26 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

practical settlement. Various speculations were afloat to account

for the appointment of so famous and energetic a man to fill what

had been regarded, if not as an inferior, at all events as a com-

paratively irresponsible and subordinate post, and " society" in Cal- cutta was in a flutter at the probability of this clear-eyed, simple- minded, plain-living satirist of shows and frivolities coming into its midst with a personal influence which would not be snubbed down or ignored, and a position and reputation so high that it would be impossible to affect indifference, especially if it should turn out to be true that he had accepted the secretaryship that he might have an opportunity of settling the Anglo-Russian frontier.

But the public wonder and the half dismay of Indian fashionable circles were soon dissipated. The one was turned into curiosity, the other was relieved, by the sudden announcement that Gordon had relinquished the secretaryship almost before he could have fulfilled any of its duties. He had left London with the viceroy in the latter part of May, and the public who had followed the telegraphic reports of the journey had scarcely learned that it had terminated at Bombay when the intelligence also arrived that Gordon had resigned. Anybody who knew him must have known that, though he had accepted the appointment in good faith and because he never thought about his own personal demands in relation to any work that he believed it might be his duty to do, he would never be able to submit to the merely subordinate work of a secretary. It was not reasonable to suppose that a man who had been a kind of sultan over a large territory requir-

ing absolute authority on the part of its governor, would be able to carry out the orders of a superior in a direction which he might be convinced was altogether a wrong one, and yet refrain from either interference or remonstrance, except perhaps in the way of a suggestion made with bated breath. It was certainly a good thing that he discovered the mistake he had made before it had become deplorable by a collision between him and his superiors who represented the government. Evidently he had found out, not only that it would be disastrous for him to abide by his hasty decision, but that it was actually impossible. He explained his