A Passage to India, E. M. Forster [book series for 10 year olds TXT] 📗

“We’ve had a breakdown.”

“But how putrid!”

“We ran into a hyena!”

“How absolutely rotten!”

“Can you give us a lift?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Take me too,” said the Nawab Bahadur.

“Heh, what about me?” cried Mr. Harris.

“Now what’s all this? I’m not an omnibus,” said Miss Derek with decision. “I’ve a harmonium and two dogs in here with me as it is. I’ll take three of you if one’ll sit in front and nurse a pug. No more.”

“I will sit in front,” said the Nawab Bahadur.

“Then hop in: I’ve no notion who you are.”

“Heh no, what about my dinner? I can’t be left alone all the night.” Trying to look and feel like a European, the chauffeur interposed aggressively. He still wore a topi, despite the darkness, and his face, to which the Ruling Race had contributed little beyond bad teeth, peered out of it pathetically, and seemed to say, “What’s it all about? Don’t worry me so, you blacks and whites. Here I am, stuck in damn India same as you, and you got to fit me in better than this.”

“Nussu will bring you out some suitable dinner upon a bicycle,” said the Nawab Bahadur, who had regained his usual dignity. “I shall despatch him with all possible speed. Meanwhile, repair my car.”

They sped off, and Mr. Harris, after a reproachful glance, squatted down upon his hams. When English and Indians were both present, he grew self-conscious, because he did not know to whom he belonged. For a little he was vexed by opposite currents in his blood, then they blended, and he belonged to no one but himself.

But Miss Derek was in tearing spirits. She had succeeded in stealing the Mudkul car. Her Maharajah would be awfully sick, but she didn’t mind, he could sack her if he liked. “I don’t believe in these people letting you down,” she said. “If I didn’t snatch like the devil, I should be nowhere. He doesn’t want the car, silly fool! Surely it’s to the credit of his State I should be seen about in it at Chandrapore during my leave. He ought to look at it that way. Anyhow he’s got to look at it that way. My Maharani’s different⁠—my Maharani’s a dear. That’s her fox terrier, poor little devil. I fished them out both with the driver. Imagine taking dogs to a Chiefs’ Conference! As sensible as taking Chiefs, perhaps.” She shrieked with laughter. “The harmonium⁠—the harmonium’s my little mistake, I own. They rather had me over the harmonium. I meant it to stop on the train. Oh lor’!”

Ronny laughed with restraint. He did not approve of English people taking service under the Native States, where they obtain a certain amount of influence, but at the expense of the general prestige. The humorous triumphs of a free lance are of no assistance to an administrator, and he told the young lady that she would outdo Indians at their own game if she went on much longer.

“They always sack me before that happens, and then I get another job. The whole of India seethes with Maharanis and Ranis and Begums who clamour for such as me.”

“Really. I had no idea.”

“How could you have any idea, Mr. Heaslop? What should he know about Maharanis, Miss Quested? Nothing. At least I should hope not.”

“I understand those big people are not particularly interesting,” said Adela, quietly, disliking the young woman’s tone. Her hand touched Ronny’s again in the darkness, and to the animal thrill there was now added a coincidence of opinion.

“Ah, there you’re wrong. They’re priceless.”

“I would scarcely call her wrong,” broke out the Nawab Bahadur, from his isolation on the front seat, whither they had relegated him. “A Native State, a Hindu State, the wife of a ruler of a Hindu State, may beyond doubt be a most excellent lady, and let it not be for a moment supposed that I suggest anything against the character of Her Highness the Maharani of Mudkul. But I fear she will be uneducated, I fear she will be superstitious. Indeed, how could she be otherwise? What opportunity of education has such a lady had? Oh, superstition is terrible, terrible! oh, it is the great defect in our Indian character!”⁠—and as if to point his criticism, the lights of the civil station appeared on a rise to the right. He grew more and more voluble. “Oh, it is the duty of each and every citizen to shake superstition off, and though I have little experience of Hindu States, and none of this particular one, namely Mudkul (the Ruler, I fancy, has a salute of but eleven guns)⁠—yet I cannot imagine that they have been as successful as British India, where we see reason and orderliness spreading in every direction, like a most health-giving flood!”

Miss Derek said “Golly!”

Undeterred by the expletive, the old man swept on. His tongue had been loosed and his mind had several points to make. He wanted to endorse Miss Quested’s remark that big people are not interesting, because he was bigger himself than many an independent chief; at the same time, he must neither remind nor inform her that he was big, lest she felt she had committed a discourtesy. This was the groundwork of his oration; worked in with it was his gratitude to Miss Derek for the lift, his willingness to hold a repulsive dog in his arms, and his general regret for the trouble he had caused the human race during the evening. Also he wanted to be dropped near the city to get hold of his cleaner, and to see what mischief his grandson was up to. As he wove all these anxieties into a single rope, he suspected that his audience felt no interest, and that the City Magistrate fondled either maiden behind the cover of the harmonium, but good breeding compelled him to continue; it was nothing to him if they were bored, because he did not know what boredom is, and it was nothing to him if they were licentious, because