Come, My Beloved

X

THE SUN WAS SINKING into the Red Sea in a fury of dying color. Heat smouldered along the horizon, it inflamed the half clouded sky and as the sun touched the water the hot light ran across the smooth sullen water like liquid metal.

“I haven’t seen such a sunset since I left India,” he said.

“It is terrifying,” the girl said thoughtfully.

She was slim and white clad, English, her fair hair drawn back from the pale oval of her face. He was tall and slender of shoulder, his hair was a bright auburn, and his eyes were grey and deepset. Both of them, Ted MacArd and Agnes Linlay, were going home. They had met in ship fashion, attracted to each other because they had come from India and were going back again. Her father was Governor-general in an eastern province, and had his father been an ordinary missionary she might not have allowed herself to continue the casual friendship begun soon after she came aboard. Everybody in India knew David MacArd, the famous missionary, who was Ted’s father. Besides, he was the grandson of the great MacArd, the American financier. Nevertheless, though he was pleasant, equally at ease with the dancing set as with the missionaries who clung to him, she did not know how far she wanted the friendship to go; neither, she felt, did he. He did not pursue her and yet when she appeared on deck after tea he was there as though he had been waiting for her. Yet she was not sure that he had been.

“How do you think of India?” he asked rather abruptly.

She lifted her accurate brown eyebrows. “Meaning?”

“Is it home or isn’t it?”

She gave honest thought to the answer. “I don’t know. I want to see my parents again, of course, and in a way where they are is home. I am not sure that I really want to see India, and yet bits of memories fly into my mind, and did, all the time I was away. You know, early morning when the air is still cool and I hear the bulbul singing in the garden, or evening and the dusty sunset, and the ayah folding my clean clothes.”

“And the wailing music in the night,” he added.

“I wonder why there is always music in the night,” she agreed.

“So many people—”

“I know.”

They were silent, gazing into the flaming sky from which the sun had suddenly disappeared. The fiery stream faded from the oily sea and the curves of the ship’s wake caught long lines of crimson afterglow.

“Perhaps we are never quite at home anywhere,” she said. “When we’re in India, we talk of going home somewhere else, England for me, America for you. When we’re there — at least when I was in England, I was always thinking of India.”

“So was I when I was in America.”

Back of the sunset was the country he had left, his own and peculiarly dear because he had been so much in exile. Once during the ten years he had been there he had gone back to spend a vacation with his father in India, and twice his father had come to visit him. He had had a good time at school, first at prep and then at college, although he could still remember how he had cried secretly when he left Poona, at twelve. But he had soon forgotten that, and his old grandfather had been fond of him and had bought him anything he wanted. He had spent his vacations with his grandfather in the old Fifth Avenue house, now so out of fashion and yet so comfortable. He had not been lonely, because he had brought friends home with him, and besides, he had always felt the life of the house and the family and been proud of it. When his father came back there were the three generations of MacArds together, although the two women who had been the links between them were dead. He had studied their portraits often, both women beautiful and aristocratic, his grandmother gentle and his mother proud.

“Though your mother changed,” his father had said once when they stood together before Olivia’s portrait. “She was a proud young girl but after our marriage the pride disappeared, for some reason, and she was often very humble and sweet.”

“Did she change or you, Father?” Ted had asked.

“I don’t know,” his father replied. “India doesn’t leave a man unchanged, certainly.”

That summer, only two years ago, his grandfather had exerted himself, feeble as his massive frame had become. There had been a reconciliation of some sort between his father and his grandfather and he was glad for it. Then he had been half afraid to tell his grandfather that he, too, wanted to go back to India. But his grandfather had not protested.

“I don’t know what you see in that damned country, but do as you please.” That was what he had said in his grumbling way and then he had said in a voice suddenly strong, “The second time it doesn’t hurt. Children don’t pay for their keep and I’ve learned to manage alone.”

Nevertheless it had been a happy summer. His grandfather had even talked of opening the long closed Maine house but in the end they had simply stayed together in town, and he enjoyed being with his father. The two older men had talked and he had listened, as usual. He was not a great talker except in that superficial chatter of his own generation. Perhaps that was India again. He held a world of memories within himself which other young men knew nothing about, and which he could not explain to them for they had nothing wherewith to understand, memories of the close black nights in his childhood when he woke to see the tiny oil lamp at his ayah’s bed burning in a flicker scarcely larger than a lit match and yet which made him feel safe, memories of the endless slow moving stream of white-garbed people in the streets outside the mission compound, or of the students at his father’s school, stopping to fondle him and practice their English upon him. He could still remember the smell of clean brown skin when they wrapped him in their arms, a smell as fresh as new cut grass on the lawns because being Hindu they ate no meat and he could remember, too, how dark were their eyes, and how the whites were tinged with blue. He remembered above all the endless kindness toward him. He had not missed his mother’s love, no, nor his busy father, so often absent, because there had been many people everywhere to love him and caress him and hold him in their arms. That was his first memory now when he thought of India, the boundless outgoing love, not because of what he was but simply because he was a child and perhaps because he was motherless. Women in the streets, old grandmotherly women, and younger mother women going to the well to fetch water, jars on their heads as they walked, and sister girls all knew him and paused to speak to him, to give him a bit of fruit or an Indian sweet, and he accepted all and he ate foods which would have frightened his father had he known, but there was much Ted never told his father or anyone and that he shared alone with India. He understood early that his India and his father’s India were two different countries, and for him there was only one, his own.

He had never known any girl well until now he was beginning to know Agnes. In his childhood he had no girl playmates. Mrs. Fordham, it was true, had given birth to a belated girl child to her astonishment and even embarrassment, but Ruthie, as they called her, was three years younger than he, a round-faced, round-eyed child with whom he would have been ashamed to play. When he visited his father, she had already been sent back to some church school in Ohio, and Mrs. Fordham was as briskly childless as ever. And it always seemed too much trouble to explain to any of the girls in America why he was going to India and, since they did not know and probably could not understand, they had remained far from him even while he carried on the gay conversations that were suitable. But this remoteness had made him shy of falling in love, and now he did not want to be more than friends even with Agnes. Some day, of course, he must marry and have children. His grandfather had been plain about that.

“You are the only scion of the family, Ted,” his grandfather had said the night before he left. The old man was lying in his bed, very straight and thin and only his big bones made him still look big. He was easily tired and he went to bed early, but he liked Ted to come in and talk, and he had gone on, “Your father never married again though I wish he had, but I couldn’t say anything because a second marriage would have been impossible for me too. We MacArd men are faithful to our women.”

He had champed his jaws under his big snow-white beard which he never bothered to cut nowadays and he had turned his eyes away from Ted to the portrait on the chimney-piece opposite his bed. He could not see it very clearly any more but memory lit the dim outlines of the beloved face.

“Marry a good woman,” he commanded in a loud voice, “marry and have a lot of children. She always wanted many children and we had one. Your mother ought to have had a dozen children, she had as lithe and strong a frame as could be found, but India killed her.”

He closed his eyes, overcome by the fitful sleep which fell upon him now at any moment, and Ted waited. In a moment his grandfather had suddenly opened his eyes. “What the devil are you going to India for?” he demanded.

“I don’t know yet,” Ted had said. “I want to go and I may not stay.”

But he knew that he would stay. He had found no place for himself in America — pleasant, oh yes, that indeed, and everybody waiting to be his friend. He had missed the war by his youth, spending those years cloistered in boys’ schools, and now, college over, he had come out into a world he did not know, glittering, laughing, corrupt, and reaching for him. The heir to the MacArd millions could scarcely escape the reaching hands and he had retired quickly to the old house where his grandfather lived, emerging shyly to accept invitations, moving with a gay poise that puzzled the mothers and the daughters to whom he was so eligible a young male.

Even his father had not urged him to come back to India. “Don’t feel you must come back to India,” David had written. “There is always a place for you here, of course, and there are times when I sorely hope you will come at least for a few years, that we may learn to know each other again. But I did not follow my father, and you must not follow me.”

It was not his father, it was India. He was going back to something he knew, an old world, a gentle world, often poor and starving and always kind. Nobody and nothing in America needed him, so he had felt. But perhaps his India did.

He knew already that his was not the India that Agnes knew.

He had found after only a few days at sea that they must not discuss Gandhi or Indian nationalism or any of the matters of which his Uncle Darya had written him. While he was a little boy he had seldom seen Darya, and when he did come to the mission house, he remembered hearing his father and Darya talking together and then almost quarreling. It had seemed to him that it was quarreling, and once, much troubled, he had asked his father, “Is Uncle Darya a bad man?”

His father had replied quickly and firmly, “He is a very good man, and I think he is going to be also a great man.”

“Then why aren’t you friends?”

His father had tried to explain. “Ted, these are strange times in which we live, and nobody can understand them. Many things are wrong and good people are trying to make them right. I believe that my way of doing it is best, but your Uncle Darya has quite a different way and he thinks his is best.”

“But can’t you be friends?” So he had insisted.

“I hope so,” his father had said soberly.

A few months ago, quite unexpectedly, Darya had begun to write to him. “Dear Ted: Your father has written me that you are coming back to India. With his permission I am writing to you. I think you should know the India to which you are returning, for it is not the country you left.”

From then on Darya’s letters had come almost regularly and he had explained to Ted the changes he would see. Of course, Darya told him, there was the old India of the villages, almost untouched. It would take years of independence to improve the villages, and perhaps there would even have to be another world war before India could be free, but the weapons of independence were being forged, and Gandhi was drawing the villages into the struggle as no one else could. They would have to have the help of the peasants, since most of India lived in villages, and only Gandhi could get their help.

None of this was real to Ted, it fitted in nowhere with his memories, but he was curious about it and he had spoken to Agnes of his curiosity. To his surprise, though of course he should have expected it, he told himself afterwards, she had grown suddenly cool toward him. They were dancing that evening, and he felt the coolness pervade her physically. She drew away from him in the middle of the first dance.

“Do you mind if we sit down?” she asked.

They had sat down and watched the dancing and after a moment she turned her lovely pale face toward him.

“I can’t forget what you said after dinner about that wretched little Gandhi! I wonder if you know how wicked he is really and how he is disturbing the peace of India. When I think of my father and all the sacrifices he has made for the Empire, and how kind he is to every Indian, much kinder and more pitying than he is to any of his English staff, it seems to me the grossest ingratitude in these new Indians to be so disloyal to Government.”

He had replied in peaceable fashion, “I can quite understand how you feel. Now shall we dance again?”

She forgave him, and he was careful not to talk about Gandhi or his Uncle Darya again, and in her reserved way she resumed the threatened friendship. And he liked her, in spite of this, because she was simple and direct with the mannerliness of the well-bred English girl. He liked her because she had no coquetry and yet she was so feminine that he wanted to be with her because he had never been friends with a girl before. There was something delicious about her, or perhaps simply about being with a girl. He felt an enticing difference in her, not only physically, but in her way of speaking and thinking. They looked at the same scene and she saw it with other eyes than his. He never knew just what she was feeling, and so there was always surprise. Every morning she was new to him and he waited eagerly until they met, and they had come to watch the sunset together, as they did now.

“There,” she said, “the sun has whirled below the sea. Soon it will be dawn in England.”

“What do you see when you think of dawn in England?”

“The amber light, stealing over the Cotswold hills. I’ve watched it often from the windows of my grandmother’s house. The light comes up like a river running into the valleys. What do you see in America?”

“The towers of the tall buildings in New York, catching the light first, but it is silver, isn’t it? Amber makes me think of evening.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed.

The twilight descended swiftly and the rays of the almost full moon cast a pale glow over the darkening water. The first gong for dinner rang in a series of musical tones and she turned reluctantly from the rail.

“Will you be dancing tonight?” he urged.

“Yes — will you?” she replied.

“Yes. Shall we meet at the usual place?”

“Yes.”

Their eyes clung for an instant, they nodded briefly and she left him.

He lingered, reluctant to leave the peaceful sea and the quieting sky. Life ahead was as familiar as his childhood, and yet it would be new. He was not a child but a man, young, of course, but a man. As a man he must meet his father and establish his own independence. It had not been worthwhile to insist upon it with his grandfather, they were not to live in the same house and he had yielded to the old gentleman’s whims and demands with a mild amusement. It must be different with his father. He was going to India as a teacher in his father’s school and he could not allow his father to dominate him, even by his powerful persuasive courteous presence. He loved his father but he knew that they were different men.

The second bell rang and he went down the stairs to his cabin. The ship was not crowded, he had the small room to himself as he prepared to put on his evening clothes, the formal black trousers, the short white jacket, black tie and wide black cummerbund of the tropics, a garb becoming to a tall and slender young man with grey eyes and auburn hair. He looked like his grandfather, except that the darkness of his mother had tempered the fiery red of the elder’s hair and beard. His own face was smooth-shaven, but his beard was stubborn and he shaved again tonight.

Nevertheless he was ready too early for the final bell, for he had learned to dress quickly in the years at school, and his skill at sports had taught him a compact co-ordination of movement with no waste of action. With the few minutes left him he did what was habitual to him. He pulled a small book from his pocket and opened the pages at a marker. It was a New Testament and he was reading the Gospel according to St. John. His father had never compelled him toward the Christian religion, but when he had left India, a little boy, his father had asked him to read the New Testament every day, and he had made the promise and kept it, inconvenient as it often was. The words of grace had crept into his mind without effort, and while in earlier years they had often been meaningless, now, when his young manhood had sharpened every nerve and feeling, they impressed upon him meanings at once poetic and profound.

“Many believed,” St. John had written, “but Jesus did not commit himself to them, because he knew all, and he needed not that any should testify, for he knew what was in man.”

As usual the seemingly simple, deeply significant words stirred his imagination. He closed the book thoughtfully and put it back into his hip pocket, but the words haunted him as he went downstairs to the dining salon. He was seated at the captain’s table because he was young MacArd, that was inescapable, but he had learned not to mind, and he took his share in the table talk, smiling, provocative, observing, and seeking, in his way, too, to know what was in man.

Meanwhile David MacArd was in Bombay to attend the Durbar for the Prince of Wales and then two days after, to meet the ship that was bringing his son back to him. It was a doubtful time for a Durbar. India was seething with new discontent and Darya had made one of his rare visits to Poona months earlier to protest to David the assertion of Empire and to beg him to advise the Viceroy against it.

Their paths had parted five years ago. Darya had chosen to follow Gandhi, subduing his own powerful personality to the firm little leader whom David did not approve.

The visit had not brought the two nearer. David had seen at once that Darya had become a single force, gathering all his soul and mind into one thrusting purpose, that of independence for India. He had left his father’s house and had given his inheritance to his brothers. Stripped by death of Leilamani, their sons and baby daughter, Darya had for the first years wandered from village to village, a sadhu except that he had no religion, a beggar except that he needed nothing. Thus he had come to know his own people and the bitterness of their life. But he had no talent for common folk, though they were his own. He was an aristocrat, a man of learning and wealth, and they were afraid of him. This he could not bear, that a peasant, starved and nearly naked, should fall to the ground before him and take the dust from his feet, and worse, when he raised the man up and forbade him to grovel, that the man would not believe him, and would run away from him in fear. There was no way in which Darya could make the poor and the ignorant trust him and without trust they would not follow him. Angry at himself and peasants alike, he had left the villages then, to seek Gandhi and in that wry and humorous man he had recognized the necessary leader. With an unselfishness which Gandhi seemed not to notice, Darya subdued himself. He bent his far more subtle mind and complex spirit before the practical little man who was neither aristocrat nor peasant and yet could understand both.

“David,” Darya had said, “you must use your influence with the Viceroy to prevent this visit from the Prince of Wales. It is not the time for a show of Empire. I tell you, the nationalists will not stand for it. They are still furious because we were compelled into the world war without our wish or will, and our dire poverty made still worse. I tell you, there will be mass riots everywhere and the life of the Prince will be in danger. I warn you, Congress will boycott the whole Durbar. We will declare hartal in Bombay when he lands there.”

It was autumn, the heat was subsiding slightly, and the college grounds were filled with swarming students. David had been aware of unrest but he had ignored it. The years of mastery over young men and women had taught him order and command. He saw no order in the unruly shouting mobs that swarmed about Gandhi, and he did not respect Gandhi as commander. He repressed the Gandhian movement in his schools and admired the steadfast calm of Government, while he disliked its use of force. The bombing of Pathan villages, even though the people had been warned to leave, troubled his Christian conscience and he had remonstrated with the Viceroy himself about shooting into mobs. Yet the whole of India was disturbed and this wretched Gandhi had begun it all with his passive resistance, the non-cooperative movement which a year before Congress had adopted as its policy. He was sorely torn, for he could not as a Christian approve the military rule in the Punjab, where thousands of innocent people had been killed by British soldiers, and he shrank to the very soul from the Amritsar massacre, where the dead and dying were left where they fell after that attack by General Dyer and his men. Even the wounded had not been cared for. “That is not my business,” the General had declared.

