Page 98 - Life of Gertrude Bell

84 GERTRUDE BELL
must be derived from a fresh revelation, posterior to the time
of Muhammad, since the Muhammadan revelation was
posterior to the Christian.’
‘The Christian revelation was itself one which could not be
supplanted. It was expressly for all times—besides which it
seems to me to be in accord with what is best in human
nature.’
‘Then you are accommodating it to fit in with your views
on human nature ... ’

So the discussion proceeded as the s.s. China ploughed eastward,
Gertrude and her brother hardly pausing for breath. Even the
letters home which would normally have occupied several pages
each day were few and far between. But there was no animosity
as yet, ‘Hugo is the most delightful of travelling companions,’
she told Florence early in December. ‘We spend a lot of time
making plans with maps in front of us. We are chiefly exercised
as to how many of the Pacific Islands we shall visit.’
They arrived in Bombay on December 12th. ‘You can’t think
how charming and amusing and agreeable the Russells have
been,’ she wrote to Florence, adding: ‘Our servant met us at the
quay; he seems a most agreeable party and he’s going to teach us
Hindustani.’ Within a few days she was telling her stepmother:
‘We have become almost unrecognisably Indian, wear pith
helmets —and oh! my Hindustani is remarkably fluent ...We
are addressed as Your Highness.’ They were in Bombay within a
year of the great plague epidemic in that city but life seems to
have returned to normal, though it is unlikely that Gertrude
would have been put out had the disease been rampant. The
Governor, Lord Northcote, she found ‘charming, delightful to
talk to, and she is even more charming’. While her companions
sat in the English club or in their hotels writing letters home and
1 ■
taking cool drinks, Gertrude rushed around the city observing
and describing its buildings and people. Two excited elderly
Parsees grabbed her as they passed and told her that ‘the ceremony
had begun’ and before she cou Id protest she was in a courtyard
witnessing a marriage ceremony.
Gertrude and Hugo went on to Agra and Jaipur and arrived
in Delhi at the end of December, where they were guests of the
Viceroy in his visitors’ camp. ‘Dearest Mother, Where shall I
begin in this tale of our wonderful days?’ They had completed