31
On 17 September, a Thursday, at about ten o’clock in the morning, the Collector found himself in conversation with the Padre. The Collector sat on an oak throne which had been chipped out of the mud rampart for fuel, but had not yet been used, though it had lost one of its front legs. The throne, whose gothic spires rose high above the Collector’s head, had been placed on a wooden dais at one end of the banqueting hall. Because of the missing front leg, the Collector had to sit well back and to one side; even so, he sometimes forgot about it and, waving an arm for emphasis, narrowly avoided plunging to the floor; this could have caused him a severe injury since the floor was some way below. The Collector had sat a good deal in this chair over the past few days and it had come to affect his habits of thought. He had found that since the chair discouraged emphasis, it also discouraged strong convictions. It had once even gone so far as to empty him on to the floor for voicing an intolerant opinion on the Jesuits. So now he was gradually coming to see that there were several sides to every question.
For the moment, however, the Collector’s mind was idly considering the question of food. It was on just such a dais as this above the feudal retainers, he supposed, that the Saxon thanes would have sat down to trenchers of roasted wild duck and suckling pig. He was numbed by the thought of this imaginary food and could hardly keep his mind on what the Padre was saying. What was it? Oh yes, he was recanting on the Exhibition which, for some reason he had taken to calling “The World’s Vanity Fair”
It was true. A terrible knowledge had been swelling slowly in the Padre’s mind, like a sweet, poisonous fruit, which for a long time he had not dared to taste. He had committed a grave error in lending his approval, together with that of the Church he represented, to the Exhibition. The Collector had shown such enthusiasm for its hollow wonders that he himself had been tempted and misled; he had allowed his own small stirrings of doubt, which he recognized now to have been stirrings of conscience, to be smothered. Besides, there had been so much in the Exhibition that might be clearly seen as innocuous, if not actually beneficial to God’s cause. The Floating Church for Seamen was not the only example...there were inventions that might also serve God: the pews for the use of the deaf, for example, which could be connected to the pulpit with gutta-percha pipes.
The Padre was very weak now, and could only move from place to place if someone helped him. But he knew that he had one more duty to perform before he allowed himself to succumb to his craving for rest. He must persuade the Collector of his error and make him realize that his veneration for this Vanity Fair of materialism was misplaced. But the Collector refused to pay attention for very long. He would murmur: “Hm, I see, I see,” with a distant look in his eye, as if he were hardly listening. Then he would stride away.
This striding away would not have mattered if the Padre had been able to keep up with him...but the Padre could not move unaided. Sometimes he would have to wait for an hour or more before he could find someone to carry him to the Collector’s side. Then, likely as not, he would hardly have had a chance to open his mouth before the Collector would be off again. But the Padre did not give up easily. Besides, the banqueting hall was small and the Collector could not get far. Sometimes, nevertheless, he had to muzzle his temper. He had to muzzle it now, for example, as the Collector suddenly bounded out of his three-legged chair and away. It had taken so long...it had taken two young ensigns, a native pensioner and a Eurasian clerk to lift him up to this platform, and now he would have to get himself down again! What increased his anger (which the chemistry of his soul swiftly transmuted into love for the Collector) was the fact that no able-bodied person seemed to be looking in his direction. He might remain up here indefinitely without anyone noticing his feeble signals!
As it happened, the Collector would not have minded agreeing with the Padre about the Exhibition. He had come to entertain serious doubts about it himself. He, too, suffered from an occasional enlightening vision which came to him from the dim past and which he must have suppressed at the time...The extraordinary array of chains and fetters, manacles and shackles exhibited by Birmingham for export to America’s slave states, for instance...Why had he not thought more about such exhibits? Well, he had never pretended that science and industry were good in themselves, of course...they still had to be used correctly. All the same, he should have thought a great deal more about what lay behind the exhibits. Feelings, the Collector now suspected, were just as important as ideas, though young Fleury no longer appeared to think so for he had given up talking of civilization as a “beneficial disease”; he had discovered the manly pleasures to be found in inventing things, in making things work, in getting results, in cause and effect. In short, he had identified himself at last with the spirit of the times. “All our actions and intentions are futile unless animated by warmth of feeling. Without love everything is a desert. Even Justice, Science, and Respectability.” The Collector was careful to embrace this conviction in a moderate manner, lest he be tipped out of the chair in which he was no longer sitting.
