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Ch 28 - A Passage to India · A Passage to India

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  Chapter twenty eight Dead, she was committed to the deep while still on the
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  southward track, for the boats from Bombay cannot point towards Europe until Arabia has
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  been rounded. She was further in the tropics than ever achieved while on shore
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  when the sun touched her for the last time and her body was lowered into
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  yet another India, the Indian Ocean. She left behind her sore discomfort.
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  For a death gives a ship a bad name? Who was this Missus Moore?
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  When adden was reached, Lady Melanby cabled wrote, did all that was
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  kind, but the wife of a lieutenant governor does not bargain for such an
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  experience, and she repeated, I had only seen the poor creature for a
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  few hours when she was taken ill. Really, this has been needlessly distressing.
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  It spoils one's homecoming. A ghost followed the ship up the Red Sea,
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  but failed to enter the Mediterranean. Somewhere about suets there is always a
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  social change. The arrangements of Asia weaken and those of Europe begin to be
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  felt, and during the transition Missus Moore was shaken off at Port Sa'id.
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  The gray, blustery north began the weather was so cold and bracing that the
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  passengers felt it must have broken in the land they had left, But it
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  became hotter steadily there. In accordance with its usual law, The death took
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  subtler and more lasting shapes. In Chandrapor a legend sprang up that an Englishman
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  had killed his mother for trying to save an Indian's life, and there was
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  just enough truth in this to cause annoyance to the authorities. Sometimes it was
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  a cow that had been killed, or a crocodile with the tusks of a
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  boar had crawled out of the Ganges. Nonsense of this type is more difficult
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  to combat than a solid lie. It hides in rubbish heaps and moves when
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  no one is looking. At one period, two distinct tombs containing s Miss
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  s Moore's remains were reported, one by the tannery, the other up near
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  the goods station. Mister McBride visited them both and saw signs of the beginning
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  of a cult earthenware, saucers and so on. Being an experienced official,
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  he did nothing to irritate it, and after a week or so the rash
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  died down. There's propaganda behind all this, he said forgetting that a hundred
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  years ago, when Europeans still made their home in the countryside and appealed to
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  its imagination, they occasionally became local demons after death, not a whole god,
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  perhaps, but part of one, adding an epithet or gesture to what
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  already existed, just as the gods contribute to the great gods, and they
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  to the philosophic brahm Rani reminded himself that his mother had left India at her
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  own wish, but his conscience was not clear. He had behaved badly to
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  her, and he had either to repent, which involved a mental overturn,
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  or to persist in unkindness towards her. He chose the latter course. How
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  tiresome she had been with her patronage of Aziz, what a bad influence upon
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  Adela, And now she still gave trouble with ridiculous tombs, mixing herself up
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  with natives. She could not help it, of course, but she had
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  attempted similar exasperating expeditions in her lifetime, and he reckoned it against her.
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  The young man had much to worry him, the heat, the local tension,
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  the approaching visit of the Lieutenant Governor the problems of Adela, and threading
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  them all together into a grotesque garland. Were these indianizations of missus Moore.
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  What does happen to one's mother when she dies? Presumably she goes to heaven
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  anyhow she clears out. Ronnie's religion was of the sterilized public school brand,
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  which never goes bad, even in the tropics. Whenever he entered mosque,
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  cave or temple, attained the spiritual outlook of the fifth form, and condemned
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  as weakening any attempt to understand them. Pulling himself together, he dismissed the
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  matter from his mind. In due time, he and his half brother and
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  sister would put up a tablet to her in the Northamptonshire church where she had
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  worshiped, recording the dates of her birth and death, and the fact that
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  she had been buried at sea. This would be sufficient, and Adela she
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  would have to depart too. He hoped she would have made the suggestion herself.
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  Ere now he really could not marry her. It would mean the end
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  of his career. Poor lamentable Adela. She remained at Government College by Fielding's
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  courtesy, unsuitable and humiliating but no one would receive her at the station.
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  He postponed all private talk until the award against her was decided. Aziz was
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  suing her for damages in the sub judge's court. Then he would ask her
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  to release him. She had killed his love and it had never been very
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  robust. They would never have achieved betrothal but for the accident to the Nahwa
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  Bahadur's car. She belonged to the callow academic period of his life, which
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  he had outgrown. Grasmere, serious talks and walks, that sort of thing.
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  End of chapter twenty eight.