your double intenders, my boy. In
the j heels. An' he took Black Maria.'

104 SET IN AUTHORITY

'The others chuckled anticipatively.

' I warned 'im. *' Wot do y' think y' can do
with that old slut of a muzzle-loader ? " I said.
" She was with the regiment when we Avas in the
Mutiny," I said. " She 's bin drawin pension for
years," I said. But James Moon, being a recruity,
knows it all an' a bit more. So he borrys Maria
an' packs in a fistful of shot and about 'arf a
pound o' powder. Jams it all in beautiful. An'
w'en 'e gets a look in, lets fly. Well, he did a lot
o' murder, but Maria kicked all she knew; an'
there ain't anything about a kick that dear old
sportin' arm doii't know. An' Moon's cheek is a
treat. Oh, it 's a work of art ! '

' Well, he '11 have time to poultice it now,'
responded Ames. * I hear the Goozies' orficers
*ave been writing in to compline of our shootin'
pig in the Serai jungle. Wot 's the 'arm, I
say, an' who 's the loser by our 'aving the bit o'
sport ? Them Serai pig never come out o' cover,
never have an' never will, not even to oblige
those wishin' to stick 'em from ponies in a gentle-
manly manner. They can't get 'em with their
spears an' we can with our guns — that 's wot 's
eatin* them. But I 've good reason to under-
stand the CO. ain't likely to take any notice
of it.'

* Blime gall they 've got,' remarked Symes, as
the three took their way across the dusty parade-
ground. * Dam lot of kitmugars — an' not here
three weeks neither. I 'd send their chin back
to 'em Value Payable, if I was the old man.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 105

' A fat lot of difference it makes for the next
two months, anyhow/ Ames reminded them, * for
which our grateful thanks are due to Henry
Morgan, Esquire, now enjoyin* all the luxuries of
the season in Pilaghur gaol. De mortihus and
cetera, which is also etiquette for those in similar
circumstances, and I 'ave no communication to
make to that muck-rake at present. But when
he comes out — '

He finished softly on the refrain of a popular
song, which was cut short by the appearance of
Colonel Vetchley. He came upon them round an
unusual corner, looking irritated and depressed,
and scrutinised them at ten paces as if each
of them, to partly paraphrase the words of the
Mugger, had a bloody mystery concealed about
his person. The men saluted, dropping instantly
into the redcoated wooden trio, putting one foot
before the other, which is their convention all
the world over, and went on their way.
Anxiety about the chance that Morgan's case
\might come before a native Sessions judge
was not confined to his comrades. As soon as
the possibility was recognised.it was canvassed
in the Club, where Mr. Biscuit pointed out to
Major Devine and Mr. Charles Cox over short
drinks, that this was precisely the contingency
which should prevent such an appointment as
Sir Ahmed Hossein's.

* Every previous Viceroy since the Mutiny has
seen clearly enough,' said Mr. Biscuit, ' that such
a case might arise, and that in such a case race

106 SET IN AUTHORITY

feeling might naturally be expected — rightly or
wrongly — to interfere with the ends of justice.
Consequently, until lately, precious few natives
have been put into the billet. You may call it
timidity, but where it's a question of putting
heavy responsibility into the hands of those
gentry, I must say I sympathise. I 'm timid, too.'
Mr. Biscuit, though getting on very well, was
not an original person ; and this opinion of his
about judgeships of the first grade was quite
widely and commonly held throughout the ser-
vice, in which such senior appointments are
naturally not too many.

* Age of progress,' remarked Mr. Cox, * I think,
you know, Biscuit, that we must expect the people
of the country to take an increasing share in its
administration as time goes on. We must make
the omelet and never mind the eggs.'

Major Devine cast upon the latest addition to
the Government of Ghoom a glance of extreme
disgust.

' It 's what you might expect from a rotter like
Thame,' he said. 'Always playing up to the
natives.'

* But there are native judges even in the High
Courts out here, I take it ? ' inquired Mr. Cox.
' Calcutta— Bombay. There they must exercise
supreme jurisdiction.'

'Yes,' Mr. Biscuit hastened to inform him,
* but such cases as this naturally wouldn't come
before them — a European judge would be put on
to try them. Though a native, of course, might

SET IN AUTHORITY 107

form one of a revisional bench. But this fellow
sits alone, you see.'

' I see,' said Charles Cox, making room for yet
another admission likely to modify the ideal view.
As he pondered it, up came Egerton Faulkner,
Chief Secretary, very warm after racquets, pull-
ing a modish coat over his flannels. Faulkner
was known as a wit, a dandy, an incroyable. He
loved the cynical, nonsensical appearance. To
account for his progress, which had been rapid,
he would drop a shy eyeglass and smile ineffably,
and say, * Sometimes I pressed their lily hands,
sometimes their ruby lips,' which nobody would
take to refer to his official superiors, and which
nobody should take to refer to anybody at all, since
Mr. Faulkner had got on solely by tact and ability,
and Mrs. Faulkner was the rather stout com-
pendium of all the hands and lips he had any
acquaintance with. His clever talk was tricked
out with the quotations and allusions which be-
longed to his year at Oxford. Though a rising and
experienced member of the most distinguished
Service in the world, he still wore intellectually
his undergraduate's clothes. There had been no
opportunity to change. Socially he was called ' a
boon to any station.' I think he was one, the
funny fellow. His attitude to life was one of such
sustained amusement that he had to summon a
long face for a serious question. He summoned
it now.

' But for Section Four of the Criminal Pro-
cedure Code, or rather a Notification under that

\

108 SET IN AUTHORITY

Section, the contingency you mention would be
a grave one, Biscuit. But it has been legislated
— I was Under-Secretary at the time— out of
existence. I imagine His Excellency, in making
the present appointment, was aware of this.
The law provides for the commitment of all such
cases as Morgan's to the nearest High Court,
irrespective, I may add, of the complexion of the
Sessions judge. Faultless — faultless as yours
and mine may be, my dear Biscuit, neither you
nor I, did we occupy the seat of judgment for
this district, would be thought competent any
more than our friend Ahmed Hossein, sitting
alone, to try Henry Morgan for his life. You
and I and Sir Ahmed may hang black men but
not white ones. Morgan may claim— and no
doubt will — to be tried in Calcutta.'

* Really, sir, is that the way it stands ? ' re-
turned the intelligent Biscuit, wagging an abased
tail at the note of correction. * I hadn't looked
into the matter. That, of course, explains to
some extent His Excellency's departure from
precedent.'

' Lamentable — lamentable, these departures
from precedent,' and Mr. Faulkner threw his
slight figure into an attitude of comedy, * though
doubtless in the line of fate, Biscuit, prefigured
long ago by Lord Canning, Lord Ripon, Lord
Curzon, I may even suggest by the Lord of All.
You and I, Biscuit, live and administer in the
dawn of history. You and I gape and boggle at
a native Sessions judge. But our sons may take

SET IN AUTHORITY 109

instructions from Bengali Heads of Departments,
and look for promotion to Madrassi Lieutenant- [
Governors. It is written among the things that^
are to be. I do not say that I rejoice in it. I
have a father's feelings. I am sure you share
them, Biscuit. "What, then, is that which is
able to direct a man ? " said our dear old friend
Marcus Aurelius, with his prophetic eye upon
the Indian Civil Service at the beginning of the
twentieth century. " One thing and one thing
only, and that is philosophy."'

Mr. Faulkner's pronouncement upon the trial
of Morgan spread through the station, bringing
a sense of relief. * He won't be tried here,' said
Mrs. Ardcn to her friends, * I 'm so thankful. I
am sure Sir Ahmed wouldn't be biassed ; but it
would be such a disagreeable incident in Eliot's
administration.' Alfred Ames was also quoted
in his circle ; and the talk in the regiment was
of Calcutta juries, their character and predilec-
tions. Calcutta juries, on the whole, were held
to be sound in the head. Certain verdicts, under
certain circumstances, it was believed, could not
be wrung from them.

Surprise was general, therefore, when it tran-
spired, in the course of a few days, that the
prisoner had waived his claim to be tried by the
Superior Court, had elected, in fact, to be tried as
a native, and that the case would come, after all,
before Sir Ahmed Hossein, in Pilaghur, with a
jury. Officials found the decision an incompre-
hensible whim, and received it with dissatisfac-

110 SET IN AUTHORITY

tion. Nobody could remember a precedent for
it, and that alone was irritating enough. Besides,
Morgan promised a centre of disturbance, which
is always better at a distance. Calcutta was
accustomed to them ; but Pilaghur would be
shaken to its foundations. The regiment took
it with blank amazement. It was said that the
Colonel himself interviewed Morgan on the folly
of his course, but could get nothing out of him
except that he was willing to take his chance, and
some unfavourable observations on the judicial
climate of Calcutta, clearly communicated. Alfred
Ames, Truthful James Symes, and the Mugger
washed their hands of concern with the prisoner's
fate a dozen times a day.

* If he 's such a fool as that shows him,' said
Ames with frequency and decision, * he 11 ave to
take 'is gruel, that's all.'

The only person neither alarmed nor displeased
was Sir Ahmed Hossein, K.C.I.E., who, indeed,
confided to Eliot Arden, in the course of an
evening walk, that he could not disguise his
gratification. The incident was a sign of that
new and better understanding, based on a com-
pleter confidence between the two races, which
all good men so ardently desired ; and he could
not help being proud to figure in it.

It was odd that nobody remembered, in the
search for an explanation, the wide reputation for
cleverness, perception, and tact attached to the
name of Mr. Moses Agabeg, the pleader in charge
of the defence.

CHAPTER XI

James Kelly was an Irish patriot by one parent
only ; but he was a man of business in his own
right. He could quote the parent — a mother —
to explain his connection with the Clan-na-Gael
society for reasons of sentiment ; and he could
point to a considerable account for services
rendered to justify it on other grounds. His
sympathies, in fact, brought him a handsome
turnover. He had pride in them and profit out
of them, and so did weU.

It was like that with regard to his enterprise
in commission from Mrs. Tring and Miss Victoria
Triug. He had a liking for the job ; it had
the touch of drama that appealed to him. He
often thought of the moment when he should
walk up to Tring and clap him on the shoulder
^and say, as the crown of many kindnesses,
* Young man, I 'm here to send you home.' Just
as he anticipated the telegram which should
one day flash Irish-American congratulations to
Dublin upon the laying of the foundation-stone
of her own House of Parliament. It would be
a consummation worth doing something for, at

a reasonable figure. The figure he had finally

111

112 SET IN AUTHORITY

managed to screw Mrs. and Miss Tring up to
was a very reasonable one — so much for Mr.
Kelly's expenses, so much for his time, and so
much for the extraordinary advantage he could
offer her in having actually seen and known her
son. He had seen him and he had known him ;
and there would be only as much difficulty in
tracing him as justified a fair margin. A little
more difficulty than he had hinted to Mrs. Tring
there would be, since it was nearly three years,
and not six months, since he had last spoken to
Herbert in San Francisco ; but it was not in a
sanguine nature, well supplied with funds, to
make much of that.

They had their first letter from Kelly about
Christmas. At Victoria's urgent petition Mrs.
Tring had agreed to keep his commission a secret,
and had, as a matter of fact, told only two people.
Lady Thame and Frayley Sambourne. Lady
Thame because Mrs. Tring considered that Pamela
had a right to know, almost as imperative as her
own to impart, and Mr. Sambourne because Mrs.
Tring would have felt a stain of insincerity in
concealing anything from him. It was not a
thing, she would have told you, to argue about ;
it was simply in their relation. Beyond these
she did not go, being compelled to acknowledge
Victoria's argument that if she did it would be
sure to get into the halfpenny papers. Victoiia
spoke of this in such a way that Mrs. Tring had to
cry out that it would be intolerable ; but her secret
criticism aaked why not, and her private bosom

SET IN AUTHORITY 113

heaved in sympathy with the headline, * A
Mother's Quest for her Son/ which sprang before
her on the posters.

Lady Thame was cold, colder than the mother
of a young Viceroy earning constant approbation
in the press ought perhaps to have been, under
the circumstances ; but she never had been fond
of Herbert.

' It is unsatisfactory,' she said.

Kelly's news was that, although he had made
all speed across the Continent, he had just, un-
fortunately, missed the last steamer that would
make the Alaskan connection for the winter. He
would therefore be obliged to wait until navi-
gation opened in those regions in the spring.
He assured Mrs. Tring that he would wait,
whatever the inconvenience to himself ; and that
she had this to console her, that if he, Kelly, was
frozen out, her son was by the same circumstance
frozen in.

' He can't get away,' wrote Kelly, ' that 's one
sure thing ; and I '11 be on to him with the first
boat in April.'

Meanwhile he had be^n making some inquiries,
not without result ; Mr. Tring had left one or two
' articles in the hands of the lady he boarded with —
personal items Kelly thought his folks might like
to have, among them a seal ring — which he had
obtained and was sending therewith, redemption
of the same to be charged to account. He had
also traced out two articles, Mr. Tring had con-
tributed to a weekly paper called the Bat, con-

114 SET IN AUTHORITY

taining his impressions of San Francisco. The
Bat had since ceased publication, so these had
taken some looking for. Hoping for better luck
later, James Kelly was hers respectfully.

* It 's unsatisfactory,' said Lady Thame, ' this
Kelly in San Francisco the whole winter, eating
his head off.'

* I have told him,' said Mrs. Tring, ' to employ
his time in tracing Herbert's literary output
further. He always signed his initials, "H. V. T.,"
so there should be no difficulty ; though the
style would be a perfect identification to any
of us who know it. Here is a sentence, for
instance : — " This westernisation of the race is
a crass and high-coloured experiment from which
the eye instinctively shrinks." Could any one
mistake if? How strange his fastidious note
must have sounded to that great city ! Perhaps
some soul understood — I hope so. There may
be other Englishmen there.'

*I don't know what he means,' said the lady
he had always called Aunt Pamela. ' The race
has got to go, I suppose, wherever there is room
for it and wherever it can strike root. Would
he find more to gratify his eye in Spitalfields '?
The faster we westernise the better I shall be
pleased. Anthony always said that the United
States was far more our possession than India,
for example. I don't know whether he would
say it now.' Lady Thame's eye gleamed com-
batively. * But we shall get him home in
another year, I hope. '

SET IN AUTHORITY 115

* Dear Pamela, why should you know what my
boy means — why should I ask you to know "?
The world is full of paths which we may safely
tread together — why should I tempt you to walk
upon a cloud? You are not formed for such
excursions. Never mind. We are here only to
fulfil the purposes of oiir own existence ; isn't it
so ? And I can imagine how vivid must be your
grief with Anthony. He seems to have gone
over hand and foot to Jingoism, to earth-hunger,
to the bloody tradition of the flag. They say he
is out-Heroding Herod in Thibet,' she added,
referring to a recent strongly Imperial adminis-
trator. ' How do you account for it — subliminally ? '

* I don't account for it — I write him letters,'
said Lady Thame, as one might say, *! don't
argue — I shoot.' ' But if I did I should put it
down to the pernicious influence of the East.T
When a dog grovels before you — '

* You don't stand it on its hind legs, or offer it
a chair, dearest Aunt Pamela,' put in Victoria,
looking up from her letters. 'Apropos, I am
writing to Anthony this very minute, and I want
Herbert's articles to send him, mother. They
shall go registered, and I know he will return
them promptly.'

The two elder women glanced at one another
instinctively. They had few points of agreement,

I but here was an interest that beckoned them over
the heads of all their propensities. Victoria was
writing to Anthony. They both knew Victoria
wrote to Anthony, but that did not rob her calm

116 SET IN AUTHORITY

announcement of any meaning that might lurk
in it. What meaning did lurk in it ? that was
what they sought one another's eyes to find
out.

*I think I might have been allowed to keep
them a little longer/ said Mrs. Tring, delivering
up the cuttings, * though I know them almost by
heart.'

* Sorry, but it 's Indian mail day/ replied her
daughter.

' I am afraid it will be no consolation to you/
Mrs. Tring went on, 'but Anthony is himself
becoming a great influence, a magnetic figure out
there against the sunrise. Frayley Sambourne
more than approves him — adores him.'

Lady Thame had opened her lips to say how
far she was consoled by this when the parlour-
maid announced Mr. Frayley Sambourne himself ;
so we shall never know.

' That isn't your place ! ' cried Mrs. Tring, as
he found a chair. ' No, I cannot have you there
— the light disfigures you. Thank you, Pamela
— if you wouldn't mind moving. He is such a
beatitude in bis own corner.'
^ ' I haven*t by any chance taken his cup and
saucer ? ' inquired Lady Thame grimly.

'Now don't pretend that I am silly,' cried
Mrs. Tring. * I have the only true wisdom : I
know it because it makes me so happy.' She
looked out at them confidingly from under her
fluffy hair, and Frayley Sambourne gave her the
kindest glance in return.

SET IN AUTHORITY 117

* What did you think of the debate last night ? '
he asked her.

* Oh, you deserved your victory. I thought
Craybrooke's vindication of England's right to
economic isolation marvellously convincing.
That sentence, " She will make here no alliances,
even with her children" — extraordinarily prob-
ing. And you, when it came to your turn — you
did not disappoint me.'

' Oh, I hadn't much to do,' Sambourne said,
thanking her with his eyes for all she had left
him to understand. *lt is easy enough,' he
turned with deference to Lady Thame, * to defend
the present administration of India ; and the
charge of coercive recruiting among the Sikhs
was too absurd. Might as well talk of coercive
conversion among the Santhalis. But I was
amazed to be able to hold so full a House.
Amazed and gratified. We have somehow
managed, our side, to revitalise interest in our
great Dependency. I candidly don't think so
many Members have been in their places through
the discussion of an Indian question since the
House listened to Burke.'

* Nothing rouses British feeling like an attempt
to undermine the liberties of British subjects,'
Lady Thame reminded them. * It strikes home
— it strikes home. I hope there was nothing in it
most profoundly. I shall ask Anthony himself.'

' I hesitate to suggest it, Lady Thame, but I
know your counsel will have weight with him ;
and I do wish, and so does Lord Akell, that some

118 SET IN AUTHORITY

good friend would say a wise word to him — our
wise words all have the official odium, you under-
stand— about his attitude toward these unfor-
tunate affairs between soldiers of British regiments
and natives. We — '

' So far,' interrupted Lady Thame uncompro-
misingly, 'it is the single feature of his administra-
tion in which I feel the smallest cause for pride.'

* Pride in the principle, in the unquestionably
lofty motive, by all means, dear Lady Thame.
But, also, how much more there is to consider !
We politicians have to look at things in the
rough, you know — in the block. The party
system yields a fair average of decent govern-
ment, that we may concede ; but it has no use,
as our excellent Transatlantic friends say, for
counsels of perfection.'

* I often wonder,' remarked Victoria musingly,
* how so much contempt has got into that
phrase.'

' I will not follow you, Frayley ! ' cried her
mother. *No, I will not. There is something
in me that refuses — refuses. I wish I could see
your aura at this moment. I am sure it would
betray you. What is the spiritual colour of
expediency ? '

* I don't know,' said Lady Thame, * but why
it should be advisable, in the interests of the
Liberal party, to let a great brute of a British
soldier knock about a helpless native is by no
means plain. Anthony has set his face against
it, and quite rightly.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 119

*It isn't quite so simple as that/ said Mr.
Sambourne. ' Of course I sympathise with
Anthony absolutely ; but it isn't quite so simple
as that. There is a question of the Courts, which
it would take too long to go into, and I am afraid
you would find very boring. I myself was routed
by the attempt to master it in half an hour before
lunch the other day. And it does not do to
antagonise so big a body as the British troops in
India. It *s not as if they stayed there. Already
I Ve seen two or three letters, highly inflammatory
to that class, that have appeared in various
quarters — mostly obscure publications, it 's true.
We're prepared to support old Anthony, of
course. Still — '

* Still ? ' repeated Victoria.

*Well, it's playing with petrol and matches.
At any moment a case might crop up with just
that quality of sentiment that acts upon the
British public — and another army grievance
wouldn't do us any good.'

* Personally,' retorted Lady Thame, * I should
be grateful for such a case ; 1 should like to see
my old Liberal colours nailed to it. Equal treat-
ment for black and white and no caste privilege.
Are we French, that we are afraid of our army ?
Fiddlesticks, Mr. Sambourne. You 're sitting up
too late at night.'

*I must say I believe British justice can take
care of itself,' he replied. * Now here, oddly
enough, is a case in point.' He took a news-
paper from his coat-pocket. ' One of these very

120 SET IN AUTHORITY

wretched instances of collision with natives. I '11
spare you the details, but the case happened,
rather unusually I fancy, to be tried by a
native, a Mahomedan, I imagine, by his name
— Sir Ahmed Hossein. Oddly the title goes
with it, doesn't it? Well, here we are. "The
case of the Emperor v. Henry Morgan, which
has been going on for the past week before the
Hon. Sir Ahmed Hossein, District and Sessions
Judge of Pilaghur, and a special jury, closed to-
day. The Court, in charging the jury, clearly
indicated the view that the accused, who is a
private in the Fifth Barfordshires, had committed
culpable homicide only, and the jury accordingly
brought in a verdict of guilty upon this count.
The judge proceeded to sentence Morgan to two
years' rigorous imprisonment. The fact that this
is the first case of a European being tried by a
native on a capital charge, added to the extreme
lightness of the sentence imposed, has excited
widespread comment throughout India." There
are signs of progress in that, I consider.'

* I hope there are signs of justice,' said Lady
Thame. * Who is this Sir Ahmed Hossein ? I
never heard of him.'

' Could he have been bribed ? * said Mrs.
Tring. * One is always told the native judiciary
is very corrupt. I should be anxious to know
that.'

'Well, I confess,' said the Under-Secretary
for India, ' that our chief anxiety is that our
people out there should let it alone.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 121

* It is a matter in which I should trust Anthony
completely/ said his mother.

* It was a crime of passion ; there is a play in
it/ cried Mrs. Tring, who had been reading the
paper. ' Bravo, Henry Morgan ! My genius is
at my elbow. I believe I could do it ! I must
keep this paper, Frayley.'

*I see opinion is against me,' said Mr. Sam-
bourne, with resignation, * unless I can get some
backing out of you. Miss Tring.' He called her
mother Deirdre ; but they were friends.

* I should like to know more about it first/
said Victoria, * but on the face of it, it looks to
me very like one of those matters in which it
would be wise to trust the man on the spot.*

Again her mother and Lady Thame exchanged
glances, this time with a smile.

'I am glad to find that you agree with me,
Victoria,' said her Aunt Pamela, and laid a
heavily approving hand upon her shoulder.

CHAPTER XII

The * widespread comment ' in India upon the
result of the Morgan case, reported in the
Calcutta telegram, had a touch of journalistic
exaggeration. Indian comment was not wide-
spread. Expectation had been. The spectacle
of an Englishman on trial before a native for a
capital offence against natives was not thought
edifying, to put it mildly, by the Anglo-Indian
Press. The inevitable consequence was hinted
here and there ; and more than one editorial pen
was dipped and ready to proclaim the impossi-
bility of accepting the decision, and the necessity
for instant appeal. One enterprising journal of
Calcutta had arranged in advance to receive
contributions to enable the case to be carried to
the nearest High Court, and was all ready with
a preliminary list of subscribers, to be published
with the judgment. The native journals were,
no doubt, equally ready to defend it ; but the
event left all parties without a word.

'Our esteemed British contemporaries,' re-
marked the Star of Islam^ ' are flabbergasted.
This has taken the wind out of their hats.'

But the Star of Islam had hardly more to say

13S

SET IN AUTHORITY 123

than its esteemed British contemporaries. It was
a kind of victory from the gods, and before the
campaign ; there would have been greater glory
in defeat, and one more historic grievance.

It was a good deal talked of, naturally, in
Pilaghur. Especially, and for a particular
reason, in the Club. I am sure I have not made
it plain that the Club was the nerve-centre of
Pilaghur. 'Everybody' belonged to it. Not
Miss Da Costa, of course, who made blouses, or
Mrs. Burbage, who made cakes, or the photo-
grapher, or the young man who had started a
bicycle agency from Cawnpore ; but everybody
else. All the people I have been describing, and
the station chaplain, and the doctor, and the
men on the staff of the Pilaghur College, and the
Army nurses, and even the missionaries. There
was no foolish exclusiveness about the Pilaghur
Club. The missionaries did not come to the
Club dances. As Mrs. Lenox used to point
out, they * never took advantage ' ; why, then,
should they not have the benefit of the library
and the tennis courts ? They were even ad-
mitted, with the Army nurses, at a low sub-
scription ; and when Miss Menzies, who never
appeared in anything but her white drill uniform
with the red collar and cuffs — took a pride in
it — but was in every way a lady though very
badly off, married the Settlement Officer, whom
she would have met nowhere but for Club
opportunities, everybody was quite pleased. If
Pilaghur had a body the Club was the heart of

124 SET IN AUTHORITY

it, the centre of interest, activity, news, amuse-
ment. You drove there every evening — for your
tennis, or your bridge, or your gossip, or to look
at the day's Renter, pinned up in the reading-
room. If you wanted to study the life of an
Indian station, as Mrs. Arden declared, you
would only have to sit there and look on. How
she wished, she often said, for the pen of the
ready writer, to describe what she saw in a
novel ; at which people always assured her she
could do it if she tried, they were certain.

The Pilaghur Club was very liberal, but it had
never yet permitted a native of India to be pro-
posed to its membership. The thing had hardly
been thought of. When the fat old Maharajah
of Pilaghur built them a new ball-room, leaving
the old one free for billiards, in obscure grati-
tude for his CLE., somebody had suggested
that the generosity should be recognised by an
honorary membership, no doubt some Mr. Cox,
newly arrived, with sensibilities not yet indur-
ated by the sun. But short work was made of
the proposition.

'My dear fellow,' he was told, *it's simply
impossible. When you have been out a year
you will understand. He 's a good old boy, and
we '11 give him a gymkhana, all to himself, and
get Metapora's fellows over for the tent-pegging.
But for Heaven's sake don't talk about letting
him in I '

And in the face of this conviction, which still
reigned undisturbed at the point of history

SET IN AUTHORITY 125

of which I write, the Chief Commissioner had
proposed Sir Ahmed Hossein.

Miss Pearce had seconded Mr. Arden's nomina-
tion ; which was so natural that people wondered
at it. ' There can't be anything in that affair,'
Mrs. Poynder Biscuit observed acutely. 'They
behave so exactly as if there were.'

They had hoped, Ruth and Eliot Arden, that
her name upon the nomination would suggest
that it would not be particularly objectionable to i
ladies, ladies being always the bugbear to social
commerce with Indian gentlemen.

' She undertakes too much,' said Mrs. Biscuit,
and perhaps she did. She belonged by nature to
the pioneers, who do not always look behind to
see whether people are coming along.

There was no special opposition among the
ladies. Though so usefully made to serve as
special pleading on occasion, they are rather
specially one with their husbands in a place like
Pilaghur; and their husbands had to remember
that it was, after all, the Chief Commissioner's
nomination. Some of them had to consider, to
put it brutally, that they themselves might any
day be the Chief Commissioner's nomination.
Arden heartily disliked this phase of his official
influence, but here, perhaps, was one of the cases in
which it seemed to him less obj ectionable ; in which
he might even, with his smile of humorous irony,
half count upon it. Little Biscuit, for instance.
Arden thought apologetically that they might
count on little Biscuit's vote, because of his size.

126 SET IN AUTHORITY

The Morgan case closed while Sir Ahmed's
name was still up. Very few votes had been
recorded, mostly safe ; but opposition threatened
in the regiments. The Barfords' mess were said
to be coming down in a body to register their
disapproval; and Davidson and Lamb of the
Guzeratis had been seen to ballot the wrong way
openly.

The Barfords did come dropping in, four or
five of them, to see how matters were going, the
afternoon of the day judgment and sentence had
been pronounced upon Morgan. They found the
place buzzing with it, and drew apart presently
for private consultation. The thing was admitted
astounding.

Morgan's own company,' said Devine, * would
have given him a jolly sight more.'

Kemp, Captain, inclined to the view Mrs.
Tring was to express a few hours later and six
thousand miles further west, that the District
and Sessions Judge had been bribed. ' They all
do it, those fellows,' he said, ' every man Jack of
'em. It's the only way to account for it.'

* Rot ! ' said Major Devine. * Where would the
money come from ? I hear the men are grumb-
ling uncommonly about the cost of the defence.
Besides, this chap Hossein's got enough of his own ;
and I don't think he 's that sort of chap anyhow.'

' Then why don't we want him in the Club 'i '
asked Loftus, subaltern.

* He 'fl a bally native,' replied Lascelles, another
subaltern, with shorter views.

SET IN AUTHORITY 127

*I don't see that it makes much diff to us,'
remarked Kemp, * whether he 's in or out. We
move along next year, in any case.'

'AH I can say is,' Devine told them, 'that by
taking the view he did, Hossein, or whatever his
name is, did an uncommon good turn to the
regiment. I don't see how Government 's going
to round on us, after this.'

'What '11 the CO. doT asked Lascelles.

'Abstain from voting if I know him.'

'Let's all abstain from voting,' proposed
Lascelles.

'No,' said Devine. 'He's going to get my
vote. '

' Damn it, I think so too,' announced Captain
Kemp.

' But ain't he finished already ? ' asked Peter
Loftus. 'I was dining with the Guzzies last
night, and I heard Lamb bragging that he and
Davidson had done the trick all by their little
selves.'

'The votes of Mr. Davidson and Mr. Lamb
can be neutralised,' their Major told them, with
a dignity that was peculiarly Barfordshire in
discussing the native regiment. 'There's been
no pilling in this place since I 've been here, I 'm
glad to say ; but here are the Club rules. I was
prepared for you fellows taking a different view,
so I brought them along.'

The situation was considered as it appeared
under the rules, and thought to offer no difficulty
to united action. They separated to whip up

128 SET IN AUTHORITY

votes, inspired by that resolute enthusiasm which
will sometimes, with this kind, take the place of
pure logic. Lascelles, last from Sandhurst, left
with a handspring over an arm-chair which the
white ants had eaten interiorly. 'Nevertheless
go it ! ' remarked the light-hearted youth as he
sat among the ruins.' ' Go it for Albert Hossein
— he 's an out-and-outer ! Good old Albert ! '

When, at a meeting of the committee three
days later, the fatal box was opened, Sir Ahmed
Hossein was declared duly elected a member of
the Pilaghur Club. Adverse desires need not be
considered ; they had been overcome. We need
not dwell, either, upon the comments of the
committee ; they bowed to the inevitable.

'Though if he wants to smoke his hookah
here,' said Mrs. Lemon firmly, * we will take it
away from him, that 's all. If there is one thing
I cannot abide it's the smell of a hookah.*

The Secretary at once advised Sir Ahmed that
he had been elected. Two or three times already
fortune had favoured this Mahomedan gentleman
of birth, wealth, education, and refinement. He
had been placed upon an important Commission,
had l)een decorated in recognition of his labours,
had been given this superior judgeship. But
none of these things, I may safely say, even his
Knight Companionship itself, had brought him
so happy a thrill as the little printed form of the
Pilaghur Club. We who have not been Maho-
medan gentlemen newly stamped with the social
recognition of anotlier world may easily not quite

SET IN AUTHORITY 129

understand. There is no reason to believe that
Lady Ahmed Hossein, sitting with her hand-
maids on the floor of a tall plastered house in
Mirnugger, working yellow birds with green
tails on magenta silk coverlets for the marriage
of her eldest daughter, understood at all. But
the District and Sessions Judge of Pilaghur
wiped tears from his eyes as he made his hasty
way to the residence of his more than ever
friend, the Honourable the Chief Commissioner.

It was Sunday morniilg. He met Mrs. Arden
driving to church, a duty she had to be punctilious
about, since Eliot would so seldom go. She was
even more careful about her appearance on this
account, so subtly do official considerations
operate ; and she was looking very nice as she
leaned forward to give Sir Ahmed, without dis-
tinction of race, the slightly more pronounced
and gracious bow which she had for senior mem-
bers of * the Service.' He felt a throb of admira-
tion for her as she trundled away to her devotions,
a welling up of appreciation for all that she repre-
sented. Perhaps he even bravely considered the
steps necessary to put Lady Ahmed Hossein into
a carriage and set her rolling up and down the
roads of Pilaghur in imitation. If so, it was
only gratitude moving on his soul ; he knew
quite well that Lady Ahmed Hossein sat in an
obscurity deeper than that of any parasol ; nor
did he wish to bring her out of it.

Arden turned in his revolving office chair as
Sir Ahmed was ushered in, and was about to get

I

130 SET IN AUTHORITY

up when his visitor, approaching him quickly,
said, with a look of alarm, * Please sit perfectly
still.' Arden stiffened himself, and Sir Ahmed,
stretching out his hand, deftly and gingerly,
picked an ugly thing from the Chief Commis-
sioner's shoulder. It was a large, black, hairy
scorpion ; and it hung in the air, helpless from
its own weight and clawing, suspended from its
captor's finger and thumb, which held the creature
by the horny poison-bag at the end of its tail.

' By Jove ! Drop it, man ! ' Arden exclaimed ;
but the District Judge continued to hold it up
as it were to indignation for a moment, then
walked across the room and threw it out of the
window.

* Well, I would have hesitated to take hold of
a fellow like that,' said Arden, ' I thought I felt
something on my back. Thank you very much.
But we ought to have killed the brute.'

* Catch him I can easily do ; it is a simple
trick. But I could not kill him,' said the Judge
smiling. ' " Do not destroy the life thou canst
not give " — I think the Jains say something like
that. I am not a Jain, but by my own hand I
cannot kill. I will not subtract from the life of
the world and add to the death. It is like sub-
tracting from the good and adding to the evil'

* I agree with you ; but I am an instinctive
murderer of things that make for the back of my
neck,* said Arden laughing. * I wish my wife
would not insist on so many curtains. Scorpions
and centipedes are too much of a concession to

SET IN AUTHORITY 131

the aesthetic. But tu kill nothing ! I sometimes
think you are not a Mussulman at all, Judge*

'No — perhaps. I am an individual. I take
my religion where I can get it — a little here, a
little there. This twentieth century permits that.
Keligion is a world-product ; and the time is
past, I think, to fight for only one kind.'

' Oh, there I am with you, too.'

* And, sir, the Supreme Source — how un-
fathomable it is ! 1 can understand that a
divinity might make a stone. 1 could almost '
— he laughed apologetically — * show him how !
Or a human being. But who created oppor-
tunity ? Who made time 1 '

Ardeu assented a little uncomfortably, and
glanced at his files. There were regions he
could not explore at a moment's notice, even in
this intelligent company. * Well, it was uncom-
monly lucky for me that you — '

' But I have come with my thanks,' inter-
rupted Sir Ahmed. * Yesterday I was elected to
the Club. This is for me great promotion, and
it is to your distinguished help and kindness
that I owe this thing. Under God,' he added
seriously.

* Oh, my dear fellow,' said Arden with a smile
he could not repress. 'Well, that's capital.'

* I have been much troubled in the matter,'
said the Judge. ' I was already ashamed to have
asked membership. I expected refusal — no less.
It was keeping me awake almost as much as the
Morgan case,' he confessed, laughing.

132 SET IN AUTHORITY

* No need in the world,' declared Arden. * I
hadn't a doubt of the result.'

' It was the military element that might have
been hostile — those young officers. But perhaps
they were pleased that I did not hang Morgan,
and so did not hang me,' laughed Morgan's
benefactor.

The joke was a little unguarded. The Chief
Commissioner looked gravely at the paper-cutter
he was playing with. * I hope we are out of that
business,' he said.

* Oh, Morgan will not appeal.'

' I should think not, indeed ! There isn't
another court in the country that would take as
lenient a view.'

Sir Ahmed looked as if he would deprecate so
generous an appreciation.

' There were many things to consider,' he said.
' Better let one man off too easily than inflame
the passions of thousands.'

* I think,' he went on with shining eyes, * I
will give a ball to those young — to the Club.
And 1 will have the music and supper from
Calcutta. I will give a good ball.'

Arden was silent for a moment before this
proposition. Then lie said, ' I think I wouldn't,
Sir Ahmed. Perhaps later. Look — I'll give
the ball. It will be better. You must consent
to be my guest that evening.'

Sir Ahmed rose and made an impulsive step
forward. * I cannot dispute your wish, sir. But
my heart melts at your good will. Oh, why are

SET IN AUTHORITY 133

there not more natures like yours among our
rulers ? Then would all bad feeling between the
races disappear.