He had nothing left now from the Exhibition. He had thrown his pistols away since he had no more soft lead balls to use in them. He sighed regretfully as he picked his way slowly through the tattered refugees camped here and there on the floor, wondering what had become of his Louis XVI table. Beauty, of course, and Art, also needed warmth of feeling, there was no getting away from it...and, in passing, he allowed himself to feel a cautious contempt for the greedy merchants of England for whom the Exhibition had been an apotheosis.
The Collector’s eye came to rest on the corner where Miriam lay; she was too weak to help Dr McNab now, but although she could no longer be of any service to the ailing figures who lay nearby, she had refused to let the Collector move her mattress up to the dais where the air was better and where cholera clouds would be less likely to hang (if such things existed, which of course they had been proved not to by Dr McNab, but all the same...). Not that the air was very bad anywhere now since most of the roof had been removed by round shot and considerable holes had been made in the walls. At night, indeed, it became quite chilly and a fire had to be built in the centre of the hall. It was Louise who usually attended to Miriam, bringing her a ration of water and helping her nearer the fire at night. The Collector’s chivalry was aroused by Miriam’s weakness, for the heart of a gentleman still beat beneath his ragged morning-coat; besides, he found her an attractive young woman in spite of everything, for she could still smile as sweetly as ever. “Can I do anything for you?” he asked her, thinking absently: “She has a mind of her own.”
“I’m perfectly alright. You must consider your other responsibilities,” said Miriam, proving it yet again. She smiled, rejecting his chivalry.
“Ah, duty!” sighed the Collector. “Mind you, where would we be without it?”
Of all the ladies who had survived both shot and cholera (for the dreaded disease had taken its toll of the billiard room as of other parts of the garrison) none now displayed greater fortitude than Louise. Although she had come to dislike Dr McNab, believing him to have been indirectly responsible for her father’s death, she remained constantly at his side, helping him to care for the sick and wounded. From this pale and anaemic-looking girl who had once thought only of turning the heads of young officers, and whom the Collector had considered insipid, he now saw a young woman of inflexible willpower emerging. He watched her as he passed the section of the hall reserved for the sick, the wounded, and the dying. Her cotton dress was rent almost from the armpit to the hem and as she leaned forward to bring a saucer of water to the lips of a wounded man, the Collector glimpsed three polished ribs and the shrunken globe of her breast; modesty was one of the many considerations which no longer troubled her. She stood up, mopping her brow with the back of a skeleton wrist. The Collector moved on, walking unsteadily. He went out for a few moments and stood on the steps between the Greek pillars, looking in the direction of the Residency for any sign of movement. But
he could see none. These pillars, he could not help noticing, were dreadfully pocked and tattered by shot. He thought contemptuously: “So they weren’t marble after all.” He lingered for a moment sneering at the guilty red core that was revealed beneath the stucco of lime and sand. He hated pretence. But then, with a shrug, he went back inside: this was hardly the time for sneering at pillars.
At the far end of the hall a great pile of earth was growing steadily; here the Sikhs were trying to dig a well. They had run out of water the day before. In spite of their weariness and thirst they declined to drink the water which the Europeans had been using and which was stored in half a dozen hip-baths brought over from the Residency a week earlier (only one of which still contained any water). The Magistrate, nowadays a mere heap of bones decked with cinnamon whiskers, had summoned a little energy with which to pour scorn on the “death by superstition” which faced the brave Sikhs. The Sikhs, ignoring him, had been digging steadily for hours; now they were beginning to shovel up wet earth. The Collector sat on his heels by the edge of the pit and watched for a few minutes before continuing on his way.
