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descent to wasps, and was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr. Sorley? No, no, this is going too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.

Chapter 5
    THE Bridge Party was not a success—at least it was not what Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested were accustomed to consider a successful party. They arrived early, since it was given in their honour, but most of the Indian guests had arrived even earlier, and stood massed at the farther side of the tennis lawns, doing nothing.
    “It is only just five,” said Mrs. Turton. “My husband will be up from his office in a moment and start the thing. I have no idea what we have to do. It’s the first time we’ve ever given a party like this at the club. Mr. Heaslop, when I’m dead and gone will you give parties like this? It’s enough to make the old type of Burra Sahib turn in his grave.”
    Ronny laughed deferentially. “You wanted something not picturesque and we’ve provided it,” he remarked to Miss Quested. “What do you think of the Aryan Brother in a topi and spats?”
    Neither she nor his mother answered. They were gazing rather sadly over the tennis lawn. No, it was not picturesque; the East, abandoning its secular magnificence, was descending into a valley whose farther side no man can see.
    “The great point to remember is that no one who’s here matters; those who matter don’t come. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Turton?”
    “Absolutely true,” said the great lady, leaning back. She was “saving herself up,” as she called it—not for anything that would happen that afternoon or even that week, but for some vague future occasion when a high official might come along and tax her social strength. Most of her public appearances were marked by this air of reserve.
    Assured of her approbation, Ronny continued: “The educated Indians will be no good to us if there’s a row, it’s simply not worth while conciliating them, that’s why they don’t matter. Most of the people you see are seditious at heart, and the rest ‘Id run squealing. The cultivator—he’s another story. The Pathan—he’s a man if you like. But these people—don’t imagine they’re India.” He pointed to the dusky line beyond the court, and here and there it flashed a pince-nez or shuffled a shoe, as if aware that he was despising it. European costume had lighted like a leprosy. Few had yielded entirely, but none were untouched. There was a silence when he had finished speaking, on both sides of the court; at least, more ladies joined the English group, but their words seemed to die as soon as uttered. Some kites hovered overhead, impartial, over the kites passed the mass of a vulture, and with an impartiality exceeding all, the sky, not deeply coloured but translucent, poured light from its whole circumference. It seemed unlikely that the series stopped here. Beyond the sky must not there be something that overarches all the skies, more impartial even than they? Beyond which again …
    They spoke of
Cousin Kate.
    They had tried to reproduce their own attitude to life upon the stage, and to dress up as the middle-class English people they actually were. Next year they would do
Quality Street
or
The Yeomen of the Guard.
Save for this annual incursion, they left literature alone. The men had no time for it, the women did nothing that they could not share with the men. Their ignorance of the Arts was notable, and they lost no opportunity of proclaiming it to one another; it was the Public School attitude; flourishing more vigorously than it can yet hope to do in England. If Indians were shop, the Arts were bad form, and Ronny had repressed his mother when she enquired after his viola; a viola was almost a demerit, and certainly not the sort of instrument one mentioned in public. She noticed now how tolerant and conventional his judgments had become; when they had seen
Cousin Kate
in London