The heat in the small room was like a weight of lead. The high wall kept away the hope of any wind, and the dusty patch of earth outside the door where not a weed could grow, reflected an intenser sun. There was no shield.
“What will you do here?” Ted asked in actual distress. “It will grow hotter until the monsoons come and that is many months away.”
“I look at the clouds,” Darya said. “Morning and evening the clouds float across my bit of sky and I stand in that patch of dust and gaze at them, and I imagine them as they go. They come from the north, the Himalayas, and of the snow-covered mountains I dream, and of the valleys between. Did you know? Those valleys are full of flowers, fed by the melting snow.”
His voice, so harsh and impassioned a moment before, was suddenly tender, rich, a wonderful flexible voice, slow and soft, swift and powerful, responding to every mood and thought. Ted heard it, but he must not allow the beautiful voice to catch his emotions, no, nor the beautiful face and the spirit of this man, the enchantment of renunciation, the enchantment of righteousness. It was there, he could feel it, the sweetness of yielding one’s whole self. He had been tempted even by the teachings of Jesus. There was a delight of surrender which he tasted but which he had resisted, fearing the distances to which it might lead him. He searched Darya’s face and found in it no bitterness, no anger and no sorrow, only content and joy and exaltation.
“Uncle Darya, what is your hope?”
“To see my people free,” Darya said, “to see them able to help themselves, to see them owning their own land, choosing their own government, living in decency and self-respect and mutual co-operation.” He lifted his face to the square of sultry white sky, where the light was metal hot. “And one day, I shall see them so. I shall see flesh on their bones, and the children will not wail with hunger any more, because they will be fed and not one will be hungry.”
“By the grace of God?”
Darya’s face changed, he opened his eyes and stared at the young white man. “No! By the grace of man! That is what you Christians always say. God, God! How dare you speak his name? Look into your own holy books—‘Not every one that crieth Lord, Lord—’ can you not remember?”
The gentle voice was a roar and Ted was silenced. It was true — and how had he mentioned the name in the presence of such renunciation? He had no right to speak the name of God.
“Uncle Darya, I must go.” He got to his feet and held out his hand. “You have shaken me, I confess it, not by what you have said, but by what you have done. You are right. I am not worthy to speak the name of God. I ask you to forgive me.”
Darya grasped his hand in both his own. “No, no, I let myself be angry and that is not good. You are not guilty, you are like a child. I must keep my anger for those who are guilty. Come again, my son — come and give me joy.”
“I will come, Uncle Darya, though not often, alas, because Poona is too far from here. But my father says the Viceroy will not allow you to be in jail very long. It is only a symbol, my father says.”
“A symbol of power,” Darya cried, “and I will resist it. If I am released, I shall make them arrest me again and again and again, until they see that it is no use. I, too, have power, and no one can take it away from me. Ted, you will see Gandhiji himself in jail before long, remember my words, I tell you it will be so.”
“I hope you are wrong.”
“Have you seen him?”
“No.”
“When you see him you will understand why we must follow him. He is the only one who gives us a road to walk upon. And who are we?” Darya spread out his beautiful dark hands. “Men without guns!”
“Uncle Darya, I must go.”
“Go, then, but come back.”
He went home wondering that Darya had joined his life with Gandhi’s. For if he had understood his Uncle Darya aright in all the years of childhood, it was to know that the beautiful and intelligent man loved life, he enjoyed physical pleasure, he was fastidious and thoughtful. And all this rich humanity was yielded up now to the ugly spare little man who did not care what he ate except that it must not be better than a peasant’s food, who chose a length of white cotton homespun as his garment, a little dark ascetic who lived by choice in a mud hut and walked barefoot. Renunciation, honesty, purity, whatever one chose to call it, whatever the charm, there it was, and Darya was not a man to be easily won. He knew the best as well as the worst even of England, he could wear an Englishman’s morning coat, striped trousers and silk top hat not only with enjoyment but with exceeding grace. He belonged by birth in a palace, his father’s mansion. Now he had chosen jail, now he had chosen poverty, and the renunciation was precious to him, not for God’s sake but for man’s.
Something trembled in Ted’s heart, a flickering flame, a marveling light, but he turned from it. He did not wish at this moment to examine his soul. He was young, his life was pleasant, the future bung bright over the horizon. For Agnes Linlay was constantly in his mind. He must hear her voice and see her in her own surroundings and know for himself what was between them, and what could be, before he examined his soul.
And by day the other country where his grandfather lived receded from his living thought and feeling. The old habits of childhood returned, they rose out of the shadows where they had waited during the years that he had spent in America and again the old half-Indian ways of the mission house became his ways, the hot nights, the shadowy days behind the dropped bamboo curtains and under the slowly waving punkahs, the foods peppered to sting the palate, the cooled melons, the flowering vines in the garden, the dark white-clad servants hastening to meet his possible need. And even in the schoolrooms, the eager, the too eager faces of the young Indian men, the half shy and always charming faces of the girls, their slender hands hovering ready to draw their saris over their heads, a gesture modest and enticing, coquettish and severe. There was much more here than Gandhi’s India.
And every week or two Agnes wrote in answer to his almost daily letters, the letters he sent in his need for companionship, for though he loved and revered his father, there was no possibility of companionship with a man who was now altogether missionary, and more than that, a missionary prince, a man upon whom the Viceroy called for advice when Church must come to the aid of Government. And Mr. and Mrs. Fordham were old and ridiculous and touching. Of all their children, only Ruthie was coming back. They talked a great deal about her and even showed him her picture, a roundfaced, simple pretty girl, whose small lips were too full for prettiness in the pleasant common face.
Besides these, there was only poor old Miss Parker in the compound, and her he avoided and knew himself cruel. He could not help it. She had grown moldy and unhealthy, and even religion had not kept her flesh sweet. She did not dry and wither, instead she grew stale and in the heat an odor, sour and rank, betrayed her presence in any room. It was hard, he supposed in his fastidious youth, for the old to keep clean, anyway in tropic heat.
In his loneliness he read and reread the letters from Agnes, always with vague disappointment at the end. She came no closer for the interchange. Though he poured his thoughts and feelings into his own letters, his increasing warmth brought only her kindly cool regard, her mild gaiety. Twice he had asked to see her, and twice she had put him off. The first time when he visited Darya he had wanted to continue eastward to her, but she put him off because she had planned a holiday with her parents into Kashmir, where her father liked to hunt, and again when he asked, she replied that everyone was too busy with plans for the visit of the Prince of Wales, who was to arrive on Christmas Eve.