Chapter Chapter 7 · Chapter VII

. Chapter VII

This Mr. Fielding had been caught by India late. He was over forty

when he entered that oddest portal, the Victoria Terminus at

Bombay, and—having bribed a European ticket inspector—took his

luggage into the compartment of his first tropical train. The

journey remained in his mind as significant. Of his two carriage

companions one was a youth, fresh to the East like himself, the

other a seasoned Anglo-Indian of his own age. A gulf divided him

from either; he had seen too many cities and men to be the first

or to become the second. New impressions crowded on him, but they

were not the orthodox new impressions; the past conditioned them,

and so it was with his mistakes. To regard an Indian as if he were

an Italian is not, for instance, a common error, nor perhaps a

fatal one, and Fielding often attempted analogies between this

peninsula and that other, smaller and more exquisitely shaped, that

stretches into the classic waters of the Mediterranean.

His career, though scholastic, was varied, and had included going

to the bad and repenting thereafter. By now he was a hard-bitten,

good-tempered, intelligent fellow on the verge of middle age, with

a belief in education. He did not mind whom he taught; public

schoolboys, mental defectives and policemen, had all come his way,

and he had no objection to adding Indians. Through the influence

of friends, he was nominated Principal of the little college at

Chandrapore, liked it, and assumed he was a success. He did succeed

with his pupils, but the gulf between himself and his countrymen,

which he had noticed in the train, widened distressingly. He could

not at first see what was wrong. He was not unpatriotic, he always

got on with Englishmen in England, all his best friends were

English, so why was it not the same out here? Outwardly of the

large shaggy type, with sprawling limbs and blue eyes, he appeared

to inspire confidence until he spoke. Then something in his manner

puzzled people and failed to allay the distrust which his profession

naturally inspired. There needs must be this evil of brains in

India, but woe to him through whom they are increased! The feeling

grew that Mr. Fielding was a disruptive force, and rightly, for

ideas are fatal to caste, and he used ideas by that most potent

method—interchange. Neither a missionary nor a student, he was

happiest in the give-and-take of a private conversation. The world,

he believed, is a globe of men who are trying to reach one another

and can best do so by the help of good will plus culture and

intelligence—a creed ill suited to Chandrapore, but he had come

out too late to lose it. He had no racial feeling—not because he

was superior to his brother civilians, but because he had matured

in a different atmosphere, where the herd-instinct does not

flourish. The remark that did him most harm at the club was a silly

aside to the effect that the so-called white races are really

pinko-grey. He only said this to be cheery, he did not realize that

“white” has no more to do with a colour than “God save the King”

with a god, and that it is the height of impropriety to consider

what it does connote. The pinko-grey male whom he addressed was

subtly scandalized; his sense of insecurity was awoken, and he

communicated it to the rest of the herd.

Still, the men tolerated him for the sake of his good heart and

strong body; it was their wives who decided that he was not a sahib

really. They disliked him. He took no notice of them, and this,

which would have passed without comment in feminist England, did

him harm in a community where the male is expected to be lively

and helpful. Mr. Fielding never advised one about dogs or horses,

or dined, or paid his midday calls, or decorated trees for one’s

children at Christmas, and though he came to the club, it was only

to get his tennis or billiards, and to go. This was true. He had

discovered that it is possible to keep in with Indians and

Englishmen, but that he who would also keep in with Englishwomen

must drop the Indians. The two wouldn’t combine. Useless to blame

either party, useless to blame them for blaming one another. It

just was so, and one had to choose. Most Englishmen preferred their

own kinswomen, who, coming out in increasing numbers, made life on

the home pattern yearly more possible. He had found it convenient

and pleasant to associate with Indians and he must pay the price.

As a rule no Englishwoman entered the College except for official

functions, and if he invited Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested to tea,

it was because they were new-comers who would view everything with

an equal if superficial eye, and would not turn on a special voice

when speaking to his other guests.

The College itself had been slapped down by the Public Works

Department, but its grounds included an ancient garden and a

garden-house, and here he lived for much of the year. He was

dressing after a bath when Dr. Aziz was announced. Lifting up his

voice, he shouted from the bedroom, “Please make yourself at home.”

The remark was unpremeditated, like most of his actions; it was

what he felt inclined to say.

To Aziz it had a very definite meaning. “May I really, Mr. Fielding?

It’s very good of you,” he called back; “I like unconventional

behaviour so extremely.” His spirits flared up, he glanced round

the living-room. Some luxury in it, but no order—nothing to

intimidate poor Indians. It was also a very beautiful room, opening

into the garden through three high arches of wood. “The fact is I

have long wanted to meet you,” he continued. “I have heard so much

about your warm heart from the Nawab Bahadur. But where is one to

meet in a wretched hole like Chandrapore?” He came close up to the

door. “When I was greener here, I’ll tell you what. I used to wish

you to fall ill so that we could meet that way.” They laughed, and

encouraged by his success he began to improvise. “I said to myself,

How does Mr. Fielding look this morning? Perhaps pale. And the

Civil Surgeon is pale too, he will not be able to attend upon him

when the shivering commences. I should have been sent for instead.

Then we would have had jolly talks, for you are a celebrated

student of Persian poetry.”

“You know me by sight, then.”

“Of course, of course. You know me?”

“I know you very well by name.”

“I have been here such a short time, and always in the bazaar. No

wonder you have never seen me, and I wonder you know my name. I

say, Mr. Fielding?”

“Yes?”

“Guess what I look like before you come out. That will be a kind

of game.”

“You’re five feet nine inches high,” said Fielding, surmising this

much through the ground glass of the bedroom door.

“Jolly good. What next? Have I not a venerable white beard?”

“Blast!”

“Anything wrong?”

“I’ve stamped on my last collar stud.”

“Take mine, take mine.”

“Have you a spare one?”

“Yes, yes, one minute.”

“Not if you’re wearing it yourself.”

“No, no, one in my pocket.” Stepping aside, so that his outline

might vanish, he wrenched off his collar, and pulled out of his

shirt the back stud, a gold stud, which was part of a set that his

brother-in-law had brought him from Europe. “Here it is,” he cried.

“Come in with it if you don’t mind the unconventionality.”

“One minute again.” Replacing his collar, he prayed that it would

not spring up at the back during tea. Fielding’s bearer, who was

helping him to dress, opened the door for him.

“Many thanks.” They shook hands smiling. He began to look round,

as he would have with any old friend. Fielding was not surprised

at the rapidity of their intimacy. With so emotional a people it

was apt to come at once or never, and he and Aziz, having heard

only good of each other, could afford to dispense with preliminaries.

“But I always thought that Englishmen kept their rooms so tidy. It

seems that this is not so. I need not be so ashamed.” He sat down

gaily on the bed; then, forgetting himself entirely, drew up his

legs and folded them under him. “Everything ranged coldly on

shelves was what _I_ thought.—I say, Mr. Fielding, is the stud

going to go in?”

“I hae ma doots.”

“What’s that last sentence, please? Will you teach me some new

words and so improve my English?”

Fielding doubted whether “everything ranged coldly on shelves”

could be improved. He was often struck with the liveliness with

which the younger generation handled a foreign tongue. They altered

the idiom, but they could say whatever they wanted to say quickly;

there were none of the babuisms ascribed to them up at the club.

But then the club moved slowly; it still declared that few

Mohammedans and no Hindus would eat at an Englishman’s table, and

that all Indian ladies were in impenetrable purdah. Individually

it knew better; as a club it declined to change.

“Let me put in your stud. I see . . . the shirt back’s hole is

rather small and to rip it wider a pity.”

“Why in hell does one wear collars at all?” grumbled Fielding as

he bent his neck.

“We wear them to pass the Police.”

“What’s that?”

“If I’m biking in English dress—starch collar, hat with ditch—they

take no notice. When I wear a fez, they cry, ‘Your lamp’s out!’

Lord Curzon did not consider this when he urged natives of India

to retain their picturesque costumes.—Hooray! Stud’s gone

in.—Sometimes I shut my eyes and dream I have splendid clothes

again and am riding into battle behind Alamgir. Mr. Fielding, must

not India have been beautiful then, with the Mogul Empire at its

height and Alamgir reigning at Delhi upon the Peacock Throne?”

