You’ve played so far, just played, scattered your years all over the
earth, with but little profit to yourself or to the world. If you
should die to-night you would possibly have earned five lines in a
thirty-volume encyclopædia: ‘Cosmo Routledge, American born, an English
war-correspondent and traveller, rode with Tom, stood fire with Dick,
and ran with Henry; undertook to study at first hand various native
India affairs, and died of a fever at the edge of’--God knows what
yellow desert or turbid river.”
He smiled and lit his pipe, musing on. “The point is, I’ll be dead
long before the fever--if I keep up this world-tramp--dead to myself
and to men--one of the great unbranded, crossing and recrossing his
trail around and around the world.... Shall I sit down in London
or New York, and double on my whole trail so far on paper--books,
editorials, special articles, long dinners beginning at eight, an hour
of billiards, a desk in some newspaper office--fat, fatuous, and fixed
at fifty?... Which is better, a gaunt, hungry, storm-bitten wanderer,
with his face forever at the fire-lit window-panes of civilization, or
a creased and cravatted master of little ceremonies within? A citizen
of ordered days and nights, or an exile with the windy planet forever
roaring in his skull?”
They were warping his ship into dock, and the voices of France were
thick in the night.
“Routledge, you’re evading the issue,” he muttered after a moment. “It
isn’t that you must choose between one city and the wide world; nor
between the desk or the saddle, a tent of skins or a compartment of
brick. You can ride a camel in London or pack a folding-bed over the
peaks to Llassa; you can be a tramp at home or an editor afield. It
isn’t the world or not, Routledge, but--a woman or not!”
The flapping awning took up the matter at length. Routledge relit his
pipe dexterously, sensing the very core of the harbor-breeze with his
nostrils, and shutting it off.... He would cross France to-night; and
dine in Paris to-morrow, breathe the ruffian winds of the Channel
to-morrow night, and breakfast again in London.... His brain had put
off the lethargy of Asia, indeed--quickened already to the tense
stroke of Europe. He was vehemently animate. The rapid French talk on
the pier below stirred him with the great import of massed life--as
it might have stirred a boy from the fields entering the city of his
visions. A few hours and then London!... “She has never forgotten you,
Routledge.”...
Once he had seen the mother of Noreen--the woman who, for a little
while, was the embodied heaven to Jerry Cardinegh; heaven in spirit
to the old man now. A face of living pearl; the gilding and bronzing
of autumnal wood-lands in her hair; great still eyes of mystery and
mercy.... In a way not to be analyzed, the sight of her made Routledge
love more Jerry Cardinegh’s Ireland. Tyrone was hallowed a little in
conception--because it had been _her_ home.
In Paris, at the Seville, the next afternoon, a servant informed
Routledge that a lady was waiting for him in the Orange Room. There
was a lifting in his breast, a thrilling temperamental response. Some
fragrant essence of home-coming which he had not thought to find in
Paris swept over his senses.... She was sitting in the mellowed glows
and shadows of the Seville’s famous parlor. The faintest scent of myrrh
and sandal; Zuni potteries like globes of desert sunlight; golden
tapestries from the house of Gobelin; fleeces of gold from Persian
looms; the sheen of an orange full moon through rifted clouds of satin;
spars of gilded daylight through the billowing laces at the casement;
the stillness of Palestine; sunlight of centuries woven into every
textile fabric--and the woman, Noreen, rising to meet him, a vivid
classic of light and warmth.
“Routledge-san!”
“To-morrow, I expected to see you--in London,” he faltered.
“I have been living in Paris. I return to Cheer Street to-night--to
make ready for father to-morrow afternoon.”
He was burning with excitement at the sight of her, and the red was
deep in her cheeks. It was as if there had been wonderful psychic
communions between them; and, meeting in the flesh at last, they were
abashed, startled by the phenomenon.
“Mr. Bingley told me that you were to be in Paris to-day. He left for
London last night. I was impatient to see you. Possibly I did not wait
long enough for you to rest after your journey.”
Routledge did not answer. He was smiling in a strange, shy way, as few
men smile after thirty. Moreover, he was holding fast to the hand so
eagerly offered.
“Do forgive my staring at you,” he said at last. “I’ve been away a very
long time. In India----”
“You may stare, Routledge-san. Men coming home from the wars may do as
they will,” she laughed.
