PART II: CAVES

A PASSAGE TO INDIA

BY

E. M. FORSTER

Author of “Howards End,” “A Room with a View,” etc.

SECOND IMPRESSION

LONDON

EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.

1924

BY THE SAME WRITER:

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

HOWARDS END

THE CELESTIAL OMNIBUS

PHAROS AND PHARILLON

_Made and Printed in Great Britain by_

Butler & Tanner Ltd., _Frome and London_

Copyright in U.S.A.

TO

SYED ROSS MASOOD

AND TO THE SEVENTEEN YEARS OF OUR FRIENDSHIP

A PASSAGE TO INDIA

PART I: MOSQUE

CHAPTER I

Except for the Marabar Caves—and they are twenty miles off—the city

of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary. Edged rather than

washed by the river Ganges, it trails for a couple of miles along

the bank, scarcely distinguishable from the rubbish it deposits so

freely. There are no bathing-steps on the river front, as the

Ganges happens not to be holy here; indeed there is no river front,

and bazaars shut out the wide and shifting panorama of the stream.

The streets are mean, the temples ineffective, and though a few

fine houses exist they are hidden away in gardens or down alleys

whose filth deters all but the invited guest. Chandrapore was never

large or beautiful, but two hundred years ago it lay on the road

between Upper India, then imperial, and the sea, and the fine

houses date from that period. The zest for decoration stopped in

the eighteenth century, nor was it ever democratic. There is no

painting and scarcely any carving in the bazaars. The very wood

seems made of mud, the inhabitants of mud moving. So abased, so

monotonous is everything that meets the eye, that when the Ganges

comes down it might be expected to wash the excrescence back into

the soil. Houses do fall, people are drowned and left rotting, but

the general outline of the town persists, swelling here, shrinking

there, like some low but indestructible form of life.

Inland, the prospect alters. There is an oval Maidan, and a long

sallow hospital. Houses belonging to Eurasians stand on the high

ground by the railway station. Beyond the railway—which runs

parallel to the river—the land sinks, then rises again rather

steeply. On the second rise is laid out the little civil station,

and viewed hence Chandrapore appears to be a totally different

place. It is a city of gardens. It is no city, but a forest sparsely

scattered with huts. It is a tropical pleasaunce washed by a noble

river. The toddy palms and neem trees and mangoes and pepul that

were hidden behind the bazaars now become visible and in their turn

hide the bazaars. They rise from the gardens where ancient tanks

nourish them, they burst out of stifling purlieus and unconsidered

temples. Seeking light and air, and endowed with more strength

than man or his works, they soar above the lower deposit to greet

one another with branches and beckoning leaves, and to build a city

for the birds. Especially after the rains do they screen what

passes below, but at all times, even when scorched or leafless,

they glorify the city to the English people who inhabit the rise,

so that new-comers cannot believe it to be as meagre as it is

described, and have to be driven down to acquire disillusionment.

As for the civil station itself, it provokes no emotion. It charms

not, neither does it repel. It is sensibly planned, with a red-brick

club on its brow, and farther back a grocer’s and a cemetery, and

the bungalows are disposed along roads that intersect at right

angles. It has nothing hideous in it, and only the view is

beautiful; it shares nothing with the city except the overarching

sky.

The sky too has its changes, but they are less marked than those

of the vegetation and the river. Clouds map it up at times, but it

is normally a dome of blending tints, and the main tint blue. By

day the blue will pale down into white where it touches the white

of the land, after sunset it has a new circumference—orange,

melting upwards into tenderest purple. But the core of blue

persists, and so it is by night. Then the stars hang like lamps

from the immense vault. The distance between the vault and them is

as nothing to the distance behind them, and that farther distance,

though beyond colour, last freed itself from blue.

The sky settles everything—not only climates and seasons but when

the earth shall be beautiful. By herself she can do little—only

feeble outbursts of flowers. But when the sky chooses, glory can

rain into the Chandrapore bazaars or a benediction pass from

horizon to horizon. The sky can do this because it is so strong

and so enormous. Strength comes from the sun, infused in it daily,

size from the prostrate earth. No mountains infringe on the curve.

League after league the earth lies flat, heaves a little, is flat

again. Only in the south, where a group of fists and fingers are

thrust up through the soil, is the endless expanse interrupted.

These fists and fingers are the Marabar Hills, containing the

extraordinary caves.

CHAPTER II

Abandoning his bicycle, which fell before a servant could catch

it, the young man sprang up on to the verandah. He was all

animation. “Hamidullah, Hamidullah! am I late?” he cried.

“Do not apologize,” said his host. “You are always late.”

“Kindly answer my question. Am I late? Has Mahmoud Ali eaten all

the food? If so I go elsewhere. Mr. Mahmoud Ali, how are you?”

“Thank you, Dr. Aziz, I am dying.”

“Dying before your dinner? Oh, poor Mahmoud Ali!”

“Hamidullah here is actually dead. He passed away just as you rode

up on your bike.”

“Yes, that is so,” said the other. “Imagine us both as addressing

you from another and a happier world.”

“Does there happen to be such a thing as a hookah in that happier

world of yours?”

“Aziz, don’t chatter. We are having a very sad talk.”

The hookah had been packed too tight, as was usual in his friend’s

house, and bubbled sulkily. He coaxed it. Yielding at last, the

tobacco jetted up into his lungs and nostrils, driving out the

smoke of burning cow dung that had filled them as he rode through

the bazaar. It was delicious. He lay in a trance, sensuous but

healthy, through which the talk of the two others did not seem

particularly sad—they were discussing as to whether or no it is

possible to be friends with an Englishman. Mahmoud Ali argued that

it was not, Hamidullah disagreed, but with so many reservations

that there was no friction between them. Delicious indeed to lie

on the broad verandah with the moon rising in front and the servants

preparing dinner behind, and no trouble happening.

“Well, look at my own experience this morning.”

“I only contend that it is possible in England,” replied Hamidullah,

who had been to that country long ago, before the big rush, and

had received a cordial welcome at Cambridge.

“It is impossible here. Aziz! The red-nosed boy has again insulted

me in Court. I do not blame him. He was told that he ought to

insult me. Until lately he was quite a nice boy, but the others

have got hold of him.”

“Yes, they have no chance here, that is my point. They come out

intending to be gentlemen, and are told it will not do. Look at

Lesley, look at Blakiston, now it is your red-nosed boy, and

Fielding will go next. Why, I remember when Turton came out first.

It was in another part of the Province. You fellows will not

believe me, but I have driven with Turton in his carriage—Turton!

Oh yes, we were once quite intimate. He has shown me his stamp

collection.”

“He would expect you to steal it now. Turton! But red-nosed boy

will be far worse than Turton!”

“I do not think so. They all become exactly the same, not worse,

not better. I give any Englishman two years, be he Turton or

Burton. It is only the difference of a letter. And I give any

Englishwoman six months. All are exactly alike. Do you not agree

with me?”

“I do not,” replied Mahmoud Ali, entering into the bitter fun, and

feeling both pain and amusement at each word that was uttered. “For

my own part I find such profound differences among our rulers.

Red-nose mumbles, Turton talks distinctly, Mrs. Turton takes

bribes, Mrs. Red-nose does not and cannot, because so far there is

no Mrs. Red-nose.”

“Bribes?”

“Did you not know that when they were lent to Central India over

a Canal Scheme, some Rajah or other gave her a sewing machine in

solid gold so that the water should run through his state.”

“And does it?”

“No, that is where Mrs. Turton is so skilful. When we poor blacks

take bribes, we perform what we are bribed to perform, and the law

discovers us in consequence. The English take and do nothing. I

admire them.”

“We all admire them. Aziz, please pass me the hookah.”

“Oh, not yet—hookah is so jolly now.”

“You are a very selfish boy.” He raised his voice suddenly, and

shouted for dinner. Servants shouted back that it was ready. They

meant that they wished it was ready, and were so understood, for

nobody moved. Then Hamidullah continued, but with changed manner

and evident emotion.

“But take my case—the case of young Hugh Bannister. Here is the

son of my dear, my dead friends, the Reverend and Mrs. Bannister,

whose goodness to me in England I shall never forget or describe.

They were father and mother to me, I talked to them as I do now.

In the vacations their Rectory became my home. They entrusted all

their children to me—I often carried little Hugh about—I took him

up to the Funeral of Queen Victoria, and held him in my arms above

the crowd.”

“Queen Victoria was different,” murmured Mahmoud Ali.

“I learn now that this boy is in business as a leather merchant at

Cawnpore. Imagine how I long to see him and to pay his fare that

this house may be his home. But it is useless. The other

Anglo-Indians will have got hold of him long ago. He will probably

think that I want something, and I cannot face that from the son

of my old friends. Oh, what in this country has gone wrong with

everything, Vakil Sahib? I ask you.”

Aziz joined in. “Why talk about the English? Brrrr . . . ! Why be

either friends with the fellows or not friends? Let us shut them

out and be jolly. Queen Victoria and Mrs. Bannister were the only

exceptions, and they’re dead.”

“No, no, I do not admit that, I have met others.”

“So have I,” said Mahmoud Ali, unexpectedly veering. “All ladies

are far from alike.” Their mood was changed, and they recalled

little kindnesses and courtesies. “She said ‘Thank you so much’ in

the most natural way.” “She offered me a lozenge when the dust

irritated my throat.” Hamidullah could remember more important

examples of angelic ministration, but the other, who only knew

Anglo-India, had to ransack his memory for scraps, and it was not

surprising that he should return to “But of course all this is

exceptional. The exception does not prove the rule. The average

woman is like Mrs. Turton, and, Aziz, you know what she is.” Aziz

did not know, but said he did. He too generalized from his

disappointments—it is difficult for members of a subject race to

do otherwise. Granted the exceptions, he agreed that all Englishwomen

are haughty and venal. The gleam passed from the conversation,

whose wintry surface unrolled and expanded interminably.

A servant announced dinner. They ignored him. The elder men had

reached their eternal politics, Aziz drifted into the garden. The

trees smelt sweet—green-blossomed champak—and scraps of Persian

poetry came into his head. Dinner, dinner, dinner . . . but when

he returned to the house for it, Mahmoud Ali had drifted away in

his turn, to speak to his sais. “Come and see my wife a little

then,” said Hamidullah, and they spent twenty minutes behind the

purdah. Hamidullah Begum was a distant aunt of Aziz, and the only

female relative he had in Chandrapore, and she had much to say to

him on this occasion about a family circumcision that had been

celebrated with imperfect pomp. It was difficult to get away,

because until they had had their dinner she would not begin hers,

and consequently prolonged her remarks in case they should suppose

she was impatient. Having censured the circumcision, she bethought

her of kindred topics, and asked Aziz when he was going to be

married.

Respectful but irritated, he answered, “Once is enough.”

“Yes, he has done his duty,” said Hamidullah. “Do not tease him

so. He carries on his family, two boys and their sister.”

“Aunt, they live most comfortably with my wife’s mother, where she

was living when she died. I can see them whenever I like. They are

such very, very small children.”

“And he sends them the whole of his salary and lives like a

low-grade clerk, and tells no one the reason. What more do you

require him to do?”

But this was not Hamidullah Begum’s point, and having courteously

changed the conversation for a few moments she returned and made

it. She said, “What is to become of all our daughters if men refuse

to marry? They will marry beneath them, or——” And she began the

oft-told tale of a lady of Imperial descent who could find no

husband in the narrow circle where her pride permitted her to mate,

and had lived on unwed, her age now thirty, and would die unwed,

for no one would have her now. While the tale was in progress, it

convinced the two men, the tragedy seemed a slur on the whole

community; better polygamy almost, than that a woman should die

without the joys God has intended her to receive. Wedlock,

motherhood, power in the house—for what else is she born, and how

can the man who has denied them to her stand up to face her creator

and his own at the last day? Aziz took his leave saying “Perhaps

. . . but later . . .” —his invariable reply to such an appeal.

“You mustn’t put off what you think right,” said Hamidullah. “That

is why India is in such a plight, because we put off things.” But

seeing that his young relative looked worried, he added a few

soothing words, and thus wiped out any impression that his wife

might have made.

During their absence, Mahmoud Ali had gone off in his carriage

leaving a message that he should be back in five minutes, but they

were on no account to wait. They sat down to meat with a distant

cousin of the house, Mohammed Latif, who lived on Hamidullah’s

bounty and who occupied the position neither of a servant nor of

an equal. He did not speak unless spoken to, and since no one spoke

kept unoffended silence. Now and then he belched, in compliment to

the richness of the food. A gentle, happy and dishonest old man;

all his life he had never done a stroke of work. So long as some

one of his relatives had a house he was sure of a home, and it was

unlikely that so large a family would all go bankrupt. His wife

led a similar existence some hundreds of miles away—he did not

visit her, owing to the expense of the railway ticket. Presently

Aziz chaffed him, also the servants, and then began quoting poetry,

Persian, Urdu, a little Arabic. His memory was good, and for so

young a man he had read largely; the themes he preferred were the

decay of Islam and the brevity of love. They listened delighted,

for they took the public view of poetry, not the private which

obtains in England. It never bored them to hear words, words; they

breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyse;

the name of the poet, Hafiz, Hali, Iqbal, was sufficient guarantee.

India—a hundred Indias—whispered outside beneath the indifferent

moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own, and they

regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented,

they felt young again because reminded that youth must fly. A

servant in scarlet interrupted him; he was the chuprassi of the

Civil Surgeon, and he handed Aziz a note.

“Old Callendar wants to see me at his bungalow,” he said, not

rising. “He might have the politeness to say why.”

“Some case, I daresay.”

“I daresay not, I daresay nothing. He has found out our dinner

hour, that’s all, and chooses to interrupt us every time, in order

to show his power.”

“On the one hand he always does this, on the other it may be a

serious case, and you cannot know,” said Hamidullah, considerately

paving the way towards obedience. “Had you not better clean your

teeth after pan?”

“If my teeth are to be cleaned, I don’t go at all. I am an Indian,

it is an Indian habit to take pan. The Civil Surgeon must put up

with it. Mohammed Latif, my bike, please.”

The poor relation got up. Slightly immersed in the realms of

matter, he laid his hand on the bicycle’s saddle, while a servant

did the actual wheeling. Between them they took it over a tintack.

Aziz held his hands under the ewer, dried them, fitted on his green

felt hat, and then with unexpected energy whizzed out of Hamidullah’s

compound.

“Aziz, Aziz, imprudent boy. . . .” But he was far down the bazaar,

riding furiously. He had neither light nor bell nor had he a brake,

but what use are such adjuncts in a land where the cyclist’s only

hope is to coast from face to face, and just before he collides

with each it vanishes? And the city was fairly empty at this hour.

When his tyre went flat, he leapt off and shouted for a tonga.

He did not at first find one, and he had also to dispose of his

bicycle at a friend’s house. He dallied furthermore to clean his

teeth. But at last he was rattling towards the civil lines, with

a vivid sense of speed. As he entered their arid tidiness,

depression suddenly seized him. The roads, named after victorious

generals and intersecting at right angles, were symbolic of the

net Great Britain had thrown over India. He felt caught in their

meshes. When he turned into Major Callendar’s compound he could

with difficulty restrain himself from getting down from the tonga

and approaching the bungalow on foot, and this not because his soul

was servile but because his feelings—the sensitive edges of

him—feared a gross snub. There had been a “case” last year—an

Indian gentleman had driven up to an official’s house and been

turned back by the servants and been told to approach more

suitably—only one case among thousands of visits to hundreds of

officials, but its fame spread wide. The young man shrank from a

repetition of it. He compromised, and stopped the driver just

outside the flood of light that fell across the verandah.

The Civil Surgeon was out.

“But the sahib has left me some message?”

The servant returned an indifferent “No.” Aziz was in despair. It

was a servant whom he had forgotten to tip, and he could do nothing

now because there were people in the hall. He was convinced that

there was a message, and that the man was withholding it out of

revenge. While they argued, the people came out. Both were ladies.

Aziz lifted his hat. The first, who was in evening dress, glanced

at the Indian and turned instinctively away.

“Mrs. Lesley, it _is_ a tonga,” she cried.

“Ours?” enquired the second, also seeing Aziz, and doing likewise.

“Take the gifts the gods provide, anyhow,” she screeched, and both

jumped in. “O Tonga wallah, club, club. Why doesn’t the fool go?”

“Go, I will pay you to-morrow,” said Aziz to the driver, and as

they went off he called courteously, “You are most welcome, ladies.”

They did not reply, being full of their own affairs.

So it had come, the usual thing—just as Mahmoud Ali said. The

inevitable snub—his bow ignored, his carriage taken. It might have

been worse, for it comforted him somehow that Mesdames Callendar

and Lesley should both be fat and weigh the tonga down behind.

Beautiful women would have pained him. He turned to the servant,

gave him a couple of rupees, and asked again whether there was a

message. The man, now very civil, returned the same answer. Major

Callendar had driven away half an hour before.

“Saying nothing?”

He had as a matter of fact said, “Damn Aziz”—words that the servant

understood, but was too polite to repeat. One can tip too much as

well as too little, indeed the coin that buys the exact truth has

not yet been minted.

“Then I will write him a letter.”

He was offered the use of the house, but was too dignified to enter

it. Paper and ink were brought on to the verandah. He began: “Dear

Sir,—At your express command I have hastened as a subordinate

should——” and then stopped. “Tell him I have called, that is

sufficient,” he said, tearing the protest up. “Here is my card.

Call me a tonga.”

“Huzoor, all are at the club.”

“Then telephone for one down to the railway station.” And since

the man hastened to do this he said, “Enough, enough, I prefer to

walk.” He commandeered a match and lit a cigarette. These

attentions, though purchased, soothed him. They would last as long

as he had rupees, which is something. But to shake the dust of

Anglo-India off his feet! To escape from the net and be back among

manners and gestures that he knew! He began a walk, an unwonted

exercise.

He was an athletic little man, daintily put together, but really

very strong. Nevertheless walking fatigued him, as it fatigues

everyone in India except the new-comer. There is something hostile

in that soil. It either yields, and the foot sinks into a

depression, or else it is unexpectedly rigid and sharp, pressing

stones or crystals against the tread. A series of these little

surprises exhausts; and he was wearing pumps, a poor preparation

for any country. At the edge of the civil station he turned into

a mosque to rest.

He had always liked this mosque. It was gracious, and the

arrangement pleased him. The courtyard—entered through a ruined

gate—contained an ablution tank of fresh clear water, which was

always in motion, being indeed part of a conduit that supplied the

city. The courtyard was paved with broken slabs. The covered part

of the mosque was deeper than is usual; its effect was that of an

English parish church whose side has been taken out. Where he sat,

he looked into three arcades whose darkness was illuminated by a

small hanging lamp and by the moon. The front—in full moonlight—had

the appearance of marble, and the ninety-nine names of God on the

frieze stood out black, as the frieze stood out white against the

sky. The contest between this dualism and the contention of shadows

within pleased Aziz, and he tried to symbolize the whole into some

truth of religion or love. A mosque by winning his approval let

loose his imagination. The temple of another creed, Hindu,

Christian, or Greek, would have bored him and failed to awaken his

sense of beauty. Here was Islam, his own country, more than a

Faith, more than a battle-cry, more, much more . . . Islam, an

attitude towards life both exquisite and durable, where his body

and his thoughts found their home.

His seat was the low wall that bounded the courtyard on the left.

The ground fell away beneath him towards the city, visible as a

blur of trees, and in the stillness he heard many small sounds. On

the right, over in the club, the English community contributed an

amateur orchestra. Elsewhere some Hindus were drumming—he knew they

were Hindus, because the rhythm was uncongenial to him,—and others

were bewailing a corpse—he knew whose, having certified it in the

afternoon. There were owls, the Punjab mail . . . and flowers smelt

deliciously in the station-master’s garden. But the mosque—that

alone signified, and he returned to it from the complex appeal of

the night, and decked it with meanings the builder had never

intended. Some day he too would build a mosque, smaller than this

but in perfect taste, so that all who passed by should experience

the happiness he felt now. And near it, under a low dome, should

be his tomb, with a Persian inscription:

Alas, without me for thousands of years

The Rose will blossom and the Spring will bloom,

But those who have secretly understood my heart—

They will approach and visit the grave where I lie.

He had seen the quatrain on the tomb of a Deccan king, and regarded

it as profound philosophy—he always held pathos to be profound.

The secret understanding of the heart! He repeated the phrase with

tears in his eyes, and as he did so one of the pillars of the

mosque seemed to quiver. It swayed in the gloom and detached

itself. Belief in ghosts ran in his blood, but he sat firm. Another

pillar moved, a third, and then an Englishwoman stepped out into

the moonlight. Suddenly he was furiously angry and shouted: “Madam!

Madam! Madam!”

“Oh! Oh!” the woman gasped.

“Madam, this is a mosque, you have no right here at all; you should

have taken off your shoes; this is a holy place for Moslems.”

“I have taken them off.”

“You have?”

“I left them at the entrance.”

“Then I ask your pardon.”

Still startled, the woman moved out, keeping the ablution-tank

between them. He called after her, “I am truly sorry for speaking.”

“Yes, I was right, was I not? If I remove my shoes, I am allowed?”

“Of course, but so few ladies take the trouble, especially if

thinking no one is there to see.”

“That makes no difference. God is here.”

“Madam!”

“Please let me go.”

“Oh, can I do you some service now or at any time?”

“No, thank you, really none—good night.”

“May I know your name?”

She was now in the shadow of the gateway, so that he could not see

her face, but she saw his, and she said with a change of voice,

“Mrs. Moore.”

“Mrs.——” Advancing, he found that she was old.

A fabric bigger than the mosque fell to pieces, and he did not know

whether he was glad or sorry. She was older than Hamidullah Begum,

with a red face and white hair. Her voice had deceived him.

“Mrs. Moore, I am afraid I startled you. I shall tell my

community—our friends—about you. That God is here—very good, very

fine indeed. I think you are newly arrived in India.”

“Yes—how did you know?”

“By the way you address me. No, but can I call you a carriage?”

“I have only come from the club. They are doing a play that I have

seen in London, and it was so hot.”

“What was the name of the play?”

