Part 14

“Physicians tell me that I should be very quiet,” Gandhi explained with a smile. “It is true that I was unable to keep all my appointments to speak on the other side of India, but in the main I am very active. The human body may be made to do what is required of it, after a fashion.... Yes, there are many changes. Our position is rapidly becoming one of direct opposition to Government. We were slow to realize these things.... Our movement depends for its success entirely upon perfect self-possession, self-restraint, absolute adherence to truth and unlimited capacity for self-suffering. In this manner only may we dare to oppose the Rowlatt legislation, and resist the spirit of terrorism which lies behind it, and of which it is the most glaring symptom.”

Dicky’s reaction was queer. He understood the point about the Government daring to leave this man at large, but didn’t Government see deeper than this placid mask? Of all keepers of the peace, Gandhi was apparently master; but in the fearlessness of the eyes that gazed on him now, Dicky fancied for a moment, at least, that he saw what British Government did not. The Little Man suddenly appeared to him as the living embodiment of the Enemy to all existing Governments, utterly terrible in stillness and poise. At the same time, Dicky didn’t lose for a moment his feeling of pity for the wasted figure before him, that tenderness which he could not even have explained to an American.

“... I see you have been faithfully at work, Mr. Cobden,” the Little Man was saying now. “Some time I would have you tell me of your days on the French fields--what you found there after India--whatever you care to speak of experiences which evidently have brought you forward in kindness and understanding and peace----”

“I am glad you find----” Dicky began in an embarrassed tone.

“It is well for me to tell you, but that is sufficient,” Gandhi added. “These are our affairs, not yours----”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand that.”

“We have a saying that one who is coming forward in attainment must not delay his progress by pausing to contemplate or analyze himself. One’s attainment rightly is the joy and affair of every other being but that one.”

Dicky now felt that there was something to report to America in the story of Gandhi and his following of millions. For three days he was with the Little Man, morning and afternoon. Very sternly he had impressed upon himself the fatuousness of expecting anything like the old “miracle.” There was no need for that miracle now, Dicky informed himself gravely and repeatedly, for something of Pidge Musser ceased to be alive in his heart at no time, though much pain of yearning was connected with it and pity and human questionings. He had learned well by now that all really important experiences are spontaneous and can only steal into a mind that is emptied of anticipation and its own inferior pictures.

But on the third day something came to him--as fruits from his dreary months of France. He had been speaking to Gandhi of the hideous directionless campaign days there. Suddenly, as he himself talked, the American Soldier in composite was unveiled before him--the game and grinning Yank, who had held fast in faith to but one thing under smoke and sun, against shock and night itself--his sense of Humor, the fun of the thing.

Dicky _saw_ the Yank, now. That was all there was to it. In the dark room of France the picture had developed and the presence of Mohandas Gandhi now brought it out to the light. It was Dicky’s for all time, and his eyes closed with pain that his old friend John Higgins had missed it--the one thing that one needed to know, to keep one’s faith in America, and to gamble even to life itself that the new order of nobleman should one day arise with laughter.

... He walked the streets of Bombay afterward, and then wrote to Pidge late at night, though he was leaving for the north early in the morning. It seemed he could not wait to tell her. All the meanings of New York that he had caught as a New Yorker, in his own home and in the house of Miss Claes, as an exile in Asia and correspondent in France--fused into a sort of splendid synthesis at last.

He saw ships coming from all Europe to New York Harbor--coming in through The Narrows bearing the emigrants of all Europe--passing under the Statue of Liberty--tiny seeds diffusing into the vast crucible of The States, running out from the meeting point of Manhattan on all the red lines of railroad, into all the green rivers, planting themselves in all parts, for the emerging of the New Race at last--the Laughing Men, the dense physical model of which he had seen in France.