Outside on the verandah the sun was shining with the crisp brilliance of the Indian winter. What a lovely day it was! In spite of everything the Collector felt his spirits lift as he sat down beside Lucy on a sheltered corner of the verandah and watched her making cartridges. Mingled with the brimstone smell of burned powder he fancied that he could smell the perfume of roses from the Residency garden, pruned this year by musket fire. Then the smell of warm grass came to join that of the roses and gunpowder and he fell asleep for a few moments, dreaming of cricket fields and meadows. When he awoke Lucy was still at his side and the position of the sun had hardly changed.
For the first three or four days after the Residency had been abandoned a number of the ladies had been employed in making cartridges; now, because of the shortage of lead for the moulds, the job had been left to Lucy, who had become extraordinarily skilful. She sat cross-legged, like a native in the bazaar, surrounded by her implements...the knife and the straight edge for cutting the cartridge paper, the wooden mandrels for rolling the paper into shape, the powder flask, the two-and-a-half dram tin measures for measuring out the powder...and finally, alas, the pot of grease, the cause of all the trouble. Lucy’s grease, however, was a mixture of beeswax and rancid butter. A Hindu could have eaten a pound of it with pleasure.
The Collector watched with admiration as Lucy’s deft fingers dipped a cartridge up to the shoulder in the grease and then set it neatly in a row with the others she had made. At intervals the defenders would come from one part or another of the ramparts to collect a supply of them; but for the moment the firing was slack. The sepoys must be well aware that the garrison’s ammunition was all but finished. They could tell by what was being fired at them. They knew that in another day or two they would not even have to charge the ramparts; they would merely have to step over them and kill off the garrison as they pleased. But of course, by then the garrison would have blown itself up.
The Collector, in a remote and academic sort of way, was musing on this question of ammunition, considering whether there was anything left which still might be fired. But surely they had thought of everything. All the metal was gone, first the round objects, then the others. Now they were on to stones. Without a doubt the most effective missiles in this matter of improvised ammunition had been the heads of his electrometal figures, removed from their bodies with the help of Turtons’ indispensable file. And of the heads, perhaps not surprisingly, the most effective of all had been Shakespeare’s; it had scythed its way through a whole astonished platoon of sepoys advancing in single file through the jungle. The Collector suspected that the Bard’s success in this respect might have a great deal to do with the ballistic advantages stemming from his baldness. The head of Keats, for example, wildly festooned with metal locks which it had proved impossible to file smooth had flown very erratically indeed, killing only a fat money-lender and a camel standing at some distance from the field of action.
A few other metal objects had been fired, such as clocks and hair brushes...but they had proved quite useless. Candlesticks filed into pieces and collected in ladies’ stockings had served for canister for a while, but had been swiftly exhausted. Then a find had been made. Poor Father O’Hara had contracted cholera and died shortly after the withdrawal to the banqueting hall; when his body had been heaved over the ramparts for the jackals and pariah dogs (the only way that remained for disposing of the dead), a number of heavy metal beads, crosses, Saints and Virgins had been discovered in his effects. The Padre, consulted as to the propriety of firing them at the enemy, had given his opinion that they could perfectly well be fired and that they, or any other such popish or Tractarian objects, would very likely wreak terrible havoc. However, this did not seem to have been the case, particularly, except for the metal beads.
There was a small explosion at the ramparts several yards away, but it was nothing to worry about...only Harry trying to free the long, iron six-pounder in which the head of a French cynic, Voltaire, had become jammed...rather surprisingly, the Collector thought, a narrow, lozenge-shaped head like that; Harry had been unable to ram the head home to the cartridge and so, according to normal procedure, was obliged to destroy the charge by pouring water down the vent; followed by a small quantity of powder, also through the vent, to blow out his makeshift shot. Harry had worked as tirelessly as his sister for the last few days; now he sank down on to a stool beside his cannon out of sheer weakness, and began to weep at the thought of the wasted powder and the wasted water resulting from this misfortune. However, he had successfully blown Voltaire’s head out of the bore of the six-pounder; it rolled over the rampart and landed among the skeletons, scattering the pariah dogs who were sunning themselves there while waiting for their next meal to be heaved over.