“You know that I agree with the Viceroy that India is not ready for independence,” David had replied sharply to Darya. They sat together that day in his study, two middle-aged men, different indeed from the two young men who had once felt as brothers. They had been drawn close for a little while after the tragedy. Yes, he and Darya had clung together weeping that day when he heard of Leilamani’s death after he had lost his own Olivia, and he had hurried to Darya’s house. He felt guilty even now because he still had his son and Darya had no one.

“You know, too, that I went to the Viceroy myself after Amritsar,” David went on irritably. He took off his spectacles and smoothed his greying beard. “The Viceroy did not like my interference. I am only an American.”

“You are the son of MacArd,” Darya had said grimly.

“I am also a missionary,” David had retorted, “and we are all suspect.”

“Who can suspect you?” Darya had flung back. “You are conservative, successful, rich — Christian, an upholder of the powers that be. No one could suspect you of sympathy for us.”

David had been deeply wounded. For a moment he could not answer. Then he had said, very controlled, “You are angry, Darya, and so you do me an injustice. I have not said that I do not sympathize, but I say you cannot accomplish anything by revolution. You must first show yourselves fit for self-government.”

Darya had leaped to his feet, a tall thin flaming figure burnt black by the sun, his darkness enhanced by his white cotton garments and the little white cotton Gandhi cap on his head. In a voice tremendous with wrath he had shouted at David, “How can my people be made fit, as you call it? Starved, despoiled, robbed, beaten! All these years the English have lived here as our masters but they have never known us, they have not tried to understand our minds or hearts. They have ruled by force and by force alone, trusting to their vast military and police organization. They have never tried to win our love or loyalty, though we were ready to love them — yes, even I, in the years at Cambridge, I loved England. In spite of India, there was that to love, and they could have won by love but they trusted to their guns. Now they resent what they call disloyalty! Yes, yes, you are right, they act in self-defense, but why do they fear us? It is because they have made us hate them. It is too late, David! What has begun cannot be stopped. You will see years of strife and we shall win!”

He had left the mission house with a proud step, and David had sat long in troubled thought. If the law and order of the British Empire were destroyed there would be chaos. The university here in the compound, his life work, the climax of (he network of schools he had built up throughout Marathi-speaking India, the fine hospital, they could not function in a lawless country. Time, time was necessary, and when the young men and women pouring from these halls were enough in number to leaven the whole country, independence would be the logical end to a peaceful evolution. But Darya, misguided by Gandhi’s fervor, was forcing an era out of its time. He had sighed, doubted, and then, suddenly resolute, he had taken a sheet of paper and written a brief note to the Viceroy, advising against the Durbar. There had been no answer. The Durbar went on as planned.

He viewed the spectacle on this morning of the seventeenth of November. It was barely dawn and the moon, not quite full, was low over the horizon. Strong searchlights from the shore played through the pinkish light of the approaching sun and fell upon the ship Renown, and upon the launches which were taking officials, both English and Indian, to welcome the Prince of Wales. They had left the shore in the early light to the roar of saluting cannon, first the Vice Admiral and then the Viceroy, wearing only the Star of India as decoration upon his grey morning suit. With them were the highest among the ruling princes of India, three maharajahs and two nawabs who were to travel with the Prince in his royal tour and on shore later in the day these were to be joined by three more, the Raja Sir Hari Singh of Kashmir, the Maharaj Kumar of Bikaner, and Nawazada Haji Hamidullah Khan of Bhopal according to the program.

The splendor of the scene could not be denied. The sun rose clear and glorious, and a brisk wind whipped up small waves in the harbor. The Renown lay too far out for him to see what was going on on the decks, but he saw her flying standard. Every ship in the harbor was decked with fluttering flags and only fleets of Indian fishing boats went their usual way. The heat already shimmering above the water lent a quality of mirage over the whole scene, a shining, quivering mist of light. It was soon too hot to stand longer, and he made his way to the enormous amphitheater which had been prepared for the assembly of the day. A long vista of red carpet led to the entrance where a reception pavilion had been erected, roofed with golden minarets and domes. Upon the central dome there blazed the royal coat of arms.

He presented his card of entrance, was admitted, and saw before him an immense space bounded by flag decorated towers, and in the space, rising thirty tiers high, thousands of persons were already seated. Most of them by far were Indians, the official and the rich, their bright many-colored garments shining in the sun, their turbans sparkling with jewels. The sober black garments of the Europeans were here and there, but only the blue and scarlet and gold imperial uniforms of the English officers could match the Indian splendor.

He took his seat, one of the severely garbed, and with the crowd he waited in the hot sun. An hour before noon the roar of welcoming cannon told them that the imperial entourage had come ashore. They waited not much longer. He rose with the crowd and saw the young Prince of Wales walking beside the Viceroy in a stately procession toward the pavilion where the flags were flying. There seated on a gilded dais, he received the ruling princes of India, the men of his own Indian staff, and finally the members of the city council.

It was a spectacle, and in spite of Darya’s warnings, David told himself, it was a success. Yet he could not be easy until it was over, for among the gorgeous robes and turbans he saw too the spartan Gandhi cap, the homespun white cotton that marked the rebels. Outside upon the streets, however, the people had gathered in suffocating crowds and he heard their shouts of greeting to the British Prince.

“Yuvraj ki jai! Yuvraj ki jai!”

Nevertheless, he was glad that the royal tour of the city was not to include the Byculla quarter, where the rowdies and the riff-raff lived, and where if riots were to break, would be their focus. The hartal, which Darya had threatened, might even now be a failure. The markets were closed, it was true, he had noticed that this morning with foreboding, for when hartal was declared, it imposed upon people a religious necessity for a period of mourning within one’s home. So far the people had not heeded the command of the rebels. They could not resist the royal display.

And he, too, was compelled to admit and willingly did admire not only the carefully planned pageant of Empire, but the grace and sincerity of those who took part in it, and most especially the grace of the young Prince himself. That slight dignified figure now came forward at the appointed time and standing he read the King’s address with extraordinary composure and clarity. It was impossible not to believe in his goodness and not to be touched by his youth. With the same natural pleasantness, he received the welcome of the city, which Sir David Sassoon presented, and in reply spoke so simply and with such earnestness and honesty, that David wished Darya were present and could hear. “I want to know you,” the young Prince said, gazing upon the vast audience of India, “I want to know you and I want you to know me.”

The beauty of order, the strength of control, the power of law, all were here, and surely they would prevail, David told himself.

The great assembly was over and music burst into the air. The royal company prepared to descend from the dais, and the crowd rose.

Suddenly at this very moment David heard his name called in a whisper. He turned his head and saw Darya standing among a group of Indians just behind him.

“Even I,” Darya said, under cover of the music. Then with his invincible smile, he said, leaning forward to be heard, “Look at me, David — you will not see me for a long time.”

“Ah, Darya,” David said anxiously, “what are you planning now?”

From whence had Darya come? He must have taken advantage of the crowds and made his way in. Among the vivid silks of the courts of the native princes he was dangerously conspicuous in the whiteness of his cotton garments, his little Gandhi cap stark among the gorgeous turbans of scarlet and blue and gold.

“In a moment I shall be arrested,” Darya whispered and his look was proud. He stood with his head high, his arms folded. It was not a moment. Almost instantly two British guards stepped forward and clapped their hands on his shoulders.

“This way, please, sir,” they said with respect; but command.

Darya turned his head this way and that, he met the eyes of those who gazed at him, he smiled again at David and then walked with dignity down the carpeted aisle between the two tall British guards. For a moment the royal company paused, though without confusion, and then as Darya disappeared, the band struck into new music, and the imperial show went on.

Ted saw his father first, tall, gaunt, bearded, his eyes shadowed by the oval brim of his sun helmet. He stood near the gang plank ready to be the first to descend from the ship, and while he waited this last instant his father caught sight of him and raised his hand. Ted lifted his hat high and waved it, and then stood smiling, but only in the instant for almost immediately the gang plank was fixed, the quick dark hands of the dock sailors fastening the ropes with skill, and he leaped down the few feet of board and clasped his father’s hand.

“Dad, this is wonderful—”

“I’m glad to see you, son.”

His father was sunburned almost as dark as the Indians themselves, or perhaps heat-burned. His grey beard cut close to his cheeks was a startling contrast to the brown skin and tragic dark eyes. It was not a smiling face, but Ted had never remembered ready smiles upon his father’s face. It was kind and it wore a controlled patience, a stillness almost terrifying. It was a stern face, as he remembered, in repose or prayer.

“We’d better not stand in this sun,” David said. His son looked so young, so tender, that he felt immediately anxious, the old sickening anxiety of the boy’s childhood in this devilish climate. Twenty-two was too young to begin life here, but it was either here or get rooted in America, and Ted had chosen India.

“I shall have to get hardened to it again,” Ted said with gaiety. There was gaiety in all he said and did, a sparkling, youthful, springing quality. Tall as he looked, he was not as tall as his father or his grandfather, and the peculiar brightness of his white skin, his grey eyes and the auburn hair enhanced his natural spirit with an electric lightness. He was more slender than father or grandfather had ever been, inheriting from Olivia his narrow wiry build and movements too quick for absolute grace. Mercurial, David thought regretfully, perhaps too fine-drawn, too taut, too sensitive for India! Though Ted did not look like Olivia, she had bequeathed something to him of her inner self.

“I have taken rooms at the hotel,” David said. “We can leave the luggage with the porter.” They got into a carriage and sat down side by side in the shelter of the hood, and the horses ambled slowly down the street.

“Do you plan to go straight home to Poona tomorrow?” Ted asked.

“Unless you have some reason for delay,” David replied.

Ted hesitated then decided against mentioning Agnes. Did he speak her name it might be too much, his father might think the friendship deeper than it was. She would not be at the hotel, her parents were staying at Government House, and he had not asked to see her there. They had told each other good-by this morning after breakfast.

“We shall meet again,” he had said with his quick nervous hand clasp.

“Of course,” she said.

“And may I write?” he asked.

“I hope you will,” she had replied.

He looked deeply for a moment into her charming blue eyes, the sweet steadfast eyes of good and highborn young English women, and impressed upon his memory the gentle oval of her face, the serious mouth and firm chin, the fresh and lovely complexion, the slender elegant figure in white linen, the low beautiful English voice. Something trembled in him for a moment, words rose to his lips, and he restrained them. It was too soon, he did not know what he wanted to make of his life, he could not speak of sharing it in any degree with her until he knew for himself what it was to be.

“I shall write after I get home,” he said. “And you, too, write me. Tell me what the first hours are.”

“I fancy we shall be feeling somewhat the same,” she replied.

So they had parted, she had left him quietly before he met his father, and he had caught a glimpse of her with a tall sallow Englishman and a thin sallow graceful woman in a green frock, her parents, he supposed, come to meet her, and to take part in the Durbar, but she did not introduce him. So he could not speak of her now, and certainly he did not want to call upon her in Government House. It would be far too significant, especially with the Durbar going on.

“I’d like to get straight home,” he told his father.

They rode in silence for a few minutes, and he gazed about the scene, so familiar and yet so new, the swarming crowds, the dark, amiable, tense, proud Indian faces, the turbans of every shape and color, the women in their brilliant saris, far more of them on the streets now than there used to be, a few Englishwomen, too, and some Eurasian girls, very beautiful in English garb, and the ever present beggars, wretched, deformed, emaciated, their high voices, pleading for mercy, threading all the noise of the everyday life, and no one paying them any heed.

“I wonder that something isn’t done to get the beggars fed and off the streets,” he said abruptly.

“I suppose it is still as it was in the time of Christ,” David said. “The poor we must have always with us.”

His father spoke, or so Ted thought, almost with indifference, as if India had worn down even pity, or mercy, and certainly the hope of change for such as these. He understood, and rebelled. However long he lived here, he would not allow himself to become indifferent. He would keep his heart alive.

So they did not stay in Bombay. He had no desire to see the Durbar, and they left on the earliest train. He was very quiet, sitting by the dusty window and watching the familiar landscape slip by. This was more than coming home. It was beginning his own life at last.

XI

“HERE WE ARE,” HIS father said.

The train journey had been long and hot, the dust grey and fine seeping in through closed windows, creeping up out of the shaking floors of the cars, sifting from the cracks of the wooden walls and ceilings. The green grass, the hanging vines, the spreading trees, and the big brick buildings made the compound heaven by contrast.

“How much you have done!” Ted exclaimed.

“I have finished the plans I made before you were born,” his father said gravely. “The chemistry building yonder was the last unit. The dormitories are all built and occupied. Over the whole presidency there is a network of lower schools, headed by our graduates, and these feed into the university.” He nodded toward a low beautiful building at the south end of the compound, a graceful compromise with Indian architecture. “That is the girls’ home-industry college. I have named it The Olivia MacArd Memorial, in memory of your mother.”

A bell rang at this moment and a stream of girls in soft-hued saris poured out of the doors, laughing and chattering as they came. When they saw the two men, they pulled the flying scarf-like ends of the saris over their heads. They all knew that the Head’s son was coming to teach, and they stole quick looks at the tall fair young man who did not look at all like his father, and turned their faces away before he could see them, curious, half fascinated because in a way he belonged to them and they to him. He would, they supposed, succeed his father some day as India’s great Christian educator. Yet there was a hint of hostility in their looks. Gandhi and Dr. MacArd were not friends, and the students were all secret followers of Gandhi, or nearly all, but because of Dr. MacArd there had been no open attempt to join the nonviolent resistance movement. The fair young man might or might not follow in his father’s path. They hurried on, young and hungry for their night meal.

“Was my mother interested in all this?” Ted asked.

His father hesitated as always when he asked a direct question about his mother. Then he said, overcoming silence with effort, “Your mother died so young, she had not time to fulfill herself. We were married and the next year you were born. She had the task of adjusting to India and to marriage. I tell myself that she would have been interested, had she lived. She was full of energy, vitality, spirit — many gifts.”

“And beauty besides,” Ted mused.

“Yes,” his father said abruptly. He turned toward the house. “We must go in and get washed for dinner.”

On the wide veranda the servants had gathered to greet the son of the house come home. They held garlands of flowers, and one by one now they came forward smiling, humble, tender, as they looped the garlands over his neck. Then they stooped to take the dust from his feet and escorted him into the house like a prince.

His father was patient with all this, but abstracted, and in the hall he picked two notes from the table. “The Fordhams,” he said, and opening it he read aloud.

“Welcome home, dear Ted. We’ll leave you to yourselves this first evening. We look forward to tomorrow—”

The sealed pink note addressed to Ted was from Miss Parker. He opened it and read her underscored lines, remembering Auntie May, as she had made him call her all the time he was a little boy. He had been fond of her but distantly, because even then he had known that she loved him because of his father, and he had divined even in childhood that she had her dreams, the highest one that some day David MacArd would ask her to be his second wife. The years had faded this dream, his father had never thought of such replacement, and Ted knew it and had learned to pity the aging lonely woman.

“Dear Ted, my special welcome to you. It is almost like a son coming home — my own son, I mean, but I just cannot put it into words. I have so many memories of you, and now you are a young man and come back to be your noble father’s strength and help. With fondest love from Auntie May.”

His father did not ask about the pink note, there was no need. They went upstairs together into the rooms he knew so well, where he had grown up lonely and yet never alone, loved and adored by the dark people and spoiled, as he knew very well now, by every one of them, guarded and shielded even from the stern father, and yet he had loved his father best, always.

“I shall be down in about half an hour,” his father said, almost formally.

He knew his father felt strange with him, that he was searching for the new relationship, father and son, yes, but man and man, teacher and superior, comrades in Christ. Ted’s heart softened suddenly, its old trick. He was always too easily touched and moved.

“By the way,” his father paused. “I have had your room changed. The old one was small, I thought. I have put you in the front room, it used to be the guest room, you remember.”

“Thanks,” Ted said. But he was startled. His old room had been small, but it was next to his father’s room. Now perhaps the older man did not want to be so near to the young one.

“I shall miss you,” his father was saying with a shy smile, half hidden in the grey beard. “But you must have room to grow.”

“Thank you, Dad,” he said.

And then he was glad he was not in the small room after all. This front room was wide and pleasant, just now almost cool, the shadows from the veranda dimming the sunshine. There were no flowers, there had never been flowers in this house that he could remember, only green things, ferns, palms, that the servants arranged.

