"Yes, False Spirituality," the Rani was repeating. "Talking about Liberation; but always, because of his obstinate refusal to follow the True Path, always working for greater Bondage. Acting the part of humility. But in his heart, he was so full of pride, Mr. Farnaby, that he refused to recognize any Spiritual Authority Higher than his own. The Masters, the Avatars, the Great Tradition-they meant nothing to him. Nothing at all. Hence those dreadful scarecrows. Hence that blasphemous rhyme that the children have been taught to sing. When I think of those Poor Innocent Little Ones being deliberately perverted, I find it hard to contain myself, Mr. Farnaby, I find it..."
"Listen, Mother," said Murugan, who had been glancing impatiently and ever more openly at his wrist watch, "if we want to be back by dinnertime we'd better get going." His tone was rudely authoritative. Being at the wheel of a car-even of this senile Baby Austin-made him feel, it was evident, considerably larger than life. Without waiting for the Rani's answer he started the motor, shifted into low and, with a wave of the hand, drove off.
"Good riddance," said Susila. "Don't you love your dear Queen?" "She makes my blood boil." "So stamp it out," Will chanted teasingly. "You're quite right," she agreed, with a laugh. "But unfortunately this was an occasion when it just wasn't feasible to do a Rakshasi Hornpipe." Her face brightened with a sudden flash of mischief, and without warning she punched him, surprisingly hard, in the ribs. "There!" she said. "Now I feel much better."
14
She started the motor and they drove off-down to the bypass, up again to the high road beyond the other end of the village, and on into the compound of the Experimental Station. Susila pulled up at a small thatched bungalow like all the others. They climbed the six steps that led up to the veranda and entered a whitewashed living room.
To the left was a wide window with a hammock slung between the two wooden pillars at either side of the projecting bay. "For you," she said, pointing to the hammock. "You can put your leg up." And when Will had lowered himself into the net, "What shall we talk about?" she asked as she pulled up a wicker chair and sat down beside him.
"What about the good, the true and the beautiful? Or maybe," he grinned, "the ugly, the bad and the even truer."
"I'd thought," she said, ignoring his attempt at a witticism, "that we might go on where we left off last time-go on talking about you."
"That was precisely what I was suggesting-the ugly, the bad and the truer than all official truth."
"Is this just an exhibition of your conversational style?" she asked. "Or do you really want to talk about yourself?"
"Really," he assured her, "desperately. Just as desperately as I don't want to talk about myself. Hence, as you may have noticed, my unflagging interest in art, science, philosophy, politics, literature-any damned thing rather than the only thing that ultimately has any importance."
There was a long silence. Then in a tone of casual reminiscence, Susila began to talk about Wells Cathedral, about the calling of the jackdaws, about the white swans floating between the reflections of the floating clouds. In a few minutes he too was floating.
"I was very happy all the time I was at Wells," she said. "Wonderfully happy. And so were you, weren't you?"
Will made no answer. He was remembering those days in the green valley, years ago, before he and Molly were married, before they were lovers. What peace! What a solid, living, maggotless world of springing grass and flowers! And between them had flowed the kind of natural, undistorted feeling that he hadn't experienced since those far-off days when Aunt Mary was alive. The only person he had ever really loved-and here, in Molly, was her successor. What blessedness! Love transposed into another key-but the melody, the rich and subtle harmonies were the same. And then, on the fourth night of their stay, Molly had knocked on the wall that separated their rooms, and he had found her door ajar, had groped his way in darkness to the bed where, conscientiously naked, the Sister of Mercy was doing her best to play the part of the Wife of Love. Doing her best and (how disastrously!) failing.
Suddenly, as happened almost every afternoon, there was a loud rushing of wind and, muffled by distance, a hollow roaring of rain on thick foliage-a roaring that grew louder and louder as the shower approached. A few seconds passed, and then the raindrops were hammering insistently on the windowpanes. Hammering as they had hammered on the windows of his study that day of their last interview. "Do you really mean it, Will?"
The pain and shame of it made him want to cry aloud. He bit his lip.
"What are you thinking of?" Susila asked. It wasn't a matter of thinking. He was actually seeing her, actually hearing her voice. "Do you really mean it, Will?" And through the sound of the rain he heard himself answering, "I really mean it."
On the windowpane-was it here? or was it there, was it then?-the roar had diminished, as the gust spent itself, to a pattering whisper.
"What are you thinking of?" Susila insisted.
"I'm thinking of what I did to Molly."
"What was it that you did to Molly?"
He didn't want to answer; but Susila was inexorable.
"Tell me what it was that you did."
Another violent gust made the windows rattle. It was raining harder now-raining, it seemed to Will Farnaby, on purpose, raining in such a way that he would have to go on remembering what he didn't want to remember, would be compelled to say out loud the shameful things he must at all costs keep to himself.
"Tell me."
Reluctantly and in spite of himself, he told her.
" 'Do you really mean it, Will?' " And because of Babs-Babs, God help him! Babs, believe it or not!-he really did mean it, and she had walked out into the rain.
"The next time I saw her was in the hospital."
"Was it still raining?" Susila asked.
"Still raining."
"As hard as it's raining now?"
"Very nearly." And what Will heard was no longer this afternoon shower in the tropics but the steady drumming on the window of the little room where Molly lay dying.
"It's me," he was saying through the sound of the rain, "it's Will." Nothing happened; and then suddenly he felt the almost imperceptible movement of Molly's hand within his own. The voluntary pressure and then, after a few seconds, the involuntary release, the total limpness. "Tell me again, Will."
He shook his head. It was too painful, too humiliating. "Tell me again," she insisted. "It's the only way." Making an enormous effort, he started to tell the odious story yet once more. Did he really mean it? Yes, he really meant it-meant to hurt, meant perhaps (did one ever know what one really intended?) to kill. All for Babs, or the World Well Lost. Not his world, of course-Molly's world and, at the center of that world, the life that had created it. Snuffed out for the sake of that delicious smell in the darkness, of those muscular reflexes, that enormity of enjoyment, those consummate and intoxicat-ingly shameless skills.
"Good-bye, Will." And the door had closed behind her with a faint, dry click.
He wanted to call her back. But Babs's lover remembered the skills, the reflexes, and within its aura of musk, a body agonizing in the extremity of pleasure. Remembered these things and, standing at the window, watched the car move away through the rain, watched and was filled, as it turned the corner, with a shameful exultation. Free at last! Even freer, as he discovered three hours later in the hospital, than he had supposed. For now he was feeling the last faint pressure of her fingers; feeling the final message of her love. And then the message was interrupted. The hand went limp and now, suddenly, appallingly, there was no sound of breathing. "Dead," he whispered, and felt himself choking. "Dead."