“Two ladies are coming to tea to meet you—I think you know them.”

“Meet me? I know no ladies.”

“Not Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested?”

“Oh yes—I remember.” The romance at the mosque had sunk out of his

consciousness as soon as it was over. “An excessively aged lady;

but will you please repeat the name of her companion?”

“Miss Quested.”

“Just as you wish.” He was disappointed that other guests were

coming, for he preferred to be alone with his new friend.

“You can talk to Miss Quested about the Peacock Throne if you

like—she’s artistic, they say.”

“Is she a Post Impressionist?”

“Post Impressionism, indeed! Come along to tea. This world is

getting too much for me altogether.”

Aziz was offended. The remark suggested that he, an obscure Indian,

had no right to have heard of Post Impressionism—a privilege

reserved for the Ruling Race, that. He said stiffly, “I do not

consider Mrs. Moore my friend, I only met her accidentally in my

mosque,” and was adding “a single meeting is too short to make a

friend,” but before he could finish the sentence the stiffness

vanished from it, because he felt Fielding’s fundamental good will.

His own went out to it, and grappled beneath the shifting tides of

emotion which can alone bear the voyager to an anchorage but may

also carry him across it on to the rocks. He was safe really—as

safe as the shore-dweller who can only understand stability and

supposes that every ship must be wrecked, and he had sensations

the shore-dweller cannot know. Indeed, he was sensitive rather than

responsive. In every remark he found a meaning, but not always the

true meaning, and his life though vivid was largely a dream.

Fielding, for instance, had not meant that Indians are obscure,

but that Post Impressionism is; a gulf divided his remark from Mrs.

Turton’s “Why, they speak English,” but to Aziz the two sounded

alike. Fielding saw that something had gone wrong, and equally that

it had come right, but he didn’t fidget, being an optimist where

personal relations were concerned, and their talk rattled on as

before.

“Besides the ladies I am expecting one of my assistants—Narayan

Godbole.”

“Oho, the Deccani Brahman!”

“He wants the past back too, but not precisely Alamgir.”

“I should think not. Do you know what Deccani Brahmans say? That

England conquered India from them—from them, mind, and not from

the Moguls. Is not that like their cheek? They have even bribed it

to appear in text-books, for they are so subtle and immensely rich.

Professor Godbole must be quite unlike all other Deccani Brahmans

from all I can hear say. A most sincere chap.”

“Why don’t you fellows run a club in Chandrapore, Aziz?”

“Perhaps—some day . . . just now I see Mrs. Moore and—what’s her

name—coming.”

How fortunate that it was an “unconventional” party, where

formalities are ruled out! On this basis Aziz found the English

ladies easy to talk to, he treated them like men. Beauty would have

troubled him, for it entails rules of its own, but Mrs. Moore was

so old and Miss Quested so plain that he was spared this anxiety.

Adela’s angular body and the freckles on her face were terrible

defects in his eyes, and he wondered how God could have been so

unkind to any female form. His attitude towards her remained

entirely straightforward in consequence.

“I want to ask you something, Dr. Aziz,” she began. “I heard from

Mrs. Moore how helpful you were to her in the mosque, and how

interesting. She learnt more about India in those few minutes’ talk

with you than in the three weeks since we landed.”

“Oh, please do not mention a little thing like that. Is there

anything else I may tell you about my country?”

“I want you to explain a disappointment we had this morning; it

must be some point of Indian etiquette.”

“There honestly is none,” he replied. “We are by nature a most

informal people.”

“I am afraid we must have made some blunder and given offence,”

said Mrs. Moore.

“That is even more impossible. But may I know the facts?”

“An Indian lady and gentleman were to send their carriage for us

this morning at nine. It has never come. We waited and waited and

waited; we can’t think what happened.”

“Some misunderstanding,” said Fielding, seeing at once that it was

the type of incident that had better not be cleared up.

