A Passage to India - E. M. Forster (e reader for manga txt) 📗

“Quite so. Heaslop ought never to have let her go, and he knows it. Shall we be off?”

“Let us wait until the happy couple leave the compound clear⁠ ⁠… they really are intolerable dawdling there. Ah well, Fielding, you don’t believe in Providence, I remember. I do. This is Heaslop’s punishment for abducting our witness in order to stop us establishing our alibi.”

“You go rather too far there. The poor old lady’s evidence could have had no value, shout and shriek Mahmoud Ali as he will. She couldn’t see through the Kawa Dol even if she had wanted to. Only Miss Quested could have saved him.”

“She loved Aziz, he says, also India, and he loved her.”

“Love is of no value in a witness, as a barrister ought to know. But I see there is about to be an Esmiss Esmoor legend at Chandrapore, my dear Hamidullah, and I will not impede its growth.”

The other smiled, and looked at his watch. They both regretted the death, but they were middle-aged men, who had invested their emotions elsewhere, and outbursts of grief could not be expected from them over a slight acquaintance. It’s only one’s own dead who matter. If for a moment the sense of communion in sorrow came to them, it passed. How indeed is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones? The soul is tired in a moment, and in fear of losing the little she does understand, she retreats to the permanent lines which habit or chance have dictated, and suffers there. Fielding had met the dead woman only two or three times, Hamidullah had seen her in the distance once, and they were far more occupied with the coming gathering at Dilkusha, the “victory” dinner, for which they would be most victoriously late.

They agreed not to tell Aziz about Mrs. Moore till the morrow, because he was fond of her, and the bad news might spoil his fun.

“Oh, this is unbearable!” muttered Hamidullah. For Miss Quested was back again.

“Mr. Fielding, has Ronny told you of this new misfortune?”

He bowed.

“Ah me!” She sat down, and seemed to stiffen into a monument.

“Heaslop is waiting for you, I think.”

“I do so long to be alone. She was my best friend, far more to me than to him. I can’t bear to be with Ronny⁠ ⁠… I can’t explain⁠ ⁠… Could you do me the very great kindness of letting me stop after all?”

Hamidullah swore violently in the vernacular.

“I should be pleased, but does Mr. Heaslop wish it?”

“I didn’t ask him, we are too much upset⁠—it’s so complex, not like what unhappiness is supposed to be. Each of us ought to be alone, and think. Do come and see Ronny again.”

“I think he should come in this time,” said Fielding, feeling that this much was due to his own dignity. “Do ask him to come.”

She returned with him. He was half miserable, half arrogant⁠—indeed, a strange mix-up⁠—and broke at once into uneven speech. “I came to bring Miss Quested away, but her visit to the Turtons has ended, and there is no other arrangement so far, mine are bachelor quarters now⁠—”

Fielding stopped him courteously. “Say no more, Miss Quested stops here. I only wanted to be assured of your approval. Miss Quested, you had better send for your own servant if he can be found, but I will leave orders with mine to do all they can for you, also I’ll let the Scouts know. They have guarded the College ever since it was closed, and may as well go on. I really think you’ll be as safe here as anywhere. I shall be back Thursday.”

Meanwhile Hamidullah, determined to spare the enemy no incidental pain, had said to Ronny: “We hear, sir, that your mother has died. May we ask where the cable came from?”

“Aden.”

“Ah, you were boasting she had reached Aden, in court.”

“But she died on leaving Bombay,” broke in Adela. “She was dead when they called her name this morning. She must have been buried at sea.”

Somehow this stopped Hamidullah, and he desisted from his brutality, which had shocked Fielding more than anyone else. He remained silent while the details of Miss Quested’s occupation of the College were arranged, merely remarking to Ronny, “It is clearly to be understood, sir, that neither Mr. Fielding nor any of us are responsible for this lady’s safety at Government College,” to which Ronny agreed. After that, he watched the semi-chivalrous behavings of the three English with quiet amusement; he thought Fielding had been incredibly silly and weak, and he was amazed by the younger people’s want of proper pride. When they were driving out to Dilkusha, hours late, he said to Amritrao, who accompanied them: “Mr. Amritrao, have you considered what sum Miss Quested ought to pay as compensation?”

“Twenty thousand rupees.”

No more was then said, but the remark horrified Fielding. He couldn’t bear to think of the queer honest girl losing her money and possibly her young man too. She advanced into his consciousness suddenly. And, fatigued by the merciless and enormous day, he lost his usual sane view of human intercourse, and felt that we exist not in ourselves, but in terms of each others’ minds⁠—a notion for which logic offers no support and which had attacked him only once before, the evening after the catastrophe, when from the verandah of the club he saw the fists and fingers of the Marabar swell until they included the whole night sky.

“Aziz, are you awake?”

“No, so let us have a talk; let us dream plans for the future.”

“I am useless at dreaming.”

“Good night then, dear fellow.”

The Victory Banquet was over, and the revellers lay on the roof of plain Mr. Zulfiqar’s mansion, asleep, or gazing through mosquito nets at the stars. Exactly above their heads hung the constellation of the Lion,