Free Zemindar by Valerie Fitzgerald Page A

piety and the exercise of the Christian virtues of sobriety, truthfulness and thrift, to say nothing of diligence. After all, my dear young lady, it was the exercise of these virtues that gave us India, so surely it is now our privilege to give India these virtues?’
    ‘I had understood that conquest rather than Christianity brought us India,’ I demurred mildly.
    ‘And could we have conquered without Christianity—the fortitude, the strength, it brings us?’
    Privately, I was convinced we could have, but it seemed unwise to press the point.
    ‘We have all recently been made to see how much rests in our own hands by our most excellent Archdeacon Carter, Miss Hewitt. Calcutta has quite reformed since he came to us, I assure you. Mr Chalmers and I sit under him twice each Sunday, in the cold weather, of course, and I cannot tell you how beautifully he speaks. Such noble sentiments, so inspiring! And all he says so true. We really must do all we can to bring these poor Hindus to the fold of Christ!’
    Mrs Chalmers heaved a sigh and wiped a moustache of curry from her upper lip. ‘Not that it is always easy to present a correct appearance, mind. This heat, y’know, the general inclemency of the climate, and now that so many more women are coming out, women without the fortitude of my generation (if you young ladies will pardon my saying so), standards have begun to deteriorate rather than improve! You’ll never credit it,’ she added sotto voce to me, ‘but I have heard of ladies—women, rather—who let themselves go to the point that they receive morning callers while wearing no stockings!’
    I failed to see the connection between this startling revelation and the message Christ left his Apostles, but fortunately Charles just then spoke, and I was spared the necessity of comment.
    ‘One of the gentlemen we met this morning,’ he said, ‘a Colonel Thorpe, I believe, talked a good deal of the unrest in Oudh. He appears to expect trouble and rather alarmed me with his opinions, since we intend to spend a time in Lucknow as you know. Do you think there is anything in it, Mr Chalmers?’
    ‘Certainly not. Nothing to it!’ Mr Chalmers practically erupted with annoyance. ‘We have had rumours of war and insurrection here in Bengal too, y’know. Only recently a mutiny, a piddling little affair of course, was quelled in Barrackpore—and very successfully too, I may add. Some matter of discontented sepoys trying to take things into their own hands. We made an example of them, I can tell you! But no, sir, no sensible man gives a hearing to these stories that go the rounds. One has to talk of something. That is all it amounts to. The country is more secure, more stable than it has ever been. The people quite devoted to us, quite devoted! And so they should be.’
    ‘I am glad to hear you say so. Colonel Thorpe also mentioned the sepoys—I believe a large number of them come from Oudh, do they not?—and hinted that all was not well in their ranks, particularly since this business of annexation.’
    Here I broke in: ‘Why, Mr Roberts was telling me just the same thing! The gentleman who was here this morning.’ I turned to Mrs Chalmers.
    ‘Roberts? Not Henry Roberts? Jute and sugar?’
    ‘And indigo,’ I agreed brightly, while Emily and Charles, who had not yet heard of my caller, looked up in surprise and Mrs Chalmers nodded her head with something like sorrow.
    ‘Hm. An alarmist if ever there was one,’ Mr Chalmers observed gruffly.
    ‘Indeed, and is that so?’ Charles’s tone showed satisfaction. ‘He travelled out with us and seemed most well-informed, but of course we are not in a positon to judge the accuracy of his views.’
    ‘Well-informed?’ Mr Chalmers now looked definitely sour. ‘Well, I suppose so. In some sense. Reads and all that, y’know. Has theories about politics and the rights of man. We need no politics out here; we have enough troubles without that ! What we need out here is a