A Passage to India - E. M. Forster [18]
Miss Derek—she companioned a Maharani in a remote Native State. She was genial and gay and made them all laugh about her leave, which she had taken because she felt she deserved it, not because the Maharani said she might go. Now she wanted to take the Maharajah’s motor-car as well; it had gone to a Chiefs’ Conference at Delhi, and she had a great scheme for burgling it at the junction as it came back in the train. She was also very funny about the Bridge Party—indeed she regarded the entire peninsula as a comic opera. “If one couldn’t see the laughable side of these people one ‘Id be done for,” said Miss Derek. Mrs. McBryde—it was she who had been the nurse—ceased not to exclaim, “Oh, Nancy, how topping! Oh, Nancy, how killing! I wish I could look at things like that.” Mr. McBryde did not speak much; he seemed nice.
When the guests had gone, and Adela gone to bed, there was another interview between mother and son. He wanted her advice and support—while resenting interference. “Does Adela talk to you much?” he began. “I’m so driven with work, I don’t see her as much as I hoped, but I hope she finds things comfortable.”
“Adela and I talk mostly about India. Dear, since you mention it, you’re quite right—you ought to be more alone with her than you are.”
“Yes, perhaps, but then people’ld gossip.”
“Well, they must gossip sometime! Let them gossip.”
“People are so odd out here, and it’s not like home—one’s always facing the footlights, as the Burra Sahib said. Take a silly little example: when Adela went out to the boundary of the club compound, and Fielding followed her. I saw Mrs. Callendar notice it. They notice everything, until they’re perfectly sure you’re their sort.”
“I don’t think Adela’ll ever be quite their sort—she’s much too individual.”
“I know, that’s so remarkable about her,” he said thoughtfully. Mrs. Moore thought him rather absurd. Accustomed to the privacy of London, she could not realize that India, seemingly so mysterious, contains none, and that consequently the conventions have greater force. “I suppose nothing’s on her mind,” he continued.
“Ask her, ask her yourself, my dear boy.”
“Probably she’s heard tales of the heat, but of course I should pack her off to the Hills every April—I’m not one to keep a wife grilling in the Plains.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be the weather.”
“There’s nothing in India but the weather, my dear mother; it’s the Alpha and Omega of the whole affair.”
“Yes, as Mrs. McBryde was saying, but it’s much more the Anglo-Indians themselves who are likely to get on Adela’s nerves. She doesn’t think they behave pleasantly to Indians, you see.”
“What did I tell you?” he exclaimed, losing his gentle manner. “I knew it last week. Oh, how like a woman to worry over a sideissue!”
She forgot about Adela in her surprise. “A side-issue, a side-issue?” she repeated. “How can it be that?”
“We’re not out here for the purpose of behaving pleasantly!”
“What do you mean?”
“What I say. We’re out here to do justice and keep the peace. Them’s my sentiments. India isn’t a drawing-room.”
“Your sentiments are those of a god,” she said quietly, but it was his manner rather than his sentiments that annoyed her.
Trying to recover his temper, he said, “India likes gods.”
“And Englishmen like posing as gods.”
“There’s no point in all this. Here we are, and we’re going to stop, and the country’s got to put up with us, gods or no gods. Oh, look here,” he broke out, rather pathetically, “what do you and Adela want me to do? Go against my class, against all the people I respect and admire out here? Lose such power as I have for doing good in this country because my behaviour isn’t pleasant? You neither of you understand what work is, or you ‘Id never talk such eyewash. I hate talking like this, but one must occasionally. It’s morbidly sensitive to go on as Adela an