" My mother bore me in the southern wild, 1
And I am black, but 0, my soul is white ! " .

And you, sir, will well remember that

"We are put on earth a little space
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove."

Is it not beautifully said "? '

The Chief Commissioner was too well accus-
tomed to Eastern emotion to be deeply embar-
rassed. He got up, smiling, to end the interview.
' I see you know Blake,' he said.

' Oh yes. The most wonderful of our poets, do
you not believe ? Shakespeare is perhaps the
greatest, or do you say Milton, but that William
Blake is surely the most wonderful.'

With this he went. The smile of pleasure
and of kindness deepened with a touch of amuse-
ment in Arden's eyes. * "Our" poets,' he repeated,^
half aloud, and turned to his work again.

One comment upon the light sentence inflicted
upon Private Morgan I have forgotten. It was
Hiria's — Hiria who was on such terms of fearful
intimacy with Gurdit Singh, the policeman that
watched over the house of Gobind and Junia

134 SET IN AUTHORITY

while they still lay waiting for the law and the
coroner. She came with infinite circumlocution
to the point of asking her mistress what the
punishment would be.

* Two years to sit in gaol/ she repeated with
approbation. ' Is it not too much, miss-sahib ;
for, whatever is said, was the gorah not the cause

of all r

* Too much, Hiria 1 ' exclaimed Ruth. * Many
people think it too little.'

* Yes, miss-sahib, very little. Too little, per-
haps, but God is merciful. I was much afraid.
I said, " You will see, he will be hanged, because
of the Lord Sahib." But two years haidi (im-
prisonment), that is not too much. And now
perhaps the gorah-people will give less dick and
trouble to the poor.'

CHAPTER XIII

The Chief Commissioner and Mrs. Arden gave
the dance. Mrs. Arden could not help feeling it
an extravagance, with such an excellent floor in
their own house, and the boys costing such an
amount at home, to give it at the Club. One
had to think of these things.

* And you know,' she confided to Mrs. Lemon,
* what education is coming to in England nowa-
days.*

And Mrs. Lemon stoutly backed her up, and
scolded the Chief Commissioner. Poor Jessica,
she invariably had one eye on Eliot and the other
on the boys at home, while he seemed to look
straight in front of him always, and see nothing
but what he had to do. She gave in easily, as
usual, about the dance, and — though Mrs. Lemon
quite agreed with her that it was ' enough ' to
have had the new Judge twice to dinner already
— helped the odd word with which Eliot suggested
its rather special intention.

•Why didn't he put "To meet Sir Ahmed
Hossein, K.C.I.E.," on the cards at once and be
done with it 1 ' demanded Mrs. Arthur Poynder
Biscuit of Mr. Biscuit when nobody could hear

135

136 SET IN AUTHORITY

her, with that superior savoir Jane that came to
her so naturally from Ealing.

' I expect that would make it too marked,' said
Mr. Biscuit. ' We 're all supposed to have met
him, you see. Well, the Chief has decided
to do this thing — he didn't consult me — and
there's nothing more to be said. But mind,
Lena, no dancing with Hossein. That I will
not have. If he asks you, you have no dances
left'

' I danced with the Maharajah of Kala Jong at
Government House in Calcutta,' rebutted Mrs.
Biscuit, who was provocative always, even to
her husband.

' That was quite a different thing. Everybody
knows Kala Jong ; he 's been taken up in Eng-
land to the most idiotic extent. Marchionesses
curtsey to him — disgusting — but he 's a sportsman,
and as English as he can make himself.'

*And dances like an angel. But as to this
man,' Mrs. Biscuit posed the tremendous ques-
tion, ' what about going in to dinner 1 At the
Chief's the other night, Mrs. Beverly flatly re-
fused— told the Aide she simply wouldn't. Upset
everything at the last minute, and the l)oy had to
take her in himself. But of course — '

' She 's military and can do as she likes. Still
I object — I strongly object — to your being sent
in to dinner with a native. Let somebody else

fo. And I will sec that you are not. Anywhere
ut at Government House, I will protest myself
— quietly, you know. No use giving offence,

SET IN AUTHORITY 137

but I'll see that it doesn't happen. Of course
if Mrs. Arden does it — '

' We can't make a fuss/ his wife agreed, and
so they left the matter.

Whatever its private feelings, Pilaghur sacri-
ficed them and came to the dance.

'On her account,' people said, everybody
absolutely must turn up, referring to Mrs.
Arden. Mrs. Arden was so kind, so charming
to everybody, so * exactly the same ' under
whatever circumstances you met her, that it
was unanimously felt the thing mustn't be 'a
frost.' Besides it would really take more than
the honoured presence of a single native gentle-
man to put Pilaghur seriously out of humour
with a dance. What was life in Pilaghur?
Work, hard work, too, upon the unstimulating
interests of an alien race, people to whom you
must build the bridge of sympathy. And for all
complement to that, one another — one, too, we
may whisper, so like another ! Was it Egerton
Faulkner or somebody else who said that no
Anglo-Indian could hope for an individuality
until he got home ; and then he could never^
escape that of the Anglo- Indian ? For everything
that enriches the fabric of life, all the pattern
and the colour, they had one another, at the
dance, the dinner, and the tennis-party ; add
the gymkhana, with another nought. It was
the merest scaffolding of social life ; but they
clung to it with a zest curiously born of all that
it was not. In spite of its sterility of atmo-

138 SET IN AUTHORITY

sphere — one has only to consider forty or fifty
human souls of the human average, remote and
isolated from the borrowed graces and interests
of their own world, planted where they can never
take root, slowly withering to the point of retire-
ment— ' society ' in Pilaghur stood for companion-
ship, intercourse, stimulus such as it was, valuable
^^things even such as they were. For Mr. and Mrs.
Biscuit society had importance and something like
brilliancy as well. There was the question of pre-
cedence worked down to a theory of atoms ; there
was ceremonial always, and often champagne ;
there was, indeed, a great deal to intrigue and
excite Mr. and Mrs. Biscuit. And even with
people to whom it did not quite represent the
world it stood for certain worldly values ; and it
was all there was. The Chief Commissioner's
dance at the Club will therefore, I hope, be
understood as an event.

* Everybody is so kind,' declared Mrs. Arden.
Everybody was. Mrs. Lemon lent two small
drawing-room sofas and any number of 'drapes.'
Mrs. Wickham contributed a standard lamp, with
a Liberty tulip shade which she had brought out
in her hat-box and loved more than any hat.
Spoons were gathered everywhere, and from Mrs.
Carter, the Barford shires' doctor's wife, a dozen
Japanese coffee cups, the sweetest things. The
decorations were in the capable hands of Mrs.
Egerton Faulkner, who always did the church for
weddings too — loved doing it, you could not
prevent her — and she slaved at them till seven

SET IN AUTHORITY 139

that evening, assisted till three by Mrs. Biscuit ;
who then went home to put her hair up and lie
down. Mrs. Arden, who was so far from strong,
had been by general compulsion lying down all
day. In the end, with old Afghan weapons from
the Barfords' mess, and palms and flags from
Government House, and red cloth on hire from
Ali Bux, and the Club's own Japanese lanterns,
it all looked charming.

It was noticed at once and with relief that Sir
Ahmed Hossein did not dance in the ' State '
Lancers. The State Lancers strictly deserved
their name only where a Viceroy led them, and
bowed and chassded opposite a Commander-in-
Chief; but Pilaghur, remember, was a capital,
and had its Chief Commissioner and its General
Commanding, who had only to exchange wives,
and there at once was the microcosm of the
greater world. The other six couples had to be
rather carefully selected. It always gave Cap-
tain Dimmock, A.D.C., some anxiety till it was
over — but a man gets accustomed to handling
even these delicate matters, and, as a rule, there
was no criticism. If it were a question between
Forests and Police, he would solve the difficulty
by putting in the male of one Department and
the female of the other, who would usually
dance together. Captain Dimmock was praised
for tact by everybody ; and Mrs. Arden con-
stantly said she didn't know what on earth she
would do without him.

Sir Ahmed did not dance in the State Lancers

140 SET IN AUTHORITY

and Mrs. Biscuit did. Little Biscuit looked on
with knit brows until he saw this consummation,
and then expressed his relieved conviction to Mr.
Cox that Sir Ahmed would not dance at all.

*It's a pity he left Terpsichore out of that
classical degree of his, which I hear was other-
wise good,' remarked Cox with the eye of
initiative upon the second Miss Hillyer — Salt
Department — the fair one. * Might just as well
have picked up dancing at Oxford ; and it would
have made him more popular.'

' Do you think so ? ' returned Mr. Biscuit, with
the glance of long suffering dissent which by this
time he had in readiness for the robust views
of his junior. Then his better feelings overcame
him.

* Look here, Cox,' he said, * let me tell you
something. Don't go about saying things like
that. They're not understood, you know, out
here. Do you harm, you know. If you 're not
careful you'll be getting identified with the
Young India party. Congress- wallah — that sort
of thing, you know. Bad for a man officially.'

Charles Cox looked for an instant insubordi-
nate ; a spark of the Union stood in his eye.
Then his glance fell upon Mr. Egerton Faulkner,
elegantly erect, wearing an eye-glass of infinite
sophistication, bowing whimsically to his part-
ner with his hand upon his heart, and travelled
from him to the Chief Commissioner, marked
already by the indefinable writing of distinction,
and on over the score of vigorous and qualified-

SET IN AUTHORITY 141

looking men who represented for him, in their
diflferent ways, the sum of wisdom and of
seniority.

* Thanks,' he said, ' I must remember.'
Mrs. Arden often mentioned to friends how
much she and Eliot were to one another, and
what a different thing such an understanding
made of life. She spoke, I fear, from memory ;
but I know no one but myself who would have
had that fancy, unless, in moments of most private
confession, it might have been Ruth Pearce. To '
others it was plain that Mrs. Arden told only the
beautiful truth. She made a point of having an
opinion upon everything that interested her
husband ; and if it was generally his opinion, that
might well prove how much they were in accord.j
All through life, where he had harvested, she
came gleaning after. She had a bowing
acquaintance with nearly all his books. Some-
times she even managed to read them, doing best
in biographies and letters; and in India, where
ladies like Mrs. Arden are so involved with social
duties, we are fortunately divorced by only a
fortnight from the London literary papers. The
little woman's innocent reputation for wide read-
ing rested, really, upon a single volume — Oher-
mann. Soon after they arrived she asked a great
many people, one after another, if they had read
Ohermann. None of them had, and several
inquired what else he had written, which neces-
sitated a tactful explanation. She had not read
the book herself, as it happened, and, as a matter

142 SET IN AUTHORITY

of fact, never did ; but it was lying at the time
on Eliot's office table, and she fully meant to.

T- She had two objects in life. One was the boys
at home, the other to 'keep up' with Eliot.
' The worst of having a clever husband,' she
would explain, 'is that you 7nust keep up.'
Eliot was her sun; she circled round him,
warmed by her revolutions. Whether she kept
up or not, it was plain that she could never keep

Laway. Even in the literal sense she could not ;
she could hardly leave him to his secretaries.
Inevitably she would join his group and add
herself to his conversations. Together with her
devotion she had a kind of futile flair, poor lady,
of the unusual and the interesting, and followed
it hungrily, arriving too often to And a spectral
banquet.

'Now isn't it a good thing, Sir Ahmed,' she
exclaimed playfully, as they sat together on the
dais and watched the waltzing, * that I 'm not a
jealous woman ? There is my husband dancing
again with Mrs. Lemon ! ' She knew always
where he was, and precisely what he was
doing.

* I think the Chief Commissioner could never
give cause for jealousy,' replied Sir Ahmed,
smiling not quite comfortably. Ho was here on
unsure ground. But the little lady prattled on.

* Now that is just like your sex — you always
back one another up ! As a matter of fact, he
isn't very fond of dancing. I wish he were. It
keeps a man young in this country, I think.

SET IN AUTHORITY 143

Nor is he much of a ladies' man, I 'm afraid, Sir
Ahmed. Of course, he has one great friend — I
think you've met her — Dr. Pearcc.'

*0h yes — that not quite young lady. She
is very learned, 1 suppose,' said Mrs. Arden's
Oriental guest.

* Oh, she is not old^ Sir Ahmed. If she is not
quite young, dear me, what are all we senior
married women ! And very clever, very clever

^ indeed in her profession.'

The Mahomedan gentleman turned dai'kly red
and cast down his eyes. He had gone as far as
he dared, being not yet emancipated enough to
banter with a woman on the terrible subject of
age. Lady Ahmed, to the world, was without
years, as Queen Elizabeth was without legs.
*So I am already told,' he said awkwardly.

* She is quite a wonderful surgeon — does the
most difficult things. She has only been out
two years, and operations in her hospital have
gone up twenty-five per cent, already. But per-
haps,' Mrs. Arden suggested, her eye following
her husband as he deposited Mrs. Lemon, red
and radiant, under a palm, and left her there,
'you would rather women did not go in for
cutting people into little bits. It does jar upon
some minds.'

* It is useful,' Sir Ahmed shrugged. ' And in
this poor retrograde India, where our ladies are
always still behind the curtain — '

' Oh, a great boon — I always say so. But
perhaps it makes a woman just a trifle hard.

lU SET IN AUTHORITY

Don't you think it might ? Please don't think
I mean to yay that Miss Pearce is hard — or if she
gives that impression, it is because she has such
splendid principles. Really the finest character —
my husband and I are proud to know her, truly.'

* That must be very favourable for Miss
Pearce.'

* Oh, indeed, it is the other way. She is a
great resource to us both. There are so few
people in a place of this size that care about
anything but promotion and official shop — it's
not like Simla, you know. And Miss Pearce is
really interested in what I call the higher side of
life — books and ideas. Not that she and I always
agree by any means in our opinion of an author.
But my husband and I both find her, in that way,
a true kindi'ed soul. So much so that the moment
a package of books comes out from home, off" some
of them must go to Dr. Pearce — sometimes before
I have had time even to look at them,' Mrs. Arden
added, with a pretence of grievance. * You must
get to know her, Sir Ahmed.'

* I have had the honour to be introduced by the
Chief Commissioner himself. I thought her a lady
of very fine intelligence,' replied the Judge,
cautiously.

' Ob, but to know her welJ, as we do. I must
ask you to tea to meet her. You, 1 am sure,
such a leader of thought in your own world,
would appreciate her. It is such a co^ufort to me
that the Chief should have a type of mind like
that to turn to when he has an hour to spare from

SET IN AUTHORITY 145

work — he is a monster for work, as you know.
And cares so little for ordinary amusements.
But I think he has been allowed to monopolise
her long enough just now — don't you? Suppose
we go and claim a share of her, Sir Ahmed ? '

They made their way across the crowded floor,
the Mahomedan deferentially escorting, Mrs.
Arden caught everywhere by petitions for
dances, important communications from ladies
neighbouring her own standing, or fluttering
approaches from junior civilians' wives who must
just tell her how beautifully everything was
going. Smiling, she gathered their tributes with
l)oth hands. Perhaps the flow of her privileged
talk was a little too unpausing. It was her way
of putting people at their ease never to give them
the smallest opening for being anything else.
They had simply to stand still under the warm
douche which descended upon them, and slip
away as best they could when it was over. But
it was quite a successful way. It was held to
show, as Mrs. Arden meant it to be, how little
'side' she had; and that, where side was so likely,
was the great thing. This was her happy little
hour. She saw in all their words and glances how
successfully she was 'making it pleasant' ; she loved
making it pleasant. It was the natural motion
of her kind heart, and here it had the charm and
gilding of Imperial function which made it, per-
haps, even more pleasant for the devoted little
lady herself. *In my position' was a phrase
often on her lips and always in her heart, a

K

146 SET IN AUTHORITY

trumpet call to lofty duty, to receiving with a
headache, to ' appearing ' at gymkhanas when a
quiet drive was so much more inviting, to asking
tiresome people to dinner because they would
expect it of the person in her position. Her
position w^as remote, it was a temporary holding
and set about with the prickly cactus, but she
had climbed to it under Eliot's glorious lead ;
and its satisfactions were very real. She tasted
them all as she progressed to where he sat on a
flowered chintz chair, in the attitude of simple con-
verse with Miss Pearce. It was the tone, too, of
common intercourse with which he was saying : —

* How can you know anything about your
spiritual force — vibration, or whatever it is"?
That is for others to measure. I might be
wandering, after death, sightless, dea^ and
dumb — bereft of all but my very Principle
itself, and coming upon your essence in the
same trance, my soul would cry in the won-
derful shock of it, '• Oh, it 's you ! " '

Ruth's eye fell upon the approaching lady.

' Here is Mrs. Arden,' she said. * How well
she is looking.'

And with Mrs. Arden I fancy the ball-room
closed in upon them again, and the lights and
the music and the scent of flowers ; and they
both saw the tragedy of Mrs. Biscuit's spangled
chifi*on rent by Major De vine's spur, and observed
that Miss Hillyer of the Salt Department, the
fair one, was dancing for the third time with
Mr. Charles Cox.

CHAPTER XIV

The Government of India had hardly settled
down in Calcutta for the cold weather, Members
of Council had hardly ceased to grumble at the
winter rents of their stucco palaces, or Under-
Secretaries to repine at the discomforts of Chow-
ringhee boarding-houses, when word crept into
the newspapers that His Excellency the Viceroy
was extremely dissatisfied with the verdict and
sentence in the Morgan case. The newspapers
could hardly believe it. I speak, of course, of
the Anglo-Indian ones.

' We should have thought,' wrote the Calcxctta
Morning Post, ' that in this instance, if anywhere,
the claims of justice had been conscientiously and
conspicuously met. The verdict upon the offence
of Henry Morgan was rendered by a jury half
composed of natives and entirely drawn from the
place in which that offence was committed, and
therefore not likely to take a palliated view.
Morgan was sentenced, leniently it is true, but
by a native civilian judge. Sir Ahmed Hossein's
decision places him at all events beyond the sus-
picion of race prejudice in dealing with such
cases, and adds to his already distinguished

I

147

148 SET IN AUTHORITY

reputation for probity and fair-mindedness.
This case, if any, should be one to allay what
we can only call, with all respect, His Excel-
lency's mania for interference with the decisions
of the Courts in pursuit of some sublimated
adjustment of the scales of justice, which
apparently he alone feels capable of balancing ;
and we profoundly hope that further inquiry will
prove the statement that it is to be reopened to
be groundless.*

Further inquiry, however, brought forth tliat
the record of the case had been sent for and the
Administration of Ghoom asked to furnish a com-
plete report of the circumstances. After careful
examination the Government of India would send
the papers to its own legal servant for opinion.
No action would be taken until the view of the
Advocate-General had been received. With so
much the newspapers and the public had to be
content. The official bow was made ; the official
curtain fell. *That fellow takes a lot of teach-
ing,' they said at the Calicut Club, referring to
Lord Thame and his recent unsuccessful invita-
tion to the underetanding of the High Court of
Bombay in the I^affan case. They said many
other things at the Calicut Club, which was
largely composed of merchants and professional
men, with no curb upon their tongues like the
official Biscuits of Pilaghur; but they looked
with confidence to the Advocate-General, Rivers
Finch. * Finch '11 squash it,' they said to one
another over their long tumblei-s.

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Just why Finch didn't squash it, if it was so
completely in his power, is not easy to determine.
To treat such a case like a noxious insect is so
simple and obvious a course. He was at once
provided by the Calcutta world with motives — he
wanted the Legal Membership : he hoped for a * K* :
he had fallen under the personal influence of Lord
Thame — but I know nothing to prevent our con-
cluding that he simply agreed with the Viceroy
in the moral aspect of the case, and performed
his function by finding a technical fault in its
conduct. At all events he armed his Govern-
ment with a misdirection to the jury, and the
Secretary in the Home Department wrote
promptly to the Chief Commissioner of Ghoom.

The letter reached Pilaghur in the morning,
and the Ardens were to look in upon Ruth
Pearce in the afternoon. Ruth had been away
for a fortnight, attending a patient in a neigh-
bouring native State. Mrs. Arden was detained,
and the Chief Commissioner went alone. * Tell
her I teas so sorry,' Mrs. Arden said to him as he
left.

Ruth got up quickly to meet him as he entered
her drawing - room, with a simplicity that she
seemed to enforce. She may /have wished to
disguise from him, from herself, the truth that
her day was culminating in his expected step.
She had nothing for him but the commonplaces
of welcome — where w^ould he sit, and tea would
be there directly — and she seemed to look at
him almost unwillingly. AVhen she did, the

150 SET IN AUTHORITY

extraordinary emotion in her eyes was half
hidden behind a veil of dignity which covered
the rest of her completely, through which she
moved and even spoke. It was her protest
against their situation, and no one, he least of
aU, could have ignored it.

* How long you have been away,' he said.
' How is the Rani 1 '

* Getting on very well, I think. But I was
only allowed to see her three days ago. She
developed light smallpox the day I arrived, and
until she had recovered from that they wouldn't
let me go near her. Smallpox is a direct com-
munication of annoyance from the gods ; and the
only treatment was administered by the priests,
who sat outside her door and chanted from their
sacred books all day and all night. I would have
l)rought down only more anger. As soon as she
was better she went personally to the village
^shrine to sacrifice a kid and feed the Brahmins —
I saw the ceremony ; it was very interesting —
and next day they came for me. Her other
trouble was not serious. I was able to relieve
her immediately, and came flying back yes-
terday.'

She spoke quickly and rather nervously, as if
she feared a wrong word.

' And you have been sitting all this time in
some miserable rest-house, with nothing to do.
Absurd. You should have come home.'

* Not at all 1 I had a whole wing of a pink
palace with wonderful old Chinese vases in it — I

SET IN AUTHORITY 151

did feel covetous — and a carriage and pair with
silver harness, where it wasn't rope, every day,
and one evening a little nautch all to myself.
I don't think they would have let me come
away.*

His eyes smiled at her, and her own fell, as if
it had not been quite seemly to provoke the
smile.

'Well — by the way, my wife was kept this
afternoon. She asked me to bring her excuses,
and hopes you will dine on Sunday. We shall
be quite alone.'

* Oh — hasn't Mrs. Arden — isn't Mrs. Arden
coming ? I am very sorry. Give her my love,
please, and say I shall be delighted to come on
Sunday. I hope she has been quite well. No
more neuritis ? '

'Quite, thanks. I was going to say that I
have been visited like your Rani. I also have
had a direct communication of annoyance from
the gods.'

She looked at him with sudden gravity. ' Not
really ? '

' I 'm sorry to say yes. It 's the Morgan case,
of course. We 've heard from India.'

' They won't have it ? '

* They want me to move the High Court of
Calcutta and get the case retried. Sir Ahmed
went too far, apparently, in charging the jury,
and this gives them a chance.'

* And shall you 1 '

' I 'm not inclined to.'

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' Then you don't think that justice — mis-
carried ? '

* I think justice carried rather obliquely. I
think culpable homicide, on the evidence, was
the right verdict, and not murder; but I also
think Morgan should have got a good deal more.
It seems plain to me, however, that much bigger
issues are involved than the proper punishment of
one man. For myself I would rather see him go
free than let him incite the storm of race feeling
and antagonism that will ravage our relations
with these people if the case comes up again.'

Ruth silently considered the matter. Behind
her grey eyes she put it to one touch-stone after
another.

* You see,' he explained to her, * during the last
ten years there has been something like a recru-
descence of the particular crime of which Morgan
was guilty. Curzon drew the rein a bit tight,
and after him came a reaction. And now
Thame wants to take up an unmistakable posi-
tion. It 's his idea, I think, if he can get hold
of the white murderer of a black man, to hang
him.'

* And you think he should not be hanged 1 '

* Not by any Viceroy, with any intention of
\ setting up for ever, at such a creature's expense,

the lofty integrity of British rule. If his judge
hangs him, well and good. But when all is said
and done, the high- water mark of British justice
is found in the Courts. If it is tempered with
mercy here and expediency there, that is because

SET IN AUTHORITY 153

it is human, or perhaps because it is divine. But
for Heaven's sake let us leave it to its appointed
medium. Nothing could be madder than the
attempt to do it violence for its own good. It is
like undertaking to add to the pain and discipline
of the world. God knows there is enough.'

* But it is still to the Courts that the Govern-
ment wish to appeal.'

' It is also from the Courts that they wish to
appeal. The man has been tried and sentenced.
In pushing for a new trial they declare their dis-
satisfaction with the first Court and their hope,
possibly of a difterent verdict, certainly of a
severer sentence. I consider that their very
attitude is improperly suggestive and likely to
influence a weak judge. It's an extraordinary
step. Of course Thame has taken it before, and
failed. He might fail again. But it shan't go
further, if I can help it.'

* You think you can help it ? '

* I hope so. They instruct me to take action
" if in my opinion " the circumstances warrant it.
That is mere ofticial courtesy, of course ; they
expect me to go ahead. But I 've written them,
or Faulkner has for me, a strong letter, stating
that in my opinion the circumstances do not
warrant it. He has worked the thing up very
well, and I hope we may block it.'

'What view does Mr. Faulkner take per-
sonally ? '

' Oh, he agrees with me. But Faulkner's
views ' — he smiled whimsically. * Faulkner is a

154 SET IN AUTHORITY

very good fellow, but he turns out views like a
typewriter. '

Euth thought again seriously for a moment.
Her face, in its concentration, unconsciously
showed its lack ; it had not the grace of
leniency.

* I don't know the value of the arguments one
way or the other,' she said, * but it is clear that
your instinct against doing this springs from
something fundamental in you, just as the
Viceroy's instinct for doing it springs from some-
thing fundamental in him. Then you can't do
it, can you ? '

In his eyes while he watched her was the
whole hunger of the man for understanding ; he
absorbed what she said rather than listened to it ;
and as she glanced at him he looked away with
an air that betrayed consciousness of his own
avidity.

* I need not do it,' he said, half to himself.

* And they cannot proceed unless you do ? '

' They cannot proceed unless I do — so long as
I am Chief Commissioner of Ghoom,' Arden told
her. ' They might override me — the law provides
for it ; but practically they couldn't.'

'Then, of course, you won't,' she simplified.
' The Viceroy wanting it makes it the more
impossible, doesn't it ?

* In a way,' said Arden. * Not impossible,
but—'

' I sometimes feel very attracted by Lord
Thame,' Ruth mused. *I think if I had been

SET IN AUTHORITY 155

under his iuliuence 1 might have takeu his view
of the Morgan case. But you have captured my
mind. Yes, I agree with you. I shall think
more about it, but I know I shall agree with you.
I am against him.'

'He is a man with a violent conscience and
rather short perspective,' said Arden.

* I like it in him. I should have despised him
if he had not felt compelled to take this matter
up,' she declared. * I believe I would have done
it in his place.'

* I believe you would,' he said, criticising her
from a distance, but soon drew close again.

'He can't help it — he oughtn't to help it.

Isn't it curious,' Ruth went on, 'that Lord
j Thame should have been predestined to persecute
; Morgan, and you predestined to protect him,

from exactly the same motive — what you believe
i to be right. The Viceroy's is the more heroic

attitude, because it is the more unpleasant. I

wish I agreed with him. This will make him

more unpopular than ever.'

* I think he rather enjoys his unpopularity,'
said Arden, smiling. ' It convinces him that he
is right.*

' I should hate being a popular Viceroy,*
exclaimed Ruth. ' Think what it means — the
winkings, the compromises, the smile for every-
body ! I should feel as if I had wasted a
splendid opportunity of disciplining myself for a
principle.'

' You could not even be a popular woman,' he

156 SET IN AUTHORITY

declared ; and she took the tribute out of its
husk and smiled with keen pleasure.

' I hope Mrs. Arden isn't very much worried
about it,' she said presently.

* My wife — oh, I haven't mentioned it to her.
She is worried about something else. "We heard
by to-day's mail that our second boy — the one at
Heidelberg — was threatening to develop typhoid.
Jessica was for starting for home at once, but she
has consented to postpone deciding till we get
an answer to my telegram of this morning. I
don't approve. She is anything but fit for
the voyage.'

* Oh, if it 's serious, let her go. She will be
ill if she doesn't. We shall have her down with
nervous prostration. She is not well enough to
bear suspense and inaction.'

'Nothing very serious was anticipated, and
Teddy is a strong little chap,' he told her, and
set forth the boy's symptoms as he was when the
mail left. She agreed that they were not alarm-
ing ; but her thought returned to the mother.

* Promise me that you won't influence her
against what she thinks she ought to do,' she
said.

Arden gave her an unwilling glance. * Always
with you, ** what one thinks one ought."' He
half reproached her. 'Does no one else ever
know best ? '

' Possibly, but one isn't bound by the beliefs
of others. One is bound by one's own.'

They came back so constantly, these two, to

SET IN AUTHORITY 157

the question of conscience, duty, right. ItJJ
seemed always just below the level of their
thoughts ; the least reference disclosed it. They
were for ever inciting one another to this abstract
consideration ; if it lurked under any aspect of
any subject they would have it out, and fling it
back and forth between them. One would say
they drew a mutual support and encouragement
from the exercise ; one might go further and say
that one offered it to the other.

'Poor Jessica, she has had a bad day,' said
Arden. There is sickness among the servants
too. Old Nubbi Bux has got something like
pneumonia, I 'm afraid. He wouldn't give in —
came crawling up with our early tea this morning
as usual ; but Jessie saw that he wasn't fit to be
about, and ordered him to bed at once. The old
fellow has been with us a long time — ever since
we were married ; and my wife is very fond of
him. She has been fussing over him the whole
morning.'

' I will run in and see him to-night,' said Ruth
promptly. * I shall be in the direction of Govern-
ment House early after dinner. I know my way
about the quarters, and I won't disturb Mrs.
Arden, but I '11 leave a note ; or, if it 's urgent,
I '11 ask for Captain Dimmock.'

'That's very kind of you. Murray sent a
Bengali hospital assistant, much to Jessie's indig-
nation. But ask for me, please. I should like
to know what you think of the old fellow.'

For a moment their eyes met in the pleasure

158 SET IN AUTHORITY

of that suggestion. Then Ruth said gently, ' I
think Captain Dimmock will do,' and he made
no more protest.

* I am sending you back The Nature of Man*
she said to him ; ' I am glad to have seen it in a
translation. I know the German would have had
more weight with me ; and it isn't the kind of
thing one wants to believe. Don't give it to
Mrs. Arden ; it will make her miserable.'

'She is going through a mild attack of that
kind as it is, poor little woman. She told me
yesterday that she could no longer avoid the
conviction that she had no soul. She didn't know
exactly what to do about it, but at all events,
she wouldn't conceal it.' He spoke in the kindest
way.

' What did you say to her ? '

' I told her I thought the probabilities were
that she was mistaken.'

' I am sure,' Ruth said, ' when people think
they have no souls it only means that they aren't
yet aware of them. It took a long time, didn't
it, to make even our bodies articulate, even our
senses delicate ? The soul-perception, either of
one's own or another's, must be the very last
thing to evolve. She simply hasn't discovered
her soul.'

' I '11 tell her,' said Arden, smiling. ' By the
way, it's her birthday the day after to-morrow.
Will you help me to choose something for her at
Moti Ram's ? He seems to have some rather
good sapphires, but I 'm no judge,'

SET IN AUTHORITY 159

* I should be de — no — oh no ! She will like
you to choose them alone. I'm afraid I have
rather a full day to-morrow,* she added formally,
and a clumsy moment came between them.

' I have something for her birthday, too,' said
Ruth presently, brightening. * A book. I saw
some extracts from it and sent home for it. It is
called Life Beautiful — by a lady. It is drenched
with Christian Science, but it has real charm,
and I am counting on its making her happy.'

' Will it repair those shattered foundations, I
wonder 1 ' said Arden, smiling as he rose to go.
* How good you are to her ! '

* I ? But I love her,* Ruth cast at him like a
stone. As the door closed she turned upon her-
self.

' Why did I tell that lie ? I don't love her. I
am sorry for her, but I don't love her. Why did
I say I did?'

Perhaps she did not know, but we do. She
loved the man, and must rebuke him. Being as
she was.

Yet she relented, and before he had well left
her. She ran out upon the verandah.

* Then you '11 let me know about Teddy,' she
called to him as he rode away.

CHAPTER XV

The reply from Heidelberg was not altogether
reassuring ; and Mrs. Arden had just time to
catch the mail steamer at Bombay. She left
Pilaghur on her birthday, wearing Arden's
bracelet because she could not bear to pack it,
depending on Ruth's book for the distraction of
her journey, supported by Mrs. Wickham's air-
cushion, and unable to refuse a small bottle of
Mrs. Lemon's pumelo punch because it got so
cold at night up towards Delhi. Small kind-
nesses and attentions poured in upon her all
day, and everybody was at the station to cheer
her up and see her off, and tell her that Govern-
ment House wouldn't be the same place without
her, and that she must come back as soon as she
possibly could, but that in any case she was per-
fectly right to go. She left on her birthday, in
a little rain of tears and a little gust of import-
ance, and her husband kissed her affectionately
as she went out of his life, and said, ' You 'II
telegraph from Marseilles, dear ? '

Ruth was not there ; it was her hour for seeing
out-patients ; but Mrs. Arden sent her by Eliot
a special farewell with her love. * And 1 'm so

1«0

SET IN AUTHORITY 161

glad you '11 have somebody to speak to while I 'm
away,' she told him.

As Arden watched the train out of sight,
Mrs. Faulkner murmured to Mrs. Biscuit that
he seemed to feel it a good deal. It was noticed
that he sent the carriage away and walked back
alone ; but none of them heard his acknowledg-
ment of her as he strode along in the twilight
under the acacias of the Lawrence road. ' She 's
a dear woman. She has always been a dear
woman. '

If they had, who among them would have
guessed how little the mist that stood in his eyes
was called there by his immediate and present
parting with his wife ?

She had gone so long before. What lingered,
what was now speeding west to the ship by the
mail train, was just the dear woman.

CHAPTER XVI

All the Official Secrets Acts yet invented failed
to prevent the Calcutta newspapers from getting
hold of the fact that the Chief Commissioner of
Ghoom had replied adversely to the reopening of
the Morgan case. Secretaries have their human
moments. These kept their lips drawn with care
during office hours and hardly glanced an opinion ;
but they talked at the Club. It was a topic of
the warmest human interest, and it involved
their overlord in the warmest human way.
After office hours they dropped down amongst
the Public, the men of jute and tea and indigo,
and had opinions, like other people. Naturally
the import of Arden's protest got into the papers.
It was announced with every variety of apprecia-
tive comment, from one end of India to the other.
The report went that the Viceroy, in great anger,
dismissed two native clerks on suspicion of having
communicated it ; but if the discipline had been
complete it would have included half of the
secretariats.

Thus was the extraordinary interest in the
Morgan Case enhanced from the beginning. It
was the most dramatic and the most disputable

102

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of all the attempts the Viceroy had made to
induce the Courts to take a literal view of equal
justice to black and white ; and it came at the
end of a series of defeats. The Judges of the
land had simply not seen eye to eye with His
Excellency in such matters ; and if this meant
that they suffered from any obliquity of vision,
it was a very widespread malady. But Arden's
attitude was a new feature. Never before had
Lord Thame suftered a check from one of his
own lieutenants. Arden's objection, added to all
the rest, made a total of strong indignation in
the public mind. It isolated the Viceroy and
his Home Member, who alone was supposed to
sympathise. It made them inquisitors, men of
one persecuting idea, men of no common sense.
The Press took the issue for granted — the Viceroy
simply wouldn't, simply couldn't, go further ; but
even on the way to that conclusion poured forth
columns of hostile comment, set free by the
attitude of the Chief Commissioner of Ghoom.

In the midst of the shouting a brief com-
munique dropped from the Home Department
upon every editorial table, announcing that the
statement which had found currency as to the
views of the Administration of Ghoom, regard-
ing the advisability of moving the High Court of
Calcutta in the case of the Emperor versus Henry
Morgan, was wholly premature. No correspond-
ence of a definite nature had as yet passed between
the Government of India and the local administra-
tion upon this subject, and Government would

164 SET IN AUTHORITY

very gravely deprecate any attempt to excite
the public mind by improper assumptions in-
volving the most serious issues.

In such dignified terms did the fate of Henry
Morgan swing to and fro among those who were
as gods to him, dealing out the remainder of his
concern with this life. He lay in Pilaghur gaol,
flesh and blood and a memory, visited by the
chaplain and by Mr. Moses Agabeg, a critical
intelligence contemplating the universe and his
strange share in it ; but to the world outside
he was a name to bandy, a battle-cry for pas-
sionate difference, or a sign for the resolute
pursuit of a lofty policy.

