He rose, and David rose with him. They parted as usual, and the Marathi went away, his full white trousers swinging about him.
David put his books together and went to his room, next to his study, to prepare for the noon meal. The mission house was a large square bungalow, encircled with a deep arched veranda to keep the heat of the sun from penetrating into the rooms. A wide hall divided the house, and at one end was his study and next it his bedroom. Both rooms were big and the bare floors, the bamboo furniture and the high ceilings gave them an air of coolness.
When he had washed he went down the hall to the dining room, where Mrs. Fordham was already seated at one end of the oval dining table, ladling soup into flat English soup plates.
“Sit down, Mr. MacArd,” she said with brisk good humor. “We won’t wait for Mr. Fordham.” She bent her head, her mouse-brown hair always disheveled, and gabbled a swift grace.
“For what we are about to receive, Lord make us truly thankful. Amen. Shall you get over to Bible Class this afternoon, Mr. MacArd?”
“I think not,” David replied.
“It’s a bad example, you know,” she said with her cheerful sharpness.
“I am sorry for that,” he said.
He was accustomed to these fencing bouts with Mrs. Fordham and he carried them through with humor. As soon as Mr. Fordham came she would stop, and the meal would proceed kindly. Mr. Fordham was a large man, shrewd and tolerant from long living in a hot climate. He came in now, his heavy body bulging in a suit of wrinkled white linen, and sat down at the opposite end of the table from his wife.
“Sorry to be late as usual,” he said, “the gateman found a snake in the store room. It was one of the old cobras.”
“Did you kill it?” Mrs. Fordham demanded.
“I sent the gateman for a dish of milk to draw it away,” Mr. Fordham said. He began drinking his soup in gulps, opening his big mouth to receive the entire spoon with each gulp.
“Oh, Robert,” his wife cried. “Why will you encourage them in their superstitions?”
“It’s a very old snake,” Mr. Fordham said mildly. “It’s been here for years, and it only wants a dish of milk each day.”
“Nasty creature,” Mrs. Fordham declared. She banged a small table bell with the flat of her hand and a white-clad Indian boy scurried in and removed the soup plates. Another boy brought in a dish of goat-meat curry and some boiled rice. She ladled these viands upon plates and the boys placed them before the two men.
“Well, David,” Mr. Fordham said. “How’s the language coming on? You should be preaching a sermon soon, you know.”
David put down his fork. The time had come to tell them that he would never preach a sermon. The long quiet months alone with his books and his solitary walks about the city had been fruitful and decisive. He intended to be a missionary of a new sort. He was not content to preach in a small chapel, or to teach a few Bible classes and circle through a hundred miles of villages, admonishing half-starved people to worship a god they could not see. Instead he planned an attack upon India itself, through Indians, and those Indians would be young men, carefully chosen and highly trained, leaders of their own people. Upon them he would exert the utmost of his influence.
“I shan’t be preaching sermons, Mr. Fordham,” he said pleasantly.
“Not preaching?” Mrs. Fordham cried. “Why, how else will the gospel be heard?”
“Be quiet, Becky,” Mr. Fordham said. “Now David, just tell us what you have in mind.”
He told them in a few words, making it simple, making it plain. “I want my life to count for something. The only way it can count in a huge country like this is to search for a few people, a few hundred, if I live long enough a few thousand, and train them to teach others. I propose—”
He let the goat-meat curry grow tepid as he painted for them in simple words the picture he had been creating of his own life. A school of the highest caliber, the sternest standards, working closely with English Government schools, a college and then a university, certainly eventually a medical college and a hospital, each unit opening as quickly as possible, and the most rigid exclusion of all except the best and brightest boys and later perhaps even girls, chosen not according to caste or wealth but ability, and free scholarships for those who were poor.
“But where is God in all this?” Mrs. Fordham demanded.
David gave her his sweet and stubborn smile. “I believe that wherever man does his best, God is there.”
“I don’t call that Christian,” Mrs. Fordham cried.
