Bab Bab 29 · Chapter XXIX

. Chapter XXIX

The visit of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province formed the

next stage in the decomposition of the Marabar. Sir Gilbert, though

not an enlightened man, held enlightened opinions. Exempted by a

long career in the Secretariate from personal contact with the

peoples of India, he was able to speak of them urbanely, and to

deplore racial prejudice. He applauded the outcome of the trial,

and congratulated Fielding on having taken “the broad, the sensible,

the only possible charitable view from the first. Speaking

confidentially . . .” he proceeded. Fielding deprecated confidences,

but Sir Gilbert insisted on imparting them; the affair had been

“mishandled by certain of our friends up the hill” who did not

realize that “the hands of the clock move forward, not back,” etc.,

etc. One thing he could guarantee: the Principal would receive a

most cordial invitation to rejoin the club, and he begged, nay

commanded him, to accept. He returned to his Himalayan altitudes

well satisfied; the amount of money Miss Quested would have to pay,

the precise nature of what had happened in the caves—these were

local details, and did not concern him.

Fielding found himself drawn more and more into Miss Quested’s

affairs. The College remained closed and he ate and slept at

Hamidullah’s, so there was no reason she should not stop on if she

wished. In her place he would have cleared out, sooner than submit

to Ronny’s half-hearted and distracted civilities, but she was

waiting for the hour-glass of her sojourn to run through. A house

to live in, a garden to walk in during the brief moment of the

cool—that was all she asked, and he was able to provide them.

Disaster had shown her her limitations, and he realized now what

a fine loyal character she was. Her humility was touching. She

never repined at getting the worst of both worlds; she regarded it

as the due punishment of her stupidity. When he hinted to her that

a personal apology to Aziz might be seemly, she said sadly: “Of

course. I ought to have thought of it myself, my instincts never

help me. Why didn’t I rush up to him after the trial? Yes, of

course I will write him an apology, but please will you dictate

it?” Between them they concocted a letter, sincere, and full of

moving phrases, but it was not moving as a letter. “Shall I write

another?” she enquired. “Nothing matters if I can undo the harm I

have caused. I can do this right, and that right; but when the two

are put together they come wrong. That’s the defect of my character.

I have never realized it until now. I thought that if I was just

and asked questions I would come through every difficulty.” He

replied: “Our letter is a failure for a simple reason which we had

better face: you have no real affection for Aziz, or Indians

generally.” She assented. “The first time I saw you, you were

wanting to see India, not Indians, and it occurred to me: Ah, that

won’t take us far. Indians know whether they are liked or not—they

cannot be fooled here. Justice never satisfies them, and that is

why the British Empire rests on sand.” Then she said: “Do I like

anyone, though?” Presumably she liked Heaslop, and he changed the

subject, for this side of her life did not concern him.

His Indian friends were, on the other hand, a bit above themselves.

Victory, which would have made the English sanctimonious, made them

aggressive. They wanted to develop an offensive, and tried to do

so by discovering new grievances and wrongs, many of which had no

existence. They suffered from the usual disillusion that attends

warfare. The aims of battle and the fruits of conquest are never

the same; the latter have their value and only the saint rejects

them, but their hint of immortality vanishes as soon as they are

held in the hand. Although Sir Gilbert had been courteous, almost

obsequious, the fabric he represented had in no wise bowed its

head. British officialism remained, as all-pervading and as

unpleasant as the sun; and what was next to be done against it was

not very obvious, even to Mahmoud Ali. Loud talk and trivial

lawlessness were attempted, and behind them continued a genuine

but vague desire for education. “Mr. Fielding, we must all be

educated promptly.”

Aziz was friendly and domineering. He wanted Fielding to “give in

to the East,” as he called it, and live in a condition of

affectionate dependence upon it. “You can trust me, Cyril.” No

question of that, and Fielding had no roots among his own people.

Yet he really couldn’t become a sort of Mohammed Latif. When they

argued about it something racial intruded—not bitterly, but

inevitably, like the colour of their skins: coffee-colour versus

pinko-grey. And Aziz would conclude: “Can’t you see that I’m

grateful to you for your help and want to reward you?” And the

other would retort: “If you want to reward me, let Miss Quested

off paying.”

The insensitiveness about Adela displeased him. It would, from

every point of view, be right to treat her generously, and one day

he had the notion of appealing to the memory of Mrs. Moore. Aziz

had this high and fantastic estimate of Mrs. Moore. Her death had

been a real grief to his warm heart; he wept like a child and

ordered his three children to weep also. There was no doubt that

he respected and loved her. Fielding’s first attempt was a failure.

The reply was: “I see your trick. I want revenge on them. Why

should I be insulted and suffer and the contents of my pockets read

and my wife’s photograph taken to the police station? Also I want

the money—to educate my little boys, as I explained to her.” But

he began to weaken, and Fielding was not ashamed to practise a

little necromancy. Whenever the question of compensation came up,

he introduced the dead woman’s name. Just as other propagandists

invented her a tomb, so did he raise a questionable image of her

in the heart of Aziz, saying nothing that he believed to be untrue,

but producing something that was probably far from the truth. Aziz

yielded suddenly. He felt it was Mrs. Moore’s wish that he should

spare the woman who was about to marry her son, that it was the

only honour he could pay her, and he renounced with a passionate

and beautiful outburst the whole of the compensation money, claiming

only costs. It was fine of him, and, as he foresaw, it won him no

credit with the English. They still believed he was guilty, they

believed it to the end of their careers, and retired Anglo-Indians

in Tunbridge Wells or Cheltenham still murmur to each other: “That

Marabar case which broke down because the poor girl couldn’t face

giving her evidence—that was another bad case.”

When the affair was thus officially ended, Ronny, who was about to

be transferred to another part of the Province, approached Fielding

with his usual constraint and said: “I wish to thank you for the

help you have given Miss Quested. She will not of course trespass

on your hospitality further; she has as a matter of fact decided

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.