Routledge rides alone

Routledge parted from Bulwer-Shinn’s cavalry at Madirabad and reached Calcutta two days before the others, except Bingley, who was but a couple of hours behind him—just enough for the latter to miss the boat Routledge had taken to Bombay. The “Horse-killer” took himself mighty seriously in this just-miss matter, and was stirred core-deep. He wanted to have the first word in London as well as the last word in India. He had studied the matter of the mystery with his peculiar zeal, cabling his point of view in full. So rapidly had he moved down, however, that he missed a cable from the Thames, hushing further theories. It was with rage that he determined to railroad across India and regain the lost time, possibly catch a ship ahead of Routledge at Bombay. This was the man he feared at home and afield, in work and play.

Bingley must not be misunderstood. He was a very important war-man, a mental and physical athlete, afraid of few things—least of all, work. Such men are interesting, sometimes dangerous. Bingley was honest in material things; on occasion, hatefully so. He was the least loved of the English war-correspondents, and one of the most famous. He envied the genial love which the name of Routledge so generally inspired; envied the triumphs of the “mystic,” as Finacune had called him; copied the Routledge-method of riding frequently alone, but found it hopeless to do so and preserve the regard of his contemporaries. The careless manner with which Routledge achieved high results was altogether beyond Bingley, as well as the capacity of seeming to forget the big things he had done. It was necessary for Bingley to be visibly triumphant over his coups; indeed, penetratingly so. This failure of manner, and a certain genius for finding his level on the unpopular side of a question, challenged the dislike of his kind.

Routledge settled himself for the long voyage with much to think about and Carlyle’s “French Revolution”—already read on many seas. Ordinarily, a mystery such as he had left in India would have furnished material for deep contemplation, but he chose to put it away from him and to live in full the delights of a returning exile. Bombay was agog with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, but Routledge did not give the subject more than one of his days out of the last Indian port. He missed nothing of the significance of this great move by England, which had so entranced Feeney, but when he undertook to delve for the first cause his faculties became lame and tired, and he had learned too well the therapeutics of sea-travel to continue an aimless grind. An accomplished traveller, he put aside all wastes of hurry and anxiety and allowed his days and nights to roll together without the slightest wear. Consequently, big volumes of tissue were renovated and rebound. With Routledge, it was not “To-morrow we will be at Port Said,” but a possible reflection to-day that “we are somewhere in the Red Sea.” Frequently, he read entire nights away; or dozed from midnight until dawn, wrapped in a rug on deck. His brain fell into a dreamy state of unproductiveness, until he could scarcely recall that it had ever been a rather imperious ruler of crises; a producer of piled words which developed, in war’s own pigments, the countless garish and ghastly films which his eye had caught. The month at sea smoothed the hard lines of service from his face, as it softened the calluses of his bridle-hand.

It was not until the dusk, when his boat steamed into the shipping before Marseilles, that the old click-click of his mental tension was resumed and the thought-lights burned strong again. He found then that much which had been vague and unreckonable at Calcutta was cleared and finished, as often so pleasantly happens after a season of pralaya, as the Hindus express the period of rest, whether it be sleep or death. Standing well forward on deck, with the brilliance of the city pricking the dark of the offing, it was borne to Routledge that his life at this period had reached a parting of the ways. The divergences stretched out before him clearly, as if his mind had arranged them subconsciously, while his material faculties had drowsed in the lull of far journeying. Thoughts began to rain upon him.

“Routledge, how are you and the world to hook up from now on?... You’ve played so far, just played, scattered your years all over the earth, with but little profit to yourself or to the world. If you should die to-night you would possibly have earned five lines in a thirty-volume encyclopædia: ‘Cosmo Routledge, American born, an English war-correspondent and traveller, rode with Tom, stood fire with Dick, and ran with Henry; undertook to study at first hand various native India affairs, and died of a fever at the edge of’—God knows what yellow desert or turbid river.”

He smiled and lit his pipe, musing on. “The point is, I’ll be dead long before the fever—if I keep up this world-tramp—dead to myself and to men—one of the great unbranded, crossing and recrossing his trail around and around the world.... Shall I sit down in London or New York, and double on my whole trail so far on paper—books, editorials, special articles, long dinners beginning at eight, an hour of billiards, a desk in some newspaper office—fat, fatuous, and fixed at fifty?... Which is better, a gaunt, hungry, storm-bitten wanderer, with his face forever at the fire-lit window-panes of civilization, or a creased and cravatted master of little ceremonies within? A citizen of ordered days and nights, or an exile with the windy planet forever roaring in his skull?”

