" I am going home to my own people
(I think I see Peter jigging up and down in expectation before my
trunks); and I am going to you. And the queer thing is, I can't feel
glad, I am so home-sick for India. All my horror of bombs and sudden
death has gone, and memory (as someone says) is making magic carpets
under my feet, so that I am back again in the white, hot sunlight,
under the dusty palm-trees, hearing the creak of the wagons, as the
patient oxen toil on the long straight roads, and the songs of the
coolies returning home at even, I see the country lying vague in the
clammy morning mist, and the great broad Ganges glimmering wanly; and
again it is a wonderful clear night of stars. I know that my own land
is the best land, that the fat babu with his carefully oiled and
parted hair and his too-apparent sock-suspenders can't be mentioned in
the same breath as the Britisher; that our daffodils and primroses
are sweeter far than the heavy-scented blossoms of the East; that the
"brain-fever" bird of India is a wretched substitute for the lark and
the thrush and others of "God's jocund little fowls"; that Abana and
Pharpar and other rivers of Damascus are better than this Jordan--all
this, I say, I know; but to-night I don't believe it.
India has thrown golden dust in my eyes, and I am seeing things all
wrong. We have anchored for the night.... I am watching the misty
green blur, which is all that is left to me of India, grow more and
more indistinct as darkness falls.
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