Egerton Faulkner saw the communique in the
Calcutta paper, and his eyeglass dropped in-
voluntarily.

* I knew we couldn't pull it oflf,' he said to Mr.
Arthur Poynder Biscuit. * To the Viceroy in his
present state of hunger for capital punishment
we were merely inflammatory, Biscuit — inflam-
matory. Clearly nothing but the rope will
satisfy Thame. By the dog of Egypt, I wish
we could give it him — for his personal benefit.'

' I respect the Chiefs courage in differing,'
replied little Biscuit, * but I think in his place I
should not have differed.'

* I am sure you wouldn't, Biscuit. I 'm afraid
I can't flatter myself that I would either. Thame
is only human, and Bengal will be going next
year. I ventured to hint to the Chief that he
was risking a good deal. I regretted it. Biscuit.

SET IN AUTHORITY 165

I received my first cold word from him. But
when our action got abroad the other day I said
in my private bosom, "There, my dear old
boy, goes the Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal,
the Blue Ribbon of the Service, a pyrotechnic
sacrifice to an opinion." And I nearly wept.
Biscuit — I did, indeed. I nearly broke my
heart.'

* Has the Chief seen this ? ' asked Biscuit.

* I am just going to find out. Quite probably
not. Arden may be depended on to go through
any newspaper and miss the only point in it of
importance to him personally. I love that man,
Biscuit. I feel towards him as Alcibiades did
towards Socrates, upon my honour. I could
grow old in listening to his talk. The fellow
has charm — he's as winning as a woman. Gad,
if he doesn't convince me of my own reality.
I Ve always felt, do you know, Biscuit, that if I
could not be Socrates I would be Alcibiades.
Indeed I have. For the sake of his distinguished
acquaintance. And if, like that agreeable fellow,
I were not afraid that I am altogether too drunk,
I would tell you things about Arden, Biscuit, that
would make you long to be a bigger and a better
man. Remind me of it another time, and I
will'

The Secretary left the somewhat strained but
wide and obedient smile upon the face of Mr.
Biscuit which his pleasantries were apt to pro-
voke, and sought his Chief, newspaper in hand,
to find that he had seen the paragraph.

166 SET IN AUTHORITY

* Nothing more from Calcutta ? ' Arden asked.

* Nothing official. But I 've had a private line
from Lawson, who has just come in as Deputy in
the Home Department, saying that Thame is
going to put his back into this. He's been
heard to say that Morgan's case is the blackest
and most disgraceful since that Madras business
five years ago, that the verdict was rotten and
the sentence inexplicable, and that if the thing
is allowed to pass he will consider it an indelible
stain upon his administration of the country.'

' That 's Thame, isn't it ? ' said Ard^n smiling.
' The thing must be identified with him. The
rest of us lay it, too easily perhaps, to the charge
of a star.'

* His Excellency himself possesses every virtue
yet invented for the inconvenience of the human
race. If he found one missing overnight he would
send to the Stores for it in the morning,' said
Faulkner. * And he is annoyed if any one con-
nected with his administration is less conspicuously
adorned.'

Arden laughed. ' Thame always irritates you,
Faulkner.'

' He docs, by God ! His determination to play
Providence to a country he only saw three years
ago — it's ludicrous.*

'Four years. It's redeemed though, by his
straight hitting. You remember that pompous
old ass Couybearc in the Foreign Department?
I happened to see Thame's marginal note on a
paper of his relating to the trucial chiefs of the

SET IN AUTHORITY 167

Gulf Coast. " Six pages of pure uonsense and
seven mistakes in spelling ! " '

' Hectoring beast ! ' laughed Faulkner, catching
at his eyeglass. ' Well, sir, I suppose this will be
returned for our more impartial consideration.'

' I thought you explained our views with the
utmost clearness. I don't know on what ground
we can be asked to change them.'

'They may have something up their sleeve.
There's a meeting of Council on Friday. We
shall hear early next week — probably from the
Hon. the Home Member ; Sir Peter never says
anything but Amen to Thame. But for that
matter none of them do. They ought to be
painted in a ring like mediaeval saints in their
mediaeval nightshirts, offering adoration. Or an
allegorical subject, "Anthony Andover Thame,
Viceroy of India, and his marionettes." '

'Thame is a man of extraordinary personal
influence, certainly,' said the Chief Commis-
sioner, twisting in his chair with a motion of
discomfort. ' By the way, what 's the meaning
of that?'

He pushed across the table a sumptuous
envelope, and Faulkner drew from it an equally
sumptuous card. It bore the arms of the regi-
ment in gilt ; it was elaborately engraved ; and
•it mentioned a date upon which Colonel Yetchley
and the officers of the Second North Barfordshires
requested the honour of the Hon. the Chief Com-
missioner's company to dinner, rather more than
a fortnight in advance.

168 SET IN AUTHORITY

' The Barfords seem anxious that you should
dine with them,' said Faulkner.

* I dine with them often enough. I 'm an
honorary member of their mess — I 'm always
dropping in there. Why all this flummery 1 It
has an air of intention.'

* Oh, I believe it 's to be a great affair. I hear
they 're asking fellows from every regiment in
the Command ; but you are to be the only civilian.
They mean to toast you in recognition of your
recent uncompromising attitude towards tyranny,
I understand.'

' Good heavens ! Can they imagine that I
would permit such a thing ? '

* They are carried away emotionally, sir. A
regiment is a corporate ass. The other day
when you came in from Guruband they proposed
in their happy hearts to take the horses out of
your carriage and drag you home. I heard of it
and met you with my dog-cart.

* Good heavens ! ' said Arden again. ' Well, I
shall decline this at once. I can go out into the
District. And when you see Vetchley,' he added
with irritation, * give him a hint, please, that we
have all left school.

CHAPTER XVII

PiLAGHUR saw itself daily, dined with itself
most evenings, drifted in and out of the Club
every afternoon except Sunday. On Sundays
the Club had an air of premeditated abandon-
ment. The home papers lay scattered about,
the chintz-covered armchairs stood empty. Only
the odd people and the new comers went to the
Club on Sundays ; the type observed the tradi-
tion that the seventh day should be spent some-
how differently from the other six. The dear
people of England change so little with place or
circumstance. Any one w^ho knew the island
would have felt at home and uncomfortable in
Pilaghur Club on Sunday afternoon.

Ruth Pearce, however, was one of the odd
people, the people who liked to look over the
Saturday or the Fortnightly undisturbed by
shrieks from the Badminton courts or Mrs.
Lemon's last triumph over her cook ; and Mr.
Cox was one of the new comers. Mr. Cox had
to learn so many things. It was pathetic to
look at him in his interest and enthusiasm and
his exuberant complexion, and think how many.
He liked Miss Pearce ; she reminded him of a

170 SET IN AUTHORITY

friend of his mother's at Oxford. * Most people
light up from the outside,' he said about her,
* she lights up from the inside,' like his mother's
friend at Oxford. When he, too, dropped into
the Club on Sunday afternoon they always
talked.

'You are in magnificent training,' she was
telling him, * but you will soon learn that it
doesn't pay to walk twenty miles in one day
anywhere in the plains of India to keep it up.
And you are bathed in perspiration. Do you
know that the temperature will drop fifteen
degrees in the next half- hour ? '

* I '11 go and get a rub. I sent a change over
here — my fellow ought to be waiting about
somewhere now. Don't you think it would bo
a good thing to have some tea ? '

And in ten short minutes he had reappeared
redder than ever, but, as he assured her, ' dry as
a chip.' He sat down solidly to the curls of
bread and butter. * They do cut it thin, don't
they ? ' he said. ' What are you laughing at.
Dr. Pearce ? '

' Oh, just at you,' she told him. ' You 're so
nice and new. You don't belong to India yet.
Do you still read the Times ? '

* Naturally.'

* Still take beer at lunch ? *

The young man laughed. He had an ex-
plosive laugh, as yet uncontrolled, like his other
emotions. Already it had earned him a nick-
name, and a little quiet dislike.

SET IN AUTHORITY 171

'When I can get it. Best drink going, Dr.
Pearce.'

' You won't always think so. And, of course,]
you still bleed with sympathy for the down-)
trodden natives ? '

*0h, now you're chaffing. But— I say, Dr.
Pearce. Isn't the Chief a thoroughly good
fellow?'

* A thoroughly good fellow.'

' The sort of fellow you could implicitly
follow ? '
' Quite.'

* Then why doesn't he back up the Viceroy in
this Morgan business ? '

* For the only reason — because he believes
Lord Thame to be wrong.'

' Do you agree ? '
'Yes, I do, wholly.'

Charles Cox having finished his tea, leaned
back with folded arms.

* It amazes me,' he said, with knitted brows.
' Justice was not done.'

* Justice was not done. It does happen so,
sometimes, in this imperfect world. But some-
thing was done, and for reasons a good deal more
important than the adequate punishment of any
man, it ought to be considered done finally.'

' Morgan wasn't properly convicted. They
didn't half exhaust the evidence.'

' How do you know ? '

' I 've heard a lot about it from my munshi,
Afzul Aziz — the old boy who is teaching me

172 SET IN AUTHORITY

Hindustani, you know. He knows the bazaar
like his pocket, and he says he can produce men
who will testify that the poor old chap that was
murdered begged for mercy on his knees, kissing
Morgan's feet, and that the brute shot him
through the head deliberately. You know, of
course, that he got off on a plea of self-defence.'

* I wouldn't place much reliance upon any talk
of Afzul Aziz,' said Ruth. ' I know him — he
taught me Hindustani too. He 's very good at
teaching Hindustani. But he's an excitable,
malevolent old fellow. And remember, the bazaar
will be full of evidence the moment it is under-
stood that the Viceroy wants it. That is a
handicap His Excellency must submit to.'

*I think I know when a chap's telling the
truth,' said young Cox, with masculine reserve.
* And I confess to you, Dr. Pearce, that in my
opinion the honour of every Englishman in
Pilaghur is pledged to assist the eftbrt Lord
Thame is making in this thing. It seems to me
heroic'

Ruth smiled. * I suppose it does,' she said.

'And I believe the Chief will come round,'
said Cox sanguinely.

Ruth lifted her chin ever so slightly. * I know
he will not,' she said. * When a decision like
that crystallises with him into a matter of con-
science he simply can't " come round." Nothing
any of them could say — '

She stopped abruptly. Arden's head, looking
oddly boyish under a tweed cap, thrust itself in

SET IN AUTHORITY 173

at the door inquiringly, and making them out
in their corner, his body followed it.

' Have you a cup left 1 ' he asked. ' What a
blessed peace there is in here. The crows are
making night hideous about my place. They
fairly drove me out.'

Charles Cox got up in deference to the Govern-
ment of Pilaghur, and sat down again respect-
fully in a less comfortable chair. Presently, as
the Chief Commissioner continued to talk plaint-
ively about the crows, and nothing but the crows,
Mr. Cox slipped away, and they heard the wheels
of his dogcart go out from under the porch.

* Nice boy that,' said Arden.

' Very nice. What is troubling you ? '

* You are a wonderful woman. Let me think
— which of my various complications may pro-
perly be described as " troubling " ? The famine
belt is spreading in Southern Ghoom — I suppose
you know ? and the ecclesiastics are fighting
like mad at Guruband. The Anglican Padre
there has fallen out with the Scotch one, and
won't lend his blessed church for Presbyterian
services. Seems it's too blessed. They both
suggest that I should build them a new one as
a solution. I 've also had a tremendous letter
from headquarters — Sir Peter Hichens this time.'

* Ah,' she said. * Does he bring out any-
thing new ? '

* Nothing whatever. The familiar arguments
— they 're quite good enough to worry a man
with.'

174 SET IN AUTHORITY

' Are they very angry with you ? '

' According to dear old Peter, not at all angry.
But "grieved" — deeply grieved.' He looked
at her with his charming smile, and she saw him
whimsically ill-treated by fate. This lighter,
sweeter side of him always made a slave of her,
and for an instant she just smiled back. Then
she flew again to the matter in hand.

* But to you — that can make no difference 1 '
Her expectancy had an eager stress in it. She
looked a shadow sunk in her chair, with a
pale face and luminous eyes, something over-
emphasised.

'None whatever. Isn't it rather stuffy in
here ? Shall we take a turn ? I should like, if
I may, to walk home with you.'

All the way he unconsciously talked to fortify
the opinion he had conceived ; and he left her
at her own gate more convinced than before that
he had taken the right course, more proudly
certain than ever that nothing would turn him
from it.

CHAPTER XVIII

' Please be at Mrs. Sannaway's at six ; must
see you this afternoon/ wired Mrs. Tring to
Mr. Frayley Sambourne, and sent out the cook
with it. The cook was always having to go with
a telegram, because Annie had always already
gone with one ; but they did it cheerfully, or any-
thing else that was out of the way, for Mrs.
Tring ; Mrs. Tring was so out of the way herself.
Their mistress was the drama and the wonder of
their lives, their constant entertainment ; and she
sometimes called them " dear." Annie said the
fact was she was more like a 'uman being than
anything else, a thing you didn't often find.
Annie was wrong, of course ; it was just the other
thing in their mistress that charmed them — her
expanded eyes, and the way she would call a
messenger at midnight to take an article to
Southampton Street. They flew with the tele-
grams, feeling as if they were on the stage of
journalistic achievement, too, in small parts.

Mrs. Sannaway's Sundays were probably the
pleasantest in Bloomsbury. She was the most
generous soul, Mrs. Sannaway, with herself and
her teapot, and her two little drawing-rooms on

176

176 SET IN AUTHORITY

Sunday afternoons. She asked everybody to
come to her then, although she might really have
asked as few as possible and they would gladly
have turned up. They all came, the few and the
many, the assured and the frightened ; people
who had written as many novels as Mrs. Sanna-
way had, and people who thought that some day
they would like to write just one. Mrs. Sanna-
way's memory was not as good as her hospitality,
and Mr. Sannaway was often too much involved
with the muffins to help her with her slightly
nonplussed welcome of shy young persons who
said guiltily, ' I 'm afraid you don't remember
me, Mrs. Sannaway. I met you at the Women
Writers' Dinner and you asked me to come,' or,
* I interviewed you a little while ago for M.A.P.
and you were kind enough to say you were at
home on Sundays.' The ambiguity with which
she would place them on convenient sofas and
invite Mr. Sannaway to provide them with tea
was always kind, however, and nearly always she
contrived to convince herself about them before
they went away, often saying, w^ith a warm part-
ing hand-clasp, * Now I remember all about you ! '
The room was full when Frayley Sambournc
arrived, but Mrs. Tring was not in it. He was
promptly introduced by Mrs. Sannaway to Miss
Maskin, ' who ballooned across Lake Baikal —
you must know. And do get her something to
cat, she must be starving.' When he liad
appeased Miss Maskin's hunger for tea cake and
gratified her thirst for adventure, he found

SET IN AUTHORITY 177

himself on the crest of an emotion with a Celtic
Revivalist, one of the most earnest; and after
that Mrs. Sannaway talked to him for a long time
herself; she was an old friend.

* Is Deirdre coming ? ' she asked. * It s nice
of her to be late and give me a chance. I know
you will whip off together.'

That was the way their relation was understood
among people who knew them ; they could be
depended on to whip off together. Sambourne's
devotion was smiled at for its whimsical futility ;
Mrs. Tring's intentions were not thought to be
serious. The Under-Secretary was a feather in
her cap and a prop for some of her moods, not
more. People looked after them with amusement
as they whipped off together.

When Mrs. Tring's cab at last dashed up, the
door that let her in let out almost the last of Mrs.
Sannaway's other guests. She passed the Celtic
Revivalist, who always stayed late, and was
inclined to come back with her, on the stairs,
and in the drawing-room she found only Frayley
and Alfred Earle remaining.

' How late I am,' she cried. * And I meant
to be so early, Kate ; but Victoria and I became
involved in a discussion : and I had to take
a little Pater before starting, to regain my tone.'

* Very late,' Mrs. Sannaway assured her.
* But you find us all faithfully waiting,'

' 1 like coming into a i-oom,' Mrs. Tring told
them, * when everybody has just gone. People
leave so much suggestion behind them. Their

M

178 SET IN AUTHORITY

breath, their words, their psychic emanations
remain. I know you have had an interest-
ing afternoon, Kate, by the disposition of the
furniture.'

' The Sally Lunn is stone cold. I do not advise
it/ said Mr. Sannaway, hovering with plates ;
but Mrs. Tring took a double slice and ate it
hungrily, explaining that she had forgotten to
lunch and was in a fainting condition.'

' And oh, my dear Catharine — my play ! I 've
burnt my play ! *

'Burnt "The Fever of the Gods"?' de-
manded at least two of the other four together,
in amazed unbelief.

* And I kept Viola Vansittart here for two
mortal hours this afternoon to talk it over with
you ! ' She loved what I told her of it,' declared
Mi-s. Sannaway.

* Ah, Viola would have been splendid for me.
But isn't it true that she has bound herself
body and soul to play only Arthur Haflin's things?
1 was so hoping it was true. The English drama
is perishing for a breath of the ideal — and she
does truly care for him, doesn't she ? '

'One hopes it isn't all expressed in the
brougham and the sables,' said Mr. Earle.

Mrs. Tring looked at him with disfavour and
sudden gloom.

* Harsh and bitter ? ' she exclaimed, gazing
before her sadly. * Why will men of the world
say such things ? My soul shivers before you,
dear Mr. Eaile.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 179

' I 'm so sorry,' said the Editor of the Prospect.
' But tell us why you burned your play, Mrs.
Tring.'

' It is burned — burned — burned,' said Mrs.
Tring, while Frayley Sambourne watched her.
' It is a heap of grey ashes in my bedroom
grate. It took a long time, but when it was
quite dead out it had about as much vitality in
it as it had before. Oh, I want to write some-
thing round real passion — something human
\nd throbbing and cruel. Suddenly, the other
day out of a newspaper, my situation leaped
at me — a soldier tragedy from India, one of
those " Without Benefit of Clergy" things, you
know — '

' The Morgan case ? ' asked Mr. Earlc.

'Don't — don't give it a name. It is present
to me still nebulously, potentially. / must give
it all the signs ; it must take body and form from
me. But yes — but yes ! The Morgan case !
You have named my play — you and Circumstance,
who is the godmother of all plays ! But I could
do nothing till I had burned the other poor
ansemic thing, so I offered it a sacrifice to Life,
in the hope that she will now let me come near
her.'

' You will have to give it another name, I am
afraid,* said Alfred Earle. ' The Morgan case
will be as familiar to the British public as the
Tichborne case before the winter is over, unless
I am very much mistaken.'

* I don't think so,' put in Frayley Sambourne.

180 SET IN AUTHORITY

* At one time we thought something of that
sort might be anticipated, but the probability
now is that very little more will be heard of the
matter. No use going into detail ; but Thame is
encountering- opposition from the local Govern-
ment, and our notion is that he will be obliged
to accept their view. Very good for him if he
will — Thame is a trifle over-fond of centralisa-
tion.'

* I sometimes wish we didn't exist in India,'
said Mrs. Sannaway, with a sigh as uncompro-
mising as the sentiment. 'Nobody can deny
that we ought to be wildly interested in it ; but
none of us are. Except you and Lord Akell,
Mr. Sambourne. I have one friend out there
who sometimes writes to me, a Dr. Pearce, a
clever woman, but it's very hard to keep in
touch.'

* I 'm afraid 1 'm horribly ignorant,' said Mr.
Sannaway, * but I never heard of the Morgan
case.'

* You will,' Earle insisted. * I 've had several
letters about it from Lawrence Lenox, a Judge
of one of their High Courts out there. He says
Thame isn't the fellow to take opposition from
anybody. He 's a great admirer of Thame, and
considers him in this case perfectly right. He
says the judgment was a scandal.'

* If you don't mind,' said Mr. Sambourne to
Mrs. Tring, glancing at his watch, * I think we
ought to be off.'

It was half peremptory and half privileged.

SET IN AUTHORITY 181

He looked at her fur boa on the floor, and seemed
just to fall short of picking it up and putting it
round her neck.

* Always, always, it is poor me who is charged
with dawdling,' cried Mrs. Tring. * I am sure
I am the easiest person in the world to get out
of a room. Pray, then, sir, come along.'

She took longer than she had yet spent in
farewelling ; but he finally marshalled her down-
stairs. They hailed a cab, and sat in it for two
minutes in silence, Mrs. Tring gazing out over
the bobbing horse's head into some far and
exciting vista which her companion could not
see.

' When,' Sambourne said at last, ' are you
going to remember that you have something to
tell me ? '

* Oh, I remember,' she assured him. * My
whole being is occupied with it. And I will tell
you presently. But I must find the words.
While I am looking for them let us talk of some-
thing else.'

Mr. Sambourne smiled indulgently. *.When
are you coming to the House again ? ' he asked.

* No, as a subject that won't do. It ministers
directly to your egotism, dear Frayley, and at
this moment I could not consider even your
shadow. Think of something else.'

' Why won't Victoria marry Anthony Thame ? '
'Ah, that's better — that ministers to mine.

Because she 's my daughter, /could never marry

Anthony Thame.'

182 SET IN AUTHORITY

' If Victoria were as much like you as that,'
said Frayley Sambourne seriously, * I would have
married her long ago myself.'

Mrs. Tring tossed out a laugh, a laugh with no
age, from the very fount at which the gods
draw mirth. *My dear Frayley, she wouldn't
have you, either.'

Frayley crossed his arms and knitted his
brows. Knitting his brows drew his features
together, which were otherwise rather vague.

'What objection do you suppose she has to
fellows like Thame and me ? We are both well
enough, in a way, aren't we ? Both have the
type of mind that is called strenuous, both — '

'Don't, Frayley. I decline to consider the
points in which you are like Anthony. There
must be far more in which you differ, or you
couldn't live so near me as you do. You 're not
a prig, and he 's a cavernous prig, with those
great black eyes. I've sat through a whole
dinner beside him and never seen him smile.
My soul flies at the approach of Anthony Thame ;
my body can hardly stay in the same room with
him.'

• But why ? '

' He has no spiritual curiosity. His soul has
nothing to give to another, nothing to take from
another. His world is full of people and things,
and the people are only other things. He is all
for what he must do. I am all for what I
must be.'

' And is Victoria like that ? '

SET IN AUTHORITY 183

' I don't know,' said Mrs. Tring forgetfully.
' Victoria isn't the least like me.'

* But you said — '

* Never mind. Listen. I can tell you now.
There is the most wonderful definite news of
Herbert ! '

*Ah.' Mr. Sambourne uncrossed his arms
imd crossed them again, with a suggestion of
self-control. * Another trace ? '

' Indeed, another trace. A woman, Frayley—
and a child ! '

♦Good God!'

* It seems he became enamoured of her very
shortly after his arrival in San Francisco and
promptly carried her off — you remember his
dashing ways. Kelly gives no particulars of her
origin, but through the veil of his language I see
that she is beautiful and very desolate. I imagine
her to be of Spanish blood — who is it who writes
so much about the old Spanish days in San
Francisco ? Some woman. Herbert would be
instantly drawn by an old historic sorcery like
that. And the child ! " The born image," Kelly
says in his way, " of H. V. T." Frayley, I want
that child.'

* Is the woman his wife ? '

* Kelly doesn't say. But she is in need — she
came to him, hearing of his quest, to tell him so,
bringing the child — that is the child of my son.'

* What did Kelly do ? '

' He gave her five pounds and charged it to
account and wrote to me. Which was perfectly

184 SET IN AUTHORITY

right, except that he ought to have given her
fifty and telegraphed.'

* And what do you propose to do ? '

* Send for them both. Give them the shelter
of my roof until Herbert appears to claim them.
Every nerve in me leaps to welcome them. You
know what I think of the marriage convention —
do you dream that I shall be troubled as to
whether it exists or not between them ? She is
his first and only passion, and its miracle is there
with her. We must make room — make room.'

* It is impossible.'

'So Victoria says. I do not understand
Victoria. She adores Herbert, and yet she
says this is impossible. But I cannot listen. My
heart says, " Do it ; it is the Only Thing." *

' Oh, my dear lady, I must convince you that
you are wrong. You have no proof of any sort.
What does Kelly know about this woman, and
what do we know about Kelly ? '

Deirdre looked at him softly — the 'we'
touched a responsive chord. ' Don't range your-
self against my heart,' she said.

'It is a matter in which I imagine Herbert
would wish to exercise sole responsibility.'

'How can he exercise anything, frozen up in the
Yukon? Don t oppose me, you great strong man.'

' I should like information additional to
Kelly's. And I very much prefer that you should
take no direct action in the matter for the
present. Let mc put it in the hands of my
solicitors— they will get hold of the facts for us.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 185

* I know solicitors are useful things. But if
you only knew, Frayley, how a woman wants a
baby, on which she has a legitimate claim.'

* It is beautiful in you, Deirdre. But that is
precisely what I should like first to establish.'

* Ah, if you will only look at it with affec-
tion, with the eyes of your real self,' cried
Mrs. Tring, * and not with cold hostility, like
Victoria, I will be guided by you, I truly will, in
this as in so many matters. And, indeed, I don't
want anything very absorbing to come into my
life until my play is born. I will wait, if you
think it best, Frayley.'

' I do think it best,' said Frayley, as he
rang her door-bell for her. * And may I hope
that you will be in the Ladies' Gallery on
Wednesday ? '

The door was opened by Victoria, who almost
huddled her mother into the entry.

' You haven't told Aunt Pamela, mother ? Or
Lavinia '? '

' I have seen only the dear Sannaways, in
Russell Square— and Frayley.'

' We must absolutely keep it from Lavinia. I
,^ don't believe a word of it, but we must absolutely
"^ keep even the lie from Lavinia.'

* But why ? ' demanded Mrs. Tring, gathering
up the sheaf of letters and telegrams on the hall
table.

'Because it would break her heart,' said
Victoria.

CHAPTER XIX

' Mr. Vice — The King ! ' said the Mess Presi-
dent, standing in his place in the Barfordshire's
whitewashed mess-room with a glass of port in
his raised hand.

' Gentlemen — " The King " ! ' responded young
Dimmock, Vice-President, from the other end of
the table.

There was an instant's silence, every man on
his feet, every glass raised. Charles Cox, dining
at the Mess for the first time, brought his to his
lips, then, seeing himself alone in the act, lowered
it again, blushing. The mess-sergeant, standing
to attention behind the Colonel's chair, eyed him
contemptuously. The band struck up the
National Anthem, and as the last note sounded,
* The King ! God bless him,' said Major Deviue.
' The King ! ' ' The King ! ' echoed the others,
drank, and sat down again.

Charles Cox was emotional. The imperial
sacrament thrilled him. He felt as he did when
a regiment passed him in the street ; the pre-
cision, the formality of each marching step
combined with its significance to underline it,
and make poetry of it. So with the simple

SET IN AUTHORITY 187

function of the King's health, drunk once a week
in the Barfordshires' mess, as in every other, by
a dozen men in uniform, half of them boys, on
their legs and looking serious for the moment,
but taking the high sentiment in the simple
order of the day. Mr. Cox wondered if they
realised what a fine thing they did, and had
an instant's regret that he hadn't gone in for
Sandhurst.

' Awful sorry we couldn't get your old man
to-night,' said young Lascelles to Cox.

* The Chief ? He 's been out in the District
for a week.'

' I know. I say, d' you see the Gunner at the
other end of the table 1 '

' Which is he ? ' asked Mr. Cox.

' Oh well, there 's only one Gunner in the
room, you know. Next to Dimmock.'

' Yes ; what about him ? '

' He 's had the most extraordinary luck, that
flow. Practically just out, and over here from
Bunderabad, to have his first try at pig. Went
out yesterday with three or four of our flows.
Came bang on to a leopard, if you please, jabbed
his spear into him and pinned him down. Brute
clawed like mad and got in an ugly scratch on
his pony's foreleg — drew blood — and the plucky
little brute never budged. I offered him five
hundred for her this morning — wouldn't look
at it.'

' I thought you generally shot leopards,' said
Mr. Cox intelligently.

188 SET IN AUTHORITY

' So you jolly well have to — it was this flow's
extraordinary luck, don't you see? First time
out — think of it! Well, I tell you, the other
chaps weren't so keen — ponies somehow not
staunch — awf ly unstaunch, you know — but when
they saw he was really there to stay they all got
a hole in. By Jove, when the skin came in it
looked like a tennis net ! There were two in his
tail ! '

' That would spoil it,' said Mr. Cox.

'His luck doesn't hold everywhere, though,'
continued Lascelles. * At bridge, for instance —
he 's a fearful fool at bridge. You play bridge ? '

'I'm afraid not.'

' Well, of course — it 's a game where a lot of
money can change hands, you see, and this
Gunner-man — I forget his exact name — was
pretty well bled all round night before last at
the Club. So last night he was goin' to play
again, and old Devine was brought into the
game. "Look here," old Devine said to him,
'* Can you aflford to lose a thousand rupees
to-night ? " " No," says he. " Then if you play,
I don't," says Devine, and he didn't — I mean the
other chap didn't. Pretty decent of old Devine
I call it, don't you ? Seems he knew the other
chap's people, and they 're not well off.'

' 1 was thinking of learning bridge,' said
Charles Cox.

* It '11 cost you about five hundred, probably,
to learn in this place. Cheap bridge, I call it
here.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 189

*I don't,' said Mr. Cox. *I only get five
hundred at present. Can't you learn without
playing for money ? '

' Oh, well, you can't expect chaps to teach
you for nothing, you know. They 've all had to
pay for their experieijce. I had to shell out
about seven, but 1 'm not quick, you know ; in
fact, I consider myself rather an exceptional
duffer. I wish I 'd offered that flow a bit more
for the mare. Brandreth — that's his name.
Rotten name to remember. He races her, too —
she's entered for three events next week.
Ridin' himself. He's a clever rider, Brandreth
is, but not a good stableman — takes no sort of
care of his cattle. Have you done yourself
pretty well in a mount this year ? '

* Well, no,' said Mr. Cox, ' I bought a nice-
looking animal, and paid a good price for it, but
it developed a bone disease of some sort the week
after I got it, and — '

* Sold you a pup, eh 'i Hard luck.'

* No — a horse. Oh, I see — yes, I dare say I
was done.'

' That was only my elaborate jest,' apologised
Lascelles, and, under cover of a crystallised
plum, gave up. Charles Cox, on the other hand,
thought within himself, that his choice of the
Indian Civil was not to be regretted after all.
He ran over in his mind the interests Lascelles
had mentioned, and said to himself, ' That 's this
fellow's whole life.'

From the fresh-coloured young gentleman in

190 SET IN AUTHORITY

the immaculate mess-jacket beside him, cutting
away at the crystallised plum, his contemptuous
thought turned to the rank and file and the
substance of existence as they had to lead it,
wandered from the feast, and settled sadly upon
Henry Morgan. 'What else,' he reflected,
' could be expected ? '

Mr. Cox adopted then that regretful and
slightly minatory attitude towards the Army
which characterises so many civil minds. Henry
Morgan, of course, was the predisposing cause ;
he felt more and more keenly, more and more
tragically, about that matter. He saw the Army
an institution necessary to the preservation of
peace, which he, nevertheless, for ethical reasons,
was compelled to criticise. It was an imperfect
institution, an unsatisfactory institution, too
much given to compromise, and far too much to
the protection of Henry Morgans. In fact, it
was an institution, that was the troul)le, and not
a simple agency at the disposal of the Civil
Arm.

In the affiiir of Private Morgan, Charles Cox
had advanced, and already beheld himself the
ally of justice. Justice sitting on high, gave her
clasp to the Viceroy. Charles Cox would take
Lord Thame's other hand, at present outstretched
80 vainly ; and Afzul Aziz, the munshi who had
taught so many Mr. Coxes Hindustani, would
hold again by him. Thus, perhaps, Mr. Cox
saw the heroic chain complete ; and as the
adventure was not free of danger to himself, wc

SET IN AUTHORITY 191

can only admire him fur it, while we pretend to
smile.

Lascelles prattled on to his neighbour on the
other side.

* Get along with an allowance of a hundred a
year ? Oh, it can be done — I know flows who
do it in this reginient. But we 're a pretty
economical lot, you know. All the same, person-
ally— well I touched exactly thirty-one rupees of
my pay last month. Thirty-one dibs! Every
blooming copper.'

* I 'd be tickled to death,' said Davidson of
the Guzeratis, family man, ' to have a hundred a
year. But there's one thing to be said, they
don't worry us about uniform as they do you.'

* Iniquitous, 1 call it,' threw in a man on the
Staff. ' I went home on leave the other day
after putting in a year in the Intelligence, in
Simla, and while there treated myself to a new
waistcoat. It wasn't obesity ; it was white ants,
"What's it goin' to be?" I said to my man.
" Six pounds," says he. '* 0, damn it all," thinks
I, " I '11 try another shop," an' at the other shop
they says seven pounds. Well, it wasn't any
use goin' further, was it? There you are.
What are you going to do ? So I got the thing.
First p'rade after I joined, the Colonel looked
me up an' down. 'S'pose you know," he said,
*' they 've taken about two inches of gold lace off"
lis this year?" "Where?" says I. "In the
waistcoat," says he. So there you are, you see.
What are you going to do ? '

192 SET IN AUTHORITY

Young Lascelles bent over to him earnestly.

' You can wear it out, you know. There 's
that to be said. They let you wear it out.*

Mr. Cox listened with a silently compressed
lip, and turned to a gentle-looking young man
in the uniform of the Royal Engineers, who sat
next him on the other side.

'You're just back from somewhere, aren't
you ?'

* Yes ; S'maliland.'

* Interesting country ? '

'Shouldn't say so. Consists too largely of
sand.'

r ' Should you call the dervishes a people worth
[studying — ethnologically,^ I mean ? '

' We found it worth while to observe them
pretty closely. At Imali — '

*I say,' cut in a subaltern from the other
side.

' Sir to you,' said the Sapper.

' Were you in that show 1 *

' Rather — and at Ajjak, too.' For the first
time a smile gathered about the lips of the
Sapper, the exulting smile of a schoolboy who
relates an adventure in which he had no
particular title to appear.

*I thought you fellows were thought too
valualjlc — '

'Oh, 1 know, we're always havijig that sung
at us. But at Imali wc wanted all we had, you
know. Besides my follows were in occupation- —
we'd been digging out the well for three days

SET IN AUTHORITY 193

before the rest came up. They couldn't refuse
us a look in under those circumstances.'

' I suppose not,' said the subaltern, with a
half-tone of commiseration.

' And it 's all very well to say our chaps are
too valuable — that it isn't their business, and so
forth. I don't say it 's primarily their business ;
but I can tell you those two shows made difierent
men of our fellows. Dififerent men. Especially
the Punjabis. It 's absurd. They like to let off
their rifles just as well as anybody else.'

* Of course they do,' said the subaltern pacifi-
cally. ' Beastly lot of routine they must have.'

'Well, it's no joke having to march three
hundred miles between wells under a tropical
sun with no tents, and then to find water for a
thousand ponies out of a choked-up hole when
you get there,' remarked the Sapper equably.
* Men rotten with scurvy too, half of 'em.'

' How did you manage to get scurvy ? ' in-
quired Charles Cox, with a hint of criticism.

'It was generally attributed to the fact that
we were fifty days on half rations, exclusively of
flour,' responded the Sapper. * But after Imali
we had the luck to walk into some of the enemy's
cattle. I gave my men a sheep to every six or
eight of 'em, and they just gorged it. In a fort-
night they were practically fit again. Nothing
like fresh meat for scurvy — and a fight, if you
can get it. Of course, onions are all right, too.'

' I believe there was tremendous carnage at
Imali,' remarked Mr. Cox.

N

194 SET IN AUTHORITY

' We pounded 'em. Naturally. We 'd have
pounded 'em harder, only the Somali transport
with the main lot stampeded. We were all
right ; our camels were Indian — never budged,
just knelt down behind us and looked this way
an' that way — cool as cucumbers — I didn't even
take the ammunition boxes off their backs. But
everything S'mali bolts — two legs or four, they
all know how to use 'em.'

'Levies not much use, eh?' asked the
subaltern.

