Yet she did not try to explain more than that for they could not understand. How could they? When they thought of India it was of great houses encircled with verandas, set in vast compounds, of uniformed Indian servants and dinner parties where the guests were always white people. None of them spoke any Indian language, except perhaps a servant dialect half pidgin, which they had picked up from their ayahs. How could they understand the depth of love she had for Vhai, this village full of people, all of whom loved her, because she was not only herself, but also the daughter of her parents? And she could never explain to them how she loved this house, reaching far enough to make rooms for herself and her brothers and her sister, but whose floor was brushed every morning with cow dung. That she could never explain, because the girls would give little screams of horror and they would never believe her if she told them how cool and smooth the earthen floors felt under bare feet, the earthen floors beaten as hard as marble and then brushed with the water from a pail in which had been flung a handful of cow dung, and the two mixed until the mixture was complete and clean. When the floor was dry, it was like old mahogany, polished as satin. But how could the English girls believe it was so?
She learned to live two entirely separate lives, one the life with the English girls where, because she was a MacArd, they did not treat her as they might a common missionary’s daughter, those persons who were only a little better indeed than Anglo-Indians, and the other when she came home to Vhai. Oh, the deep and solid comfort of coming home to Vhai, where she could walk with no more on her feet than sandals, where often after her morning bath, she simply put on a cotton sari with a little short-sleeved blouse, pleating and knotting the long ends as skilfully about her narrow waist as though she were an Indian girl! And indeed she was much an Indian, for it is not only blood that makes the human being but the air breathed, the water drunk, the food eaten, the sounds heard, the language spoken and those with whom communication is made most deeply, and for her these were all Indian. She was closer to her mother than to her father because her mother, too, was much of an Indian woman, though her blood was American white. That was not quite the same as English white.
Yet, now, her mother could not understand her love for Jatin. She had thought she would, because she had been so sure that the India she and her mother loved were the same. They loved the little things in Vhai, the way the monkeys fought in the trees even when their quarrelsome chatter woke them in the mornings, the hum of the grindstone, the tinkle of silver bracelets and anklets as the women came and went with their water jars on their heads, the clatter and rattle of spinning wheels, for everybody these days tried to spin, at least an hour a day because Gandhiji was the Mahatma, the leader of all the souls of India.
“And I don’t want you to think that I approve, either,” her mother was saying. “For I don’t, Livy. I can’t go so far as to think it right that a white American girl should marry an Indian. Jatin isn’t even an Anglo-Indian.”
“You act as though he were an Untouchable,” Livy said with anger.
Her mother refused this insinuation. “Livy, I won’t have you say that, after all your father has done for Untouchables. Why, when Gandhiji took an untouchable girl into his household to be an adopted daughter to him, your father said that it was the final proof of his sincerity and he has believed in him ever since. And have I ever shown in this house that I cared about caste?”
Livy said, “Jatin and I want to be married.”
Ruth sighed. Oh, the terrible stubbornness of Livy! She was all MacArd and had been since the day she was born, and, thank God, the others were not. Sara was like her, and the boys were more Fordham, too, than MacArd, but Livy had not a drop of Fordham in her. She was glad now that they had sent the boys home early! They were safely in a church school in mid-Ohio, and so she should have done with Livy, except that the child would not go, and year by year they had let her keep on growing up here in India until now this had happened.
“Don’t make me have to tell your father, Livy,” she pleaded. She had never been able to discipline the children, and she used their love for her shamelessly for her own protection when she feared Ted’s reproach.
“I won’t,” Livy said. “Jatin and I will tell him ourselves.”
“Oh, dear,” her mother groaned. “It will kill him. He loves you more than all the others put together, I do believe.”
“What else can we do?” Livy asked.
She had finished the hem and she folded the small dress carefully and put away the thimble and needle.
“I don’t know,” her mother sighed. “I couldn’t have believed such a thing could happen. Much as I love India—”
Livy took the sentence away from her. “Much as you love India, you could never have loved an Indian.”
“Not in that way,” her mother amended. “You don’t understand.”
“You are right, and I don’t understand.” Livy got up and began walking about the room again with her peculiar smooth grace. “Jatin is a wonderful doctor, you and Father have said so. He gave up a fine practice with his father in Bombay and came here because he believes in what Father is doing. And Bapu Darya says he will be one of the great men in India. So I don’t understand. And I counted on you, Mother.”
“Oh, dear,” Ruth sighed. She shook her head and bit off the thread from the pillowcase. How could one explain anything to Livy when she already knew everything one was going to say?
There was no need to speak. Livy went out of the room and probably to meet Jatin somewhere. She supposed that in a way she had failed her child, but indeed she could not face what it would mean. She was still a white woman and she could not see her daughter dragged down into the mass of the dark people. Jatin himself could not prevent it and Livy could not lift Jatin up. She, in spite of her love for him, and he, in spite of his love for her, could not keep from sinking. She wished it were not true, it was hard enough to be a Christian among the Indians, who were literal-minded, but it was true and not all the saints could make it different.
She sighed again and let her mind subside gently until at last she was not thinking at all, simply sewing, and breathing to the rhythm of the stitches.
Livy walked down to the banyan tree where the shadows were deepest, her eyes instinctively watchful for snakes, although she was not afraid. The rain had abated in the last half hour until now there were only drifts of mist. She had put on her heaviest cotton sari and drawn the end over her head and Jatin, waiting for her, thought how exactly like an Indian girl she looked as she came toward their usual meeting place. That was something they must face, too, that this meeting place had been discovered and so they must abandon it. But where could they meet? In the clinic they saw each other now always in the presence of others. If her parents approved their marriage, of course they need not hide their meetings, but he had not succeeded in overcoming his natural and secret despondency. He was an Indian, however high he rose in his profession, and only because her father was so sincere a Christian could he find the conviction of human equality for which his pride hungered more than ever he had hungered for food. To Mr. MacArd he owed everything, and he felt guilty of ingratitude, because now he had fallen in love with Livy. Yet how could he help it when he discovered that she could love him? He had taken it as play, as nonsense, the young girl home from boarding school, and he was already twenty-six years old, a graduate doctor at the Vhai hospital. But he had begun to dream nevertheless, and when her eyes met his with increased meaning and wonder, how could he keep from loving her?
“How dark it is,” she said, coming into the shadow where he stood. “It must be later than I thought.”