A passage to India
“He’s sure to refuse, it’s all he exists for,” said the other
desperately.
The expected answer came back: the Major would not hear of the
patient being troubled.
“I only wanted to ask her whether she is certain, dead certain,
that it was Aziz who followed her into the cave.”
“Possibly my wife might ask her that much.”
“But _I_ wanted to ask her. I want someone who believes in him to
ask her.”
“What difference does that make?”
“She is among people who disbelieve in Indians.”
“Well, she tells her own story, doesn’t she?”
“I know, but she tells it to you.”
McBryde raised his eyebrows, murmuring: “A bit too finespun.
Anyhow, Callendar won’t hear of you seeing her. I’m sorry to say
he gave a bad account just now. He says that she is by no means
out of danger.”
They were silent. Another card was brought into the
office—Hamidullah’s. The opposite army was gathering.
“I must put this report through now, Fielding.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“How can I not?”
“I feel that things are rather unsatisfactory as well as most
disastrous. We are heading for a most awful smash. I can see your
prisoner, I suppose.”
He hesitated. “His own people seem in touch with him all right.”
“Well, when he’s done with them.”
“I wouldn’t keep you waiting; good heavens, you take precedence of
any Indian visitor, of course. I meant what’s the good. Why mix
yourself up with pitch?”
“I say he’s innocent——”
“Innocence or guilt, why mix yourself up? What’s the good?”
“Oh, good, good,” he cried, feeling that every earth was being
stopped. “One’s got to breathe occasionally, at least I have. I
mayn’t see her, and now I mayn’t see him. I promised him to come
up here with him to you, but Turton called me off before I could
get two steps.”
“Sort of all-white thing the Burra Sahib would do,” he muttered
sentimentally. And trying not to sound patronizing, he stretched
his hand over the table, and said: “We shall all have to hang
together, old man, I’m afraid. I’m your junior in years, I know,
but very much your senior in service; you don’t happen to know this
poisonous country as well as I do, and you must take it from me
that the general situation is going to be nasty at Chandrapore
during the next few weeks, very nasty indeed.”
“So I have just told you.”
“But at a time like this there’s no room for—well—personal views.
The man who doesn’t toe the line is lost.”
“I see what you mean.”
“No, you don’t see entirely. He not only loses himself, he weakens
his friends. If you leave the line, you leave a gap in the line.
These jackals”—he pointed at the lawyers’ cards—“are looking with
all their eyes for a gap.”
“Can I visit Aziz?” was his answer.
“No.” Now that he knew of Turton’s attitude, the policeman had no
doubts. “You may see him on a magistrate’s order, but on my own
responsibility I don’t feel justified. It might lead to more
complications.”
He paused, reflecting that if he had been either ten years younger
or ten years longer in India, he would have responded to McBryde’s
appeal. The bit between his teeth, he then said, “To whom do I
apply for an order?”
“City Magistrate.”
“That sounds comfortable!”
“Yes, one can’t very well worry poor Heaslop.”
More “evidence” appeared at this moment—the table-drawer from Aziz’
bungalow, borne with triumph in a corporal’s arms.
“Photographs of women. Ah!”
“That’s his wife,” said Fielding, wincing.
“How do you know that?”
“He told me.”
McBryde gave a faint, incredulous smile, and started rummaging in
the drawer. His face became inquisitive and slightly bestial. “Wife
indeed, I know those wives!” he was thinking. Aloud he said: “Well,
you must trot off now, old man, and the Lord help us, the Lord help
us all. . .”
As if his prayer had been heard, there was a sudden rackety-dacket
on a temple bell.
CHAPTER XIX
Hamidullah was the next stage. He was waiting outside the
Superintendent’s office, and sprang up respectfully when he saw
Fielding. To the Englishman’s passionate “It’s all a mistake,” he
answered, “Ah, ah, has some evidence come?”
“It will come,” said Fielding, holding his hand.
“Ah, yes, Mr. Fielding; but when once an Indian has been arrested,
we do not know where it will stop.” His manner was deferential.
“You are very good to greet me in this public fashion, I appreciate
it; but, Mr. Fielding, nothing convinces a magistrate except
evidence. Did Mr. McBryde make any remark when my card came in? Do
you think my application annoyed him, will prejudice him against
my friend at all? If so, I will gladly retire.”
“He’s not annoyed, and if he was, what does it matter?”
“Ah, it’s all very well for you to speak like that, but we have to
live in this country.”
The leading barrister of Chandrapore, with the dignified manner
and Cambridge degree, had been rattled. He too loved Aziz, and knew
he was calumniated; but faith did not rule his heart, and he prated
of “policy” and “evidence” in a way that saddened the Englishman.
Fielding, too, had his anxieties—he didn’t like the field-glasses
or the discrepancy over the guide—but he relegated them to the edge
of his mind, and forbade them to infect its core. Aziz _was_
innocent, and all action must be based on that, and the people who
said he was guilty were wrong, and it was hopeless to try to
propitiate them. At the moment when he was throwing in his lot with
Indians, he realized the profundity of the gulf that divided him
from them. They always do something disappointing. Aziz had tried
to run away from the police, Mohammed Latif had not checked the
pilfering. And now Hamidullah!—instead of raging and denouncing,
he temporized. Are Indians cowards? No, but they are bad starters
and occasionally jib. Fear is everywhere; the British Raj rests on
it; the respect and courtesy Fielding himself enjoyed were
unconscious acts of propitiation. He told Hamidullah to cheer up,
all would end well; and Hamidullah did cheer up, and became
pugnacious and sensible. McBryde’s remark, “If you leave the line,
you leave a gap in the line,” was being illustrated.
