Читать книгу Chronicles of Dustypore: A Tale of Modern Anglo-Indian Society - Sir H. S. Cunningham - Страница 9

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Hos motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta—

The Salt Board had excessively respectable traditions. Its commencement dated far back in Indian history, long before the conquest of the Sandy Tracts, and its prestige had been maintained by a series of officials all of whom had been in the habit of speaking of one another with the utmost respect. The 'illustrious Jones,' 'the great administrator Brown,' the 'sagacious and statesmanlike Robinson,' all threw the lustre of their abilities over the institution, and were appealed to with unhesitating faith by their successors in the department. When one member referred to another he spoke of himself as 'sitting at his feet,' or as 'formed in his school,' or as 'guided by his principles,' in language that was perhaps a little unnecessarily grandiloquent, but which had, at any rate, the effect of investing the Board with a sort of moral grandeur with the uninitiated. Even the mistakes of the Board acquired a sort of dignity and were not to be spoken of in an off-hand or irreverential manner. They might seem mistakes, but it was not prudent to be too sure that they were so. Many other decisions of the Board had been cavilled at by rash critics, and time had shown their wisdom. The Board, moreover, had a certain grand, misty way of its own of talking, which made its proceedings somewhat hard to criticise. Indeed, all outside criticism was resented as an impertinence, and those rash critics who had the temerity to attempt it were put down with the contemptuous decisiveness appropriate to ill-judged advisers. There was a regular conventional way of crushing them: first it was contended that, being outsiders, they could not, in the nature of things, understand the matter; as if there was a sort of inner and spiritual sense, by which the affairs of the Salt Board must be apprehended. Then there were stereotyped phrases, which really meant nothing, but which were understood and accepted in the Sandy Tracts as implying that the Board considered the subject disposed of and did not want further discussion. Arguments which could not be otherwise met were smothered in an array of big names, or parried by pathetic references to the zeal of the Salt officials and the conscientious manner in which they worked in the sun. Whatever line was adopted, it was the invariable tradition that Government should express its concurrence, and so the whole thing ended comfortably to all parties concerned. All this was naturally regarded as being highly satisfactory. But the maintenance of this agreeable equilibrium depended on the persons concerned being tempered of the right metal, imbued with the right spirit, and what Strutt used to call 'loyal.' The intrusion of an alien spirit could not fail to produce deplorable disturbance, disquiet and the dissipation of all sorts of agreeable illusions. And this was what happened when Blunt—who was an outsider, the hardest, roughest, most matter-of-fact of commercial Englishmen—was appointed to the Board. Blunt violated every tradition in the most ruthless fashion, was unimpressed by all the solemnities which awed conventional beholders, and had the most inconvenient way of asking what things meant, and (as he used to say with a sort of horrid glee) 'of picking out the heart of a thing.' Now, the Board did not at all relish having its heart picked out in this unceremonious fashion, and resented it with a sort of passionate dislike. Fotheringham felt that he had indeed fallen on very evil times, and that the pleasant days of peace were numbered. Cockshaw, when he found that Blunt would neither smoke nor play whist, gave him up as a bore. The very clerks in the office became agitated and depressed. When Blunt pulled out his spectacles and produced his papers, and went ruthlessly into figures, looking rigid and tough, and implacable and indefatigable, both Fotheringham and Cockshaw knew that their places were not worth having and that they must look for comfortable quarters elsewhere. Fotheringham counted the months to the time when his pension would be due. Cockshaw, who was a man of action, applied forthwith for the Chief Commissionership of the Carraway Islands, which was just then in the market.

Blunt had not been many weeks at Dustypore before he showed to demonstration at the Board that the accounts were kept on an entirely wrong footing, and that a vast sum of money, five or six lakhs, was not traceable.

'It is the floating balance,' said Fotheringham, with an air of quiet assurance, arising from his having given the same reply frequently before, and always found it answer.

'Perhaps you will trace it, then,' said Blunt, pushing the papers across to Fotheringham in the most unfeeling way. 'I cannot.'

'We had better send for Strutt,' said Cockshaw, who knew nothing about the accounts himself, and had a nervous distrust of Fotheringham's explanations. Thereupon Strutt appeared, radiant and self-satisfied, and cleared up everything with the easy air of a man who is and who feels himself thoroughly master of the situation.

'No,' he said, in reply to Fotheringham's inquiry, 'not in the floating balance, but in Suspense Account A: here it is, you see: one item, 2 lakhs—85,000 rs. 15 annas 3 pie.'

'Of course,' said Fotheringham, ignoring his blunder with an air of placid dignity, 'there, you see, it is!'

'Well,' said Blunt, insatiable of explanation, 'but you said it was in the floating balance; and pray where are the other items, and what is Suspense Account A, and how many other Suspense Accounts have you? Pray go on, Mr. Strutt.'

So Mr. Strutt had to go on, and then it was sad to see the brightness fade out of his face, and his pleasant swagger disappear, and his answers get wilder and wilder as Blunt led him from figure to figure, puzzled him by putting things in all sorts of new lights, and finally took him completely out of his depth.

This was not the sort of treatment to which Strutt had been accustomed, or for which he was constitutionally fitted. At last, in despair, he sent down for Vernon and the Head Accountant, and these two brought up a pile of ledgers, and traced the missing sums from one account into another in a manner which baffled all Fotheringham's attempts to follow them, and proved at last to their own satisfaction that all was right.

Still the horrible Blunt was only half convinced.

'All may be right,' he said, 'and I will take your words that it is so. But the figures do not prove it; nor do they prove anything except that the system of accounts is deplorable. Any amount of fraud might be perpetrated under them. I can't understand them: Strutt does not understand them: not one of you gentlemen understands them. This may suit you; but, as for me, I hate what I cannot understand.'

So no doubt did Fotheringham, and this was one reason why he so cordially hated Blunt.

Another thing about Blunt that irritated his colleagues was his way of coughing—a loud, harsh, strident cough—whenever he was vexed.

'His coughs are quite like oaths,' Fotheringham said with a shudder; and it must be confessed that Blunt could throw an expression that sounded horribly like 'damn it' into his mode of clearing his throat; and that when Fotheringham was arguing with him he cleared his throat oftener and more vigorously than can have been necessary.