_“Cousin Kate.”_

“I think you ought not to walk at night alone, Mrs. Moore. There

are bad characters about and leopards may come across from the

Marabar Hills. Snakes also.”

She exclaimed; she had forgotten the snakes.

“For example, a six-spot beetle,” he continued, “You pick it up,

it bites, you die.”

“But you walk about yourself.”

“Oh, I am used to it.”

“Used to snakes?”

They both laughed. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “Snakes don’t dare bite

me.” They sat down side by side in the entrance, and slipped on

their evening shoes. “Please may I ask you a question now? Why do

you come to India at this time of year, just as the cold weather

is ending?”

“I intended to start earlier, but there was an unavoidable delay.”

“It will soon be so unhealthy for you! And why ever do you come to

Chandrapore?”

“To visit my son. He is the City Magistrate here.”

“Oh no, excuse me, that is quite impossible. Our City Magistrate’s

name is Mr. Heaslop. I know him intimately.”

“He’s my son all the same,” she said, smiling.

“But, Mrs. Moore, how can he be?”

“I was married twice.”

“Yes, now I see, and your first husband died.”

“He did, and so did my second husband.”

“Then we are in the same box,” he said cryptically. “Then is the

City Magistrate the entire of your family now?”

“No, there are the younger ones—Ralph and Stella in England.”

“And the gentleman here, is he Ralph and Stella’s half-brother?”

“Quite right.”

“Mrs. Moore, this is all extremely strange, because like yourself

I have also two sons and a daughter. Is not this the same box with

a vengeance?”

“What are their names? Not also Ronny, Ralph, and Stella, surely?”

The suggestion delighted him. “No, indeed. How funny it sounds!

Their names are quite different and will surprise you. Listen,

please. I am about to tell you my children’s names. The first is

called Ahmed, the second is called Karim, the third—she is the

eldest—Jamila. Three children are enough. Do not you agree with

me?”

“I do.”

They were both silent for a little, thinking of their respective

families. She sighed and rose to go.

“Would you care to see over the Minto Hospital one morning?” he

enquired. “I have nothing else to offer at Chandrapore.”

“Thank you, I have seen it already, or I should have liked to come

with you very much.”

“I suppose the Civil Surgeon took you.”

“Yes, and Mrs. Callendar.”

His voice altered. “Ah! A very charming lady.”

“Possibly, when one knows her better.”

“What? What? You didn’t like her?”

“She was certainly intending to be kind, but I did not find her

exactly charming.”

He burst out with: “She has just taken my tonga without my

permission—do you call that being charming?—and Major Callendar

interrupts me night after night from where I am dining with my

friends and I go at once, breaking up a most pleasant entertainment,

and he is not there and not even a message. Is this charming, pray?

But what does it matter? I can do nothing and he knows it. I am

just a subordinate, my time is of no value, the verandah is good

enough for an Indian, yes, yes, let him stand, and Mrs. Callendar

takes my carriage and cuts me dead . . .”

She listened.

He was excited partly by his wrongs, but much more by the knowledge

that someone sympathized with them. It was this that led him to

repeat, exaggerate, contradict. She had proved her sympathy by

criticizing her fellow-countrywoman to him, but even earlier he

had known. The flame that not even beauty can nourish was springing

up, and though his words were querulous his heart began to glow

secretly. Presently it burst into speech.

“You understand me, you know what others feel. Oh, if others

resembled you!”

Rather surprised, she replied: “I don’t think I understand people

very well. I only know whether I like or dislike them.”

“Then you are an Oriental.”

She accepted his escort back to the club, and said at the gate that

she wished she was a member, so that she could have asked him in.

“Indians are not allowed into the Chandrapore Club even as guests,”

he said simply. He did not expatiate on his wrongs now, being

happy. As he strolled downhill beneath the lovely moon, and again

saw the lovely mosque, he seemed to own the land as much as anyone

owned it. What did it matter if a few flabby Hindus had preceded

him there, and a few chilly English succeeded?

CHAPTER III

The third act of _Cousin Kate_ was well advanced by the time Mrs.

Moore re-entered the club. Windows were barred, lest the servants

should see their mem-sahibs acting, and the heat was consequently

immense. One electric fan revolved like a wounded bird, another

was out of order. Disinclined to return to the audience, she went

into the billiard room, where she was greeted by “I want to see

the _real_ India,” and her appropriate life came back with a rush.

This was Adela Quested, the queer, cautious girl whom Ronny had

commissioned her to bring from England, and Ronny was her son, also

cautious, whom Miss Quested would probably though not certainly

marry, and she herself was an elderly lady.

“I want to see it too, and I only wish we could. Apparently the

Turtons will arrange something for next Tuesday.”

“It’ll end in an elephant ride, it always does. Look at this

evening. _Cousin Kate!_ Imagine, _Cousin Kate!_ But where have you

been off to? Did you succeed in catching the moon in the Ganges?”

The two ladies had happened, the night before, to see the moon’s

reflection in a distant channel of the stream. The water had drawn

it out, so that it had seemed larger than the real moon, and

brighter, which had pleased them.

“I went to the mosque, but I did not catch the moon.”

“The angle would have altered—she rises later.”

“Later and later,” yawned Mrs. Moore, who was tired after her walk.

“Let me think—we don’t see the other side of the moon out here,

no.”

“Come, India’s not as bad as all that,” said a pleasant voice.

“Other side of the earth, if you like, but we stick to the same

old moon.” Neither of them knew the speaker nor did they ever see

him again. He passed with his friendly word through red-brick

pillars into the darkness.

“We aren’t even seeing the other side of the world; that’s our

complaint,” said Adela. Mrs. Moore agreed; she too was disappointed

at the dullness of their new life. They had made such a romantic

voyage across the Mediterranean and through the sands of Egypt to

the harbour of Bombay, to find only a gridiron of bungalows at the

end of it. But she did not take the disappointment as seriously as

Miss Quested, for the reason that she was forty years older, and

had learnt that Life never gives us what we want at the moment that

we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

She said again that she hoped that something interesting would be

arranged for next Tuesday.

“Have a drink,” said another pleasant voice. “Mrs. Moore—Miss

Quested—have a drink, have two drinks.” They knew who it was this

time—the Collector, Mr. Turton, with whom they had dined. Like

themselves, he had found the atmosphere of _Cousin Kate_ too hot.

Ronny, he told them, was stage-managing in place of Major Callendar,

whom some native subordinate or other had let down, and doing it

very well; then he turned to Ronny’s other merits, and in quiet,

decisive tones said much that was flattering. It wasn’t that the

young man was particularly good at the games or the lingo, or that

he had much notion of the Law, but—apparently a large but—Ronny

was dignified.

Mrs. Moore was surprised to learn this, dignity not being a quality

with which any mother credits her son. Miss Quested learnt it with

anxiety, for she had not decided whether she liked dignified men.

She tried indeed to discuss this point with Mr. Turton, but he

silenced her with a good-humoured motion of his hand, and continued

what he had come to say. “The long and the short of it is Heaslop’s

a sahib; he’s the type we want, he’s one of us,” and another

civilian who was leaning over the billiard table said, “Hear,

hear!” The matter was thus placed beyond doubt, and the Collector

passed on, for other duties called him.

Meanwhile the performance ended, and the amateur orchestra played

the National Anthem. Conversation and billiards stopped, faces

stiffened. It was the Anthem of the Army of Occupation. It reminded

every member of the club that he or she was British and in exile.

It produced a little sentiment and a useful accession of will-power.

The meagre tune, the curt series of demands on Jehovah, fused into

a prayer unknown in England, and though they perceived neither

Royalty nor Deity they did perceive something, they were strengthened

to resist another day. Then they poured out, offering one another

drinks.

“Adela, have a drink; mother, a drink.”

They refused—they were weary of drinks—and Miss Quested, who always

said exactly what was in her mind, announced anew that she was

desirous of seeing the real India.

Ronny was in high spirits. The request struck him as comic, and he

called out to another passer-by: “Fielding! how’s one to see the

real India?”

“Try seeing Indians,” the man answered, and vanished.

“Who was that?”

“Our schoolmaster—Government College.”

“As if one could avoid seeing them,” sighed Mrs. Lesley.

“I’ve avoided,” said Miss Quested. “Excepting my own servant, I’ve

scarcely spoken to an Indian since landing.”

“Oh, lucky you.”

“But I want to see them.”

She became the centre of an amused group of ladies. One said,

“Wanting to see Indians! How new that sounds!” Another, “Natives!

why, fancy!” A third, more serious, said, “Let me explain. Natives

don’t respect one any the more after meeting one, you see.”

“That occurs after so many meetings.”

But the lady, entirely stupid and friendly, continued: “What I mean

is, I was a nurse before my marriage, and came across them a great

deal, so I know. I really do know the truth about Indians. A most

unsuitable position for any Englishwoman—I was a nurse in a Native

State. One’s only hope was to hold sternly aloof.”

“Even from one’s patients?”

“Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die,”

said Mrs. Callendar.

“How if he went to heaven?” asked Mrs. Moore, with a gentle but

crooked smile.

“He can go where he likes as long as he doesn’t come near me. They

give me the creeps.”

“As a matter of fact I have thought what you were saying about

heaven, and that is why I am against Missionaries,” said the lady

who had been a nurse. “I am all for Chaplains, but all against

Missionaries. Let me explain.”

But before she could do so, the Collector intervened.

“Do you really want to meet the Aryan Brother, Miss Quested? That

can be easily fixed up. I didn’t realize he’d amuse you.” He

thought a moment. “You can practically see any type you like. Take

your choice. I know the Government people and the landowners,

Heaslop here can get hold of the barrister crew, while if you want

to specialize on education, we can come down on Fielding.”

“I’m tired of seeing picturesque figures pass before me as a

frieze,” the girl explained. “It was wonderful when we landed, but

that superficial glamour soon goes.”

Her impressions were of no interest to the Collector; he was only

concerned to give her a good time. Would she like a Bridge Party?

He explained to her what that was—not the game, but a party to

bridge the gulf between East and West; the expression was his own

invention, and amused all who heard it.

“I only want those Indians whom you come across socially—as your

friends.”

“Well, we don’t come across them socially,” he said, laughing.

“They’re full of all the virtues, but we don’t, and it’s now

eleven-thirty, and too late to go into the reasons.”

“Miss Quested, what a name!” remarked Mrs. Turton to her husband

as they drove away. She had not taken to the new young lady,

thinking her ungracious and cranky. She trusted that she hadn’t

been brought out to marry nice little Heaslop, though it looked

like it, Her husband agreed with her in his heart, but he never

spoke against an Englishwoman if he could avoid doing so, and he

only said that Miss Quested naturally made mistakes. He added:

“India does wonders for the judgment, especially during the hot

weather; it has even done wonders for Fielding.” Mrs. Turton closed

her eyes at this name and remarked that Mr. Fielding wasn’t pukka,

and had better marry Miss Quested, for she wasn’t pukka. Then they

reached their bungalow, low and enormous, the oldest and most

uncomfortable bungalow in the civil station, with a sunk soup plate

of a lawn, and they had one drink more, this time of barley water,

and went to bed. Their withdrawal from the club had broken up the

evening, which, like all gatherings, had an official tinge. A

community that bows the knee to a Viceroy and believes that the

divinity that hedges a king can be transplanted, must feel some

reverence for any viceregal substitute. At Chandrapore the Turtons

were little gods; soon they would retire to some suburban villa,

and die exiled from glory.

“It’s decent of the Burra Sahib,” chattered Ronny, much gratified

at the civility that had been shown to his guests. “Do you know

he’s never given a Bridge Party before? Coming on top of the dinner

too! I wish I could have arranged something myself, but when you

know the natives better you’ll realize it’s easier for the Burra

Sahib than for me. They know him—they know he can’t be fooled—I’m

still fresh comparatively. No one can even begin to think of

knowing this country until he has been in it twenty years.—Hullo,

the mater! Here’s your cloak.—Well: for an example of the mistakes

one makes. Soon after I came out I asked one of the Pleaders to

have a smoke with me—only a cigarette, mind. I found afterwards

that he had sent touts all over the bazaar to announce the fact—told

all the litigants, 'Oh, you’d better come to my Vakil Mahmoud

Ali—he’s in with the City Magistrate.’ Ever since then I’ve dropped

on him in Court as hard as I could. It’s taught me a lesson, and

I hope him.”

“Isn’t the lesson that you should invite all the Pleaders to have

a smoke with you?”

“Perhaps, but time’s limited and the flesh weak. I prefer my smoke

at the club amongst my own sort, I’m afraid.”

“Why not ask the Pleaders to the club?” Miss Quested persisted.

“Not allowed.” He was pleasant and patient, and evidently understood

why she did not understand. He implied that he had once been as

she, though not for long. Going to the verandah, he called firmly

to the moon. His sais answered, and without lowering his head, he

ordered his trap to be brought round.

Mrs. Moore, whom the club had stupefied, woke up outside. She

watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the purple

of the surrounding sky. In England the moon had seemed dead and

alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together with

earth and all the other stars. A sudden sense of unity, of kinship

with the heavenly bodies, passed into the old woman and out, like

water through a tank, leaving a strange freshness behind. She did

not dislike _Cousin Kate_ or the National Anthem, but their note

had died into a new one, just as cocktails and cigars had died into

invisible flowers. When the mosque, long and domeless, gleamed at

the turn of the road, she exclaimed, “Oh, yes—that’s where I got

to—that’s where I’ve been.”

“Been there when?” asked her son.

“Between the acts.”

“But, mother, you can’t do that sort of thing.”

“Can’t mother?” she replied.

“No, really not in this country. It’s not done. There’s the danger

from snakes for one thing. They are apt to lie out in the evening.”

“Ah yes, so the young man there said.”

“This sounds very romantic,” said Miss Quested, who was exceedingly

fond of Mrs. Moore, and was glad she should have had this little

escapade. “You meet a young man in a mosque, and then never let me

know!”

“I was going to tell you, Adela, but something changed the

conversation and I forgot. My memory grows deplorable.”

“Was he nice?”

She paused, then said emphatically: “Very nice.”

“Who was he?” Ronny enquired.

“A doctor. I don’t know his name.”

“A doctor? I know of no young doctor in Chandrapore. How odd! What

was he like?”

“Rather small, with a little moustache and quick eyes. He called

out to me when I was in the dark part of the mosque—about my shoes.

That was how we began talking. He was afraid I had them on, but I

remembered luckily. He told me about his children, and then we

walked back to the club. He knows you well.”

“I wish you had pointed him out to me. I can’t make out who he is.”

“He didn’t come into the club. He said he wasn’t allowed to.”

Thereupon the truth struck him, and he cried “Oh, good gracious!

Not a Mohammedan? Why ever didn’t you tell me you’d been talking

to a native? I was going all wrong.”

“A Mohammedan! How perfectly magnificent!” exclaimed Miss Quested.

“Ronny, isn’t that like your mother? While we talk about seeing

the real India, she goes and sees it, and then forgets she’s seen

it.”

But Ronny was ruffled. From his mother’s description he had thought

the doctor might be young Muggins from over the Ganges, and had

brought out all the comradely emotions. What a mix-up! Why hadn’t

she indicated by the tone of her voice that she was talking about

an Indian? Scratchy and dictatorial, he began to question her. “He

called to you in the mosque, did he? How? Impudently? What was he

doing there himself at that time of night?—No, it’s not their

prayer time.”—This in answer to a suggestion of Miss Quested’s,

who showed the keenest interest. “So he called to you over your

shoes. Then it was impudence. It’s an old trick. I wish you had

had them on.”

“I think it was impudence, but I don’t know about a trick,” said

Mrs. Moore. “His nerves were all on edge—I could tell from his

voice. As soon as I answered he altered.”

“You oughtn’t to have answered.”

“Now look here,” said the logical girl, “wouldn’t you expect a

Mohammedan to answer if you asked him to take off his hat in

church?”

“It’s different, it’s different; you don’t understand.”

“I know I don’t, and I want to. What is the difference, please?”

He wished she wouldn’t interfere. His mother did not signify—she

was just a globe-trotter, a temporary escort, who could retire to

England with what impressions she chose. But Adela, who meditated

spending her life in the country, was a more serious matter; it

would be tiresome if she started crooked over the native question.

Pulling up the mare, he said, “There’s your Ganges.”

Their attention was diverted. Below them a radiance had suddenly

appeared. It belonged neither to water nor moonlight, but stood

like a luminous sheaf upon the fields of darkness. He told them

that it was where the new sand-bank was forming, and that the dark

ravelled bit at the top was the sand, and that the dead bodies

floated down that way from Benares, or would if the crocodiles let

them. “It’s not much of a dead body that gets down to Chandrapore.”

“Crocodiles down in it too, how terrible!” his mother murmured.

The young people glanced at each other and smiled; it amused them

when the old lady got these gentle creeps, and harmony was restored

between them consequently. She continued: “What a terrible river!

what a wonderful river!” and sighed. The radiance was already

altering, whether through shifting of the moon or of the sand; soon

the bright sheaf would be gone, and a circlet, itself to alter, be

burnished upon the streaming void. The women discussed whether they

would wait for the change or not, while the silence broke into

patches of unquietness and the mare shivered. On her account they

did not wait, but drove on to the City Magistrate’s bungalow, where

Miss Quested went to bed, and Mrs. Moore had a short interview with

her son.

He wanted to enquire about the Mohammedan doctor in the mosque. It

was his duty to report suspicious characters and conceivably it

was some disreputable hakim who had prowled up from the bazaar.

When she told him that it was someone connected with the Minto

Hospital, he was relieved, and said that the fellow’s name must be

Aziz, and that he was quite all right, nothing against him at all.

“Aziz! what a charming name!”

“So you and he had a talk. Did you gather he was well disposed?”

Ignorant of the force of this question, she replied, “Yes, quite,

after the first moment.”

“I meant, generally. Did he seem to tolerate us—the brutal

conqueror, the sundried bureaucrat, that sort of thing?”

“Oh, yes, I think so, except the Callendars—he doesn’t care for

the Callendars at all.”

“Oh. So he told you that, did he? The Major will be interested. I

wonder what was the aim of the remark.”

“Ronny, Ronny! you’re never going to pass it on to Major Callendar?”

“Yes, rather. I must, in fact!”

“But, my dear boy——”

“If the Major heard I was disliked by any native subordinate of

mine, I should expect him to pass it on to me.”

“But, my dear boy—a private conversation!”

“Nothing’s private in India. Aziz knew that when he spoke out, so

don’t you worry. He had some motive in what he said. My personal

belief is that the remark wasn’t true.”

“How not true?”

“He abused the Major in order to impress you.”

“I don’t know what you mean, dear.”

“It’s the educated native’s latest dodge. They used to cringe, but

the younger generation believe in a show of manly independence.

They think it will pay better with the itinerant M.P. But whether

the native swaggers or cringes, there’s always something behind

every remark he makes, always something, and if nothing else he’s

trying to increase his izzat—in plain Anglo-Saxon, to score. Of

course there are exceptions.”

“You never used to judge people like this at home.”

“India isn’t home,” he retorted, rather rudely, but in order to

silence her he had been using phrases and arguments that he had

picked up from older officials, and he did not feel quite sure of

himself. When he said “of course there are exceptions” he was

quoting Mr. Turton, while “increasing the izzat” was Major

Callendar’s own. The phrases worked and were in current use at the

club, but she was rather clever at detecting the first from the

second hand, and might press him for definite examples.

She only said, “I can’t deny that what you say sounds very sensible,

but you really must not hand on to Major Callendar anything I have

told you about Doctor Aziz.”

He felt disloyal to his caste, but he promised, adding, “In return

please don’t talk about Aziz to Adela.”

“Not talk about him? Why?”

“There you go again, mother—I really can’t explain every thing. I

don’t want Adela to be worried, that’s the fact; she’ll begin

wondering whether we treat the natives properly, and all that sort

of nonsense.”

“But she came out to be worried—that’s exactly why she’s here. She

discussed it all on the boat. We had a long talk when we went on

shore at Aden. She knows you in play, as she put it, but not in

work, and she felt she must come and look round, before she

decided—and before you decided. She is very, very fair-minded.”

“I know,” he said dejectedly.

The note of anxiety in his voice made her feel that he was still

a little boy, who must have what he liked, so she promised to do

as he wished, and they kissed good night. He had not forbidden her

to think about Aziz, however, and she did this when she retired to

her room. In the light of her son’s comment she reconsidered the

scene at the mosque, to see whose impression was correct. Yes, it

could be worked into quite an unpleasant scene. The doctor had

begun by bullying her, had said Mrs. Callendar was nice, and

then—finding the ground safe—had changed; he had alternately whined

over his grievances and patronized her, had run a dozen ways in a

single sentence, had been unreliable, inquisitive, vain. Yes, it

was all true, but how false as a summary of the man; the essential

life of him had been slain.

Going to hang up her cloak, she found that the tip of the peg was

occupied by a small wasp. She had known this wasp or his relatives

by day; they were not as English wasps, but had long yellow legs

which hung down behind when they flew. Perhaps he mistook the peg

for a branch—no Indian animal has any sense of an interior. Bats,

rats, birds, insects will as soon nest inside a house as out; it

is to them a normal growth of the eternal jungle, which alternately

produces houses trees, houses trees. There he clung, asleep, while

jackals in the plain bayed their desires and mingled with the

percussion of drums.

“Pretty dear,” said Mrs. Moore to the wasp. He did not wake, but

her voice floated out, to swell the night’s uneasiness.

CHAPTER IV

The Collector kept his word. Next day he issued invitation cards

to numerous Indian gentlemen in the neighbourhood, stating that he

would be at home in the garden of the club between the hours of

five and seven on the following Tuesday, also that Mrs. Turton

would be glad to receive any ladies of their families who were out

of purdah. His action caused much excitement and was discussed in

several worlds.

“It is owing to orders from the L.G.,” was Mahmoud Ali’s explanation.

“Turton would never do this unless compelled. Those high officials

are different—they sympathize, the Viceroy sympathizes, they would

have us treated properly. But they come too seldom and live too

far away. Meanwhile——”

“It is easy to sympathize at a distance,” said an old gentleman

with a beard. “I value more the kind word that is spoken close to

my ear. Mr. Turton has spoken it, from whatever cause. He speaks,

we hear. I do not see why we need discuss it further.” Quotations

followed from the Koran.

