MacArd was repelled to the soul. This, then, was why poisonous snakes abounded in the vile soil, and this was why they could not be destroyed!
He turned abruptly from the potter. “I will go back to Poona now,” he said to Wahdi. “Pay this man something.”
All the way back to Poona he kept seeing the flattened devilish head of the snake, and between him and it the slender graceful figure of the potter, a good man as even he could see, but one who did not dare to kill the snake, the curse, the menace even to his own life, because of his religion.
MacArd strode into his hotel bedroom and forbade Wahdi to come in.
“I want to rest,” he told Wahdi. “Go away, amuse yourself, eat a meal, anything you wish.”
“Yes, Sahib,” Wahdi said. He was used now to this harsh American who was foolishly liberal with his money. He went away complacent over his own superior common sense and MacArd sat down in a wicker chair. David was not back and he was alone in the room.
Religion! Was that religion, being willing to wait for a snake to strike, passive and waiting, no protest, no self-defense? No wonder the people sat upon the barren land, waiting for the rains.
He struck his big clenched fist on the bamboo arm of the chair. He would put an end to it.
The vision rose before his eyes. The dry land would grow green, the hungry would be fed, the poor would be rich. And he would go to heaven, at last.
II
HE ENTERED HIS OWN house with a firm step a few weeks later, and he gave his hat and stick and his gloves and overcoat to Enderby, the butler.
“Well, Enderby,” he said in his usual brusque greeting.
“Mr. MacArd, sir,” Enderby replied, bowing his head slightly. “I hope you had a good trip.”
“Excellent,” MacArd said. He turned to David, waiting just behind him. “Well, son?”
“Yes, Father?” David said. He understood his father well, he knew that the grizzled head held high and the blue eyes fierce with resolution simply meant that there was to be no mention of his mother. The house was empty in spite of its warmth and the many flowers arranged in the magnificence of the vistas. He felt very tenderly toward his father.
“What are your plans?” MacArd asked.
“I have none, Father,” David said in his equable voice. “I think I shall just go to my rooms and take my time, unless there is something you want me to do.”
“Not at present,” his father replied. “If you have nothing on your mind, I shall go on to my office and be home for dinner tonight.”
“Yes, Father,” David said again.
It was still early, they had breakfasted on the ship, and there was nothing he wished for so much as to be alone for reflection and meditation. Above all, he needed relief from his father, that dominating and oppressive presence which he knew was also powerfully loving. He had shared its weight with his mother all the years of his life, she had taught him to value his father and yet to know that he was unchangeable, and David could bear the knowledge while he had her with him, her gaiety, her humor, her life-giving vitality. The talent she had for absorbing herself in him and in his father, quite separately and yet always keeping the three of them together, had made the atmosphere of this immense house. Now that she was gone he was resolved to maintain it so far as he could do so alone, for her sake, and yet he had a quiet independence, his father’s thought filtered through the gentle blood of his mother, and he was determined also to find the life he wanted for himself and to live it.
“Will you have your luncheon served in your own sitting room, sir?” Enderby was asking, in a slightly raised tone.
“I’m sorry! Yes, if you please, Enderby, I shall spend the day there, I think, until my father comes home. I want to put my photographs away myself. I brought back a lot of them from India.”
“Very well, sir,” said Enderby, for whom India did not exist.
He went away and David mounted the wide marble stairs. There was an elevator at the end of the hall, but he liked the steps. His mother had descended them often while he stood at the bottom, his face uplifted to watch her come down, beautifully dressed, perhaps for the theater or a dinner party. When he was small he had raced down to be ahead of her so that he could see her descend, her train trailing behind her, and her arms and bosom bare except for her jewels.
His rooms were on the second floor, in the east wing, and a wide carpeted corridor led to the door. The house was completely quiet, and this was strange to him, for when his mother had been alive it seemed full of pleasant sounds, music somewhere, the piano or her lovely voice, an almost brilliant voice, or if not such music yet the house had been full of the sounds of living, her friends, the bark and whines of her pet dogs.
He entered the outer door to the rooms he knew so well and there they were before him, the doors open between, his bedroom and dressing room and bath, and here where he stood in his sitting room, and beyond it his study and library combined. The colors were crimson and cream; his mother had chosen them for him while he was in college, and the rooms looked fresh and yet familiar. He sat down in his favorite chair, and leaning back he closed his eyes.
India had made a profound impression upon him or perhaps it was not India but Darya. He had not been able to explain to his father how he felt about Darya. He had been drawn to the slender young Indian when he met him in London but there had been no time to talk with him. Darya was reserved then, he had seemed even cynical, at least dangerously humorous, his dark eyes quick and haunted, as though he saw everything and told nothing. He had wished that Darya was taking the same ship to Bombay for then he could have satisfied his curiosity about a man who attracted him so much and yet who seemed beyond the reach of understanding, but Darya had passage on a French ship a few days later and did not seem inclined to change. “I never travel on English ships,” he had said briefly. Yet he had no rancor toward the English there in Claridge’s where he had the best suite of rooms.