'Not under our management. The Mullah
can make soldiers of them, but he takes a dif-
ferent way. In the Mullah's show, of course,
the best men get the rifles and the ponies. If a
rifleman drops, somebody is supposed to take
his rifle so that it shan't be bagged by the other
side, and carry on. Well, about four hundred of
the Mullah's riflemen, when they came on at us,
gave their ponies to spearmen to hold. When
these gentry saw how it was going they jumped
on the ponies and cleared out. But unwisely,
they made for the Mullah's camp, see? The
Mullah, being a little out of sorts I dare say, said,
"Hello, what are you doing here?" And had
them all executed on the spot. That's against
our ideas, of course, but it's the only way to
make soldiers out of Somalis.'
f ' It will be a long time, no doubt,' Mr. Cox
^observed thoughtfully, 'before we exert any-
' thing like moral force in a country like Somali-
land.'
/

SET IN AUTHORITY 195

The Sapper lighted a fresh cigar. * In my
opinion it isn't worth anything of the kind,' he
said supremely.

'Then what are we doing there?' demanded
Mr. Cox.

*0h, just keepin' things movin'. Got to keep
things movin', you know.'

Mr. Cox retired into his conviction about the
Army, and shut the door.

On the other side of the table Colonel Vetchley
also deplored the Chief Commissioner's absence.
He deplored it to Mr. Biscuit, who was actually
the most senior civilian present. The dinner had
degenerated into little more than the ordinary
guest-night ; it had quite lost its special
character. After Arden's refusal several other
civilians had been asked, but most of them had
been unaccountably engaged. Even Sir Ahmed
Hossein, who had accepted in the first instance,
excused himself on the plea of illness at the last
moment.

It was somehow in the air that the Chief was
prejudiced against the occasion ; and nobody of
importance was inclined to take the responsi-
bility of setting that prejudice at naught. Little
Biscuit, in fact, had felt it his duty to consult
Egerton Faulkner upon the subject, and only
when the Chief Secretary had said, ' Go, by all
means, my dear chap ; it won't matter tuppence,'
did he feel that his act of acceptance was officially
sanctioned. Charles Cox happened to have heard
nothing of the first intention of the dinner, or of

196 SET IN AUTHORITY

Arden's refusal. If he had he would have been
embarrassed to choose between the independence
of going and the independence of staying away ;
but after careful examination he would have
done what seemed essentially most independent.
Mr. Cox, not content with the noble intention I
have explained, was kicking generally against the
pricks.

'I hope,' said Colonel Vetchley to little
Biscuit, * there 's nothing serious in this report
that the Government is trying to get round
Arden in the Morgan case ? '

Mr. Biscuit assumed exactly the proper air of
embarrassment, and fiddled responsibly with the
nutshells he had made.

' Is there such a report ? ' he said. ' It 's most
unsatisfactory, the way these things leak out.
Personally I know nothing about it. Quite un-
founded, I should say.'

' 0 Mary Ann, Biscuit I What the Viceroy
wants is common property ; and it 's not likely
he 's going to take it lying down from a fellow
under him, is it? The question is, will Arden
hold out ? '

* I may tell you in confidence,' said little
Biscuit, lowering his voice, 'that the Chief
reported strongly against the Viceroy's view in
that matter.'

'Thanks, my dear chap,' laughed Colonel
Vetchley, rather irritably. ' That was in the
Admimstratcyt' three weeks ago.'

Mr. Biscuit frowned upon journalistic enter-

SET IN AUTHORITY 197

prise. *I believe it was. Now what a thiug
like that tempts one to ask is: Have we an
Official Secrets Act in India or have we not ? '

*0h, well — Service paper. Interested in a
case like that. I needn't say where my sym-
pathies are. And I don't look at it from a
purely regimental point of view, by any means.
On any practical ground Thame's notions are
absurd. I tell you you can't hang a white man y
for killing a black one in this country. It isn't
in nature. It hasn't been done for two genera-
tions out here, and it 's not likely to be done for
ten. The scales don't balance that way. If
Thame should get this case carried up to the
High Court — I don't say there 's the least likeli-
hood, but if he should, and by any chance Morgan
was convicted of murder, do you know under
what name Thame would go down to history ?
" The Hanging Viceroy," sir — " the Hanging
Viceroy.'"

Colonel Vetchley swallowed his glass of Kum-
mel as if this prediction proved the uselessness
of further argument.

* His Excellency is a little disposed to be what
might be called visionary,' agreed Mr. Biscuit.
* And obstinate. Very obstinate.'

* Call it what you like, it won't work. And
as for British troops in India, he simply knows
nothing whatever about them. Any ordinary
man would make some allowance. Seventy
thousand of them there are — think of the dulncss
for them, poor devils. To men of Thame's stamp

198 SET IN AUTHORITY

the common soldier is a brute, neither more or
less, a brute that kicks punkah coolies with his
great heavy ammunition boots ! Well, why does
he do it with his great heavy ammunition boots ?
Because they 're the only ones he 's got to wear !
Regulations don't provide troops with carpet
slippers.'

Mr. Biscuit received this impartially, with
an air of reserving his opinion against further
evidence. ' I don't suppose the men get many
luxuries of any sort,' he said.

' You 're quite right there. But apart from all
that' — Colonel Vetchley came to the point he
had made out to his own satisfaction that very
morning in the course of shaving — ' this notion
of putting the native on an absolute equality
with the European is all Tommy-rot ; and I '11
prove it to you. Man for man he isn't an equal.
[Take the most fundamental instinct — the sport-
I ing instinct — and what do we find ? \Vc find he
Uiasn't got it. Do you call a chap like Kala Jong
a sportsman ? Now I '11 tell you something. Six
years ago, when we were stationed in Calcutta,
that fellow asked me to a shoot. As we started
we were given to understand that we were
to shoot everything — does, butchns, everything,
every head we saw — to beat Dharmsala's bag of
the week before.'

• Really ? ' said Biscuit, to the Colonel's horri-
fied earuestness.

* The absolute truth. When it came to getting
does, Devine and I put up our rifles — wouldn't

SET IN AUTHORITY 199

even stand up io it. Did no good ; those fellows
went on with their slaughter. Afterwards on
one island we counted nineteen wild bufifalo, left
lying, females an' all — hadn't taken a horn or a
skin. Sickening. Wonderful sporting country
it was then. I remember wef put up eleven rhino
in one beat. But they massacred the lot. Differ-
ent matter now, of course. The Commander-in-
. Chief went down there last March ; and they made
a fearful fuss about getting one for him. What
else could you expect 1 Kala Jong exterminates
*" everything, the swine. And that 's your native
— that 's the fellow Thame would like to murder
a decent white man for killing — in self-defence.
I 've no patience with the man.'

* I believe His Excellency considers that self-
defence was by no means established in the
Morgan case,' said Mr. Biscuit.

' Oh — is that his line 1 But no doubt, as you
say, the whole thing is confidential as yet, and
hasn't come your way. Perhaps I shouldn't have
mentioned it ; but Faulkner — of course I know
Faulkner very well — told me the other day that
the Home Member — what's the fellow's name"?
Hichens — had written, pressing Arden strongly
to change his base about the thing. So far, how-
ever, he said, Arden didn't see his way.'

' I was aware of that,' said little Biscuit.
' Of course. And — don't mention it ; it 's not a
thing we want talked of — but matters have gone
even further. The Viceroy himself has written
to the Chief.'

200 SET IN AUTHORITY

' Confound liim ! '

* Written to him privately. That 's going very
far, I consider.'

'Deuced far. But will he bring Arden
round "i '

The anxiety of the Colonel's tone flattered little
Biscuit. These military fellows were apt to be
overbearing in their independence.

' Oh, there 's no reason to suppose that — none
whatever. But, of course, Thame may have got
hold of some new aspect of the case — and the
Viceroy is always the Viceroy, you know\'

Colonel Vetchley looked at Mr. Biscuit in a
manner that conveyed, without precisely meaning
to, an unflattering estimate. Then he finished
his port.

' Damn the Viceroy,' he said warmly.

CHAPTER XIX

*Has this shaken you at all?' asked Ruth
Pearce, handing Lord Thame's letter back to
Arden.

He made a motion of denial. ' No,' he said.
* I see nothing differently. I suppose one might
call it a notable presentation of the case, but — '

*I should call it a notable piece of special
pleading by Lord Thame for his conscience,' she
told him.

'Well, you will admit his conscience, I sup-
pose, as a factor in the situation.'

' I will admit only yours — in the situation as
you have to deal with it.'

She spoke very fearlessly, with that disregard
of everything but the issue, that he had so happily
perceived in her in the beginning. It was one of
the things which had singled Ruth Pearce out to
him then, absurd as it may stand in eyes un-
familiar with that small arbitrary world, the way
in which she ignored the perpetual petty impedi-
ment of official position that seemed to tangle
all his intercourse with other people — that some-
times stood, when she addressed him at their
dinner parties, even in the eye of his wife. From
the first he had felt himself with Miss Pearce

201

202 SET IN AUTHORITY

essentially the man and but incidentally the
Chief Commissioner ; he who was so universally
the Chief Commissioner that he might hardly
have claimed any other identity.

After that he was Ruth's friend on terms of
detachment from everything else he was ; and
after that he had become the central figure of
her life, always with the same intense reference
to that which was most virtually himself and his
own. He knew it, and it was the new flame
by which he at once lived and watched the spec-
tacle of his own existence ; yet at times there
was in it a subtle dissatisfaction. She had taken
him, all human as he was, and had enshrined
him ; she knew him mortal, but she would not
have him less divine. Her possession of him
exacted this ; her eye ravaged him for a flaw.
When she found one she must have it away.
Loving him, she was compelled to find her ideal
in him : loving him unlawfully he must be
the more transcendently worthy. The necessity
arose, no ^ doubt, in the moral egotism of the
woman, but need not be the less edifying for
that. Her task of illusion was noble and pitiful ;
it held the chance of tragedy. Arden, vaguely
rasped, felt it irrational ; and he, from whom she
would ward ofl' for ever the falling of a fleck, had
sometimes the wilful impulse to cover himself
with the common dust.

He was silent for a moment under her final
establishing of him.

You think there is no room for the specula-

SET IN AUTHORITY 203

tion how far one is entitled to come between the
''ruler and his conscience ? ' he meditated aloud.

* None at all,' she said swiftly.
' It has given me a new sympathy,' he said,

smiling at the apprehension in her glance. * For
the stumbling-block. The stumbling-block and
the rock of offence. '

* I won't be drawn into Lord Thame's point of
view. I do not care for that. He is nothing to
me,' she added inadvertently.

*It is decent in him — fair-minded — to ex-
postulate in these terms and at this length.'

' You are flattered ! ' she cried, almost fiercely.
She would pierce him to guard him, without a
qualm.

' Am I ? ' he said humbly. ' I don't know. I
am — touched.'

She leaned forward toward him, putting out
her hand, his passionate monitor. ' You mustn't
be touched,' she said. 'Don't you see you
mustn't ? '

' Oh, I have hardened my heart. Unluckily, I
can't close my eyes at the same time ; and we
have to consider a complication. It is offered to
us by your ingenuous young friend Cox.'

* I thought it was not impossible that he would
come muddling in ! ' she exclaimed, all alight.
'What? How?'

' He has collected a quantity of evidence, or
what he calls evidence, with the assistance of an
old fellow — '

* Afzul Aziz,' she cried. ' I know him very well.'

204 SET IN AUTHORITY

* Do you know anything against him ? '

'I'm afraid not/ she said, with so fallen a
countenance that they both laughed.

'Nor I, unluckily. He's a capital munshi
— passes all his men — seems to have borne a
respectable character always, and is generally
looked up to, as far as I can make out, by the
Mahometans here. All this Cox points out,
and it can't be gainsaid. Morgan's offence was
against Hindoos ; so there is no room for a race
motive.'

' Is the evidence Mahomedan ? '

' Some of it. Not all. There are two sweepers
and a Sikh policeman, who declares he was
threatened before the trial by soldiers — '

'And Mr. Cox has sent it up through the
ordinary channels ? '

' Oh yes — most straightforwardly.'

' So that it was bound to come before you ;
and you are — '

* Bound to send it on to the Government of
India. Exactly.'

She saw the boy's courage, caught at the thing
implied, and smiled. ' I like that in Cox, don't
you?'

' Of course I do,' he said, and waited for her
to go on with the * but.'

' But how exasperating ! How discourteous
to experience 1 He has barely been out a year.
Oh dear, how priggish ! Though that will wear
off — he 's really a good fellow. You must snub
him, I suppose ? '

SET IN AUTHORITY 205

' No, I haven't snubbed him. I confess I have
hardly thought of him.'

' Of course,' she said, quickly self-accusing,
*the personal aspect is nothing. Do you find
anything in it — in what he has got together ? '

* Well, it 's in the loosest form, and some of it,
no doubt, would fail to come to the scratch, and
some would fall to pieces under cross-examina-
tion; but as far as one can read what would
probably be got out of it — ' he paused. ' It 's
the usual thing — a little truth and a great deal
of lying, constructive lying, after the event, it
seems to me. It 's cleverly put together.'

' Does the truth in it bear at all importantly ? '
' Not importantly enough to justify a second

trial. But you mustn't pin me down like that.

I speak only of what I conceive to be the truth.

Thame, no doubt, will believe much more of it ;

because it is in the line of what he wants to

prove, and has been constructed precisely with

that intention.'

* It seems to me,' she said wildly, * that you
ought not to send it up.'

He took with some eagerness the moral upper
hand. * You can't mean that,' he said. * It went
on at once.'

' No — perhaps I don't.'

*I let them know, of course, exactly what
value I attach to it ; and the Viceroy's view
would carry no weight with the Court, you
know, even in the event of a re- trial.'

*But there can be no re-trial. You have

206 SET IN AUTHORITY

pledged your conscience, your authority, your-
self, against it.'

* I have placed my opinion on record against
it ; and I have not changed my opinion.'

'You are pledged,' she repeated. Her eyes
darkened on him, insisting, as she believed, upon
a principle ; but the thing that leapt to him was
the passion in them.

* To whom am I pledged ? ' he asked, though
his thought had followed his heart, and he hardly
cared for an answer.

Ruth reflected for an instant. ' If there is
nobody else, you are pledged to me,' she said.

It brought him foolishly nearer, and he was
near before. He sat looking at her, with his
hand dropped upon his knee. It was a middle-
aged attitude, and he was a middle-aged man,
with a film of grey on his hair, a wife and sons
in another part of the world, and a post of heavy
public responsibility. His honourable past sat
there with him, was plain in every line of him.
It seemed to lift him into security from irregular
impulse, to fortify him against what might
happen to men of meaner mould and less dis-
tinguished experience. Yet it failed him ; and
he failed himself.

' There is no way of telling you how deeply I
am pledged to you,' lie said, speaking as a lover
speaks, and will speak always.

* Please say " how loftily 1 " ' she begged.
That is how I feel it.'

Oh, as loftily as you like,' he answered with

SET IN AUTHORITY 207

a touch of roughness, ' but more deeply. Down
among the sources and mysterious roots of
things — '

She met his look with a half -frightened start,
and plainly stiffened herself, as she sat awkwardly
in her chair, against some great tide of passion
from him ; she knew the dykes were down. If it
had come, and especially if it had swept her for
an instant away, I think she might have forgiven
him, not so much for the rapturous moment, as
because she had a natural lenience for everything
that came crashing over barriers, showing itself
greatly. She made a class and a category for
such things ; she set them aside and bowled to
them. Perhaps she had an instinct for acquies-
cence in the supreme ; perhaps, being a woman,
she was only cowed ; there seems something of
the essential feminine in it. If Arden had
yielded to his pulses she would have sat before
him dumb and overcome. But no torrent came.
The man struggled with it, suffering the in-
hibitions of honour and conscience; and so his
opportunity passed. Her soul, within a hair's-
breadth of capitulation, of some irrevocable word,
fell back upon its forces ; and she mistook her
sudden angry tears, which welled not because of
his shortcomings, but because he had not gone
far enough. With a great effort she held them
back, ignored everything, and smiled at him.

* I like the heights best,' she said.

He would have none of her pleasant interpre-
tations.

208 SET IN AUTHORITY

' I can't have the heights so insisted upon,' he
told her. ' You want to be forever there. Let
us recognise the whole of our claim upon one
another. Why should we conspire to ignore it ?
We are not children or cowards. The truth will
not damage us. You know what it is.'

She looked at him calmly and fully ; and
within, far within, beyond tenderness and for-
giving and extenuation, sat her soul always in
judgment, an eye that never closed, a scale that
never trembled. He knew it perfectly, and in
his rebellion a bitter word escaped him.

' Behind the kindness of your regard,' he said,
' I see the charnel-house where you will presently
be tearing me to pieces.'

' Shall I ? ' she said. * I dare say. But it will
be something new. I have always torn things
to pieces, my whole world sometimes. It is my
bane — it spoils my life. But so far, not you.
So far I have felt differently about you. Other-
wise, how could we have gone on ? Your ideals
were my bread of life, and — I thought — mine
were yours. Wasn't that happiness enough for
us both ? '

* It was a fool's paradise,' he told her ; ' but I
see that I have turned myself out.'

He got up to go, but she put out her hand.
* For a moment,' she said. * I have not told
you, have I, that I intend to ask for leave
immediately ? '

* No,' lie said. * You have only just thought
of it.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 209

* I have always wanted the M.D. of London.
One must practise for two years first, you know.
I have done that.'

* Do you really think it well to go ? Because
I leave myself to-morrow for camp. I shall be
away a long time.'

* You must come and go as is necessary. Yes,
I do really want my M.D. And I want,' she
added fervently, her conscience grasping wildly
at any straw, *to see Mrs. Arden. If she is
still at Heidelberg I shall go there to see her. I
want to — be with her.'

This was intended at least to pierce her own
bosom on its way to his ; but he took it to him-
self alone.

* Then,' he said, * I may not see you again
before you go.' He held out his hand, and she
took it with a startled look.

* Good-bye,' she said timidly.

* Good-bye. You will take six months 1 '
' A year if I can get it.'

' I dare say you would be the better for a year.
I hope it will be profitable in every way. Good-
bye.'

His tongue felt dull with every one of his
forty-three years. He even seemed to move
from her presence heavily. He was aware of a
loss of significance ; a familiar deadly conviction i
overcame him that he was a convention of the v
Indian Civil Service, and nothing more. She
had given him shame to drink and it had made
him conscious in every unhappy way.

0

210 SET IN AUTHORITY

Ruth stood with her hands on the back of her
chair. Her hands looked nerveless, unconscious,
frozen to the chair. She heard her heart crying
aloud that she had hurt him too much ; yet even
at that moment something else in her flung down
her heart, rushed to the front with a flag. She
saw him in disaster, but there was something to
be saved.

'You will not forget one thing,' she said.
* You are pledged.'

* Oh, that ! ' he said indiflerently. * Yes, I quite
hope we shall be able to hold our own.'

He looked back once from the door to add a
final, formal ' Good-bye,' and saw her still stand-
ing beside the chair with her rigid hands upon it.
She contrived something like a bow of acknow-
ledgment, and a smile that was in a ghostly way
polite ; but her farewell to him was in her eyes,
her lips by this time refusing to say it. She
formed the word, but he heard nothing.

It was an ambiguous trifle ; and if it had not
touched his life it might have appealed to his
imagination. Had she or had she not bidden
him a final farewelU However, he made his
way home thinking nothing of the form of her
severance from him. He had to carry the
fact.

The following day the Staft' and establishment
were informed that the Hon. the Chief Commis-
sioner had postponed going into camp for the
present. This he did unavoidably, owing to a

SET IN AUTHORITY 211

command from His Excellency the Viceroy. It
was in appearance an invitation, by the hand of
the Military Secretary, to Government House,
Calcutta ; but Lord Thame no less required
than requested the pleasure of a visit from the
Hon. the Chief Commissioner of Ghoom at as
early a date as he should find convenient, when
His Excellency would confer with him upon
various important matters now pending. It
took this gracious form, but it was as unbending
as an order could be.

* I suppose I have no alternative ? ' said Arden
to Egerton Faulkner.

* I imagine not, sir,' replied Faulkner, disguis-
ing the shock he received from the question.
* You must go, I fancy. Upon my soul I believe
the fellow would come here if you didn't. But
in sending for you of course he 's within his pre-
rogative. I 'm afraid you have no alternative.*

* Oh well, there 's some relief in that.'

CHAPTER XX

Our haughty snubs to Fate are not always
successful. She throws us into a passion we
cannot approve ; we loftily propose to remove
ourselves from its scene and object; we will
teach her. And it so happens that we cannot
go. Fate thus remains undiscouraged, with the
added amusement of seeing us disconcerted.
Ruth Pearce sustained herself the whole of the
next day upon her intention of taking leave.
She saw her out-patients, gave clinical instruc-
tion to her dozen Eurasian girl-students, did her
routine hospital work, and dismissed a sweeper
for an unsavoury drain, voyaging always away
toward her purpose. The Red Sea piled blue on
the Indian Ocean, the waves of the Mediter-
ranean succeeded these ; and they all carried her
to London lodgings where she would know how
to take the aggressive toward the threatenings
of her heart. She went uj)liftedly about her
work and did it unusually well. Our heroic
intentions have this way of rewarding us before-
hand. Then she came home and found a letter
from the Secretary of the Central Committee
informing her that she had been appointed to the

212

SET IN AUTHORITY 213

charge of the Fund's Hospital in Calcutta during
the absence on sick leave of its present Super-
intendent. Dr. Elizabeth Garrens, now at Bijli,
would relieve her at Pilaghur, and she would be
expected to take over at Calcutta on the 24th
instant — in exactly a week's time.

She read the letter twice, remembering, the
second time, that she ought to be flattered.
Then she felt the desire to give it immediately
the reality of a spoken statement, to proclaim
that the thing had been taken out of her hands.
She looked round for Hiria, but Hiria was not in
the room. To talk to Hiria was like communi-
cating without telling anybody. Involuntarily
she opened her lips to call her, checked the
impulse, and sat thinking, but consciously wait-
ing for the ayah to come in.

Presently she came. Ruth watched her for a
moment as she bustled about the room, picking
up a handkerchief with a disciplinary shake,
hanging up and putting in order, as important a
Mistress of the Robes as ever held practical
office.

' Hiria,' she said in the language, ' I do not go
to England. There is another order. I go to
Calcutta.'

' To Calcutta, miss-sahib ! Good talk ! England
is too far, miss-sahib ; and everybody is very sick
in those ships. Three times my grandmother I
went to England : seven times my mother went, j
I never going yet. My mem-sahib wanted me
many times, and many times my mother said to

214 SET IN AUTHORITY

me, "Hiria, you go, silly gell. You get big
wages and you sleep in a bed, and sit on chair,
and eat off china plates, like the sahib-folk." But
I fear too much.'

' I will go later, Hiria. Without doubt I will
go later, only this order has come from the
Sirkar for the present.'

* And who can refuse to hear the order of the
Sirkar, miss-sahib ? Even the Burra Sahib, it is
said, must obey when the Lord Sahib speaks.
And for me, what order, your honour ? '

* Oh, you will go to Calcutta too, Hiria —
unless you object'

•Very good, miss-sahib. In Calcutta rice is
fifteen seers for a rupee, and cotton saHs very
cheap also, in the New Market. Your honour
has never yet seen the New Market? Every-
thing they are selling there, miss-sahib — woolliug
cloth, glass box, flour, feather, gol' ring — very
nice hat too, miss-sahib, very nice hat. It is
said the sahib-log go always once to Calcutta to
see the New Market.'

' Well, Hiria, I shall see it now.'

* But, your honour, what sort of women are
those jungly ones at Calcutta ! They wear but
one garment, those! That first time I went,
coming very early morning from the station, my
mem-sahib said, "You sit by the coachman,
Hiria, so you see everything ! T'ank you, mem-
sahib — I see too much ! In the tanks bathing,
miss-sabib, ten, twenty together — and only one
cloth for each — what a sight 1 And when I

SET IN AUTHORITY 215

pulled my sari over my face they laughed —
impudents ! One day I spoke — " What shame,"
I said, " to wear only one garment." '

'And what did they say ? '

' They said, " It costs as much as all of yours "
— which was false talk, miss-sahib — "and if you
don't want to see, shut your eyes." They have
no respect, those coolie women. And what dress
am I now to put out ? '

* Whatever you like, Hiria — anything. It is
a tennis-party,' said Ruth, with her eyes on the
Secretary's letter.

The ayah opened the wardrobe door and
hesitated. * Perhaps,' she ventured, * the party is
at the General mem-sahib's— Lemon mem-sahib's ? '

* No, Hiria ; it 's in the Guzerati lines, where
is always much dust, you know.'

* Then there is no need for the new one with
the large spots — you will stay there.' She
nodded to the new one arbitrarily, and debated
again. ' Perhaps it is the Colonel mem-sahib
of the black regiment who is giving the kail^
to-day ? '

'No,' her mistress told her absently; 'it is
Mrs. Lamb's party.'

Hiria, with brisk decision, took down a dress
that bespoke her estimate of the social import-
ance of a subaltern's wife.

* Then the cream- wallah of yesterday will be
abundantly enough, miss-sahib. I mended the
sleeve — and it can go to the wash to-morrow.'

' Play.

216 SET IN AUTHORITY

Mrs. Lamb's tennis party was something to
count on in Pilaghur, a permanent amenity. If
Mrs. Lamb was not giving it somebody else
was ; and there were certain constant features
whoever gave it. Always the refreshments were
grouped on little tables under a tree, always
cane chairs were grouped near the refreshments ;
always red and blue striped dhurries from
Cawnpore lay stretched upon the grass against
the early dew. Withdrawn a little way as if
to excuse itself, stood always a special table
with whisky and cheroots for the men, the
former in a Tantalus stand which was invari-
ably a wedding present. Overhead the crows
kept up so constant an interruption that nobody
minded them ; round about, hibiscus bushes
nodded sleepily, always in flower and always
unregarded. Not far away a line of ragged
coleas and a bunch of marigolds made a vain
attempt to disguise the stables or the kitchen.

Of course circumstances differ, and at the
General's or the Judge's the tennis-court wasn't
jammed up against the back of the house in
such a way that you had to ignore the mosquito
curtains of your host's bed, the door being neces-
sarily open for ventilation. Or his boots, which
stood in a row in the back verandah, or his
saddlery, which occupied one end of it, or the
family durzic, who sat cross-legged at the other,
snipping and sewing in the midst of white
things for the mem-aahib. But as everybody
knew that circumstances differed, and exactly

SET IN AUTHORITY 217

to what extent, nobody in the least minded
Lamb's boots or Mrs. Lamb's petticoats. Rather
not. The party sat in a row of oblivious backs
and made cheerful conversation, while one kit-
mutgar, with three buttons off his cotton livery,
hastily washed tea- cups in relays behind a bush,
and the other, who was pock-marked and had
but one eye, again and yet again made solemn
offers of cocoa-nut toff'ee in triangles.

Mrs. Lemon was there of course. Mrs. Lemon
made a particular point of going to the parties
of subalterns' wives, especially those in native
regiments : it was her good heart. The Faulk-
ners were also there, Mrs. Faulkner just a little
composed and distant. Also the Davidsons and
the Wickhams and Charles Cox, and both the
Misses Hilly er, and the doctor, and a pair of
new railway people, and practically everybody
except the Barfordshires, with whom Mrs. Lamb,
and indeed all the Guzerati ladies, sustained
for the moment strained relations. We need
not go into it, but it does seem more than
V- possible that a ba-chelor mess might exert an
undue influence in a mutton club. I know Mrs.
Lemon, without taking sides, heartily endorsed
this view.

The Biscuits were not there either. It must
be confessed that Mrs. ap- Williams Lamb and
Mrs. Arthur Poynder Biscuit were not on speak-
ing terms. That was a much more serious"*
matter, involving a Biscuit terrier which had
worried the goat that supplied nourishment to

218 SET IN AUTHORITY

a Lamb baby — the kind of matter that is not
likely to be healed either in this world or the
next. Unfortunately, there is time only in the
smaller Indian plains stations to do justice to
such complications ; but one is inclined to agree
off-hand with Mrs. Lemon — it is phenomenal
the number of times one agrees with Mrs.
Lemon — who said to Mrs. Davidson, in discuss-
ing it, that to charge the goat with temper was
^at all events absurd.

Mrs. Lemon and Mr. Egerton Faulkner were
having the liveliest possible conversation a little
apart, in two of Mrs. Lamb's wicker chairs.
Egerton Faulkner was always happy with Mrs.
Lemon. She helped him more than anybody,
with her comfortable twinkle, to the delicious exer-
cise of producing himself. He did it somehow
for her benefit and yet at her expense ; and Mrs.
Lemon enjoyed nothing more than Mr. Faulkner,
except Mr. Faulkner and a strawberry ice.

Mrs. Lemon, sipping her ice, was saying,
apropos of the goat, that Mrs. Biscuit, though
a pretty woman and a well-dressed woman, was
too clever for Aer. She supposed it was a good
thing to be clever, indeed people said that now-
adays a girl had no chance unless she was
clever, but why — ?

* Why not sometimes conceal it ? ' Mr. Faulk-
ner cut in with agility. He was the only person
in the station wlio could successfully interrupt
Mrs. Lemon.

' I entirely agree. Mrs. Biscuit might conceal

SET IN AUTHORITY 219

the quality of her mind with advantage oftener
than she does. She ought to think even more
about her clothes, which are so rewarding, or
more about Biscuit's future. I confess to you,
dear Mrs. Lemon, I sometimes look upon that
excellent little man's career with apprehension,
wondering whether Mrs. Biscuit feels herself suffi-
ciently involved — sufficiently responsible.'

* Oh, she 's a model wife.'

* I 'm sure she is — I 'm sure she is. One might
almost say a French model, and not admire too
much. But would she, at a critical moment, sink
all for Biscuit "? She reminds me fatally at times
of a lady I once knew at Simla — in the days, you
understand, when Simla was winning the renown
that helped so importantly to make Mr. Kipling's.
She was a beautiful woman, more beautiful even
than Mrs. Biscuit, and there was one who loved her
much. It wasn't me. I loved her too, but I wasn't
senior enough. And on one occasion this other
person — he was very senior, of course, to dare
such a thing — gently took the hand of the lady,
the beautiful lady whom Mrs. Biscuit so strikingly
reminds me of. On the spur of the moment,
yielding, you see, to untutored impulse, she drew
it away. The next instant she thought of her
husband's future, and put it hack again. But it
wasn't the same thing. He didn't get on.' And
Mr. Faulkner, with a seraph's smile, screwed his
eyeglass in to observe arriving guests.

* Simla is better behaved nowadays,' chuckled
Mrs. Lemon.

220 SET IN AUTHORITY

' Simla has lost all the reputation it ever had.
I am told that the most conspicuous object on the
Mall to-day is the parlour, or whatever they call
it, of the Young Women's Christian Association.
Dear Mrs. Lemon, Simla has gone irretrievably
downhill. And we have let it happen under our
very noses. Among the fresh masses of meddling
and often mischievous legislation that yearly dis-
figure our statute-books, no one has ever paused
to bring in a bill for — . You are about to tell me,
Mrs. Lemon, that I am talking nonsense.'

' No, go on. I like it. Here comes Dr.
Pearce. Now there's a clever woman, if you
like.'

* Oh, consumedly ! If she wasn't always dying
to tell you what you really ought to do to be
saved. Which is stupid,' observed the Chief
Secretary, dropping his eyeglass.

His face changed as Ruth approached ; its look
of banter seemed to fall with the eye-glass. She
always had this effect upon Egerton Faulkner.
He was robbed, at her approach, of his whims
and affectations ; she made him serious, threw him
back upon himself and reality. He very nearly
disliked her for it.

It was a passing shadow on this occasion.
Ruth responded to his ceremonious bow with a
pleasant nod and went on to the railway couple,
who were sitting together, new and uncertain,
not yet quite accepted and plainly a little black.
The railway man often said he hated talking
shop, a superior sort of thing to believe, which is

SET IN AUTHORITY 221

usually quite without foundation ; but he was pre-
sently giving Miss Pearce a quantity of informa-
tion about the pilgrim traffic to Hurdwar, which
she found very nearly as interesting as he did.
People always told Ruth about what most closely
concerned them, because that was what she
always wanted to know. She sat hearing the
number of pilgrims who died on the threshold of
the sanctity they coveted, pointing out the pathos
while the railway man dwelt on the percentage,
and accepted tea from the pock-marked kit-
mutgar, and noted now and then the progress of
the tennis. Charles Cox was playing with Mrs.
Davidson, once more in form, against Mr. David-
son and the fair Miss Hillyer ; it was a tremendous
sett, and vied with the badminton for noise.

'How long have they been playing?' asked Kuth.

She was longing for a talk with Charles Cox,
for an opportunity of telling him how inexcusably
he had behaved. But they had just begun.

'Play up, old man,' cried Mrs. Davidson to
her husband from the other side, and Davidson,
sending her a hard service, which she missed,
remarked gaily —

' If I go on doing that I ohall get myself dis-
liked.'

'That's healthy,' observed Miss Hillyer dis-
gustedly, making a second fault. ' Well tried ! *
' Well played, partner ! ' ' Liner, liner ! ' ' Half
a mile out ! ' * Buck up, your side ! ! ' The air
was full of these battle cries and much laughter.
Charles Cox, valiant and threatening at the net,

222 SET IN AUTHORITY

received a ball in his person just above tbe line,
and it bounded back to a shout of 'Well defended! '
They indulged in searching sarcasm, splendid
boasts, appalling personalities, abject apology,
all the high words and bywords that come of
doing in excellent spirits the same thing every
day. Davidson, when a swift return overtook
him somewhere in the legs, spun round twice,
and made as if to fall upon the field.

And after all, they were nothing to the bad-
minton, where the quicker play made wilder
shrieks, and the ' chirria,' the ' bird,' lent itself
to more exuberant humour. General Lemon was
generally conceded the best badminton-player in
Pilaghur. He played seven times a week, which,
I am afraid, was only once a day ; but his execu-
tion was wonderful. It almost justified the con-
stancy of the practice, especially as he never
missed morning service. And here I am only
quoting Mr. Biddow, the station chaplain, who
ran him very close. It would have been hard to
invent more innocent amusements for elderly
people, or even for their juniors.

At last the game was over. Ruth paused in
the story she was telling the railway man's wife,
and her eyes followed Charles Cox, whose own
were too clearly fixed upon the pursuit of Miss
Hillyer to the neglect of his lawful partner, upon
whom, by all the traditions of the game, he
should have been pressing tea or claret cup.

* And when you took the stethoscope out of
your pocket, Dr. Pearce — ? '

SET IN AUTHORITY 223

* Oh, she ran away,' said Ruth, rising.

* She was afraid of it ? '

* I beg your pardon ? Afraid ? Yes, I suppose
she was afraid. They told me afterwards that
she said I pulled snakes out of my clothes. I
never saw her again,' said Ruth. * I think I
must go now. There is somebody that I want
to speak to.'

Mrs. Lamb had seized upon Miss Hillyer to
play again, and Miss Hillyer was protesting that
Mrs. Lamb should really play herself this time ;
and Mr. Lamb had joined the altercation with
the statement that the other three players were
waiting 'and the light was going. Mr. Cox,
finding that the dispute gave him no opportunity,
turned away to see Miss Pearce standing near
him. Something in her eyes drew and compelled
him ; he went up to her at once.

' Well ''i ' he said, smiling as he lifted his cap.

* Well — I have heard what you have done.'
Mr. Cox glanced once again at the contending

group, saw that Miss Hillyer was about to be
reabsorbed, and postponed further hope in that
direction.

* I 'm afraid you don't approve,' he said.

* No, I don't approve. You have made a mis-
take in judgment, I think; and you have added
to the difficulties of a man in a very hard
place.'

* I can't help that. I feel a jolly sight better
now that it's done.'

'Of course you do. You've given your con-

224 SET IN AUTHORITY

science a cathartic,' Ruth told him. She did
not always choose her phrases. 'Lord Thame,
also, would feel a jolly sight better if he could
hang Morgan ; but there are more important con-
siderations.'

* Not to us ! And — excuse me, Dr. Pearce,
but that's just like a woman. The Viceroy
doesn't want necessarily to " hang " Morgan ; he
only wants to get him adequately punished. And
it isn't only his rectitude that 's involved — it 's
the honour of England.'

Ruth winced for an instant at the thought of
how much more deeply she was concerned with
the honour of one man.

* An irritable conscience in a position of autho-
rity ought to be very well informed,' she said
stiffly. * I 'm afraid I doubt the value of your
contribution to Lord Thame's information, Mr.
Cox.'

Her tone was inexcusably hostile, but her soul
was in confusion for the man she loved, half
shrinking from any test of him except her own ;
and her heart was full of displeasure towards this
young Cox, who had stepped in at so wrong a
time to darken counsel and perhaps to weaken
resolution. He took it very well.

