The Public Square

“DO you people want peace or war? If you wish for war the Government is prepared for it, and if you want peace, then obey my orders and open all your shops; else, I will shoot. For me the battlefield of France or Amritsar is the same. I am a military man and I will go straight. Neither shall I move to the right, nor to the left. Speak up, if you want war. In case there is to be peace, my order is to open all shops at once. Obey orders. I do not wish to have anything else. I have served in the military for over thirty years. I understand the Indian sepoy and the Sikh people very well. You must inform me of the budmashes. I will shoot them. Obey my orders and open shops. Speak up if you want war.”

General Fyatt was talking to a large company of Amritsar’s native representatives, lawyers, merchants, doctors, in the kotwali, the day after the massacre.

The Deputy Commissioner added: “You have committed a bad act in killing the English. The revenge will be taken upon you and upon your children.”

The large company of natives listened. Not one spoke of the Jallianwalla Bagh, or of the dead which still lay there. Richard Cobden reasoned with himself; neither did he speak. Out of all the burn of feelings and the great waste of ineffectual thoughts, it was dawning upon him that in their own good time, the dead of Amritsar’s public square would speak for themselves.

In the days that followed Dicky worked quietly, worked from the standpoint of the English almost entirely. He “exposed” himself like a film to the aftermath of the tragedy. He went after facts and statements. It was never to be ascertained, the number of killed and injured. The English granted about three hundred dead; the natives claimed five times that, even more. He was much at Headquarters; and confined himself altogether to the Civil Lines. Through Lala Relu Ram, he received certain secret reports from the native point of view, and guarded these little tissues assiduously. A cigarette case contained them all.

He went each day to the Crawling Lane, as one doing a city beat for a newspaper would call at city hall or recorders’ court. This was the place where Miss Sherwood was assaulted by the natives, on the 10th. It was narrow and thickly populated, with double-story buildings on either side, and numerous blind alleys shooting out of the lane.

The crawling order remained in force for eight days. Although General Fyatt called it “going on all fours,” and it had been called the “hand and knee order” by the press, the process consisted in the persons lying flat on their bellies and crawling like reptiles. Any lifting of the knees or bending thereof brought the rifle butts of the soldiers and police on the native backs.

“But, General,” Dicky said cheerfully, “people are forced to crawl through there or go without food and medicine—people who have never seen Miss Sherwood, much less taken part in the assault.”

“She was beaten,” General Fyatt declared. “We look upon women as sacred.”

“Ah,” said the American.

In the Crawling Lane and elsewhere were erected tikitis for flogging. These were triangles of wood, upon which the hands could be suspended and tied. A general order was issued for all the native population of Amritsar, a city of one hundred and sixty thousand, to salam to English in the streets. Those who did not salam were arrested, often flogged. Many of the people were so terrified, that they dared not sit down anywhere outside of their own houses, lest one of the English appear suddenly and not find them standing and in position to salam.

During the late days of April, Richard Cobden did not see Nagar, though occasional brief messages reached him from his friend through the students. One of these was a suggestion, which Dicky followed, to send off whatever mail he had ready, in care of one of the young men who was leaving for Pondicherry, French India. Finally there was the episode of the tennis court, in the Civil Lines. Dicky drew up to the crowd.

A set of doubles or singles was not in progress. This was a game of triangle—a tikiti in the center of the court; a naked native strung up and being whipped. Dicky had seen about enough of this, and was ready to turn back, when something of the carriage of the native’s head arrested his eye, and started a peculiar sinking in his heart.

The bare back was toward him, but the face turned sidewise revealed the profile of Nagar. His hands were strapped high toward the top of the great frame formed in the shape of the letter A. Nagar had been stripped to the loincloth, his head bare, his white robes and turban cloth flung upon the turf. The stripes were being put on by one of the native police. The whip was a rigid canelike affair, but longer than a walking-stick. A detachment of native soldiers was drawn up on one side, police on the other. Two young officers of the military, one of whom Dicky knew, were in charge of the affair.

Dicky had halted, hand to mouth. Each stroke blinded his eyes; his body became, for an instant after it, like a house in flames with every curtain tightly drawn. Then he would see the sunlight before the next stroke, and the naked man with bleeding back. He had direct need to turn his back upon this thing—the old nausea. It never occurred to him that this was his own great test, greater than Nagar’s, for such tests of the human heart do not come announced; but out of all past experience, one thing stood in the midst of a rocking universe—that if he did anything in this red blindness, he would do worse than nothing.

He walked away, his elbows jerking up as another stroke fell. The thing that saved him was already accomplished. The turning of his back was all that was required, apparently, since in this instant he got a life and death grip on the word Messenger. Was he Nagar’s friend or India’s messenger?

Then he knew just one furious smearing doubt. What of human loyalty—to stand by and allow this thing to go on? He was answered in his mind from Nagar’s own words, “Mahatma-ji’s ideal isn’t human, Richard. It is of the Soul.” Action of a foreigner in behalf of a native would only intensify the English fears and the native’s plight. To rush in was John Higgins’ code. Evidently there was another.

He walked around to meet Nagar face to face. Ten feet away, he stood until Nagar’s eyes came up to his. Had Nagar’s hand been free to lift and command Silence, his lips free to speak, the word could not have been more fiercely impressed. Indeed, the word Silence seemed to have been shot into the American’s consciousness.

A blow fell. Nagar’s eyes closed; his lips stretched out as if struck by an invisible hand. Then under the trailing eyelids, Dicky saw a look of inexpressible gratitude and relief—the barest beginning of a smile. Nagar had found him fit to trust. It was another moment of real life, that moment of the look, another instant of essential recognition.

“Oh, I say, Cobden—have you seen a ghost?”

It was Langoyer, one of the young English officers, who spoke. He was leaning upon his cane, to flick a cigarette stub off the court with his boot. Langoyer paid no attention to the flogging. The men attended to that, you know. One had to stand by—as one would wait for his horse to drink.

Dicky was now being lashed to the quick himself. He had seen clearly—but a sort of hideous night had settled upon him again. He had to watch his temper.

“How many does this man get, Langoyer?” he managed to ask.

“Thirty.”

“What for?”

“He knows more of the sedition of Kitchlew and Satyapal than he’ll tell.”

The figure had gone limp on the triangle.

“Fainted,” gasped Richard Cobden.

The whipping stopped. A tin bucket of water was brought and dashed upon Nagar’s face and shoulders. A moan came from him because he was not quite conscious. Then the knees drew up and his feet felt for the ground.

The lieutenant stepped forward taking Nagar’s ear in his right hand and calling aloud:

“Will you tell the truth now of Kitchlew’s plot against Government?”

Nagar looked at him without hatred. He tried to speak twice before the words came:

“I have already told the truth——”

“How many stripes have been given?” Langoyer asked.

“Twenty-six.”

“Finish the thirty, then take him to kotwali. A few days more will make him tell all right.”

The American remained. One—two—three—four.

The hands were unstrapped. The robe was cast about the shoulders. Nagar could stand. Dicky left the officers and followed his friend and the native policemen to the station, feeling like a pariah’s whelp.