A Passage to India by E. M. Forster Read Free Book Online

together in the past, he had scorned it; now he pretended that it was a good play, in order to hurt nobody’s feelings. An “unkind notice” had appeared in the local paper, “the sort of thing no white man could have written,” as Mrs. Lesley said. The play was praised, to be sure, and so were the stage management and the performance as a whole, but the notice contained the following sentence: “Miss Derek, though she charmingly looked her part, lacked the necessary experience, and occasionally forgot her words.” This tiny breath of genuine criticism had given deep offence, not indeed to Miss Derek, who was as hard as nails, but to her friends. Miss Derek did not belong to Chandrapore. She was stopping for a fortnight with the McBrydes, the police people, and she had been so good as to fill up a gap in the cast at the last moment. A nice impression of local hospitality she would carry away with her.
    “To work, Mary, to work,” cried the Collector, touching his wife on the shoulder with a switch.
    Mrs. Turton got up awkwardly. “What do you want me to do? Oh, those purdah women! I never thought any would come. Oh dear!”
    A little group of Indian ladies had been gathering in a third quarter of the grounds, near a rustic summer-house in which the more timid of them had already taken refuge. The rest stood with their backs to the company and their faces pressed into a bank of shrubs. At a little distance stood their male relatives, watching the venture. The sight was significant: an island bared by the turning tide, and bound to grow.
    “I consider they ought to come over to me.”
    “Come along, Mary, get it over.”
    “I refuse to shake hands with any of the men, unless it has to be the Nawab Bahadur.”
    “Whom have we so far?” He glanced along the line. “H’m! h’m! much as one expected. We know why he’s here, I think—over that contract, and he wants to get the right side of me for Mohurram, and he’s the astrologer who wants to dodge the municipal building regulations, and he’s that Parsi, and he’s—Hullo! there he goes—smash into our hollyhocks. Pulled the left rein when he meant the right. All as usual.”
    “They ought never to have been allowed to drive in; it’s so bad for them,” said Mrs. Turton, who had at last begun her progress to the summer-house, accompanied by Mrs. Moore, Miss Quested, and a terrier. “Why they come at all I don’t know. They hate it as much as we do. Talk to Mrs. McBryde. Her husband made her give purdah parties until she struck.”
    “This isn’t a purdah party,” corrected Miss Quested.
    “Oh, really,” was the haughty rejoinder.
    “Do kindly tell us who these ladies are,” asked Mrs. Moore.
    “You’re superior to them, anyway. Don’t forget that. You’re superior to everyone in India except one or two of the Ranis, and they’re on an equality.”
    Advancing, she shook hands with the group and said a few words of welcome in Urdu. She had learnt the lingo, but only to speak to her servants, so she knew none of the politer forms and of the verbs only the imperative mood. As soon as her speech was over, she enquired of her companions, “Is that what you wanted?”
    “Please tell these ladies that I wish we could speak their language, but we have only just come to their country.”
    “Perhaps we speak yours a little,” one of the ladies said.
    “Why, fancy, she understands!” said Mrs. Turton.
    “Eastbourne, Piccadilly, High Park Corner,” said another of the ladies.
    “Oh yes, they’re English-speaking.”
    “But now we can talk: how delightful!” cried Adela, her face lighting up.
    “She knows Paris also,” called one of the onlookers.
    “They pass Paris on the way, no doubt,” said Mrs. Turton, as if she was describing the movements of migratory birds. Her manner had grown more distant since she had discovered that some of the group was Westernized, and might apply her own standards to her.
    “The shorter lady, she is my