LIITHE OLD FACE
DICKY reflected that there were two ways of looking at a person or a thing, a fact proven several times in his experience. There had been a moment in the presence of Gandhi, after many minutes of talk, when the face, that had been dull and unattractive as a camel driver’s, had suddenly appeared to him with memorable, essential significance. It had been so with Miss Claes: also the moment when he had really seen Pidge, as they stood together on the Palisades of Santa Monica. Recently he had caught an immortal something in the look from Nagar on the rack.
He did not see Nagar again in Amritsar, but up to mid-May the students reported that his friend was still imprisoned. The sound of those falling strokes was slow to die out of the corridors of Dicky’s memory. They awoke him in the night. It was far easier, however, to recall the splendor of gameness in the way Nagar had taken his beating. This satisfied every American instinct; and even above this, was the mystery of compassion for the English, in Nagar’s face. Here was a man on a tennis court in a remote Punjabi town, hardly heard-of in this war-racked world, plainly putting over the thing he had marveled at, as a smallboy in Sunday school: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Apparently the same majestic composure. Life held many things; yet Richard Cobden couldn’t be sure altogether, that he had not outraged the spirit of friendship in failing to register his protest of word and deed. Of course, the consequences might have been disastrous, but, at least, a certain man-to-man loyalty would have been satisfied.
If further tortures were inflicted upon Nagar, Dicky was not informed. The Amritsar story was no longer on the outside; it was in Richard Cobden’s brain and heart. He wrote some of it and his letters were forwarded, but still he conned and brooded. Having held still through the whipping of Nagar, he found it easier to stand in the midst of current events without losing his head, or letting emotion or opinion have right of way.
Late in May, a student brought word that Nagar was free and had gone south. This was all that Dicky had been waiting for. Crawling, salaming, flogging, imprisonment and forced testimony had long since become to him a full and bitter cup. At the station, as he waited for his train, a student, edging near, managed to whisper two words:
“Ashrama, Ahmedabad.”
The American’s head bowed slightly. He had meant to go to Ahmedabad anyway.
He was not met at the station there, but a servant at theEntresdentold him to go at once to theAshrama.He obeyed, and found himself listening for the voice of Mahatma-ji, as he entered, but his eyes searched the shadows of the hall for Nagar, a kind of breathless pain about it all.
As the door of an inner room opened, at last, and the native who conducted him drew back, Dicky saw a woman standing in the dimness. Her face, turned toward him, was a mere blur of darkness, but there was a leap toward her in Richard Cobden’s breast. Then he stood before her, in a daze of joy, one hand in hers, one upon her shoulder.
“It happened very quickly in New York,” she told him. “A letter saying that I was coming could hardly have reached you before the steamer that brought me——”
“But, Miss Claes—New York! What are we to do—no Harrow Street?”
“You will know what to do,” she said. “And about the things that were in your rooms. I had them carefully boxed and sent to your mother, who was well when I left. Also your aunt and sister.”
He took from his pocket the old dark key to the “parlor” door. She bent and touched it.
“Keep it, Richard,” she said, “until I send you another.”
“And Nagar——” he began at length.
“He is here.”
“And well? I could get so little word.”
“Nagar has been hurt, but is healing. Look——”
Dicky turned to find his friend standing behind them at the door. He had felt a presence there, but thought it was the native who had brought him. Nagar’s eyes looked very large in the wasted face.
“Oh, yes, all is well with me,” he said. “I have been sorry to leave you so much alone in the north.... Yes,” he added, “it was harder for you than for me—the test that day on the tennis court. You were brave, my friend. I knew all was well—when the instant passed and you remained silent.”
“How do you mean—all was well?”
“I knew that the message of India would get to America—since you did not spoil it by defending me.”
Nagar turned to Miss Claes, adding:
“I saw the fury and fright rise in his eyes, and all the impulses of ethics of the West—then silence over all. It was as if we were cemented——”
Dicky remembered that last word afterward.
As he moved about and talked, he was vaguely conscious of watching the other two together. It was as if Pidge would want to hear of every gesture and detail. Miss Claes was less Indian here than in Harrow Street. There he had thought of her as belonging to the East; here she seemed of the West. Something of the composure he had noted on the tennis court had come to stay in Nagar’s eyes. As moments passed, Dicky knew that they contained deep vitalities of meaning that would appear in coming days.
It was as if his limitations were being stretched, but by consummate hands. There was repeatedly broughtto him, from them, something that he refused to hear or dwell with: that he had done well, that he was deeply approved of in their sight; that there was much more to take place between them as a group, even though they were to stay in Asia, and he was leaving for The States.... Then all faces turned, and in the doorway stood the Little Man.
No one spoke, but to Richard Cobden it was one moment of his life that he thought of as religious. Mahatma-ji came in between them, and Dicky felt the old urge somehow to help with his hands; the sense, too, of all India thronging, whispering around them. For a moment the four had been standing in silence, when they heard thesweepof bare slow feet in the hall, and now an old dark face was in the doorway, a smile serene as nothing else on earth but the Hills themselves—a dark wrinkled old face, and she came forward and stood very low and little in the midst of them—Gandhi’s comrade.
In San Francisco, waiting for the departure of his train east, a card was sent up to Cobden’s hotel room. It was from Chris Heidt, the managing editor of his former newspaper connection.
“Hello, Cobden. Just noticed you were off ship. What did you bring back?”
Dicky reflected. “The story of Amritsar,” he said finally.
“Amritsar, what’s that?”
“The first big story I ever ran across. I feel likeone of Job’s servants, who said he alone remained to make a report.”
Mr. Heidt had been much on trains during the past few days, and had missed the fact, so far, thatThe Public Squarehad begun to publish the story.
“Not going to bury it in a weekly, are you?”
“I have much more thanThe Public Squarecould use in months. It really should get out into the broad market. The end of one world and the birth of another took place that Sunday in Amritsar—all in miniature, you understand——”
He spoke of Gandhi, whose name had scarcely been heard at this time in America, and touched upon the story ofmaidan.
“Sure,” said Mr. Heidt. “Sure, it’s a big yarn, but months ago. No way to substantiate it. You’re a little out of perspective, Cobden, seeing it all first hand that way.”
“I can substantiate it,” Dicky said queerly.
“I know, but the whole story’s a trouble-maker. Far as I can make out, this Gandhi is a sort of sanctimonious Lenine, and we’re not promoting any kind of Lenines just now. Red roughhouses all over the world, but we’re not advertising the fact. The best newspaper interests here and in England are letting that sort of thing die down. Everybody’s healthily intent on getting back to business right now. Make a corking fiction setting—your Amritsar—series of short stories that would do no harm.”
Thus Richard had his American perspective restored.