A passage to India
you leave the club, from which you do very well to resign, you will
express some detestation of the crime, and you will apologize to
Mr. Heaslop.”
“Are you speaking to me officially, sir?”
The Collector, who never spoke otherwise, was so infuriated that
he lost his head. He cried, “Leave this room at once, and I deeply
regret that I demeaned myself to meet you at the station. You have
sunk to the level of your associates; you are weak, weak, that is
what is wrong with you——”
“I want to leave the room, but cannot while this gentleman prevents
me,” said Fielding lightly; the subaltern had got across his path.
“Let him go,” said Ronny, almost in tears.
It was the only appeal that could have saved the situation. Whatever
Heaslop wished must be done. There was a slight scuffle at the
door, from which Fielding was propelled, a little more quickly than
is natural, into the room where the ladies were playing cards.
“Fancy if I’d fallen or got angry,” he thought. Of course he was
a little angry. His peers had never offered him violence or called
him weak before, besides Heaslop had heaped coals of fire on his
head. He wished he had not picked the quarrel over poor suffering
Heaslop, when there were cleaner issues at hand.
However, there it was, done, muddled through, and to cool himself
and regain mental balance he went on to the upper verandah for a
moment, where the first object he saw was the Marabar Hills. At
this distance and hour they leapt into beauty; they were Monsalvat,
Walhalla, the towers of a cathedral, peopled with saints and
heroes, and covered with flowers. What miscreant lurked in them,
presently to be detected by the activities of the law? Who was the
guide, and had he been found yet? What was the “echo” of which the
girl complained? He did not know, but presently he would know.
Great is information, and she shall prevail. It was the last moment
of the light, and as he gazed at the Marabar Hills they seemed to
move graciously towards him like a queen, and their charm became
the sky’s. At the moment they vanished they were everywhere, the
cool benediction of the night descended, the stars sparkled, and
the whole universe was a hill. Lovely, exquisite moment—but passing
the Englishman with averted face and on swift wings. He experienced
nothing himself; it was as if someone had told him there was such
a moment, and he was obliged to believe. And he felt dubious and
discontented suddenly, and wondered whether he was really and truly
successful as a human being. After forty years’ experience, he had
learnt to manage his life and make the best of it on advanced
European lines, had developed his personality, explored his
limitations, controlled his passions—and he had done it all without
becoming either pedantic or worldly. A creditable achievement, but
as the moment passed, he felt he ought to have been working at
something else the whole time,—he didn’t know at what, never would
know, never could know, and that was why he felt sad.
CHAPTER XXI
Dismissing his regrets, as inappropriate to the matter in hand, he
accomplished the last section of the day by riding off to his new
allies. He was glad that he had broken with the club, for he would
have picked up scraps of gossip there, and reported them down in
the city, and he was glad to be denied this opportunity. He would
miss his billiards, and occasional tennis, and cracks with McBryde,
but really that was all, so light did he travel. At the entrance
of the bazaars, a tiger made his horse shy—a youth dressed up as
a tiger, the body striped brown and yellow, a mask over the face.
Mohurram was working up. The city beat a good many drums, but
seemed good-tempered. He was invited to inspect a small tazia—a
flimsy and frivolous erection, more like a crinoline than the tomb
of the grandson of the Prophet, done to death at Kerbela. Excited
children were pasting coloured paper over its ribs. The rest of
the evening he spent with the Nawab Bahadur, Hamidullah, Mahmoud
Ali, and others of the confederacy. The campaign was also working
up. A telegram had been sent to the famous Amritrao, and his
acceptance received. Application for bail was to be renewed—it
could not well be withheld now that Miss Quested was out of danger.
The conference was serious and sensible, but marred by a group of
itinerant musicians, who were allowed to play in the compound. Each
held a large earthenware jar, containing pebbles, and jerked it up
and down in time to a doleful chant. Distracted by the noise, he
suggested their dismissal, but the Nawab Bahadur vetoed it; he said
that musicians, who had walked many miles, might bring good luck.
Late at night, he had an inclination to tell Professor Godbole of
the tactical and moral error he had made in being rude to Heaslop,
and to hear what he would say. But the old fellow had gone to bed,
and slipped off unmolested to his new job in a day or two: he
always did possess the knack of slipping off.
CHAPTER XXII
Adela lay for several days in the McBrydes’ bungalow. She had been
touched by the sun, also hundreds of cactus spines had to be picked
out of her flesh. Hour after hour Miss Derek and Mrs. McBryde
examined her through magnifying glasses, always coming on fresh
colonies, tiny hairs that might snap off and be drawn into the
blood if they were neglected. She lay passive beneath their fingers,
which developed the shock that had begun in the cave. Hitherto she
had not much minded whether she was touched or not: her senses were
abnormally inert and the only contact she anticipated was that of
mind. Everything now was transferred to the surface of her body,
which began to avenge itself, and feed unhealthily. People seemed
very much alike, except that some would come close while others
kept away. “In space things touch, in time things part,” she
repeated to herself while the thorns were being extracted—her brain
so weak that she could not decide whether the phrase was a
philosophy or a pun.