“We have not all your sweet nature, Nawab Bahadur, nor your

learning.”

“The Lieutenant-Governor may be my very good friend, but I give

him no trouble.—How do you do, Nawab Bahadur?—Quite well, thank

you, Sir Gilbert; how are you?—And all is over. But I can be a

thorn in Mr. Turton’s flesh, and if he asks me I accept the

invitation. I shall come in from Dilkusha specially, though I have

to postpone other business.”

“You will make yourself chip,” suddenly said a little black man.

There was a stir of disapproval. Who was this ill-bred upstart,

that he should criticize the leading Mohammedan landowner of the

district? Mahmoud Ali, though sharing his opinion, felt bound to

oppose it. “Mr. Ram Chand!” he said, swaying forward stiffly with

his hands on his hips.

“Mr. Mahmoud Ali!”

“Mr. Ram Chand, the Nawab Bahadur can decide what is cheap without

our valuation, I think.”

“I do not expect I shall make myself cheap,” said the Nawab Bahadur

to Mr. Ram Chand, speaking very pleasantly, for he was aware that

the man had been impolite and he desired to shield him from the

consequences. It had passed through his mind to reply, “I expect

I shall make myself cheap,” but he rejected this as the less

courteous alternative. “I do not see why we should make ourselves

cheap. I do not see why we should. The invitation is worded very

graciously.” Feeling that he could not further decrease the social

gulf between himself and his auditors, he sent his elegant grandson,

who was in attendance on him, to fetch his car. When it came, he

repeated all that he had said before, though at greater length,

ending up with “Till Tuesday, then, gentlemen all, when I hope we

may meet in the flower gardens of the club.”

This opinion carried great weight. The Nawab Bahadur was a big

proprietor and a philanthropist, a man of benevolence and decision.

His character among all the communities in the province stood high.

He was a straightforward enemy and a staunch friend, and his

hospitality was proverbial. “Give, do not lend; after death who

will thank you?” was his favourite remark. He held it a disgrace

to die rich. When such a man was prepared to motor twenty-five

miles to shake the Collector’s hand, the entertainment took another

aspect. For he was not like some eminent men, who give out that

they will come, and then fail at the last moment, leaving the small

fry floundering. If he said he would come, he would come, he would

never deceive his supporters. The gentlemen whom he had lectured

now urged one another to attend the party, although convinced at

heart that his advice was unsound.

He had spoken in the little room near the Courts where the pleaders

waited for clients; clients, waiting for pleaders, sat in the dust

outside. These had not received a card from Mr. Turton. And there

were circles even beyond these—people who wore nothing but a

loincloth, people who wore not even that, and spent their lives in

knocking two sticks together before a scarlet doll—humanity grading

and drifting beyond the educated vision, until no earthly invitation

can embrace it.

All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is

futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the

gulfs between them by the attempt. So at all events thought old

Mr. Graysford and young Mr. Sorley, the devoted missionaries who

lived out beyond the slaughterhouses, always travelled third on

the railways, and never came up to the club. In our Father’s house

are many mansions, they taught, and there alone will the incompatible

multitudes of mankind be welcomed and soothed. Not one shall be

turned away by the servants on that verandah, be he black or white,

not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart.

And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with

all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mansion for the

monkeys also? Old Mr. Graysford said No, but young Mr. Sorley, who

was advanced, said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys should not

have their collateral share of bliss, and he had sympathetic

discussions about them with his Hindu friends. And the jackals?

Jackals were indeed less to Mr. Sorley’s mind, but he admitted that

the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals.

And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, and

was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals

and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr. Sorley? No, no, this is going

too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall

be left with nothing.

CHAPTER V

The Bridge Party was not a success—at least it was not what Mrs.

Moore and Miss Quested were accustomed to consider a successful

party. They arrived early, since it was given in their honour, but

most of the Indian guests had arrived even earlier, and stood

massed at the farther side of the tennis lawns, doing nothing.

“It is only just five,” said Mrs. Turton. “My husband will be up

from his office in a moment and start the thing. I have no idea

what we have to do. It’s the first time we’ve ever given a party

like this at the club. Mr. Heaslop, when I’m dead and gone will

you give parties like this? It’s enough to make the old type of

Burra Sahib turn in his grave.”

Ronny laughed deferentially. “You wanted something not picturesque

and we’ve provided it,” he remarked to Miss Quested. “What do you

think of the Aryan Brother in a topi and spats?”

Neither she nor his mother answered. They were gazing rather sadly

over the tennis lawn. No, it was not picturesque; the East,

abandoning its secular magnificence, was descending into a valley

whose farther side no man can see.

“The great point to remember is that no one who’s here matters;

those who matter don’t come. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Turton?”

“Absolutely true,” said the great lady, leaning back. She was

“saving herself up,” as she called it—not for anything that would

happen that afternoon or even that week, but for some vague future

occasion when a high official might come along and tax her social

strength. Most of her public appearances were marked by this air

of reserve.

Assured of her approbation, Ronny continued: “The educated Indians

will be no good to us if there’s a row, it’s simply not worth while

conciliating them, that’s why they don’t matter. Most of the people

you see are seditious at heart, and the rest ’ld run squealing.

The cultivator—he’s another story. The Pathan—he’s a man if you

like. But these people—don’t imagine they’re India.” He pointed to

the dusky line beyond the court, and here and there it flashed a

pince-nez or shuffled a shoe, as if aware that he was despising

it. European costume had lighted like a leprosy. Few had yielded

entirely, but none were untouched. There was a silence when he had

finished speaking, on both sides of the court; at least, more

ladies joined the English group, but their words seemed to die as

soon as uttered. Some kites hovered overhead, impartial, over the

kites passed the mass of a vulture, and with an impartiality

exceeding all, the sky, not deeply coloured but translucent, poured

light from its whole circumference. It seemed unlikely that the

series stopped here. Beyond the sky must not there be something

that overarches all the skies, more impartial even than they?

Beyond which again . . .

They spoke of _Cousin Kate._

They had tried to reproduce their own attitude to life upon the

stage, and to dress up as the middle-class English people they

actually were. Next year they would do _Quality Street_ or _The

Yeomen of the Guard._ Save for this annual incursion, they left

literature alone. The men had no time for it, the women did nothing

that they could not share with the men. Their ignorance of the Arts

was notable, and they lost no opportunity of proclaiming it to one

another; it was the Public School attitude, flourishing more

vigorously than it can yet hope to do in England. If Indians were

shop, the Arts were bad form, and Ronny had repressed his mother

when she enquired after his viola; a viola was almost a demerit,

and certainly not the sort of instrument one mentioned in public.

She noticed now how tolerant and conventional his judgments had

become; when they had seen _Cousin Kate_ in London together in the

past, he had scorned it; now he pretended that it was a good play,

in order to hurt nobody’s feelings. An “unkind notice” had appeared

in the local paper, “the sort of thing no white man could have

written,” as Mrs. Lesley said. The play was praised, to be sure,

and so were the stage management and the performance as a whole,

but the notice contained the following sentence: “Miss Derek,

though she charmingly looked her part, lacked the necessary

experience, and occasionally forgot her words.” This tiny breath

of genuine criticism had given deep offence, not indeed to Miss

Derek, who was as hard as nails, but to her friends. Miss Derek

did not belong to Chandrapore. She was stopping for a fortnight

with the McBrydes, the police people, and she had been so good as

to fill up a gap in the cast at the last moment. A nice impression

of local hospitality she would carry away with her.

“To work, Mary, to work,” cried the Collector, touching his wife

on the shoulder with a switch.

Mrs. Turton got up awkwardly. “What do you want me to do? Oh, those

purdah women! I never thought any would come. Oh dear!”

A little group of Indian ladies had been gathering in a third

quarter of the grounds, near a rustic summer-house in which the

more timid of them had already taken refuge. The rest stood with

their backs to the company and their faces pressed into a bank of

shrubs. At a little distance stood their male relatives, watching

the venture. The sight was significant: an island bared by the

turning tide, and bound to grow.

“I consider they ought to come over to me.”

“Come along, Mary, get it over.”

“I refuse to shake hands with any of the men, unless it has to be

the Nawab Bahadur.”

“Whom have we so far?” He glanced along the line. “H’m! h’m! much

as one expected. We know why he’s here, I think—over that contract,

and he wants to get the right side of me for Mohurram, and he’s

the astrologer who wants to dodge the municipal building regulations,

and he’s that Parsi, and he’s—Hullo! there he goes—smash into our

hollyhocks. Pulled the left rein when he meant the right. All as

usual.”

“They ought never to have been allowed to drive in; it’s so bad

for them,” said Mrs. Turton, who had at last begun her progress to

the summer-house, accompanied by Mrs. Moore, Miss Quested, and a

terrier. “Why they come at all I don’t know. They hate it as much

as we do. Talk to Mrs. McBryde. Her husband made her give purdah

parties until she struck.”

“This isn’t a purdah party,” corrected Miss Quested.

“Oh, really,” was the haughty rejoinder.

“Do kindly tell us who these ladies are,” asked Mrs. Moore.

“You’re superior to them, anyway. Don’t forget that. You’re superior

to everyone in India except one or two of the Ranis, and they’re

on an equality.”

Advancing, she shook hands with the group and said a few words of

welcome in Urdu. She had learnt the lingo, but only to speak to

her servants, so she knew none of the politer forms and of the

verbs only the imperative mood. As soon as her speech was over,

she enquired of her companions, “Is that what you wanted?”

“Please tell these ladies that I wish we could speak their language,

but we have only just come to their country.”

“Perhaps we speak yours a little,” one of the ladies said.

“Why, fancy, she understands!” said Mrs. Turton.

“Eastbourne, Piccadilly, High Park Corner,” said another of the

ladies.

“Oh yes, they’re English-speaking.”

“But now we can talk: how delightful!” cried Adela, her face

lighting up.

“She knows Paris also,” called one of the onlookers.

“They pass Paris on the way, no doubt,” said Mrs. Turton, as if

she was describing the movements of migratory birds. Her manner

had grown more distant since she had discovered that some of the

group was Westernized, and might apply her own standards to her.

“The shorter lady, she is my wife, she is Mrs. Bhattacharya,” the

onlooker explained. “The taller lady, she is my sister, she is Mrs.

Das.”

The shorter and the taller ladies both adjusted their saris, and

smiled. There was a curious uncertainty about their gestures, as

if they sought for a new formula which neither East nor West could

provide. When Mrs. Bhattacharya’s husband spoke, she turned away

from him, but she did not mind seeing the other men. Indeed all

the ladies were uncertain, cowering, recovering, giggling, making

tiny gestures of atonement or despair at all that was said, and

alternately fondling the terrier or shrinking from him. Miss

Quested now had her desired opportunity; friendly Indians were

before her, and she tried to make them talk, but she failed, she

strove in vain against the echoing walls of their civility. Whatever

she said produced a murmur of deprecation, varying into a murmur

of concern when she dropped her pocket-handkerchief. She tried

doing nothing, to see what that produced, and they too did nothing.

Mrs. Moore was equally unsuccessful. Mrs. Turton waited for them

with a detached expression; she had known what nonsense it all was

from the first.

When they took their leave, Mrs. Moore had an impulse, and said to

Mrs. Bhattacharya, whose face she liked, “I wonder whether you

would allow us to call on you some day.”

“When?” she replied, inclining charmingly.

“Whenever is convenient.”

“All days are convenient.”

“Thursday . . .”

“Most certainly.”

“We shall enjoy it greatly, it would be a real pleasure. What about

the time?”

“All hours.”

“Tell us which you would prefer. We’re quite strangers to your

country; we don’t know when you have visitors,” said Miss Quested.

Mrs. Bhattacharya seemed not to know either. Her gesture implied

that she had known, since Thursdays began, that English ladies

would come to see her on one of them, and so always stayed in.

Everything pleased her, nothing surprised. She added, “We leave

for Calcutta to-day.”

“Oh, do you?” said Adela, not at first seeing the implication. Then

she cried, “Oh, but if you do we shall find you gone.”

Mrs. Bhattacharya did not dispute it. But her husband called from

the distance, “Yes, yes, you come to us Thursday.”

“But you’ll be in Calcutta.”

“No, no, we shall not.” He said something swiftly to his wife in

Bengali. “We expect you Thursday.”

“Thursday . . .” the woman echoed.

“You can’t have done such a dreadful thing as to put off going for

our sake?” exclaimed Mrs. Moore.

“No, of course not, we are not such people.” He was laughing.

“I believe that you have. Oh, please—it distresses me beyond

words.”

Everyone was laughing now, but with no suggestion that they had

blundered. A shapeless discussion occurred, during which Mrs.

Turton retired, smiling to herself. The upshot was that they were

to come Thursday, but early in the morning, so as to wreck the

Bhattacharya plans as little as possible, and Mr. Bhattacharya

would send his carriage to fetch them, with servants to point out

the way. Did he know where they lived? Yes, of course he knew, he

knew everything; and he laughed again. They left among a flutter

of compliments and smiles, and three ladies, who had hitherto taken

no part in the reception, suddenly shot out of the summer-house

like exquisitely coloured swallows, and salaamed them.

Meanwhile the Collector had been going his rounds. He made pleasant

remarks and a few jokes, which were applauded lustily, but he knew

something to the discredit of nearly every one of his guests, and

was consequently perfunctory. When they had not cheated, it was

bhang, women, or worse, and even the desirables wanted to get

something out of him. He believed that a “Bridge Party” did good

rather than harm, or he would not have given one, but he was under

no illusions, and at the proper moment he retired to the English

side of the lawn. The impressions he left behind him were various.

Many of the guests, especially the humbler and less anglicized,

were genuinely grateful. To be addressed by so high an official

was a permanent asset. They did not mind how long they stood, or

how little happened, and when seven o’clock struck, they had to be

turned out. Others were grateful with more intelligence. The Nawab

Bahadur, indifferent for himself and for the distinction with which

he was greeted, was moved by the mere kindness that must have

prompted the invitation. He knew the difficulties. Hamidullah also

thought that the Collector had played up well. But others, such as

Mahmoud Ali, were cynical; they were firmly convinced that Turton

had been made to give the party by his official superiors and was

all the time consumed with impotent rage, and they infected some

who were inclined to a healthier view. Yet even Mahmoud Ali was

glad he had come. Shrines are fascinating, especially when rarely

opened, and it amused him to note the ritual of the English club,

and to caricature it afterwards to his friends.

After Mr. Turton, the official who did his duty best was Mr.

Fielding, the Principal of the little Government College. He knew

little of the district and less against the inhabitants, so he was

in a less cynical state of mind. Athletic and cheerful, he romped

about, making numerous mistakes which the parents of his pupils

tried to cover up, for he was popular among them. When the moment

for refreshments came, he did not move back to the English side,

but burnt his mouth with gram. He talked to anyone and he ate

anything. Amid much that was alien, he learnt that the two new

ladies from England had been a great success, and that their

politeness in wishing to be Mrs. Bhattacharya’s guests had pleased

not only her but all Indians who heard of it. It pleased Mr.

Fielding also. He scarcely knew the two new ladies, still he

decided to tell them what pleasure they had given by their

friendliness.

He found the younger of them alone. She was looking through a nick

in the cactus hedge at the distant Marabar Hills, which had crept

near, as was their custom at sunset; if the sunset had lasted long

enough, they would have reached the town, but it was swift, being

tropical. He gave her his information, and she was so much pleased

and thanked him so heartily that he asked her and the other lady

to tea.

“I’ld like to come very much indeed, and so would Mrs. Moore, I

know.”

“I’m rather a hermit, you know.”

“Much the best thing to be in this place.”

“Owing to my work and so on, I don’t get up much to the club.”

“I know, I know, and we never get down from it. I envy you being

with Indians.”

“Do you care to meet one or two?”

“Very, very much indeed; it’s what I long for. This party to-day

makes me so angry and miserable. I think my countrymen out here

must be mad. Fancy inviting guests and not treating them properly!

You and Mr. Turton and perhaps Mr. McBryde are the only people who

showed any common politeness. The rest make me perfectly ashamed,

and it’s got worse and worse.”

It had. The Englishmen had intended to play up better, but had been

prevented from doing so by their women folk, whom they had to

attend, provide with tea, advise about dogs, etc. When tennis

began, the barrier grew impenetrable. It had been hoped to have

some sets between East and West, but this was forgotten, and the

courts were monopolized by the usual club couples. Fielding resented

it too, but did not say so to the girl, for he found something

theoretical in her outburst. Did she care about Indian music? he

enquired; there was an old professor down at the College, who sang.

“Oh, just what we wanted to hear. And do you know Doctor Aziz?”

“I know all about him. I don’t know him. Would you like him asked

too?”

“Mrs. Moore says he is so nice.”

“Very well, Miss Quested. Will Thursday suit you?”

“Indeed it will, and that morning we go to this Indian lady’s. All

the nice things are coming Thursday.”

“I won’t ask the City Magistrate to bring you. I know he’ll be busy

at that time.”

“Yes, Ronny is always hard-worked,” she replied, contemplating the

hills. How lovely they suddenly were! But she couldn’t touch them.

In front, like a shutter, fell a vision of her married life. She

and Ronny would look into the club like this every evening, then

drive home to dress; they would see the Lesleys and the Callendars

and the Turtons and the Burtons, and invite them and be invited by

them, while the true India slid by unnoticed. Colour would

remain—the pageant of birds in the early morning, brown bodies,

white turbans, idols whose flesh was scarlet or blue—and movement

would remain as long as there were crowds in the bazaar and bathers

in the tanks. Perched up on the seat of a dogcart, she would see

them. But the force that lies behind colour and movement would

escape her even more effectually than it did now. She would see

India always as a frieze, never as a spirit, and she assumed that

it was a spirit of which Mrs. Moore had had a glimpse.

And sure enough they did drive away from the club in a few minutes,

and they did dress, and to dinner came Miss Derek and the McBrydes,

and the menu was: Julienne soup full of bullety bottled peas,

pseudo-cottage bread, fish full of branching bones, pretending to

be plaice, more bottled peas with the cutlets, trifle, sardines on

toast: the menu of Anglo-India. A dish might be added or subtracted

as one rose or fell in the official scale, the peas might rattle

less or more, the sardines and the vermouth be imported by a

different firm, but the tradition remained; the food of exiles,

cooked by servants who did not understand it. Adela thought of the

young men and women who had come out before her, P. & O. full after

P. & O. full, and had been set down to the same food and the same

ideas, and been snubbed in the same good-humoured way until they

kept to the accredited themes and began to snub others. “I should

never get like that,” she thought, for she was young herself; all

the same she knew that she had come up against something that was

both insidious and tough, and against which she needed allies. She

must gather around her at Chandrapore a few people who felt as she

did, and she was glad to have met Mr. Fielding and the Indian lady

with the unpronounceable name. Here at all events was a nucleus;

she should know much better where she stood in the course of the

next two days.

Miss Derek—she companioned a Maharani in a remote Native State.

She was genial and gay and made them all laugh about her leave,

which she had taken because she felt she deserved it, not because

the Maharani said she might go. Now she wanted to take the

Maharajah’s motor-car as well; it had gone to a Chiefs’ Conference

at Delhi, and she had a great scheme for burgling it at the junction

as it came back in the train. She was also very funny about the

Bridge Party—indeed she regarded the entire peninsula as a comic

opera. “If one couldn’t see the laughable side of these people one

’ld be done for,” said Miss Derek. Mrs. McBryde—it was she who had

been the nurse—ceased not to exclaim, “Oh, Nancy, how topping! Oh,

Nancy, how killing! I wish I could look at things like that.” Mr.

McBryde did not speak much; he seemed nice.

When the guests had gone, and Adela gone to bed, there was another

interview between mother and son. He wanted her advice and

support—while resenting interference. “Does Adela talk to you

much?” he began. “I’m so driven with work, I don’t see her as much

as I hoped, but I hope she finds things comfortable.”

“Adela and I talk mostly about India. Dear, since you mention it,

you’re quite right—you ought to be more alone with her than you

are.”

“Yes, perhaps, but then people’ld gossip.”

“Well, they must gossip sometime! Let them gossip.”

“People are so odd out here, and it’s not like home—one’s always

facing the footlights, as the Burra Sahib said. Take a silly little

example: when Adela went out to the boundary of the club compound,

and Fielding followed her. I saw Mrs. Callendar notice it. They

notice everything, until they’re perfectly sure you’re their sort.”

“I don’t think Adela ’ll ever be quite their sort—she’s much too

individual.”

“I know, that’s so remarkable about her,” he said thoughtfully.

Mrs. Moore thought him rather absurd. Accustomed to the privacy of

London, she could not realize that India, seemingly so mysterious,

contains none, and that consequently the conventions have greater

force. “I suppose nothing’s on her mind,” he continued.

“Ask her, ask her yourself, my dear boy.”

“Probably she’s heard tales of the heat, but of course I should

pack her off to the Hills every April—I’m not one to keep a wife

grilling in the Plains.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be the weather.”

“There’s nothing in India but the weather, my dear mother; it’s

the Alpha and Omega of the whole affair.”

“Yes, as Mr. McBryde was saying, but it’s much more the Anglo-Indians

themselves who are likely to get on Adela’s nerves. She doesn’t

think they behave pleasantly to Indians, you see.”

“What did I tell you?” he exclaimed, losing his gentle manner. “I

knew it last week. Oh, how like a woman to worry over a side-issue!”

She forgot about Adela in her surprise. “A side-issue, a side-issue?”

she repeated. “How can it be that?”

“We’re not out here for the purpose of behaving pleasantly!”

“What do you mean?”

“What I say. We’re out here to do justice and keep the peace.

Them’s my sentiments. India isn’t a drawing-room.”

“Your sentiments are those of a god,” she said quietly, but it was

his manner rather than his sentiments that annoyed her.

Trying to recover his temper, he said, “India likes gods.”

“And Englishmen like posing as gods.”

“There’s no point in all this. Here we are, and we’re going to

stop, and the country’s got to put up with us, gods or no gods.

Oh, look here,” he broke out, rather pathetically, “what do you

and Adela want me to do? Go against my class, against all the

people I respect and admire out here? Lose such power as I have

for doing good in this country because my behaviour isn’t pleasant?

