The Rains Came/Part III - 1

On the frail wooden balcony which ran round the second floor of Mr. Bannerjee's house Edwina and Ransome awaited the swift Indian sunrise. From there, through openings in the masses of peepul and banyan trees, they had a view of that part of the flooded burning town which lay in the low ground between them and the Great Palace. Most of the fires had been drowned quickly by the torrents of rain or by the flood itself, but three or four of the more important buildings what Ransome judged to be Great Market, the Courts of Justice and the Central Administration offices still burned stubbornly, throwing up sudden jets of fire which cast on the thick clouds overhead the sullen menacing reflection of flames. The strange sound of a whole city wailing with a single voice was gone presently, and there was only silence save for an occasional distant solitary cry of anguish and chill terror, like the howls of the jackals when they came out of the jungle in the evening to hunt.

Once he said, "I'll fetch you a shawl. It's silly standing there dressed as you are. You'll be soaked. You don't know what this monsoon rain is like. Roofs mean nothing. The dampness penetrates everywhere." He spoke quite simply as if, instead of watching the death of a great city, they were watching a cinema, but the sound of his own voice startled him a little, as if there was something of bad taste in his speaking at all.

He found a Kashmiri shawl that was used as a covering for one of the Indian beds, and when he had wrapped it round her shoulders, over the white dress and all the jewels, they were silent again, watching. At moments when the flames of one building or another leapt high in the air, the reflected light from the clouds illumined the water, revealing there all sorts of nasty things floating just beneath the surface.

Tom thought, "Tomorrow it will begin to stink. Tomorrow will be horrible, and the day after, and the day after... with all this heat and rain." But the jackals would feed well and the vultures and the crocodiles, risen now in the flood out of the thick smelly mud of the river. They could swim anywhere now, into the very heart of the town.

Then the wind, rising, tore apart the clouds for a little while, and in the velvety blackness of the open sky the stars appeared again, the Indian stars that were different from stars elsewhere, more brilliant than ever now in the clean-washed air. But in a little while the stars disappeared again and there was only the low roof of blood-red clouds. Inside the house the wailing of Mr. Banner jee began once more, a wailing in which there was the terror of a hurt animal.

Edwina said, "I wish that nasty little man would stop making such a noise. That's worse than everything else."

She had come to India wanting something to happen to her, and now as she stood on the balcony the realization came to her that it was happening to her and happening with a vengeance, something which surpassed anything within the scope of her imagination. She was not dead, but she might be dead before many days passed, or hours or even minutes, for that matter. She had never thought much about houses before, but now the house of Mr. Banner jee, even though it withstood the double shock of flood and quake, seemed to her a fragile, puny thing, ridiculous in the face of the catastrophe which had surrounded them; and when she thought of the house, it made her think suddenly of herself and her own utter fragility and uselessness. There was something ridiculous in facing a spasm of Nature, clad in a single garment of white crepe, wearing half of one's jewels. A little amused, her mind began to wander, thinking how one should dress properly for such an occasion. "Shorts, I suppose," she thought, "and a silk shirt. That would be smart as well as sensible."

A great many times in Hill Street, in Cannes, in country houses at moments when she had lain in bed, bored with reading, half-asleep, she had speculated lazily and voluptuously on what it would be like to find oneself suddenly faced by death with the knowledge that one had a few hours to live. Pushing the idea further, she had wondered what she would do, bored and cold-blooded as she was, if she found herself facing death alone with an attractive man. She had thought then,

"There would be only one thing to do to kill the time. Anything else would be a bore."

She had thought, too, that making love under such circumstances would have a kind of fierce added zest, springing from some primitive atavistic necessity deep in one's nature. Now, slyly, she looked at Tom, who was leaning on his elbows on the fragile wooden rail, his profile silhouetted against the red clouds, and she thought, as she had thought many times before, "He is an attractive man ... in that way surely one of the most attractive of men." But now, strangely, the sight of him left her without emotion. There was nothing on earth to prevent them making love. Three nights ago, on sight, in the palace they had not hesitated, but now the idea did not even interest her. It was not at all as she had imagined it.

Quite logically she thought, "What if he had been any one of the others?" But she could think of no man out of her past who could have aroused her interest in the same circumstances. In any case, none of them any longer interested her. She was fonder of Tom than she had ever been of any of them, and the affection for Tom persisted somehow, surviving boredom and surfeit, luxury, idleness, everything. And again she thought, "Perhaps I ought to get rid of Albert and marry him. Perhaps it would bring stability into both our lives," But almost at once she knew that she was not ready to marry yet, not, at any rate, in the sense which meant a settled, tranquil life. There were still adventures to be had. She did not love Tom. She was only fond of him.

And suddenly she found herself wishing that it was Tom who had gone off into the flood and darkness with Miss MacDaid, leaving behind the Major, and almost at once, a little startled, she thought, "So that's the way the land lies. That's what has happened to me." And in a kind o decadent voluptuousness she gave herself over to thinking of the young doctor, seeing him again, greedily, as she had seen him during the hours of restless boredom before the fantastic Miss Hodge had come to call. He was the one! And she thought, "If I do come out of this alive, I will be free for a little time; there will only be confusion so terrible that no one will notice me or what I do. I will no longer be Lord Esketh's wife, but nobody at all. I'll be, for a little while, no more than the wife of one of those little clerks."

She saw the Major very clearly now carrying the hysterical, screaming Miss Murgatroyd up the stairs like a bag of meal. She saw him with his great shoulders and fine dark face and blue eyes and the funny half-grin that was born, she divined suddenly, out of an odd mixture of animal vitality and high spirits, with the sadness of melancholy and tragedy just beneath. It was Tom, in his drunkenness, who had been useless.

The Major couldn't be dead now, swept away by the flood like all the screaming, terrified people in the compound, because the thing wasn't finished yet. It was for that, she told herself with a half-hysterical mysticism, that she had come to India against her will, against the advice of everyone; it was for that she had come here in the wrong season, drawn here by this thing which had to happen. Two days ago, even an hour ago, she would not have cared whether she lived or died, but now she had desperately to live, because this thing had to come to an end in fulfillment, this thing for which she had been searching always, which she had dreamt of in a wild nightmare only a few nights ago. No, he couldn't be dead, because it was he who would save her. In him she was going to find the thing she had been searching for; and suddenly she was aware that it was not simply his good looks which attracted her, but something else his coolness, his defiance, his fearlessness in setting out into the flood with that rather grim old maid, Miss MacDaid, and by something that was in his face, shining there like a light, something which was goodness and pity and understanding and strength which she had never encountered in any man she had known before.

But then she thought, "I have never known any decent men except perhaps Tom, and he's eaten up by defeat and bitterness. All the men I've known have been cheap and common or bounders or weaklings or men like Albert." And again she was aware of a whole world which existed, which had always existed, outside the realm of her experience and understanding. The realization was like a brilliant light which made her blind suddenly to Tom, to the flood, to the disaster, to all the horrors. And then the sudden revelation faded quickly, so quickly that she. had not time to seize and hold it, and again she was simply Edwina Esketh, bored, intelligent, cold, cynical, and sensual Edwina Esketh, a rich and fashionable slut.

When she could bear the unnatural stillness no longer, she said to Tom in a whisper, "Do you think they got through?'*

For a moment he did not answer, and she thought, "He is contemptuous of me and shocked. He thinks I'm shameless, but it isn't like that. It's different, only I could never make him believe that it isn't simply the other thing all over again."

Tom was saying, "If they managed to reach the hospital and it's still standing, they're all right." And then, after a moment, he added, "But I should think the chances were one in a thousand."

A little before dawn, after the rain had begun again, Mrs. Banner jee, calm and beautiful and still steel-bright with excitement, came quietly up behind them and said, "My father-in-law has had an attack. I think he is dying."

When Ransome offered his aid, she refused it, saying: "No, there is nothing you can do. The excitement was too much for him. He's aa old man. It's just as well. If Major Safti had been here he could have done something, but it was meant to be like this. In his horoscope it is written that he should die in a disaster." For a moment she was silent, and in the darkness Ransome felt that she was smiling. "My husband's wailing," she said, "you must not take too seriously. It relieves him."

Then she was gone, and after she had gone it seemed to Ransome that there had been in her voice something of pride and triumph, as if she had said: "You have not conquered India. Nothing has ever conquered her... you pale, puny Europeans least of all." And he thought again of the Major's long speeches about the cruelty of India.

As the rim of sky beneath the clouds began to turn pink and gray in the east he turned and said to Edwina, "Perhaps it would be better if you had a little sleep. I don't suppose there'll be much rest or comfort for a long time to come."

"No, I couldn't sleep now ... I want to see what it looks like when the light comes up. I want to see if the Summer Palace is still standing." She did not look at him, for fear that he would divine her deceit and make her ashamed, for ia her heart she did not care a fig whether the Summer Palace was gone; it was the hospital she must know about.

Again the sense of freedom returned to her, the same extraordinary sense of having come to the end of something, neatly and cleanly, and she thought, "If only this place would remain isolated forever. If only I would never have to go back to Europe again."

Once more she glanced at Ransome, and now in the rising light she could see the unhappy face quite clearly and it seemed to her that she found in it a kind of bitterness and tragedy she had not seen there before, not the trivial bitterness which made him speak so often with mockery and scorn, but something deeper, as if a fine spirit and a great intelligence had been wasted and that he was aware of the waste and the folly. Perhaps he was suffering even now, not for himself, but for the people in the drowned city whom he did not know and perhaps had never seen. And it occurred to her that perhaps that new look was not new, but only strange to her because until now she had never before been able to see it. She thought, "It is the Major, whom I scarcely know, who has made me see." And with shame she remembered that Tom had never talked with her save in a trivial way, as if he thought her unworthy of anything better. She had never known him at all. She did not know anything about him. And suddenly she felt a quick wave of affection for him, an emotion that was clear and clean and uncomplicated and different from any feeling she had ever had for him before, and at the same time she was swept by an emotion of terrifying loneliness, as if both Tom and the Major existed on a plane far above her, which she could not reach, which neither of them would permit her to reach, and that between the two men there was a kind of understanding which forever shut her out. For the first time in all her life, there was no arrogance in her, but only humbleness and fear, a greater fear, a far greater fear, than any terror she had experienced during the earthquake and the flood because it was a fear of something unknown, of some vague thing which lay before her.

Tom turned to her and said, "Look, the towers of the Great Palace are gone."

It was light enough now to see the silhouette of the great structure on the heights on the other side of the river. The light was gray and murky, for the low heavy clouds had come back again and stifled the beams of the rising sun, and as it increased it became clear that nothing

remained of the town save here and there the half-wrecked mass of some important building. From the balcony of Mr. Bannerjee's house they could make out distandy the ruins of the Music School, the shattered mass of the Maharani's Girls' High School, the Engineering School. As it grew lighter, Edwina pointed into the gray rain and asked, "Is that the Summer Palace?"

"Yes."

"It has fallen in."

"Not all of it. He might still be alive there." And at the same time he remembered what he had forgotten until this moment that the Major had said that Esketh had the plague, and he thought, "Better that the whole palace fell on him." And then he thought about poor Miss Dirks, old Dacy Dirk's daughter, and for a moment he doubted whether all this had not been a kind of nightmare. The memory came back to him hazily and he thought, "That is because I was so drunk." It was not possible that a man like Esketh could catch the plague. It was not possible that there could be such cruelty as the lonely suffering of poor dutiful Miss Dirks.

Then he heard Edwina saying, "The hospital... where is the hospital?" and he answered, "You can't see it from here. It's behind the trees." And when he looked at her he saw that she had turned away her face so that he could not see it.

Then for a long time they watched the desolation in silence, fascinated by the spectacle of bodies and trees and snakes, and in the shock and unreality of what had happened to them, calloused to the full horror of what they saw, Tom thought, "It was that way in the war. In the normal person something must happen to deaden the sensibilities when a catastrophe occurs." The war had never upset him in that way; he had simply grown sick, horribly sick, at the endless idiotic killing.

Behind him some one was saying, "Goodness! there's nothing left at all," and turning he saw Miss Murgatroyd, her sallow face swollen with sleep, her gown of blue taffeta with its garknds of pale-pink rosebuds, all bedraggled and soiled to the knees with muddy water. It struck him as odd that her terror was all gone. The dull, muddy face betrayed no emotion of any kind.

"You're not frightened now?" he asked.

"Oh dear, no! I'm sure we'll be rescued," and she smiled at him that silly bright smile of admiration which always made the pit of his stomach contract with boredom. She was play-acting now, in front of himself and Edwina; she was being British, the daughter of that mythical magistrate in Madras, and as he watched her he understood the full depths of her loneliness and her morbid egotism. She was not frightened now; she was even insensible to the whole tragedy because she was safe and Mrs. Banner jee, who was so cruel to her, was safe, and perhaps himself who had been kind to her. That was all she had in the world, the only friends she had known for years, and here they were, the three of them, isolated together by the flood in Mr. Bannerjee's house.

"Old Mr. Bannerjee is dying," she said, brightly, as if the news made her, in some way, more interesting.

"I know," said Ransome. "Perhaps there's something that we could do to help Mrs. Bannerjee."

"Oh no," said Miss Murgatroyd. "She sent me away. She said I'd only be in the way."

Very likely Mrs. Bannerjee had not put it as kindly as that. He thought, "O Lord! that means she's going to stay with us.' 5

Edwina said, suddenly, "Do you think there's any way of making a cup of tea? It would help our spirits."

Ransome looked at Miss Murgatroyd as the intimate of the household.

"I expect so/' she said, "Mrs. Bannerjee keeps a primus stove in her room just for making tea at night. I'll go and see." And suddenly important and useful, she turned and re-entered the upper hallway.

"I hope the old gentleman doesn't die," said Ransome.

"Yes, I suppose it would add to the complications."

"It's worse than that. Bannerjee will want to burn the body before sundown so that he can throw the ashes into the river. The old man meant to die in Benares. He was going there next month to sit on the bank and wait for death. It was a piece of bad luck, the flood. . ."

Edwina smiled.

"What are you smiling about?"

"I know it's not in the best of taste, but I can't help seeing you and myself here on this balcony, worrying over such things as what is to become of old Mr. Bannerjee's body."

The wailing of Mr. Banner jee, the son, was less violent now, as if the exertions of the night had worn him out. It had sunk away into a kind of low, monotonous keening, rising and falling now into a moan, now becoming distant like the buzzing of the bees at night in the great chandeliers of the palace.

"I'd like to have a picture of Bannerjee just now to frame and send to the Oxford Union." As he spoke he knew that Edwina's smile and her remark had been born of the weariness and hysteria which had followed the excitement of the night before, an excitement to which neither of them had yielded at the moment. Now he felt it in himself, the sudden desire to laugh and make flippant remarks in the very face of death and tragedy. Now that all the brandy and cocktails had wora off, his head ached and he began to think longingly of the brandy bottle he had salvaged from the flooded dining room. At the same moment Miss Murgatroyd returned.

"The stove is all right and there's tea, but there isn't any water."

Flippantly he said, "What, no water?" and Miss Murgatroyd answered, "You know what I mean, no drinking-water." She pointed to the flood and said, "If we used that water we might get cholera or typhus or something."

"Fetch me the kettle," he said, and when she returned, he went to the pipe which carried the water from the roof to the ground and kicked loose a section of it. The clean rain water poured out from the broken pipe and the kettle was filled in a moment.

"There," he said, "there's plenty o water. Do you suppose there's anything to eat?"

"The cookhouse is under water. There's part of a tin of biscuits in Mrs. Bannerjee's room."

"Well, fetch them when the tea's ready, and tell Mrs. Bannerjee. Perhaps the old man would like a cup of tea."

"He's beyond that," said Miss Murgatroyd.

She went away happy, bustling now with importance and content to be serving these two members of a conquering race, whose blood, diluted, mixed in her veins with that of a low-caste Indian woman.

Edwina said, suddenly, "Has the house got a tin roof?"

"No, it's slabs o stone."

"Then it's all right. He could burn the body up there."

"That wouldn't stop him. He's so scared by now, he'd set the house on fire and burn us all out if there wasn't any other way."

Then from inside the house the wailing of Mr. Bannerjee suddenly took on a new energy, hysterical, louder even than it had been at the onset of the flood. For a moment Ransome listened, and then said, "The old man must be gone."

In the doorway Miss Murgatroyd appeared, looking like a dreary A.B.C. waitress in fancy dress. She carried a tray with the teapot and two cups, and a plate of biscuits. She said, "Will you hold this a moment while I fetch a table?" Obediently Ransome took the tray, thinking, "Perhaps, after all, the poor thing is good for something."

In a moment she returned with a cheap bamboo table, and after placing the tray on it she asked, as if there was nothing whatever unusual in the scene about them, "How does your ladyship like it?"

"As it comes," said Edwina.

"Old Mr. Bannerjee is dead," said Miss Murgatroyd, brightly.

All that day they did not see Mr. or Mrs. Bannerjee, but Miss Murgatroyd, bright with the delight of finding some one to worship, came and went, reporting the progress of the ceremonies of mourning. Toward noon Lady Esketh retired to one of the bedrooms to sleep for a time, and Ransome, after he had finished what remained of the brandy, went to another room to sleep. There was no use in thinking of lunch, because there was nothing to eat When he wakened he went out again to the balcony, but nothing in the scene of desolation had changed save that two or three of the fires had burned themselves out. The water still moved sluggishly, its surface clotted with wreckage. Still in all the wide landscape not one human figure was visible, not one sign of life save for the passing of an occasional python wrapped round a floating beam or the branch of a tree, and the distant chatter of the sacred monkeys in the trees somewhere in the direction of Ransome's own house.

A little while later Edwina joined him, and presendy she said, "Aren't there any boats in Ranchipur?"

"Not many, and those were along the river. They must have been swept away."

"It doesn't seem to trouble you."

"There isn't anything we can do about it. You're not in Europe now, you know.'*

"Won't anybody do anything about it?"

"I think it unlikely. It depends on who has been left alive. I should think everyone is pretty badly disorganized. Raschid we could count on, and the officers of the Indian regiment, and some of the Mahrattas. I wouldn't trust the Gujerati at a time like this. Very likely they're all behaving like Bannerjee or trying to save their own property."

"I was only thinking that it's beginning to be a bore."

Then Ransome, who was himself beginning to feel restless, remembered the playing-cards Mrs. Bannerjee had rescued before everything was covered with water. "We might play patience," he said, grinning.

"I consider that a bad joke."

"No, I really mean it." So he fetched the cards, and for a time they tried playing patience on the top of the bamboo table which Miss Murgatroyd had furnished with the tea. It was too small to allow them a double game, too small even to play a single game in comfort, and they both had to stand because there were no chairs. After a time in which Edwina kept repeating, "Red jack on black queen" and "Black eight on red nine" she said, suddenly, pushing the cards from the table, "I'm sick of being British."

"What do you mean?"

"Taking it like this, coldly, as if nothing had happened. I'd like to know what's happened to the maids and Albert and even Bates and the Major and that nurse."

"Of course I could swim to the Summer Palace and stop by at the hospital on the way back."

"Don't be a bloody fool!"

"Patience, my dear girl, is a great game in more senses than one."

"I must say I wish Indian houses had a little more furniture. I'm sick of standing up or lying down. Don't they ever do anything else?"

"They sit on the floor. There are plenty of chairs downstairs for entertaining people like us."

The afternoon wore on and Edwina's temper grew a little worse. Presently she said, "Are you inhuman? Don't you care what has happened to your friends?"

And quickly his face grew white and he said, "Don't talk like a Goddamned fool!" And she was ashamed again.

Then Miss Murgatroyd reappeared, carrying fresh tea, and they knew that it must be four o'clock. There were only four soggy biscuits on the tray.

"That's all there are," said Miss Murgatroyd.

"Perhaps we'd better go on rations," said Ransome.

"Oh, the water will go down or some one will turn up," said Miss Murgatroyd, and suddenly Ransome understood another reason why she was neither frightened nor bored. Something was happening to her. For the first time in her dreary librarian's life something was happening.

"Won't you join us?" he asked, politely.

"No. I've had tea with Mrs. Bannerjee." She handed him his cup and then said, "They're going to burn old Mr. Bannerjee on the roof.' 1 There was a hint of a giggle in her voice and she added, "These Hindus certainly do the most extraordinary things." And Ransome felt his stomach contract again with dislike. At the same time, from the inside of the house came a sound of wood being smashed, and Ransome turned toward the door, listening.

"It's Mr. Bannerjee and the house servant tearing up the floors to get wood."

"The servant?" said Ransome, "Did he have a family?"

"Yes, a wife and four children."

"What happened to them?"

"They were in the houses in the compound."

After Miss Murgatroyd had gone, the sound of hammering and smashing continued for a long time. Then as the darkness began to close in, it died away, and in its place came the dim, ghostly sound of bare feet ascending and descending the stairway to the roof. The sound continued until it was quite dark outside, and then presently from the roof above their heads the sound of Mr. Banner jee's wailing began again, louder now, for his voice was rested, and then after a moment from the roof above them appeared a glow which illumined the leaves of the trees all about, a glow which grew and grew, accompanied by a crackling sound. Ransome thought, "I suppose I should stand by with water in case the house takes fire," but he did nothing. He was aware now of a kind of apathy which had transformed everything, changed all values, made nothing seem worth while. Edwina disappeared again to try to sleep, and, alone, he waited on the balcony.

While he watched there he saw that the body of old Mr. Bannerjee was not the only one being burned. Here and there all about the rim of the flood little fires leapt up against the stormy sky, puny, feeble flames of superstition, perhaps of faith, wherever the bodies of friends, of mothers, of children, of wives and husbands, had been found. The Major and Mrs. Bannerjee were right No one would ever conquer India.