“Finding you here in Paris is immense, Miss Noreen. I was planning to
keep the way open from Bookstalls to Cheer Street--to ride out with you
possibly, watch you paint things, and have talks----”
“You’ll stay in London for a time, Routledge-san?”
“Yes, until you and Jerry appeal to the _Review_ to start a war to be
rid of me.”
She did not need to tell him that she was glad. “Come, let’s go
outside. It’s like an enchanted castle in here--like living over one of
your past lives in all this yellow stillness.”
She could not have explained what made her say this. Routledge liked
the idea, and put it away to be tried in the crucible of solitude.
“Where did you leave father?” she asked when they were in the street.
“Away up in Bhurpal--two or three days before we were all called in.”
He dreaded the next question, but, understanding that it would trouble
him, Noreen pushed into the heart of the subject without asking.
“Of course, he wouldn’t tell me, but I’m afraid he isn’t well. I seem
to know when ill befalls any one dear to me.”
“It was a dull, hard-riding campaign, but he weathered it.”
“I feel him white and time-worn somehow, Routledge-san. It is his last
time afield. He will need me always now--but we won’t talk of it.”
She led the way through the crowded streets--a cold, bright February
afternoon, with the air cleanly crisp and much Parisian show and play
about them. “I’ll take you to my studio, if you wish.... It is quiet
and homey there. Most of my things are packed, but we can have tea.”
“I was planning to leave for London to-night,” he ventured.
“Of course--we’ll take the same boat. And to-morrow--to-morrow there
will be things for a man to do in Cheer Street--getting ready for
father.”
Both laughed. It seemed almost too joyous to Routledge.
“I can’t endure London--that is, I can’t live there when father
is away,” she said presently. “It seems less lonely in Paris.
London--certain days in London--seem to reek with pent tragedy. There
is so much gray sorrow there; so much unuttered pain--so many lives
that seem to mean nothing to the gods who give life. I suppose it is so
everywhere, but London conceals it less.”
“Less than India?”
“Oh, but India has her philosophy. There is no philosophy in the
curriculum of the East End.... I wish I could think about India as you
do--calmly and without hate for the British ascendency there. At least,
without showing my hatred. But it seems so scandalous and grotesque
to me for a commercial people to dominate a spiritual people. What
audacity for the English to suggest to the Hindus the way to conduct
life and worship God! I am Jerry Cardinegh’s girl--when it comes to
India and Ireland. It must be that which makes me hate London.”
“England is young; India old,” said Routledge. “Many times the old can
learn from the young--how to live.”
“But not how to die--and yet India has had much practice in learning
how to die at the hands of the British.... We mustn’t talk about it
to-day! The word _famine_ rouses me into a savage. India famine; Irish
famine; the perennial famine of the London East End!... Coming home
from the wars, you must not be forced to talk about bitter things.
I want to sit down and listen to you about _your_ India--not the
Cardinegh India. We always see the black visage behind India, as
behind Ireland. You see the enchantment of Indian inner life--and we
the squalor of the doorways. Yes, I still read the _Review_.... Ah,
Routledge-san, your interview with the English ‘missionary-and-clubman’
in Lucknow was a delicious conception; yet back of it all there is
something of horror in its humor to me. Most of all because the
‘missionary-and-clubman,’ as I saw him, under your hand, would have
perceived none of the humor! He would no doubt have called it a very
excellent paper--yet every line contained an insinuation of his
calamitous ignorance and his infant-soul! I must repeat--what audacity
for the cumbering flesh of a matter-mad people, undertaking to teach
_visionary_ India--how to look for God!”
Routledge invariably became restless when the values of his own work
were discussed before him.
“By the way, Miss Noreen,” he said, “I left Bingley behind me in
Calcutta----”
“He said so, but crossed India by rail and caught a ship before you at
Bombay. Father and the others will be in London to-morrow. They left
ship at Naples to be in time for the Army and Navy Reception to-morrow
night.”
Routledge was a trifle bewildered as he followed Noreen up the stairway
into the studio, and sat down by the window. The place was stripped
of many things identified with her individuality, and yet it was all
distinctly a part of her. Trunks and boxes were ready for the carrier,
her portmanteau alone opened. Out of this she drew the tea-things, and
the man watched with emotion. After the alien silence of the Orange
Room and the turmoil of the Parisian streets, the studio was dear
with nameless attractions. All the negatives of his mind, once crowded
with pictures of Paris and civilization, had been sponged clean by
India. The moments now were rushed with new impressions.... The stamp
of fineness was in her dress, and to him a far-flinging import in all
her words. The quick turn of her head and hand, all her movements,
expressed that nice elastic finish which marks an individual from the
herd. It was even as they had told him in India. Noreen Cardinegh had
put on royalty in becoming a woman.
