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‘What I mean is, Macgregor’ll have dropped that bloody rot about electing a native member, eh?
Not the moment for it just now. After the rebellion and all that.’
‘What about the rebellion, by the way?’ said Flory. He did not want to start wrangling about the
doctor’s election yet. There was going to be trouble and to spare in a few minutes. ‘Any more news–
are they going to have another try, do you think?’
‘No. All over, I’m afraid. They caved in like the funks they are. The whole district’s as quiet as a
bloody girls’ school. Most disappointing.’
Flory’s heart missed a beat. He had heard Elizabeth’s voice in the next room. Mr Macgregor came
in at this moment, Ellis and Mr Lackersteen following. This made up the full quota, for the women
members of the Club had no votes. Mr Macgregor was already dressed in a silk suit, and was
carrying the Club account-books under his arm. He managed to bring a sub-official air even into such
petty business as a Club meeting.
‘As we seem to be all here,’ he said after the usual greetings, ‘shall we–ah–proceed with our
labours?’
‘Lead on, Macduff,’ said Westfield, sitting down.
‘Call the butler, someone, for Christ’s sake,’ said Mr Lackersteen. ‘I daren’t let my missus hear me
calling him.’
‘Before we apply ourselves to the agenda,’ said Mr Macgregor when he had refused a drink and the
others had taken one, ‘I expect you will want me to run through the accounts for the half-year?’
They did not want it particularly, but Mr Macgregor, who enjoyed this kind of thing, ran through the
accounts with great thoroughness. Flory’s thoughts were wandering. There was going to be such a
row in a moment–oh, such a devil of a row! They would be furious when they found that he was
proposing the doctor after all. And Elizabeth was in the next room. God send she didn’t hear the noise
of the row when it came. It would make her despise him all the more to see the others baiting him.
Would he see her this evening? Would she speak to him? He gazed across the quarter-mile of
gleaming river. By the far bank a knot of men, one of them wearing a green gaungbaung, were
waiting beside a sampan. In the channel, by the nearer bank, a huge, clumsy Indian barge struggled
with desperate slowness against the racing current. At each stroke the ten rowers, Dravidian
starvelings, ran forward and plunged their long primitive oars, with heart-shaped blades, into the
water. They braced their meagre bodies, then tugged, writhed, strained backwards like agonised
creatures of black rubber, and the ponderous hull crept onwards a yard or two. Then the rowers
sprang forward, panting, to plunge their oars again before the current should check her.
‘And now,’ said Mr Macgregor more gravely, ‘we come to the main point of the agenda. That, of
course, is this–ah–distasteful question, which I am afraid must be faced, of electing a native member
to this Club. When we discussed the matter before——’
‘What the hell!’
It was Ellis who had interrupted. He was so excited that he had sprung to his feet.
‘What the hell! Surely we aren’t starting that over again? Talk about electing a damned nigger to
this Club, after everything that’s happened! Good God, I thought even Flory had dropped it by this
time!’