The air is heavy with it, and
for miles and miles along that distressful eternity of rail there's no horizon
to show where air and earth separate."
"Yes. It isn't easy to see truly or far in India. But you had a decent passage
out, hadn't you?"
"Very good on the whole. Your Anglo-Indian may be unsympathetic about one's
political views; but he has reduced ship life to a science."
"The Anglo-Indian is a political orphan, and if he's wise he won't be in a
hurry to be adopted by your party grandmothers. But how were your companions,
unsympathetic?"
"Well, there was a man called Dawlishe, a judge somewhere in this country it
seems, and a capital partner at whist by the way, and when I wanted to talk to
him about the progress of India in a political sense (Orde hid a grin, which
might or might not have been sympathetic), the National Congress movement, and
other things in which, as a Member of Parliament, I'm of course interested, he
shifted the subject, and when I once cornered him, he looked me calmly in the
eye, and said: 'That's all Tommy rot. Come and have a game at Bull.' You may
laugh; but that isn't the way to treat a great and important question; and,
knowing who I was, well, I thought it rather rude, don't you know; and yet
Dawlishe is a thoroughly good fellow.
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