in the gloom was like the vision of a master-artist, too perfect for
the poor human hand. The pressure of her shoulder; the fragrance of
her presence; the voice of her which stirred within him the primal
mystery of other lives--against such he fought for strength.... It was
not passion in the red meaning of the word, but a love that made the
railway gates at Charing Cross his portals to living death.
“Think what you will,” he commanded, after a moment. “God knows, I do
not want you to think me devilish, but you must be silent to others
about me.... You will make me suffer more than you know--if you stand
against London for me--when I am gone. It was a magnificent life labor
of your father’s which purchased for you--your place in London....
Noreen Cardinegh, I shall leave the carriage as we approach Charing
Cross; and in the name of God, do nothing to further attract my infamy
to your name!”
“We will say no more about that,” she answered quietly. “I shall avoid
every man and woman in London who would dare to speak of infamy and
Routledge-san in one breath, but if they seek me out!... But I have
other things to say. You must go, and I must stay. Before you go,
I shall tell you what you have done for Noreen Cardinegh, and what
you mean to her--to me.... You are my bravest man, Routledge-san....
When I was but a little girl my father told me of you. I have heard
all the men speak of you. Yours would have been the greatest of all
welcomes at the Armory last night--save for this terrible mystery. I
saw the way that little boy looked up at you this morning. I know what
he thought--for the same thoughts were mine in Japan when I was but
a little older. And your work has been deep and important to me--a
personal, illuminating service. It has made me see the vanity of piled
stones, the futility of possessions. In looking the way you pointed--I
have found that real life is not food and metal----”
The tension was eased for a moment. Routledge laughed softly. “Why, I
am but a dealer in war-stuff--the most godless of all matter, Noreen,”
he said.
“A dealer in war-stuff--to make the world see the horrible farce of it!
Oh, don’t think I have failed to see the import of your work, or failed
to contrast it with the ponderous egotism of certain other English
war-correspondents, who build their careers upon wars--with their dull
studies of tactics, their heavy handling of strategies--so comically
like a child panting with heavy stones. Do you think that I did not
see, in spite of your brilliant description how the Japanese caught and
held the van at Tientsin, the real picture of your whole story--that of
a cruel, ruthless nation of insensate boys--running to jaw instead of
mind?”
Routledge was startled by the expression of a thought which the
_Review_ would not intentionally have published, less obviously than in
a charade. There was nothing of vanity in the matter, but her words
became dear to memory--rifts in that dreadful parting hour. Certainly
there was deep gladness for the woman in the telling:
“They speak of you losing yourself in India for months and months. Do
you think I have missed all that you have found, Routledge-san, when
you were lost to men? I know something of what India means to you,
her submission and her famines, and the hundreds of little Warren
Hastings’ trooping over her, from Lahore to Pondicherry, brooding
of pounds and power! Why, to me you have placed it clear as Carlyle
with his reverberating thunders of fifty years ago. Here is England,
sitting dull-eyed among her flesh-pots, and yonder is India--drained.
You did not say it in direct words, Routledge-san, but you made me
see the provinces of India scattered about like the shells of insects
in a spider’s web, and this London--the darkened lair of the watching
eyes.... Oh, I have seen all that you mean, Routledge-san, but
more--the bigger, finer things than national relations.... You have
gone into the silent places to meditate, and to me you have brought
back the images of the silence--big, chaste things, like our bravest
man. There is good and there is hope in the world which holds such men
and such things--and because of you I have kept my optimism. I seem
to have a perfect torrent of talk, but I have been so much alone to
think--and you are going away. I want you to know that you and the
things you have brought to me are bigger--than London and the world....
When I speak with you--I seem to have known you always.... And then you
are going away--with a burden in your heart, which no act of yours put
there.... Why is it, Routledge-san, that one’s bravest man must suffer
such deluges of evil?”
“Noreen, you are resistless,” he murmured. “It is life----”
She pressed her face to the pane, tried thoughtlessly to brush away the
blurring rain on the outside. With a quick, savage return of pain, she
realized how near they were to Charing Cross.