A punkah above his head began to sway slowly and a strange loneliness, a homesickness of the spirit crept over him like a mist from the past, when this world was the only one he knew. It had crept over him often in America, even while he knew that was his own land and he an American. There it was India that he missed. Here, standing in the midst of the familiar past, he felt a pang of longing for his grandfather’s house, the clean avenue, the taxicabs, the well-dressed people, his own people, the cool brisk air. Perhaps if he were in New York at this moment there would even be snow, it was only two weeks until Thanksgiving! He had not spoken to his father while they were driving homeward in the old bullock cart, the bullock bandy, from the train an hour ago, he had not spoken of the streets he remembered so well. They were unchanged in all these years, the straining dark faces, too eager, too tired with heat and hunger, the thin dark bodies, that life of the streets all open to the passerby, the unpainted houses, the unfurnished rooms of the common people, the narrow streets crowded with vehicles and bullocks and people, the priests and beggars, and pressed against the walls the vendors of spice and grain, crosslegged in the dust, and women carrying water from the wells, the jars on their heads, and dyers stretching bright green and orange and yellow lengths of cloth in everyone’s way and the twang of a weaver’s loom somewhere behind a thin wall. In the streets all India swarmed about him again, and though he stood in this oasis of quiet, it was there, it was there.

He reached into his hip pocket and brought out the small Testament. Its leather covers were wet with his sweat and he opened it and read.

“For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved.”

It was extraordinary, he was not superstitious, but there it was. India was not to be condemned, it was simply to be saved. His fear lifted suddenly, he was even light-hearted. He had come here to work, and there was work to do. The vast old house on Fifth Avenue was thousands of miles away, and years would pass before he entered it again.

“Where is Uncle Darya?” Ted asked.

They sat at the English mahogany dining table, he and his father alone as they had always sat during the meals of his childhood, but now his place was set at one end of the oval instead of at his father’s right hand where when he was small his father could lean toward him and cut his meat. His father, he supposed, had given such orders. The servant, in snow-white cotton garb, was passing chicken curry and rice, tinted bright yellow with saffron.

“Darya would have been here to greet you,” his father replied, “except he has gone and got himself arrested. He is in jail.”

“In jail!” Ted exclaimed.

“Darya has committed himself to that fellow Gandhi.” His father’s voice was calm, but Ted knew his elder well enough to see the signs of concern, if not of agitation in his look, in his lips pressed together in his heard.

“But jail!” Ted remonstrated.

“Darya wanted to go to jail. I cannot understand what is going on in India nowadays. There is a perfect madness to get into prison, a passion for martyrdom, a perversity of patriotism. The Viceroy is deeply troubled, because he believes firmly in India’s right to eventual independence. It is simply a matter of when the people can be made ready. But Darya has become almost as fanatical as Gandhi himself. He even protested the Durbar.”

“I never thought Uncle Darya a fanatic,” Ted said. “He was a little sad — or so I remember him.”

“He became a different man after he lost his family. I have had you but he has no one nearer than his brothers and their children. He is a very personal sort of man, as Indians are, affectionate and so on. It was difficult for him to adjust. An ordinary Indian would simply have married again, but Darya seems really to have loved his wife. Did you know her name was Leilamani? Your grandmother’s name was Leila.”

“I know. And so now what will happen?”

The servant was passing spinach cooked until it was grey, and peas black with pepper. He had forgotten about the execrable vegetables, cooked always as Indians ate them. But his father took them as habit and helped himself to both.

“Sooner or later Gandhi will have to be put down,” his father was saying with sudden vigor. “Government cannot tolerate this sort of thing. Nonviolence sounds mild enough, but it can cause the greatest annoyance and real disruption, the people lying on railroad tracks, for example, with complete disregard for their lives, and of course they can’t be ran over or the country would be in an uproar. I shan’t be surprised if we hear of riots in a day or two about the Prince himself.”

“Have you ever seen this man Gandhi?” Ted inquired.

“Only at a distance,” his father replied. “An insignificant ugly little man. I am surprised that Darya finds anything in him.”

“I’d rather like to talk with Gandhi,” Ted persisted.

“I advise you to stay away from him and all his works,” his father said rather stiffly.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. At some point, Ted was thinking, he would say to his father that now he was a man, young it was true, but his own master nevertheless, and he must decide for himself what he would do, whom he would see.

“At least you wouldn’t mind my going to visit Uncle Darya in prison?”

David hesitated. “I suppose not, though he won’t be there long. Government simply wants to make an example. The Viceroy has talked at length with me about the strategy.”

“Rather a pity that they had the Durbar at this moment, don’t you think? A sort of display of power?”

His father corrected him. “A display of strength, not power, and strength is essential.”

Now or never, Ted thought, and from the very beginning he must have courage to disagree with his father.

“I wonder, even so, if it is wise,” he said pleasantly. “The people here have such a profound recklessness of themselves. They have so little to lose, I suppose, a mud hut, two lengths of cotton cloth, a handful of pulse or wheat. They don’t mind death, it comes so soon anyway — twenty-seven years is the life span, isn’t it? And I suppose for most of them prison is a good deal better than everyday life for at least they get fed.”

“I agree that they have too little,” his father replied. “And it has been the whole purpose of my life to create better leadership for them, so that conditions can be improved. I think I am making the greatest possible contribution toward their independence in providing educated Indian leaders, Christian if possible. The sooner, then, can independence became a reality. England would welcome responsible Indian leaders but not a fanatic who insists upon wearing a dhoti and spends half his time spinning on a primitive wheel, so that the people won’t buy good English cloth.”

“I know too little to agree or disagree,” Ted said honestly. “But I shall go to see Uncle Darya.”

His father did not answer. The plates were removed and the servant brought on what Miss Parker, Ted remembered, used to call a shape. It was a trembling block of blancmange, surrounded by a circle of thick yellow custard. He helped himself to the accustomed dish and ate it without too much difficulty.

“Go to the villages,” Darya said.

The guard had allowed the tall red-haired young American a special favor. He need not talk with the prisoner through the barricade. Instead the wooden gate was unlocked and Ted had come into the bare room opening upon a grey dusty patch of ground. Here he had found Darya alone, writing at a table made of two boards supported on posts driven into the earthen floor. He had looked up startled and for a full second he did not recognize his visitor. Then he saw who it was and he sprang to his feet and threw his arms about him.

“Ted, my friend, my son—”

“Uncle Darya, I had to come as soon as I knew you were here.”

“Your father did not object?”

“No.”

So they had begun their talk. Ted sat down cross-legged on the earth, refusing the stool Darya tried to give him, and one question was enough, “Uncle Darya, how came you here?”

“You must know,” Darya began, and he took up the story of his life from the moment when he saw his little younger son die and after him the older son, and then Leilamani had died and the baby girl and at last Darya was left alone.

“I said I would become a sadhu,” Darya declared. His great eyes darkened, his mobile face grew tragic. “I divided my property between my brothers, I put on common clothes and sandals, I set forth by foot to travel everywhere through the villages, not begging as true sadhus must do, for I knew myself still richer than the people in the villages, and I fed myself and even gave to them when they starved. Oh Ted, if you would know India, go to the villages!”

Ted did not speak. Across his clasped knees he listened, watching the handsome weary face of his father’s friend.

“North and south I went,” Darya was saying, “east and west I traveled, alone and always on foot, and I slept at night with the peasants, I ate with them, I listened to their talk, staying sometimes for days and weeks in a single place until I knew the people as my own. I buried my sorrow in their sorrows, I forgot the death in my house because they died by the thousands and the hundreds of thousands. I saw my India, a wretched starving suffering people, living upon a rich soil never their own, oppressed by greedy landlords and driven by debt and taxation. The whole country moves to and fro with the restlessness of the misery of the people and I forgot all that I had ever been. I am become another man, a single flame burns here—”

He knotted his hands on his breast, “And then I found Gandhiji.”

His hands dropped. “Mind you, I am not a blind worshiper of this man. No, indeed, I can see him as he is, but still I will follow him because he is not working for himself. Ted, I tell you, renunciation is the test. If a man renounces all that he has for the sake of others, then that man can be trusted. Without renunciation, trust none.”

The heat in the small room was like a weight of lead. The high wall kept away the hope of any wind, and the dusty patch of earth outside the door where not a weed could grow, reflected an intenser sun. There was no shield.

“What will you do here?” Ted asked in actual distress. “It will grow hotter until the monsoons come and that is many months away.”

“I look at the clouds,” Darya said. “Morning and evening the clouds float across my bit of sky and I stand in that patch of dust and gaze at them, and I imagine them as they go. They come from the north, the Himalayas, and of the snow-covered mountains I dream, and of the valleys between. Did you know? Those valleys are full of flowers, fed by the melting snow.”

His voice, so harsh and impassioned a moment before, was suddenly tender, rich, a wonderful flexible voice, slow and soft, swift and powerful, responding to every mood and thought. Ted heard it, but he must not allow the beautiful voice to catch his emotions, no, nor the beautiful face and the spirit of this man, the enchantment of renunciation, the enchantment of righteousness. It was there, he could feel it, the sweetness of yielding one’s whole self. He had been tempted even by the teachings of Jesus. There was a delight of surrender which he tasted but which he had resisted, fearing the distances to which it might lead him. He searched Darya’s face and found in it no bitterness, no anger and no sorrow, only content and joy and exaltation.

“Uncle Darya, what is your hope?”

“To see my people free,” Darya said, “to see them able to help themselves, to see them owning their own land, choosing their own government, living in decency and self-respect and mutual co-operation.” He lifted his face to the square of sultry white sky, where the light was metal hot. “And one day, I shall see them so. I shall see flesh on their bones, and the children will not wail with hunger any more, because they will be fed and not one will be hungry.”

“By the grace of God?”

Darya’s face changed, he opened his eyes and stared at the young white man. “No! By the grace of man! That is what you Christians always say. God, God! How dare you speak his name? Look into your own holy books—‘Not every one that crieth Lord, Lord—’ can you not remember?”

The gentle voice was a roar and Ted was silenced. It was true — and how had he mentioned the name in the presence of such renunciation? He had no right to speak the name of God.

“Uncle Darya, I must go.” He got to his feet and held out his hand. “You have shaken me, I confess it, not by what you have said, but by what you have done. You are right. I am not worthy to speak the name of God. I ask you to forgive me.”

Darya grasped his hand in both his own. “No, no, I let myself be angry and that is not good. You are not guilty, you are like a child. I must keep my anger for those who are guilty. Come again, my son — come and give me joy.”

“I will come, Uncle Darya, though not often, alas, because Poona is too far from here. But my father says the Viceroy will not allow you to be in jail very long. It is only a symbol, my father says.”

“A symbol of power,” Darya cried, “and I will resist it. If I am released, I shall make them arrest me again and again and again, until they see that it is no use. I, too, have power, and no one can take it away from me. Ted, you will see Gandhiji himself in jail before long, remember my words, I tell you it will be so.”

“I hope you are wrong.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No.”

“When you see him you will understand why we must follow him. He is the only one who gives us a road to walk upon. And who are we?” Darya spread out his beautiful dark hands. “Men without guns!”

“Uncle Darya, I must go.”

“Go, then, but come back.”

He went home wondering that Darya had joined his life with Gandhi’s. For if he had understood his Uncle Darya aright in all the years of childhood, it was to know that the beautiful and intelligent man loved life, he enjoyed physical pleasure, he was fastidious and thoughtful. And all this rich humanity was yielded up now to the ugly spare little man who did not care what he ate except that it must not be better than a peasant’s food, who chose a length of white cotton homespun as his garment, a little dark ascetic who lived by choice in a mud hut and walked barefoot. Renunciation, honesty, purity, whatever one chose to call it, whatever the charm, there it was, and Darya was not a man to be easily won. He knew the best as well as the worst even of England, he could wear an Englishman’s morning coat, striped trousers and silk top hat not only with enjoyment but with exceeding grace. He belonged by birth in a palace, his father’s mansion. Now he had chosen jail, now he had chosen poverty, and the renunciation was precious to him, not for God’s sake but for man’s.

Something trembled in Ted’s heart, a flickering flame, a marveling light, but he turned from it. He did not wish at this moment to examine his soul. He was young, his life was pleasant, the future bung bright over the horizon. For Agnes Linlay was constantly in his mind. He must hear her voice and see her in her own surroundings and know for himself what was between them, and what could be, before he examined his soul.

And by day the other country where his grandfather lived receded from his living thought and feeling. The old habits of childhood returned, they rose out of the shadows where they had waited during the years that he had spent in America and again the old half-Indian ways of the mission house became his ways, the hot nights, the shadowy days behind the dropped bamboo curtains and under the slowly waving punkahs, the foods peppered to sting the palate, the cooled melons, the flowering vines in the garden, the dark white-clad servants hastening to meet his possible need. And even in the schoolrooms, the eager, the too eager faces of the young Indian men, the half shy and always charming faces of the girls, their slender hands hovering ready to draw their saris over their heads, a gesture modest and enticing, coquettish and severe. There was much more here than Gandhi’s India.

And every week or two Agnes wrote in answer to his almost daily letters, the letters he sent in his need for companionship, for though he loved and revered his father, there was no possibility of companionship with a man who was now altogether missionary, and more than that, a missionary prince, a man upon whom the Viceroy called for advice when Church must come to the aid of Government. And Mr. and Mrs. Fordham were old and ridiculous and touching. Of all their children, only Ruthie was coming back. They talked a great deal about her and even showed him her picture, a roundfaced, simple pretty girl, whose small lips were too full for prettiness in the pleasant common face.

Besides these, there was only poor old Miss Parker in the compound, and her he avoided and knew himself cruel. He could not help it. She had grown moldy and unhealthy, and even religion had not kept her flesh sweet. She did not dry and wither, instead she grew stale and in the heat an odor, sour and rank, betrayed her presence in any room. It was hard, he supposed in his fastidious youth, for the old to keep clean, anyway in tropic heat.

In his loneliness he read and reread the letters from Agnes, always with vague disappointment at the end. She came no closer for the interchange. Though he poured his thoughts and feelings into his own letters, his increasing warmth brought only her kindly cool regard, her mild gaiety. Twice he had asked to see her, and twice she had put him off. The first time when he visited Darya he had wanted to continue eastward to her, but she put him off because she had planned a holiday with her parents into Kashmir, where her father liked to hunt, and again when he asked, she replied that everyone was too busy with plans for the visit of the Prince of Wales, who was to arrive on Christmas Eve.

Riots were expected, she wrote him, for there were rumors that nationalists were sending in malcontents from the jute mills, paying them each six annas a day to stir up the people against the Prince. But Government was rounding them up before the royal visit, and more than three thousand rebels were in jail. As for hartal—

“Actually complete hartal will be helpful,” she wrote, “for the people will stay at home. Otherwise many might be crushed to death in the crowds on the streets.”

Her letters rose to enthusiasm when the Prince of Wales arrived, and Ted read them thoughtfully, remembering Darya lonely in his prison cell. “It has all been a great success,” she wrote in January. “Most satisfying to us, of course, was the vast entertainment on the second day after Christmas, given entirely by the Indians. It was in the open, on the maidan, and thousands came to see him. How they cheered when the Prince drove slowly around — and it was so very comforting to us. Then he mounted the magnificent dais, and sat down, although he rose as soon as the program began, to receive the sacred offerings — silver coconuts, sweet rice, flowers — all on silver platters. He was finally garlanded and could sit again. Then three great processions came slowly toward him, the first one of priests in their saffron robes, chanting Sanskrit hymns to the most beautiful music, soft and yet wild and sad. Then came thirteen bullock carts, each with a spectacle, a tableau of Indian life, the figures so motionless and poised one could have sworn them of bronze instead of flesh and blood. Then there was the Thibetan dance procession. Of course there was everything else — Manipur dancers, very pretty and so young in their stiff golden skirts and dark bodices, and finally a tremendous historical pageant of the Mogul era. Oh, but the best was when it was all over and the crowd surged forward toward the Prince simply to show their love! And even on the twenty-ninth when he left, the cheering crowds gathered along the river to see him off, although the Pansy was moored by Outram Ghat and his departure was supposed to be private. They were all middle class and working people, too. A great triumph for the British Empire! My father is delighted and so are we all.”

Ted put this letter down. She had never been so warm, so excited, but none of this emotion was for him. It was time indeed to go and see her face to face.

XII

HE REACHED CALCUTTA ON a day already growing hot and went at once to the hotel after the dusty journey. His bearer had fetched his bags and bedding and now hastened ahead to prepare his bath and tea. In the lobby he lingered at the desk, hoping for a letter from Agnes. There was a chit, an invitation not for immediate luncheon, but for tea this afternoon and tennis, a cool little note, not unfriendly perhaps but wary, or did he so imagine? The pale grey paper was thick, and it was embossed with the crest of Government House. But Government House, he reminded himself, was home for her. He must not expect her to be as she had been on the ship, simple and single and free to be herself. She was the Governor’s daughter, and an English woman in India. He stood fingering the note, remembering with a sudden blush the frankness of his letters. He had all but made love to her, for love was very easy. He was still lonely, the nights were hot and long and he dreamed of companionship.

