Beyond the Black Waters

“You’ll see it, Mr. Lawrence, you’ll see it—everything will be changed in England now that the old king is dead and the sailor William on the throne. The people are mad for changes, and shout for reform, as if it meant bread to their butter, or rather beef-steaks and plum-pudding.”

“But the Duke—” began Mr. Lawrence; but Dr. Pinfold cut him short ere he could finish the sentence.

“The Iron Duke is facing the mob like a man, but he’ll have to give way to popular excitement. Westminster is not Waterloo; let Londoners roar as they will, he can’t say, ‘Up, Guards, and at them.’ The Duke can no more stem the current than he can stop with his field-marshal’s baton one of those new-fangled monster engines which crushed out poor Huskisson’s life.”

The two gentlemen who were discoursing on politics were the chaplain of Moulmein and the doctor of the station. Their path was along a cactus-bordered road, where every here and there the plantain waved its broad green leaves aloft, as if proud of the heavy clusters of fruit forming below. The two men were very different in appearance: the clergyman was small, slight, pale, and fair-haired; the doctor was somewhat portly, with grizzled eyebrows and a copious beard. He was full of the subject of politics, to which Mr.Lawrence gave very divided attention.

“Every ship from England brings stirring tidings,” continued the doctor. “Have you seen the papers to-day?”

“Not yet,” replied the chaplain. “I was rather absorbed in the perusal of home letters. I am by no means indifferent to what is passing in the dear old island at the other end of the world; but the sounds of political changes, roaring mobs, and exciting orations in London, only reach me here at Moulmein as the distant plash of surges breaking on the shore.”

“So it is,” observed the doctor philosophically. “What is near always affects us most, a button close to the eye shuts out the landscape, and excludes even the sun. It is of more importance to me that mybhansamar should cook my pillau to my taste than that the Tories should secure a majority in the House. Perhaps your small parish here in Moulmein (if it can be called a parish at all)—your handful of soldiers, and a few scattered Europeans, take up more of your attention than the affairs of England, with Scotland and Ireland to boot.”

“Perhaps so,” replied the chaplain; “but my interest in what concerns Siam and Burmah is by no means confined to what you call my parish in Moulmein. I have hearty sympathy to give to our American brethren, labouring nobly and successfully amongst the native races.”

“The natives!” repeated Dr. Pinfold in a tone of contempt. “Do you think that all the praying and preaching in the world can wash the n*****s white, or get the blackness out of their blood? The Yankees could as easily turn pomegranates into potatoes, or make monkeys into men.”

Mark Lawrence held a different opinion, but he saw that there would be no use at that time in pressing his views on the cheerful, corpulent doctor, from whom his own button of personal comfort shut out the view of anything of a higher nature. Dr. Pinfold’s favourite maxim was Live, and let live: the first, and to him more important, part of the proverb meaning what is called good-living—not a mere seat, but a well-cushioned chair; not simple food, but a banquet, washed down with old wine. It must be owned that the second clause of the proverb was by no means forgotten. Dr. Pinfold was popular as a medical man; and not without reason, for he was not only clever in his profession, but he took a pleasure in curing his patients. Pinfold liked to relieve pain, and to see people happy; and he had a feeling of general goodwill towards all his fellow-countrymen which passed for benevolence, though his charity was ever of the kind which begins at home, and is limited to a conveniently small circle beyond it.

“I wish to know something of the family who arrived yesterday from England via Calcutta—the Coldstreams, to whom you are going to introduce me,” said Mark Lawrence, changing the subject of conversation. “I think that we are now approaching their bungalow; a very pleasant dwelling it appears to be.”

“It’s a capital house,” observed the doctor; “there’s not a prettier one in Moulmein. It is fitted up too with perfect taste; for, you see, Oscar Coldstream arranged everything himself, and built and ornamented the house for the girl to whom he was engaged, whom he has just brought out as his wife. Coldstream came out first, two years ago, to get everything ready; a sensible plan, to my mind, for it is folly to bring a pretty girl still in her teens to face all sorts of discomforts in a heathenish country like this.”