A Passage to India Read Online Free PDF

he had once been as she, though not for long. Going to the verandah, he called firmly to the moon. His sais answered, and without lowering his head, he ordered his trap to be brought round.
    Mrs. Moore, whom the club had stupefied, woke up outside. She watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the purple of the surrounding sky. In England the moon had seemed dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together with earth and all the other stars. A sudden sense of unity, of kinship with the heavenly bodies, passed into the old woman and out, like water through a tank, leaving a strange freshness behind. She did not dislike
Cousin Kate
or the National Anthem, but their note had died into a new one, just as cocktails and cigars had died into invisible flowers. When the mosque, long and domeless, gleamed at the turn of the road, she exclaimed, “Oh, yes—that’s where I got to—that’s where I’ve been.”
    “Been there when?” asked her son.
    “Between the acts.”
    “But, mother, you can’t do that sort of thing.”
    “Can’t mother?” she replied.
    “No, really not in this country. It’s not done. There’s the danger from snakes for one thing. They are apt to lie out in the evening.”
    “Ah yes, so the young man there said.”
    “This sounds very romantic,” said Miss Quested, who was exceedingly fond of Mrs. Moore, and was glad she should have had this little escapade. “You meet a young man in a mosque, and then never let me know!”
    “I was going to tell you, Adela, but something changed the conversation and I forgot. My memory grows deplorable.”
    “Was he nice?”
    She paused, then said emphatically: “Very nice.”
    “Who was he?” Ronny enquired.
    “A doctor. I don’t know his name.”
    “A doctor? I know of no young doctor in Chandrapore. How odd! What was he like?”
    “Rather small, with a little moustache and quick eyes. He called out to me when I was in the dark part of the mosque—about my shoes. That was how we began talking. He was afraid I had them on, but I remembered luckily. He told me about his children, and then we walked back to the club. He knows you well.”
    “I wish you had pointed him out to me. I can’t make out who he is.”
    “He didn’t come into the club. He said he wasn’t allowed to.”
    Thereupon the truth struck him, and he cried, “Oh, good gracious! Not a Mohammedan? Why ever didn’t you tell me you’d been talking to a native? I was going all wrong.”
    “A Mohammedan! How perfectly magnificent!” exclaimed Miss Quested. “Ronny, isn’t that like your mother? While we talk about seeing the real India, she goes and sees it, and then forgets she’s seen it.”
    But Ronny was ruffled. From his mother’s description he had thought the doctor might be young Muggins from over the Ganges, and had brought out all the comradely emotions. What a mix-up! Why hadn’t she indicated by the tone of her voice that she was talking about an Indian? Scratchy and dictatorial, he began to question her. “He called to you in the mosque, did he? How? Impudently? What was he doing there himself at that time of night?—No, it’s not their prayer time.”—This in answer to a suggestion of Miss Quested’s, who showed the keenest interest. “So he called to you over your shoes. Then it was impudence. It’s an old trick. I wish you had had them on.”
    “I think it was impudence, but I don’t know about a trick,” said Mrs. Moore. “His nerves were all on edge—I could tell from his voice. As soon as I answered he altered.”
    “You oughtn’t to have answered.”
    “Now look here,” said the logical girl, “wouldn’t you expect a Mohammedan to answer if you asked him to take off his hat in church?”
    “It’s different, it’s different; you don’t understand.”
    “I know I don’t, and I want to. What is the difference, please?”
    He wished she wouldn’t interfere. His mother did not signify—she was just a