They were warping his ship into dock, and the voices of France were thick in the night.

“Routledge, you’re evading the issue,” he muttered after a moment. “It isn’t that you must choose between one city and the wide world; nor between the desk or the saddle, a tent of skins or a compartment of brick. You can ride a camel in London or pack a folding-bed over the peaks to Llassa; you can be a tramp at home or an editor afield. It isn’t the world or not, Routledge, but—a woman or not!”

The flapping awning took up the matter at length. Routledge relit his pipe dexterously, sensing the very core of the harbor-breeze with his nostrils, and shutting it off.... He would cross France to-night; and dine in Paris to-morrow, breathe the ruffian winds of the Channel to-morrow night, and breakfast again in London.... His brain had put off the lethargy of Asia, indeed—quickened already to the tense stroke of Europe. He was vehemently animate. The rapid French talk on the pier below stirred him with the great import of massed life—as it might have stirred a boy from the fields entering the city of his visions. A few hours and then London!... “She has never forgotten you, Routledge.”...

Once he had seen the mother of Noreen—the woman who, for a little while, was the embodied heaven to Jerry Cardinegh; heaven in spirit to the old man now. A face of living pearl; the gilding and bronzing of autumnal wood-lands in her hair; great still eyes of mystery and mercy.... In a way not to be analyzed, the sight of her made Routledge love more Jerry Cardinegh’s Ireland. Tyrone was hallowed a little in conception—because it had been her home.

In Paris, at the Seville, the next afternoon, a servant informed Routledge that a lady was waiting for him in the Orange Room. There was a lifting in his breast, a thrilling temperamental response. Some fragrant essence of home-coming which he had not thought to find in Paris swept over his senses.... She was sitting in the mellowed glows and shadows of the Seville’s famous parlor. The faintest scent of myrrh and sandal; Zuni potteries like globes of desert sunlight; golden tapestries from the house of Gobelin; fleeces of gold from Persian looms; the sheen of an orange full moon through rifted clouds of satin; spars of gilded daylight through the billowing laces at the casement; the stillness of Palestine; sunlight of centuries woven into every textile fabric—and the woman, Noreen, rising to meet him, a vivid classic of light and warmth.

“Routledge-san!”

“To-morrow, I expected to see you—in London,” he faltered.

“I have been living in Paris. I return to Cheer Street to-night—to make ready for father to-morrow afternoon.”

He was burning with excitement at the sight of her, and the red was deep in her cheeks. It was as if there had been wonderful psychic communions between them; and, meeting in the flesh at last, they were abashed, startled by the phenomenon.

“Mr. Bingley told me that you were to be in Paris to-day. He left for London last night. I was impatient to see you. Possibly I did not wait long enough for you to rest after your journey.”

Routledge did not answer. He was smiling in a strange, shy way, as few men smile after thirty. Moreover, he was holding fast to the hand so eagerly offered.

“Do forgive my staring at you,” he said at last. “I’ve been away a very long time. In India——”

“You may stare, Routledge-san. Men coming home from the wars may do as they will,” she laughed.

“Finding you here in Paris is immense, Miss Noreen. I was planning to keep the way open from Bookstalls to Cheer Street—to ride out with you possibly, watch you paint things, and have talks——”

“You’ll stay in London for a time, Routledge-san?”

“Yes, until you and Jerry appeal to the Review to start a war to be rid of me.”

She did not need to tell him that she was glad. “Come, let’s go outside. It’s like an enchanted castle in here—like living over one of your past lives in all this yellow stillness.”

She could not have explained what made her say this. Routledge liked the idea, and put it away to be tried in the crucible of solitude. “Where did you leave father?” she asked when they were in the street.

“Away up in Bhurpal—two or three days before we were all called in.”

He dreaded the next question, but, understanding that it would trouble him, Noreen pushed into the heart of the subject without asking.

“Of course, he wouldn’t tell me, but I’m afraid he isn’t well. I seem to know when ill befalls any one dear to me.”

“It was a dull, hard-riding campaign, but he weathered it.”

“I feel him white and time-worn somehow, Routledge-san. It is his last time afield. He will need me always now—but we won’t talk of it.”

She led the way through the crowded streets—a cold, bright February afternoon, with the air cleanly crisp and much Parisian show and play about them. “I’ll take you to my studio, if you wish.... It is quiet and homey there. Most of my things are packed, but we can have tea.”

“I was planning to leave for London to-night,” he ventured.

“Of course—we’ll take the same boat. And to-morrow—to-morrow there will be things for a man to do in Cheer Street—getting ready for father.”