While he listened to the sounds from overhead he became aware presently that a flame had sprung up on the roof of the shattered palace, tiny at first, no more than a pinpoint of light, growing and growing until Ransome understood that there, too, a body was being burned. The wind blowing toward Mr. Banner jee's house carried the smoke across the water and presently Ransome fancied that he divined the ghost of sandalwood scent in the deep air. He thought, "Perhaps it is the old gentleman. Perhaps he was killed by one of the falling towers. That would be the worst calamity of all." Now, more than ever Ranchipur would have need of the old Maharajah's simplicity and courage.

About ten o'clock Ransome did not know exactly the time, for in the excitement his watch had stopped the glow from the roof overhead began to die away. The house had not caught fire, perhaps because there was some magical quality in the slabs of stone which had been brought long ago from the sacred mountain of Abana to roof the house built by the dissolute Lady Streetingham to house her wastrel guests. The wailing, too, had ceased, perhaps because the voice of Mr. Bannerjee had failed at last. When it was quite dark he went into the house and called as softly as possible the name of Edwina. She was awake and answered him from one of the rooms along the hallway.

"Come in," she said. "I'm not asleep. I couldn't stand on my feet any longer. But I think a light would help, and some tea."

From the doorway of the roof he called to Miss Murgatroyd as softly

as possible, and in a moment Miss Murgatroyd appeared out of the thick blackness, feeling her way along the wall.

"Do you think we could have some tea?"

"There isn't any more alcohol."

"What about a light?"

"The parafine is all gone, too. Mr. Bannerjee used them both to start the fire."

"Blast and damn!" said Ransome, and out of the darkness from the bed behind them he heard the sound of Edwina's stifled laugh.

All through the night they spent their time sleeping, talking, and watching. Outside, the last of the great fires burned itself out, so that .there was no longer a tragic but magnificent spectacle beneath their eyes, but only velvety darkness and the sound of the horrible, monotonous rain. When dawn came there was nothing to see save the unchanged panorama of water and rubbish and bodies and shattered and burned buildings. And then about eight o'clock Edwina cried out, "Look! Look! What is that?" And Ransome, turning, saw one of the Maharani's tiny pleasure boats, all gold and gilt, coming through the lower branches of a great banyan tree. It was driven by some one whose figure was not yet visible, for the canopy of the little boat had become jammed in the branches of the tree and the oarsman was struggling, half-concealed by the leaves, to free it.

Then suddenly it shot free of the branches and the figure they saw was that of a white boy clad in shorts and a shirt. For a moment it nearly lost its balance and fell into the muddy water, but as it regained its feet and took up the oars once more they saw that it was not a boy at all.

Ransome said, "My God! It's Fern!"

"Who is Fern?"

The question puzzled Ransome for a second because, without thinking of it, it seemed to him that Edwina had been in Ranchipur for weeks, even for months, and that she must know quite well who Fern was. Then, with a shock, he remembered that only five days had passed since her arrival, and he said, "She's the daughter of the American missionaries."

The boat was quite near now, near enough for them to see that one of the oars was painted scarlet and gold and clearly belonged to the boat, but that the other was an improvised affair, made of a pole and a bit of wood. And Ransome now recognized the clothes he had loaned her to wear home on the night she had run away. She did not shout to them. She did not even stop rowing to raise her arm and wave. Instead she kept rowing steadily, awkwardly, her progress crippled by the makeshift oar, driving the fragile silly little boat against the sluggish current nearer and nearer to them.

"She's very pretty," said Edwina, "and very young."

Ransome did not answer her.

Fern had left Ransome's house, meaning to go straight home. Angry, she went away, out of the house to the forte cochere^ where she had left her bicycle, and then when she mounted it she discovered that even the bicycle had let her down* One of the tires was flat and the discovery made her burst into tears. It meant that she had two miles ahead of her on foot through the rain, unless she went back and asked Ransome's boy to repair the damage, and she could not go back now for fear she might see Ransome again, and as she left the house she told herself that she would never see him again, no matter what happened.

Walking beside the bicycle, wheeling it, she got as far as the end of the drive, and there she discovered that she was no longer angry, but only defeated and tired, more tired than she had ever been in all her life, not only of Ranchipur, of her mother and father and Hazel, everyone she knew, but tired even of Ransome. Because she was very young she thought, "If only I could die now. It would be so easy. There isn't anything to live for. If only I could lie down here on the racecourse road and die of exposure." But she know that in the warm, sticky air of Ranchipur in monsoon time, she might lie there for days without any ill effects, and then at night at this season there was always the question of snakes, and snakes terrified her. They were everywhere now. At night one might encounter them anywhere crossing the road . . * pythons or Russell's vipers or kraits or cobras.

The failure of the tire changed her mood suddenly, so that she was no longer angry at Ransome, but only sorry for herself. It seemed now to her, as she trudged along through the sticky mud, that he had never

done anything but let her down. He had never treated her seriously, and tonight, worst of all, when she had come to warn him, he had been drunk and behaved as if she were a child or an idiot. She had never seen a man really drunk before (once or twice she had seen one of The Boys when they had had too much, but it seemed to make them only gay and rather silly) and the sight of Ransome frightened her and made her feel ill. It seemed to her that he might have been less drunk than mad, laughing as he did at the things which frightened her and made her so miserable, laughing even at the prospect of scandal and scenes and trouble in which he himself was certain to be involved.

Why had she ever told that horrible lie? Why had she ever said that she had lived with him? It wasn't only that she had played directly into her mother's hand; it made her seem, when she tried to deny it, nothing better than a silly fool.

As she passed the garden of Raschid AH Khan she thought, wildly, "I will go in and stay there. That will fix them all. Then they'll all be sorry." But almost at once she saw that such a course was impossible because the one it hurt most was certain to be Raschid Ali Khan, wha had never done her any harm. She scarcely knew him by sight and she. did not know whether she would like him or not. She did not even know whether or not she liked Indians, because she had never really known any except the converted half-savage Bhils who worked about the Mission. And they were aborigines and not really Indians at all. But she told herself that they must be all right if Ransome liked them so much, for even in her anger and disappointment she did not accuse him of being a fool. To her he still seemed, in spite of drunkenness, in spite of everything, the wisest person she knew. Then the thought that she would never see him again made her weep once more, so that she was blinded now not only by the driving rain but by her own tears; but at the same time that curious warm feeling which she had experienced in the darkness after she had gone to bed at the Smileys' returned to her, and even in her youth and inexperience she knew in her heart that she loved him and that she would always remember him and think of him with a catch at the heart even when she was an old woman.

Then, plodding along in the mud, she reached the corner by the Distillery and as she turned toward the Mission she noticed the lights of a motor coming along the road over which she had just passed. At once she thought, "That is momma coming home from town," and without hesitation she switched off the light of the bike and plunged into the nullah alongside the road. She knew now that she dreaded the snakes less than she dreaded seeing her mother. Very likely her mother was returning from Ransome's. Very likely she had seen Ransome and told him that he had to marry her. Terrified, she waited in the nullah until the car had passed above her, showering her with mud. She recognized the old Ford, and then, out of terror, anguish, and sheer misery, she was suddenly sick.

Once on her way again she saw that every step was bringing her nearer home, nearer to her mother, who by now had perhaps told her father and Hazel the whole story. She still walked, automatically, almost without conscious effort, in the same direction, because there seemed to be no other direction in which to go. Sobbing, she stumbled along until ahead of her the lights of the Mission appeared through the wall of rain, and at sight of them a new idea came to her. She would not go home at all. She would go to the Smileys' after all and ask them to hide her. The harm she had done them was already accomplished. The awful letter filled with disgusting accusations had already been sent. Nothing worse could happen. And the decision brought her a sense of peace. The Smileys would understand. At least they would shelter her for a little time until she got over the shock of the call on Ransome.

But the Smileys weren't at home. As she reached the door she saw only Aunt Phoebe alone in the sitting-room, and remembered that of course the Smileys at this hour would be at the night school. For a moment she hesitated again, for Aunt Phoebe frightened her a little, not because she would be hard and unsympathetic, but because in the wisdom of her great age she seemed to know everything. Her eye was too sharp, and her common sense frightened and shamed what little there remained of Blythe Summerfield, the Pearl of the Orient.

But again, as in the nullah, the thought came to her that she would rather face anyone or anything now, than her mother, and she understood that it was quite impossible to go all night walking round and round Ranchipur in the rain. So resting her bike against the rail of the verandah she knocked, and Aunt Phoebe, looking up from her tatting, said, "Come in."

At sight of Fern a dim expression of surprise came into the bright eyes of the old lady, but she suppressed it quickly, perhaps moved by the swollen eyes and the look of despair on Fern's face.

Then Fern was embarrassed, so embarrassed that without any prelude she said, abruptly, "I can't go home. Will you let me stay here for a while?" and overcome with self-pity and the image of herself as a homeless orphan, she burst into tears.

"Heavens on earth!" said Aunt Phoebe, springing up from her rocking-chair. "What's the matter?" She put her arm around Fern's shoulders and said, "But you're soaking wet. I'll get you some dry things and then you can tell me all about it." Left alone for a moment, Fern flung herself down on the settee and sobbed loudly and without restraint.

When Aunt Phoebe returned she was carrying a complete costume belonging to Mrs. Smiley, as well as a large towel. Gently she touched Fern's shoulder and said, "Come now. Rub yourself dry and put on these things of Bertha's, and then you can tell me what's the matter."

Fern had no desire to dry herself and change her clothes. She wanted only to weep, to keep the soaked clothing on her until she caught pneumonia and died, but there was something in the dry manner of the old lady which made her feel a fool and compelled her to obey.

Then by the time she had changed, the hysterical sobbing had stopped and once more she felt on the defensive. But again it was no good against the determination of Aunt Phoebe, who said, "Now, listen to me, child. You've got something on your mind and you're going to tell me about it. I can kind of guess what some of it is, but you can tell me the rest. I don't say I'll be of any use, but it'll take the load off your mind."

Then Fern heard herself saying, "Could I tell you? Will you let me?*' And she realized all at once that in all Ranchipur it was only the Smileys who could possibly understand why she had been such a fool. It was only the Smileys, too, who would not judge her or give her advice or laugh at her. She did not like the plain gingham dress belonging to Bertha Smiley because it was ugly and too long, but it gave her a kind of confidence as if it were invested with the quality of Bertha Smiley herself, and suddenly she found herself telling Aunt Phoebe everything, just as it had happened to her, why she had done this and that, why she hated her mother (she admitted even that), why she had gone to Ransome's a second time, and throughout the recital Aunt Phoebe was silent, save that now and then she made a clucking sound to indicate her concern and her disapproval of certain foolish incidents.

When Fern had finished with the account of her second visit to Ransome, Aunt Phoebe said, "I must say he didn't behave much like a gentleman. It doesn't sound like him. Maybe it was because he was drunk."

"That's it," said Fern, herself suddenly seeking excuses for him. "I'm sure that's it. I shouldn't have come to you at all ... not after all the trouble I caused you the last time, not after my mother wrote that letter to the Mission Board."

"Never mind about that," said Aunt Phoebe. "It ain't the first letter like that she's written. And, anyway, evil never triumphs over good. I'm an old woman, and in the end I know that's true. The trouble is your mother wasn't raised right. Southern women never are. All they're taught is to get a husband for themselves. They can't even think of anything else."

"I don't know what to do now," said Fern. "I don't know where to go."

Aunt Phoebe stood up. "I guess," she said, "the best thing for us to do is get a bite to eat. We've all had supper and I guess maybe the cook-boy has gone out, but I can rake up something. I'd kind of like a bite myself. I'm used to scratching up odds and ends when I get hungry. We'll make up a good cup of coffee and some eggs and maybe some fried yams."

She took Fern's hand and led her toward the kitchen. Aunt Phoebe's hand was old and thin and gnarled and worn by the hard work of nearly seventy years, but Fern found it soft and comforting. It was an experience she had never had before in all her nineteen years, and it made her want to begin crying all over again.

The old lady kept on chattering, perhaps to spare the frightened girl the effort of saying anything. "The trouble is," she said, "that you don't belong in a place like Ranchipur. It's bad enough for grown-up people with all the heat and filth and mud and dust. I like it, but sometimes it gets on my nerves and makes me cantankerous so that I get sharp even with Bertha and Homer. It ain't natural, this climate, but it's awful interesting."

While Aunt Phoebe bustled about, she set Fern to helping her as if she knew that the best thing for the girl was to have something for her hands to do. As Fern worked, the sense of hysterical tension began to leave her and presently she knew that there was still something she wanted to tell the old woman, the one thing she hadn't told her, the most important thing of all, that she was in love for the first time in her life. Again when she tried to think of some one to whom she might tell her secret, there was, after all, no one in Ranchipur except Aunt Phoebe and perhaps Bertha Smiley, and she was not sure even that Bertha Smiley would have understood. Of Aunt Phoebe, who was so old, she felt more confident. It was as if Aunt Phoebe had lived so long that she had completed a cycle and become young again.

She wanted desperately to talk about Ransome with someone. Even her attempt to confide in her cousin by letter in far-off Biloxi had been a failure because with every word she put on paper she knew more surely that her cousin would not understand, or that if she had even a hint of understanding, she would somehow make the whole thing cheap and trivial. She remembered Aunt Phoebe's sudden contemptuous speech about her mother that Southern women were never taught anything but to get a husband for themselves, and she thought, "Now when we sit down to eat I will begin to talk about him." Again the warm feeling came over her, and she felt her own heart expand again with goodness and a desire to help to save him from drunkenness and despair.

When at last they sat down to a snack of eggs and yams, toast and tea and gingerbread, Aunt Phoebe, as if she understood everything, said, "It's such a pity about Mr. Ransome. He's such a nice man. It's awful when drink gets a hold on a man like that. Most drunks don't matter, because they were never any good, anyway. I had a brother like that... like Ransome I mean he died of drink when he was fifty."

Fern's heart warmed again, and she was about to tell the old woman everything, when suddenly her tongue was checked, with the very words at her lips, by something physical outside o her, a kind of menacing stillness in the hot damp air. It was as if she had started to speak and then suddenly became aware that she was interrupting some more important speech, some communication being made to herself and old Aunt Phoebe by all of Nature. She saw that Aunt Phoebe was aware of the same intrusion; it was as if a ghost had entered the room and commanded the attention of both of them. The old lady looked at her and started to speak, and then the world about them seemed to come to an end. The dies beneath their feet crinkled and broke apart. The table rocked and the tea was spilled on the fresh cloth. There was the sound of stone and mortar crackling and crumbling, and the lights went out as the distant power-house was buried by the wall of water from the broken dam.

Then in the darkness Fern heard Aunt Phoebe saying in a funny flat voice, "I guess that must have been an earthquake."

Fern, paralyzed, did not move or speak, and the old lady said, "Stay where you are. I think there's a flashlight in the cupboard," and Fern heard her, rustling like a mouse, across the broken tiles somewhere in the darkness and then the sound of a cupboard door being opened and then there was a light again in the room, the dim light of an electric torch with a battery which was almost exhausted. Then she found candles of which there were an abundance because Aunt Phoebe had never in her heart trusted lights which might go on and off without warning at the touch of the hand of some Indian filled with curiosity in a power-house ten miles away.

"I suppose we ought to go outside at once," said Aunt Phoebe. "That's what my sister Doris said she always did at Long Beach when they had earthquakes. But I don't hanker after going out in that rain. I suppose it would make more sense if we went to see what had happened to the house. From all the dust and smell you'd think the whole place had come down."

The calmness of the old lady, which wasn't perhaps so much calmness as indifference, brought Fern back to her senses, and she thought, "What has happened to our house? And to Ransome? Where was he?" And then she remembered that he had gone out to dine with the Bannerjees, and thought quickly: "Anyway, that's not a stone house. Maybe a wooden house is better in an earthquake."

Half o the Smileys' house the front half looking on to the Distillery Road had collapsed, but there remained intact three bedrooms and a vast empty storeroom which had not been made over when the rest of the house was converted from barracks into mission. In some freakish fashion the earthquake had demolished the one end and left the other shaken but still standing. The old lady, followed by Fern, regarded the wreckage, making a clucking sound at the sight of the ruins of a house which she had always kept in such fine order.

To Fern she said, "I guess it was lucky we were in the kitchen instead of the sitting-room." And at the same moment they were both aware of a strange sound coming toward them distantly from the direction of the town, a sound vague and distant, compounded of the rushing of water and the wailing of people which filled the emptiness of the silence that succeeded the quake. Each with a candle in her hand, they stood, the old woman and the girl, listening, frightened now by the new sounds which were less sudden and, being mysterious and less immediate, were more terrifying.

Aunt Phoebe, pulling herself together, was the first to speak. "What on earth do you suppose that could be?" and then: "I guess Bertha and Homer will be all right. The night school is a new building and good and strong."

"It sounds like yelling," said Fern. "I want to go and see what's happened to our house."

She was afraid now, deeply, sickeningly afraid, because from the house in the other garden there had come no sound. If her mother was there, or Hazel, they would have screamed because that was their nature. One of them would have come across the drive, no matter how much they hated the Smileys. From the window she could make out nothing in the thick darkness... nothing but rain and the great branches of the banyan trees reaching up and up toward the black sky.

The house of the Simons had gone down, like the regimental barracks, into a mass of beams and mortar and broken stone. By the time Fern and Aunt Phoebe reached it the cloud o dust raised by the collapse had been stifled by the downpour, and feebly, in silence, by the aid of the worn-out electric torch, the girl and the old woman circled the wrecked house, calling out in faint, shaken voices, searching for some sign of life. Now Fern felt a sudden terrible calmness come over her the calmness that follows a horrible shock. It left her mind unnaturally cold and clear. There was no reality in the scene. Her consciousness rejected it as something nightmarish and impossible that she and Aunt Phoebe should be here in the rain, searching the ruins of the shattered house for some sign of her father, her mother, and her sister. The weird sound of wailing which came toward them from the distant town had nothing to do with life; it too belonged in a nightmare.

Then suddenly it seemed to her that if she called their names loudly enough they might appear, safe and alive, out of the rain-drenched darkness, perhaps from the tennis-courts or along the road, and she began to call in a wavering hysterical voice, "Poppa! Momma! Hazel!" but her voice was muted by the flood of rain and no sound came back to her save the ghostly wailing from the stricken town.

She heard Aunt Phoebe saying, "Maybe they weren't at home. Maybe they're safe somewhere else."

A wild and dreadful thought crossed her brain, "Perhaps they're all dead! Perhaps I'm free!" and she felt suddenly sick with shame. Again, for the last time, she called into the blackness, "Hazel! Hazel!" For plain, stupid Hazel couldn't be dead. The earth seemed suddenly to rise beneath her feet and the blackness closed in on her, swallowing her up as the sound of the wailing grew fainter and fainter, until it died away.

When she became conscious again she was lying wrapped in a sheet on the broken floor of the kitchen. There was a taste of brandy in her mouth which made her think at once of Ransome and that first visit to his house, and over her was standing Aunt Phoebe who said, "It's all right, my child. You fainted and I dragged you in here. That was alL Here, take a little more of this. I always have it around for a time like this."

She drank the strong, cheap brandy, choking a little, and then slowly the memory of what had happened came back to her. Now it had a kind of dull, sickening reality. The nightmarish quality was gone and she knew that the earthquake had happened and that very likely her mother and father and Hazel were dead. Tears came to her eyes and began to trickle down her cheeks, and in spite of herself she began to whimper.

The old lady took her hand. "You mustn't do that," she said. "It doesn't do any good. You'd better put on some dry clothes. I couldn't get you dressed. It was about all I could do to get you in here and get the wet clothes off you."

"I won't do it again. I promise. I don't know what was the matter with me."

And then from out of the darkness they heard faintly a voice calling. For a moment the wall of rain made the sound blurred and weak. Sitting up. Fern listened. A second time the voice came to them, shrill, wavering, hysterical, but clearer this time, so clear that Fern recognized it as her mother's, and holding the sheet about her scrambled to her feet. The third time the voice became clear. In the darkness and rain her mother was calling, "Elmer! Elmer! Hazel! Fern!"

"I'll go and fetch her," said Aunt Phoebe.

"I'll go with you. I'll go! I'll go!" And with the sheet wrapped about her, she followed the old lady out into the rain.

By the weak light of the torch they found their way toward the sound o Mrs. Simon's voice. She discovered her on the drive, a little distance from the house, and when they came near they saw that she was not alone. Leaning on her, being dragged along, was the overblown figure of Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry.

At sight of the light, Mrs. Simon called out, hysterically, "Who is it? Is it you, Elmer?" and Fern answered, "It's me, Momma."

"Where are they? Where's your father? Where's Hazel? O my God! what has happened?"

Then Mrs. Simon flung her arms about Fern and, sobbing, cried out: "Oh, my darling! I know they're dead! I know they're dead!" and Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, unsupported now, slipped to the muddy driveway and remained sitting there, upright, murmurous and complaining, in the drenched peignoir of lace and baby-blue satin.

Left alone with Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry on the verandah of the deserted bungalow, Mrs. Simon had waited for a long time, listening to the moans of her stricken friend and the sounds from the town. She did not at first know what she was waiting for, but presently it was borne in upon her intelligence that they might stay there until doomsday without anyone coming to help them. Slowly, too, it dawned upon her that her friend was drunk and therefore useless. It was rare that she ever saw Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry so late in the evening, and never before had she seen her helpless. That part of Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry which had always remained sober enough to permit an illusion of dignity had now, it seemed, succumbed to the added intoxication of terror; and for a moment Mrs. Simon hated her profoundly because in such a crisis she was silly and useless, because she was only a burden, because she was stupid and soft and idiotic. Her instinct told her to go off, leaving her friend there alone on the floor of the verandah, but experience told her that this was impossible. Twice she slapped her, with no effect save to increase the volume of the moans. Then taking one arm and placing it over her shoulder as if she were saving a drowning woman, she got her to her feet.

