The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [343]
Captain Crimpley, who occasionally caught sight of one of these letters (the post was laid out daily on the hall table), spoke scathingly at the Club about Pandy Martyn's correspondents, and hinted that they should be investigated by Intelligence. But apart from Major Raikes, no one paid any attention to these allegations. The Captain and his crony were not popular with their fellow members, and it is unlikely that they could have done Ash much harm if it had not been for the affair of Mr Adrian Porson, that well-known lecturer and globe-trotter…
January and February had come and gone. The days were warm and sunny, and Mr Porson was among the last of these birds-of-passage to appear in Rawalpindi, the genus preferring to be out of the country well before the first of April. He had already spent several months seeing India under the aegis of such exalted personages as Governors, Residents and Members of Council, and was at present staying with the Commissioner of Rawalpindi, en route to his final port of call, Peshawar, before returning to Bombay and Home. The object of this tour had been to acquire material for a series of critical lectures on ‘Our Eastern Empire’, and by now he considered himself to be an authority on the subject, and had chosen to air his views to a group of members at the 'Pindi Club one early March evening.
‘The trouble is,’ said Mr Porson in a voice trained to carry to the back rows of a hall, ‘that as I see it, the only Indians you people out here care to know are either Maharajahs or peasants. You would seem to have no objection to hob-nobbing with a ruling prince and pronouncing him to be quite a “decent sort of chap”, but, one asks oneself, how is it that you fail to make friends with Indian men and women of your own class? That, if you will forgive plain speaking, one finds inexcusable, as it indicates a degree of shortsightedness and prejudice, not to say racial snobbery, that must strike any thinking person as offensive in the extreme. Particularly when one compares it with the patronizing indulgence extended to your “faithful old servants” that you speak so highly of the subservient “Uncle Toms” who wait on you hand and foot and care for all your creature comforts, the –’
It was at this point that Ash, who had dropped in to pay a Club bill and paused to listen to Mr Porson's discourse, was moved to intervene:
‘It would be interesting, sir,’ observed Ash, in a tone that cut across those rolling periods like acid, ‘to know why you should sneer at faithfulness. I had always supposed it to be one of the Christian virtues, but obviously, I was wrong.’
The unexpectedness of the attack took Mr Porson aback, but only momentarily. Recovering himself, he turned to look the interrupter up and down, and then said blandly: ‘Not at all. One was merely endeavouring to illustrate a point: that in this country, all you Anglo-Indians obviously get on admirably with your inferiors and enjoy the company of your betters, but make no effort at all to make friends with your equals.’
‘May one ask, sir,’ inquired Ash with deceptive mildness, ‘how many years you have spent in this country?’
‘Oh, shut up, Pandy!’ muttered an anxious acquaintance, jerking warningly at Ash's coat-sleeve. ‘Stash it!’
Mr Porson, however, remained unruffled, not because he was used to being heckled (the type of audience he was accustomed to lecture to were far too well-bred to interrupt the speaker), but he could recognize a