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!
In early July, Pidge made her first move since coming to New York. The spirit had gone out of the house in Harrow Street for her, with Miss Claes’ departure. She sent the boy-baby up into the country and took a room at the Sennacherib in Gramercy Park, a step of which Rufe Melton strongly approved:
“You were getting stale down there, Pan,” he said, one night when he came to dine. “The Village is all right for a novelty, but real New York hasn’t time for that sort of thing. I see you’re running Carver’s novel in the P. S. What did you get in on that for? Did he give it to you?”
“Rather not. It cost real money.”
“A hang-over from John Higgins’ desk?”
“No, we took it after—after——”
“Carver could never have slipped that over on you, Pan,” he broke in, “if you had lived uptown. But no, you never would listen to me, that a thing isn’t great because it’s nasty——”
“You think it isn’t a successful serial?”
“Not a chance——”
There was truth in what he said. The new novel was rapidly unreeling in generous installments, without much gratifying noise from the readers.
Rufe confided that he was doing a long story, and that Redge Walters was very much interested in it as a serial prospect.
“What’s it on?” she asked.
“Business,” said Rufe. “Shipping—grain—iron—packing-houses. Everybody’s panting for business since the War.”
“Sounds American.”
“Epic of the Great Lakes, Pan. Never knew what I was about, till now——”
She was thinking of Amritsar—of the first Amritsar mail recently in from Richard Cobden, posted at Pondicherry, French India—of hathis and her new mahout—of British bulletins, native documents, and Dicky’s own straight story of April 10th and 13th. It had been difficult for Pidge not to become too excited by all this. For the first time Dicky’s work had carried her off her feet. That had been days ago, and she had not altogether trusted her fiercely fresh enthusiasm, but it didn’t subside, and at the present minute, the epic of the Great Lakes sounded to her like a forlorn side show. Moreover, Dicky’s Amritsar story, about to be printed in The Public Square, took away most of the disappointment in that Carver’s novel hadn’t proved a powerful stimulus to circulation.
“Its capital is Chicago,” Rufe further divulged about his book. “Funny how you have to get away from there to see that big town. All the years I lived in Chi—never got next to her, as I have since I came to New York.... Yes, it’s booming along. Haven’t been really right until just now, since I was gassed.”
“I’m glad, Rufe.”
“It’s got a mahatma in it,” Rufe chuckled.
“A what?”
“What’s the matter with you, Pan?”
“That word—from you!”
“You look as if you’d seen the Dweller——”
“The what, Rufe?”
He chuckled again. “Didn’t know I’ve been going in for the occult, did you? Say Pan, there’s one fine thing about you. I never feel as if you could be disappointed in your Rufie.”
“Why is that?” She was entirely off his trend.
“You haven’t started to expect anything of me.... Oh, yes, had to have a mahatma in the story. It’s the new thing. Everybody’s got one since the War. Not enough to go round.... This mahatma of mine in Chi is wise to the stock exchange. It’s his tip, you know, that the whole tale turns on. Reader never thinks of it—until it’s pulled.”
“Where did you get your model?”
He laughed again. “Right in the family, Pan. Been going to hear Adolphus. Say, you never did appreciate your father. Bad habit of yours, Pan, honest to God—to lose respect for a man just because you live with him.”
Pidge was in a whirl. Her hands dropped down to the seat of her chair on either side and gripped hard. The world looked about as big to her as Delaware; Amritsar and New York signaling to each other.
“Heard him this afternoon—in the ballroom of the Pershing—swell crowd out,” Rufe pursued. “Talked on Lytton’s Zanoni. I’m going to read that book. And didn’t Adolph put it over to the damsels and dowagers! Just what I need for my white mahatma. Where does the old man get all that? It’s a wonder you haven’t gotten in on your father’s stuff, Pan.”
She wanted Miss Claes as never before. This was too much for one small person to hold. When she really listened again, Rufe was asking to go upstairs with her to see her room.
“It’s just a common room. What’s the use?”
“Little afraid to see me alone, eh, Pan?”
“Not afraid—only what’s the use?”
“You might see it different——”
“I might have once, Rufe——”
“Say, Pan——”
“Yes?”
“Does Mrs. Melton want to be free?”
Her hands dropped to the seat of her chair again. She saw the new want in his eyes and something else—the old captive thing.
There were two possible answers to his question, and it took every minute of her twenty-five years, and all that had gone before, to choose. This is what she said:
“Mrs. Melton will never be free!”
“What—what do you mean?”
“Ask your mahatma, Rufe.”