Suddenly it stopped. It was as if the prayer had been heard, and the relics exhibited. “I apologize for my colleague,” said Mr. Amritrao, rather to everyone’s surprise. “He is an intimate friend of our client, and his feelings have carried him away.”
“Mr. Mahmoud Ali will have to apologize in person,” the Magistrate said.
“Exactly, sir, he must. But we had just learnt that Mrs. Moore had important evidence which she desired to give. She was hurried out of the country by her son before she could give it; and this unhinged Mr. Mahmoud Ali—coming as it does upon an attempt to intimidate our only other European witness, Mr. Fielding. Mr. Mahmoud Ali would have said nothing had not Mrs. Moore been claimed as a witness by the police.” He sat down.
“An extraneous element is being introduced into the case,” said the Magistrate. “I must repeat that as a witness Mrs. Moore does not exist. Neither you, Mr. Amritrao, nor, Mr. McBryde, you, have any right to surmise what that lady would have said. She is not here, and consequently she can say nothing.”
“Well, I withdraw my reference,” said the Superintendent wearily. “I would have done so fifteen minutes ago if I had been given the chance. She is not of the least importance to me.”
“I have already withdrawn it for the defence.” He added with forensic humour: “Perhaps you can persuade the gentlemen outside to withdraw it too,” for the refrain in the street continued.
“I am afraid my powers do not extend so far,” said Das, smiling.
So peace was restored, and when Adela came to give her evidence the atmosphere was quieter than it had been since the beginning of the trial. Experts were not surprised. There is no stay in your native. He blazes up over a minor point, and has nothing left for the crisis. What he seeks is a grievance, and this he had found in the supposed abduction of an old lady. He would now be less aggrieved when Aziz was deported.
But the crisis was still to come.
Adela had always meant to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, and she had rehearsed this as a difficult task—difficult, because her disaster in the cave was connected, though by a thread, with another part of her life, her engagement to Ronny. She had thought of love just before she went in, and had innocently asked Aziz what marriage was like, and she supposed that her question had roused evil in him. To recount this would have been incredibly painful, it was the one point she wanted to keep obscure; she was willing to give details that would have distressed other girls, but this story of her private failure she dared not allude to, and she dreaded being examined in public in case something came out. But as soon as she rose to reply, and heard the sound of her own voice, she feared not even that. A new and unknown sensation protected her, like magnificent armour. She didn’t think what had happened, or even remember in the ordinary way of memory, but she returned to the Marabar Hills, and spoke from them across a sort of darkness to Mr. McBryde. The fatal day recurred, in every detail, but now she was of it and not of it at the same time, and this double relation gave it indescribable splendour. Why had she thought the expedition “dull”? Now the sun rose again, the elephant waited, the pale masses of the rock flowed round her and presented the first cave; she entered, and a match was reflected in the polished walls—all beautiful and significant, though she had been blind to it at the time. Questions were asked, and to each she found the exact reply; yes, she had noticed the “Tank of the Dagger,” but not known its name; yes, Mrs. Moore had been tired after the first cave and sat in the shadow of a great rock, near the dried-up mud. Smoothly the voice in the distance proceeded, leading along the paths of truth, and the airs from the punkah behind her wafted her on. . . .
“. . . the prisoner and the guide took you on to the Kawa Dol, no one else being present?”
“The most wonderfully shaped of those hills. Yes.” As she spoke, she created the Kawa Dol, saw the niches up the curve of the stone, and felt the heat strike her face. And something caused her to add: “No one else was present to my knowledge. We appeared to be alone.”
“Very well, there is a ledge half-way up the hill, or broken ground rather, with caves scattered near the beginning of a nullah.”
“I know where you mean.”
“You went alone into one of those caves?”
“That is quite correct.”
“And the prisoner followed you.”
“Now we’ve got ’im,” from the Major.
She was silent. The court, the place of question, awaited her reply. But she could not give it until Aziz entered the place of answer.
“The prisoner followed you, didn’t he?” he repeated in the monotonous tones that they both used; they were employing agreed words throughout, so that this part of the proceedings held no surprises.
“May I have half a minute before I reply to that, Mr. McBryde?”
“Certainly.”
Her vision was of several caves. She saw herself in one, and she was also outside it, watching its entrance, for Aziz to pass in. She failed to locate him. It was the doubt that had often visited her, but solid and attractive, like the hills, “I am not——” Speech was more difficult than vision. “I am not quite sure.”
“I beg your pardon?” said the Superintendent of Police.
“I cannot be sure . . .”
“I didn’t catch that answer.” He looked scared, his mouth shut with a snap. “You are on that landing, or whatever we term it, and you have entered a cave. I suggest to you that the prisoner followed you.”
She shook her head.
“What do you mean, please?”
“No,” she said in a flat, unattractive voice. Slight noises began in various parts of the room, but no one yet understood what was occurring except Fielding. He saw that she was going to have a nervous breakdown and that his friend was saved.
“What is that, what are you saying? Speak up, please.” The Magistrate bent forward.
“I’m afraid I have made a mistake.”
“What nature of mistake?”
“Dr. Aziz never followed me into the cave.”
The Superintendent slammed down his papers, then picked them up and said calmly: “Now, Miss Quested, let us go on. I will read you the words of the deposition which you signed two hours later in my bungalow.”
“Excuse me, Mr. McBryde, you cannot go on. I am speaking to the witness myself. And the public will be silent. If it continues to talk, I have the court cleared. Miss Quested, address your remarks to me, who am the Magistrate in charge of the case, and realize their extreme gravity. Remember you speak on oath, Miss Quested.”
“Dr. Aziz never——”
“I stop these proceedings on medical grounds,” cried the Major on a word from Turton, and all the English rose from their chairs at once, large white figures behind which the little magistrate was hidden. The Indians rose too, hundreds of things went on at once, so that afterwards each person gave a different account of the catastrophe.
“You withdraw the charge? Answer me,” shrieked the representative of Justice.
Something that she did not understand took hold of the girl and pulled her through. Though the vision was over, and she had returned to the insipidity of the world, she remembered what she had learnt. Atonement and confession—they could wait. It was in hard prosaic tones that she said, “I withdraw everything.”
“Enough—sit down. Mr. McBryde, do you wish to continue in the face of this?”
The Superintendent gazed at his witness as if she was a broken machine, and said, “Are you mad?”
“Don’t question her, sir; you have no longer the right.”
“Give me time to consider——”
“Sahib, you will have to withdraw; this becomes a scandal,” boomed the Nawab Bahadur suddenly from the back of the court.
“He shall not,” shouted Mrs. Turton against the gathering tumult. “Call the other witnesses; we’re none of us safe——” Ronny tried to check her, and she gave him an irritable blow, then screamed insults at Adela.
The Superintendent moved to the support of his friends, saying nonchalantly to the Magistrate as he did so, “Right, I withdraw.”
Mr. Das rose, nearly dead with the strain. He had controlled the case, just controlled it. He had shown that an Indian can preside. To those who could hear him he said, “The prisoner is released without one stain on his character; the question of costs will be decided elsewhere.”
