“We shall be all Moslems together now, as you promised.”
She was perfect as always, his dear Mrs. Moore. All the love for her he had felt at the mosque welled up again, the fresher for forgetfulness. There was nothing he would not do for her. He would die to make her happy.
“Get in, Dr. Aziz, you make us giddy,” the other lady called. “If they’re so foolish as to miss the train, that’s their loss, not ours.”
“I am to blame. I am the host.”
“Nonsense, go to your carriage. We’re going to have a delightful time without them.”
Not perfect like Mrs. Moore, but very sincere and kind. Wonderful ladies, both of them, and for one precious morning his guests. He felt important and competent. Fielding was a loss personally, being a friend, increasingly dear, yet if Fielding had come, he himself would have remained in leading-strings. “Indians are incapable of responsibility,” said the officials, and Hamidullah sometimes said so too. He would show those pessimists that they were wrong. Smiling proudly, he glanced outward at the country, which was still invisible except as a dark movement in the darkness; then upwards at the sky, where the stars of the sprawling Scorpion had begun to pale. Then he dived through a window into a second-class carriage.
“Mohammed Latif, by the way, what is in these caves, brother? Why are we all going to see them?”
Such a question was beyond the poor relative’s scope. He could only reply that God and the local villagers knew, and that the latter would gladly act as guides.
CHAPTER XIV
Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, “I do enjoy myself,” or, “I am horrified,” we are insincere. “As far as I feel anything, it is enjoyment, horror”—it’s no more than that really, and a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent.