A Passage to India Read Online Free PDF Page B

globe-trotter, a temporary escort, who could retire to England with what impressions she chose. But Adela, who meditated spending her life in the country, was a more serious matter; it would be tire-some if she started crooked over the native question. Pulling up the mare, he said, “There’s your Ganges.”
    Their attention was diverted. Below them a radiance had suddenly appeared. It belonged neither to water nor moonlight, but stood like a luminous sheaf upon the fields of darkness. He told them that it was where the new sand-bank was forming, and that the dark ravelled bit at the top was the sand, and that the dead bodies floated down that way from Benares, or would if the crocodiles let them. “It’s not much of a dead body that gets down to Chandrapore.”
    “Crocodiles down in it too, how terrible!” his mother murmured. The young people glanced at each other and smiled; it amused them when the old lady got these gentle creeps, and harmony was restored between them consequently. She continued: “What a terrible river! what a wonderful river!” and sighed. The radiance was already altering, whether through shifting of the moon or of the sand; soon the bright sheaf would be gone, and a circlet, itself to alter, be burnished upon the streaming void. The women discussed whether they would wait for the change or not, while the silence broke into patches of unquietness and the mare shivered. On her account they did not wait, but drove on to the City Magistrate’s bungalow, where Miss Quested went to bed, and Mrs. Moore had a short interview with her son.
    He wanted to enquire about the Mohammedan doctor in the mosque. It was his duty to report suspicious characters and conceivably it was some disreputable hakim who had prowled up from the bazaar. When she told him that it was someone connected with the Minto Hospital, he was relieved, and said that the fellow’s name must be Aziz, and that he was quite all right, nothing against him at all.
    “Aziz! what a charming name!”
    “So you and he had a talk. Did you gather he was well disposed?”
    Ignorant of the force of this question, she replied, “Yes, quite, after the first moment.”
    “I meant, generally. Did he seem to tolerate us—the brutal conqueror, the sundried bureaucrat, that sort of thing?”
    “Oh, yes, I think so, except the Callendars—he doesn’t care for the Callendars at all.”
    “Oh. So he told you that, did he? The Major will be interested. I wonder what was the aim of the remark.”
    “Ronny, Ronny! you’re never going to pass it on to Major Callendar?”
    “Yes, rather. I must, in fact!”
    “But, my dear boy——”
    “If the Major heard I was disliked by any native subordinate of mine, I should expect him to pass it on to me.”
    “But, my dear boy—a private conversation!”
    “Nothing’s private in India. Aziz knew that when he spoke out, so don’t you worry. He had some motive in what he said. My personal belief is that the remark wasn’t true.”
    “How not true?”
    “He abused the Major in order to impress you.”
    “I don’t know what you mean, dear.”
    “It’s the educated native’s latest dodge. They used to cringe, but the younger generation believe in a show of manly independence. They think it will pay better with the itinerant M.P. But whether the native swaggers or cringes, there’s always something behind every remark he makes, always something, and if nothing else he’s trying to increase his izzat—in plain Anglo-Saxon, to score. Of course there are exceptions.”
    “You never used to judge people like this at home.”
    “India isn’t home,” he retorted, rather rudely, but in order to silence her he had been using phrases and arguments that he had picked up from older officials, and he did not feel quite sure of himself. When he said “of course there are exceptions” he was quoting Mr.Turton, while “increasing the izzat” was Major Callendar’s own. The phrases worked and were in