The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [339]
“Miriam,” she said instead, “I cannot tell you how worried I am for Harry. He is so young and innocent; although he pretends to be a man he is still only a schoolboy. And now he is in such danger! I have tried to talk to him but he will not listen.”
“But, my dear, there is no way that danger may be avoided whilst this dreadful siege lasts.”
(“The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life!” exclaimed the Collector fervently.)
“Alas, it’s not physical danger that I fear for him...or rather, I fear that too, but since we are all in God’s hands I trust that He will not forsake us...no, it’s another danger that I fear for him. My dear, you cannot have failed to see how Lucy is leading him on. Think what unhappy circumstances would attend his career if he should now be trapped by a penniless girl without family whose reputation is known throughout India.”
Miriam was silent. To worry that your brother might make an unfortunate marriage when at any moment he might be killed was something she found difficult to understand. But in a sense, too, she knew that Louise was not wrong to worry about Harry committing such a blunder, for Harry, moving in the social circles in which he would move, if he survived the siege, to the day of his death, would almost certainly suffer the inconveniences of having such a wife, would regret his marriage, and perhaps in due course would come to believe that his life had been ruined. He would be bound by the social fetters of Lucy’s unsuitability simply because he too would believe in them.
“I don’t think you should worry. Harry will probably get over his affection for Lucy once we return to a normal life again. And in any case, what Lucy may have done was surely not so dreadful and will be soon forgotten. A moment of foolishness with a man in one’s youth, Louise dear, is more common even among the better classes than you might think. Lucy is much to be pitied. Let us worry about her future when the siege is over.”
“But now she has gone to live in the banqueting hall where she will be able to use her...” Louise was going to say “feminine wiles” but hesitated, afraid that Miriam might find this ridiculous, and uncertain, in any case, exactly what “feminine wiles” might amount to. “...where she will be able to see Harry all the time,” she corrected herself.
“With so many people under the same roof, my dear, Harry will be in no danger.”
Presently, in the silence that followed these remarks, the two young women heard the sound of distant guns...more distant, it seemed, than the sepoy cannons which had been firing intermittently throughout their conversation; this sound echoed from across the dark rim of the plain. “Could it be the guns of a relief force?” Miriam was wondering as the first fat drops of rain splashed on the verandah.
“Rain! It’s come at last!”
Almost immediately the first breath of cooler air reached them. The rain steadily increased in force, blotting out the fires on the hill above the melon beds, increasing the darkness until they could make out nothing in the compound below, and driving them back from the streaming verandah. Soon it had become a continuous deluge as if countless buckets of black ink were being emptied from the sky above them.
“In a moment it will be time to give Mr Hopkins another half ounce of brandy, poor man,” sighed Miriam. The excitement of this first fall of rain had filled her with a desire that things should be different, that she should be happy again.
For the rest of the night the rain cascaded from the verandah roof, but the Collector paid no heed to it...he continued to mutter urgently to himself, thrashing weakly, possessed with the vehemence of a strange inner life where no one could reach him. The lamp beside his bed threw a faint glow over his swollen, passionate, tormented face.
21
On the following day Dr McNab made an incision in the Collector’s right eyelid and a small quantity of pus escaped. Disturbed, the Doctor examined the rest of the Collector’s body with care to see if there were any further