A passage to India
Either none, or else tranquillity swallowed up everything, as it
appeared to do for Professor Godbole. Here was Aziz all shoddy and
odious, Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested both silly, and he himself and
Heaslop both decorous on the surface, but detestable really, and
detesting each other.
“Good-bye, Mr. Fielding, and thank you so much. . . . What lovely
College buildings!”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Moore.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Fielding. Such an interesting afternoon. . . .”
“Good-bye, Miss Quested.”
“Good-bye, Dr. Aziz.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Moore.”
“Good-bye, Dr. Aziz.”
“Good-bye, Miss Quested.” He pumped her hand up and down to show
that he felt at ease. “You’ll jolly jolly well not forget those
caves, won’t you? I’ll fix the whole show up in a jiffy.”
“Thank you. . .
Inspired by the devil to a final effort, he added, “What a shame
you leave India so soon! Oh, do reconsider your decision, do stay.”
“Good-bye, Professor Godbole,” she continued, suddenly agitated.
“It’s a shame we never heard you sing.”
“I may sing now,” he replied, and did.
His thin voice rose, and gave out one sound after another. At times
there seemed rhythm, at times there was the illusion of a Western
melody. But the ear, baffled repeatedly, soon lost any clue, and
wandered in a maze of noises, none harsh or unpleasant, none
intelligible. It was the song of an unknown bird. Only the servants
understood it. They began to whisper to one another. The man who
was gathering water chestnut came naked out of the tank, his lips
parted with delight, disclosing his scarlet tongue. The sounds
continued and ceased after a few moments as casually as they had
begun—apparently half through a bar, and upon the subdominant.
“Thanks so much: what was that?” asked Fielding.
“I will explain in detail. It was a religious song. I placed myself
in the position of a milkmaiden. I say to Shri Krishna, ‘Come! come
to me only.’ The god refuses to come. I grow humble and say: ‘Do
not come to me only. Multiply yourself into a hundred Krishnas,
and let one go to each of my hundred companions, but one, O Lord
of the Universe, come to me.’ He refuses to come. This is repeated
several times. The song is composed in a raga appropriate to the
present hour, which is the evening.”
“But He comes in some other song, I hope?” said Mrs. Moore gently.
“Oh no, he refuses to come,” repeated Godbole, perhaps not
understanding her question. “I say to Him, Come, come, come, come,
come, come. He neglects to come.”
Ronny’s steps had died away, and there was a moment of absolute
silence. No ripple disturbed the water, no leaf stirred.
CHAPTER VIII
Although Miss Quested had known Ronny well in England, she felt
well advised to visit him before deciding to be his wife. India
had developed sides of his character that she had never admired.
His self-complacency, his censoriousness, his lack of subtlety,
all grew vivid beneath a tropic sky; he seemed more indifferent
than of old to what was passing in the minds of his fellows, more
certain that he was right about them or that if he was wrong it
didn’t matter. When proved wrong, he was particularly exasperating;
he always managed to suggest that she needn’t have bothered to
prove it. The point she made was never the relevant point, her
arguments conclusive but barren, she was reminded that he had
expert knowledge and she none, and that experience would not help
her because she could not interpret it. A Public School, London
University, a year at a crammer’s, a particular sequence of posts
in a particular province, a fall from a horse and a touch of fever
were presented to her as the only training by which Indians and
all who reside in their country can be understood; the only training
she could comprehend, that is to say, for of course above Ronny
there stretched the higher realms of knowledge, inhabited by
Callendars and Turtons, who had been not one year in the country
but twenty and whose instincts were superhuman. For himself he made
no extravagant claims; she wished he would. It was the qualified
bray of the callow official, the “I am not perfect, but——” that
got on her nerves.
How gross he had been at Mr. Fielding’s—spoiling the talk and
walking off in the middle of the haunting song! As he drove them
away in the tum-tum, her irritation became unbearable, and she did
not realize that much of it was directed against herself. She
longed for an opportunity to fly out at him, and since he felt
cross too, and they were both in India, an opportunity soon
occurred. They had scarcely left the College grounds before she
heard him say to his mother, who was with him on the front seat,
“What was that about caves?” and she promptly opened fire.
“Mrs. Moore, your delightful doctor has decided on a picnic,
instead of a party in his house; we are to meet him out there—you,
myself, Mr. Fielding, Professor Godbole—exactly the same party.”
“Out where?” asked Ronny.
“The Marabar Caves.”
“Well, I’m blessed,” he murmured after a pause. “Did he descend to
any details?”
“He did not. If you had spoken to him, we could have arranged
them.”
He shook his head laughing.
“Have I said anything funny?”
“I was only thinking how the worthy doctor’s collar climbed up his
neck.”
“I thought you were discussing the caves.”
“So I am. Aziz was exquisitely dressed, from tie-pin to spats, but
he had forgotten his back collar-stud, and there you have the
Indian all over: inattention to detail; the fundamental slackness
that reveals the race. Similarly, to ‘meet’ in the caves as if they
were the clock at Charing Cross, when they’re miles from a station
and each other.”
“Have you been to them?”
“No, but I know all about them, naturally.”
“Oh naturally!”
“Are you too pledged to this expedition, mother?”