“Oh no, it wasn’t that,” Miss Quested persisted. “They even gave

up going to Calcutta to entertain us. We must have made some stupid

blunder, we both feel sure.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“Exactly what Mr. Heaslop tells me,” she retorted, reddening a

little. “If one doesn’t worry, how’s one to understand?”

The host was inclined to change the subject, but Aziz took it up

warmly, and on learning fragments of the delinquents’ name

pronounced that they were Hindus.

“Slack Hindus—they have no idea of society; I know them very well

because of a doctor at the hospital. Such a slack, unpunctual

fellow! It is as well you did not go to their house, for it would

give you a wrong idea of India. Nothing sanitary. I think for my

own part they grew ashamed of their house and that is why they did

not send.”

“That’s a notion,” said the other man.

“I do so hate mysteries,” Adela announced.

“We English do.”

“I dislike them not because I’m English, but from my own personal

point of view,” she corrected.

“I like mysteries but I rather dislike muddles,” said Mrs. Moore.

“A mystery is a muddle.”

“Oh, do you think so, Mr. Fielding?”

“A mystery is only a high-sounding term for a muddle. No advantage

in stirring it up, in either case. Aziz and I know well that

India’s a muddle.”

“India’s—— Oh, what an alarming idea!”

“There’ll be no muddle when you come to see me,” said Aziz, rather

out of his depth. “Mrs. Moore and everyone—I invite you all—oh,

please.”

The old lady accepted: she still thought the young doctor

excessively nice; moreover, a new feeling, half languor, half

excitement, bade her turn down any fresh path. Miss Quested accepted

out of adventure. She also liked Aziz, and believed that when she

knew him better he would unlock his country for her. His invitation

gratified her, and she asked him for his address.

Aziz thought of his bungalow with horror. It was a detestable

shanty near a low bazaar. There was practically only one room in

it, and that infested with small black flies. “Oh, but we will talk

of something else now,” he exclaimed. “I wish I lived here. See

this beautiful room! Let us admire it together for a little. See

those curves at the bottom of the arches. What delicacy! It is the

architecture of Question and Answer. Mrs. Moore, you are in India;

I am not joking.” The room inspired him. It was an audience hall

built in the eighteenth century for some high official, and though

of wood had reminded Fielding of the Loggia de’ Lanzi at Florence.

Little rooms, now Europeanized, clung to it on either side, but

the central hall was unpapered and unglassed, and the air of the

garden poured in freely. One sat in public—on exhibition, as it

were—in full view of the gardeners who were screaming at the birds

and of the man who rented the tank for the cultivation of water

chestnut. Fielding let the mango trees too—there was no knowing

who might not come in—and his servants sat on his steps night and

day to discourage thieves. Beautiful certainly, and the Englishman

had not spoilt it, whereas Aziz in an occidental moment would have

hung Maude Goodmans on the walls. Yet there was no doubt to whom

the room really belonged. . . .

“I am doing justice here. A poor widow who has been robbed comes

along and I give her fifty rupees, to another a hundred, and so on

and so on. I should like that.”

Mrs. Moore smiled, thinking of the modern method as exemplified in

her son. “Rupees don’t last for ever, I’m afraid,” she said.

“Mine would. God would give me more when he saw I gave. Always be

giving, like the Nawab Bahadur. My father was the same, that is

why he died poor.” And pointing about the room he peopled it with

clerks and officials, all benevolent because they lived long ago.

“So we would sit giving for ever—on a carpet instead of chairs,

that is the chief change between now and then, but I think we would

never punish anyone.”

The ladies agreed.

“Poor criminal, give him another chance. It only makes a man worse

to go to prison and be corrupted.” His face grew very tender—the

tenderness of one incapable of administration, and unable to grasp

that if the poor criminal is let off he will again rob the poor

widow. He was tender to everyone except a few family enemies whom

he did not consider human: on these he desired revenge. He was even

tender to the English; he knew at the bottom of his heart that they

could not help being so cold and odd and circulating like an ice

stream through his land. “We punish no one, no one,” he repeated,

“and in the evening we will give a great banquet with a nautch and

lovely girls shall shine on every side of the tank with fireworks

in their hands, and all shall be feasting and happiness until the

next day, when there shall be justice as before—fifty rupees, a

hundred, a thousand—till peace comes. Ah, why didn’t we live in

that time?—But are you admiring Mr. Fielding’s house? Do look how

the pillars are painted blue, and the verandah’s pavilions—what do

you call them?—that are above us inside are blue also. Look at the

carving on the pavilions. Think of the hours it took. Their little

roofs are curved to imitate bamboo. So pretty—and the bamboos

waving by the tank outside. Mrs. Moore! Mrs. Moore!”

