“And there are so many things I want to tell you of myself. I want to tell you all the story of my life; of my falling and rising; of my love for you; and of that mother of yours who lives far down in Virginia in the cabin by the wood. Oh, Matthew, you have a wonderful mother. Have you seen her hands? Have you seen the gnarled and knotted glory of her hands?” And then slowly with wide eyes: “Your mother is Kali, the Black One; wife of Siva, Mother of the World!”
II
Matthew was talking in the darkness as they lay together closely entwined in each other’s arms.
“You will tell me, dear one, all about yourself? How came you here, masquerading as a trade union leader?”
“It must be a long, long story, Matthew—a Thousand Nights and a Night?”
“So short a tale? Talk on, Scheherazade!”
So Kautilya whispered, nestling in his arms:
“But first, Matthew, sing me that Song of Emancipation—sing that Call of God, ‘Go down, Moses!’ I believe, though I did not then know it—I believe I began to love you that night.”
Matthew sang. Kautilya whispered:
“When you left me and went to jail, I seemed first to awake to real life. From clouds I came suddenly down to earth. I knew the fault was mine and the sacrifice yours. I left the country according to my promise to the government. But it was easy to engineer my quick return from London in a Cunard second cabin, without my title or real name.
“And then came what I shall always know to have been the greatest thing in my life. I saw your mother. No faith nor religion, Matthew, ever dies. I am of the clan and land that gave Gotama, the Buddha, to the world. I know that out of the soul of Brahma come little separations of his perfect and ineffable self and they appear again and again in higher and higher manifestations, as eternal life flows on. And when I saw that old mother of yours standing in the blue shadows of twilight with flowers, cotton, and corn about her, I knew that I was looking upon one of the ancient prophets of India and that she was to lead me out of the depths in which I found myself and up to the atonement for which I yearned. So I started with her upon that path of seven years which I calculated would be, in all likelihood, the measure of your possible imprisonment. We talked it all out together. We prayed to God, hers and mine, and out of her ancient lore she did the sacrifice of flame and blood which was the ceremony of my own great fathers and which came down to her from Shango of Western Africa.
“You had stepped down into menial service at my request—you who knew how hard and dreadful it was. It was now my turn to step down to the bottom of the world and see it for myself. So I put aside my silken garments and cut my hair, and, selling my jewels, I started out on the long path which should lead to you. I did not write you. Why did I need to? You were myself, I knew. But I sent others, who kept watch over you and sent me news.
“First, I went as a servant girl into the family of a Richmond engineer.”
Matthew started abruptly, but Kautilya nestled closer to him and watched him with soft eyes.
“It was difficult,” she said, “but necessary. I had known, all my life, service, but not servants. I had not been able to imagine what it meant to be a servant. Most of my life I had not dreamed that it meant anything; that servants meant anything to themselves. But now I served. I made beds, I swept, I brought food to the table, sometimes I helped cook it. I hated to clean kitchens amid dirt and heat, and I worked long hours; but at night I slept happily, dear, by the very ache of the new muscles and nerves which my body revealed.
“Then came the thing of which your mother had warned me, but which somehow I did not sense or see coming, until in the blackness of the night suddenly I knew that someone was moving in my room; that someone had entered my unlocked door.”
Matthew arose suddenly and paced the floor. Then he came and sat down by the couch and held both her hands.
“Go on,” he said.
“I sat up tense and alert and held in my hand the long, light dagger with its curved handle and curious chasing; a dagger which the grandfathers of my grandfather had handed down to me. That night, Matthew, I was near murder, but the white man, my employer, slipped as I lunged, and the dagger caught only the end of his left eye and came down clean across cheek, mouth, and chin, one inch from the great jugular vein, just as the mistress with her electric torch came in.
“Instead of arrest which I thought I surely faced, the man was hurried out and off and the woman came to me in the still morning, worn and pale, and said, ‘I thank you. This is perhaps the lesson he needed.’
“She paid me my little wage and I walked away.”
“But, Kautilya, why, why did you go through all this? What possible good could it do?”
“Matthew, it was written. I went to Petersburg and worked in a tobacco factory, sitting cramped at a long bench, stripping the soft fragrant tobacco leaf from those rough stems. It was not in itself hard work, but the close air, the cramped position, the endless monotony, made me at times want to scream. And there were the people about me: some good and broken; some harsh, hard, and
