“We’ll see what happens, in any case,” he observed cryptically, and walked out into the sunlight. The Magistrate watched his head glow for a moment before a bearer sprang forward to protect it with the shade of a black umbrella. He too sighed. More than ever he longed to grasp the Collector’s skull and make some exact measurements of it.
Now that the greatest heat of the day was over, the engineers were setting to work on the demolition of the mosque. Presently, the Collector found himself alone once more in his study. He stood near the window, one hand resting on the marble head of Innocence Protected by Fidelity. “It really wasn’t altogether my fault,” he suggested to himself hopefully.
A strange thing was happening to the mosque; a golden cloud had begun to spread outwards from its walls into the still air. Gradually the cloud darkened and spread into a thick cloak of dust that completely masked the building from the Collector’s troubled eyes, as if to protect him from the evidence of his own barbarity.
While the Collector was observing the slow demolition of the mosque Harry Dunstaple, attended by Fleury and a couple of Sikh sowars, had gone to rescue the “fallen woman” from the dak bungalow...this was exactly the sort of daring and noble enterprise that appealed to the two young men’s imaginations, rescuing girls at the gallop was very much their cup of tea, they thought.
The difficulty about the dak was that it had not been built, as it should have been, in the cantonment but in the middle of the native town, which made the expedition dangerous. To make matters worse the sun was setting; they had to hurry lest they be caught in the native town after nightfall. After the tranquillity of the cantonment the noisy crowds surging through the streets came as a shock to Fleury; as they penetrated deeper into the bazaar men shouted at them, words he could not understand, but they were plainly jeering. Their progress was constantly impeded by the crush; a perilously swaying cargo of Mohammedan women passed by on a camel, their masked heads turned towards Fleury; he felt himself stared at weirdly by their tiny, embroidered eye-holes.
“ Sahib. Yih achcha jagah nahin!” one of the Sikhs said to him. “No good place, Sahib. Come quick.” He was leading them towards a short cut which would take them away from the principal road through the bazaar.
They plunged into a wilderness of dark and stinking streets, so narrow that there was hardly room for two people to pass each other. Their way led down flights of twisting steps and past shadowy doorways redolent of smoke, excrement and incense; sometimes the street narrowed to a mere slit between houses and once a massive, comatose Brahmin bull stumbled past them. Then, abruptly, they emerged from the stifling darkness into light and air. The dak bungalow lay beside them. While Fleury waited at the gate with the Sikhs Harry darted inside for the “fallen woman”.
After a few minutes Harry emerged alone, looking perturbed, to confer with Fleury. The “fallen woman”, whose name was Miss Hughes, was refusing to come. What on earth should he do? They could not possibly leave her alone for a second night without protection...And now, not content with refusing to come she was even thinking of killing herself again. Anyway, that is what she had said she was thinking of doing. She had implied that then he and all the others would not have to worry about her any longer. She might as well be dead, anyway, loathsome creature that she was, because now...(Harry had blushed at that “now” knowing only too well what it referred to)...because now she had nothing to live for. She had ruined herself.
“Nonsense!” Harry had declared gruffly. “You have a jolly great deal to live for.”
“Just tell me one single thing!” And Miss Hughes had turned her tear-stained face, which was like that of a sensual little angel, towards Harry.
“Well...Any amount of things.”
“What things?”
But Harry had been unable to think of anything. This was not the sort of thing he was good at. So he had dashed out to see if Fleury had any ideas. All this time the light was fading. To remain here after dark would be to invite disaster. So there was no time to lose. The two young men stared at each other in dismay.
“Tell her...tell her...” But Fleury, too, found himself baffled by this unexpected development. And it was not that his mind had gone completely blank, as Harry’s had...because he could think of a number of ways for a dishonoured woman to spend the rest of her life...becoming a nun, good works to achieve redemption, that sort of thing. The trouble was that these did not sound to him like the sort of lives one could recommend to someone who thought she had nothing to live for; they sounded too uncomfortable for that.
But this was getting them nowhere. The Sikhs were beginning to roll their eyes ironically, and the horses were becoming restive too.
“Look here, tell her what a joy it is just to be alive. You know, the smell of new-mown hay, crystal mountain streams, the beauty of the setting sun, the laughter of little children...or rather, no...never mind the children...And, of course, you might also bring in the woman taken in adultery, the casting of first stones, Our Lord loving sinners and so forth.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed here and you spoke to Miss Hughes?” pleaded Harry.
“Certainly not. She knows you.”
So Harry again hurried inside, his lips moving silently as he rehearsed Fleury’s reasons for life being worth living. Outside, meanwhile, Fleury had to pretend not to notice that the Sikhs, their irony verging on impertinence, were ostentatiously saying goodbye to each other.
So it was that when Harry again emerged, distressed and still without Miss Hughes, it was less the fear of death in the native town than of appearing foolish in the eyes of the Sikhs, which caused the two young men to ride back to the Residency, leaving Miss Hughes to her fate. But they did not feel very pleased with themselves.