* 1 suppose there is always the possibility of
being deceived,' he said; 'but 1 have done my
best to sift and verify it.'

' It will make no difference. I am sure it will
make no difference.'

' I don't know. Perhaps not. But the Chief

SET IN AUTHORITY 225

and the Viceroy together are pretty sure to get
at the value of it, whatever it is.'

* The Chief and the Viceroy together ? I don't
understand.'

The young fellow spoke a little shamefacedly.
He had no wish to exult over her.

* Oh — I supposed you knew Lord Thame had
sent for Mr. Arden.'

' Upon this matter ? No. When does he go '? '
The thought flew from her mind to her heart and
back again, * If I could only see him first ! '

' He starts by the Calcutta mail this afternoon,
I believe, at six. There are the guns now.*

It was, in effect, the first gun, and twelve
more made formal announcement that the Chief
Commissioner of Ghoom was leaving his admini-
strative territory. Ruth listened intently, and
neither of them spoke until the thirteenth had
boomed and shaken itself into silence. Then a
flock of sparrows, settling into some bushes for
the night and silenced by the unusual sound,
began again their storm of squealing chirps, and
Charles Cox, eyeing her curiously, said —

' It is impressive, isn't it — the salute ? '

* Oh yes,' she replied, ' it is. Especially when
you don't — exactly — know what it means.'

* Oh, I fancy it has no very deep significance,'
he began to tell her ; but at that moment the
players were seen to be leaving the courts and
Miss Hillyer to come again within the region of
the possible. Mr. Cox found an excusing word
and left his companion, and she, still listening

p

226 SET IN AUTHORITY

interiorly to the vibrations of the last gun,
hardly knew that he was gone.

She turned and looked at Mrs. Lamb's tennis
party, searching the groups in the cane chairs and
round the little tables for some one who would
say to her confidently, with a serious knowledge
of what was involved : ' There is no danger —
he will stand firm. You need not be afraid.'

They were all drawn from Arden's world ;
some of them were his counsellors and lieu-
tenants; she felt strongly that some at least
should have this business very deeply at heart.
Yet her instinct told her that there was not one
to whom she could speak of it and expect a reply
that was neither perfunctory, nor indifferent, nor
frivolous. She felt with resentment that they
had no measure for the man, not stopping to
consider how rare and strange a thing it was
that she should have a measure for him. The
result was that for the moment she had no
measure for them ; she thought them, in her
indignation, a collection of puppet-people.

They drank more tea and ate more ices. The
pock-marked kitmutgar circulated among them
with feverish activity. They chattered as hard
as the sparrows, and laughed, which the sparrows
couldn't do ; Mr. Cox's explosion was heard at
regular intervals with an unmistakable note of
excitement. They were occupied with whisky
and soda and iced coffee and fifty different things.
Ruth Pearcc felt it possible to be occupied with
only one thing, and went home.

CHAPTER XXI

So Eliot Arden went to Calcutta.

Later in Lord Thame's political career it was
constantly said of him that, whatever he was, he
was no opportunist. Knowing very well what
/le wanted, he often appeared to take the most
difficult means of getting it — a trait which was
more admired outside his party than in it. Bio-
graphers of his administration of India might
have testified to the same effect in considering
his dealing with the Chief Commissioner of Ghoom
over the Morgan case. To order a man of Arden's
type into his presence like a schoolboy, the
historian might point out, was not tactful : to
arm him with the expectation of being put upon
his metal was not wise. There was a publicity
about the thing, too, that made against its chances
of success. Senior officials of Bengal, asked to
dinner to meet the Chief Commissioner of Ghoom,
must have been aware that there was a subject
which, without invitation, it would be better not
to enter upon. Anybody might guess, meeting
the Viceregal carriage, with its red and gold escort
of Sikh cavalrymen in front and behind, what the
two men with concentrated looks and folded arms
who sat in it, were talking about. A change of

227

228 SET IN AUTHORITY

opinion, like a change of clothes, is most happily-
accomplished, one supposes, in privacy.

Lord Thame's assault upon the views of his Chief
Commissioner appeared to take nothing of the
sort into account. It involved damage to Arden's
dignity, to his sense of propriety, and to long
settled convictions upon certain questions, not to
count his belief in his own experience and so
small a matter as his popularity. Perhaps these
considerations, once they fully appeared to Arden's
mind, rather helped the Viceroy's appeal ; and
perhaps Lord Thame knew they would. A
smaller man might have fortified himself with
such things. Eliot Arden, the moment he
believed himself depending on them, was capable
of making a present of them to the enemy.

I am afraid the matter could hardly have occu-
pied for Arden quite the high ground upon which
Ruth Pearce saw it. This is borne out by the fact
that she never entered, even to preside, into his
heavy deliberations. He saw it in as lofty a light
as may shine upon a question of serious expediency
— and tliose may criticise expediency in a theory
of Oriental administration who feel qualified to
do so — but he did not see it to be a doubt in
wliich his conscience was sole and predestined
arbiter, with results gravely critical to himself.
Ruth never came in. The matter did not mingle
with his thoughts of her, which would have sur-
prised and not pleased her. She believed herself
always there, urging and compelling him ; it was
iu that way that she identified herself with him.

SET IN AUTHORITY 229

But he only thought of her before or after. This
does, I think, show where it stood for him. If
he had recognised it with his soul it would have
come to him always with her face.

I am glad to be able to declare that he ar-
rived at his decision without her. Otherwise
there would have been a temptation to ferret
among the influences that finally tipped the
balance, and to make some sort of comparison
between the two emotions deepest in him — his
feeling for her and this other passion for the
ruler. One can imagine them in opposition,
tearing him, in so far as he felt them to bear
upon his problem, in different directions ; but
it is a speculation which it is pleasanter to abandon.
I feel happier in contemplating him simply the
prey to his loyalty, in so far as his mind listened
to his heart. If he was pulled by the strings
there was only one string. The woman did not
come in until afterwards. Then she had her
turn.

They took a week over it. Public attention
was invited to the statement that further large
discoveries of coal in Ghoom and certain diffi-
culties in working the labour regulations there,
were receiving the close personal attention of
the Viceroy. Public attention was not for a
moment diverted from the real question ; but
the papers observed a certain decency. Nothing
appeared that might embarrass either the Viceroy
or his guest. People talked, and watched, and
waited for the event ; varying degrees of con-

230 SET IN AUTHORITY

fidence in Arden were expressed ; but bets were
made at the Calicut Club, which had always a
pessimistic tone about officials, three to one
against him.

Then, one morning, thirteen more guns spoke
from Fort William, and any one in Calcutta who
happened to be paying attention knew that the
Chief Commissioner, who had been for some days
the guest of His Excellency at Government
House, was starting back to Ghoom. Also the
papers mentioned it.

That same morning Arden had a letter from
Ruth. It was handed to him by a panting
messenger in the red and gold livery of the
Viceroy, as he was stepping into the train. The
letter seemed, therefore, to have the futility of
attempts that are made too late ; yet Arden put
it in his pocket with an instinct to postpone it
until some miles of his journey should add to the
inevitableness of what he had done. He had a
thought of somewhat cynical congratulation that
she had not written before, telling himself that it
could have made no difference — and the thing was
complicated enough without bringing feeling into
it. He waited alone in his special carriage, as
the train hurried him through the palm-fringed
rice-fields of Lower Bengal, until he began to
feel, instead of any apprehension, the simple
happiness of having a letter from her to read.
He sat in the warmth of that for a while, and
then he opened it.

It was neither an appeal nor an expostulation.

SET IN AUTHORITY 231

There was nothing in it to make him, in view of
what he had done, sorry for her, though once or
twice, as he read it, he felt rather poignantly
sorry for himself. It was not the cry of an
impulse that could no longer be held down, but
the formulation, thought out at pains and at
length, of an argument. It had not arrived too
late, but precisely in the nick of time. She had
watched his movements in the newspapers ; and
she knew that by the time he received it there
would be no further question.

She had no desire, Ruth told him — and she
believed it when she wrote it — to thrust herself
into his councils. In a way, not in the truest
way or the highest way, but in a way, whatever
action he took, even what she most feared, would
be right for him. She would admit that But
no sophistry in the world — Arden's smile ran into
a frown at the unconscious rough emphasis which,
blotted and underlined, was so like her — no
sophistry in the world could make it right for
her. Whatever he did, he would find in it"^
justification enough ; the insuperable difficulty
was that she couldn't. And if the worst had
happened, it would be to her the kind of blow
under which all that was most beautiful and
worth saving in their relations would finally
perish. She knew no way of keeping it alive.
She would be glad always to have had the ideal
which he, as it were, had lent her for a little
while ; but henceforth the room would be empty ^
in her soul where it used to come and go. That,

232 SET IN AUTHORITY

the ideal, was all that there was of it, she certi-
fied, all that there ever had been of it ; and to
deface that was to destroy everything. She told
him this in so many vague yet violent ways that
he might have read in her insistence the necessity
for convincing herself ; but he only thought her
curiously austere.

Simply said, it came to this, that she could
not — and would not if she could — withstand the
shock of another disappointment in him. We
may not think the first one very shattering ; but
then the idol was not ours. There was a kind
of sufiering that she found unbearable. It was
implied that he alone could provoke it ; but
among the plainer terms of the letter I am afraid
he failed to grasp this hidden consolation also.
His head was not so much wilier than his heart
as that would show it. And to everything that
had grown up between them, of what was more
exquisite and true than what people called the
realities of life, there should be a definite end.
That was the clear thing ; and he grasj^ed it as
lucidly as he had grasped any other issue that
had been presented to him during the last week.

If he had yielded to the Viceroy — well, he
had yielded to the Viceroy — Ruth Pearce took
herself out of his life. Well, iliei], she was gone.
It seemed to come to him with (j[uecr naturalness,
as part of the discipline of his long service, some-
thing that was laid down by authority not to be
i questioned, something that was merely to be
accepted and obeyed. He folded up the letter

SET IN AUTHORITY 233

and put it in his pocket, as he might have folded
up a refusal of furlough or a distasteful transfer
— with the same sense that it was part of a
scheme of things in which his was the simple
duty of loyal co-operation. He had made it a
point of honour for twenty years never to protest,
and he did not protest now. This was more than
ever to be accepted, because it was a legitimate
consequence of a thing he had thought proper to
do. It was no unjust or arbitrary infliction, such
as will sometimes fly from the machinery of even
the best oiled bureaucracy, but a direct issue of
his own administrative act. He took it up with-
out a thought of rejection, as he would have
taken up a lighter penalty, which had not to be
poised upon his heart. _^

He had come, besides, to the point in life when *
the eager heart has learned how much it must
do without ; when it knows acquiescence and
shrewdly guesses the certainty of denial by the
depth of desire. It would go cowled like a monk
among the ways of the world if it could, the
heart of middle age ; so wise it has grown, andj
so humble. Or perhaps it is like a dog that has
been beaten often but still would serve its master,
trying to learn indiff'erence to every other foolish
wish. Yes, it is most like that ; since the poor
dog pants and bounds in his allegiance much
longer, sometimes, than we have any need of
him.

Arden never denied himself, notwithstanding,
his right of private criticism ; and as he sat

234 SET IN AUTHORITY

there in his corner while the hours and the train
went on, he took what lean satisfaction there was
in trying his charge, and pulling the logic of his
sentence to pieces. As he saw it, she wished to
command his political conscience. She would
condemn its obedience to the ruler, or even to
himself; what she forbade, therefore, that she
exacted. It was not a view to be upheld, no
doubt ; but the man was on his defence against
the woman he loved. Perhaps this invalidates
all his arguments ; I will quote no more of them.
Only let me tell how he thought it supreme and
characteristic in her that she could thus debate
and decide about anything so certified in itself as
what they were to one another, a thing which, to
his simpler mind, having come into existence,
should just be and remain. We know her letter
was nothing of the kind, but a mere subtle refuge
of hers, tangled and defended with inscrutable
woman's ethics ; but again we are not in his
situation. He sat there, indeed, did the Chief
Commissioner of Ghoom, making one mistake
after another. His traffic had truly and wonder-
fully been with Ruth Pearce's soul ; and it was
perhaps natural that he should refer this decision
of hers to what was finest and noblest and least
to be dis[)uted in her, and should receive it
simply as absolute and irrevocable — which was
the greatest mistake of all.

Yet he was her lover. Night came, early
night, with its tenderness of stars and its
humanity of vilLagc fires, the Indian night, in its

SET IN AUTHORITY 235

vague travelling darkness and warm breathing
of the expanded earth. Suddenly, as the train
fled along, his blood awoke and murmured in
him. He leaned with excitement towards the
window where the soft air rushed in and brought
him nothing. He seemed to have a bond with
the night in his veins, which burned with mount-
ing possession of her, as if imagination cast a
sweet fiction after everything else that departed.
He sat seized and wondering, for it was a palpable
thing like a visitation ; and across his vision,
nailed to the darkness, shot the lights of another
train side-tracked to let him pass. It was the
Calcutta mail, and Ruth Pearce was in it, on her
way to her new appointment, a chained slave to
the rebel thought of him, fighting with her
longing to know what her letter would bring
back.

Next day she found out by the Calcutta
papers.

CHAPTER XXII

The individual human lot, liow practically it
disengages itself from the mass ! We talk of
campaigns and revolutions, and it is all paper
theory, less important to our instincts than the
single case, anywhere on the round of the world,
that has managed to become detached, and to rise,
like a microcosm of miserjr, out of the depths.
There is the picture and the drama ; and we
stare fascinated at the bubble we see, while the
fate of anonymous thousands sleeps in the next
paragraph.

Well, the sun rose one morning to throw the
shadow of the gallows across the history of India
in a new significance, and even in London they
saw it. The earlier telegrams announcing the
reopening of the Morgan case in Calcutta had
been dry and brief, so dry and brief as to hint
discretion in the wording, and a sense of grave
issues at the Indian end. But nobody thought
of finding that in them, except perhaps the India
Office and one or two members of the Govern-
ment. The great British gallery passed them by,
and they were presently wrapping up herrings
and cheese as if by pre- destination. In a week

SM

SET IN AUTHORITY 237

or two, however, another note crept into them,
a note that could not be subdued ; and the centre
of the Empire became vaguely aware that far out
upon those circling boundaries which she manages
with such magnificent unconcern something was
happening. *They seem to be rather upset in
Calcutta over that chap Morgan,' said the break-
fast-tables of the City of Westminster. An
imperfect acquaintance with the facts crept even
into the suburban trains. Then in the course of
time and the progress of the morning deliveries
the thing that came throbbing over the cables
finally conquered the fogs and grasped the
imagination of the island. Henry Morgan
emerged from the welter of the world, and his
name became the tag of an idea. London — even
England — became aware of how and why Cal-
cutta was upset, and naturally, feeling that she
had a voice in the matter, became upset herself,
and lifted it.

It is easy to hear her. When a subject arrives
/ at editorial importance her tones sound round the
v/orld. Henry Morgan became in a moment a
touchstone for the character and feelings, the
principles, prejudices, and politics of the British
nation, as reflected in the metropolitan Press.
He made a channel for them all down the fourth
page.

The Daily Flash, a revolving light which, it
was now recognised, could never be extinguished,
gave him a brief lyrical setting, with a crisp
notice to Lord Thame that his 'great constitu-

23^ SET IN AUTHORITY

ency' had an eye upon his vagaries, the last
paragraph reminding its readers — comprising one
quarter of the literate population of Great Britain
— that the Flash had been two days ahead of its
contemporaries in publishing the original account
of Morgan's crime. ' First you see the Flash
and then you hear the report/ said punning
readers of this journal. The Morning Remem-
brancer turned from its daily labour to keep the

Anglo-Saxon race within the kingdom of Great

• • • t

Britain, to bestow warm appreciation and applause

upon the Viceroy of India, who, in spite of a
threatening tradition and a clamouring bureau-
cracy, was calling down reluctant justice upon a
criminal of his own race from a sky which should
not shelter them both. The journal referred to
with afifectionate deference by its contributors as
' the Organ ' went dispassionately back over the
matter from the beginning, laid a calm restraining
hand upon its emotional significance, and finished
with an expression of fatherly confidence in Lord
Thame, whose course and conduct in India the
Organ and the nation had so frequently found
occasion to approve. The weeklies joined the
chorus, singing second but in perfect tune.
Fireside Comment spared its readers the unhappy
details of Morgan's offence, led them in a serious
circle round what it described as a standard of
ethics, and implored them to be on their guard
against the noxious bacteria of race feeling which
might presently be in the air, against which even
the balanced mind of the English people could not

SET IN AUTHORITY 239

hope to be absolutely proof. Alfred Earle, in the
Prospect^ pointed out that this was a matter in
which a Conservative Opposition might well find
its account, as well as one of possible grave
reckoning to the nation, certainly a matter to be
regarded with the utmost concern in every aspect.
After which he congratulated Lord Thame upon
his courage in adding the intolerable to the
burdens of his administration, and closed with
some reflections upon the obvious inconvenience,
in an Oriental country, of an Early Victorian cast
of mind. People often wondered why the Pro-
spect, which was really so clever, did not make
more of a mark.

Lady Thame went about with the face and
figure of triumph. Anthony stood a fair chance
of immolation for a principle at last, and whether
the pyre was lighted in England or in India she
did not much care. He had gone consistently
after false gods for so long, mostly by tortuous
paths leading over frontiers, that she had almost
given up the hope of reclaiming him. But the
affair of Henry Morgan was proving him her own
son — * a Thame,' as the Bishop remarked, ' of the
first water.'

She fanned the flame.

' I wish they would drag him from his seat,'
she said to the Bishop, who was dining with
her.

Deirdre and Victoria Tring were there, and
Lady Akell with her husband's excuses. The
Secretary of State for India had cried off at the

240 SET IN AUTHORITY

last moment. Lord Arthur Perth, editor of the
last monthly review — independent of everything
but Ireland — was also present ; Jasper Dabchick,
proprietor of Fireside Comment ; an odd man
from the Home Office, other London items, large
and small.

The Bishop of Battersea smiled along an
inclined plane at the chandelier, and the pendants
twinkled back.

' I hope they won't do that,' he replied ; ' but
a friend of mine in Calcutta, a brother-priest of
the Oxford Mission, writes to me that feeling is
rising very high. The prisoner was transferred
the other day from this up-country place with the
curious name where the crime was committed, to
Calcutta; and I believe the demonstration at the
station was extraordinary. Extraordinary, I
mean, for Calcutta, where, no doubt owing to the
climate, the public is somewhat lethargic. And
quite unexpected.'

' Anthony gave me a full account of it,' said
his mother, * at least so far as he was informed
by the newspapers. He and his Council had left
for Simla just two days before, I regret to say.
Otherwise I can quite imagine his going out
himself among the people to restore order.'

* The moment of heroic opportunity,' observed
the Bishop, * how often it comes when we are not
there 1 And Simla. That is a town in what they
call "the Hills," I believe. Now that's an odd
fancy to call the vast Himalayas " the Hills,"
The Viceroy and liis Government

SET IN AUTHORITY 241

summer to Simla, I have been told. No doubt to
escape the terrible Indian heat. Dear me, how
much we have heard of Simla ! '

' Of course they do, dear Bishop. How could
they accomplish anything down in the Plains,
from April to November, with their brains
frizzling ? But Anthony frequently tells me to
believe very little of what one hears of Simla, I
am thankful to say. "Think of it rather,*' he
says, " as a workshop of Empire." He says I am
to organise a crusade — a crusade — against the
popular idea of the place; so I might as well
begin with you.'

The Bishop put up a shapely hand.

' I fall at once,' he protested.

*** Anglo-India," he tells me,' continued Lady
Thame, * " maybe roughly divided into men who
are intelligent and women who are virtuous. As
far as I am able to observe," he says, '* there are
hardly any others." That was his phrase.
Rather epigrammatic I call it — epigrammatic, if I
am his mother. You are eating nothing. Bishop.'

* I am so excessively fond of — of this excel-
lent roll, dear Lady Thame. But to return to
this unsavoury fellow, Morgan. The trial in the
Supreme Court is pending, I take it.'

'The first part of it, to do away with the
original judgment — quash it, don't they say?
— comes on next week, before what they call
a Revisional bench. Which will consist of Dick
Wimpole — you know Richard Wimpole, their last
appointment from England to the Calcutta High

Q

242 SET IN AUTHORITY

Court? He went out in January. Oh yes,
Bishop, I am sure you do. Who did so much to
defeat that wicked Canada Loaf Bill last year.
Wrote his fingers to the bone and talked himself
into spasmodic asthma. Very bad he was, poor
fellow.'

*Yes, yes. • To be sure I do. Wimpole.
Prominent everywhere but at the Bar, perhaps.'

* Possibly. But as he has private means that
doesn't matter. A man of the best principle, and
most anxious to be of real service somewhere.
And we all thought India, you know, would do
beautifully for the asthma. Well, he is to be one
of these Revisional judges. Another is an Irish-
man, not at all over-fond of our military despot-
ism out there, and what they call a civilian
judge ; and the third is very properly a Hindoo,
whose name I can't remember, but it ends in
" bhai." Anthony writes that he has every hope
that the matter may be put right. Nobody
knows but me how much he has it at heart.
And possibly,' added Lady Thame, who was
scrupulously truthful, as her eye fell upon Victoria
Tring, * one other person.'

The dinner-table was informed with the topic.
It possessed the hour and the occasion as a shadow
thrown by the morning papers will possess it in
London. Lady Thame's party fell on it with
avidity, exercised their reflection and their wit,
their judgment and their imagination upon it.
Among the last of Henry Morgan's poor uses was
that of a whetstone. Arthur Perth, who looked

SET IN AUTHORITY 243

heavily weighted with the matter of his Review
and drank only Apollinaris, expressed his grati-
tude that there were still opportunities, in the
course of history, for Englishmen to make pre-
cedents of conduct. Jasper Dabchick agreed
profoundly, but trusted, with a bright and per-
spicacious eye upon consequences, that Morgan's
sentence would not be enhanced beyond, say, ten
years. He ought to ge^; ten years, certainly.

* I am inclined to think,' said Mrs. Tring, lift-
ing her head like a daughter of Olympus out of
some not quite pristine lace foam, * that he ought
to be hanged. I have never had that feeling
before — that any one ought to be hanged — but
it seems imposed on me. The ideals are gods
that demand sacrifices. We must not withhold
them.'

The Bishop looked with what one might call
averted interest at Mrs. Tring, who always
attracted this curious attention from Bishops.

* Is that your view. Lady Akell ? ' he asked
his neighbour on the other side.

The wife of the Secretary of State for India
answered with her eyes, and the Bishop smiled
with that conscious discretion that persons in
these circles have occasion to use so often. Pre-
sently, with the safe precision of practice. Lady
Thame being engaged upon her left, Lady Akell,
so to speak, developed her glance.

'They don't like it at aU,' she told him.
'Akell thinks it an odious persecution, and
George Craybrooke is quite nervous about it. It

244 SET IN AUTHORITY

must be backed up, I suppose. But of all the
pig-headed — '

* Ah,' said the Bishop, giving her an instant's
necessary cover.

' Oh, I assure you ! As to that little lady — '
' The advocate of the willing sacrifice ? '

* Is she quite mad ? I hear that she has broken,
over this, with her dearest friend.'

* Eeally ? How very sad — how very sad,
indeed.'

' He can't and won't see it as she does — in fact,
he 's furious with certain people, like everybody
else — and he 's banished I It 's too absurd. You
perceive he 's not here to-night.'

* And is that remarkable ? '

*0h, she won't go anywhere without him.
People understand that perfectly, you know. The
odd thing is, he began by not liking her at all.
Then one day he went down like a shot. It was
at our house. She said one of her extraordinary
things, and he replied as rudely as possible, " I
don't know what you mean. " She looked at him
as if he were to be pitied. " No, I suppose you
don't," she said, " but that doesn't destroy the
meaning." You know how Fraylcy has always
been spoiled and flattered, Bishop. I assure you
he almost visibly jumped. And capitulated at
once.'

* Dear me, how very interesting.' The Bishop's
eye now rested, as if by licence, upon Deirdre.

' Yes, but 80 annoying. Bishop. Frayley has
been tripped in the House by that odious Welsh-

SET IN AUTHORITY 245

man twice in the last three days. I wish she
would marry him and be done with it I '

* Perhaps she prefers to keep her privilege to
banish him. There is never any news, I suppose,
of that poor fellow, the son — most unhappy affair,
that.'

* Oh, they 've found him, I believe — or are on
the point of finding him,' replied Lady Akell, a
statement which seemed greatly to reassure and
comfort the Bishop.

Lavinia Thame, asking Victoria practically
the same question, as the ladies paired into after-
dinner talk in the drawing-room, was less com-
pletely solaced by the reply, though it was to the
same effect.

*It can only be a question of a few weeks
now,' said Victoria, ' but Kelly has only just
sailed, you know. Tell me, Lavinia, are you all
certain that George Craybrooke is going to stick
to Anthony through this business ? I hear the
India Office is against him to a man — and why
isn't Akell here to-night ? '

' He telegraphed influenza, or a threatening.
Kelly sailed on the 3rd, Victoria. We ought to
hear something by the first week in May.'

' I am sure we shall, Lavinia, dear old thing.
We must have patience,' said Victoria. 'If
Craybrooke fails Anthony over this Morgan busi-
ness the last shred of my respect for a Liberal
Government vanishes.'

CHAPTER XXIII

What they thought in London was a matter of
great indifference in India. There they were
thinking for themseves. When it came to a tea
duty or a sugar bounty, attention was paid, how-
ever exasperated, to the home view; but in
matters intrinsically Indian the home view was
felt to be superfluous. Renter duly cabled the
opinions of the Organ and the Remembrancer as
to the Indian Government's action in the Morgan
case ; and they said in the Calicut Club that it
was sickening. From their point it was sicken-
ing ; but as this is not a study of an Anglo-
Saxon group, isolated in a far country under
tropical skies and special conditions, but only a
story, I cannot stop to explain why. However
they put it in India, they felt that here was a
matter removed by circumstance and destiny
from the British intelligence, and threw the para-
graphs of Fleet Street into the waste-paper
basket. The fact that they were politically
equipped in no way whatever to deal with it only
further heated their blood and intensified their
conviction. The Viceroy had again over-ridden
the Courts — that was the way they put it. The
thing was getting beyond bearing.

246

SET IN AUTHORITY 247

The hot air of April burned over the Maidan ;
and the short grass on the glacis of Fort William
withered shorter still. The teak-trees uncurled
their miracle of young leaves, branch by vivid
branch ; the gold mohurs waited for no leaves,
but threw their scarlet splendour back to the
passionate sun along every dusty highway. They
were always dramatic, these flags of the hot
weather; and the fact that Henry Morgan,
already once delivered from the Courts with his
life, lay in a suburban gaol waiting for a second
jury and a further judgment, seemed to write
itself upon them and make them more intense
than ever. The thing possessed the place ; it
stood in the wide, red roads and the uneven lines
of the stucco buildings, and throbbed all day
upon the traffic. Calcutta lay helpless under it
as cities do lie helpless while the Time- Spirit
makes history in their streets ; helpless, but
bitterly angry.

Not especially angry toward Eliot Arden.
Here where we might expect sneers and reproba-
tion, there was nothing worse than a half-cynical
acquiescence. The public mind had the habit of
inter- official dealing, and accepted the practical
politics of the machine. Kuth Pearce noted with
indignant grief that he was not even given the
credit of a struggle and a decision. ' Extra-
ordinary pressure ' was generally assumed to have
been brought to bear upon the Chief Commis-
sioner of Ghoom, and his original stand, still
figuring as courageous and praiseworthy, was

248 SET IN AUTHORITY

thrust endlessly into the indictment of the
Viceroy. With that they had done with him.
Arden sent the rest of the Government of Ghoom
up to its summer headquarters at Gangutri, but
made a late tour for himself among some ab-
original tribes inside his boundaries down below.
No doubt he wished to be within easy reach of
any commotion or any consequences ; but in this
his courage found no field. He was set aside as
a person no longer concerned with the matter ;
and in what he had done he was treated as the
agent of circumstances. He was not given the
dignity of an accomplice, nor was he thought
deserving of censure. In these pretty ways will
fate sometimes make her compliments to the
bureaucrat.

But Lord Thame, high in his castle at Simla,
became a target. After the comments in London
of the Organ and the Rememhrancer, the shots
came thicker and faster. According to his
critics there was no longer any shadow of doubt
as to the motive of the Viceroy's dealing with
the case of Henry Morgan, and others that had
gone before. They were making the capital of
his political future. Morgan's crime was being
distorted before the home public to lift up
Anthony Thame as the champion of righteous-
ness and justice. He would step on their
ignorant prejudices and enthusiasms into a seat
in the Cabinet. His ambition was boundless ;
and if he liad a conscience it was little more
than a working theory of sophistries. They made

SET IN AUTHORITY 240

it all very clear, and grew angrier as they
explained.

Across the storm no word or sign came from
Simla. This behaviour was contrasted with the
line that would have been taken by former
Viceroys, now gathered back to Britain, who had
one after the other added to precedent, but never
disputed it. This one, as strenuous a doer as
Lord Thame, would at least have justified him-
self ; there would have been a speech in Council
or a Resolution in the Gazette. That one, ever
regardful of the public pulse, would have with-
drawn from the attempt long ago. The author
of the familiar epigram that Indian justice was
a compromise with the police would naturally
never have entered upon it. Any of these courses
would have been preferable to Lord Thame's,
who, withdrawn and impervious on his mountain
seat, watched with apparent calm the course of
the action he had initiated.

It was recognised that in the meantime nothing
could be done. The Viceroy had gained his first
point. Since he could make the law carry out
ins will, the public quite recognised that he had
for the moment the whip hand. Nobody wanted
to storm the suburban gaol. As they said at
the Calicut Club, there was nothing for it but to
see the thing through. Perhaps this was a more
philosophic view than it would have been if it
had not been supported by long-standing con-
fidence in the High Court. That tribunal had
already dealt the Viceroy more than one historic

250 SET IN AUTHORITY

snub. More than once it had been pointed out,
in high notes of congratulation, that the Judges
of that Court were officers and not officials. Its
independence was the pride and glory of Calcutta,
and it had almost an unbroken tradition of non-
compliance with suggestions emanating from
what one might call the trans-frontier regions of
practical law. The Revisional Bench would refuse
to quash the proceedings at the Pilaghur trial.

Then the Viceroy gained his second point.
The Revisional Bench ordered the re-trial.

Still, the strength of its old bulwark steadied
public opinion. It began to be believed that on this
occasion Lord Thame had put the High Court, as
they said at the Calicut Club, ' in a hole,' and that
the Viceroy would to some extent ' score.' Only
very arrogant spirits indeed, persons who still held
to brandy-pegs and the theories of John Company,
declared the expectation that Morgan's original
sentence would be endorsed or diminished. Never-
theless, for the comfort of all, the High Court was
the High Court, the arbiter of large commercial
uncertainties, and the last stronghold of the con-
viction that equal justice between man and man in
India is subject to interpretations. And nothing
to prejudice this view was found in the fact that
the case was to come before the Hon. Mr. Justice
Lenox, whom fate had hastened to make ' pucca,'
in his appointment, as if for the occasion.

The trial has been described as the most sensa-
tional in the history of Calcutta. It lasted a
fortnight ; and the volume and consistency of the
evidence that poured through the daily papers

SET IN AUTHORITY 251

astonished even hardened observers of the Indian
witness. The Standing Counsel was a man of
unusual ability, lately appointed. The native
papers remarked, with their quaint appropria-
tion of homely sayings, that he was a new
broom and would make a clean sweep of Morgan ;
which was quoted in the Calicut Club by a
facetious tea-taster, who asked whether it was
possible to make a clean sweep.

People did not crowd to the trial ; it was too
hot, too odorous, and airless. Justice in the
East entertains hardly anybody. The Court was
daily full of natives and reporters, a score of
soldiers from the fort, an occasional Chinaman.
The people who lived in the pillared chunam
houses along Chowriughee did not attend ; but
they read the evidence with the deepest interest
on their verandahs in the cool of the early morn-
ing, and speculated between toast and tea how
much of it Lenox would believe, how many yeai-s
it indicated, and whether Morgan would spend
them in the Andamans. Little else was thought
of as the long hot days went by ; nothing else
was talked of under the punkahs that whirled
above the brokers' tifhn-tables, or across the
baked sward of the golf links when the sun sank
over the river and the wind came up from the sea.

The event was a wild surprise. It was known
in the Bar Library in a quarter of an hour, known
and but half- believed in the Clubs by dinner
time, rumoured and discredited everywhere the
same night ; but Calcutta has no evening papers,
and the thing had only the carriage of mouth to

252 SET IN AUTHORITY

mouth. Next morning it came with the assurance
of the reported page. In the case of the Emperor
versus Henry Morgan the jury had brought in
the verdict of wilful murder, and the prisoner
had been sentenced to be hanged.

The jury had been very plainly charged by the
Hon. Mr. Justice Lenox. The address, informed
as it was by the essential spirit of equity, would
have been read with gratification by the public
of the Remembrancer^ if it could have appeared
in that journal. The native papers acclaimed it
with applauding words — 'fearless,' 'unflinching,'
* impartial.' It was a summing-up of extra-
ordinary vigour, and it conveyed very clearly
his lordship's profound sense both of the double
duty and the double responsibility involved in
the task they had before them. It was marked
withal by the nicest care ; it left no smallest
cranny for the entrance of that disorganising lever
known as a point of law. Calcutta's rage and fury
with it, the way Calcutta bespattered the man
with it, must have been because it was successful.

If the verdict was surprising, the sentence was
amazing. It seemed a sentence that took
advantage of the verdict — to go one better. The
prisoner fainted under it, no doubt from sheer
astonishment. An American gentleman connected
witli the Standard Oil Company said it was ' the
limit/ That, perhaps, in its brevity, was what
Calcutta felt. It was not only the limit, but
beyond the limit. Hardly any one but the native
papers paused to admire the courage, in thus
passing the limit, of the Hon. Mr, J ustice Lenox.

SET IN AUTHORITY 253

About the Hon. Mr. Justice Lenox things were
said in the Bar Library, and even, I fear, in other
precincts of the Court, which I must not report.
It was pointed out with excitement on the
Exchange that the case was likely to make a
most dangerous precedent. The Anglo-Indian
community could not accept such a precedent.
The sentence must be commuted.

The only road to that lay through His
Excellency the Viceroy. There was no legal
appeal. Calcutta ground its teeth in the recog-
nition of this, and went to work at what the
Hooghly Pilot paused between paragraphs to call
orderly and legitimate agitation.

The newspapers bayed and bayed ; and though
they addressed a public without a vote, which is
like shouting into a vacuum, they made an
astounding noise. The officials were silent, but
the commercial world had its committees, and
used them. The matter was transferred in a day
from the hands of the Courts to those of the
jute balers, the tea-growers, the wheat and
seedsmen. The Chamber of Commerce led the
way, with the Trades' Association on its heels,
and every mail train for a week carried a
corporate remonstrance to Simla. The Defence
Committee added to its protest an open letter to
Lord Thame, published simultaneously over India,
and couched in terms so little discreet that the
Star of Islam named this body imaginatively the
Mafia of Viceroys, at which the Defence Com-
mittee took action against the proprietor.

If the incredible thing were done, it was fixed

254 SET IN AUTHORITY

or the first of June. June was still three weeks
iu the future, but to Ruth Pearce, waking in the
knowledge of it, it seemed that every dawn
brought that day. Dr. Pearce's extraordinary
interest in the case was explained in the hospital
by the fact that Morgan belonged to the Barford-
shires, and the Barfordshires were stationed at
Pilaghur, whence Dr. Pearce had come ; but
even this hardly accounted for the number of
hours — practically all her leisure — that Dr.
Pearce steadily devoted to the trial. It was
thought morbid in her by the staff, who talked a
good deal about it. Once, when the matron asked
her ' Were there any other ladies ? ' Ruth had
felt herself covered with a hot blush as she
answered, ' No.'

She was not there at the dramatic close. Her
duties prevented that ; and she, for whom only
in all seething Calcutta the trial had a heavy
personal significance, saw the verdict and the
sentence, like the rest of the world, in the morning
papers. It struck straight at her heart through
Arden's. She saw it printed black in retribution.
It had been a long time, I am afraid, since she
thought of the abstract justice of the Morgan
case, long, too, since even Eliot's failure to keep
covenant with his opinion had weighed much with
her. Her heart had fled on before in terror to
meet the consequence that threatened, to meet it
and engage it, and turn it aside. That was all of
her great contention that remained with her, the
consequence — the consequence to him. And here

SET IN AUTHORITY 255

it was, heavy and black, a thing for him to carry
— and she could never help him — all the rest of
her days. It simply must not happen.

