A passage to India
and coolly. The mere fact of examination caused it to diminish. Of
course they were friends, and for ever. “Do you know what the name
of that green bird up above us is?” she asked, putting her shoulder
rather nearer to his.
“Bee-eater.”
“Oh no, Ronny, it has red bars on its wings.”
“Parrot,” he hazarded.
“Good gracious no.”
The bird in question dived into the dome of the tree. It was of no
importance, yet they would have liked to identify it, it would
somehow have solaced their hearts.
But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question
causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.
“McBryde has an illustrated bird book,” he said dejectedly. “I’m
no good at all at birds, in fact I’m useless at any information
outside my own job. It’s a great pity.”
“So am I. I’m useless at everything.”
“What do I hear?” shouted the Nawab Bahadur at the top of his
voice, causing both of them to start. “What most improbable
statement have I heard? An English lady useless? No, no, no, no,
no.” He laughed genially, sure, within limits, of his welcome.
“Hallo, Nawab Bahadur! Been watching the polo again?” said Ronny
tepidly.
“I have, sahib, I have.”
“How do you do?” said Adela, likewise pulling herself together.
She held out her hand. The old gentleman judged from so wanton a
gesture that she was new to his country, but he paid little heed.
Women who exposed their face became by that one act so mysterious
to him that he took them at the valuation of their men folk rather
than at his own. Perhaps they were not immoral, and anyhow they
were not his affair. On seeing the City Magistrate alone with a
maiden at twilight, he had borne down on them with hospitable
intent. He had a new little car, and wished to place it at their
disposal; the City Magistrate would decide whether the offer was
acceptable.
Ronny was by this time rather ashamed of his curtness to Aziz and
Godbole, and here was an opportunity of showing that he could treat
Indians with consideration when they deserved it. So he said to
Adela, with the same sad friendliness that he had employed when
discussing the bird, “Would half an hour’s spin entertain you at
all?”
“Oughtn’t we to get back to the bungalow.”
“Why?” He gazed at her.
“I think perhaps I ought to see your mother and discuss future
plans.”
“That’s as you like, but there’s no hurry, is there?”
“Let me take you to the bungalow, and first the little spin,” cried
the old man, and hastened to the car.
“He may show you some aspect of the country I can’t, and he’s a
real loyalist. I thought you might care for a bit of a change.”
Determined to give him no more trouble, she agreed, but her desire
to see India had suddenly decreased. There had been a factitious
element in it.
How should they seat themselves in the car? The elegant grandson
had to be left behind. The Nawab Bahadur got up in front, for he
had no intention of neighbouring an English girl. “Despite my
advanced years, I am learning to drive,” he said. “Man can learn
everything if he will but try.” And foreseeing a further difficulty,
he added, “I do not do the actual steering. I sit and ask my
chauffeur questions, and thus learn the reason for everything that
is done before I do it myself. By this method serious and I may
say ludicrous accidents, such as befell one of my compatriots
during that delightful reception at the English Club, are avoided.
Our good Panna Lal! I hope, sahib, that great damage was not done
to your flowers. Let us have our little spin down the Gangavati
road. Half one league onwards!” He fell asleep.
Ronny instructed the chauffeur to take the Marabar road rather than
the Gangavati, since the latter was under repair, and settled
himself down beside the lady he had lost. The car made a burring
noise and rushed along a chaussée that ran upon an embankment above
melancholy fields. Trees of a poor quality bordered the road,
indeed the whole scene was inferior, and suggested that the
country-side was too vast to admit of excellence. In vain did each
item in it call out, “Come, come.”
There was not enough god to go round. The two young people conversed
feebly and felt unimportant. When the darkness began, it seemed to
well out of the meagre vegetation, entirely covering the fields
each side of them before it brimmed over the road. Ronny’s face
grew dim—an event that always increased her esteem for his
character. Her hand touched his, owing to a jolt, and one of the
thrills so frequent in the animal kingdom passed between them, and
announced that all their difficulties were only a lovers’ quarrel.
Each was too proud to increase the pressure, but neither withdrew
it, and a spurious unity descended on them, as local and temporary
as the gleam that inhabits a firefly. It would vanish in a moment,
perhaps to reappear, but the darkness is alone durable. And the
night that encircled them, absolute as it seemed, was itself only
a spurious unity, being modified by the gleams of day that leaked
up round the edges of the earth, and by the stars.
They gripped . . . bump, jump, a swerve, two wheels lifted in the
air, breaks on, bump with tree at edge of embankment, standstill.
An accident. A slight one. Nobody hurt. The Nawab Bahadur awoke.
He cried out in Arabic, and violently tugged his beard.
“What’s the damage?” enquired Ronny, after the moment’s pause that
he permitted himself before taking charge of a situation. The
Eurasian, inclined to be flustered, rallied to the sound of his
voice, and, every inch an Englishman, replied, “You give me five
minutes’ time, I’ll take you any dam anywhere.”
“Frightened, Adela?” He released her hand.
“Not a bit.”
“I consider not to be frightened the height of folly,” cried the
Nawab Bahadur quite rudely.
“Well, it’s all over now, tears are useless,” said Ronny,
dismounting. “We had some luck butting that tree.”
“All over . . . oh yes, the danger is past, let us smoke cigarettes,
let us do anything we please. Oh yes . . . enjoy ourselves—oh my
merciful God . . .” His words died into Arabic again.
