Mr. Sita Ram, however, thought that the only hope was universal suffrage and self-government. He went on with the station-master’s history. The man had passed all his examinations with credit; his qualifications were the highest possible. And yet he had been passed over for promotion no less than four times. Four times, and always in favour of Europeans or Eurasians. Mr. Sita Ram’s blood boiled when he thought of the five thousand years of Indian civilization, Indian spirituality, Indian moral superiority, cynically trampled, in the person of the station-master of Bhowanipore, under English feet…
‘Is dat justice, I ask? ‘ He banged the table.
Who knows? Philip wondered. Perhaps it is.
Realizing that he was expected to make some response, Philip shook his head and said, ‘No.’
Elinor was still thinking of the nine children. To obtain a quick delivery, the midwives, she had heard, stamp on their patients. And, instead of ergot, they use a paste made of cow-dung and powdered glass
‘Do you call dat justice? ‘ Mr. Sita Ram repeated. Realizing that he was expected to make some response, Philip shook his head and said, ‘No.’
‘You ought to write about it,’ said Mr. Sita Ram, ‘you ought to show de scandal up.’
Philip excused himself; he was only a writer of novels, not a politician, not a journalist.’do you know old Daulat Singh?’ he added with apparent irrelevance. ‘The one who lives at Ajmere?’
‘I have met de man,’ said Mr. Sita Ram, in a tone that made it quite clear that he didn’t like Daulat Singh, or perhaps (more probably, thought Philip) hadn’t been liked or approved by him.
‘A fine man, I thought,’ said Philip. For men like Daulat Singh justice would have to mean something very different from what it meant for Mr. Sita Ram or the station-master of Bhowanipore. He remembered the noble old face, the bright eyes, the restrained passion of his words. If only he could have refrained from chewing pan….
The time came for them to go. At last. They said goodbye with an almost excessive cordiality, climbed into the waiting car and were driven away. The ground beneath the palm trees of Joohoo was littered with a mintage of shining silver, splashed with puddles of mercury. They rolled through a continuous flickering of light and dark—the cinema film of twenty years ago—until, emerging from under the palm trees, they found themselves in the full glare of the enormous moon.
‘Three-formed Hecate,’ he thought, blinking at the round brilliance. ‘But what about Sita Ram and Daulat Singh and the station-master, what about old appalling India, what about justice and liberty, what about progress and the future? The fact is, I don’t care. Not a pin. It’s disgraceful. But I don’t. And the forms of Hecate aren’t three. They’re a thousand, they’re millions. The tides. The Nemorensian goddess, the Tifatinian. Varying directly as the product of the masses and inversely as the square of the distances. A florin at arm’s length, but as big as the Russian Empire. Bigger than India. What a comfort it will be to be back in Europe again!
And to think there was a time when I read books about yoga and did breathing exercises and tried to persuade myself that I didn’t really exist! What a fool! It was the result of talking with that idiot Burlap. But luckily people don’t leave much trace on me. They make an impression easily, like a ship in water. But the water closes up again. I wonder what this Italian ship will be like to-morrow? The Lloyd Triestino boats are always supposed to be good. “Luckily,” I said; but oughtn’t one to be ashamed of one’s indifference? That parable of the sower. The seed that fell in shallow ground. And yet, obviously, it’s no use pretending to be what one isn’t. One sees the results of that in Burlap. What a comedian! But he takes in a lot of people. Including himself, I suppose. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a conscious hypocrite, except for special occasions. You can’t keep it up all the time. All the same, it would be good to know what it’s like to believe in something to the point of being prepared to kill people or get yourself killed. It would be an experience….’
Elinor had lifted her face towards the same bright disc. Moon, full moon…. And instantly she had changed her position in space and time. She dropped her eyes and turned towards her husband; she took his hand and leaned tenderly against him.
‘Do you remember those evenings?’ she asked. ‘In the garden, at Gattenden. Do you remember, Phil?’
