I
In early life Chandrapál had been engaged in the practice of the law, and had held a position of some honour under the Crown. But as the years wore on the ties which bound him to the world of sense were severed one by one, and he was now released. By the study of the Vedanta, by ascetic discipline, and by the daily practice of meditation undertaken at regular hours, he had attained the Great Peace; and those who knew the signs of such attainment reverenced him as a holy man. His influence was great, his fidelity was unquestioned, and his fame as a teacher and sage had been carried far beyond his native land.
Chandrapál was versed in the lore of the West. He had studied the history, the politics, the literature and philosophy of the great nations, and could quote their poets and their sages with copiousness and aptitude. He had written a commentary on Faust. He also read, and sometimes expounded, the New Testament; and he held the Christian Gospel in high esteem.
Among the philosophers of the West it was Spinoza to whom he gave the place of highest honour. Regarding the Great Peace as the ultimate object of human attainment, he held that Spinoza alone had found a clear path to the goal; since then European thought had been continually decadent.
Though far advanced in life, Chandrapál had never seen Western civilisation face to face until the year when we are about to meet him. He travelled to America by way of Japan, and Vancouver was the first Western city in which he set his foot. There he looked around him with bewildered eyes, gaining no clear impression, save in the negative sense that the city contained nothing to remind him of Spinoza or of the Nazarene. It was not that he expected to find a visible embodiment of their teaching in everything he saw; Chandrapál was too wise for that. But he hoped that somewhere and in some form the Truth, which for him these teachers symbolised in common, would show itself as a living thing. It might be that he would see it on some human face; or he might feel it in the atmosphere; or he might hear it in the voice of a man. Chandrapál knew that he had much to see and to discover; but in all his travels it was for this that he kept incessant watch.
From Vancouver he passed south to San Francisco; thence, city by city, he threaded his way across the United States and found himself in New York. All that he had seen so far gathered itself into one vast picture of a world fast bound in the chains of error and groaning for deliverance from its misery. In New York the misery seemed to deepen and the groanings to redouble. But of this he said nothing. He let the universities fête him; he let the millionaires entertain him in their great houses; he delivered lectures on the wisdom of the East, and, though a kindly criticism would now and then escape him, he gave no hint of his great pity for Western men. He was the most courteous, the most delightful of guests.
Arrived in England, he received the same impression and practised the same reserve. Wherever he went a rumour spread before him, and men waited for his coming as though the ancient mysteries were about to be unsealed. The curious cross-examined him; the bewildered appealed to him; the poor heard him gladly, and famished souls, eager for a morsel of comfort from the groaning table of the East, hovered about his steps. He preached in churches where the wandering prophet is welcomed; he broke bread with the kings of knowledge and of song; he sat in the seats of the mighty and received honour as one to whom honour is due.
To all this he responded with a gratitude which was sincere; but his deeper gratitude was for the Powers by whose ordering he had been born neither an Englishman nor a Christian, but a Hindu.
Here, as in America, he looked about him observingly and pondered the meaning of what he saw. But he understood it not, and went hither and thither like a man in a dream. In his Indian home he had studied Western civilisation from the books which tell of its mighty works and its religion; and, so studied, it had seemed to him an intelligible thing. But, seen with the naked eye, it appeared incomprehensible, nay, incredible. Its bigness oppressed him, its variety confused him, its restlessness made him numb. Values seemed to be inverted, perspectives to be distorted, good and evil to be transposed: "in" meant "out," and Death did duty for Life. Chandrapál could not take the point of view, and finally concluded there was no point of view to take. He could not frame his visions into coherence, and therefore judged that he was looking at chaos. Sometimes he would doubt the reality of what he saw, and would recollect himself and seek for evidence that he was awake. "Can such things be?" he would say to himself; "for this people has turned all things upside down. Their happiness is misery, their wisdom is bewilderment, their truth is self-deception, their speech is a disguise, their science is the parent of error, their life is a process of suicide, their god is the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched. What is believed is not professed, and what is professed is not believed. In yonder place"—he was looking at London—"there is darkness and misery enough for seven hells. Verily they have already come to judgment and been condemned."
So thought Chandrapál. But his mistake, if it was one, offended nobody; for he held his peace about these things.
There came a day when the folk of Deadborough were started from their wonted apathy by the apparition of a Strange Man. They saw him first as he drove from the station in a splendid carriage-and-pair, with a coronet on its panels. Seated in the carriage was a venerable being with a swarthy countenance and headgear of the whitest—such was the brief vision. Other carriages followed in due course, for there was an illustrious house-party at Deadborough Hall—the owner of which was not only a slayer of pheasants, but a reader of books and a student of things. He had gathered together the Bishop of the Diocese, a Cabinet Minister, two eminent philosophers, the American Ambassador, a leading historian, and a Writer on the Mystics. To these was added—for he deserves a sentence to himself—an Orientalist of world-wide reputation. All were gathered for the purpose of meeting Chandrapál.