“Wasn’t the bridge. We skidded.”
“We didn’t skid,” said Adela, who had seen the cause of the
accident, and thought everyone must have seen it too. “We ran into
an animal.”
A loud cry broke from the old man: his terror was disproportionate
and ridiculous.
“An animal?”
“A large animal rushed up out of the dark on the right and hit us.”
“By Jove, she’s right,” Ronny exclaimed. “The paint’s gone.”
“By Jove, sir, your lady is right,” echoed the Eurasian. Just by
the hinges of the door was a dent, and the door opened with
difficulty.
“Of course I’m right. I saw its hairy back quite plainly.”
“I say, Adela, what was it?”
“I don’t know the animals any better than the birds here—too big
for a goat.”
“Exactly, too big for a goat . . .” said the old man.
Ronny said, “Let’s go into this; let’s look for its tracks.”
“Exactly; you wish to borrow this electric torch.”
The English people walked a few steps back into the darkness,
united and happy. Thanks to their youth and upbringing, they were
not upset by the accident. They traced back the writhing of the
tyres to the source of their disturbance. It was just after the
exit from a bridge; the animal had probably come up out of the
nullah. Steady and smooth ran the marks of the car, ribbons neatly
nicked with lozenges, then all went mad. Certainly some external
force had impinged, but the road had been used by too many objects
for any one track to be legible, and the torch created such high
lights and black shadows that they could not interpret what it
revealed. Moreover, Adela in her excitement knelt and swept her
skirts about, until it was she if anyone who appeared to have
attacked the car. The incident was a great relief to them both.
They forgot their abortive personal relationship, and felt
adventurous as they muddled about in the dust.
“I believe it was a buffalo,” she called to their host, who had
not accompanied them.
“Exactly.”
“Unless it was a hyena.”
Ronny approved this last conjecture. Hyenas prowl in nullahs and
headlights dazzle them.
“Excellent, a hyena,” said the Indian with an angry irony and a
gesture at the night. “Mr. Harris!”
“Half a mo-ment. Give me ten minutes’ time.”
“Sahib says hyena.”
“Don’t worry Mr. Harris. He saved us from a nasty smash. Harris,
well done!”
“A smash, sahib, that would not have taken place had he obeyed and
taken us Gangavati side, instead of Marabar.”
“My fault that. I told him to come this way because the road’s
better. Mr. Lesley has made it pukka right up to the hills.”
“Ah, now I begin to understand.” Seeming to pull himself together,
he apologized slowly and elaborately for the accident. Ronny
murmured, “Not at all,” but apologies were his due, and should have
started sooner: because English people are so calm at a crisis, it
is not to be assumed that they are unimportant. The Nawab Bahadur
had not come out very well.
At that moment a large car approached from the opposite direction.
Ronny advanced a few steps down the road, and with authority in
his voice and gesture stopped it. It bore the inscription “Mudkul
State” across its bonnet. All friskiness and friendliness, Miss
Derek sat inside.
“Mr. Heaslop, Miss Quested, what are you holding up an innocent
female for?”
“We’ve had a breakdown.”
“But how putrid!”
“We ran into a hyena!”
“How absolutely rotten!”
“Can you give us a lift?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Take me too,” said the Nawab Bahadur.
“Heh, what about me?” cried Mr. Harris.
“Now what’s all this? I’m not an omnibus,” said Miss Derek with
decision. “I’ve a harmonium and two dogs in here with me as it is.
I’ll take three of you if one’ll sit in front and nurse a pug. No
more.”
“I will sit in front,” said the Nawab Bahadur.
“Then hop in: I’ve no notion who you are.”
“Heh no, what about my dinner? I can’t be left alone all the
night.” Trying to look and feel like a European, the chauffeur
interposed aggressively. He still wore a topi, despite the darkness,
and his face, to which the Ruling Race had contributed little
beyond bad teeth, peered out of it pathetically, and seemed to say,
“What’s it all about? Don’t worry me so, you blacks and whites.
Here I am, stuck in dam India same as you, and you got to fit me
in better than this.”
“Nussu will bring you out some suitable dinner upon a bicycle,”
said the Nawab Bahadur, who had regained his usual dignity. “I
shall despatch him with all possible speed. Meanwhile, repair my
car.”
They sped off, and Mr. Harris, after a reproachful glance, squatted
down upon his hams. When English and Indians were both present, he
grew self-conscious, because he did not know to whom he belonged.
For a little he was vexed by opposite currents in his blood, then
they blended, and he belonged to no one but himself.
But Miss Derek was in tearing spirits. She had succeeded in stealing
the Mudkul car. Her Maharajah would be awfully sick, but she didn’t
mind, he could sack her if he liked. “I don’t believe in these
people letting you down,” she said. “If I didn’t snatch like the
devil, I should be nowhere. He doesn’t want the car, silly fool!
Surely it’s to the credit of his State I should be seen about in
it at Chandrapore during my leave. He ought to look at it that way.
Anyhow he’s got to look at it that way. My Maharani’s different—my
Maharani’s a dear. That’s her fox terrier, poor little devil. I
fished them out both with the driver. Imagine taking dogs to a
Chiefs’ Conference! As sensible as taking Chiefs, perhaps.” She
shrieked with laughter. “The harmonium—the harmonium’s my little
mistake, I own. They rather had me over the harmonium. I meant it
to stop on the train. Oh lor’!”