“I haven’t told you--all that I mean yet, Routledge-san!” she whispered
feverishly. “You met some adversary last night and conquered. You are
weak and hurt--but you have won.... I cannot quite understand, but the
sentence ringing in my brain is this: ‘The young grain is springing on
the field of Waterloo.’... I met my adversary in the night--and I have
won, too. When I think of you--it rushes over me like a tidal wave--to
fight London and the world for you; but I have my work here. It must be
done cleanly and without a cry. My father needs me. The best is gone
from him already--and I must treasure the rest; but it will not be
always.... And when my work is finished in Cheer Street, Routledge-san,
I shall cross the world to find you!”
He felt it hard to breathe in the desolation. A desire full-formed
and upstanding, in spite of the mockery of it, vanquished him for a
moment. It was to keep on with her--riding, journeying, sailing--with
her, through the gates of Charing Cross, to Southampton, New York,
San Francisco, Yokohama, Nagasaki, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Calcutta--up the Ganges to its source in the Hills, and there among the
mystic people of his heart, to dwell with her, adoring in the stillness
of starlight, in the morning glow.
“I shall be nameless, and a wanderer----”
“And my bravest man!... This is not unwomanly, Routledge-san. This is
farewell. The girl is torn from me--and the woman speaks her heart....
No one but you could understand. Always I have been strange.... I
cannot leave it unsaid. I shall come to find you when I am free! It is
not--not that I shall ask you to marry me. It is not that--but to be
with you! I think--I think that you are so noble that my being a woman
would not complicate.... Routledge-san! It is Charing Cross!”
Swiftly she drew tiny scissors from a pocket-case, snipped from her
temple a lock of hair, tied it with a strand of its own, and thrust it
into his hand.
It was light, living, warm like a bird in his palm. Her last words
intoned through his dreams for many days:
“Remember, I am Noreen Cardinegh--who believes in you always--before
all men--for all time. And I, too, must be brave and enduring until my
work is done--and I may cross the world to find you!”
... He was standing at the curb before the great station. The carriage
had turned away. There came to him out of the throng--a cry, not to his
ears, but straight to his breast, a cry wild with desolation, which his
heart answered....
He purchased his ticket, and rechecked his baggage, and then passed
through the gates to the gray, smoky yards. From the deck of his
steamer at Southampton that night he caught a last glimpse of the White
Mustache, a satisfied smile on the keen, hard face. In a cold, distant
fashion, Routledge marvelled that he was allowed to leave England
alive.
NINTH CHAPTER
MR. JASPER IS INFORMED THAT MOTHER INDIA CAUSED NAPOLEON’S DEFEAT, AND
THAT FAMINES ARE NOT WITHOUT VIRTUE
“J. J. Jasper, Syracuse, New York,” was being inscribed in the hotel
registers along the travelled-lines around the world. Mr. Jasper
was making no haste. “I have been rushed all my life until now,” he
explained. He was a sincere, hard-thinking, little man of fifty,
who had manufactured road-carts for thirty years, and had succeeded
remarkably well in emancipating himself from business--a high-ranged
achievement for only the few Americans.
Mr. Jasper was interested in India long before he touched Bombay, going
east. This happened because his sister was a member of a theosophical
class back in Syracuse. He had heard of “dreamy India” for many years,
of Madras and the Ganges, of _yogis_ and astral bodies, of esoteric
sections and H.P.B., of Sinnett, Olcott, Besant, masters, famines, of
_karma_, _devachan_, _pralaya_, of metempsychosis and the Great White
Lodge of the Himalayas.... “Go to Madras, James,” his sister had told
him. “By all means, go to Madras. Our headquarters and our libraries of
occult literature are there. It may be that our president and founder,
Mr. Olcott, will meet you personally, or Annie Besant, the most noted
woman in the world. Don’t call it ‘Bes_ant_’, like the author, but as
if it were spelled ‘_Bes_sant.’ There are reasons, James, _esoteric
reasons_.”