By the charm of his manners, by his urbanity, by his brilliant and thought-provoking conversation, the Oriental repaid his host a hundred times over. To most of his fellow-guests he played the part of teacher, while seeming to act that of disciple; but to none was his manner so deferential and his air of attention so profound as to the great Orientalist. And yet in the secret heart of Chandrapál this was the man for whom he felt the deepest compassion. He found, indeed, that the great man's reputation had not belied him; he was versed in the wisdom of the East and in the tongues which had spoken it; he knew the path to the Great Peace as well as the sage knew it himself; but when Chandrapál looked into his restless eyes and heard the hard tones of his voice, he perceived that no soul on earth was further from the Great Peace than this.
With the two philosophers Chandrapál spent many hours in close debate. He spoke to them of the Bhagavad Gita and of Spinoza. He found that of the Bhagavad Gita they knew little—and they cared less. Of Spinoza they knew much and understood nothing—thus thought he. So he turned to other topics and conversed fluently on the matters dearest to their hearts—namely, their own works, with which he was well acquainted. They, on their part, had never met a listener more sympathetic, a critic more acute. Chandrapál left upon them the impression of his immense capacity for assimilating the products of Western thought; also the belief that they had thoroughly rifled his brains.
Meanwhile he was thinking thus within himself: "These men are keepers of shops, like the rest of their nation. Their merchandise is the thoughts of God, which they defile with wordy traffic, understanding them not. They have no reverence for their masters; their souls are poisoned with self; therefore the Light is not in them, and they know not the good from the evil. The word of the Truth is on their lips, but it lives not in their hearts. Moreover, they are robbers; and even as their fathers stole my country so they would capture the secrets of my soul—that they may sell them for money and increase their traffic. But to none such shall the treasure be given. I will walk with them in the outer courts; but the innermost chamber they shall not so much as see."
With the Cabinet Minister Chandrapál had this in common—that both were lawyers and servants of the Crown. Thus a basis of intercourse was established—were it only in the fact that each man understood the official reserve of the other. The first day of their acquaintance was passed by each in reconnoitring the other's position and deciding on a plan of campaign. The Minister concluded that there were three burning topics which it would be unwise to discuss with Chandrapál. Chandrapál perceived what these topics were, knew the Minister's reasons for avoiding them, and reflected with some satisfaction that they were matters on which he also had no desire to talk. His real object was to penetrate the Minister's mind in quite another direction, and he saw that this astute diplomatist had not the slightest suspicion of what he was after. This, of course, gave the tactical advantage to the Indian.
Now Chandrapál was more subtle than all the guests in Deadborough Hall. With great adroitness he managed to introduce the very topics on which, as he well knew, the Minister had resolved not to express himself; but he took care on each occasion to provide the other with an opportunity for talking about something else. This something else had been carefully chosen by Chandrapál, and it was a line of escape which led by very gradual approaches to the thing he wanted to find out. The Minister had won a great reputation in beating the diplomatists of Europe at their own game; but he had never before directly encountered the subtlety of an Oriental mind. Stepping aside from the dangerous spots to which the other was continually leading him, he put his foot on each occasion into the real trap; and thus, by the end of the third day, he had revealed what the Indian valued more than all the secrets of the British Cabinet. Meanwhile the Minister had conceived an intense dislike to Chandrapál, which he disguised under a mask he had long used for such purposes; at the same time he flattered himself on the ease with which he outwitted this wily man.
Chandrapál, on his side, reflected thus: "Behold the misery of them that know not the Truth. This man flatters the people; but in his heart he despises them. Those whom he leads he knows to be blind, and his trade is to persuade them that they can see. The Illusion has made them mad; none sees whither he is going; the next step may plunge them all into the pit; they live for they know not what. All this is known to yonder man; and, being unenlightened, he has no way of escape, but yields to his destiny, which is, that he shall be the bond-servant of lies." In short, the discovery which the Oriental believed himself to have made was this—that neither the Great Man before him, nor the millions whom he led, had the faintest conception of the Meaning of Life; and, further, that the Great Man was aware of his ignorance and troubled by it, whereas the millions knew it not and were at their ease.
With the Writer on Mystics he was reserved to the point of coldness. In this man's presence Chandrapál felt that he was being regarded as an "interesting case" for analysis. So he wrapped himself in a mantle impervious to professional scrutiny, and gave answers which could not be worked up into a chapter for any book. The Writer was disappointed in Chandrapál, and Chandrapál had no satisfaction in the Writer. "This man," he thought, "has studied the Light until he has become blind. He would speak of the things which belong to Silence. He is the most deeply entangled of them all."
