CHAPTER I.
With the advent of the cold season Anglo-Indian society revives from its hot-weather torpor. Drills and field-days begin; regiments are on the move; civilians look up their camp-equipage and shooting-apparatus; officers rejoin from furlough; wives and children return from the hills; inspections, balls, and race-meetings come off. And never were the English in India more disposed to give themselves to the amusement of the passing hour than at the close of the year 1856, when no warning note had yet been given of the great catastrophe to come, and it seemed as if the end of Indian wars had been reached at last, and that the only possible excitement remaining was to be found in field-sports, or the small gaieties within the reach of dwellers in cantonments. At the beginning of the cold season, too, there takes place the annual importation of young ladies from England. At small stations, indeed, this last element of the cold-weather excitement must needs be of a more or less intermittent and occasional character, since there will not be found every year parents to receive a newly grown-up daughter; but in so large a place as Mustaphabad, some accessions of this kind must always be due, and on the present occasion Miss Cunningham's arrival was heralded by rumours of her accomplishments and beauty which, even with due allowance for pardonable exaggeration when describing a young lady as yet unseen, were sufficient to account for the flutter of excitement which pervaded the local society. Letters from officers returning from leave to residents at the station, made special reference to the charms of their fellow-passenger, — notably that written by young Miles of the native infantry, who was hanging about Calcutta after arrival in search of some employment which would prevent his returning to regimental duty, and who wrote to his correspondent that Miss Cunningham was "as nice as she looks, only Mrs. Shaperown (in whose charge she came out) would hardly let her speak to a fellow on board." Still more circumstantial evidence was afforded by Captain Sparrow, the assistant commissioner of Mustaphabad, another fellow-passenger on board the Burrampootra, who had rejoined his appointment straightway on landing, and looked in, a day or two afterwards, on his cousin, Ensign Spragge, of the 76th Native Infantry, while the officers of that corps were taking early tea in the mess-house verandah after morning parade. "Ah! Miss Cunningham?" said Sparrow, with an air of languid superiority, to the two or three sitting next him, as his wily cousin turned the conversation from that gentleman's experiences of London life and Continental travel to the subject of general interest — "ah! you see, Miss Cunningham is a sort of woman that don't often come out to this country. Not a mere chit of a girl just out of the schoolroom, to get her head turned by seeing a few young fellows in red coats, or being made love to by a P. and O. purser; she has been brought up abroad and seen something of the world; talks French and Italian, and that sort of thing, as well as English, and with really quite a good taste in music. Not that she is at all stuck up, you know. She was not on speaking terms with everybody on board, of course — Mrs. Shaperown was too particular for that; but I saw a good deal of their party, naturally — her father and I being in the same commission, you see, made it different — and I found her very agreeable and well-informed. But I am afraid it will be slow for her out here, for my worthy chief, though a very excellent fellow, ain't much accustomed to ladies' society, and she's not the sort of girl to care for what you fellows call gaiety — a ball where you make up a dozen dancing couples, including the grandmammas still on active service; or your picnics out at the nawab's gardens, where there's no grass and no water, and nothing to do but yawn, and eat hermetically-sealed lobsters. No, no, English life spoils you for that sort of thing. I declare since I have come back from furlough I hate India more than ever."
So saying, Captain Sparrow mounted his horse, and, nodding his adieu languidly but affably to his audience, cantered off to the residency, while the little group of officers dispersed to their respective bungalows to dress and breakfast. Nor were they the only persons discussing the subject. "The poor dear commissioner," said Mrs. Polwheedle, the brigadier's wife, to the occupant of the next carriage, as the two ladies sat listening to the strains of the regimental band playing on the Mall at sunset — "the poor dear commissioner, there's his daughter actually going to arrive in a day or two, and not a thing ready for her. I want him to let Miss Cunningham stay with us for a week or two at first, it will be so dull for her, poor girl, in that great barn of a residency all by herself, and not a lady within five miles. No, he has not exactly promised that she shall do so, but then you know the commissioner, it is so hard to get him to say a thing outright; he is always most friendly with us, I am sure, and the brigadier says he is very clever in his management of the natives, and very clever he must be, for he scarcely ever speaks a word. But as I said to him, my dear Mr. Cunningham, you really must let the dear girl stay and rest with us, at any rate on her way up, for she will be shaken to death with the palkee journey from Panipoor, and will never be able to get on to the residency the same morning. And so we expect her, and then I daresay when she once stops, she will be glad to stay with me for a day or two, and the commissioner can come down and dine whenever he likes, and I will ask some of the senior officers and their wives to meet them. This will be such a nice introduction for her — don't you think so? and much pleasanter than if she were set down all at once at the residency, with the commissioner away all day at cutchery, and she not able to speak a word of the language. It's bad enough when you can talk it, with these native servants ready to steal the very nose off your face. Oh, I do think they are such rogues, every man of them." And as the good lady's thoughts passed from her hospitable intentions to the wrongs inflicted by the children of the soil, her ample face assumed a rosier hue, and her voice a deeper tone.
The arrangement proposed by Mrs. Polwheedle for Miss Cunningham's reception was, however, never carried out. Two mornings after the above conversation took place, the brigadier returning from his early ride, brought the news to his wife that the commissioner had gone down the previous day in the nawab's camel-carriage to Panipoor, at which place the made road from Calcutta at that time terminated, to meet his daughter and her maid, and that the party had passed through cantonments on their way to the residency at daybreak that morning.