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 ma
ny-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.”