Just now Dicky was contending with the feeling that he was in the presence of an evangelist or healer. He had difficulty for the moment in recalling that Gandhi was world-trained; a lawyer of London’s careful making; an opponent of governments in South Africa; a man found powerful enough in his own person to be reckoned with by the established laws of men of high place.
“We have many things to ask of England,” Gandhi said, “and she has promised us her attention, as soon as her present difficulties give her freedom of heart and hand to attend our wants here. To press our wants now, or to force our desires upon England in her crisis in Europe, would be taking an unfair advantage. So this is a time for us in India to cleanse and prepare ourselves for future action, sacrifice if necessary——”
At one moment Gandhi’s face was dull and unattractive as a camel driver’s; again it shone with a high clear calm, like the ideal most of us have of a saint or a priest. Now the instant came, as the words stopped, that Dicky seemed to be looking into the Indian face actually for the first time, and Gandhi was looking into him. The American was uncentered for a second or two, as he had once felt in the quick sag of an airplane in a bit of rough going.
It began to become clear to the caller that there were only a few constantly vibrating themes in this man’s talk: the necessity for nonviolence; the control of self, essential before the control of others can be contemplated; the establishment of altruism as a basis for all political activity; the return of India into her own destiny of a handicraft civilization, which involved the making and using of her own goods and the turning of her back upon the “monster of a mechanical civilization”; freedom of speech, devotion to truth, fearlessness, always that.
Dicky now actually contemplated the look of unearthly calm in the eyes of the man before him. Was it fanaticism—this fearlessness which Gandhi put into practice? Was there a soul-calm back of the human nervous system, a central calm that a man could reach and abide in, that made anything negligible that men might do to the body? Was there something really that Miss Claes and Nagar and this man talked about—something that went on and on, that loved one’s enemies, that loved one’s love, no matter what this life effected to keep them apart? Was it worth going after, since every ordinary viewpoint seemed changed in those who had touched it?... Surely India was getting him going—he, Dicky Cobden, of the family of trowel makers! In amazement, he realized that he was responding to some stimulus like the finest wine—that if he didn’t get out of here soon, he would fall to telling his troubles like a man who has had too many drinks.
Gandhi was speaking of his workers and devotees here in Ahmedabad; the manner of their life together:
“So in our Ashrama,” he explained, “every child is taught to understand political institutions and to know how his country is vibrating with new emotions, with new aspirations, with new life.... As for men and women living and working together in the Ashrama, they must live the celibate life whether married or unmarried. Marriage brings a woman close together with a man, and they become friends in a special sense, never to be parted in this life or in the lives to come; but I do not think that into that place of life, our lusts should necessarily enter.”
Dicky had scrambled to his feet from the floor.
“I won’t take your time any more just now,” he mumbled haltingly.
Mahatma-ji watched him with a look of gentlest understanding.