You neither of you understand what work is, or you ’ld never talk

such eyewash. I hate talking like this, but one must occasionally.

It’s morbidly sensitive to go on as Adela and you do. I noticed

you both at the club to-day—after the Burra Sahib had been at all

that trouble to amuse you. I am out here to work, mind, to hold

this wretched country by force. I’m not a missionary or a Labour

Member or a vague sentimental sympathetic literary man. I’m just

a servant of the Government; it’s the profession you wanted me to

choose myself, and that’s that. We’re not pleasant in India, and

we don’t intend to be pleasant. We’ve something more important to

do.”

He spoke sincerely. Every day he worked hard in the court trying

to decide which of two untrue accounts was the less untrue, trying

to dispense justice fearlessly, to protect the weak against the

less weak, the incoherent against the plausible, surrounded by lies

and flattery. That morning he had convicted a railway clerk of

overcharging pilgrims for their tickets, and a Pathan of attempted

rape. He expected no gratitude, no recognition for this, and both

clerk and Pathan might appeal, bribe their witnesses more

effectually in the interval, and get their sentences reversed. It

was his duty. But he did expect sympathy from his own people, and

except from new-comers he obtained it. He did think he ought not

to be worried about “Bridge Parties” when the day’s work was over

and he wanted to play tennis with his equals or rest his legs upon

a long chair.

He spoke sincerely, but she could have wished with less gusto. How

Ronny revelled in the drawbacks of his situation! How he did rub

it in that he was not in India to behave pleasantly, and derived

positive satisfaction therefrom! He reminded her of his

public-schooldays. The traces of young-man humanitarianism had

sloughed off, and he talked like an intelligent and embittered boy.

His words without his voice might have impressed her, but when she

heard the self-satisfied lilt of them, when she saw the mouth

moving so complacently and competently beneath the little red nose,

she felt, quite illogically, that this was not the last word on

India. One touch of regret—not the canny substitute but the true

regret from the heart—would have made him a different man, and the

British Empire a different institution.

“I’m going to argue, and indeed dictate,” she said, clinking her

rings. “The English are out here to be pleasant.”

“How do you make that out, mother?” he asked, speaking gently

again, for he was ashamed of his irritability.

“Because India is part of the earth. And God has put us on the

earth in order to be pleasant to each other. God . . . is . . .

love.” She hesitated, seeing how much he disliked the argument,

but something made her go on. “God has put us on earth to love our

neighbours and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even in India,

to see how we are succeeding.”

He looked gloomy, and a little anxious. He knew this religious

strain in her, and that it was a symptom of bad health; there had

been much of it when his stepfather died. He thought, “She is

certainly ageing, and I ought not to be vexed with anything she

says.”

“The desire to behave pleasantly satisfies God. . . The sincere if

impotent desire wins His blessing. I think every one fails, but

there are so many kinds of failure. Good will and more good will

and more good will. Though I speak with the tongues of . . .”

He waited until she had done, and then said gently, “I quite see

that. I suppose I ought to get off to my files now, and you’ll be

going to bed.”

“I suppose so, I suppose so.” They did not part for a few minutes,

but the conversation had become unreal since Christianity had

entered it. Ronny approved of religion as long as it endorsed the

National Anthem, but he objected when it attempted to influence

his life. Then he would say in respectful yet decided tones, “I

don’t think it does to talk about these things, every fellow has

to work out his own religion,” and any fellow who heard him

muttered, “Hear!”

Mrs. Moore felt that she had made a mistake in mentioning God, but

she found him increasingly difficult to avoid as she grew older,

and he had been constantly in her thoughts since she entered India,

though oddly enough he satisfied her less. She must needs pronounce

his name frequently, as the greatest she knew, yet she had never

found it less efficacious. Outside the arch there seemed always an

arch, beyond the remotest echo a silence. And she regretted

afterwards that she had not kept to the real serious subject that

had caused her to visit India—namely the relationship between Ronny

and Adela. Would they, or would they not, succeed in becoming

engaged to be married?

CHAPTER VI

Aziz had not gone to the Bridge Party. Immediately after his

meeting with Mrs. Moore he was diverted to other matters. Several

surgical cases came in, and kept him busy. He ceased to be either

outcaste or poet, and became the medical student, very gay, and

full of details of operations which he poured into the shrinking

ears of his friends. His profession fascinated him at times, but

he required it to be exciting, and it was his hand, not his mind,

that was scientific. The knife he loved and used skilfully, and he

also liked pumping in the latest serums. But the boredom of regime

and hygiene repelled him, and after inoculating a man for enteric,

he would go away and drink unfiltered water himself. “What can you

expect from the fellow?” said dour Major Callendar. “No grits, no

guts.” But in his heart he knew that if Aziz and not he had operated

last year on Mrs. Graysford’s appendix, the old lady would probably

have lived. And this did not dispose him any better towards his

subordinate.

There was a row the morning after the mosque—they were always

having rows. The Major, who had been up half the night, wanted damn

well to know why Aziz had not come promptly when summoned.

“Sir, excuse me, I did. I mounted my bike, and it bust in front of

the Cow Hospital. So I had to find a tonga.”

“Bust in front of the Cow Hospital, did it? And how did you come

to be there?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh Lord, oh Lord! When I live here”—he kicked the gravel—“and you

live there—not ten minutes from me—and the Cow Hospital is right

ever so far away the other side of you—_there_—then how did you

come to be passing the Cow Hospital on the way to me? Now do some

work for a change.”

He strode away in a temper, without waiting for the excuse, which

as far as it went was a sound one: the Cow Hospital was in a

straight line between Hamidullah’s house and his own, so Aziz had

naturally passed it. He never realized that the educated Indians

visited one another constantly, and were weaving, however painfully,

a new social fabric. Caste “or something of the sort” would prevent

them. He only knew that no one ever told him the truth, although

he had been in the country for twenty years.

Aziz watched him go with amusement. When his spirits were up he

felt that the English are a comic institution, and he enjoyed being

misunderstood by them. But it was an amusement of the emotions and

nerves, which an accident or the passage of time might destroy; it

was apart from the fundamental gaiety that he reached when he was

with those whom he trusted. A disobliging simile involving Mrs.

Callendar occurred to his fancy. “I must tell that to Mahmoud Ali,

it’ll make him laugh,” he thought. Then he got to work. He was

competent and indispensable, and he knew it. The simile passed from

his mind while he exercised his professional skill.

During these pleasant and busy days, he heard vaguely that the

Collector was giving a party, and that the Nawab Bahadur said every

one ought to go to it. His fellow-assistant, Doctor Panna Lal, was

in ecstasies at the prospect, and was urgent that they should

attend it together in his new tum-tum. The arrangement suited them

both. Aziz was spared the indignity of a bicycle or the expense of

hiring, while Dr. Panna Lal, who was timid and elderly, secured

someone who could manage his horse. He could manage it himself,

but only just, and he was afraid of the motors and of the unknown

turn into the club grounds. “Disaster may come,” he said politely,

“but we shall at all events get there safe, even if we do not get

back.” And with more logic: “It will, I think, create a good

impression should two doctors arrive at the same time.”

But when the time came, Aziz was seized with a revulsion, and

determined not to go. For one thing his spell of work, lately

concluded, left him independent and healthy. For another, the day

chanced to fall on the anniversary of his wife’s death. She had

died soon after he had fallen in love with her; he had not loved

her at first. Touched by Western feeling, he disliked union with

a woman whom he had never seen; moreover, when he did see her, she

disappointed him, and he begat his first child in mere animality.

The change began after its birth. He was won by her love for him,

by a loyalty that implied something more than submission, and by

her efforts to educate herself against that lifting of the purdah

that would come in the next generation if not in theirs. She was

intelligent, yet had old-fashioned grace. Gradually he lost the

feeling that his relatives had chosen wrongly for him. Sensuous

enjoyment—well, even if he had had it, it would have dulled in a

year, and he had gained something instead, which seemed to increase

the longer they lived together. She became the mother of a son . . .

and in giving him a second son she died. Then he realized what

he had lost, and that no woman could ever take her place; a friend

would come nearer to her than another woman. She had gone, there

was no one like her, and what is that uniqueness but love? He

amused himself, he forgot her at times: but at other times he felt

that she had sent all the beauty and joy of the world into Paradise,

and he meditated suicide. Would he meet her beyond the tomb? Is

there such a meeting-place? Though orthodox, he did not know. God’s

unity was indubitable and indubitably announced, but on all other

points he wavered like the average Christian; his belief in the

life to come would pale to a hope, vanish, reappear, all in a

single sentence or a dozen heart-beats, so that the corpuscles of

his blood rather than he seemed to decide which opinion he should

hold, and for how long. It was so with all his opinions. Nothing

stayed, nothing passed that did not return; the circulation was

ceaseless and kept him young, and he mourned his wife the more

sincerely because he mourned her seldom.

It would have been simpler to tell Dr. Lal that he had changed his

mind about the party, but until the last minute he did not know

that he had changed it; indeed, he didn’t change it, it changed

itself. Unconquerable aversion welled. Mrs. Callendar, Mrs.

Lesley—no, he couldn’t stand them in his sorrow: they would guess

it—for he dowered the British matron with strange insight—and would

delight in torturing him, they would mock him to their husbands.

When he should have been ready, he stood at the Post Office,

writing a telegram to his children, and found on his return that

Dr. Lal had called for him, and gone on. Well, let him go on, as

befitted the coarseness of his nature. For his own part, he would

commune with the dead.

And unlocking a drawer, he took out his wife’s photograph. He gazed

at it, and tears spouted from his eyes. He thought, “How unhappy

I am!” But because he really was unhappy, another emotion soon

mingled with his self-pity: he desired to remember his wife and

could not. Why could he remember people whom he did not love? They

were always so vivid to him, whereas the more he looked at this

photograph, the less he saw. She had eluded him thus, ever since

they had carried her to her tomb. He had known that she would pass

from his hands and eyes, but had thought she could live in his

mind, not realizing that the very fact that we have loved the dead

increases their unreality, and that the more passionately we invoke

them the further they recede. A piece of brown cardboard and three

children—that was all that was left of his wife. It was unbearable,

and he thought again, “How unhappy I am!” and became happier. He

had breathed for an instant the mortal air that surrounds Orientals

and all men, and he drew back from it with a gasp, for he was

young. “Never, never shall I get over this,” he told himself. “Most

certainly my career is a failure, and my sons will be badly brought

up.” Since it was certain, he strove to avert it, and looked at

some notes he had made on a case at the hospital. Perhaps some day

a rich person might require this particular operation, and he gain

a large sum. The notes interesting him on their own account, he

locked the photograph up again. Its moment was over, and he did

not think about his wife any more.

After tea his spirits improved, and he went round to see Hamidullah.

Hamidullah had gone to the party, but his pony had not, so Aziz

borrowed it, also his friend’s riding breeches and polo mallet. He

repaired to the Maidan. It was deserted except at its rim, where

some bazaar youths were training. Training for what? They would

have found it hard to say, but the word had got into the air. Round

they ran, weedy and knock-kneed—the local physique was wretched—with

an expression on their faces not so much of determination as of a

determination to be determined. “Maharajah, salaam,” he called for

a joke. The youths stopped and laughed. He advised them not to

exert themselves. They promised they would not, and ran on.

Riding into the middle, he began to knock the ball about. He could

not play, but his pony could, and he set himself to learn, free

from all human tension. He forgot the whole damned business of

living as he scurried over the brown platter of the Maidan, with

the evening wind on his forehead, and the encircling trees soothing

his eyes. The ball shot away towards a stray subaltern who was also

practising; he hit it back to Aziz and called, “Send it along

again.”

“All right.”

The new-comer had some notion of what to do, but his horse had

none, and forces were equal. Concentrated on the ball, they somehow

became fond of one another, and smiled when they drew rein to rest.

Aziz liked soldiers—they either accepted you or swore at you, which

was preferable to the civilian’s hauteur—and the subaltern liked

anyone who could ride.

“Often play?” he asked.

“Never.”

“Let’s have another chukker.”

As he hit, his horse bucked and off he went, cried, “Oh God!” and

jumped on again. “Don’t you ever fall off?”

“Plenty.”

“Not you.”

They reined up again, the fire of good fellowship in their eyes.

But it cooled with their bodies, for athletics can only raise a

temporary glow. Nationality was returning, but before it could

exert its poison they parted, saluting each other. “If only they

were all like that,” each thought.

Now it was sunset. A few of his co-religionists had come to the

Maidan, and were praying with their faces towards Mecca. A Brahminy

Bull walked towards them, and Aziz, though disinclined to pray

himself, did not see why they should be bothered with the clumsy

and idolatrous animal. He gave it a tap with his polo mallet. As

he did so, a voice from the road hailed him: it was Dr. Panna Lal,

returning in high distress from the Collector’s party.

“Dr. Aziz, Dr. Aziz, where you been? I waited ten full minutes’

time at your house, then I went.”

“I am so awfully sorry—I was compelled to go to the Post Office.”

One of his own circle would have accepted this as meaning that he

had changed his mind, an event too common to merit censure. But

Dr. Lal, being of low extraction, was not sure whether an insult

had not been intended, and he was further annoyed because Aziz had

buffeted the Brahminy Bull. “Post Office? Do you not send your

servants?” he said.

“I have so few—my scale is very small.”

“Your servant spoke to me. I saw your servant.”

“But, Dr. Lal, consider. How could I send my servant when you were

coming: you come, we go, my house is left alone, my servant comes

back perhaps, and all my portable property has been carried away

by bad characters in the meantime. Would you have that? The cook

is deaf—I can never count on my cook—and the boy is only a little

boy. Never, never do I and Hassan leave the house at the same time

together. It is my fixed rule.” He said all this and much more out

of civility, to save Dr. Lal’s face. It was not offered as truth

and should not have been criticized as such. But the other

demolished it—an easy and ignoble task. “Even if this so, what

prevents leaving a chit saying where you go?” and so on. Aziz

detested ill breeding, and made his pony caper. “Farther away, or

mine will start out of sympathy,” he wailed, revealing the true

source of his irritation. “It has been so rough and wild this

afternoon. It spoiled some most valuable blossoms in the club

garden, and had to be dragged back by four men. English ladies and

gentlemen looking on, and the Collector Sahib himself taking a

note. But, Dr. Aziz, I’ll not take up your valuable time. This will

not interest you, who have so many engagements and telegrams. I am

just a poor old doctor who thought right to pay my respects when

I was asked and where I was asked. Your absence, I may remark, drew

commentaries.”

“They can damn well comment.”

“It is fine to be young. Damn well! Oh, very fine. Damn whom?”

“I go or not as I please.”

“Yet you promise me, and then fabricate this tale of a telegram.

Go forward, Dapple.”

They went, and Aziz had a wild desire to make an enemy for life.

He could do it so easily by galloping near them. He did it. Dapple

bolted. He thundered back on to the Maidan. The glory of his play

with the subaltern remained for a little, he galloped and swooped

till he poured with sweat, and until he returned the pony to

Hamidullah’s stable he felt the equal of any man. Once on his feet,

he had creeping fears. Was he in bad odour with the powers that

be? Had he offended the Collector by absenting himself? Dr. Panna

Lal was a person of no importance, yet was it wise to have

quarrelled even with him? The complexion of his mind turned from

human to political. He thought no longer, “Can I get on with

people?” but “Are they stronger than I?” breathing the prevalent

miasma.

At his home a chit was awaiting him, bearing the Government stamp.

It lay on his table like a high explosive, which at a touch might

blow his flimsy bungalow to bits. He was going to be cashiered

because he had not turned up at the party. When he opened the note,

it proved to be quite different; an invitation from Mr. Fielding,

the Principal of Government College, asking him to come to tea the

day after to-morrow. His spirits revived with violence. They would

have revived in any case, for he possessed a soul that could suffer

but not stifle, and led a steady life beneath his mutability. But

this invitation gave him particular joy, because Fielding had asked

him to tea a month ago, and he had forgotten about it—never

answered, never gone, just forgotten.

And here came a second invitation, without a rebuke or even an

allusion to his slip. Here was true courtesy—the civil deed that

shows the good heart—and snatching up his pen he wrote an

affectionate reply, and hurried back for news to Hamidullah’s. For

he had never met the Principal, and believed that the one serious

gap in his life was going to be filled. He longed to know everything

about the splendid fellow—his salary, preferences, antecedents,

how best one might please him. But Hamidullah was still out, and

Mahmoud Ali, who was in, would only make silly rude jokes about

the party.

CHAPTER VII

This Mr. Fielding had been caught by India late. He was over forty

when he entered that oddest portal, the Victoria Terminus at

Bombay, and—having bribed a European ticket inspector—took his

luggage into the compartment of his first tropical train. The

journey remained in his mind as significant. Of his two carriage

companions one was a youth, fresh to the East like himself, the

other a seasoned Anglo-Indian of his own age. A gulf divided him

from either; he had seen too many cities and men to be the first

or to become the second. New impressions crowded on him, but they

were not the orthodox new impressions; the past conditioned them,

and so it was with his mistakes. To regard an Indian as if he were

an Italian is not, for instance, a common error, nor perhaps a

fatal one, and Fielding often attempted analogies between this

peninsula and that other, smaller and more exquisitely shaped, that

stretches into the classic waters of the Mediterranean.

His career, though scholastic, was varied, and had included going

to the bad and repenting thereafter. By now he was a hard-bitten,

good-tempered, intelligent fellow on the verge of middle age, with

a belief in education. He did not mind whom he taught; public

schoolboys, mental defectives and policemen, had all come his way,

and he had no objection to adding Indians. Through the influence

of friends, he was nominated Principal of the little college at

Chandrapore, liked it, and assumed he was a success. He did succeed

with his pupils, but the gulf between himself and his countrymen,

which he had noticed in the train, widened distressingly. He could

not at first see what was wrong. He was not unpatriotic, he always

got on with Englishmen in England, all his best friends were

English, so why was it not the same out here? Outwardly of the

large shaggy type, with sprawling limbs and blue eyes, he appeared

to inspire confidence until he spoke. Then something in his manner

puzzled people and failed to allay the distrust which his profession

naturally inspired. There needs must be this evil of brains in

India, but woe to him through whom they are increased! The feeling

grew that Mr. Fielding was a disruptive force, and rightly, for

ideas are fatal to caste, and he used ideas by that most potent

method—interchange. Neither a missionary nor a student, he was

happiest in the give-and-take of a private conversation. The world,

he believed, is a globe of men who are trying to reach one another

and can best do so by the help of good will plus culture and

intelligence—a creed ill suited to Chandrapore, but he had come

out too late to lose it. He had no racial feeling—not because he

was superior to his brother civilians, but because he had matured

in a different atmosphere, where the herd-instinct does not

flourish. The remark that did him most harm at the club was a silly

aside to the effect that the so-called white races are really

pinko-grey. He only said this to be cheery, he did not realize that

“white” has no more to do with a colour than “God save the King”

with a god, and that it is the height of impropriety to consider

what it does connote. The pinko-grey male whom he addressed was

subtly scandalized; his sense of insecurity was awoken, and he

communicated it to the rest of the herd.

Still, the men tolerated him for the sake of his good heart and

strong body; it was their wives who decided that he was not a sahib

really. They disliked him. He took no notice of them, and this,

which would have passed without comment in feminist England, did

him harm in a community where the male is expected to be lively

and helpful. Mr. Fielding never advised one about dogs or horses,

or dined, or paid his midday calls, or decorated trees for one’s

children at Christmas, and though he came to the club, it was only

to get his tennis or billiards, and to go. This was true. He had

discovered that it is possible to keep in with Indians and

Englishmen, but that he who would also keep in with Englishwomen

must drop the Indians. The two wouldn’t combine. Useless to blame

either party, useless to blame them for blaming one another. It

just was so, and one had to choose. Most Englishmen preferred their

own kinswomen, who, coming out in increasing numbers, made life on

the home pattern yearly more possible. He had found it convenient

and pleasant to associate with Indians and he must pay the price.

As a rule no Englishwoman entered the College except for official

functions, and if he invited Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested to tea,

it was because they were new-comers who would view everything with

an equal if superficial eye, and would not turn on a special voice

when speaking to his other guests.

The College itself had been slapped down by the Public Works

Department, but its grounds included an ancient garden and a

garden-house, and here he lived for much of the year. He was

dressing after a bath when Dr. Aziz was announced. Lifting up his

voice, he shouted from the bedroom, “Please make yourself at home.”

The remark was unpremeditated, like most of his actions; it was

what he felt inclined to say.

To Aziz it had a very definite meaning. “May I really, Mr. Fielding?

It’s very good of you,” he called back; “I like unconventional

behaviour so extremely.” His spirits flared up, he glanced round

the living-room. Some luxury in it, but no order—nothing to

intimidate poor Indians. It was also a very beautiful room, opening

into the garden through three high arches of wood. “The fact is I

have long wanted to meet you,” he continued. “I have heard so much

about your warm heart from the Nawab Bahadur. But where is one to

meet in a wretched hole like Chandrapore?” He came close up to the

door. “When I was greener here, I’ll tell you what. I used to wish

you to fall ill so that we could meet that way.” They laughed, and

encouraged by his success he began to improvise. “I said to myself,

How does Mr. Fielding look this morning? Perhaps pale. And the

Civil Surgeon is pale too, he will not be able to attend upon him

when the shivering commences. I should have been sent for instead.

Then we would have had jolly talks, for you are a celebrated

student of Persian poetry.”

“You know me by sight, then.”

“Of course, of course. You know me?”

“I know you very well by name.”

“I have been here such a short time, and always in the bazaar. No

wonder you have never seen me, and I wonder you know my name. I

say, Mr. Fielding?”

“Yes?”

“Guess what I look like before you come out. That will be a kind

of game.”

“You’re five feet nine inches high,” said Fielding, surmising this

much through the ground glass of the bedroom door.

“Jolly good. What next? Have I not a venerable white beard?”

“Blast!”

“Anything wrong?”

“I’ve stamped on my last collar stud.”

“Take mine, take mine.”

“Have you a spare one?”

“Yes, yes, one minute.”

“Not if you’re wearing it yourself.”

