Free A Passage to India by E. M. Forster Page B

Bahadur. But where is one to meet in a wretched hole like Chandrapore?” He came close up to the door. “When I was greener here, I’ll tell you what. I used to wish you to fall ill so that we could meet that way.” They laughed, and encouraged by his success he began to improvise. “I said to myself, How does Mr. Fielding look this morning? Perhaps pale. And the Civil Surgeon is pale too, he will not be able to attend upon him when the shivering commences. I should have been sent for instead. Then we would have had jolly talks, for you are a celebrated student of Persian poetry.”
    “You know me by sight, then.”
    “Of course, of course. You know me?”
    “I know you very well by name.”
    “I have been here such a short time, and always in the bazaar. No wonder you have never seen me, and I wonder you know my name. I say, Mr. Fielding?”
    “Yes?”
    “Guess what I look like before you come out. That will be a kind of game.”
    “You’re five feet nine inches high,” said Fielding, surmising this much through the ground glass of the bedroom door.
    “Jolly good. What next? Have I not a venerable white beard?”
    “Blast!”
    “Anything wrong?”
    “I’ve stamped on my last collar stud.”
    “Take mine, take mine.”
    “Have you a spare one?”
    “Yes, yes, one minute.”
    “Not if you’re wearing it yourself.”
    “No, no, one in my pocket.” Stepping aside, so that his outline might vanish, he wrenched off his collar, and pulled out of his shirt the back stud, a gold stud, which was part of a set that his brother-inlaw had brought him from Europe. “Here it is,” he cried.
    “Come in with it if you don’t mind the unconventionality.”
    “One minute again.” Replacing his collar, he prayed that it would not spring up at the back during tea. Fielding’s bearer, who was helping him to dress, opened the door for him.
    “Many thanks.” They shook hands smiling. He began to look round, as he would have with any old friend. Fielding was not surprised at the rapidity of their intimacy. With so emotional a people it was apt to come at once or never, and he and Aziz, having heard only good of each other, could afford to dispense with preliminaries.
    “But I always thought that Englishmen kept their rooms so tidy. It seems that this is not so. I need not be so ashamed.” He sat down gaily on the bed; then, forgetting himself entirely, drew up his legs and folded them under him. “Everything ranged coldly on shelves was what
I
thought—I say, Mr. Fielding, is the stud going to go in?”
    “I hae ma doots.”
    “What’s that last sentence, please? Will you teach me some new words and so improve my English?”
    Fielding doubted whether “everything ranged coldly on shelves” could be improved. He was often struck with the liveliness with which the younger generation handled a foreign tongue. They altered the idiom, but they could say whatever they wanted to say quickly; there were none of the babuisms ascribed to them up at the club. But then the club moved slowly; it still declared that few Mohammedans and no Hindus would eat at an Englishman’s table, and that all Indian ladies were in impenetrable purdah. Individually it knew better; as a club it declined to change.
    “Let me put in your stud. I see … the shirt back’s hole is rather small and to rip it wider a pity.”
    “Why in hell does one wear collars at all?” grumbled Fielding as he bent his neck.
    “We wear them to pass the Police.”
    “What’s that?”
    “If I’m biking in English dress—starch collar, hat with ditch—they take no notice. When I wear a fez, they cry, ‘Your lamp’s out!’ Lord Curzon did not consider this when he urged natives of India to retain their picturesque costumes—Hooray! Stud’s gone in—Sometimes I shut my eyes and dream I have splendid clothes again and am riding into battle behind Alamgir. Mr. Fielding, must not India have been beautiful then, with the Mogul Empire at its height