Both laughed. It seemed almost too joyous to Routledge.

“I can’t endure London—that is, I can’t live there when father is away,” she said presently. “It seems less lonely in Paris. London—certain days in London—seem to reek with pent tragedy. There is so much gray sorrow there; so much unuttered pain—so many lives that seem to mean nothing to the gods who give life. I suppose it is so everywhere, but London conceals it less.”

“Less than India?”

“Oh, but India has her philosophy. There is no philosophy in the curriculum of the East End.... I wish I could think about India as you do—calmly and without hate for the British ascendency there. At least, without showing my hatred. But it seems so scandalous and grotesque to me for a commercial people to dominate a spiritual people. What audacity for the English to suggest to the Hindus the way to conduct life and worship God! I am Jerry Cardinegh’s girl—when it comes to India and Ireland. It must be that which makes me hate London.”

“England is young; India old,” said Routledge. “Many times the old can learn from the young—how to live.”

“But not how to die—and yet India has had much practice in learning how to die at the hands of the British.... We mustn’t talk about it to-day! The word famine rouses me into a savage. India famine; Irish famine; the perennial famine of the London East End!... Coming home from the wars, you must not be forced to talk about bitter things. I want to sit down and listen to you about your India—not the Cardinegh India. We always see the black visage behind India, as behind Ireland. You see the enchantment of Indian inner life—and we the squalor of the doorways. Yes, I still read the Review.... Ah, Routledge-san, your interview with the English ‘missionary-and-clubman’ in Lucknow was a delicious conception; yet back of it all there is something of horror in its humor to me. Most of all because the ‘missionary-and-clubman,’ as I saw him, under your hand, would have perceived none of the humor! He would no doubt have called it a very excellent paper—yet every line contained an insinuation of his calamitous ignorance and his infant-soul! I must repeat—what audacity for the cumbering flesh of a matter-mad people, undertaking to teach visionary India—how to look for God!”

Routledge invariably became restless when the values of his own work were discussed before him.

“By the way, Miss Noreen,” he said, “I left Bingley behind me in Calcutta——”

“He said so, but crossed India by rail and caught a ship before you at Bombay. Father and the others will be in London to-morrow. They left ship at Naples to be in time for the Army and Navy Reception to-morrow night.”

Routledge was a trifle bewildered as he followed Noreen up the stairway into the studio, and sat down by the window. The place was stripped of many things identified with her individuality, and yet it was all distinctly a part of her. Trunks and boxes were ready for the carrier, her portmanteau alone opened. Out of this she drew the tea-things, and the man watched with emotion. After the alien silence of the Orange Room and the turmoil of the Parisian streets, the studio was dear with nameless attractions. All the negatives of his mind, once crowded with pictures of Paris and civilization, had been sponged clean by India. The moments now were rushed with new impressions.... The stamp of fineness was in her dress, and to him a far-flinging import in all her words. The quick turn of her head and hand, all her movements, expressed that nice elastic finish which marks an individual from the herd. It was even as they had told him in India. Noreen Cardinegh had put on royalty in becoming a woman.

The man did not cease to be a trifle bewildered. He was charged again with the same inspiring temperament which compelled him to tell her the intimate story of Rawder, and to tell it with all his valor and tenderness. Impedimenta which the months had brought to his brain and heart were whipped away now before those same wondrous, listening eyes. Memories of her had always been the fairest architecture of his thoughts, but they were as castles in cloudland, lineaments half-lost, compared to this moment, with the living glory of Noreen Cardinegh sweeping into full possession of his life. All that had been before was dulled and undesirable; even himself, the man, Routledge, with whom he had lived so much alone.... In this splendid moment of expansion, it came to him—the world’s bright answer to his long quest for the reason of being.

“Routledge-san, I have wine and tea and biscuit, and you may smoke if you like.” She drew up a little table and chair for herself. “It will be an hour before the carrier comes for my trunks, and I want you to tell me if you have seen again—our bravest man. It’s long over a year since you left him in Hong Kong.”

“Miss Noreen——”

“I’d rather be Noreen to you.”

“Noreen, what is the force of Rawder’s bigness to you?” Routledge asked, after watching her several seconds.

“He serves blindly, constantly, among the dregs, and has mercy for all men but himself!” she said intensely. “The living spirit of the Christ seems to be in him, and nothing of sex or earthly desire. I have pictured him, since you told me the story, as one pure of soul as any of the prophets or martyrs. I care not for the range of his brain when he has a human heart like that!... I wish I could say all he suggests to me, but I mean—I think he is close to God!”