All the days they were in Bombay and when he was alone in Agra, wherever they stopped until they reached Poona, David had kept thinking of Darya. He had written to him before they left Bombay, reminding him of their agreement to see each other and Darya had replied courteously that he was at home, that he hoped that David would spend at least an afternoon with him.
That afternoon was, in a way he could not explain, the first comfort, the first assuaging, since his mother’s death. Until then he had simply followed his father, trying to be pleasant, as his mother would have said, but he had not been able to think at all, even about what he was seeing. He guessed that his numbness had made his father anxious, and that perhaps his father had felt him a burden, too. But Darya had lifted his heart or stirred his mind, he could not yet tell which, though Darya had said very little actually that he could remember. There was no entertainment beyond some cakes and honeyed milk, brought in by servants. None of the family appeared. They had simply wandered about the beautiful house and the flowering gardens, and Darya had pointed out one thing and another, the ivory carving set in a stone wall, the marble lattices brought from an ancient palace. It was not exhibited in pride or vanity, for many handsome objects Darya had ignored. He showed David the particular things that he loved, sharing with him the reason for his pleasure in them. The lotus, blooming in the vast central pool in the garden, their rose pink petals open under the sun, had moved Darya one day to suggest that they sit down on a marble bench and look at them.
“When the sun begins to sink,” he had said, “you will see the petals quiver and if you are patient, you can watch them close. You cannot actually see them move, you understand, but while you wait they close over the golden centers.”
And while they had sat in that garden of beauty where they seemed to be completely alone, although Darya told him that his two brothers and their wives and children lived here also, and that his married sister was visiting his parents with her children, Darya asked him a question which would have seemed strange except that they were in India and an I
ndian asked it.
“David, what is your religion?” This was the question Darya had asked.
He asked it as one might ask about an ancestor, a nationality or race, or a destination.
David had hesitated for an instant. “I suppose I am a Christian,” he said at last. “At least I am a member of a church.”
“Of Christianity I know nothing,” Darya said almost indifferently. He stooped and plucked a small purple flower that grew between the marble stones of the terrace encircling the pool. He wore his Hindu dress, and this made him less a stranger, David reflected, than he had been in the London hotel, dressed as an Englishman. There was an air of informality about the white silk robes that left Darya’s arms and legs bare, and he wore sandals instead of leather shoes.
“I know too little, myself,” David said honestly. “But my mother believed in God and in prayer. She taught me to believe, I suppose.”
Darya interrupted him. In London he had spoken like an Englishman, but here, though he used English perfectly, he spoke as an Indian, dulling the consonants and rounding the vowels.
“Your religion is not a part of your life?”
“In a way it is,” David said. He wanted to be wholly honest with Darya. He yearned for friendship, a peculiar friendship where they could speak to each other from the heart, because they were strangers to each other. He could not so speak to those whom he had always known, who knew his family and especially his father. To Darya the name MacArd seemed to mean nothing and he took wealth for granted. It was doubtful, David reflected, that all his father’s fortune could match the riches that Darya would inherit.
“How?” Darya persisted. “Tell me more, David, for I wish to know you, and to know a man’s religion is the best way to know him.”
David said, somewhat astonished, “I am afraid that it is not true of me—or of most of us. Perhaps we mean different things by religion.”
“Explain yourself,” Darya commanded with an imperious air. He had a handsome head, smoothly waved dark hair cut short about his oval beautiful face. His large brown eyes, very dark, were fixed on David’s face, and it was impossible to resist their magnetic power.
“With us,” David said diffidently, “religion is or should be expressed in practical works. It would be impossible, for us, I think, to endure or allow such poverty as you have here in your country, Darya. We would try to do something about it and that would be part of our religion.”
“What else?” Darya demanded again, his gaze not wavering.
“What else? Well, I suppose the church, its worship and so on.”
“But what of the soul?” Darya pressed. “What of the mind, the heart, the communion with God?”
“It is individual,” David said.
“You,” Darya said relentlessly, “what is it to you?”
“Not very much, I am afraid,” David acknowledged. “I have gone to church with my parents, I take communion, the bread and wine, you know. I used as a child to pray, I do not do so now. Since my mother died, I have thought about such things more than before, but I do not know how to begin to pray again. I cannot pray as a child and I do not know how to pray as a man. Indeed, I am not convinced of the reality of prayer, though certainly I believe in God, or I cannot say I do not. I have no explanation, otherwise, for the universe.”
“All this is not religion,” Darya had said thoughtfully.
It was true that one could see the lotus closing. David noticed at this moment when Darya spoke that the heavy flowers were lifting their petals slowly from the water, their movement imperceptible, yet positive, as the sun sank down behind the walls of the garden.
“Then what is religion?” he asked and turning his head he looked full into Darya’s wonderful face, so living and lighted a face, so young, so confident.
“I cannot tell you,” Darya said. “You cannot see it and yet it is everywhere. Shall you go to Benares?”
