forgets himself, Nagar, you can be sure a big show is being pulled
off.... I’ve smoked too much, talked too much. I am going to lie down
for a little--until breakfast.... Bed! Think of having a bed, in
Amritsar. A bed with sheets.... Out there so many were lying on the
ground. Oh, I say, Nagar, where will they put them all?”
The Hindu’s cool, slim fingers reached over and touched his hand. He
didn’t speak, just kept his hand still, and Dicky found it easier to
stop talking, because of that hand; easier to endure the furious forces
of activity in his brain. Finally Nagar spoke:
“I had to stay with the students. They wanted to go to the _maidan_.
That would not have been well, but it was well for you to be there--to
forget yourself there through the hours. It will come forth from you
for years--not as the voice of an American, but as a citizen of the
world. You have prepared long; last night India found you prepared, and
dared to show you something of herself. Miss Claes would be very glad
to be here with us this morning.”
Dicky’s mind fumbled with the idea that he had not only come closer
into the Indian heart, but into Nagar’s as well.
“You might sleep a little until breakfast. I shall not leave you
until after that. You are very tired and spent, but you will not be
injured from last night. When a man forgets himself, as you say, he is
strangely replenished.”
But Dicky did not sleep. They breakfasted early and Nagar arose, saying:
“... In the days that you remain in Amritsar finishing your work (for
last night will mean more and more to you as the days go on) you and I
shall not be much together. What you see in Amritsar--you must watch
without feeling or partisanship. One cannot tell--you may see strange
things. Remember, always remember, that you are American; that as an
American you have no enemies, and belong to the world. In the fusion of
all Europe, which America is, to form a new type of nobility, remember
that no country has furnished a nobler ingredient--than England. And
forgive my many words, Richard, if I ask you to remember this also:
that anything which might happen to me here in Amritsar in the days you
remain, must never make you forget that you have a message to carry to
America.”
“I don’t understand, Nagar.”
“It is difficult to say. I can only repeat: Anything which might happen
to me in this city must not arouse in you a personal or partisan
effort to help me. We must be strangers--unless I come to you alone.
The English are beside themselves; they know not what they do. You
must have no feelings about me--to betray you. Go further into the
English. Forget me--except as a part of your own source of kindness and
strength.”
Nagar was gone. As Dicky conned all this, he began to wonder if he
would see his friend again. All the days before this in Amritsar, he
had been waiting for things to get quiet so that he and Nagar might
really begin to get together.... “India’s messenger,” he muttered, as
he fell asleep.
XLIX
PIDGE TRIES GRAMERCY PARK
THE second part of Dicky Cobden’s letter about Gandhi written after his
three interviews in Bombay, reached Pidge fully a fortnight after the
first. Of course, it interested her, as it could no one else.
... From several angles I placed before Mahatma-ji, the concept of
dreamers of all countries--the dream of the mating of the East and
West, that the New Race is to be born of this mating; that globe
means globe, and a world citizen must belong to all; that as Goethe
says, “above the nations is Humanity.” This thing, you understand,
has attracted me merely as a concept, not with the dreamer’s fire at
all. Short work Gandhi made of the mating of the East and West. The
damsel, New India, is not ready for marriage. She is not clean. She
has not found herself, therefore has not herself to give. (These are
not his words, but the idea.) She must become free, before she has
anything to bestow. She is just a perfumed body, which the West has
already desecrated and begun to despise--merely an offering now, not
a wife. What Gandhi arrays himself against to-day is the fact that
India has already fallen under the lure of the West. She has felt the
fascination of his big toys, the glamour of his mighty works. The
Little Man has made me see that a woman who “falls for” a man, can
never become the man-maker which a wife must be, maker of her husband
as well as child. Queer, how it came to me that way first, before
I saw the man’s side of it--the great thing you have done, pushing
me back, forever pushing me back into myself, until that day when I
shall be able to _stand_, not “fall for” you. I am learning--learning
so slowly what I bargained for that night at the Punjabi Fireplace.
“... Go back into your house!” Gandhi cries to India. (Not his words,
you know; merely my picture of him.) “Fast and pray. That is safe.
