Kabanata Kabanata 28 · Chapter XXVIII

. Chapter XXVIII

Dead she was—committed to the deep while still on the southward

track, for the boats from Bombay cannot point towards Europe until

Arabia has been rounded; she was further in the tropics than ever

achieved while on shore, when the sun touched her for the last time

and her body was lowered into yet another India—the Indian Ocean.

She left behind her sore discomfort, for a death gives a ship a

bad name. Who was this Mrs. Moore? When Aden was reached, Lady

Mellanby cabled, wrote, did all that was kind, but the wife of a

Lieutenant-Governor does not bargain for such an experience; and

she repeated: “I had only seen the poor creature for a few hours

when she was taken ill; really this has been needlessly distressing,

it spoils one’s home-coming.” A ghost followed the ship up the Red

Sea, but failed to enter the Mediterranean. Somewhere about Suez

there is always a social change: the arrangements of Asia weaken

and those of Europe begin to be felt, and during the transition

Mrs. Moore was shaken off. At Port Said the grey blustery north

began. The weather was so cold and bracing that the passengers felt

it must have broken in the land they had left, but it became hotter

steadily there in accordance with its usual law.

The death took subtler and more lasting shapes in Chandrapore. A

legend sprang up that an Englishman had killed his mother for

trying to save an Indian’s life—and there was just enough truth in

this to cause annoyance to the authorities. Sometimes it was a cow

that had been killed—or a crocodile with the tusks of a boar had

crawled out of the Ganges. Nonsense of this type is more difficult

to combat than a solid lie. It hides in rubbish heaps and moves

when no one is looking. At one period two distinct tombs containing

Esmiss Esmoor’s remains were reported: one by the tannery, the

other up near the goods station. Mr. McBryde visited them both and

saw signs of the beginning of a cult—earthenware saucers and so

on. Being an experienced official, he did nothing to irritate it,

and after a week or so, the rash died down. “There’s propaganda

behind all this,” he said, forgetting that a hundred years ago,

when Europeans still made their home in the country-side and

appealed to its imagination, they occasionally became local demons

after death—not a whole god, perhaps, but part of one, adding an

epithet or gesture to what already existed, just as the gods

contribute to the great gods, and they to the philosophic Brahm.

Ronny reminded himself that his mother had left India at her own

wish, but his conscience was not clear. He had behaved badly to

her, and he had either to repent (which involved a mental overturn),

or to persist in unkindness towards her. He chose the latter

course. How tiresome she had been with her patronage of Aziz! What

a bad influence upon Adela! And now she still gave trouble with

ridiculous “tombs,” mixing herself up with natives. She could not

help it, of course, but she had attempted similar exasperating

expeditions in her lifetime, and he reckoned it against her. The

young man had much to worry him—the heat, the local tension, the

approaching visit of the Lieutenant-Governor, the problems of

Adela—and threading them all together into a grotesque garland were

these Indianizations of Mrs. Moore. What does happen to one’s

mother when she dies? Presumably she goes to heaven, anyhow she

clears out. Ronny’s religion was of the sterilized Public School

brand, which never goes bad, even in the tropics. Wherever he

entered, mosque, cave, or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook

of the Fifth Form, and condemned as “weakening” any attempt to

understand them. Pulling himself together, he dismissed the mater

from his mind. In due time he and his half-brother and -sister

would put up a tablet to her in the Northamptonshire church where

she had worshipped, recording the dates of her birth and death and

the fact that she had been buried at sea. This would be sufficient.

And Adela—she would have to depart too; he hoped she would have

made the suggestion herself ere now. He really could not marry

her—it would mean the end of his career. Poor lamentable Adela. . . .

She remained at Government College, by Fielding’s

courtesy—unsuitable and humiliating, but no one would receive her

at the civil station. He postponed all private talk until the award

against her was decided. Aziz was suing her for damages in the

sub-judge’s court. Then he would ask her to release him. She had

killed his love, and it had never been very robust; they would

never have achieved betrothal but for the accident to the Nawab

Bahadur’s car. She belonged to the callow academic period of his

life which he had outgrown—Grasmere, serious talks and walks, that

sort of thing.