“No, no, one in my pocket.” Stepping aside, so that his outline

might vanish, he wrenched off his collar, and pulled out of his

shirt the back stud, a gold stud, which was part of a set that his

brother-in-law had brought him from Europe. “Here it is,” he cried.

“Come in with it if you don’t mind the unconventionality.”

“One minute again.” Replacing his collar, he prayed that it would

not spring up at the back during tea. Fielding’s bearer, who was

helping him to dress, opened the door for him.

“Many thanks.” They shook hands smiling. He began to look round,

as he would have with any old friend. Fielding was not surprised

at the rapidity of their intimacy. With so emotional a people it

was apt to come at once or never, and he and Aziz, having heard

only good of each other, could afford to dispense with preliminaries.

“But I always thought that Englishmen kept their rooms so tidy. It

seems that this is not so. I need not be so ashamed.” He sat down

gaily on the bed; then, forgetting himself entirely, drew up his

legs and folded them under him. “Everything ranged coldly on

shelves was what _I_ thought.—I say, Mr. Fielding, is the stud

going to go in?”

“I hae ma doots.”

“What’s that last sentence, please? Will you teach me some new

words and so improve my English?”

Fielding doubted whether “everything ranged coldly on shelves”

could be improved. He was often struck with the liveliness with

which the younger generation handled a foreign tongue. They altered

the idiom, but they could say whatever they wanted to say quickly;

there were none of the babuisms ascribed to them up at the club.

But then the club moved slowly; it still declared that few

Mohammedans and no Hindus would eat at an Englishman’s table, and

that all Indian ladies were in impenetrable purdah. Individually

it knew better; as a club it declined to change.

“Let me put in your stud. I see . . . the shirt back’s hole is

rather small and to rip it wider a pity.”

“Why in hell does one wear collars at all?” grumbled Fielding as

he bent his neck.

“We wear them to pass the Police.”

“What’s that?”

“If I’m biking in English dress—starch collar, hat with ditch—they

take no notice. When I wear a fez, they cry, ‘Your lamp’s out!’

Lord Curzon did not consider this when he urged natives of India

to retain their picturesque costumes.—Hooray! Stud’s gone

in.—Sometimes I shut my eyes and dream I have splendid clothes

again and am riding into battle behind Alamgir. Mr. Fielding, must

not India have been beautiful then, with the Mogul Empire at its

height and Alamgir reigning at Delhi upon the Peacock Throne?”

“Two ladies are coming to tea to meet you—I think you know them.”

“Meet me? I know no ladies.”

“Not Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested?”

“Oh yes—I remember.” The romance at the mosque had sunk out of his

consciousness as soon as it was over. “An excessively aged lady;

but will you please repeat the name of her companion?”

“Miss Quested.”

“Just as you wish.” He was disappointed that other guests were

coming, for he preferred to be alone with his new friend.

“You can talk to Miss Quested about the Peacock Throne if you

like—she’s artistic, they say.”

“Is she a Post Impressionist?”

“Post Impressionism, indeed! Come along to tea. This world is

getting too much for me altogether.”

Aziz was offended. The remark suggested that he, an obscure Indian,

had no right to have heard of Post Impressionism—a privilege

reserved for the Ruling Race, that. He said stiffly, “I do not

consider Mrs. Moore my friend, I only met her accidentally in my

mosque,” and was adding “a single meeting is too short to make a

friend,” but before he could finish the sentence the stiffness

vanished from it, because he felt Fielding’s fundamental good will.

His own went out to it, and grappled beneath the shifting tides of

emotion which can alone bear the voyager to an anchorage but may

also carry him across it on to the rocks. He was safe really—as

safe as the shore-dweller who can only understand stability and

supposes that every ship must be wrecked, and he had sensations

the shore-dweller cannot know. Indeed, he was sensitive rather than

responsive. In every remark he found a meaning, but not always the

true meaning, and his life though vivid was largely a dream.

Fielding, for instance, had not meant that Indians are obscure,

but that Post Impressionism is; a gulf divided his remark from Mrs.

Turton’s “Why, they speak English,” but to Aziz the two sounded

alike. Fielding saw that something had gone wrong, and equally that

it had come right, but he didn’t fidget, being an optimist where

personal relations were concerned, and their talk rattled on as

before.

“Besides the ladies I am expecting one of my assistants—Narayan

Godbole.”

“Oho, the Deccani Brahman!”

“He wants the past back too, but not precisely Alamgir.”

“I should think not. Do you know what Deccani Brahmans say? That

England conquered India from them—from them, mind, and not from

the Moguls. Is not that like their cheek? They have even bribed it

to appear in text-books, for they are so subtle and immensely rich.

Professor Godbole must be quite unlike all other Deccani Brahmans

from all I can hear say. A most sincere chap.”

“Why don’t you fellows run a club in Chandrapore, Aziz?”

“Perhaps—some day . . . just now I see Mrs. Moore and—what’s her

name—coming.”

How fortunate that it was an “unconventional” party, where

formalities are ruled out! On this basis Aziz found the English

ladies easy to talk to, he treated them like men. Beauty would have

troubled him, for it entails rules of its own, but Mrs. Moore was

so old and Miss Quested so plain that he was spared this anxiety.

Adela’s angular body and the freckles on her face were terrible

defects in his eyes, and he wondered how God could have been so

unkind to any female form. His attitude towards her remained

entirely straightforward in consequence.

“I want to ask you something, Dr. Aziz,” she began. “I heard from

Mrs. Moore how helpful you were to her in the mosque, and how

interesting. She learnt more about India in those few minutes’ talk

with you than in the three weeks since we landed.”

“Oh, please do not mention a little thing like that. Is there

anything else I may tell you about my country?”

“I want you to explain a disappointment we had this morning; it

must be some point of Indian etiquette.”

“There honestly is none,” he replied. “We are by nature a most

informal people.”

“I am afraid we must have made some blunder and given offence,”

said Mrs. Moore.

“That is even more impossible. But may I know the facts?”

“An Indian lady and gentleman were to send their carriage for us

this morning at nine. It has never come. We waited and waited and

waited; we can’t think what happened.”

“Some misunderstanding,” said Fielding, seeing at once that it was

the type of incident that had better not be cleared up.

“Oh no, it wasn’t that,” Miss Quested persisted. “They even gave

up going to Calcutta to entertain us. We must have made some stupid

blunder, we both feel sure.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“Exactly what Mr. Heaslop tells me,” she retorted, reddening a

little. “If one doesn’t worry, how’s one to understand?”

The host was inclined to change the subject, but Aziz took it up

warmly, and on learning fragments of the delinquents’ name

pronounced that they were Hindus.

“Slack Hindus—they have no idea of society; I know them very well

because of a doctor at the hospital. Such a slack, unpunctual

fellow! It is as well you did not go to their house, for it would

give you a wrong idea of India. Nothing sanitary. I think for my

own part they grew ashamed of their house and that is why they did

not send.”

“That’s a notion,” said the other man.

“I do so hate mysteries,” Adela announced.

“We English do.”

“I dislike them not because I’m English, but from my own personal

point of view,” she corrected.

“I like mysteries but I rather dislike muddles,” said Mrs. Moore.

“A mystery is a muddle.”

“Oh, do you think so, Mr. Fielding?”

“A mystery is only a high-sounding term for a muddle. No advantage

in stirring it up, in either case. Aziz and I know well that

India’s a muddle.”

“India’s—— Oh, what an alarming idea!”

“There’ll be no muddle when you come to see me,” said Aziz, rather

out of his depth. “Mrs. Moore and everyone—I invite you all—oh,

please.”

The old lady accepted: she still thought the young doctor

excessively nice; moreover, a new feeling, half languor, half

excitement, bade her turn down any fresh path. Miss Quested accepted

out of adventure. She also liked Aziz, and believed that when she

knew him better he would unlock his country for her. His invitation

gratified her, and she asked him for his address.

Aziz thought of his bungalow with horror. It was a detestable

shanty near a low bazaar. There was practically only one room in

it, and that infested with small black flies. “Oh, but we will talk

of something else now,” he exclaimed. “I wish I lived here. See

this beautiful room! Let us admire it together for a little. See

those curves at the bottom of the arches. What delicacy! It is the

architecture of Question and Answer. Mrs. Moore, you are in India;

I am not joking.” The room inspired him. It was an audience hall

built in the eighteenth century for some high official, and though

of wood had reminded Fielding of the Loggia de’ Lanzi at Florence.

Little rooms, now Europeanized, clung to it on either side, but

the central hall was unpapered and unglassed, and the air of the

garden poured in freely. One sat in public—on exhibition, as it

were—in full view of the gardeners who were screaming at the birds

and of the man who rented the tank for the cultivation of water

chestnut. Fielding let the mango trees too—there was no knowing

who might not come in—and his servants sat on his steps night and

day to discourage thieves. Beautiful certainly, and the Englishman

had not spoilt it, whereas Aziz in an occidental moment would have

hung Maude Goodmans on the walls. Yet there was no doubt to whom

the room really belonged. . . .

“I am doing justice here. A poor widow who has been robbed comes

along and I give her fifty rupees, to another a hundred, and so on

and so on. I should like that.”

Mrs. Moore smiled, thinking of the modern method as exemplified in

her son. “Rupees don’t last for ever, I’m afraid,” she said.

“Mine would. God would give me more when he saw I gave. Always be

giving, like the Nawab Bahadur. My father was the same, that is

why he died poor.” And pointing about the room he peopled it with

clerks and officials, all benevolent because they lived long ago.

“So we would sit giving for ever—on a carpet instead of chairs,

that is the chief change between now and then, but I think we would

never punish anyone.”

The ladies agreed.

“Poor criminal, give him another chance. It only makes a man worse

to go to prison and be corrupted.” His face grew very tender—the

tenderness of one incapable of administration, and unable to grasp

that if the poor criminal is let off he will again rob the poor

widow. He was tender to everyone except a few family enemies whom

he did not consider human: on these he desired revenge. He was even

tender to the English; he knew at the bottom of his heart that they

could not help being so cold and odd and circulating like an ice

stream through his land. “We punish no one, no one,” he repeated,

“and in the evening we will give a great banquet with a nautch and

lovely girls shall shine on every side of the tank with fireworks

in their hands, and all shall be feasting and happiness until the

next day, when there shall be justice as before—fifty rupees, a

hundred, a thousand—till peace comes. Ah, why didn’t we live in

that time?—But are you admiring Mr. Fielding’s house? Do look how

the pillars are painted blue, and the verandah’s pavilions—what do

you call them?—that are above us inside are blue also. Look at the

carving on the pavilions. Think of the hours it took. Their little

roofs are curved to imitate bamboo. So pretty—and the bamboos

waving by the tank outside. Mrs. Moore! Mrs. Moore!”

“Well?” she said, laughing.

“You remember the water by our mosque? It comes down and fills this

tank—a skilful arrangement of the Emperors. They stopped here going

down into Bengal. They loved water. Wherever they went they created

fountains, gardens, hammams. I was telling Mr. Fielding I would

give anything to serve them.”

He was wrong about the water, which no Emperor, however skilful,

can cause to gravitate uphill; a depression of some depth together

with the whole of Chandrapore lay between the mosque and Fielding’s

house. Ronny would have pulled him up, Turton would have wanted to

pull him up, but restrained himself. Fielding did not even want to

pull him up; he had dulled his craving for verbal truth and cared

chiefly for truth of mood. As for Miss Quested, she accepted

everything Aziz said as true verbally. In her ignorance, she

regarded him as “India,” and never surmised that his outlook was

limited and his method inaccurate, and that no one is India.

He was now much excited, chattering away hard, and even saying damn

when he got mixed up in his sentences. He told them of his

profession, and of the operations he had witnessed and performed,

and he went into details that scared Mrs. Moore, though Miss

Quested mistook them for proofs of his broad-mindedness; she had

heard such talk at home in advanced academic circles, deliberately

free. She supposed him to be emancipated as well as reliable, and

placed him on a pinnacle which he could not retain. He was high

enough for the moment, to be sure, but not on any pinnacle. Wings

bore him up, and flagging would deposit him.

The arrival of Professor Godbole quieted him somewhat, but it

remained his afternoon. The Brahman, polite and enigmatic, did not

impede his eloquence, and even applauded it. He took his tea at a

little distance from the outcasts, from a low table placed slightly

behind him, to which he stretched back, and as it were encountered

food by accident; all feigned indifference to Professor Godbole’s

tea. He was elderly and wizen with a grey moustache and grey-blue

eyes, and his complexion was as fair as a European’s. He wore a

turban that looked like pale purple macaroni, coat, waistcoat,

dhoti, socks with clocks. The clocks matched the turban, and his

whole appearance suggested harmony—as if he had reconciled the

products of East and West, mental as well as physical, and could

never be discomposed. The ladies were interested in him, and hoped

that he would supplement Dr. Aziz by saying something about

religion. But he only ate—ate and ate, smiling, never letting his

eyes catch sight of his hand.

Leaving the Mogul Emperors, Aziz turned to topics that could

distress no one. He described the ripening of the mangoes, and how

in his boyhood he used to run out in the Rains to a big mango grove

belonging to an uncle and gorge there. “Then back with water

streaming over you and perhaps rather a pain inside. But I did not

mind. All my friends were paining with me. We have a proverb in

Urdu: ‘What does unhappiness matter when we are all unhappy

together?’ which comes in conveniently after mangoes. Miss Quested,

do wait for mangoes. Why not settle altogether in India?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Adela. She made the remark

without thinking what it meant. To her, as to the three men, it

seemed in key with the rest of the conversation, and not for

several minutes—indeed, not for half an hour—did she realize that

it was an important remark, and ought to have been made in the

first place to Ronny.

“Visitors like you are too rare.”

“They are indeed,” said Professor Godbole. “Such affability is

seldom seen. But what can we offer to detain them?”

“Mangoes, mangoes.”

They laughed. “Even mangoes can be got in England now,” put in

Fielding. “They ship them in ice-cold rooms. You can make India in

England apparently, just as you can make England in India.”

“Frightfully expensive in both cases,” said the girl.

“I suppose so.”

“And nasty.”

But the host wouldn’t allow the conversation to take this heavy

turn. He turned to the old lady, who looked flustered and put

out—he could not imagine why—and asked about her own plans. She

replied that she should like to see over the College. Everyone

immediately rose, with the exception of Professor Godbole, who was

finishing a banana.

“Don’t you come too, Adela; you dislike institutions.”

“Yes, that is so,” said Miss Quested, and sat down again.

Aziz hesitated. His audience was splitting up. The more familiar

half was going, but the more attentive remained. Reflecting that

it was an “unconventional” afternoon, he stopped.

Talk went on as before. Could one offer the visitors unripe mangoes

in a fool? “I speak now as a doctor: no.” Then the old man said,

“But I will send you up a few healthy sweets. I will give myself

that pleasure.”

“Miss Quested, Professor Godbole’s sweets are delicious,” said Aziz

sadly, for he wanted to send sweets too and had no wife to cook

them. “They will give you a real Indian treat. Ah, in my poor

position I can give you nothing.”

“I don’t know why you say that, when you have so kindly asked us

to your house.”

He thought again of his bungalow with horror. Good heavens, the

stupid girl had taken him at his word! What was he to do? “Yes,

all that is settled,” he cried.

“I invite you all to see me in the Marabar Caves.”

“I shall be delighted.”

“Oh, that is a most magnificent entertainment compared to my poor

sweets. But has not Miss Quested visited our caves already?”

“No. I’ve not even heard of them.”

“Not heard of them?” both cried. “The Marabar Caves in the Marabar

Hills?”

“We hear nothing interesting up at the club. Only tennis and

ridiculous gossip.”

The old man was silent, perhaps feeling that it was unseemly of

her to criticize her race, perhaps fearing that if he agreed she

would report him for disloyalty. But the young man uttered a rapid

“I know.”

“Then tell me everything you will, or I shall never understand

India. Are they the hills I sometimes see in the evening? What are

these caves?”

Aziz undertook to explain, but it presently appeared that he had

never visited the caves himself—had always been “meaning” to go,

but work or private business had prevented him, and they were so

far. Professor Godbole chaffed him pleasantly. “My dear young sir,

the pot and the kettle! Have you ever heard of that useful proverb?”

“Are they large caves?” she asked.

“No, not large.”

“Do describe them, Professor Godbole.”

“It will be a great honour.” He drew up his chair and an expression

of tension came over his face. Taking the cigarette box, she

offered to him and to Aziz, and lit up herself. After an impressive

pause he said: “There is an entrance in the rock which you enter,

and through the entrance is the cave.”

“Something like the caves at Elephanta?”

“Oh no, not at all; at Elephanta there are sculptures of Siva and

Parvati. There are no sculptures at Marabar.”

“They are immensely holy, no doubt,” said Aziz, to help on the

narrative.

“Oh no, oh no.”

“Still, they are ornamented in some way.”

“Oh no.”

“Well, why are they so famous? We all talk of the famous Marabar

Caves. Perhaps that is our empty brag.”

“No, I should not quite say that.”

“Describe them to this lady, then.”

“It will be a great pleasure.” He forewent the pleasure, and Aziz

realized that he was keeping back something about the caves. He

realized because he often suffered from similar inhibitions himself.

Sometimes, to the exasperation of Major Callendar, he would pass

over the one relevant fact in a position, to dwell on the hundred

irrelevant. The Major accused him of disingenuousness, and was

roughly right, but only roughly. It was rather that a power he

couldn’t control capriciously silenced his mind. Godbole had been

silenced now; no doubt not willingly, he was concealing something.

Handled subtly, he might regain control and announce that the

Marabar Caves were—full of stalactites, perhaps; Aziz led up to

this, but they weren’t.

The dialogue remained light and friendly, and Adela had no

conception of its underdrift. She did not know that the comparatively

simple mind of the Mohammedan was encountering Ancient Night. Aziz

played a thrilling game. He was handling a human toy that refused

to work—he knew that much. If it worked, neither he nor Professor

Godbole would be the least advantaged, but the attempt enthralled

him and was akin to abstract thought. On he chattered, defeated at

every move by an opponent who would not even admit that a move had

been made, and further than ever from discovering what, if anything,

was extraordinary about the Marabar Caves.

Into this Ronny dropped.

With an annoyance he took no trouble to conceal, he called from

the garden: “What’s happened to Fielding? Where’s my mother?”

“Good evening!” she replied coolly.

“I want you and mother at once. There’s to be polo.”

“I thought there was to be no polo.”

“Everything’s altered. Some soldier men have come in. Come along

and I’ll tell you about it.”

“Your mother will return shortly, sir,” said Professor Godbole,

who had risen with deference. “There is but little to see at our

poor college.”

Ronny took no notice, but continued to address his remarks to

Adela; he had hurried away from his work to take her to see the

polo, because he thought it would give her pleasure. He did not

mean to be rude to the two men, but the only link he could be

conscious of with an Indian was the official, and neither happened

to be his subordinate. As private individuals he forgot them.

Unfortunately Aziz was in no mood to be forgotten. He would not

give up the secure and intimate note of the last hour. He had not

risen with Godbole, and now, offensively friendly, called from his

seat, “Come along up and join us, Mr. Heaslop; sit down till your

mother turns up.”

Ronny replied by ordering one of Fielding’s servants to fetch his

master at once.

“He may not understand that. Allow me——” Aziz repeated the order

idiomatically.

Ronny was tempted to retort; he knew the type; he knew all the

types, and this was the spoilt Westernized. But he was a servant

of the Government, it was his job to avoid “incidents,” so he said

nothing, and ignored the provocation that Aziz continued to offer.

Aziz was provocative. Everything he said had an impertinent flavour

or jarred. His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without

a struggle. He did not mean to be impertinent to Mr. Heaslop, who

had never done him harm, but here was an Anglo-Indian who must

become a man before comfort could be regained. He did not mean to

be greasily confidential to Miss Quested, only to enlist her

support; nor to be loud and jolly towards Professor Godbole. A

strange quartette—he fluttering to the ground, she puzzled by the

sudden ugliness, Ronny fuming, the Brahman observing all three,

but with downcast eyes and hands folded, as if nothing was

noticeable. A scene from a play, thought Fielding, who now saw them

from the distance across the garden grouped among the blue pillars

of his beautiful hall.

“Don’t trouble to come, mother,” Ronny called; “we’re just

starting.” Then he hurried to Fielding, drew him aside and said

with pseudo-heartiness, “I say, old man, do excuse me, but I think

perhaps you oughtn’t to have left Miss Quested alone.”

“I’m sorry, what’s up?” replied Fielding, also trying to be genial.

“Well . . . I’m the sun-dried bureaucrat, no doubt; still, I don’t

like to see an English girl left smoking with two Indians.”

“She stopped, as she smokes, by her own wish, old man.”

“Yes, that’s all right in England.”

“I really can’t see the harm.”

“If you can’t see, you can’t see. . . . Can’t you see that fellow’s

a bounder?”

Aziz flamboyant, was patronizing Mrs. Moore.

“He isn’t a bounder,” protested Fielding. “His nerves are on edge,

that’s all.”

“What should have upset his precious nerves?”

“I don’t know. He was all right when I left.”

“Well, it’s nothing I’ve said,” said Ronny reassuringly. “I never

even spoke to him.”

“Oh well, come along now, and take your ladies away; the catastrophe

over.”

“Fielding . . . don’t think I’m taking it badly, or anything of

that sort. . . . I suppose you won’t come on to the polo with us?

We should all be delighted.”

“I’m afraid I can’t, thanks all the same. I’m awfully sorry you

feel I’ve been remiss. I didn’t mean to be.”

So the leave-taking began. Every one was cross or wretched. It was

as if irritation exuded from the very soil. Could one have been so

petty on a Scotch moor or an Italian alp? Fielding wondered

afterwards. There seemed no reserve of tranquillity to draw upon

in India.

Either none, or else tranquillity swallowed up everything, as it

appeared to do for Professor Godbole. Here was Aziz all shoddy and

odious, Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested both silly, and he himself and

Heaslop both decorous on the surface, but detestable really, and

detesting each other.

“Good-bye, Mr. Fielding, and thank you so much. . . . What lovely

College buildings!”

“Good-bye, Mrs. Moore.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Fielding. Such an interesting afternoon. . . .”

“Good-bye, Miss Quested.”