Well, then, he would sleep and rest and read, perhaps even study his language lessons, for he was determined to master not only the literate Marathi but Hindustani and vernacular Gujerati, and after that if possible the other chief languages of India so that wherever he went he could speak to people. Poona, he was beginning to feel, was not to be his final home, but the future was not clear until he had seen Agnes. He mounted the marble steps then and went to his room. There his bearer had already let down the mosquito net, had drawn the shutters and the punkah was in motion.

“English bath, sahib,” the faithful one said, grinning white teeth in a dark face, meaning that here was a vast porcelain tub and cumbrous plumbing and running hot and cold water.

“That is good,” Ted replied. “Now bring me some food, and then you go and sleep, too. I shall sleep all morning.”

“Yes, Sahib.”

The man drifted away, closing the door silently. The room was suddenly quiet, the thick walls shut away the sounds of the street and there was only the faint squeak of the punkah, moving to and fro.

The gardens at Government House were a display of imperial splendor. The heat had not been allowed to scorch the flowers, English larkspur mingled with the luscious Indian blooms and roses, and orchids grew in the shadow of huge lath houses. Lawns spread in acres of green and in the center the dignified mansion rose like an immense English country house. The hired carriage rolled along the driveway and stopped at the entrance steps, his bearer leaped nimbly down from beside the driver and Ted got out.

“You may come back in two hours, or wait,” he directed.

“I wait, Sahib,” the bearer said with dignity. He was handsome in fresh white garments, and he was aware that he did honor to his master, even here.

“Very well,” Ted said.

He mounted the steps and at the open door behind the mosquito screens a servant, a Sikh, tall and bearded, splendid in a blue and gold livery, waited for him.

“Miss Linlay,” Ted said.

“Expecting you, Sahib,” the Sikh said suavely and ushered him into the reception room to the left of the huge square entrance hall.

There he waited, but only a moment for almost at once she came, looking cool and beautiful in her white linen tennis frock, as he saw immediately, her fair hair drawn back into a large knot on her neck, and her face pale, though touched with a faint sudden blush. At her throat she had fastened a yellow rose.

“Agnes!” He took both her hands and looked down into her smiling face, and how blue her eyes were, he thought, more blue even than he remembered and her lips even more sweet. He was overcome with a sudden impulse to bend and kiss those lips, an impulse so strong that he could resist it only by the utmost will. But he knew that she could be deeply and delicately offended, and he would not risk it.

She stood looking at him, smiling, warding him off nevertheless and he imagined that she was changed, less free, at least, than she had been on the ship. But he was prepared for that.

“You had my note quite safely, I see, arriving so exactly,” she said, “and it is still too hot for tennis, I fear. Perhaps it is as cool here as anywhere.”

She sat down on a rather high chair of teak, cool and polished, and he drew a small gold chair near to her, and sitting down he gazed at her frankly and with delight, determined not to allow her to withdraw from him.

“I have come a long way to see you, and I have waited a long time. I wanted to come last autumn, when I went to the United Provinces to see an old friend. But you wouldn’t let me, and again—”

She fended him off. “And who is the old friend?”

“An Indian friend of my father’s, I call him Uncle. He is Darya Sapru.”

“Ah, that name I know,” she observed. “My father says he could have had a knighthood last year if he had not joined himself with Gandhi.”

“Really? But I don’t think he would have accepted a knighthood.”

He saw the slightest hardening of the lovely clear blue eyes, and he hastened away from the subject. “Anyway, my father and Darya have been lifelong friends, although now they are rather apart, because my father does not feel Gandhi is right.”

He stopped abruptly, smitten with guilt.

She said, “I am glad to know your father feels that.”

“Yes, and I mustn’t take shelter behind my father,” he said resolutely. “I don’t know if Gandhi is right or wrong. There is so much I don’t know now. The old India was nicely clear, or so I seem to remember it, maybe because I was only a child, and now everything seems complex. I had to listen to Darya, of course. Seeing him in jail was very confusing.”

“Why?” she asked. “He made a demonstration during the Durbar in Bombay.”

“It is you I want to talk about,” Ted said. “Not the Prince, and not Darya, and certainly not Gandhi or politics, not even India. Only you—”

He took her narrow white hand as it lay on her knee, and he held it only long enough to discern response. There was none and he put it down again.

She got up almost at once. “Let’s go out to the courts. After all, they are shaded, and the darkness falls so quickly after the sun sets. My father will soon be home.”

She gave him a quick glance, her eyes upon his shoes.

“I am quite ready,” he said, smilingly submitting himself to her survey. “White linen suit, white shoes.”

“Very handsome,” she retorted, thawing nicely into an answering smile.

They sauntered across the green lawns and approached the courts. There were already people playing, ladies sat under the green striped umbrellas and liveried Indian servants were offering tea, sandwiches and cold drinks. Agnes introduced him casually as they came near.

“Lady Fenley, this is Ted MacArd, from Poona. Sir Angus, Ted MacArd, and Lady Mary Fenley, Ted MacArd. Frederick Payne, Mr. MacArd, and Bart Lankester, and Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Wayne—”

He shook hands, smiled, repeated names, and she disposed of them all by offering to play him at singles immediately upon a still vacant court. He tested some racquets, chose one rather heavy, they tossed for the serve and she won.

He suspected that she played well, but he did not imagine her superlative, as indeed she was. She seemed scarcely to move about the court, and yet his balls were returned with swift accuracy and in the least convenient spots. She used no tricks, no cuts or pretenses, a straight game, but devastating and hard. He was put to it to match her, and he lost the first three games with scarcely a point. Then he rallied himself, forgot who she was and that he was very nearly if not altogether in love with her, and concentrating upon her as an adversary, he won two sets out of three by a bare margin. Defeated, she came to the net and they shook hands formally. Her fair skin was rose red and the straight short strands of hair about her forehead were wet.

“You play too well,” he said.

“Impossible,” she said, “since you beat me.”

“I had to work hard,” he retorted.

“Why not?” she asked.

They sauntered side by side to the umbrellas again, and she took hot tea. “Don’t drink that cold stuff,” she suggested, disapproving when he chose lemonade. “It’s dangerous when you’re hot.”

“Not for an American,” he replied, determined for a reason he could not understand not to yield to her. “We’re used to cold and hot together.”

“There’s my father,” she said, nodding toward the green.

He saw the tall Englishman walking slowly across the lawns toward them.

“He looks tired,” she said. “Things are so difficult again, since the Durbar.”

Everyone rose as the Governor approached and she introduced Ted formally. “Father, this is Mr. MacArd. I told you we were shipmates. He is from America, you remember.”

“Ah, yes.”

The Governor shook hands with him limply. “I think I’ve met your father. Of course I know of your grandfather.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Ted said clearly.

He sat down again when the Governor was seated, he chatted with Lady Fenley, he glanced at Agnes once or twice, rather restlessly, until he perceived that this was to be his visit. There was not to be a stroll alone under the great banyan tree at the far end of the lawns, nor did she seize the opportunity he made by suggesting that they look at the rose gardens. In sudden anger he got up after a half hour or so.

“I must he leaving now,” he said, refraining from her name.

“Must you?” she murmured.

“I shan’t leave Calcutta until the day after tomorrow,” he went on. Actually he had no plans whatever, but he said not tomorrow, because it gave him a day longer. Yet he warned her that it might be only a day. A day would be enough to see whether she wanted to see him again. She did not speak. She gave him her hand, he pressed it and released it, he bowed to the assembly under the green striped umbrellas and went away. The sun was setting ferociously over the great temple of Kali as he got into his carriage and they went down the road toward the city and then along the Chowringhi, that most famous street of the East, and so to his hotel. He was still angry and his lips were tense and white.

Sleep was impossible. It was the inner heat that kept him awake, not the thick black heat of the outer night. He tossed and turned and sat up and threw the pillows on the floor. Then he got up and lit the table lamp and drew out sheets of the hotel paper, slightly mildewed at the edges already, though it was fresh yesterday, he supposed, and he began to write down all the angry thoughts he had been speaking to her in the darkness while he could not sleep.

“Why did you let me come to see you?” he demanded. “Why not simply tell me that we were friends on the ship and no more? Why accept my letters? Why let me all but tell you that I love you and want to marry you? Very well, I tell you now. I do love you, and I want you for my wife. There are distances between us, all India, perhaps, but I love you. If you can love me, there will be nothing to separate us, not India and not the seas between your country and mine. You will tell me I am impatient, you were always saying on the ship that I was impatient. Yes, I am — I am like my grandfather and he is the most impatient man I have ever seen, and my father is the most stubborn man I have ever seen, and I am both of those. So I shall come to you tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock for your answer. Nothing shall prevent me from coming.”

The first signs of the thunderous dawn were streaking the sky with crimson when he had emptied himself of words and of anger, and he sealed the letter. Then he went to the door where his bearer slept on the threshold outside. He touched him with his foot and the man leaped awake.

“Take this to Government House,” Ted ordered. “Stay there with it until a reply is put into your hand, then bring it to me at once. I shall be here in this room.”

The bearer got up in silence. He wrapped himself twice in the length of cotton which was his garment. He straightened his turban and taking the letter he went away.

Upon the silver tray, with the tea and toast and the ripe yellow mangoes, Agnes saw the letter and recognized it, but she did not take it at once. She sat up in bed and the ayah piled the pillows behind her and handed her the brush and comb. She brushed out the long fair braid and twisted it around her head. Then she dipped her hands into the bowl of cool water the ayah brought to the bedside, she took up the linen towel that lay in the water and squeezing it half dry she wiped her face and neck.

“Now,” she said, “I will have my chota hari.”

“The man waits for an answer, my rose, my darling,” the old ayah said in a tender, singing voice.

“I will read the letter when I have had my tea,” she said. “Then I will ring the bell for you to return.”

“I will return instantly,” the ayah said.

She went out silently and Agnes put down the cup and took up the letter. She expected it. It was not likely that Ted would simply go away nor really did she wish him to do that. Her father and mother had asked many questions about the American, they were reluctant, as she had seen, that she should let him come, and yet they loved her sincerely and knew that she must be allowed to do what she wished to do.

“The Americans are so odd,” her mother had murmured. “One never knows where they are. I mean, some of them actually encourage Gandhi, you know, darling, and that is so embarrassing for your father. I mean, if the white people don’t stick together, you know, and all that—”

Her mother seldom finished a sentence, it trailed in the air, not quite a question, something more than a suggestion. It was true that the times were dangerous. Agnes did not like to believe that the danger had anything to do with her life, and yet of course it did. India always had everything to do with her life because she was her father’s daughter. If she had not been, it would not have mattered so much whom she married. She could have allowed herself to fall into love with Ted as pleasantly as though he were an Englishman. It was, of course, of immense help that he was a MacArd, old David MacArd’s grandson, and even David MacArd’s son. For David MacArd was famous, too, in his own way, though her father said it was a pity he had let himself choose to be a missionary, a great disappointment it must have been to his powerful father, who naturally would have hoped that his only son could have looked after his vast financial interests, so vital and far reaching into almost every country. The Viceroy had said, however, that the graduates of MacArd University in Poona were among the most loyal of the younger Indians, and for that David MacArd must certainly be thanked.

She read Ted’s letter thoughtfully, and when she had finished it she read it again, very slowly. Then she lay back on her pillows, allowing her tea and toast to grow cool, as cool as anything could be, but it was odd how one craved something very hot, too, by way of contrast instead of the eternal tepid. Perhaps that was why she found this American so fascinating, he was positive. Most young Englishmen grew tepid, after a few years in India, it was the only way to endure the climate, perhaps, but one could almost guess what they would say when they opened their mouths to talk, especially to her. In a way she wished she could have stayed in England, and yet she did not like it there. It was a small place, and everything was set in a pattern that could not be broken. After living in India and being the Governor’s daughter, the pattern was petty. The trouble was that there was a pattern here, too, superimposed upon the undercurrents and the restlessness of India itself. One could never be sure of the foundations. Nothing was more powerful and more eternal than the British Empire, and it was simply a matter of time until the followers of Gandhi were put down, and men like her father would do it kindly and with justice, but one could not forget nevertheless that there were so few white men and so many of the others. Even here in Government House itself, there were only the handful of English surrounded by Indians, loyal of course, loving their masters in a way, and yet only someone who had grown up in India could understand the rumblings and the tremblings of the foundation. Her parents underneath were rooted in England, but she was rooted here. The things she had seen that they had never seen, the things she heard and understood because she knew a language that they did not! Ah, children heard and saw. That was why she felt so safe with Ted. He had been a child here, too, a white child in a dark country.

She got up and went to her little rosewood English desk and wrote, “Dear Ted, I shall expect you at four. Agnes.”

The great oval drawing room was shadowy at the far end but he saw her rise from the gold satin-covered couch and come toward him, a figure in filmy white.

“This is always the coolest room,” she explained. “And we seldom use it except for big parties. We’ll not be disturbed.”

“I am glad of that,” he said gravely, “For what I have to say is not to be interrupted.”

“Oh, Ted,” she cried too softly, “must you say it yet? We’re still so young—”

“I know,” he said, but we aren’t as young as our years, Agnes. We talked about that on the ship, do you remember? We said that India makes people grow up fast.”

She turned rather abruptly and sat down on the gold couch again and he sat beside her. The pillows, stuffed with down, were unexpectedly soft, and the thick satin felt almost cool to his touch.

“More than that,” he went on, not putting out his hand to hers. “We shall be forced, I think, in still another way. Agnes, your father stands for one kind of life. It is the same side my father is on. But I may choose the opposite side. I want to know that you’ll go with me.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked. Her eyes were steadily upon his and her voice was calm.

“You know what I mean,” he retorted.

“I want to hear you say what you mean,” she insisted.

“Then I dread to say it, and yet I must say it. I must tell you, first of all and above all, that in spite of the Prince’s visit, there is a terrible struggle coming. Darya is on one side with Gandhi, and your father and mine are on the other side. I don’t know where I am, Agnes. I shall need time to know where I am. What I must know is — will you go with me wherever I go?”

“How odd to put it like that,” she exclaimed.

“Odd?”

“One would think you were planning something dreadful.”

“Perhaps it would be dreadful for you.”

“I can’t imagine anything very dreadful happening to you,” she said, beginning to smile.

She meant, what is there dreadful that could happen to a tall and handsome young man, the son of the MacArds?

“Aren’t you being dramatic?” she asked.

“What if I am?” he demanded.

“I might want to laugh,” she suggested.

He gave a large impetuous sigh. “We are fencing. I am making the thrusts and you are fending me off. Let’s speak plainly. Agnes, do you love me?”

She bent her fair and graceful head. “I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you do love me,” he urged. “At least if you don’t know?”

“There is so much more than just love,” she said.

“Just love!” he repeated with reproach.

“One doesn’t just decide by feeling.”

“I do!”

“A woman then.”

“An Englishwoman perhaps,” he said with quick bitterness.

She accepted this. “An Englishwoman, especially here in India. To be English here carries more than the usual weight, especially now.”

“Why especially now, if it is you and me?”

“I can imagine that if you should be friends with Gandhi, for example,” she said thoughtfully, “it would make an immense difference if I were your wife. It would separate me entirely from the world where I belong, from my parents, certainly. I must consider that.”

“And may it not separate you from me, if you do consider it?” he demanded.

“Ah, yes, perhaps,” she agreed, “but then I am not quite in love with you. There is still time to stop myself.”

His heart leaped at the possibilities of her not being quite in love with him, which must mean nevertheless that she was on the way to being in love with him, not with the heat and urge and demand of his own nature, for she was as cool as a flower and that was one of her lovely qualities. He had absorbed some of the heat of India, but she had grown up more cool, more still, by contrast.

“Then you are a little in love with me!” he exclaimed.

“I know that I could love you,” she said honestly. “I do want to love you, Ted, if I can be sure—”

“Sure of me?”

“Sure that being your wife would not destroy what I am.”

They looked at each other, a long half yearning look, she reluctantly and he arresting his heart. “Is it because I am a missionary?”

She hesitated, searching for her own feelings, restraining the impulse to throw herself into his arms and give herself up to loving him, which she could so easily do.

“If it were only that,” she said, “I would not hesitate, because you are still yourself, Ted, though you choose to be a missionary. There are all sorts of missionaries, and some are repulsive, I grant you — ignorant and pushing and all that. But your father is a great gentleman and you are his son. No, no, it’s not that.”

“Then what, my darling?” He was tender with her, being grateful to her because it was plain that she wanted honesty.

She said unexpectedly, “I suppose the easiest way to put it is this — if you were English, I shouldn’t hesitate. But you’re American.”

Now he was taken aback. “What has that to do with it? You do amaze me, Agnes. I shouldn’t have thought you guilty of prejudice!”

