Dicky’s mind fumbled with the idea that he had not only come closer into the Indian heart, but into Nagar’s as well.
“You might sleep a little until breakfast. I shall not leave you until after that. You are very tired and spent, but you will not be injured from last night. When a man forgets himself, as you say, he is strangely replenished.”
But Dicky did not sleep. They breakfasted early and Nagar arose, saying:
“... In the days that you remain in Amritsar finishing your work (for last night will mean more and more to you as the days go on) you and I shall not be much together. What you see in Amritsar—you must watch without feeling or partisanship. One cannot tell—you may see strange things. Remember, always remember, that you are American; that as an American you have no enemies, and belong to the world. In the fusion of all Europe, which America is, to form a new type of nobility, remember that no country has furnished a nobler ingredient—than England. And forgive my many words, Richard, if I ask you to remember this also: that anything which might happen to me here in Amritsar in the days you remain, must never make you forget that you have a message to carry to America.”
“I don’t understand, Nagar.”
“It is difficult to say. I can only repeat: Anything which might happen to me in this city must not arouse in you a personal or partisan effort to help me. We must be strangers—unless I come to you alone. The English are beside themselves; they know not what they do. You must have no feelings about me—to betray you. Go further into the English. Forget me—except as a part of your own source of kindness and strength.”
Nagar was gone. As Dicky conned all this, he began to wonder if he would see his friend again. All the days before this in Amritsar, he had been waiting for things to get quiet so that he and Nagar might really begin to get together.... “India’s messenger,” he muttered, as he fell asleep.
XLIX
PIDGE TRIES GRAMERCY PARK
THE second part of Dicky Cobden’s letter about Gandhi written after his three interviews in Bombay, reached Pidge fully a fortnight after the first. Of course, it interested her, as it could no one else.
... From several angles I placed before Mahatma-ji, the concept of dreamers of all countries—the dream of the mating of the East and West, that the New Race is to be born of this mating; that globe means globe, and a world citizen must belong to all; that as Goethe says, “above the nations is Humanity.” This thing, you understand, has attracted me merely as a concept, not with the dreamer’s fire at all. Short work Gandhi made of the mating of the East and West. The damsel, New India, is not ready for marriage. She is not clean. She has not found herself, therefore has not herself to give. (These are not his words, but the idea.) She must become free, before she has anything to bestow. She is just a perfumed body, which the West has already desecrated and begun to despise—merely an offering now, not a wife. What Gandhi arrays himself against to-day is the fact that India has already fallen under the lure of the West. She has felt the fascination of his big toys, the glamour of his mighty works. The Little Man has made me see that a woman who “falls for” a man, can never become the man-maker which a wife must be, maker of her husband as well as child. Queer, how it came to me that way first, before I saw the man’s side of it—the great thing you have done, pushing me back, forever pushing me back into myself, until that day when I shall be able to stand, not “fall for” you. I am learning—learning so slowly what I bargained for that night at the Punjabi Fireplace. “... Go back into your house!” Gandhi cries to India. (Not his words, you know; merely my picture of him.) “Fast and pray. That is safe. Fast and pray and spin! Pray to the hum of the charka. Forget your lover. Find yourself. You are the East, the inner. Already you have been lured by his brutal boyish games. You have flattered him, but already he despises you. What does he bring now, but a bloody carcass to your hearth, saying, ‘Arise. Gut and skin.’”... Mahatma-ji is on the ground. Now, To-day, seeing but one step—the next step—crying, “Go Back!” This is the most extraordinary part to me, that his very limitations appear to be in use!