1.02.16. Book 2: Ch 16. Running Water

CHAPTER XVI

WHAT does running water do for one? I do not know. It does different things at different times. Be tired, be disturbed in mind, feel for the moment out of harmony with your forest world, and it flows over you, whispers little unrepeatable things to you, cools certain little unsuitable heats, "gentles" you all over. For of one thing I am very sure, it knows the way into the inward parts of its lovers, and it knows how to soothe till all is comforted and composed.

We call our creamy sweet-scented flower which grows in water-lands, Meadow-sweet. River­-sweet should be the name for this sense of all deliciousness known nowhere but by running water.

Two days ago when Lavana, Kumarie, and Mala were coming up attended by a trusty servant, they saw to their surprise, squatting by the River of Rest, which is our name for the river when it first meets us in the hot lower jungle, a large man in a shiny black coat, sure sign of a certain profession much affected in India.

Now Indian etiquette demanded that he of the coat should be blind to our girls, and they to him. They were passing on when he called after them, "Ho you, I am coming to see your Amma. Will she give me milk and bread? I cannot eat your other food, but I can eat that and shall require it. Also will she put me and my servants up? I shall require that also." But the girls had seen what had hurt them sorely. Just as they came up, the large man’s servant, riding a poor little hack pony which he was thrashing mercilessly, had passed them. They heard as they passed the reason for the thrashing. The pony had spilled his master on the path; or in other words, his master being loosely put together had slipped off, and the pony had not raised so much as a hoof to help him. Therefore he was to be beaten all the way down the hill, whence the servant was to hasten to fetch a dhooley and carriers so that the aggrieved one might be carried up in comfort.

Also the girls knew their manners, and were not going to forget them, so with the briefest word in Tamil they went on. "Can you not speak English to me?" he called after them. They took no notice, beyond another quiet word in Tamil. Then he tackled the servant. "Hai! Has your mistress soda water? Will she arrange for my convenience when I come up?" The poor man was nervous. Brahmanhood was oozing out of every inch of the large man, and he, the servant, was as dust under his feet; so he fumbled out that as I had a house it might be all would be as was desired (forgetting there were already twenty in it), but as to soda water, he was unable to promise, there being un­fortunately none. When the little party reached the house and I heard all this, I sent down to assure the Brahman he had made a mistake. We were not in a position to offer either to him or his the hospitality he de­manded. And I hoped that was the last we should hear of him; for to open the gates of our ravine to such would be to end all privacy, and even safety for the girls and the children. But no, on a peaceful Sunday morning, in the midst of the Sabbath quiet, like a stone falling plump into a clear still pool, the Brahman dropped upon us. The first I knew of it was the sound of a scramble down the steep path leading to my tree and the cook-bay’s rather startled voice announcing, "A Brahman has come to see you, and with him many men, and he himself is very fat." And I knew it must be the same.

"Ask him to come here."

"Here?" There was much doubt in the boy’s voice; the great of the earth are usually entertained in bungalows.

"Yes, here." For I knew Preena and Leela were in the house at that moment, and thought it as well to let it be clearly understood it was a woman’s house.

Presently there was the sound of small stones rolling excitedly down the path, and a good deal of puffing, and then the large smiling face of the gentleman in black broke through the surprised green of the bushes, and rounded the grey rocks. Never before had they seen such as he.

He dropped heavily on the other stone under my tree, and the tree looked down and wondered. He did not look at it, saw nothing to look at, did not hear the river’s music, only his own weary grunts as he settled himself on that uncomfortable stone, and he visibly mildly marvelled at the taste of the mad English who, some of them at least, prefer stones and wild woods to chairs and re­spectable houses. And the birds, their feelings ruffled, flew away.