She cried, "Pull yourself together, Lily. We've got to get out of here." But Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry only moaned and remained sagging and heavy and inert. Now, in the midst of catastrophe, Mrs. Simon was no longer impressed. In some mysterious way the importance of Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry had melted away. She was no longer afraid to call her Lily to her face, as she called her behind her back; she called her even worse things. Now she made no effort to conceal her hardness. She cried, "Come on, you damned drunken fool. I've got to get home!"

Just as Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry seemed to collapse, so the small female figure of Mrs. Simon seemed to gain strength. The coquetry, the exaggerated femininity were nowhere in evidence now. She became suddenly a woman of iron. Half carrying, half dragging her friend, she negotiated the steps and thrust her, still moaning, into the back of the old Ford. Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry fell on the floor and lay there with one plump leg hanging out of the car, but Mrs. Simon savagely thrust the leg inside and banged the door shut. Then, without a backward glance, she climbed into the front and drove off.

By now the fires had begun in the town and the reflected glow lighted up the road all the way to the Distillery. At the Distillery corner, which was on lower ground, the Ford plunged in a jet of spray into a foot or

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more of water. The road itself was invisible but she was able to discover where it lay by the lines of Java fig trees on each side. Steering by these, she made another half-mile, sometimes on the bare road, sometimes driving through water which nearly covered the wheels. She kept thinking, "If only I can get to the racecourse milepost we'll be on higher ground," and then just as she had almost reached it, the water entered the carburetor and the old Ford died.

Again and again she tried to start the engine, swearing now, using words which she had heard long ago as a girl on hot nights, used by drummers on the verandah of her father's hotel in Unity Point, Mississippi, words which she did not even know that she knew. And at the same time she began to cry, more out of exasperation than from fear. She thought, "We can't stay here all night. The water might rise. I've got to get back to the Mission and I've got to drag that drunken fool with me. After this she can never again put on airs with me."

When at last she gave up all hope of starting the Ford, she climbed down, filled with terror of snakes, into the tepid water. It rose above her knees, muddy, smelly, and uncomfortable. Pulling open the door, she cried, "Get up out of there, you fool!"

By the glow of the reflected fire, she saw that Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry lay exactly as she had fallen, and at once she divined that there was no way of getting her out of the car save by pulling her out feet first. Bracing herself, she managed this by a series of tugs and jerks, so that presently the bank manager's wife was able to sit up on the floor with her feet outside. This position was better, Mrs. Simon realized, and with one more effort, she said in a wheedling voice, as if she were addressing a child, "Now, Lily, help yourself a little. Put your feet down and stand up." Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, moaning, obeyed her hazily, but the heel of one ostrich-feathered mule caught on the fender and she plunged face forward into the water.

The shock of the water and perhaps the terror of death by drowning sobered her a little and gave back something of the will which she had cast away a little time before in a kind of drunken feminine voluptuousness. After a struggle she managed to scramble to her feet, and cried out, vaguely, "Where am I? Where am I? How did I get here?"

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"You're on the Distillery Road, you fool! And we've got to walk. The Ford won't run."

With a little help from Mrs. Simon she managed to walk, whimpering and unsteady, until they were on higher ground and were free of the flood. Then, almost at once, she began to moan again and to collapse every thirty or forty feet. At last they passed the racecourse milestone and presently came to the foot of the Mission drive. Here, exhausted and in despair, Mrs. Simon had begun the screams which presently Fern and old Aunt Phoebe heard in the kitchen of the Smileys' half-wrecked house.

All the way from the banyan tree as far as the Bannerjee house, Fern continued rowing across the submerged gardens without once looking up. From the moment she had nearly capsized in trying to free the boat from the limbs of the tree, she had seen him there on the balcony, standing beside a strange woman, and now she was shy, not only on account of Ransome, but of the stranger. She thought, "It must seem to him that I am always running after him," and he might not want to be rescued. He might want to stay on there. The single glance at the stranger told her that the woman was very pretty. In her directness, she did not think or care about rescuing the stranger or the whole of the Bannerjee family. It was only of Ransome she had thought when she found the little boat drifting on the flood near the Distillery. It was only of him she had been thinking when she waded out to it up to her waist in water to drag it ashore; only of him when she patched together the crazy oar out of two pieces of wood Aunt Phobe had found for her. Her mother had become violent at the idea of the rescue, screaming and crying and wringing her hands and saying, "I forbid you to go out in that crazy boat. Haven't I suffered enough? Haven't I lost enough without losing you, too?" And Fern had paid no attention, but had gone on hammering away, and when she had made the contrived oar she stalked out of the house dressed in the clothes of Ransome which had been left behind on the night she spent with the Smileys.

She wasn't free, after all. Her mother was still alive and in her heart she knew that she would rather have lost her mother than her father and Hazel. But something had happened to her during the night of terror

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and tragedy. She knew now that, even if her mother was alive, she was none the less free of her forever. Slowly, another discovery about life dawned on her . . . that distance, that escape, had nothing to do with freedom. Freedom was something which existed inside of you, no matter where you were. She had not escaped and run away, she was still in Ranchipur, yet she was free, freer, perhaps, than if she had succeeded in escaping to Hollywood without having lived through the tragedy of the last few hours. She had proven stronger than her mother, for although she was sick and miserable and terrified, she had kept her head. She had found dignity, and her mother, in the crisis, had lost whatever dignity she had ever had behind the silly pink-and-white fagade of the perpetual ingenue.

Even when she appeared dressed in Ransome's shorts and tennis shirt and her mother, at sight of them, gave a low cry as if she had been mortally hurt, she was not impressed. Setting out on such an expedition, it would, Fern knew, have been silly to wear any other clothes. Even in the midst of tragedy her mother had managed to cry out, "What will people say if they see you dressed like that? What will the natives say? They won't have any respect for us."

She did not, Fern noticed, say, "What will Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry say?"

Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry was still lying on her back, plump and inert, naked, beneath the sheets in the Smileys' double bed. The peignoir of pale-blue silk and lace, covered with mud, hung over the back of a chair in the kitchen to dry before the fire, and Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, collapsed and ridiculous, was snoring. No, Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry and the threat of what she would say was finished forever.

And then, just as she was about to set off. on the expedition, Raschid Ali Khan and Harry Loder appeared out of nowhere. The big Muslim was dressed in bits of officers' kit which they had found while searching the ruins for the bodies of The Boys. The jodhpurs he wore were too tight for him and the great muscular wrists protruded from the sleeves of a tunic which was meant for a man of half his size. And Harry Loder no longer looked the spick-and-span polo-playing dandy of the Indian army. The ruddy color was gone from his face and he was shaking a little as if he had a chill.

At sight of him Mrs. Simon, frightened, began to cry again, but Aunt Phoebe said, "You'd better have some brandy."

"A nip wouldn't be bad," he answered, in a voice that seemed like the voice of another person, and while Aunt Phoebe went for the brandy, he told them that all the Boys except himself were dead and already buried by the soldiers of the regiment. Then Mrs. Simon, hysterically began to scream and say that they must help her to find the bodies of her husband and Hazel, and Raschid AH Khan, in a brusque voice (a voice, she thought afterward, he should never have dared to use to her as a European) told her that there was no time for the dead while there were living to be saved.

Then Aunt Phoebe returned, having found the brandy bottle empty among the sheets of Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry's bed, to say that she had made a mistake and there wasn't any brandy, after all. Almost eagerly but with a curious coldness, they exchanged grim bits of news. Not even the hysterics of Mrs. Simon checked them. Raschid's wife and seven children were safe because the house was built on an American plan and had stood up against the quake, but they were isolated by the flood, with only a little food. As soon as it was light, Raschid, naked, had plunged into the water and swum through the flood to dry land. He could, he said, rescue the family later. He had arrived at the Barracks as naked as any sweeper, but clothed still in the boundless dignity of a true believer.

They had, he said, to find boats or build rafts; they had also to discover what it was that blocked the canyon far off near Mount Abana and held back the waters.

To Fern, Harry Loder seemed a person she had never seen before not the boisterous, beefy fellow who had tried to get her alone in corners where he might try to kiss and maul her, but a man who was ill and frightened. She listened to them, never speaking, and she said nothing of the frail little boat hidden in the half-drowned guava orchard near the Distillery, for fear that they would take it from her; and she had to have it to find out if Tom Ransome was still alive. After that they could have the boat. After that they could take anything they wanted from her. Now she was not afraid of Harry; she did not even dislike him and he did not seem to be aware of her at ail. She was afraid that one of the others might betray her secret, but Aunt Phoebe was busy with the Untouchable cook-boy, who had come back at daylight, cooking eggs and toast for the two men. Mrs. Simon only moaned hysterically, hypnotized by her own loss.

Raschid, he said, was going to the Philkana to bring out the elephants. Harry's motor had run out of petrol halfway from the Barracks. They had tried Mrs. Simon's old Ford, stalled near the Distillery, but there wasn't enough petrol in it to be worth salvaging. The tanks at the Barracks had collapsed and the great petrol tanks in the town, if they still stood, were under water. Mechanical civilization had failed them. There remained only the elephants, rocking back and forth in the dubious shelter of the Philkana. The elephants could go anywhere, even swimming the flood, if necessary. Only some one it was Raschid who meant to do it would have to swim the mile or more of flood to give the jobedar orders to fetch them out. With the elephants they could go down the valley to Mount Abana to discover what it was that dammed the waters. Harry thought it was a barrier of debris and bodies. While the police minister swam to the Philkana, Harry meant to go to the army warehouses for dynamite.

Then the eggs were ready and Raschid and Harry Loder sat down to them, scarcely talking at all, save to answer a question now and then from Aunt Phoebe about the hospital or the Maharani's Girls' High School But about the part of the town which lay on the other side of the river they knew very little more than she herself.

Fern, still terrified lest her mother come to her senses and betray the existence of the pleasure-boat, watched and listened, and as she watched, she grew fascinated by the spectacle of Harry Loder, tired and white, his tunic all stained by mud and plaster. He had not looked at her directly, and as she watched him it seemed to her that although there was something dead in him, something which she had never seen before had come to life. What it was she could not define because she had been taught nothing and had so little experience and knew so little, but it seemed to her that the new look in his face was a little like the look of grimness she had seen now and then in the face of that strange woman, Miss Dirks, when she had encountered her by accident in the bazaar or in the great square * . . the Miss Dirks who seemed always intent upon some urgent errand, who in passing her might have been passing no more than a tree or a rock.

Suddenly they had finished their eggs and coffee and Raschid stood up, absurd but rather magnificent in his ill-fitting tunic and jodhpurs, Raschid, of all people (thought Aunt Phoebe) wearing the uniform of the conquerors. Harry said, "I'll be back with news as soon as I have any," and to Aunt Phoebe, "How are you for food?"

"We can get along for two or three days. I was never one to have a house empty of food. Ill get up a regular meal for you next time."

Then Harry Loder looked at Fern for the first time, with an odd unseeing look. "You'd better not run about," he said. "There aren't any police. You don't know what might happen. The Bhils may even come down from the mountains to do a bit of plundering." To Aunt Phoebe, as the one in authority, he said, "Have you got a gun?"

"No," said Aunt Phoebe. "Who needs a gun?"

"There's nothing to eat in Ranchipur. You can't tell what may happen." He unstrapped the revolver he wore beneath his tunic and said, "Here, keep this. I'll send around a guard." He was silent for a second, looking down at the big muscular hands scarred and still bloody from

the struggle with the stones and broken beams. Then he said, "But I oo

can't even be sure of my own troops... what's left of them."

At that Mrs. Simon began to weep noisily, crying out, "What do you mean? Don't go away and leave us. Don't leave us alone. We may be killed or anything. . . ."

It wasn't Harry, but Raschid, who answered her brusquely, with scorn. "You'll be all right, madame. You can be thankful we've got nothing worse than Gujerati to deal with."

Then they went away, and when they had gone Aunt Phoebe strapped the revolver to her waist over her apron and set about clearing up the dishes and taking stock of the supply of food. She'd lived through this sort of thing before, twice through prairie fires as a girl, and she'd heard stories of red-Indian raids and massacres in her father's day, and she didn't expect to be left in peace with only Fern and Mrs. Simon and poor drunken Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry in the house. In her tired tough old heart she was troubled about Bertha and Homer Smiley, but there wasn't any use in speaking of that, what with Mrs. Simon, hysterical and useless, Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry drunk in Bertha's bed, and poor Fern eating her heart out about a man whom nothing could save from drink. The best thing she knew was to keep as busy as possible.

But now as the silly boat sidled to a position just beneath the balcony on which Ransome stood, Fern wasn't thinking of Harry Loder, but only that perhaps for a second time she had made a fool of herself. She could not bring herself to look up at him as he called out directions, leaning over to hold out the cord of one of Mr. Banner jee's Jermyn Street dressing-gowns. Now that she was here, now that she had achieved the rescue, she did not know what to do. She only wanted to leave the boat and go away again. And as she caught the cord and fastened it to one of the fluted gilt columns of the boat's canopy, she knew that she was miserable, not so much because of Ransome as because of the woman with him... that lovely woman dressed all in white and wearing a great many diamonds and emeralds, a woman out of another world of which Fern knew nothing save the specious shadow of the reality as Hollywood saw it.

This woman belonged to his world. When they talked to each other each would understand almost without words what the other meant. There wouldn't be the awkward pauses and misunderstandings that made him grin suddenly in a way which caused herself to blush and made her love him at the same time because he was so kind and tried so hard to be elderly and wise in order to help her. It was the woman who troubled her... that woman whose very clothes and jewels were insolent and assured, that woman who to Fern seemed not bored and on the verge of middle-age, but incomparably perfect and lovely. She did not see or even suspect that she herself, in Ransomed old shorts and tennis shirt, had a freshness and charm for which the woman would have exchanged all her fine clothes, all her jewels, everything she possessed.

Then for the first time she was forced to look up because Ransome was calling out to her, now that the pleasure boat had been made fast, to take his hand so that he might draw her up to the second-floor balcony. She saw his face and her heart leaped because she saw by the look in it that, after all, he was glad she had come; she saw that he was pleased to see her, even proud of her, and that at the same time he was amused by the preposterousness of the whole scene. For the first time it occurred to her, who had never analyzed any emotion or thought, what it was that made her love him so much. It was the kindness and the grin, that grin which came and went so easily and quickly, like a light turned on and off, a light illuminating depths which she might divine but not yet understand.

The hand and arm were strong, with more strength than she had believed possible in the body of a man so slim. He drew her up to the edge of the balcony and there she let go of his hand quickly and climbed over the railing, feeling helpless and awkward.

Ransome said, "You're a very clever girl," and she was suddenly angry because he was treating her again as if she were a child, and humiliated because the other woman was there to watch them. The tears were just beneath her eyelids, waiting to rush forth, but with a great effort, an effort worthy of the iron control of poor Miss Dirks, she checked them. In a sudden wave of self-pity the death of her father and Hazel became for the first time a reality. Until now it had been like something seen in the cinema, but now it was true. She knew now that whatever happened she would never see either of them again. And Ransome dared to grin and call her a "very clever girl."

Then he said, "This is Lady Esketh" and Lady Esketh said, in the most charming way possible, "We owe you a lot. It was very courageous of you. We might have died here of starvation and boredom."

"Where on earth did you get the boat?" asked Ransome.

"I found it near the Distillery. Aunt Phoebe helped me make the oar. It only had one." And suddenly she felt proud again and almost happy. Then poor Miss Murgatroyd appeared in the doorway in her bedraggled robe de style of blue taffeta, and at the sight of her Fern felt assured and confident, for the appearance of Miss Murgatroyd at that moment would have brought confidence to any woman.

Miss Murgatroyd cried out, eagerly, "For Heaven's sake, how did you get here?" And when Fern answered, "I've got a boat," Miss Murgatroyd turned and ran into the house, crying, "Mrs. Banner jee! Mrs. Banner jee! We've been rescued!"

While Miss Murgatroyd was bearing the tidings to the Bannerjees, Ransome and Lady Esketh asked for news. Fern told them of the death of her father and Hazel and the wiping out of The Boys when the barracks collapsed on them, and the grin died out of Ransome's face. He took her hand and said, "I'm sorry, my dear" and again her heart warmed and again she felt a little stab of shame that she should be so happy when her father and sister were lying dead beneath the ruins of the Mission.

Lady Esketh asked, "The Summer Palace? What has happened to it?"

"I don't know."

"And the hospital?"

"The hospital is standing. Raschid Ali Khan said so."

Then Ransome said, "Where is Raschid?"

"He swam out from his house. He's gone to get the elephants."

"And his family?"

"They're all right. They're still at his house."

"And the Smileys?"

"I don't know. Aunt Phoebe is safe."

Suddenly Lady Esketh asked, "Are the people in the hospital alive?"

"I don't know."

And Ransome, divining what lay beneath Edwina's question, asked, "The Doctor and Miss MacDaid?"

"I don't know."

"They tried to get from here to the hospital when the flood happened."

Then an odd silence occurred again, and the sense of excitement died away. Fern, awkward and shy, was again aware for a moment of the horrible reality of the tragedy. She thought, "Tomorrow it will be real and the day after that and the day after that, but it isn't real now. It never happened."

Ransome said, "I suppose we ought to get away from here on to dry land, at any rate. If there was another quake, the whole place might come down." He turned to Fern. "My house? You must have passed it."

"The verandah and the cookhouse have fallen in. It's half under water like this, but it's still standing. Your boy was sitting on the roof." (So John the Baptist hadn't run away. He'd been hiding there in the house all the time.) "You'd better go to the Smileys'. Aunt Phoebe said to tell you. She's awfully good at looking after people. Momma is there with Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry."

"I'll take the boat," said Ransome. "We'll only be able to go off one at a time. There isn't room for more. Have you had any sleep?"

"Not much."

"You ought to lie dowa for a bit and I'll come for you after I've taken off the other women."

"I couldn't sleep."

"No, but ju^t lying down for a bit would be a help." He took her arm and said, "Come along. Do as I say. It isn't over yet it's only begun. s>

She did not want to lie down. She didn't feel tired now. She only felt bewildered, and so excited that it seemed to her that very likely she would never be able to sleep again; but it was nice having him care whether she was tired or not. It was nice to have the chance of being alone with him, if only for a moment. It was nice to have him away from that Lady Esketh and her superiority, for even in the crudeness of her instinct she had divined that the speech and manner of Lady Esketh were not sincere, but the casual products of long habit and breeding. Lady Esketh had seemed unconcerned about the whole thing, except the hospital. Fern couldn't help being interested in the way she cared so much about what had happened at the hospital.

In one of the rooms she lay down on the hard Indian bed, and Ransome said, "Your clothes are wet. You ought to take them off."

"Not much. The canopy kept off the rain."

"I'll fetch a couple of shawls."

He went away, leaving her happy and full of peace, and when he returned he was carrying two Kashmiri shawls which he wrapped about her, carefully and gently. Then casually he laid a hand on her forehead and said, "You've had a tough time, my dear. Try and sleep a little." Without knowing what she was doing, without willing it, her hand reached up and touched his, but he drew it away quickly as if the touch hurt him and said, "Now go to sleep like a good girl" as if she were a child.

On the balcony Edwina was still waiting. First she said, "I wish we could get more news."

The speech angered him because it seemed to him to illuminate shamelessly the profundity of her selfishness and egotism. So he said sourly, "We'll get more news as soon as we get out of here, but I don't imagine we'll find out what's happened to the Major."

"I didn't mean that. It's bitchy of you to think it."

"You did mean it and you ought to be ashamed o yourself, if not for the fact, at least for betraying it. Do you want to go ashore first?"

"It doesn't make a damned bit of difference when I go unless you want to be left behind with your little bit."

"What do you mean by that?"

She laughed, "You're not going to tell me that there isn't something up between you?"

"I'm not going to tell you anything. Because you behave like a Piccadilly whore, don't believe all other women do the same."

"All right. Have it your own way. But if ever I saw a girl suffering from calf-love, it's that one. When you speak her face lights up like fireworks. But I suppose you like being treated as if you were God." Then she put her hand on his arm, gently and disarmingly, so that he had again the feeling that with him, and perhaps before all the world, she always made herself appear far worse than she was. She said, "I you remember, that's what broke it up between us a long time ago... because I never treated you as if you were God, but just as bad as myself."

"My God! the things you can think up. 1 *

But he was ashamed now and his shame went back to the thought he had had two days ago of how amusing Edwina would find the story of Fern's determination to seduce him, how amused she would be by the idea that she had saved Fern's virtue, because a little while before they had experienced a bored and passionless embrace in that forgotten room of the palace. It did not seem funny now. The idea of repeating the story to Edwina was disgusting and made him feel a little sick. He thought, "I must be worse even than I believed." He told himself that it was not because he was in love with Fern. Such an idea was preposterous, and if she were in love with him, something must be done to put an end to that. Whatever else was true, Fern deserved someone better than himself, at any rate someone fresher and younger and cleaner. But he was troubled now for the first time because he no longer knew what he felt.

Then it occurred to him that it was he whom Fern had come to rescue. It was for his sake she and Aunt Phoebe had contrived the clumsy necessary oar. It couldn't have been the others, whom she scarcely knew. And he thought, "It must have been that! I'm a bloody fool! I've been a bloody fool all along."

