A Good Soldier

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  “We don’t want to waste time here, dear,” he told Constance. “The sooner we leave for the interior, the sooner I can start to do the kind of business the bank sent me here to do.”

  “Nobody sent you, Henry. It was your idea to come pioneering... trail blazing... in India. You talked the other board members into this enterprise.”

  “You used the right word, my love: enterprise is the secret of commercial success. Now I have a list of names and addresses I got in Bombay and I aim to start making calls right away. I still don’t know exactly where in this benighted land we had best head for from here. The first guy I’m going to visit with is a Scotchman they say is one of the sharpest businessmen in Calcutta: name of Angus MacLean.”

  *

  Until now Ramsey had had no qualms about his future. His reasoning was dominated by the hurt the sepoys’ betrayal of trust had inflicted on him; but he was honest enough with himself to admit that this was probably just the catalyst which prompted the final action in what had been a decision rooted in growing frustration. He told himself that if he could not find someone among his fathers’ influential friends and acquaintances who would start him on his new life, he could always take service with some native prince: as adviser, commander of the state army, or in some administrative position. Looking downriver to the warehouses and the great assembly of masts of ocean-going ships lying off Garden Reach, across the maidan to the tall new commercial buildings, the law courts, the mansions which were changing the face of Calcutta, he had a fleeting twinge of loneliness. The ramparts of Fort William standing between the river and the city reminded him of everything familiar and friendly that he had cast aside. He was bereft now in a strange, hard world. The disconcerting moment quickly passed.

  His thoughts returned to the man who had predominated in them for several days. Although he knew something about Angus MacLean’s past, he did not know the essential man as well as he would have liked. He was taking a lot for granted or at least on trust. But one could never know anyone really well except a brother officer and perhaps his relationship with MacLean would soon be the equivalent.

  It was his father who had introduced them. Their first meeting had impressed Ramsey favourably in some way he could not define. His father’s cordial manner had something to do with it and he had not acted the usual supercilious young ensign in a distinguished regiment.

  MacLean had been deferential but with a touch of irreverence in his look while his voice was bland. “Your father did me a great kindness when he was still in command of the regiment, before his well-deserved promotion to the Staff.”

  Ramsey had turned questioningly to his father. “Papa?”

  “It was a couple of years after MacLean came out and before you joined the regiment. You remember we were on garrison duty in Oudh. The King — Nawab as he was still called then —was being somewhat more extortionate than usual and I was able to be of some assistance to our friend here.”

  There was no need to say more. In 1798 the British had put a new Nawab on the throne of Oudh and the Honourable Company had taken over the kingdom’s defence. The ruler’s revenue-farmers gathered as much tax and produce as the owners of land and growers of crops would tolerate. Doubtless MacLean had a large investment there and in return for Lieutenant Colonel Ramsey’s protection of his interests had compensated him generously. Nobody considered such rewards to be in any way venal; even direct bribery was accepted as a legitimate way of compensating for the paucity of Army pay, as long as it did not involve a conspicuous dereliction of duty.

  In 1813 the East India Company had relinquished its sole right to trade with India — while retaining the monopoly for China — and a new charter opened the country to all British merchants. Ramsey knew that MacLean had been among the first to take advantage of it and arrived early in 1814. His father had told him that MacLean had already built a substantial business in his native Edinburgh, exporting textiles and jute to America, importing sugar from the West Indies, coffee from Brazil and wine from France.

  He was not aware, however, that MacLean had been widowed in his early thirties when his wife and two children died in a fire while he was absent in Dundee: or that the young man who sailed from Leith soon after Hogmanay 1813 seemed to his family and friends to regard his tragedy as a challenge to defeat the world and thus avenge himself. There was at that time a sombre guardedness in his bearing that ten years, further success and a second marriage which brought him three more children, two boys and a girl, had changed; although it had not altered his sense of grievance or in any way softened his outlook on his fellow men. There was nothing about him to warn Ramsey or anyone else that he inhabited, within himself, a separate world which was contiguous with, but separate from, the cosmos of trade, social ostentation and superficial joviality in which he appeared totally to exist. If people had known the details of his past they might have suspected a lingering anguish, but they would have been in error. Grief had been assuaged but bitterness remained. MacLean harboured a grudge against life.