I could not either sincerely or wisely receive him with any particular warmth. I had the mishandled pony in mind, and the girls so impolitely accosted in the wood. Also by coming in this unannounced way he had again broken his own country’s rules. It is well known that we of Dohnavur follow Indian customs in so far as they are good and possible; our Indian dress, little simple sign of our kinship with the women of India, would be a mere farce and wholly useless, and even hindering, if we ignored the customs of women. Alone as we are, a company of women in the midst of a large Hindu population, we have over and over again proved the helpfulness of a careful observance. All this the Brahman knew. Finally it was our holy day, which fact he also knew, and he knew our habits. For not one single thing connected with the ordering of our lives is unknown to the people about us. We live in glass houses in India.

I reminded him, then, of the laws he had trans­gressed, and he apologised till the oil flowed; then observed that the day was hot and he was thirsty.

Now a big, luscious, middle-aged man without a firm line anywhere in him, and self-indulgence written allover him, is not a tender plant. So, taking it for granted that of course he could not drink of our drinks or out of our vessels, I suggested the river.

"Shall I drink of it?" was his answer as amazed he turned his great face upon me. "I of it," and feeling it was really too much to ask the river to allow him, I offered milk if he did not mind the inevitable contamination. There was no one to see, no one that is who counted, and so he condescended, and I asked the cook-boy who had lingered politely to bring a cup of milk.

"Stand aside!" was the word to the boy, when he returned with the milk. "Stand aside!" This in the tone a badly brought up hippopotamus might conceivably use in addressing vermin; and the boy, feeling his worminess, retired hastily. Then the Brahman, making a long arm, gingerly accepted the milk, poured it down his throat without touching the cup, in the clever Indian fashion, and with a lordly, "Here, take it," dropped it neatly into the humbly outstretched hand. "Rama!" he exclaimed with a deep sigh as he did it. Perhaps he was apologising. And I sat still on my stone, and said all sorts of reproving things to myself; for once the large man had accepted our milk he had become in away our guest, and I did not like to dislike him. But it was no good. I could only think of a text in the Apocrypha: "0 how desirable are the works of the Lord,’-and how undesirable this man’s. And now he proceeded to business, or rather attempted to do so, but found to his consternation that our laws regarding our holy day were as inflexible as his own (not that he would have minded talking business on his, but other things would be taboo). And he tried to skate over the awkwardness by a few well-chosen compliments and failed; and he tried to sail round it, and failed, and at last desisted, feeling sick.

I knew his business before he began. Briefly it was a quarrel which had gone to the law courts, over "who was to bow to whom," which, that is, of the two disputants was the greater religious celebrity. Three times I had been approached about it and three times had refused to touch it. It concerned Government, whose action it was hoped might be influenced by "a little letter" attesting to the virtues of the one who claimed to be chief holiest. "Unlike many others," as a note written to me by a local official assured me, "he is a man learned and cultured, and full of public charities " (a word intended delicately to hint at much), "and occupies a position so unique, that," etc., etc. In vain had I tried to explain to the three previous messengers that Government minded its own business and missionaries theirs; that it would not be in the least gratified to receive the "little letter," would in fact be more annoyed than otherwise; that not knowing the one who claimed the pre-eminence I could say nothing about him, it not being our way to write guarantees to unknown qualities; and that altogether, I could do nothing.

After a contemplative pause, the large man tried what the wise Tamil calls "face-praise." Now this is impossible anywhere, but in the forest it was quite dreadful. I felt ashamed for my tree to hear it, and the clean, clean river; so with what must have seemed the most barbaric lack of apprecia­tion of the good things of life I cut it short, and tried to reach what might still remain of the soul of the man, only to be interrupted by those oiled tones, as the one matter that mattered was slipped in again under a new skin.

