The Deceivers

Copyright Bengal-Rockland ©1952

Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction, in which no reference is intended to any person living or dead, except that many historical characters are mentioned, and some occasionally appear on the scene.

To John and Ada Masters, from their son.

John Masters was born in Calcutta in 1914. Educated at Wellington and Sandhurst, he returned to India in 1934 to join the 4th Prince of Wales’s Own Gurkha Rifles. In 1944 he commanded a brigade of General Wingate’s Chindits in Burma, and later fought with the 19th Indian Division at the capture of Mandalay.

Masters retired from the Army in 1948 as a lieutenant colonel with the DSO and OBE. He went to America and turned to writing. Several short stories were succeeded by Nightrunners of Bengal, the first of an outstanding series of novels set in British India. John Masters died in 1983 in New Mexico.

‘Wilt thou, William, have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her . . ?

The bridegroom shifted his weight from his right foot to his left, rubbed his fingers together, and felt the clammy sweat inside his palms. The high leather stock cut into his neck; he stretched out his chin, eased it round, and tried to remember when he had last worn a stock. About the time he left his regiment -- ten, eleven years? -- a good long time, anyway.

Mynah birds squabbled raucously in the afternoon heat outside the church. The bridegroom’s hands were cold. The best man had forgotten the ring. No, that was a fantasy born of panic. George would not make a mistake like that. George was as likely to forget the scroll which in a few days he would present to Chandra Sen as to forget the ring. Both were impossible. George knew all about weddings. He was always going to them -- as the best man.

The bridegroom, William Savage, stared woodenly ahead as his thoughts wandered. He considered for a moment the injustice of God, who gave His creatures such unequal gifts. He had no qualities or assets to compare with George Angelsmith’s. George stood over six feet two, and he under five feet ten. The blue broadcloth ran smoothly up George’s back; his own old scarlet coat was thin and smelled of neem leaves. The religious light cast a halo about George’s tight gold curls: how strong was that light on his own head? He smoothed his hair in a nervous gesture, his hand touching the grey at his temple and continuing down over the lined skin at the side of his face and neck. His hands, and the skill in them -- those he was proud of. He dried the palms surreptitiously on his trousers.

An elbow nudged him. He started and muttered, ‘I will.’

‘Wilt thou, Mary, have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him and serve him . . .’

The Reverend Seymour Matthias was showing his years. His scrawny neck stuck out; the crosses on the ends of his stole shivered as he spoke; the stole’s silken lightness bowed his shoulders. The church was full of whispers. William Savage began to calculate how many people had come to his wedding. The back of his neck tingled as he imagined them all staring at him. They would be snickering, too, at the idea of Mary Wilson obeying him . . . wondering why she’d said ‘I will’ . . . where he’d found the nerve to ask her to . . .

From the corner of his eye he examined Mary’s firm profile, and, beyond her, the square angles of her father’s face. Before bringing his daughter to the church Mr Wilson must have stood in front of a mirror and composed his features in the proper mould. He was a widower, and held the office of Agent to the Governor-General of India for the Kaimur and Mahadeo Territories. An expression of stern but not oppressive solemnity would therefore be expected of him at all times. So now his face was stern and solemn, but calm. It was not hypocrisy on his part, for calmness and unbending rigour were the props of his character. He had been angry about the marriage, but he had swallowed his anger. William admired and respected Mr Wilson.

Beyond him, the cavalry colonel’s wife, who liked to regard herself as heaven-sent in place of Mary’s dead mother, cried intermittently into a tiny lace handkerchief. Her happy whimpers mingled with the squabbles of the mynah birds. A pencil of sunlight pierced the branches of the tree outside, leaped down through the high white glass, and touched Mary’s hair.

‘I will.’

He looked full at her. Bright blue eyes, bright black hair. Life, and fire, and the touch of sunlight, and no sadness of years. He loved her, if he knew what love was. He wasn’t sure of that. He must have been out of his mind when he proposed. And had she accepted only because she was young and foolish? But Mary wasn’t a fool. Because she was too recently out of England to know the difference between the men of promise and the others -- between the racehorses and the carthorses, between George Angelsmith who was her father’s assistant and would become a Commissioner, and William Savage who would not? That couldn’t be it; her father had explained all that to her in great detail, and more than once; she had told him so.

He knew that George Angelsmith had wanted to marry her, but he, plodding ‘Dobbin’ Savage, had got her. Her body, at any rate. He clenched his hands suddenly. He was damned well going to win all of her, in time -- her heart and her mind.

She had been different every time he met her, and for the past month that had been every day. Young, flighty girl . . . young, lovely girl . . . lovely, distant woman . . . loved . . . loving, wise, shy, bold -- she’d bearded her father. He wished his mind worked faster, as fast as his hands on the carpenter’s bench, for instance. By the time he caught up with this Mary who said ‘I will,’ she would be someone else.

‘. . . they also may without the Word be won by the conversation of the wives; while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear...”

Surely this must be near the end?

. . whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel ...’

Old Matthias’s voice was a thin trumpet. Surely he didn’t want Mary to take off her clothes?

‘. . . the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible; even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.’

The old priest drew a deep, quavering breath, and William bowed his head. He had left his regiment, though he loved it, because he thought he had a meek and quiet spirit. He had hoped to find a place for himself in the civil administration of India. After a fashion he had; but he was not of great price in the sight of Mr Wilson, or of George Angelsmith, or of anybody, except perhaps the villagers of the Madhya District. They valued him because many storms had beaten over them, and because he did his best for them. English people seemed to tolerate him with a sort of weary good temper. They admired the tables and chairs and carriage wheels he made and laughed as they admired. He raised his head.

