“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 to Know. 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!”
XXVII
THE MAHATMA AND THE MIRACLE
COBDEN heard the voice before he saw the man. Standing in a darkened hall of the bungalow, spoken of as the Ashrama, the voice of one speaking English in easy cultured tones reached his ears. When the door opened, he saw several native young men sitting upon the floor and a wasted Hindu figure in the center—a little man in a thin turban more like a skullcap; a homespun loincloth, his bare feet beneath him upon a mat of coarse cloth, a rough pillow at his back. The young men about him had risen, but the central figure merely lifted and extended the hand.
“Mr. Cobden from America,” Gandhi said. “Nagarjuna has made us eager to welcome you.”
Even Nagar withdrew, but one of the boys returned bringing a chair.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll try sitting on the floor, too,” Dicky told the latter. “I’d feel perched with Mr. Gandhi sitting below.”
The Mahatma smiled. “I quite appreciate,” he said. “I hope you will find in India the same kindness that you gave Nagarjuna in New York.”
Dicky had expected power; he found composure. His idea of power was perhaps in part a hang-over from a boyish ideal of a certain American financial executive. Nothing of that in this room; rather he was conscious of Gandhi’s frailness and smallness. This presence called forth impulses to be tender, to lower one’s voice, to hurry to bring anything wanted. He was shocked a little at the twisted, battered look of the features. The lips looked pulpy in parts and did not rest together evenly. The smile was curiously slow—tentative, like one in whom understanding dawns. Back of the iron-rimmed spectacles and tired eyes, so inured to pain, was the essence of fearlessness. This was the first commanding characteristic to the American.