“Good-bye, Dr. Aziz.”

“Good-bye, Mrs. Moore.”

“Good-bye, Dr. Aziz.”

“Good-bye, Miss Quested.” He pumped her hand up and down to show

that he felt at ease. “You’ll jolly jolly well not forget those

caves, won’t you? I’ll fix the whole show up in a jiffy.”

“Thank you. . .

Inspired by the devil to a final effort, he added, “What a shame

you leave India so soon! Oh, do reconsider your decision, do stay.”

“Good-bye, Professor Godbole,” she continued, suddenly agitated.

“It’s a shame we never heard you sing.”

“I may sing now,” he replied, and did.

His thin voice rose, and gave out one sound after another. At times

there seemed rhythm, at times there was the illusion of a Western

melody. But the ear, baffled repeatedly, soon lost any clue, and

wandered in a maze of noises, none harsh or unpleasant, none

intelligible. It was the song of an unknown bird. Only the servants

understood it. They began to whisper to one another. The man who

was gathering water chestnut came naked out of the tank, his lips

parted with delight, disclosing his scarlet tongue. The sounds

continued and ceased after a few moments as casually as they had

begun—apparently half through a bar, and upon the subdominant.

“Thanks so much: what was that?” asked Fielding.

“I will explain in detail. It was a religious song. I placed myself

in the position of a milkmaiden. I say to Shri Krishna, ‘Come! come

to me only.’ The god refuses to come. I grow humble and say: ‘Do

not come to me only. Multiply yourself into a hundred Krishnas,

and let one go to each of my hundred companions, but one, O Lord

of the Universe, come to me.’ He refuses to come. This is repeated

several times. The song is composed in a raga appropriate to the

present hour, which is the evening.”

“But He comes in some other song, I hope?” said Mrs. Moore gently.

“Oh no, he refuses to come,” repeated Godbole, perhaps not

understanding her question. “I say to Him, Come, come, come, come,

come, come. He neglects to come.”

Ronny’s steps had died away, and there was a moment of absolute

silence. No ripple disturbed the water, no leaf stirred.

CHAPTER VIII

Although Miss Quested had known Ronny well in England, she felt

well advised to visit him before deciding to be his wife. India

had developed sides of his character that she had never admired.

His self-complacency, his censoriousness, his lack of subtlety,

all grew vivid beneath a tropic sky; he seemed more indifferent

than of old to what was passing in the minds of his fellows, more

certain that he was right about them or that if he was wrong it

didn’t matter. When proved wrong, he was particularly exasperating;

he always managed to suggest that she needn’t have bothered to

prove it. The point she made was never the relevant point, her

arguments conclusive but barren, she was reminded that he had

expert knowledge and she none, and that experience would not help

her because she could not interpret it. A Public School, London

University, a year at a crammer’s, a particular sequence of posts

in a particular province, a fall from a horse and a touch of fever

were presented to her as the only training by which Indians and

all who reside in their country can be understood; the only training

she could comprehend, that is to say, for of course above Ronny

there stretched the higher realms of knowledge, inhabited by

Callendars and Turtons, who had been not one year in the country

but twenty and whose instincts were superhuman. For himself he made

no extravagant claims; she wished he would. It was the qualified

bray of the callow official, the “I am not perfect, but——” that

got on her nerves.

How gross he had been at Mr. Fielding’s—spoiling the talk and

walking off in the middle of the haunting song! As he drove them

away in the tum-tum, her irritation became unbearable, and she did

not realize that much of it was directed against herself. She

longed for an opportunity to fly out at him, and since he felt

cross too, and they were both in India, an opportunity soon

occurred. They had scarcely left the College grounds before she

heard him say to his mother, who was with him on the front seat,

“What was that about caves?” and she promptly opened fire.

“Mrs. Moore, your delightful doctor has decided on a picnic,

instead of a party in his house; we are to meet him out there—you,

myself, Mr. Fielding, Professor Godbole—exactly the same party.”

“Out where?” asked Ronny.

“The Marabar Caves.”

“Well, I’m blessed,” he murmured after a pause. “Did he descend to

any details?”

“He did not. If you had spoken to him, we could have arranged

them.”

He shook his head laughing.

“Have I said anything funny?”

“I was only thinking how the worthy doctor’s collar climbed up his

neck.”

“I thought you were discussing the caves.”

“So I am. Aziz was exquisitely dressed, from tie-pin to spats, but

he had forgotten his back collar-stud, and there you have the

Indian all over: inattention to detail; the fundamental slackness

that reveals the race. Similarly, to ‘meet’ in the caves as if they

were the clock at Charing Cross, when they’re miles from a station

and each other.”

“Have you been to them?”

“No, but I know all about them, naturally.”

“Oh naturally!”

“Are you too pledged to this expedition, mother?”

“Mother is pledged to nothing,” said Mrs. Moore, rather unexpectedly.

“Certainly not to this polo. Will you drive up to the bungalow

first, and drop me there, please? I prefer to rest.”

“Drop me too,” said Adela. “I don’t want to watch polo either, I’m

sure.”

“Simpler to drop the polo,” said Ronny. Tired and disappointed, he

quite lost self-control, and added in a loud lecturing voice, “I

won’t have you messing about with Indians any more! If you want to

go to the Marabar Caves, you’ll go under British auspices.”

“I’ve never heard of these caves, I don’t know what or where they

are,” said Mrs. Moore, “but I really can’t have”—she tapped the

cushion beside her—“so much quarrelling and tiresomeness!”

The young people were ashamed. They dropped her at the bungalow

and drove on together to the polo, feeling it was the least they

could do. Their crackling bad humour left them, but the heaviness

of their spirit remained; thunderstorms seldom clear the air. Miss

Quested was thinking over her own behaviour, and didn’t like it at

all. Instead of weighing Ronny and herself, and coming to a reasoned

conclusion about marriage, she had incidentally, in the course of

a talk about mangoes, remarked to mixed company that she didn’t

mean to stop in India. Which meant that she wouldn’t marry Ronny:

but what a way to announce it, what a way for a civilized girl to

behave! She owed him an explanation, but unfortunately there was

nothing to explain. The “thorough talk” so dear to her principles

and temperament had been postponed until too late. There seemed no

point in being disagreeable to him and formulating her complaints

against his character at this hour of the day, which was the

evening. . . . The polo took place on the Maidan near the entrance

of Chandrapore city. The sun was already declining and each of the

trees held a premonition of night. They walked away from the

governing group to a distant seat, and there, feeling that it was

his due and her own, she forced out of herself the undigested

remark: “We must have a thorough talk, Ronny, I’m afraid.”

“My temper’s rotten, I must apologize,” was his reply. “I didn’t

mean to order you and mother about, but of course the way those

Bengalis let you down this morning annoyed me, and I don’t want

that sort of thing to keep happening.”

“It’s nothing to do with them that I . . .”

“No, but Aziz would make some similar muddle over the caves. He

meant nothing by the invitation, I could tell by his voice; it’s

just their way of being pleasant.”

“It’s something very different, nothing to do with caves, that I

wanted to talk over with you.” She gazed at the colourless grass.

“I’ve finally decided we are not going to be married, my dear boy.”

The news hurt Ronny very much. He had heard Aziz announce that she

would not return to the country, but had paid no attention to the

remark, for he never dreamt that an Indian could be a channel of

communication between two English people. He controlled himself

and said gently, “You never said we should marry, my dear girl;

you never bound either yourself or me—don’t let this upset you.”

She felt ashamed. How decent he was! He might force his opinions

down her throat, but did not press her to an “engagement,” because

he believed, like herself, in the sanctity of personal relationships:

it was this that had drawn them together at their first meeting,

which had occurred among the grand scenery of the English Lakes.

Her ordeal was over, but she felt it should have been more painful

and longer. Adela will not marry Ronny. It seemed slipping away

like a dream. She said, “But let us discuss things; it’s all so

frightfully important, we mustn’t make false steps. I want next to

hear your point of view about me—it might help us both.”

His manner was unhappy and reserved. “I don’t much believe in this

discussing—besides, I’m so dead with all this extra work Mohurram’s

bringing, if you’ll excuse me.”

“I only want everything to be absolutely clear between us, and to

answer any questions you care to put to me on my conduct.”

“But I haven’t got any questions. You’ve acted within your rights,

you were quite right to come out and have a look at me doing my

work, it was an excellent plan, and anyhow it’s no use talking

further—we should only get up steam.” He felt angry and bruised;

he was too proud to tempt her back, but he did not consider that

she had behaved badly, because where his compatriots were concerned

he had a generous mind.

“I suppose that there is nothing else; it’s unpardonable of me to

have given you and your mother all this bother,” said Miss Quested

heavily, and frowned up at the tree beneath which they were sitting.

A little green bird was observing her, so brilliant and neat that

it might have hopped straight out of a shop. On catching her eye

it closed its own, gave a small skip and prepared to go to bed.

Some Indian wild bird. “Yes, nothing else,” she repeated, feeling

that a profound and passionate speech ought to have been delivered

by one or both of them. “We’ve been awfully British over it, but

I suppose that’s all right.”

“As we are British, I suppose it is.”

“Anyhow we’ve not quarrelled, Ronny.”

“Oh, that would have been too absurd. Why should we quarrel?”

“I think we shall keep friends.”

“I know we shall.”

“Quite so.”

As soon as they had exchanged this admission, a wave of relief

passed through them both, and then transformed itself into a wave

of tenderness, and passed back. They were softened by their own

honesty, and began to feel lonely and unwise. Experiences, not

character, divided them; they were not dissimilar, as humans go;

indeed, when compared with the people who stood nearest to them in

point of space they became practically identical. The Bhil who was

holding an officer’s polo pony, the Eurasian who drove the Nawab

Bahadur’s car, the Nawab Bahadur himself, the Nawab Bahadur’s

debauched grandson—none would have examined a difficulty so frankly

and coolly. The mere fact of examination caused it to diminish. Of

course they were friends, and for ever. “Do you know what the name

of that green bird up above us is?” she asked, putting her shoulder

rather nearer to his.

“Bee-eater.”

“Oh no, Ronny, it has red bars on its wings.”

“Parrot,” he hazarded.

“Good gracious no.”

The bird in question dived into the dome of the tree. It was of no

importance, yet they would have liked to identify it, it would

somehow have solaced their hearts.

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question

causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.

“McBryde has an illustrated bird book,” he said dejectedly. “I’m

no good at all at birds, in fact I’m useless at any information

outside my own job. It’s a great pity.”

“So am I. I’m useless at everything.”

“What do I hear?” shouted the Nawab Bahadur at the top of his

voice, causing both of them to start. “What most improbable

statement have I heard? An English lady useless? No, no, no, no,

no.” He laughed genially, sure, within limits, of his welcome.

“Hallo, Nawab Bahadur! Been watching the polo again?” said Ronny

tepidly.

“I have, sahib, I have.”

“How do you do?” said Adela, likewise pulling herself together.

She held out her hand. The old gentleman judged from so wanton a

gesture that she was new to his country, but he paid little heed.

Women who exposed their face became by that one act so mysterious

to him that he took them at the valuation of their men folk rather

than at his own. Perhaps they were not immoral, and anyhow they

were not his affair. On seeing the City Magistrate alone with a

maiden at twilight, he had borne down on them with hospitable

intent. He had a new little car, and wished to place it at their

disposal; the City Magistrate would decide whether the offer was

acceptable.

Ronny was by this time rather ashamed of his curtness to Aziz and

Godbole, and here was an opportunity of showing that he could treat

Indians with consideration when they deserved it. So he said to

Adela, with the same sad friendliness that he had employed when

discussing the bird, “Would half an hour’s spin entertain you at

all?”

“Oughtn’t we to get back to the bungalow.”

“Why?” He gazed at her.

“I think perhaps I ought to see your mother and discuss future

plans.”

“That’s as you like, but there’s no hurry, is there?”

“Let me take you to the bungalow, and first the little spin,” cried

the old man, and hastened to the car.

“He may show you some aspect of the country I can’t, and he’s a

real loyalist. I thought you might care for a bit of a change.”

Determined to give him no more trouble, she agreed, but her desire

to see India had suddenly decreased. There had been a factitious

element in it.

How should they seat themselves in the car? The elegant grandson

had to be left behind. The Nawab Bahadur got up in front, for he

had no intention of neighbouring an English girl. “Despite my

advanced years, I am learning to drive,” he said. “Man can learn

everything if he will but try.” And foreseeing a further difficulty,

he added, “I do not do the actual steering. I sit and ask my

chauffeur questions, and thus learn the reason for everything that

is done before I do it myself. By this method serious and I may

say ludicrous accidents, such as befell one of my compatriots

during that delightful reception at the English Club, are avoided.

Our good Panna Lal! I hope, sahib, that great damage was not done

to your flowers. Let us have our little spin down the Gangavati

road. Half one league onwards!” He fell asleep.

Ronny instructed the chauffeur to take the Marabar road rather than

the Gangavati, since the latter was under repair, and settled

himself down beside the lady he had lost. The car made a burring

noise and rushed along a chaussée that ran upon an embankment above

melancholy fields. Trees of a poor quality bordered the road,

indeed the whole scene was inferior, and suggested that the

country-side was too vast to admit of excellence. In vain did each

item in it call out, “Come, come.”

There was not enough god to go round. The two young people conversed

feebly and felt unimportant. When the darkness began, it seemed to

well out of the meagre vegetation, entirely covering the fields

each side of them before it brimmed over the road. Ronny’s face

grew dim—an event that always increased her esteem for his

character. Her hand touched his, owing to a jolt, and one of the

thrills so frequent in the animal kingdom passed between them, and

announced that all their difficulties were only a lovers’ quarrel.

Each was too proud to increase the pressure, but neither withdrew

it, and a spurious unity descended on them, as local and temporary

as the gleam that inhabits a firefly. It would vanish in a moment,

perhaps to reappear, but the darkness is alone durable. And the

night that encircled them, absolute as it seemed, was itself only

a spurious unity, being modified by the gleams of day that leaked

up round the edges of the earth, and by the stars.

They gripped . . . bump, jump, a swerve, two wheels lifted in the

air, breaks on, bump with tree at edge of embankment, standstill.

An accident. A slight one. Nobody hurt. The Nawab Bahadur awoke.

He cried out in Arabic, and violently tugged his beard.

“What’s the damage?” enquired Ronny, after the moment’s pause that

he permitted himself before taking charge of a situation. The

Eurasian, inclined to be flustered, rallied to the sound of his

voice, and, every inch an Englishman, replied, “You give me five

minutes’ time, I’ll take you any dam anywhere.”

“Frightened, Adela?” He released her hand.

“Not a bit.”

“I consider not to be frightened the height of folly,” cried the

Nawab Bahadur quite rudely.

“Well, it’s all over now, tears are useless,” said Ronny,

dismounting. “We had some luck butting that tree.”

“All over . . . oh yes, the danger is past, let us smoke cigarettes,

let us do anything we please. Oh yes . . . enjoy ourselves—oh my

merciful God . . .” His words died into Arabic again.

“Wasn’t the bridge. We skidded.”

“We didn’t skid,” said Adela, who had seen the cause of the

accident, and thought everyone must have seen it too. “We ran into

an animal.”

A loud cry broke from the old man: his terror was disproportionate

and ridiculous.

“An animal?”

“A large animal rushed up out of the dark on the right and hit us.”

“By Jove, she’s right,” Ronny exclaimed. “The paint’s gone.”

“By Jove, sir, your lady is right,” echoed the Eurasian. Just by

the hinges of the door was a dent, and the door opened with

difficulty.

“Of course I’m right. I saw its hairy back quite plainly.”

“I say, Adela, what was it?”

“I don’t know the animals any better than the birds here—too big

for a goat.”

“Exactly, too big for a goat . . .” said the old man.

Ronny said, “Let’s go into this; let’s look for its tracks.”

“Exactly; you wish to borrow this electric torch.”

The English people walked a few steps back into the darkness,

united and happy. Thanks to their youth and upbringing, they were

not upset by the accident. They traced back the writhing of the

tyres to the source of their disturbance. It was just after the

exit from a bridge; the animal had probably come up out of the

nullah. Steady and smooth ran the marks of the car, ribbons neatly

nicked with lozenges, then all went mad. Certainly some external

force had impinged, but the road had been used by too many objects

for any one track to be legible, and the torch created such high

lights and black shadows that they could not interpret what it

revealed. Moreover, Adela in her excitement knelt and swept her

skirts about, until it was she if anyone who appeared to have

attacked the car. The incident was a great relief to them both.

They forgot their abortive personal relationship, and felt

adventurous as they muddled about in the dust.

“I believe it was a buffalo,” she called to their host, who had

not accompanied them.

“Exactly.”

“Unless it was a hyena.”

Ronny approved this last conjecture. Hyenas prowl in nullahs and

headlights dazzle them.

“Excellent, a hyena,” said the Indian with an angry irony and a

gesture at the night. “Mr. Harris!”

“Half a mo-ment. Give me ten minutes’ time.”

“Sahib says hyena.”

“Don’t worry Mr. Harris. He saved us from a nasty smash. Harris,

well done!”

“A smash, sahib, that would not have taken place had he obeyed and

taken us Gangavati side, instead of Marabar.”

“My fault that. I told him to come this way because the road’s

better. Mr. Lesley has made it pukka right up to the hills.”

“Ah, now I begin to understand.” Seeming to pull himself together,

he apologized slowly and elaborately for the accident. Ronny

murmured, “Not at all,” but apologies were his due, and should have

started sooner: because English people are so calm at a crisis, it

is not to be assumed that they are unimportant. The Nawab Bahadur

had not come out very well.

At that moment a large car approached from the opposite direction.

Ronny advanced a few steps down the road, and with authority in

his voice and gesture stopped it. It bore the inscription “Mudkul

State” across its bonnet. All friskiness and friendliness, Miss

Derek sat inside.

“Mr. Heaslop, Miss Quested, what are you holding up an innocent

female for?”

“We’ve had a breakdown.”

“But how putrid!”

“We ran into a hyena!”

“How absolutely rotten!”

“Can you give us a lift?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Take me too,” said the Nawab Bahadur.

“Heh, what about me?” cried Mr. Harris.

“Now what’s all this? I’m not an omnibus,” said Miss Derek with

decision. “I’ve a harmonium and two dogs in here with me as it is.

I’ll take three of you if one’ll sit in front and nurse a pug. No

more.”

“I will sit in front,” said the Nawab Bahadur.

“Then hop in: I’ve no notion who you are.”

“Heh no, what about my dinner? I can’t be left alone all the

night.” Trying to look and feel like a European, the chauffeur

interposed aggressively. He still wore a topi, despite the darkness,

and his face, to which the Ruling Race had contributed little

beyond bad teeth, peered out of it pathetically, and seemed to say,

“What’s it all about? Don’t worry me so, you blacks and whites.

Here I am, stuck in dam India same as you, and you got to fit me

in better than this.”

“Nussu will bring you out some suitable dinner upon a bicycle,”

said the Nawab Bahadur, who had regained his usual dignity. “I

shall despatch him with all possible speed. Meanwhile, repair my

car.”

They sped off, and Mr. Harris, after a reproachful glance, squatted

down upon his hams. When English and Indians were both present, he

grew self-conscious, because he did not know to whom he belonged.

For a little he was vexed by opposite currents in his blood, then

they blended, and he belonged to no one but himself.

But Miss Derek was in tearing spirits. She had succeeded in stealing

the Mudkul car. Her Maharajah would be awfully sick, but she didn’t

mind, he could sack her if he liked. “I don’t believe in these

people letting you down,” she said. “If I didn’t snatch like the

devil, I should be nowhere. He doesn’t want the car, silly fool!

Surely it’s to the credit of his State I should be seen about in

it at Chandrapore during my leave. He ought to look at it that way.

Anyhow he’s got to look at it that way. My Maharani’s different—my

Maharani’s a dear. That’s her fox terrier, poor little devil. I

fished them out both with the driver. Imagine taking dogs to a

Chiefs’ Conference! As sensible as taking Chiefs, perhaps.” She

shrieked with laughter. “The harmonium—the harmonium’s my little

mistake, I own. They rather had me over the harmonium. I meant it

to stop on the train. Oh lor’!”

Ronny laughed with restraint. He did not approve of English people

taking service under the Native States, where they obtain a certain

amount of influence, but at the expense of the general prestige.

The humorous triumphs of a free lance are of no assistance to an

administrator, and he told the young lady that she would outdo

Indians at their own game if she went on much longer.

“They always sack me before that happens, and then I get another

job. The whole of India seethes with Maharanis and Ranis and Begums

who clamour for such as me.”

“Really. I had no idea.”

“How could you have any idea, Mr. Heaslop? What should he know

about Maharanis, Miss Quested? Nothing. At least I should hope

not.”

“I understand those big people are not particularly interesting,”

said Adela, quietly, disliking the young woman’s tone. Her hand

touched Ronny’s again in the darkness, and to the animal thrill

there was now added a coincidence of opinion.

“Ah, there you’re wrong. They’re priceless.”

“I would scarcely call her wrong,” broke out the Nawab Bahadur,

from his isolation on the front seat, whither they had relegated

him. “A Native State, a Hindu State, the wife of a ruler of a Hindu

State, may beyond doubt be a most excellent lady, and let it not

be for a moment supposed that I suggest anything against the

character of Her Highness the Maharani of Mudkul. But I fear she

will be uneducated, I fear she will be superstitious. Indeed, how

could she be otherwise? What opportunity of education has such a

lady had? Oh, superstition is terrible, terrible! oh, it is the

great defect in our Indian character!”—and as if to point his

criticism, the lights of the civil station appeared on a rise to

the right. He grew more and more voluble. “Oh, it is the duty of

each and every citizen to shake superstition off, and though I have

little experience of Hindu States, and none of this particular one,

namely Mudkul (the Ruler, I fancy, has a salute of but eleven

guns)—yet I cannot imagine that they have been as successful as

British India, where we see reason and orderliness spreading in

every direction, like a most health-giving flood!”

Miss Derek said “Golly!”