Fast and pray and spin! Pray to the hum of the _charka_. Forget your
lover. Find yourself. You are the East, the inner. Already you have
been lured by his brutal boyish games. You have flattered him, but
already he despises you. What does he bring now, but a bloody carcass
to your hearth, saying, ‘Arise. Gut and skin.’”... Mahatma-ji is on
the ground. Now, To-day, seeing but one step--the next step--crying,
“Go Back!” This is the most extraordinary part to me, that his very
limitations appear to be in use!
In early July, Pidge made her first move since coming to New York. The
spirit had gone out of the house in Harrow Street for her, with Miss
Claes’ departure. She sent the boy-baby up into the country and took a
room at the _Sennacherib_ in Gramercy Park, a step of which Rufe Melton
strongly approved:
“You were getting stale down there, Pan,” he said, one night when he
came to dine. “The Village is all right for a novelty, but real New
York hasn’t time for that sort of thing. I see you’re running Carver’s
novel in the _P. S._ What did you get in on that for? Did he give it to
you?”
“Rather not. It cost real money.”
“A hang-over from John Higgins’ desk?”
“No, we took it after--after----”
“Carver could never have slipped that over on you, Pan,” he broke in,
“if you had lived uptown. But no, you never would listen to me, that a
thing isn’t great because it’s nasty----”
“You think it isn’t a successful serial?”
“Not a chance----”
There was truth in what he said. The new novel was rapidly unreeling in
generous installments, without much gratifying noise from the readers.
Rufe confided that he was doing a long story, and that Redge Walters
was very much interested in it as a serial prospect.
“What’s it on?” she asked.
“Business,” said Rufe. “Shipping--grain--iron--packing-houses.
Everybody’s panting for business since the War.”
“Sounds American.”
“Epic of the Great Lakes, Pan. Never knew what I was about, till
now----”
She was thinking of Amritsar--of the first Amritsar mail recently in
from Richard Cobden, posted at Pondicherry, French India--of _hathis_
and her new _mahout_--of British bulletins, native documents, and
Dicky’s own straight story of April 10th and 13th. It had been
difficult for Pidge not to become too excited by all this. For the
first time Dicky’s work had carried her off her feet. That had been
days ago, and she had not altogether trusted her fiercely fresh
enthusiasm, but it didn’t subside, and at the present minute, the epic
of the Great Lakes sounded to her like a forlorn side show. Moreover,
Dicky’s Amritsar story, about to be printed in _The Public Square_,
took away most of the disappointment in that Carver’s novel hadn’t
proved a powerful stimulus to circulation.
“Its capital is Chicago,” Rufe further divulged about his book. “Funny
how you have to get away from there to see that big town. All the years
I lived in Chi--never got next to her, as I have since I came to New
York.... Yes, it’s booming along. Haven’t been really right until just
now, since I was gassed.”
“I’m glad, Rufe.”
“It’s got a _mahatma_ in it,” Rufe chuckled.
“A what?”
“What’s the matter with you, Pan?”
“That word--from you!”
“You look as if you’d seen the Dweller----”
“The what, Rufe?”
He chuckled again. “Didn’t know I’ve been going in for the occult, did
you? Say Pan, there’s one fine thing about you. I never feel as if you
could be disappointed in your Rufie.”
“Why is that?” She was entirely off his trend.
“You haven’t started to expect anything of me.... Oh, yes, had to have
a _mahatma_ in the story. It’s the new thing. Everybody’s got one
since the War. Not enough to go round.... This _mahatma_ of mine in Chi
is wise to the stock exchange. It’s his tip, you know, that the whole
tale turns on. Reader never thinks of it--until it’s pulled.”
“Where did you get your model?”
He laughed again. “Right in the family, Pan. Been going to hear
Adolphus. Say, you never did appreciate your father. Bad habit of
yours, Pan, honest to God--to lose respect for a man just because you
live with him.”
Pidge was in a whirl. Her hands dropped down to the seat of her chair
on either side and gripped hard. The world looked about as big to her
as Delaware; Amritsar and New York signaling to each other.
“Heard him this afternoon--in the ballroom of the _Pershing_--swell
crowd out,” Rufe pursued. “Talked on Lytton’s _Zanoni_. I’m going
to read that book. And didn’t Adolph put it over to the damsels and
dowagers! Just what I need for my white _mahatma_. Where does the old
man get all that? It’s a wonder you haven’t gotten in on your father’s
stuff, Pan.”
She wanted Miss Claes as never before. This was too much for one small
person to hold. When she really listened again, Rufe was asking to go
upstairs with her to see her room.