They were kind to her, indeed over-kind, the men too respectful,
the women too sympathetic; whereas Mrs. Moore, the only visitor
she wanted, kept away. No one understood her trouble, or knew why
she vibrated between hard commonsense and hysteria. She would begin
a speech as if nothing particular had happened. “I went into this
detestable cave,” she would say dryly, “and I remember scratching
the wall with my finger-nail, to start the usual echo, and then as
I was saying there was this shadow, or sort of shadow, down the
entrance tunnel, bottling me up. It seemed like an age, but I
suppose the whole thing can’t have lasted thirty seconds really.
I hit at him with the glasses, he pulled me round the cave by the
strap, it broke, I escaped, that’s all. He never actually touched
me once. It all seems such nonsense.” Then her eyes would fill with
tears. “Naturally I’m upset, but I shall get over it.” And then
she would break down entirely, and the women would feel she was
one of themselves and cry too, and men in the next room murmur:
“Good God, good God!” No one realized that she thought tears vile,
a degradation more subtle than anything endured in the Marabar, a
negation of her advanced outlook and the natural honesty of her
mind. Adela was always trying to “think the incident out,” always
reminding herself that no harm had been done. There was “the
shock,” but what is that? For a time her own logic would convince
her, then she would hear the echo again, weep, declare she was
unworthy of Ronny, and hope her assailant would get the maximum
penalty. After one of these bouts, she longed to go out into the
bazaars and ask pardon from everyone she met, for she felt in some
vague way that she was leaving the world worse than she found it.
She felt that it was her crime, until the intellect, reawakening,
pointed out to her that she was inaccurate here, and set her again
upon her sterile round.
If only she could have seen Mrs. Moore! The old lady had not been
well either, and was disinclined to come out, Ronny reported. And
consequently the echo flourished, raging up and down like a nerve
in the faculty of her hearing, and the noise in the cave, so
unimportant intellectually, was prolonged over the surface of her
life. She had struck the polished wall—for no reason—and before
the comment had died away, he followed her, and the climax was the
falling of her field-glasses. The sound had spouted after her when
she escaped, and was going on still like a river that gradually
floods the plain. Only Mrs. Moore could drive it back to its source
and seal the broken reservoir. Evil was loose . . . she could even
hear it entering the lives of others. . . . And Adela spent days
in this atmosphere of grief and depression. Her friends kept up
their spirits by demanding holocausts of natives, but she was too
worried and weak to do that.
When the cactus thorns had all been extracted, and her temperature
fallen to normal, Ronny came to fetch her away. He was worn with
indignation and suffering, and she wished she could comfort him;
but intimacy seemed to caricature itself, and the more they spoke
the more wretched and self-conscious they became. Practical talk
was the least painful, and he and McBryde now told her one or two
things which they had concealed from her during the crisis, by the
doctor’s orders. She learnt for the first time of the Mohurram
troubles. There had nearly been a riot. The last day of the
festival, the great procession left its official route, and tried
to enter the civil station, and a telephone had been cut because
it interrupted the advance of one of the larger paper towers.
McBryde and his police had pulled the thing straight—a fine piece
of work. They passed on to another and very painful subject: the
trial. She would have to appear in court, identify the prisoner,
and submit to cross-examination by an Indian lawyer.
“Can Mrs. Moore be with me?” was all she said.
“Certainly, and I shall be there myself,” Ronny replied. “The case
won’t come before me; they’ve objected to me on personal grounds.
It will be at Chandrapore—we thought at one time it would be
transferred elsewhere.”
“Miss Quested realizes what all that means, though,” said McBryde
sadly. “The case will come before Das.”
Das was Ronny’s assistant—own brother to the Mrs. Bhattacharya
whose carriage had played them false last month. He was courteous
and intelligent, and with the evidence before him could only come
to one conclusion; but that he should be judge over an English girl
had convulsed the station with wrath, and some of the women had
sent a telegram about it to Lady Mellanby, the wife of the
Lieutenant-Governor.
“I must come before someone.”
“That’s—that’s the way to face it. You have the pluck, Miss
Quested.” He grew very bitter over the arrangements, and called
them “the fruits of democracy.” In the old days an Englishwoman
would not have had to appear, nor would any Indian have dared to
discuss her private affairs. She would have made her deposition,
and judgment would have followed. He apologized to her for the
condition of the country, with the result that she gave one of her
sudden little shoots of tears. Ronny wandered miserably about the
room while she cried, treading upon the flowers of the Kashmir
carpet that so inevitably covered it or drumming on the brass
Benares bowls. “I do this less every day, I shall soon be quite
well,” she said, blowing her nose and feeling hideous.
“What I need is something to do. That is why I keep on with this
ridiculous crying.”
“It’s not ridiculous, we think you wonderful,” said the policeman
very sincerely. “It only bothers us that we can’t help you more.
Your stopping here—at such a time—is the greatest honour this