A Passage to India - E. M. Forster [95]
But the little excursion had a good effect on Miss Quested’s nerves. She felt easier now that she had seen all the people who were in the room. It was like knowing the worst. She was sure now that she should come through “all right”—that is to say, without spiritual disgrace, and she passed the good news on to Ronny and Mrs.Turton. They were too much agitated with the defeat to British prestige to be interested. From where she sat, she could see the renegade Mr. Fielding. She had had a better view of him from the platform, and knew that an Indian child perched on his knee. He was watching the proceedings, watching her. When their eyes met, he turned his away, as if direct intercourse was of no interest to him.
The Magistrate was also happier. He had won the battle of the platform, and gained confidence. Intelligent and impartial, he continued to listen to the evidence, and tried to forget that later on he should have to pronounce a verdict in accordance with it. The Superintendent trundled steadily forward: he had expected these outbursts of insolence—they are the natural gestures of an inferior race, and he betrayed no hatred of Aziz, merely an abysmal contempt.
The speech dealt at length with the “prisoner’s dupes,” as they were called—Fielding, the servant Antony, the Nawab Bahadur. This aspect of the case had always seemed dubious to Miss Quested, and she had asked the police not to develop it. But they were playing for a heavy sentence, and wanted to prove that the assault was premeditated. And in order to illustrate the strategy, they produced a plan of the Marabar Hills, showing the route that the party had taken, and the “Tank of the Dagger” where they had camped.
The Magistrate displayed interest in archæology.
An elevation of a specimen cave was produced; it was lettered “Buddhist Cave.”
“Not Buddhist, I think, Jain… .”
“In which cave is the offence alleged, the Buddhist or the Jain?” asked Mahmoud Ali, with the air of unmasking a conspiracy.
“All the Marabar caves are Jain.”
“Yes, sir; then in which Jain cave?”
“You will have an opportunity of putting such questions later.”
Mr. McBryde smiled faintly at their fatuity. Indians invariably collapse over some such point as this. He knew that the defence had some wild hope of establishing an alibi, that they had tried (unsuccessfully) to identify the guide, and that Fielding and Hamidullah had gone out to the Kawa Dol and paced and measured all one moonlit night. “Mr. Lesley says they’re Buddhist, and he ought to know if anyone does. But may I call attention to the shape?” And he described what had occurred there. Then he spoke of Miss Derek’s arrival, of the scramble down the gully, of the return of the two ladies to Chandrapore, and of the document Miss Quested signed on her arrival, in which mention was made of the field glasses. And then came the culminating evidence: the discovery of the field-glasses on the prisoner. “I have nothing to add at present,” he concluded, removing his spectacles. “I will now call my witnesses. The facts will speak for themselves. The prisoner is one of those individuals who have led a double life. I dare say his degeneracy gained upon him gradually. He has been very cunning at concealing, as is usual with the type, and pretending to be a respectable member of society, getting a Government position even. He is now entirely vicious and beyond redemption, I am afraid. He behaved most cruelly, most brutally, to another of his guests, another English lady. In order to get rid of her, and leave him free for his crime, he crushed her into a cave among his servants. However, that is by the way.”
But his last words brought on another storm, and suddenly a new name, Mrs. Moore, burst on the court like a whirlwind. Mahmoud Ali had been enraged, his nerves snapped; he shrieked like a maniac, and asked whether his client was charged with murder as well as rape, and who was this second English lady.
“I don’t propose to call her.”
“You don’t because you can’t, you have smuggled her out of the country;