“Well?” she said, laughing.

“You remember the water by our mosque? It comes down and fills this

tank—a skilful arrangement of the Emperors. They stopped here going

down into Bengal. They loved water. Wherever they went they created

fountains, gardens, hammams. I was telling Mr. Fielding I would

give anything to serve them.”

He was wrong about the water, which no Emperor, however skilful,

can cause to gravitate uphill; a depression of some depth together

with the whole of Chandrapore lay between the mosque and Fielding’s

house. Ronny would have pulled him up, Turton would have wanted to

pull him up, but restrained himself. Fielding did not even want to

pull him up; he had dulled his craving for verbal truth and cared

chiefly for truth of mood. As for Miss Quested, she accepted

everything Aziz said as true verbally. In her ignorance, she

regarded him as “India,” and never surmised that his outlook was

limited and his method inaccurate, and that no one is India.

He was now much excited, chattering away hard, and even saying damn

when he got mixed up in his sentences. He told them of his

profession, and of the operations he had witnessed and performed,

and he went into details that scared Mrs. Moore, though Miss

Quested mistook them for proofs of his broad-mindedness; she had

heard such talk at home in advanced academic circles, deliberately

free. She supposed him to be emancipated as well as reliable, and

placed him on a pinnacle which he could not retain. He was high

enough for the moment, to be sure, but not on any pinnacle. Wings

bore him up, and flagging would deposit him.

The arrival of Professor Godbole quieted him somewhat, but it

remained his afternoon. The Brahman, polite and enigmatic, did not

impede his eloquence, and even applauded it. He took his tea at a

little distance from the outcasts, from a low table placed slightly

behind him, to which he stretched back, and as it were encountered

food by accident; all feigned indifference to Professor Godbole’s

tea. He was elderly and wizen with a grey moustache and grey-blue

eyes, and his complexion was as fair as a European’s. He wore a

turban that looked like pale purple macaroni, coat, waistcoat,

dhoti, socks with clocks. The clocks matched the turban, and his

whole appearance suggested harmony—as if he had reconciled the

products of East and West, mental as well as physical, and could

never be discomposed. The ladies were interested in him, and hoped

that he would supplement Dr. Aziz by saying something about

religion. But he only ate—ate and ate, smiling, never letting his

eyes catch sight of his hand.

Leaving the Mogul Emperors, Aziz turned to topics that could

distress no one. He described the ripening of the mangoes, and how

in his boyhood he used to run out in the Rains to a big mango grove

belonging to an uncle and gorge there. “Then back with water

streaming over you and perhaps rather a pain inside. But I did not

mind. All my friends were paining with me. We have a proverb in

Urdu: ‘What does unhappiness matter when we are all unhappy

together?’ which comes in conveniently after mangoes. Miss Quested,

do wait for mangoes. Why not settle altogether in India?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Adela. She made the remark

without thinking what it meant. To her, as to the three men, it

seemed in key with the rest of the conversation, and not for

several minutes—indeed, not for half an hour—did she realize that

it was an important remark, and ought to have been made in the

first place to Ronny.

“Visitors like you are too rare.”

“They are indeed,” said Professor Godbole. “Such affability is

seldom seen. But what can we offer to detain them?”

“Mangoes, mangoes.”

They laughed. “Even mangoes can be got in England now,” put in

Fielding. “They ship them in ice-cold rooms. You can make India in

England apparently, just as you can make England in India.”

“Frightfully expensive in both cases,” said the girl.

“I suppose so.”

“And nasty.”

But the host wouldn’t allow the conversation to take this heavy

turn. He turned to the old lady, who looked flustered and put

out—he could not imagine why—and asked about her own plans. She

replied that she should like to see over the College. Everyone

immediately rose, with the exception of Professor Godbole, who was

finishing a banana.