XLI

UNDER THE MANGOES OF CAWNPORE

“NO haste, but no delay.” Gandhi had used the very words in suggesting that it would be well for Dicky to join Nagar in the north. The American telegraphed that he would reach Amritsar on the evening of the ninth, and made his way northward leisurely, stopping over in Cawnpore, for a full day. It was in Cawnpore, toward midday, after a two hours’ ramble in white dust and the killing colorless heat, that Dicky halted in the shade of a little grove of mangoes. He took off his helmet and mopped his brow with a piece of silk already damp. In the shade, at a slight distance (his left foot twisted into the ground), sat an ascetic who kept on with his muttering, not turning the way of the American.

The look of an iron statue suggested itself. There were ashes, and worse, in the holy man’s hair, and in one empty eye socket. The hands were held out in space--twisted, seared hands, but so moveless that Dicky thought of the iron statue again. The wrists were thick and very strong. Cobden squinted his eyes back toward the pitiless Indian street, and then he perceived the Hindu’s face turned to him. A single vivid eye held him, as by the scruff of the neck. The voice was deep and resonant as from one who had learned to breathe, a rare art. The words in English were quietly spoken:

“It is written, my son, that you are to come to the end of your search within six days.”

Dicky edged closer, and asked courteously: “Do you really get it that way?”

“So it reads in the crystals. To one who truly reads, the tale is one--whether read in the crystals or the stars.”

The holy man lifted from between his thighs a handful of stained and rusty stones.

“You will go to a wall,” he added studiously. “You will enter through the gate of the wall----”

“What wall, father?”

“Who knows? I see the wall. The end comes within six days, and there is tumult.”

“The end of my life?”

“There seems no surety of that, but it is possible.”

The deep voice of the _hathayogin_ went on: “The crystals foretell, but the wisdom and daring of man forestall. Had you not come to this tree, there would be no hope. As it is, you may come again to-morrow at this time.”

“I’m afraid not, father. Whatever wall it is, I shall be one day nearer it, to-morrow.”

Few would have noted the faint film of pallor under Dicky Cobden’s tan. As white men go, he knew something about the Indian holy men. The more he learned, the more he respected certain rare types. There is a saying in India that the real mystic never begs. Dicky determined to learn the quality of the man before him, for he arose now to depart without offering a present in money.

“Perhaps, father, from this meeting, I shall be wiser to face the fate that awaits me at the wall.”

“You should be wise enough to take one day from your journey.”

“I cannot take what is not altogether my own,” the American laughed. “I am saying good-by now.”

He walked slowly out of the shade of the trees. With each step, his blood chilled a little, in spite of noon heat. He thought of _The Public Square_, of Pidge Musser at the desk there, of Harrow Street. Death had to come some time, but life wasn’t boring him just now. The sunlight of the open stretch stung his eyes with great weariness. The deep voice called from behind:

“Stay, my pupil!”

Dicky halted and returned, looking down into the apparently guileless and desireless eye. “Alms for the temple in Cawnpore,” the lips intone.

“By all means, father,” the other said, no visible change upon his face, as he placed in the palm of the beggar several bits of silver from his purse. In the burning day again, he lifted a tired smile to the sun. No true mystic, perhaps, but what had this man seen in the crystals?

XLII

LALA RELU RAM

NAGAR took him by the hand at the railway station in Amritsar on the evening of the ninth of April, 1919. The need for many words seemed past; there was quiet gladness. Dicky took up his quarters in the _Golden Temple Inn_. Under the lights at the entrance, as he passed in with Nagar, groups of Mohammedans and Hindus stood together, with self-conscious but eager shows of mutual friendship, and the American rubbed his eyes.

If there was one thing in India that could be counted upon like Government itself, it was the mutual hatred of these two great divisions of native life. Dicky had heard in recent days much of the swift breaking down of these barriers, under the influence of Mahatma-ji, but he had seen no example of it working out like this under the lights of the Inn.

“But what do the English think when they see the Hindu and Moslem _kowtowing_ to each other--as at the door below when we came in?” Dicky inquired.

“The Deputy Commissioner, the highest English civilian of Amritsar, looked upon a similar spectacle to-day,” Nagar said. “I did not hear him, but he is reported to have remarked, ‘There’s going to be a row here,’ and drank much cold soda water.”

“What is your work here, Nagar?”

“I have been working among the students at the college of Lahore, and now here in Amritsar, working with the young men and women.”