“It’s just a common room. What’s the use?”
“Little afraid to see me alone, eh, Pan?”
“Not afraid--only what’s the use?”
“You might see it different----”
“I might have once, Rufe----”
“Say, Pan----”
“Yes?”
“Does Mrs. Melton want to be free?”
Her hands dropped to the seat of her chair again. She saw the new want
in his eyes and something else--the old captive thing.
There were two possible answers to his question, and it took every
minute of her twenty-five years, and all that had gone before, to
choose. This is what she said:
“Mrs. Melton will never be free!”
“What--what do you mean?”
“Ask your _mahatma_, Rufe.”
L
DICKY’S IDEA WORKS
PIDGE felt the hugeness of life around her at last. Doors were being
opened as never before. She saw as clearly as if Rufe Melton had
confessed to her, that it was he who wanted to be free. She could
grant this well enough; having been forced to it, in effect, from the
beginning. He would doubtless come again soon, making it plain that he
wanted her to agree to divorce. The point was that certain barriers and
limitations in her own life were suddenly lifted. It was as if she had
emerged from a city, to the shore of the sea, and before her eyes was
an unbroken horizon line.
The abrupt extension frightened her. The story of Amritsar now
unfolding for her from the Indian mail--in its hatelessness, in its
devotion to truth and unsentimental love for the people--unveiled for
her eyes a _man_--not Gandhi, not Nagar, but Richard Cobden, himself.
The few sentences he had inserted in his letter about Gandhi, “--the
great thing you have done, pushing me back, forever pushing me back
into myself, until the day when I shall be able to _stand_, not fall
for you!”--in these words there was for Pidge an invincible call.
She had searched the language for another expression to convey
what that little slangy verb “to fall for” meant. It was one of her
treasures. When one “fell for” a person or thing--one couldn’t stand
for the same. One was captive, not co-worker. Here was the difference
between infatuation and romance. Dicky had found it out. There was
expressed in his letter more than she had dreamed as possible; and this
time words thrilled her furiously, because she believed they had become
working knowledge, before it had occurred to him to express the idea.
She saw this knowledge working out in his studies of Gandhi. He did
not “fall for” the Little Man. He did not rush into eulogy; he sought
to understand. In a word, he stood for Gandhi. But now that Dicky was
ready to stand for her, she was ready to fall, and all her horizons
were being pushed back to give her room.
... She was very weary. She had not known it before. _The Public
Square_ thrived. It was strong pulsed with new life. For the first time
in her experience she sensed from the magazine’s field, following the
issue of the first Amritsar story--silence, the perfect tribute, the
instantaneous readjustment of all other journals; then crowded mails,
the answer from people everywhere. Something about Gandhi touched
hundreds of people to the point of saying so, in a letter to _The
Public Square_.
Yes, she was weary. She had held grimly to the post. She wanted to turn
it over to Dicky Cobden now.... It had been like this once before--on
the night of Somebody’s Shoulder. She had wanted to give him what he
wanted that night--the tiredest and most hopeless girl in New York.
Only that night it had been--for what he had. Now it was for what he
was.
John Higgins lost his bearings in the city traffic. A copy of the issue
containing the first section of the Amritsar story was in the old
editor’s hand when he fell in the street. She was with him for several
hours, until the end. He looked at her long and strangely--eyes more
“run-out” than ever. He did not seem to hear her words, but if she
remained in silence too long, a little frown gathered on his forehead,
and his hand would pull at hers. He had waited for the big story. Once
he said:
“I wish Dicky would come,” and that brought Pidge’s slow tears.
* * * * *
The next day a solicitor called at the office and Pidge still felt
squally. She couldn’t grasp what he was saying. She thought it had
something to do with a secret society that was going to attend an
absurd matter, known as “obsequies.” She was deluged in words.
“... Be perfectly calm, Mrs. Melton,” the solicitor said at last. “This
isn’t exactly bad news, but I’ve known lasting injury from the one, as
well as the other----”
“Please--what are you talking about?”
“Your legacy----”
“My--I don’t----”
“From the late John Higgins----”
“But it was only last night!”
“The late John Higgins, nevertheless. The demise----”
“And what about it?”
“That he has left you--this paper in my hand being the memorandum--his
interest in _The Public Square_----”
“Me----”
“A half-interest in the ownership, to be exact----”
Pidge glanced around the room. The man was sitting. The first and
terrible obstacle of life was to remove him, or escape from him.
