In May, for it was against his instinct to show haste in spite of his wish, he left India and many weeks later, his ship drew near to the dock in New York. It was his first visit but he had heard of the city, fabulous and new, rising high from its island base. He stood on the deck among the other passengers, ignoring their curious stares, and gazed at the buildings massed against the sky, and he wondered at the skill of the hands that had built them and fixed them there, in spite of storm and earthquake. A foreboding of future power in this white man’s land crept over him. There was nothing to stop such men, and he wondered again, as he had so often before, what spirit of restlessness filled the white men of the West, driving them to greater distances, vaster wealth, more abundant power until some day they might conquer the world. As the ship edged nearer to the shore, he half wished that he had not come lest David might not be the modest and gentle young man he remembered.
But his fears were soon forgot. When he came down the gangway, dressed in his best London suit and topcoat and carrying a gold headed cane, he heard David’s voice.
“Darya, how glad I am!”
It was the same David, Darya’s swift Indian instinct assured him, and then he was shaking hands, both hands, his cane under his arm, and the two young men were gazing at each other with delight, not seeing the glances that were cast at them from other eyes.
“Come along, the automobile is waiting,” David urged. He pulled Darya along by the arm.
“I say,” Darya protested, “what about my luggage?”
“Oh, that will be attended to,” David said. He was ruddy with exhilaration and good spirits, the day was one of soaring wind and bright sunshine and he was proud of the city glittering under the brilliant sky.
“Come along,” he cried, “luncheon is ready at home and we shall be alone. Ah, I’m glad to see you, Darya!”
Darya had never been so greeted before by a white man and he felt his heart glow in his bosom with love and excitement. A wonderful country where white men could be like this, where he was urged to come to a white man’s home as though he belonged to the family!
“I can’t tell you how happy I am,” he stammered.
David laughed and then saw the glimmer of tears in Darya’s dark eyes. “Why, dear fellow,” he exclaimed, “what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Darya said. “I thought perhaps you had changed.”
“I change?” David demanded. “Why should I?”
“I don’t know,” Darya said. But he did know. He had seen too many white men change when they saw an Indian face.
“My friend,” Darya said, “you should marry.” He had been in the luxurious American house for three weeks, he had seen the city, he had visited the shops and bought gifts for his mother, his young wife and the two children, his three sisters, his aunts and cousins, his father and uncles and nephews. He had gone with David to the theaters, had heard the new music and on Sundays he had even gone to church with David and his father and had listened in some amazement to Dr. Barton, whom he professed not to understand.
David smiled and then blushed faintly. “What makes you say that?”
The two young men had come to a point of intimacy where anything could be said.
“This vast house,” Darya said, waving a dark and graceful hand to signify endless empty rooms. “Your father, who has only you. There is a great deal to be said for many sons. I am glad I have two already.”
“I keep seeing my mother here,” David said. “It would be hard to find anyone to fill her place.”
Darya looked horrified. “You don’t want to fill your mother’s place, surely,” he exclaimed. “You want to find a wife.”
“I would like to find a wife who is as much like my mother as possible,” David said.
Darya shook his head. “No, no — a man’s wife and his mother should be totally different persons. Anything else is incestuous in concept.”
David was innocent enough to look bewildered. “I should say that it was a tribute to one’s mother.”
“Not at all,” Darya maintained. “Any mother in India would choose for her son a wife very different from herself, of equal caste and so on, but that’s all.”
David did not answer. He thought suddenly of Olivia to whom he had never returned. He had felt a curious and perhaps unnecessary delicacy about pursuing his friendship while his father was buying her home. Nevertheless, he had not forgotten her, as he now realized.
“A relationship between mother and son cannot be continued between husband and wife,” Darya was saying with authority. They were in David’s sitting room in the late afternoon of a crowded day. They had spent the morning, at Darya’s wish, in art museums, had lunched at Delmonico’s and afterwards had gone to a matinee. Now, they were smoking cigarettes, a new taste for Darya, and idling before they dressed for dinner. Darya was meticulous about dressing before dining with David’s father, whom he admired and professed to fear.
“A man begins something entirely new when he takes a wife,” he went on. “Moreover, a real woman does not wish to be also her husband’s mother. If she is compelled to this unnatural position she will resent the burden and despise the man. Keep your mother in your memory, my friend, and open your eyes. It is time. It is not well for a man to live celibate when he is young. Afterwards, yes, when he thinks of becoming a sadhu, a saint, it is then becoming enough.”
The fluent melodious stream of words poured over David’s sensitive ear. If Darya had a fault it was this pouring golden stream of talk, the overflow of his restless and active mind, a penetrating mind, David had to acknowledge, a scintillating searchlight cast upon every person and every object and scene which presented itself. Only today he had grumbled half humorously, and yet with seriousness,
“Darya, I feel that you are showing me New York, rather than the other way around.”
For surrounding every experience had been the enveloping glow of Darya’s incessant comment, question, conclusion, criticism, humor, and instant understanding appraisal. His was a mind too acute for comfort, and yet in spite of this he was always at ease with himself. In these three weeks David had come not to understand the young Indian but to the knowledge that here was the most complex person he had ever met, and one whom perhaps he could never fully understand.
He took a daring step. “You advise me to marry, and yet you did not introduce me to your own wife.”
Darya opened his immense dark eyes, handsome eyes with heavy curling lashes. “I do not see the connection!”
“In the western mind there is some relevance,” David said.
“In the eastern mind, none,” Darya declared with dignity. “My wife is shy as most Indian women still are, and she would have been in consternation had I brought her out of her rooms to meet you, and even more embarrassed had I taken you to her. It is not our custom, as yet.”
For the first time David was aware of a barrier between them. “I’m sorry if I have offended you, Darya.”
“Not at all,” Darya rejoined. “It is difficult for people outside to understand the relationships in our country between men and women. Yet they are very profound. Indeed, we find your celibate Christian gods difficult to believe in. Our society is based upon the pure connubial relationship between Rama and Sita. Marriage is lifted to an ideal plane because of them and therefore it is a religious duty.”
“Now you are being very Indian, my dear Darya!”
Darya wavered between dignity and capitulation and chose the latter. He smiled his slow delightful smile.
“Tell me,” he said in a coaxing voice. “According to your abominable western customs, is there no woman in your dreams?”