The rest of the day was spent in journeys back and forth between Mr. Banner jee's house and the Distillery corner. It was not an easy task in the frail boat with the sluggish currents moving now this way, now that, and he had to go in a roundabout way to avoid the clumps of trees in the Maharajah's Park and the long row of Java figs that lined the Distillery Road. From the landing-place the wrecked Mission was distantly visible in its dark clump of banyan trees, and one by one as the refugees landed from the little boat they made their way along the road and across the muddy fields to the haven presided over by Aunt Phoebe. First went Miss Murgatroyd, then Mrs. Bannerjee carrying with her three Pekinese, some jewels, and the inevitable gold box in which she kept her pan, then Lady Esketh still in the white gown from Paris, a Kashmiri shawl wrapped round her shoulders.

The rain came and died away, sluicing down suddenly from the low overburdened clouds, and there were moments when the silly boat was threatened by the violence of the wind as well as by the water. It had been built long ago to drift at fetes over the surface of a shallow pond littered with flower petals and illuminated by Bengal lights, and now each shift of the current, each clutch of the passing branches at the silly gilt canopy threatened it with disaster.

Miss Murgatroyd, during her voyage, squealed a great deal and giggled when Ransome, with that old feeling of illness at the pit of his stomach, grimly told her to sit very still unless she wished to join the corpses that floated past them. Mrs. Bannerjee was still and dignified and silent, chewing her wilted betel leaves with the calm and indifference of a sacred cow; chewing with assurance and confidence as if this India, torn, shattering, and dying, was the true India to which she belonged, as if only now, with the famed modernity of Ranchipur destroyed, she had come into her own. Only the Pekinese made a nuisance of themselves, squealing and barking at the corpses and wreckage and snakes that drifted slowly past.

Ransome, sitting opposite her, no longer felt any desire to conquer or humiliate her. As he watched her, chewing indifferently, it seemed to him strange that he should ever have found her exciting. Now he admired her in a kind of abstract fashion for her calmness, her indifference, even for the humor she had shown over the wailing of her husband, but he no longer thought of her as a desirable woman; she had become, somehow, a kind of inhuman and sexless curiosity. Her peculiar fine- drawn beauty, the great glowing eyes, the exquisiteness of the pale hands with their lacquered nails none of these had changed, save perhaps that their quality had been augmented by excitement. Only yesterday he had desired her out of boredom and perversity. Today she was strange, even a little repulsive, because she seemed inhuman.

At the landing-place near the Distillery they found the faithful Miss Murgatroyd, her pale-blue taffeta drenched now, the hem of the skirt stained with the red mud of the fields. She wore a shawl over her head. She had pretended, when Ransome put her ashore, to set out toward the Mission, but the moment he was gone she had turned back to wait for her beloved and precious Mrs. Bannerjee.

Edwina, throughout her rescue, was ill-tempered. Now that the excitement was over, she was bored, dismally and profoundly, the victim of a kind of gnawing impatience. As the little boat made its way through the dripping trees, she talked now and then, irritably. She was aware only of the mud, and that she was soaked through, and that there was no way of discovering what had happened at the hospital, and that this was something that she could no longer discuss with Ransome because somehow he had slipped away from her overnight; the Tom she had met on that first night was gone. It seemed to her, as she watched him slyly (because she did not want to meet his eye) that even his face had changed, that it had grown mysteriously thinner and that the angle of the stubborn jaw had grown a little sharper. The change made her angry and she thought, sullenly, "Now, if the Major is still alive, I will have him in spite of every one. Nobody can really care. I shall have him, and after that we shall see. After that 111 have to go back to that bloody awful life at home." She had to have him now after all those hours of thinking of him, of trying to imagine what it would be like. Even though he proved to be a poor thing, simply another changeable, intriguing Indian, only another lover like all the long procession before him she had to have him, because that was the only cure for the malady which she herself had perversely created. She had to be crushed by him > to be humiliated and subdued. It would be, she thought cynically, like a purge, and afterward she would be free. But all at once she was ashamed, thinking, "I never dreamed this could happen to me."

Ransome was saying, "You should have accepted one of Mrs. Bannerjee's saris"

"No. Even this dress is better than a sari. What would I do with all that stuff hanging about me ? What I want is a bath and some practical clothes ... a shirt and some shorts like that girl was wearing."

Quietly Ransome said, "Oh, you mean Fern Simon?"

"Yes, if that's her name."

"You know it is."

"Let's not begin all over again."

He grinned and said, "You can't be jealous of her. You haven't any right to be. I never pretended anything... not even that night at the palace."

"Neither did I."

"All this seems pretty trivial and silly considering the circumstances.* 1 He allowed one oar to drift and pointed to a naked corpse wedged head downward in the low branches of a neam tree. "It wouldn't matter very much to him."

And then he saw that he had been silly himself and melodramatic and priggish. With all Edwina's upbringing, with all that had happened to her, the body of a low-caste Hindu could mean no more to her than the corpse of a goat or a cow. With all the feeling of caste behind her in England, she would be no more impressed by the spectacle than an orthodox Brahmin. Once the sight would have left him unmoved because it was beyond his comprehension; in certain aspects it still was. Even now in his heart he could not believe that this man, whoever he had been, was not better off dead than alive. His death could not have made much difference to anyone, least of all to the man himself.

She said, "The trouble with you is that you're a bloody sentimentalist..." Then after a moment's vague thought, "The kind that gets sentimental over cities and armies and history. If you were a little more personal you wouldn't always be in a mess."

She had spoken, he knew, out of instinct, because although she was intelligent, intellect was a quality unknown to her, and yet what she had said was true, so true that it threw a great light suddenly upon him and all his life. She was right. He had always been a Universalist He had fallen from the beginning into the error of Descartes. He had separated humanity from the individual and that made you at once sentimental and a litde less than human.

They passed the blank wall of the Distillery and the litde boat thrust its nose into the red mud of the shore. He stepped out, took her hand and then began to laugh.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

"Just the picture of the two of us. The world is a more wonderful place than I thought."

"Yes, it's pretty funny. I'm not sure it's our proper role."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure we can live up to it."

He turned and pointed toward the Mission. "That's it, over there," he said. "Tell Aunt Phoebe that I recommend you to her care. Ill be along when I fetch the others ashore."

Then he put off in the boat again, and when he had gone a litde way he let the oars rest and turned to look after her. She had thrown away her slippers and was walking barefoot through the mud. The trailing skirt of soiled white crepe-de-chine she had hitched up and fastened about her waist with the girdle of rhinestones. Her legs were bare to the thighs. The Kashmiri shawl she had thrown over her head.

Grinning, he thought, "Maybe it wasn't necessary to recommend her to Aunt Phoebe. Maybe the old lady will understand her quality of indefatigability," And again he thought, "She's personal. . . , God knows, she's personal."

When he came once more in sight of the house he discovered the figure of Mr. Bannerjee already waiting for him on the balcony. It was clear at once that he had reverted with a vengeance. Gone now was every vestige of Bond Street He was wearing a white dhoti Bengali fashion, draped over his shoulder, and the black hair which usually shone with brilliantine was covered with a paste of ashes. In the crook of one plump arm he carried a big lacquered box which Ransome divined at once must contain all that remained on earth of the elder Mr. Banner jee.

"The old gentleman/' he thought, "is going to the Ganges, after all." The flooded Ranchipur wasn't holy enough to receive the ashes of the retired insurance broker.

As the boat drew nearer, Mr. Banner jee suddenly caught sight of it and immediately he began to moan once more and beat his breast with the free hand. The costume did not become him and he had lost, somewhere between Calcutta and Oxford, the knack of wearing it properly, for the dhoti kept slipping from his fat shoulder, so that now and then in the midst of his breast-beating, he was forced to give it a hasty tug in order to keep it in place. Bond Street had managed better than the Howrah bazaar to conceal the soft rotundity of Mr. Banner jee's figure and now Ransome discovered that he had the great kimono arms of a prima donna past her prime.

But the moment the canopy of the little boat touched the balcony the wailing and the breast-beating ceased and Mr. Bannerjee, as if still pursued by the vengeance of Kali, plumped over the side, lacquered box and all

"Easy!" cried Ransome. "You'll sink the boat"

He was angry suddenly, so angry that if it would not have capsized the boat he would have given Mr. Bannerjee a good kick in the behind. His anger illuminated the distaste he had long felt for him; he disliked Mr. Bannerjee because he was a fool and had no dignity, because he was at the same time a coward and a humbug. And he was angry, too, at the obvious arrogant conviction of Mr. Bannerjee that he himself at that moment had no importance to the world save as ferryman for Mr. Bannerjee and the ashes of Mr. Banner jee's father. Dressed in Bond Street clothes, Mr. Bannerjee had been obsequious and, at times, groveling. Now he had taken a leaf from the book of his wife. He was still frightened, so frightened that the yellow white of his eyes showed in the ash-colored face. A person so terrified could not at the same time afford to be arrogant.

1357]

"Sit tight," said Ransome. "If you capsize the boat I shan't try to save you. There's too much work to be done."

Mr. Bannerjee did not answer him. It seemed to Ransome that in his terror he must have lost the power of speech. With one hand he clung to the edge of the pleasure-boat; with the other he clutched the lacquered box containing the ashes. Once clear of the balcony, he closed his eyes and seemed to go into a trance, and Ransome, watching him, remembered what the Major had once said that the Bengalis were the Irish of India. It was odd that the same race could produce two people as unlike as Mr. and Mrs. Bannerjee.

As he passed the house of Raschid All Khan, the figure of Mrs. Raschid surrounded by children of all ages appeared in a broad upper window. In Urdu she called out to him that she and the children were all safe and could hold out for another day, and in Hindustani he called back that he would come to fetch them either tonight or early the next morning. Then as they passed the drowned world of his own compound, he caught sight of John the Baptist, naked, perched on the cracked roof in the rain. Through the downpour, John the Baptist shouted to him in his soft French. "All the plate is safe. It's on the first floor with all Sahib's clothes."

"Better go inside. I'll come for you later."

"Tres bien, Sahib," and the boy slithered down the drain-pipe like one of the monkeys and swung into an upper window.

At the Distillery, Mr. Bannerjee, still meditating, opened his eyes long enough to step ashore without a word either of thanks or of recognition. Ransome pulled in the oars and sat staring after him as he plodded bare- foot, still carrying the ashes, through the mud toward Aunt Phoebe and the distant Mission.

When he returned to the house, the servant whom he had not seen since he had appeared with the hurricane lantern was waiting on the balcony. The man was standing, looking out over the drowned city, turned away a little so that he did not see the boat approaching. He was a thin, ugly little man, very black, and now in the midst of the devastated landscape he was the only living thing, for even the birds and the sacred monkeys had deserted the flooded area as if they had divined that it was accursed by nature.

The servant did not move, and in the tranced immobility of the figure Ransome found something vaguely disturbing. Here was a man who had lost everything his wife, his children, perhaps his father and his mother and even his grandparents (for the compound had been a whole village in which there were shrines to Kali and Shiva and Rama). This man created a kind of awe. He was, one might have said, a fragile monument of patience and endurance, tiny and ugly and childish against the menace of the darkening monsoon sky. This man was India, more than any of the others, more than Mr. Bannerjee, or the Major, or Raschid Ali Khan or even the Old Maharajah himself, the India which went on, breeding and breeding, indestructible, like those swarms of bees clinging to the marble eaves of the great palace. This was life, a principle, ripening from a starved childhood into a maturity in which there were only animal pleasures and superstitions scarcely different from those of the swarming, noisy, sacred monkeys.

For a time, as if enchanted, Ransome sat in the drifting boat, trying to discover what this man #w -what was his need, his soul, his spirit, his essence. What significance could he himself have to that skinny, dark, motionless figure on the balcony, that figure to whom the British Empire meant nothing, whose imagination did not extend beyond the limits of the wrecked city, not even so far as the solitude of El-Kautara or the sacred mountain of Abana. He was not quite an animal, for he was made in human shape. What could it mean to him to be left in a second, utterly alone in a world which until a little time before had been solid and secure? Of what was he thinking now as he stood, still as the stubby statute of the Good Old Queen, looking out over the dead city? For him what was reality and what spirit? How was it possible to reach the spirit of that dark, half-real image?

And wearily there came to Ransome a slow impulse toward self-abnegation, rising up in him like that strange feeling he had had long ago as he sat against the mud-stained wall of a shattered house in Belgium. It was an odd desire, faindy sensuous in its implications, to lose himself that self which was the Honorable Thomas Ransome, unhappy, at times drunken, egotistical, intelligent, disappointed, neurotic, despairing. It was a desire to merge himself whatever there was of soul, of intelligence, of personality, known as Thomas Ransome into the mixture of what was known as humanity, a desire as strong as that of thirst, to know this man standing there against the sky, and his brothers, whether black or white, yellow or brown, a desire to fathom the endless, inexplicable patience and resignation of all his kind. For a second he was aware, as if the low-hanging clouds had lifted suddenly to reveal the blazing sun they hid, of having had a glimpse of salvation and peace.

And then suddenly, eluding him., the sensation and the vision were gone.

At the same time, at the second the experience ceased, the black maa on the balcony turned and looked toward him into the light which came from below the rim of clouds. For Ransome the trees about him were no longer luminous and glorified, but only the familiar banyans and peepul trees beneath whose branches he had sat so many times drinking the bad cocktails at Mr. Banner] ee's badminton parties. And the ugly black man was no longer some one very near to him, so near that he had been on the verge of discovering his secret, but simply Mr. Bannerjee's Gujerati servant, dirty, inefficient, groveling when abused by his master.

As the boat came again beneath the balcony, he called out to the man in Hindustani, "Where is Memsahib?"

The man answered him in Gujerati, "Memsahib sleeping" and made pantomimed sleep with a sudden gesture of singular beauty.

Ransome thought, "Let the child sleep. She probably hasn't slept for two days," and pantomiming his meaning, told the man to come into the boat.

The man at first refused, and only came reluctantly when Ransome ordered him abruptly.

In a mixture of pidgin tongues, he asked the man if he had nothing to bring with him, but the man replied, "No, Sahib, nothing"... nothing but the ragged bit of cloth he wore about his skinny waist between his skinny thighs.

They set out and on the way he tried with all the Gujerati he could muster to talk with the man, but the servant seemed either dazed or stupid. Nothing could be got from him save an occasional animal gesture of pantomime which meant nothing to Ransome.

At the Distillery the man stepped out and, falling on his knees pressed his forehead into the red mud in an exaggerated salaam.

Ransome asked, "Where will you go?" But the man did not understand and, aware that the sun was sinking, he turned away and took up the oars. The man waited as if out of respect until the boat was a hundred yards from the shore and then, turning, he set out across the vast muddy plain, straight away into the sulphurous yellow light that rimmed the sky beyond. Until the boat lost itself among the half-drowned trees, the crooked tiny black figure was still visible, growing smaller and smaller in the terrifying vastness of the Indian landscape.

He had passed his own house and the house of Raschid Ali Khan when the darkness came down suddenly. It was as if in a few moments the trees, the houses, the familiar landmarks melted into blackness, or as if the waters themselves had risen and enveloped everything. For a second, alarmed, he stopped rowing and thought, "I must not get lost. If she should waken and find herself alone in the house she might be frightened," and again, as he had done so many times during the war, he sought to take command of himself in a new way, to force his body to exert an extra sense to guide him straight to the house. There were no stars to steer by, and now suddenly no trees or houses, for even if he could have seen them the neam and peepul and banyan trees had been planted long ago without order or system. Calculating that the lag of Fern's one contrived and limping oar would pull him always toward the left, he set out once more, glancing over his shoulder in a vain effort to discover some evidence that he had not already lost his way.

The rain which just before sunset had stopped for a little while began again now, descending in ropes of water with such violence that it beat up a fine mist above the flood. For ten minutes he rowed with a terrifying feeling of blind helplessness, for the evocation of that sixth sense which long ago had been real, had now failed. Again and again he ran the little boat blindly among the branches of trees and then suddenly he became aware that, despite his efforts, it had taken a direction of its own and that the oars were making no impression any longer. He had blundered and now he was no longer in the backwaters, but in a part of the flood where the force of the river's rushing current made itself felt. For a second he thought, "Now I am lost. I will be swept away like all the others." He did not want to die and he struggled for a time until he saw that rowing was of no avail, especially when he did not know whither he was bound and whether each stroke of the oars might not be bringing him nearer to death. So he ceased all effort presently and let himself drift, thinking quietly, "Well, if it is over, it is over and maybe it's better that way."

He could not tell, now in the darkness, whether the boat was drifting rapidly or merely swinging about in the eddies of? the main current, but presently a cluster of leaves brushed his face and reaching out, he seized a branch and held fast. Now the worst was over. At least he could spend the night here, wet and miserable as he was, and with the coming of daylight he could discover where he was. Then he remembered the cord of Mr. Bannerjee's Bond Street dressing-gown, and groping he found it on the bottom of the boat and fastened one end to a stout branch of the tree. Now he might even sleep with safety in the midst of the murmurous threatening darkness*

For a long time he waited, wakeful despite the weariness of two days without sleep. He was hungry, and even in the damp heat he had begun to shiver. He thought again, "I must get back to her somehow." If she wakened she might be frightened in that strange house with its ancient evil legends and the spirit of old Mr. Bannerjee still haunting its dark corridors. And then slowly he began to experience a sensation which he had not known since the war, a feeling of the presence there all about him in the darkness among the rustling trees of all those dead who had vanished in the catastrophe. Long ago the same feeling terrified him far more than any shells or bullets; long ago that same feeling had crept over him slowly like the rising of icy water, against his will, defeating his intelligence and his reason. Long ago he had felt the invisible, intangible, presence of the thousands of those whose bodies lay shattered and torn above and in the ferule Flemish mud all about him. Then the terror chilled his blood and made the hair rise on his body; long ago the fear had been all the worse because it was beyond reason and his own boyish rejection of immortality. It was as if those unseen and unseeable spirits had stood there in the gray fog which hung above the mud, accusing him, saying, "We are not dead. There is no death."

But now there was no terror. Sitting alone in the little boat in all that blackness, he knew that the spirits were there, not born of his imagination as he had tried long ago to make himself believe, but real, possessing perhaps even a substance which could be neither seen nor felt with the poor senses he possessed. It was not terror which he experienced now, but a sense of peace and understanding.

How long he remained, shaking and exhausted, in the tugging boat he did not know, for in the blackness all sense of time seemed to vanish, but presently he became aware that a kind of light had entered the darkness, gradually more and more apparent, suffusing dimly the whole air and bringing a vague black form to the trees all about him. It was a light that came downward from the clouds, the reflection of some fire which had broken out again in the town. Slowly the light increased until at last only a little way off he was able to make out the complicated, richly carved phallic roof of the Shiva temple, and then quite near at hand all that was visible of the stubby cast-iron Queen Victoria. Only the head remained above the water and about the short thick neck there had collected a garland of grasses and rotting flowers brought down by the current of the river. Half-drowned, she had remained somehow, stubborn and undefeatable, on the central buttress of the shattered bridge.

As the rosy light increased he discovered against the sky not far away in a filigree of black the great fan of the ancient Java fig tree that stood near the badminton court, and knew that if he could reach the tree itself the rest would be easy. There was no use in attempting to propel the boat with the oars, so at last he untied the cord, and drawing it and himself from branch to branch clotted with rubbish, he made his way along the row of banyan trees which bordered the Racecourse Road. It was a slow business because the gilded canopy kept being caught by the branches. After what seemed hours he arrived beneath the tree and there, dripping with sweat, he waited for a moment to rest. The chill was gone now. Rowing the boat for the last hundred yards, he arrived quickly at the balcony of the dead house, and climbing over the rail he made the boat fast once more with the cord of Mr. Bannerjee's dressing-gown.

The house was still, more quiet even than the desolation outside, and for a moment he thought, "Perhaps she has gone away. Perhaps some one has come for her," and felt suddenly the sickness of disappointment. By the dim, reflected glow of the light outside he made his way slowly along the hallway until he came at last to the room where he had left ber.

She had not gone away. She was still asleep beneath the netting on the bed, stretched out like a child with one arm thrown over her head, the short blonde hair curly and towsled in the damp.

Exhausted now and puzzled, he stood there for a long time, looking down at her in the dim light that came through the window. All at once, for some reason, she seemed very remote from him and no longer childish. In her very youth there was something which was ageless, which touched him profoundly, and in his own weariness, in his thirst and hunger, brought a lump into his throat. He experienced both shame and envy for the youth, the very youngness, which surrounded her like an aura, envy too for a kind of romance which he felt in her and which he had never known. For a fleeting moment he divined how wonderful it would be to have been young once as she was young, to have believed in the world as she believed in it. That was something he had never known and would never know now, because it was too late. But he was aware too of the tragedy which lay in her very youngness, of what lay before her, thinking how litde she knew of the world, how little there was of truth between the reality and the tissue of that false world she had created out of her own imagination. What would happen to her when she passed from the one world into the other?

But the chills began to return, and going into Mr. Banner jee's room he rummaged about in the dim light until he found a dhoti. After stripping himself and rubbing himself down with a bed cover, he put on the dhoti and returned to the room where Fern lay sleeping. At the same moment there was an explosion coming from a great distance which rocked the shattered wooden house. And then another and another. Bits of plaster fell from the ceiling about him, and he thought, "That would be Raschid and Harry Loder blowing up the wreckage/' In the morning the flood would be gone.

On the hard bed beneath the netting the girl stirred but did not waken, and he thought, "How tired she must have been."

The fire in the town was burning itself out and the light was fading. With cushions he made himself a bed, and wrapping the dhoti about his head after the fashion of the millions who slept each night in the streets over all India, he lay down on the floor beside her, so that when she wakened she would not be afraid.