And so Mr. Jasper went to Madras. He took the hand of white-bearded
Olcott,[A] a rounded man, who had not lost interest in the New York bar
or press simply because he was president and founder of a great body of
generally refined men and women who have the temerity to believe that
buying cheap and selling dear is not the supreme glory of man. Also Mr.
Jasper pronounced it “_Bes_sant,” for esoteric reasons, but he did not
meet the most noted woman in the world, since she had taken her annual
flight to London.
In the midst of all his seeing and smelling and brooding among the
coast cities of India, Mr. Jasper was impressed with the dire poverty
of certain districts. The heart of the man was wrung, and his brain
filled with the Everlasting Why. At the house of a missionary in
Nizagari, he ascertained certain facts. The Hindus of the town were
hungry. They came to the missionary, men and wives and babes, and
begged most pitifully for food.
“If we could only eat food once in two days, we would ask no more!”
they cried.
“God, this is famine--the famine of the Bible!” exclaimed the American.
“Ah, no,” replied the missionary. “You must allow me to correct you.
There is no _recognized_ famine in Nizagari.”
“If this is not famine--what does the word mean?”
“Go to the central provinces,” the missionary said wearily. “Famine is
declared there.”
Mr. Jasper thought long that night. He recalled being left once, when
he was a much younger man, in New York city over night without money.
The metropolis was a city of strangers to him then, but, as now, a
city of pure and plenteous water, free lunches, and benches to sit
upon. Moreover, it was a summer night; and yet before mail-time in the
morning, Mr. Jasper felt that his cosmos had dropped into chaos.... “I
will arise and go to the Central Provinces,” he declared. After many
weary days, he alighted from his train in the hot, fetid city of Nagpur.
“Famine,” they told him--he thought he saw famine in the eyes of the
English--“yes, there is famine northward, but the government has taken
it in hand. You see, when a famine is officially declared it doesn’t
last long....”
Mr. Jasper hurried northward, lest it be over before he reached there.
He wanted to see the conditions which would cause the Anglo-Indians
officially to recognize famine. Finally, it was borne upon him that he
must leave the railway to discover the reality, and he made his way
eastward, for a long day’s journey, by bullock-cart and sedan-chair,
across a burning, forsaken land to the town of Rydamphur--too little
and too far for the English yet to have heard its cry. Least of
villages, Rydamphur, a still, sterile, Christless place, sprawled upon
a saffron desert. He paid his coolies at the edge of the village, and
they pointed out the Rest House among the huts.
The place was dead as a dream creation. There was something febrile,
unnatural in the late afternoon sunlight. The houses looked withered
and ready to fall in that dead-gold light. He passed a darkened
doorway and was stabbed by the spur of horrid understanding--a blast
of unutterable fetor.... He ran for a step or two, horrified as if
he had trodden upon the dead in the dark. His brain was filled with
muttering: “This is famine! This is famine!”... Mr. Jasper turned
shortly, and saw emerging from the darkened hut--a white man in native
dress. It was a face incapable of tan, and fixed with a sorrow too deep
for tears--a wild, tragic sorrow, vivid in the fever-wide eyes....
It was all nightmarish and inchoate. Thus he entered the oven of
bricks called the Rest House, and bathed, changed, and gasped, while
the snoring punkahs whipped him with hot, sterilizing breaths....
Dinner that evening at eight. Mr. Jasper sat down to a table with a
gaunt, embrowned stranger in white linen--a wasted giant, with a head
and figure of singular command; eyes that were weary and restless,
but very wise and very kind. So sun-darkened was the face that Mr.
Jasper thought at first his companion must be a native of high caste;
especially since he ate no meat and sparingly of the rest. The dinner
was meagre, but a feast compared to what was expected in the nucleus of
a famine district.
“I didn’t suppose such a variety of food could be procured here,” Mr.
Jasper observed.
“There has been plenty of food to be had for money, until the last day
or two,” the stranger replied.
“And the natives have no money?”
Mr. Jasper realized that the question was inane, but his eagerness
was great to draw the man before him into conversation. There was a
distinguished look in the man’s face which promised much. He proved
by no means disinclined to talk; indeed, seemed urged by a strange
zeal for conversation that night, as one who has been in prison, or
somewhere long and far from his kind.