And then the flimsy framework of the court broke up, the shouts of derision and rage culminated, people screamed and cursed, kissed one another, wept passionately. Here were the English, whom their servants protected, there Aziz fainted in Hamidullah’s arms. Victory on this side, defeat on that—complete for one moment was the antithesis. Then life returned to its complexities, person after person struggled out of the room to their various purposes, and before long no one remained on the scene of the fantasy but the beautiful naked god. Unaware that anything unusual had occurred, he continued to pull the cord of his punkah, to gaze at the empty dais and the overturned special chairs, and rhythmically to agitate the clouds of descending dust.
Miss Quested had renounced her own people. Turning from them, she was drawn into a mass of Indians of the shopkeeping class, and carried by them towards the public exit of the court. The faint, indescribable smell of the bazaars invaded her, sweeter than a London slum, yet more disquieting: a tuft of scented cotton wool, wedged in an old man’s ear, fragments of pan between his black teeth, odorous powders, oils—the Scented East of tradition, but blended with human sweat as if a great king had been entangled in ignominy and could not free himself, or as if the heat of the sun had boiled and fried all the glories of the earth into a single mess. They paid no attention to her. They shook hands over her shoulder, shouted through her body—for when the Indian does ignore his rulers, he becomes genuinely unaware of their existence. Without part in the universe she had created, she was flung against Mr. Fielding.
“What do you want here?”
Knowing him for her enemy, she passed on into the sunlight without speaking.
He called after her, “Where are you going, Miss Quested?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t wander about like that. Where’s the car you came in?”
“I shall walk.”
“What madness . . . there’s supposed to be a riot on . . . the police have struck, no one knows what’ll happen next. Why don’t you keep to your own people?”
“Ought I to join them?” she said, without emotion. She felt emptied, valueless; there was no more virtue in her.
“You can’t, it’s too late. How are you to get round to the private entrance now? Come this way with me—quick—I’ll put you into my carriage.”
“Cyril, Cyril, don’t leave me,” called the shattered voice of Aziz.
“I’m coming back. . . . This way, and don’t argue.” He gripped her arm. “Excuse manners, but I don’t know anyone’s position. Send my carriage back any time to-morrow, if you please.”
“But where am I to go in it?”
“Where you like. How should I know your arrangements?”
The victoria was safe in a quiet side lane, but there were no horses, for the sais, not expecting the trial would end so abruptly, had led them away to visit a friend. She got into it obediently. The man could not leave her, for the confusion increased, and spots of it sounded fanatical. The main road through the bazaars was blocked, and the English were gaining the civil station by by-ways; they were caught like caterpillars, and could have been killed off easily.
“What—what have you been doing?” he cried suddenly. “Playing a game, studying life, or what?”
“Sir, I intend these for you, sir,” interrupted a student, running down the lane with a garland of jasmine on his arm.
“I don’t want the rubbish; get out.”
“Sir, I am a horse, we shall be your horses,” another cried as he lifted the shafts of the victoria into the air.
“Fetch my sais, Rafi; there’s a good chap.”
“No, sir, this is an honour for us.”
Fielding wearied of his students. The more they honoured him the less they obeyed. They lassoed him with jasmine and roses, scratched the splash-board against a wall, and recited a poem, the noise of which filled the lane with a crowd.
“Hurry up, sir; we pull you in a procession.” And, half affectionate, half impudent, they bundled him in.
“I don’t know whether this suits you, but anyhow you’re safe,” he remarked. The carriage jerked into the main bazaar, where it created some sensation. Miss Quested was so loathed in Chandrapore that her recantation was discredited, and the rumour ran that she had been stricken by the Deity in the middle of her lies. But they cheered when they saw her sitting by the heroic Principal (some addressed her as Mrs. Moore!), and they garlanded her to match him. Half gods, half guys, with sausages of flowers round their necks, the pair were dragged in the wake of Aziz’ victorious landau. In the applause that greeted them some derision mingled. The English always stick together! That was the criticism. Nor was it unjust. Fielding shared it himself, and knew that if some misunderstanding occurred, and an attack was made on the girl by his allies, he would be obliged to die in her defence. He didn’t want to die for her, he wanted to be rejoicing with Aziz.
Where was the procession going? To friends, to enemies, to Aziz’ bungalow, to the Collector’s bungalow, to the Minto Hospital where the Civil Surgeon would eat dust and the patients (confused with prisoners) be released, to Delhi, Simla. The students thought it was going to Government College. When they reached a turning, they twisted the victoria to the right, ran it by side lanes down a hill and through a garden gate into the mango plantation, and, as far as Fielding and Miss Quested were concerned, all was peace and quiet. The trees were full of glossy foliage and slim green fruit, the tank slumbered; and beyond it rose the exquisite blue arches of the garden-house. “Sir, we fetch the others; sir, it is a somewhat heavy load for our arms,” were heard. Fielding took the refugee to his office, and tried to telephone to McBryde. But this he could not do; the wires had been cut. All his servants had decamped. Once more he was unable to desert her. He assigned her a couple of rooms, provided her with ice and drinks and biscuits, advised her to lie down, and lay down himself—there was nothing else to do. He felt restless and thwarted as he listened to the retreating sounds of the procession, and his joy was rather spoilt by bewilderment. It was a victory, but such a queer one.
At that moment Aziz was crying, “Cyril, Cyril . . .” Crammed into a carriage with the Nawab Bahadur, Hamidullah, Mahmoud Ali, his own little boys, and a heap of flowers, he was not content; he wanted to be surrounded by all who loved him. Victory gave no pleasure, he had suffered too much. From the moment of his arrest he was done for, he had dropped like a wounded animal; he had despaired, not through cowardice, but because he knew that an Englishwoman’s word would always outweigh his own. “It is fate,” he said; and, “It is fate,” when he was imprisoned anew after Mohurram. All that existed, in that terrible time, was affection, and affection was all that he felt in the first painful moments of his freedom. “Why isn’t Cyril following? Let us turn back.” But the procession could not turn back. Like a snake in a drain, it advanced down the narrow bazaar towards the basin of the Maidan, where it would turn about itself, and decide on its prey.
“Forward, forward,” shrieked Mahmoud Ali, whose every utterance had become a yell. “Down with the Collector, down with the Superintendent of Police.”
“Mr. Mahmoud Ali, this is not wise,” implored the Nawab Bahadur: he knew that nothing was gained by attacking the English, who had fallen into their own pit and had better be left there; moreover, he had great possessions and deprecated anarchy.
“Cyril, again you desert,” cried Aziz.
“Yet some orderly demonstration is necessary,” said Hamidullah, “otherwise they will still think we are afraid.”
“Down with the Civil Surgeon . . . rescue Nureddin.”
“Nureddin?”
“They are torturing him.”
“Oh, my God . . .”—for this, too, was a friend.
“They are not. I will not have my grandson made an excuse for an attack on the hospital,” the old man protested.
“They are. Callendar boasted so before the trial. I heard through the tatties; he said, ‘I have tortured that nigger.’”
“Oh, my God, my God. . . . He called him a nigger, did he?”
“They put pepper instead of antiseptic on the wounds.”