The man did not cease to be a trifle bewildered. He was charged again
with the same inspiring temperament which compelled him to tell her
the intimate story of Rawder, and to tell it with all his valor and
tenderness. Impedimenta which the months had brought to his brain and
heart were whipped away now before those same wondrous, listening
eyes. Memories of her had always been the fairest architecture of his
thoughts, but they were as castles in cloudland, lineaments half-lost,
compared to this moment, with the living glory of Noreen Cardinegh
sweeping into full possession of his life. All that had been before was
dulled and undesirable; even himself, the man, Routledge, with whom he
had lived so much alone.... In this splendid moment of expansion, it
came to him--the world’s bright answer to his long quest for the reason
of being.
* * * * *
“Routledge-san, I have wine and tea and biscuit, and you may smoke if
you like.” She drew up a little table and chair for herself. “It will
be an hour before the carrier comes for my trunks, and I want you to
tell me if you have seen again--our bravest man. It’s long over a year
since you left him in Hong Kong.”
“Miss Noreen----”
“I’d rather be Noreen to you.”
“Noreen, what is the force of Rawder’s bigness to you?” Routledge
asked, after watching her several seconds.
“He serves blindly, constantly, among the dregs, and has mercy for
all men but himself!” she said intensely. “The living spirit of the
Christ seems to be in him, and nothing of sex or earthly desire. I have
pictured him, since you told me the story, as one pure of soul as any
of the prophets or martyrs. I care not for the range of his brain when
he has a human heart like that!... I wish I could say all he suggests
to me, but I mean--I think he is close to God!”
“Thank you,” said Routledge. “It is one of the finest things I know, to
have you speak of him as ‘our bravest man’--to share him with me....
Yes, I have seen him again, and there is another story to tell, and I
will tell it, as he told me:
“It began with his leaving Hong Kong. He was never so weary nor so
faint-hearted as on one certain day. It was about the time I was with
you for an evening in Cheer Street. He declares when that night came he
went out on the water-front to his work with a ‘wicked rebellion’ in
his heart. A night of rain and storm. He had rescued a fallen sailor
from the Chinese, and was leading him to his own lodging when he was
struck from behind and trampled. ‘I’m afraid they meant to kill me,’
he divulged, and added in apology that the lives of the Chinese are
so dark and desperate on the water-front. His old Minday wound was
reopened, and he awoke to feel that death was very close. You see,
the police had found his body in the rain. He was drifting off into
unconsciousness when a vision appeared.
“He had never touched India at that time in this life, but it was a
bit of India that appeared in his vision, and it was all very true
to him.... Nightfall and a little village street; an ancient Hindu
holy man sitting in a doorway, head bowed, his lips moving with the
Ineffable Name. Very clearly Rawder saw this and the rest, so that he
would know the place when he saw it again--the sand, the silence, the
river sweeping like a rusty sickle about the town, and his old master
sitting in the doorway.
“This was the picture that came to him as he lay in a station of the
Hong Kong Sihk-police, and close to death.... The Hindu holy man, so
old that he seemed to be a companion of Death, looked up sorrowfully
and said: ‘My son, I have come down from the goodly mountains for you.
Just this way, you shall find me waiting. Make haste to come for me, my
_chela_, for I am full of years, and already am I weary of these plains
and so many men. There is work for us to do before we go back together
to our goodly mountains.’
“The Sannyasi spoke in Tibetan, which Rawder had never heard before,
but every word he understood as I have told you. ‘And how swiftly did
I heal after that!’ he exclaimed to me, smiling. His pain left him
and his wound closed magically. They told him he would die if he left
his bed, but he finished his healing on the road to his river and his
village. All was made easy for him, as our bravest man declares. There
was a ship in the harbor, which needed a man to peel vegetables, and
Rawder fitted in, remaining aboard port after port, until something
prompted him to go ashore at Narsapur, which lies among the mouths
of the great Godavari. One of these he followed up to the main stem,
and journeyed, on foot for months and months, studying the natives
and their language, doing what appeared to him among the dead and the
living in the midst of famine and plague, and ‘_knowing no hunger nor
thirst nor pain_.’ These are his words, Noreen.”
