... He was standing at the curb before the great station. The carriage had turned away. There came to him out of the throng—a cry, not to his ears, but straight to his breast, a cry wild with desolation, which his heart answered....
He purchased his ticket, and rechecked his baggage, and then passed through the gates to the gray, smoky yards. From the deck of his steamer at Southampton that night he caught a last glimpse of the White Mustache, a satisfied smile on the keen, hard face. In a cold, distant fashion, Routledge marvelled that he was allowed to leave England alive.
NINTH CHAPTER
MR. JASPER IS INFORMED THAT MOTHER INDIA CAUSED NAPOLEON’S DEFEAT, AND THAT FAMINES ARE NOT WITHOUT VIRTUE
“J. J. Jasper, Syracuse, New York,” was being inscribed in the hotel registers along the travelled-lines around the world. Mr. Jasper was making no haste. “I have been rushed all my life until now,” he explained. He was a sincere, hard-thinking, little man of fifty, who had manufactured road-carts for thirty years, and had succeeded remarkably well in emancipating himself from business—a high-ranged achievement for only the few Americans.
Mr. Jasper was interested in India long before he touched Bombay, going east. This happened because his sister was a member of a theosophical class back in Syracuse. He had heard of “dreamy India” for many years, of Madras and the Ganges, of yogis and astral bodies, of esoteric sections and H.P.B., of Sinnett, Olcott, Besant, masters, famines, of karma, devachan, pralaya, of metempsychosis and the Great White Lodge of the Himalayas.... “Go to Madras, James,” his sister had told him. “By all means, go to Madras. Our headquarters and our libraries of occult literature are there. It may be that our president and founder, Mr. Olcott, will meet you personally, or Annie Besant, the most noted woman in the world. Don’t call it ‘Besant’, like the author, but as if it were spelled ‘Bessant.’ There are reasons, James, esoteric reasons.”
And so Mr. Jasper went to Madras. He took the hand of white-bearded Olcott,[A] a rounded man, who had not lost interest in the New York bar or press simply because he was president and founder of a great body of generally refined men and women who have the temerity to believe that buying cheap and selling dear is not the supreme glory of man. Also Mr. Jasper pronounced it “Bessant,” for esoteric reasons, but he did not meet the most noted woman in the world, since she had taken her annual flight to London.
In the midst of all his seeing and smelling and brooding among the coast cities of India, Mr. Jasper was impressed with the dire poverty of certain districts. The heart of the man was wrung, and his brain filled with the Everlasting Why. At the house of a missionary in Nizagari, he ascertained certain facts. The Hindus of the town were hungry. They came to the missionary, men and wives and babes, and begged most pitifully for food.
“If we could only eat food once in two days, we would ask no more!” they cried.
“God, this is famine—the famine of the Bible!” exclaimed the American.
“Ah, no,” replied the missionary. “You must allow me to correct you. There is no recognized famine in Nizagari.”