It did not occur to him that what he did, staying there all the night with her, might create a fresh scandal That old world, that world of gossip and petty jealousies and ambitions, that world of the Club and the Boys, of Pukka Lil and the Simon tennis parties had been swept away, leaving in its place a world that would be for a time at least savage and primitive and desperate.

At the Mission Aunt Phoebe went about her work.

There was no boy now to help her, for in the early morning she had sent away the only boy who had returned to seek news of the Smileys. He had gone unwillingly and had not returned. And among the refugees she found no help. When she looked over her guests without passion now in the midst of disaster, she saw that Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry was not only an inebriate but a fool, and that Mrs. Simon was only another kind of fool. She would be useless in a crisis, only sobbing and wringing her hands (when she was not asleep) and talking of "her loss" the loss. Aunt Phoebe thought sourly, of a husband and a daughter whom she had always bullied and made unhappy, to whom death itself must have come as a relief. Mrs. Bannerjee had never done any work and knew nothing about it, and merely sat chewing her pan with the indifferent calm of a yogi. To Aunt Phoebe, Mrs. Bannerjee was no beauty. To Aunt Phoebe she was simply a lazy woman without feelings. Miss Murgatroyd, when she was not bringing down upon her head the snubs and petty cruelties of Mrs. Bannerjee, fluttered about, making an effort to be useful; but she too was a fool, perhaps the biggest of the lot.

So Aunt Phoebe thought, "The best thing I can do is to keep them all out of the way." But they would not be kept out of the way in either the huge storeroom or the bedrooms. As if they were aware that security lay only in the presence of the old woman, they kept coming and going to and from the kitchen. Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry wanted aspirin and Mrs. Simon something to make her sleep.

Yet, despite all the irritations, the old lady was enjoying herself as she had not enjoyed herself since the days of prairie fires and tornadoes. The absence of news about the Smileys disturbed her, but not very profoundry, because she had faith, a peculiarly potent faith which believed not only that God would protect her nephew and his wife, but that if He failed to protect them, it would be because He had His own reasons. And because she was old and had lived all her life in simplicity close to the earth, she possessed at eighty-two a wisdom and a knowledge which none of the others, even the Hindus, were able to share. She knew that in the course of nature it would not matter very much what happened to the Smileys or to herself. The one thing that mattered was that they had lived honorably and that in death there could be no reproaches; such knowledge was wonderful for putting the mind at ease. It did seem to her a pity that if people must die, the Lord had not taken away the fools and the useless ones like Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry and Mrs. Simon and the Banner jees.

And she was at peace because her mind was occupied with a thousand details and because her hands were busy. No one knew better than herself the solace which work might bring. In all her life she had never had time either to think of herself or to "enjoy" grief. There had been moments since she came to Ranchipur when she had been idle, moments when she was threatened by a temptation to work mischief as she had done in letting out the poor comfortable old hyena, moments when she tormented Mrs. Simon deliberately by appearing on the verandah with her rocking chair and lemonade and palm leaf fan. The only flaw she had found in the life of Ranchipur was that there was, at moments > not enough to do. And now she was busy, with making an invoice of the storeroom to see how long the food there would hold out, with, cooking and making certain that none of the refugees received more than his proper ration, with finding aspirin for Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry and brewing neam tea for Mrs. Simon's nerves.

She went about her work with the revolver Harry Loder had givem her still strapped about her waist over her apron, partly because she did not know what to do with it and partly because it was exciting to- think that it might be useful. She had not much faith in the necessity* for it until late in the afternoon when she saw coming across the- muddy fields the tall, thin, black figures of three Bhils. They came straight toward the house and in silence she watched their approach, as she might have watched the approach of three redskins across the prairies of her childhood. She saw no use in alarming the others, and she determined first to discover what it was they wanted.

They had come down from the hills to plunder and appeared astonished when they found the door of a house they had supposed empty barred by an old woman with a revolver (which Aunt Phoebe took out of its holster as they drew near). She could not speak their language, but when they made signs that they wanted to come into the house and wanted something to eat, she in her turn made vigorous pantomimes showing them that they could not enter and that there was nothing to eat. They were black and menacing enough in appearance, with rags and goatskins for coverings and long, black, greasy hair which fell to their shoulders. They had no firearms but each of them carried a long spear.

For a moment they gibbered and chattered among themselves and they might have attempted to force their way in save that in the midst of their conference Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry came into the kitchen and, seeing them, uttered a shrill scream which attracted all the other refugees. The sight of Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, wrapped like a mummy in sheets (for both Aunt Phoebe and Mrs. Smiley were small thin women and their clothes of no use to her) put them to rout. Sullenly they turned and walked through the red mud in the direction of the town.

Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, threatening again to faint, cried for brandy, but there was none. Miss Murgatroyd and Mrs. Simon both began talking at once; Miss Murgatroyd predicting the direst horrors of rape and torture, and Mrs. Simon crying out, "What is going to happen to us now? I know what they're like ... the Bhils. I know what they're like around the Mission. They've been waiting for years just to cut our throats." And then suddenly she thought of Fern and cried out, "Where is Fern? What have they done to her? Why hasn't she come back?"

Aunt Phoebe looked at her sourly and said, "Fern is all right. Don't you worry. From what I know about Fern, she's got a head on her shoulders."

Then in the doorway appeared a new sight, more strange and more exotic than the Bhils. It was Lady Esketh, with her white evening gown hitched about her waist, her arms covered with jewels, her legs spattered to the knees with red mud. With a dignity which was suddenly comic, she said, "I am Lady Esketh," and then to Aunt Phoebe, "I suppose you are Aunt Phoebe. Tom Ransome told me to come straight to you."

"Yes," said Aunt Phoebe, feeling suddenly shy, "that's right. That was right. Come right in." Then remembering her manners, she said, "This is Mrs. Simon and Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry."

"How d'you do?" said Lady Esketh, at the same time pulling the tucked up dress from the rhinestone belt and letting it fall to the -floor.

Upon Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry the effect of the introduction was far greater than any brandy could have been; she was meeting Lady Esketh at last, in spite of everything; she recovered herself at once and stood up as if in the presence of royalty. She was the first to find her tongue. She said, with her China-blue eyes wide open, "Didn't you meet them? Didn't they attack you?"

"Who?" asked Lady Esketh.

"The Bhils."

"What are Bills?"

"Those savages , . . black men with spears."

"Oh, them! Yes, I saw them."

Then Mrs. Simon spoke breathlessly, "Didn't they attack you . , . with all those jewels?"

"No. They didn't see me."

"What did your ... I mean, what did you do?" Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry had very nearly stumbled. Under the stress of emotion she had slipped back across the years of officialdom and had very nearly said, "Your Ladyship."

"I didn't like their looks. I hid in a ditch till they went past."

"Oh," said Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, "a nullah. How very clever of you!"

Aunt Phoebe knew suddenly that she was going to like the newcomer. She did not suffer fools gladly; she was always astonished by the number of people who reached middle-age still remaining fools. Clearly, Lady Esketh was no fool.

"You'd better have some dry clothes," said Aunt Phoebe.

"Yes, thanks. And some kind of a bath."

"There's a chattee... ' began Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry.

"There's a stone crock full of water and a dipper. I'll heat up some water," said Aunt Phoebe. "Come on with me."

Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry giggled, aware suddenly of her mummy-like attire. "We haven't any clothes, any of us," she said, "I was caught in my neglijay. It's drying now, but it's so hard to dry things in monsoon weather."

As for Mrs. Simon, she appeared to have become mute. She stood quite still, staring at Lady Esketh and the fortune in jewels she wore on one wrist. This was her dream of what a duchess should be. She for' got even the bodies of Mr. Simon and poor, stupid Hazel crushed beneath tons of stone and plaster. While she stared Lady Esketh began to unfasten the bracelets, saying, "What can I do with these?"

"Give them to me," said Aunt Phoebe. "I'll keep them in my stocking." Then a wicked gleam came into her eyes that same look of devilment which Ransome had caught in her wrinkled face on the day the hyena drove Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry up the arbor. "I guess no matter what hap' pens," she said, "they won't be looking under my skirts."

When she had gone, taking Lady Esketh with her, Mrs. Simon said, "What a way to talk! Now you can see!"

"In front of Lady Esketh, too!"

"How can she talk like that... when anything might happen?"

And then Mr. Bannerjee appeared in the doorway, his head covered with ashes, carrying his lacquer box. At sight of him both women screamed, and then recognizing him beneath the ashes, they turned their backs and occupied themselves with Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry's peignoir, which was nearly dry. Mr. Bannerjee in European clothes was bad enough. In a dhoti, covered with ashes, Mr. Bannerjee, the elegant, the cosmopolitan, looked like any filthy sadhu.

Almost at once he became a nuisance, for in an accession of orthodoxy he demanded a corner of the stove and a set of kitchen utensils where he might prepare food for himself and Mrs. Bannerjee uncontaminated by the hand of the untouchable Aunt Phoebe.

In the bathroom by the chattee^ Aunt Phoebe and Lady Esketh began to understand each other. Aunt Phoebe brought cotton underwear (which Lady Esketh had not seen since the pinched days long ago whea she had lived in a Florentine pension with a bankrupt father) and a dress of calico which she had never seen in all her life, a dress which was simply two pieces of cloth sewn together with sleeves by a Gujerati dress- maker who had squatted on the verandah floor while he made it.

Aunt Phoebe felt a sudden shyness, not because Lady Esketh was fashionable or because she was rich or because she was the god-daughter of a queen, but because she was called "Lady" Esketh. Aunt Phoebe had never called anyone "Lady" in her life, and in spite of a knowledge remote and somewhat vague, that there were such things as tides, it seemed to her that it was a silly thing to call anyone "Lady" Esketh or Lady Smith or Lady Jones. Her shyness was born of the unwillingness of her tongue to pronounce the word "Lady/' so in all their conversations she simply addressed Lady Esketh as "you/*

Almost at once Lady Esketh had asked, "Who are the two women in the kitchen?" And Aunt Phoebe had responded, "The one in sheets is Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry. She's the wife of the bank manager. The other is Mrs. Simon, the wife of the other missionary."

"The one who has a daughter called Fern?"

"Yes," said Aunt Phoebe. "The poor thing has lost her other daughter and her husband. They were killed."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

For a moment the unreal horror of the reality returned, making them both mute.

There was a long silence, and then Lady Esketh, who had quite shamelessly taken off all her clothes and was standing quite naked beside the chattee^ said, "Have you heard of what has happened to the hospital?"

"No. Nobody knows anything. I sent one of the boys to find out, but he never came back."

"I don't know whether my own husband is alive or dead. He was ill , . . in the old Summer Palace."

Aunt Phoebe thought, "Poor thing" and then knew at once that her thought was merely conventional Whatever happened to this strange woman standing there naked, dousing herself with cold water from the chattee, she would never be a poor thing. So she said, "I expect that tomorrow things will be better."

Then Aunt Phoebe left Lady Esketh with the clothes, and in a little

while, dressed in the calico frock, she came in the kitchen and Aunt Phoebe thought, "It's wonderful what a difference there is in the way people wear clothes. 5 * In the calico dress which fitted her no better than it had fitted Mrs. Smiley, for whom it had been made, Lady Esketh somehow looked smart, or at least she looked what Aunt Phoebe supposed smartness to be, for it had never been a subject in which she had taken any great interest.

Lady Esketh said, "If there's anything I can do to help, you must tell me what it is. I'm not very clever, but I'd like to help. I don't care what."

Aunt Phoebe started to say that she could manage and that there wasn't any reason to spoil the looks of the lovely white hands with the lacquered nails, but before she could speak, Lady Esketh said, "I really mean it. You see, I want to be useful. I want to do something." And into her voice and into the blue eyes there came the shadow of something which Aunt Phoebe in her wisdom understood, something which astonished her. For a second she was silent and then she said, "Well, you might scrape the yams." but when she placed the basin and the yams and the knife before her, she saw that Lady Esketh had not the faintest idea of how to scrape yams, so she took the knife in her own work-worn hands and said, "See, like this."

Lady Esketh said, "I'm sorry, but I'm such a fool about things like that" and into her face came a look of childishness, almost of innocence, which Ransome had discovered in his drunkenness on the night of Mr, Bannerjee's party a little while before the earthquake.

Turning away to the stove, Aunt Phoebe thought, "That's it! That's what she wants." The yams would discolor her white hands and the water would crack the lovely nails, but that was what she wanted more than anything in all the world.

Together they got ready the dinner for Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry and Mrs. Simon and Miss Murgatroyd. On his end of the stove Mr. Bannerjee prepared a dish of rice and saffron. At last he had put aside his lacquered box.

It was Lady Esketh and Mrs. Simon who kept watch through the night, armed with Aunt Phoebe's revolver. A little after midnight reverberations of the distant explosions from the direction of Mount Abana

rocked the house and brought the others into the candle-lighted kitchen where the two women sat with the door barricaded by chairs and tables. It was Aunt Phoebe who divined the cause o the explosions. Nothing else of importance occurred during the night. No Bhils appeared and the only sound from the muddy plain outside was the steady roar of monsoon rain and the howling of the jackals and the occasional maniacal laughter of a hyena.

As the night drew on the two women talked to each other. At first there had only been an exchange of occasional remarks, civil but uninteresting, for Mrs, Simon was still bedazzled and Lady Esketh found herself bored and unhappy. Miss Hodge had been one thing, but Mrs. Simon, she found was another. The groveling and snobbery of Miss Hodge she understood well enough; out of years of experience at bazaars and horticultural shows she knew all the necessary answers, the gracious word or two of formula that would make drab women like Miss Hodge and Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry glow with an inner happiness. But Mrs. Simon was different. In her American snobbery Lady Esketh detected a kind of formlessness; it was the manifestation of an individual rather than a whole caste, and so it puzzled her. The old answers which had satisfied Miss Hodge did not appear to satisfy Mrs. Simon. She divined that both women were commonplace and boring, but she discovered almost at once that their quality was different. Mrs. Simon had a chip on her shoulder; poor Miss Hodge was grateful for any kind word. Mrs. Simon .wanted more than formulas. She demanded intimacy on an equal footing as the final price of a tolerable relationship.

For the first time in her life Lady Esketh felt ill-at-ease, thinking, "Perhaps, after all, our way is the best. At least you know where you stand." Mrs. Simon dared to ask her direct questions about her husband, about his illness, what she thought about Ranchipur and the Maharani and about Ransome. It was not only that she expected an answer; she expected the same intimate revelations which she herself produced with such breath-taking frankness and simplicity.

When she brought the name of Ransome into their desultory talk, obliquely rather like a crab dragging its prey sidewise, she hinted at an intimacy between him and Fern which made Edwina feel that he had deliberately deceived her about the depth of his relationship to the girl. She talked to Lady Esketh with a curious detachment about her husband and her daughter who were dead, saying, "Tomorrow, somehow, we must bury them."

On the other side of the table, with the candle between them, Lady Esketh found that she was being shocked, something which she had not thought possible. The woman slowly became to her a little inhuman. It was as if nothing in the world, neither her dead husband and daughter, nor her living child existed except in relation to her own ego. As she listened it seemed to her that the woman almost believed that poor Hazel and the Reverend Mr. Simon had arranged to have themselves killed in order to spite her. And as she sat there, idly answering "yes" or "no" or "how terrible!" it occurred to her again how little, for all her experience, she really knew of what the world was like, how little she knew of its meannesses and crudeness and petty ambitions and jealousies. She had never known because when they came near her she had always turned away from them. Now, willy-nilly, these things of which she had been unaware were being forced on her by the hard-faced middle-aged woman seated on the opposite side of the table. Watching the missionary's wife, she experienced at the same time resentment and pity resentment at Mrs. Simon's vulgarity and pity for her very smallness and for all the harshness she divined in a background and a childhood of which she knew nothing whatever.

Listening with only half her mind, the thought of Albert returned to her, and for a moment it seemed to her that he was less awful than she had believed. His faults, his vices, were at least great ones. The evil he had done was vast and far-reaching. In his selfishness, in his ambition, there was a kind of evil grandeur. And then forgetting Mrs. Simon altogether, she thought, "He is very likely dead ... if not by the earthquake, from the illness. I shall never see him again and I am free." And then after a moment, "But what am I to do with my freedom? Where am I to go? What reason have I for living?"

The jackals were howling again, quite near, at the edge of the compound, and the absurd thought occurred to her that this adventure should be romantic and exciting in quality, but that for some reason she could not quite discover, it was not; it seemed only squalid and empty, the wrecked house, the strange assortment of commonplace people, even her feeling for Tom. She had never been afraid, even for a moment. For a little time she had been excited, but now the adventure had gone all flat and tasteless. The discomfort and drabness and boredom had outweighed whatever excitement there had been in it. Out of it all there remained only the Major, and very likely he was dead.

Then she was aware that the odd, common little woman opposite her was crying, not noisily and hysterically, but quietly, the tears rolling down the badly made-up cheeks. Very quietly she was talking, unaware even whether Lady Esketh was listening or not.

She was saying: "I could have been better to him... and kinder to him. Now I can't be ... never again... because he's gone." Lady Esketh was aware that the face was no longer hard; it had turned flabby and the rice powder was streaked and blotched by the tears. She went on talking in a curious muffled voice, saying, "Sometimes I nagged him. I nagged Hazel, too, but that wasn't the same. I always meant to make it up to him somehow... and now it's too late. I made him do things he didn't want to do, and sometimes he used to get so tired. I didn't mean it that way. I meant to help him. He wasn't the kind o man who could help himself." She rubbed the smudged face with her handkerchief and said, "He was weak, but he was a good man. I wish you could have known him."

Watching the woman, Lady Esketh experienced a kind of cold horror at her sorrow, at the pitiful egotistical quality of her confession. She wanted to go away, to turn her back and talk to some one else. She was even afraid, for she divined the half-mad quality of the hysteria in Mrs. Simon. But there was no place to go and no one to talk to. She remembered suddenly, with a faint desire to laugh, that she had a duty imposed upon her; she was sitting there in a calico dress with a revolver in her lap, acting as sentinel. Outside there was nothing but that endless plain of red mud with its jackals and hyenas and perhaps wandering troops of those savages she had seen a little while before. All at once she was angry at Ransome for having sent her ahead instead of allowing her to remain behind with him. Then she thought, "But he didn't want me. He wanted to be alone with that girl. Probably it was his first chance. He has the girl. Why shouldn't I have my beautiful Doctor?"

The awful woman opposite her, that vulgar, strange, ravaged woman, went on and on talking, telling her things she did not want to hear, things which had nothing to do with her, which in an odd way made her feel ashamed of herself.

She was saying now, "I wasn't good to him as often as I should have been ... he never asked me outright, but I knew and sometimes I shut him out."

Lady Esketh wanted to cry out, "What is that to me? Why should you be telling me all this?" But she could not bring herself to speak. She wanted to say, "I don't give a damn about a husband I never saw," but she kept silent, still watching the raddled face that was no longer coquettish and hard, but raddled and old and flabby.

"I've had so much misery. You've no idea what it is like to have to live here in Ranchipur... always... always. It makes you mean and queer and horrible inside."

Then perhaps through her tears Mrs. Simon saw the shadow on the face of Lady Esketh, the hard, rather set look of distaste, and she said, "Please let me talk to you. There isn't anyone else I might talk to." And Lady Esketh thought, "I suppose that at home I would have said that she didn't show a decent restraint... but I'm not at home." No, she was sitting here in the midst of India in a world that was suddenly shattered and terrifying.

"You see," Mrs. Simon said, "I've just begun to feel what has happened. I couldn't feel it before. It wasn't real. I didn't believe it in my heart. It's only now that I fyious he's dead under all those stones. It's the first time I've 'known I'll never see him again."

The jackals began their ghostly wailing again, and above the chorus rose the wild laughter of a hyena. "Dead," thought Lady Esketh. "The whole place is full of dead and the jackals and hyenas are dragging the dead about." And she remembered suddenly the clouds of vultures and kites she had seen distantly from Mr. Bannerjee's balcony, swirling round and round, circling lower and lower, not darting cleanly like eagles and falcons, but swooping lazily down because their victims were dead and there was no reason for haste. She thought, "I will waken and it will be over and I will discover that I have never been in India at all." But she knew that the sound of the jackals' crying was real, as real as the cheap, bitter grief in the face of the awful woman who kept watch with her.

It was true what Mrs. Simon had said. Neither the catastrophe nor the death of her husband and daughter had had any reality for her until suddenly in the stillness of the half-ruined kitchen it had become suddenly as real to her as if they had both died slowly in their beds under her very eye. Before that, the shock, her own sense of the dramatic, the confusion, the terror and the excitement, had somehow numbed her consciousness and distorted the whole world about her so that her own persistence and heroism in the rescue of Lily Hoggett-Egburry had obscured all else. And then something in the eyes of the Englishwoman opposite her had changed everything. What it was that suddenly made the difference she could not explain to herself, but there was in the eyes a kind of coldness and honesty which had eaten away layer after layer of pretense and hysteria until at last she had begun quietly to cry the first real tears which she had shed in twenty years. For the first time in nearly twenty years she felt as she had felt long ago as a girl, soft and warm and at peace. The tears she shed were not for the middle- aged, plumpish man who lay crushed and dead under all the stones across the drive, but for a boy of twenty-one and for herself as she had been long ago. They were tears, too, for what had never been between them and might have been, something which now, weary and terrified, with the world about her demolished and standing still at last, she divined dimly for the first time. They were tears, too, of self-pity for her own muddled life, and because suddenly she knew that in spite of everything she was old, older even than she should have been at forty-three, worn out by anxieties and envy and petty jealousies, older by a hundred years than this cold beautiful woman who sat opposite her and could not be many years younger than herself. And beneath her tears and regrets she kept thinking, "It isn't fair. It isn't fair that she should have had everything and me nothing."

