It was rumoured in
official circles that he had narrowly escaped beheading, for pointing
out too ironically the disabilities of a Viceroy who insisted on
reviewing the troops from a cushioned carriage with the horses taken
out. Fillimore seemed to think that if nature had not made such a
nobleman a horseman, the Queen-Empress should not have made him
Governor-General of India. Fillimore was full of prejudices. Gianacchi,
however, found it impossible to treat him coldly. His smoothness of
temperament stood in the way. Instead, he imparted the melodious
information that the _Gadfly_ had pecked badly twice at Tollygunge that
morning, and smiled with pathetic philosophy. "Always let 'em use their
noses," said Fillimore, and there seemed to be satire in it. Fillimore
certainly had a flair, and when Beryl Stace presently demanded of him,
"What's the dead bird going to be on Saturday, Filly?" he put it
generously at her service. Among the friends of Mr. Stanhope and his
company were also several gentlemen, content, for their personal effect,
with the lustre they shed upon the Stock Exchange--gentlemen of high
finance, who wrote their names at the end of directors' reports, but
never in the visitors' book at Government House, who were little more to
the Calcutta world than published receipts for so many lakhs, except
when they were seen now and then driving in fleet dog-carts across the
Maidan toward comfortable suburban residences where ladies were not
entertained.
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