Part 10

Dicky had expected power; he found composure. His idea of power was perhaps in part a hang-over from a boyish ideal of a certain American financial executive. Nothing of that in this room; rather he was conscious of Gandhi’s frailness and smallness. This presence called forth impulses to be tender, to lower one’s voice, to hurry to bring anything wanted. He was shocked a little at the twisted, battered look of the features. The lips looked pulpy in parts and did not rest together evenly. The smile was curiously slow--tentative, like one in whom understanding dawns. Back of the iron-rimmed spectacles and tired eyes, so inured to pain, was the essence of fearlessness. This was the first commanding characteristic to the American.

* * * * *

“... Fear,” Gandhi was saying, “fear of death makes us devoid both of valor and religion. There is no place for fear in the _Satyagrahi’s_ heart.”

“What is a _Satyagrahi_?” Cobden asked.

“One who is devoted and pledged to truth, to _Satyagraha_. I coined the word, to express our purpose in South Africa. _Satyagraha_ is the use of Love-force or Soul-force.”

Curiously, Dicky felt the cleanness of the house, the peace of it, the humming of a _charka_ in the next room, a symbol of that peace. He felt Gandhi’s face growing upon him out of the shadow, a face that had been dried cleanly by many suns, the features fashioned by a life of direct, unpredatory thinking--the face of a man incapable, even in thought, of hitting below the belt. And now, there was to go with the hum of the _charka_, the faint fragrance of dried fruit in the air, or that sweetness one breathes in the altitudes where the sun is shining upon the great conifers.

“The world has talked much of the omnipotence of God,” Mahatma-ji went on. “India, at last, is preparing to put her faith to test. Passive resistance has been called the weapon of the weak; if this is so, the Soul is weaker than the flesh. Passive resistance calls upon its devotees to endure great suffering, even martyrdom and death. Those who believe it is too difficult to carry out do not trust the Soul. They are not moved by true courage.”

There was no pose nor show, no straining for force, rarely an adjective or simile, no shadings of sense--a direct approach, inevitably direct. Dicky felt suddenly hopeless of ever understanding such directness. For the first time in his life, he realized that all his training to live and to write was less than straight. He had been taught half-tones, shadows to accentuate lights. Here was directness.

Gandhi resumed: “It is the sacred principle of love which moves mountains. To us is the responsibility of living out this sacred law; we are not concerned with results.”

“No such thing then as righteous anger?” Dicky asked.

“There is not for us. Anger is the misuse of force. Anger in thought is an enemy to clear thinking, to understanding. To understand is to love. Anger in action tends to become violence, and violence is the negation of spiritual force. In fact, only those who eschew violence can avail themselves of their real powers. Only those who realize that there is something in man which is superior to the brute nature in him, and that the latter always yields to it, can effectively apply this force, which is to violence, and therefore to all tyranny, all injustice, what light is to darkness. For the exercise of the purest Soul-force, prolonged training of the individual Soul is an absolute necessity.”

Just now Dicky was contending with the feeling that he was in the presence of an evangelist or healer. He had difficulty for the moment in recalling that Gandhi was world-trained; a lawyer of London’s careful making; an opponent of governments in South Africa; a man found powerful enough in his own person to be reckoned with by the established laws of men of high place.

“We have many things to ask of England,” Gandhi said, “and she has promised us her attention, as soon as her present difficulties give her freedom of heart and hand to attend our wants here. To press our wants now, or to force our desires upon England in her crisis in Europe, would be taking an unfair advantage. So this is a time for us in India to cleanse and prepare ourselves for future action, sacrifice if necessary----”

At one moment Gandhi’s face was dull and unattractive as a camel driver’s; again it shone with a high clear calm, like the ideal most of us have of a saint or a priest. Now the instant came, as the words stopped, that Dicky seemed to be looking into the Indian face actually for the first time, and Gandhi was looking _into_ him. The American was uncentered for a second or two, as he had once felt in the quick sag of an airplane in a bit of rough going.

