“I thank you,” said the stranger. “I am not carrying cards just now. My name matters little to any one, but I wish you a very good night.”
The Syracuse manufacturer went to his room and sat in the dark under the punkahs, staring out the window and studying what he had heard. The saffron desert was ghostly gray under the brilliant low-hanging stars, and all objects were black and blotchy upon it. It made him think of paintings of Egyptian nights—paintings hung he could not remember where. He was troubled because the stranger withheld his name. Here was a man with whom he would have rejoiced to travel, to know better and better. The thought which recurred strongest out of all that he had heard was: “All men, as all nations, must suffer. Europe and America are learning to suffer through their excesses; India through her privations, a cleaner, holier way.”
The drone of the punkah-leathers ruffled his very good nerves at last, and Mr. Jasper went out to walk. In a little hut at the far end of the street, to which he was attracted by candle-light and the voices of white men, he perceived three figures through the open doorway. One was an ancient Hindu, sitting with bowed head upon the matting. The second was a white man in native dress, whom he had seen emerging from the hut of horrors in the afternoon—the face incapable of tan and vivid with tragic sorrow. The third was the sun-darkened young giant who had left him earlier in the evening, who had spoken of India and of her famines, and discussed the Powers as familiarly as one might discuss his partners or rivals in business. Quite inadvertently, Mr. Jasper heard the name which had been withheld from him by its owner—the name of Routledge.... The next day he mentioned this name to the Englishman of the Famine Relief, who had brought provisions to little Rydamphur. He discovered that it was a name to uncover devils.
TENTH CHAPTER
A SINGULAR POWER IS MANIFEST IN THE LITTLE HUT AT RYDAMPHUR, AND ROUTLEDGE PERCEIVES HIS WORK IN ANOTHER WAR
Leaving the Rest House, Routledge walked in the mingled gray and shadow to the hut of the candle-light, where Mr. Jasper afterward saw him. He entered softly. The aged Hindu sat cross-legged upon a mat of rice straw, his eyelids closed as if by effort, his lips and entire chest moving with the Name. This was Sekar, the master who had come down from the goodly mountains for his chela—the bravest man. Rawder was lying full-length upon the floor, his head raised over an open book, upon which the light shone. He held up his hand to Routledge, and a glad smile formed on the deep-lined, pallid face.
“Sit down in the cool of the doorway, and let us talk, my good friend. What has the day brought you?”
Routledge obeyed, amused at “the cool of the doorway.” The night breeze was but a withering breath from the hot sand.
“The day has brought sundry brown babes, and I have dutifully squeezed a milky rag into their open mouths. Also, I bought the last rice which the Chunder person who keeps the Rest House will sell at any price, and passed it out to the edges of the hunger. The morning will bring us more dead. What a gruesome monotony it is—dying, dying, dying—and they make so little noise about it. Also, I was so oppressed with famine that I found a good, unobtrusive American and crowded him with facts for an hour—a countryman of ours, Rawder.”
“A countryman of ours,” Rawder repeated softly. “It is long since I have heard the sound of a thought like that. I am not to see my country again, good brother.”
“Then, has Sekar told you what you are to do?”