“It’s not prejudice, Ted. It’s simply that being American you can’t easily understand the English point of view. You don’t see our responsibility here. You might be angry with me, even if I were your wife, if you saw me standing by my father, for example, when you might think him very wrong. If there is ever a crisis, Ted, I should have to stand by my own people. I think they are right.”

“I see.”

He did see. She could never marry him simply for himself, by herself. She was like all other English of her class, she assumed their burden, she recognized their cause. He had to confess a certain nobility here, however mistaken he felt it might be.

“I wish I could take you in my arms, darling. Will you let me do that?”

She shook her head. “Please not, Ted. It’s too soon. Please! I shouldn’t like to make a decision against you, and I think I would if I were … swept off my feet.”

“Very well, then.” He rose, but he allowed himself to take her narrow hand, and she did not withdraw it. “Shall we go on as we are for the present, darling? Or do you want to stop that, too?”

“No, I don’t want to stop, Ted. It’s just that I don’t want to go further — not until everything is more clear.”

“Everything being—?” he inquired.

“You and me — and India,” she replied.

XIII

SO HE TRAVELED HOME again to Poona, but not by the way he had come. He did not take a swift transcontinental train, he did not leap from city to city. Instead he remembered what Darya had said in jail. “Go to the villages,” Darya had said.

He took a train westward for a few hundred miles and then getting off he wound his way uncomfortably through a network of villages accompanied only by his indignant bearer, to whom such conduct in a sahib was dangerous and absurd. Midway through the United Provinces the bearer left him, and Ted continued his way alone and for the first time in his life no one stood between him and India, not even an Indian.

He knew now why Darya had not tried to persuade him, and why he had simply said, “Go to the villages.” For the villages spoke to him, in their mute misery, the scores he saw with his own eyes and the tens of thousands he did not see. They clung to the hillsides of north India, they rose out of the central plateaus, and on the low-lying southern plains, they were mounds scooped by human hands from the dust and the mud of the Indian earth, hollowed into hovels for the barest shelter from torrential rains and bitter burning sun, and from the chill of frost and cold winds upon the hills. Generations had lived in them, without memory of more or hope for better. He looked into the faces of a starved people, the faces of the too many born, because too many must die, for Nature herself urged birth because she foresaw death too soon. Starvation was the culprit, not swift or instant, nor alone the starvation of flood or overwhelming famine, but the slow starvation of those who never have had enough to eat and never will. It was an India as far from the mission house as it was from the palace and his father was as guilty as the governor.

He returned weeks overdue to Poona, and his heart was a burning fire in his breast, and he had made up his mind, independent even of love.

His father welcomed him in his spare half-silent fashion, without reproach. “I have distributed your classes among the assistants. Now you will want to gather them back again.”

“Yes, Father,” Ted replied.

He knew it would not be for long, but of this he would not speak now. After a few minutes he excused himself to his father and went to his own room. He had not written to Agnes during the weeks of travel, nor did he expect letters from her and there were none among the letters on his desk. The long solitary journey, crowded with men, women and children among whom he moved, had cut him off from every one he knew and even Agnes was far from him. Alone he had gone and now alone he set himself to discover what he was, where he had arrived, and whither must he go. Like Saul of Tarsus, he had been converted by the roadside.

In the stillness of the mission house he came and went and did his daily work, while the months passed into summer. He read his scriptures constantly, over and over again the cries of St. John, and then the spare sweet words of Jesus. He read, too, the psalms of the Marathi saints and again and again this one:

How can I know the right,

I, helpless one!

Of pride of knowledge, lo, O God,

I now have none.

In June the heat reached its height and the city waited from hour to hour for news of the breaking of the monsoons, first upon the eastern shore of the country where the plateaus sloped most easily to the sea. It was during this most tense and breathless month when even the punkahs scarcely stirred the burning air, that he quarreled at last with his father. Out of the controlled calm of their days, their quarrel rose as suddenly as a typhoon rises out of a quiet tropic sea.

The cause was a young Sikh, Jehar Singh, whose father, a man of great wealth and ambition, had sent him to MacArd University, where he might receive the most advanced western education in India. Sirdar Singh did not wish his son to be trained in the English tradition and therefore he had not sent him to England. He foresaw, while taking no part in the nonviolent revolution of Gandhi, that Empire in the old English sense was finished, and whether Gandhi was successful or not, Empire would be compelled to its end because of the enormous pressure of Russian communism. He feared and abhorred all that he heard in these days from Russia, and casting his mind shrewdly about the world, he fixed upon the United States as the one power and nation likely to be able to face the New Russia when the day of crisis came, as he feared it would. Therefore, he decided, he would have Jehar, his only and beloved son, taught by Americans, who could be trusted to cling to the principles of individual property of which he owned so vast a share. He was uneasy, it is true, because MacArd University was a missionary institution, but he had been reassured by Dr. MacArd, the president, so obviously a gentleman and a man of culture and wealth, though a Christian. Moreover, he was the son of one of America’s great capitalists, and by his father’s bounty he had built up a magnificent compound, replete with luxury and American ways. Were Jehar trained here, it was not likely that he would graduate with any ancient notion of renunciation or poverty, such as the emaciated Gandhi was putting forth as a net to catch the idealistic young. Sirdar Singh was vastly pleased with what he saw at MacArd, and especially with Dr. MacArd, with whom he talked, stressing with him that his son was the heir to one of India’s great fortunes, as well as the only scion of a very famous, powerful and old family. The president had accepted the responsibility and had welcomed the tall dreamy poetic-looking youth who appeared at the beginning of the next semester.

Young Jehar had been at MacArd for the required four years and now was among those to graduate with first honors. What then was Sirdar Singh’s horror when he arrived in magnificence this June to be present when his son received his honors, to discover that the young man wished to be a Christian! He heard this in the evening after the important day, Jehar having been reticent until the graduation was over. Then when his father talked with him ardently concerning marriage, business, foreign travel, and all those important matters always upon a father’s mind when he thinks of his son, Jehar lifted his handsome head and said,

“My father, to me none of these things is important. I intend to become a sadhu.”

Even then Sirdar Singh did not grasp the full horror of what his son said. A sadhu was a Hindu saint. To be a Hindu saint meant renunciation and poverty, dreadful enough for a rich man’s ears to hear. But the next words his son spoke were even more awful. Jehar said,

“I do not mean a Hindu sadhu, my father. I mean a Christian sadhu.”

“What is a Christian sadhu?” Sirdar Singh demanded. He was a tall strong man, as Sikhs are, but in late years he had given up restraints and had grown exceedingly fat, so that his figure was now immense.

“I shall travel on foot over India,” Jehar said, “teaching and preaching as Jesus did, but I shall remain an Indian. As an Indian I will portray an Indian Christ, such as He might have been had He been born among us.”

“Where did you get this mad idea?” Sirdar Singh asked in great terror. “I am sure you did not get it from Dr. MacArd.”

“I got it from no one,” Jehar replied. “It came to me when I was reading the Christian scriptures.”

Though it was now past midnight and the whole compound was quiet, Sirdar Singh could fix upon only one idea.

“Let us go to Dr. MacArd,” he gasped. “I must have help from him.”

So it was that the quiet of the mission house was broken and all the household set stirring by tremendous beating on the gate by the Sirdar’s bearers at midnight, reinforced by the Sirdar’s own bellowing. The gateman opened the gate and at once ran to call his master.

“Sahib, Sahib,” he shouted at David’s door. “The Sirdar is here in distress. There is something wrong with his son.”

These were the cries that Ted heard also from his own room, his door open because of the heat. He got up from his bed and put on his silk dressing robe and went down the hall to his father’s room. There the light was already shining and he knocked and went in and found his father dressing himself, in haste but still with suitable formality.

Meanwhile the Sikhs, father and son, were waiting downstairs.

“Shall I come, Father?” Ted asked.

David threw a glance toward him. “Yes, but get into your clothes.”

“Yes, Father.”

A few minutes later when Ted went downstairs, he found the drawing room door shut and all the servants and bearers waiting outside on the verandas. He opened the door and went in. The Sirdar was sitting on the long couch and on a chair near him was Jehar, listening to what his father said, but with no air of repentance, although with full respect.

Ted knew the young man, having taught him English literature, and he remembered him especially because Jehar had revealed a poetic talent and a quick perception of the quality of beauty.

The Sirdar stopped abruptly in what was obviously a verbal torrent as the door opened.

“My son,” David said. “He has been Jehar’s teacher and I have asked him to be present.”

The Sirdar gave an upheaving sigh. “Is he a Christian?” he demanded.

“Naturally, he is,” David replied.

The Sirdar turned to Jehar. “You see this, here is a young man who is even a Christian but he does not talk of being a sadhu! No, he is a comfort to his father. He teaches in his father’s university. He obeys his father, and his father trusts him.”

Jehar turned his head to look at Ted, and gave him a shy smile. “Are you a Christian?” he asked.

So absolute was the honesty in this question that Ted felt humble.

“I wish to be,” he said, “and I hope that I am.”

Sirdar Singh listened to this, sighed loudly, and turned to the other father. He began once more to plead. “I did put my son into your hands. Dr. MacArd. I wished that he be taught how the Americans do everything. The Americans are strong and rich and very powerful and they will become more powerful. They will be the only ones who can fight against Russia when that day comes as already we can see it must come. We have had one world war and there will be still another. Everybody is saying it. After the next world war the English will be weak but the Americans will be strong. I wish to stand with the Americans at that time. So I sent my son to you. Surely I did not expect him to become a Christian. This was not my wish.”

The Sirdar’s English was excellent but he was beginning to lose the idiom.

“I suppose, Sirdar,” David said calmly, “that if you send your son to a mission university you must take the risk of his becoming Christian. But you cannot expect me to agree that being a Christian is so dreadful a fate as you seem to imagine. A good number of our students are Christian before they graduate, and although we do not make the attempt deliberately, we hope that the atmosphere of MacArd is such that they will wish to become Christian. There is no compulsion, however. We believe in freedom.”

“I also believe in freedom,” the Sirdar said eagerly. “I have always given my son much freedom, except he is compelled to remember he is my son and he cannot act in such ways as my son should not act. Therefore he cannot renounce all his inherited wealth which he will have from me, and become a sadhu.”

David could not repress his surprise. “A sadhu?”

“Well, he wishes to become a Christian sadhu,” the Sirdar cried more agitated.

“But this is impossible,” David replied. “A sadhu is a Hindu, not a Christian.

“A sadhu is a saint,” Jehar said. “I shall be a Christian sadhu.”

“I have never heard of such a person,” David said.

“Now you will hear of me,” Jehar said gently.

“You see!” the Sirdar exclaimed.

He spread out his large fat hands. “What will you do, Dr. MacArd? This boy is very stubborn. I know that. He has always been stubborn from birth. And his mother is dead. She cannot help me.”

Ah, Ted thought, now what will my father do? He was suddenly deeply excited by what was happening. The young Indian was extraordinary, his face, always so delicately handsome, took on in the lamplight an unearthly beauty. He sat with motionless grace, his hands lightly clasped in his lap, his white garments flowing about him.

“Will you do as the sadhus do?” Ted asked. “Jehar, will you wander about from village to village?”

“As Jesus did,” Jehar answered, and his dark eyes were quiet with peace.

“You see, you see!” the Sirdar wailed.

“Sirdar Singh,” David spoke with decision. “Leave this to me, please. It is clear that Jehar does not understand what he is saying. He has confused two religions, Hinduism and Christianity. They are not to be confused. I suppose you have no objection if he wishes merely to be a Christian?”

“Certainly not,” the Sirdar said in his ardent eager fashion. “Let him be a Christian if he likes, but as you are, sir, Dr. MacArd. Let him be a reasonable man, though Christian, it is all I ask. Let him remain my son, which he cannot be if he is a sadhu.”

“Then leave him to me,” David said. “It is very late, you are tired, and Jehar has been excited by the day. Tomorrow I will talk with him myself, and I will explain to him what it means to be a Christian. Certainly he cannot be a sadhu. The Christian church would not recognize him.”

“Thank you, sir, thank you, Dr. MacArd,” the Sirdar cried warmly. He clasped his hands on his bosom. “If you knew! But my only hope is in you. I know now this son never listens to his old father. I have done everything for him, how much money it has cost me to send him here for four years, and he ends by talking of sadhus! You see how my money would be wasted. Really, there is some responsibility for you, my dear sir.”

“I accept it,” David said firmly. “Now go back to the guest rooms, Sirdar. Jehar, do not trouble your father any more tonight. Come to me in my study tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

Jehar rose. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I will come because of my father.”

He put out his right arm to his father, who clung to it and hoisted himself thus from the sofa and they went away after their farewells for the night, the father still leaning upon the son.

In the drawing room David turned to put out the lamp when Ted spoke.

“Wait a minute, Father.”

His father stayed his hand and glanced at him. “What is it?”

“I must say something.”

“Well?”

“I hope you will not try to change Jehar.”

“What do you mean?” his father demanded.

Ted spoke firmly. “Jehar has an immense idea — one that might revive the whole spirit of Christ in India!”

“I don’t see what you are driving at—”

“Father, an Indian Christ!”

“That’s blasphemous — or would be if it were not absurd.”

He gazed at his father with clear eyes, his heart beginning to flame. “I wish I could have thought of it, only I am not Indian. I wish I were! To see the spirit of Christ incarnate again in an Indian—”

“Ted, I will not listen.”

“But, Father—”

“It is very late and I am exceedingly tired.”

“Very well, Father, but I warn you that tomorrow I shall see Jehar, too.”

“I must beg you not to do so. I have an obligation to Sirdar Singh. It is very distressing for a father to know that an only son—”

“Are you going to try to keep Jehar from being a Christian?”

“Of course not. Could I do that when I myself have devoted my life to Christian education? I shall try simply to make him understand what it means to be a Christian in the place where God has put him, in the household of Sirdar Singh, and what great influence he can wield there, as a Christian. It would be folly to give it all up.”

“But Father—”

“Not one word more, if you please.”

His father put out the light and walked upstairs, and Ted stayed alone in the darkness. For a long moment he stood, thinking of Jehar’s face, and then suddenly, involuntarily, he lifted his eyes to pierce the enveloping night. He prayed, though without words, his whole soul reaching outward and upward for guidance and for light. From where does guidance come for the human soul, and where is the source of light? Where, oh, where had the light come from that fell upon the soul of Jehar?

The darkness did not change, he went upstairs to his room and read scriptures, he prayed as he had never prayed before because his prayer was simple, asking for nothing except for light. Still no light broke and at last he went to bed again. … He rose before dawn, as soon as the sultry darkness of the sky brightened delicately in the east with the golden edge of a cloud. He washed in cool water and went out to the small chapel, where sometimes the Christian students prayed. There as he thought he might, he found Jehar. The young Indian stood silent before the altar, his head uplifted, his eyes open.

Ted spoke, “Jehar!”

Jehar turned and saw him and smiled. “Teacher,” he replied.

“I thought I might find you here,” Ted said. “It is good. Let us talk together of what has happened. How is it that you did not tell me?”

“I do not know you well,” Jehar said without diffidence. “I did not think you needed to know about me.”

Ted was hurt. “How have I behaved that any pupil of mine should think I needed not to know him? Come and sit here on this bench.”

Jehar came down the aisle, very graceful in his fresh white cotton garments, and he sat down and waited, the smile still on his lips. His large dark eyes were clear, he showed no sign of sleeplessness or weariness or fear. Peace was in him.

“You are not going home with your father today?” Ted asked.

“I am going home,” Jehar said, “I shall go home with him and I shall live there for a while until he understands my heart.”

“And if he does not understand?”

Jehar’s face was calm and his bearing full of dignity. “Then I must leave my home.”

“You are very young, Jehar.”

“I am not too young to know what I must do. If I had not seen what I must do, I should also be preparing for my life’s work, either to take the management of my father’s estates, or to be a barrister, or some such thing. Now I know what my work is.”

“You cannot really beg for your food as sadhus do. Surely it is not suitable, Jehar. After all, people know who you are.”

“I need not to beg. God will give me what is necessary.”

“To me it sounds dangerous and strange.”

“That is because you come from the West, sir.” Jehar’s voice was courteous but positive. “To us of India there is nothing strange in wishing to become a sadhu. There are many sadhus, as you know. People do not wonder. It is so, and that is all. But I shall be a Christian sadhu and that is all.”

“What church will you join?”

“None, for if I join one then the others will not allow me to belong to them. I have inquired of this of my teacher, Mr. Fordham, who explains Christianity to us every week twice, as you know. From him I understand that church is good for many people but also I see it is not good for me, because I wish to belong everywhere, to everyone, only first to Christ and only to Christ.”

“Does he know you wish to become a sadhu?” Ted asked.

“I have not told him,” Jehar replied.

