第41章 CHAPTER XVI THE INDIAN CIVILIAN(2)
I hit you in the wind for the benefit of myself--all right: law of nature; but to say it does you good at the same time is beyond me.""No, no," returned Crocker, grave and anxious; "you can't persuade me that we 're not doing good.""Wait a bit. It's all a question of horizons; you look at it from too close. Put the horizon further back. You hit India in the wind, and say it's virtuous. Well, now let's see what happens. Either the wind never comes back, and India gasps to an untimely death, or the wind does come back, and in the pant of reaction your blow--that's to say your labour--is lost, morally lost labour that you might have spent where it would n't have been lost.""Are n't you an Imperialist?" asked Crocker, genuinely concerned.
"I may be, but I keep my mouth shut about the benefits we 're conferring upon other people.""Then you can't believe in abstract right, or justice?""What on earth have our ideas of justice or right got to do with India?""If I thought as you do," sighed the unhappy Crocker, "I should be all adrift.""Quite so. We always think our standards best for the whole world.
It's a capital belief for us. Read the speeches of our public men.
Does n't it strike you as amazing how sure they are of being in the right? It's so charming to benefit yourself and others at the same time, though, when you come to think of it, one man's meat is usually another's poison. Look at nature. But in England we never look at nature--there's no necessity. Our national point of view has filled our pockets, that's all that matters.""I say, old chap, that's awfully bitter," said Crocker, with a sort of wondering sadness.
"It 's enough to make any one bitter the way we Pharisees wax fat, and at the same time give ourselves the moral airs of a balloon.
I must stick a pin in sometimes, just to hear the gas escape."Shelton was surprised at his own heat, and for some strange reason thought of Antonia--surely, she was not a Pharisee.
His companion strode along, and Shelton felt sorry for the signs of trouble on his face.
"To fill your pockets," said Crocker, "is n't the main thing. One has just got to do things without thinking of why we do them.""Do you ever see the other side to any question?" asked Shelton.
"I suppose not. You always begin to act before you stop thinking, don't you?"Crocker grinned.
"He's a Pharisee, too," thought Shelton, "without a Pharisee's pride.
Queer thing that!"
After walking some distance, as if thinking deeply, Crocker chuckled out:
"You 're not consistent; you ought to be in favour of giving up India."Shelton smiled uneasily.
"Why should n't we fill our pockets? I only object to the humbug that we talk."The Indian civilian put his hand shyly through his arm.
"If I thought like you," he said, "I could n't stay another day in India."And to this Shelton made no reply.
The wind had now begun to drop, and something of the morning's magic was stealing again upon the moor. They were nearing the outskirt fields of cultivation. It was past five when, dropping from the level of the tors, they came into the sunny vale of Monkland.
"They say," said Crocker, reading from his guide-book--"they say this place occupies a position of unique isolation."The two travellers, in tranquil solitude, took their seats under an old lime-tree on the village green. The smoke of their pipes, the sleepy air, the warmth from the baked ground, the constant hum, made Shelton drowsy.
"Do you remember," his companion asked, "those 'jaws' you used to have with Busgate and old Halidome in my rooms on Sunday evenings?
How is old Halidome?"
"Married," replied Shelton.
Crocker sighed. "And are you?" he asked.
"Not yet," said Shelton grimly; "I 'm--engaged."Crocker took hold of his arm above the elbow, and, squeezing it, he grunted. Shelton had not received congratulations that pleased him more; there was the spice of envy in them.
"I should like to get married while I 'm home," said the civilian after a long pause. His legs were stretched apart, throwing shadows on the green, his hands deep thrust into his pockets, his head a little to one side. An absent-minded smile played round his mouth.
The sun had sunk behind a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy perfume. From the converging lanes figures passed now and then, lounged by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves, and vanished into the cottages that headed the incline. A clock struck seven, and round the shady lime-tree a chafer or some heavy insect commenced its booming rushes. All was marvellously sane and slumbrous. The soft air, the drawling voices, the shapes and murmurs, the rising smell of wood-smoke from fresh-kindled fires--were full of the spirit of security and of home. The outside world was far indeed. Typical of some island nation was this nest of refuge--where men grew quietly tall, fattened, and without fuss dropped off their perches; where contentment flourished, as sunflowers flourished in the sun.
Crocker's cap slipped off; he was nodding, and Shelton looked at him.
From a manor house in some such village he had issued; to one of a thousand such homes he would find his way at last, untouched by the struggles with famines or with plagues, uninfected in his fibre, his prejudices, and his principles, unchanged by contact with strange peoples, new conditions, odd feelings, or queer points of view!
The chafer buzzed against his shoulder, gathered flight again, and boomed away. Crocker roused himself, and, turning his amiable face, jogged Shelton's arm.
"What are you thinking about, Bird?" he asked.