  Ramsey believed that MacLean must, from the very beginning of his oriental venture, have had no doubts that he would arrive where he was now. The young Scot who had never crossed the English border must have regarded life with the same cool assurance as the middle-aged nabob who presided at the head of a sumptuously laid dining table in Calcutta a decade later. Ramsey had the impression that Angus MacLean was a man whose career had evolved just as he intended it should. It gave him confidence to put his commercial future in the hands of such a man. He trusted MacLean unreservedly.

  MacLean stood perhaps four inches shorter than Ramsey, burly, with a square, rubicund face. His hair was abundant, sandy already tinged with grey. His eyes were pale and often mocking in a way which Ramsey had always thought he would find disconcerting if he were not a soldier and therefore did not care a damn about MacLean’s mockery. But he was a soldier no longer and was not pleased to find himself experiencing a mild feeling of restraint and diffidence in the present company and under his host’s gaze.

  He had dined often at the MacLeans’ during spells of attachment at Fort William and they were on first name terms: the second Mrs. MacLean was about his own age. She was the daughter of a Company official, a collector, sometimes known as a district officer or deputy commissioner; a Scotsman from Peebles: herself country-bred but blessed with a clear Scottish complexion which had not grow sallow from a quarter-century in India.

  Although MacLean’s greeting had been warm, there was a guardedness about it which had never been present before. Ramsey had learned by now that it was a mistake to underrate men like Angus MacLean, with their bluff manner and suggestion of roughness which was complemented by a certain physical coarseness: the plethoric complexion, heavy features and thick torso, the over-indulgent bulge. MacLean must have set out from Scotland with a frame much like Alec Lumsden’s; but whereas Alec had suggested athletic strength, MacLean looked as though he had the gigantic calves and thighs of a chairman, the arms of a stevedore. Ramsey was not deceived. He knew that, as with MacLean’s fellow-countrymen who had come seeking wealth and power in the East, there lay behind that callused and insensitive appearance a subtle mind and a formidable talent for exploitation and opportunism. He had never needed an opportunity more and he hoped that this energetic and resourceful man would provide it. He had never seen, nor could he imagine, a look of puzzlement showing in MacLean’s eyes.

  At the same time he was cynical enough to tell himself that if there was a change in MacLean’s manner it must be because whatever favour his father had done had long been repaid and because he was no longer a rising officer who might in turn be of use, but a civilian without employment.

  There were a dozen other guests to dinner, most of them strangers to Ramsey; all civilians. At other times it had been pleasant to dine at this table, a welcome contrast with the atmosphere of a mess. This evening he sensed a patronage in the others’ manner and veiled amusement in the way in which his host cast sh
arp glances at him. There was something disturbing and investigative about them. I have many lessons still to learn, he thought, despite all I know of this country and what I thought I knew of my compatriots here.

  The three last arrivals ushered into the drawing-room caught Ramsey’s interest immediately. His admiration was aroused by the beauty of the two ladies, mother and daughter, their athletic and confident carriage and the quiet elegance of their dress in contrast with the strident vulgarity of the Calcutta ladies. The man provoked attention by his bearing, his rugged air and the self-assurance of his style. This fellow Whittaker looked more like a soldier or a country squire than a man who earned his living indoors: yet he had a wise and far from simple look about him.

  It was their manner of speech which most startled him: a drawl with incisive overtones, a sharpening of their “a”s, a twang he had never heard before.

  The other guests looked as surprised and curious as he felt. MacLean, beaming with the pride of one showing off a new possession or rare discovery, explained the mystery.