“Don’t you come too, Adela; you dislike institutions.”

“Yes, that is so,” said Miss Quested, and sat down again.

Aziz hesitated. His audience was splitting up. The more familiar

half was going, but the more attentive remained. Reflecting that

it was an “unconventional” afternoon, he stopped.

Talk went on as before. Could one offer the visitors unripe mangoes

in a fool? “I speak now as a doctor: no.” Then the old man said,

“But I will send you up a few healthy sweets. I will give myself

that pleasure.”

“Miss Quested, Professor Godbole’s sweets are delicious,” said Aziz

sadly, for he wanted to send sweets too and had no wife to cook

them. “They will give you a real Indian treat. Ah, in my poor

position I can give you nothing.”

“I don’t know why you say that, when you have so kindly asked us

to your house.”

He thought again of his bungalow with horror. Good heavens, the

stupid girl had taken him at his word! What was he to do? “Yes,

all that is settled,” he cried.

“I invite you all to see me in the Marabar Caves.”

“I shall be delighted.”

“Oh, that is a most magnificent entertainment compared to my poor

sweets. But has not Miss Quested visited our caves already?”

“No. I’ve not even heard of them.”

“Not heard of them?” both cried. “The Marabar Caves in the Marabar

Hills?”

“We hear nothing interesting up at the club. Only tennis and

ridiculous gossip.”

The old man was silent, perhaps feeling that it was unseemly of

her to criticize her race, perhaps fearing that if he agreed she

would report him for disloyalty. But the young man uttered a rapid

“I know.”

“Then tell me everything you will, or I shall never understand

India. Are they the hills I sometimes see in the evening? What are

these caves?”

Aziz undertook to explain, but it presently appeared that he had

never visited the caves himself—had always been “meaning” to go,

but work or private business had prevented him, and they were so

far. Professor Godbole chaffed him pleasantly. “My dear young sir,

the pot and the kettle! Have you ever heard of that useful proverb?”

“Are they large caves?” she asked.

“No, not large.”

“Do describe them, Professor Godbole.”

“It will be a great honour.” He drew up his chair and an expression

of tension came over his face. Taking the cigarette box, she

offered to him and to Aziz, and lit up herself. After an impressive

pause he said: “There is an entrance in the rock which you enter,

and through the entrance is the cave.”

“Something like the caves at Elephanta?”

“Oh no, not at all; at Elephanta there are sculptures of Siva and

Parvati. There are no sculptures at Marabar.”

“They are immensely holy, no doubt,” said Aziz, to help on the

narrative.

“Oh no, oh no.”

“Still, they are ornamented in some way.”

“Oh no.”

“Well, why are they so famous? We all talk of the famous Marabar

Caves. Perhaps that is our empty brag.”

“No, I should not quite say that.”

“Describe them to this lady, then.”

“It will be a great pleasure.” He forewent the pleasure, and Aziz

realized that he was keeping back something about the caves. He

realized because he often suffered from similar inhibitions himself.

Sometimes, to the exasperation of Major Callendar, he would pass

over the one relevant fact in a position, to dwell on the hundred

irrelevant. The Major accused him of disingenuousness, and was

roughly right, but only roughly. It was rather that a power he

couldn’t control capriciously silenced his mind. Godbole had been

silenced now; no doubt not willingly, he was concealing something.

Handled subtly, he might regain control and announce that the

Marabar Caves were—full of stalactites, perhaps; Aziz led up to

this, but they weren’t.

The dialogue remained light and friendly, and Adela had no

conception of its underdrift. She did not know that the comparatively

simple mind of the Mohammedan was encountering Ancient Night. Aziz

played a thrilling game. He was handling a human toy that refused

to work—he knew that much. If it worked, neither he nor Professor

Godbole would be the least advantaged, but the attempt enthralled

him and was akin to abstract thought. On he chattered, defeated at

every move by an opponent who would not even admit that a move had

been made, and further than ever from discovering what, if anything,

was extraordinary about the Marabar Caves.

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 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.