Elinor’s words came to his ears from a great distance and from a world in which, for the moment, he felt no interest. He roused himself with reluctance. ‘Which evenings? ‘ he asked, speaking across gulfs, and in the rather flat and colourless voice of one who answers an importunate telephone.
At the sound of that telephone voice Elinor quickly drew away from him. To press yourself against someone who turns out simply not to be there is not only disappointing; it is also rather humiliating. Which evenings, indeed!
‘Why don’t you love me any more?’ she asked despairingly. As if she could have been talking about any other evenings than those of that wonderful summer they had spent, just after their marriage, at her mother’s house. ‘You don’t even take any interest in me now—less than you would in a piece of furniture, much less than in a book.’
‘But, Elinor, what are you talking about?’ Philip put more astonishment into his voice than he really felt. After the first moment, when he had had time to come to the surface, so to speak, from the depths of his reverie, he had understood what she meant, he had connected this Indian moon with that which had shone, eight years ago, on the Hertfordshire garden. He might have said so, of course. It would have made things easier. But he was annoyed at having been interrupted, he didn’t like to be reproached, and the temptation to score a debater’s point against his wife was strong. ‘I ask a simple question,’ he went on, ‘merely wanting to know what you mean. And you retort by complaining that I don’t love you. I fail to see the logical connection.’
‘But you know quite well what I was talking about,’ said Elinor. ‘And besides, it is true—you don’t love me any more.’
‘I do, as it happens,’ said Philip and, still skirmishing (albeit, vainly as he knew) in the realm of dialectic, went on like a little Socrates with his cross-examination. ‘But what I really want to know is how we ever got to this point from the place where we started. We began with evenings and now…’
But Elinor was more interested in love than in logic. ‘Oh, I know you don’t want to say you don’t love me,’ she interrupted. ‘Not in so many words. You don’t want to hurt my feelings. But it would really hurt them less if you did so straight out, instead of just avoiding the whole question, as you do now. Because this avoiding is really just as much of an admission as a bald statement. And it hurts more because it lasts longer, because there’s suspense and uncertainty and repetition of pain. So long as the words haven’t been definitely spoken, there’s always just a chance that they mayn’t have been tacitly implied. Always a chance, even when one knows that they have been implied. There’s still room for hope. And where there’s hope there’s disappointment. It isn’t really kinder to evade the question, Phil; it’s crueller.’
‘But I don’t evade the question,’ he retorted. ‘Why should I, seeing that I do love you?’
‘Yes, but how? How do you love me? Not in the way you used to, at the beginning. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten. You didn’t even remember the time when we were first married.’
‘But, my dear child,’ Philip protested,’do be accurate. You just said “those evenings” and expected me to guess which.’
‘Of course I expected,’ said Elinor. ‘You ought to have known. You would have known, if you took any interest. That’s what I complain of. You care so little now that the time when you did care means nothing to you. Do you think I can forget those evenings?’
She remembered the garden with its invisible and perfumed flowers, the huge black Wellingtonia on the lawn, the rising moon, and the two stone griffins at either end of the low terrace wall, where they had sat together. She remembered what he had said and his kisses, the touch of his hands. She remembered everything—remembered with the minute precision of one who loves to explore and reconstruct the past, of one who is for ever turning over and affectionately verifying each precious detail of recollected happiness.
‘It’s all simply faded out of your mind,’ she added, mournfully reproachful. For her, those evenings were still more real, more actual than much of her contemporary living.
‘But of course I remember,’ said Philip impatiently. ‘Only one can’t readjust one’s mind instantaneously. At the moment, when you spoke, I happened to be thinking of something else; that was all.’
Elinor sighed. ‘I wish I had something else to think about,’ she said. ‘That’s the trouble; I haven’t. Why should I love you so much? Why? It isn’t fair. You’re protected by an intellect and a talent. You have your work to retire into, your ideas to shield you. But I have nothing—no defence against my feelings, no alternative to you. And it’s I who need the