“Preaching Gandhi’s sort of peace?”

“Yes,” said Nagar.

“I still wonder that the English don’t ‘get’ the Little Man, Nagar.”

“The Government regards him as harmless because he speaks of Soul-force. It deals with precedents; Mahatma-ji with ideals----”

“You think the Government will arrest him sooner or later?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Won’t that stop or hurt the work?”

“I remember,” said Nagar, “hearing the school children in New York sing, ‘John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, but his Soul goes marching on.’ A spiritual beginning never stops. Mahatma-ji has already brought his few spiritual principles into matter, into action.”

“Tunnel,” said Dicky.

“Night and day Mahatma-ji has been preparing his entire people to stand quiet and hateless; no matter what happens to him,” Nagar went on with a smile. “He tells them that in the event of his imprisonment, or even of his martyrdom, they would only wound his spirit, by answering the shedding of blood with blood----”

They talked late. For fully an hour after Nagar left, Dicky sat by the open window, smoking to keep the insects away. Tobacco did not entirely quench the stale tired smell of the town. Even after he put out the light, sleepless hours passed, so it was late in the forenoon when he awoke, hearing cries in the street below. He crossed to the window.

“_Hindu Mussultmanki jai!_” a voice cried. This he took to mean a native impulse to promote Hindu and Moslem unity, or something of the sort. Also he heard the cry repeatedly, “_Mahatma Gandhiki jai!_” Also Gandhi’s name associated with the names of “Kitchlew and Satyapal,” native leaders in Amritsar, of whom Nagar had spoken last night. Presently there was a knock at his door. A serious but friendly young Hindu in student’s garb bowed, entered and walked to the center of the room, saying in careful English:

“From Nagarjuna I have come to be at the service of Cobden Sahib for the full day.”

“Thank you. Is Nagar busy?”

The student bowed again and proceeded: “My name is Lala Relu Ram and I am glad to come and make you acquainted with the disposition of the city.”

The shouts were raised again outside.

“What’s in the air?” Dicky asked.

This was too much for Lala Relu Ram.

“I mean the shouts below--is this another holiday?”

“My people are gravely disturbed. Doctors Kitchlew and Satyapal have been sent for by the Deputy Commissioner Sahib. It is feared for them by my people.”

“What have they been doing?”

“In the terms of public speech they have cried out--also against the Rowlatt Bills, and for the amity of all peoples in Amritsar, Dr. Kitchlew being a Mohammedan and Dr. Satyapal a Hindu, which is anomalous.”

Dicky was still unshaven, and there were some notes he wished to put down.

“I’ll be ready to go out with you in an hour or less,” he said. “Would you not like to go down and get a line on what is going on?”

The student confessed that he would, but plainly the American idiom “get a line on” fascinated him. He paused to inquire, and Dicky explained.

“That is very good,” the student observed. “We are taught that the language of the future is to be made of most flexible symbols. I will get a line upon what is in the air and return.”

He was back within a half hour saying that the worst had happened. Doctors Kitchlew and Satyapal had been arrested under the Defense of India Act, ordered to write farewell letters to their families, and been driven out of town, their destination unknown.

“My people are gathering to go to the bungalow of the Deputy Commissioner with a _faryad_ (petition) that will remonstrate very firmly,” the Hindu boy said.

“We had better be there, don’t you think, when the doings begin?” Dicky inquired.

“Doings?”

“When the performance is pulled off.”

“Ah, _tamasha_!”

“I think so,” said Dicky.

They heard the slamming of boarded shop windows in all the native streets. The word for suspension of trade had gone abroad. The two pressed through gathering groups all making their way in one direction.

They had passed through a stretch of bazaars and before them now was a carriage bridge over the railroad right of way. On the bridge, they were packed tightly in the throng by the railings on either side. In a moment, the crowd in front halted and surged back. Lala Relu Ram gripped his arm queerly. Now they heard voices far ahead--angry voices in English--demanding the people to disperse. The van of the crowd had been confronted by a police and military piquet, but the pressing forward did not cease.

