The Third Student

by schemingreader

Summary:

I was called "inscrutable" by a man who had never smiled at me in an entire year, who sometimes responded to my "Good morning," with a little tip of his patrician head, as though speech was something he'd have to hold in reserve for someone who counted.

Notes:

This is a story I decided to write after reading The Adventure of the Three Students, after I read a really lovely, sexy slash fan fic, The Greek Tutor, about it. I found the canon story disturbing, and wanted to write a fic in the voice of the one character who doesn't speak a word during the story. I had a lot of help from beta readers including Oxford experts naraht and tarteaucitron and her husband, and some help with the ending from rexluscus. Also, thanks to applegnat who took time out of her busy schedule to do an Indian cultural pick. Any remaining errors are my responsibility.

The Third Student

In order for you to understand how I came to join the Indian National Congress, I must first tell you of how I met Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the famous consulting detective, and how I came to study Law.

I was a student at Oxford, reading Greats. I lived on the same stair as my tutor, whom Dr. Watson called Mr. Hilton Soames in his story--for yes, I appeared in a story by the great Dr. Watson. Had he not written it, I should never have known how close I had come to being expelled from the university.

There were three of us living on the staircase of the college quad, and all were preparing to sit the same examination for a substantial scholarship. The money would have been welcome, of course, but for me the question of being the first Indian student to attain the scholarship was paramount. I had ambition, you see. I wanted to be able to choose whether to return to India to teach or whether to attempt to find a teaching position in some other country. Classics, I believed, were the basis of civilisation, and as every country became civilised, a teacher of these fundamental, universal texts would be needed nearly everywhere.

My tutor believed that Greek was my weak subject, having subjected me during Michaelmas and Hilary terms to a reading of Books Three and Four of Herodotus, in which residents of ancient India are represented as eating their parents. Had we been back in Calcutta, the tone of the discussions would have been light and amused, but Mr. Soames was invariably humourless and cold in all our conversation.

People say England is cold, and it is true that I was perpetually chilled, but not from the weather. I liked the weather. It suited the heavy clothing, the subfusc black suit with a white shirt and black gown. I found the snow exotic and the spring, bright with colour--though nothing like the riot of our garden at home. No, the coldest thing at Oxford was the famous English reserve.

Later I learned I might find friends among the other foreign students and among the few British Jews and Irishmen. But the spring of 1895 was a very chilly one for me. The other fellows who shared my staircase never greeted me at all. The beautiful Mr. Gilchrist was busy with his track and field, and the brilliant Mr. McLaren with trying to cope with his sexual awakening. That was how it went, with some students--their depression and guilt overwhelmed them, and they became wild and dissolute. It was not easy, even while studying Catullus, to realize that one was a homosexual--I saw this more than once, from my position of invisibility.

I did not judge men like McLaren. Their position was difficult enough. The college was still in essence Christian, and those men who came to discover they were Uranians (as some were calling it) felt tremendous guilt. I came to believe they could not help it. Your mother would be scandalised by such talk, but between us, now that you're nearly an adult, I must say it, for it is the way of the world. They were cold men, all pretending to be celibate, or merely busy, merely distracted, but it was clear they suffered emotional agonies, and there were many of them at the University.

Certainly Mr. Soames preferred his own sex, or he would never have been as solicitous as he was of Gilchrist. In his interview with Holmes he described Gilchrist as "hardworking and industrious." Say rather, charming and golden-haired and a baronet. Not that Gilchrist was a bad fellow, I should say. Had I been visible to him, had I been white, in short, I feel assured we would have been good friends. He was bluff and heartily polite to nearly everyone.

McLaren, on the other hand, couldn't see anyone, as he seemed determined to drink himself blind. Gilchrist never spoke to him--too much like his father who'd lost the family money, I speculated. So there we were, our little staircase, none speaking to the other.

Though I seemed to be invisible, I was able to see and hear them all. Somehow I thought, through excellence in my studies, I could make them all see me. I would be the exception, I would prove that Indians are worthy. Instead I was called "inscrutable" by a man who had never smiled at me in an entire year, who sometimes responded to my "Good morning," with a little tip of his patrician head, as though speech was something he'd have to hold in reserve for someone who counted.

A quiet, inscrutable fellow, I? How my family would laugh. Wouldn't they? I couldn't write it in a letter, that whole first miserable year, I couldn't admit to them that I had made a mistake in coming here, in my pursuit of pure knowledge, pure high culture. At home I was a joker, at school, the lively wisecracking sort of boy. At Oxford I was freezing, even in the lovely spring weather.

When Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson came up to see me in my rooms with Mr. Soames, I didn't recognise them immediately. They were merely people who interrupted my revising. Yes, even then I paced when I was thinking, just as I do today when I'm thinking about a case. Holmes caught my attention as one of very few Englishmen to address me directly and respectfully, though I could see his companion's gaze slide past me, over and past me, as though it were too difficult for his eyes to rest on my face.

No wonder I looked queer to them, since I'd had no one in my room for the entire academic year.

What was Holmes like? As you know from the stories, he was a misanthrope, but a general one, and his politeness on the one occasion we spoke was remarkable to me, afterward. He was tall and slim, with a long face--well, everyone was taller than I was. Yes, you may stop laughing now.

My first thought in reading Dr. Watson's account 'The Adventure of the Three Students' was that Holmes must also be an invert. How else to explain his treatment of Gilchrist? Was he also so impressed by the blue eyes and yellow hair, the height and the muscular figure, of a son of the nobility? Gilchrist was merely a younger, taller version of Dr. Watson, another fair-haired, blue-eyed man with regular features. If Holmes and Watson were not in love with one another, it was merely from an excess of reserve.

Yes, there were many young women with pale skin as well. Paleness as a standard of beauty will never move me, not after those cold years. Now you know why I have no patience with Aunty when she talks about marrying a girl with a good complexion. I hope I will never be such a hypocrite.

I saw the two men walking away from the college, after Holmes had solved the case--after I understood just who had been in my room! I was excited by my brush with fame. Mr. Holmes was a bit taller, and he inclined his head to listen to Watson. In such a reserved society, that was as good as screaming 'I love you' from the rooftops.

Yes, I did win the scholarship, and I enjoyed a whole term in my scholar's gown before Dr. Watson published his story about the exam. It's a very difficult thing to change course of study at Oxford. Fortunately my parents had always wanted me to read law and didn't mind that I would need an extra term, and what I had done until then did count toward it...

I do think, though, understanding how brilliant Holmes was, that he knew a man who cheated on an examination for a scholarship was just the sort to do well enforcing the rules of empire in Rhodesia. A man who could claim something unearned for himself, based only on his sense of his own superiority--a perfect, golden man to make his fortune in Africa, where people are kind and generous, and black, and therefore invisible.

Oh my dear chap, they're not inscrutable. We're inscrutable, they're savages, don't you know.

No, it wasn't only that one incident that made me want home rule. It was reading law. It was everything that was happening at home. But yes--it began there.