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Ch 23 - A Passage to India · A Passage to India

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  Chapter twenty three. Lady Melanby, wife to the Lieutenant Governor of the province,
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  had been gratified by the appeal addressed to her by the ladies of Chandraport.
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  She could not do anything, besides, she was sailing for England,
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  but she desired to be informed if she could show sympathy in any other way.
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  Missus Churton replied that mister Heathlope's mother was trying to get a passage,
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  but had delayed too long and all the boats were full. Could Lady Melanby
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  use her influence? Not even Lady Melanby could expand the dimensions of a p
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  and o. But she was a very very nice woman, and she actually
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  wired, offering the unknown and obscure old Lady accommodation in her own reserved cabin.
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  It was like a gift from Heaven. Humble and grateful, Rannie could
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  not but reflect that there are compensations for every woe. His name was familiar
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  at Government House owing to poor Adelae, and now Missus Moore would stamp it
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  on Lady Melanby's imagination. As they journeyed across the Indian Ocean and up the
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  Red Sea. He had a return of tenderness for his mother, as we
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  do for our relatives when they received conspicuous and unexpected honor. She was not
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  negligible. She could still arrest the attention of a high official's wife. So
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  missus Moore had all she wished. She escaped the trial, the marriage,
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  and the hot weather. She would return to England in comfort and distinction and
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  see her other children. At her son's suggestion, and by her own desire,
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  she departed. But she accepted her good luck without enthusiasm. She had
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  come to that state where the horror of the universe and its smallness are both
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  visible at the same time, the twice of the double vision, in which
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  so many elderly people are involved. If this world is not to our taste,
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  well at all events there is heaven, hell, annihilation, one or
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  other of those large things, that huge scenic background of stars, fires,
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  blue or black air. All heroic endeavor and all that is known as art
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  assumes that there is such a background, just as all practical endeavor when the
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  world is to our taste, assumes that the world is all. But in
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  the twilight of the double vision, a spiritual muddledom is set up, for
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  which no high sounding words can be found. We can neither act nor refrain
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  from action. We can neither ignore nor respect infinity. Missus Moore had always
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  inclined to resignation. As soon as she landed in India. It seemed to
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  her good. And when she saw the water flowing through the mosque tank,
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  or the Ganges, or the moon caught in the shawl of night with all
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  the other stars, it seemed a beautiful goal and an easy one to be
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  won, with the universe so dignified and simple. But there was always some
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  little duty to be performed first, some new card to be turned up from
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  the diminishing pack and placed. And while she was pottering about the Marabar struck
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  its gone? What had spoken to her in that scoured out cavity of the
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  granite? What dwelt in the first of the caves, Something very old and
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  very small, before time? It was before space, also, something snub
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  nosed, incapable of generosity, the undying worm itself. Since hearing its voice,
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  she had not entertained one large thought. She was actually envious of Adela.
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  All this fuss over a frightened girl, nothing had happened, And if
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  it had, she found herself thinking with the cynicism of a withered priestess.
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  If it had, there are worse evils than love. The unspeakable attempt presented
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  itself to her as love in a cave, in a church boom, it
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  amounts to the same thing. Visions are supposed to entail profundity, but wait
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  till you get one, dear reader, The abyss also may be petty,
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  the serpent of eternity made of maggots. Her constant thought was us attention should
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  be paid to my future daughter in law, and more to me. There
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  is no sorrow like my sorrow, although when the attention was paid she rejected
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  it irritably. Her son couldn't escort her to Bombay, for the local situation
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  continued acute and all officials had to remain at their posts. Antony couldn't come
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  either, in case he never returned to give his evidence, So she traveled
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  with no one who could remind her of the past. This was a relief.
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  The heat had drawn back a little before its next advance, and the
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  journey was not unpleasant. As she left Chandrapur, the moon full again shone
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  over the Ganges and touched the shrinking channels into threads. Of silver, then
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  veered and looked into her window. The swift and comfortable mail train slid with
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  her through the night and all the next day. She was rushing through central
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  India through landscapes that were baked and bleached, but had not the hopeless melancholy
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  of the plane. She watched the indestructible life of man and his changing faces,
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  the houses he has built for himself and God. And they appeared to
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  her not in terms of her own trouble, but as things to see.
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  There was, for instance, a place called Assirga, which she passed at
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  sunset and identified on a map an enormous fortress among wooded hills. No one
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  had ever mentioned Assirga to her, but it had huge and noble bastions,
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  and to the right of them was a mosque. She forgot it. Ten
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  minutes later Assirga reappeared. The mosque was to the left of the bastions.
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  Now the train, in its descent through the Indias, had described a semicircle
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  round Assirga. What could she connect it with except its own name. Nothing.
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  She knew no one who lived there, but it had looked at her
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  twice and seemed to say, I do not vanish. She woke in the
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  middle of the night with a start, for the train was falling over the
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  western cliff. Moonlit pinnacles rushed up at her like the fringes of a sea.
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  Then a brief episode of plain, the real sea and the soupi dawn
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  of Bombay. I have not seen the right places, she thought, as
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  she saw embayed, the platforms of the Victoria Terminus, the end of the
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  rails that had carried her over a continent and could never carry her back.
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  She would never visit Asirga or other untouched places, neither Delhi nor Agre,
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  nor the Rajputana cities, nor Cashmir, nor the obscurer marvels that had sometimes
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  shown through men's speech, the bilingual Rock of Girnar, the statue of Shri
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  Belgola, the ruins of Mandu and Hampi, temples of Cadraja, gardens of
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  Shalimar. As she drove through the huge city which the West has built and
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  abandoned with a gesture of despair, she longed to stop, though it was
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  only Bombay, and disentangle the hundred Indians that passed each other in its streets.
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  The feet of the horses moved her on, and presently the boat sailed,
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  and thousands of cocoanut palms appeared all round the anchorage and climbed the hills
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  to wave her farewell. So you thought an echo was India. You took
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  the Marabar caves as final bay, laughed, what have we in common with
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  them? Or with Asirga? Good Bye? Then the steamer rounded Kolaba.
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  The continent swung about the cliff of the gots melted into the haze of a
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  tropic sea. Lady Melanby turned up and advised her not to stand in the
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  heat. We are safely out of the frying pan, said Lady Mellanby.
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  It will never do to fall into the fire. End of Chapter twenty three.