A passage to India
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.”
“Aziz was so fond of her too.”
“But it has made me remember that we must all die: all these
personal relations we try to live by are temporary. I used to feel
death selected people, it is a notion one gets from novels, because
some of the characters are usually left talking at the end. Now
‘death spares no one’ begins to be real.”
“Don’t let it become too real, or you’ll die yourself. That is the
objection to meditating upon death. We are subdued to what we work
in. I have felt the same temptation, and had to sheer off. I want
to go on living a bit.”
“So do I.”
A friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air. Both
man and woman were at the height of their powers—sensible, honest,
even subtle. They spoke the same language, and held the same
opinions, and the variety of age and sex did not divide them. Yet
they were dissatisfied. When they agreed, “I want to go on living
a bit,” or, “I don’t believe in God,” the words were followed by
a curious backwash as though the universe had displaced itself to
fill up a tiny void, or as though they had seen their own gestures
from an immense height—dwarfs talking, shaking hands and assuring
each other that they stood on the same footing of insight. They
did not think they were wrong, because as soon as honest people
think they are wrong instability sets up. Not for them was an
infinite goal behind the stars, and they never sought it. But
wistfulness descended on them now, as on other occasions; the
shadow of the shadow of a dream fell over their clear-cut interests,
and objects never seen again seemed messages from another world.
“And I do like you so very much, if I may say so,” he affirmed.
“I’m glad, for I like you. Let’s meet again.”
“We will, in England, if I ever take home leave.”
“But I suppose you’re not likely to do that yet.”
“Quite a chance. I have a scheme on now as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, that would be very nice.”
So it petered out. Ten days later Adela went off, by the same route
as her dead friend. The final beat up before the monsoon had come.
The country was stricken and blurred. Its houses, trees and fields
were all modelled out of the same brown paste, and the sea at
Bombay slid about like broth against the quays. Her last Indian
adventure was with Antony, who followed her on to the boat and
tried to blackmail her. She had been Mr. Fielding’s mistress,
Antony said. Perhaps Antony was discontented with his tip. She rang
the cabin bell and had him turned out, but his statement created
rather a scandal, and people did not speak to her much during the
first part of the voyage. Through the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea
she was left to herself, and to the dregs of Chandrapore.
With Egypt the atmosphere altered. The clean sands, heaped on each
side of the canal, seemed to wipe off everything that was difficult
and equivocal, and even Port Said looked pure and charming in the
light of a rose-grey morning. She went on shore there with an
American missionary, they walked out to the Lesseps statue, they
drank the tonic air of the Levant. “To what duties, Miss Quested,
are you returning in your own country after your taste of the
tropics?” the missionary asked.
“Observe, I don’t say to what do you turn, but to what do you
_re_-turn. Every life ought to contain both a turn and a _re_-turn.
This celebrated pioneer (he pointed to the statue) will make my
question clear. He turns to the East, he _re_-turns to the West.
You can see it from the cute position of his hands, one of which
holds a string of sausages.” The missionary looked at her
humorously, in order to cover the emptiness of his mind. He had no
idea what he meant by “turn” and “return,” but he often used words
in pairs, for the sake of moral brightness. “I see,” she replied.
Suddenly, in the Mediterranean clarity, she had seen. Her first
duty on returning to England was to look up those other children
of Mrs. Moore’s, Ralph and Stella, then she would turn to her
profession. Mrs. Moore had tended to keep the products of her two
marriages apart, and Adela had not come across the younger branch
so far.
CHAPTER XXX
Another local consequence of the trial was a Hindu-Moslem entente.
Loud protestations of amity were exchanged by prominent citizens,
and there went with them a genuine desire for a good understanding.
Aziz, when he was at the hospital one day, received a visit from
rather a sympathetic figure: Mr. Das. The magistrate sought two
favours from him: a remedy for shingles and a poem for his
brother-in-law’s new monthly magazine. He accorded both.
“My dear Das, why, when you tried to send me to prison, should I
try to send Mr. Bhattacharya a poem? Eh? That is naturally entirely
a joke. I will write him the best I can, but I thought your magazine
was for Hindus.”
“It is not for Hindus, but Indians generally,” he said timidly.
“There is no such person in existence as the general Indian.”
“There was not, but there may be when you have written a poem. You
are our hero; the whole city is behind you, irrespective of creed.”
“I know, but will it last?”
“I fear not,” said Das, who had much mental clearness. “And for
that reason, if I may say so, do not introduce too many Persian
expressions into the poem, and not too much about the bulbul.”
“Half a sec,” said Aziz, biting his pencil. He was writing out a
prescription. “Here you are. . . . Is not this better than a poem?”
“Happy the man who can compose both.”
“You are full of compliments to-day.”
“I know you bear me a grudge for trying that case,” said the other,
stretching out his hand impulsively. “You are so kind and friendly,
but always I detect irony beneath your manner.”
“No, no, what nonsense!” protested Aziz. They shook hands, in a
half-embrace that typified the entente. Between people of distant
climes there is always the possibility of romance, but the various
branches of Indians know too much about each other to surmount the
unknowable easily. The approach is prosaic. “Excellent,” said Aziz,
patting a stout shoulder and thinking, “I wish they did not remind
me of cow-dung”; Das thought, “Some Moslems are very violent.” They
smiled wistfully, each spying the thought in the other’s heart,
and Das, the more articulate, said: “Excuse my mistakes, realize
my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.”
“Oh, well, about this poem—how did you hear I sometimes scribbled?”
he asked, much pleased, and a good deal moved—for literature had
always been a solace to him, something that the ugliness of facts
could not spoil.
“Professor Godbole often mentioned it, before his departure for
Mau.”
“How did he hear?”
“He too was a poet; do you not divine each other?”
Flattered by the invitation, he got to work that evening. The feel
of the pen between his fingers generated bulbuls at once. His poem
was again about the decay of Islam and the brevity of love; as sad
and sweet as he could contrive, but not nourished by personal
experience, and of no interest to these excellent Hindus. Feeling
dissatisfied, he rushed to the other extreme, and wrote a satire,
which was too libellous to print. He could only express pathos or
venom, though most of his life had no concern with either. He loved
poetry—science was merely an acquisition, which he laid aside when
unobserved like his European dress—and this evening he longed to
compose a new song which should be acclaimed by multitudes and even
sung in the fields. In what language shall it be written? And what
shall it announce? He vowed to see more of Indians who were not
Mohammedans, and never to look backward. It is the only healthy
course. Of what help, in this latitude and hour, are the glories
of Cordova and Samarcand? They have gone, and while we lament them
the English occupy Delhi and exclude us from East Africa. Islam
itself, though true, throws cross-lights over the path to freedom.
The song of the future must transcend creed.