Mrs. Moore felt that she had made a mistake in mentioning God, but she found him increasingly difficult to avoid as she grew older, and he had been constantly in her thoughts since she entered India, though oddly enough he satisfied her less. She must needs pronounce his name frequently, as the greatest she knew, yet she had never found it less efficacious. Outside the arch there seemed always an arch, beyond the remotest echo a silence. And she regretted afterwards that she had not kept to the real serious subject that had caused her to visit India—namely the relationship between Ronny and Adela. Would they, or would they not, succeed in becoming engaged to be married?
Aziz had not gone to the Bridge Party. Immediately after his meeting with Mrs. Moore he was diverted to other matters. Several surgical cases came in, and kept him busy. He ceased to be either outcaste or poet, and became the medical student, very gay, and full of details of operations which he poured into the shrinking ears of his friends. His profession fascinated him at times, but he required it to be exciting, and it was his hand, not his mind, that was scientific. The knife he loved and used skilfully, and he also liked pumping in the latest serums. But the boredom of regime and hygiene repelled him, and after inoculating a man for enteric, he would go away and drink unfiltered water himself. “What can you expect from the fellow?” said dour Major Callendar. “No grits, no guts.” But in his heart he knew that if Aziz and not he had operated last year on Mrs. Graysford’s appendix, the old lady would probably have lived. And this did not dispose him any better towards his subordinate.
There was a row the morning after the mosque—they were always having rows. The Major, who had been up half the night, wanted damn well to know why Aziz had not come promptly when summoned.
“Sir, excuse me, I did. I mounted my bike, and it bust in front of the Cow Hospital. So I had to find a tonga.”
“Bust in front of the Cow Hospital, did it? And how did you come to be there?”
“Oh Lord, oh Lord! When I live here”—he kicked the gravel—“and you live there—not ten minutes from me—and the Cow Hospital is right ever so far away the other side of you—_there_—then how did you come to be passing the Cow Hospital on the way to me? Now do some work for a change.”