They passed a row of flushed chaperones alongside the floor; the incessant movement of fans gave a fluttering effect to these ladies, as of birds preening themselves. Their eyes, starting out of the pallor of heavily powdered faces, followed Fleury expressionlessly as he strolled by; he thought: “How true that English ladies do not prosper in the Indian climate! The flesh subsides and melts away, leaving only strings and fibres and wrinkles.”

Now there was a stir in the ballroom as the word went round: General Hearsey had arrived! The throng at the edge of the floor was so great that the Doctor and Fleury could see nothing, so they mounted a few steps of the white marble staircase. There they managed to catch a glimpse of the General and the Doctor could not help glancing at Fleury and wishing that his son Harry was there in his stead. Harry would have given anything to set eyes on the brave General whereas Fleury, his brain poached by theories about civilization, could surely not appreciate the worth of the man now making his slow way through the guests, many of whom came forward to greet him; others who had not made his acquaintance rose out of respect and bowed as he passed.

But the Doctor was doing Fleury an injustice for Fleury was no less stirred than he was himself. Fleury suspected himself of being a coward and here he was in the presence of the man who, in front of a sepoy quarter guard trembling on the brink of revolt, had ridden fearlessly up to the rebel who had just shot the adjutant. To the warning of a fellow officer that his musket was loaded the General had replied in words already famous all over Calcutta: “Damn his musket!” And the sepoy, overpowered by the General’s moral presence, had been unable to squeeze the trigger. No wonder that, for the moment, Fleury had forgotten about his theories and was feasting his eyes on the elderly soldier below, on the General’s thick white hair and mustache, on the manly bearing that made you forget he was sixty-six years old. And as the General, who was talking calmly to some friend, but whose face nevertheless wore a tired and strained look, lifted his eyes and rested them on Fleury for a moment, Fleury’s heart thudded as if he had been a hussar instead of a poet.

Refreshed by this glimpse of courage personified Fleury and the Doctor continued up the marble staircase to the galleries. Here a number of people were comfortably seated in alcoves, separated from each other by ferns and red plush screens, in a good position to survey the floor below. There was a good deal of coming and going between these alcoves as social calls were paid and it was here that one might discuss the hard facts of marriage while the young people took care of the sentimental aspects downstairs. Mrs Dunstaple had found herself a sofa beneath a punkah and was talking to another lady who also had a nubile daughter, though rather more plain than Louise. At the sight of Fleury approaching with her husband Mrs Dunstaple was unable to stifle a groan of pleasure for she had just been boasting to her companion of the attentions which Fleury was paying to Louise and had had the disagreeable impression of not being altogether believed.

Fleury bowed as he was introduced and then sat down, dazed by the heat. The red plush screens surrounding him gave him the feeling that he was sitting in a furnace. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his oily brow. On the floor below, the dancers were coming to the end of a waltz and soon it would be time for the galloppe. Presently Louise appeared, escorted by Lieutenants Cutter and Stapleton who both stared insolently at Fleury and evidently found themselves unequal to the task of recognizing him.

Fleury gazed in admiration at Louise; he understood she had been a bridesmaid at the wedding of a childhood friend earlier in the evening. The two girls had grown up together and now, after they had told each other so many times: “Oh no, you’ll be first!”, the other girl had been first, because Louise was taking such a long time making up her mind.

Fleury could see that Louise had been moved by this experience of being her friend’s bridesmaid; her face had become vulnerable, as if she were close to laughter or tears. He found this vulnerability strangely disarming.

And now that Louise had been keyed up in this way, small wonder if for a few hours at least, she should look at every young man she met, even Fleury, and see him momentarily as her future husband. Mrs Dunstaple looked at her daughter and then looked at Fleury, who was covertly grinding his teeth and scratching his knuckles, which had just been bitten by a mosquito. How quickly life goes by! She sighed. The rather plain daughter of her companion was suffering from “prickly heat”, she was being informed. What a shame! She bent a sympathetic ear.

It was time for the galloppe. As they took up their positions on the floor Louise raised her eyes and gazed at Fleury in an enquiring sort of way. But Fleury was wool-gathering, he was thinking complacently that in London one would not still have seen gentlemen wearing brown evening dress coats as one did here, and he was thinking of civilization, of how it must be something more than the fashions and customs of one country imported into another, of how it must be a superior view of mankind, and of how he was suffocated in his own black evening dress coat, and of what a strong smell of sweat there was down here on the floor, and of whether he could possibly survive the coming dance. Then, at last, the orchestra struck up with a lively air and set the dancers’ feet in motion, among them Louise’s white satin shoes and Fleury’s patent leather boots, charging and wheeling rhythmically as if all this were taking place not in India but in some temperate land far away.

3

Towards the end of April the dak gharry which carried the English mail inland every fortnight made its laborious way as usual across the vast plain towards Krishnapur. It dragged behind it a curtain of dust which climbed to an immense height and hung in the air for several miles back like a rain cloud. As well as the mail the gharry also contained Miriam, Fleury, Lieutenant Harry Dunstaple, and a spaniel called Chloë, who had spent a good deal of the journey with her head out of the window watching with amazement the dust that billowed from beneath the wheels.

“What I should like to know, Harry, is whether it’s a Moslem or a Hindu cemetery?”

“The Hindus don’t bury their dead so it must be Mohammedan.”

“Of course it must, what a fool I am!” Fleury glanced at Harry for the signs of derision that newcomers to India, insultingly termed “griffins”, had to expect from old hands. But Harry’s pleasant face registered only polite lack of interest in the burial habits of the natives.

Fleury and Miriam had come across Harry at the last dak bungalow; he had very decently ridden out to greet them, in spite of the fact that his left arm was in a sling; he had sprained his wrist pig-sticking. Not content with riding out he had sent his horse back with the sais and had joined the travellers in the discomfort of the gharry, a carriage which bore a close resemblance to an oblong wooden box on four wheels without springs; they had now spent almost two days in this conveyance and their soft bodies cried out for comfort. Miriam had spent most of the journey with her nose buried in a handkerchief and her eyes leaking muddy tears, not because she had suffered a renewal of grief for Captain Lang but because of the stifling dust which irritated her eyeballs. As for Fleury, his excitement at the prospect of seeing Louise again was muted by misgivings as to what sort of place Krishnapur might turn out to be. This arid plain they were crossing was scarcely promising. Very likely there would be discomfort and snakes. In such circumstances he feared that he would not shine.