She found herself saying, "I can't help talking like this to you. There isn't anyone I can talk to in all Ranchipur." There wasn't even Lily any longer, for she had found out about Lily, found her out so thoroughly that she could never again envy or even respect her. And for that too she wept. Burying her face in her hands, she leaned forward on the table and for a moment she felt that she was about to faint or to die, and then quietly she fell asleep in the candle-light.

Opposite her, Lady Esketh thought, "Thank God!" but at the same time she felt ashamed of her own hardness.

The night dragged on and on. For a long time Edwina sat upright on the stiff wooden chair, Harry Loder's pistol on the table before her. Opposite her, Mrs. Simon slept, leaning forward on the kitchen table, her head buried in her plump arms. It was a sleep like death, born of all the terror and hysteria and exhaustion of the past forty-eight hours. Edwina herself felt no desire to sleep; it was as if she would never sleep again. And presendy she rose and walked about Aunt Phoebe's kitchen, clean now and spotless as Aunt Phoebe always kept it. She opened cupboard doors and examined kettles and the odd Indian stove with its series of tiny fireplaces, and slowly the place took on a kind of wonder for her. It was all so small, so neat, with a kind of charm about it like the charm of a doll's house for a child. This was a tiny realm belonging to the odd, rather matter-of-fact, direct old lady. Within its walls there was a scrupulous order and an obviously efficient organization. And presendy Edwina thought, "What fun it would be to have a kitchen like this a kitchen which belonged to you, in which you were a queen, out of which you produced with order and efficiency the meals three times a day for a whole family." And again there occurred to her intimations of that peace which was a part of all small lives, a peace which was desirable and even wonderful for all its monotony. She saw suddenly that never in all her life, not even during those pinched days long ago in the Florentine pension, had she ever known a life that was orderly and secure and pleasant; for even then in the three small rooms overlooking the Arno, she and her father had had in a sense "camped out" like gypsies, awaiting always a turn in the wheel of fortune which would throw them back into a world of impersonal luxury and debt, where there was a certain splendor and even glamour but neither security nor order nor peace. "That was it," she thought as she inspected Aunt Phoebe's orderly kitchen, "I have always lived a disorderly life as far back as I can remember."

She had been trained somehow, without ever having had any training, to believe, even to feel in the marrow of her bones, that for her there was some special privilege which set her aside, some obligation imposed upon the world to see that things were done for her; and so she had never known the sureness and satisfaction of that bird-like old lady to whom all this unearthly mixture of refugees Hindus and Europeans and Americans alikehad turned in the moment of catastrophe. And suddenly she understood for a second the profoundness of the satisfaction which Aunt Phoebe must know, a sense of fulfillment, of having done one's duty, so great that it annihilated fear and boredom and disorder and even the terror of death. No, that she had never known. And she thought, "I am intelligent. I am strong as an ox. I have never been o the least use to anyone. I might sail make a try. I might find something more wonderful than I have ever known. I might some day come to have in my eye that look of peace which is in the eyes of that old lady and in the eyes of that funny, disagreeable Scotswoman who runs the hospital for the Major."

Like a schoolgirl she began, in the silence of Aunt Phoebe's kitchen, to have dreams and ideas about another existence. The catastrophe had broken the line of her life. Now, alone, she knew that circumstance had freed her and given her another chance, perhaps the last she would ever have. Albert was probably dead by now, dead as she had predicted on that morning, years ago it seemed now, when she had sat across the room from him, realizing for the first time all her hatred and contempt. Yes, he was probably dead (the fact left her cold and without feeling) and she was free, free not only of him, but of all that life of which she had been a part. She need never even go back to the house in Hill Street or to England. She could become another person. She would go to the Maharani, to Aunt Phoebe herself, to old Miss MacDaid, or to the Major and say, "Here I am, strong and healthy. In all this death and misery there must be something I can do to help. Tell me and I will do it/ 5

And suddenly she was seized with excitement, of a kind she had never known before. That was it! She would work in the hospitals. She would work with the Major. Somehow she would cling to the edges of that feeling, that emotion, which Tom said those others had about India, the India that was to stir and, shaking herself, rise and return to tier old dignity and grandeur. She, who had always been spoiled and lecherous and useless, could still save herself. The room seemed to her suddenly small and stifling, and going to the door she pulled away the chair and table and opened it and went out into the Indian night*

For a moment the sky had cleared here and there, and among the scattered clouds there were patches of deep sapphire sky foiled with shining stars. It was still now save for the occasional cry of a jackal and a distant sound of roaring which troubled her as if it were the prelude to some new catastrophe. Before her, beyond the barrier of prickly pear and the shattered mud wall, stretched the Indian plain, that vast plateau which extended on and on as far as the Gulf of Bengal, a plain which could swallow up England and France and Germany, more than hah: of Europe, and still be empty. Far off, miles away, near the barrier of corpses and wreckage which Harry Loder and Raschid had gone to destroy, rose the dark mass of Mount Abana, its, white Jain temples dimly glistening in the light of the Indian sky. While she stood there she experienced, for the first time in all her crowded and confused existence, a sense of solitude and insignificance, which to her feverish spirit was like a bath of cold clear water; and with the solitude came a kind of peace. And then all at once she was terrifiedof what she did not know, unless it was the revelation of her own smallness.

Then out of the stillness from behind her came a noise like the cry of a jackal, the voice of Mrs. Simon filled with terror.

"Lady Esketh! Lady Esketh! Where are you? Where are you?" and the dreams, the peace, the solitude were gone and she was filled with anger and exasperation. In a fierce whisper she called toward the plump figure oudined against the dim candle-light which showed through the open doorway, "Here I am! Be quiet! You'll wake all the others!"

"Oh, you frightened me so! I thought you might have been carried off by those awful Bhils."

Then as the rain began again the clouds swept over the sky. The faint phosphorescent whiteness of the distant temples faded away into the darkness and she went back into the shuttered house to listen once more to the shaming confidences of Mrs. Simon.

In Mrs, Bannerjee's bedroom Fern waked as the first light of dawn appeared over the shattered city. She had slept long and wearily and as she opened her eyes and threw back one arm she did not know where she was and for a long time, half between sleep and consciousness, she experienced a slow feeling of horror, of what she did not know. It was like the horror of a nightmare from which she could not waken. And then in the dim gray light she became aware of the netting that enclosed her and of the hardness of the strange, rope-woven bed on which she lay. Sitting up, she pushed aside the netting and at the same time she remembered all that had happened the horror of the quake itself, the trip in the little red-and-gold boat, the dreadful scene with her mother, and the scene with Ransome, drunk, mocking her and himself.

In the gray light she saw the figure wrapped in a dhoti lying on the floor at her feet, and in sudden terror she thought it must be a strange corpse. Fascinated, she stared at it for a time, and seeing that the body inside the dhoti breathed and moved, she bent over it and saw that one hand emerged, a hand which she knew very well, one of the two hands she had found so beautiful, and for a moment she felt that she was going to faint. But she thought, "No, I mustn't do that. Not now. I must not faint." And pulling herself together she knelt and gently lifted the cloth so that she might see the face beneath it. The face she could not see, as it was hidden in the crook of the arm, but she knew the head with its strong lean neck and curly, crisp, dark hair, the head which she somehow knew so well without ever having consciously noticed it. The sight of it made her want to cry. Quietly she slipped down beside him, and lay there pressing her cheek against the curly head.

When he stirred he turned his head and looked at her with a dazed expression of wonder in the dark eyes. Then slowly the crooked grin which always made her feel weak spread over the tired face, and he put his arm about her and held her close to him, As her cheek touched his, she knew that he was crying.

Outside, in the rising dawn, the choked river had begun to roar again for Harry Loder had done his job well and the barrier of wreckage and bodies was gone.

When they left the room and came out on to the frail wooden balcony, the daylight had come and with it the flood water had disap-

peared. From the balustrade the little gilded pleasure boat dangled, like a drunken man after a night of revelry, from the cord of Mr. Bannerjee's Bond Street dressing-gown. Then for the first time they were able to see the devastation wrought by the flood. Of the village at the end of the compound nothing remained of the clustered huts and shrines. Against the shattered wall lay three bodies, those of a man, an old woman, and a child. In the lower branches of the great banyan tree there was another body caught and held there by the cheap cotton dhoti which the man had worn in life. In another tree there hung suspended grotesquely the carcass of a dead donkey. In the landscape close at hand only two structures remained standing, the phallic temple of Shiva and the stout cast-iron statue of Queen Victoria. Half the bridge had collapsed, but the buttress which supported the Good Queen remained, and on it she still stood, clutching firmly her umbrella and her reticule. Weeds and branches formed a kind of boa scarf about the short plump neck, trailing backward as they had been drawn by the current of the flood.

"We can walk now," said Ransome. "I suppose we had better go to the Smileys 5 . We can't get across the river."

So they descended the stairs of the wrecked half-empty house and set out along the drive past the Major's overturned motor toward the Race- course Road. Everywhere there was wreckage and red mud, mud so thick that it sucked at their feet as if trying to draw them back into the earth with all the other dead. They passed Raschid's house, where they saw Mrs. Raschid and her seven children already engaged in dragging soaked bits of furniture on to the verandah. And then Ransome's own house still standing but with half the roof shattered and a gigantic crack disfiguring the Belgravian fagade. Then they reached the open country and the walking was easier, for the flood had swept past here and left the metalled road bare and shining.

They walked in silence, both still dazed and incredulous at what had happened to them. Ransome scarcely saw the shattered landscape about them. It was as if he moved without effort, as if he had no consciousness of reality of the moment that Fern, dressed in his own shorts and tennis shirt and himself in Mr. Bannerjee's Bengali dhoti made a grotesque picture. Now, grotesqueness which even in ordinary circumstances

counted for so little in India, had ceased utterly to exist. He knew now what poets meant when they wrote of "the singing of the heart." Something had happened to him, something which he had sought, sometimes without knowing it, the whole of his life. He had for a time lost himself, that awful, introspective self-pitying, boring self which always destroyed all satisfaction. And it had happened easily, without planning, without self-consciousness, with a kind of simple beauty and naturalness, like the thrusting of green shoots after the first downpour of the monsoon rains. For a second the old self returned as he knew it would return again and again once this first intoxication was passed, and he thought, "I am a man at last, a human man like those who are blessed by God with simplicity," Not all the debauchery, not all the weary promiscuous experimenting, had made of him a man. It had been that simple, fine and lovely thing, merging into the borders of sleep and dreams, which had happened in this shattered, evil-haunted house of Mr. Banner jee. It was a new feeling, filled with a kind of glory which seemed to blind him and fill him with an extraordinary sense of confidence and of strength that was physical.

She was there beside him, walking with her fingers entwined in his. And he dared not to look at her for fear that the whole thing, all the sense of exaltation, all the simple beauty of what had happened, even Fern herself, might simply vanish in illusion, as all else had always vanished. As he walked he felt prayerful and kept repeating, not with his lips, but in his brain, "Thank you, God! Thank you!" for he knew that whatever else happened to him in the rest of his life, he had, for one moment, known what few men ever know. It was a sense of fullness, of fulfillment. At last he was a man. Most men died without ever knowing what that meant. And it had happened in the midst of desolation and death.

Beside him Fern walked, thinking over and over again, "I am happy! I am happy! I love him!" and she too knew, without all the weary experience of Ransome, that she was among the blessed of God. Now she did not even think that with her father and sister dead, and death all about her, she should be sad. In all that ruined world only two people existed any longer herself and Tom Ransome.

As they came in sight of the Smileys' house, they saw among the trees the rusty gray figures o the elephants, and Ransome said, "Raschid must be there, and Harry Loder." But when they arrived at the house Harry Loder was not there, but only Raschid Ali Khan still dressed in the ill-fitting uniform, surrounded by the others, by Edwina and Aunt Phoebe, Mrs. Simon and Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry and the Banner jees and a half-dozen low-caste Hindus who had turned up from somewhere. He looked gaunt and weary and he was telling them about the death of Harry Loder.

Harry had succeeded in blowing up the barrier with dynamite, but somehow, Raschid did not know how, something had gone wrong and in the darkness, in the very midst of the operations, his escape from the barrier had been cut off, and as the explosion occurred and the mass of wreckage and bodies heaved and broke, Harry Loder was swept away with it, down the narrow canyon.

The big Muslim told the story simply, and when he had finished, he said, "He gave his life to save many others. He wasn't even an engineer, He knew nothing about such things. He acted as a soldier and a hero."

For a moment there was silence and then Raschid, the warrior, thd Muslim, the enemy of the British Empire said, quite simply, "It waf an Englishman doing his duty."

Watching him, listening, Fern understood suddenly the look on the face of Harry Loder when he had stood here in the same room the day before without seeing her at all, as if she had ceased to exist. It was like the look in the face of Miss Dirks as she sat on the verandah of Ransome's house, drinking tea and talking nostalgically of Nolham, the look of one who was already dead. What Fern could not have known was the story of the nightmare he had had long ago in the mountains when he had killed one panther after another as they sprang at him; until at last in weariness his arm had fallen and that last one which he saw was India, had sprung upon him, dragging him to the ground.

Then Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, dressed once more in her dried but still mud-stained peignoir, began to cry and Mrs. Simon led her from the room. They had both known Harry Loder well; the sight of his full- blooded, beefy body entering a room had stirred them both. And now in death he was a hero. Now their itching, troubling desire was still; together they might weep for what they had never known.

Whea they had gone, Raschid said, "I must get back now to the other side of the river." And to Ransome he said, "You'd better come with me. I imagine Her Highness will want to see you."

But Aunt Phoebe would not let him go until he had had coffee and toast and the last two eggs in the house. "It's no good/' she said, "asking a man to do work on an empty stomach."

So while they waited he wrote a note in French to John the Baptist and sent one of the Untouchables on Aunt Phoebe's bicycle back to his house for proper clothes. Now suddenly, with Mr. Bannerjee in the same room, he saw that in spite of everything he must look ridiculous in a Bengali dhoti, and he found it unmanageable; it kept tripping him up and slipping off his shoulders. Then for the first time he became aware of Edwina., sitting in a corner, dressed in Mrs. Smiley's calico dress. She looked at him and gave him a tired smile, and he thought, "She knows what has happened, but of course she would."

She knew and Aunt Phoebe knew. They had known, he understood now, from the moment he and Fern had entered the room. He tried to catch Aunt Phoebe's eye, but when he met her gaze it was blank, too blank to be convincing.

Raschid's account of Harry Loder's death had saved Fern and himself the ordeal and embarrassment of coming into the room to meet at the same time the combined gaze of Aunt Phoebe's strange house party. The others had all been listening to Raschid, and scarcely noticed them. They would perhaps have thought the worst, but they could not, like Edwina and Aunt Phoebe, have divined it. On the way from Mr. Banner jee's house, in his mood of exaltation and release, he had thought of that old world of gossip and smallness as shattered and finished, but now he knew that it still existed. It was still there all about him so long as people like Fern's mother and Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry and Miss Murgatroyd remained. They had a power, a strong and maddening power, of altering the whole quality of what happened about them. Once their distraction over Harry Loder's death was gone, they would talk, and in talking of what they could not understand, would tarnish and complicate and bespatter the thing with their hypocrisy and respectability. There returned to him the memory of Fern's visit just before Mr. Bannerjee's dinner, of her misery and his own drunkenness, and the hopelessness of going for aid to Raschid Ali Khan and his wife. But it seemed now all very far away, as if he had been another man who was now dead.

Exhaustion, the exhaustion which follows shock and the long strain of work and responsibility, seemed to have seized them all. Mr. and Mrs. Bannerjee drifted away silently, with Miss Murgatroyd, subdued and weary, following them, and there were left in the kitchen only big Raschid and Edwina, Fern, and Aunt Phoebe bending over the stove. Even her spare, tireless figure seemed to droop a little. They sat in silence until Edwina said, "But what happened to you? You haven't told us that."

For a second Ransome did not answer her; he did not want to answer her until he was sure how she meant the question, whether she had asked simply out of curiosity, whether there was still in the question something of the old maliciousness, or whether she had asked only to embarrass himself and Fern. A sharp glance and he saw that the blue eyes were innocent. She \new, but she had not asked in order to embarrass them.

"Nothing much. On the way back, it got dark and I got myself lost. I spent most of the night in the boat tied up to a banyan tree."

He watched Aunt Phoebe's back. She did not even turn from the stove, and then, with a little shock of astonishment, he knew that she had approved of what had happened, and he thought again of his grandmother and the story of how she had not waited for a clergyman and had ridden pregnant, three hundred miles across the Nevada mountains on muleback to make her child legitimate. In both old women there was something, some force and grandeur, it seemed to him, which one no longer found in the world, something which was of the world, real, not "modern" and transient like the morality of such people as himself and Edwina, but something eternal. The sight of Aunt Phoebe bending over the stove, so ancient and wise and dependable, made him feel suddenly young, like a boy who has gotten himself into a scrape.

He and Raschid and Fern began to eat, and to his astonishment he saw Edwina rise from the stiff wooden chair and help Aunt Phoebe to serve the eggs and coffee Edwina who for years had never raised a finger even to dress herself. He looked at her, and in the blue eyes he saw the shadow of a smile. She was too tired and the burden ot misery was too great for her to smile, but the look of understanding was there that she knew he thought the spectacle funny. But there was, too, in the sudden glance something appealing, as if she said, "You see, I can be useful. I'm not a useless fool," and he remembered the sight of her on the day before, with her white evening gown hiked up and fastened about the waist, making her way across the muddy red plain. A sudden flash of delight went through him because people, in a crisis, were better than you expected them to be even people like Edwina and himself.

Opposite him, Raschid said, "Look! Here come Homer and Bertha!" and through the open door they saw a little procession coming across the plain toward the house from the direction of the shattered Sikh barracks. At the head walked Homer Smiley; after him trailed the twenty- seven Untouchable boys from the night school and at the rear like a sheep dog, came Bertha Smiley.

They brought news, good news, that there still remained a bridge the steel bridge two miles above the city which carried the narrow-gauge railway across the Ranchipur River. The force of the flood and wreckage had jarred it loose from its foundations, but it was still solid enough to provide a way from one side of the town to the other.

In the joy of finding the Smileys still alive, the little group forgot for an instant the catastrophe. The Banner jees and Miss Murgatroyd, Mrs. Simon and Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry returned, drawn by the sounds of welcome, and Ransome was treated to the extraordinary spectacle of Mrs. Simon kissing Mr. Smiley while tears ran down her plump face. Even Mrs. Simon was more human than he had believed possible.

When they had all heard the Smileys' story, Raschid said, "What is the news from the other side?"

"The Maharajah is dead," said Homer Smiley. "The hospital is still standing. The Summer Palace is wrecked. The Engineering School and the Law Courts have burned. Her Highness is living in a tent in the park. She sent word that she wanted to see Raschid and Ransome if they were still alive."

"And the Major?" asked Ransome without looking at Edwina.

"The Major and Miss MacDaid are alive. He was nearly drowned, but God saved him by some miracle. It must have been God who saved the man who is most needed."

Still Ransome did not look at Edwina.

The Untouchable boy who had been sent for Ransome's clothes appeared with the message that John the Baptist would remain to guard the house. The wild Bhils, said the boy, had come down from the hills and begun looting deserted houses.

"He needn't have stayed," said Ransome. "There isn't anything to guard. They could take what they like so far as I am concerned."

Then he changed and with Raschid set out on the elephants for the other side of the river. A little crowd sped them on their way, and as they left an idea came to Ransome. Calling Homer over to him, he said, "What about setting the boys to work to find the bodies of Mr. Simon and his daughter. In this heat, the sooner they're found the less horrible it will be."

For nearly three miles Ransome and Raschid rode the elephants through the rain across the devastated plains. They sat upright, each behind a mahout on the shoulders of the elephants. It was a slow and ponderous progress, with the red mud sucking at the feet of the great beasts. The mahouts, all Muslims, seemed unmoved by the whole affair. They sat very straight, crying out now and then a command to their elephants.

As they passed the house of Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, four wild Bhils emerged, carrying with them pieces of bric-a-brac and Benares brass. At sight of them, Raschid had the procession of elephants turned in their direction, but the greasy aborigines only ran away toward the river. One of them carried a statuette of Psyche in Naples marble, another two embroidered sofa cushions, a third the enlarged and tinted photograph of Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry in her prime.

At last the bridge appeared. It had the air of floating on the river itself, for the surface of the water was just touching the rails. The elephants, it was clear, would have to swim, since walking the naked railway ties was impossible for them. So Raschid and Ransome slithered down the sides of their great beasts and set out on foot. On the other side of the river they came upon what remained of a tiny village; there was nothing save a broken wall or two and a shattered village temple to mark the place where a hundred souls had once lived.

Along the road which had led from the city to the shattered reservoir they walked, picking their way among bits of rubbish and wreckage deposited by the receding waters. Here and there among the torn prickly pear that bordered the road there was a body, distorted and grotesque, beginning to swell in the damp heat. They walked hurriedly and in silence, and as they neared the city itself there came toward them even through the wall of rain, a faint sickly sweetish odor which stirred in Ransome old memories of mud, of shattered bodies, of decaying flesh in another part of the world. He knew now why Raschid had been in such haste, why he was striding along now like a madman. The whole city would be a pesthouse, filled with people wailing and paralyzed by the calamity. Half those with authority, with experience or talent for organization, would be dead. Harry Loder and The Boys were all dead. The Dewan was in Poona. The Maharajah dead. And somehow, quickly, all this desolation, all those multitudes of corpses which had not been swept away by the flood would have to be destroyed or there would be epidemics of cholera, of typhus, even of plague which in horror would be worse than the earthquake and the flood. And some- where among the wreckage of the Summer Palace would be the corpse of the great and powerful Lord Esketh, bloated and rotting now in the damp heat. That corpse, he knew, must be rescued and shown at least a decent respect before the vultures found it.

