In the room, Dicky said:
“Make a lot of tea, Nagar. Sorry you won’t join me in a little drink from the flask.”
A moment later, he said:
“I think after all, you’ll have to help me get off this shirt. I’m a rubbed-in mess of blood and dirt.”
Nagar perceived that the body of the American trembled full-length; also that his clothing was soaked with blood from the wounded shoulder, as well as from stains received from handling others.
“... Some of them crawled about in the dark!” Dicky was saying. “A woman sat there moaning through the whole night. The pariahs came—I heard them lapping, lapping. From the windows of the houses around the Bagh came the cries of the women who dared not disobey the curfew.... Why, that ten minutes of firing was longer than whole years I lived as a schoolboy, but the ten hours since dark—that passed, Nagar, like a man walking by a house, not a lame man.... I saw your India, oh, yes. The gentlest-tempered crowd I ever moved through, but something dangerous and deadly in its pain and grief. God help us—when you wake up——”
Nagar helped him. Dicky bathed his neck and face and hair copiously with one hand, and then washed the left arm. With Nagar’s help the wound was packed with clean lint. Dicky drank hot tea, filling his goblet several times and shivering, though the heat of the night was still in the room. Finally he sat down in his bathrobe by the open window and lit a cigarette. The sunlight had found the gold of the Temple dome.
“... I actually forgot myself,” Dicky repeated. “When an American forgets himself, Nagar, you can be sure a big show is being pulled off.... I’ve smoked too much, talked too much. I am going to lie down for a little—until breakfast.... Bed! Think of having a bed, in Amritsar. A bed with sheets.... Out there so many were lying on the ground. Oh, I say, Nagar, where will they put them all?”
The Hindu’s cool, slim fingers reached over and touched his hand. He didn’t speak, just kept his hand still, and Dicky found it easier to stop talking, because of that hand; easier to endure the furious forces of activity in his brain. Finally Nagar spoke:
“I had to stay with the students. They wanted to go to the maidan. That would not have been well, but it was well for you to be there—to forget yourself there through the hours. It will come forth from you for years—not as the voice of an American, but as a citizen of the world. You have prepared long; last night India found you prepared, and dared to show you something of herself. Miss Claes would be very glad to be here with us this morning.”