So, when the Viceroy's ' No ' rolled down the
Himalayas, and the anti- Government agitations
of the next three weeks began in earnest, a
prominent part in them was taken by Dr. Ruth
Pearce, of the Dufferin Hospital for Women, who
wrote and worked continuously on behalf of the
condemned soldier, and made at least one
eflfective speech to a large audience gathered in
the Town Hall. It was so unusual for ladies
in India to interest themselves conspicuously in
matters of public importance that Dr. Pearce's
devotion to what was called the lofty principle
at stake was given a good deal of prominence in
the papers. Eliot Arden saw it there. Never
guessing it was all for his sake, he forgave her,
with rather a bitter smile, for her campaign
against his action and the action he had
countenanced.

* Dear fanatic,' he murmured privately, ' she
is quite entitled to her opinion.'

Thus he added up every word she said, and
every line she wrote, putting the total always to
the wrong side of the account. In spite of his
philosophy, he grew a little more formal and
official, a little greyer and sadder. The ladies of
his court at Gangutri told him they were quite
sure he was over- working, and said among them-
selves that the Chief no doubt missed dear Mrs.
Arden more than might be supposed.

CHAPTER XXIV

' No/ said Egerton Faulkner to his chief,
' Thame won't yield. He 's got his chance of
playing iron arbiter at last, and he'll take it.
That's what he was born for — to hang an
Englishman for shooting a native of India, and
take the glorious consequences.'

They were discussing the Viceroy's reply to
Arden's letter urging the exercise of the Crown's
prerogative.

The letter was in His Excellency's own hand ;
it was a long letter. Arden had gathered from
it that his appeal was refused with keener pain
and a deeper sense of urgency than Lord Thame
had felt in dismissing any other of the many
that had reached him. But there was no doubt
about the refusal.

* I hear,' Faulkner went on, ' that Jack
Maconochy — he 's President of the Calcutta
Chamber of Commerce this year — went up to
Simla on his own account, to give Thame some
notion of the feeling. Jack 's a good chap, and
was at school with him. I believe he let him have
it straight, after dinner — told him if he made a
public entry into Calcutta now he'd be hissed

2M

SET IN AUTHORITY 257

from Howrah Station to Government House—
if no worse.'

' Maconochy had better have stayed at home,'
remarked Arden. * He may be a good chap,
but I doubt his intelligence.'

' Vetchley sends me some pretty stories too.
The Barfords are naturally wild. One of the
men was overheard to remark the other day,
after kicking a regimental sweeper, " Now go
and tell your 'arf-brother, Antony Andover."
But most of the things they say are less quot-
able. Vetchley himself is almost too furious to
hold a pen. His handwriting shakes like an
old man's.'

*I don't think we shall see the execution.
They will put a stop to it from home. The
Service journals are at it like wolves, and I see by
to-day's telegrams that Grindlay Maple is expected
to make a great attack on it in the House.'

'Maple is elected, I believe, by the hedgers
and ditchers of Mid-Bloxham, but his real con-
stituency is Anglo-India,' said the Chief Secre-
tary, gathering up his papers. ' We 're not
altogether represented by gentlemen who think
they should have been Lieutenant-Governors,
and enter Parliament to get their knives into
their old Administration. Excellent Maple — I
wish he had even more coal in Jerriah.'

' How will that group take it ? ' asked Arden,
smiling. ' The little lot that Thame should have
given Bengal and Burma to. They won't sup-
port Thame, and they can't disavow the native

258 SET IN AUTHORITY

of India who groans under the tyranny of the
cast-iron British Raj. They '11 be in a hat.'

* They '11 fold their arms and shut their
mouths,' said Faulkner. 'But if the Home
Secretary commutes Morgan's sentence over
Thame's head, Thame is perfectly capable of
threatening to resign — and resigning. That
would look pretty to the people of England,
wouldn't it, sir ? Intractable brute ! '

' I don't think we shall see the execution,'
repeated Arden. 'I hear of strong representa-
tions in the highest quarters. Why has Lady
Waterbrook gone home suddenly this way,
through the Red Sea in the middle of May ? *

The lady in question was the wife of the
Commander-in-Chief.

' Not for her health, or to attend a Drawing-
room, we may suppose,' he continued. ' Lady
Waterbrook is a clever woman, and she happens
to be the King's godchild.'

'Things have come to a deadlock in Simla,'
replied Faulkner, rising. ' The Viceroy and Sir
Robert are hardly on speaking terms, and at
Thame's last dunce not a soul on the Head-
quarters Staff turned up. Well, I suppose
Waterbrook will do all he knows. It may be
a serious business for him. He has seventy
thousand British troops in India to take care
of, and nobody could describe them as a happy
family who had any acquaintance with the facts.'

' Waterbrook should have made a stand long
ago ; he was in a position to do it,' said the

SET IN AUTHORITY 259

Chief Commissioner with a note of irritation.
' He had a big theory behind him and a tremen-
dous interest to defend. This demonstration of
keeping your people away from dances is puerile.'

' Oh, ridiculous ! He was hypnotised, I sup-
pose, like everybody else. My wife hoped I
might bring you back to lunch with us, sir,*
added Faulkner hastily. 'She commanded me
— ah — to tell you we are to have rhubarb tart
— and rhubarb tart,' added the Chief Secretary,
covering his embarrassment with a whimsical
drop of his eyeglass, 'is one of the things that
really comfort one in trouble.'

Arden laughed.

'My best thanks to Mrs. Faulkner,' he said,
* and the temptation is great ; but I am afraid
I must content myself with a sandwich here.'

He turned as his Chief Secretary left him, to
preoccupations other than the fate of Henry
Morgan, which indeed made only one claim out
of many upon his mind. The matter had passed
for Arden beyond the sphere of administrative
interest ; his active concern with it had closed,
at all events for the time. He watched the
ferment in Calcutta with all India, and kept
the eye of careful observation on the symptoms
that corresponded in London ; but he felt him-
self now almost as detached as the Governor of
Bombay or the man in Piccadilly. Even as a
reference in his mind the character of the thing
had changed. In his definite official way he had
written it off and filed it. The letter to the

260 SET IN AUTHORITY

Viceroy, of which he and Faulkner had been talk-
ing, had been his last duty in the matter. He
still hoped, as he still looked, for the commutation
of the sentence ; but Morgan's fate now belonged
to the public records, not to him.

While he sat at his work the English mail came
in, bringing letters from his wife. Jessica wrote
always copiously, and of late her letters had been
very cheerful, full of Teddy's convalescence and
outrageous appetite, which seemed a gift in his
mother's interpretation, like his turn for lan-
guages and the genius she so much more than
suspected in him for music. Mrs. Arden was
now only waiting for the rains to break and make
railway travelling possible in India to return to
her husband and their hot-weather perch in dear,
beautiful Gangutri ; where she hoped the sweet-
peas wouldn't be quite so good this year when
she hadn't been there to help them to grow. And
would Eliot please carefully remember to tell her
when people, as well as sweet-peas, said they
missed her; for she liked being missed, and missed
everything and everybody, most dreadfully herself.
She hoped the Meteorological— was that the way to
spell it ? — Department would arrange for an early
monsoon this year, for she really couldn't wait after
the third week in June. Wouldn't he let her take
the chance of bringing it with her? And he
mustn't forget to give her salaams to Nubbi Bux
and the other servants, and tell tliem the burra
mem-sahib would soon be back to scold them now.

It was nearly all like that, and Arden's eye ran

SET IN AUTHORITY 261

over it with pleasant familiarity, the little melody
she had played so often. But the last page or
two of the last letter he read twice. Mrs. Ardeu
had been ' doing ' Nietzsche for two hours, she told
him, and she felt completely tired out. Perhaps,
although her German was wonderfully brushed
up by being in Heidelberg and having to order
everything, it was not yet quite equal to philo-
sophy ; at all events her brain simply refused to
take it in, though it was beautiful print and
Lati7iische7' schrytL He must write and tell her
what he thought of Nietzsche ; she couldn't
remember. And what Miss Pearcc thought too ;
their united opinions would help her, perhaps, to
tackle him again. She was sure they would
think alike. How was [Dr. Pearce getting on in
Calcutta ? It was some time since he had men-
tioned her. Jessica was sure he must be missing
Ruth's thoughtful and stimulating companion-
ship, especially as he had not even his poor little
wife to fall back on. His poor little wife must
hurry home, or she would begin to feel left
behind. The worst of having a clever husband
was that you always had to think about being
left behind in his interests and pursuits.

* But you can say for me, can't you, dear, that
I 've made a point of keeping up, except when
circumstances were too strong for me, like the
time you tried to teach me Persian when Teddy
was coming — in Thugganugger, the year the rains
failed and we so nearly lost Herbie. Oh, that
awful Thugganugger ! The sight of an Arabic

262 SET IN AUTHORITY

character, even now, is more than I can bear. I 'm
afraid the Persian was a failure, and I Ve never
translated Omar Khayyam for myself as I always
meant to do ; but in other ways, though I haven't
kept step, I have kept up, haven't I, dear 1 I think
I say this because, though I've never, in our
eighteen years of happiness together, felt it before,
to-day I feel so far behind that I have to shade
my eyes even to see you. It must be that horrid
Nietzsche. But — wait for me, dear.'

Arden's 11^3 for an instant trembled. He got up
quickly and locked himself in from the corridor,
and said to a servant in waiting on the verandah —

* If any come, the door is shut.'

Then he went back and sat down again at his
office table, and remained sitting there with the
sheets of his wife's letters gathered in his hand
for a Jong time, as if they presented new and
complicated matter to his consideration. He
ceased reading the pages, but his eye remained
fixed on them, engaged with all that they evoked.
He did, indeed, remember Thugganugger and
that brazen June and their struggles to save
Herbie — he did, indeed. And the poor little
scholar who sat so late with grammar and dic-
tionary under the cloud of insects that swarmed
round the lamp and fell on the curling page, until
she literally cried with the heat and weariness,
and he had to take the books away, and assure
her that Persian could never make her more to
him than she was then. He remembered. Once
or twice ho took up a pen as if to tell her, but

SET IN AUTHORITY 263

laid it down again. His heart would have it out
with him first, and forbade his hand. Besides, it is
possible to acquire a secretariat way of dealing with
every emotion ; one shuns the chaotic, one bounds
an impulse and waits for ordered conclusions.

Jessica was a dear woman. He more than
remembered that. A dear, loving woman. Had
always been. Dear and loving, the woman he
chose. Wait for her ! The sheets grew blurred.
How foolish of you, Jessie, to say a thing Hke
that ! Was he not always waiting for you, dear
little woman, to come back into his life ?

If she hadn't kept step she had kept up. In-
deed she had kept up, every mile of the way ;
and the way had been no primrose path. Months
of camping, shifting, changing, years of bad
climates, loneliness, of desert and jungle — every-
thing a woman should not have. And never to be
persuaded to leave him, until she had to go home
with the boys. The Hills were for women who
were not so keen on keeping up. Through the
pain in his heart he felt the truth, that she had
been always there, near him there, keeping up.

He would never let her feel like this again.
She never did when she was with him. It was
being so far away ; and no doubt she was a bit
run down after her long bout of nursing Teddy.
He would tell her she ought to be out in the
fresh air, and not poring over Nietzsche. When
she came back he would do a little with her
every day, until she forgot about it and took up
something else — wood-carving or cactus dahlias.

264 SET IN AUTHORITY

And her instinct was perfectly right, there was
more happiness in things than in formulas. Wait
for her! He could smile by this time, with just
a touch of indignation. Where was she now ?
He wanted her. Oh well, he supposed the boys
had claims.

Again he took up his pen ; and I wish he might
have answered her letter and written out his heart
to her. It would have been a thing done, a message
sent. It would have stood to him afterward for
something, something * on record ' ; and if there
had been time to post it so much the better. But
there was no time for anything. An urgent
despatch from the Government of India inter-
rupted him for half an hour ; he was still occupied
with it when they brought him the yellow tele-
graph envelope marked * Foreign.' He broke it
with his mind still half upon the business of the
despatch from Simla, and read : —

Heidelberg, May 20th.
Dear Jessica died here early this morning. Heart
failure following slight operation. Mother with her all
through. I arrived too late. We are both broken-
hearted. Deepest sympathy. — Elinor.

* Heart failure,' repeated Eliot Arden, and said
it again. * Heart failure.'

Close on the blow came his imagination with its
stab — was it Jessica's heart that had failed ? But
the thought that hurt him most miserably, with
her letter still speaking to him, was that it would
never matter any more whether his wife could
keep up — she had gone so irretrievably on ahead.

CHAPTER XXV

Sir Ahmed Hossein disappeared from these
pages early in April, having been compelled
about that time to take leave to England on
medical certificate. He had become unfit for his
duties. The Oriental mind, under the displeasure"!
of the ruler, takes a peculiar tone of despondency;/
and the District Judge of Pilaghur was profoundly
afiected by Lord Thame's attitude toward his
action in the case which was to become so cele-
brated, the more so as he had expected at least
the Viceroy's appreciation. To win and keep
that I fear he would have enhanced Morgan's or
any sentence, doubled it, multiplied it, cheerfully
made it capital. To Ahmed Hossein the Viceroy
was more than a god — he was a god of dear
benignance toward himself; everything he had
except his brains and his fortune he owed to
Lord Thame. He grew ill with the censure
implied in the Viceroy's determined appeal to a
higher tribunal ; he starved and was sleepless,
shrank from society, pondered suicide. This
second tragedy might actually have added itself
to Morgan's crime, but for an odd coincidence.
The ten-year-old son of Sir Ahmed's coachman,

265

266 SET IN AUTHORITY

slapped by his father for burning the chupatties,

threw himself into a tank in the garden and was

[drowned. Sir Ahmed looked at the little body

^and turned away, feeling that the racial instinct

was absurd.

But when a medical board pronounced upon
him, and ordered immediate rest and change of
climate, the District Judge escaped gladly from
the storm in which he had so unnecessarily in-
volved his friends. He wrote his feelings fully
to Arden, who understood — who understood even
when Sir Ahmed wept before the clerks in the
office in the act of saying good-bye.

' Three months in England will put you right
again,' said the Chief Commissioner as they shook
hands, and did not smile even to his spirit when
his fellow-official replied in the clipped syllables
of native English —

r ' I am sure that is so. Leave home is the great
I restorative. There is no place like home.'

Sir Ahmed was, therefore, in England when
the storm really reached its height in Calcutta,
and the odd revolution of sympathy at home
showed plain danger-signals to Mr. Craybrooke's
Government. He was at home and in town
again, enjoying a daily l^ath in that admir-
ing consideration which the island always has
warm and ready for subjects of any complexion
but her own. Tipping a waiter, he was again
an Asiatic prince ; his furled umbrella almost
gave him a vote ; under a silk hat he was once
more happy and himself.

SET IN AUTHORITY 267

The Flash fouud him out first, and interviewed
him. With regard to desirable people to inter-
view, and knowing where they were, the Flash
should have been called the Flair. Sir Ahmed
appeared at exactly the right moment for the
Flash. The House was very stale, civilisation
all over the world very dull, nothing doing in
barbarism. Sir Ahmed helped the Flash enor-
mously to ask the effective question, * Shall
Morgan Hang ? ' to make an issue, an emergency,
almost a crisis out of Morgan. The young man
of the Flash confessed in quivering sentences
his impression of Sir Ahmed's personality, its
dignity and charm and touch of * mystere
austerity,' and added his conviction that * the
lofty convention known as British justice ' would
be for ever safe under any skies in hands like
these.

As to Sir Ahmed's views, he had nothing but
approval of the conduct of the case from the
beginning. On the evidence brought before him,
his Court, he considered, could have arrived at
no other verdict; and he did not feel called upon
to (.lel'end the original sentence. Taking into
account the Viceroy's conviction of its inadequacy,
His Excellency had no other course than to move
the Calcutta High Court for revision of the case.
With the fresh evidence laid before it, the Calcutta
jury could have brought the prisoner in guilty of
nothing short of murder. And in accepting that
verdict Mr. Justice Lenox only did his duty in
sentencing Morgan to be hanged. As to the

268 SET IN AUTHORITY

Viceroy's prerogative of mercy, personally Sir
Ahmed hoped His Excellency would exercise it ;
but if he did not choose to do so, he, Sir Ahmed,
could not say that his admiration for Lord Thame
would be lessened, while there was no doubt
whatever that the confidence of India in British
equity would be greatly increased.

The Flash had a brief leading article pointing
out the generosity and moderation of Sir Ahmed's
attitude, but reasserting its original conviction
about the case — a conviction arrived at three
days before any of its contemporaries — that the
public interest demanded the immediate commu-
tation of the sentence of Henry Morgan. Rc-
enlistment in India, of which so much was
expected, had fallen off thirty-five per cent, in
the last year of Lord Thame's Viceroyalty.
Figures spoke for themselves. The Flash gave
Lord Thame unbounded credit for nobility of
motive and conscientious compulsion, but would
point out that His Excellency had here a unique
opportunity of sacrificing his conscience to the
Empire, and was unable to forbear to add that,
if he did not take it, the Empire was extremely
likely to sacrifice him to his conscience.

One would think, indeed, during those last ten
days of May that the fate of the Empire depended
on that of Henry Morgan. If he did not hang,
it would totter morally, according to the Liberal
Press ; if he did hang, it would crumble every
other way, according to the Conservative oppo-
sition. The Organ sought painfully for a middle

SET IN AUTHORITY 269

course by which Morgan should be hanged and
yet not suffer capital punishment, turning from
this exercise to point out that the Crown's pre-
rogative of mercy extended to its humblest sub-
ject and its furthest dominions, and that this
course, if it commended itself to the Sovereign,
would at once relieve his representative of all
responsibility, and leave the history of India
ennobled by a splendid protest. There could be
no doubt, added the Organ with just a hint of
expiring patience, that if such a solution were
offered to the unhappy question, Lord Thame
would see the propriety of accepting it as final.
Any other course would be to make a doubtful
precedent at the cost of an Imperial scandal.
Alfred Earle moaned in the Prospect that,
whether Morgan was hanged or not, we were
rotten, rotten, rotten. Jasper Dabchick chirped
in Fireside Comment that, whether Morgan was
hanged or not, nobody could doubt the integrity
of British purpose or the zeal of British adminis-
tration.

In touching public sympathy Morgan had the
advantage of being something like an original
instance. The first Englishman in forty years to
suffer death for the murder of a native of India
was a vastly more attractive figure to the popular
imagination than the sixth or even the second
would have been. Henry Morgan became a
sacrifice to the unknown god of that-which-we
are-not-in-the-habit-of-doing, and a thousand
voices cried ' Stop ! ' ' Wait ! '

270 SET IN AUTHORITY

His case as a common soldier touched the
common people. They made his cause their own
for the whole ten days. It was suggested to
them that Morgan would never have been
/sentenced to be hanged if he had been an officer
t. and a gentleman. He was to suffer in the cause
of a new ideal because he was ' only a Tommy,'
whereas officers and gentlemen in India, it was
hinted, were known to be guilty of worse things.

As the Viceroy's attitude became more clearly
understood, his action suffered every distortion.
He emerged a despot, who had torn Morgan
from the Courts to make an example of at his
own pleasure. His name was bracketed with
those of Roman Emperors, and he was warned
that modern civilisation had no office for even a
just tyrant. He was held up as the systematic
persecutor of the army, a fanatic, an inquisitor ;
he was invited to come home and be hounded
from public life. An Imperialistic poet made
glorious havoc of the situation in ten stanzas,
and the Peoples Hour published the Viceroy's
portrait with the inscription, ' Bloody Thame.'

The country was on the eve of a general
election ; and the Craybrooke Administration felt
itself to have a list of matters to answer for long
enough without the addition of a piece of stupid
obstinacy on the part of an outlying Viceroy.
Government messages go at special rates ; but the
India Office bill for cables that week was heavy.
However brief the order or expensive the expos-
tulation that went to Simhi, the reply left the

SET IN AUTHOKITY 271

situation unchanged. If the sentence of the
Calcutta High Court upon Henry Morgan was
interfered with from England, Lord Thame
would place his protest before the country in
the only effective way, by immediate resignation.
This had not, naturally, been published to the
world ; it was an alternative upon which Lord
Akell and the India Office were sitting secretly,
hoping to hatch a compromise ; but it was well
enough known at Mrs. Tring's Sunday supper-
party, where Lady Thame, indeed, loudly pro-
claimed it. Lady Thame did not often honour
Deirdre's Sunday suppers, having as a rule more
important things to do ; but on hearing that
Mrs. Tring expected Sir Ahmed Hossein, she
promptly invited herself — if Deirdre would
kindly have something plain — as she thought
the man might be worth meeting.

So Lady Thame was there, and Sir Ahmed,
whom Mrs. Tring had met only the week before
at a large tea in his honour at the Aganippe
Club, but had seen with enthusiasm three times
since. Sir Ahmed was, indeed, the indirect
cause of her reconciliation with Fraylcy Sam-
bourne ; she could simply not resist the possi-
bility of bringing them together. Mr. Sambourne
was more than pleased, so he also was there, and
Alfred Earle, and the young actor who had made
such a marvellous interpretation of brutality in
the Tolstoi play, and the young actress w^ho
simply accomplished the soul of everything in
which a soul could be discerned, Mrs. Trins:

272 SET IN AUTHORITY

hoped to secure them both for her own play,
which was daily being beaten, out of gold and
flame, into four acts upstairs.

'There was once a dispute between a Thame
and Cromwell,' said Lady Thame ; * My son's
ancestor had his conscience behind him, and
Cromwell gave in. That good man shortly
afterwards emigrated, I am sorry to say, to
America, where he thought it his duty to marry
a Mohawk ; so the strain is practically lost to us,
though, no doubt, still influential over there.
But in personal matters we have always felt
it a point of honour, to put it on no higher
ground, to defeat our Cromwells. You will
find that my son will neither be persuaded nor
intimidated.'

*His Excellency,' said Sir Ahmed, who had
just been introduced, ' has always high courage.
In matters of foreign policy also he shows it like
no other Viceroy. Look at the Ameer — is he
not humble now ? Five years ago that great
man was roaring.'

'Was he?' said Lady Thame. 'Well, why
shouldn't he roar ? ' But Sir Ahmed was intent
upon his panegyric.

' We have upon our frontier some troublesome
independent tribes,' he went on, glowing, ' and
one fellow — a great priest among them — began
preaching jehad and raiding. It was the third
otfence, and the last time we had to send a
punitive expedition. Lord Thame was very
angry with that mullah. He spoke to me about

SET IN AUTHORITY 273

it. " By God, I '11 lay him by the heels," he
said, and he annexed that bit of country.'

*Yes,* said Lord Thame's mother. *I was
extremely ashamed of that matter. If that sort
of thing was all he found to do in India, I
thought the sooner he came home the better.*

'You see,' interposed Mrs. Tring naively, at
Sir Ahmed's look of blank dismay, * we are all
related to him. Lady Thame is his mother, and
I am his half-aunt, and my daughter Victoria is
his half-cousin — and so is my son Herbert, who
is very shortly coming home from Alaska — so,
though he is Viceroy, we can be cross with him if
we like.'

* With us also,' bowed Sir Ahmed, ' there is
freedom of speech among the ladies of the family.'

'But we are not cross with him at present,'
said Lady Thame benignly, as to an infant.
* No ! Very pleased. Doing right, we think.'

* What is right ? ' asked Alfred Earle wearily.

' You will have to expand that in a leading
article, Mr. Earle,' said Victoria, smiling.

' The Viceroy is right,' contributed Sir Ahmed
unconsciously. * I myself hope that Morgan's
sentence will be commuted by the King, but
that Lord Thame will not resign.'

' Can't have both. Can't have both,' said Lady
Thame.

' Then we must hang that man,* remarked Sir
Ahmed, with decision.

' I 've no desire that this particular man should
be hanged. As a matter of fact I shouldn't be

274 SET IN AUTHORITY

sorry to see him let off,' announced Lady Thame.
' I don't feel bloodthirsty toward the poor wretch,
and I 'm sure Anthony doesn't ; but if the law is
not allowed to take its course, I clearly see that a
great principle is at stake, and that the Viceroy
ought to — '

' Light the stake,' put in Mr. Earle.

* Precisely. By resigning. And you coalition
gentlemen' — Lady Thame nodded at Frayley
Sambourne — 'may make the best of it.'

' I am generally with the people and for the
people,' said Deirdre Tring. * Oh, and with
clemency and for clemency. But here I see the
great, dim, helpless mass of Anthony's dark
subjects — and justice like a star appearing — and
their conquerors seem armed brutes beside them,
and I think Anthony is right. This man should
be hanged. Besides,' she added with a little
frivolous laugh, ' he is hanged in my play.'

* Whatever happens must be,' said Sir Ahmed.
"'Our acts our angels are, and good or ill. Our
fatal shadows that walk by us still," ' he quoted,
looking luminously round the table. It was as
if he had thrown a stone upon it, disconcerting
for an instant. Lady Thame was the first to
recover.

* JDo you refer to my son or to Morgan ? ' she
asked.

* I am afraid I do not know of what I was
thinking exactly. It came to me, that is all.'

* There ! ' cried Mrs. Tring in general appeal.
* Isn't he delightful ? He doesn't always know

SET IN AUTHORITY 275

of what he is thinking; but things come to
him ! Exactly like me ! Sometimes I write
them down — do you ever write them down, Sir
Ahmed ? — and then isn't it maddening to look at
them afterwards and wonder what one could have
meant ? '

Her guest from India beamed and nodded.

* Another day, when one is at what we call a
lower psychical temperature,' he said.

'*' Psychical temperature"— how perfectly that
exp'resses it, though a little, just a little coldly !
Only yesterday 1 found this in my own hand-
writing. "Everything is possible that it is
possible to imagine, since so much is actual that it
is not possible to imagine." Oh, ivhat could I have
meant ? Will somebody explain me to myself ? '

'Not at all difficult to explain,' said Lady
Thame, getting up. ' You 've been reading some-
thing you haven't understood, Deirdre. Now,
may I ask for my motor, please ? '

' Going on to the Stage Society, Lady Thame ? '
asked Frayley Sambourne.

'Not I — I'm going on to the Bishop. De-
lighted to have met you. Sir Ahmed, I 'm sure.
I wish you knew what you want done about
Morgan — not that it would make any difference
to my view, I 'm afraid. Come and see me. I
live in an old-fashioned way in Cavendish
Square. The motor is there, is it? I hope
Thomas has been inside this rainy night. One
advantage over a carriage — coachman never on
your mind — always inside. Good night.'

276 SET IN AUTHORITY

They said farewell to her with extreme relief ;
and they all, as the door closed behind her and
they sat down again, began to talk at once, even
the young man who did Russian souls from the
inside, and the young woman who did souls of
any nationality, catching them apparently in her
beautiful hair. These two had hitherto been
quite silent in contemplation of Lady Thame.
The conversation wandered from the Viceroy of
India, irresistibly impelled by the presence of an
Oriental, to the occultism of the East. Sir
Ahmed found himself surrounded by disciples,
and talked happily about the seven Kosmic
planes of manifestation, until it became plain
that what they really wanted to know was
whether he had ever seen a Mahatma and
whether he could ' do anything.' Mrs. Tring
had in the end to isolate him for his protection,
to surround him with her own spirit, give him
one of her own cigarettes, and tell him about her
play. He was so interested that he threatened,
at half-past eleven, to outstay everybody else.

' But, Mrs. Tring, London is the great theatre,'
he said, with his eyes glistening ; and she cried,
' Oh, 1 do agree ! The most wonderful ideas
come to me in omnibuses.'

They were all ftir from Lord Thame and his
striking situation, and it was growing late, when
Victoria turned quietly to Frayley Sambourne.

* What is going to be done about it ? ' she
asked.

* I wish I knew. You are supposed to have

SET IN AUTHORITY 277

some influence in that quarter/ he jested. * Use
it. Urge Tony briefly by wire not to be an ass
— any longer.'

' I would urge him quite differently, if he
wanted urging; but the splendid thing about
him is that he doesn't,' she told him. * I can't
tell you how much I admire the stand he has
taken. I am absolutely against you all here.
Tony is right ; we cannot let Morgan off" without
shame before a whole Empire. Besides, the man
is a brute and ought to be hanged. It is you,
now, who arc persecuting your Viceroy. Let
him take his own high course. You have put
India in the hands of a Thame and his conscience,
and I think you ought to leave it there.'

' I 'm afraid we shall have to usurp the func-
tions of Anthony's conscience this time/ he told
her indulgently.

*I don't think you'll do that,' replied Miss
Tring with emphasis; and then, as everybody else
had gone, she too left the Under-Secretary for
India to his privilege of a little_flnal uninter-
rupted chat with her mother.

CHAPTER XXVI

If the rancour against the Viceroy had left any
room for rancour against Eliot Arden, the news
of Arden's sudden bereavement would have gone
far to soften it. He belonged, in his distinguished
Anglo-Indian place, less to a caste than to a
family, to a family that lived always on the edge
of tragedy like this, that had lear;ned acquiescence
in every kind of strange and sudden loss.

' Poor chap,' they said at the Calicut Club.
*Shc was a nice woman too. Great shock for
him, poor chap. Reminds one of that cousin of
his, Harry Arden, of the Assam Police, who rode
in from a three days' district inspection tour and
met his wife's funeral. Horrid thing — he never
quite got over it.'

Everybody would quote a parallel, some near
and fresh, some already far but unfaded. Sym-
pathy for Arden was wide and sincere while it
lasted. It did not last long. Graves in India are
quickly made and soon filled ; but for the time it
removed him further than ever from the scope of
public indignation over the Morgan case.

To Ruth Pearce the sudden word came with a
strange solemnity — strange in being so simply and
only the feeling which rose in her lieart to meet

SET IN AUTHORITY 279

it. A bell-stroke from high Heaven it was ; and
as the sound throbbed through her heart she could
do nothing but listen. She felt even a detach-
ment from it, as the observer of an act of fate.
The significance in it to herself she almost uncon-
sciously folded away and would not look at. Her
imagination, caught and awed, forbade her for
the moment to feel ; and her passion shut itself
from the sun, and sat beside the corpse that was
in the house.

Through those first days she had indeed a
wonderful exaltation of spirit, and it brought her
a sense of cruelty in being separated from Arden
— exactly for those first days. Then, above all
other times that had come or could come in their
lives, she believed he wanted her help ; and she
could have helped him. Perhaps this was true,
or perhaps it was the creation of her simple wish
to believe it, one of those large determinations
that so characterised her ; but she held to it.
She wrote him two long letters, which she
burned. Written words seemed an intolerable
incarnation of what she would say to him.
There was so little, after all, that could be said,
so much that could be given ; she longed to give.
She dwelt with him in his contrition of spirit ;
she soothed his pain ; they talked together gently
of Jessica.

Good Mrs. Lemon wrote her the details as they
came to be known, but there were not many ; the
simple story had a simple end. Mrs. Arden,
completely run down by nursing her son through

280 SET IN AUTHORITY

enteric, had submitted to a slight operation at
Heidelberg, hoping to get it over without letting
her husband know, as she did not wish to add even
a small anxiety to his daily burden. It wasn't
true kindness, in Mrs. Lemon's opinion, there was
too much risk in any operation ; but people had
their own ideas about such things. At any rate
blood-poisoning set in almost immediately. They
suspected the drains, but of course it was too
late — and in three days she was dead. Her
mother, most fortunately, was staying with her in
Heidelberg at the time, otherwise the poor little
woman would have been alone, as the sister
seemed to have got there only after all was over.
Of course it had put a stop to everything in
Gangutri, and people were awfully sorry for him.
Mrs. Lemon hadn't seen Mr. Ardeu herself, but
the General had gone to him at once, and said he
seemed very broken. She heard, however, that
it wasn't to make any immediate difference to his
plans ; he did not intend to take leave, or any-
thing of that sort. After all, what was there to
be done ? People were feeling dreadfully about
it, and not having so much as a tea-party ; but
nobody had gone as far as Mrs. Biscuit, who
appeared in church, the first Sunday after, in
mourning ! It was all very sad, and Mrs. Lemon
begged particularly to know how long Dr.
Pearcc's acting appointment would last in Cal-
cutta, and very sincerely hoped that in October
or November, when they all came down, they
would sec her back again at Pilaghur.

SET IN AUTHORITY 281

Euth waited a week and then wrote to Arden,
but briefly and gently. The emotion of her first
letters had taken wings with them when the
flame licked up the paper. Perhaps it would
have lifted and carried him to a height from
which he could have seen down into her heart ;
but the tide never reached him, and the little
note that came seemed kind and formal. If she
had not written at all it would have been more
significant, would perhaps have roused a doubt in
him ; but these careful phrases proclaimed her
~ withdrawal with certainty. I cannot insist too
much that he was a ' senior ' ofticial, accustomed
to accept decisions and file them. His relation
with Ruth was a matter fully noted on, dealt with,
and filed. The finality with which he believed
this had not even been disturbed by his new
freedom ; and she must needs write him a
* letter of condolence ' to seal his conviction. He
answered it in the same spirit and almost in the
same words as he had answered many others;
and she forgave the reply, which was a thorn to
her love, grieving over the pain she believed it
had given before it reached her.

Meanwhile she got what comfort she could out
of her solicitude for the criminal, Henry Morgan.
She threw herself into the agitation on his behalf
with such fervour that the hospital matron
thought that * notice ' ought to be taken of it.
However, nobody seemed to wish to take notice,
except the matron. In Ruth's dreams she saw
Arden always Morgan's executioner, putting the

282 SET IN AUTHORITY

noose about the man's neck, while he looked the
other way. She believed he would wish her to
do anything, everything, she could for Morgan.
At last, drawn and repelled by it many times a
day, she visited him in gaol.

I believe she was allowed to go three times ;
and it was remembered afterwards that Miss
Pearce was the only person the prisoner saw by
his own desire. She came away white and ill
from these interviews, which, in their pathetic
futility, we may leave to be a memory of her
own. She felt vaguely that she might have had
an impression of Morgan, of his character and
his past — he told her a good deal about his life,
and some quite remarkable incidents — but for
the one unbearable knowledge that filled the cell
and blurred out everything, that she talked with
a man whom Arden had helped to condemn to
die. One small thing only she was able to do
for him, on her last visit, small in itself, but she
trembled as she promised it. She took a letter
addressed to his relatives, whom she would find
in London, to be delivered if the sentence was
not commuted.

* But wouldn't it be kinder — "? ' she faltered, to
which he replied that there were ' family reasons '
— he brought out the phrase as grotesquely as he
might have produced a visiting-card — why they
should know. ' Besides,' he added grimly, ' the
death of a fellow like me oughtn't to be kept
from his people — it's not common justice.'
Then when she turned away lie asked her to

SET IN AUTHORITY 283

shake hands with him, and said, when the
warder gave his permission, that he thought he
could promise that she wouldn't be * altogether '
sorry. And that day did come. As she was
let out she felt his eyes following her, specula-
tively, as if she represented a world with which
it might after all have been worth while to have
had to do.

The execution was to take place at Pilaghur ;
and the following day the prisoner was quietly
removed there. The hospital matron said it was
just as well ; Dr. Pearce's nerves were going all
to pieces. The whole city felt lighter with the
departure of Morgan from the suburban gaol,
sore but saner, as after the excision of an abscess
that sent poison through the blood. There in
Alipore he had been very inflammatory. Ex-
citement about him still ran high ; but it was
moderated by his transfer to the district that
produced him ; and a splendid thunderstorm, a
real * north-wester,' further relieved the tempera-
ture the day after he went.

Everything had been done that could be done.
The great commercial societies had shown the
Viceroy clearly what their attitude was in the
matter ; and the Viceroy had so far disregarded
them. The Anglo-Indian Press had urged and
entreated, oddly backed up, in the last resort, by
two or three tender-hearted Bengali journals,
who reminded His Excellency that mercy was a
quality twice blessed, and compassion was better
than revenge. Skits and sneers had begun to

284 SET IN AUTHORITY

follow anger and astonishment. Even the Ad-
ministi^ator, a Service journal, which had never
been known to quarrel with a Viceroy before,
grew acrid over Morgan, publishing a very-
successful parody of another and an earlier
Antoninus, sent by a contributor who wrote it in
a tent, fifty miles from anywhere, on the frontier
of Baluchistan.

