A Passage to India by E. M. Forster (top novels to read .txt) 📕

“A ghost!” But the idea of a ghost scarcely passed her lips. The young people did not take it up, being occupied with their own outlooks, and deprived of support it perished, or was reabsorbed into the part of the mind that seldom speaks.

“Yes, nothing criminal,” Ronny summed up, “but there’s the native, and there’s one of the reasons why we don’t admit him to our clubs, and how a decent girl like Miss Derek can take service under natives puzzles me.⁠ ⁠… But I must get on with my work. Krishna!” Krishna was the peon who should have brought the files from his office. He had not turned up, and a terrific row ensued. Ronny stormed, shouted, howled, and only the experienced observer could tell that he was not angry, did not much want the files, and only made a row because it was the custom. Servants, quite understanding, ran slowly in circles, carrying hurricane lamps. Krishna the earth, Krishna the stars replied, until the Englishman was appeased by their echoes, fined the absent peon eight annas, and sat down to his arrears in the next room.

“Will you play Patience with your future mother-in-law, dear Adela, or does it seem too tame?”

“I should like to⁠—I don’t feel a bit excited⁠—I’m just glad it’s settled up at last, but I’m not conscious of vast changes. We are all three the same people still.”

“That’s much the best feeling to have.” She dealt out the first row of “demon.”

“I suppose so,” said the girl thoughtfully.

“I feared at Mr. Fielding’s that it might be settled the other way⁠ ⁠… black knave on a red queen.⁠ ⁠…” They chatted gently about the game.

Presently Adela said: “You heard me tell Aziz and Godbole I wasn’t stopping in their country. I didn’t mean it, so why did I say it? I feel I haven’t been⁠—frank enough, attentive enough, or something. It’s as if I got everything out of proportion. You have been so very good to me, and I meant to be good when I sailed, but somehow I haven’t been.⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Moore, if one isn’t absolutely honest, what is the use of existing?”

She continued to lay out her cards. The words were obscure, but she understood the uneasiness that produced them. She had experienced it twice herself, during her own engagements⁠—this vague contrition and doubt. All had come right enough afterwards and doubtless would this time⁠—marriage makes most things right enough. “I wouldn’t worry,” she said. “It’s partly the odd surroundings; you and I keep on attending to trifles instead of what’s important; we are what the people here call ‘new.’ ”

“You mean that my bothers are mixed up with India?”

“India’s⁠—” She stopped.

“What made you call it a ghost?”

“Call what a ghost?”

“The animal thing that hit us. Didn’t you say ‘Oh, a ghost,’ in passing.”

“I couldn’t have been thinking of what I was saying.”

“It was probably a hyena, as a matter of fact.”

“Ah, very likely.”

And they went on with their Patience. Down in Chandrapore the Nawab Bahadur waited for his car. He sat behind his town house (a small unfurnished building which he rarely entered) in the midst of the little court that always improvises itself round Indians of position. As if turbans were the natural product of darkness a fresh one would occasionally froth to the front, incline itself towards him, and retire. He was preoccupied, his diction was appropriate to a religious subject. Nine years previously, when first he had had a car, he had driven it over a drunken man and killed him, and the man had been waiting for him ever since. The Nawab Bahadur was innocent before God and the Law, he had paid double the compensation necessary; but it was no use, the man continued to wait in an unspeakable form, close to the scene of his death. None of the English people knew of this, nor did the chauffeur; it was a racial secret communicable more by blood than speech. He spoke now in horror of the particular circumstances; he had led others into danger, he had risked the lives of two innocent and honoured guests. He repeated, “If I had been killed, what matter? it must happen sometime; but they who trusted me⁠—”

The company shuddered and invoked the mercy of God. Only Aziz held aloof, because a personal experience restrained him: was it not by despising ghosts that he had come to know Mrs. Moore? “You know, Nureddin,” he whispered to the grandson⁠—an effeminate youth whom he seldom met, always liked, and invariably forgot⁠—“you know, my dear fellow, we Muslims simply must get rid of these superstitions, or India will never advance. How long must I hear of the savage pig upon the Marabar Road?” Nureddin looked down. Aziz continued: “Your grandfather belongs to another generation, and I respect and love the old gentleman, as you know. I say nothing against him, only that it is wrong for us, because we are young. I want you to promise me⁠—Nureddin, are you listening?⁠—not to believe in Evil Spirits, and if I die (for my health grows very weak) to bring up my three children to disbelieve in them too.” Nureddin smiled, and a suitable answer rose to his pretty lips, but before he could make it the car arrived, and his grandfather took him away.

The game of Patience up in the civil lines went on longer than this. Mrs. Moore continued to murmur “Red ten on a black knave,” Miss Quested to assist her, and to intersperse among the intricacies of the play details about the hyena, the engagement, the Maharani of Mudkul, the Bhattacharyas, and the day generally, whose rough desiccated surface acquired as it receded a definite outline, as India itself might, could it be viewed from the moon. Presently the players went to bed, but not before other people had woken up elsewhere, people whose emotions they could not share, and whose existence they ignored. Never tranquil, never perfectly dark, the night wore itself away, distinguished from other nights by two or three