“What have I to do?”
“Just sign----”
But he was still sitting, after she had signed. He wanted to be
sociable.... She was on the car going home. She hopped off at Eighth
Street, and was turned into Harrow, before she realized that she didn’t
live there any more but in Gramercy Park.... Curving Harrow Street
was quiet and calling. She went in to the curve and stood before the
old green front. A sign on the door announced “Rooms, Permanent and
Transient.”... “What kind of rooms are transient rooms?” she thought.
The curb and doorstep thronged with memories. “Oh, Dicky, it’s too
much,” she whispered at last. “Come soon, and prop me up!”
LI
“WE LOOK UPON WOMEN AS SACRED”
“_DO you people want peace or war? If you wish for war the Government
is prepared for it, and if you want peace, then obey my orders and
open all your shops; else, I will shoot. For me the battlefield of
France or Amritsar is the same. I am a military man and I will go
straight. Neither shall I move to the right, nor to the left. Speak
up, if you want war. In case there is to be peace, my order is to open
all shops at once. Obey orders. I do not wish to have anything else.
I have served in the military for over thirty years. I understand the
Indian sepoy and the Sikh people very well. You must inform me of the
budmashes. I will shoot them. Obey my orders and open shops. Speak up
if you want war._”
General Fyatt was talking to a large company of Amritsar’s native
representatives, lawyers, merchants, doctors, in the _kotwali_, the day
after the massacre.
The Deputy Commissioner added: “You have committed a bad act in killing
the English. The revenge will be taken upon you and upon your children.”
The large company of natives listened. Not one spoke of the
Jallianwalla Bagh, or of the dead which still lay there. Richard Cobden
reasoned with himself; neither did he speak. Out of all the burn of
feelings and the great waste of ineffectual thoughts, it was dawning
upon him that in their own good time, the dead of Amritsar’s public
square would speak for themselves.
In the days that followed Dicky worked quietly, worked from the
standpoint of the English almost entirely. He “exposed” himself like
a film to the aftermath of the tragedy. He went after facts and
statements. It was never to be ascertained, the number of killed and
injured. The English granted about three hundred dead; the natives
claimed five times that, even more. He was much at Headquarters; and
confined himself altogether to the Civil Lines. Through Lala Relu Ram,
he received certain secret reports from the native point of view, and
guarded these little tissues assiduously. A cigarette case contained
them all.
He went each day to the Crawling Lane, as one doing a city beat for a
newspaper would call at city hall or recorders’ court. This was the
place where Miss Sherwood was assaulted by the natives, on the 10th. It
was narrow and thickly populated, with double-story buildings on either
side, and numerous blind alleys shooting out of the lane.
The crawling order remained in force for eight days. Although General
Fyatt called it “going on all fours,” and it had been called the “hand
and knee order” by the press, the process consisted in the persons
lying flat on their bellies and crawling like reptiles. Any lifting of
the knees or bending thereof brought the rifle butts of the soldiers
and police on the native backs.
“But, General,” Dicky said cheerfully, “people are forced to crawl
through there or go without food and medicine--people who have never
seen Miss Sherwood, much less taken part in the assault.”
“She was beaten,” General Fyatt declared. “We look upon women as
sacred.”
“Ah,” said the American.
In the Crawling Lane and elsewhere were erected _tikitis_ for flogging.
These were triangles of wood, upon which the hands could be suspended
and tied. A general order was issued for all the native population
of Amritsar, a city of one hundred and sixty thousand, to _salam_ to
English in the streets. Those who did not _salam_ were arrested, often
flogged. Many of the people were so terrified, that they dared not sit
down anywhere outside of their own houses, lest one of the English
appear suddenly and not find them standing and in position to _salam_.
During the late days of April, Richard Cobden did not see Nagar, though
occasional brief messages reached him from his friend through the
students. One of these was a suggestion, which Dicky followed, to send
off whatever mail he had ready, in care of one of the young men who was
leaving for Pondicherry, French India. Finally there was the episode of
the tennis court, in the Civil Lines. Dicky drew up to the crowd.
A set of doubles or singles was not in progress. This was a game of
triangle--a _tikiti_ in the center of the court; a naked native strung
up and being whipped. Dicky had seen about enough of this, and was
ready to turn back, when something of the carriage of the native’s head
arrested his eye, and started a peculiar sinking in his heart.
