A Passage to India Page 8

  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 sub dominant.

  “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 8

  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 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 sh
oulder 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.