I am glad to come and make you acquainted with the disposition of the
city.”
The shouts were raised again outside.
“What’s in the air?” Dicky asked.
This was too much for Lala Relu Ram.
“I mean the shouts below--is this another holiday?”
“My people are gravely disturbed. Doctors Kitchlew and Satyapal have
been sent for by the Deputy Commissioner Sahib. It is feared for them
by my people.”
“What have they been doing?”
“In the terms of public speech they have cried out--also against
the Rowlatt Bills, and for the amity of all peoples in Amritsar,
Dr. Kitchlew being a Mohammedan and Dr. Satyapal a Hindu, which is
anomalous.”
Dicky was still unshaven, and there were some notes he wished to put
down.
“I’ll be ready to go out with you in an hour or less,” he said. “Would
you not like to go down and get a line on what is going on?”
The student confessed that he would, but plainly the American idiom
“get a line on” fascinated him. He paused to inquire, and Dicky
explained.
“That is very good,” the student observed. “We are taught that the
language of the future is to be made of most flexible symbols. I will
get a line upon what is in the air and return.”
He was back within a half hour saying that the worst had happened.
Doctors Kitchlew and Satyapal had been arrested under the Defense of
India Act, ordered to write farewell letters to their families, and
been driven out of town, their destination unknown.
“My people are gathering to go to the bungalow of the Deputy
Commissioner with a _faryad_ (petition) that will remonstrate very
firmly,” the Hindu boy said.
“We had better be there, don’t you think, when the doings begin?” Dicky
inquired.
“Doings?”
“When the performance is pulled off.”
“Ah, _tamasha_!”
“I think so,” said Dicky.
They heard the slamming of boarded shop windows in all the native
streets. The word for suspension of trade had gone abroad. The two
pressed through gathering groups all making their way in one direction.
They had passed through a stretch of bazaars and before them now was
a carriage bridge over the railroad right of way. On the bridge, they
were packed tightly in the throng by the railings on either side. In
a moment, the crowd in front halted and surged back. Lala Relu Ram
gripped his arm queerly. Now they heard voices far ahead--angry voices
in English--demanding the people to disperse. The van of the crowd
had been confronted by a police and military piquet, but the pressing
forward did not cease.
“My people are refusing to be stopped. They claim the right to make
their plea,” the student whispered.
Dicky was sinking himself into the purpose of the populace. As ever
from his training, he sought to clear his mind of preconception and
self-interest--so that the events might write upon a clean surface.
Just now a shot was heard; a bullet sang overhead--then a volley. It
was not until that moment that he remembered the dusty twisted ascetic
in the mango grove at Cawnpore. But that was only two days ago, and
where was the wall?
* * * * *
He found himself in the very quick of the Indian people--under the
cuticle of India herself. India the timid, the terrible; India talking
of Soul-force; India running with its _faryad_ to the ranking English
representative of Amritsar; explaining her griefs and her hurts to
herself and to the English, seeing neither the humor of her plight on
one side, nor its grimness on the other; India led about on a string
which she might have broken with the flick of a finger.
That was what India had always seemed most like to Dicky
Cobden--_hathis_, the elephant, gentlest and strongest of creatures.
For many generations she had been banged about by the shouts and blows
of the white _mahout_, who was not in the cult of elephant lore, never
a native of her habitat. He had made her stand around according to
his own ideas--India, the great female elephant, full of tremors and
flutterings; of vast strange delicacies and uncomputable powers.... Now
she was leaving her white _mahout_ to follow about a little black man
with an invisible string.
“_Mahatma Gandhiki jai! Gandhi Maharajiki rai!_”
Dicky heard the voice raised now in the lull that followed the first
volley.... A little black man with an invisible string, called
Soul-force.
One with the crowd, he felt its galvanic jerk of ugliness pass through
himself. The murmur of protest that now arose from the open mouths
was like something from himself--as if his mouth, too, were open with
sound. A bearded native in soiled white garments turned suddenly and
pressed him back. This man had felt a stone under his bare foot and
he was making room to reach down to pick it up. Dicky saw his fingers
stretch toward the muck. He understood. Here was one of the primal
impulses of the human body in a stress of fear and hate. Far ahead,
the English officers roared commands for the natives to go back. The
voices of native leaders standing with the English, also implored the
people to disperse. But the people had their _faryad_. They wanted
talk. Also there were dead and wounded on the earth before the eyes of
the front ranks. Another volley sounded.
