“Is there nothing we can do?”
“We’ll take in the ‘crannies’, if you like … They would be the most in danger, anyway. All I can suggest for the native Christians is that we give each of them a certificate to say that they’ve been loyal to the Government, for when these difficulties are over. They can be rewarded afterwards.”
“A fat lot of good a certificate will be!” groaned the Collector, but there was no alternative that he could see. He stayed for an hour in the Cutcherry helping the Magistrate to sign and issue the certificates. All the time he remained there the highpitched, resonant humming did not cease for a moment.
It was only as he was walking back to the Residency that he remembered the General and summoned a bearer, telling him to go and enquire how the General was. The bearer, however, did not move. Instead, he replied quietly that it was unnecessary … He had just heard … he dropped his eyes and after a moment’s hesitation murmured … “… is dunniab fänê sñ rehlat keah” (that his spirit had begun its march from this transitory world).
It was about noon that the General died. The humming of the native Christians was the only sound to break the silence. As the afternoon wore on, the humming was silenced by the great heat; all living creatures were obliged to crawl into some shade in order to survive. For a while the silence now became profound at the Residency, as it did every afternoon. Besides, there was nothing further for the garrison to do; by now they had made their defences as secure as was possible in the circumstances. The ladies, having fought polite but ruthless battles for a place under those punkahs in the billiard room that were still moving (that is to say, those which still had a native attached to the other end), lay stretched out on charpoys and mattresses in their chemises and petticoats like arrangements of wilted flowers, their faces, necks, and arms shining with perspiration. Flies and mosquitoes tormented them and they longed for the evening which would bring, if not coolness, at least a fall in the temperature.
About three o’clock the deathly silence was broken by a terrible noise of banging and hammering which startled them awake. It was the native carpenters knocking together a coffin for the General. The Padre was to bury him that evening. Towards four o’clock, when the heat had at last begun to die down a little, the aggrieved humming started up again. This time it came from a little further away … from outside the Residency gates, where the native Christians had been moved, each holding his certificate of loyalty to the Company.
The Padre, too, was distressed by this humming. He had complained to the Collector about the Christians being left outside, just as he had complained about the storing of great jars of grain and powder at the back of the Church, but it had done no good. The Collector had been polite and soothing, but he stubbornly continued to ignore the Padre’s demands.
The Padre was dismayed that his authority, which ought to have increased at this time of danger, had instead melted away. Even on the day following the disaster at Captainganj when he had taken the Sunday evening service in the expectation, at such a critical time, of finding it full to capacity, he had found himself with a congregation of a mere half dozen, all ladies.
He had intended beforehand, picturing to himself a large and anxious congregation, to preach a comforting sermon on a text from the Psalms: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put any confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put any confidence in princes.” But seeing that mere handful of worshippers in the empty, echoing Church, he had been seized by righteous anger and had preached instead on the theme: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
He had heard, he declared, that there were those in the British community who blamed their present perilous situation on the missionary activity of the Church. They blamed a colonel of a regiment at Barrackpur who had been preaching Christianity in the bazaar. They blamed Mr Tucker, the Judge at Fatehpur, for the piety which had made him have the Ten Commandments translated into the vernacular and chiselled on stones to be placed by the roadside …
“They blame the pale-faced Christian knight with the great Excalibur of Truth in his hand, who is cleaving right through all the most cherished fictions of Brahmanism … the literature of Bacon and Milton that is exciting a new appetite for Truth and Beauty … the exact sciences of the West with their clear, demonstrable facts and inevitable deductions which are putting to shame the physical errors of Hinduism.
“They blame the pious men who have circulated this missionary address to the more educated natives in our Presidency,” cried the Padre, flourishing a pamphlet in the pulpit, “demonstrating that our European civilization, which is rapidly uniting all the nations of the earth by means of railways, steam-vessels and the Electric Telegraph, is the forerunner of an inevitable absorption of all other faiths into the One Faith of the white ruler. They blame these devoted men for daring to suggest such a thing! They blame Lord Canning for giving a donation to the Baptist college at Srirampun and Lady Canning for visiting the female schools of Calcutta! They blame our most saintly men of God … and I ask you, brethren, for what sin do they blame them? They blame them for buying little native orphans during famines in order to bring them up in the true Way. Is this a crime? No, it is the service of Our Lord!
“Brethren, if our little community is now in peril it is because of Sin. The bad lives that are led by many of the Christians among us are a cause of discontent to Him … and make Him, who is above all, withdraw His protection. Sin is the one thing above all others which grieves Him . . Sin is the thing which God most hates …”
The Padre paused. It had grown dark in the Church. On each side of the pulpit a wrought-iron bracket, raised like a skeletal arm, held a thick white candle. The two small flames from these candles suddenly furnished him with inspiration and he began to explain their significance … As the world grows darker, so the flame of truth grows brighter … just as these candles were slowly growing brighten as darkness fell outside. He was talking in a different tone, hurriedly, even incoherently. In spite of the wafting punkahs which made the candles flicker, it was stifling in the Church. He left the candles and returned to the subject of Sin. He felt there was something he had left unsaid, something that it was vital to explain to his congregation. No doubt they were suffering from weariness after the anxious night they had passed. But if they were tired, so was he. He had never felt more tired in his life, non more suffocated by omnipresent Sin. The heat was appalling … but Sin dazed him even more.
As he continued to talk, somewhat at random, the conviction slowly gained on him that he was delivering his sermon not to the half dozen ladies in front of him but to the ranks of great earthenware jars at the back of the Church. They crouched there in their shadowy pews, perfectly motionless. He pleaded with them to listen to the Word of God, but they made no answer. Ignoring the ladies, who were becoming uneasy, he tried again and again to formulate the one elusive argument that would win over those dim, sinful ranks of jars. But they remained deaf to the exhortations which echoed round their stony ears.
Although Miss Hughes had not yet killed herself (she was reluctantly reserving this measure until Harry was satisfied that he had done justice to the cause of life) she had steadfastly maintained her refusal to move from the dak bungalow. Neither of the two young men had expected her to survive that first night. They were even more surprised when she continued to survive.