8
Days passed and still the sepoys made no decision to attack the Krishnapur cantonment. They moved out once, but after only a mile they stopped, engaged in disputes, and then moved back to Captainganj again. This movement of retreat caused some of the Europeans to hope that the affair might pass away without further bloodshed, but neither the Collector nor the Magistrate shared this optimism. A strange calm prevailed.
By acting as if the Company still retained some authority in the region, by staging a pantomime of administrative government to an empty theatre, the Collector had done his best to keep everything going as usual. But he found that all business in the courts and offices had ceased, except for the opium-eaters who came for the drug at the usual hour. There was another sign of this ominous calm, too, for the native sub-officers out in the district reported that crime had ceased altogether. The Collector remembered something he had once read...a Sanskrit poem describing how, in an overwhelmingly hot season, the cobra lay under the peacock’s wing and the frog reclined beneath the hood of the cobra. So it must be, he thought, in Krishnapur, where all personal antagonism had been forgotten in the general feeling of expectation.
At the same time, however, as this sudden absence of crime was noticed, there was evidence of unrest in the native town. Merchants had latticed up the fronts of their shops with bamboo hurdles to protect them against the looting which they evidently expected. The wealthier merchants had even hired small armies of mercenaries to protect their property. These men, armed with swords and lâtees, were to be seen swaggering about the streets in various uniforms of their own confection, shouting with laughter if they saw a European and boasting that they were now the masters.
The Collector was grateful for the days of respite. He knew that if the sepoys had attacked immediately after the mutiny at Captainganj they would have had little chance of defending themselves in the Residency. For the past few days everyone had been working to make the defences solid. It was true that some of the ladies were becoming bad-tempered and disconsolate from the heat, from the absence of active punkahs (the punkah-wallahs were vanishing one by one), and from the scarcity of khus tatties, the frames woven with fragrant grass over which water was thrown in order to cool t
he air during the hot weather. But on the whole the community had worked together, frantically and with a common purpose, until now order prevailed where there had only been confusion before. And the Collector thought admiringly of that observation hive of bees they had had in the Crystal Palace. What fine little beasts bees were!
He was standing in his bedroom with one elbow on the chimney piece as he mused on the qualities of bees. But suddenly it occurred to him that he could no longer hear the General’s whistling breath from the adjoining dressing-room. This breath had grown daily less audible...yet how tenaciously the old General had been fighting to survive! Dr Dunstaple proclaimed it a miracle that he should have lasted so long.
The Collector was moving towards the dressing-room where Louise was watching by the General’s bedside, when he heard another noise coming from outside in the compound, a strange, resonant murmur, a humming sound which slowly grew in volume until it reverberated everywhere, and which sounded, by an odd coincidence with his reflections of a moment earlier, not unlike the sound of bees about to swarm. As he hesitated a bearer knocked and came in with a message from the Magistrate, asking him to come immediately to the Cutcherry.
Outside the offices the Collector found the explanation for the resonant humming he had heard. A crowd of Eurasians and native Christians had assembled with bundles of bedding and other possessions loaded on to hackeries or balanced on their heads; the noise came from their humming, a sound like that made by the native infantry when striking camp, combined with a high-pitched wail of discontent.
The Magistrate, looking harassed, was sitting at his desk. From the wall the portrait of the young Queen surveyed her two subjects with bulging blue eyes.
“What on earth is the matter with them?”
“They want to come into the enclave. They say they’re loyal to the Company and that as Christians they’ll certainly be murdered by the sepoys. They’re probably right, at that.” Noting the look of dismay on the Collector’s face he added: “I know, but what can we possibly do? I suppose we could take in the Eurasians at a pinch but we can’t possibly have any more native Christians...We have more than enough as it is. We haven’t enough food.”
“We can’t just leave them out there to be massacred, for Heaven’s sake!” cried the Collector, who had turned pale and was groping for a chair. The Magistrate was taken aback by the Collector’s show of emotion. He said: “I’m sorry, but we won’t be able to stand a siege for any time at all if we have to feed such a crowd. Of course, it’s up to you to decide, but I can’t recommend you to take them in.”
“Is there nothing we can do?”
“We’ll take in the ‘crannies’, if you like...They would be the most in danger, anyway. All I can suggest for the native Christians is that we give each of them a certificate to say that they’ve been loyal to the Government, for when these difficulties are over. They can be rewarded afterwards.”
“A fat lot of good a certificate will be!” groaned the Collector, but there was no alternative that he could see. He stayed for an hour in the Cutcherry helping the Magistrate to sign and issue the certificates. All the time he remained there the high-pitched, resonant humming did not cease for a moment.
It was only as he was walking back to the Residency that he remembered the General and summoned a bearer, telling him to go and enquire how the General was. The bearer, however, did not move. Instead, he replied quietly that it was unnecessary...He had just heard...he dropped his eyes and after a moment’s hesitation murmured...“... is dunniah fänê sā; rehlat keah” (that his spirit had begun its march from this transitory world).