“Mr. Mahmoud Ali, impossible; a little roughness will not hurt the boy, he needs discipline.”
“Pepper. Civil Surgeon said so. They hope to destroy us one by one; they shall fail.”
The new injury lashed the crowd to fury. It had been aimless hitherto, and had lacked a grievance. When they reached the Maidan and saw the sallow arcades of the Minto they shambled towards it howling. It was near midday. The earth and sky were insanely ugly, the spirit of evil again strode abroad. The Nawab Bahadur alone struggled against it, and told himself that the rumour must be untrue. He had seen his grandson in the ward only last week. But he too was carried forward over the new precipice. To rescue, to maltreat Major Callendar in revenge, and then was to come the turn of the civil station generally.
But disaster was averted, and averted by Dr. Panna Lal.
Dr. Panna Lal had offered to give evidence for the prosecution in the hope of pleasing the English, also because he hated Aziz. When the case broke down, he was in a very painful position. He saw the crash coming sooner than most people, slipped from the court before Mr. Das had finished, and drove Dapple off through the bazaars, in flight from the wrath to come. In the hospital he should be safe, for Major Callendar would protect him. But the Major had not come, and now things were worse than ever, for here was a mob, entirely desirous of his blood, and the orderlies were mutinous and would not help him over the back wall, or rather hoisted him and let him drop back, to the satisfaction of the patients. In agony he cried, “Man can but die the once,” and waddled across the compound to meet the invasion, salaaming with one hand and holding up a pale yellow umbrella in the other. “Oh, forgive me,” he whined as he approached the victorious landau. “Oh, Dr. Aziz, forgive the wicked lies I told.” Aziz was silent, the others thickened their throats and threw up their chins in token of scorn. “I was afraid, I was mislaid,” the suppliant continued. “I was mislaid here, there, and everywhere as regards your character. Oh, forgive the poor old hakim who gave you milk when ill! Oh, Nawab Bahadur, whoever merciful, is it my poor little dispensary you require? Take every cursed bottle.” Agitated, but alert, he saw them smile at his indifferent English, and suddenly he started playing the buffoon, flung down his umbrella, trod through it, and struck himself upon the nose. He knew what he was doing, and so did they. There was nothing pathetic or eternal in the degradation of such a man. Of ignoble origin, Dr. Panna Lal possessed nothing that could be disgraced, and he wisely decided to make the other Indians feel like kings, because it would put them into better tempers. When he found they wanted Nureddin, he skipped like a goat, he scuttled like a hen to do their bidding, the hospital was saved, and to the end of his life he could not understand why he had not obtained promotion on the morning’s work. “Promptness, sir, promptness similar to you,” was the argument he employed to Major Callendar when claiming it.
When Nureddin emerged, his face all bandaged, there was a roar of relief as though the Bastille had fallen. It was the crisis of the march, and the Nawab Bahadur managed to get the situation into hand. Embracing the young man publicly, he began a speech about Justice, Courage, Liberty, and Prudence, ranged under heads, which cooled the passion of the crowd. He further announced that he should give up his British-conferred title, and live as a private gentleman, plain Mr. Zulfiqar, for which reason he was instantly proceeding to his country seat. The landau turned, the crowd accompanied it, the crisis was over. The Marabar caves had been a terrible strain on the local administration; they altered a good many lives and wrecked several careers, but they did not break up a continent or even dislocate a district.
“We will have rejoicings to-night,” the old man said. “Mr. Hamidullah, I depute you to bring out our friends Fielding and Amritrao, and to discover whether the latter will require special food. The others will keep with me. We shall not go out to Dilkusha until the cool of the evening, of course. I do not know the feelings of other gentlemen; for my own part, I have a slight headache, and I wish I had thought to ask our good Panna Lal for aspirin.”
For the heat was claiming its own. Unable to madden, it stupefied, and before long most of the Chandrapore combatants were asleep. Those in the civil station kept watch a little, fearing an attack, but presently they too entered the world of dreams—that world in which a third of each man’s life is spent, and which is thought by some pessimists to be a premonition of eternity.
Evening approached by the time Fielding and Miss Quested met and had the first of their numerous curious conversations. He had hoped, when he woke up, to find someone had fetched her away, but the College remained isolated from the rest of the universe. She asked whether she could have “a sort of interview,” and, when he made no reply, said, “Have you any explanation of my extraordinary behaviour?”
“None,” he said curtly. “Why make such a charge if you were going to withdraw it?”
“Why, indeed.”
“I ought to feel grateful to you, I suppose, but——”
“I don’t expect gratitude. I only thought you might care to hear what I have to say.”
“Oh, well,” he grumbled, feeling rather schoolboyish. “I don’t think a discussion between us is desirable. To put it frankly, I belong to the other side in this ghastly affair.”
“Would it not interest you to hear my side?”
“Not much.”
“I shouldn’t tell you in confidence, of course. So you can hand on all my remarks to your side, for there is one great mercy that has come out of all to-day’s misery: I have no longer any secrets. My echo has gone—I call the buzzing sound in my ears an echo. You see, I have been unwell ever since that expedition to the caves, and possibly before it.”
The remark interested him rather; it was what he had sometimes suspected himself. “What kind of illness?” he enquired.
She touched her head at the side, then shook it.
“That was my first thought, the day of the arrest: hallucination.”
“Do you think that would be so?” she asked with great humility. “What should have given me an hallucination?”
“One of three things certainly happened in the Marabar,” he said, getting drawn into a discussion against his will. “One of four things. Either Aziz is guilty, which is what your friends think; or you invented the charge out of malice, which is what my friends think; or you have had an hallucination. I’m very much inclined”—getting up and striding about—“now that you tell me that you felt unwell before the expedition—it’s an important piece of evidence—I believe that you yourself broke the strap of the field-glasses; you were alone in that cave the whole time.”
“Perhaps. . . .”
“Can you remember when you first felt out of sorts?”
“When I came to tea with you there, in that garden-house.”
“A somewhat unlucky party. Aziz and old Godbole were both ill after it too.”
“I was not ill—it is far too vague to mention: it is all mixed up with my private affairs. I enjoyed the singing . . . but just about then a sort of sadness began that I couldn’t detect at the time . . . no, nothing as solid as sadness: living at half pressure expresses it best. Half pressure. I remember going on to polo with Mr. Heaslop at the Maidan. Various other things happened—it doesn’t matter what, but I was under par for all of them. I was certainly in that state when I saw the caves, and you suggest (nothing shocks or hurts me)—you suggest that I had an hallucination there, the sort of thing—though in an awful form—that makes some women think they’ve had an offer of marriage when none was made.”
“You put it honestly, anyhow.”
“I was brought up to be honest; the trouble is it gets me nowhere.”
Liking her better, he smiled and said, “It’ll get us to heaven.”
“Will it?”
“If heaven existed.”
“Do you not believe in heaven, Mr. Fielding, may I ask?” she said, looking at him shyly.
“I do not. Yet I believe that honesty gets us there.”
“How can that be?”