It began to become clear to the caller that there were only a few constantly vibrating themes in this man’s talk: the necessity for nonviolence; the control of self, essential before the control of others can be contemplated; the establishment of altruism as a basis for all political activity; the return of India into her own destiny of a handicraft civilization, which involved the making and using of her own goods and the turning of her back upon the “monster of a mechanical civilization”; freedom of speech, devotion to truth, fearlessness, always that.

Dicky now actually contemplated the look of unearthly calm in the eyes of the man before him. Was it fanaticism--this fearlessness which Gandhi put into practice? Was there a soul-calm back of the human nervous system, a central calm that a man could reach and abide in, that made anything negligible that men might do to the body? Was there something really that Miss Claes and Nagar and this man talked about--something that went on and on, that loved one’s enemies, that loved one’s love, no matter what this life effected to keep them apart? Was it worth going after, since every ordinary viewpoint seemed changed in those who had touched it?... Surely India was getting him going--he, Dicky Cobden, of the family of trowel makers! In amazement, he realized that he was responding to some stimulus like the finest wine--that if he didn’t get out of here soon, he would fall to telling his troubles like a man who has had too many drinks.

Gandhi was speaking of his workers and devotees here in Ahmedabad; the manner of their life together:

“So in our _Ashrama_,” he explained, “every child is taught to understand political institutions and to know how his country is vibrating with new emotions, with new aspirations, with new life.... As for men and women living and working together in the _Ashrama_, they must live the celibate life whether married or unmarried. Marriage brings a woman close together with a man, and they become friends in a special sense, never to be parted in this life or in the lives to come; but I do not think that into that place of life, our lusts should necessarily enter.”

Dicky had scrambled to his feet from the floor.

“I won’t take your time any more just now,” he mumbled haltingly.

Mahatma-ji watched him with a look of gentlest understanding.

Dicky backed out. He was in the street alone.... The young men had not restrained him in the slightest. They had seemed to understand that he must be alone. Even Nagar had only walked at his side a moment in the hall, to say that he would come to the _Entresden_ after dinner.... He was alone in the outskirts of the city with the miracle. Somewhere among Gandhi’s sentences about men and women, it had happened--somewhere in there, when he had spoken about--yes, that was it, “about friends in a special sense!...”

A pariah dog yelped, running out of a doorway, almost banging into his knees. He was in a narrow street, and had to step upon a doorsill, while two men passed dragging at a cart. He saw their bare ribs and salt-whitened loin cloths. The sun was still high; the stillness and heat almost fetid in the byways. He passed a native market place by the river, and out of all the moving multicolored crowd, he remembered only one parasol of jade green, though he did not see the face beneath.

His American-trained mind scoffed against the thing that had happened, but his heart held on serenely.... What did this little world-warrior with the battered mouth know about love and living with a woman? What did he know about lusts that he spoke so freely of? Did he ever give three years of his life to the one battle--not to hate the woman he loved most under heaven? Or was that particular battle so far back in his experience that he merely spoke of it as one skirmish in the great campaign of fifty years, called Life?

Alone at dinner at the _Entresden_, Dicky conned every word the Little Man had spoken about the young married people who worked together in the _Ashrama_, of the celibacy they vowed themselves to, of their becoming through marriage “friends in a special sense--for this and all lives.” Yes, Gandhi talked as if it were a foregone conclusion that there were other lives....

He wasn’t tasting his dinner.... He came up from the deeps of reflection to realize a waiter was coming toward him, as if in answer to a signal. He also discovered that he had been sitting over his filled plate with one hand lifted--the thumb and fingers brushing together, as if he were close to _her_, and it was a bit of her dress or a wisp of her hair between his fingers. His mind could scoff all it pleased, for his heart held serenely to the miracle, and this was the miracle: that Pidge Musser, married or not married, was back alive in his heart; and such a melting pity for her plight had come to him as he sat before the Little Man, that he, the hardheaded, had to rise abruptly from the interview and rush away, lest he fall to weeping and explaining all.

