A passage to India
the happiness he felt now. And near it, under a low dome, should
be his tomb, with a Persian inscription:
Alas, without me for thousands of years
The Rose will blossom and the Spring will bloom,
But those who have secretly understood my heart—
They will approach and visit the grave where I lie.
He had seen the quatrain on the tomb of a Deccan king, and regarded
it as profound philosophy—he always held pathos to be profound.
The secret understanding of the heart! He repeated the phrase with
tears in his eyes, and as he did so one of the pillars of the
mosque seemed to quiver. It swayed in the gloom and detached
itself. Belief in ghosts ran in his blood, but he sat firm. Another
pillar moved, a third, and then an Englishwoman stepped out into
the moonlight. Suddenly he was furiously angry and shouted: “Madam!
Madam! Madam!”
“Oh! Oh!” the woman gasped.
“Madam, this is a mosque, you have no right here at all; you should
have taken off your shoes; this is a holy place for Moslems.”
“I have taken them off.”
“You have?”
“I left them at the entrance.”
“Then I ask your pardon.”
Still startled, the woman moved out, keeping the ablution-tank
between them. He called after her, “I am truly sorry for speaking.”
“Yes, I was right, was I not? If I remove my shoes, I am allowed?”
“Of course, but so few ladies take the trouble, especially if
thinking no one is there to see.”
“That makes no difference. God is here.”
“Madam!”
“Please let me go.”
“Oh, can I do you some service now or at any time?”
“No, thank you, really none—good night.”
“May I know your name?”
She was now in the shadow of the gateway, so that he could not see
her face, but she saw his, and she said with a change of voice,
“Mrs. Moore.”
“Mrs.——” Advancing, he found that she was old.
A fabric bigger than the mosque fell to pieces, and he did not know
whether he was glad or sorry. She was older than Hamidullah Begum,
with a red face and white hair. Her voice had deceived him.
“Mrs. Moore, I am afraid I startled you. I shall tell my
community—our friends—about you. That God is here—very good, very
fine indeed. I think you are newly arrived in India.”
“Yes—how did you know?”
“By the way you address me. No, but can I call you a carriage?”
“I have only come from the club. They are doing a play that I have
seen in London, and it was so hot.”
“What was the name of the play?”
_“Cousin Kate.”_
“I think you ought not to walk at night alone, Mrs. Moore. There
are bad characters about and leopards may come across from the
Marabar Hills. Snakes also.”
She exclaimed; she had forgotten the snakes.
“For example, a six-spot beetle,” he continued, “You pick it up,
it bites, you die.”
“But you walk about yourself.”
“Oh, I am used to it.”
“Used to snakes?”
They both laughed. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “Snakes don’t dare bite
me.” They sat down side by side in the entrance, and slipped on
their evening shoes. “Please may I ask you a question now? Why do
you come to India at this time of year, just as the cold weather
is ending?”
“I intended to start earlier, but there was an unavoidable delay.”
“It will soon be so unhealthy for you! And why ever do you come to
Chandrapore?”
“To visit my son. He is the City Magistrate here.”
“Oh no, excuse me, that is quite impossible. Our City Magistrate’s
name is Mr. Heaslop. I know him intimately.”
“He’s my son all the same,” she said, smiling.
“But, Mrs. Moore, how can he be?”
“I was married twice.”
“Yes, now I see, and your first husband died.”
“He did, and so did my second husband.”
“Then we are in the same box,” he said cryptically. “Then is the
City Magistrate the entire of your family now?”
“No, there are the younger ones—Ralph and Stella in England.”
“And the gentleman here, is he Ralph and Stella’s half-brother?”
“Quite right.”
“Mrs. Moore, this is all extremely strange, because like yourself
I have also two sons and a daughter. Is not this the same box with
a vengeance?”
“What are their names? Not also Ronny, Ralph, and Stella, surely?”
The suggestion delighted him. “No, indeed. How funny it sounds!
Their names are quite different and will surprise you. Listen,
please. I am about to tell you my children’s names. The first is
called Ahmed, the second is called Karim, the third—she is the
eldest—Jamila. Three children are enough. Do not you agree with
me?”
“I do.”
They were both silent for a little, thinking of their respective
families. She sighed and rose to go.
“Would you care to see over the Minto Hospital one morning?” he
enquired. “I have nothing else to offer at Chandrapore.”
“Thank you, I have seen it already, or I should have liked to come
with you very much.”
“I suppose the Civil Surgeon took you.”
“Yes, and Mrs. Callendar.”
His voice altered. “Ah! A very charming lady.”
“Possibly, when one knows her better.”
“What? What? You didn’t like her?”
“She was certainly intending to be kind, but I did not find her
exactly charming.”
He burst out with: “She has just taken my tonga without my
permission—do you call that being charming?—and Major Callendar
interrupts me night after night from where I am dining with my
friends and I go at once, breaking up a most pleasant entertainment,
and he is not there and not even a message. Is this charming, pray?
But what does it matter? I can do nothing and he knows it. I am
just a subordinate, my time is of no value, the verandah is good
enough for an Indian, yes, yes, let him stand, and Mrs. Callendar
takes my carriage and cuts me dead . . .”
She listened.