“Thank you,” said Routledge. “It is one of the finest things I know, to have you speak of him as ‘our bravest man’—to share him with me.... Yes, I have seen him again, and there is another story to tell, and I will tell it, as he told me:

“It began with his leaving Hong Kong. He was never so weary nor so faint-hearted as on one certain day. It was about the time I was with you for an evening in Cheer Street. He declares when that night came he went out on the water-front to his work with a ‘wicked rebellion’ in his heart. A night of rain and storm. He had rescued a fallen sailor from the Chinese, and was leading him to his own lodging when he was struck from behind and trampled. ‘I’m afraid they meant to kill me,’ he divulged, and added in apology that the lives of the Chinese are so dark and desperate on the water-front. His old Minday wound was reopened, and he awoke to feel that death was very close. You see, the police had found his body in the rain. He was drifting off into unconsciousness when a vision appeared.

“He had never touched India at that time in this life, but it was a bit of India that appeared in his vision, and it was all very true to him.... Nightfall and a little village street; an ancient Hindu holy man sitting in a doorway, head bowed, his lips moving with the Ineffable Name. Very clearly Rawder saw this and the rest, so that he would know the place when he saw it again—the sand, the silence, the river sweeping like a rusty sickle about the town, and his old master sitting in the doorway.

“This was the picture that came to him as he lay in a station of the Hong Kong Sihk-police, and close to death.... The Hindu holy man, so old that he seemed to be a companion of Death, looked up sorrowfully and said: ‘My son, I have come down from the goodly mountains for you. Just this way, you shall find me waiting. Make haste to come for me, my chela, for I am full of years, and already am I weary of these plains and so many men. There is work for us to do before we go back together to our goodly mountains.’

“The Sannyasi spoke in Tibetan, which Rawder had never heard before, but every word he understood as I have told you. ‘And how swiftly did I heal after that!’ he exclaimed to me, smiling. His pain left him and his wound closed magically. They told him he would die if he left his bed, but he finished his healing on the road to his river and his village. All was made easy for him, as our bravest man declares. There was a ship in the harbor, which needed a man to peel vegetables, and Rawder fitted in, remaining aboard port after port, until something prompted him to go ashore at Narsapur, which lies among the mouths of the great Godavari. One of these he followed up to the main stem, and journeyed, on foot for months and months, studying the natives and their language, doing what appeared to him among the dead and the living in the midst of famine and plague, and ‘knowing no hunger nor thirst nor pain.’ These are his words, Noreen.”

“He is like one of those mystics,” the woman said, “like Suso or St. Francis of Assisi—who would not reckon with physical pain.”

“Yes.... I did not remain long in America after leaving you in Cheer Street. In fact, I was back in India months before this last trouble arose in Bhurpal—with Rawder in India. It was at Sironcha, where the Godavari joins the Penganga, that I found him, and he told me all these things. Then for awhile I journeyed with him, and it was very good for me. Always he was helping—down at the very roots of the disorder of things. I thought of you very much. You were the only one I had told of Rawder. That’s why I was so glad to hear you say ‘our bravest man.’”

“And his master?”

“Yes.... It was far north of Sironcha, on the Penganga, and he had been hurrying, hurrying, for days. I was to leave him at Ahiri for the service in two days more. At nightfall, we came to the little village, with the Penganga sweeping about it like a rusty sickle. ‘It is the place—I know the place,’ he kept repeating.... Even I was not surprised, Noreen, to see the aged Sannyasi sitting in the doorway, his lips moving with the Ineffable Name.... And so our bravest man found the master he had earned; the old master who had come down from his lodge in the goodly mountains to take back the purest man-soul I have ever known.”

“Then you—then you will never see him again?” the woman cried.

“That is what is strange to me, Noreen. He said I should see him again in India this year. He said I would know the time and the place. They are journeying northward toward the hills on foot and very slowly. One might travel around the world, and, returning, find them only three or four latitudes northward from the place of parting. And so I left him very happy, learning Tibetan and Chinese, and the ancient wisdom, happily helping in the midst of the world’s direst poverty.”

“And you have no thought to return to India so far, Routledge-san?”

“No.”

The tea was perfect. The carrier came and took the trunks and boxes. They sat together in the stripped studio while the twilight hushed the distances. The street below lost its look of idling, and the figures moved quickly.... There were no lights. The man thrilled in the black hallway as the woman whispered an adieu to her little Paris place; then shut the door, and, feeling for his hand, led him to the stairs.