Instead of being driven back by the second pelting of shots, the
native crowd crushed its way across the bridge. In the opening on the
other side, it halted, now in the Civil Lines, no longer jammed by the
narrow rails of the bridge. The throng had not yet become insensate; no
individual had seized the office of leadership. This was the instant
of all to Dicky Cobden, the turning point. The native gathering might
still have been reasoned with, as it stood leaderless, looking upon
its own dead; but instead of reason, came the third volley from the
soldiers and police, the prod of the ankus that turned the elephant
_musth_.
The shuddering of revolt that the people felt passed through Richard
Cobden as well--whipped up in his own breast. Then he was carried
forward with the mob. Nothing gentle or yielding about the bodies now,
a rough, bruising, muscular mass pushed from behind by incredible power.
Dicky glanced about to look for Lala Relu Ram, and that instant was
whacked to the ground, a slug from the pistol of one of the troopers,
gouging his left shoulder. He arose to one knee, still turned back, a
laugh on his lips, looking for the student.
And now a most extraordinary shock was meted out to the son of the
trowel makers. A running native with gray, patchy face, completely
carried away by mob impulse, halted, stood above the kneeling white
man, struck him in the face with both hands, emptying his mouth
at the same time. Some of the natives immediately behind, without
questioning but that Dicky was one of the English, now tramped over
his body as they ran. Though fallen, he still preserved a final waver
of consciousness--face down, head covered in his arms. Finally he was
caught by the arm and jerked to the side.
It was Lala Relu Ram who had pulled him out of the crowd and looked
down into a face covered with blood and mud, and a welt or two. The
only white about that face now was the lips which smiled and repeated
a word which the Hindu student had never heard in all his linguistic
studies of the East and West.
XLIII
_HATHIS_ LAMENTS
DICKY really came to back in an apothecary shop on the way to the
Golden Temple, where Lala Relu Ram had carried him. The filth of
that face that had opened upon him as he looked up from his knee--a
shudder about that, something he would never be able to tell. It had
been uglier to take than the blows. As moments dragged on, he fell to
wishing Nagar would come. A curious wonder played incessantly in his
mind about the twisted ascetic under the mango trees in Cawnpore, but
where was the wall? The crystal gazer had repeated that the thing which
was to befall would be within a wall.
“... The bullet didn’t think enough of you to stay, Mr. Cobden,” the
young English surgeon said after examination. “It merely bit out a
chunk of muscle and went its way. Since there is no cavity for it to
drain into, it means nothing but a stitch or two, and a clean bandage.
But you’ve been considerably mashed about the face. There’s going to
be a strain on your drainage system for a few days to carry off dead
tissue.”
He was taken to his room at the Inn, much bandaged, and Lala Relu Ram
sat by his bedside, his face often turned to the open window that
looked out over the street.
“I’m all right--don’t stay,” Dicky urged, as he began to understand the
sacrifice of the student in remaining with him instead of following the
mob.
“Nagarjuna did not say for one hour, or for half of one day, but for
the full day,” Lala Relu Ram declared, “and who knows but that I too
might have disobeyed the orders of Mahatma-ji and become violent?”
Dicky hadn’t much of a grin left, but such as it was, he was free to
let it work under the folds of gauze. He sent the student below on
one pretext after another, knowing that the young man was exhausting
himself from strain to hear all that had happened.
“It is more terrible than we supposed,” the student reported, as the
long day ended. “Enraged by their dead and wounded, and being prevented
from carrying their request to the Deputy Commissioner, my people have
burned buildings, bank buildings--the National, the Chartered, the
Alliance banks----”
“That’s hitting them where they live,” said Mr. Cobden, impelled to
Americanisms as never before.
“Sir?” said Lala Relu Ram, bending forward on the scent of the idiom.
“A Government bank is an English nerve center, Lala Ram,” Dicky said.
The student was thoughtful, and then resumed: “It is with sorrow that I
have to confess that my people have forgotten themselves in the case of
Mr. Stewart and Mr. Scott of the National Bank and Mr. Thomason of the
Alliance Bank----”
“Hurt?” said Dicky.
