“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 Indi
an. 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 cle
ar 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.