“And what makes you think that you know best how to follow Christ?”

“I do not know, except for myself,” Jehar said. He laughed unexpectedly, a pleasant boyish laughter. “I am not so stupid as that, surely, so that I think I can decide for others. It is only for myself that I know.”

“So you will take a bowl, a blanket—”

“I will take my bowl, my blanket, and I shall wear my saffron robe, so that men know I am a sadhu, but I shall preach only Christ.”

“Jehar, you make me afraid. It is so absolute.”

“Why are you afraid? I simply do what many have done, except I am of Christ. Siva and Ram I do not condemn, Kali I will not worship, nor Ganesh, for I cannot see them good or beautiful. But Christ I see is beautiful because he committed no crime and he harmed no one, and he spoke of God.”

“This one thing I will say,” Ted replied, after a moment, “you are renouncing the life of a man before you know what it is. I have seen Indians renounce life, Jehar. I saw Darya himself in prison.”

All India knew the name of Darya, and Jehar lifted his head in interest. “Did you see him indeed?”

“Yes, and he, too, has renounced everything except it is for his country, or so he believes. But he is not a young man as you are. He has known marriage and fatherhood, and only after these were taken from him did he accept renunciation.”

“I have no need to wait,” Jehar said confidently. “I have had a vision. Perhaps Darya had no vision until God had taken from him his wife and his children.”

“What vision had you?” Ted asked. It was impossible to be less than gentle with Jehar.

“I saw Christ plain,” Jehar replied. “It was not a vision of the spirit, you understand. There are such visions also, but I saw him with these very eyes.”

He touched his eyes with his two forefingers.

“I have read the books,” he went on. “I knew the Bhagavad Gita by heart before my mother died. She taught me that to be a saint is the best that man can know, but I did not think I could be a saint, and so I was unhappy. When I first came to this university how unhappy I was, and I did not like to hear of the new religion. It seemed not so good to me as our own more ancient faith. Once I even tore to pieces the Bible Mr. Fordham said we must use in the class room. I was so unhappy to read it. I did not wish to be compelled by him. And then suddenly I saw Christ, there in my lonely room.”

Ted sighed. “I hope you have not changed your whole life because of this — vision, as you say it is.”

“I have changed my life,” Jehar replied.

What more could be said? Jehar was simple and pure and quiet and he could not be changed. The sun tipped the edge of the horizon red gold, and coolness faded quickly from the air. The day had begun. The two young men rose and walked together across the lawn and parted with a handclasp and no spoken word.

Thus harmlessly begun, the day developed into a strange storm, not between Sirdar Singh and Jehar but between Ted and his father, who had never quarreled before. He had half expected to be called into the conference between his father and Jehar. At seven o’clock the first light meal of the day was served, the chota hari which was eaten wherever they happened to be. His father was already in his study. Ted accepted the tray on one of the small veranda tables and ate there, seated in a wicker armchair. Jehar passed him and lifted his hands in greeting, palm to palm, and went on into the hall and the study. The door to his father’s study closed and Ted waited, finishing his tea and toast and ripe mango and then he sat, still expecting to hear his father’s voice.

The call did not come. After more than an hour the door opened again, and Jehar came out, looking pale and almost weary. Again he passed with the silent greeting and without speech he descended the steps and went away. Then Ted got up and went to the study. His father sat at the desk reading some papers, his face stern.

“Father?”

His father looked up. “Yes, Ted?”

“How did it go?”

“You mean the conference? I am convinced that Jehar is out of his mind. He talked of visions.”

Courage, Ted thought, courage to speak, to take Jehar’s side, to declare that visions are possible.

“There is plenty of evidence for visions in the Scriptures, Father.”

His father stared at him. “Surely you are not going to justify Jehar?”

“Only to say that there is scriptural justification for visions.”

“Ignorant men wrote the Scriptures, as you very well know,” his father retorted. “They put into concrete form the feelings of their hearts. I do not expect that sort of thing from the graduates of my university.”

“I wonder if Jehar has not decided upon a rather brilliant act, nevertheless?”

“What do you mean?” his father demanded.

“I mean, we have tried our way of preaching Christianity for some hundreds of years, churches and hospitals and universities, all this you have here, but it doesn’t make Christians.”

“It does make Christians,” his father said harshly. “There is a statistical gain every year in Indian church membership.”

“No real gain,” Ted said doggedly, “The villages are as they have been for all these hundreds of years. I saw no sign of Christianity there, Father. The same old poverty, the same old misery, the same greed of the zamindars and the landowners, the same ruthlessness of the rich over the poor, the evil over the good—”

“These things have always been and always will be,” his father said.

“Then of what good is Christianity?” Ted cried passionately.

He met his father’s astonished eyes, he saw his father’s concern, and he leaped to deny his father’s faith.

“Jehar is right,” he cried. “I wish I had the guts to be like him! I wish I could give up all and follow Christ!”

There was a look of real terror in his father’s eyes and this at last he could not face. He turned and strode away.

What had he said? He had said that he wished he could give up all and follow Christ. But what did that mean? He stopped in the big empty drawing room. As clearly as Jehar had said he saw the face of Christ, he saw the face before his eyes. It was the face of a peasant, a nameless face, a face he had seen in one of the scores of villages through which he had passed, had seen and had forgotten, but it had hidden itself in the folds of his brain, a face twisted with pain and labor and starvation, a hopeless face except for the deathless burning eager eyes, and the eyes demanded of him, “Is there no hope for me?”

He stared at this face, and while the eyes made their demand upon him, he heard the door to his father’s study suddenly close.

Alone in his study David fell to his knees. He had turned the key in the lock, ashamed, or perhaps only shy, lest he be discovered in prayer at this hour. But he was driven to prayer, for now he was afraid for his beloved and only son. All the year since Ted first came back to him he had waited for the time when he could speak freely to Ted, when he could tell his son his problems and the fearful weight of his task, and he had not spoken. He had been confused with memories. When he looked at Ted, he saw his own father, as he might have been when young, and yet Ted was like Olivia, he had Olivia’s ways, her quick feelings. And thus confused and accustomed to loneliness, he had not spoken to his son even of his fears and burdens.

And now Jehar!

If the Indian people were touched enough with unreality so that they could follow a fanatic, their ignorance was still appalling and he had begun to see that all he did would not be soon enough to save the country, because Gandhi had lighted such a flame.

And now Jehar!

With Empire his work, too, would collapse. The millions of ignorant peasants in the villages could not soon enough be taught or their poverty relieved to save the day for Empire. The task should have been begun three hundred years ago, if Empire was to hold. He knew now that his own student body was rotten with disloyalty. He tried not to know it, but the secret meetings, the private slogans, the Gandhi caps and the homespun cloth were conspicuous. If Gandhi won, then the Christianity upon which he had built his life was only shifting sand. And Ted had today defied him, as yesterday Jehar had defied his own father. Oh, the cruelty of sons to their fathers!

There on his knees while his thoughts prevented his prayers, he suddenly remembered his own youth. So had he defied his father, and his whole life had been a defiance and still was. That aged man lying bedridden now in the old mansion, he had deserted, too, in his own fashion. The tears rushed to his eyes.

“God, let me go back to my father and explain to him—”

It was not at all the prayer he had planned to make.

“Have I been wrong, O God? Should I have obeyed my earthly father instead of Thee? Am I punished now in my own son? Give me wisdom that I may know what to do.”

He knelt there for a long time, waiting, but no answer came, and he got up from his knees. It had been long since he had been aware of any answer to his prayers. Somehow without knowing it he had lost the sense of the presence of God, even while he spent his whole life in that service. Loneliness descended upon him again, the awful loneliness of the spirit. When Olivia died he had known loneliness and in a sense he had never learned to live without her. But the loneliness then was not absolute, as this was. He had not given himself to Olivia as he had to God. Involuntarily he groaned aloud the cry that once Christ had made, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

But why, but why?

Ted strode from the drawing room down the hall to his own room and closed the door silently and then stood motionless. His heart was beating with joy! Wave after wave of joy, astounding joy, whose source he did not know except that it came from outside himself, infused his being. It filled him like an atmosphere, cooling and invigorating. He laughed aloud, he felt the hair prickle on his head and his fingers tingled. He wanted to run and leap and dance. Yet why except that there alone in the drawing room when he had seen his vision, he had reached a decision so clear that it was absurd not to have known before that it was inevitable. He must leave Poona and go and live in a village. How simple a resolution, but he had been struggling toward it all these months since he had seen Darya, and only Jehar’s directness and childlike purity had led him to the end.

“Why should I follow my father’s footsteps? I must leave him so that I can live alone with India and myself. There was that little village in the north that I liked so well. That is where I shall live.”

He stood enraptured with the thought. Hindu saints, like ancient Christians, were acquainted with the state of ecstasy, and this, he supposed, was what they meant. When a decision was right, because it was the will of God, or perhaps only because it fulfilled the soul’s deepest unspoken desire, then such ecstasy was the confirmation, a powerful happiness, an accord which was complete.

He sat down quiescent, wondering and grateful, and after a time the joy subsided and peace remained. He made plans, he thought of the village, Vhai, and of all that he could do there — yes, and receive. He would go there humbly to learn as well as to teach.

XIV

“I CANNOT UNDERSTAND YOU,” David said.

“I don’t expect you to, Father,” Ted replied.

They sat at dinner together that night in the orderly house. His father looked exhausted. The heat had risen unbearably during the day and the monsoons were due at any hour now, and would probably begin before midnight. Meanwhile the air was fetid. Neither of them could eat and they made no pretense. The languid servant removed their plates and brought in coffee.

“Does this decision mean that you have given up the thought of marriage?” David asked.

“No, not if Agnes will come to the village with me,” Ted said.

“I hope you will not be so inconsiderate as to ask her,” his father replied severely.

Ted laughed. In spite of the heat he had continued singularly lighthearted all day. He had busied himself with packing a few of his things, a change of garments, some books, a cooking kit, an army cot and a mosquito net. When he got to Vhai, he would build one of the mud-walled houses with a thatched roof. There was no reason for delay now that the school year was over.

“Does it seem laughable to you?” his father asked drily. Humor between the generations was perhaps impossible. He remembered the jokes which his father used to tell and laugh at loudly which even in his youth had seemed to him childish and certainly not funny.

“Not at all,” Ted said gaily, “but I suppose Poona was rather remote when my mother came to marry you.”

“It was not the same,” his father retorted. But he did not explain how it was. Instead his mind busied itself suddenly with an inspiration. Why should not he write to Agnes Linlay and beseech her good sense for his foolish son? Let it be a secret between them, let him convey to her delicately how happy he would be if ever she became his daughter-in-law. He could praise his son honestly to several ways, and then hint that though he was extremely young and could benefit the more from a sensible wife, yet he felt he could promise that she need never regret her choice, if now Ted could be kept from an unwise decision to go and live in an Indian village, an act which must somehow be prevented by his family and his friends. There were proper ways for a white man to live in India and she above all young women perhaps must know this and could help to save Ted from folly.

“I shall just drift off in a day or two, Father,” Ted was saying cheerfully.

“I am surprised that you have let Jehar so influence you,” David said.

“It is not Jehar alone,” Ted said. It is even partly Darya. Most of all it is my own wish just to strip off everything that you and Grandfather have given me, though I am grateful to you both and must always be, and yet I want to be only myself at least for a while — not a MacArd, perhaps.”

David did not reply. He was haunted by this morning’s memories of his own youth and he could not speak without seeming to echo his own father twenty-five years ago. He must rely on Agnes Linlay.

Their meal was interrupted by a commotion on the veranda and the announcement that Fordham Sahib and Memsahib were waiting.

“Ask them to come in,” David told the manservant. They came in not two but three, and the third was a young girl, a girl with a face as fresh as a pansy, and indeed very like a pansy, the large soft brown eyes and thick soft brown eyebrows, full red mouth and pointed chin combining the effects of that simple flower. She was extremely pretty and childlike, and Mrs. Fordham introduced her with bursting pride.

“Our daughter Ruthie, Dr. MacArd, and this is young Mr. MacArd, Ruthie. Do forgive us, but we couldn’t wait.”

“She’s come, has she?” David said, essaying a smile. He had forgotten and so, he supposed, had Ted, that Ruthie was to arrive.

“Oh yes, and very lucky it is just before the monsoons, so difficult to travel in those pouring rains, but they’re very near.”

“I went up to Bombay to fetch her,” Mr. Fordham said, staring at Ruthie with eyes shining behind his small steel spectacles. “Ain’t she pretty?” he added with mischief.

“Papa!” Ruthie cried in a sweet, loud, young voice.

“Papa is just the same as he always was, dearie,” Mrs. Fordham said fondly.

“He’s awful,” Ruthie said to everybody. She opened her red lips and laughed, her teeth sparkling white. She was quite at ease, her rather plump young body relaxed and even indolent, and she wore a pink short-sleeved dress, for which Mrs. Fordham now felt it necessary to apologize.

“Ruthie, your sleeves are a mite short, aren’t they? For a missionary, dearie? We have to set an example.”

“Are they?” Ruthie said innocently.

They all gazed at Ruthie’s smooth and pretty arms, and Ted stared at her frankly. It was astonishing to remember her even as vaguely as he was able to do and then see her as she was now. That round-faced, round-eyed troublesome small girl who had tagged him mercilessly as soon as she could walk, and whom he had avoided as completely as he could, had become this fresh and natural flower, a little stupid perhaps, but of a gentle and sweet disposition, as anyone could see. His grandfather had said once, “Marry a good disposition, Ted. Your grandmother had a sweet nature and it is the most important gift for a woman to have. I’ve known men ruined by their wives’ dispositions.”

When the guests were seated Ted asked his father, “Shall I tell the Fordhams?”

“With one explanation,” David replied. “That is, I do not approve.”

“What is it now?” Mrs. Fordham was as usual lively with curiosity.

“I am going to live in a village,” Ted said.

“For good?” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed.

“I hope so,” Ted said.

“Mama means is it forever,” Ruthie said, laughing.

“I don’t know.”

“But how queer,” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed. “To leave your father, and this lovely house and everything — what for?”

“I daresay the end of the summer will see him back,” Mr. Fordham said.

“I don’t know,” Ted said again.

“A lot of young men think they are going to do something new,” Mr. Fordham said. “I remember when I was young, I had such ideas. But a village can be very uncomfortable.”

He broke off and they all looked at him. “I don’t know what the authorities will think of it just now,” he went on, answering their looks. “They may take it to be a bit on the revolutionary side, you know.”

“I shall explain matters to the Viceroy myself,” David said.

“In that case—” Mr. Fordham stopped.

“I think it would be fun,” Ruthie said. “I’ve always liked country Indians. They appreciate you and they’re not proud the way the educated ones are. There was an Indian girl in school at home, she was the daughter of a native Prince, one of the very smallest ones, but she wouldn’t speak to me. She looked down on missionaries.”

Nobody answered this until Mrs. Fordham said piously, “I hope you forgave her, dear.”

“I let her go her way and I went mine,” Ruthie said.

“You should have prayed for her,” Mrs. Fordham said.

“I didn’t bother,” Ruthie replied.

Ted laughed. He suddenly liked Ruthie, without admiring her in the least. She had grown up lazy, he supposed, as so many missionary children did, waited on by ayahs as he himself had been. The thought occurred to him that he might even now be thinking of a village as an escape, a place of no demands, and, as Ruthie said, of gratitude and appreciation. Gratitude was a habit-forming drug, he had seen white men who needed more and more of it to keep them self-satisfied until they became ridiculous and pompous with false righteousness.

“We must go home,” Mr. Fordham said. “The gentlemen want to finish their dinner.”

“Hark,” Ruthie exclaimed. Her eyes widened, listening, and they all listened. Far off they heard the howl of rising wind, it came nearer with a rush, and then they heard the splashes of rain from the purpling sky. The monsoon had come.

“Run for it,” Mr. Fordham shouted. They ran out of the open door, and Ted stood watching them. Mr. Fordham sprinted ahead, Mrs. Fordham lifted her skirt over her head, letting her white petticoat flutter in the wind, but Ruthie did not hurry at all. She walked slowly, her face lifted to catch the full force of the rain, and she spread her plump little hands palms upward. The wind snatched the curly strands of her hair and pulled at the knot at her neck until it fell upon her shoulders and the rain whipped her cheeks. She was not afraid, and that, too, Ted liked.

“I admire Ted,” Agnes Linlay wrote in her upright large handwriting, after a suitable number of weeks had passed. “At the same time I quite see how impossible it is to accomplish anything by what he is doing. Believe me, Dr. MacArd, I feel honored by your confidence in me, but Ted and I did not come to an understanding, I might almost say it was quite the contrary, and that we parted upon disagreement. I have been brought up as an English girl is brought up in India, and I suppose I cannot help my own feelings of proper responsibility. I fear we can only wait for Ted to come to his senses, and meanwhile there is no obligation of any sort between us. If he writes to me, as he says he wishes to do, I shall express my own point of view.”