“Let us go back to hallucinations. I was watching you carefully through your evidence this morning, and if I’m right, the hallucination (what you call half pressure—quite as good a word) disappeared suddenly.”
She tried to remember what she had felt in court, but could not; the vision disappeared whenever she wished to interpret it. “Events presented themselves to me in their logical sequence,” was what she said, but it hadn’t been that at all.
“My belief—and of course I was listening carefully, in hope you would make some slip—my belief is that poor McBryde exorcised you. As soon as he asked you a straightforward question, you gave a straightforward answer, and broke down.”
“Exorcise in that sense. I thought you meant I’d seen a ghost.”
“I don’t go to that length!”
“People whom I respect very much believe in ghosts,” she said rather sharply. “My friend Mrs. Moore does.”
“She’s an old lady.”
“I think you need not be impolite to her, as well as to her son.”
“I did not intend to be rude. I only meant it is difficult, as we get on in life, to resist the supernatural. I’ve felt it coming on me myself. I still jog on without it, but what a temptation, at forty-five, to pretend that the dead live again; one’s own dead; no one else’s matter.”
“Because the dead don’t live again.”
“I fear not.”
“So do I.”
There was a moment’s silence, such as often follows the triumph of rationalism. Then he apologized handsomely enough for his behaviour to Heaslop at the club.
“What does Dr. Aziz say of me?” she asked, after another pause.
“He—he has not been capable of thought in his misery, naturally he’s very bitter,” said Fielding, a little awkward, because such remarks as Aziz had made were not merely bitter, they were foul. The underlying notion was, “It disgraces me to have been mentioned in connection with such a hag.” It enraged him that he had been accused by a woman who had no personal beauty; sexually, he was a snob. This had puzzled and worried Fielding. Sensuality, as long as it is straight-forward, did not repel him, but this derived sensuality—the sort that classes a mistress among motor-cars if she is beautiful, and among eye-flies if she isn’t—was alien to his own emotions, and he felt a barrier between himself and Aziz whenever it arose. It was, in a new form, the old, old trouble that eats the heart out of every civilization: snobbery, the desire for possessions, creditable appendages; and it is to escape this rather than the lusts of the flesh that saints retreat into the Himalayas. To change the subject, he said, “But let me conclude my analysis. We are agreed that he is not a villain and that you are not one, and we aren’t really sure that it was an hallucination. There’s a fourth possibility which we must touch on: was it somebody else?”
“The guide.”
“Exactly, the guide. I often think so. Unluckily Aziz hit him on the face, and he got a fright and disappeared. It is most unsatisfactory, and we hadn’t the police to help us, the guide was of no interest to them.”
“Perhaps it was the guide,” she said quietly; the question had lost interest for her suddenly.
“Or could it have been one of that gang of Pathans who have been drifting through the district?”
“Someone who was in another cave, and followed me when the guide was looking away? Possibly.”
At that moment Hamidullah joined them, and seemed not too pleased to find them closeted together. Like everyone else in Chandrapore, he could make nothing of Miss Quested’s conduct. He had overheard their last remark. “Hullo, my dear Fielding,” he said. “So I run you down at last. Can you come out at once to Dilkusha?”
“At once?”
“I hope to leave in a moment, don’t let me interrupt,” said Adela.
“The telephone has been broken; Miss Quested can’t ring up her friends,” he explained.
“A great deal has been broken, more than will ever be mended,” said the other. “Still, there should be some way of transporting this lady back to the civil lines. The resources of civilization are numerous.” He spoke without looking at Miss Quested, and he ignored the slight movement she made towards him with her hand.
Fielding, who thought the meeting might as well be friendly, said, “Miss Quested has been explaining a little about her conduct of this morning.”
“Perhaps the age of miracles has returned. One must be prepared for everything, our philosophers say.”
“It must have seemed a miracle to the onlookers,” said Adela, addressing him nervously. “The fact is that I realized before it was too late that I had made a mistake, and had just enough presence of mind to say so. That is all my extraordinary conduct amounts to.”
“All it amounts to, indeed,” he retorted, quivering with rage but keeping himself in hand, for he felt she might be setting another trap. “Speaking as a private individual, in a purely informal conversation, I admired your conduct, and I was delighted when our warm-hearted students garlanded you. But, like Mr. Fielding, I am surprised; indeed, surprise is too weak a word. I see you drag my best friend into the dirt, damage his health and ruin his prospects in a way you cannot conceive owing to your ignorance of our society and religion, and then suddenly you get up in the witness-box: ‘Oh no, Mr. McBryde, after all I am not quite sure, you may as well let him go.’ Am I mad? I keep asking myself. Is it a dream, and if so, when did it start? And without doubt it is a dream that has not yet finished. For I gather you have not done with us yet, and it is now the turn of the poor old guide who conducted you round the caves.”
“Not at all, we were only discussing possibilities,” interposed Fielding.
“An interesting pastime, but a lengthy one. There are one hundred and seventy million Indians in this notable peninsula, and of course one or other of them entered the cave. Of course some Indian is the culprit, we must never doubt that. And since, my dear Fielding, these possibilities will take you some time”—here he put his arm over the Englishman’s shoulder and swayed him to and fro gently—“don’t you think you had better come out to the Nawab Bahadur’s—or I should say to Mr. Zulfiqar’s, for that is the name he now requires us to call him by.”
“Gladly, in a minute . . .”
“I have just settled my movements,” said Miss Quested. “I shall go to the Dak Bungalow.”
“Not the Turtons’?” said Hamidullah, goggle-eyed. “I thought you were their guest.”
The Dak Bungalow of Chandrapore was below the average, and certainly servantless. Fielding, though he continued to sway with Hamidullah, was thinking on independent lines, and said in a moment: “I have a better idea than that, Miss Quested. You must stop here at the College. I shall be away at least two days, and you can have the place entirely to yourself, and make your plans at your convenience.”
“I don’t agree at all,” said Hamidullah, with every symptom of dismay. “The idea is a thoroughly bad one. There may quite well be another demonstration to-night, and suppose an attack is made on the College. You would be held responsible for this lady’s safety, my dear fellow.”
“They might equally attack the Dak Bungalow.”
“Exactly, but the responsibility there ceases to be yours.”
“Quite so. I have given trouble enough.”
“Do you hear? The lady admits it herself. It’s not an attack from our people I fear—you should see their orderly conduct at the hospital; what we must guard against is an attack secretly arranged by the police for the purpose of discrediting you. McBryde keeps plenty of roughs for this purpose, and this would be the very opportunity for him.”
“Never mind. She is not going to the Dak Bungalow,” said Fielding. He had a natural sympathy for the down-trodden—that was partly why he rallied from Aziz—and had become determined not to leave the poor girl in the lurch. Also, he had a new-born respect for her, consequent on their talk. Although her hard schoolmistressy manner remained, she was no longer examining life, but being examined by it; she had become a real person.
