XLIUNDER 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 tobreathe, 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 thehathayoginwent 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. Dickydetermined 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 ofThe 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?