He slowly descended the stairs, no longer noticing the landslide of furniture, boxes, curios, antlers, rowing oars and other trophies, but thinking: “Women are weak, we shall always have to take care of them, just as we shall always have to take care of the natives; no doubt, there are exceptions . . women of character like Miss Nightingale, but not unfortunately like Carrie or Eliza or Margaret … Even a hundred years from now…” the Collector feebly tried to imagine 1957 … “it will still be the same. They are made of a softer substance. They arouse our desire, but they are not our equals.”
As he went out on to the portico and down the steps the sunlight once again smote him painfully, like a solid substance. Above, at the bedroom window he knew that Eliza and Margaret would be weakly waiting with the brass telescope which they used throughout the livelong day to watch over him lest any harm should befall him as he made his leisurely progress round the defences.
Later in the morning the Collector found himself reclining in a mass of paper documents on the floor of the vernacular record room in the company of the Magistrate and of Fleury, who had been permitted a temporary absence from his post as no attack seemed imminent. A strange contentment had settled over the Collector, perhaps because his senses, usually kept under lock and key, had enjoyed their unaccustomed exercise that morning, perhaps because he was most comfortably supported by the documents. There were salt reports bound in red tape under each elbow; a voluminous, but extraordinarily comfortable correspondence with a local landowner concerning the Permanent Settlement cradled his back at just the right angle, and opium statistics, rising to a mound beneath his knees and cushioning the rest of his body, filled him with a sense of ease verging on narcosis. From outside, a few yards away, came the regular discharge of cannons and mortars; but inside, such was the thickness of the paper padding, one felt very safe indeed. True, daylight appeared in places where holes had been made by round shot in the brickwork, but even that could be looked on as an advantage for it provided ventilation and prevented pockets of bad air forming; elsewhere it had become necessary to burn camphor and brown paper.
The Collector had been discoursing in an objective way on the perplexing question of why, after a hundred years of beneficial rule in Bengal, the natives should have taken it into their heads to return to the anarchy of their ancestors. One or two mistakes, however serious, made by the military in their handling of religious matters, were surely no reason for rejecting a superior culture as a whole. It was as if, after the improving rule of the Romans, the Britons had decided to paint themselves with woad again. “After all, we’re not ogres, even though we don’t marry among the natives or adopt their customs.”
“I must take issue with the expression ‘superior culture’,” said Fleury; but neither of the older men paid any attention to him.
“The, great majority of natives have yet to see the first sign of our superior culture,” said the Magistrate. “If they’re lucky they may have seen some red-faced youth from Haileybury or Addiscombe riding by once or twice in their lives.”
(“I say, ‘superior culture’ is a very doubtful proposition, but I think …”)
“Come, come, Tom, think of the system of justice that the Company has brought to India. Even if there were nothing else …”
“This justice is a fiction! In the Krishnapur district we have two magistrates for almost a million people. There are many districts where it’s worse.”
(“Look here, what I think …”)
“Things are not yet perfect, of course,” sighed the Collector. “All the same, I should go so far as to say that in the long run a superior civilization such as ours is irresistible. By combining our advances in science and in morality we have so obviously found the best way of doing things. Truth cannot be resisted! Er, that’s to say, not successfully,” the Collector added as a round shot struck the corner of the roof and toppled one of the pillars of the verandah.
“But what I think is this,” declared Fleury when the rubble had ceased to fall, determined at last to get his word in. “It’s wrong to talk of a ‘superior civilization’ because there isn’t such a thing. All civilization is bad. It mars the noble and natural instincts of the heart. Civilization is decadence!”
“What rubbish!”
“I have seldom heard such gibberish,” agreed the Collector, chortling as he got to his feet. “By the way, what on earth are you dressed like that for?”
Somewhat taken aback by the speed with which his theories had been dismissed, Fleury could not at first think what the Collector was talking about. All the same, he was indeed rather oddly dressed in a blue velvet smoking jacket and tasselled smoking cap. He had brought them out with him, assuming that in India, as in England, gentlemen wore such garments while smoking in order to protect their clothes and hair from a smell offensive to the ladies. It had turned out that in India no one took the trouble … one of the many ways, alas, in which Indian society failed to live up to the rigorous standards set at home. With the shortage of clothes becoming acute Harry had found himself unable to replace his ripped tunic, so Fleury had generously given him the “Tweedside”, which he had taken a fancy to and which, in any case, Fleury had been finding oppressively warm … not that the smoking jacket was much cooler. As for the tasselled cap, he had improved it by attaching a flannel flap to the back to protect his neck from the sun, and a visor to the front, fashioned from the black cardboard binding of a book of sermons lent him by the Padre. The title of this book, inscribed in gothic letters of gold, glinted like braid as he accompanied the Collector out into the sunlight.
By contrast with the comfort of a few moments earlier the Collector suffered a painful return to reality as he stepped out into the glare. Worries, temporarily forgotten, assailed him once more … still no sign of a relieving force! The dwindling garrison … almost every day now someone was killed. The health of the garrison was beginning to deteriorate from the poor diet and lack of vegetables. Slight wounds became serious … from serious wounds death was inevitable. He stood, blinking, outside the Cutcherry for a moment, appalled, unable to decide where to go next. But then, remembering that his daughters were very likely observing his dismay through the telescope and were perhaps even concluding that he had just been shot, he grasped Fleury by the arm and steered him towards the Residency; he needed someone’s company to nerve himself for his daily visit to the hospital. Besides, he might take the opportunity to counter the demoralizing effect of the Magistrate’s words on the young man’s mind.
He began to say something about the principles behind a civilization being more important than the question of whether they were actually realized in a concrete manner . . - He had a firm grip on the arm of his audience, too, which is usually helpful when you have an argument to put across. But he found himself finishing what he had to say rather lamely, partly because Fleury was sulking over the rapid rejection of his own theories and refused to agree with him, partly because they were both chased into the lee of the hospital by an enemy rocket which careered down at them in wild loops out of the sky and, for an awful moment, seemed to be chasing them personally. Fortunately, it did not explode for it landed quite close to them, burying its cone-shaped iron head in the earth no more than ten yards away. Fleury indignantly began to prise it out of the earth with his sabre which was, perhaps, rather rash of him since smoke was still pouring from the vents in its case even if the fuse on its base appeared to be extinct. It was a six-pound Congreve rocket, one of many which had dived wildly into the enclave.
“One of the advantages of our civilization,” said Fleury. But the Collector failed to grasp even this simple irony and observed mildly: “One of these days I’m afraid their rocketeers may hit something, if only by accident.”