After the mass meeting convened by the Sheriff
of Calcutta to ask the "Viceroy for clemency had
been seen to fail, the Defence Committee had
circulated a petition to the King, which gathered
the signatures of all Calcutta, sending it to
Simla with the prayer that His Excellency would
forward it to His Majesty. The people had to
come to the petition instead of the petition to
the people, to get it signed in time, but they
came ; and the document travelled to Simla
l)lack and heavy. The intimation came promptly
back that the Government of India was forward-
ing it by the first mail to England. That would
give His Majesty just three days to overrule his
Viceroy by telegraph. Calcutta waited. One
woman in Calcutta waited more than any.
Beyond the teeming cities where they quarrelled
about it, all tlie burning plain of India, rolling
far and wide under the Himalayas, seemed to
wait also.

They talked Imavely in the Calicut Club of
what they would do if Morgan were hanged.
Certain manifestations of public disfavour were
openly discussed. Lord Thame's term of office

SET IN AUTHORITY 285

included one more winter in Calcutta. He
would be compelled to arrive ; he could not avoid
the usual State entry. Persons who shall not be
indicated even by classes or professions volun-
teered to assist at it, in the sense of making it
memorable. The escort of mounted Militia
would consist of officers only. There would be
a conspiracy of absence from Lord Thame's
Levee and his Drawing- Room ; the ladies talked
of taking a pledge not to attend. A public
petition to the Home Government for his removal
was seriously discussed, and one tea-planter
volunteered to gather men in Assam for a
masked conspiracy to raid Government House
and put the Viceroy bodily on board a steam
yacht bound for England, if funds could be found
to commission the yacht. She would fly a
foreign flag, and His Excellency would be kept
under the hatches until she was well out to
sea.

* That 's all right,' said a Port Commissioner
of the sedater sort. * This is the end of May, and
it's very warm just now. The Viceroy doesn't
turn up again till December. By that time we
shall have stopped talking either indecency or
treason, and Thame will come and go quite com-
fortably ; though I 'm not prepared to subscribe
to a statue to him myself.'

This gentleman had lived a long time in Cal-
cutta.

CHAPTER XXVII

Ruth found a certain relief in a humble quarter
— she could say anything she liked about Morgan
to Hiria. It was the simplest emotional outlet ;
her anxiety and her hope flowed through Hiria,
taking the merest reflection of their channel and
paying no heed to that. Hiria was curious and
intelligent about the trial, and downcast, in her
businesslike way, about the result, which she
disapproved. She heard of the eff'orts to move
the Viceroy with a shrug.

* Nothing will come, miss-sahib. The Burra
Lat has a strong heart,' she said ; but the peti-
tion to the King filled her with hope; and she
asked incessantly whether word had come from
' Belat,' days before word could possibly come.
When Morgan was sent back to Pilaghur she
became restless and dissatisfied in Calcutta,

* It in true talk that this is a place of noise and
commotion,' she said. 'Kat-khutl Phut-phut]
upstairs, down\t5tairs, all day long. How quiet is
Pilaghur, so that one crow in a tree a mile away
can be heard ! And the jackals at night — here are
too many, miss-sahib, no one can sleep. in
Pilaghur a few only, so that it is plain what they

280

SET IN AUTHORITY 287

say. Your honour knows what they say ? One
big jackal far off cries out very loud '—she lifted
her voice in a long plaintive howl — * " Hum Maha-
rajah hai 1 Hum Maharajah hai ! " ^ and all the
others very far off tell that one, " Ha, hai ! Ha,
hail Ha, /icw!'"2

*Yes, they do say that,' said Ruth, smiling.
* Brush gently, Hiria. My head aches.'

' Poor miss-sahib ! Again the head aches. I
will give the oUy-collone. In Calcutta is also
too much bundobust — head always thinkin',
thinkin'. Miss-sahib's head is never aching in
Pilaghur, where the air also is good to eat. Here
arc too many smells.'

* I thought you liked Calcutta, Hiria.'

* Very good place, miss-sahib. But now cheat-
ing. By your honour's pleasure I bought three
days ago calico for a new petticoat, giving full
price. There is a small hole eaten in every
measure. I gave it to the sewing-man of the
head nurse-mem. He stole two yards from the
fulness, so I must go as thin as a post ! Without
doubt rice is cheap— but that is of God. And
there is no order to return to Pilaghur, miss-
sahib ? '

* No, Hiria. And you are not to say you want
to go, for I couldn't possibly spare you.'

' Very good, miss-sahib,' said the ayah re-
luctantly. 'There is no great need. The
marriage of my youngest is for the winter, and

^ I am a Maharajah ! I am a Maharajah !

2 Yes, you are ! Yes, you are I Yes, you are !

288 SET IN AUTHORITY

they dick me to be returning for the clothes, not
more. She is nearly fourteen, miss-sahib ; it
begins to be shameful that she is not yet
married.'

'You shall marry her in the winter, Hiria,
when we go back to Pilaghur. Yes, we will have
the wedding and I will give the feast. When
the clematis comes out, and the big yellow honey-
suckle over the gate.' Ruth looked at her softly,
'And the roses.'

' T'ank you, miss-sahib. Nor are there any
roses in Calcutta like those that came to our
house from the Burra Sahib,' added Hiria, and
the face of her mistress suddenly burned.

' The marriage of daughters is a heavy busi-
ness, Hiria.'

'That is very true talk, miss- sahib. Four I
have married,' said Hiria with just pride, * and
one of my sister who died ; and now only one is
to marry.'

'Wasn't that unlucky, to have so many
daughters ? *

' 1 found also six sons, miss-sahib,' Hiria justi-
fied herself. ' But to me it was always alike —
sou, d'otta, d'otta, son — from the same pains they
come,' she added with stalwart philosophy.
' Only for the marriage the daughter is much
more expense. For the son it is nothing — a cake,
two three pray's in the Christine church, no
more. Christine way very cheap. But for the
daughter everything is to give — nose-ring, toe-
ring, jewliar, two pair all clothes, silk jacket.

SET IN AUTHORITY 289

wooUing petticoat — to every one I gave alike,'
said Hiria capably. * For is it not the command
of God, miss-sahib, that all women should marry
— rich, poor, Hindustan-people, sahib-people — to
all the same order ? In Belat doubtless the
custom is not so quick,' Hiria added discreetly,
' but even there, in the end all marry also, I
think.'

'No, Hiria. Many do something else, like
me.'

' Ah, miss-sahib ! It will come to your honour
also. Why not — it is the order of Houddha.
And it is good, for those with the strong heart,
like your honour. For me also it was good,'
added Hiria simply. * Shall I plait now ? '

' That is foolish talk, Hiria — there is plenty to
be done in the world beside marrying,' Ruth
said. The dark hair round her shoulders gave
her face the touch of imagination that could
make it beautiful. She saw it herself and smiled
in the content of it. * And I forbid you to say
that I have a strong heart, like the Viceroy. My
heart is very, very weak.'

She looked reproach with tender eyes at the
other self in the glass.

'Also I have heard,' observed Hiria thought-
fully, * that since the Afreeka war there are no
more sahibs in England. And the soldier will
be hanged at Pilaghur on Friday, miss-sahib ? '

* Unless w^ord comes from the King,' said Ruth
with a sudden shiver,

* It is not justice, miss-sahib.'

T

290 SET IN AUTHORITY

'Many people think that, Hiria.'

* If — if your honour will give the order I will
go to Pilaghur and tell the Police Inspector-sahib
that it is not justice.'

'What nonsense, Hiria. What good would
that do ? No, there will be plenty of time to
make those wedding clothes when we go back.
Don't worry. Good-night.*

CHAPTER XXVIII

PiLAGHUR was at its hottest aud emptiest, but
the Barfords were all there. So were the Tenth
Guzeratis, the District Superintendent of Police,
the station doctor, and a few other persons whose
work tied them by the leg to the plains, whatever
the temperature. Some of their wives were there
too — Mrs, Lamb and Mrs. Davidson certainly, and
Mrs. Wickham, and others that should be honour-
ably mentioned. And on Thursday afternoon, the
thirty-first of May, when the sun withdrew his
cruel tooth and the tamarinds threw long shadows
across the hard, white roads, and it was possible
to drive to the club for the sake of suffering in a
different place, behold, the flag shot up from
Government House and the guard stood at the
gate. So the Chief Commissioner was also there,
a sudden and silent appearance from the Hills.

It was too hot to be astonished ; besides,
Pilaghur that was left knew quickly, too quickly,
why he had come. Mrs. Lamb, driving in from
the Guzerati lines past the gaol, had heard the
hammering. She said it made her sick. The
execution, * Thame's superior show,' as Wickham

291

292 SET IN AUTHORITY

the policeman called it, was to take place * as
advertised ' — I still quote Wickham — next morn-
ing at six o'clock. So far the Viceroy had not
been over-ruled. Grindlay Maple had made his
attack in vain ; the Government had lived quite
comfortably through his censuring motion. No
Avord of Koyal clemency had come. The strong
outcry had had too far to travel. Lady Water-
brook had apparently gone home in vain.

One concession had been made to the * special
circumstances' of the case. The execution
remained in the hands of the civil authorities.
The regiment was not asked to hang Morgan, the
gallows was not going up on the parade ground.
The Home Department had insisted, however,
that the regiment should witness the hanging —
'and we know whose bark that is,' said the
Colonel. The moral effect of the prisoner's fate
was not to be thrown away upon the chaplain and
the coroner and the Gaol Superintendent. Next
morning the regiment, after parading as usual,
would march to Pilaghur gaol, fall into convenient
formation in the prison compound, and there
before all eyes Private Morgan would be hanged
for the crime of which he had been ultimately
found guilty.

These were the arrangements, and in convey-
ing them demi-officially to Arden, the Home
Secretaiy at Simla added that it would be as
well if the Chief Commissioner could conveniently
arrange to be in Pilaghur on the day of the
execution. The presence of the head of the civil
administration would tend to preserve order ; and

I

SET IN AUTHORITY 293

if necessity arose he would be able to take im-
mediate action. Nothing serious was anticipated,
but the Government of India was informed that
there had been bad feeling for some time between
the Barf ordshires and the Guzerati Regiment over
some restriction of the Barfords in the matter of
pig-shooting, at the instance of the Guzerati
mess ; and this might be made an occasion for
its demonstration. Arden had better be there.
So Arden, with rather a grim feeling of being
chained to the criminal, was there.

In the billiard-room of the Barf ordshires' mess
that night it was as hot as it was anywhere, except
perhaps in Pilaghur gaol and other places unpro-
vided with punkahs. Rather than saying the air<
was hot, one might say that the heat was aired ;
-the heat was the thing you breathed and moved
in. Devine and Dimmock had been knocking the
balls about, Kemp looking on, charging them
indiscriminately and irritably with ' rotting,' as
if they were playing for his instruction and enter-
tainment. Finally they put up the cues and
dropped with Kemp into those cane chairs with
wooden leg-rests which invite such postures of
irregular ease in warm countries. They drew
around the door for the sake of the fiction that it
was cooler outside, and lighted further cigarettes.
Somebody mentioned the Commander-in-Chief,
and Kemp, who had been on the great man's
Staff, told a story of him. When it is desirable
to talk something has to be said.

' We were gettin' through a field day in the
hills round Kadala,' he related, 'and the Chief

294 SET IN AUTHORITY

was riding a mule — the only thing that could keep
its feet. Well, you can take it from me that
Waterbrook 's the worst rider — of a mule — you 're
likely to see. One of the sepoys with us thought
so too, I fancy. Anyhow, he came up to the Chief
and offered his back ! He did, upon my soul.'

' What did the Chief say ? ' asked Devine
languidly.

* Oh, he laughed. That 's a thing you notice
about Waterbrook ; he always sees the comic
side.'

Major Devine and young Dimmock laughed
then, too, as if for the moment they had forgotten
the comic side. Kemp thought of another ' yarn,'
but decided to keep it to himself.

* I notice the weather-man up at Simla gives
us early rains this year,' he observed instead.
As a rule, any reference to the Meteorological
Department in May was safe to produce some-
thing ironic and more or less cheerful.

' The earlier the better,' responded Devine,
and got up to kill a cockroach running im-
pudently near.

* The air 's like flannel,' said Dimmock, and
the matter dropped.

'The CO. played a good game yesterday,'
Kemp tried again.

* Ripping,' assented Dimmock, slightly roused.
Colonel Vetchley's polo was a subject of regi-
mental pride.

'The Colonel always plays for himself, you
know,' objected Devine. 'Never sends you a

r

SET IN AUTHORITY 295

ball. And he ought to stop, I think, before he
begins to go off. I do, really. He 's getting too
old a man.'

It seemed as unanswerable as it was depress-
ing. Kemp threw his cigarette end into the
verandah and pulled out a thicker case. For
the attempt to turn heavy considerations into
smoke there appears to be nothing like a cheroot.
For a few minutes they sat in silence while the
night sounds fell monotonously through the dark-
ness— a vagrant tom-tom, the sleepy harsh note
of birds disturbed and huddling in the branches,
the far wail of the jackal crying that he was a
Maharajah.

'I see by the papers,' remarked Major Devine
at last, * that Government is issuing a book
instructing British soldiers how to treat natives.
The Administ7'ator wants to know whether we
may expect any book instructing natives how to
treat British soldiers. Rather neat, that.'

' They want more than books,' said Kemp.
* My wife tells me she saw a gharry- driver in the
bazaar lash one of our men across the face the
other day in pure wantonness. The man hadn't
got out of the way quick enough to suit the brute.'

' By Jove ! W as it reported ? '

' No. Nothing 's been heard of it. The men
don't report such things nowadays. They knowl
perfectly well it only means another "case of ^^
collision with natives," and they '11 get the worst
of it. They say there 's no justice for the common
soldier.'

296 SET IN AUTHORITY

* Unless he happens to be an officer,' contributed
young Dimmock. ' A couple of fellows in the
Second Welsh — that 's my old regiment — were
out after cheetal the other day, and some villagers
made a set on them with lathies, taking them for
Tommies. They'd have been perfectly justified

;in shooting, but they didn't; they said they'd
see the thing through, and allowed themselves to
be hauled before the magistrate and charged with
the most infernal tissue of lies. Of course it was
dismissed ; but it shows what we 're comin' to.'

' There 's no doubt,' said Kemp, in a tone of
heavy conviction, * Thame 's beiug playin' about
too much with the army. The C.O. had a case
before him to-day — damn it, when he told me, I
could hardly keep a straight face. Sergeant-
Major charged a fellow with disrespectful
language. " What did he say ? " says Vetchley.
" He called me a bloody Antony Andover," says
the Sergeant- Major. "Apart from gross in-
subordination, what do you mean ? " says
Vetchley, " by using the Viceroy's name in this
insulting manner?" "Very good, sir," says the
fellow, " but, beggin' your pardon, which 'ave I
insulted, the Sergeant- Major or 'is Excellency?'"

* What did the old man give him ? ' asked
Devine.

' I didn't ask,* replied Captain Kemp, and blew
a circle.

There was another pause, in the midst of which
young Dimmock observed quite irrelevantly :
* All the same I call it beastly decent of Lady

SET IN AUTHORITY 297

Waterbrook to go home to have a shot at it,
through heat like this.'

* It 's about three in the afternoon there, now,'
said Devine. * Perhaps His Majesty is still con-
sidering it — after tiffin. It 's to be hoped he '11
remember the difference in the time, and make up
his mjnd before the business is over.'

* Oh, it never reached him,' said Kemp.
* Those things don't get beyond some permanent
official or other. It was folly to send it, anyhow.
For such purposes the V. is Home Secretary for
India. The King could never round on him like
that.'

* It 's a let-off, anyhow, that we haven't to do
the thing ourselves,' said Devine. * I 'm not
fond of walking at the head of a procession along-
side the chaplain myself, with the band playin'
" The Dead March." '

* Tommy Lascelles,' interrupted Captain Kemp,
' seems remarkably anxious to get lights out to-
night. That 's about the fifth time it 's gone ! No,
it ain't pleasant, Devine, as you say. To-morrow
we 're only to provide the gallery. I believe
they 're hanging a scoundrel, if that 's any comfort
to you.'

An excited beat of hoofs drawing towards the
mess made them all sit up and listen. The pony
pulled up at the verandah, and ' Hullo — I say ! '
came from his back.

' There 's Tommy now,' said Devine. * Hullo,
Thomas ! '

*Is Kemp in there? Oh — are you there,

298 SET IN AUTHORITY

Kemp ? I wish you 'd let me speak to you a
minute.'

Kemp got up and strolled out. ' What 's up,
Tommy ? '

' There 's a row in barracks ! '

* What d' you mean by a row ? '

* Just what you 'd mean by it, old man, if you
were there. The men are simply in a mutinous
condition. I don't like it at all.'

Kemp took his cigar out of his mouth and
turned round.

* Devine,* he called, ' come here a minute,
will you ? '

' Now, Tommy,' he continued as Major Devine
joined them. 'Keep your hair on, and talk in
words of one syllable. What d' you mean by a
mutinous condition ? '

*0h, damn it, Kemp, don't rot. I can't get
lights out, and the men are shouting and sing-
ing and playing the fool generally. I thought
I knew language, but the stuff they 're throwing
about the Viceroy's name made me sick. The
Sergeant- Major threatened them an' got a boot
at his head — it precious nearly hit me ! He
thought I 'd better let you know.'

' Right-0,' said Kemp, and turned to Major
Devine.

'Have you dismissed the picket?' asked
Devine with excitement.

* I told them to fall in again.'

'Go back and fall in with them. Who is
captain of the week 1 Here — Dimmock ! There 's

SET IN AUTHORITY 299

a beastly row on in barracks — natural enough. I
thought as much — there 's been a nasty feeling all
day — here, syce ! The bay, as quick as the devil !'

' Shall I sound the officers' call "? ' asked
Dimmock breathlessly.

*No — that would startle people. Sound the
assembly. We'll parade every man who isn't
on leave or in the lock-up. I'll rout out the
Colonel. No — your animal 's here, Dimmock
— you go ; and Kemp and I will get down to
barracks.'

Already they could hear young Lascelles cross-
ing the bridge over the mullah as the orderly
officer galloped back. Kemp threw away his
cigar.

' It 's too hot a night,' he grumbled, as he got
one leg over his pony, 'for business of this
kind.'

Twenty minutes later the Barfords were out
of barracks, lined and marshalled on the starlit
semi-darkness of the parade ground.

'They won't refuse to turn out,' Kemp had
calmed Devine. * They know we 're with them,
blast it,' and they hadn't. They had moved
mechanically to the familiar words of command
with a surly appreciation of the unusual sharp
ring in them, and its implication that they were
men, and had to do with men. They answered
with their muscles, and perhaps the thing on the
surface of their minds was the chance that half-
buttoned coats would escape notice in the
darkness. The other thing that was deeper

300 SET IN AUTHORITY

there was for the instant cowed and quelled
and put aside by the necessity of response to
routine, with its demand upon the attention, sub-
dued by the simple exercise of putting one foot
before another. Yet it was there, throbbing in
the body of them as they stood in their orderly
lines, a thing to be felt, and a th'ng incalculable
at another moment, the strange dangerous thing
that runs one man into the mass and melts the
mass into one man. They listened to their com-
manding officer in silence, but the silence was
temporary and imposed, the thing stood there
with them ; in the hot darkness it had almost a
tangible existence.

Colonel Vetchley had no gift of words, but he
had a big angry voice and a bullying common
sense. He did not make a speech, he spoke ;
and there were no hesitations in what he said.
... * You know perfectly well what this kind
of thing leads to,' he told them, ' I don't need
to tell you anything about that. File o' men
and a hole in the ground — and there you are.
Pull yourselves together, men ; and don't bring
disgrace on the regiment. There 's no disgrace
like insubordination — I don't need to tell you
that.' Those were some, and very nearly all, of
his brief reminders.

* We 're not boys in the Barfords,' he said to
them finally, 'and what comes in the day's
work 's got to be done in the day's work. Dis-
miss the parade,' he roared to Devine with the
last accent of disgust.

SET IN AUTHORITY 301

The men marched off quietly enough to their
private parades, and the Colonel, Devine, and
Kemp were left consulting. They made a little
group, in their white uniforms under the lamp-
post, whose movements and attitudes betokened
serious business in hand.

' If that insane programme has got to be gone
through with to-morrow,' said Major Devine,
*in ray opinion we'd better get some one else
here.'

' The Goozies ? ' inquired Kemp with sarcasm,
lighting a cigarette.

* Don't play the goat, Kemp. You know
perfectly well what I mean. The men will want
steadying. Should we get Arden to send for
the battery at Bunderabad, sir ? A wire would
bring them — it 's only ten miles. '

' No, I *m damned,' said the Colonel. * It
would be nothing short of a scandal. If the
men have got to go through it, I '11 put 'em
through it— I would if they shot me, and dash
it, I wish they would, if they're going to shoot
anybody.'

' The men '11 stand,' said Kemp.

* They '11 stand in a way that will be difficult
to keep out of the papers,' said Devine.

* There are two reporters from Calcutta at the
Taj Mahal Hotel already. I saw them. They're
probably wiring this business now, if they possess
any ears.'

' I expect they 're in bed,' said Kemp cheer-
fully. * They 've got to get up early to-morrow.*

302 SET IN AUTHORITY

' I don't see why it should be in the papers,'
said Colonel Vetchley. 'Go and have a look,
Kemp — and prevent it if possible. No use
having a thing like this blabbed broadcast about
the regiment.'

* I '11 square 'em,' said Kemp, mounting. * I '11
point out their duty to the country, if it can be
done.'

*And to-morrow?' asked Major Devine, as
Kemp cantered off.

* To-morrow ' — began Colonel Vetchley with a
grim jaw, ' well — in view of the probable conse-
quences to the regiment if the men do play the fool
in any way, I conceive it 's my business to go now
and knock up Arden and get him to take the

" responsibility of relieving us of parading them.'

' After what 's happened to-night he can't
refuse,' said Devine.

' It 's hard to say. I suppose Lascelles and
Dimmock are keeping the picket out.'

' They 're patrolling the barracks now. I '11
stop on here then, sir, and you — '

' I '11 join you on my way back from Govern-
ment House.'

They nodded and separated ; and Colonel
Vetchley was presently riding between the
garden shrubs, flaunting and theatrical in the
rising moon, of the drive to Government House.

It was barely yet eleven. The Chief Commis-
sioner was sitting smoking in a long chair in the
upper verandah with all the air of waiting for
him. Arden said as much.

SET IN AUTHORITY 303

' 1 heard something sound after last post,' he re-
marked, *I thought some one might drop in to say
what was going on. Lemon 's on tour, isn't he ? '

* Yes, he is, thank goodness,' said Vetchley,
and explained what had been going on.

* Come inside,' said Arden. * It s cooler under
the punkah,' and sent for the iced whisky and
soda that attends most business and all pleasure
in those parts.

' I 'm as thirsty as a horse,' said Vetchley, and
demonstrated that he was. Then he made his
request.

'I'm sorry,' said Arden, 'but I'm under
orders, Vetchley. I can't do it'

'Anything might happen,' said the Colonel.
* A rush — an attempt at rescue — any blessed
thing. The men are dangerous.'

*I can't change my arrangements.'

* The Viceroy may wish you had.'

* That 's his look-out. I was against the thing
in the beginning, as you know, but I surrendered
to his judgment then, and I surrender now. But
this I can tell you — whatever happens he won't
wish I had.'

' There 's discredit in it to as decent a body of
troops as ever mustered — but I won't urge that.
There 's the seeds of future trouble in it — worse
trouble than ever between the soldier and the
native. Anything may happen,' repeated Qolonel
Vetchley.

'We thought of all that last February,
Vetchley.'

304 SET IN AUTHORITY

' Will you send an urgent telegram to Simla,
and get authority ? ' asked the Colonel.

' No. It would be forcing the Viceroy's hand.
But I will do this, if you like. On your assur-
ance that the state of the regiment necessitates
it, I will wire to Bunderabad and get the battery
over.'

'I can't listen to such a proposition,' said
Vetchley with a darkening face.

*But I gather from you the men are in a
mutinous condition ? '

* I don't want any assistance to deal with my
men. But we've had a warning to-night, and
I considered it my duty to pass it on to you.*
Colonel Vetchley rose. ' If you choose to ignore
it, you take your share, at all events, of the
responsibility.'

* I will take it,' said Arden.

' But mind you — I expect something to happen.
If that damned sweep at Simla — '

'Pray,' said Arden, 'transfer your epithet to
your Sovereign. It would be as justifiable.'

' I beg your pardon. But it 's folly to insist
on the regiment witnessing the execution. If
the temper they show to-night increases, I tell
you the Duke of Wellington couldn't hold
them.'

* Shall I send for the battery ? '

* No — not with my consent ! '

* I offer it as a practicable measure. If you
are unable to keep control of your regiment ' —
Arden flushed, and paused to regain his temper.

SET IN AUTHORITY 305

* I '11 have a shot at it,' replied Vetchley,
furious and turning on his heel. 'The whole
business is an infamous miscarriage of justice.
The men won't take it lying down, and I don't
want to command anybody who would.'

* Good-night,' said Arden, as Colonel Vetchley
opened the door.

' I shall do my best. Good-night to you,'
replied that officer.

u

CHAPTER XXIX

Early, very early next morning, Pilaghur
emerged, dim and vague, upon the plain, sub-
missive in her sleep to the burden of another
day. The sun, strong and cruel, lay just under
the horizon ; a palm-tree drooped against the
tinging sky. Only the silent trees and garden
bushes were awake and waited, and perhaps
Akbar's finger-post, which would presently throw
a shadow. The East might only then have left
the hand of God. Suddenly, up from the roof
line of the gaol across the river, a kite circled,
screaming, and sank back. The long low wall
grew yellow, and an object in the courtyard stood
distinct.

But the thrushes were hardly stirring in the
acacias or the squirrels in the neem trees, and
only two or three people were yet awake in can-
tonments, when a native orderly on a bicycle
slipped swiftly out of the gaol gate and made for
the other side of the river. He had a note for
Surgeon-Major Carter and a quick commission.
As he crossed the bridge he met the chaplain in
his dogcart, with his surplice rolled in the parcel-
net in front. The orderly slackened his wheel

3Wi

SET IN AUTHORITY 307

and turned his head, but the padre-sahib was
already out of respectful calling distance ; and
they both went on.

The regimental doctor had not been roused
quite 80 early as the chaplain, but he was up and
ready too ; though not ready for the note, which
he read hastily in the verandah, looking, as he
replaced it in the envelope, suddenly more alive
than people usually look in Pilaghur on the first
of June. He went back with it into his wife's
room carrying great, triumphant news.

* Ethel,' he said, 'there will be no execution.
Morgan was found dead in his cell at four this
morning. Suicide, of course — though how he
managed it — *

His wife, half awake, sat up in bed under the
punkah, and understood him ; and the tears of
pure excitement started in her eyes. They
looked at one another in silence, taking it in ;
and across all official considerations a smile broke
upon the face of Surgeon-Major Carter. Ethel
had the first word.

' Oh, Tom,' she cried, 'what's the difierence —
how he managed it — so long as he did manage it !'

* It will make a good deal of difference to some
people,' her husband told her. * Me among 'em,
I daresay. Don't cry, Ethel. The fellow was a
skunk. It 's a let-off all the same. Here 's the
trap. Good-bye, old girl. Don't wait break-
fast ; and for God's sake stop howling.'

But Mrs. Carter was not to be intimidated.
She continued to howl happily and wipe her

308 SET IN AUTHORITY

*^] eyes; and, being of a mercurial temperament, she
mingled her tears with a kind of war-dance of
triumph, which she executed in her nightdress in
the course of helping her husband to look for his
pith helmet. The last thing Surgeon-Major
Carter heard her say when he drove away was,
' W-w- wouldn't I like to be the person to wire it
to the Viceroy ! '

As the doctor's cart went rocking behind a
canter along the Lawrence Eoad the sun flashed
up and down the shaft of Akbar and three kites
sailed above the roof of the gaol of Pilaghur.

The inquest established opium poisoning.
Carter declared that Morgan must have swal-
lowed a ball the size of a marble. Justice auto-
matically shifted her centre. Disdaining the
corpse, she revolved about the problem of how
the prisoner had obtained the means to take this
liberty with her. Two European warders — ex-
soldiers both — were put under arrest, and a
sweeper ; but Morgan's transfer to Calcutta and
back made connivance diificult to locate — diffi-
cult under the circumstances.

'The stuff stinks so, they must have known
he had it on him,' said Surgeon-Major Carter;
but he only mentioned that to Ethel and nobody
else mentioned it at all. It appears from this
that persons who could have held no relations
with Morgan in his lifetime did not mind con-
niving with him after he was dead. The Indian
i'ournals gave two days to him. Reuter wired
lis end to every newspaper in England. The

SET IN AUTHORITY 309

Flash described it in a special article by cable,
which, if the world revolved the other way, would
have been before the event. For a week, per-
haps, the suicide was mourned by a Parliamen-
tary party, but London forgot it next day. In
India the matter travelled to and fro in the files
for months; and at long last the Home Depart-
ment censured the Gaol Superintendent, who
was on the eve of retirement and thereby better
pleased to go. After that Henry Morgan sank
like a stone into the infinite whence he came.

The rains kept their promise of coming early ;
they fell upon the just and upon the unjust, and
all abroad over the land. They channelled down
the khudsides at Gangutri, and filled the steaming
gutters of Calcutta, and beat upon the huts
round Akbar's finger-post in Pilaghur. They
brought a new psychological climate. Eeported
* cases of collision with natives ' dropped oflF
noticeably ; and in the certainty of a good
harvest the yearly burden of apprehension slipped
from the shoulders that carry it. They were
'good rains,' well distributed, honest, punctual,
wet rains, rejoicing the heart. Eliot Arden, in
his quiet, lonely, settled way, often wished that
his wife could have seen the dahlias that year,
the single ones, that crowded the khudsides above
the public roads and crowned the crests that
looked across, when the rain stopped and the sun
came out, towards the Snows. They had never
been better. He missed Jessica extraordinarily,
considering that she had only been a bright

310 SET IN AUTHORITY

woman — more than might have been anticipated
by anybody, even himself. Like the rains that
came down upon her flowers she used in her life-
time to water his heart, which seemed now to be
shrivelling within him past any of its gentler
functions. She had been, indeed, his gardener
for small wages ; and he looked in vain for
substitutes in periods before Christ.

So it just rained through to September and
little marked the time except the falling water
and the files. October brightened over the hills,
with reddened creepers and sharp mornings ; and
in due course the Chief Commissioner of Ghoom,
with his Government and his clerks, his cook and
his chuprassies, and all that were his, drove down
from Gangutri to the Plains and went back by
rail to Pilaghur, where the officer commanding
the Second Barfordshire Regiment was the first
to write his name in the visitors' book at Govern-
ment House.

Pilaghur had not taken the liberty of any
change. The roads were just as empty, the cactus
hedgerows just as dusty. Ali Bux, established
on the same triangle, advertised the same fresh
consignment of Simla hill jams, and exposed the
same maroon sofa with several springs sticking up,
also four dining-room chairs and a bed, complete
with mosquito curtains, which he had bought
from the Assistant Magistrate, Mr. Cox, trans-
ferred, rather to liis annoyance, immediately
after his engagement to the second Miss Hillyer
of the Salt Department, the fair one. The Club

SET IN AUTHORITY 311

tennis-courts were reported in capital order as
always, and the prospects for polo were excellent
as ever. In the public gardens the English
phloxes, pink and purple, were again coming
out. The bougainvilliers trailed as before over
the verandah of the house of the lady in charge of
the Dufferin Hospital for Women ; and I believe
Dr. Elizabeth Garrens was entitled to claim that
there had been no falling off either in the number
of operations or the attendance of out-patients
since Dr. Pearce handed over to her. Dr. Eliza-
- beth was a short effective person, well packed
into her clothes, who wore spectacles and created
no anomaly anywhere, never had and never
would. In the city by the river Ganeshi Lai
counted his profits over again on his carved
window frame ; and at the corner of Krishna
Ghat Lane the leper woman, that no-fingered one,
spread out her hands to public pity as on that
other day. Over all the same sun, the same
high spirits and dogcarts driving to the Club,
the same little world of the centre — of Ghoom.

And it was entirely what might be expected
that the Chief Commissioner should be dining,
very quietly, with the Lemons, a small party, only
the Faulkners and the Biscuits and a Biscuit sister,
just out from home — people he knew very well.

' The man must go somewhere and do some-
thing,' Mrs. Lemon had declared in justification
of asking him ; and Mrs. Biscuit agreed with
many words.

They were all keyed to the Chief Commissioner,

312 - SET IN AUTHORITY

as was natural, to liis presence and his late
bereavement ; it was the first time he had ' gone
anywhere.' Mrs. Lemon, in general genial charge
of him, gallantly cheered him up ; Mrs. Biscuit,
placed next him on the other side, sought subjects
above the general line. The others were all
ready, with voice and glance, to urge upon him
that life was still tremendously worth living.

Perhaps Mrs. Biscuit was less fortunate than
her intention.

* I don't think too much can be said for our
men in this country,' she told him, with a very
unprejudiced air, ' but the women ! Oh, Mr.
Arden, the Anglo-Indian women ! Take a place
like Bunderabad — take Kalagunj — take Hatori !
I don't say it's altogether their fault, but the
women seem to be deplorably narrow. Do they
ever read ? Do they keep up with science or art
in any form ? Have they any ideas ? What are
their lives made up of 1 '

Mrs. Biscuit poised her question with a level-
ling look of great candour, and effective play
with a wiDC-glass on the table at the other end of
a straight and shapely arm. Her observation, to
a widower, she felt to be felicitous and safe.

* I must not compare my knowledge of the sex
with yours,* Arden replied quietly, * but I should
be inclined to say that the principal things their
lives are made up of are courage and self-
sacrifice.'

Mrs. Biscuit blushed — she was intelligent —
and covered her retreat.

SET IN AUTHORITY 313

* Oh, Mr. Arden, how gallantly you defend us !
I 'm afraid I was too sweeping ; but I had a tea-
party to-day — mostly military ladies, I will say
that — and I was trying to talk home politics.
You can't think how difficult it was.'

* Let us listen to Faulkner's story,' said Mr.
Arden.

' I hope it isn't a naughty one.'

It was not at all a naughty one, but a simple,
almost a nursery story of Mr. Faulkner's district
experience.

' The policeman started off with his prisoner,'
he was saying, ' to march him in, a dozen miles
or so. They halted at a village half-way, and
somehow the policeman lost his man. The
prisoner arrived punctually that evening and
presented himself at the gaol — but the doors
were closed against him. They couldn't take
him in without a warrant. And there he sat
disconsolate, on the doorstep! They came for
me, and I gave him shelter, without prejudice,
in a bathroom, and at his urgent solicitation
locked him in. Perfectly true, I assure you. I
convicted the policeman later of gross and
culpable negligence.'

* There are endless stories of the police, aren't
there ? ' said Mrs. Biscuit confidentially.

* I 'm afraid there are, and not all so innocent
as that,' Arden replied, and turned to Mrs.
Lemon's difficulties with her quails.

Mrs. Lemon's quails were the fattest to be
found on any dinner-table in Pilaghur, and the

314 SET IN AUTHORITY

amount of time, trouble, and anxiety they con-
sumed made it reasonable that they should be.

'There's only one enemy my wife hasn't to
contend against,' the General told them, 'but
there is one. When I was in West Africa,
towards the end of the last century, we were
camped one night in a fairly remote spot where
there was one white man, trader of sorts, who
had a thatched hut with a couple of rooms. He
very kindly put me up ; and in the middle of the
night I began to hear a queer kind of rustling
overhead. It went on and on, and at last I
woke the fellow up. "Oh," he said, "it's
nothing — probably the boa- constrictors after the
chickens." My wife has no boa-constrictors
after her quails, at all events.'

' What a lovely story,' said Mrs. Biscuit.

' Yes,' said Mrs. Lemon, ' but now we shall
never get the conversation away from snakes.
If you once begin talking about snakes you go on
for ever, in my experience. No more snakes!
But, Mr. Faulkner — I 'm sure it 's your Depart-
ment— is it or is it not true that monkeys have
been dying of plague ? '

' Why should we be denied a subject that our
first mother made dear to us for all time?'
demanded Egerton Faulkner, screwing in his
eyeglass. ' What do we know about monkeys 1
No monkey was concerned with making us what
we arc.'

* Oh, arc you sure ? ' cried the others in a
breath ; and Mrs. Biscuit looked at her plate.