“I don’t know,” David had answered. “My father is somewhat unpredictable since my mother’s death. We are not yet accustomed to being alone.”
“You must not say she is dead,” Darya said. “I read of it in the newspapers in London and that is why I was friendly with you at once when we met. But she is not dead, she is born again.”
“We also are told that the dead live,” David said.
“Ah, but I mean really alive,” Darya said with enthusiasm, “and you need not grieve for her. You may even meet her and you should be watchful.”
“You Spoke of Benares,” David reminded him. He did not care to think of his mother living again in an unknown shape which he could not recognize, and he supposed that was what Darya meant.
“Ah yes,” Darya said, “it was only to say that there you could realize what religion is. Oh, it is a filthy city, you know, but you must remember that it is as old as Egypt, already great when Rome was founded, and that all India hopes to go there, Buddhist and Brahmin alike, to die beside the Ganges. I doubt a western city could be clean if for thousands of years millions of people had gone there to die. It is a repulsive city, I acknowledge it, it is full of beggars and fakirs, but it is also full of pilgrims and it is full of people who most earnestly seek God and with every breath and every act, so that all their life is religion. It is a place where rich men build palaces, where there are wide streets and costly clothes, this silk of my tunic was made there, and Benares is famous for its tapestries of silver and gold. In the old and narrow streets there are beggars and mangy dogs and naked children and unkempt women and peddlers of cheap stuffs and lazy sacred cows and bulls, and lepers—all the dregs of India, if you like, and yet people are driven there by the need for God. Unless you can understand—but how can you? Promise me not to go to Benares, David. I wish you to understand India, and it is there that you will or will not, and I feel your understanding is necessary to me.”
“I promise not to go without you,” David said.
The evening air, the massive lotus flowers closing their petals over their hearts, the heavy fragrance that flowed from them in the dusk, the magic silent garden spread about David an atmosphere which he had never breathed before. He had never felt so close to any human being as he now did to Darya, not even to his mother, for Darya was a man and young, his own age, and life was before them both, a different life for each, in what different worlds he well knew, and yet their need was the same.
He had longed then to be able to speak profoundly to Darya of Christianity, but he could not. He did not know enough, all that he had learned had been from others and he had nothing of his own to give. And Darya, perhaps, was feeling the same way, longing to give him, an American, the richness he believed was in Hinduism.
“Our religion,” Darya said suddenly, “does not spring from one source. Into it many religions have poured their streams, it is great enough to comprehend all and yet it has distilled something unique and individual. Some day I shall be able to explain it to you, but not yet.”
They rose, for the dusk was suddenly chill.
“The lotus flowers have closed, just as you said they would, and it is a sight that I have never seen,” David said.
“You will see it often,” Darya said. “You will come back again and again to India.”
“And you will come to America,” David replied with young warmth. “When you do, you must always stay with me.”
“When I come, if I do,” Darya said, “I will stay with you, and meanwhile we will sometimes write to each other.”
It was a promise. They walked side by side through the garden and he felt his hand taken by Darya’s hand, not closely or even warmly but delicately, kindly, as a token and only of friendship. It would have been a strange act in an American and even repulsive, but somehow it was not so here. He had often seen young Indians walking hand in hand and the act was one of brotherhood. This young Indian accepted him as a brother, and he had never had a brother. His heart stirred but he did not know what to say, and at the gate he still did not know what to say. While
the gateman waited, the gate opened, he turned to Darya and put his other hand over their interlocked hands.
“I shall never forget you,” he said.
“Nor I you,” Darya said.
They had planned to meet again but there had been no other meeting and no visit to Benares. Instead his father had decided abruptly to leave India. Long ago his mother had told him never to interfere when such moments came.
“Your father is a sort of genius and you and I are not. We must be humble about it, Davie.”
That was what she used to say, and so he had learned to be quiet in the house, not to ask questions, not even to insist on saying good-night when he went to bed and good-by in the morning when his father went to the office—not for a while, at least, until his father’s fearful energy was fulfilled in some new explosion of creation. Thus the MacArd railroads had drawn into their iron grasp vast industries of oil and steel, coal and ore mines, ships and bridges, and these in time produced immense industrial plants and business buildings.
Was it over? He wondered where his father’s powerful imagination would lead him now. He sighed, helpless before the dynamo, and then he drew from the bookshelf near his chair a small leather-bound book. It was the New Testament his mother had kept on her table. When he left her for the last time, she was lying dead upon her bed. He had not been allowed to stay. Strangers tiptoed in and waited for him to be gone so that they could begin their work. He had turned away, distracted, and at that moment he saw the little book and took it and alone in his room he had tried to read it and could not and so had thrust it into this shelf.
Now he could take it again, no longer fresh from her hand, and yet her touch was upon it and upon him. He let the pages fall open and his eyes fell upon a passage she had marked. She was given to marking lines in books and especially here: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
He read the words slowly. Rebirth, the words that Darya had used, but what did they mean, not in India, but here and now, for him?