'Oh, for the sake of something to say.'
'Did you say I too was on board?'
'I did in passing,' he said irritably, for he now realized he had better not have. I was writing that damned epistle, not you, and I had to fill it up. Don't worry?she's forgotten your very existence by this time.'
The other was certain she hadn't. If he had foreseen this meeting and had worked towards it through dreams, why should not an anxious parent have foreseen it too? She had valid reasons for anxiety, for things had actually started on that other boat. A trivial collision between children had alerted them towards each other as men. Thence had their present happiness sprung, thither might it wither, for the children had been disturbed. That vengeful onswishing of skirts . . . ! 'What trick can I think of this time that will keep him from her? I love him, I am clever, I have money. I will try.' The first step was to contrive his exit from the Army. The second step was to dispose of that English girl in India, called Isabel, about whom too little was known. Marriage or virginity or concubinage for Isabel? He had no scruples at perverting Lionel's instincts in order to gratify his own, or at endangering his prospects of paternity. All that mattered was their happiness, and he thought he knew what that was. Much depended on the next few days: he had to work hard and to work with the stars. His mind played round approaching problems,
5. One who speaks or acts to evade the truth.
.
THE OTHER BOAT / 2071
combining them, retreating from them, and aware all the time of a further problem, of something in the beloved which he did not understand. He half- closed his eyes and watched, and listened through half-closed ears. By not being too much on the spot and sacrificing shrewdness to vision he sometimes opened a door. And sure enough Lionel said, 'As a matter of fact the Mater never liked you,' and a door opened, slowly.
'Man, how should she? Oh, when the chalk went from the hand of the sailor round the feet of the lady and she could not move and we all knew it, and oh man how we mocked her.'
'I don't remember?well, I do a little. It begins to come back to me and does sound like the sort of thing that would put her off. She certainly went on about you after we landed, and complained that you made things interesting when they weren't, funny thing to say, still the Mater is pretty funny. So we put our heads together as children sometimes do '
'Do they? Oh yes.'
'?and Olive who's pretty bossy herself decreed we shouldn't mention you again as it seemed to worry her extra and she had just had a lot of worry. He actually?I hadn't meant to tell you this, it's a dead secret.'
'It shall be. I swear. By all that is without me and within me I swear.' He became incomprehensible in his excitement and uttered words in that unknown tongue. Nearly all tongues were unknown to Lionel, and he was impressed.
'Well, he actually '
'Man, of whom do you now speak?'
'Oh yes, the Mater's husband, my Dad. He was in the Army too, in fact he attained the rank of major, but a quite unspeakable thing happened?he went native somewhere out East and got cashiered6?deserted his wife and left her with five young children to bring up, and no money. She was taking us all away from him when you met us and still had a faint hope that he might pull himself together and follow her. Not he. He never even wrote?remember, this is absolutely secret.'
'Yes, yes,' but he thought the secret a very tame one: how else should a middle-aged husband behave? 'But, Lionel, one question to you the more. For whom did the Major desert the Mater?'
'He went native.'
'With a girl or with a boy?'
'A boy? Good God! Well, I mean to say, with a girl, naturally?I mean, it was somewhere right away in the depths of Burma.' 'Even in Burma there are boys. At least I once heard so. But the Dad went native with a girl. Ver' well. Might not therefore there be offspring?'
'If there were, they'd be half-castes.7 Pretty depressing prospect. Well, you know what I mean. My family?Dad's, that's to say?can trace itself back nearly two hundred years, and the Mater's goes back to the War of the Roses. It's really pretty awful, Cocoa.'
The half-caste smiled as the warrior floundered. Indeed he valued him most when he fell full length. And the whole conversation?so unimportant in itself?gave him a sense of approaching victory which he had not so far entertained. He had a feeling that Lionel knew that he was in the net or almost in
6. Dishonorably discharged. 7. Offensive term for people of mixed racial descent.
.
2072 / E. M. FORSTER
it, and did not mind. Cross-question him further! Quick! Rattle him! 'Is Dad dead?' he snapped.
'I couldn't very well come East if he wasn't. He has made our name stink in these parts. As it is I've had to change my name, or rather drop half of it. He called himself Major Corrie March. We were all proud of the 'Corrie' and had reason to be. Try saying 'Corrie March' to the Big Eight here, and watch the effect.'
'You must get two passports, must you not, one with and one without a 'Corrie' on it. I will fix it, yes? At Bombay?' 'So as I can cheat like you? No, thank you. My name is Lionel March and that's my name.' He poured out some more champagne.
'Are you like him?'
'I should hope not. I hope I'm not cruel and remorseless and selfish and self-indulgent and a liar as he was.' 'I don't mean unimportant things like that. I mean are you like him to look at?'
'You have the strangest ideas of what is important.'
