Dr. Sutherland’s return to Williams Lane turns an old neighborhood tragedy into a personal act of mourning: after hearing Hobbs’s account of Jane Grey and Robert Adam, he revisits the place where he was born and leaves flowers in the cemetery where his mother was buried. His restraint during the story gives way not to a public explanation but to a sudden embrace of a beggar child; only in a letter to Shankar does he disclose that he was the infant rescued after his parents’ deaths.

The Story Behind the Return

Hobbs’s story ends with the deaths of Jane and Robert. After learning of Jane’s death, Robbie collapses, develops a fever that same night, refuses food, and dies despite the doctors’ efforts. The boys of Williams Lane, already grieving Jane, borrow money to buy flowers for Robbie’s funeral. The priest takes the newborn child with him. The account leaves the infant’s identity and later life unstated, making the return to the lane a search for the places and people left behind by a tragedy Shankar has heard only as a story.

When Hobbs finishes, Shankar is unable to hold back his tears. Dr. Sutherland, by contrast, shows no visible distress. Shankar speculates that doctors, encountering death every day, may cease to regard it as unusual, but he cannot know what lies behind the doctor’s composure. Dr. Sutherland thanks Hobbs and leaves without a word. The pair are not yet in a position to discuss what the story has stirred in him.

Williams Lane and the Beggar Child

Some days later, Sata Bose signals that Shankar should accompany Dr. Sutherland, promising to cover for him. Dr. Sutherland seems dazed and inattentive to his companion, as if Shankar were simply a hired guide. They leave their taxi at the entrance to Williams Lane, near Bowbazar Street, where children are playing in the road.

The children bring the past close without restoring it. Shankar thinks of the boys who once came to find out about the funerals, and wonders where the old landmarks have gone. Even the building where the family’s drama unfolded may have disappeared, replaced by another. Dr. Sutherland suggests that the house might no longer exist; the children nearby appear to know nothing of the history attached to the street.

A small beggar is filling a tin with water beside a street hydrant when he falls and begins to cry. Dr. Sutherland runs to him, lifts him up, and holds him against his chest. The gesture startles Shankar, who notices the child’s badly pustulated leg and worries that the doctor will soil his clothes. People hurry over at the sight of a foreigner embracing a beggar, but Dr. Sutherland ignores them. He wipes the child’s runny nose with his handkerchief and asks in Hindi where his parents are.

The boy points toward Sealdah Station, then suddenly struggles free and runs off, apparently afraid he might be kidnapped. Dr. Sutherland stands motionless. In the approaching dusk, Shankar sees him wipe his eyes with the same corner of the handkerchief he had used on the child. The scene offers no explanation yet, but the doctor’s tenderness and grief break through the reserve that had followed Hobbs’s account.

Flowers at the Cemetery

From Williams Lane, the two go directly to Lower Circular Road Cemetery. Darkness is gathering; flower sellers wait at the entrance, and Dr. Sutherland buys flowers although Shankar has no money. Inside, the grounds are so dark that even the doctor’s lighter can offer little help. They cannot locate the grave of the former barmaid from the Shahjahan Hotel, and Shankar acknowledges that the boys who once laid her to rest may themselves all be dead.

They place the flowers beside a tree and Dr. Sutherland stands silently. The visit cannot recover the exact grave or undo the passage of time. Against the untraceable resting place of a woman from Williams Lane, Shankar sets the continuing life of the Shahjahan Hotel: the building remains young in appearance, drawing the hungry, thirsty, and lustful even as its workers and former guests vanish. The hotel’s endurance is not a human memory; the scene’s dead and displaced people are scarcely legible in the city they inhabited.

The Letter and the Revealed Identity

A few days later, Dr. Sutherland writes to Shankar from the point of departure from his Indian connections. He says he is bound for Tahiti on assignment for the World Health Organization and expects to spend there the few days remaining to him. He apologizes for his behavior on the night he left the Shahjahan and admits that he had wronged Shankar and Hobbs by withholding the truth. He had hoped to apologize in person, but will not see them again.

The letter supplies the identity the return had left unspoken. Dr. Sutherland was born in Williams Lane; his father was Robert Adam and his mother Jane Grey. The newborn saved through the generosity of the boys of Williams Lane was taken back to England by Father Sutherland and acquired the legal right to use the priest’s surname. Dr. Sutherland’s visit was therefore not merely an inquiry into a vanished family home: he had come back to the place of his own birth and to the neighborhood whose children had made his survival possible.

He also explains why he wanted to spend his last night in Calcutta at the Shahjahan, and thanks Shankar for making that wish possible. He expresses relief that the hotel no longer employs barmaids and gratitude to Father Brockway’s wife at Union Chapel, whose efforts spared many girls the misery of working as barmaids. Unable to visit her because she is dead, he has written to her son, Frenner Brockway. The letter links his family’s story to the vulnerability of other women, while his apology names the concealment that had kept his own past from his companions. His return ends not with a recovered grave or a reunion, but with a belated confession and a farewell.