XXVIII

THE RACK OF SEX

DICKY and Nagar sat under the _punkahs_ in the room at the _Entresden_--that stillest, hottest night. A fierce stimulus was driving the American. Moment by moment he realized it more clearly--that his love had come back to him, or some strange new fire from it, as he had talked with Mahatma-ji. It compelled him, mind and emotion now, and his questions were insatiable, but he was slow and roundabout in getting to the core of matters that fascinated.

“For instance, what makes him starve himself?” Dicky asked.

“He has no illusions about fasting,” Nagar answered. “Mahatma-ji objects to the distractions of the body. He keeps down this drum of the senses by severity of handling, an old well-tried way of the East. Ask an expert horseman what to do with a spirited saddle horse that has a tendency now and then to take the bit and run away. ‘Cut down his grain, and he will be easier to handle,’ you will be told.”

Dicky was groping feverishly within himself as the other talked. “But what has celibacy to do----” he halted and finished, “with politics and all that?”

“Mahatma-ji has made himself free from the rack of sex and the drum of the senses--enough to realize his great work for others, for India. We who follow him wish to do the same. We understand that we have not the great gift for India, until we are free; that is, only a man who has freed himself from his own desires can help greatly to free others, or his country. We are not free agents so long as we are on the rack of sex. We cannot hate ourselves off that rack; in fact, we must learn to love more, not less, to escape.”

“Tunnel,” Dicky said. “No man educated on the Hudson can get that sort of thing. Have a heart, Nagar.”

“It is my poor telling----”

Dicky smiled and smoked: “I can’t see how he’d have anything left to give the world,” he added--“a man who got on top of himself that way.”

* * * * *

The thing that Dicky had found in the same room with the Little Man wasn’t happiness, but it was better than the deadness he had known; good to feel the tissues of his heart alive again, not a leaden lump.

Again the next day, he went to sit with Mahatma-ji, but nothing happened, though he remained two hours. On one side he had come to doubt the whole business; on the other he had been naïve enough half to believe that all he had to do was to enter the presence of the Indian leader to get this living thing back in his heart, this pain that had the breath of life in it. Two days afterward, however, while he was deeply involved with Gandhi’s explanation of _Satyagraha_, taking notes so that he could put down the other’s words almost exactly, the sense of Pidge Musser’s presence and plight was suddenly with him again, renewed within him, the pity of it almost more than he could endure.

There were hours also when Dicky could believe almost anything at the _Ashrama_, where he was permitted to sit with the native students (Gandhi often halting his speech in Hindi or Guzerati, to talk English for the American’s benefit). And occasionally during long evening talks with Nagar, on the banks of the Sabarmati or under the muffle-winged _punkahs_ in the _Entresden_ room, Dicky’s mind had sudden extensions of range. Still he had a vague foreboding that he would not be able to hold all this hopeful stuff when he was away from India, for slowly and surely he was being pressed to depart.

“America needs your loyalty now,” Nagar said. “We will send for you to come when the curtain rises here. The drama of India is not being played now, but the Play is written. This that you have heard, so far, is only a rehearsal of minor parts.”

In June, a letter came from _The Public Square_, pressing its correspondent to return to France, or at least to some of the points where the American troops were gathering.

... As for magazine conditions, Dicky [John Higgins wrote], they couldn’t be worse. Our little old _Public Square_ has fallen into sorry ways.... If you’ve had a German neighbor for thirty years and learned cautiously to respect the beast, you’re supposed now to know him no more, in trade or whist or home or club, nor his woman nor children. Old England’s bloomed out more seductive than ever, and this country’s infatuated. You couldn’t believe it. We’re more English than Canada right now. She’s borrowed everything in sight and is so tickled over herself that she’s beginning to laugh at us already. It’s a fact, her big business men can’t keep the joke any longer.... But I only meant to tell you that _The Public Square_ has nothing to say, nothing to do. We tried a critical study of the architecture of a federal building in Des Moines, and we’re being looked into for unpatriotic motives. A lot of American business men, who once gloried in their breadth and toleration, have taken positions in what they call the Department of Justice, and their business is to probe into speeches and writings like ours. They are looking for heresies of citizenship. If we’re not suspended for making a croak, we’ll likely be forced to suspend for not having the breath. Otherwise, we’re quite well, and the trade world--you ought to be able to hear American business boom, even in India--if you’re not too far inland.

