A Passage to India E. M. Forster (best ereader manga TXT) 📖

Something that she did not understand took hold of the girl and pulled her through. Though the vision was over, and she had returned to the insipidity of the world, she remembered what she had learnt. Atonement and confession⁠—they could wait. It was in hard prosaic tones that she said, “I withdraw everything.”

“Enough⁠—sit down. Mr. McBryde, do you wish to continue in the face of this?”

The Superintendent gazed at his witness as if she was a broken machine, and said, “Are you mad?”

“Don’t question her, sir; you have no longer the right.”

“Give me time to consider⁠—”

“Sahib, you will have to withdraw; this becomes a scandal,” boomed the Nawab Bahadur suddenly from the back of the court.

“He shall not,” shouted Mrs. Turton against the gathering tumult. “Call the other witnesses; we’re none of us safe⁠—” Ronny tried to check her, and she gave him an irritable blow, then screamed insults at Adela.

The Superintendent moved to the support of his friends, saying nonchalantly to the Magistrate as he did so, “Right, I withdraw.”

Mr. Das rose, nearly dead with the strain. He had controlled the case, just controlled it. He had shown that an Indian can preside. To those who could hear him he said, “The prisoner is released without one stain on his character; the question of costs will be decided elsewhere.”

And then the flimsy framework of the court broke up, the shouts of derision and rage culminated, people screamed and cursed, kissed one another, wept passionately. Here were the English, whom their servants protected, there Aziz fainted in Hamidullah’s arms. Victory on this side, defeat on that⁠—complete for one moment was the antithesis. Then life returned to its complexities, person after person struggled out of the room to their various purposes, and before long no one remained on the scene of the fantasy but the beautiful naked god. Unaware that anything unusual had occurred, he continued to pull the cord of his punkah, to gaze at the empty dais and the overturned special chairs, and rhythmically to agitate the clouds of descending dust.

Miss Quested had renounced her own people. Turning from them, she was drawn into a mass of Indians of the shopkeeping class, and carried by them towards the public exit of the court. The faint, indescribable smell of the bazaars invaded her, sweeter than a London slum, yet more disquieting: a tuft of scented cotton wool, wedged in an old man’s ear, fragments of pan between his black teeth, odorous powders, oils⁠—the Scented East of tradition, but blended with human sweat as if a great king had been entangled in ignominy and could not free himself, or as if the heat of the sun had boiled and fried all the glories of the earth into a single mess. They paid no attention to her. They shook hands over her shoulder, shouted through her body⁠—for when the Indian does ignore his rulers, he becomes genuinely unaware of their existence. Without part in the universe she had created, she was flung against Mr. Fielding.

“What do you want here?”

Knowing him for her enemy, she passed on into the sunlight without speaking.

He called after her, “Where are you going, Miss Quested?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can’t wander about like that. Where’s the car you came in?”

“I shall walk.”

“What madness⁠ ⁠… there’s supposed to be a riot on⁠ ⁠… the police have struck, no one knows what’ll happen next. Why don’t you keep to your own people?”

“Ought I to join them?” she said, without emotion. She felt emptied, valueless; there was no more virtue in her.

“You can’t, it’s too late. How are you to get round to the private entrance now? Come this way with me⁠—quick⁠—I’ll put you into my carriage.”

“Cyril, Cyril, don’t leave me,” called the shattered voice of Aziz.

“I’m coming back.⁠ ⁠… This way, and don’t argue.” He gripped her arm. “Excuse manners, but I don’t know anyone’s position. Send my carriage back any time tomorrow, if you please.”

“But where am I to go in it?”

“Where you like. How should I know your arrangements?”

The victoria was safe in a quiet side lane, but there were no horses, for the sais, not expecting the trial would end so abruptly, had led them away to visit a friend. She got into it obediently. The man could not leave her, for the confusion increased, and spots of it sounded fanatical. The main road through the bazaars was blocked, and the English were gaining the civil station by byways; they were caught like caterpillars, and could have been killed off easily.

“What⁠—what have you been doing?” he cried suddenly. “Playing a game, studying life, or what?”

“Sir, I intend these for you, sir,” interrupted a student, running down the lane with a garland of jasmine on his arm.

“I don’t want the rubbish; get out.”

“Sir, I am a horse, we shall be your horses,” another cried as he lifted the shafts of the victoria into the air.

“Fetch my sais, Rafi; there’s a good chap.”

“No, sir, this is an honour for us.”

Fielding wearied of his students. The more they honoured him the less they obeyed. They lassoed him with jasmine and roses, scratched the splashboard against a wall, and recited a poem, the noise of which filled the lane with a crowd.

“Hurry up, sir; we pull you in a procession.” And, half affectionate, half impudent, they bundled him in.

“I don’t know whether this suits you, but anyhow you’re safe,” he remarked. The carriage jerked into the main bazaar, where it created some sensation. Miss Quested was so loathed in Chandrapore that her recantation was discredited, and the rumour ran that she had been stricken by the Deity in the middle of her lies. But they cheered when they saw her sitting by the heroic Principal (some addressed her as Mrs. Moore!), and they garlanded her to match him. Half gods, half guys, with sausages of flowers round their necks, the pair were dragged in the wake of Aziz’ victorious landau. In the applause that greeted them some derision mingled.