“By all means, father,” the other said, no visible change upon his face, as he placed in the palm of the beggar several bits of silver from his purse. In the burning day again, he lifted a tired smile to the sun. No true mystic, perhaps, but what had this man seen in the crystals?
XLII
LALA RELU RAM
NAGAR took him by the hand at the railway station in Amritsar on the evening of the ninth of April, 1919. The need for many words seemed past; there was quiet gladness. Dicky took up his quarters in the Golden Temple Inn. Under the lights at the entrance, as he passed in with Nagar, groups of Mohammedans and Hindus stood together, with self-conscious but eager shows of mutual friendship, and the American rubbed his eyes.
If there was one thing in India that could be counted upon like Government itself, it was the mutual hatred of these two great divisions of native life. Dicky had heard in recent days much of the swift breaking down of these barriers, under the influence of Mahatma-ji, but he had seen no example of it working out like this under the lights of the Inn.
“But what do the English think when they see the Hindu and Moslem kowtowing to each other—as at the door below when we came in?” Dicky inquired.
“The Deputy Commissioner, the highest English civilian of Amritsar, looked upon a similar spectacle to-day,” Nagar said. “I did not hear him, but he is reported to have remarked, ‘There’s going to be a row here,’ and drank much cold soda water.”
“What is your work here, Nagar?”
“I have been working among the students at the college of Lahore, and now here in Amritsar, working with the young men and women.”
“Preaching Gandhi’s sort of peace?”
“Yes,” said Nagar.