“Be quiet, Becky,” Mr. Fordham said. “Where will you get the funds for all this, David? It will take millions.”
“My mother left me money,” David said quietly.
There could be no reply. The Fordhams had grown up in poverty, they had lived in little midwestern towns and had struggled through small midwestern colleges. They lived now on a salary too small for luxuries, and had they been at home instead of in India, Mrs. Fordham would have been the servant and Mr. Fordham the breadwinner. They were stunned by this young man with a gentle handsome face who possessed a fortune to do with as he liked. Let him serve God as he would.
“Well, it sounds very fine,” Mr. Fordham said at last.
Mrs. Fordham could not speak. She was thinking of her three sons. Poor things, they had nothing. At home in Ohio they had to work on her father’s farm and when they got to college they would have to work their way through to diplomas, while here in the mission compound Indian boys and girls would be having scholarships and every sort of luxury. It was not fair and God was not just.
The meal was over, and after it, as usual, David made ready for his walk outside the compound into the early twilight to breathe what coolness was there. Tonight he enjoyed it in a profound, stimulating, troubled sort of way. The streets of Poona were crowded when he stepped from the gate. They were always crowded, a solid flowing mass of men, dark faces, bare dark legs, white turbans, moving, crowding, eager, pushing, the dust rising, stirred by their feet and settling in the open shops and markets. The sun had set but the straining anxious life went on in the winding crowded streets, drivers shouting from the carts that threatened to crush the people and yet they never did, the hot hairy shoulders of bullocks pressing against human beings, and the beggars, the fakirs, the sellers of small wares, shrieking above the din. It was Friday, the day the lepers came in from the villages to beg, and they were going home again, their decayed flesh, their stumps of arms and legs uncovered for all to see, while the ones most crippled rode in little pushcarts. When they saw David, a white man, they howled at him for alms, but he went his way.
He was not overwhelmed by it now as he had been at first. Now that he had made his plans and had set a routine for his life, he found it good to join this stream of life at sunset, or in the morning before sunrise when the air was cool. The Indian night was beautiful, the stars hung enormous in the sultry sky, and he turned away from the street into the Poona theater, a great, dusty, flimsy hall, lit by candles hung high in big glass bowls. Two balconies, supported by hand-hewn wooden pillars, were filled with white-turbaned men and the pit was nearly filled. Large holes, not repaired, gaped in the roof and let in the night air and starlight, but the air was still hot and the sweet rank odor of humanity was close. David hesitated, and then found a seat and sat down. Some sort of meeting was going on, students, he supposed, were making the usual outcry against Government. He watched their faces, so mobile, so intent to hear what the man said. These, he told himself, would someday be his men, his material.
A week later he was alone in the mission house for the summer. Poona was cooler than Bombay, though farther south, but even here the currents of air that prevailed usually between the two cities had died away. The heat of summer had fallen and the people waited for the monsoons, the winds which alone keep India from being a desert, uninhabitable for man. The winds begin in north India, born of the intense heat of Delhi and Agra, where, more than two thousand feet a
bove the sea, the dry air and the hot sands draw down the rays of a sunshine fatal and intense. That heat attracts the moist winds from the surrounding sea, and for two months the winds blow toward the northwest and travel southward, circling until opposite winds blow northeast, making two monsoons, during which seed can be sown in the earth, and harvests can be reaped. If the monsoons fail, the people starve.
As yet, not a drop of moisture had fallen this year upon the glittering landscape. The streets were dust, except where the water carriers filled their jars at the rivers, and at the rivers the people gathered to slake their thirst and wash their dried bodies. Women hid in the shadows of their homes, and only the desperate women of the poor wrapped themselves in their Poona saris, nine yards long, and went down to the river’s edge.
For this season the church was closed and the Fordhams had gone to the hills. David had refused to go with them.
“I want to see what it’s like,” he told them. “The Indians have to live through it, and I suppose I can.”