“Dead,” said the student, with a dramatic pause. “And that is not all.
Miss Sherwood was most brutally assaulted, and outside the city a
railway guard named Robinson, and a havildar in charge of the Electric,
named Rowlands, were beaten to death where they live, and the station
goods yard burnt----”
Dicky’s eyes squinted under the cloths. “And what of your own people?”
he managed to ask.
“Oh, many have been killed!”
This was an item that did not require the enumeration of details.
_Hathis_ had gone _musth_, but not for long. _Hathis_ was horrified
at the awfulness of the thing she had done. _Hathis_ was back in her
pickets again, not realizing her own hurts, anticipating a clubbing on
the toes, and in the immortal way of _hathis_, half suspecting that a
clubbing was deserved.
“I’d like to doze a little,” said Dicky.
The student rose, but lingered.
“Would Cobden Sahib permit me to ask one question?”
“Why, of course, shoot--I mean--ask it.”
“It is about that moment when you fell,” said Lala Relu Ram. “Rather,
it was when I reached you, and had driven off my people who thought you
were one of the English----”
“Yes.”
“You were partly out of the body--unconscious. Yet your eyes were open
and you were speaking some word that I have never heard--several times,
as you would speak the Holy Name in devotion, with breathing.”
“What was that name?” Dicky inquired, pulling the bandage down farther
over his eyes.
“It is not one which I have ever heard in my speech or yours--that is
why I ask. It was like this, ‘Pid-gee--Pid-gee.’”
Dicky laughed.
“That is--the fact is, that’s right curious,” he said. “I must have
been ‘out of the body,’ as you say. That--that is a little expression
we use in childhood!”
* * * * *
As Nagar stood under the light that evening, Dicky saw that his eyes,
too, were burning with strange sorrow. Lala Relu Ram bowed himself out,
walking backward. When they were alone, Nagar came to the bedside,
drawing a chair, and his hand found the American’s.
“We have not done well in Amritsar to-day.”
“I don’t think you understand it quite,” Dicky said. “I was there this
noon, at the place they call the Hallgate Bridge----”
“There was violence,” said Nagar.
“There were three volleys----”
The Oriental smiled. “It is not the provocation that we deal with, but
the losing of oneself in anger. Nothing remains to us but the fact that
Amritsar lost its self-control.”
“You think the Little Man will be unhappy about what has happened, when
he comes?”
“Mahatma-ji was arrested this morning at Kosi, served with an order not
to enter Punjab, nor the district of Delhi, but to confine himself to
the Bombay Presidency.”
Dicky studied his friend. He couldn’t help feeling if Nagar had been at
the Hallgate Bridge---- Finally he spoke:
“I’m just a reporter, Nagar. I’m not granting that Gandhi knows it all
or that the natives to-day are all right, and the English all wrong.
Still, I can’t help wondering at what you ask of your people--as a
reporter would ask, you understand. They turned the other cheek! They
took the first volley and the second. I was there. No man has three
cheeks. I saw it all in that minute between the second and third
firing.”
Nagar’s hand pressed his and Dicky lowered his voice, though his tone
had not been loud.
“Anything might have happened that instant had there been a bit of
leadership,” he added. “The people wanted to talk to their father--the
Deputy. You would have wept for their forbearance, or stupidity, as you
like. Their dead were at their feet, the cries of the wounded in their
ears, and still they weren’t maddened. They only wanted to show their
_faryad_. If there had been the right Englishman on the spot--why, the
crowd would have been allowed to go forward with its document. I’ve
an idea that it was something dangerously like funk that caused that
third volley, and that nobody will ever be so sorry for what happened
to-day, as England herself. I call it human the way your people lost
their heads.”
“Mahatma-ji’s ideal isn’t human, Richard. It is of the Soul. We shall
suffer and India shall suffer--for to-day.”
“I’ve got a lot to learn about this man’s India. I can see that,” the
American said queerly.