He was excited partly by his wrongs, but much more by the knowledge
that someone sympathized with them. It was this that led him to
repeat, exaggerate, contradict. She had proved her sympathy by
criticizing her fellow-countrywoman to him, but even earlier he
had known. The flame that not even beauty can nourish was springing
up, and though his words were querulous his heart began to glow
secretly. Presently it burst into speech.
“You understand me, you know what others feel. Oh, if others
resembled you!”
Rather surprised, she replied: “I don’t think I understand people
very well. I only know whether I like or dislike them.”
“Then you are an Oriental.”
She accepted his escort back to the club, and said at the gate that
she wished she was a member, so that she could have asked him in.
“Indians are not allowed into the Chandrapore Club even as guests,”
he said simply. He did not expatiate on his wrongs now, being
happy. As he strolled downhill beneath the lovely moon, and again
saw the lovely mosque, he seemed to own the land as much as anyone
owned it. What did it matter if a few flabby Hindus had preceded
him there, and a few chilly English succeeded?
CHAPTER III
The third act of _Cousin Kate_ was well advanced by the time Mrs.
Moore re-entered the club. Windows were barred, lest the servants
should see their mem-sahibs acting, and the heat was consequently
immense. One electric fan revolved like a wounded bird, another
was out of order. Disinclined to return to the audience, she went
into the billiard room, where she was greeted by “I want to see
the _real_ India,” and her appropriate life came back with a rush.
This was Adela Quested, the queer, cautious girl whom Ronny had
commissioned her to bring from England, and Ronny was her son, also
cautious, whom Miss Quested would probably though not certainly
marry, and she herself was an elderly lady.
“I want to see it too, and I only wish we could. Apparently the
Turtons will arrange something for next Tuesday.”
“It’ll end in an elephant ride, it always does. Look at this
evening. _Cousin Kate!_ Imagine, _Cousin Kate!_ But where have you
been off to? Did you succeed in catching the moon in the Ganges?”
The two ladies had happened, the night before, to see the moon’s
reflection in a distant channel of the stream. The water had drawn
it out, so that it had seemed larger than the real moon, and
brighter, which had pleased them.
“I went to the mosque, but I did not catch the moon.”
“The angle would have altered—she rises later.”
“Later and later,” yawned Mrs. Moore, who was tired after her walk.
“Let me think—we don’t see the other side of the moon out here,
no.”
“Come, India’s not as bad as all that,” said a pleasant voice.
“Other side of the earth, if you like, but we stick to the same
old moon.” Neither of them knew the speaker nor did they ever see
him again. He passed with his friendly word through red-brick
pillars into the darkness.
“We aren’t even seeing the other side of the world; that’s our
complaint,” said Adela. Mrs. Moore agreed; she too was disappointed
at the dullness of their new life. They had made such a romantic
voyage across the Mediterranean and through the sands of Egypt to
the harbour of Bombay, to find only a gridiron of bungalows at the
end of it. But she did not take the disappointment as seriously as
Miss Quested, for the reason that she was forty years older, and
had learnt that Life never gives us what we want at the moment that
we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
She said again that she hoped that something interesting would be
arranged for next Tuesday.
“Have a drink,” said another pleasant voice. “Mrs. Moore—Miss
Quested—have a drink, have two drinks.” They knew who it was this
time—the Collector, Mr. Turton, with whom they had dined. Like
themselves, he had found the atmosphere of _Cousin Kate_ too hot.
Ronny, he told them, was stage-managing in place of Major Callendar,
whom some native subordinate or other had let down, and doing it
very well; then he turned to Ronny’s other merits, and in quiet,
decisive tones said much that was flattering. It wasn’t that the
young man was particularly good at the games or the lingo, or that
he had much notion of the Law, but—apparently a large but—Ronny
was dignified.
Mrs. Moore was surprised to learn this, dignity not being a quality
with which any mother credits her son. Miss Quested learnt it with
anxiety, for she had not decided whether she liked dignified men.
She tried indeed to discuss this point with Mr. Turton, but he
silenced her with a good-humoured motion of his hand, and continued
what he had come to say. “The long and the short of it is Heaslop’s
a sahib; he’s the type we want, he’s one of us,” and another
civilian who was leaning over the billiard table said, “Hear,
hear!” The matter was thus placed beyond doubt, and the Collector
passed on, for other duties called him.
Meanwhile the performance ended, and the amateur orchestra played
the National Anthem. Conversation and billiards stopped, faces
stiffened. It was the Anthem of the Army of Occupation. It reminded
every member of the club that he or she was British and in exile.
It produced a little sentiment and a useful accession of will-power.
The meagre tune, the curt series of demands on Jehovah, fused into
a prayer unknown in England, and though they perceived neither
Royalty nor Deity they did perceive something, they were strengthened
to resist another day. Then they poured out, offering one another
drinks.
“Adela, have a drink; mother, a drink.”
They refused—they were weary of drinks—and Miss Quested, who always
said exactly what was in her mind, announced anew that she was
desirous of seeing the real India.
Ronny was in high spirits. The request struck him as comic, and he
called out to another passer-by: “Fielding! how’s one to see the
real India?”
“Try seeing Indians,” the man answered, and vanished.
“Who was that?”
“Our schoolmaster—Government College.”
“As if one could avoid seeing them,” sighed Mrs. Lesley.
“I’ve avoided,” said Miss Quested. “Excepting my own servant, I’ve