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

to find comfort by reflecting that her main interest would henceforward be Ronny.

“What a nice cheerful servant! What a relief after Antony!”

“They startle one rather. A strange place to make tea in,” said Mrs. Moore, who had hoped for a nap.

“I want to sack Antony. His behaviour on the platform has decided me.”

Mrs. Moore thought that Antony’s better self would come to the front at Simla. Miss Quested was to be married at Simla; some cousins, with a house looking straight on to Tibet, had invited her.

“Anyhow, we must get a second servant, because at Simla you will be at the hotel, and I don’t think Ronny’s Baldeo⁠ ⁠…” She loved plans.

“Very well, you get another servant, and I’ll keep Antony with me. I am used to his unappetizing ways. He will see me through the Hot Weather.”

“I don’t believe in the Hot Weather. People like Major Callendar who always talk about it⁠—it’s in the hope of making one feel inexperienced and small, like their everlasting, ‘I’ve been twenty years in this country.’ ”

“I believe in the Hot Weather, but never did I suppose it would bottle me up as it will.” For owing to the sage leisureliness of Ronny and Adela, they could not be married till May, and consequently Mrs. Moore could not return to England immediately after the wedding, which was what she had hoped to do. By May a barrier of fire would have fallen across India and the adjoining sea, and she would have to remain perched up in the Himalayas waiting for the world to get cooler.

“I won’t be bottled up,” announced the girl. “I’ve no patience with these women here who leave their husbands grilling in the plains. Mrs. McBryde hasn’t stopped down once since she married; she leaves her quite intelligent husband alone half the year, and then’s surprised she’s out of touch with him.”

“She has children, you see.”

“Oh yes, that’s true,” said Miss Quested, disconcerted.

“It is the children who are the first consideration. Until they are grown up, and married off. When that happens one has again the right to live for oneself⁠—in the plains or the hills, as suits.”

“Oh yes, you’re perfectly right. I never thought it out.”

“If one has not become too stupid and old.” She handed her empty cup to the servant.

“My idea now is that my cousins shall find me a servant in Simla, at all events to see me through the wedding, after which Ronny means to reorganize his staff entirely. He does it very well for a bachelor; still, when he is married no doubt various changes will have to be made⁠—his old servants won’t want to take their orders from me, and I don’t blame them.”

Mrs. Moore pushed up the shutters and looked out. She had brought Ronny and Adela together by their mutual wish, but really she could not advise them further. She felt increasingly (vision or nightmare?) that, though people are important, the relations between them are not, and that in particular too much fuss has been made over marriage; centuries of carnal embracement, yet man is no nearer to understanding man. And today she felt this with such force that it seemed itself a relationship, itself a person who was trying to take hold of her hand.

“Anything to be seen of the hills?”

“Only various shades of the dark.”

“We can’t be far from the place where my hyena was.” She peered into the timeless twilight. The train crossed a nullah. “Pomper, pomper, pomper,” was the sound that the wheels made as they trundled over the bridge, moving very slowly. A hundred yards on came a second nullah, then a third, suggesting the neighbourhood of higher ground. “Perhaps this is mine; anyhow, the road runs parallel with the railway.” Her accident was a pleasant memory; she felt in her dry, honest way that it had given her a good shake up, and taught her Ronny’s true worth. Then she went back to her plans; plans had been a passion with her from girlhood. Now and then she paid tribute to the present, said how friendly and intelligent Aziz was, ate a guava, couldn’t eat a fried sweet, practised her Urdu on the servant; but her thoughts ever veered to the manageable future, and to the Anglo-Indian life she had decided to endure. And as she appraised it with its adjuncts of Turtons and Burtons, the train accompanied her sentences, “pomper, pomper,” the train half asleep, going nowhere in particular and with no passenger of importance in any of its carriages, the branch-line train, lost on a low embankment between dull fields. Its message⁠—for it had one⁠—avoided her well-equipped mind. Far away behind her, with a shriek that meant business, rushed the Mail, connecting up important towns such as Calcutta and Lahore, where interesting events occur and personalities are developed. She understood that. Unfortunately, India has few important towns. India is the country, fields, fields, then hills, jungle, hills, and more fields. The branch line stops, the road is only practicable for cars to a point, the bullock-carts lumber down the side tracks, paths fray out into the cultivation, and disappear near a splash of red paint. How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world’s trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls “Come” through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.

“I will fetch you from Simla when it’s cool enough. I will unbottle you in fact,” continued the reliable girl. “We then see some of the Mogul stuff⁠—how appalling if we let you miss the Taj!⁠—and then I will see you off at Bombay. Your last glimpse of this country really shall be interesting.” But Mrs. Moore had fallen asleep, exhausted by