“My people are refusing to be stopped. They claim the right to make their plea,” the student whispered.

Dicky was sinking himself into the purpose of the populace. As ever from his training, he sought to clear his mind of preconception and self-interest--so that the events might write upon a clean surface. Just now a shot was heard; a bullet sang overhead--then a volley. It was not until that moment that he remembered the dusty twisted ascetic in the mango grove at Cawnpore. But that was only two days ago, and where was the wall?

* * * * *

He found himself in the very quick of the Indian people--under the cuticle of India herself. India the timid, the terrible; India talking of Soul-force; India running with its _faryad_ to the ranking English representative of Amritsar; explaining her griefs and her hurts to herself and to the English, seeing neither the humor of her plight on one side, nor its grimness on the other; India led about on a string which she might have broken with the flick of a finger.

That was what India had always seemed most like to Dicky Cobden--_hathis_, the elephant, gentlest and strongest of creatures. For many generations she had been banged about by the shouts and blows of the white _mahout_, who was not in the cult of elephant lore, never a native of her habitat. He had made her stand around according to his own ideas--India, the great female elephant, full of tremors and flutterings; of vast strange delicacies and uncomputable powers.... Now she was leaving her white _mahout_ to follow about a little black man with an invisible string.

“_Mahatma Gandhiki jai! Gandhi Maharajiki rai!_”

Dicky heard the voice raised now in the lull that followed the first volley.... A little black man with an invisible string, called Soul-force.

One with the crowd, he felt its galvanic jerk of ugliness pass through himself. The murmur of protest that now arose from the open mouths was like something from himself--as if his mouth, too, were open with sound. A bearded native in soiled white garments turned suddenly and pressed him back. This man had felt a stone under his bare foot and he was making room to reach down to pick it up. Dicky saw his fingers stretch toward the muck. He understood. Here was one of the primal impulses of the human body in a stress of fear and hate. Far ahead, the English officers roared commands for the natives to go back. The voices of native leaders standing with the English, also implored the people to disperse. But the people had their _faryad_. They wanted talk. Also there were dead and wounded on the earth before the eyes of the front ranks. Another volley sounded.

Instead of being driven back by the second pelting of shots, the native crowd crushed its way across the bridge. In the opening on the other side, it halted, now in the Civil Lines, no longer jammed by the narrow rails of the bridge. The throng had not yet become insensate; no individual had seized the office of leadership. This was the instant of all to Dicky Cobden, the turning point. The native gathering might still have been reasoned with, as it stood leaderless, looking upon its own dead; but instead of reason, came the third volley from the soldiers and police, the prod of the ankus that turned the elephant _musth_.

The shuddering of revolt that the people felt passed through Richard Cobden as well--whipped up in his own breast. Then he was carried forward with the mob. Nothing gentle or yielding about the bodies now, a rough, bruising, muscular mass pushed from behind by incredible power.

Dicky glanced about to look for Lala Relu Ram, and that instant was whacked to the ground, a slug from the pistol of one of the troopers, gouging his left shoulder. He arose to one knee, still turned back, a laugh on his lips, looking for the student.

And now a most extraordinary shock was meted out to the son of the trowel makers. A running native with gray, patchy face, completely carried away by mob impulse, halted, stood above the kneeling white man, struck him in the face with both hands, emptying his mouth at the same time. Some of the natives immediately behind, without questioning but that Dicky was one of the English, now tramped over his body as they ran. Though fallen, he still preserved a final waver of consciousness--face down, head covered in his arms. Finally he was caught by the arm and jerked to the side.

It was Lala Relu Ram who had pulled him out of the crowd and looked down into a face covered with blood and mud, and a welt or two. The only white about that face now was the lips which smiled and repeated a word which the Hindu student had never heard in all his linguistic studies of the East and West.

XLIII

_HATHIS_ LAMENTS

DICKY really came to back in an apothecary shop on the way to the Golden Temple, where Lala Relu Ram had carried him. The filth of that face that had opened upon him as he looked up from his knee--a shudder about that, something he would never be able to tell. It had been uglier to take than the blows. As moments dragged on, he fell to wishing Nagar would come. A curious wonder played incessantly in his mind about the twisted ascetic under the mango trees in Cawnpore, but where was the wall? The crystal gazer had repeated that the thing which was to befall would be within a wall.

