I am used to it.”
“Used to snakes?”
They both laughed. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “Snakes don’t dare bite me.” They sat down side by side in the entrance, and slipped on their evening shoes. “Please may I ask you a question now? Why do you come to India at this time of year, just as the cold weather is ending?”
“I intended to start earlier, but there was an unavoidable delay.”
“It will soon be so unhealthy for you! And why ever do you come to Chandrapore?”
“To visit my son. He is the City Magistrate here.”
“Oh no, excuse me, that is quite impossible. Our City Magistrate’s name is Mr. Heaslop. I know him intimately.”
“He’s my son all the same,” she said, smiling.
“But, Mrs. Moore, how can he be?”
“I was married twice.”
“Yes, now I see, and your first husband died.”
“He did, and so did my second husband.”
“Then we are in the same box,” he said cryptically. “Then is the City Magistrate the entire of your family now?”
“No, there are the younger ones—Ralph and Stella in England.”
“And the gentleman here, is he Ralph and Stella’s half-brother?”
“Quite right.”
“Mrs. Moore, this is all extremely strange, because like yourself I have also two sons and a daughter. Is not this the same box with a vengeance?”
“What are their names? Not also Ronny, Ralph, and Stella, surely?”
The suggestion delighted him. “No, indeed. How funny it sounds! Their names are quite different and will surprise you. Listen, please. I am about to tell you my children’s names. The first is called Ahmed, the second is called Karim, the third—she is the eldest—Jamila. Three children are enough. Do not you agree with me?”
“I do.”
They were both silent for a little, thinking of their respective families. She sighed and rose to go.
“Would you care to see over the Minto Hospital one morning?” he enquired. “I have nothing else to offer at Chandrapore.”
“Thank you, I have seen it already, or I should have liked to come with you very much.”
“I suppose the Civil Surgeon took you.”
“Yes, and Mrs. Callendar.”
His voice altered. “Ah! A very charming lady.”
“Possibly, when one knows her better.”
“What? What? You didn’t like her?”
“She was certainly intending to be kind, but I did not find her exactly charming.”
He burst out with: “She has just taken my tonga without my permission—do you call that being charming? —and Major Callendar interrupts me night after night from where I am dining with my friends and I go at once, breaking up a most pleasant entertainment, and he is not there and not even a message. Is this charming, pray? But what does it matter? I can do nothing and he knows it. I am just a subordinate, my time is of no value, the verandah is good enough for an Indian, yes, yes, let him stand, and Mrs. Callendar takes my carriage and cuts me dead …”
She listened.
He was excited partly by his wrongs, but much more by the knowledge that someone sympathized with them. It was this that led him to repeat, exaggerate, contradict. She had proved her sympathy by criticizing her fellow-countrywoman to him, but even earlier he had known. The flame that not even beauty can nourish was springing up, and though his words were querulous his heart began to glow secretly. Presently it burst into speech.
“You understand me, you know what others feel. Oh, if others resembled you!”
Rather surprised, she replied: “I don’t think I understand people very well. I only know whether I like or dislike them.”
“Then you are an Oriental.”
She accepted his escort back to the club, and said at the gate that she wished she was a member, so that she could have asked him in.
“Indians are not allowed into the Chandrapore Club even as guests,” he said simply. He did not expatiate on his wrongs now, being happy. As he strolled downhill beneath the lovely moon, and again saw the lovely mosque, he seemed to own the land as much as anyone owned it. What did it matter if a few flabby Hindus had preceded him there, and a few chilly English succeeded?
Q
CHAPTER III
T
he third act of ‘Cousin Kate’ was well advanced by the time Mrs. Moore re-entered the club. Windows were barred, lest the servants should see their mem-sahibs acting, and the heat was consequently immense. One electric fan revolved like a wounded bird, another was out of order. Disinclined to return to the audience, she went into the billiard room, where she was greeted by “I want to see the real India,” and her appropriate life came back with a rush. This was Adela Quested, the queer, cautious girl whom Ronny had commissioned her to bring from England, and Ronny was her son, also cautious, whom Miss Quested would probably though not certainly marry, and she herself was an elderly lady.
“I want to see it too, and I only wish we could. Apparently the Turtons will arrange something for next Tuesday.”
“It’ll end in an elephant ride, it always does. Look at this evening. Cousin Kate! Imagine, Cousin Kate! But where have you been off to? Did you succeed in catching the moon in the Ganges?”
The two ladies had happened, the night before, to see the moon’s reflection in a distant channel of the stream. The water had drawn it out, so that it had seemed larger than the real moon, and brighter, which had pleased them.
“I went to the mosque, but I did not catch the moon.”
“The angle would have altered—she rises later.”
“Later and later,” yawned Mrs. Moore, who was tired after her walk. “Let me think—we don’t see the other side of the moon out here, no.”
“Come, India’s not as bad as all that,” said a pleasant voice. “Other side of the earth, if you like, but we stick to the same old moon.” Neither of them knew the speaker nor did they ever see him again. He passed with his friendly word through red-brick pillars into the darkness.
“We aren’t even seeing the other side of the world; that’s our complaint,” said Adela. Mrs. Moore agreed; she too was disappointed at the dullness of their new life. They had made such a romantic voyage across the Mediterranean and through the sands of Egypt to the harbour of Bombay, to find only a gridiron of bungalows at the end of
