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

river that gradually floods the plain. Only Mrs. Moore could drive it back to its source and seal the broken reservoir. Evil was loose⁠ ⁠… she could even hear it entering the lives of others.⁠ ⁠… And Adela spent days in this atmosphere of grief and depression. Her friends kept up their spirits by demanding holocausts of natives, but she was too worried and weak to do that.

When the cactus thorns had all been extracted, and her temperature fallen to normal, Ronny came to fetch her away. He was worn with indignation and suffering, and she wished she could comfort him; but intimacy seemed to caricature itself, and the more they spoke the more wretched and self-conscious they became. Practical talk was the least painful, and he and McBryde now told her one or two things which they had concealed from her during the crisis, by the doctor’s orders. She learnt for the first time of the Mohurram troubles. There had nearly been a riot. The last day of the festival, the great procession left its official route, and tried to enter the civil station, and a telephone had been cut because it interrupted the advance of one of the larger paper towers. McBryde and his police had pulled the thing straight⁠—a fine piece of work. They passed on to another and very painful subject: the trial. She would have to appear in court, identify the prisoner, and submit to cross-examination by an Indian lawyer.

“Can Mrs. Moore be with me?” was all she said.

“Certainly, and I shall be there myself,” Ronny replied. “The case won’t come before me; they’ve objected to me on personal grounds. It will be at Chandrapore⁠—we thought at one time it would be transferred elsewhere.”

“Miss Quested realizes what all that means, though,” said McBryde sadly. “The case will come before Das.”

Das was Ronny’s assistant⁠—own brother to the Mrs. Bhattacharya whose carriage had played them false last month. He was courteous and intelligent, and with the evidence before him could only come to one conclusion; but that he should be judge over an English girl had convulsed the station with wrath, and some of the women had sent a telegram about it to Lady Mellanby, the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor.

“I must come before someone.”

“That’s⁠—that’s the way to face it. You have the pluck, Miss Quested.” He grew very bitter over the arrangements, and called them “the fruits of democracy.” In the old days an Englishwoman would not have had to appear, nor would any Indian have dared to discuss her private affairs. She would have made her deposition, and judgment would have followed. He apologized to her for the condition of the country, with the result that she gave one of her sudden little shoots of tears. Ronny wandered miserably about the room while she cried, treading upon the flowers of the Kashmir carpet that so inevitably covered it or drumming on the brass Benares bowls. “I do this less every day, I shall soon be quite well,” she said, blowing her nose and feeling hideous.

“What I need is something to do. That is why I keep on with this ridiculous crying.”

“It’s not ridiculous, we think you wonderful,” said the policeman very sincerely. “It only bothers us that we can’t help you more. Your stopping here⁠—at such a time⁠—is the greatest honour this house⁠—” He too was overcome with emotion. “By the way, a letter came here for you while you were ill,” he continued. “I opened it, which is a strange confession to make. Will you forgive me? The circumstances are peculiar. It is from Fielding.”

“Why should he write to me?”

“A most lamentable thing has happened. The defence got hold of him.”

“He’s a crank, a crank,” said Ronny lightly.

“That’s your way of putting it, but a man can be a crank without being a cad. Miss Quested had better know how he behaved to you. If you don’t tell her, somebody else will.” He told her. “He is now the mainstay of the defence, I needn’t add. He is the one righteous Englishman in a horde of tyrants. He receives deputations from the bazaar, and they all chew betel nut and smear one another’s hands with scent. It is not easy to enter into the mind of such a man. His students are on strike⁠—out of enthusiasm for him they won’t learn their lessons. If it weren’t for Fielding one would never have had the Mohurram trouble. He has done a very grave disservice to the whole community. The letter lay here a day or two, waiting till you were well enough, then the situation got so grave that I decided to open it in case it was useful to us.”

“Is it?” she said feebly.

“Not at all. He only has the impertinence to suggest you have made a mistake.”

“Would that I had!” She glanced through the letter, which was careful and formal in its wording. “Dr. Aziz is innocent,” she read. Then her voice began to tremble again. “But think of his behaviour to you, Ronny. When you had already to bear so much for my sake! It was shocking of him. My dear, how can I repay you? How can one repay when one has nothing to give? What is the use of personal relationships when everyone brings less and less to them? I feel we ought all to go back into the desert for centuries and try and get good. I want to begin at the beginning. All the things I thought I’d learnt are just a hindrance, they’re not knowledge at all. I’m not fit for personal relationships. Well, let’s go, let’s go. Of course Mr. Fielding’s letter doesn’t count; he can think and write what he likes, only he shouldn’t have been rude to you when you had so much to bear. That’s what matters.⁠ ⁠… I don’t want your arm, I’m a magnificent walker, so don’t touch me, please.”

Mrs. McBryde wished her an affectionate goodbye⁠—a woman with whom she had nothing in common and whose intimacy oppressed her. They would