第 三十七 章 · Chapter XXXVII

. Chapter XXXVII

Friends again, yet aware that they could meet no more, Aziz and

Fielding went for their last ride in the Mau jungles. The floods

had abated and the Rajah was officially dead, so the Guest House

party were departing next morning, as decorum required. What with

the mourning and the festival, the visit was a failure.

Fielding had scarcely seen Godbole, who promised every day to show

him over the King-Emperor George Fifth High School, his main

objective, but always made some excuse. This afternoon Aziz let

out what had happened: the King-Emperor had been converted into a

granary, and the Minister of Education did not like to admit this

to his former Principal. The school had been opened only last year

by the Agent to the Governor-General, and it still flourished on

paper; he hoped to start it again before its absence was remarked

and to collect its scholars before they produced children of their

own. Fielding laughed at the tangle and waste of energy, but he

did not travel as lightly as in the past; education was a continuous

concern to him, because his income and the comfort of his family

depended on it. He knew that few Indians think education good in

itself, and he deplored this now on the widest grounds. He began

to say something heavy on the subject of Native States, but the

friendliness of Aziz distracted him. This reconciliation was a

success, anyhow. After the funny shipwreck there had been no more

nonsense or bitterness, and they went back laughingly to their old

relationship as if nothing had happened. Now they rode between

jolly bushes and rocks. Presently the ground opened into full

sunlight and they saw a grassy slope bright with butterflies, also

a cobra, which crawled across doing nothing in particular, and

disappeared among some custard apple trees. There were round white

clouds in the sky, and white pools on the earth; the hills in the

distance were purple. The scene was as park-like as England, but

did not cease being queer. They drew rein, to give the cobra

elbow-room, and Aziz produced a letter that he wanted to send to

Miss Quested. A charming letter. He wanted to thank his old enemy

for her fine behaviour two years back: perfectly plain was it now

that she had behaved well. “As I fell into our largest Mau tank

under circumstances our other friends will relate, I thought how

brave Miss Quested was, and decided to tell her so, despite my

imperfect English. Through you I am happy here with my children

instead of in a prison, of that I make no doubt. My children shall

be taught to speak of you with the greatest affection and respect.”

“Miss Quested will be greatly pleased. I am glad you have seen her

courage at last.”

“I want to do kind actions all round and wipe out the wretched

business of the Marabar for ever. I have been so disgracefully

hasty, thinking you meant to get hold of my money: as bad a mistake

as the cave itself.”

“Aziz, I wish you would talk to my wife. She too believes that the

Marabar is wiped out.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know, perhaps she might tell you, she won’t tell me. She

has ideas I don’t share—indeed, when I’m away from her I think them

ridiculous. When I’m with her, I suppose because I’m fond of her,

I feel different, I feel half dead and half blind. My wife’s after

something. You and I and Miss Quested are, roughly speaking, not

after anything. We jog on as decently as we can, you a little in

front—a laudable little party. But my wife is not with us.”

“What are you meaning? Is Stella not faithful to you, Cyril? This

fills me with great concern.”

Fielding hesitated. He was not quite happy about his marriage. He

was passionate physically again—the final flare-up before the

clinkers of middle age—and he knew that his wife did not love him

as much as he loved her, and he was ashamed of pestering her. But

during the visit to Mau the situation had improved. There seemed

a link between them at last—that link outside either participant

that is necessary to every relationship. In the language of

theology, their union had been blessed. He could assure Aziz that

Stella was not only faithful to him, but likely to become more so;

and trying to express what was not clear to himself, he added dully

that different people had different points of view. “If you won’t

talk about the Marabar to Stella, why won’t you talk to Ralph? He

is a wise boy really. And (same metaphor) he rides a little behind

her, though with her.”

“Tell him also, I have nothing to say to him, but he is indeed a

wise boy and has always one Indian friend. I partly love him

because he brought me back to you to say good-bye. For this is

good-bye, Cyril, though to think about it will spoil our ride and

make us sad.”

“No, we won’t think about it.” He too felt that this was their last

free intercourse. All the stupid misunderstandings had been cleared

up, but socially they had no meeting-place. He had thrown in his

lot with Anglo-India by marrying a countrywoman, and he was

acquiring some of its limitations, and already felt surprise at

his own past heroism. Would he to-day defy all his own people for

the sake of a stray Indian? Aziz was a memento, a trophy, they were

proud of each other, yet they must inevitably part. And, anxious

to make what he could of this last afternoon, he forced himself to

speak intimately about his wife, the person most dear to him. He

said: “From her point of view, Mau has been a success. It calmed

her—both of them suffer from restlessness. She found something

soothing, some solution of her queer troubles here.” After a

silence—myriads of kisses around them as the earth drew the water

in—he continued: “Do you know anything about this Krishna business?”

“My dear chap, officially they call it Gokul Ashtami. All the State

offices are closed, but how else should it concern you and me?”

“Gokul is the village where Krishna was born—well, more or less

born, for there’s the same hovering between it and another village

as between Bethlehem and Nazareth. What I want to discover is its

spiritual side, if it has one.”

“It is useless discussing Hindus with me. Living with them teaches

me no more. When I think I annoy them, I do not. When I think I

don’t annoy them, I do. Perhaps they will sack me for tumbling on

to their dolls’-house; on the other hand, perhaps they will double

my salary. Time will prove. Why so curious about them?”

