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 ............