to perform that kind office for them which they do for others. He who is paid to find out the mote that is in his brother's eye, and devotes his energies to its discovery, is of all men the one who requires the most kind and faithful friend to show him the beam which is in his own. I will be that friend, and charge nothing for it," thought I.
Grandon saw the flush of enthusiasm which mounted to my brow, and looked grave.
"My impulsive friend," he said, "this is a very serious subject; we must beware lest we fall into the error which we blame in others. It is one thing to see the need of the missionary, it is another to rush headlong upon the work. However, I am able to offer you an opportunity of beginning at once, for I have just come to tell you that Dickiefield has given us a joint invitation to go down to-morrow to Dickiefield, to stay till Parliament opens; we shall be certain to find a choice assortment of pagan and theological curiosities in that most agreeable of country-houses, and you may possibly meet the identical colonial bishop at whose palace you proposed staying. The three o'clock train lands us exactly in time for dinner. Will you come?"
"Of course I will. Nothing would justify my neglecting so promising a vineyard in which to commence my labours;" and I rubbed my hands enthusiastically, and sat down to write a series of those "consecrated lies" by means of which dinner engagements, already accepted, are at the last moment evaded.
Dickiefield, 4th February.
The party here consists of old Lady Broadhem, with that very aspiring young nobleman, her son, the young Earl (old Lord Broadhem died last year), and his sisters, Ladies Bridget and Ursula Newlyte, neither of whom I have seen since they emerged from the nursery.
They had all disappeared to dress for dinner, however, and Dickiefield had not come home from riding, so that when Grandon and I entered the drawing-room, we found only the deserted apparatus of the afternoon tea, a Bishop, and a black man—and we had to introduce ourselves. The Bishop had a beard and an apron, his companion a turban, and such very large shoes, that it was evident his feet were unused to the confinement. The Bishop looked stern and determined; perhaps there was just a dash of worldliness about the twist of his mustache. His companion wore a subdued and unctuous appearance; his face was shaved; and the whites of his eyes were very bloodshot and yellow. Neither of them was the least embarrassed when we were shown in; Grandon and I both were slightly. "What a comfort that the snow is gone," said I to the Bishop.
"Yes," said his lordship; "the weather is very trying to me, who have just arrived from the Caribbee Islands."
"I suppose you have accompanied his lordship from the Caribbee Islands," said I, turning to the swarthy individual, whom I naturally supposed to be a specimen convert.
"No," he said; "he had arrived some months since from Bombay."
"Think of staying long in England?" said Grandon.
"That depends upon my prospects at the next general election. I am looking out for a borough."
"Dear me!" said Grandon; and we all, Bishop included, gazed on him with astonishment.
"My name is Chundango," he went on. "My parents were both Hindoos. Before I was converted my other name was Juggonath; now I am John. I became acquainted with a circle of dear Christian friends in Bombay, during my connection, as catechist, with the Tabernacle Missionary Society, was peculiarly favoured in some mercantile transactions into which I subsequently entered in connection with cotton, and have come to spend my fortune, and enter public life, in this country. I was just expressing to our dear friend here," pointing in a patronising way towards the Bishop, "my regret at finding that he shares in views which are becoming so prevalent in the Church, and are likely to taint the Protestantism of Great Britain and part of Ireland."
"Goodness," thought I, "how this complicates matters! which of these two now stands most in need of my services as a missionary?" As Dickiefield was lighting me up to my bedroom, I could not resist congratulating him upon his two guests. "A good specimen of the 'unsound muscular,' the Bishop," said I.
"Not very," said Dickiefield; "he is not so unsound as he looks, and he is not unique, like the other. I flatter myself I have under my roof the only well-authenticated instance of the Hindoo converted millionaire. It is true he became a 'Government Christian' when he was a poor boy of fifteen, and began life as a catechist; then he saw a good mercantile opening, and went into cotton, out of which he has realised an immense fortune, and now is going into political life in England, which he could not have done in an unconverted condition. Who ever heard before of a Bombay man wanting to get into Parliament, and coming home with a carte du pays all arranged before he started? He advocates extension of the franchise, ballot, and the Evangelical Alliance, so I thought I would fasten him on to Broadhem—they'll help to float each other."
"Who else have you got here besides?" I asked.
"Oh, only a petroleum aristocrat from the oil regions of America—another millionaire. He is a more wonderful instance even than Chundango, for he was a poor man three months ago, when he 'struck oil.' You will find him most intelligent, full of information; but you will look upon him, of course, as the type of the peculiar class to which he belongs, and not of Americans generally." And my warm-hearted and eccentric friend, Lord Dickiefield, left me to my meditations and my toilet.
"I shall probably have to take one of these Broadhem girls in to dinner," thought I, as I followed the rustle of their crinolines down-stairs back to the drawing-room. So I ranged myself near the one with dark hair and blue eyes—I like the combination—to the great annoyance of Juggonath, who had got so near her for the same purpose that his great foot was on her dress.
"I beg your pardon, Mr Juggernaut," said I, giving him a slight shove, "I think you are standing——"
"Chundango, sir, if you please," said he, unconsciously making way for me, "Juggonath is the name which my poor benighted countrymen——"
"Juggernaut still speaking, as they say in the telegraphic reports from the House of Commons," I remarked to Lady Ursula, as I carried her off triumphantly; and the Indian's voice was lost in the hum of the general movement towards the dining-room.
I have promised not to shrink from alluding to those tender sensibilities which an ordinary mortal jealously preserves from the rough contact of his fellow-men; but I am not an ordinary mortal, and I have no hesitation in saying, that never in my life have I gone through such a distinct change of feeling in the same period as during the two hours we sat at that dinner. Deeply versed as I am in every variety of the sex, married or single, how was I to know that Lady Ursula was as little like the rest of the species as our Bombay friend was to wealthy Hindoos generally? What reason had I to suppose that Lady Broadhem's daughter could possibly be a new type?
Having been tolerably intimate at Broadhem House before she was out, I knew well the atmosphere which had surrounded her youth, and took it for granted that she had imbibed the family views.
"Interesting creature, John Chundango, Esq.," said I, for I thought she had looked grave at the flippancy of my last remark; "he has quite the appearance of a 'Brand.'"
"A what?" said Lady Ursula, as she looked up and caught him glaring fixedly at her with his great yellow eyeballs from the other side of the table.
"Of course I don't mean of the 'whipper-in' of the Liberal party, but of one rescued from fire. I understand that his great wealth, so far from having proved a snare to him, has enabled him to join in many companies for the improvement of Bombay, and that his theological views are quite unexceptionable."
"If his conversion leads him to avoid discussing either his neighbours or their theology, Lord Frank, I think he is a person whom we may all envy."
Is that a hit at her mother or at me? thought I. At Broadhem House, society and doctrine used to be the only topics of discussion. My fair friend here has probably had so much of it that she has gone off on another tack; perhaps she is a "still deep fast" one. As I thought thus, I ran over in my mind my young-lady categories, as follows:—
{The wholly worldly
First, { and