A passage to India
light from its whole circumference. It seemed unlikely that the
series stopped here. Beyond the sky must not there be something
that overarches all the skies, more impartial even than they?
Beyond which again . . .
They spoke of _Cousin Kate._
They had tried to reproduce their own attitude to life upon the
stage, and to dress up as the middle-class English people they
actually were. Next year they would do _Quality Street_ or _The
Yeomen of the Guard._ Save for this annual incursion, they left
literature alone. The men had no time for it, the women did nothing
that they could not share with the men. Their ignorance of the Arts
was notable, and they lost no opportunity of proclaiming it to one
another; it was the Public School attitude, flourishing more
vigorously than it can yet hope to do in England. If Indians were
shop, the Arts were bad form, and Ronny had repressed his mother
when she enquired after his viola; a viola was almost a demerit,
and certainly not the sort of instrument one mentioned in public.
She noticed now how tolerant and conventional his judgments had
become; when they had seen _Cousin Kate_ in London together in the
past, he had scorned it; now he pretended that it was a good play,
in order to hurt nobody’s feelings. An “unkind notice” had appeared
in the local paper, “the sort of thing no white man could have
written,” as Mrs. Lesley said. The play was praised, to be sure,
and so were the stage management and the performance as a whole,
but the notice contained the following sentence: “Miss Derek,
though she charmingly looked her part, lacked the necessary
experience, and occasionally forgot her words.” This tiny breath
of genuine criticism had given deep offence, not indeed to Miss
Derek, who was as hard as nails, but to her friends. Miss Derek
did not belong to Chandrapore. She was stopping for a fortnight
with the McBrydes, the police people, and she had been so good as
to fill up a gap in the cast at the last moment. A nice impression
of local hospitality she would carry away with her.
“To work, Mary, to work,” cried the Collector, touching his wife
on the shoulder with a switch.
Mrs. Turton got up awkwardly. “What do you want me to do? Oh, those
purdah women! I never thought any would come. Oh dear!”
A little group of Indian ladies had been gathering in a third
quarter of the grounds, near a rustic summer-house in which the
more timid of them had already taken refuge. The rest stood with
their backs to the company and their faces pressed into a bank of
shrubs. At a little distance stood their male relatives, watching
the venture. The sight was significant: an island bared by the
turning tide, and bound to grow.
“I consider they ought to come over to me.”
“Come along, Mary, get it over.”
“I refuse to shake hands with any of the men, unless it has to be
the Nawab Bahadur.”
“Whom have we so far?” He glanced along the line. “H’m! h’m! much
as one expected. We know why he’s here, I think—over that contract,
and he wants to get the right side of me for Mohurram, and he’s
the astrologer who wants to dodge the municipal building regulations,
and he’s that Parsi, and he’s—Hullo! there he goes—smash into our
hollyhocks. Pulled the left rein when he meant the right. All as
usual.”
“They ought never to have been allowed to drive in; it’s so bad
for them,” said Mrs. Turton, who had at last begun her progress to
the summer-house, accompanied by Mrs. Moore, Miss Quested, and a
terrier. “Why they come at all I don’t know. They hate it as much
as we do. Talk to Mrs. McBryde. Her husband made her give purdah
parties until she struck.”
“This isn’t a purdah party,” corrected Miss Quested.
“Oh, really,” was the haughty rejoinder.
“Do kindly tell us who these ladies are,” asked Mrs. Moore.
“You’re superior to them, anyway. Don’t forget that. You’re superior
to everyone in India except one or two of the Ranis, and they’re
on an equality.”
Advancing, she shook hands with the group and said a few words of
welcome in Urdu. She had learnt the lingo, but only to speak to
her servants, so she knew none of the politer forms and of the
verbs only the imperative mood. As soon as her speech was over,
she enquired of her companions, “Is that what you wanted?”
“Please tell these ladies that I wish we could speak their language,
but we have only just come to their country.”
“Perhaps we speak yours a little,” one of the ladies said.
“Why, fancy, she understands!” said Mrs. Turton.
“Eastbourne, Piccadilly, High Park Corner,” said another of the
ladies.
“Oh yes, they’re English-speaking.”
“But now we can talk: how delightful!” cried Adela, her face
lighting up.
“She knows Paris also,” called one of the onlookers.
“They pass Paris on the way, no doubt,” said Mrs. Turton, as if
she was describing the movements of migratory birds. Her manner
had grown more distant since she had discovered that some of the
group was Westernized, and might apply her own standards to her.
“The shorter lady, she is my wife, she is Mrs. Bhattacharya,” the
onlooker explained. “The taller lady, she is my sister, she is Mrs.
Das.”
The shorter and the taller ladies both adjusted their saris, and
smiled. There was a curious uncertainty about their gestures, as
if they sought for a new formula which neither East nor West could
provide. When Mrs. Bhattacharya’s husband spoke, she turned away
from him, but she did not mind seeing the other men. Indeed all
the ladies were uncertain, cowering, recovering, giggling, making
tiny gestures of atonement or despair at all that was said, and
alternately fondling the terrier or shrinking from him. Miss
Quested now had her desired opportunity; friendly Indians were
before her, and she tried to make them talk, but she failed, she
strove in vain against the echoing walls of their civility. Whatever
she said produced a murmur of deprecation, varying into a murmur
of concern when she dropped her pocket-handkerchief. She tried
doing nothing, to see what that produced, and they too did nothing.
