Zemindar by Valerie Fitzgerald Read Free Book Online Page B

worthless creature living and well deserved to be knocked off his gadhi .’
    ‘ Gadhi ?’
    ‘Throne! Mr Chalmers says if poor Lord Dalhousie were still here, the Nawab would soon be cut down to size, but Lord Canning, the new man, y’know, is altogether a different sort of character. Too good. Too tolerant. It’s just as well the country is as peaceful and quiet as it is at the moment, Mr Chalmers says, because otherwise there’s no telling what might happen. As it is all Lord Canning has to do is to continue on the lines laid down by Lord Dalhousie, and long may it continue to be so.’
    ‘Oh, but poor creature! It must be terrible for a man who has been a king suddenly to find himself a no one,’ commiserated Emily. ‘Whatever did he do that was so dreadful?’
    ‘Well, it wasn’t only this Nawab. Oh, no! It was his father too, and his grandfather and I don’t know how many others before them. They were all a bad lot. Drink, don’t you see, and opium and extravagance and … debauchery. Of every kind! Why, this one even went through the streets of his own city playing his drums like a common tamasa-wallah —a strolling showman I suppose you would say—with all the population looking on, and never gave a thought to the running of his kingdom, which has fallen into the most dire state as a result of his neglect, so that now the Government has had to step in and take it over entirely to put things to right. And after all that, the Nawab is allowed to bring his menagerie to Calcutta with him!’
    Mrs Chalmers sniffed in great dudgeon, and I thought I could detect even in her sniff an echo of the denunciations of her husband. I wondered idly whether I would ever be capable of taking on a man’s opinions merely because he was my husband? Perhaps, if he were very sensible and his opinions were really the expression of my own mind. But on the whole it was as well that I stood in small danger of matrimony.
    ‘Well, I suppose he’s very terrible as you say, but I had hoped that when we were in Lucknow we might see him, meet him perhaps too,’ said Emily. ‘But I suppose he sees no one now, and as he is not a king any longer it wouldn’t signify much anyway.’
    ‘Oh, kings are two-a-penny in this country,’ answered Mrs Chalmers, ‘and if you take my advice you will have nothing to do with any of ’em. Nasty, grabbing, vicious people on the whole, and I’d sooner put my feet under the mahogany of an English gentleman any time.’
    ‘I expect you are right. But it would have been nice to have told people at home that we had called on a king,’ said Emily with regret.
    The Chalmerses’ house was set by the river, and its lawns and gardens led right down to the water. It was a typical bungala khoti or Bengal house—a term which we English with our flair for etymological adaptation have turned into ‘bungalow’—a building of great height and extent, but comprising only one storey. A deep verandah surrounded it, and the rooms were dark, cavernous and bare, at least to eyes accustomed to the amount of ornament and bric-à-brac fashionable in recent years. The bedchamber to which I was conducted was the largest room I had ever seen, let alone occupied. Three tall doors led on to the verandah, and from it opened a dressing-room and a bathroom furnished with a tin bath and an enormous earthenware container full of cold water. This was full of mosquito larvae and other insects drawn up with the water from the well, something which caused Emily only a little more uneasiness than the prevalent Indian custom of taking a bath every day. She was sure so much subjection to tepid water would be bad for her health and complexion.
    We were each supplied with an ayah, a sort of lady’s maid, while Charles found himself waited upon by a neatly turbanned and fiercely-moustachioed bearer. Thus amply were our creature comforts supplied by the hospitable Chalmers, and within a few days I had become accustomed to such