  “Our friends here are from America.”

  There were two other young bachelors in the room, who turned their entire attention on Ruth. Ramsey kept his distance. He had more important matters on his mind just now than paying court to pretty girls; particularly transient ones: for even if she were staying in Calcutta, he was not. Moreover it was beneath his dignity to enter into any sort of competition with civilians of his own generation. He was in the habit of ignoring them. None the less, he was gratified as well as amused by the cool disdain with which Miss Whittaker treated them.

  He was more pleased when his hostess asked him to take Ruth in to dinner. When he offered her his arm he looked closely for the first time into her remarkably beautiful and lively blue eyes and realised instantly that she had captured more than his admiration.

  “From what part of America do you come, Miss Whittaker?”

  “From Boston, Massachusetts.”

  “Then we have something in common. My home is in Lincolnshire and I believe our Boston gave its name to yours.”

  “My father’s family came from Somerset. That is his middle name: Henry Somerset Whittaker.”

  “He has a sentimental attachment to England, then?”

  “You had better ask him. He has never been there.”

  He felt a prickling of resentment. He was used to pretty spinsters being vain and conceited, but they were also as a rule predatory and cautioned by the mating instinct not to be curt.

  “How long have you been in India?”

  “Too long! A horrid week in Bombay and already a week here, which is little more to my taste.”

  “I know how you must feel...”

  “I doubt it, Mr. Ramsey.” Unmarried British ladies seldom interrupted gentlemen either. “I don’t think anyone who has never been to America can possibly know how an American feels, confronted by the squalor and backwardness, the ignorance, superstition and brutality of this country.”

  “My word! I assure you all those are quite a sharp contrast with England too.”

  “I daresay. But that does not seem to have made you English... I should say British,... reluctant to leave home in preference for India.”

  He smiled. “Since you Americans expelled us, our choice has been somewhat restricted.”

  She returned his smile and he could see that she did it reluctantly. “Come now, sir, your countrymen showed a great liking for India long before our War of Independence.”

  “Your Revolution, Miss Whittaker?”

  She gave him a look compounded of indignation, impertinence and the same reluctant amusement. Her lips softened into a little grin that presaged some mischievous retort. But before she could utter it, the man sitting opposite him, who had been eavesdropping, took his cue.

  Ramsey had met him before. Pocock was a lawyer, a sardonic, frowning man of fifty with a grating voice.

  “You speak appositely of revolution, Ramsey. It will be a cause of great mortification to your father when the news from Barrackpore reaches him.” A gripping silence fell as everyone around the table paid attention to the lawyer’s interjection. They waited expectantly. Ramsey made no response. The dry voice droned on.

  “No doubt, however, he will derive some satisfaction from the clemency shown to his regiment.”

  What could this pedantic cold fish know of clemency? Ramsey wondered. Still he offered no comment. Spiritually he was back in the uniform he had shed only a few hours earlier, aloof and rebuffing to anyone outside the mystique of the profession of arms who had the effrontery to commit such a trespass. The easy, assured lineaments of the lawyers’ patrician face irritated him more than any overt quarrelsome vulgarity could have. He hoped that his obstinate silence was giving as much offence as he intended it should.

  Whittaker, sensing the hostility on Pocock’s part, the malicious amusement on MacLean’s and the general awkwardness of the others, spoke up with his usual quiet reasonableness.

  “I am sorry to appear ignorant, but I find myself unable to follow the trend of your... ah... discourse, Pocock. I am sure my wife and daughter are equally mystified.”

  Pocock looked triumphant and, Whittaker thought, mean and ill-disposed.

  “Ramsey was lately a lieutenant in the Sixty-Ninth Native Infantry, who mutinied last month.”

  Whittaker gave him a hard look. “So? Surely that has a very tenuous connection with our...” he smiled, to take the heat out of the atmosphere that had quickly been generated “...difference of opinion with the British Government forty-eight years ago?”