Mrs. Moore was equally unsuccessful. Mrs. Turton waited for them
with a detached expression; she had known what nonsense it all was
from the first.
When they took their leave, Mrs. Moore had an impulse, and said to
Mrs. Bhattacharya, whose face she liked, “I wonder whether you
would allow us to call on you some day.”
“When?” she replied, inclining charmingly.
“Whenever is convenient.”
“All days are convenient.”
“Thursday . . .”
“Most certainly.”
“We shall enjoy it greatly, it would be a real pleasure. What about
the time?”
“All hours.”
“Tell us which you would prefer. We’re quite strangers to your
country; we don’t know when you have visitors,” said Miss Quested.
Mrs. Bhattacharya seemed not to know either. Her gesture implied
that she had known, since Thursdays began, that English ladies
would come to see her on one of them, and so always stayed in.
Everything pleased her, nothing surprised. She added, “We leave
for Calcutta to-day.”
“Oh, do you?” said Adela, not at first seeing the implication. Then
she cried, “Oh, but if you do we shall find you gone.”
Mrs. Bhattacharya did not dispute it. But her husband called from
the distance, “Yes, yes, you come to us Thursday.”
“But you’ll be in Calcutta.”
“No, no, we shall not.” He said something swiftly to his wife in
Bengali. “We expect you Thursday.”
“Thursday . . .” the woman echoed.
“You can’t have done such a dreadful thing as to put off going for
our sake?” exclaimed Mrs. Moore.
“No, of course not, we are not such people.” He was laughing.
“I believe that you have. Oh, please—it distresses me beyond
words.”
Everyone was laughing now, but with no suggestion that they had
blundered. A shapeless discussion occurred, during which Mrs.
Turton retired, smiling to herself. The upshot was that they were
to come Thursday, but early in the morning, so as to wreck the
Bhattacharya plans as little as possible, and Mr. Bhattacharya
would send his carriage to fetch them, with servants to point out
the way. Did he know where they lived? Yes, of course he knew, he
knew everything; and he laughed again. They left among a flutter
of compliments and smiles, and three ladies, who had hitherto taken
no part in the reception, suddenly shot out of the summer-house
like exquisitely coloured swallows, and salaamed them.
Meanwhile the Collector had been going his rounds. He made pleasant
remarks and a few jokes, which were applauded lustily, but he knew
something to the discredit of nearly every one of his guests, and
was consequently perfunctory. When they had not cheated, it was
bhang, women, or worse, and even the desirables wanted to get
something out of him. He believed that a “Bridge Party” did good
rather than harm, or he would not have given one, but he was under
no illusions, and at the proper moment he retired to the English
side of the lawn. The impressions he left behind him were various.
Many of the guests, especially the humbler and less anglicized,
were genuinely grateful. To be addressed by so high an official
was a permanent asset. They did not mind how long they stood, or
how little happened, and when seven o’clock struck, they had to be
turned out. Others were grateful with more intelligence. The Nawab
Bahadur, indifferent for himself and for the distinction with which
he was greeted, was moved by the mere kindness that must have
prompted the invitation. He knew the difficulties. Hamidullah also
thought that the Collector had played up well. But others, such as
Mahmoud Ali, were cynical; they were firmly convinced that Turton
had been made to give the party by his official superiors and was
all the time consumed with impotent rage, and they infected some
who were inclined to a healthier view. Yet even Mahmoud Ali was
glad he had come. Shrines are fascinating, especially when rarely
opened, and it amused him to note the ritual of the English club,
and to caricature it afterwards to his friends.
After Mr. Turton, the official who did his duty best was Mr.
Fielding, the Principal of the little Government College. He knew
little of the district and less against the inhabitants, so he was
in a less cynical state of mind. Athletic and cheerful, he romped
about, making numerous mistakes which the parents of his pupils
tried to cover up, for he was popular among them. When the moment
for refreshments came, he did not move back to the English side,
but burnt his mouth with gram. He talked to anyone and he ate
anything. Amid much that was alien, he learnt that the two new
ladies from England had been a great success, and that their
politeness in wishing to be Mrs. Bhattacharya’s guests had pleased
not only her but all Indians who heard of it. It pleased Mr.
Fielding also. He scarcely knew the two new ladies, still he
decided to tell them what pleasure they had given by their
friendliness.
He found the younger of them alone. She was looking through a nick
in the cactus hedge at the distant Marabar Hills, which had crept
near, as was their custom at sunset; if the sunset had lasted long
enough, they would have reached the town, but it was swift, being
tropical. He gave her his information, and she was so much pleased
and thanked him so heartily that he asked her and the other lady
to tea.
“I’ld like to come very much indeed, and so would Mrs. Moore, I
know.”
“I’m rather a hermit, you know.”
“Much the best thing to be in this place.”
“Owing to my work and so on, I don’t get up much to the club.”
“I know, I know, and we never get down from it. I envy you being
with Indians.”
“Do you care to meet one or two?”
“Very, very much indeed; it’s what I long for. This party to-day
makes me so angry and miserable. I think my countrymen out here