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.
