The Weary Generations Read Online Free Page B

‘Frenchwomen are not like Indian ladies, after all.’
    â€˜No, no,’ the Maharajkumar said, appearing thoughtful. ‘They are hardworking women.’
    This induced laughter all round. The secretary handed over the deck of cards, properly arranged. The Maharajkumar started showing the trick to his audience.
    Naim moved on. The huge-headed Englishman, now on his feet, paced up and down in front of his listeners, and, most unlike his race of people, still talked on with much animation. On the first of the Indians’ seats, two men in very large and loose turbans and dhotis, who looked like a higher class of trader, sat discussing the prices of commodities and other matters of the market. Outside the main gate the waiting motor cars and polished behlis with their colourfully decorated horses, just visible from the lawn, had attracted the street people and children, who stood around to view them in fascination. The police that had accompanied the British officers, and the Chief Commissioner’s own guards, were busy shooing them away with threatening curses and lathis raised overhead. But the viewers of this finery, with their customary stubbornness, would shift from one spot to another, refusing to go away. The sky was now completely dark, with only the glimmer of stars scattered far into the warm cloudless night. On a sofa, in the Indians’ area, Ayaz Beg was deep in conversation with Annie Besant, as was a man with very pale skin and dark hair.
    â€˜But, Mr Beg, at this point I disagree with Madame Blavatsky,’Mrs Besant was saying. ‘She contends that beings in the stars are not material but only spirits, and wants to prove their existence by invoking super-naturalism. But the point is that they are indeed material bodies, and can be proved by physical phenomena. The introduction of physical sciences does no harm to theosophy.’
    â€˜I did answer this point in my letter to you last January,’ Ayaz Beg said to her. ‘The time has not yet come that physical sciences may be imposed upon …’
    â€˜There is no question of “imposing”, Mr Beg. The point is …’
    Naim stopped listening. He had heard all this from his uncle often enough and had long ago lost interest in it. He kept looking at Annie Besant, though, whose white hair made a kind of close-knit hat on her head and who had one of the most alluring voices Naim had ever heard. The girl who had left him standing under the tree a short while back wasn’t to be seen anywhere. Suddenly, a sense of melancholy, to which he was given on occasion, seized Naim. He wandered on.
    Nawab Ghulam Mohyyeddin had shifted to another sofa where he was now sitting beside the handsome woman who had earlier been acting as the hostess at the reception point. There were two Englishmen and an Indian by their side; the five of them formed a group of sorts and were listening to the Indian gentleman who had just been handed, by one of the nawab’s servants, a long-barrelled heavy pistol with a wooden handle. The Indian, a man with a nice, intelligent face who was the last one to arrive by motor car and had entered the house leaning heavily on a walking stick, dragging an obviously gammy leg behind him, had been received warmly by several people, including the Chief Commissioner, and was now sitting with his leg, presumably wooden, straight out in front of him, admiring the handgun, handling it in a way that showed his familiarity with guns. Naim overheard Annie Besant behind him saying to her companion, ‘I would like to speak to Mr Gokhle. He looks so weak …’ Shortly afterwards she got up and walked across, Ayaz Beg and another man following her, to where Gokhle was sitting. People sitting over there made room for the three to sit beside Gokhle. Naim followed them at a short distance. As he passed the lame Indian he heard him say, ‘The Germans, they make such wonderful machines. There isn’t a