“It’s difficult to explain. I never really understood or liked

them, except an occasional scrap of Godbole. Does the old fellow

still say ‘Come, come?’”

“Oh, presumably.”

Fielding sighed, opened his lips, shut them, then said with a

little laugh, “I can’t explain, because it isn’t in words at all,

but why do my wife and her brother like Hinduism, though they take

no interest in its forms? They won’t talk to me about this. They

know I think a certain side of their lives is a mistake, and are

shy. That’s why I wish you would talk to them, for at all events

you’re Oriental.”

Aziz refused to reply. He didn’t want to meet Stella and Ralph

again, knew they didn’t want to meet him, was incurious about their

secrets, and felt good old Cyril to be a bit clumsy. Something—not

a sight, but a sound—flitted past him, and caused him to re-read

his letter to Miss Quested. Hadn’t he wanted to say something else

to her? Taking out his pen, he added: “For my own part, I shall

henceforth connect you with the name that is very sacred in my

mind, namely, Mrs. Moore.” When he had finished, the mirror of the

scenery was shattered, the meadow disintegrated into butterflies.

A poem about Mecca—the Caaba of Union—the thorn-bushes where

pilgrims die before they have seen the Friend—they flitted next;

he thought of his wife; and then the whole semi-mystic, semi-sensuous

overturn, so characteristic of his spiritual life, came to end like

a landslip and rested in its due place, and he found himself riding

in the jungle with his dear Cyril.

“Oh, shut up,” he said. “Don’t spoil our last hour with foolish

questions. Leave Krishna alone, and talk about something sensible.”

They did. All the way back to Mau they wrangled about politics.

Each had hardened since Chandrapore, and a good knock about proved

enjoyable. They trusted each other, although they were going to

part, perhaps because they were going to part. Fielding had “no

further use for politeness,” he said, meaning that the British

Empire really can’t be abolished because it’s rude. Aziz retorted,

“Very well, and we have no use for you,” and glared at him with

abstract hate. Fielding said: “Away from us, Indians go to seed at

once. Look at the King-Emperor High School! Look at you, forgetting

your medicine and going back to charms. Look at your poems.”—“Jolly

good poems, I’m getting published Bombay side.”—“Yes, and what do

they say? Free our women and India will be free. Try it, my lad.

Free your own lady in the first place, and see who’ll wash Ahmed

Karim and Jamila’s faces. A nice situation!”

Aziz grew more excited. He rose in his stirrups and pulled at his

horse’s head in the hope it would rear. Then he should feel in a

battle. He cried: “Clear out, all you Turtons and Burtons. We

wanted to know you ten years back—now it’s too late. If we see you

and sit on your committees, it’s for political reasons, don’t you

make any mistake.” His horse did rear. “Clear out, clear out, I

say. Why are we put to so much suffering? We used to blame you,

now we blame ourselves, we grow wiser. Until England is in

difficulties we keep silent, but in the next European war—aha, aha!

Then is our time.” He paused, and the scenery, though it smiled,

fell like a gravestone on any human hope. They cantered past a

temple to Hanuman—God so loved the world that he took monkey’s

flesh upon him—and past a Saivite temple, which invited to lust,

but under the semblance of eternity, its obscenities bearing no

relation to those of our flesh and blood. They splashed through

butterflies and frogs; great trees with leaves like plates rose

among the brushwood. The divisions of daily life were returning,

the shrine had almost shut.

“Who do you want instead of the English? The Japanese?” jeered

Fielding, drawing rein.

“No, the Afghans. My own ancestors.”

“Oh, your Hindu friends will like that, won’t they?”

“It will be arranged—a conference of Oriental statesmen.”

“It will indeed be arranged.”

“Old story of ‘We will rob every man and rape every woman from

Peshawar to Calcutta,’ I suppose, which you get some nobody to

repeat and then quote every week in the _Pioneer_ in order to

frighten us into retaining you! We know!” Still he couldn’t quite

fit in Afghans at Mau, and, finding he was in a corner, made his

horse rear again until he remembered that he had, or ought to have,

a mother-land. Then he shouted: “India shall be a nation! No

foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be

one! Hurrah! Hurrah for India! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

India a nation! What an apotheosis! Last comer to the drab

nineteenth-century sisterhood! Waddling in at this hour of the

world to take her seat! She, whose only peer was the Holy Roman

Empire, she shall rank with Guatemala and Belgium perhaps! Fielding

mocked again. And Aziz in an awful rage danced this way and that,

not knowing what to do, and cried: “Down with the English anyhow.

That’s certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We

may hate one another, but we hate you most. If I don’t make you

go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it’s fifty five-hundred years we

shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman

into the sea, and then”—he rode against him furiously—“and then,”

he concluded, half kissing him, “you and I shall be friends.”

“Why can’t we be friends now?” said the other, holding him

affectionately. “It’s what I want. It’s what you want.”

But the horses didn’t want it—they swerved apart; the earth didn’t

want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single

file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the

carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from

the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn’t want it, they said in

their hundred voices, “No, not yet,” and the sky said, “No, not

there.”

Weybridge, 1924.

[END]

_Mr. E. M. FORSTERS NOVELS_

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

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THE LONGEST JOURNEY

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A ROOM WITH A VIEW

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still queerer repugnances which make up the strange region of

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HOWARDS END

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“This novel, taken with its three predecessors, assures its author

a place amongst the handful of living writers who count.”_—Athenæum._

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