The Siege of Krishnapur - J. G. Farrell [16]
“On the contrary, Mrs Hopkins has my deepest sympathy...and all the more so as I have myself only recently lost someone very dear to me.”
The Collector’s brows gathered up; he looked moody and displeased, but he said nothing further.
Although he generally liked sad things, such as autumn, death, ruins and unhappy love affairs, Fleury was nevertheless dismayed by the morbid turn the conversation had taken. Besides, this was the very thing that he had brought Miriam to India to avoid. But Mrs Hopkins had composed herself and Mrs Dunstaple, too, had dried her eyes, for she was easily affected by the tears of others and only the thought of making her eyes red had prevented her from shedding them as copiously as her friend. As for Louise, although she had allowed herself to be tearfully embraced, she was more self-possessed than her mother and her own eyes had not moistened.
In any case, there was no time left for crying. Large quantities of news had to be exchanged for the Dunstaples had left Krishnapur in October and a great deal had happened since then. And they wanted to know so many things...how was the Padre? and the Magistrate? and had Dr McNab despatched anyone yet? In turn Mrs Dunstaple had to explain everything which had occurred in Calcutta. She would have liked to detail the various suitors who had been attending Louise but she did not like to, in Fleury’s presence, lest he should become discouraged. Moreover, Louise tended to be bad tempered if there was open discussion of her prospects. But while Fleury and Miriam were talking to the Collector Mrs Dunstaple just had time to intimate to Mrs Hopkins that there was one prospect, a certain Lieutenant Stapleton, nephew of a General, who looked very promising indeed.
The Collector was not in a good temper. He found leave-takings harrowing at the best of times and he was concerned for his wife, who had been overtired by the long and arduous journey by dak gharry from Krishnapur to the rail-head; but he was also worried as to what might be happening in Krishnapur during his absence, for his presentiment of approaching disaster grew every day more powerful. In addition, he felt himself to have been ill-used just now by Miriam, who had seemed to rebuke him for lack of feeling. “She cannot know how I myself suffered for the death of the baby! And how was I to know she had lost a husband in the Crimea?” (for the Doctor had enlightened him in a whisper)...“How like a woman to take an unfair advantage like that, dragging in a dead husband to put one in the wrong!” And the Collector stroked his side-whiskers against the grain, releasing a further cloud of lemon verbena into the air. “What was that phrase of Tennyson’s? ‘...the soft and milky rabble of woman-kind...!”’
But the Collector admired pretty women and could not feel hostile to them for very long. If they were pretty he swiftly found other virtues in them which he would not have noticed had they been ugly. Soon he began to find Miriam sensible and mature, which was only to say that he liked her grey eyes and her smile. “She has a mind of her own,” he decided. “Why can’t all women be widows?”
Fleury and Miriam sat opposite the elder Dunstaples in the carriage, beside little Fanny. Their space was confined because the ladies’ crinolines ballooned against each other leaving very little room for a gentleman to stretch his legs with discretion. Even Fanny’s slender legs were lost in mounds of snowy, tiered petticoats.
“How pleasant it is to be ashore again after those five interminable months at sea! How one misses the trees, the fields, the green grass! But, of course, Miss Dunstaple, you yourself must have experienced this very same ordeal by water and here I am speaking as if I were the only person ever to have come out from England!”
Fleury had regarded