Mrs. Fordham was inexplicably angry with him. “Natives are fitted for the climate and white people aren’t. You had better follow the example of the British. They’ve been here a long time, and it’s only by being sensible that we can stay here. You’ll break down, you’ll get ill, you’ll see!”
She did not quite say that it would then be their duty to leave the pleasant hill station and come back and fetch him, but David caught the overtones.
“You have no idea how the snakes and poisonous insects abound once the rains begin,” she went on.
“I have no idea,” he agreed, “and that is why I shall stay and see what it’s like.”
They had gone at last, unwillingly, with servants and mounds of baggage and bedding, and he had seen them off and had returned to the empty house, where only the cook’s son was left to care for him. He had expected to find it lonely, and instead had found it pleasantly filled with peace. Here he had pursued his solitary life, spending the hours of morning and evening in study with his tall Marathi, and in the hot hours alone, he stayed with his books. On one of these days Darya had come to see him.
“David,” he said, impetuous with the purpose of his visit, “I have never received you into the inner part of my own house. Come with me today, my friend, and let me show you my children and my wife. You are such a gentle fellow that you won’t frighten her. She has never seen a white man or woman, though I don’t keep her in purdah, as her parents did. Still, she has the habit of shyness.”
“If you wish it, I shall be happy,” David said. Here was God’s leading, plain! He knew that if he did not go away, if he stayed here waiting, he would be shown reason for obedience.
“Come with me now,” Darya commanded him. “The day is still early. I think my house is cooler than yours.”
David obeyed, his feet guided, or so he thought, and soon the two young men walked together down the blazing street. “I envy you your garments, Darya.”
“Then why not wear them?” Darya asked in his lively fashion.
“I suppose I had better keep my pale skin covered,” David said. “At least that is what I am told. Am I wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Darya replied. “How can I know? I am brown.”
It was a small thing, an interchange almost childish, and yet David, sensitive to his friend, felt it a slight barrier between them. The truth, which he had not spoken, was that he could not feel at ease were he to uncover himself, to make bare his arms and legs and feet, to wear a twist of white cloth about his loins and a length of white cloth over his shoulder, and walk in sandals as Darya did. And would not the people stare to see a white man in this dress? Darya’s dark skin did not look bare, but white skin would be naked indeed.
They had reached the great carved stone gate, and with a careless gesture to the watchman Darya entered, David following. Inside the gardens were beautiful and green.
“How have you managed this?” David exclaimed.
“My father employs many water carriers,” Darya said with the same carelessness. “And more than that, we have a stream of water flowing through the house, a natural fountain.”
Darya led the way through one gate and another and then by winding paths to a part of the house which belonged to him and his wife and children. There he opened the door into a large pillared hall, through which flowed a quiet stream, lined with green tiles. Potted palms and trees were set against the walls and low couches stood here and there.
As they entered two small naked boys climbed out of the water to run away and a young woman drew her sari over her head.
“Leilamani!” Darya called in his own Marathi tongue. “Please do not go away.”
She stopped, the silken garment held across her face.
David stood waiting while Darya went to his wife and said in a manner most gentle and coaxing, “Leilamani, here is my dear friend, in whose house I stayed while I was in America. I was in his house and now I have asked him to come to mine. Is this not what I should do?”
His little naked sons came back and clung to their mother’s flowing skirts, sucking their wet forefingers while they stared at the stranger their father had brought into their house.
She did not reply, and at last, very gently and as though she, too, were a child, Darya pulled at the silk across her face and drew it away. He held her hand as in a caress and he put his arm about her shoulders and coaxed her to walk with him, though she was very unwilling, until they came within ten feet or so of David, who stood waiting and smiling, and there Darya stopped, while his young wife drooped her head and let her long black lashes curl against her cheek.
“David, this is Leilamani, the mother of my children, and this, Leilamani, is David. He is my brother and you must not think he is like any other white man, but only my brother.”
“Do not make her stay,” David said in Marathi. It was pleasant to be able to speak that language which she could understand.
“Hear him,” Darya said in delight, “he speaks as we do, Leilamani, and have you ever heard a white man speak so well like us before?”