A dignified young woman, David thought, exactly what he would like to have had for a daughter-in-law, and exactly what Ted needed for a wife. He wrote a careful reply to her, in his own rather fine tight handwriting, expressing the hope, as he put it, that some day they might meet and talk about Ted, and meanwhile he would appreciate anything she could do to keep her point of view before his son. For his own part, he deeply valued what the British Empire was doing to bring the people of India into a position where they could be independent and take their place in the family of modern nations and he deplored the ingratitude of young intellectuals and their leaders, among whom, he was sorry to say, were Indians whom he considered his old friends.

He did not tell her that he was feeling lonely since his son had left. For Ted was gone. He had stayed only a day or two after the monsoon broke and in pouring rains he had set out to the northeast for the village of Vhai. There, his first letter had reported, he found the whole countryside a lake, reflecting the clouds when the sun burst through for an hour or two at a time. But Vhai itself was on a low hill, a small flattened mountain, and the earthen streets were not too muddy. He had found a little house and had set up his housekeeping, although so far he had not been able to do anything except let the villagers stare at him, which they were able to do because they did not need to work while the rains fell. He was glad he had learned their language, for he exchanged jokes with them, and nothing seemed to them more of a joke, though they liked it, than that he declared that he had come to learn of them. The whole village was only a cluster of earth-walled houses and in this handful of minute homes every sort of small industry went on, spinning and weaving, pottery making and carpentry and grinding meal. The people were on the verge of starvation, of course, but cheerful now that the rains were generous. There was even a little temple to Ganesh in the village, the little fat elephant-headed god of whom the people were fond because he was innocent and tried to do his best.

Ted was happy. He was free, the ecstatic gaiety held, and he lived from day to day. The rains would cease in due time, and the lake grow dry and become fields of rice and mustard and beans. He would not visit Poona soon, he wrote his father. He was learning very much, and the people were no longer afraid of him.

He did not write to Agnes for many months, not until the winds blew cool from the foothills of the Himalayas, and not until his life was established in the mud house, and the routine of his days was clear. In the early morning he rose and taught two hours of school for anyone in Vhai who wanted to read and write. Then his pupils went to work and he set up a small dispensary under the overhang of his thatched roof, and there the sick came to him from an ever widening area, and he healed some, persuaded some he could not heal to go to the nearest hospital and agonized over those who went home to die. The afternoon was spent in arbitrating petty quarrels, with which Vhai was seething, and thus in patient talk and shy advice the day passed and night fell. It was a simple routine, accomplishing much less than he dreamed of for the future, but it was established, and so he could write to Agnes at last.

“You and I had no chance really to know these people when we were growing up. I wish I could share with you the stories that happen every day here in Vhai, the extraordinary, the sad, the sweet stories of this everyday village life. It is so much more exciting than the life we lived behind our compound walls. Here in the village street, and in the scraps of gardens behind each house, walled with earth for a tiny privacy, I see human life and see it whole. My darling”—and these were his only words of love—“does it offend you that they have put up an image of Jesus now in the temple? But he looks like Jehar, who is a Christian sadhu. Perhaps Jesus did look like that. He stands beside Ganesh, but they have made him tall.”

Two words in the letter moved her to write to him immediately. “Ted, I cannot let you call me your darling. I do not know how to tell you and so I will just tell you. I have promised to marry your father.”

No news came to Vhai, no gossip from the outer world, and his father’s letters had given him no warning. He understood that deep reserve, or perhaps even delicacy, which made it necessary for Agnes to be the one to speak first. Had he lived in the mission house he might have seen the strange disparate friendship growing between her and the man who was his own father. But he had seen nothing. He had lived his joyous life in the village, the joy isolating him for a time, at least, even from the need of love, so that he had not written her sooner. He had to imagine from her letter and his father’s, which now came promptly, and thus he discovered that it was he who had brought them together. They had written letters about him, and then in September his father had gone to Calcutta to see her, distressed indeed because of his own new feelings. His father made it plain that he was distressed.

“I never thought to put another woman in your mother’s place, but I have been driven by loneliness since you left, and in my loneliness a friendship has developed with Miss Linlay.” This was his father’s scanty explanation.

Ted did not leave the village for the wedding, and the wedding journey which was to have been to China and Japan was instead to New York. The speechless old man, father and grandfather, was dying.

David and his young wife reached New York on a fine bright day, when the city was in its brightest beauty. A wind blew from the sea, and the sky was brilliantly clear. He was happy as he had never dreamed of being happy again, the fair-haired English girl at his side was wife and daughter both, he had somehow won her for himself, and pride and complacency filled his heart. He loved her not as he had loved Olivia, but with tender fondness and infrequent passion. Fortunately she too was cool. He had been troubled, before the wedding, lest the long years of celibacy might make him diffident with her, but it was not so. She had delicacy and good breeding, a taste at once understanding and compliant, and there had been no confusion between them. When the marriage was consummated finally, his last loneliness disappeared and with it his slight enduring sense of guilt toward his son. Though she said that she knew now she could never have married a man so young as Ted, though she affirmed her love for him, David had felt guilt until the final act which made her all his own.

To his old home he took his English wife, and she settled into the rooms which had been his mother’s and he was proud to see how well she liked them and how much at home she was.

“It might be an old London house,” she said, wandering here and there, looking at everything. The French taffeta and the satins which his mother had chosen a lifetime ago had scarcely faded and were not worn.

“These stuffs are very fine,” Agnes said. “I love the old materials.”

He embraced her tenderly, and because she was as shy as he, he pressed her the more warmly to his breast. There was no need here for withdrawal. Olivia demanded but this woman would never make demands and so he need not fear her. His life had fallen into pleasant places. God was good.

“Go to your father now, dear,” she said reasonably. “I will wait.”

His father did not know him. He stood beside the massive bed and stared down at a large skeleton, elongated and immovable. The grey eyes were open and saw nothing, the whole effort was for life drawn in with each shallow breath and almost lost when each breath went out.

The nurse stood by, large and placid. “He can’t last long, poor man,” she sighed. “Any day, any hour now. I’m glad you got here, Dr. MacArd.”

“Has he asked for me?”

“He don’t ask for anybody, Dr. MacArd. He’s too busy drawing his breath.”

“Call me if I am needed. I shall not leave the house.”

“Yes, sir.”

He tiptoed out again and went back to the sunlit rooms where Agnes waited.

“I don’t want you to see him as he is now, dear,” he said. She lay on the chaise longue where his mother used to lie, the satin cover drawn up and a book in her hand. She put down the book and he took her hand.

“It can’t last but a few hours, at most a day or so. Then when he is at peace—”

“Thank you, dear,” she said. “It’s very thoughtful of you.”

On the fourth day when he went as usual he heard his father’s voice, still strangely strong. He entered and saw that the nurse was at the bedside, pressing the old man’s shoulders.

“Lie down, do, Mr. MacArd. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“What’s this?” David inquired.

“He come to, all of a sudden,” the nurse exclaimed.

From his pillow MacArd stared at his son, his dry lips open. The nurse had cut off the famous beard, and the jutting chin and thick pale mouth were plain.

“Where’s Olivia?” he demanded.

He was glad he had not let Agnes come into the room with him. “Father, Olivia died more than twenty years ago.”

“Olivia dead, too?”

“Long ago, Father.”

“Leila,” old MacArd muttered, “Leila, Leila, Leila—”

“Hush,” the nurse said, “now you are beginning to fret again.”

The snow-white bushy eyebrows lifted with old fury.

“Shut up,” the old man bawled. “Shut up, woman!”

The effort was too much. Upon the wave of wrath he stiffened with sudden amazement, thrust up his naked chin and died.

“I’d rather like to live here,” Agnes said. The old Victorian house, though surrounded now by skyscrapers and business offices, made her think of London.

“Then we will some day,” David said. “I have my work to think of still.”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “I was only imagining. We’ll be happy in India, though I’ll never be a proper missionary’s wife, David. You know that?”

He stopped himself from saying that he had told Olivia long ago that he did not expect her, either, to be a missionary’s wife.

“Only be happy,” he said instead. He was relieved that she seemed inclined to be happy in spite of the disconcerting discovery that an American physician had made, that she would be unable to have a child. He had been fearful that he might at this age have young children, a possibility which alarmed him and made him somewhat ashamed. His dignity might be threatened perhaps, certainly in India, if his sexual reawakening were made so manifest. Then she had felt that there should be an examination while they were in a city where the physicians were excellent, and so after the funeral of his father, that notable funeral in St. James Cathedral, where the church had been filled with white-haired men and women in broadcloth and satins, had come this news that there could be no children. Whatever heirs there were to be for the MacArd fortunes, must come from Ted. He did not mind; indeed he was glad. Doubtless Ted would marry. Young men in India inevitably married. A woman would bring Ted out of that village and make him sensible again.

XV

IN THE VILLAGE, TED was expecting his first visitor from outside. Darya was freed from jail again, and he was coming to Vhai. While he was in jail he had heard of the lively young white man, American, for what Englishman could do such a thing, who had left his home and gone to Vhai to live like an Indian, though he was a Christian. His father was even a rich man.

“What is the rich father’s name?” Darya had inquired, guessing who it was.

“MacArd, Sahib—”

“Ah,” Darya said, “it was I who told that young man to go to the village.”

“And he obeyed you,” the new fellow prisoner said, admiring him.

“Ah,” Darya said, “I have known that young man from the hour he was born.

So, freed, he went immediately to the village of Vhai and found Ted, his fair skin blackened with the sun and his blue eyes like lamps in the darkness. The village was all astir and agitated with Darya’s coming, whose name was almost as great as Gandhi’s own, and Ted’s glory rose.

“Now,” Darya said, gazing at the tall young man grown excessively thin on village fare, “you are a true Indian. You might have come from Kashmir, you know, with those blue eyes. Aha, even a dhoti, and very skillfully worn!”

“Thanks,” Ted grinned. “It’s cooler.”

The crowd stood to listen and to admire.

“And this is your house,” Darya went on, gazing at the neat earthen house, now enlarged to two rooms and a small veranda, made of rough wooden posts and covered with thatch. “How do you support yourself?”

“Still on the old bounty, I fear,” Ted said.

“Expensive poverty, eh?” Darya said, half teasing. “The sadhu tradition is good, but you do not travel, eh?”

“I have not yet learned here all that I want to know,” Ted said. He made a sweeping gesture with his hands to include the crowd, and they fell back a few feet and grinned with modesty and shyness.

“The best of teachers,” Darya declared courteously.

They went into the little house then and sat down on mats on the earthen floor and they talked. Darya’s tongue was eager to wag after the many months in jail, and Ted was eager to listen to someone his superior, to receive instead of to give. The villagers were kind and good and they taught him much but their words were the words of children, while Darya’s language flowed in Hindustani or Marathi or Gujerati or English, or French or German, whatever language he chose, a dazzling array of tongues, all fluent and acute together.

“Gandhi is in Yarvada prison,” he began. “He is not well, and I hear there may have to be an operation. If so, he will be freed. Until I can talk with him, I must not plan the next strategy. To resist without violence demands the utmost in wisdom, in attack, in endurance. Violence is simple and easy, it is the sword of the stupid and dull-witted, and it always leaves chaos. To carry on a positive revolution without violence — ah, that is a challenge to intelligence!” Darya spoke with relish, a lively enjoyment upon his lean and vivid face. Prison had sharpened and refined both mind and body and had charged his spirit with compulsive energy.

“Is Gandhi the absolute leader?” Ted asked.

“Spiritually, yes,” Darya replied, “and until we know the feelings of his spirit none of us acts. The situation grows more complex every day. The hope of freedom sounds simple, does it not? But hope is a releasing force, and what it releases is not always simple. You would think it is enough to dream of India being free, but no, there are other more petty freedoms also desired. The Muslims cannot only be free Indians, they wish also to be free Muslims, and so it is with the Hindus, and now even with the Sikhs. And it is not enough for these lesser freedoms, but labor is divided, some pulling to the left with Russia and some to the right. Labor wishes to be free of capital. Meanwhile eighty-seven percent of capital in India is British, and Indian capital also wishes to be free of British capital, and above all, there is that for which I will fight with my whole life, and that is the freedom of these land people, the peasants, who are ruled by the landlords and the moneylenders, and now, alas, these two are becoming one great evil, for the land is falling into those grasping hands, and landowners do not even come near the land. They live in the cities and send out their agents to take the land away from the peasants who cannot pay their rents and debts.”

It was true. Moneylender and landlord were becoming one and because of this the peasant was being pushed off the earth. “Dangerous rumors are creeping over the border from Russia,” Darya went on, “sweet promises to seize the land by force from the landlords and give it again to the people. While Gandhi insists on nonviolence, the people are muttering of force. I have asked Gandhiji what he will do if the peasants break into violence.”

Ted had no answer. He was still learning of the deep restlessness in the heart of India and he had never seen Gandhi.

Through the next few days they talked as they could, but Darya must stop often to greet visitors, for when it was known that he was there, men walked for many miles to look at him, to hear his voice and touch his hands, and to ask him, “When shall be we free, punditji, and will the land then be given to us again?”

Darya made always the same steady answer. “Our only hope is in Gandhiji.”

At night Ted could speak in English without fear of offending those who could not understand, for he would not speak during the day in a language foreign to the villagers, a delicacy with which Darya was impatient. For, as Ted soon saw, with all his passion and concern for the peasants, Darya was not one of them. He could be impatient with them and speak to them with unconscious arrogance, whereas Ted, the American, did honestly feel no difference between a peasant and any other man. He wondered at Darya’s lack and did not know how to speak of it, for understanding is a gift and Darya did not have it with each man as he was. This was the sin and the fault in the intellectual Indian, and if the revolution failed, Ted thought, it would be because of it. For none was quicker to observe this arrogance than a peasant himself, and after a few days the villagers drew away from Darya and Ted felt them come nearer to him, though he was a foreigner, than they were to Darya. They were courteous and kind, but they withdrew, and Darya did not seem to notice.

After Darya had gone away, on foot, his imperious head held high and his mind full of plans for the people’s freedom and his heart full of indignation on their behalf, though he was a rich man who had given up all he had for their sake, yet the villagers waited until he was gone before they came crowding into Ted’s little house again, asking their questions about Gandhi and how far freedom was away. They respected Darya and knew him a leader, but they knew, too, that though he would give up his life for them, he could not eat with them or sleep under their thatched roofs.

The day after Darya was gone, Ted received a letter brought as usual by a carrier on foot. The envelope was square, the paper was cheap and pink, and it was stamped with the name Fordham. The writing was not that of Mr. Fordham, and certainly he would not get a pink letter from Mrs. Fordham. He opened the letter and found inside two double sheets covered with a childish handwriting in purple ink. The name at the end of these lines was Ruthie and now he was embarrassed as well as surprised. She said frankly that she wrote without the knowledge of her parents, and because she was lonely. She had no companions of her own age, she was nineteen, and her parents would not let her meet any of the young Englishmen in business or Government, lest there be talk among the Christians.

It was plain indeed that she wanted simply to write to a young man and she had chosen him not knowing why she did, an urge of the blood which he must not encourage, although it was touching.

He had not written to Agnes except for one letter wishing her happiness, but her presence in the mission house would make it impossible for him to be there again. His father had written, however, that he planned to build a house for himself and Agnes in a separate compound when they returned to Poona, releasing the mission house for others. Agnes wanted to live where other English families had homes, he said, and he could see no objection, since he had never accepted funds from the mission and was to that measure independent. The time might even come, his father went on, when he would give up his active presidency of the university and become a liaison between Church and Government. The Viceroy very much wished him to undertake this larger mission, and Agnes would enjoy the travel. Ted could not read that name without pain, but his father used it firmly and with ease, taking for granted that his son would know how to behave and to feel toward his father’s wife.

“How I envy you,” Ruthie wrote now in large round letters. “I would like to live in a village, too. I love Indian food and the little Indian children. I could bathe the babies and teach the mothers about them. I read quite a lot of books on child care. It is such a pity that one must think of the conventions.”

Thus began an artless and on his side a half-amused friendship. She sent him her picture, a snapshot taken in the brightest sunshine. Her round arms were bare and her hair was a mass of short curls. She had cut her hair, she told him, because it was so hot, although her mother was angry. But she could not always listen to her mother.

“Mother keeps wanting to see your letters, for of course she found out, nobody else writes to me except a girl from school in Ohio, but I won’t let her see them. There is no reason why she shouldn’t see them but I must have something all my own.”

She was teaching in the lower school, she told him, Bible and English, but she did not enjoy teaching older children. It was really the babies she loved.

