XXVITHE HANGING SOCK
NAGAR was changed. On the day that Richard Cobden reached Ahmedabad, he encountered one of the surprises of his life. It was like meeting a man out in the freedom of the world, whom one had only known before in prison. Two years in the East had sharpened Dicky’s eyes to note something in Nagar’s face that he had been unable to detect before. Dicky called it cleanliness and calm, but this brought up the old difficulty which he never missed in his work of writing—that at best, words only suggest, only intimate.
In America Nagar had looked dark; here he looked fair. There he had moved in and out as one of the colored men; here he was one of the elect. There he had lived in the midst of silences and mysterious inhibitions, diminished by the garments of Western civilization; here he was white-robed in the sunlight, like young Gautama in his father’s garden. Of course, Dicky knew that the change was more substantial than that of garb or place. He could only repeat that Nagar seemed free in his own mind.
In the first few moments at the station in Ahmedabad, Dicky had himself felt unwashed and unwholesome,as no man ever made him feel before. His hand went up to his chin. Yes, he had shaved that morning, but realizing it did not help much. It wasn’t the grime of travel that hurt him, but the smear of his recent mental and emotional overturning, the ugliness of all those days in the red room at Bombay, and the sense of failure and loss he lived with constantly since the coming of the letter from Pidge.
“... And the Little Man is actually here in Ahmedabad, and not a myth?” Dicky had asked, as they drew out of the crowd at the station.
“Not only that, but you are to go to theAshramanow, if you will. He is eager to have you come.”
“His house first?” Dicky asked.
“It is also the house in which I live,” said Nagar.
“You mean you wish to put me up in your quarters?”
“If you would not mind our great simplicity.”
“Thanks, I should like that,” said Dicky, “but I think it would be better for me to follow the usual course of a foreigner and find hotel quarters.”
TheEntresdenwas not crowded and Dicky obtained comfortable quarters in a northeast room where the upholstering was covered in clean tan linen, and thepunkahsshowed signs of life immediately upon their entrance. Nagar prepared to leave as soon as Dicky sat down in the air crossing between two shaded windows.
“I will come for you this afternoon if you wish to go to theAshramato-day,” he said. “It is some distance from the center of the city.”
“Sit down, Nagar; don’t hurry off.”
“I thought you would prefer to rest until aftertiffin.”
“Stay and we’ll have it here. You’ll pour the tea like the old days in Miss Claes’ room.”
Nagar’s face was in the shadows, but there was a soft shining as of polished silver in or around his eyes. At times, shutting his eyes as Nagar spoke, Dicky could almost believe he was back in the basement at Harrow Street. The way Nagar said to him, “my friend,” was almost Miss Claes herself. That was the poignant part of finding the Oriental again; that he brought back Harrow Street—even moments under the white light. The day would have been joyous but for the aching emptiness of heart. Dicky asked tirelessly about Gandhi, especially since it gave him such a chance to study the new Nagar.
“Mahatma-ji has burned away all waste,” Nagar said at length. “He has narrowed himself down, body and mind, to an almost perfect obedience—self-control. He measures action to all his words. The best he knows, step by step, he performs.”
“Where did you hear of him first?”
“Here in India—of his work in South Africa. I went there to know him better—followed the gleam, as you might say. I stayed four years. It was he who encouraged me to go to America to study more of the spirit of the West.”
“What’s Gandhi’s message to these people?”
“He believes that politics cannot be successfully divorcedfrom religion,” Nagar said. “His message always is toward the spiritualizing of India’s political life and her institutions. The spiritual predominance of India, which he idealizes as being the real destiny of India, can only be effected by her rebecoming herself, by the return of the Motherland into herself, by her ceasing to imitate all the ways of western civilization.”
“But if she returns into herself, making her own goods, cutting herself off from all institutions of the present government—England will be done for here.”
Nagar bowed without the trace of a smile.
“I’ve heard that every turn of a spinning-wheel in India takes part of a turn from a power loom in Manchester,” Dicky added.
Nagar further acquiesced.
“And that isn’t politics?... I think I’ll go in for religion, myself.”
“It is very good to have you here,” Nagar said later. “Mahatma-ji will also be glad. He has asked much about you and believes that you may be a means of making many in America understand. It is a saying with us here that ‘to understand is to love.’”
“But I didn’t come here with any set idea, you know.”
“The work you will do for us in America will be the better for that. The more reason and rationale you bring——”
“Evidently it’s easy for one to go off his head where Gandhi is,” Dicky said.
“His effect on some is subtle and strong.”
“I’ll keep a stiff bridle arm. Say, Nagar, have you stopped to think how I happen to be here to-day?”
“Tell me, please.”
“One hanging sock.”
“I do not understand.”
“One hanging sock. It was that which made me go out into the reception room in the first place, that day you brought the story toThe Public Square. I heard the office boy say to J. H., ‘He keeps pulling up his sock.’ I went out to see. So that’s what made me go to Harrow Street, and meet Miss Claes and the rest and go to Africa, and come here. I believe that’s what started the World War.”
Nagar laughed. “I always had such trouble in the early days with American clothing. I would get one part working and another would give way——”
“But, Nagar, what made it so imperative for you to have the two hundred that day?”
“A ship was leaving within twenty-four hours for the Mediterranean to connect with South African ports. Mahatma-ji was greatly in need of funds to carry on his work.”
“I thought you were ill—possibly starving.”
“I was ill from strain—self-consciousness. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do—to stand up against America in the office ofThe Public Square.”
“You certainly put it over. But what made you so silent in New York? It’s an actual shock to find you chatty and human, like this.”
“Certain of us in India are trained differently from American ways. You perhaps have read that in the Pythagorean schools, a period of silence was enjoined among the young men. It was so in my training. We seek to silence all opinions, all half-truths, all thinking, in fact, in order toKnow. We postulate, of course, a center of Spontaneous Knowledge, or Genius, above the mind. To learn obedience to this, one takes a vow of silence——”
“Ah, I remember! Pidge—Miss Musser—I mean Mrs. Melton, told me something of the kind!”