‘ . . For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves; even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord; whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement. .

He found himself out on the steps, but his mind was still in the church, echoing the eerie magic of the words.
Afraid with any amazement
. Unwillingly he came back from that unpeopled place. There were people here, scores of them. The young officers of the cavalry were laughing and shouting. They and the smiling women and the shouted congratulations and blessings enclosed him and carried him forward. He was in a tight circle of English faces, English customs, English values, and he could not find happiness or success here. He had tried many ways and failed.

Beyond the wall at the foot of the churchyard and down the hill a still haze of smoke and dust hung over the city of Sagthali. Beyond again, the sun was sinking behind the half-seen, half-sensed hills of the Bhanrer range. Tomorrow he and his bride would be on their way out there, through those hills, to his own people. The cool of the coming night was in the air, and he took a deep breath, pushing out his chest a little.

He could still get into his uniform, but then people always said the stomach began to spread at forty. His chest deflated and his shoulders came forward. Mr Wilson would lead him aside at the reception and, amid his parting good wishes, remind him of many unsatisfactory matters in the Madhya District: the old Deori revenue records, probably; the fact that he had not prevented the old woman at Garhakota from becoming suttee six months ago. How could he have prevented her? Suttee was not against the law -- yet. Wasn’t there enough interference with old customs, old religious beliefs? How did Mr Wilson know that God was always on his side?

He smiled dumbly to right and left as he began to walk down to the carriage. He was on the wrong side of Mary. He should be on her right, so that his sword arm was free to defend her. It was not such a strange conceit, on this newly conquered Mahratta frontier. The English circle was tight about him, but it was small and thin, and beyond it the old gods ruled.

He had better do what was correct. Flustered and stammering, he stumbled round his bride. Once in position, he muttered an apology. The men and women about them were smiling, grinning. He recognized the familiar weary good temper.

Mary was not grinning but smiling; one hand rested lightly on the side of the carriage. His feet stopped moving and he stared at her, not hearing the shouts and seeing nothing but her face. A radiance surrounded her. It was blue and dark-edged and sparkling. It was not the sun, for the sun had set.

He knew nothing of women. Perhaps all brides looked like this. And even if her radiance was real, he did not know where he could find in himself the quality to make it last. But he must, because he loved her.

The corners of his mouth dropped, and he began his habitual gesture, running his left hand over his hair and down the side of his face and neck. But he had a shako on now, and he heard the tittering again. While he fumbled desperately to put back in its place the armour of stolidity that protected his inmost self, he felt her hand on his and heard her say, ‘Come on, darling.’

A pain swelled in his chest, choking off his breath, so that in the carriage he could say nothing. He wanted to hate them all, who could hurt him so -- Mr Wilson, and George Angelsmith, and the laughing subalterns, and Mary above all, who could hurt above all. But he could not speak and he could not hate. His strong hands rested on his knees. The road ahead would take him, after only a little more delay, only a little more talking and explaining and answering, out of this English place where he was nothing. The road would take him through the thickset hills to Madhya, where his work lay.

Sagthali lay forty miles behind them, and in the freshness of another afternoon they rode side by side. They had passed the Bhanrer hills, and the road ahead would bring them to Madhya; and, if they followed, to every habitation of man in India.

For in India, that year of 1825, the roads were not lines joining point and point, each road separately identifiable, each beginning and ending at a pinmark on a map, each absorbing and being absorbed at named and definite junctions. They were not many roads, but one. It was a web of fragile thread, irregularly woven by a hundred generations of travellers. It did not begin anywhere, but it went to everywhere. In one place, by one tree, this year -- it was. Next year, perhaps -- it was not. A traveller might strike a westward-leading ray and at that point find a single rutted track and follow it. A mile farther on it might turn south, or north, or back on itself; or it might break up into ten weary threadlets. It might disappear among rice paddy and reappear at the edge of a grass jungle. It might be wide here, narrow there; it might guide the traveller, in a line straight as the shaft of a spear, for miles between double avenues of mahua and bijasal; it might take him to a ruined temple in a forgotten village and desert him there.Mary knew a little of this, for she had come up from Bombay to Sagthali, and William told her more, forgetting his shyness as he spoke. ‘See, there!’ He pointed to one side, where a path ran in a gorge between six-foot cliffs of tiger grass. ‘That used to be the road, twenty, fifty years ago. I expect some obstinate old farmers still use it. But those two flame-of-the-forest trees, so close together, wouldn’t let a car between them when they grew up. Someone turned aside. Now this is the road. The tree roots here aren’t properly beaten down into the earth. The bullock carts have no springs, you know. They go bump and crash as the carts move along, and you can hear them from a long way off.’

A bullock cart was coming, and they drew aside to let it pass. William leaned forward in the saddle to see if he recognized the driver. In this sunny semi-drought of late February, as in the full blast of the hot weather, the dust lay thick on the road, dust of the creamy texture of kaolin, which curved back and over under the wheels. A child lying on the cart stared down into the dust, mesmerized by its steady roll, and did not see them where they watched. The child’s father salaamed perfunctorily as he passed, and William smiled and waved his arm. The people here were not as a rule an obsequious lot; or perhaps it was only he among their rulers that they treated so offhandedly. He glanced at Mary, but she did not seem to have noticed anything amiss. He smiled at her, and they moved forward together.