Mr. Early looked a little taken aback, but brightened again with a new
suggestion.
"Why not do it here?" he asked. "Come, where could you find a more
fitting place? You have your rooms in a wing of the house all to
yourself. That gives you perfect solitude. I should be delighted to have
you for my guest while you do your work; and when you finish, I know
enough of the tricks of the trade to help you push it a bit."
"Of a certainty truth is self-vigorous, and needs no tricks to keep it
living."
"Ah, yes," the man of business answered cheerfully. "But one may boost
it,--one may boost it, my dear fellow."
The Swami bent his great head and appeared to meditate. When he looked
up, his spiritual eyes were narrowed to a speculative slit, and he
studied the face on the other side of the comfortable log fire.
"My friend, you are generous. You offer me a home, and I am fain to
accept it, if I may put the offer in another form. For the present I
must return to India. Too long already have I been away from the
atmosphere which is to me life. I must see some of the brothers of my
soul. I must saturate myself with repose and with the underlying--with
Karma. Also, in this too-vigorous country, that is unattainable. But
here, in this place, one who is filled with the message might give it
forth to his brothers--or perhaps to the sisters, who appear the more
anxious for it. Here the very energy of the air says 'give' rather than
'grow'. If I might a year--six months hence--accept your hospitality?"
He looked tentatively at Mr. Early.
"My home is yours. Do what you like with it," said Mr. Early benignly.
He was thinking how well a picturesque cut of the Hindu's head would
look on the covers of The Aspirant, combined with a judicious puff
within.
The Swami smiled serenely.
"I observe," he went on in his delicate voice, "that the wing on the
ground floor, in which you have given me room, has two apartments,
divided by a little passage, and that the little passage gives not upon
the public highway, but upon a garden, quiet and lovely, that faces the
sun and is shut in by brick walls and hedges. The farther one of these
rooms is bare and but slightly furnished, though my bedroom is sumptuous
like that of a maha-rajah. Still the bare small room pleases me best. If
I might have this room when I come again! If I might keep the bare room
sacred to my meditations, all unentered save by myself! It means to me
much that no alien mind, no soul of a common servant, should mar the
serenity of the atmosphere in that spot where I sit alone with myself. I
would have it dedicated to the greater Me. It would be the cap-sheaf--do
you not so say in this land of great harvests?--thus to give shelter not
only to my body, but to my soul, in this bare and quiet little room."