Undeterred by the expletive, the old man swept on. His tongue had

been loosed and his mind had several points to make. He wanted to

endorse Miss Quested’s remark that big people are not interesting,

because he was bigger himself than many an independent chief; at

the same time, he must neither remind nor inform her that he was

big, lest she felt she had committed a discourtesy. This was the

groundwork of his oration; worked in with it was his gratitude to

Miss Derek for the lift, his willingness to hold a repulsive dog

in his arms, and his general regret for the trouble he had caused

the human race during the evening. Also he wanted to be dropped

near the city to get hold of his cleaner, and to see what mischief

his grandson was up to. As he wove all these anxieties into a

single rope, he suspected that his audience felt no interest, and

that the City Magistrate fondled either maiden behind the cover of

the harmonium, but good breeding compelled him to continue; it was

nothing to him if they were bored, because he did not know what

boredom is, and it was nothing to him if they were licentious,

because God has created all races to be different. The accident

was over, and his life, equably useful, distinguished, happy, ran

on as before and expressed itself in streams of well-chosen words.

When this old geyser left them, Ronny made no comment, but talked

lightly about polo; Turton had taught him that it is sounder not

to discuss a man at once, and he reserved what he had to say on

the Nawab’s character until later in the evening. His hand, which

he had removed to say good-bye, touched Adela’s again; she caressed

it definitely, he responded, and their firm and mutual pressure

surely meant something. They looked at each other when they reached

the bungalow, for Mrs. Moore was inside it. It was for Miss Quested

to speak, and she said nervously, “Ronny, I should like to take

back what I said on the Maidan.” He assented, and they became

engaged to be married in consequence.

Neither had foreseen such a consequence. She had meant to revert

to her former condition of important and cultivated uncertainty,

but it had passed out of her reach at its appropriate hour. Unlike

the green bird or the hairy animal, she was labelled now. She felt

humiliated again, for she deprecated labels, and she felt too that

there should have been another scene between her lover and herself

at this point, something dramatic and lengthy. He was pleased

instead of distressed, he was surprised, but he had really nothing

to say. What indeed is there to say? To be or not to be married,

that was the question, and they had decided it in the affirmative.

“Come along and let’s tell the mater all this”—opening the

perforated zinc door that protected the bungalow from the swarms

of winged creatures. The noise woke the mater up. She had been

dreaming of the absent children who were so seldom mentioned, Ralph

and Stella, and did not at first grasp what was required of her.

She too had become used to thoughtful procrastination, and felt

alarmed when it came to an end.

When the announcement was over, he made a gracious and honest

remark. “Look here, both of you, see India if you like and as you

like—I know I made myself rather ridiculous at Fielding’s, but . . .

it’s different now. I wasn’t quite sure of myself.”

“My duties here are evidently finished, I don’t want to see India

now; now for my passage back,” was Mrs. Moore’s thought. She

reminded herself of all that a happy marriage means, and of her

own happy marriages, one of which had produced Ronny. Adela’s

parents had also been happily married, and excellent it was to see

the incident repeated by the younger generation. On and on! the

number of such unions would certainly increase as education spread

and ideals grew loftier, and characters firmer. But she was tired

by her visit to Government College, her feet ached, Mr. Fielding

had walked too fast and far, the young people had annoyed her in

the tum-tum, and given her to suppose they were breaking with each

other, and though it was all right now she could not speak as

enthusiastically of wedlock or of anything as she should have done.

Ronny was suited, now she must go home and help the others, if they

wished. She was past marrying herself, even unhappily; her function

was to help others, her reward to be informed that she was

sympathetic. Elderly ladies must not expect more than this.

They dined alone. There was much pleasant and affectionate talk

about the future. Later on they spoke of passing events, and Ronny

reviewed and recounted the day from his own point of view. It was

a different day from the women’s, because while they had enjoyed

themselves or thought, he had worked. Mohurram was approaching,

and as usual the Chandrapore Mohammedans were building paper towers

of a size too large to pass under the branches of a certain pepul

tree. One knew what happened next; the tower stuck, a Mohammedan

climbed up the pepul and cut the branch off, the Hindus protested,

there was a religious riot, and Heaven knew what, with perhaps the

troops sent for. There had been deputations and conciliation

committees under the auspices of Turton, and all the normal work

of Chandrapore had been hung up. Should the procession take another

route, or should the towers be shorter? The Mohammedans offered

the former, the Hindus insisted on the latter. The Collector had

favoured the Hindus, until he suspected that they had artificially

bent the tree nearer the ground. They said it sagged naturally.

Measurements, plans, an official visit to the spot. But Ronny had

not disliked his day, for it proved that the British were necessary

to India; there would certainly have been bloodshed without them.

His voice grew complacent again; he was here not to be pleasant

but to keep the peace, and now that Adela had promised to be his

wife, she was sure to understand.

“What does our old gentleman of the car think?” she asked, and her

negligent tone was exactly what he desired.

“Our old gentleman is helpful and sound, as he always is over

public affairs. You’ve seen in him our show Indian.”

“Have I really?”

“I’m afraid so. Incredible, aren’t they, even the best of them?

They’re all—they all forget their back collar studs sooner or

later. You’ve had to do with three sets of Indians to-day, the

Bhattacharyas, Aziz, and this chap, and it really isn’t a

coincidence that they’ve all let you down.”

“I like Aziz, Aziz is my real friend,” Mrs. Moore interposed.

“When the animal runs into us the Nawab loses his head, deserts

his unfortunate chauffeur, intrudes upon Miss Derek . . . no great

crimes, no great crimes, but no white man would have done it.”

“What animal?”

“Oh, we had a small accident on the Marabar road. Adela thinks it

was a hyena.”

“An accident?” she cried.

“Nothing; no one hurt. Our excellent host awoke much rattled from

his dreams, appeared to think it was our fault, and chanted exactly,

exactly.”

Mrs. Moore shivered, “A ghost!” But the idea of a ghost scarcely

passed her lips. The young people did not take it up, being occupied

with their own outlooks, and deprived of support it perished, or

was reabsorbed into the part of the mind that seldom speaks.

“Yes, nothing criminal,” Ronny summed up, “but there’s the native,

and there’s one of the reasons why we don’t admit him to our clubs,

and how a decent girl like Miss Derek can take service under

natives puzzles me. . . . But I must get on with my work. Krishna!”

Krishna was the peon who should have brought the files from his

office. He had not turned up, and a terrific row ensued. Ronny

stormed, shouted, howled, and only the experienced observer could

tell that he was not angry, did not much want the files, and only

made a row because it was the custom. Servants, quite understanding,

ran slowly in circles, carrying hurricane lamps. Krishna the earth,

Krishna the stars replied, until the Englishman was appeased by

their echoes, fined the absent peon eight annas, and sat down to

his arrears in the next room.

“Will you play Patience with your future mother-in-law, dear Adela,

or does it seem too tame?”

“I should like to—I don’t feel a bit excited—I’m just glad it’s

settled up at last, but I’m not conscious of vast changes. We are

all three the same people still.”

“That’s much the best feeling to have.” She dealt out the first

row of “demon.”

“I suppose so,” said the girl thoughtfully.

“I feared at Mr. Fielding’s that it might be settled the other way

. . . black knave on a red queen. . . .” They chatted gently about

the game.

Presently Adela said: “You heard me tell Aziz and Godbole I wasn’t

stopping in their country. I didn’t mean it, so why did I say it?

I feel I haven’t been—frank enough, attentive enough, or something.

It’s as if I got everything out of proportion. You have been so

very good to me, and I meant to be good when I sailed, but somehow

I haven’t been. . . . Mrs. Moore, if one isn’t absolutely honest,

what is the use of existing?”

She continued to lay out her cards. The words were obscure, but

she understood the uneasiness that produced them. She had

experienced it twice herself, during her own engagements—this vague

contrition and doubt. All had come right enough afterwards and

doubtless would this time—marriage makes most things right enough.

“I wouldn’t worry,” she said. “It’s partly the odd surroundings;

you and I keep on attending to trifles instead of what’s important;

we are what the people here call ‘new.’”

“You mean that my bothers are mixed up with India?”

“India’s——” She stopped.

“What made you call it a ghost?”

“Call what a ghost?”

“The animal thing that hit us. Didn’t you say ‘Oh, a ghost,’ in

passing.”

“I couldn’t have been thinking of what I was saying.”

“It was probably a hyena, as a matter of fact.”

“Ah, very likely.”

And they went on with their Patience. Down in Chandrapore the Nawab

Bahadur waited for his car. He sat behind his town house (a small

unfurnished building which he rarely entered) in the midst of the

little court that always improvises itself round Indians of

position. As if turbans were the natural product of darkness a

fresh one would occasionally froth to the front, incline itself

towards him, and retire. He was preoccupied, his diction was

appropriate to a religious subject. Nine years previously, when

first he had had a car, he had driven it over a drunken man and

killed him, and the man had been waiting for him ever since. The

Nawab Bahadur was innocent before God and the Law, he had paid

double the compensation necessary; but it was no use, the man

continued to wait in an unspeakable form, close to the scene of

his death. None of the English people knew of this, nor did the

chauffeur; it was a racial secret communicable more by blood than

speech. He spoke now in horror of the particular circumstances; he

had led others into danger, he had risked the lives of two innocent

and honoured guests. He repeated, “If I had been killed, what

matter? it must happen sometime; but they who trusted me——”

The company shuddered and invoked the mercy of God. Only Aziz held

aloof, because a personal experience restrained him: was it not by

despising ghosts that he had come to know Mrs. Moore? “You know,

Nureddin,” he whispered to the grandson—an effeminate youth whom

he seldom met, always liked, and invariably forgot—“you know, my

dear fellow, we Moslems simply must get rid of these superstitions,

or India will never advance. How long must I hear of the savage

pig upon the Marabar Road?” Nureddin looked down. Aziz continued:

“Your grandfather belongs to another generation, and I respect and

love the old gentleman, as you know. I say nothing against him,

only that it is wrong for us, because we are young. I want you to

promise me—Nureddin, are you listening?—not to believe in Evil

Spirits, and if I die (for my health grows very weak) to bring up

my three children to disbelieve in them too.” Nureddin smiled, and

a suitable answer rose to his pretty lips, but before he could make

it the car arrived, and his grandfather took him away.

The game of Patience up in the civil lines went on longer than

this. Mrs. Moore continued to murmur “Red ten on a black knave,”

Miss Quested to assist her, and to intersperse among the intricacies

of the play details about the hyena, the engagement, the Maharani

of Mudkul, the Bhattacharyas, and the day generally, whose rough

desiccated surface acquired as it receded a definite outline, as

India itself might, could it be viewed from the moon. Presently

the players went to bed, but not before other people had woken up

elsewhere, people whose emotions they could not share, and whose

existence they ignored. Never tranquil, never perfectly dark, the

night wore itself away, distinguished from other nights by two or

three blasts of wind, which seemed to fall perpendicularly out of

the sky and to bounce back into it, hard and compact, leaving no

freshness behind them: the hot weather was approaching.

CHAPTER IX

Aziz fell ill as he foretold—slightly ill. Three days later he lay

abed in his bungalow, pretending to be very ill. It was a touch of

fever, which he would have neglected if there was anything important

at the hospital. Now and then he groaned and thought he should die,

but did not think so for long, and a very little diverted him. It

was Sunday, always an equivocal day in the East, and an excuse for

slacking. He could hear church bells as he drowsed, both from the

civil station and from the missionaries out beyond the slaughter

house—different bells and rung with different intent, for one set

was calling firmly to Anglo-India, and the other feebly to mankind.

He did not object to the first set; the other he ignored, knowing

their inefficiency. Old Mr. Graysford and young Mr. Sorley made

converts during a famine, because they distributed food; but when

times improved they were naturally left alone again, and though

surprised and aggrieved each time this happened, they never learnt

wisdom. “No Englishman understands us except Mr. Fielding,” he

thought; “but how shall I see him again? If he entered this room

the disgrace of it would kill me.” He called to Hassan to clear

up, but Hassan, who was testing his wages by ringing them on the

step of the verandah, found it possible not to hear him; heard and

didn’t hear, just as Aziz had called and hadn’t called. “That’s

India all over . . . how like us . . . there we are . . .” He dozed

again, and his thoughts wandered over the varied surface of life.

Gradually they steadied upon a certain spot—the Bottomless Pit

according to missionaries, but he had never regarded it as more

than a dimple. Yes, he did want to spend an evening with some

girls, singing and all that, the vague jollity that would culminate

in voluptuousness. Yes, that was what he did want. How could it be

managed? If Major Callendar had been an Indian, he would have

remembered what young men are, and granted two or three days’ leave

to Calcutta without asking questions. But the Major assumed either

that his subordinates were made of ice, or that they repaired to

the Chandrapore bazaars—disgusting ideas both. It was only Mr.

Fielding who——

“Hassan!”

The servant came running.

“Look at those flies, brother;” and he pointed to the horrible mass

that hung from the ceiling. The nucleus was a wire which had been

inserted as a homage to electricity. Electricity had paid no

attention, and a colony of eye-flies had come instead and blackened

the coils with their bodies.

“Huzoor, those are flies.”

“Good, good, they are, excellent, but why have I called you?”

“To drive them elsewhere,” said Hassan, after painful thought.

“Driven elsewhere, they always return.”

“Huzoor.”

“You must make some arrangement against flies; that is why you are

my servant,” said Aziz gently.

Hassan would call the little boy to borrow the step-ladder from

Mahmoud Ali’s house; he would order the cook to light the Primus

stove and heat water; he would personally ascend the steps with a

bucket in his arms, and dip the end of the coil into it.

“Good, very good. Now what have you to do?”

“Kill flies.”

“Good. Do it.”

Hassan withdrew, the plan almost lodged in his head, and began to

look for the little boy. Not finding him, his steps grew slower,

and he stole back to his post on the verandah, but did not go on

testing his rupees, in case his master heard them clink. On

twittered the Sunday bells; the East had returned to the East via

the suburbs of England, and had become ridiculous during the

detour.

Aziz continued to think about beautiful women.

His mind here was hard and direct, though not brutal. He had learnt

all he needed concerning his own constitution many years ago,

thanks to the social order into which he had been born, and when

he came to study medicine he was repelled by the pedantry and fuss

with which Europe tabulates the facts of sex. Science seemed to

discuss everything from the wrong end. It didn’t interpret his

experiences when he found them in a German manual, because by being

there they ceased to be his experiences. What he had been told by

his father or mother or had picked up from servants—it was

information of that sort that he found useful, and handed on as

occasion offered to others.

But he must not bring any disgrace on his children by some silly

escapade. Imagine if it got about that he was not respectable! His

professional position too must be considered, whatever Major

Callendar thought. Aziz upheld the proprieties, though he did not

invest them with any moral halo, and it was here that he chiefly

differed from an Englishman. His conventions were social. There is

no harm in deceiving society as long as she does not find you out,

because it is only when she finds you out that you have harmed her;

she is not like a friend or God, who are injured by the mere

existence of unfaithfulness. Quite clear about this, he meditated

what type of lie he should tell to get away to Calcutta, and had

thought of a man there who could be trusted to send him a wire and

a letter that he could show to Major Callendar, when the noise of

wheels was heard in his compound. Someone had called to enquire.

The thought of sympathy increased his fever, and with a sincere

groan he wrapped himself in his quilt.

“Aziz, my dear fellow, we are greatly concerned,” said Hamidullah’s

voice. One, two, three, four bumps, as people sat down upon his

bed.

“When a doctor falls ill it is a serious matter,” said the voice

of Mr. Syed Mohammed, the assistant engineer.

“When an engineer falls ill, it is equally important,” said the

voice of Mr. Haq, a police inspector.

“Oh yes, we are all jolly important, our salaries prove it.”

“Dr. Aziz took tea with our Principal last Thursday afternoon,”

piped Rafi, the engineer’s nephew. “Professor Godbole, who also

attended, has sickened too, which seems rather a curious thing,

sir, does it not?”

Flames of suspicion leapt up in the breast of each man.

“Humbug!” exclaimed Hamidullah, in authoritative tones, quenching

them.

“Humbug, most certainly,” echoed the others, ashamed of themselves.

The wicked schoolboy, having failed to start a scandal, lost

confidence and stood up with his back to the wall.

“Is Professor Godbole ill?” enquired Aziz, penetrated by the news.

“I am sincerely sorry.” Intelligent and compassionate, his face

peeped out of the bright crimson folds of the quilt. “How do you

do, Mr. Syed Mohammed, Mr. Haq? How very kind of you to enquire

after my health! How do you do, Hamidullah? But you bring me bad

news. What is wrong with him, the excellent fellow?”

“Why don’t you answer, Rafi? You’re the great authority,” said his

uncle.

“Yes, Rafi’s the great man,” said Hamidullah, rubbing it in. “Rafi

is the Sherlock Holmes of Chandrapore. Speak up, Rafi.”

Less than the dust, the schoolboy murmured the word “Diarrhœa,”

but took courage as soon as it had been uttered, for it improved

his position. Flames of suspicion shot up again in the breasts of

his elders, though in a different direction. Could what was called

diarrhœa really be an early case of cholera?

“If this is so, this is a very serious thing: this is scarcely the

end of March. Why have I not been informed?” cried Aziz.

“Dr. Panna Lal attends him, sir.”

“Oh yes, both Hindus; there we have it; they hang together like

flies and keep everything dark. Rafi, come here. Sit down. Tell me

all the details. Is there vomiting also?”

“Oh yes indeed, sir, and the serious pains.”

“That settles it. In twenty-four hours he will be dead.”

Everybody looked and felt shocked, but Professor Godbole had

diminished his appeal by linking himself with a co-religionist. He

moved them less than when he had appeared as a suffering individual.

Before long they began to condemn him as a source of infection.

“All illness proceeds from Hindus,” Mr. Haq said. Mr. Syed Mohammed

had visited religious fairs, at Allahabad and at Ujjain, and

described them with biting scorn. At Allahabad there was flowing

water, which carried impurities away, but at Ujjain the little

river Sipra was banked up, and thousands of bathers deposited their

germs in the pool. He spoke with disgust of the hot sun, the

cow-dung and marigold flowers, and the encampment of saddhus, some

of whom strode stark naked through the streets. Asked what was the

name of the chief idol at Ujjain, he replied that he did not know,

he had disdained to enquire, he really could not waste his time

over such trivialities. His outburst took some time, and in his

excitement he fell into Punjabi (he came from that side) and was

unintelligible.

Aziz liked to hear his religion praised. It soothed the surface of

his mind, and allowed beautiful images to form beneath. When the

engineer’s noisy tirade was finished, he said, “That is exactly my

own view.” He held up his hand, palm outward, his eyes began to

glow, his heart to fill with tenderness. Issuing still farther from

his quilt, he recited a poem by Ghalib. It had no connection with

anything that had gone before, but it came from his heart and spoke

to theirs. They were overwhelmed by its pathos; pathos, they

agreed, is the highest quality in art; a poem should touch the

hearer with a sense of his own weakness, and should institute some

comparison between mankind and flowers. The squalid bedroom grew

quiet; the silly intrigues, the gossip, the shallow discontent were

stilled, while words accepted as immortal filled the indifferent

air. Not as a call to battle, but as a calm assurance came the

feeling that India was one; Moslem; always had been; an assurance

that lasted until they looked out of the door. Whatever Ghalib had

felt, he had anyhow lived in India, and this consolidated it for

them: he had gone with his own tulips and roses, but tulips and

roses do not go. And the sister kingdoms of the north—Arabia,

Persia, Ferghana, Turkestan—stretched out their hands as he sang,

sadly, because all beauty is sad, and greeted ridiculous Chandrapore,

where every street and house was divided against itself, and told

her that she was a continent and a unity.

Of the company, only Hamidullah had any comprehension of poetry.

The minds of the others were inferior and rough. Yet they listened

with pleasure, because literature had not been divorced from their

civilization. The police inspector, for instance, did not feel that

Aziz had degraded himself by reciting, nor break into the cheery

guffaw with which an Englishman averts the infection of beauty. He

just sat with his mind empty, and when his thoughts, which were

mainly ignoble, flowed back into it they had a pleasant freshness.

The poem had done no “good” to anyone, but it was a passing

reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale

between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna,

it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for

the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved. Aziz it

left thinking about women again, but in a different way: less

definite, more intense. Sometimes poetry had this effect on him,

sometimes it only increased his local desires, and he never knew

beforehand which effect would ensue: he could discover no rule for

this or for anything else in life.

Hamidullah had called in on his way to a worrying committee of

notables, nationalist in tendency, where Hindus, Moslems, two

Sikhs, two Parsis, a Jain, and a Native Christian tried to like

one another more than came natural to them. As long as someone

abused the English, all went well, but nothing constructive had

been achieved, and if the English were to leave India, the committee

would vanish also. He was glad that Aziz, whom he loved and whose

family was connected with his own, took no interest in politics,

which ruin the character and career, yet nothing can be achieved

without them. He thought of Cambridge—sadly, as of another poem

that had ended. How happy he had been there, twenty years ago!

Politics had not mattered in Mr. and Mrs. Bannister’s rectory.

There, games, work, and pleasant society had interwoven, and

appeared to be sufficient substructure for a national life. Here

all was wire-pulling and fear. Messrs. Syed Mohammed and Haq—he

couldn’t even trust them, although they had come in his carriage,

and the schoolboy was a scorpion. Bending down, he said, “Aziz,

Aziz, my dear boy, we must be going, we are already late. Get well

quickly, for I do not know what our little circle would do without

you.”

“I shall not forget those affectionate words,” replied Aziz.

“Add mine to them,” said the engineer.

“Thank you, Mr. Syed Mohammed, I will.”

“And mine,” “And, sir, accept mine,” cried the others, stirred each

according to his capacity towards goodwill. Little ineffectual

unquenchable flames! The company continued to sit on the bed and

to chew sugarcane, which Hassan had run for into the bazaar, and

Aziz drank a cup of spiced milk. Presently there was the sound of

another carriage. Dr. Panna Lal had arrived, driven by horrid Mr.

Ram Chand. The atmosphere of a sick-room was at once re-established,

and the invalid retired under his quilt.

“Gentlemen, you will excuse, I have come to enquire by Major

Callendar’s orders,” said the Hindu, nervous of the den of fanatics

into which his curiosity had called him.

“Here he lies,” said Hamidullah, indicating the prostrate form.