“First and foremost, the question of bail . . .”
Application must be made this afternoon. Fielding wanted to stand
surety. Hamidullah thought the Nawab Bahadur should be approached.
“Why drag in him, though?”
To drag in everyone was precisely the barrister’s aim. He then
suggested that the lawyer in charge of the case would be a Hindu;
the defence would then make a wider appeal. He mentioned one or
two names—men from a distance who would not be intimidated by local
conditions—and said he should prefer Amritrao, a Calcutta barrister,
who had a high reputation professionally and personally, but who
was notoriously anti-British.
Fielding demurred; this seemed to him going to the other extreme.
Aziz must be cleared, but with a minimum of racial hatred. Amritrao
was loathed at the club. His retention would be regarded as a
political challenge.
“Oh no, we must hit with all our strength. When I saw my friend’s
private papers carried in just now in the arms of a dirty policeman,
I said to myself, ‘Amritrao is the man to clear up this.’”
There was a lugubrious pause. The temple bell continued to jangle
harshly. The interminable and disastrous day had scarcely reached
its afternoon. Continuing their work, the wheels of Dominion now
propelled a messenger on a horse from the Superintendent to the
Magistrate with an official report of arrest. “Don’t complicate,
let the cards play themselves,” entreated Fielding, as he watched
the man disappear into dust. “We’re bound to win, there’s nothing
else we can do. She will never be able to substantiate the charge.”
This comforted Hamidullah, who remarked with complete sincerity,
“At a crisis, the English are really unequalled.”
“Good-bye, then, my dear Hamidullah (we must drop the ‘Mr.’ now).
Give Aziz my love when you see him, and tell him to keep calm,
calm, calm. I shall go back to the College now. If you want me,
ring me up; if you don’t, don’t, for I shall be very busy.”
“Good-bye, my dear Fielding, and you actually are on our side
against your own people?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
He regretted taking sides. To slink through India unlabelled was
his aim. Henceforward he would be called “anti-British,”
“seditious”—terms that bored him, and diminished his utility. He
foresaw that besides being a tragedy, there would be a muddle;
already he saw several tiresome little knots, and each time his
eye returned to them, they were larger. Born in freedom, he was
not afraid of muddle, but he recognized its existence.
This section of the day concluded in a queer vague talk with
Professor Godbole. The interminable affair of the Russell’s Viper
was again in question. Some weeks before, one of the masters at
the College, an unpopular Parsi, had found a Russell’s Viper nosing
round his class-room. Perhaps it had crawled in of itself, but
perhaps it had not, and the staff still continued to interview
their Principal about it, and to take up his time with their
theories. The reptile is so poisonous that he did not like to cut
them short, and this they knew. Thus when his mind was bursting
with other troubles and he was debating whether he should compose
a letter of appeal to Miss Quested, he was obliged to listen to a
speech which lacked both basis and conclusion, and floated through
air. At the end of it Godbole said, “May I now take my leave?”—always
an indication that he had not come to his point yet. “Now I take
my leave, I must tell you how glad I am to hear that after all you
succeeded in reaching the Marabar. I feared my unpunctuality had
prevented you, but you went (a far pleasanter method) in Miss
Derek’s car. I hope the expedition was a successful one.”
“The news has not reached you yet, I can see.”
“Oh yes.”
“No; there has been a terrible catastrophe about Aziz.”
“Oh yes. That is all round the College.”
“Well, the expedition where that occurs can scarcely be called a
successful one,” said Fielding, with an amazed stare.
“I cannot say. I was not present.”
He stared again—a most useless operation, for no eye could see what
lay at the bottom of the Brahman’s mind, and yet he had a mind and
a heart too, and all his friends trusted him, without knowing why.
“I am most frightfully cut up,” he said.
“So I saw at once on entering your office. I must not detain you,
but I have a small private difficulty on which I want your help;
I am leaving your service shortly, as you know.”
“Yes, alas!”
“And am returning to my birthplace in Central India to take charge
of education there. I want to start a High School there on sound
English lines, that shall be as like Government College as
possible.”
“Well?” he sighed, trying to take an interest.
“At present there is only vernacular education at Mau. I shall feel
it my duty to change all that. I shall advise His Highness to
sanction at least a High School in the Capital, and if possible
another in each pargana.”
Fielding sunk his head on his arms; really, Indians were sometimes
unbearable.
“The point—the point on which I desire your help is this: what name
should be given to the school?”
“A name? A name for a school?” he said, feeling sickish suddenly,
as he had done in the waiting-room.
“Yes, a name, a suitable title, by which it can be called, by which
it may be generally known.”
“Really—I have no names for schools in my head. I can think of
nothing but our poor Aziz. Have you grasped that at the present
moment he is in prison?”
“Oh yes. Oh no, I do not expect an answer to my question now. I
only meant that when you are at leisure, you might think the matter
over, and suggest two or three alternative titles for schools. I