She raised her head at this and gave him a shy lovely look and now she let the silk stuff fall and she put her hands on the shoulders of her sons, but still she was speechless.
“Another day,” Darya said for her, “another day, David, she will speak to you. It is enough today that she did not run with the children. Go now, my dove, and bid the servants bring us limes and lemons and cold boiled water and honey. The children may stay and play in the stream. It is too hot elsewhere.”
She leaned and spoke to the boys then in a low voice, bidding them, as David could hear, to be obedient to their father, and she raised her hands to David in greeting and farewell and drew the silk over her head again and went away, her sandaled feet noiseless upon the polished tiles of the floor.
“Sit down on this couch,” Darya commanded.
David sank on the low couch. The children, silent and graceful, slipped into the water again and played with small stones. Servants came in soon with trays of sweetmeats arranged on fresh green leaves. The sudden coolness, the soft sibilance of the water slipping over the stones created an atmosphere so new, so restful after the intense heat and the anxiety of the continued dryness, that he felt sleep creep over him as he relaxed. He had not slept well for many nights, even upon the thin straw mat which for coolness had replaced the sheet over his mattress.
“Rest,” Darya said in his caressing voice. “I can see you are weary. You have grown very thin, David. Eat, my friend, and drink this fruit juice. It is sweetened with honey and that too will restore you.” And while they ate and drank Darya fixed his shrewdly seeing eyes upon David and he said, “David, you do wrong to try to be a saint. Why do you not marry? Where is Olivia? Have you forgotten her? It is not necessary for a Christian to be a sadhu. In our religion, yes, the priests must be holy and they do not marry, but it is better for you to marry. You do not look well. Now you know, David, some men can be celibate, they
carry life within themselves, but you, my friend, must find a source of life outside yourself. You are a transmitter, and from Olivia you would draw strength.”
“I have not forgotten her,” David said. The dainty morsel of sweet in his mouth, the fluff of sugared pastry, went suddenly dry. Even Darya had no right to pierce the secret of his heart.
“Have you asked her to marry you?” Darya inquired with fond and pressing interest.
“Yes,” David said abruptly.
“And she refused you?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, that was foolish of her,” Darya said warmly, “She should have seen not only that you need her but that she needs you. Her only hope of peace as a woman is to marry a man who is gentle like you, David. You could teach her to be mild, and she would teach you to be strong, through love. It is the other way in my marriage, I acknowledge it. It is necessary for me to have a gentle wife, one who is obedient, who is silent when I am angry. Well, then, the foolish Olivia! But try again, David. You must not continue alone, it is the mistake Englishmen make when they allow their wives to go and live in England. The climate here is more than hot, it is fecund, our weakness and our strength. Ask her again to be your wife, David.”
“It is not as easy as you think,” David said. He could not explain to Darya the nature of western love between man and woman. In some ways Darya was very alien and Indian.
“I cannot speak of her,” he said abruptly.
Darya pressed his hand, smiled, and shook his head. “Then we will not speak of her. Eat this cool melon, it is good for the kidneys in summer.”
He ate and drank as Darya bade him do. He had not been hungry for weeks and the boiled water in the mission house was tepid and flat.
Then, grateful that Darya had not been his usual insistent self, he made talk. “Are there many houses like this in India?”
“Not many,” Darya confessed, “but there are a few. You are asking why we do not renounce our riches when so many are poor. I have asked myself also and it troubles me, and yet I do not accept the renunciation. My parents are old, I am the eldest son, I have my wife and children and the family depends upon me—this, though I know that renunciation is the highest form of spiritual joy. My father says nevertheless that we who are rich perform a useful function. It is well, he says, for the people to know that there can be houses like ours, so that they too may have hope of fortune. Whether he merely comforts himself, I do not know. But you are the son of a rich man, David, and your Scriptures say, too, that it is hard for rich men to enter the kingdom of heaven. Our Scriptures say the same thing in other words.”
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