It was about noon that the General died. The humming of the native Christians was the only sound to break the silence. As the afternoon wore on, the humming was silenced by the great heat; all living creatures were obliged to crawl into some shade in order to survive. For a while the silence now became profound at the Residency, as it did every afternoon. Besides, there was nothing further for the garrison to do; by now they had made their defences as secure as was possible in the circumstances. The ladies, having fought polite but ruthless battles for a place under those punkahs in the billiard room that were still moving (that is to say, those which still had a native attached to the other end), lay stretched out on charpoys and mattresses in their chemises and petticoats like arrangements of wilted flowers, their faces, necks, and arms shining with perspiration. Flies and mosquitoes tormented them and they longed for the evening which would bring, if not coolness, at least a fall in the temperature.
About three o’clock the deathly silence was broken by a terrible noise of banging and hammering which startled them awake. It was the native carpenters knocking together a coffin for the General. The Padre was to bury him that evening. Towards four o’clock, when the heat had at last begun to die down a little, the aggrieved humming started up again. This time it came from a little further away...from outside the Residency gates, where the native Christians had been moved, each holding his certificate of loyalty to the Company.
The Padre, too, was distressed by this humming. He had complained to the Collector about the Christians being left outside, just as he had complained about the storing of great jars of grain and powder at the back of the Church, but it had done no good. The Collector had been polite and soothing, but he stubbornly continued to ignore the Padre’s demands.
The Padre was dismayed that his authority, which ought to have increased at this time of danger, had instead melted away. Even on the day following the disaster at Captainganj when he had taken the Sunday evening service in the expectation, at such a critical time, of finding it full to capacity, he had found himself with a congregation of a mere half dozen, all ladies.
He had intended beforehand, picturing to himself a large and anxious congregation, to preach a comforting sermon on a text from the Psalms: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put any confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put any confidence in princes.” But seeing that mere handful of worshippers in the empty, echoing Church, he had been seized by righteous anger and had preached instead on the theme: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
He had heard, he declared, that there were those in the British community who blamed their present perilous situation on the missionary activity of the Church. They blamed a colonel of a regiment at Barrackpur who had been preaching Christianity in the bazaar. They blamed Mr Tucker, the Judge at Fatehpur, for the piety which had made him have the Ten Commandments translated into the vernacular and chiselled on stones to be placed by the roadside...
“They blame the pale-faced Christian knight with the great Excalibur of Truth in his hand, who is cleaving right through all the most cherished fictions of Brahmanism...the literature of Bacon and Milton that is exciting a new appetite for Truth and Beauty...the exact sciences of the West with their clear, demonstrable facts and inevitable deductions which are putting to shame the physical errors of Hinduism.
“They blame the pious men who have circulated this missionary address to the more educated natives in our Presidency,” cried the Padre, flourishing a pamphlet in the pulpit, “demonstrating that our European civilization, which is rapidly uniting all the nations of the earth by means of railways, steam-vessels and the Electric Telegraph, is the forerunner of an inevitable absorption of all other faiths into the One Faith of the white ruler. They blame these devoted men for daring to suggest such a thing! They blame Lord Canning for giving a donation to the Baptist college at Srirampur and Lady Canning for visiting the female schools of Calcutta! They blame our most saintly men of God...and I ask you, brethren, for what sin do they blame them? They blame them for buying little native orphans during famines in order to bring them up in the true Way. Is this a crime? No, it is the service of Our Lord!
“Brethren, if our little community is now in peril it is because of Sin. The bad lives that are led by many of the Christians among us are a cause of discontent to Him...a
nd make Him, who is above all, withdraw His protection. Sin is the one thing above all others which grieves Him... Sin is the thing which God most hates...”
The Padre paused. It had grown dark in the Church. On each side of the pulpit a wrought-iron bracket, raised like a skeletal arm, held a thick white candle. The two small flames from these candles suddenly furnished him with inspiration and he began to explain their significance...As the world grows darker, so the flame of truth grows brighter...just as these candles were slowly growing brighter as darkness fell outside. He was talking in a different tone, hurriedly, even incoherently. In spite of the wafting punkahs which made the candles flicker, it was stifling in the Church. He left the candles and returned to the subject of Sin. He felt there was something he had left unsaid, something that it was vital to explain to his congregation. No doubt they were suffering from weariness after the anxious night they had passed. But if they were tired, so was he. He had never felt more tired in his life, nor more suffocated by omnipresent Sin. The heat was appalling...but Sin dazed him even more.
As he continued to talk, somewhat at random, the conviction slowly gained on him that he was delivering his sermon not to the half dozen ladies in front of him but to the ranks of great earthenware jars at the back of the Church. They crouched there in their shadowy pews, perfectly motionless. He pleaded with them to listen to the Word of God, but they made no answer. Ignoring the ladies, who were becoming uneasy, he tried again and again to formulate the one elusive argument that would win over those dim, sinful ranks of jars. But they remained deaf to the exhortations which echoed round their stony ears.
The Empire Trilogy Page 60