For the first time John Higgins’ views looked diminished to Dicky Cobden’s eyes. This personal treason he laid to India. He made an arrangement, however, to help _The Public Square_ to keep alive.... Gandhi was called to Lucknow, and Dicky saw him into his third-class coach, with a catch in his throat and a sadness of heart. A day or two later he left Nagar at the station where he found him--and the day looked dull and gloomy from the windows of the Bombay _Inter Provincial_, as the American started south alone.

XXIX

RUFUS’ PLAY DAY

RUFUS MELTON was having his coffee at Miss Claes’ table. It was noon and July, 1917. The package of mail left at 54 Harrow Street had not forgotten Rufus this morning. Another story had gone through, and he felt that the day was all right. It looked to him like a very good day to play and to shop. Miss Claes came in from the kitchen in a fresh white dress and canvas shoes, nor did she come empty handed. A crystal and silver marmalade jar was in one hand, and a plate of cold ham in the other. These she placed on the cloth before him; and noting that the loaf of rye bread lay uncut upon the board, she went to a drawer for the knife.

Rufus dropped a cube of sugar into his coffee cup and contemplated Miss Claes’ ankle. His mind became industrious. He was thinking how he would describe the ankle if he were using it in a story. He thought of several narrow white things. There was a white greyhound, but you couldn’t say a woman’s ankle was like that. There was a white pleasure yacht on the river, with narrow lines and clipper bow that bore a psychological likeness, but it would take a paragraph to put that over. The boneheads would think of boiler plate. Then there was a birch tree and a polar bear and a snowy church spire ... anyway the ankle was fetching.

“You look great this morning, Miss Claes, and see here----”

He spread out his letter from a most rich and inaccessible editorial room.

“How interesting, Rufus. You are doing so well with your stories.”

“Pidge thinks they’re rotten,” he chuckled.

No comment from Miss Claes.

“She’d have me sit in a cave and growl over a story--bringing one out every three months for editors to muss their hair over and finally turn down. That’s the life----”

Miss Claes had turned to the cabinet of dishes, the double doors of which were open. One might have thought that Rufus was now entirely involved in the subject of Pidge’s idea of stories, but in reality he was studying Miss Claes’ waist and throat and profile. Her particular freshness from boots up this morning fascinated his eye. She took his coffee cup to the kitchen to be refilled, and when she came back close to his chair, Rufus’ arm moved engagingly around her hips, his face turning up with a questioning boyish smile.

“What is it, Rufus?” she asked, making no movement to be free from his arm.

“You’re mighty charming this morning----”

“It’s a charming morning.”

His arm tightened a little, yet she stood perfectly still. Rufus was now in a quandary. This sitting posture had its diminishing aspect: yet to arise and disentangle his feet from under the table, he must loosen his arm or show an uncouth line to the camera, so to speak. Rufus rarely broke his rhythms in these little performances; certainly not when the going was as delicate as this. Miss Claes had become especially desirable, because of an exciting uncertainty about her, and an affectation, at least, of allegiance to Pidge. If he had only had sense enough to turn his chair around, before taking her in. Presently Rufus reached the conclusion that it was better to draw her down to him, than take a chance of getting his arm around her again.

She came--no resistance, no rigidity. His lips found her shadowy cheek, and an indescribable and most disturbing fragrance from her neck and hair. Or was it the extraordinary coolness of everything that disturbed, or the words gently whispered in his ear:

“You’re such a lonely boy. You don’t understand at all what you are really dying for.”

Rufe was disappointed. So hers was the mothering game. Besides his position was uncomfortable, knees under the table, and his coffee was getting cold. So he let her go after all, in order to reach a standing posture, but by the time he was free of the chair and the table, Miss Claes had vanished without haste into the kitchen. Rufus now stood dangling inconveniently between his breakfast and her return.