“I came here, not out of vulgar curiosity, but striving to understand,”
Mr. Jasper said.
“And how do you like our great brown Mother India?”
“She does not feed her children.”
“That is true. Mother India must come back to the table of the
world and learn how things are served by the younger peoples--the
sharper-eyed, quicker-handed peoples. You have heard the story,
no doubt, that India had once great and profitable industries.
Her commercial systems were founded upon mutual service, not upon
competition. Then the East India company and England came. ‘Mother
India, you are quite absurd,’ said England, and she took away all the
mutual benefit industries, and reorganized them again in the true
English way. ‘We shall show you how, Mother India,’ she said. India
must have been inept, because England never gave them back.”
Both men were smiling. “Then you think India famines are the result of
British rule?” the man from Syracuse observed.
“If I told you that, it would be right for me to explain why I think
so. That would take some time, and the night is very hot.”
“I came to Rydamphur to learn the truth. Somehow, I believe I shall
succeed--if you will tell me what you can, sir.” The stranger’s eyes
brightened.
“Discussing the matter seriously, it is well to begin with Macaulay’s
sentence. ‘The heaviest of all yokes is the yoke of a stranger.’”
“You are not an Englishman?” Mr. Jasper asked.
“No, but does that signify? Many English have spoken the truth. Edmund
Burke said, ‘The Tartar invasion was mischievous, but it is our
protection which destroys India.’ The English historian, Montgomery
Martin, wrote that so constant a drain as England’s upon India would
impoverish England herself if she were subjected to it. And here
reflect that the wage of the laborer, when he gets work, averages but
twopence a day. J. I. Sunderland observes, ‘The British have _given_
India railways, jute-mills, tea plantations, and many things else....
The profits go to the British.’ Mr. Sunderland, no doubt, remarks
elsewhere about the opium industry. Herbert Spencer declares that it
was an arrogant assumption upon the part of the British to accept as
a fact that India exists for England. He also characterizes England’s
relations to India as a ‘cunning despotism which uses native soldiers
to maintain and extend native subjection.’”
“But we in America,” said Mr. Jasper--“I refer to those who have
not looked deeply into the question--even our president, Mr.
Roosevelt--have regarded English rule in India as a vast and beneficent
system.”
“Ah, yes,” responded the stranger, with a queer smile; “as you say,
those who have not looked deeply into the question, regard it so.
There was another American president, Mr. Lincoln, who declared that
no man is good enough to govern another man.... But there are errors
of judgment all around the world, and errors of ignorance which make
for cruelty. English agents will come here to poor little Rydamphur
presently with rice and millet, and when the rains start, the periodic
famine officially will be declared over for another year, and the
people of this district will arise to the normal condition of forty
millions of India--that of slow starvation.”
“But why don’t the Hindus emigrate?”
“Mother India cannot afford to give her children passage money,” the
stranger declared quickly. “She is sending a few, the pith and promise
of her young men, to America and elsewhere to learn from the younger
peoples how to take care of herself in commercial matters, in the hope
of reviving her industries in centuries to come. But the ordinary
low-castes, _the fuel of the famines_, would have to starve a little
extra in good times to save from their earnings the price to cross one
of our North River ferries. They would die long before they hoarded the
fare from Brooklyn Bridge to Coney Island.”
Mr. Jasper’s eyes kindled at the references. “But why do the Hindus not
fight?” he asked.
“India has no arms.”
“But even our little South and Central American States get arms and
fight right merrily with them.”
“India is poorer than the little South and Central American States--so
poor that it requires a white man years to conceive the meaning of her
poverty.” The speaker leaned forward and added in a slow, bitter way:
“Forty millions in India are hungry to-night: forty millions are never
otherwise than hungry--they pass from the womb to the burning-ghats,
never having known a moment of repletion: yet England drains India of
one hundred million dollars a year. Listen; in the last twenty-five
years of the nineteenth century ten millions in India died of famine.
