His lips formed with explanations and thoughts as he worked—the things he would tell Pidge, the way he would tell these things to Pidge. He placed the unconscious one down at the feet of a native doctor who was binding wounds, but often raising his eyes to heaven in prayer that the soldiers might not come back.

Dicky stood up in the warm dark, lifted his helmet and mopped his forehead with his grimy right hand. He could actually smell what horses smelled (as he remembered in France and Arabia) when they snorted and ran aside.... The dead would never end—hundreds of dead—public square covered with dead. And what was pulling at his brain—something trying to gain admittance? He had it now. Pidge Musser was close again; close as she had come in the Ashrama—not weeping, horrified, not in the least dismayed or hopeless by all these lifeless ones on the ground, but the spirit of swift-handed helpfulness, utterly in accord with him in thought and purpose, no words being necessary. So this was why he had been standing in the dark with uncovered head, rubbing his hand over his brow—that her closeness might come through to him! Not so weird, after all, that he should know this, standing upon the soaked turf of the maidan. Things of this kind had often happened to soldiers on the battlefields of France.

Was this what it was all about then—the separation, the struggling—at last to become connected to her this way, though across the world? He mustn’t study it too closely. He had a warning that he would spoil it, unless he kept on heartily with the work. So he continued separating the wounded, but every little while when his hands were free he would stop and uncover his head to the moist warmth of the evening. Would she come nearer and nearer through the years?... And these were her dead and her dying, and she had blessed the little Hindu girl with coarse black hair. He smiled at the absurdity of his thoughts.

Now it was full dark and the cries of the living women across the maidan were raised in agony because they must leave the Bagh before the curfew sounded. Hundreds were still searching. They had not found their own, but it was close to eight o’clock and this—the dead on the field—was what had come of breaking Martial Law to-day. It did not matter that lives might still be saved if the wounded could be taken out from the dead. Sarkar had fired upon them to-day. Sarkar would come with more death, if they disobeyed. Husbands dragged away the women whose faces turned back.

Richard Cobden stayed on. He had the sense of not being alone. Moreover, there was much to do. There were voices to answer. He heard cries and callings from the windows of the houses that overlooked the maidan. No English came that night—but the pariah dogs from all the city and outskirts. They moved like ghouls in the shadows. There were mysteries everywhere—white vapors from the ground. He saw and felt the unutterable; became rich for future years in that one night with the fruits of sadness.

XLVIII
“INDIA’S MESSENGER”

COBDEN walked back from the maidan through the streets of Amritsar in the dawn. He did not feel like a foreigner. That which had happened during the night had furnished him with what rarely comes to a white man—the Indian point of view. He was in the Indian fabric for the moment, at least; no longer a spectator from the West. He did not hate England, not even the crooked finger that had mismanaged for England. He knew something right now that he might not be able even to remember—more sorrow than anger.

As he approached the Golden Temple, near which was the Inn, Nagar appeared in the street, and they walked together in silence. As he tottered a little, Nagar’s arm swung around him and Dicky said:

“Don’t. I’m very dirty.”

Now that the light was coming on, they saw people hurrying to the Jallianwalla Bagh.