“Then where is she to go? We shall never have done with her!” For Miss Quested had not appealed to Hamidullah. If she had shown emotion in court, broke down, beat her breast, and invoked the name of God, she would have summoned forth his imagination and generosity—he had plenty of both. But while relieving the Oriental mind, she had chilled it, with the result that he could scarcely believe she was sincere, and indeed from his standpoint she was not. For her behaviour rested on cold justice and honesty; she had felt, while she recanted, no passion of love for those whom she had wronged. Truth is not truth in that exacting land unless there go with it kindness and more kindness and kindness again, unless the Word that was with God also is God. And the girl’s sacrifice—so creditable according to Western notions—was rightly rejected, because, though it came from her heart, it did not include her heart. A few garlands from students was all that India ever gave her in return.
“But where is she to have her dinner, where is she to sleep? I say here, here, and if she is hit on the head by roughs, she is hit on the head. That is my contribution. Well, Miss Quested?”
“You are very kind. I should have said yes, I think, but I agree with Mr. Hamidullah. I must give no more trouble to you. I believe my best plan is to return to the Turtons, and see if they will allow me to sleep, and if they turn me away I must go to the Dak. The Collector would take me in, I know, but Mrs. Turton said this morning that she would never see me again.” She spoke without bitterness, or, as Hamidullah thought, without proper pride. Her aim was to cause the minimum of annoyance.
“Far better stop here than expose yourself to insults from that preposterous woman.”
“Do you find her preposterous? I used to. I don’t now.”
“Well, here’s our solution,” said the barrister, who had terminated his slightly minatory caress and strolled to the window. “Here comes the City Magistrate. He comes in a third-class band-ghari for purposes of disguise, he comes unattended, but here comes the City Magistrate.”
“At last,” said Adela sharply, which caused Fielding to glance at her.
“He comes, he comes, he comes. I cringe. I tremble.”
“Will you ask him what he wants, Mr. Fielding?”
“He wants you, of course.”
“He may not even know I’m here.”
“I’ll see him first, if you prefer.”
When he had gone, Hamidullah said to her bitingly: “Really, really. Need you have exposed Mr. Fielding to this further discomfort? He is far too considerate.” She made no reply, and there was complete silence between them until their host returned.
“He has some news for you,” he said. “You’ll find him on the verandah. He prefers not to come in.”
“Does he tell me to come out to him?”
“Whether he tells you or not, you will go, I think,” said Hamidullah.
She paused, then said, “Perfectly right,” and then said a few words of thanks to the Principal for his kindness to her during the day.
“Thank goodness, that’s over,” he remarked, not escorting her to the verandah, for he held it unnecessary to see Ronny again.
“It was insulting of him not to come in.”
“He couldn’t very well after my behaviour to him at the Club. Heaslop doesn’t come out badly. Besides, Fate has treated him pretty roughly to-day. He has had a cable to the effect that his mother’s dead, poor old soul.”
“Oh, really. Mrs. Moore. I’m sorry,” said Hamidullah rather indifferently.
“She died at sea.”
“The heat, I suppose.”
“Presumably.”
“May is no month to allow an old lady to travel in.”
“Quite so. Heaslop ought never to have let her go, and he knows it. Shall we be off?”
“Let us wait until the happy couple leave the compound clear . . . they really are intolerable dawdling there. Ah well, Fielding, you don’t believe in Providence, I remember. I do. This is Heaslop’s punishment for abducting our witness in order to stop us establishing our alibi.”
“You go rather too far there. The poor old lady’s evidence could have had no value, shout and shriek Mahmoud Ali as he will. She couldn’t see through the Kawa Dol even if she had wanted to. Only Miss Quested could have saved him.”
“She loved Aziz, he says, also India, and he loved her.”
“Love is of no value in a witness, as a barrister ought to know. But I see there is about to be an Esmiss Esmoor legend at Chandrapore, my dear Hamidullah, and I will not impede its growth.”
The other smiled, and looked at his watch. They both regretted the death, but they were middle-aged men, who had invested their emotions elsewhere, and outbursts of grief could not be expected from them over a slight acquaintance. It’s only one’s own dead who matter. If for a moment the sense of communion in sorrow came to them, it passed. How indeed is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones? The soul is tired in a moment, and in fear of losing the little she does understand, she retreats to the permanent lines which habit or chance have dictated, and suffers there. Fielding had met the dead woman only two or three times, Hamidullah had seen her in the distance once, and they were far more occupied with the coming gathering at Dilkusha, the “victory” dinner, for which they would be most victoriously late.
They agreed not to tell Aziz about Mrs. Moore till the morrow, because he was fond of her, and the bad news might spoil his fun.
“Oh, this is unbearable!” muttered Hamidullah. For Miss Quested was back again.
“Mr. Fielding, has Ronny told you of this new misfortune?”
He bowed.
“Ah me!” She sat down, and seemed to stiffen into a monument.
“Heaslop is waiting for you, I think.”
“I do so long to be alone. She was my best friend, far more to me than to him. I can’t bear to be with Ronny . . . I can’t explain . . . Could you do me the very great kindness of letting me stop after all?”
Hamidullah swore violently in the vernacular.
“I should be pleased, but does Mr. Heaslop wish it?”
“I didn’t ask him, we are too much upset—it’s so complex, not like what unhappiness is supposed to be. Each of us ought to be alone, and think. Do come and see Ronny again.”
“I think he should come in this time,” said Fielding, feeling that this much was due to his own dignity. “Do ask him to come.”
She returned with him. He was half miserable, half arrogant—indeed, a strange mix-up—and broke at once into uneven speech. “I came to bring Miss Quested away, but her visit to the Turtons has ended, and there is no other arrangement so far, mine are bachelor quarters now——”
Fielding stopped him courteously. “Say no more, Miss Quested stops here. I only wanted to be assured of your approval. Miss Quested, you had better send for your own servant if he can be found, but I will leave orders with mine to do all they can for you, also I’ll let the Scouts know. They have guarded the College ever since it was closed, and may as well go on. I really think you’ll be as safe here as anywhere. I shall be back Thursday.”
Meanwhile Hamidullah, determined to spare the enemy no incidental pain, had said to Ronny: “We hear, sir, that your mother has died. May we ask where the cable came from?”
“Aden.”
“Ah, you were boasting she had reached Aden, in court.”
“But she died on leaving Bombay,” broke in Adela. “She was dead when they called her name this morning. She must have been buried at sea.”
Somehow this stopped Hamidullah, and he desisted from his brutality, which had shocked Fielding more than anyone else. He remained silent while the details of Miss Quested’s occupation of the College were arranged, merely remarking to Ronny, “It is clearly to be understood, sir, that neither Mr. Fielding nor any of us are responsible for this lady’s safety at Government College,” to which Ronny agreed. After that, he watched the semi-chivalrous behavings of the three English with quiet amusement; he thought Fielding had been incredibly silly and weak, and he was amazed by the younger people’s want of proper pride. When they were driving out to Dilkusha, hours late, he said to Amritrao, who accompanied them: “Mr. Amritrao, have you considered what sum Miss Quested ought to pay as compensation?”
“Twenty thousand rupees.”