The bare back was toward him, but the face turned sidewise revealed
the profile of Nagar. His hands were strapped high toward the top of
the great frame formed in the shape of the letter A. Nagar had been
stripped to the loincloth, his head bare, his white robes and turban
cloth flung upon the turf. The stripes were being put on by one of the
native police. The whip was a rigid canelike affair, but longer than
a walking-stick. A detachment of native soldiers was drawn up on one
side, police on the other. Two young officers of the military, one of
whom Dicky knew, were in charge of the affair.
Dicky had halted, hand to mouth. Each stroke blinded his eyes; his body
became, for an instant after it, like a house in flames with every
curtain tightly drawn. Then he would see the sunlight before the next
stroke, and the naked man with bleeding back. He had direct need to
turn his back upon this thing--the old nausea. It never occurred to
him that this was his own great test, greater than Nagar’s, for such
tests of the human heart do not come announced; but out of all past
experience, one thing stood in the midst of a rocking universe--that if
he did anything in this red blindness, he would do worse than nothing.
He walked away, his elbows jerking up as another stroke fell. The thing
that saved him was already accomplished. The turning of his back was
all that was required, apparently, since in this instant he got a
life and death grip on the word _Messenger_. Was he Nagar’s friend or
India’s messenger?
Then he knew just one furious smearing doubt. What of human loyalty--to
stand by and allow this thing to go on? He was answered in his mind
from Nagar’s own words, “Mahatma-ji’s ideal isn’t human, Richard. It is
of the Soul.” Action of a foreigner in behalf of a native would only
intensify the English fears and the native’s plight. To rush in was
John Higgins’ code. Evidently there was another.
He walked around to meet Nagar face to face. Ten feet away, he stood
until Nagar’s eyes came up to his. Had Nagar’s hand been free to lift
and command _Silence_, his lips free to speak, the word could not have
been more fiercely impressed. Indeed, the word _Silence_ seemed to have
been shot into the American’s consciousness.
A blow fell. Nagar’s eyes closed; his lips stretched out as if struck
by an invisible hand. Then under the trailing eyelids, Dicky saw a look
of inexpressible gratitude and relief--the barest beginning of a smile.
Nagar had found him fit to trust. It was another moment of real life,
that moment of the look, another instant of essential recognition.
* * * * *
“Oh, I say, Cobden--have you seen a ghost?”
It was Langoyer, one of the young English officers, who spoke. He was
leaning upon his cane, to flick a cigarette stub off the court with
his boot. Langoyer paid no attention to the flogging. The men attended
to that, you know. One had to stand by--as one would wait for his horse
to drink.
Dicky was now being lashed to the quick himself. He had seen
clearly--but a sort of hideous night had settled upon him again. He had
to watch his temper.
“How many does this man get, Langoyer?” he managed to ask.
“Thirty.”
“What for?”
“He knows more of the sedition of Kitchlew and Satyapal than he’ll
tell.”
The figure had gone limp on the triangle.
“Fainted,” gasped Richard Cobden.
The whipping stopped. A tin bucket of water was brought and dashed
upon Nagar’s face and shoulders. A moan came from him because he was
not quite conscious. Then the knees drew up and his feet felt for the
ground.
The lieutenant stepped forward taking Nagar’s ear in his right hand and
calling aloud:
“Will you tell the truth now of Kitchlew’s plot against Government?”
Nagar looked at him without hatred. He tried to speak twice before the
words came:
“I have already told the truth----”
“How many stripes have been given?” Langoyer asked.
“Twenty-six.”
“Finish the thirty, then take him to _kotwali_. A few days more will
make him tell all right.”
The American remained. One--two--three--four.
The hands were unstrapped. The robe was cast about the shoulders. Nagar
could stand. Dicky left the officers and followed his friend and the
native policemen to the station, feeling like a pariah’s whelp.
LII
THE OLD FACE
DICKY reflected that there were two ways of looking at a person or a
thing, a fact proven several times in his experience. There had been
a moment in the presence of Gandhi, after many minutes of talk, when
the face, that had been dull and unattractive as a camel driver’s, had
suddenly appeared to him with memorable, essential significance. It had
been so with Miss Claes: also the moment when he had really seen Pidge,
as they stood together on the Palisades of Santa Monica. Recently he
had caught an immortal something in the look from Nagar on the rack.