“... The bullet didn’t think enough of you to stay, Mr. Cobden,” the young English surgeon said after examination. “It merely bit out a chunk of muscle and went its way. Since there is no cavity for it to drain into, it means nothing but a stitch or two, and a clean bandage. But you’ve been considerably mashed about the face. There’s going to be a strain on your drainage system for a few days to carry off dead tissue.”

He was taken to his room at the Inn, much bandaged, and Lala Relu Ram sat by his bedside, his face often turned to the open window that looked out over the street.

“I’m all right--don’t stay,” Dicky urged, as he began to understand the sacrifice of the student in remaining with him instead of following the mob.

“Nagarjuna did not say for one hour, or for half of one day, but for the full day,” Lala Relu Ram declared, “and who knows but that I too might have disobeyed the orders of Mahatma-ji and become violent?”

Dicky hadn’t much of a grin left, but such as it was, he was free to let it work under the folds of gauze. He sent the student below on one pretext after another, knowing that the young man was exhausting himself from strain to hear all that had happened.

“It is more terrible than we supposed,” the student reported, as the long day ended. “Enraged by their dead and wounded, and being prevented from carrying their request to the Deputy Commissioner, my people have burned buildings, bank buildings--the National, the Chartered, the Alliance banks----”

“That’s hitting them where they live,” said Mr. Cobden, impelled to Americanisms as never before.

“Sir?” said Lala Relu Ram, bending forward on the scent of the idiom.

“A Government bank is an English nerve center, Lala Ram,” Dicky said.

The student was thoughtful, and then resumed: “It is with sorrow that I have to confess that my people have forgotten themselves in the case of Mr. Stewart and Mr. Scott of the National Bank and Mr. Thomason of the Alliance Bank----”

“Hurt?” said Dicky.

“Dead,” said the student, with a dramatic pause. “And that is not all. Miss Sherwood was most brutally assaulted, and outside the city a railway guard named Robinson, and a havildar in charge of the Electric, named Rowlands, were beaten to death where they live, and the station goods yard burnt----”

Dicky’s eyes squinted under the cloths. “And what of your own people?” he managed to ask.

“Oh, many have been killed!”

This was an item that did not require the enumeration of details. _Hathis_ had gone _musth_, but not for long. _Hathis_ was horrified at the awfulness of the thing she had done. _Hathis_ was back in her pickets again, not realizing her own hurts, anticipating a clubbing on the toes, and in the immortal way of _hathis_, half suspecting that a clubbing was deserved.

“I’d like to doze a little,” said Dicky.

The student rose, but lingered.

“Would Cobden Sahib permit me to ask one question?”

“Why, of course, shoot--I mean--ask it.”

“It is about that moment when you fell,” said Lala Relu Ram. “Rather, it was when I reached you, and had driven off my people who thought you were one of the English----”

“Yes.”

“You were partly out of the body--unconscious. Yet your eyes were open and you were speaking some word that I have never heard--several times, as you would speak the Holy Name in devotion, with breathing.”

“What was that name?” Dicky inquired, pulling the bandage down farther over his eyes.

“It is not one which I have ever heard in my speech or yours--that is why I ask. It was like this, ‘Pid-gee--Pid-gee.’”

Dicky laughed.

“That is--the fact is, that’s right curious,” he said. “I must have been ‘out of the body,’ as you say. That--that is a little expression we use in childhood!”

* * * * *

As Nagar stood under the light that evening, Dicky saw that his eyes, too, were burning with strange sorrow. Lala Relu Ram bowed himself out, walking backward. When they were alone, Nagar came to the bedside, drawing a chair, and his hand found the American’s.

“We have not done well in Amritsar to-day.”

“I don’t think you understand it quite,” Dicky said. “I was there this noon, at the place they call the Hallgate Bridge----”

“There was violence,” said Nagar.

“There were three volleys----”