Fortunately for Chandrapál, there were children in the house, and these alone succeeded in finding the path to his heart. There was one Little Fellow of five years who continually haunted the drawing-room when he was there, hiding behind screens or the backs of arm-chairs, and staring at the Strange Man with wide eyes and finger in mouth. One day, when he was reading, the Little Fellow crept up to his chair on hands and knees and began industriously rubbing the dark wrist of the Indian with his wetted finger. "It dothn't come off," said the Little Fellow. From that moment he and the Strange Man became the fastest of friends and were seldom far apart.
Except for this companionship it may be said that never since leaving his native land was the spirit of Chandrapál more solitary nor more aloof from the things and the persons around him. Never did he despair so utterly of beholding that which he was most eager to find. Only when in the company of the Little Fellow, and in the hours reserved for meditation, was he able to shake off the sense of oppression and recover the balance of his soul. At these times he would quit the talkers and go forth alone into unfrequented places. Nowhere else, he thought, could a land be found more inviting than this to those moods of inward silence and content, whence the soul may pass, at a single step, into the ineffable beatitude of the Great Peace. Full, now, of the sense of harmony between himself and his visible environment, he would penetrate as far as he could into the forests and the hills. He would take his seat beside the brook; he would say to himself in his own tongue, "This water has been flowing all night long," and at the thought his mind would sink deep into itself; and presently the trees, the rocks, the fields, the skies, nay, his own body, would seem to melt into the movement of the flowing stream, and the Self of Chandrapál, freed from all entanglements and poised at the centre of Being, would gaze on the River of Eternal Flux.
One day, while thus engaged, standing on a bridge which carried a by-road over the stream, a shock passed through him: the stillness was broken as by thunder, the vision fled, and the entanglements fell over him like a gladiator's net. A motor, coming round a dangerous bend, had just missed him; and he stood covered with dust. Chandrapál saw and understood, and then, closing his eyes and making a mighty effort, shook the entanglements from his soul, and sank back swiftly upon the Centre of Poise.
The car stopped, and a white-haired woman alighted. A moment later there was a touch on the arm, and a human voice was calling to him from the world of shadows. "I beg a thousand pardons," said Mrs. Abel; "the driver was careless. Thank Heaven, you are unhurt; but the thing is an injury, and you are a stranger. My house is here; come with me, and you shall have water."
What more was said I do not know. But when some hours later Chandrapál returned on foot to the Hall he walked lightly, for the load of pity had been lifted from his heart. To one who was with him he said: "The Wisdom of the Nazarene still lives in this land, but it is hidden and obscure, and those who would find it must search far and long, as I have searched. Why are the Enlightened so few; for the Truth is simple and near at hand? The light is here, 'but the darkness comprehendeth it not.' Is not that so? The men in yonder house, who will soon be talking, are the slaves of their own tongues; but this woman with the voice of music is the mistress of her speech. They are of the darkness: she of the light. But perhaps," he added, "she is not of your race."
Thus the Thing for which Chandrapál had never ceased to watch since his foot touched Western soil was first revealed to him; thus also the secret of his own heart, which he had guarded so long from the intrusion of the "wise," was first suffered to escape. He had lit his beacon and seen the answering fire.
Several months elapsed, during which Chandrapál continued his travels, visiting the capitals of Europe, interviewing German Professors, and seeing more and more of the Great Illusion (for so he deemed it) which is called "Progress" in the West. He met reformers everywhere, and studied their schemes for amending the world; he heard debates in many parliaments, and did obeisance to several kings; he visited the institutions where day by day the wounded are brought from the battle, and where medicaments are poured into the running sores of Society; he went to churches, and heard every conceivable variety of Christian doctrine; he sat in the lecture-halls of socialists, secularists, anarchists, and irreconcilables of every sort; he made acquaintance with the inventors of new religions; he saw the Modern Drama in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna; he attended political meetings and listened to great orators; he was taken to reviews and beheld the marching of Armies and the manoeuvring of Fleets; he was shown an infinity of devices for making wheels go round, and was told of coming inventions that would turn them faster still. All these and many more such things passed in vision before him; but nothing stirred his admiration, nothing provoked his envy, nothing disturbed his fixed belief that Western civilization was an air-born bubble and a consummation not to be desired.
"The disease of this people is incurable," he thought, "because they are ignorant of the Origin of Sorrow. Hence they heal their woe at one end and augment its sources at the other. But as for me, I will hold my peace; for there is none here, no, not even the wisest, who would hear or understand. Never will the Light break forth upon them till the East has again conquered the West."