No more was then said, but the remark horrified Fielding. He couldn’t bear to think of the queer honest girl losing her money and possibly her young man too. She advanced into his consciousness suddenly. And, fatigued by the merciless and enormous day, he lost his usual sane view of human intercourse, and felt that we exist not in ourselves, but in terms of each others’ minds—a notion for which logic offers no support and which had attacked him only once before, the evening after the catastrophe, when from the verandah of the club he saw the fists and fingers of the Marabar swell until they included the whole night sky.
“Aziz, are you awake?”
“No, so let us have a talk; let us dream plans for the future.”
“I am useless at dreaming.”
“Good night then, dear fellow.”
The Victory Banquet was over, and the revellers lay on the roof of plain Mr. Zulfiqar’s mansion, asleep, or gazing through mosquito nets at the stars. Exactly above their heads hung the constellation of the Lion, the disc of Regulus so large and bright that it resembled a tunnel, and when this fancy was accepted all the other stars seemed tunnels too.
“Are you content with our day’s work, Cyril?” the voice on his left continued.
“Are you?”
“Except that I ate too much. ‘How is stomach, how head?’—I say, Panna Lal and Callendar ’ll get the sack.”
“There’ll be a general move at Chandrapore.”
“And you’ll get promotion.”
“They can’t well move me down, whatever their feelings.”
“In any case we spend our holidays together, and visit Kashmir, possibly Persia, for I shall have plenty of money. Paid to me on account of the injury sustained by my character,” he explained with cynical calm. “While with me you shall never spend a single pie. This is what I have always wished, and as the result of my misfortunes it has come.”
“You have won a great victory . . .” began Fielding.
“I know, my dear chap, I know; your voice need not become so solemn and anxious. I know what you are going to say next: Let, oh let Miss Quested off paying, so that the English may say, ‘Here is a native who has actually behaved like a gentleman; if it was not for his black face we would almost allow him to join our club.’ The approval of your compatriots no longer interests me, I have become anti-British, and ought to have done so sooner, it would have saved me numerous misfortunes.”
“Including knowing me.”
“I say, shall we go and pour water on to Mohammed Latif’s face? He is so funny when this is done to him asleep.”
The remark was not a question but a full-stop. Fielding accepted it as such and there was a pause, pleasantly filled by a little wind which managed to brush the top of the house. The banquet, though riotous, had been agreeable, and now the blessings of leisure—unknown to the West, which either works or idles—descended on the motley company. Civilization strays about like a ghost here, revisiting the ruins of empire, and is to be found not in great works of art or mighty deeds, but in the gestures well-bred Indians make when they sit or lie down. Fielding, who had dressed up in native costume, learnt from his excessive awkwardness in it that all his motions were makeshifts, whereas when the Nawab Bahadur stretched out his hand for food or Nureddin applauded a song, something beautiful had been accomplished which needed no development. This restfulness of gesture—it is the Peace that passeth Understanding, after all, it is the social equivalent of Yoga. When the whirring of action ceases, it becomes visible, and reveals a civilization which the West can disturb but will never acquire. The hand stretches out for ever, the lifted knee has the eternity though not the sadness of the grave. Aziz was full of civilization this evening, complete, dignified, rather hard, and it was with diffidence that the other said: “Yes, certainly you must let off Miss Quested easily. She must pay all your costs, that is only fair, but do not treat her like a conquered enemy.”
“Is she wealthy? I depute you to find out.”
“The sums mentioned at dinner when you all got so excited—they would ruin her, they are perfectly preposterous. Look here . . .”
“I am looking, though it gets a bit dark. I see Cyril Fielding to be a very nice chap indeed and my best friend, but in some ways a fool. You think that by letting Miss Quested off easily I shall make a better reputation for myself and Indians generally. No, no. It will be put down to weakness and the attempt to gain promotion officially. I have decided to have nothing more to do with British India, as a matter of fact. I shall seek service in some Moslem State, such as Hyderabad, Bhopal, where Englishmen cannot insult me any more. Don’t counsel me otherwise.”
“In the course of a long talk with Miss Quested . . .”
“I don’t want to hear your long talks.”
“Be quiet. In the course of a long talk with Miss Quested I have begun to understand her character. It’s not an easy one, she being a prig. But she is perfectly genuine and very brave. When she saw she was wrong, she pulled herself up with a jerk and said so. I want you to realize what that means. All her friends around her, the entire British Raj pushing her forward. She stops, sends the whole thing to smithereens. In her place I should have funked it. But she stopped, and almost did she become a national heroine, but my students ran us down a side street before the crowd caught flame. Do treat her considerately. She really mustn’t get the worst of both worlds. I know what all these”—he indicated the shrouded forms on the roof—“will want, but you mustn’t listen to them. Be merciful. Act like one of your six Mogul Emperors, or all the six rolled into one.”
“Not even Mogul Emperors showed mercy until they received an apology.”
“She’ll apologize if that’s the trouble,” he cried, sitting up. “Look, I’ll make you an offer. Dictate to me whatever form of words you like, and this time to-morrow I’ll bring it back signed. This is not instead of any public apology she may make you in law. It’s an addition.”
“‘Dear Dr. Aziz, I wish you had come into the cave; I am an awful old hag, and it is my last chance.’ Will she sign that?”
“Well good night, good night, it’s time to go to sleep, after that.”
“Good night, I suppose it is.”
“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t make that kind of remark,” he continued after a pause. “It is the one thing in you I can’t put up with.”
“I put up with all things in you, so what is to be done?”
“Well, you hurt me by saying it; good night.”
There was silence, then dreamily but with deep feeling the voice said: “Cyril, I have had an idea which will satisfy your tender mind: I shall consult Mrs. Moore.” Opening his eyes, and beholding thousands of stars, he could not reply, they silenced him.
“Her opinion will solve everything; I can trust her so absolutely. If she advises me to pardon this girl, I shall do so. She will counsel me nothing against my real and true honour, as you might.”
“Let us discuss that to-morrow morning.”
“Is it not strange? I keep on forgetting she has left India. During the shouting of her name in court I fancied she was present. I had shut my eyes, I confused myself on purpose to deaden the pain. Now this very instant I forgot again. I shall be obliged to write. She is now far away, well on her way towards Ralph and Stella.”
“To whom?”
“To those other children.”
“I have not heard of other children.”
“Just as I have two boys and a girl, so has Mrs. Moore. She told me in the mosque.”
“I knew her so slightly.”
“I have seen her but three times, but I know she is an Oriental.”
“You are so fantastic. . . . Miss Quested, you won’t treat her generously; while over Mrs. Moore there is this elaborate chivalry. Miss Quested anyhow behaved decently this morning, whereas the old lady never did anything for you at all, and it’s pure conjecture that she would have come forward in your favour, it only rests on servants’ gossip. Your emotions never seem in proportion to their objects, Aziz.”
“Is emotion a sack of potatoes, so much the pound, to be measured out? Am I a machine? I shall be told I can use up my emotions by using them, next.”
“I should have thought you could. It sounds common sense. You can’t eat your cake and have it, even in the world of the spirit.”
“If you are right, there is no point in any friendship; it all comes down to give and take, or give and return, which is disgusting, and we had better all leap over this parapet and kill ourselves. Is anything wrong with you this evening that you grow so materialistic?”
“Your unfairness is worse than my materialism.”
