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

friends who can’t remember why they married, no more can their wives. I suspect that it mostly happens haphazard, though afterwards various noble reasons are invented. About marriage I am cynical.”

“I am not. This false start has been all my own fault. I was bringing to Ronny nothing that ought to be brought, that was why he rejected me really. I entered that cave thinking: Am I fond of him? I have not yet told you that, Mr. Fielding. I didn’t feel justified. Tenderness, respect, personal intercourse⁠—I tried to make them take the place⁠—of⁠—”

“I no longer want love,” he said, supplying the word.

“No more do I. My experiences here have cured me. But I want others to want it.”

“But to go back to our first talk (for I suppose this is our last one)⁠—when you entered that cave, who did follow you, or did no one follow you? Can you now say? I don’t like it left in air.”

“Let us call it the guide,” she said indifferently. “It will never be known. It’s as if I ran my finger along that polished wall in the dark, and cannot get further. I am up against something, and so are you. Mrs. Moore⁠—she did know.”

“How could she have known what we don’t?”

“Telepathy, possibly.”

The pert, meagre word fell to the ground. Telepathy? What an explanation! Better withdraw it, and Adela did so. She was at the end of her spiritual tether, and so was he. Were there worlds beyond which they could never touch, or did all that is possible enter their consciousness? They could not tell. They only realized that their outlook was more or less similar, and found in this a satisfaction. Perhaps life is a mystery, not a muddle; they could not tell. Perhaps the hundred Indias which fuss and squabble so tiresomely are one, and the universe they mirror is one. They had not the apparatus for judging.

“Write to me when you get to England.”

“I shall, often. You have been excessively kind. Now that I’m going, I realize it. I wish I could do something for you in return, but I see you’ve all you want.”

“I think so,” he replied after a pause. “I have never felt more happy and secure out here. I really do get on with Indians, and they do trust me. It’s pleasant that I haven’t had to resign my job. It’s pleasant to be praised by an L.-G. Until the next earthquake I remain as I am.”

“Of course this death has been troubling me.”

“Aziz was so fond of her too.”

“But it has made me remember that we must all die: all these personal relations we try to live by are temporary. I used to feel death selected people, it is a notion one gets from novels, because some of the characters are usually left talking at the end. Now ‘death spares no one’ begins to be real.”

“Don’t let it become too real, or you’ll die yourself. That is the objection to meditating upon death. We are subdued to what we work in. I have felt the same temptation, and had to sheer off. I want to go on living a bit.”

“So do I.”

A friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air. Both man and woman were at the height of their powers⁠—sensible, honest, even subtle. They spoke the same language, and held the same opinions, and the variety of age and sex did not divide them. Yet they were dissatisfied. When they agreed, “I want to go on living a bit,” or, “I don’t believe in God,” the words were followed by a curious backwash as though the universe had displaced itself to fill up a tiny void, or as though they had seen their own gestures from an immense height⁠—dwarfs talking, shaking hands and assuring each other that they stood on the same footing of insight. They did not think they were wrong, because as soon as honest people think they are wrong instability sets up. Not for them was an infinite goal behind the stars, and they never sought it. But wistfulness descended on them now, as on other occasions; the shadow of the shadow of a dream fell over their clear-cut interests, and objects never seen again seemed messages from another world.

“And I do like you so very much, if I may say so,” he affirmed.

“I’m glad, for I like you. Let’s meet again.”

“We will, in England, if I ever take home leave.”

“But I suppose you’re not likely to do that yet.”

“Quite a chance. I have a scheme on now as a matter of fact.”

“Oh, that would be very nice.”

So it petered out. Ten days later Adela went off, by the same route as her dead friend. The final beat up before the monsoon had come. The country was stricken and blurred. Its houses, trees and fields were all modelled out of the same brown paste, and the sea at Bombay slid about like broth against the quays. Her last Indian adventure was with Antony, who followed her on to the boat and tried to blackmail her. She had been Mr. Fielding’s mistress, Antony said. Perhaps Antony was discontented with his tip. She rang the cabin bell and had him turned out, but his statement created rather a scandal, and people did not speak to her much during the first part of the voyage. Through the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea she was left to herself, and to the dregs of Chandrapore.

With Egypt the atmosphere altered. The clean sands, heaped on each side of the canal, seemed to wipe off everything that was difficult and equivocal, and even Port Said looked pure and charming in the light of a rose-grey morning. She went on shore there with an American missionary, they walked out to the Lesseps statue, they drank the tonic air of the Levant. “To what duties, Miss Quested, are you returning in your own country after your taste of the tropics?” the missionary asked.

“Observe, I don’t say to what