David listened without understanding. He was ashamed to confess to his father that all his years of school had not prepared him to comprehend what he meant by bimetallism. He had been an exceptional Greek scholar, and he had taken high honors in English literature and philosophy, but he had no notion of what the threat in his father’s words could mean, even though it might reach disastrously into his own life, and he shrank from knowing. Life was beautiful and graceful as it was, touched with sadness, to be sure, since his mother died, but beauty must contain sadness, and Shelley and Keats and Browning had so taught him.
“If I can ever be of real use to you, Father,” he said, “you have only to let me know.” He hesitated a moment, “I suppose I ought to go upstairs now.”
“Good night,” MacArd said shortly. He lifted his head and watched his son leave the room and then he sat for a long time in lonely thought.
It was the first really hot day of summer, and the two young men got out of the dusty train gratefully enough, although the ride had been so short. Darya looked about him with lively appreciation.
“These wooded hills, these empty valleys,” he exclaimed. “It’s a wilderness, and only an hour away from a vast city! I say, you know, David, some day it may seem to the rest of the world that you Americans haven’t any right to all this emptiness. Think how people are crowded together where I come from!”
“We don’t have such big families as you do,” David said. He was distressed to find that his relationship with Darya was changing subtly this morning. Darya was criticizing everything he saw, always gaily, to be sure, and surrounding his criticism with an embroidery of rapid flowing talk, simile and metaphor enriching every devastating word, but he felt that inwardly Darya was sitting as a judge upon him. He was puzzled and irritated, the more because Darya never went beyond the actual bounds of courtesy as a guest. Yet he presumed upon their affectionate relationship.
“Ah,” Darya exclaimed, “the old Anglo-Saxon argument, the reason given by every viceroy for not making an empire a benefit to my people, for what is the use of feeding the people when they simply increase their numbers? Starvation is inevitable, and indeed desirable, so the rulers say. It keeps the people obedient.”
“You cannot deny overpopulation,” David said.
“The argument of vicious and wilful ignorance,” Darya declared. “Have you ever observed a dying tree? When it knows that life is over, it blossoms in one frantic outburst of flower and seed, producing far more than normal, because, my friend, the law of nature, as you would call it, or Karma, as we call it with the same fateful meaning, is that though the individual dies, the species must not. Only when the species cannot reproduce, does it die. Our strength is that we can still reproduce, and so we have not perished from the face of the earth. We are still taught to respect our parents, to subdue our individual wills to the family good, else long before now would we have died as other peoples have died! ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land’—that is also Christian, isn’t it?”
“You know I cannot argue against you, Darya,” David complained. “You are much too quick for me.”
“But you do not agree with me,” Darya exclaimed.
“Not always,” David admitted.
“Therefore you will never be convinced,” Darya persisted.
“Not against my will,” David replied.
“But your reason, your reason,” Darya cried with passion, “is there no way of reaching your reason, you white man?”
They stood on the platform of the little railroad station, forgetting where they were. The country station master passing by looked at them astonished, a white man and a Negro, he thought, getting mad at each other. He had better break it up. He spat tobacco juice.
“Anything I can do for you folks?”
David started. “Oh no, thanks. Come along, Darya. We are making a spectacle of ourselves.”
They turned their backs abruptly on the man, he spat again, and then chewed his cud, ruminating and shaking his head.
“We’ll walk,” David said. “It’s only two miles.”
They struck off up the river, mutually agreeing each in himself to give over their argument and enjoy the day. David was surprised to find how eagerly he wanted to see Olivia. He had thought of her a good deal in the night, seeing her dark handsome face clear against the curtains of his memory.
“This river makes me think of our Ganges,” Darya said in his usual amiable voice. “My father goes every year and brings back jars of its sacred water for us.”
“Now that I don’t understand,” David said. “Your father, yes, but you, Darya, no. Cambridge and the sacred Ganges — it doesn’t go together.”
Darya stopped. “Look at me,” he demanded. “Do you see my forehead? There is an invisible line here.” He drew his forefinger down from his hair to the bridge of his high and handsome nose. “On this side, the left side, the heart side, is my religion. On the other side, Cambridge, the modern world, science.”
“You keep them separate?”
“Separate and inviolate.”
“I can’t understand that—” David began.
“Do not try to understand,” Darya said. “Simply accept. Some long day hence the line may fade away. But science is far behind the intuitions of religion and until it overtakes faith, the line remains immovable.”
“You are content with this?” David asked.
“I must be content,” Darya declared, “for I can do nothing about it. If I were a scientist I would devote myself to removing the division, but I have no vocation for science. I am merely a man who waits.”
David did not reply. There was indeed no reply possible, for as usual Darya had led him beyond himself. He realized that his own mind until now had been wholly uncreative, absorbing what he had been taught, receiving what he was given. He had no valid opinions of his own, he was far less thoughtful than Darya, though they were so nearly the same age, and he was beginning to be made uncomfortable by his very presence. It was time the visit ended. In spite of pleasant companionship, Darya’s presence was becoming a reproach and a burden. He was not ready yet to ponder the large matters of the world and the universe, and perhaps not even of love. He wanted to live each day as it was given him, and he might like to remain as he was, simple-minded and not subtle. As an American, he distrusted subtlety, and he was beginning, he feared, to dislike it, even in Darya. Perhaps they had passed the point of understanding each other.
They walked along in silence, the sun was growing hot and near its zenith. They had breakfasted late and heartily and Darya had declared that he would not eat again until they reached home in the evening. American food, he said, he found too heavy, it remained too long in the intestines, and sometimes he fasted for a whole day. Now he walked more quickly than David, swinging along lightly and steadily, seeming not to notice heat or dust, until the river curved and the house was before them on the hill.
“There it is,” David said.
They stopped and looked up at it. “A fine place,” Darya observed. “So that is to be the cradle of the teachers who are to be sent to my people. Very American!”
David was suddenly angry. “I suppose the best that any people can give to another people is its own chosen men.”
“Is it to be reciprocal?” Darya demanded. “Would your people accept our men? If so, I offer myself. I will come here and preach our gospel, David, the gospel of the faith of our people. Will your father accept me, do you think?”
David turned on him. “Are you jesting?”
“Not at all,” Darya said. “I am in bitter earnest. Would it not be good sense to engage a man of India to prepare your young teachers for their pupils? Would it not be well for them to know the country to which they are sent? Seriously, seriously! Would I be welcome?”