‘The sahib places his foot here, upon the brute.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ murmured Stephen at the vast archaic ear, and mounted. They rode down the crowded Chowringhee, Mahomet pointing out objects of interest. ‘There lives Mirza Shah, decrepit, blind: kings trembled at his name. There Kumar the rich, an unbeliever; he has a thousand concubines. The sahib is disgusted. Like me, the sahib looks upon women as tattling, guileful, tale-?bearing, noisy, contemptible, mean, wretched, unsteady, harsh, inhospitable; I will bring him a young gentleman that smells of honey. This is the Maidan. The Sahib sees two peepul-?trees near the bridge, God give him sight for ever. That is where the European gentlemen come to fight one another with swords and pistols. The building beyond the bridge is a heathen temple, full of idols. We cross the bridge. Now the sahib is in Alipur.’
In Alipur: vast walled gardens, isolated houses; here a Gothic ruin with a true pagoda in its grounds, there a homesick Irishman’s round tower. The elephant padded up a gravel drive to a portico, very like the portico of an English country house apart from the deep recesses on either side for the tigers, and the smell of wild beasts that hung beneath its roof. They paced out and looked not at but towards him with implacable eyes: their chains still dragged upon the ground, yet their faces were so close together that their whiskers mingled, and it was impossible to say from which cavernous chest came the growl that filled the echoing porch with this low, continuous sound. The porter’s infant child, woken by the organ-?note, applied himself to a winch, and the tigers were heaved apart.
‘Infant child,’ said Stephen, ’state the names and ages of thy beasts.’
‘Father of the poor, their names are Right and Wrong. They are of immemorial antiquity, having been in this portico even before I was born.’
‘Yet the territory of the one overlaps the territory of the other?’
‘Maharaj, my understanding does not reach the word overlap; but no doubt it is so.’
‘Child, accept this coin.’
Stephen was announced, ‘Here is that physical chap again,’ said Lady Forbes, peering at him under her shading hand. ‘Thu must admit he has a certain air - has seen good company - but I never trust these half-?castes. Good afternoon, sir: I trust I see you well, my Sawbones Romeo: they have been at it hammer and tongs and thrown in the bloody coal-?scuttle, too: she would have reduced me to tears, if! had any left to shed. You find me at my tea, sir. May I offer you a cup? I lace it with gin, sir; the only thing against this hot relaxing damp. Kumar - where is that black sodomite? Another cup. So you have buried poor Stanhope, I hear? Well, well, we must all come to it: that’s my comfort. Lord, the young men I have seen buried here! Mrs Villiers will be down presently. Perhaps I will pour you another cup and then help her with her gown. She will be lying there stark naked, sweating under the punkah: I dare say you would like to go and help her yourself, young fellow, for all your compass? airs. Don’t tell me you have no - la, I am a coarse old woman; and to think I was once a girl, alas, alas.’
‘Stephen, my conquering hero,’ cried Diana, coming in alone, ‘how glad I am to see your phiz at last! Where have you been all these days? Did you not have my note? Sit down, do, and take off your coat. How can you bear this wicked heat? We are beside ourselves with stickiness and vexation, and you look as cool as - how I envy you. Is that your elephant outside? I will have him led into the shade at once - you must never leave an elephant in the sun.’ She called a servant, a stupid man who did not understand her directions at once, and her voice rose to a tone that Stephen knew well.
When I saw an elephant coming up the drive,’ she ’said, ’smiling again, I thought it was that bore Johnstone, he is always calling Not that he is really a bore - an interesting man, in fact; an American: you would like him - have you ever met an American? - nor had I before this: perfectly civilised, you know; all that about their spitting on the floor is so much stuff - and immensely rich, too - but it is embarrassing, and a source of these perpetual God-?damned scenes. how I hate a man that makes scenes, particularly in this weather, when the least exertion brings you out in a muck-?sweat. Everybody is furious in this weather. But what made you come on an elephant, Stephen, dressed in a bloom-?coloured coat?’
It was clear to a man with far less knowledge of morphology than Stephen possessed that there was nothing under Diana’s gown, and he looked out of the window with a light frown: he wished his mind to be perfectly clear.
He said, ‘The elephant stands for splendour and confidence. These last weeks, ever since the ship turned back from the Sumatra coast, I have noticed a look of settled and increasing anxiety upon my face. I see it when I shave: I also feel the set of my features, head, neck, shoulders -the expressive parts. From time to time I look and again I verify that it is indeed this expression of an indwelling, undefined, and general apprehension or even dread. I dispel it; I look cheerful and alert, perhaps confident; and in a
few moments it is there again. The elephant is to deal with this. You will remember the last time we met I begged you would do me the honour of marrying me.’
‘I do, Stephen,’ cried Diana, blushing: he had never seen her blush, and it moved him. ‘Indeed I do. But oh why did you not say so long ago - at Dover, say? It might have been different then, before all this.’ She took a fan from the table and stood up, flicking it nervously. ‘God, how hot it is today,’ she said, and her expression changed. ‘Why wait till now? Anyone would say I had brought myself so low that you could do something quixotic. Indeed, if I were not so fond of you - and I am fond of you, Maturin: you are a friend I love - I might call it a great impertinence. An affront. No woman of any spirit will put up with an affront. I have not degraded myself.’ hcr chin began to pucker; she mastered it and said, ‘I have not come down to. . . ‘But in spite of her pride the tears came running fast: she bowed her head on his shoulder, and they ran down his bloom-?coloured coat. ‘In any case,’ she said between her sobs, ‘you do not really wish to marry me. You told me yourself, long ago, the hunter does not want the fox.’
‘What the devil are you about, sir?’ cried Canning from the open door.
‘What is that to you, sir?’ said Stephen, turning sharp upon him.
‘Mrs Villiers is under my protection,’ said Canning. He was pale with fury.
‘I give no explanations to anyman for kissing a woman, unless it is his wife.’
‘Do you not?’
‘I do not, sir. And what does your protection amount to? You know very well Mrs Canning will be here in the Hastings on the sixteenth. Where is your protection then? What kind of consideration is this?’
‘Is that true, Canning?’ cried Diana.
Canning flushed deeply. ‘You have been tampering with my papers, Maturin. Your man Atkins has been tampering with my papers.’ He stepped forward and in his passion he gave Stephen a furious open-?handed