SET IN AUTHORITY 315

* I am no mere evolutionist. We owe no con-
scious debt to monkeys, and, therefore' — Faulkner
dropped his eyeglass — 'if they choose, in their
silly way, to borrow plague from us, I should
leave them to the uninterrupted enjoyment of it.
Seriously, however, living as they do upon fresh
air and other people's ideas, I should doubt the
possibility of their contracting it.'

' They are getting very troublesome in Simla,'
said Arden, ' attacking children and nurses lately.
The Viceroy has ordered the destruction of a lot
of them. Langurs chiefly.'

'His Excellency had better be careful,' re-
marked Mr. Faulkner, *or he will be examined
in thei House upon the remorseless shooting down '
of nomadic tribes — the Bundars, a peaceful and j
innocent people, pursuing their everyday avoca-
tions in the forests of the Western Himalayas,
which belonged to them long before they did !
to us.'

* His Excellency must be getting pretty near
the end of his tether,' remarked General Lemon.

' He goes in April,' said little Biscuit.

* And thankful he must be,' said Mrs. Lemon.
' I wouldn't be a Viceroy in this country for
something.'

* I should be undeterred,' said Egerton Faulk-
ner, ' by anything — wouldn't you, Biscuit ? Even
the adulation of the Bengali Press would fail
entirely to put me oft'. By the way, has any-
body heard of Maconochy's indiscretion the
other day ? Maconochy was at school with him.

316 SET IN AUTHORITY

and doesn't always think, you know. Besides,
he is one of those Calcutta commerce-wallahs
that feel they can babble from the heart. He
and the Viceroy were talking about Courtney
Young, and Maconochy said Young was some-
thing unmitigated, and had been pilled three
times for the Calicut Club — a fact that all but
Viceroys know, of course. " Oh ! " said Thame,
"I'm sorry to hear that. I've just given him
the Kaiser-i-Hind medal." "Serve him jolly
well right, too," said Maconochy.'

They all laughed, for the new decoration had
not yet outlived its inevitable first stage of
ridicule.

* I should be very pleased to get the Kaiser-i-
Hind medal,' remarked little Biscuit.

'Nobly said, Biscuit,' applauded Egerton
Faulkner. ' If we searched our hearts I 'm sure
we all would.'

' The really furious people,' said Mrs. Faulkner,
* will be the Lawrence Lenoxes, who got it at the
same time. He would expect a C.S.I., at least.
She will be fearfully disappointed.'

*I don't see,' said Mr. Arden, 'why Lenox
should expect anything particularly. His work
on the Courts Procedure Code was purely
nominal. He was very lucky to be confirmed so
early. '

There was the slightest pause, the merest hint
of embarrassment, broken decisively by the Chief
Secretary.

*I am convinced we need shed nothing for

SET IN AUTHORITY 317

Lenox, nothing at all,* he declared. ' Lenox rises
by natural law. No Viceroy, no circumstance, can
permanently keep him down. I agree with you,
sir, that Lenox has nothing to be surprised at,
and much to be grateful for. Conspicuous decora-
tion, at the moment, should have surprised and
pained him. I don't say that it would,' Mr.
Faulkner put his eyeglass in, and looked round
in cheerful interrogation. * I know very little
about Lenox.'

* What a fuss they are making at home over
Sir Ahmed Hossein,' remarked Mrs. Lemon, who
never inquired into her trains of thought.

*I saw his name in two society paragraphs
last week,' Mrs. Biscuit told them. 'At very
smart parties. Ifm!t it ridiculous ? '

* There would be something ridiculous in Ahmed
Hossein at a smart London party,' said Arden,

* but I think it would be the party.*

* They would take him to be a prince, of course,
because of his colour,' said Mrs. Faulkner.

* He has very good manners too,' said Arden.

* They are making much of him every way,* he
went on smiling. ' Did you see his verses in the
Saturday ? *

*Does he write poetry?' cried Mrs. Biscuit.

* How interesting ! What was it about ? *

* He writes very good verse. This was about
the illness of the King last month ; quite good
it was. He is fond of esoteric subjects, but the
passion for the monarch takes him furthest. It
is in the blood in the East.'

318 SET IN AUTHORITY

'The last story I heard of Sir Ahmed/ said
Egerton Faulkner, * he told me himself ; and it
was at your expense, sir. " I asked the Chief
Commissioner," he said, " which he would rather
meet, St. Paul or William Shakespeare. And he
went away sorrowful, for he is a great admirer
of the English classics." Is it true, sir 1 '

' I dare say,' laughed Arden. * It 's the sort of
thing he would ask.'

' Miss Pearce wrote me the other day that she
had heard from him,' said Mrs. Lemon to the
Chief Commissioner. 'He had been meeting
friends of hers — the Sannaways. You know
Mrs. Sannaway, the writer.'

Arden nodded attentively. ' How is Miss
Pearce V he asked with solicitude. * She wrote
to me very kindly a few months ago, but I have
not heard from her since.'

Mrs. Lemon gave him a look in which she
tried hard to disguise the disconcertment.

* Oh, very well indeed, and liking her Calcutta
work immensely. You didn't know then that
she stays on there till March ? '

*No, I didn't know,' replied Arden, with
friendly — astonishingly friendly — interest. * I
am very glad to hear she likes it.'

' And your own plans, Mr. Arden ? You must
be wanting leave soon — you haven't had a rest
for ages.*

* Oh, I shall try for six months in the hot
weather, I think. I shall have pretty well got
to the end of this job ; and I must go home and

SET IN AUTHORITY 319

see the boys. After having a look at them I 'm
promising myself a lounge in Italy,' said Arden.
The ladies went up to the drawing-room, and
Mrs. Lemon, in a two minutes' aside with Mrs.
Faulkner, repeated the last part of her conversa-
tion with the Chief Commissioner, making rapid
deductions.

* I never thought there was anything serious
in that affair,' she said. ' It was too literary — too

"-Hterary, my dear.'
' I can't say — '

* You 're sorry. Well, I am!

' She 's a nice woman, of course, but it doesn't
seem exactly suitable,' murmured Mrs. Faulkner.
* In his position — *

'He couldn't possibly do better. Go along
with you — with your Service airs,' returned Mrs.
Lemon robustly. ' She 's a great deal too good
for him.'

CHAPTER XXX

'The Chief Commissioner told me the other
night,' wrote Mrs. Lemon nevertheless, when
next she addressed Ruth Pearce, 'that he had
heard nothing of you for months. Why don't
you ^vrite to the poor man 1 He is looking dis-
tinctly older; and they say in the offices that
he's keener than ever on the work — a bit too
keen, if the truth were told ; but I find him just
the same dear old thing he always was. He
tells me he is going to Italy in April.'

Ruth read it and looked out at the gay
Calcutta life of the sun -suffused 'cold weather.'
She seemed to find her problem there, painted
on the yellow walls and the waving palms, as it
was painted everywhere about her. She simply
didn't understand it, the way Arden's life went
on without her, and seemed likely to go on. She
was for ever changing places with him, and
deciding how soon she would have entreated a
sign from the woman in Calcutta, how long she
could have borne to do without it. Just any
little common sign, something to live upon ; and
the limit was already months in the past. She
did not forget her letter of decree, written in

820

SET IN AUTHORITY 321

the crisis she remembered even better ; but she
thought of it to euphemise it, and smooth the
ferocity out of it and despise it.

* He never could have believed such a letter,'
she told herself, and ' Surely he would balance
me against my emotions.'

But the silence grew between them until it
looked like a time of years and the space of a
continent.

The happy escape of Henry Morgan had made
no difference to her ; she had forgiven Arden
loDg before that. She heard of it with thankful-
ness ; but she would have heard of his execution
with resignation. As soon as she had freedom
to look her love in the face she laughed at the
idea of binding it with conditions, and knew
that they were part of a miserable figment she
had built to hide it from herself. Now that she
could love him without restraint she simply did ;
and any criticism of him seemed the merest poor
wreckage, swept and tumbling in the tide. How
could such. things matter?

The thing she attained was the golden opinion
of the Calcutta doctors, two of whom frequently
asked for her in consultation. She had never
worked so well or so subtly. She was driven by
a force not herself; and she referred all her
successes to Arden, made an ofifering of them. |
He came back to his niche in her temple, but
now she dusted him less and worshipped him
more.

Ruth and Hiria, tnerefore, lived on in Calcutta

X

322 SET IN AUTHORITY

and ruled where they lived. The hospital matron
said Dr. Pearce spoiled her ayah, who was un-
bearable in the quarters ; and I dare say it was
true. Many an ear heard, for example, that
when the ayah was to have her cold- weather coat
Dr. Pearce had actually brought her patterns to
choose from.

' For my part,' said the hospital matron, ' I
dress my servants according to my taste, not
according to theirs/ which was, of course, most
justifiable, as all the ladies of Calcutta would
agree. I don't know whether one should
apologise, but Ruth's woman-servant was the
thing nearest to her, and she had an overflow of
affection to spend upon some one. Hiria was
its indulgence. In the matter of the coat she
went further.

* I could never direct you to the shop,' she
said, • but we will both go and buy it, Hiria, and
you shall have the dusturi.*

The dusturi was the commission on a sahib's
purchase paid by the dealer to any servant, a
thing discouraged always by the hospital matron
and other right-minded persons. Ruth's mind
was like the bow unbent. The small immorality
seemed delectable and amusing. ' Why shouldn't
she have it 1 ' she said, and Hiria had it. It came
to eightpence, with sewing-cotton and six buttons
thrown in. Fate wrote a postscript the day
they went to buy.

The shop was in a crowded, narrow street out-
side the New Market. Ruth was standing in

SET IN AUTHORITY 323

the door to get what air there was. Her eyes
ranged absently the littered thoroughfare, full of
Bengalis and ox-carts and obstruction — chickens
pecking in the drains, here and there a Chinaman,
smells of the sun on food and fodder, everywhere
strident sound. Suddenly she started forward.

'Hiria ! ' she cried. 'Here, quick ! Good — Who
is that sala'aming — there, by the Cabuli's stall ? '

She caught the ayah's arm without taking her
eyes from the figure of a disreputable -looking old
fellow who was making signs of humble and
delighted recognition to her from across the road
at the widest part. Hiria's glance followed in a
flash ; then her face jerked back as from a blow,
and her eyes became vague.

* I see no one, miss-sahib.'

* Oh yes, Hiria. There, he is looking at us —
how does he know us ? Who is it ? Beside the
lamp-post.'

* Some beggar, I think, miss-sahib. Nothing
at all. Oh, your honour is pinching.'

* Hiria, I know that man ! Is it possible ! '
'Some mindless one, miss-sahib. God gives

leave to many such.'

' Go and bring him instantly. I must speak
with him. In one breath, go ! '

' The ayah hesitated, then took her way across
among the shouting drivers to the other side.
There she seemed confused, ran this way and
that, passed close to the man, but did not seem
to speak to him, finally accosted some one else.
As Ruth hurried after her the old fellow tum«d

324 SET IN AUTHORITY

on his heel and slipped away with an amazing
quick limp into the bazaar.

Ruth paused for a moment disconcerted, and
already he was a rag in a dissolving bundle of
rags. Then keeping her eyes steadily on the
yellow wisp of his turban she started in pursuit,
Hiria following close and breathless.

' What need, miss-sahib, for going ? I will
catch him. I will bring him. Your honour's
feet cannot come in these places. There, he is
gone ! '

But Ruth kept up the pursuit through crooked
lanes and cramped alleys until he did vanish into
a black hole, which, when they arrived at it,
proved to contain nothing but a hostile cow and
a heap of dirty fodder. Then she turned sharply
to the ayah.

' You will bring the man at once. I will stay
here until he comes. Otherwise I will give this
place into the hands of the police.'

The familiar threat had its effect. * Na, miss-
sahib, there is no need to talk of the police,' said
Hiria, ' I will bring him quickly, that hudzat^'
and she disappeared.

She kept her mistress waiting ten minutes,
and then returned with the old man, who looked
vacant, stupid, and smiling.

*He says he was a sepoy of your honour's
sahib's old regiment,' said Hiria. * I have told
him your honour is miss-sahib, and there is no
major-sahib, and he dreams. And now he is
content to go away.'

SET IN AUTHORITY 325

But Ruth had also been reflecting, by flashes
and inspirations, and had come to a different
conviction, one of those incredible convictions to
which, in the East, the mind is so often invited.

* Speak no false words,' she said. * This, and
you know it well, ayah, is Gobind, who was
sworn murdered by the soldier last year. Have
I not often seen your face ? ' she asked their
captive. * Have you not often received medicine
from me ? And your elephant leg — I see it is
no better, but worse.'

The old man's eye shifted to Hiria ; his face
twisted, and he began to cry.

'Many times worse, Protector of the Poor.
And it will never be better until I get leave to
come back to Pilaghur, where the Protector of
the Poor gives good medicine. But I have yet no
leave, and when I saw the Presence in the bazaar,
my heart said, " Perhaps the miss-sahib is giving
medicine in Calcutta, and will again cure this
miserable person," ' and he got laboriously down
upon the ground and attempted to kiss her feet.

Ruth looked round at the gathering knot of
observers.

' Come,' she said, * I never cured you ; but I
will give you more medicine.'

She sent him in front of her through the fetid
lanes, and Hiria followed downcast and inventive.
Although she found herself in no way to blame,
this was very much of an emergency to Hiria.
She felt that the bottom of air contrivance was
falling out.

326 SET IN AUTHORITY

As they emerged from the bazaar, Ruth took
out her watch and saw that there was still an
hour before she was due at her lecture. She
beckoned a hired victoria, put Gobind on the box
by the driver, and took Hiria beside her. They
drove quickly to the hospital, where the office
was empty.

* It is an old patient,' said Ruth to the matron,
whom they met in the hall. ' He 's got a bad
leg, hasn't he ? *

When the door was shut and Hiria set sentry
at the window, Ruth got the story. Gobind con-
fessed promptly that he had committed a fault —
Hiria had already convinced him of that. He
had come to Calcutta. His orders were to
remain far south in Chittagong ; but in Chitta-
gong life had gone heavily. He had fallen sick,
and the money -order did not always come from
his sons in Pilaghur. Also he had no caste
brothers in Chittagong, * and how,' he asked, ' is
it possible for a poor man to remain apart from
his hhai ? ' But they would not allow him to
return.

* So they sent you away,' said Ruth. * Then
who was killed ? *

* Nobody killed, Protector of the Poor — only
this miserable one badly hurt from the gun.'

* He does not know, miss-sahib,' said Hiria
from the window. ' He is old and foolish.
Another man was killed.'

* What other man ? By the soldier 1 Explain
quickly,' said Ruth.

SET IN AUTHORITY 327

' No, miss-sahib, it was a cultivator, and one
of the Guzeratis had killed him the day before,
" also on account of his wife,' added Hiria cheer-
fully ; ' it was known, but not yet brought to the
thanna} And it was much desired to punish the
white soldier because of the evil and nutkuttie
which he did. So they took Gobind away the
same night, thinking he might not die, and
brought the other dead man there, for his face
was broken with the shot ; and they put on the
clothes of Gobind, and said nothing for three
days. After that no one could say, " This is not
Gobind," the wife being also dead. And the
sons say, "Yes, this is Gobind." But Gobind be-
came well in the house of the post-oftice jemadar,
and afterwards, to avoid trouble, he was given
money and sent away, the ungrateful one.'

Miss Pearce was silent, silent for so long that
her excellent woman-servant began quietly to
cry. Gobind had been weeping for some time.

*Did the police know all thisV she said at last.

Hiria looked frightened. * The police came to
know, Hazur. And it was necessary to find
many rupees, for one said, "Give me five," and
another said, " Give me ten," and the sons of
Gobind are now very poor, miss-sahib.'

' And how came you to know ? '

* By the babbling mouth of the wife of Gurdit
Singh, your honour. And many times I wished
she had not spoken, for it has been heavy to
know.'

' Police-station.

328 SET IN AUTHORITY

Ruth was again dumb. It was useless to ask
the ayah why she had kept the secret. The fear
of the police was even then in her face ; she
looked cowed and miseral^le. Anger was useless ;
indignation was useless.

' If I had gone back to Pilaghur in May would
you have told then ? ' she asked the woman
curiously.

* I would have frightened the wife of Gurdit
Singh so that she w^ould have made her man
re-port,' said Hiria. ' I knew a way. I had no
liking to do it, but your honour was very sorry —
all day sitting very sorry — '

'Oh, Hiria, Hiria!'

'How costly, miss-sahib, was this wretched
one's trouble ! ' Gobind blinked assent. * How
many rupees the excellent munshi also spent!
Heera MuU has set up a sweet-shop, and Lai
Bey-'

' Afzul Aziz ! ' exclaimed Ruth, ' I always sus-
pected— why, then, did he pay rupees for lies,
ayah ? *

* Truly, miss-sahib, is he not a quiet, poor-
spirited man to look at? Yet he did this at
great expense, for zid} Great zid he has had all
his life against this pulthan^ because of a bad
thing at Cawnpore long ago. I was not born
then, but my mother saw the Great Folly, your
honour. My father was sweeper with this
Baffodshi pulthan, and the soldiers when they
came to Cawnpore were very angry — shooting,

* Qrudgo. « Regiment.

SET IN AUTHORITY 329

killing all sepoys. The father of Afzul Aziz was
not a sepoy, miss-sahib. He was a teaching man
like this one — and the two older sons were
writers under the sahibs, good men, of poor
spirit, miss-sahib. When the soldiers found
them they said, " We are not sepoys ! " but the
soldiers said, "Look at your feet. You have
corns on them. Therefore, you wear shoes.
Therefore, you are sepoys " ; and killed all three.
Only Afzul they did not kill because he was so
little. But he saw it, miss-sahib, and he has
always zid against the regiment. So he went to
great expense.'

* Oh, Hiria ! ' Ruth could think of nothing else
to say. She looked in silence at the woman
curling her toes in anxiety, and at the tattered
wreck under the yellow turban, with their extra-
ordinary revelation; and standards of justice
and right rose ironically beside them.

The clock pointed the hour of her lecture.
She took out her purse and gave the old fellow
ten rupees, with a sense that his situation should
place him, somehow, above her charity.

* Come to-morrow at this time for your
medicine,' she said. * I will consider what ought
to be done,' and Gobind hobbled out, followed
with an eye of guardianship by Hiria.

Most of that night she took counsel with
herself, but next day at the same hour she had
still to write the letter which should put the
Chief Commissioner of Ghoom in possession of

330 SET IN AUTHORITY

the facts. She made out Gobind's prescription
and gave it to the hospital compounder, but the
old man did not come. Hiria persisted that she
knew nothing of his whereabouts, and had obsti-
nately little more to say about the matter ; but
at the end of the third day she offered an
opinion. * I think he will not come, miss-sahib.
He is afraid.'

At that Ruth wrote to Arden. Her astonish-
ing discovery gave her a look of triumphing
under which she was very unhappy. It seemed
wholly adventitious, Gobind's being alive — and
Ruth was aware of wishing that he hadn't been
alive — to criticise the acumen of two courts and
a supreme ruler, and especially of the Chief Com-
missioner of Ghoom. It was her business, how-
ever, to state the facts, and she stated them, to
make them clear and undeniable, and she did so.
They went baldly ; she found comment impos-
sible. There was nothing to say that might not
hurt him and did not distress her ; but he would
see, would know that. She could trust his in-
stinct— I don't know why she thought she could.
Ruth added a line about her own plans. She
would be relieved early in March, and had
already obtained leave to England, where she
would go direct by the mail from Calcutta.

Arden read the letter as a vindication of her
position from the beginning, very fortuitous, but
undeniable. He found implications in the care-
fully uncoloured sentences to fit everything that
had happened to his damage ; he had a trained

SET IN AUTHORITY 331

official eye for what lies between such rigid
lines. He wrote in reply with the dignity
and courtesy that befitted the Government of
Ghooni. He thanked Miss Pearce explicitly for
the information she had sent, regrettable as were
its bearings in more than one direction. It had
already received his careful consideration ; and
it would certainly receive the careful considera-
tion of higher authorities. His own opinion was
that, in view of the irrevocableness of what had
come about and the painful tension which the
re-opening of the matter would produce, it would
be advisable to refrain from further prosecution,
and handle the connivance of the police depart-
mentally ; but he even implied that if she chose
to publish her discovery, and so force the hand
of Government, that course was also open to her.
He noted with interest that she proposed to take
leave home in the summer, and wished there were
a better chance of their meeting in England ;
but his own leave, he feared, would be all too
inadequate for arrears he had to make up in
Italy. And he was, with very kind regards, hers
sincerely. . . .

The end came like thpit. It marked the
absolute close of a case under deliberation ; and
Miss Pearce had lived long enough in India to
recognise the touch.

CHAPTER XXXI

The glistening black twigs of the hedge of Mrs.
Sannaway's Bloom sbury plot were full of the
indomitable London buds of March when Ruth
Pearce one windy afternoon pushed open the
iron gate and went up the steps to her friend's
house. She had done what she proposed to do,
had handed over her charge in Calcutta, accom-
plished the voyage home, and settled into London
lodgings for the purposes of her further degree.
The further task she had accepted from herself,
to make her profession all of her life, stood also
before her, outlined for accomplishment. When
her foolish, unconvinced heart clamoured to hope
on, that was the scheme she laid before it.

Mrs. Sannaway met and embraced her in the
drawing-room. It was delightful to see her again
after all these years. She looked tired — that was
the journey. Was the climate really as trying
as people said ? How often this last winter Mrs.
Sannaway had envied her the Indian sun.

• Why have you got your things on ? * asked
Ruth. 'I thought I was coming to tea. In
India wc never have our things on when people
are coming to tea.'

S82

SET IN AUTHORITY 333

* You have better manners, dear — eh ? Now
let me break it to you. I 'm not going to give

• you tea, unless you 'd like a cup this instant. I 'm
"^oing to take you somewhere else. You '11 for-
give me, won't you? — I completely forgot, and
you '11 like to come, I know you will. It 's Mrs.
Frayley Sambourne, a very special friend, most
interesting woman, and a bride, at least a bride
of sorts. We none of us thought it would
happen — miles older than he is — but it did,
quite suddenly at the end. This is her first At
Home — charming house in Tite Street — sure to
be amusing. We 'Jl go for just half an hour and
then we '11 dash back here in a cab and have our
talk comfortably. He 's Under-Secretary of
State for India, you know.'

' I know his name, of course,' said Ruth, rising
submissively, ' and I '11 go with pleasure. But 1
can't come back. You must have me another
day. I have a rather sad and dreadful commis-
sion to execute — a letter to deliver — and I want
to get it over.'

* One of those Indian tragedies that are always
happening, I suppose. You must tell me about
it later. How nice that it has stopped raining.
All sorts of people will be there, you know — quite
a special lot, and always somebody you see no-
where else,' said Mrs. Sannaway, getting into the
hansom. * Do you find London much changed ? '

Ruth looked at her hostess of the cab, and a
smile flickered across her face.

* No/ she said, * I don't.'

334 SET IN AUTHORITY

* Well, now/ said Mrs. Sannaway, ' tell me all
about India.'

The newly and so oiiginally decorated rooms
in Tite Street were full of sitting or shifting
groups when they arrived ; and Deirdre, more
Deirdre than ever, was receiving, farewelling,
wavering among them.

* From India ? ' she said, as she clasped Ruth's
hand. ' Ah yes, you have a look of solitudes.
This house is much occupied with India. More
than you think, Kate — but greatly more than
you think,' she turned to Mrs. Sannaway. * My
girl there has just promised to marry the Viceroy
of India ! '

' Lord Thame ! ' exclaimed Ruth, and whether
she would or not, her heart bounded.

* Then she has at last ! ' cried Mrs. Sannaway.
* Oh, my darliyig Deirdre, I am so glad 1 And
you are announcing it to-day — how delightful !
You must let me give you another kiss. But the
silly monkey not to have done it before — to let
all his Viceroy alty pass — '

*My new husband,' said Mrs. Fray ley Sam-
bourne, * declares that she has saved him from a
very absurd position. As Under-Secretary to be
father-in-law to the Viceroy — how could he sur-
vive it ? As it is, I don't know how I am to
survive it. But dearest Kate — it was his Vice-
royalty that did it. Such a splendid range for
his genius and character ! Victoria has simply
gone down before it. She says as much.

SET IN AUTHORITY 885

Especially that wonderful Morgan tragedy, that
I have built my play on — oh, my dear, Mortimer
Finch has accepted it, and I 'm almost too happy
to live. It 's to be announced for the first week
in June. Well, Anthony Thame came out of
that very grandly, we all thought. And it won
him Victoria.'

* I sometimes think you are the most fortunate
woman on the whole earth,' returned Mrs. Sanna-
way. ' Two such announcements in one after-
noon! Now aren't you glad you came?' she
said, laughing, to Ruth.

'/could never have married him, Kate,' said
Mrs. Sambourne. ' To me he is a mere reposi-
tory of dead men's virtues — does that strike you
as good ? ' she asked Ruth, who smiled, and said
honestly —

' Yes— rather. But not quite true. He has
excellent virtues of his own.'

'Well, the phrase isn't mine — I borrowed it
from one of the characters in my play. But
Victoria is of a thicker paste than I. Here she
is — let me introduce you. My daughter — Miss
Pearce. From India, Victoria.'

Victoria was lost for a moment under the
avalanche of Mrs. Sannaway's happy sentiments.
She emerged from them brightly enough and
turned to Ruth.

' From India 1 Then I am sure that you too
will congratulate me. Do you know Anthony
Thame?'

* I have never seen him,' said Ruth. ' Most of

336 SET IN AUTHORITY

us, you know, have never seen him. And we
don't call him — that'

* No — out there he suffers dreadfully from
capital letters, I know. He has to wear them
like a permanent magnifying glass — and it 's not
necessary, for he is great, don't you think, to
the naked eye 1 '

' He has great purposes,' said Ruth ; ' and he
has carried them into history.'

Victoria looked at her frankly.

' I see your reserve,' she said. * Yes, I
know. He isn't what is called ''popular" out
there — you would all have your reserves. But
in the end don't you think he will be vindi-
cated ? About that miserable Morgan case,
for instance, don't you yourself feel that he
was right ? '

It was a direct appeal ; it came with force and
demanded candour. Ruth looked away for an
instant, following the track of a velvet train
across the room.

*I am afraid I cannot tell you — quickly, or
easily, or at all really — what I feel about that
case,' she answered. * I was rather near it.'

' Near Morgan ^ '

'Well, yes, in a sense,' said Ruth, with a
feeling of escape. 'Near Morgan. I saw him
in the gaol at Calcutta. I have now in my pocket
a letter he gave me to deliver to a relative in
London — a sister, 1 think — if the sentence was
not commuted. He was afraid it might get from
the post into other hands. And he said he could

SET IN AUTHORITY 337

not bear the thought of its being dropped in at

the door, and picked up on the mat.'

1 Victoria's eyes dilated ; she turned a little pale.

* How — how appalling ! ' she faltered. * And
how strange that you should have brought it
here, to-day! But one shouldn't shrink from
such things. May I see the handwriting ? No,
of course I mustn't — it would tell me the name.
He was by way of being a gentleman, wasn't
he? — it was not Morgan really.'

'I'm sorry,' said Ruth. 'Yes, I believe he
was. I ought not to have mentioned it — I don't
know why I did. I meant to do my distressing
commission to-day, but I 'm afraid it 's too late
now. When does His Excellency leave India,
Miss Sambourne 1 '

' Next Saturday. He is coming by the P. and
0. mail, not by the usual man-of-war. He says
it makes very little diflference ; but it 's a conces-
sion to my future mother-in-law, who thinks he
ought to save the Indian taxpayer the expense of
sending him. She is very proud of having in-
fluenced him in the right direction at last — I say
it 's a late last. But I mustn't let you call me
Miss Sambourne. My mother has just married
again. My name is Victoria Tring.'

Oh, the tricks of life ! Before this one Ruth
Pearce stood for an instant rigid. As she turned
her head to look at Victoria the muscles of her
neck seemed to move with difficulty, grinding
against one another.

* May I ask, what did you say it was ? *

Y

338 SET IN AUTHORITY

* Victoria Tring.'

* I am so stupid about surnames. Would you
mind spelling it ? '

* Oh, but it is so simple ! T-r-i-n-g.'

' Yes/ said Ruth. ' Oh yes. Thank you.
What a pretty house this is. I think Mrs. Sanna-
way said you had only just come here to live.'

* Only just. Our old house was in Egerton
Crescent. I liked it better in some ways/ said
Victoria.

* Oh yes/ replied Ruth. She felt furtively for
the letter, in the pocket of her cloak ; and kept
her hand there, on it, as if it might of its own
accord have leapt out upon the floor, searing the
air with its address, 'Miss Victoria Tring, 75
Egerton Crescent, S.W.'

* Oh yes,' she repeated, and her eye wandered
vaguely over the moving people. What now was
to be done 1 What was to be said ? What was
even to be thought ?

A footman offered her tea. She emptied the
cup at a draught, and put it down with a steady
hand. Only her mind wliirled and refused to
obey her. Obstinately her mind would present
nothing to her but the whitewashed walls of a
cell in the gaol at Alipore, and a man in the
clothes of an Indian convict, who sat on the
edge of his bed and talked al)out * family reasons '
why he should let his people know what fate had
befallen him, and whoso hand — oh, precisely ! —
whose hand had sped the bolt, ilere indeed,
and with a vengeance, were the family reasons 1

SET IN AUTHORITY 339

Other fragments hurried before her. What had
he said about her not being 'sorry' some day
that she had shaken hands with him? That
must have been because he had had the decency
not to make the appeal of disclosing his
identity. Well, it was a good deal to have had
that decency. But if he had — what a situation
for the Viceroy ! She must settle afterwards what
Lord Thame would have done. But in no case
— in no case — She stared at the girl before
her, who talked pleasantly on about India.

*0h yes/ she returned again to something
Victoria said, who looked curiously at her.
Lavinia came up, and was introduced, but was
just on the wing, she explained.

'And before I go,' she said to Victoria, 'I
hear there 's more news.'

'About Herbert,' said Miss Tring. 'Yes.
This morning. From Omaha. Kelly has almost
caught up with him now — perhaps he '11 be home
for the wedding.'

' You got my cheque % ' murmured Lavinia ;
and Victoria replied in the affirmative, with a
thousand thanks.

' My brother,' she explained to Ruth, ' has been
away from home for years. He is just on the
point of being — of returning. We are all rather
excited about it.'

'Oh yes,' replied Miss Pearce, looking so
intently at her that Victoria blushed.

A lady in a group near began to nod at
Ruth, who presently perceived that it was Mrs.

340 SET IN AUTHORITY

Sannaway, conveying to her that it was time
to go.

'Good-bye/ she said to Victoria, and held out
her hand. Victoria kept it for an instant.

* I should like to have your good wishes/ she
said.

' Oh yes,' said Ruth once more. * Yes,
indeed.'

' Good-bye, Miss Pearce,' said Mrs. Frayley
Sambourne. ' Your eyes tell me that India is a
tragedy. Your beautiful eyes have suffered.
Good-bye. Come and see my play.'

At the door Ruth turned to Mrs. Sannaway.
' I think I will go back with you after all,' she
said. ' Do tell me more about Miss Tring and
her mother. They seem unusual people. Is that
the whole family ? '

And Mrs. Sannaway was only too delighted.

Surely, therefore, if Ruth Pearce had desired
to strike back at fate, a very pretty and con-
venient weapon was placed in her hand — a
weapon of remarkable precision. The mere
drama of the thing might have tempted her, so
complete it was ; so beautifully automatic, self-
justifying, self- reposing. She had only to deliver
the letter. Reasons were not lacking either why
she ought to deliver it.

Among them came one reason why she should
not ; and as she looked at it, it began to wear a
certain beauty. Through the Viceroy she had
lost everything ; through her the Viceroy might

SET IN AUTHORITY 341

keep— everything. That, as she thought about
it, slowly emerged the only thing that could be
saved out of the wreck, if she had the r'ght to
save it. And he was the Viceroy — she, too,
owed something just to that. Owed perhaps the
sacrifice of her sense of duty — after all, when
one came to compare — was it so much to sacri-
fice 1 Far down the street the notes of a band
struck upon the air. She listened thrilling, a
smile upon her lips and tears standing in her
eyes. It played 'God save the King.'. ... If
she were quite sure that only her sense of duty
were involved, how gladly she would offer it up !
For a very long time she thought about it
ever more passionately. After all. Lord Thame
had had the enormous disadvantage of being
Viceroy. He had made a mistake. Well, there
should be a conspiracy to keep him from sufier-
ing from his mistakes. She would join the
conspiracy. But gladly! She would be the
conspiracy. She knew, too, what Eliot Arden
would have done, and her heart found an instant's
sweetness in the humility of following him — her
begging heart, that was so humble now. So
humble and yet so victorious, carrying her in
this moment splendidly past the barriers of
reason and of conscience, on such a tide that she
wished for more definite scruples, that they
might be overwhelmed. The great moment of
her life it was, this conscientious woman's, when
she threw Herbert Valentia.Tring's dying letter
to his sister into the fire. ^

342 SET IN AUTHORITY

So a very curious little holocaust went up
from the grate of a Bloomsbury lodging-house
that night, where a tragedy turned into flame and
went out in nothingness. To Euth, watching,
passions seemed to burn and punishments, and
even people. Her own soul seemed too near
that blaze.

On the canopied and decorated wharf at
Bombay, five days later, a crowd of people were
slowly dispersing. It was a large crowd, with
many ladies in it, and a thick border of natives,
who also penetrated, more sparsely, into the
heart of it, in the form of wealthy and important
Parsees. But the gathering was chiefly of oflicials
in frock-coats and ladies in muslins, with parasols,
and even in its moments of warm and impeded
disintegration it kept its look of function. Tears,
indeed, still stood in the eyes of some of the
^ Parsee gentlemen.

The weather was burning April, the crowd
broke up slowly ; people waited patiently in
groujjs for their carriages. The Governor of
Bombay with his staff had been gone some
moments, and the Rao of Kutch had also driven
off in state, when a hired victoria drove up
among the private carriages and a gentleman
jumped out of it, looking at his watch. It was
tlie Chief Commissioner of Ghoom.

Arden saw at once that he had not been in
time, as he feared. He looked doubtfully and
vaguely about him at the muster of Bombay
faces, most of which were strange to him, and

SET IN AUTHORITY 343

made his way among them to the edge of the
wharf. Some one clapped him on the back. It
was Hichens, Home Member.

* How are you, Arden ? You 're late, my dear
fellow.'

* I am, unfortunately. We had a breakdown
coming over the Ghats. It delayed us four
hours.'

'His Excellency was disappointed. He had
counted on seeing you, and making a certain
communication himself,' said Sir Peter Hichens,
smiling. ' But he knew it was doubtful, so he
had written to you. Here is the letter — he gave
it to me to post.'

Mr. Arden opened the letter, and learned from
its dignified and effective phrases, that in bidding
him farewell Lord Thame had the pleasure of
informing him of his appointment to the Lieu-
tenant-Governorship of Bengal, and of his selec-
tion for the vacant Knight- Commandership of the
Star of India, as the Extraordinary Honours List
of the following day would officially notify him.
He was permitted to understand that Lord
Thame had made few appointments and conferred
few honours with such definite and sincere satis-
faction as attended his act upon this occasion ; and
that no consideration more efiectively tempered
the regret with which the outgoing Viceroy him-
self laid down the reins of office than the thought
that he had been able to leave the. administration
of the premier province to hands of such tried
capacity as those of the Chief Commissioner of
Ghoom.

344 SET IN AUTHORITY

Arden refolded the letter, and his eyes sought
the lessening ship, where it dipped on the horizon
to the west.

'May I offer my congratulations?* said Sir
Peter.

' Many thanks — many thanks indeed. I wish
I had been in time.'

* If you will allow me to say so, Thame couldn't
have made a sounder selection,' Hichens said, in
a very decent spirit, considering that he had
been thought well in the running for Bengal
himself.

'He writes cordially,' replied Arden, looking
old and tired.

Again his eyes, and Sir Peter's also, sought the
vanishing ship.

' He seems to have had a decent send-off,' said
the Chief Commissioner. * I 'm glad of that.
He 's had a strenuous term. And now — '

'He's probably having tea,' said Sir Peter,
without sentiment. ' He 's going home to be
married, almost at once, to a cousin of sorts, a
Miss Tring — had you heard ? '

' I hadn't heard. I 'm very glad. I wish him
every happiness,' said Eliot Arden.

THE END

Printed by T. koH A. CoNHTAnLi
•t thv Edinburgh Ud

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