Finally Pidge heard that Dicky was going to South Africa, possibly to hunt up Nagar’s Little Man, whose name was Gandhi, and who had been Nagar’s friend and teacher both in India and Natal. Also Dicky was to do some letters for The Public Square.
On the night before he was to sail for the Mediterranean, he was invited with Pidge by Miss Claes for dinner at Tara Subramini’s Punjabi Fireplace down on Sixth Avenue near Fourth Street. This was also the night Pidge smelled Spring in New York for the first time.
Mid-April; there had been rain. Pidge hadn’t caught the Spring magic coming home from the factory, but now as they walked down Sixth Avenue under the momentary crashes of the Elevated—it stole up out of the pavements as if she were in a meadow—that untellable sweetness which seems the breath of Mother Nature herself, a breath made of all the perfumes of all the flowers, without accentuating one, and a sublimation of all the passions of the human heart as well. Her left hand burrowed under the hanging sleeve of Miss Claes’ wrap. The bare elbow there closed upon it. They both laughed, and Mr. Richard, walking sedately, was altogether out of the question.
Tara Subramini served her Punjabi dinners on great individual plates which were none too hot. She discussed modern dancing with Miss Claes at easy length, when Pidge was served and Richard Cobden was not. The rice cooled, the lamb cooled, even if the peppery curry held its fire. The vast plate had curious little crevices on the side for conserves and glutinous vegetables and various watery leaves. Pidge became prejudiced at once against the Punjab. The great leisure of Asia, which she had heard about from a child and which had tempted her alluringly in the more intense pressures of her own life, lost something of its charm as Tara Subramini conversed with all concerned and the contents of the troughs congealed.
Food is food, but talk is merely talk. Besides, Pidge was hungry. Subramini had things to say, but also an oriental delight in the use of English. Mr. Cobden was unreservedly courteous. Pidge always wondered if he really knew what hunger was. She could get so hungry that her hands trembled, and New York had shown her deeper mysteries of the hunger lesson that she would be slow to forget.
“It must be great to be a gentleman,” she thought.
She positively yearned for Dicky to wake up. If this were poise, this moveless calm of his, this unvarying quiet and courtesy, this inability to be stretched even in laughter—Pidge felt she was ready to drop the hunt; also she was tempted to test out Dicky’s poise to see how much it could really stand.... India bored her, as well as America. Miss Claes could eat and talk at the same time, and drop neither words nor food.... A lone Hindu arose to depart from another table. Subramini helped him with his coat and followed him to the door. Pidge thought once that Subramini was about to spread herself on the doorstep and let him walk over her. Punjab didn’t rise in her regard. Pidge suddenly burst out into a kind of merriment that had nothing to do with anybody present.
“It is because we’re such idiots!” she said brokenly. “Oh, I don’t mean you, Miss Claes. I mean myself and—Mr. Cobden. It is the way things are done in the world—so utterly silly. Why should we be strange and embarrassed, avoiding each other for days and weeks—when we should be more than ever friends, and——”
Richard Cobden bent forward attentively. Pidge was turned from him.
“You don’t mean, Pidge, that you fail to see a reason for this strangeness?” Miss Claes asked. “You——”