  Pocock shut his eyes for a couple of seconds in a grimace of hard-pressed forbearance. Then, in his mincing tone, he resumed his diatribe.

  “There is a very close similarity. But, as I was saying before I was interrupted, apportionment of blame is, of course, invariably difficult in such cases. Nevertheless I think I am right in saying that amongst most observers, certainly those of us who are in the legal profession and the civil administration, there is a feeling that none of the participants can escape some measure of stigma. It has been suggested that a closer knowledge of the sepoys, by the General and especially the Colonel and officers of the Sixty-Ninth, would have averted such grim events.” By implication, every officer was culpable. “It discredits all of us and our country.”

  Whittaker glanced at Ramsey to see how he would take this accusation. He noticed that both his wife and daughter were also regarding Ramsey; with sympathy, whereas the other guests were either watching him with spite or had their eyes cast down in embarrassment.

  The intent silence continued. The jetsam of the immediate past floated to the surface of Ramsey’s consciousness from the depths to which he had thrust it. He felt murderously angry but all he showed was contempt.

  Whittaker turned to the lawyer, who was looking smug and exultant.

  “Have you any experience of military life, Pocock, that you speak with such certainty and authority?”

  Pocock looked briefly at him and said curtly “One does not need military experience in order to take an intelligent view of the event, if one has lived in this country as long as I have.” Whittaker frowned at the rudeness, but before he could speak Ramsey did so.

  “Long residence does not necessarily confer deep knowledge, Pocock. What do you know of India beyond Calcutta? You hardly even speak the language. I have heard you mangling it. Your speech is worse than the way a five-year-old Cockney guttersnipe speaks English. And what right have you, who have never commanded troops, to speak so of men to whom you are in all respects so wretchedly inferior? You do not know what you are talking about and you have me at a disadvantage in the presence of ladies and as a fellow guest. I daresay you would not have dared to impugn my regiment in circumstances less safe.”

  Ruth began to laugh. Constance and Henry were smiling. Pocock looked apoplectic. MacLean swiftly took charge of the conversation. Bogus animation and brittle laughter camouflaged the embarrassment of the others. M
acLean was not embarrassed and Ramsey suspected why Pocock had been invited. He also perceived certain facets of MacLean’s character which had not been revealed before.

  After the ladies had withdrawn and the port was circulating, Whittaker went to sit beside Ramsey. They ignored the general conversation.

  “I admire the way you handled that offensive situation, young man. How long is it since you left the Army?”

  “Officially, I retire at midnight. I left my regiment this morning.”

  “Then I understand why you are so restrained. I expected you to invite that silly fellow to meet you with swords or pistols, as soon as the ladies left us. I am sure the wound of parting from your regiment is still raw.”

  “It is a decision I made voluntarily. But it was not easy to leave my friends: among the men as well as the officers.”

  “What are your plans?”

  “I hope to find commercial employment.”

  “Perhaps you would care to dine with us at Brown’s Hotel the day after tomorrow?”

  *

  In the morning Ramsey accompanied MacLean to his office in Chowringhee. They had not spoken about the previous evening. Ramsey had come to Calcutta full of definite intentions but suddenly found himself confronted by vagueness which clouded his future and made him uneasy. His forthright nature could wait no longer.

  “Will you tell me where I can send to call Pocock out, Angus?”

  MacLean shifted round to look hard at him. Ramsey read a mingled expression of amused malice, caution and veiled triumph in his close-set eyes.

  “You surely are not serious, Hugh?”

  “I should not think well of myself I did not challenge him.”

  MacLean gave signs of agitation. “But you will kill him. You know what the consequences will be for you: at the best, you will have to flee. Whatever the outcome, it will cause a great scandal; and I do not think sympathy will be on your side. I would carry a heavy responsibility for the quarrel.”

  “I have no wish to kill him. A wound in the arm bad enough to ensure an amputation will satisfy me.”