“And aren’t you coming to Poona even for Christmas?” she asked.

“Not even for Christmas,” he wrote back. “Vhai is home to me now.”

Yes, Vhai was home, the home of his spirit. He knew that his father believed that one day he would come back to Poona but he would never go back to Poona or to the mission. He could not teach or preach Christ there in that comfortable house, far removed from these millions who were the true India, and why only India? These were the people of the world, the world was full of them, and until they were saved, until their sickness was made health, until their starved bodies were fed, their ignorance enlightened, Christ was not preached. And all this must be done without robbing them of their honesty and their loving kindness, for never were people so truly loving as these who had nothing to give but their love. So he could never go back to Poona or Bombay or New York, never to Calcutta or London or Paris. His place was here.

He began to find a certain simple comfort in Ruthie’s letters, as months went on again, and because he had to fill the pages somehow when he wrote back to her, and he liked to write because she made no demands and she enjoyed whatever he told her, he conjured up small incidents and minute observations. Darya had told him of the companionship of insects and small animals while he was in jail, he had described the secret life in the crannies of the prison walls. So thinking of something that might interest Ruthie’s youthful mind, Ted now began to observe for himself the presence of other lives in his own two-room earthwalled house. The sun drying the earth had made cracks and from the cracks there came stealing slender lizards, some blue tailed. They moved swiftly, but sometimes they clung motionless for hours to a certain spot upon the wall or ceiling and when a fly or moth came near, out flicked a bright thread of a tongue to lap the unwary insect into a narrow gullet. Centipedes and scorpions provided on a little scale the same terrors that tigers did in the nearby jungle, but the real hazard and excitement of everyday life were thieving monkeys. Some were red-bottomed or blue-bottomed, for spectacle, but the common hordes were small and brown and incessantly noisy. These lives that shared his household and village life were not strange to a girl brought up in a compound in India, and so further to amuse her he created personalities for his most frequent insect and animal guests, none of which he killed unless it made a threat. Old Mossback, the father of the lizards, was his nightly companion, a grey and grisly little reptile, innocent of any guile except toward foraging for food. And he made a wilful pet of a tiny female monkey thrown by its mother to the ground and therefore wounded with a broken leg. She clung to his trousers like a child and wailed if he put her from him, and he named her, for no reason, Louise.

Thus he described the simple round of his days, and how in the short twilight of each day the villagers gathered around his door and he read to them from the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran, the Christian or the Hebrew sacred books, or he told them stories of other countries across the black waters, as they called the seas. Sometimes he told them tales from their own history books which none of them could read. After he had spoken, they commented or questioned or they drew out of the recesses of memory stories that they themselves knew, experiences and wonders, and after all had spoken who wished, he wove the evening’s talk together in some way to lead toward God, who was One, however worshiped and by whom, and then he prayed the prayers they understood and craved, the prayers for food and health and safety.

“Even at night,” he wrote, “the village is not quiet. Sometimes I hear voices from the jungle animals, sometimes a child cries because of illness, but when we part at dark we are full of peace.”

Such letters went between them, until one day when he had been in Vhai for more than a year, and knew that years might pass before he left it, he had a letter from her which he had guessed might come, had dreaded and half expected, and had put off thinking about because he did not know what to think. It came and as soon as he opened it he knew what it was.

“Let me come to the village,” Ruthie wrote. “Let me come and be your wife. I don’t ask anything, you needn’t even love me. But I love you.”

What makes a marriage? He did not know. The demands of his young body were strong but subdued by prayer and fatigue. There were times when he was sleepless and then he got up and lit his lamp and read, although this meant that he would hear footfalls in the night, kindly neighbors come to see if he were ill, or perhaps because they were ill themselves or also sleepless.

India is not a place for long hours of sleep, even in the dense blackness of night. The undying heat, the restlessness of insects and beasts, the frail children crying in their dreams, or wailing because they are hungry, such sounds habitually broke Ted’s rest, unless he was exhausted by the day’s work, which he tried to be. Yet his deepest sleep would be on the edge of waking and when his own restlessness was added, he could not sleep, indeed. Yet did he wake, he could not be alone.

In Vhai he was everybody’s concern, and upon him they all depended. What they would think if he married he did not know. No one had suggested marriage, they thought of him as part sadhu, part Sahib, although he repudiated both offices.

He could not imagine any white woman living in Vhai except Ruthie and he did not love her. He had a queer half-amused fondness for her, but he could not even imagine loving her, and he did not want to love any woman. Love would completely disturb the life he chose to live. Jehar came to his mind, of whom he had heard nothing, and he wondered if Jehar had married or would marry — not while he was sadhu, certainly, but had the primary need of a man’s life overcome the saint in him? Or had he made the compromise that fakirs made, impregnating women under the pretense of being gods? But Jehar was nowhere near and there was none to whom he could go for advice or comparison.

Meanwhile the letter waited. He found he could not reply with whole-hearted repulsion to the thought of Ruthie’s cheerful childish presence in his house, nor could he make the excuse that she could not bear the life here. She could bear it as well and perhaps much better than he did. Her plump little frame was probably immune by now to most of the germs of India, as well as to the heat. He sought relief in prayer and scripture reading, but the pages opened perversely to verses encouraging the natural life of man. So Solomon sang to a woman and he read,

Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field,

Let us lodge in the villages.

And even in the Sanharacharya he read,

For only where the one is twain

And where the two are one again

Will truth no more be sought in vain.

He searched for guidance and found it finally not in one voice or answer, but in the slow and growing conviction of his own heart. He had chosen where he would build his house and Ruthie was the only woman who wanted to live in it, and he had never lived in the house with any woman who was his own. His grandmother had died long before he was born, his mother had died before he could remember and to his father’s house he could return no more. He wrote the shortest of letters in reply.

“If you will accept me as I am, Ruthie, then let us be married.”

“Ted and I might as well be married right away,” Ruthie said to her mother.

They were living in the mission house again where the young woman had been born and had grown up. David MacArd had not yet returned, and privately Mrs. Fordham considered that he had deserted the ranks of the missionaries, although Mr. Fordham, who was less spiritual than she was, had pointed out the advantage of the new Mrs. MacArd being the daughter of a British Government official.

They had been amazed at little old Miss Parker, however. She had suddenly screamed at them both.

“Worshipers of Mammon! That’s what you are! David MacArd never was a missionary and you know he wasn’t! His own glory, that’s all he ever wanted. A humble and a contrite heart, Oh God—”

She suddenly began to sob in loud hoarse snorts, to the consternation of the good Fordhams.

“She’s crazy,” Mrs. Fordham gasped.

“I’m afraid so,” Mr. Fordham agreed.

But he was kind to the sobbing crazed little soul, and a few days later he took her to Bombay himself and put her on a steamer for home. Somewhere in a quiet small asylum in New Hampshire Miss Parker lived out her life, refusing to speak anything but Marathi to her attendants, and even the Fordhams had forgotten her.

“I don’t think you ought to be married before Ted’s father comes back,” Mrs. Fordham now said to Ruthie.

She was conscious of conflict within her heart as she gazed at her pretty daughter whom she did not in the least understand. Ruthie was not at all like herself when she had been young in a small Ohio town. She feared Ruthie was neither religious nor conscientious, and yet Indians loved the girl with adoration, and she could not understand why.

Ruthie did not care to improve anybody. She was gentle and mild, she was kind because it was the easiest way, not with intention of performing good works. She was careless and she did not mind dust and dirt, she was reckless enough to eat all Indian food however spiced and peppered. She had no sense of shame, and while she understood the slightest nuance of caste and never offended anyone, she mingled with Brahmans and untouchables alike though never at the same time. Children clung to her and she treated them with easy love and let them do what they willed, because she did not want to bother. She was at home anywhere, and Mrs. Fordham knew that the ladies in purdah counted all the days between Ruthie’s visits because she gossiped with everyone and told everything and did not know the meaning of the word secret. She carried back to her parents unspeakable tales of life behind high walls where she was a beloved visitor and however horrible the tales she told them all in the clear level childish voice with which she asked for a second serving of sliced mango. She feared no insect or beast and went without a hat in the midday sun if she felt inclined, although her routine was that of an Indian, for she rose early, and she spent the four middle hours of the day asleep, refusing the punkah because it was tedious for the punkah boy to pull the rope. She was not a good teacher in the lower school because she let the girls laugh and talk and she had no conscience about their not learning anything. When a girl fell ill in the foreign dormitories and it was too far for her family to come, that girl always cried for Ruthie, who came and sat beside her and held her hand and told her she need not take the medicines unless she wished, speaking in whatever language the girl best understood. With all this Ruthie did not say her prayers at night, and in many ways Mrs. Fordham felt she could not really be called a missionary. So far as Mrs. Fordham knew, Ruthie never even told anyone about Jesus, and when she pointed out to her daughter the opportunity she was missing, Ruthie said she felt she did not know enough herself.

“But you could learn, Ruthie,” Mrs. Fordham often remonstrated.

“I suppose I could,” Ruthie always said agreeably.

“I don’t believe Dr. MacArd will want Ted to marry me,” Ruthie said now without rancor.

She did not intend to tell anybody that she had first suggested the idea of marriage to that tall and adorable young man with whom she had fallen in love the moment she saw him. There were many things she told to no one, in spite of all she did tell.

“Then we certainly ought to wait,” Mrs. Fordham said in some alarm.

“Why?” Ruthie said in innocence. “We had better get it over with before he comes.”

Mr. Fordham, when the question was put to him, agreed with his daughter, not in order to escape MacArd wrath, but because he was indignant that his daughter might be considered not good enough for anybody.

“We are plain Christian people,” he said, “and we are good enough even for the MacArds.”

Thus it was settled. Ruthie wrote to Ted that she would just as lief get married now, if he were willing, and then they could have a Christmas together in Vhai. The wedding would be small, she said, and she would just as lief not have many white people come to it, and she would ask only her best Indian friends. If he wanted to wait until his father came home, she would wait, but she would just as lief not.

This letter Ted received at the end of a day of unusual exhaustion after his clinic, and doubts beset him. He was probably doing the wrong thing, but the affair had gone too far now to stop. He divined that even in this a subtle India had influenced him, so that marriage seemed not so much a matter of romantic love for two individuals as a convenience in his life. It would be very convenient as well as pleasant to have a sweet-tempered girl busy about his house and managing the details of housekeeping for his comfort. A girl from America, or England, or even from the levels of white society in India, would never live in Vhai, even for love. After all, Ruthie was unique.

These thoughts occupied several hours of the breathless night, when the burning darkness sat on his chest like a hot and furry beast. He slept at last, convinced that Ruthie was his fate.

A pleasant fate, he decided, in the midst of the marriage ceremony, when she stood up beside him in a short white linen dress. She had cut her hair very short and it curled in flat ends close to her head. He looked down on this feathery mass of gold, and saw upon her sunbrowned cheek a soft fruity down. Her lips were red and her brown eyes serious. Mr. Fordham was performing the rites and the university chapel was crowded with staring, lively Indians. None of the English were there, and only a few white missionaries of other sects in Poona. He knew them all from childhood but of their children not many had grown up and come back.

“Do you, Theodore, take this woman—” Mr. Fordham’s voice trembled slightly. He questioned now the wisdom of his performing the ceremony in Dr. MacArd’s absence. But Ruthie had persisted and as usual he had yielded.

“I do,” Ted said almost gaily.

“Do you, Ruth, take this man—” he spoke each word clearly and almost sternly for Ruthie’s ears and she replied with unconcern, “Yes, indeed I do, Father.”

It was over, they walked down the aisle to the wedding march which Mrs. Fordham forced out of the wheezy baby organ, and there was no nonsense about rice. Rice was much too precious to throw about and the Indians would not have understood it. They did not have a reception or any food because castes were too complicating. Ruthie went back to the mission house and put on a thin brown cotton frock for traveling, she bade her parents good-by, pursing her full soft lips to kiss them heartily on each cheek and to hug her ayah, and then she turned to Ted, who was waiting.

“I’m ready, Ted, let’s go.”

They got into a tonga, the driver suggested to his horse that he begin his duty, and thus they left the mission house. Mr. and Mrs. Fordham stood side by side on the porch and watched them out of the gate. When the gate shut they turned to each other.

“Well?” Mr. Fordham asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, hesitating. “I never saw a couple just like them.”

“I guess there isn’t a couple just like them,” he replied. “But I believe they will suit each other. Anyway, they know India and what they have to cope with.”

“What they have to cope with,” Mrs. Fordham said with some spirit, “is each other.”

Mr. Fordham avoided this and looked at his watch. “It’s time for me to get out to the west chapel. I have to preach there this afternoon, wedding or no wedding, and I am taking a load of tracts.”

“Ruthie, I want to say something to you.”

It was the middle of the afternoon of their wedding day and the train was rocking along in the hot dust.

“Do,” Ruthie replied. She opened her eyes and yawned. “I’m ashamed that I went to sleep, but I usually do sleep in the afternoon.”

They had lunched on the train, a poor imitation of a wretched English meal. After it they had returned to their own compartment and she had placed herself compactly upon one of the wooden benches, her cloth handbag under her head for a pillow, and had slept for two hours. He was amazed, and when she woke he remarked that had he known she wished to sleep he would have told his servant, Baj, now their servant, to open the bedding for her so that she might have been comfortable. To this she had made no reply but he saw her cheeks flush a very pretty dark pink, and he knew the time had come to say what he had to say.

“We haven’t had much time for talk,” he went on. “But there is plenty of time ahead, and so we needn’t hurry things.”

He had done much thinking in the days before his marriage and he had prayed more than usual for wisdom and self-control and the fruit of prayer was that he had made up his mind he would not take Ruthie in a hasty carnal fashion. They must be friends before they became lovers. Only thus could he respect himself and her, but mostly himself, because it was necessary for him, and he feared that she was so soft, so yielding, so childish, that she would do whatever he said, without knowing his deepest necessity, which was not of the flesh, but the spirit.

“Tell me what you mean,” she said. “You needn’t be afraid of me. I’m not a bit shy. Heavens, I guess I couldn’t grow up in India and see all I’ve seen and hear all I’ve heard and still be the least shy.”

He felt relieved by her frankness.

“I will say what I have in mind,” he replied, “and yet I want you to understand at the same time why I have made the decision.”

“Decision?” she repeated, her pansy eyes opening wide at him.

“I am a normal man, I suppose,” he said with plenty of his own shyness now. “It would be easy enough for me just to—”

“I know,” she said, “go on, please.”

“I would like to — to wait until it means something more to us than just the — flesh,” he said. “I can put it in a verse of the Scripture, perhaps. ‘That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us.’ I think our marriage is going to be a good thing, Ruthie, but I want to keep it in the Holy Spirit, and spirit must come first.”

She pondered. “Hasn’t it come in you?”

“Not yet,” he replied. This was very hard. “I feel the flesh, but not the spirit.”

“I feel the flesh, too,” she said rather sadly. “And I wouldn’t like to wait too long, because, honestly, I want a baby, Ted, just as soon as possible. I would like to have a lot of children.”

He stared at her. He had not thought of a baby, but of course she had. His motherless life had not taught him to think of children, and so he had thought only of himself, and his soul.

But she was not thinking of herself, she simply wanted a baby, and that, after all, was the purpose of marriage. The people of Vhai were right. They married their sons and daughters to each other so that there might be children born, but he had been making of marriage a complexity entirely his own, of spirit and sinful flesh.

He laughed suddenly. Ruthie was right and he was wrong and there was no reason why she should not have children as soon as she wanted them. Why should he prudishly deny her children because he wanted to test the quality of his soul?

“What is making you laugh?” she inquired.

The heat of the train had forced little rills of sweat down the sides of her cheeks and her curls were damp about her forehead. The shaking car had scattered dust from its cracks and this mingled with her sweat to make delicate lines of mud.

“I wonder if my face is as dirty as yours,” he said gaily. “Come here and let me wipe it off.”

So she came to his side where he sat, and he blessed the solitude of English trains which locked them alone in a compartment together until they reached the next station, three hours away.

“It’s not dirt,” she protested, “just earth blown off the fields.”

He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the stains away, tenderness mounting in him. Her brown eyes were lovely, deep and soft, the lashes thick and dark, and her face was really like a pansy, just as he had thought when he first saw her. His heart began to beat hard and his breath quickened. This was not love, of course, but love would come. He could not possibly feel all this without its ending in love. She had small richly convoluted ears set close to her head, and a pretty neck. He glanced down and saw the rise of her breasts, where her frock opened, then hastily looked upward and caught the full pleading look of her eyes.

She said in her honest fashion, “You haven’t kissed me — did you mean not to do that, too?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered helplessly, “I don’t know just what I do mean.”

He looked at her lips now, parted and fresh, her small teeth white between, and suddenly he bent his head.