In the same period England vampirized this land of the hungry of
twenty-five hundred millions of dollars. This is one of the tragic
facts of the world.
“Here’s another: in the nineteenth century England compelled India to
maintain five times as many troops as were needed for her own defense
or her own _subjection_--in other words, forced India to furnish troops
for British conquests outside of India!... Would you mind, sir, if I
uttered a sentence that has never been uttered before?”
Mr. Jasper laughed a little nervously.
“It was India that whipped Napoleon.”
“There’s some shock to that statement. Tell me how.”
“In the fifty-seven years between the battles of Plassey and Waterloo,
England looted a billion in pounds sterling--five thousand million
dollars--from the conquered Indian people. This was the price India
paid for bondage, for ruined industries and periodic famines. This
was the period of England’s military expansion. The army that crushed
Napoleon was fed and clothed and armed by Indian tributes.”
Neither spoke for a moment, and the stranger added with an
impressiveness that Mr. Jasper never forgot: “It is rather stirring to
remember that this old India was highly civilized, in a rich meaning of
the expression, ripe in arts, letters, and incomparable philosophies,
when the ancestors of the English were painted savages. India was the
leader of Asiatic civilization, and perhaps the richest country in the
world, when England broke in upon her. What is old India now? Hearken
to the souls passing in little Rydamphur to-night!”
“But what, in God’s name, can be done?” Mr. Jasper demanded.
“When England begins to treat India as she would be forced to treat a
colony of white men, aggressive as Americans, for instance, India will
begin to discover her gray of morning.”
“But England won’t do that until India becomes a militant people.”
“No, I’m afraid not. England still has much of her imperialistic
arrogance.... A little while ago, one of the ablest of the native
editors, an old man, was banished from the country for six years
because he published an article in his paper pointing out his country’s
misfortunes. This aged editor was a Murahti, and during his trial
called for a Murahti jury. On the contrary, the jury was made of
English and Parsees. The prisoner did not know a word of the court’s
proceedings until an interpreter informed him of his banishment.
Another young Hindu nobleman was recently banished for life because
he took part in public speeches. The English judge who sentenced this
young man declared that there was no reason for one Hindu addressing
a gathering of Hindus, since the latter had no votes. I call that a
rather interesting political homily.”
“It is chief among outrages,” declared Mr. Jasper.
The other regarded him intently a moment, as if deliberating whether it
were wise to go a bit farther. He studied the deep and honest interest
in the perspiring face, and caught up the question afresh:
“India, the best of India, has lost from her blood that which makes
for war and commercial conquests. She is the longest suffering of all
the nations. She asks only for peace. Those great playthings of the
more material powers--navies, soldiery, colonies, armament--she cannot
appreciate, cannot understand. India is not cowardly. You would not
call an old man a coward because he rebukes with a smile a young brute
who has struck him. Old mystic India prefers to starve rather than to
outrage her philosophy with war. She has even adjusted her philosophy
to the spectacle of her children starving, rather than to descend to
the outgrown ugliness of physical warfare. It has been work of mine to
study the nations somewhat, and I have come to think of them as human
beings at different ages.... Look at young Japan--the sixteen-year-old
among the powers! A brown-skinned, black-eyed boy, cruel, unlit from
within, formidable, and itching to use again the strength he has
once felt. To the boy-brain, supremacy at war is the highest victory
the world can give. Japan has the health of a boy, heals like an
earth-worm, and blazes with pride in the possession of his first
weapons. Like the boy again, he is blind to the intrinsic rights of
women. Shamelessly, he casts his women out over the seven seas to fill
the brothels of every port--breeds human cattle to feed the world’s
lusts, and knows no prick of pride--but watch him run hot-breathed to
the rifle-pits if so much as a bit of humor from an outside nation
stirs the restless chip upon his shoulder! Brute boy, Japan, the
trophies of conquests are as yet but incidents to him. The soldier is
in highest manifestation; the expansionist not yet weaned. He fights
for the great glory of the fight--mad with the direct and awful lust of
standing in the midst of the fallen....