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The trouble was that Vokins, as he made his solemn journeys from the door to the Collector’s ear, did not understand that many of these messages were redundant (for, after all, once a cantonment has been set alight the number of bungalows blazing, more or less, is a matter of relative indifference). Vokins thought they were cumulative and progressive; Vokins lacked the broader view. He tended only to see the prospect of the Death of Vokins. Although some of the Collector’s guests might have been hard put to it to think of what a man of Vokins’s class had to lose, to Vokins it was very clear what he had to lose: namely his life. He was not at all anxious to leave his skin on the Indian plains; he wanted to take it back to the slums of Soho or wherever it came from.
By the time pudding was being served his expression had become tragic and he was uttering his messages in a muted gasp of terror … so that in the end even the Collector noticed and looked up enquiringly, as if to say: “Whatever is the matter with the fellow?” but then, evidently concluding that it was the heat, sank back into his own thoughts which were still following, in a meandering fashion, the theme of progress.
When the last of these messages was whispered funereally into his ear (five more bungalows adding warmth to the already stifling night) such a look of dismay came over the Collector’s face that the two pretty Misses O’Hanlon could not resist a rapid intake of breath at the sight of it. But the Collector had merely been thinking of Prince Albert’s Model Houses for the Labouring Classes and of another argument he had had with the Magistrate about them … how shocked he had been at the Magistrate’s attitude to these model houses!
On his way to the Crystal Palace a small block of houses had caught his eye not far from the south entrance to the Exhibition and a little to the west of the Barracks. He had paused, thinking how cheerful they were in their modest way. They had stood there, respectful but unabashed, without giving themselves airs amid the grander edifices round about. They were square and simple (like the British working man himself, as one of his colleagues of the Sculpture Jury had lyrically expressed it) with a large window upstairs and downstairs, and they were built in pairs with a modestly silhouetted coping stone above the entrance but no flamboyant decoration. They were not dour and sullen like so many of the houses in the populous districts; they were proud, but yet knew their places. In short, they were so delightful that for a moment one even had to envy the working man his luck to be able to live in them as one passed on one’s way towards the Exhibition.
But when the Collector had grown eloquent about these charming little dwellings, for this was in the early days before he had realized that the Magistrate was impermeable to optimism where social improvements were concerned, the Magistrate had spoken with equal vehemence about the exploitation of the poorer classes, the appalling conditions in which they were expected to live and so on, dismissing Prince Albert’s model houses as a sop to the royal conscience. The Collector had protested that he was certain that the Prince’s houses had been prompted, in a genuine spirit of sympathy, by the reports published by the Board of Health’s inspectors about the wretched home accommodation of the poorer classes, the utter lack of drainage, of water supply and ventilation.
“What prompted these trivial improvements, on the contrary,” the Magistrate had replied, “was a fear of a cholera epidemic among the wealthier classes!”
Well, the Collector mused, it is impossible to argue with someone who ascribes generous motives to self-interest, and he looked up mournfully past the optimistic glints scattered by the electro-silver branches of the centre-piece to the fox-red growth that sprouted from the Magistrate’s permanently contemptuous features. “What on earth is that?” he wondered aloud, having noticed, beyond the Magistrate, through the open window a tinge of buttercup in the night sky. Then, he added: “Oh yes, I see,” and got to his feet.
Downstairs in his study he lit a cheroot and shortly afterwards put it out again; instead he plucked his watch from its nest below his ribs. Once more he had to go upstairs; it was time for the last and most unpleasant task of the day. As he opened the door of his study he was confronted by a stuffed owl in a glass bell; one of its shoulders had long ago been eaten away by insects and it glared accusingly at the Collector with its glittering yellow eyes. But if the owl did not like the Collector, the Collector did not like the owl … for this owl was one of a vast population of owls, and of other stuffed birds which had come to roost in the Residency, together with a million other useless possessions. The Collector had long ago realized that he should have ordered them to be left to their fate. Instead, these possessions were stacked all over the Residency, all over Dunstaple’s house, and even in the banqueting hall. Only the Magistrate had refused to allow this useless but prized rubbish into the Cutcherry, which, of course, had meant more for everyone else. Now every room, every corridor, every staircase was occluded with the garrison’s acquisitions. “But still, are not possessions important? Do they not show how far a man has progressed in society from abject and anti-social poverty towards respectability? Possessions are surely a physical highwater mark of the moral tide which has been flooding steadily for the past twenty years or more.”
Amid the lumber of furniture, vases, crockery, musical instruments, and countless other objects, several more birds, motionless within their bubbles of glass, watched him wearily climb the stairs. He paused at the top, frowning. A ghostly voice had whispered in his ear: “The world is a bridge. Pass over it but do not build a house on it.” Was that a Christian or a Hindu proverb? He could not remember.
To accommodate the new arrival the Collector had had to turn out an indigo planter and his wife who had lodged themselves, uninvited, in the only remaining room. They had made a disagreeable fuss and had left, still grumbling, to seek shelter from Dr Dunstaple. Now, in their place, Hari was sitting crosslegged on the floor with his elbows propped on his knees and a sullen expression on his face. The Collector was a
“My dear Hari, why ever did you not call for more light? How long have you been sitting in the dark like this?”
Hari shrugged his shoulders crossly, as if to indicate that lights were of no importance to him. In the shadows the Collector could make out the form of another seated figure, but the light of the solitary candle was too dim for him to see who it was.
“I left instructions that everything for your comfort …”
“Oh, comfort … You think that I worry anxiously about such a thing as comfort!”
“I should have come before this but you must understand, I’ve had so many things to see to.” But not meaning to sound plaintive, he added firmly: “One’s duty has to come first, of course.” Hari shrugged again, but made no other reply.
The Collector was fond of Hari; it distressed him deeply that he should have to take advantage of him but he could see no alternative. He sighed and waited with impatience for the bearer to bring the lamp. To conduct this interview in semidarkness seemed furtive and unmanly to him.
When the lamp came at last it illuminated not only Hari but also the other figure seated on the carpet, who turned out to be the Prime Minister. Of course, he had come too! And he could not help thinking ungratefully: “Another mouth to feed!” Not that the Prime Minister looked as if he ate very much, however, he was only a bundle of skin and bones. The Prime Minister, in any case, seemed indifferent to his fate; he was gazing incuriously at the carpet a few inches in front of the Collector’s feet.