“He is like one of those mystics,” the woman said, “like Suso or St.
Francis of Assisi--who would not reckon with physical pain.”
“Yes.... I did not remain long in America after leaving you in Cheer
Street. In fact, I was back in India months before this last trouble
arose in Bhurpal--with Rawder in India. It was at Sironcha, where the
Godavari joins the Penganga, that I found him, and he told me all these
things. Then for awhile I journeyed with him, and it was very good for
me. Always he was helping--down at the very roots of the disorder of
things. I thought of you very much. You were the only one I had told of
Rawder. That’s why I was so glad to hear you say ‘our bravest man.’”
“And his master?”
“Yes.... It was far north of Sironcha, on the Penganga, and he had
been hurrying, hurrying, for days. I was to leave him at Ahiri for
the service in two days more. At nightfall, we came to the little
village, with the Penganga sweeping about it like a rusty sickle. ‘It
is the place--I know the place,’ he kept repeating.... Even I was not
surprised, Noreen, to see the aged Sannyasi sitting in the doorway,
his lips moving with the Ineffable Name.... And so our bravest man
found the master he had earned; the old master who had come down from
his lodge in the goodly mountains to take back the purest man-soul I
have ever known.”
“Then you--then you will never see him again?” the woman cried.
“That is what is strange to me, Noreen. He said I should see him again
in India this year. He said I would know the time and the place. They
are journeying northward toward the hills on foot and very slowly. One
might travel around the world, and, returning, find them only three
or four latitudes northward from the place of parting. And so I left
him very happy, learning Tibetan and Chinese, and the ancient wisdom,
happily helping in the midst of the world’s direst poverty.”
“And you have no thought to return to India so far, Routledge-san?”
“No.”
The tea was perfect. The carrier came and took the trunks and boxes.
They sat together in the stripped studio while the twilight hushed the
distances. The street below lost its look of idling, and the figures
moved quickly.... There were no lights. The man thrilled in the black
hallway as the woman whispered an _adieu_ to her little Paris place;
then shut the door, and, feeling for his hand, led him to the stairs.
FOURTH CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE CONTEMPLATES THE PAST, IN THE MIDST OF A SHADOW FORECAST BY
LARGE EVENTS
They dined at the Seville, took a night-train for Calais, and talked
on the steamer’s deck in the Channel. It was a night of stars and cold
gusts of wind. The lights of France died out behind. A ship appeared
ahead like a faint, low-swinging star, loomed mightily, her great
form pricked in light, and passed swiftly by, so near that they heard
her crushing the seas, and the throb of her iron heart.... Noreen was
saying:
“It’s so good not to have to travel alone. I have been so much alone. I
seem to tell you things quite amazingly.... I must be intensely strange
in some way, possibly psychic, because I dream so many things which
remain vividly afterward.”
The picture she meant to put into words came clearly with Routledge
listening.
“Once, when I was so little that I couldn’t talk plainly--so little
that you might have balanced me in your hand--a woman came to the tiny
room where I lay. It was in the midst of the night. Father was in Asia
somewhere. I was awake, I think, because I heard the woman fumbling at
the door. She was a big, hysterical thing and suddenly screamed that my
mother was dead--then rushed away, leaving me alone in the dark!... It
was at a lonely English country-house in winter. I remember the snow
and the winds and the gray, tossing sky and the nights. I had to stay
there alone until father came home. For more than a month I was in that
great house, with naked, sighing trees all around--trees close to the
walls of the house. They cut the wind into ribbons and made a constant
moaning. And, oh, the nights were eternal! I was in a broad, cold room
in the great, creaking house--and always I could hear hard-breathing
from somewhere. Alone, I wore out all my fears there--until at last I
had no fears, only dreams of the night that lived with me all through
the day. I have never gone near that country-place since father came.
How terrible he looked! It left me strange and different--so that I was
never like a little child afterward.... Routledge-san, why do I tell
you all these things? Not in years have I talked so much in one day.”
“Nor have I listened so raptly, Noreen.”
“I wouldn’t have tried to tell you so much--except that you are to be
back in India within a year.... It has come to me, Routledge-san, that
you are to go very quickly!”