“Mother is pledged to nothing,” said Mrs. Moore, rather unexpectedly.
“Certainly not to this polo. Will you drive up to the bungalow
first, and drop me there, please? I prefer to rest.”
“Drop me too,” said Adela. “I don’t want to watch polo either, I’m
sure.”
“Simpler to drop the polo,” said Ronny. Tired and disappointed, he
quite lost self-control, and added in a loud lecturing voice, “I
won’t have you messing about with Indians any more! If you want to
go to the Marabar Caves, you’ll go under British auspices.”
“I’ve never heard of these caves, I don’t know what or where they
are,” said Mrs. Moore, “but I really can’t have”—she tapped the
cushion beside her—“so much quarrelling and tiresomeness!”
The young people were ashamed. They dropped her at the bungalow
and drove on together to the polo, feeling it was the least they
could do. Their crackling bad humour left them, but the heaviness
of their spirit remained; thunderstorms seldom clear the air. Miss
Quested was thinking over her own behaviour, and didn’t like it at
all. Instead of weighing Ronny and herself, and coming to a reasoned
conclusion about marriage, she had incidentally, in the course of
a talk about mangoes, remarked to mixed company that she didn’t
mean to stop in India. Which meant that she wouldn’t marry Ronny:
but what a way to announce it, what a way for a civilized girl to
behave! She owed him an explanation, but unfortunately there was
nothing to explain. The “thorough talk” so dear to her principles
and temperament had been postponed until too late. There seemed no
point in being disagreeable to him and formulating her complaints
against his character at this hour of the day, which was the
evening. . . . The polo took place on the Maidan near the entrance
of Chandrapore city. The sun was already declining and each of the
trees held a premonition of night. They walked away from the
governing group to a distant seat, and there, feeling that it was
his due and her own, she forced out of herself the undigested
remark: “We must have a thorough talk, Ronny, I’m afraid.”
“My temper’s rotten, I must apologize,” was his reply. “I didn’t
mean to order you and mother about, but of course the way those
Bengalis let you down this morning annoyed me, and I don’t want
that sort of thing to keep happening.”
“It’s nothing to do with them that I . . .”
“No, but Aziz would make some similar muddle over the caves. He
meant nothing by the invitation, I could tell by his voice; it’s
just their way of being pleasant.”
“It’s something very different, nothing to do with caves, that I
wanted to talk over with you.” She gazed at the colourless grass.
“I’ve finally decided we are not going to be married, my dear boy.”
The news hurt Ronny very much. He had heard Aziz announce that she
would not return to the country, but had paid no attention to the
remark, for he never dreamt that an Indian could be a channel of
communication between two English people. He controlled himself
and said gently, “You never said we should marry, my dear girl;
you never bound either yourself or me—don’t let this upset you.”
She felt ashamed. How decent he was! He might force his opinions
down her throat, but did not press her to an “engagement,” because
he believed, like herself, in the sanctity of personal relationships:
it was this that had drawn them together at their first meeting,
which had occurred among the grand scenery of the English Lakes.
Her ordeal was over, but she felt it should have been more painful
and longer. Adela will not marry Ronny. It seemed slipping away
like a dream. She said, “But let us discuss things; it’s all so
frightfully important, we mustn’t make false steps. I want next to
hear your point of view about me—it might help us both.”
His manner was unhappy and reserved. “I don’t much believe in this
discussing—besides, I’m so dead with all this extra work Mohurram’s
bringing, if you’ll excuse me.”
“I only want everything to be absolutely clear between us, and to
answer any questions you care to put to me on my conduct.”
“But I haven’t got any questions. You’ve acted within your rights,
you were quite right to come out and have a look at me doing my
work, it was an excellent plan, and anyhow it’s no use talking
further—we should only get up steam.” He felt angry and bruised;
he was too proud to tempt her back, but he did not consider that
she had behaved badly, because where his compatriots were concerned
he had a generous mind.
“I suppose that there is nothing else; it’s unpardonable of me to
have given you and your mother all this bother,” said Miss Quested
heavily, and frowned up at the tree beneath which they were sitting.
A little green bird was observing her, so brilliant and neat that
it might have hopped straight out of a shop. On catching her eye
it closed its own, gave a small skip and prepared to go to bed.
Some Indian wild bird. “Yes, nothing else,” she repeated, feeling
that a profound and passionate speech ought to have been delivered
by one or both of them. “We’ve been awfully British over it, but
I suppose that’s all right.”
“As we are British, I suppose it is.”
“Anyhow we’ve not quarrelled, Ronny.”
“Oh, that would have been too absurd. Why should we quarrel?”
“I think we shall keep friends.”
“I know we shall.”
“Quite so.”
As soon as they had exchanged this admission, a wave of relief
passed through them both, and then transformed itself into a wave
of tenderness, and passed back. They were softened by their own
honesty, and began to feel lonely and unwise. Experiences, not
character, divided them; they were not dissimilar, as humans go;
indeed, when compared with the people who stood nearest to them in
point of space they became practically identical. The Bhil who was
holding an officer’s polo pony, the Eurasian who drove the Nawab
Bahadur’s car, the Nawab Bahadur himself, the Nawab Bahadur’s
debauched grandson—none would have examined a difficulty so frankly