Three times out of a possible three hundred have I broken my rule of refusing these coveted "little letters," and the last of the three was fresh in my mind and stiffened my present "No." The applicant, brought by a leading Christian, was a young man, a Mohammedan, from a near town, and his argument, "Madam, having proceeded to Failed B.A." (quite a good degree here) "in Govern­ment college, I think it least thing Government can do is to give me billet" struck me as so reasonable that I weakly yielded; for if a paternal Government will persist in educating to Failed B.A. it hardly seems fair to turn the product on to a cold world which by that time may not know what to do with it. So I wrote that though I did not personally know this lad, he came of good folk, his people being the most respectable in the village-a fact; and not affected by the discovery made a week later, that at that very hour the aforesaid family was giving cover to a man wanted by the police for the trifling sin of slaying another, the slayer of course being a relative. My note remained quite true: but some­how I felt it a mistake. So, reinforced by this and other strong reasons, I held out under that most wearisome application, oiled conversation, impossible without churlishness to end.

Now I knew that the man and his powerful clique could greatly hinder us in our search for children, one word from a similarly offended man had years ago closed hundreds of houses, and inside those houses were children in peril; so all through this interview, had been the little, quiet appeal to a Greater than he, "Suffer him not to hurt us: let not a single child perish because of this." One does not live for long in India, the real India un­known to dwellers in that other more westernised India which is the shell of the real, without learning much of possibilities in such connections. And the eyes that watched me across the stone though apparently seeing nothing, saw all, knew what I knew might be. At last convinced that his really toilsome and expensive journey had been in vain the poor Brahman ponderously arose. His farewells were effusive, and his face never lost its smiling creases, but he had less control over his back, and as he stumbled up the path (how he must have hated that steep little path) the whole of him was just one mass of disgust. And as he went, all in me was much distressed; for to the foolish stuff used in the making of some of us, to say "No" to any breathing thing is an uncomfortable experience, and I felt rude all over. Then, too, who could care for India without thinking troubled thoughts as the vision arose of such as this man anywhere near the helm of events before the great lesson had been learned that to rule means to serve. And who can say that this lesson has been learned? Not that all who seek that power are like this one.

There are of course some of very different calibre, but they are exceptional. What wonder then that the peasants of India, and the great mass of the people generally, dread the day when the white hand goes. Never does a Government official come to our bungalow at Dohnavur but dozens of the surrounding villagers, scenting out the blessed fact, come beseeching us to let them have speech with him. "He will be just," is their one word. "He will do justice." And no sooner has the motor reeled out of our drive on to the village street, than we see it stop, for the best sort of Englishman is the kindest-hearted man on earth, and we know a petition is being thrust before his eyes, maybe false but as likely true, by some poor wretch who has wasted half his substance, and plunged his posterity in debt to get justice in one or in fifty native law courts. If only the white man will give it five solid minutes’ con­sideration, he believes somehow it will prosper in the end. And finally, when I thought of that man as he once was, a nice, sincere baby in his hammock, and then grievingly of what man has made of man, I felt it was worth everything to give our God the chance to make something very different. And I rejoiced in the thought of the little lads now in the Dohnavur nursery, boys of the selfsame stock, the kind so hard to win, and of whom so few have been won after the formative influences of life have had time to play upon them. But the Brahman had left a feeling behind him, it took the river an hour or more to wash that greasy ­feeling off. I felt as if I ought to apologise to the clean good world about me for this unlovely intrusion of mine. For after all his world is mine, trying though it be to admit it, and the call to the forest to which thousands of little voices within respond so eagerly is, rightly heard, a call to come apart awhile in order to return the keener to that other world where the need is, because there only is the sin.

Two happy butterflies are honeymooning in the still blue air above the river, the birds have come back, all the green leaves of all the green trees are busy about their work and I am at peace with my forest world, forgiven for being a human, taken into its heart again, and it is the river’s doing, even now it is murmuring words of quietness, singing its unforgettable songs, washing the last little worrying dust off me. 0 praised be the Maker of all running waters, for every caressing way in them, and praised be the kindness that makes such places as this in the world, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. Of the Self-same Stock Now therefore I bow the knee of mine heart.­ The Prayer of Manasses.