There was a creak of a wicker-chair in the shadows of the engine-room
air-shafts behind them. Noreen grasped his arm impulsively. It was not
that she had said anything which the world might not hear, but her
concentration had been intense, and the little story she had told had
been so intimately personal to her that no woman, and only this man,
had ever called it forth. There was quick cruelty in the thought of
it being overheard by a stranger. In any case, the spell was broken.
Routledge was irritated. The recall from the world of the woman, and
the feeling of oneness with her which the strange little confidence
had inspired, was pure unpleasantness.
“I’ll go to my state-room now,” she whispered. “There is only a little
while to rest.... Good-night, Routledge-san. I’ll be abroad early.”
He knew that she would not have thought of her cabin yet, even though
the hour was late, had it not been for the intrusion of the creaking
chair. Routledge took her hand and spoke a brisk good-night. Returning
to the deck-chair between the air-shafts, he sat down and arose again
carefully. The sound was the same. He tested the chair thoroughly
and found that in no possible way could the wind have caused the
creak.... They had stood long within eight or nine feet of the chair.
A gentleman would have given some notice that he was within hearing,
or, better still, would have gone his way--unless asleep. This last
was unlikely, because the deck was searched by a keen winter wind. In
the smoking-room was an individual whose face had become familiar to
Routledge since he had taken the Paris train at Marseilles the night
before--a middle-aged man, strongly featured, wearing a white mustache.
This traveller had also stopped at the Seville. He glanced up from
a game of solitaire as Routledge entered. There were a bridge-party
and one or two others in the apartment. Routledge chose a cigar very
carefully, and managed to whisper to the attendant in a light, humorous
way:
“Let me look at that cordial-flask a moment, and tell me how long that
man at solitaire has been here.”
The other handed him the package and whispered, “Just about five
minutes.”
Routledge purchased the cordial and passed out. It happened that
he glanced into the smoking-room through a half-curtained window,
and met the eyes of the White Mustache fully.... It was a little
thing--scarcely a coincidence--for one to cross France by the same
stages in twenty-four hours and break the journey at the same hotel
in Paris. Moreover, because the stranger was not in the smoking-room
fifteen minutes before did not establish the fact that it was his
weight that had made the chair creak.... Routledge was disinclined to
rest. The day had revolutionized his systems of being. He longed for
daylight again, quite forgetting his usual patience with the natural
passing of hours and events. The day itself had been unspeakably fine,
but there was a disturbing reaction now and a premonitive shadow that
would not be smoked nor reasoned out of mind.
This, on the night of his perfect day. Noreen Cardinegh had given him
every moment of her time in Paris, not even saying good-by to her
friends.... It was not the mystery in India; not the swift failing of
Jerry Cardinegh, which his daughter felt, though she had not seen; not
the White Mustache nor the creaking chair--these merely wove into a
garment of nettles. The premonition was not even his own. It was Noreen
Cardinegh’s, and had to do with his leaving her and hurrying back to
India.... “It has come to me, Routledge-san, that you are to go very
quickly!”... The great frieze coat was wet with Channel mists and
Channel spray when the half-dawn developed the Dover pier, and the eyes
of the wanderer were filled once more with the seven shades of English
gray.... Noreen was out before the full day.
“Let’s take the earlier train for Charing Cross,” she said. “I
believe we still have time. Our luggage is checked through, and we can
breakfast _en route_.”
He brought his bag, and Noreen took his arm companionably as he
appeared on the main-deck again.... She was all in gray like the
morning, save for a touch of yellow ruching at her throat and her
hair’s golden wonder-work.... Routledge turned on the pier at a step
behind. It was the White Mustache in light-travelling order, hastening
to make the early train.
A breakfast-table was between them. “Routledge-san,” she said, leaning
toward him critically, “you don’t look the least bit tired, but I doubt
if you’ve slept since I left you. Beside, your coat is all wet.”
“I did smell the Channel a bit,” he replied, thinking that a man who
looked dull and worn in the presence of Noreen Cardinegh would be
incapable of reflecting light of any kind. “I couldn’t? feel more fit
and keep my self-control. Though I am not an Englishman, it thrills to
see England again.” He glanced from his plate to her eyes and then out
upon the winter fields, sweeping by the window like an endless magic
carpet. “Some time, when there are no more wars,” he added, “we shall
write an essay and call it, ‘Grape-fruit and Kentish Gardens.’”