XLIV
THE SLATE AND THE SPONGE
PIDGE was choosing a serial for _The Public Square_. The choice lay
now between two manuscripts on the desk before her eyes. One was by a
maker of the “new” American literature, named Carver, who had dared to
perform the work in one sustained, slow movement, bound to ward off
excessive popularity, a thing of drabs and tans and grays, but earnest,
even in its hopelessness. It consistently portrayed a cross section
of life, a fine piece of human observation, but altogether unlit with
intuition.
The other book was a novel of New York, by a woman whose name was
entirely unheard of. This manuscript had been refused several times
as a serial in the past year, and several times as a book prospect.
The letters of refusal from the different editors were also on Pidge
Musser’s desk. One said, “This book is too much of a gamble for an
unknown name.” The united opinion of all professional readers was that
this story was unquestionably an augur for the future of the novelist,
rather than a compelling announcement of her arrival.
In her own heart, Pidge believed that the woman’s story would interest
more readers than Carver’s. Also, _The Public Square_ would be saved
considerable money in taking the woman’s story, for Carver stood out
for rather a high price for his first American serial rights.
“It isn’t the freedom of ignorance,” she said at last, about the
lower-priced book, “but it isn’t the freedom of knowledge, either. ‘A
man is crippled while he’s learning technic.’... No, I can’t take the
chance!”
So the novel by the unknown woman went back to Harrow Street with its
refusals, and found a resting place in the drawer under the mirror that
waved; and only Miss Claes and the author, herself, knew who was hurt.
* * * * *
Mr. Adolph Musser, in New York with his daughter, began to have
callers. The two small upper rooms in Harrow Street were not adapted
for callers, even in the adaptable Village. Especially this was so
because an adopted male child of one year was rooted and ramifying in
the place. One of the ramifications was a female lodger and one-time
nurse who looked after the child while Pidge was away at the office.
Mr. Musser, during his first week in New York, before he found an
apartment in the Sixties, had pronounced this woman too heavy-footed to
live with.
Though Pidge had received an important increase of salary, dating
from the first of this year of 1919, she did not find herself in a
greatly improved condition when the additional expenses of nurse and
her father’s separate maintenance were considered. However, something
happened which she had not foreseen. Mr. Adolph Musser became rapidly
self-supporting. According to his predictions, New York proved to be
suffering from a “biological hunger and thirst” for his very sort of
metaphysic. Los Angeles had been sated. One had merely to move from
temple to temple in Los Angeles. Cultists of all colors were there;
light-bringers from all lands. Mr. Musser, according to predictions,
found New York a virgin oil field and he was not long in getting his
derricks up.
Late in May there was a letter from Richard Cobden, mailed at Bombay
in early April. Though it was written to Pidge personally she saw in
it Dicky’s first real work, his first actual grasp and retention of
essentials, to her idea. It opened to her, also, the lineaments of the
Big Story they had talked so much about. She read the letter through
twice on the day it arrived, and that night took it home to read to
Miss Claes, who came to the upper room in the latter part of the
evening, as she had come to hear _The Lance of the Rivernais_, over
five years ago. Their faces were close together, and Pidge read low and
rapidly:
I have been with Gandhi several times in the past three days, and
early to-morrow I start north for Amritsar to join Nagar. I hadn’t
thought of writing this until just now, on my way to bed, and the
subject of the Little Man suddenly filled me. I feel an unadulterated
American to-night, and there may be an advantage, at least an angle,
in a study of Gandhi from that point.... He is very ill, can scarcely
stand, but more than ever full of his kind of light and power. In
the last three days with him, I have come to understand _you_ as
never before--and America and the American soldier. I have found
out, Pidge, what you mean by stating and living the fact, that it
isn’t how much one knows that counts, but how much one does. Gandhi
is a doer. I used to hear in church something about the Spirit being
made flesh, and now I’ve got an inkling of what that means. Gandhi’s
genius doesn’t dream. _It does._ The sun shines on all India, but
Gandhi has become a lens. The rays focalize through him. The ground
burns under his feet.... He is called a bigot, a fanatic, a living
Blue Law, and it is all true, Pidge. He is drawn in black and white.
He has no half-tones, no twilights, no afterglows. He is devoid of
atmosphere as the moon. His lines of light and shadow are never blent
or diffused. He is vivid noon where his light strikes, densest night
where light ends.... It is not that he loathes the West, but that he
knows the East. He has become a specialist, as Nagar says repeatedly.