“I see. Anything further to complain of?” He was good-tempered and affectionate but a little formidable. Imprisonment had made channels for his character, which would never fluctuate as widely now as in the past. “Because it is far better you put all your difficulties before me, if we are to be friends for ever. You do not like Mrs. Moore, and are annoyed because I do; however, you will like her in time.”
When a person, really dead, is supposed to be alive, an unhealthiness infects the conversation. Fielding could not stand the tension any longer and blurted out: “I’m sorry to say Mrs. Moore’s dead.”
But Hamidullah, who had been listening to all their talk, and did not want the festive evening spoilt, cried from the adjoining bed: “Aziz, he is trying to pull your leg; don’t believe him, the villain.”
“I do not believe him,” said Aziz; he was inured to practical jokes, even of this type.
Fielding said no more. Facts are facts, and everyone would learn of Mrs. Moore’s death in the morning. But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality. An experience of his own confirmed this. Many years ago he had lost a great friend, a woman, who believed in the Christian heaven, and assured him that after the changes and chances of this mortal life they would meet in it again. Fielding was a blank, frank atheist, but he respected every opinion his friend held: to do this is essential in friendship. And it seemed to him for a time that the dead awaited him, and when the illusion faded it left behind it an emptiness that was almost guilt: “This really is the end,” he thought, “and I gave her the final blow.” He had tried to kill Mrs. Moore this evening, on the roof of the Nawab Bahadur’s house; but she still eluded him, and the atmosphere remained tranquil. Presently the moon rose—the exhausted crescent that precedes the sun—and shortly after men and oxen began their interminable labour, and the gracious interlude, which he had tried to curtail, came to its natural conclusion.
Dead she was—committed to the deep while still on the southward track, for the boats from Bombay cannot point towards Europe until Arabia has been rounded; she was further in the tropics than ever achieved while on shore, when the sun touched her for the last time and her body was lowered into yet another India—the Indian Ocean. She left behind her sore discomfort, for a death gives a ship a bad name. Who was this Mrs. Moore? When Aden was reached, Lady Mellanby cabled, wrote, did all that was kind, but the wife of a Lieutenant-Governor does not bargain for such an experience; and she repeated: “I had only seen the poor creature for a few hours when she was taken ill; really this has been needlessly distressing, it spoils one’s home-coming.” A ghost followed the ship up the Red Sea, but failed to enter the Mediterranean. Somewhere about Suez there is always a social change: the arrangements of Asia weaken and those of Europe begin to be felt, and during the transition Mrs. Moore was shaken off. At Port Said the grey blustery north began. The weather was so cold and bracing that the passengers felt it must have broken in the land they had left, but it became hotter steadily there in accordance with its usual law.
The death took subtler and more lasting shapes in Chandrapore. A legend sprang up that an Englishman had killed his mother for trying to save an Indian’s life—and there was just enough truth in this to cause annoyance to the authorities. Sometimes it was a cow that had been killed—or a crocodile with the tusks of a boar had crawled out of the Ganges. Nonsense of this type is more difficult to combat than a solid lie. It hides in rubbish heaps and moves when no one is looking. At one period two distinct tombs containing Esmiss Esmoor’s remains were reported: one by the tannery, the other up near the goods station. Mr. McBryde visited them both and saw signs of the beginning of a cult—earthenware saucers and so on. Being an experienced official, he did nothing to irritate it, and after a week or so, the rash died down. “There’s propaganda behind all this,” he said, forgetting that a hundred years ago, when Europeans still made their home in the country-side and appealed to its imagination, they occasionally became local demons after death—not a whole god, perhaps, but part of one, adding an epithet or gesture to what already existed, just as the gods contribute to the great gods, and they to the philosophic Brahm.
Ronny reminded himself that his mother had left India at her own wish, but his conscience was not clear. He had behaved badly to her, and he had either to repent (which involved a mental overturn), or to persist in unkindness towards her. He chose the latter course. How tiresome she had been with her patronage of Aziz! What a bad influence upon Adela! And now she still gave trouble with ridiculous “tombs,” mixing herself up with natives. She could not help it, of course, but she had attempted similar exasperating expeditions in her lifetime, and he reckoned it against her. The young man had much to worry him—the heat, the local tension, the approaching visit of the Lieutenant-Governor, the problems of Adela—and threading them all together into a grotesque garland were these Indianizations of Mrs. Moore. What does happen to one’s mother when she dies? Presumably she goes to heaven, anyhow she clears out. Ronny’s religion was of the sterilized Public School brand, which never goes bad, even in the tropics. Wherever he entered, mosque, cave, or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook of the Fifth Form, and condemned as “weakening” any attempt to understand them. Pulling himself together, he dismissed the mater from his mind. In due time he and his half-brother and -sister would put up a tablet to her in the Northamptonshire church where she had worshipped, recording the dates of her birth and death and the fact that she had been buried at sea. This would be sufficient.
And Adela—she would have to depart too; he hoped she would have made the suggestion herself ere now. He really could not marry her—it would mean the end of his career. Poor lamentable Adela. . . . She remained at Government College, by Fielding’s courtesy—unsuitable and humiliating, but no one would receive her at the civil station. He postponed all private talk until the award against her was decided. Aziz was suing her for damages in the sub-judge’s court. Then he would ask her to release him. She had killed his love, and it had never been very robust; they would never have achieved betrothal but for the accident to the Nawab Bahadur’s car. She belonged to the callow academic period of his life which he had outgrown—Grasmere, serious talks and walks, that sort of thing.
The visit of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province formed the next stage in the decomposition of the Marabar. Sir Gilbert, though not an enlightened man, held enlightened opinions. Exempted by a long career in the Secretariate from personal contact with the peoples of India, he was able to speak of them urbanely, and to deplore racial prejudice. He applauded the outcome of the trial, and congratulated Fielding on having taken “the broad, the sensible, the only possible charitable view from the first. Speaking confidentially . . .” he proceeded. Fielding deprecated confidences, but Sir Gilbert insisted on imparting them; the affair had been “mishandled by certain of our friends up the hill” who did not realize that “the hands of the clock move forward, not back,” etc., etc. One thing he could guarantee: the Principal would receive a most cordial invitation to rejoin the club, and he begged, nay commanded him, to accept. He returned to his Himalayan altitudes well satisfied; the amount of money Miss Quested would have to pay, the precise nature of what had happened in the caves—these were local details, and did not concern him.