“The sepoys are very quiet,” the Collector called to Harry conversationally to stop him weeping, because now Lucy was starting and he was afraid that she would spoil the powder by dropping tears into the flask.
“D’you think they’re going to attack?”
“I expect so.” Harry dried his eyes on a piece of wadding, annoyed with himself.
“There’s one thing...the spectators have got tired of waiting, anyway.”
The melon beds had been virtually deserted for the last two or three days. Only a lonely rajah or two was to be seen now, solitary figures surrounded by servants, watching through elaborate brass telescopes acquired at one or other of the European stores in Calcutta. At night there were no longer any bonfires to be seen, either on the hill or way out on the surrounding plain.
The Collector heard shuffling and heavy breathing and knew, though the breathing was not the Padre’s, that the Padre was nevertheless approaching. He could have told this without turning to look; but he did turn, because he did not want to give the Padre the impression that he was avoiding him. The Padre was strung limply between the shoulders of a young ensign and of an ancient pensioner, both of whom looked ill, worn out, and exasperated. They laid the Padre down at the Collector’s side as instructed and arranged his limbs in a suitable position of repose.
“There was something I forgot to mention to you earlier,” said the Padre, who did not normally favour such a blunt approach but felt that given the state of his health there might not be any time to lose...This time he was determined to go as straight as an arrow aimed at Saint Sebastian to the core of the problem, as he saw it.
“I’m referring to a leading article which appeared in The Times concerning the Exhibition and which I should like to read you (by a fortunate chance I happen to have it on my person). It goes as follows: ‘So man is approaching a more complete fulfilment of that great and sacred mission which he has to perform in this world. His image being created in the image of God, he has to discover the laws by which the Almighty governs His creation; and, by making these laws his standard of action, to conquer nature to his use, himself a d
ivine instrument.’ Hm, I wonder did you hear that, Mr Hopkins, or should I read it again?”
“Thank you, Padre. I heard it perfectly and found it most interesting.”
“It seems to me, Mr Hopkins, that the doctrine of this passage has no foundation whatsoever in the word of God. If we turn to the history of man’s creation in the sacred volume, we find that his mission was simply to dress and keep the garden of Eden and to serve and obey his Creator...and that, so far from having any mission to pry into the laws by which the Almighty governs His creation, he was expressly forbidden to do so. The only forbidden tree in the garden was the tree of science and intellect. It is a remarkable fact, Mr Hopkins, that the argument used by the serpent to seduce Eve from her allegiance to her Creator is almost precisely that used by the Editor of The Times : ‘Ye shall be as GODS, knowing good and evil’...that is, as wise as God Himself!”
The Collector’s mind had wandered yet again, though he nodded intelligently from time to time, hoping thus to soothe the Padre. But his concentration was poor these days: he could hardly keep his mind on anything for more than a moment...and even when he heard what the Padre said it made no sense...“the Editor of The Times as wise as God Himself!” Really, what rubbish. As the Padre’s feeble voice continued to denounce the Editor of The Times the Collector lifted his eyes to the sky where, as always, the kites and vultures were circling.
The Collector was fond of vultures and did not share the usual view of them as sinister and ominous creatures. By their diligent eating of carcases they had probably spared the garrison an epidemic or a pestilence, but that was not what the Collector liked about them...though clumsy on the ground, their flight was extraordinarily graceful. They climbed higher than any other birds, it seemed; they ascended into the limitless blue until they became lost to sight or mere specks, drifting round and round in a free flight in which their wings scarcely seemed to move. They more resembled fish than birds, gliding in gentle circles in a clear pool of infinite depth. The Collector would have liked to watch them all day. Their flight absorbed him completely. He thought of nothing while he watched them, he shed his own worries and experienced their freedom, no longer bound by his own dull, weak body.
The Empire Trilogy Page 83