They were flying overhead now, sailing slowly down on the plain and on the outskirts of the wrecked city, and here and there a little distance on either side of the road there were black struggling clusters of them, pulling and tearing and gorging themselves. There were more vultures than he had ever seen before; they must have come from the outlying villages, from the hills, from the dead city of El-Kau^ara. The spectacle was not revolting now; he wished there were more vultures, millions of them to swoop down and destroy the corpses all about them.

On the edge of the town they came upon the first people they had seen, a half-dozen women, three men and a child collecting bits of shattered wood from the wrecked houses to make a funeral pyre. The child had been given a stick to frighten off the vultures which soared

above three bodies laid neatly in a row against the broken wall of a house. The little group stopped gathering wood and stared at them until one of the men recognized the Minister of Police dressed grotesquely in the uniform of the Conquerors. Then they all fell on their faces and, salaaming, pressed their foreheads into the mud.

A little further on as they passed a shattered house, a woman, wailing, ran into the street and threw her arms about the knees of Raschid, crying out in Gujerati. The big Muslim tried to thrust her aside, but she clung to him, still wailing.

"Her husband and child are ill," he said. "She wants us to save them. 5 *

In Gujerati he spoke to the woman and, still salaaming, she led them to the door of the broken house. There on the floor, in the filth, lay a man and a child. For a second he looked at them and then bent over the child, and after a moment turned and spoke again to the woman, in Gujerati. Throwing herself on the floor, she began to wail more loudly than ever.

Quickly Raschid turned away from her and into his blue eyes came a look that Ransome had never seen before in the handsome fierce warrior's countenance, an expression of terror and horror and compassion.

"It's cholera," he said. "Cholera already. The child is dead. It's too late to do anything for the man."

Then as they hurried on toward the Great Palace, Ransome was afraid, with a fear he had not known since the first days at the front. He was afraid now of death. He knew a sudden physical horror of being trapped here in this ruined city, surrounded by the dead and dying. The chill indifference to life and death was gone. For a moment, as the first terror passed, he was filled with wonder, and the old self cried out, "Why? Why now suddenly are you afraid of death?" Then he knew, and feeling again oddly young as if he had been reborn, he thought: "Fern! I must send her away if there is any way of sending her at once, today, tomorrow!"

A mangy fie dog sitting on its haunches howling, suddenly stopped its outcry as they passed, and sniffing at their heels, followed them. It was followed then by another and another hungry animal until behind them was a whole procession. The sickly sweet smell of death grew stronger, and then, passing the shattered Music School, they saw in the distance the hospital which seemed scarcely damaged at all and beyond the Great Gate the Great Palace, its towers and pinnacles shorn away, a gaping hole where the Durbar Hall had been.

In the Park, the flowers, the shrubs, the vines, the trees, grew wildly in the rebirth of the monsoon. Already vines had thrust tentacles across the wrecked drive as if to close it and take possession once more o the land wrested thousands of years ago from the jungle. The little lake was filled to overflowing but the pleasure-boats were gone, swept away by the first onrush of the flood. By its side stood the pavilion where the Maharani had set up her court. It was a huge striped tent of many rooms which the old Maharajah had used when the court went to shoot lions, tiger, and panthers in the Kathiawar hills. It stood upon the permanent stone emplacements built for the tents which housed the overflow of guests during jubilees and durbars and other great state occasions.

At the door stood two Sikhs in their scarlet and gold, their handsome faces as blank as if nothing had happened, as if half their number had not perished in the disaster. At sight of the Police Minister they presented arms and permitted Raschid and Ransome to enter an outer room of the great tent. There an aide-de-camp rose and came toward them. His face was gray and his eyes dull

"Her Highness has been awaiting you," he said, "since daylight. Major Safti is with her and Mr. Gupta, the town engineer."

They passed through another room and then came to the largest of the compartments. Along one side the fabric of the pavilion had been lifted a few feet, high enough to admit light but to keep out the rain. Then for the first time Ransome had a clue to what had happened to the Maharani. It was as if at the moment he and Raschid stepped through the curtained doorway they had gone back across the centuries to the time of Akbar or Asoka.

Whatever had been European in the background of the old lady was gone now. At the very end on a dais sat the Maharani herself, cross- legged on a great cushion of Benares brocade, and all about her on the earth and on the walls there were Moghul and Persian prayer rugs. She herself was dressed all in gray, the mourning color of Ranchipur, and she wore no jewels, but to Ransome, in the half-light that came in beneath the borders of the tent it seemed that she had never been more beautiful. There was at once an air of authority, of dignity, of tragedy about her that was new, and a beauty about the whole scene that was archaic like the delicate, vigorous beauty of a Moghul miniature. He thought, "This is a Mahratta queen, living in her tent, waging war, regal, untamed."

And as they moved toward her, he found himself not bowing as he had always done, European fashion, but placing his hands together and making a low obeisance as Raschid was doing. Then he saw that the Major was there and Mr. Gupta and Nil Kant Rao, the palace steward, a compact Mahratta with fierce mustaches. At sight of him Ransome thought, "Thank God he is still alive! He is a capable man." Behind her in the shadows sat one of the old Princesses of Bewanagar and, uncomfortably, cross-legged on her haunches, the Russian woman.

The Maharani said, "It is good you are here. We have much work to do. This is all there are. The others are all away or dead the others who might be of use. All save Colonel Ranjit Singh. He is now driving off the Bhils."

As they came in, the men who had been sitting stood up, and now as she finished speaking he was aware that the Major had moved nearer to him and suddenly he felt the Major's hand clasping his own in a sudden fierce grip. It was as if he had said, "We are all here together to help each other and to save our people. We are depending on you. We have faith in you." For a second Ransome was overcome with astonishment, and then he returned the pressure, and at the same time something like a lump came into his throat. It was not only that the sudden clasp of the great delicate hand had said, "I am a friend." It also meant: "You are one of us. We trust you. That is why Her Highness sent specially for you." It was the first time in all those lonely years in Ranchipur they had told him that. And now he knew what before he had sometimes suspected that he loved these people, the old Maharani, the Major, and the burly Raschid, as much as he had ever loved any people in this world.

Then the old lady told one of the servants to bring a chair for him,

but when the chair arrived he refused it, saying, "No, I have sat on the floor many times. I can do it as well as the others."

Then the Maharani set forth her plan. It was that the little group assembled about her was to constitute a kind of council of war. These, she said, were the ones she had chosen after long reflection. These., together with Colonel Ranjit Singh, were the ones who could meet the catastrophe these and the Smileys and Miss MacDaid, but Miss Mac- Daid could not leave the hospital. She would have her hands full organizing and carrying out the care of the sick and wounded. When she had finished the first short speech, Raschid said, "Your Highness, I think that first of all we should know what the situation is how bad it is. There is so little time. There is already cholera in the town and there will be typhoid and typhus."

And so, one by one, each of the little group told what he knew, what he had seen, what he had heard. And then for the first time the full picture of the catastrophe emerged, a picture far more terrible in its reality than any one of them had imagined.

There was no more telephone or telegraph, no more electricity. What motors remained would be useless in a day or two because the only petrol was what remained in the tanks at the palace stables. Between the city and the outer world, the railroad which followed the shallow valley had been swept away. Roads there were none beyond the dead city of El-Kautara but only the tracks over the distant hills to the desert and salt marshes beyond, tracks over which only bullock carts and elephants might pass, slowly, painfully. The granaries in the middle of the city were half-destroyed and the rice, the millet, the grain stored there would be fermented and useless in a day or two. The wells where the flood had passed were now only sources of corruption and sickness, and the people must be prevented from using them. There were corpses everywhere beginning now to rot which must be gathered and burned in heaps regardless of religious prejudices. Force had to be used if necessary.

For two hours the little council sat there Mohammedan and Mahratta, Hindu and European, striving to bring some order out of the terrible chaos. Only a few things were settled, only a beginning was made. Mr, Gupta, the engineer, was to concern himself with the repairing of bridges, the opening of roads, the demolition of wreckage, the gathering of wood for the great pyres to burn the bodies. Colonel Ranjit Singh was to use what was left of his Sikhs and of Raschid's disorganized police to stop the looting and seal the wells, posting a guard at each one to prevent the people from using the water which would poison them. The Smileys and Aunt Phoebe were to be given the task of sheltering and feeding the orphans and the low-caste children. The Major and Miss MacDaid would have the hospital and the horror of the epidemics which each one in his heart knew had already begun. To Raschid fell the task of commander-in-chief, the duty of being everywhere at once, of seeing that commands were carried out, the gathering of food from the villages and districts, and of attempting what at the moment seemed an impossible thing, the establishment of communication with the outside world. And Ransome, it was agreed, was to help him, to have somewhere a headquarters where information might be gathered, where orders might be given, where the helpless and ignorant, the hundreds and hundreds of them, might apply for food and for shelter. He would have the nephew of Nil Kant Rao, the palace steward, for in- terpreter, and a half-dozen Untouchable boys for runners. To Nil Kant Rao of the fierce Mahratta mustaches fell the task of apportioning the scanty supplies of grain and rice to the hungry. And above them all stood the old Maharani herself, the dictator, the absolute monarch, with the power of life and death in her hands.

Before the council had ended, the curtains at the end of the pavilion parted and Colonel Ranjit Singh came in. What he had to say was brief. He had driven away the Bhils from the east side of the river. Twenty-three of them he had put against the wall of the ruined Engineering School and shot as a lesson to the others. "Twenty-three poor, half-naked aborigines from the hills," thought Ransome. He heard Ranjit Singh saying in Hindustani, "I regret the matter, Your Highness, but it was necessary. They were caught in the Girl's High School with two Parsee girls they had carried there. The girls are at the hospital now. They are the children of the Parsee called Ginwallah who keeps a restaurant in the Engineering School Road."

Suddenly Ransome understood what it was had happened. The state was isolated. All the vaunted modernity had vanished overnight as if it had never existed. The old Maharani living in her pavilion furnished with the loot of the long vanished Moghul Empire, was a despot once more, ruler of a state which had become half-savage again. And the heir, her grandson, was at Eton, learning to be a gentleman.

Then as the others left, the old Maharani signaled to him, and when he came up to her she said, "There is the question o your friends, the Eskeths."

"She is safe. I don't know what has happened to him/ 5

"He is dead," said the Maharani. "She must be told. There is the question of what to do with what is left of him. He is an important man. Even a thing like that may make trouble later on."

"Yes."

The old lady looked at him sharply. "She must be got out of here."

"Yes, Your Highness, I think shell be willing to go if we can find a way."

"I don't like her being here."

"I understand/'

She was thoughtful for a moment and he saw that there was a sudden, quick sadness in her face. It was as if the body were old and tired; but the spirit in the black eyes was unflagging, indefatigable. He thought, "She has been waiting all her life for this. Now she is queen. Now she is absolute." For a little while not even the power of the British Empire could touch her. He was pleased that she should have placed this trust in him, that she should think him worthy of being summoned with the others Raschid, and Nil Kant Rao and the Major. Why should she trust him? Why should she believe that he was anything but a waster, a remittance man? She liked good-looking men. She had always sur- rounded herself by them. He was, he knew, tolerably handsome, better than Homer Smiley or the Reverend Simon or most of the Europeans in Ranchipur, but that was no reason for believing he might be worthy of the trust she was placing in him.

"And the other Europeans they ought to leave, too. I don't mean the ones like Miss MacDaid and Miss Dirks and the Smileys... but the others, the ones who don't belong here." "It is a question of how to get them out." It was extraordinary how much she knew of the state, he thought, even of the Europeans there whom she rarely saw.

"We shall have to find a way," she said. "They will only be a nuisance and make trouble."

He was aware suddenly of the sallow face of the Russian woman just behind her. He did not like Maria Lishinskaia, although he barely knew her, and he did not like her here now, listening, prying, with her pale green eyes and despairing lascivious mouth. There was something hungry, something almost greedy, about her which always made him feel uncomfortable.

As if she divined what he was thinking, the old Queen said, over her shoulder to Maria Lishinskaia, "Go and fetch my gold box the one with the rubies."

When the Russian woman had gone, the black eyes of the Maharani narrowed a little and she said, suddenly, "You are better than you think."

He could not think what to answer to the extraordinary remark, but he managed to say, "Perhaps!"

"You can help us now."

"I want to help, Your Highness."

"That is all. I wanted you to know why I asked you to help."

Still he did not know why she had chosen him, but he dared not to ask her. She was, he knew, his friend, but now he dared not to be presumptuous, to talk to her intimately, as he had done sometimes during those poker games long ago in the now ruined palace. Something had changed and the change was subtle, indefinable. It had to do with this luxurious tent and the new authority he discovered in her. It was as if he had been transported suddenly back across hundreds of years to the time of the Moghul Emperors. He was aware all at once of the absurdity of himself, in shorts and tennis shirt, standing there before the magnificent old Mahratta Queen.

She said, "I suppose you think the shooting of the Bhils was barbaric?"

"No," but his answer was polite and doubtful rather than sincere and she divined the reticence immediately.

"This is India," she said. "We can be thankful that the people here are only Gujarati a mild people. Especially the Europeans can be thankful."

Then Maria Lishinskaia returned with the gold box. The Maharani opened it and took out a handful of cardamon seeds and began chewing them.

"You might try to find Miss Dirks," she said. "She has disappeared."

"And the other one?"

"Miss Hodge. The Sikhs rescued her. She was on the roof of the bungalow. But she's a fool and no use to us. It's Miss Dirks who has the head."

They gave him for an office the quarters of the jobedar in the great gateway opposite the bungalow of Miss Hodge and Miss Dirks. In the great niches no Sikhs in scarlet and gold now sat on their black horses; they were needed elsewhere to guard polluted wells and shoot marauding Bhils and see that the orders of the Major as to the burning of the corpses were carried out. He was tempted for a moment to cross the road and try to discover what had become of Miss Dirks and Miss Hodge, but a second glance told him that the place was deserted. There was a thick coating of mud on the tiny verandah and from the windows the rain- soaked curtains flapped in and out dismally.

In a little while the nephew of Nil Kant Rao appeared, a sturdy, small, muscular Mahratta about twenty years old, rather like the terrier policemen of Bombay. He wore his small Mahratta turban at a rakish angle with the same air of dash and recklessness. He was a bright boy who had been educated in Bombay and spoke English and Gujerati as well as Hindustani and Mahratta. One needed a lot of languages to get on properly in India.

His name, he said, with a white-toothed grin, was Gopal Rao and he was willing to do anything. The disaster, it seemed, did not appall him; rather he seemed to find it exciting, and his attitude made Ransome feel far more cheerful. He thought, studying the boy, "The Mahrattas are the toughest people in the world, bred in a burning desert upon hardship and catastrophe and disaster." And he was young so that horror seemed less horrible to him.

They had not to wait for long. The news of the office in the Great Gateway had spread in tie mysterious way of news in India, and presently there was a little line of those who had survived the flood and earthquake extending along Engineering School Road. Some wanted to find lost relatives and friends; some wanted food and shelter; one silver- smith complained that his shop had been looted by one of the state police. It was an interminable story which concerned a prostitute and her passion for silver trinkets, and while he told it, others in the line grew impatient and complained. One rich Parsee came to offer the store of grain he always kept in his own compound. It was dry and in good condition and would help feed the population until grain could be brought in from the districts, only he wanted to be assured that it would go only to the part of the population which was Parsee. Just as he finished his story there came through the grilled window the sound of quarreling, and when Ransome and Gopal Rao went outside to discover the cause, they found that two Bunyas, reverting to the times before the Good Maharajah, had thrust a mason and a potter roughly mif nf _thrir nl^cr in lin&. Wnw t-hfi whole

When Ransome spoke to him he saw that the man was trembling. "Come in," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm Lord Esketh's man," he said, "Bates is my name. They sent me to see you, sir. I've been everywhere, but I've only seen Indians, and none of them seemed to know anything. I've got 'Is Lordship's papers and the jewels 'Er Ladyship left behind. Can you take them in charge, sir?"

He saw that the man was frightened, that probably he had had nothing to eat and no shelter for two days. The spectacle he made was at once pitiful and comic. Ransome told Gopal Rao to go oix with the work and he took Bates into a corner of the room.

Immediately he began to pour out his story. On the night of the quake he had gone out for a little air and had walked as far as the Engineering School when the world seemed to come to an end all about him. The shock, he said, had thrown him to the ground, and when he picked himself up he ran, where he did not know, but luckily in a direction away from the path of the flood. There was a good deal he did not remember at all.

"The shock," he kept repeating, "was 'orrible," and the terrified people he met could not understand what he was saying and he could not understand their language. For hours he had wandered about, and at last he stumbled into an archway which he discovered afterward was the great portico of the palace. There he had found a lot of Indian boys and two American missionaries. He could talk to them, at least, but they hadn't seemed very talkative.

The next morning he set out to find His Lordship but because of the flood he couldn't get anywhere near the Summer Palace and he took up a refuge in the wrecked Engineering School, where at least he could keep out of the endless, horrible rain. And on the third day when the flood water went away, he made his way back to the Summer Palace and there, climbing over the wreckage, he managed to make his way to the second floor, where he found His Lordship.

" 'E was dead," he said, dully, "lying alone on the floor of the bedroom. 'E must have died of the fever 'e 'ad. There wasn't any mark on him but a gash on the side of his 'ead. I don't know what 'as become of the nurse and 'Er Ladyship's maids. Maybe they're alive and maybe they're under all that wreckage. Is Lordship is an awful sight, sir. 'E ought to be buried, but I thought I'd better see about 'Er Ladyship first if 'Er Ladyship is still alive." He held up the black tin box. "I didn't know what to do with these things. Could I leave them with you, sir?"

"No. I think you'd better take them to Lady Esketh. She's alive." He reflected for a moment and then said, "I suppose you'll want something to eat."

"I 'aven't 'ad anything for two days, sir."

"You'd better go to Lady Esketh." He told Bates that she was at the American Mission and gave him directions and even made him a map showing him how to reach the only bridge that remained standing. Then Bates thanked him and said, looking down at himself ruefully, "I'm afraid I don't look very presentable, sir."

"I wouldn't worry about that. Lady Esketh will understand."

He was about to leave when Ransome said, "Wait. I'd like to send a message by you to Lady Esketh." Quickly he wrote a dozen lines, folded the bit of paper and gave it to Bates. Then almost at once he said, "Wait," and wrote another note, and addressing it to Fern said, "And give this to the young woman you'll find there at the Mission. That's all."

Then he took Bates to the arch of the Great Gateway and showed him the way. For a little time he stood looking after the stoop-shouldered dreary figure in the bespattered morning coat. He thought, "What can all this mean to him?" And for a second he was tempted to laugh.

When he returned he found his young assistant hard at work, brusquely dispatching one by one this line which kept growing longer and longer in spite of all their efforts. He did it with energy and decision, abruptly, and Ransome thought, "He's better at the job than I am. They only thought of me because I'm European and they think all Europeans are efficient." So he sat down by the Mahratta and said, "You go on with it; 111 keep the records."

It was not until after the railway bridge that Bates lost himself. Through all the nightmare of fie dogs and vultures, dead and dying and desolation, he made his way along the smooth metaled road. A half-dozen times, people seeing him dressed in the costume European officials wore to the Durban, ran out of wrecked houses or sprang up from the ditches beside the road to throw themselves on their faces in the mud and ask for food and protection, but Bates, understanding none of their gibberish, only went on his way doggedly, freeing himself with a kick when some woman grasped his knees in hysterical supplication.

He was weak now from hunger and exposure and the morning coat soaked by the rain seemed an intolerable weight, but he could not bring himself to throw it away. Lord Esketh's man did not appear walking through the streets, even of a ruined city in the midst of disaster, clad only in shirt, trousers, and braces. And so he bore the weight, stumbling along, frightening flocks of vultures who only rose and flapped a little distance, to return to their feast as soon as he had passed.

He moved in a daze, uncertainly, from side to side of the road, beyond horror, in a realm which bordered upon delirium. There were moments when he felt a wild desire to fall beside the road and remain there, but he kept being driven on by habits and instincts stronger than his own body. He had to find Lady Esketh and deliver into her hands the tin box. Then and only then would he lie down and rest, sleeping on and on and on. And then when he woke perhaps all this would only be a nightmare and Lord Esketh would not be simply a bloated corpse, but alive and red-faced and irritable. Then Lord Esketh would take him back to England, and he would give notice and go to Manchester and live for the rest of his life in a semi-detached villa with his sister. And never again would he leave Manchester, even to go as far as London. As he stumbled along he saw the villa, exactly as it would be, and to him in that moment it was as magnificent as the Paradise of the Revelations.

He should have gone away from His Lordship without even coming out to this horrible country. It had all been a mistake, he saw now; he had been led into it by the descriptions in the newspapers of the magnificence and romance and color of India, the Pearl in the Crown of the Realm. It hadn't been like that at all; it had only been hot and dusty and miserable, and had made His Lordship more irritable than usual and Her Ladyship more bored and restless. In Government Houses and hotels it had been no better, with no proper quarters for a self- respecting servant, and shower baths and water closets which never worked properly.