Fielding found himself drawn more and more into Miss Quested’s affairs. The College remained closed and he ate and slept at Hamidullah’s, so there was no reason she should not stop on if she wished. In her place he would have cleared out, sooner than submit to Ronny’s half-hearted and distracted civilities, but she was waiting for the hour-glass of her sojourn to run through. A house to live in, a garden to walk in during the brief moment of the cool—that was all she asked, and he was able to provide them. Disaster had shown her her limitations, and he realized now what a fine loyal character she was. Her humility was touching. She never repined at getting the worst of both worlds; she regarded it as the due punishment of her stupidity. When he hinted to her that a personal apology to Aziz might be seemly, she said sadly: “Of course. I ought to have thought of it myself, my instincts never help me. Why didn’t I rush up to him after the trial? Yes, of course I will write him an apology, but please will you dictate it?” Between them they concocted a letter, sincere, and full of moving phrases, but it was not moving as a letter. “Shall I write another?” she enquired. “Nothing matters if I can undo the harm I have caused. I can do this right, and that right; but when the two are put together they come wrong. That’s the defect of my character. I have never realized it until now. I thought that if I was just and asked questions I would come through every difficulty.” He replied: “Our letter is a failure for a simple reason which we had better face: you have no real affection for Aziz, or Indians generally.” She assented. “The first time I saw you, you were wanting to see India, not Indians, and it occurred to me: Ah, that won’t take us far. Indians know whether they are liked or not—they cannot be fooled here. Justice never satisfies them, and that is why the British Empire rests on sand.” Then she said: “Do I like anyone, though?” Presumably she liked Heaslop, and he changed the subject, for this side of her life did not concern him.
His Indian friends were, on the other hand, a bit above themselves. Victory, which would have made the English sanctimonious, made them aggressive. They wanted to develop an offensive, and tried to do so by discovering new grievances and wrongs, many of which had no existence. They suffered from the usual disillusion that attends warfare. The aims of battle and the fruits of conquest are never the same; the latter have their value and only the saint rejects them, but their hint of immortality vanishes as soon as they are held in the hand. Although Sir Gilbert had been courteous, almost obsequious, the fabric he represented had in no wise bowed its head. British officialism remained, as all-pervading and as unpleasant as the sun; and what was next to be done against it was not very obvious, even to Mahmoud Ali. Loud talk and trivial lawlessness were attempted, and behind them continued a genuine but vague desire for education. “Mr. Fielding, we must all be educated promptly.”
Aziz was friendly and domineering. He wanted Fielding to “give in to the East,” as he called it, and live in a condition of affectionate dependence upon it. “You can trust me, Cyril.” No question of that, and Fielding had no roots among his own people. Yet he really couldn’t become a sort of Mohammed Latif. When they argued about it something racial intruded—not bitterly, but inevitably, like the colour of their skins: coffee-colour versus pinko-grey. And Aziz would conclude: “Can’t you see that I’m grateful to you for your help and want to reward you?” And the other would retort: “If you want to reward me, let Miss Quested off paying.”
The insensitiveness about Adela displeased him. It would, from every point of view, be right to treat her generously, and one day he had the notion of appealing to the memory of Mrs. Moore. Aziz had this high and fantastic estimate of Mrs. Moore. Her death had been a real grief to his warm heart; he wept like a child and ordered his three children to weep also. There was no doubt that he respected and loved her. Fielding’s first attempt was a failure. The reply was: “I see your trick. I want revenge on them. Why should I be insulted and suffer and the contents of my pockets read and my wife’s photograph taken to the police station? Also I want the money—to educate my little boys, as I explained to her.” But he began to weaken, and Fielding was not ashamed to practise a little necromancy. Whenever the question of compensation came up, he introduced the dead woman’s name. Just as other propagandists invented her a tomb, so did he raise a questionable image of her in the heart of Aziz, saying nothing that he believed to be untrue, but producing something that was probably far from the truth. Aziz yielded suddenly. He felt it was Mrs. Moore’s wish that he should spare the woman who was about to marry her son, that it was the only honour he could pay her, and he renounced with a passionate and beautiful outburst the whole of the compensation money, claiming only costs. It was fine of him, and, as he foresaw, it won him no credit with the English. They still believed he was guilty, they believed it to the end of their careers, and retired Anglo-Indians in Tunbridge Wells or Cheltenham still murmur to each other: “That Marabar case which broke down because the poor girl couldn’t face giving her evidence—that was another bad case.”
When the affair was thus officially ended, Ronny, who was about to be transferred to another part of the Province, approached Fielding with his usual constraint and said: “I wish to thank you for the help you have given Miss Quested. She will not of course trespass on your hospitality further; she has as a matter of fact decided to return to England. I have just arranged about her passage for her. I understand she would like to see you.”
“I shall go round at once.”
On reaching the College, he found her in some upset. He learnt that the engagement had been broken by Ronny. “Far wiser of him,” she said pathetically. “I ought to have spoken myself, but I drifted on wondering what would happen. I would willingly have gone on spoiling his life through inertia—one has nothing to do, one belongs nowhere and becomes a public nuisance without realizing it.” In order to reassure him, she added: “I speak only of India. I am not astray in England. I fit in there—no, don’t think I shall do harm in England. When I am forced back there, I shall settle down to some career. I have sufficient money left to start myself, and heaps of friends of my own type. I shall be quite all right.” Then sighing: “But oh, the trouble I’ve brought on everyone here. . . . I can never get over it. My carefulness as to whether we should marry or not . . . and in the end Ronny and I part and aren’t even sorry. We ought never to have thought of marriage. Weren’t you amazed when our engagement was originally announced?”
“Not much. At my age one’s seldom amazed,” he said, smiling. “Marriage is too absurd in any case. It begins and continues for such very slight reasons. The social business props it up on one side, and the theological business on the other, but neither of them are marriage, are they? I’ve friends who can’t remember why they married, no more can their wives. I suspect that it mostly happens haphazard, though afterwards various noble reasons are invented. About marriage I am cynical.”
“I am not. This false start has been all my own fault. I was bringing to Ronny nothing that ought to be brought, that was why he rejected me really. I entered that cave thinking: Am I fond of him? I have not yet told you that, Mr. Fielding. I didn’t feel justified. Tenderness, respect, personal intercourse—I tried to make them take the place—of——”
“I no longer want love,” he said, supplying the word.
“No more do I. My experiences here have cured me. But I want others to want it.”
“But to go back to our first talk (for I suppose this is our last one)—when you entered that cave, who did follow you, or did no one follow you? Can you now say? I don’t like it left in air.”
“Let us call it the guide,” she said indifferently. “It will never be known. It’s as if I ran my finger along that polished wall in the dark, and cannot get further. I am up against something, and so are you. Mrs. Moore—she did know.”
“How could she have known what we don’t?”
“Telepathy, possibly.”
The pert, meagre word fell to the ground. Telepathy? What an explanation! Better withdraw it, and Adela did so. She was at the end of her spiritual tether, and so was he. Were there worlds beyond which they could never touch, or did all that is possible enter their consciousness? They could not tell. They only realized that their outlook was more or less similar, and found in this a satisfaction. Perhaps life is a mystery, not a muddle; they could not tell. Perhaps the hundred Indias which fuss and squabble so tiresomely are one, and the universe they mirror is one. They had not the apparatus for judging.
“Write to me when you get to England.”
“I shall, often. You have been excessively kind. Now that I’m going, I realize it. I wish I could do something for you in return, but I see you’ve all you want.”
“I think so,” he replied after a pause. “I have never felt more happy and secure out here. I really do get on with Indians, and they do trust me. It’s pleasant that I haven’t had to resign my job. It’s pleasant to be praised by an L.-G. Until the next earthquake I remain as I am.”
“Of course this death has been troubling me.”