He has withdrawn his attention from the world to India, Herself. He
has brought in his eyes from the future, to the Now. He sees the next
step which India must take, and leaves to the dreamers of the world
to point out the glories and the penalties. He stands in the road in
front of India to-day, like a man before a runaway horse----
Dicky had ended the letter suddenly, saying he was sleepy, but had more
to say later. The two women talked low, because of _another_ in the
room. This other was not to be disturbed. They stood over him now. He
would not have approved at all of their gayety and know-it-all manner,
had he been awake. His lids were down, however; the black curving
lashes reposed in their hollows; the world, which was the big horse he
must some time ride, was away minding its own business.
“I’m glad to hear this much before I go----” Miss Claes stopped and
took both of Pidge’s hands.
“Before you go--where?”
“This little slate of Harrow Street is all written over. It is to be
rubbed out now, Pidge. My part is finished here--I don’t know how well,
but it’s finished. I am leaving New York.”
“Why, that--that seems--insupportable!... Why, I thought anything could
happen but that--to my New York!”
“Only you are to know, dear,” Miss Claes said moments afterward. “Yes,
it is India----”
“To Nagar--you are to be with him--the Hills!”
“Don’t, Pidge. It isn’t for words----”
“Forgive me----”
“These are terrible days for India. It means work--work--tests for
every one’s courage. Little Harrow Street is still and steady,
compared.... But this is dear to me--the thought that I go ahead to
make ready for you another place to come----”
“My upper room,” said Pidge softly. “My upper room.”
XLV
AMRITSAR, APRIL 13, 1919
TOWARD the end of the afternoon of Sunday, the 13th, Richard Cobden
ordered a carriage. He was still bandaged about the head, his left arm
in a sling. This was his first descent from the room since his hurts
on the 10th, and meanwhile General Fyatt had taken control of the
city, bringing in troops from nearby stations. Dicky had met Fyatt in
France, and was on his way now to pay his respects to the General at
his Headquarters in the Ram Bagh. He was getting it very clearly just
now that if it were observed that he had any sort of affiliation with
the natives, he would promptly be placed out of reach of all Punjabi
events, even as a spectator.
The American was personally and intensely interested in Nagar and
Gandhi, but still he did not feel that he had taken sides in the least.
He looked upon Gandhi’s work as visionary, and the work of the British
in India as substantial, and the more likely to endure. He had seen
Nagar but a moment or two each day since the 10th, and had kept in
touch with developments through the English sources.
The air was still furiously hot, though it was after four in the
afternoon. The streets were crowded, this being the day of the
_Baisaki_ fair, and thousands were in from the country. Dicky heard
the roar of a ’plane over the city, and craned out of the window of
his half-closed carriage for a glance at its flight. The pilot was
making circles over a point at a little distance ahead--a low peculiar
hovering.
Dicky inquired of his driver the meaning, and was told that the
’plane appeared to be hanging over the great crowd assembled in the
Jallianwalla Bagh--that thousands of the visitors attending the fair
were there, listening to the speakers, as well as many townsfolk.
“But didn’t the General give orders for no public assemblies?”
The driver had not heard. Dicky reflected that the ’plane didn’t appear
to be there for the amusement of a crowd--no circus ’plane, but an
effective bit of government property, rather, with an air of business.
It rose now and vanished over the city.
The carriage continued on the way to the Ram Bagh, until it was halted
for the passage of troops in the street. A half-hundred Gurkhas and
Baluchees, two motor cars with English officers and civilians, the
whole outfit trailed by a pair of armored cars, and moving in the
direction where the government ’plane had hovered.
“Where are they going?” Dicky asked of his driver.
The man was not sure, but suggested the Jallianwalla Bagh.
“What is that place?”
“It is a _maidan_,” the man said, “a big open square, a public place.”
“Public square,” Dicky muttered. “Turn in short after the armored
cars,” he commanded the driver. “Follow close.”
“Ram Bagh is not so.”
It is a difficult proceeding, requiring formalities, to alter one’s
orders in Asia.
“Listen. I am changing my purpose. Not Ram Bagh, but Jallianwalla. Turn
in after the soldiers--now!”
The driver obeyed, but was hurt and murmuring.