For a moment on the railway bridge, with the flooded river rushing along beneath his feet, he had come near to falling, and slipping to his knees he remained for a long time, dizzy, his head going round and round, clinging with one hand to the tin box and with the other to the rails. After a time he regained control of himself, but he had to make what remained of the journey to the other side on his hands and knees. He had to deliver the box and he had to reach the semi-detached villa in Manchester.

But between the Distillery and the Sikh barracks, he could go no further. Slipping in the mud, he fell on his side and fainted. There Mr. Smiley found him, the tin box still clutched in his hand. On a window shutter Mr. Smiley and two of the Untouchable boys carried him back to the Mission. There was no brandy to revive him, but Mr. Smiley stripped the soaked clothes from the skinny body and Aunt Phoebe wrapped him in hot sheets, and in a little while he opened his eyes and drank a little hot goat's milk. When he was able to speak he asked for his clothes, and taking from a pocket of the trousers some keys and the two damp notes, he asked Mr. Smiley to deliver the one to Fern, and then asked to speak to Lady Esketh alone. Before Mr. Smiley left he asked to have the tin box set on the bed beside him.

When Lady Esketh came into the room, still dressed in Mrs. Smiley's calico dress, she saw at once that he was shocked by her appearance. Strong, he might have concealed the expression which came over his face, but in his weakness the disapproval was as clear as if he had spoken it. She thought, "He would rather see me wearing the evening dress and all my jewels in the middle of the afternoon." But in her turn she was shocked by his woebegone appearance. As she entered he sat up on the army bed and clutched the cotton sheets high about his throat, leaving exposed one skinny arm, knotty with muscles, the heritage of generations of underfed ancestors. She was shocked, too, by his pallid ugliness, but most of all by the tired ugliness of the skinny arm.

She said, trying to smile, "Well, Bates? 5 '

"It's been awful, Your Ladyship... 'orrible."

"I know. Bates. I suppose, though, we ought to be thankful we escaped."

" 'Is Lordship is dead, me lady."

"Yes, I know that."

"I found Your Ladyship's jewels. I think they're all here. I would be thankful if you checked them up."

He had placed the key in the tin box. She had only to turn it and lift the lid.

They were all there in small boxes all the diamonds, the emeralds, the rubies she had brought with her, all save the ones Aunt Phoebe guarded pinned into her petticoats. As she opened the box and looked at them she had a sudden feeling of their glittering uselessness and unreality. What could she do with them now, in this wrecked world ? They were meant for balls in London and Casinos in Cannes and Le Touquet, those remote places which seemed scarcely to exist any longer.

"Yes," she said, "they're all here."

"The nurse is dead, too," he said, "and the two girls. I suppose they never knew what hit them."

For a second a vision of Bates, correct and slightly pompous, on the night of the quarrel with Albert, returned to her now the sly, insinuating Bates, who had implied by a look that they would both be glad when Albert was dead.

"There's a note, too, from Mr. Ransome," he said, and gave it to her. Then out of weakness he was forced suddenly to lie down again, drawing the sheet carefully up to his chin, concealing this time the knotted, skinny arm.

"I'll go away now and let you sleep," she said. "You'll be all right here. Old Mrs. Smiley will look after you."

"Thank you," he murmured in a weak voice. "I'm sorry, me lady, that I'm useless."

"Don't worry about that, Bates. As soon as you're strong again we'll send you home."

"Home? "asked Bates.

"Yes... England."

"And Your Ladyship?"

"I don't know, Bates. Don't think about that now."

He made one more effort. "His Lordship's papers are in the box, too. All I could find. I 'ope they're all there." For a second he looked at her with the old slyness. "I brought everything," he said, "just as I found them in his drawer. I didn't know which ones might be important."

"Thank you, Bates."

She left him then and took the note and box into the next room, where the Smileys slept at nights in the tired old double bed. The note from Ransome was brief. It told her of the job they had given him, and asked what was to be done with Albert's body. It had to be disposed of before nightfall. Did she want it buried or burned? He advised against burial. There was no proper ground. If the body was burned she could take back to England with her what ashes might be gathered up.

Then she opened the tin box again and took out the jewel-boxes and underneath them she found the papers, neatly tied in a bundle. As she untied the string her glance caught a name that was familiar, written in Albert's handwriting. She read "Henri de Rochefort," and thought, "How could Albert have known anything about him?"

Taking up the papers, she saw that the name was part of a list. It read:

Henri de Rochefort Perry Molton French Boxer (?) Austrian at Monte Carlo Tom Blashford Nolham's brother (?)

She saw clearly enough the significance of the list. All of them but one had been her lovers, but how could he have known? For a long time she sat staring at the list in a kind of voluptuous revery.

Rochefort from the Embassy had been satisfactory. It had been a silky, decadent affair, very Latin in quality, and it had lasted longer than most, until he had grown tiresome and jealous and complicated. He had threatened to kill himself when she broke it ofif, but deliberately she had put an end to that by telling him brutally that as a lover he was satisfactory, but that she had never been in love with him. That was not altogether true, but it had served to make him seem ridiculous, for it had insulted his Latin belief that to sleep with some one you had to feel romantic about them. He had called her a cold-blooded, depraved English bitch, but she had not resented the accusation because in that sense at least she was a realist and had no pretensions. And it had served to end the affair without a scandal.

And Perry Molton didn't count. He had come to her room twice simply because he happened to be in the room across the hall at Barbury House. He was handsome in his good English way and had the body of an athlete, but there had been nothing very exciting about those two occasions. The next morning she had to think hard to believe that it had ever happened at all. No, that was just a house-party affair, o scarcely more significance than shaking hands. And Perry was so clumsy and stupid.

And Albert need not have placed a question mark beside the French boxer. It had happened all right, again and again in that ugly little villa at Eze. And it had been satisfactory. Even now, years afterward, the memory made her heart beat more rapidly and the fever to rise in her cheeks. His name, she could have told Albert, was Andre Simon. He had a body like a beautiful machine, and he was tireless and brutal. There had been something primitive and earthy and vigorous about him which she had never found in any other man, something which made of her a woman like the peasant women who dragged harrows in the fields. What she had experienced with Andre she saw now, sitting in the Smileys' bedroom, was not depravity; it was life; it was generation; it was what love and creation and sleeping together should be, at once brutal and tender, satisfying and sometimes cruel. Unconsciously she smiled now at the memory of the other women who, one way or another, had tried to gain him for a lover; because he was so good-looking and his manners were so good that he went everywhere on the C6te d'Azur and met all sorts of women. Out of the lot he was the only one that she regretted, but the regrets were old now, and she shuddered a little to think that then, for the only time in her life, she had nearly lost her head and considered for a time chucking everything and running away with him. But she thought, too, "Maybe if I had done that, life would have been more satisfactory. Maybe it would have had a biting earthy flavor and a reality I've never known." But she knew, too, that he would have been unfaithful to her as he had been even during those six weeks she met him secretly in the ugly little villa. And some day he would have grown tired of her and left her, and then... No, she had always had to be master of the situation. In the end she had left him because she was afraid, of blackmail, of violence, of what she did not know, but the fear had made the breaking away easy at the time. She had made him a gift of two hundred pounds in bank notes, told him to buy himself a motor which they could use together when she came back from London, and then she had never returned and never seen him again. Now the memory of him was more painful than the parting had been, because she had not known then that she was losing a satisfaction which she would never again discover in all her reckless searching. She did not even know what had become of him; perhaps he kept a fristro now in Marseilles or Toulon and was no longer beautiful with a body of marble, but middle-aged and fat with a plump black- eyed wife and a half dozen black-eyed children. That was the destiny made for him ... to breed and breed and breed fine animals like him- self who would grow up and bring a fierce and salty satisfaction to people like herself who were born too old, too lecherous.

And the Austrian at Monte Carlo. On the list Albert had placed no question mark against his name. He had been sure about him and he had been wrong. She remembered his face and his body, although she could not remember his name. She had done her best to seduce him, for he was beautiful in a curious, decadent fashion, but even when she tricked him into a rendezvous nothing had happened. He neither loved nor desired her, and then one day she heard that he did not desire any woman, and she had been humiliated, resentful, and furious because she had made a fool of herself.

And Tom Blashford. He was nothing. Just another week-end party like Perry Molten.

And Nolham's brother... Tom Ransome. Albert need not have put a question mark beside his name. She had lived with Tom before she had even heard of Albert. And Tom, she knew now, was the only man who had brought her near to knowing what love might be. He was not brutal and satisfactory like Andre. He was too much like herself, a

U5]

little rotten at the heart, but lovable and sympathetic and wise in a despairing fashion as none of the others had ever been.

The list was incomplete. There had been many others, some half- forgotten, some like Andre, still vivid, but none so vivid as he. And what an odd thing life was, that after so many years she had found Tom Ransome again in Ranchipur, of all places. And now perhaps all that was finished and there was nothing before her but dreariness and monotony.

She sighed, and then was struck again by wonder that Albert should have known so much and never once betrayed his knowledge. That he was simply complacent she could not, knowing him, believe; it must have been then that his snobbery was more profound even than she had believed on that morning when she sat hating the swollen, helpless body in the bed of teakwood and mother-of-pearl, or perhaps he had known her far better than she suspected, better even than she knew herself, and divined that she was hopeless and the less said the sooner mended. Perhaps he had gone his own way; perhaps he had had mistresses, too. But she doubted this, knowing that he could never bring himself to take the time which mistresses demanded. And he had been too exigent of herself. Perhaps he visited brothels or picked up women in Jermyn Street, or perhaps she herself had been enough for him; perhaps he had used her all along simply as a convenience, a necessity like the necessity for food and drink. He was, she knew, very English and middle-class and so he had been materialistic; women were for him a necessity but never a glory. She knew that, God knows, from his own love-making. There had been times while he made love to her when she had suspected that his mind was occupied with other things, with columns of figures or plans for some great coup.

"Perhaps," she thought, bitterly, sitting there on the Smileys' battered old double bed, "the joke was on me, after all. He could show me off outside working-hours, and then take me home and use me to quiet his desire and his nerves and leave his mind free."

And all at once she was wild with rage, that he should have tricked her, that at the very end, on that last night when they had quarreled, he had had the laugh on her, knowing that it was he who had the victory.

And he was dead now, and she could never discover the truth and perhaps salve the wounds of her humiliation.

"And yet," she thought, "I got what I deserved. He had either to divorce me or treat me as he treated me." And divorce he would not face or any scandal which might have endangered his precious position, that position to which he had fought his way up from the suburbs of Liverpool There was, too, his vanity, which would never permit him to announce to the world in a divorce court that the woman he had purchased had not found him satisfactory or sufficient. It must have been that his suspicion of Ransome was the last straw, that on that last night after they had quarreled and he had left her, he had considered divorcing her for the first time and written down this list of men whom he knew about; and it must have been when he had finished the list that he decided the humiliation of a divorce court was no worse than the knowledge that half the world must have known one way or another of her infidelities, and that these six men must have laughed at him as a cuckold. And he must have known that there were others whom he had never discovered.

Bates, she thought, must have told him, for Bates knew her better and. knew more about her than Albert had ever known. Perhaps he had cornered Bates on that last night and bullied or bribed him into telling what he knew. Perhaps that was why Bates was so sly and insinuating when he came in to tell her that Albert was ill. If Albert were alive she would have gone to Bates and accused him and discovered the truth, but now it did not matter; it was not even worth a disagreeable scene. Bates would be gone soon on his way back to England, out of her life forever. And then she saw that Bates, whether he was the one who had betrayed her or not, knew the list of lovers. He had himself placed it there on top of the other papers when he made up the bundle. It was stupid of Albert and caddish to have left such a thing lying about.

Then suddenly she felt very tired and bored with the whole thing, and tearing the paper into tiny bits she thrust them into the pocket of Mrs. Smiley's calico dress and began looking at the other papers. Most of them meant nothing to her; there were notes on a new special leader for the Esketh papers. She did not even bother to read them, but went through the rest of the lot until she came to the will.

It struck her as odd that he should be carrying it about with him; perhaps, in spite of his swaggering, he knew that he was an ill man and might never reach England alive. Perhaps he had meant to alter it, cutting her off with nothing. He had been shrewd about the marriage settlement., making it cover her rights of dowry so that if he chose he could always die without leaving her a cent. That was it; on that last night he had decided to divorce her and cut her out of his will. He could have added a line or two with Bates and one of her own maids to witness the signature. Witnesses were not supposed to know the contents of a will or to be included in it. And then, as she held the paper in her hand, she thought, "Perhaps that is what he did do"; but when she glanced hastily at the end there was no sign of a codicil. Quickly she began to read it through.

It was long and contained a number of showy bequests to charities and schools and hospitals. In life he had -been mean about gifts to such organizations unless he felt he must make them to buy respect for himself. But now, because he could not take the money with him, he was generous. And there was a provision about his newspapers which she did not trouble to read, and then she came to the list of personal bequests five thousand pounds to that lower middle-class brother of whom he had been ashamed, never allowing her to see him, and a thousand pounds to two maiden ladies she had never heard of, perhaps his aunts or cousins, and five hundred pounds to Bates Bates who had betrayed him and mocked at him and hated him.

And the rest, the residue of the estate, was left to her.

She had never believed that it would happen. She had thought that he would leave her something, but not everything, not the hundreds of thousands of pounds, perhaps a couple of million pounds, perhaps even more. The will lay there in her lap and for a moment she felt for it a curious, indescribable horror. That bit of paper made her one of the richest women in the world, and the thought gave her no pleasure, nor even much excitement.

"I had enough with the settlement," she thought. "What can I do with all this?"

By a chance it was hers. She found herself thinking again of the Florentine pension, of the days when she could not afford a hairdresser

more than once a month, when she had worn the dresses of her fashionable friends which were misfits or failures. Then a windfall like this would have been in the realm of the wildest fantasy; it would have changed all her life and her father's life. She would never have married Albert. She might even have been more honest and less of a slut.

She tried to feel as she would have felt then, but the effort ended only in a sensation of dullness; now there was nothing she desired in the world which could be bought with money. Now, it was too late.

She thought, "I suppose I had to earn it. Now I must think what I shall do with it."

He had meant to divorce her and cut her off, but the decision had come too late. This horrible country, this monster with its plagues and terrors, its splendor and shabbiness, its hospitality and its cruelty, had killed him too soon. Then she saw the bitterness of the will that in all the world there was no one to whom he might leave this huge fortune he had built up out of ambition and trickery and ruthlessness, none but herself, who had always been contemptuous of him, who had betrayed him again and again from the very beginning. For a moment she tried hard to think of some one to whom he might legally have left his wealth, but there was no one. She saw suddenly that she had been right; he had never had any friends.

Half aloud, she found herself speaking as if Albert were still alive in the room with her instead of having to be buried before sundown for sanitary reasons. "But I don't want it. What am I to do with it?" and thought, "I may never even go back to England." For now she knew that there was only one thing she wanted and that was something that money could not buy, as she had bought Andre Simon, the boxer, long ago.

Thrusting the paper and jewels back into the box, she closed the lid and locked it, thrust the keys into the pocket with the torn bits of paper, and crossed the room to the battered mirror where each morning Bertha Smiley did her hair.

It was not like the glass on her dressing-table in Hill Street, made with a pinkish tinge to flatter her. The quicksilver which backed it was blotched and had peeled off in spots from the heat and dampness, and the whole thing had a bilious yellow tinge. When she saw herself

it was with a sense of shock, for she saw a tired, pale woman who looked more than her age, with hair that hung limply against her face.

"In a day or two," she thought, "the parting will begin to lose its color. I suppose I must have reached the bottom of something this morning." But what it was she did not know.

Then through the sense of defeat which had overcome her she heard the sound of music, incredible music, for it was hymn-singing. Somewhere near at hand in the garden people were singing, "Now the day is over" as they used to sing it at the little church next to the house in England where she had lived as a child. There were only four or five voices and they were accompanied by a tiny organ. For a moment she thought, "Maybe I've gone mad. Maybe I'm seeing and hearing things." Nevertheless, she walked to the window to make certain that she had not lost her senses.

There, beneath the trees, standing in the rain about a little mound of fresh earth, were Mr. and Mrs. Smiley and Aunt Phoebe and that girl Fern. They were singing in quavering voices to the accompaniment of a melodeon played by one of the Christian Untouchables. And then she understood; they were burying what remained of the missionary and his daughter.

Across the drive from the Smileys', on the tennis-court where The Boys had once come to play tennis, Mr. Smiley and the Untouchable boys had built a great pyre of beams and shattered furniture salvaged from the ruins of the Simons' home. They found the bodies of Hazel and the Reverend Mr. Simon in what had been the dining-room, for they had been having supper while Mrs. Simon was with Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry and Fern was pushing her bicycle through the rain from Ran- some's house. When they brought the news to Mrs. Simon she became hysterical and only the firmest persuasion on the part of Mrs. Smiley and harsh words from Aunt Phoebe prevented her from rushing across the drive to throw herself upon the bodies of her husband and daughter. When she was a litde more calm Mr. Smiley said that they meant to burn the bodies and that he would read the service. This threw her into a fresh attack of hysteria in which she cried out against the burning as "heathenish." But when Mr. Smiley explained that there were no coffins in Ranchipux and no wood and no coffin-maker, and that the bodies had to be disposed of as quickly as possible, she yielded again and fell into a low moaning which continued for the rest of the day.

So at last, wrapped in sheets, all that remained of Mr. Simon and poor Hazel was placed on top the pyre; and Mr. Smiley, exhausted and troubled, read the service, and when he had finished set fire to the oil- soaked mass of wood, and the bodies of the Baptist missionary and his daughter were burned as if they had been no more than Hindus. The rain came and went away, in gusts and showers and torrents, but the wood was old and dry and oil kept it burning fiercely, and at last there remained only a heap of rain-soaked ashes. With these Mr. Smiley reverently filled two of the glass jars which Aunt Phoebe used for her chutney preserves, and these, with a second short service, were buried in the Smileys' garden beneath the trees hung with orchids and petunias and ivy geraniums.

Mrs. Simon, moaning on her cot in the storeroom, took part in none of the service, but Fern was present to the very end, even raising a shaky voice to join in "Now the day is over."

Mr. Smiley had not allowed her to witness the burning of the bodies and she was thankful to him for that. She had meant to be present, why she did not clearly know save that she had a confused feeling that poor Hazel and her father would be less lonely if she were there. Mr. Smiley in his kind way must have divined her thoughts, for he had said to her, "There is no reason for you to be present, Fern. There is nothing left that was Hazel or your father. What is left is only clay. The Hindus know that, too, even better than ourselves."

And so, with a handful of Untouchable boys to help him, he had gone about the grisly task, leaving her alone to comfort her mother. She had no great desire to be with Mrs. Simon and she could not think what to say to her. It was odd, she thought, that Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, her mother's bosom friend and companion, had not remained to comfort her. She had always been the only person Mrs. Simon would see on the occasion of her migraines, and now Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry had gone off in the dirty peignoir, waddling a little in her high-heeled shoes and accompanied by two of Mrs. Smiley's pupils, to revisit her house and discover what had happened to it.

So there was nothing for it but to go into the big storeroom where her mother lay on a cot, moaning, with a damp cloth on her head.

She opened the door quietly, still thinking that she might by some lucky chance find her mother asleep and so escape, but the door creaked and Mrs. Simon, removing the cloth, stopped moaning for a moment and looked up to see who was entering the room. When she saw it was Fern she said, "Come here, my child, and sit by me," and awkwardly, reluctantly. Fern obeyed her.

She sat on the very edge of the bed, as far away as possible from her mother. In a way she suddenly felt sorry for her, because in the last two days she had aged so much. The fresh look which always made people say, "But you can't be the mother of a daughter of twenty," was gone now. She was collapsed, crumpled, frightened, and tired. Fern thought, "She is the one who is alone now. With Poppa dead she isn't anything any more not even a missionary. What will become of her?" and for a moment she was almost frightened by the picture of her mother alone, gone to pieces, with no one to bully but herself who would no longer be bullied, with no husband to lie beside her. That, Fern divined in her new wisdom, had always been important to her mother, although such things were never mentioned among people like themselves. What now would she do? She was in a way still young only forty-two, and sitting there on the edge of the bed, fragments of a conversation she had over- heard between her mother and Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry, long ago, returned to her. She had been in the hall upstairs and the door of her mother's room was open, and she had heard the two voices, and being only fourteen or fifteen years old, she had listened and heard Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry saying, "No, Herbert has his own room. He hasn't come near me for nearly three years. I think he must be incapable because I can't see that there could be any other woman in Ranchipur. If there was another woman the servants would hear of it."

And then there had been a silence and she had heard her mother's voice saying, "Of course, our husbands are very different, but I can't imagine Elmer wanting a room of his own. I don't know what I'd do. I'd be so lonely."

At the time, because she had never been told anything, she did not understand the significance of what the two women were saying, but she had felt, without knowing why, that it was shameful and even vulgar, Now, long afterward, she understood the conversation and pityingly she wondered if her mother had ever felt about her father as she felt about Ransome. It would be terrible if anything happened to him. She did not think of him as "Tom," but always as "Ransome" and sometimes even as "Mr. Ransome." In the two or three times they had been together she had never addressed him by name, she had never called him anything at all. All this morning when she had lain there beside him on the floor in Mr. Bannerjee's house, she had called him "my dear" and "my darling. '

Then her mother turned toward her, and opening her eyes once more looked at Fern and said, "We shall have to stay together now, no matter what happens. You're all I have in the world. 1 '

A sensation of horror swept over Fern. She had thought herself free; she had never imagined the personal consequences of the earthquake. She found herself saying: "There's always Mrs. Hoggett-Egburry. I thought she would be with you now."

"No," said Mrs. Simon. "That's finished."

"What's happened?"

"The night of the flood I found her dead drunk in her own house."