She came; he went to her. Her dark eyes were utterly calm, no traceable deepening of the color in her face. She halted, but lightly held in the two hands before her was a gold-edged dish, with a little golden globe of butter in the center.

Rufus dropped back in his chair and lifted his coffee cup. What on earth could a man do with a woman holding a butter dish? “It’s hell to be fastidious,” he thought, in regard to his own inhibitions.

Something delectable had gone out of the July day. Miss Claes was no nearer his understanding than before. Pidge would have the laugh on him, because these women could never keep anything to themselves. He didn’t mind anything about Pidge so much as her laugh. Altogether, this little brush at breakfast left him unsatisfied--and this was a play day.

“Thanks,” he said at the door.

She gave him a pink, an old-fashioned white one. “The butter-and-egg-man brought in some from his dooryard garden in Yonkers,” she said.

Rufe started upstairs.

There were voices from one of the rooms on the main floor, but the second was entirely empty and silent until a rear door opened and Fanny Gallup looked out.

“Hello,” she said in a far-reaching whisper.

Fanny’s “hello” was one of the best of her little ways. She said it, as one would cast a silken noose.

Rufe looked back and down. On certain mornings he would have growled an answer and tramped on, but there was something white and calling about the face in the dim shadows this morning, and for a wonder the kids weren’t squalling.

“Oh, come in. Come on in!” was in his ears. Her bare arm was raised and he saw the little muffler of dark in the pit of it. The lacing was gone from the smock, moreover, and there was a pull for the moment to Fanny’s sad little breast. The fact that the smock had once been Pidge’s, Rufe thrust back into his mind for future reference. He halted, looking around and listening again. Then he tiptoed in and the door was shut. Not a great while afterward the door was opened, the crying of children was heard. Fanny was moaning, “Don’t go ’way--oh, don’t go ’way!”

But Rufus breasted past her muttering within himself, “Never again!”

* * * * *

... Pidge and Rufe Melton went over to Bank Street for supper that evening. Rufus wasn’t hungry. He had bought a golf suit that looked very well on him, he said, but evidently now he was troubled how to use it. He hadn’t done any work so far to-day and felt less like it than ever. Pidge thoughtlessly mentioned that an Indian letter had come in to the office from Richard Cobden that day.

“You folks are dippy about this Cobden,” Rufe said. “Every time an article of his comes out in the _Passé Square_, you gather together to read it as if it had come from the Messiah. What’s he to you, Pan--a little bit tender on your Dicky?”

“A little bit tender,” she said.

Rufus felt abused. He glared at her. This sort of thing had happened before. Rufe had come to look at Pidge as his picket pin. He had a long rope and everything was all right, so long as the pin held. But her manner now would uncenter any man.

“I’d like to get out of Harrow Street,” he growled. “Every time I put my address on the top of a manuscript, I feel it’s a knock rather than a boost. I’ve been tempted to get an agent, for no other reason than to have his address for the magazines to work through. I was talking with Redge Walters who bought this story to-day, and he said, ‘Rufe, you sure fall for the little bobbed heads down in the Village, don’t you? Why don’t you come uptown and live in New York?’”

“I like Harrow Street,” said Pidge.

“You don’t make a secret of it, either,” he went on. “Of course, Miss Claes is kind and all that, but we pay for what we get, and there’s no question in my mind about the pictures in her gallery being hung crooked.”

“If you’ve finished your supper, let’s go,” said Pidge.

“She breathes! The Arctic princess!” Rufe shivered.

Pidge didn’t answer.

“And that second floor needs policing up,” Rufe resumed. “I haven’t taken it to heart so much about living in the Village, but that second floor’s a tenement patch. Every time I go up and down----”

“Fanny’s my fault and Miss Claes accepts it with never a murmur,” Pidge said, wide-eyed. “I’d look well running off uptown and leaving Fanny there. Oh, Rufe, don’t you ever see any fault except on the outside?”

Right then Rufe said something.