“Dr. Aziz, Dr, Aziz, I come to enquire.”

Aziz presented an expressionless face to the thermometer.

“Your hand also, please.” He took it, gazed at the flies on the

ceiling, and finally announced “Some temperature.”

“I think not much,” said Ram Chand, desirous of fomenting trouble.

“Some; he should remain in bed,” repeated Dr. Panna Lal, and shook

the thermometer down, so that its altitude remained for ever

unknown. He loathed his young colleague since the disasters with

Dapple, and he would have liked to do him a bad turn and report to

Major Callendar that he was shamming. But he might want a day in

bed himself soon,—besides, though Major Callendar always believed

the worst of natives, he never believed them when they carried

tales about one another. Sympathy seemed the safer course. “How is

stomach?” he enquired, “how head?” And catching sight of the empty

cup, he recommended a milk diet.

“This is a great relief to us, it is very good of you to call,

Doctor Sahib,” said Hamidullah, buttering him up a bit.

“It is only my duty.”

“We know how busy you are.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“And how much illness there is in the city.”

The doctor suspected a trap in this remark; if he admitted that

there was or was not illness, either statement might be used

against him. “There is always illness,” he replied, “and I am

always busy—it is a doctor’s nature.”

“He has not a minute, he is due double sharp at Government College

now,” said Ram Chand.

“You attend Professor Godbole there perhaps?”

The doctor looked professional and was silent.

“We hope his diarrhœa is ceasing.”

“He progresses, but not from diarrhœa.”

“We are in some anxiety over him—he and Dr. Aziz are great friends.

If you could tell us the name of his complaint we should be grateful

to you.”

After a cautious pause he said, “Hæmorrhoids.”

“And so much, my dear Rafi, for your cholera,” hooted Aziz, unable

to restrain himself.

“Cholera, cholera, what next, what now?” cried the doctor, greatly

fussed. “Who spreads such untrue reports about my patients?”

Hamidullah pointed to the culprit.

“I hear cholera, I hear bubonic plague, I hear every species of

lie. Where will it end, I ask myself sometimes. This city is full

of misstatements, and the originators of them ought to be discovered

and punished authoritatively.”

“Rafi, do you hear that? Now why do you stuff us up with all this

humbug?”

The schoolboy murmured that another boy had told him, also that

the bad English grammar the Government obliged them to use often

gave the wrong meaning for words, and so led scholars into mistakes.

“That is no reason you should bring a charge against a doctor,”

said Ram Chand.

“Exactly, exactly,” agreed Hamidullah, anxious to avoid an

unpleasantness. Quarrels spread so quickly and so far, and Messrs.

Syed Mohammed and Haq looked cross, and ready to fly out. “You must

apologize properly, Rafi, I can see your uncle wishes it,” he said.

“You have not yet said that you are sorry for the trouble you have

caused this gentleman by your carelessness.”

“It is only a boy,” said Dr. Panna Lal, appeased.

“Even boys must learn,” said Ram Chand.

“Your own son failing to pass the lowest standard, I think,” said

Syed Mohammed suddenly.

“Oh, indeed? Oh yes, perhaps. He has not the advantage of a relative

in the Prosperity Printing Press.”

“Nor you the advantage of conducting their cases in the Courts any

longer.”

Their voices rose. They attacked one another with obscure allusions

and had a silly quarrel. Hamidullah and the doctor tried to make

peace between them. In the midst of the din someone said, “I say!

Is he ill or isn’t he ill?” Mr. Fielding had entered unobserved.

All rose to their feet, and Hassan, to do an Englishman honour,

struck with a sugar-cane at the coil of flies.

Aziz said, “Sit down,” coldly. What a room! What a meeting! Squalor

and ugly talk, the floor strewn with fragments of cane and nuts,

and spotted with ink, the pictures crooked upon the dirty walls,

no punkah! He hadn’t meant to live like this or among these

third-rate people. And in his confusion he thought only of the

insignificant Rafi, whom he had laughed at, and allowed to be

teased. The boy must be sent away happy, or hospitality would have

failed, along the whole line.

“It is good of Mr. Fielding to condescend to visit our friend,”

said the police inspector. “We are touched by this great kindness.”

“Don’t talk to him like that, he doesn’t want it, and he doesn’t

want three chairs; he’s not three Englishmen,” he flashed. “Rafi,

come here. Sit down again. I’m delighted you could come with Mr.

Hamidullah, my dear boy; it will help me to recover, seeing you.”

“Forgive my mistakes,” said Rafi, to consolidate himself.

“Well, are you ill, Aziz, or aren’t you?” Fielding repeated.

“No doubt Major Callendar has told you that I am shamming.”

“Well, are you?” The company laughed, friendly and pleased. “An

Englishman at his best,” they thought; “so genial.”

“Enquire from Dr. Panna Lal.”

“You’re sure I don’t tire you by stopping?”

“Why, no! There are six people present in my small room already.

Please remain seated, if you will excuse the informality.” He

turned away and continued to address Rafi, who was terrified at

the arrival of his Principal, remembered that he had tried to

spread slander about him, and yearned to get away.

“He is ill and he is not ill,” said Hamidullah, offering a

cigarette. “And I suppose that most of us are in that same case.”

Fielding agreed; he and the pleasant sensitive barrister got on

well. They were fairly intimate and beginning to trust each other.

“The whole world looks to be dying, still it doesn’t die, so we

must assume the existence of a beneficent Providence.”

“Oh, that is true, how true!” said the policeman, thinking religion

had been praised.

“Does Mr. Fielding think it’s true?”

“Think which true? The world isn’t dying. I’m certain of that!”

“No, no—the existence of Providence.”

“Well, I don’t believe in Providence.”

“But how then can you believe in God?” asked Syed Mohammed.

“I don’t believe in God.”

A tiny movement as of “I told you so!” passed round the company,

and Aziz looked up for an instant, scandalized. “Is it correct that

most are atheists in England now?” Hamidullah enquired.

“The educated thoughtful people? I should say so, though they don’t

like the name. The truth is that the West doesn’t bother much over

belief and disbelief in these days. Fifty years ago, or even when

you and I were young, much more fuss was made.”

“And does not morality also decline?”

“It depends what you call—yes, yes, I suppose morality does

decline.”

“Excuse the question, but if this is the case, how is England

justified in holding India?”

There they were! Politics again. “It’s a question I can’t get my

mind on to,” he replied. “I’m out here personally because I needed

a job. I cannot tell you why England is here or whether she ought

to be here. It’s beyond me.”

“Well-qualified Indians also need jobs in the educational.”

“I guess they do; I got in first,” said Fielding, smiling.

“Then excuse me again—is it fair an Englishman should occupy one

when Indians are available? Of course I mean nothing personally.

Personally we are delighted you should be here, and we benefit

greatly by this frank talk.”

There is only one answer to a conversation of this type: “England

holds India for her good.” Yet Fielding was disinclined to give

it. The zeal for honesty had eaten him up. He said, “I’m delighted

to be here too—that’s my answer, there’s my only excuse. I can’t

tell you anything about fairness. It mayn’t have been fair I should

have been born. I take up some other fellow’s air, don’t I, whenever

I breathe? Still, I’m glad it’s happened, and I’m glad I’m out

here. However big a badmash one is—if one’s happy in consequence,

that is some justification.”

The Indians were bewildered. The line of thought was not alien to

them, but the words were too definite and bleak. Unless a sentence

paid a few compliments to Justice and Morality in passing, its

grammar wounded their ears and paralysed their minds. What they

said and what they felt were (except in the case of affection)

seldom the same. They had numerous mental conventions and when

these were flouted they found it very difficult to function.

Hamidullah bore up best. “And those Englishmen who are not delighted

to be in India—have they no excuse?” he asked.

“None. Chuck ’em out.”

“It may be difficult to separate them from the rest,” he laughed.

“Worse than difficult, wrong,” said Mr. Ram Chand. “No Indian

gentleman approves chucking out as a proper thing. Here we differ

from those other nations. We are so spiritual.”

“Oh that is true, how true!” said the police inspector.

“Is it true, Mr. Haq? I don’t consider us spiritual. We can’t

co-ordinate, we can’t co-ordinate, it only comes to that. We can’t

keep engagements, we can’t catch trains. What more than this is

the so-called spirituality of India? You and I ought to be at the

Committee of Notables, we’re not; our friend Dr. Lal ought to be

with his patients, he isn’t. So we go on, and so we shall continue

to go, I think, until the end of time.”

“It is not the end of time, it is scarcely ten-thirty, ha, ha!”

cried Dr. Panna Lal, who was again in confident mood. “Gentlemen,

if I may be allowed to say a few words, what an interesting talk,

also thankfulness and gratitude to Mr. Fielding in the first place

teaches our sons and gives them all the great benefits of his

experience and judgment——”

“Dr. Lal!”

“Dr. Aziz?”

“You sit on my leg.”

“I beg pardon, but some might say your leg kicks.”

“Come along, we tire the invalid in either case,” said Fielding,

and they filed out—four Mohammedans, two Hindus and the Englishman.

They stood on the verandah while their conveyances were summoned

out of various patches of shade.

“Aziz has a high opinion of you, he only did not speak because of

his illness.”

“I quite understand,” said Fielding, who was rather disappointed

with his call. The Club comment, “making himself cheap as usual,”

passed through his mind. He couldn’t even get his horse brought

up. He had liked Aziz so much at their first meeting, and had hoped

for developments.

CHAPTER X

The heat had leapt forward in the last hour, the street was deserted

as if a catastrophe had cleaned off humanity during the inconclusive

talk. Opposite Aziz’ bungalow stood a large unfinished house

belonging to two brothers, astrologers, and a squirrel hung

head-downwards on it, pressing its belly against burning scaffolding

and twitching a mangy tail. It seemed the only occupant of the

house, and the squeals it gave were in tune with the infinite, no

doubt, but not attractive except to other squirrels. More noises

came from a dusty tree, where brown birds creaked and floundered

about looking for insects; another bird, the invisible coppersmith,

had started his “ponk ponk.” It matters so little to the majority

of living beings what the minority, that calls itself human,

desires or decides. Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind

how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of England

concerned about England, but in the tropics the indifference is

more prominent, the inarticulate world is closer at hand and

readier to resume control as soon as men are tired. When the seven

gentlemen who had held such various opinions inside the bungalow

came out of it, they were aware of a common burden, a vague threat

which they called “the bad weather coming.” They felt that they

could not do their work, or would not be paid enough for doing it.

The space between them and their carriages, instead of being empty,

was clogged with a medium that pressed against their flesh, the

carriage cushions scalded their trousers, their eyes pricked, domes

of hot water accumulated under their head-gear and poured down

their cheeks. Salaaming feebly, they dispersed for the interior of

other bungalows, to recover their self-esteem and the qualities

that distinguished them from each other.

All over the city and over much of India the same retreat on the

part of humanity was beginning, into cellars, up hills, under

trees. April, herald of horrors, is at hand. The sun was returning

to his kingdom with power but without beauty—that was the sinister

feature. If only there had been beauty! His cruelty would have been

tolerable then. Through excess of light, he failed to triumph, he

also; in his yellowy-white overflow not only matter, but brightness

itself lay drowned. He was not the unattainable friend, either of

men or birds or other suns, he was not the eternal promise, the

never-withdrawn suggestion that haunts our consciousness; he was

merely a creature, like the rest, and so debarred from glory.

CHAPTER XI

Although the Indians had driven off, and Fielding could see his

horse standing in a small shed in the corner of the compound, no

one troubled to bring it to him. He started to get it himself, but

was stopped by a call from the house. Aziz was sitting up in bed,

looking dishevelled and sad. “Here’s your home,” he said

sardonically. “Here’s the celebrated hospitality of the East. Look

at the flies. Look at the chunam coming off the walls. Isn’t it

jolly? Now I suppose you want to be off, having seen an Oriental

interior.”

“Anyhow, you want to rest.”

“I can rest the whole day, thanks to worthy Dr. Lal. Major

Callendar’s spy, I suppose you know, but this time it didn’t work.

I am allowed to have a slight temperature.”

“Callendar doesn’t trust anyone, English or Indian: that’s his

character, and I wish you weren’t under him; but you are, and

that’s that.”

“Before you go, for you are evidently in a great hurry, will you

please unlock that drawer? Do you see a piece of brown paper at

the top?”

“Yes.”

“Open it.”

“Who is this?”

“She was my wife. You are the first Englishman she has ever come

before. Now put her photograph away.”

He was astonished, as a traveller who suddenly sees, between the

stones of the desert, flowers. The flowers have been there all the

time, but suddenly he sees them. He tried to look at the photograph,

but in itself it was just a woman in a sari, facing the world. He

muttered, “Really, I don’t know why you pay me this great

compliment, Aziz, but I do appreciate it.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, she was not a highly educated woman or even

beautiful, but put it away. You would have seen her, so why should

you not see her photograph?”

“You would have allowed me to see her?”

“Why not? I believe in the purdah, but I should have told her you

were my brother, and she would have seen you. Hamidullah saw her,

and several others.”

“Did she think they were your brothers?”

“Of course not, but the word exists and is convenient. All men are

my brothers, and as soon as one behaves as such he may see my

wife.”

“And when the whole world behaves as such, there will be no more

purdah?”

“It is because you can say and feel such a remark as that, that I

show you the photograph,” said Aziz gravely.

“It is beyond the power of most men. It is because you behave well

while I behave badly that I show it you. I never expected you to

come back just now when I called you. I thought, ‘He has certainly

done with me; I have insulted him.’ Mr. Fielding, no one can ever

realize how much kindness we Indians need, we do not even realize

it ourselves. But we know when it has been given. We do not forget,

though we may seem to. Kindness, more kindness, and even after that

more kindness. I assure you it is the only hope.” His voice seemed

to arise from a dream. Altering it, yet still deep below his normal

surface, he said, “We can’t build up India except on what we feel.

What is the use of all these reforms, and Conciliation Committees

for Mohurram, and shall we cut the tazia short or shall we carry

it another route, and Councils of Notables and official parties

where the English sneer at our skins?”

“It’s beginning at the wrong end, isn’t it? I know, but institutions

and the governments don’t.” He looked again at the photograph. The

lady faced the world at her husband’s wish and her own, but how

bewildering she found it, the echoing contradictory world!

“Put her away, she is of no importance, she is dead,” said Aziz

gently. “I showed her to you because I have nothing else to show.

You may look round the whole of my bungalow now, and empty

everything. I have no other secrets, my three children live away

with their grandmamma, and that is all.”

Fielding sat down by the bed, flattered at the trust reposed in

him, yet rather sad. He felt old. He wished that he too could be

carried away on waves of emotion. The next time they met, Aziz

might be cautious and standoffish. He realized this, and it made

him sad that he should realize it. Kindness, kindness, and more

kindness—yes, that he might supply, but was that really all that

the queer nation needed? Did it not also demand an occasional

intoxication of the blood? What had he done to deserve this outburst

of confidence, and what hostage could he give in exchange? He

looked back at his own life. What a poor crop of secrets it had

produced! There were things in it that he had shown to no one, but

they were so uninteresting, it wasn’t worth while lifting a purdah

on their account. He’d been in love, engaged to be married, lady

broke it off, memories of her and thoughts about her had kept him

from other women for a time; then indulgence, followed by repentance

and equilibrium. Meagre really except the equilibrium, and Aziz

didn’t want to have that confided to him—he would have called it

“everything ranged coldly on shelves.”

“I shall not really be intimate with this fellow,” Fielding thought,

and then “nor with anyone.” That was the corollary. And he had to

confess that he really didn’t mind, that he was content to help

people, and like them as long as they didn’t object, and if they

objected pass on serenely. Experience can do much, and all that he

had learnt in England and Europe was an assistance to him, and

helped him towards clarity, but clarity prevented him from

experiencing something else.

“How did you like the two ladies you met last Thursday?” he asked.

Aziz shook his head distastefully. The question reminded him of

his rash remark about the Marabar Caves.

“How do you like Englishwomen generally?”

“Hamidullah liked them in England. Here we never look at them. Oh

no, much too careful. Let’s talk of something else.”

“Hamidullah’s right: they are much nicer in England. There’s

something that doesn’t suit them out here.”

Aziz after another silence said, “Why are you not married?”

Fielding was pleased that he had asked. “Because I have more or

less come through without it,” he replied.

“I was thinking of telling you a little about myself some day if

I can make it interesting enough. The lady I liked wouldn’t marry

me—that is the main point, but that’s fifteen years ago and now

means nothing.”

“But you haven’t children.”

“None.”

“Excuse the following question: have you any illegitimate children?”

“No. I’d willingly tell you if I had.”

“Then your name will entirely die out.”

“It must.”

“Well.” He shook his head. “This indifference is what the Oriental

will never understand.”

“I don’t care for children.”

“Caring has nothing to do with it,” he said impatiently.

“I don’t feel their absence, I don’t want them weeping around my

death-bed and being polite about me afterwards, which I believe is

the general notion. I’d far rather leave a thought behind me than

a child. Other people can have children. No obligation, with

England getting so chock-a-block and overrunning India for jobs.”

“Why don’t you marry Miss Quested?”

“Good God! why, the girl’s a prig.”

“Prig, prig? Kindly explain. Isn’t that a bad word?”

“Oh, I don’t know her, but she struck me as one of the more pathetic

products of Western education. She depresses me.”

“But prig, Mr. Fielding? How’s that?”

“She goes on and on as if she’s at a lecture—trying ever so hard

to understand India and life, and occasionally taking a note.”

“I thought her so nice and sincere.”

“So she probably is,” said Fielding, ashamed of his roughness: any

suggestion that he should marry always does produce overstatements

on the part of the bachelor, and a mental breeze. “But I can’t

marry her if I wanted to, for she has just become engaged to the

City Magistrate.”

“Has she indeed? I am so glad!” he exclaimed with relief, for this

exempted him from the Marabar expedition: he would scarcely be

expected to entertain regular Anglo-Indians.

“It’s the old mother’s doing. She was afraid her dear boy would

choose for himself, so she brought out the girl on purpose, and

flung them together until it happened.”

“Mrs. Moore did not mention that to me among her plans.”

“I may have got it wrong—I’m out of club gossip. But anyhow they’re

engaged to be married.”

“Yes, you’re out of it, my poor chap,” he smiled. “No Miss Quested

for Mr. Fielding. However, she was not beautiful. She has

practically no breasts, if you come to think of it.”

He smiled too, but found a touch of bad taste in the reference to

a lady’s breasts.

“For the City Magistrate they shall be sufficient perhaps, and he

for her. For you I shall arrange a lady with breasts like mangoes.

. . .”

“No, you won’t.”

“I will not really, and besides your position makes it dangerous

for you.” His mind had slipped from matrimony to Calcutta. His face

grew grave. Fancy if he had persuaded the Principal to accompany

him there, and then got him into trouble! And abruptly he took up

a new attitude towards his friend, the attitude of the protector

who knows the dangers of India and is admonitory. “You can’t be

too careful in every way, Mr. Fielding; whatever you say or do in

this damned country there is always some envious fellow on the

look-out. You may be surprised to know that there were at least

three spies sitting here when you came to enquire. I was really a

good deal upset that you talked in that fashion about God. They

will certainly report it.”

“To whom?”

“That’s all very well, but you spoke against morality also, and

you said you had come to take other people’s jobs. All that was

very unwise. This is an awful place for scandal. Why, actually one

of your own pupils was listening.”

“Thanks for telling me that; yes, I must try and be more careful.

If I’m interested, I’m apt to forget myself. Still, it doesn’t do

real harm.”

“But speaking out may get you into trouble.”

“It’s often done so in the past.”

“There, listen to that! But the end of it might be that you lost

your job.”

“If I do, I do. I shall survive it. I travel light.”

“Travel light! You are a most extraordinary race,” said Aziz,

turning away as if he were going to sleep, and immediately turning

back again. “Is it your climate, or what?”

“Plenty of Indians travel light too—saddhus and such. It’s one of

the things I admire about your country. Any man can travel light

until he has a wife or children. That’s part of my case against

marriage. I’m a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your

three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.”

Aziz was charmed and interested, and turned the new idea over in

his mind. So this was why Mr. Fielding and a few others were so

fearless! They had nothing to lose. But he himself was rooted in

society and Islam. He belonged to a tradition which bound him, and

he had brought children into the world, the society of the future.

Though he lived so vaguely in this flimsy bungalow, nevertheless

he was placed, placed.

“I can’t be sacked from my job, because my job’s Education. I

believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand

other individuals. It’s the only thing I do believe in. At

Government College, I mix it up with trigonometry, and so on. When

I’m a saddhu, I shall mix it up with something else.”

He concluded his manifesto, and both were silent. The eye-flies

became worse than ever and danced close up to their pupils, or

crawled into their ears. Fielding hit about wildly. The exercise

made him hot, and he got up to go.

“You might tell your servant to bring my horse. He doesn’t seem to

appreciate my Urdu.”

“I know. I gave him orders not to. Such are the tricks we play on

unfortunate Englishmen. Poor Mr. Fielding! But I will release you

now. Oh dear! With the exception of yourself and Hamidullah, I have

no one to talk to in this place. You like Hamidullah, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

“Do you promise to come at once to us when you are in trouble?”

“I never can be in trouble.”

“There goes a queer chap, I trust he won’t come to grief,” thought

Aziz, left alone. His period of admiration was over, and he reacted

towards patronage. It was difficult for him to remain in awe of

anyone who played with all his cards on the table. Fielding, he

discovered on closer acquaintance, was truly warm-hearted and

unconventional, but not what can be called wise. That frankness of

speech in the presence of Ram Chand, Rafi and Co. was dangerous

and inelegant. It served no useful end.

But they were friends, brothers. That part was settled, their

compact had been subscribed by the photograph, they trusted one

another, affection had triumphed for once in a way. He dropped off

to sleep amid the happier memories of the last two hours—poetry of

Ghalib, female grace, good old Hamidullah, good Fielding, his

honoured wife and dear boys. He passed into a region where these

joys had no enemies but bloomed harmoniously in an eternal garden,

or ran down watershoots of ribbed marble, or rose into domes

whereunder were inscribed, black against white, the ninety-nine

attributes of God.

PART II: CAVES