"A missionary! Would a missionary come to my house?" he asked in scorn.
Blackmore-Sahib had seen the missionary lady often, for she was one of the very few Europeans in the city, but he never had spoken to her. He knew missionary principles and he felt that he and Nona in her eyes were worse than the Hindus "in their blindness." He had always avoided a missionary's path; now he would not ask for help! Even if he should humble his pride and do so, he felt that no Christian would come to him, for were not he and Nona without the law?
"No, she would not come," he said emphatically.
"Yes, master, she will come. I know she will come. See how ill my mistress is! Hear her moans!" and the faithful ayah wrung her hands in grief. "Oh, let me go to get her."
"Is she a doctor?" he asked. "Does she give medicine?" he went on, trying to make the native woman understand.
"No, she is not a doctor, but she gives medicines," the woman replied enigmatically.
There was no doctor within reach. If this woman could help Nona, had he any right to let his pride keep him from at least asking for her help? Blackmore-Sahib reasoned it out slowly. Although he was sure that she would not come, he must do all that he could to help the sick woman and so he must ask the missionary to come.
"Go!" he said finally to the ayah and as she sped down the road he continued his pacing and his thoughts. His thoughts turned strangely, after the interruption, to his boyhood home and his boyhood days when even a lie, a wrong word, or an unkind deed had hurt him almost as much as his mother. But his mother had died when he was only a lad and after that had come school and then India and—Nona.
The change from the rigid morality of a well-trained boy living under the eye of a law-abiding people, to the moral thoughtlessness and neglect of a man far away from the reign of aught but the law of the conqueror among an inferior people; the change from the conventional obedience to the social customs of a Christian land, to the unconventional disregard of all Christian customs in a heathen land, had come so gradually that Blackmore-Sahib had never before realized how different he was in moral integrity from what he had been in that boyhood home and how different he must be in reality from what his mother had imagined that he would be in her fond dreams about the future. Had India by her enervating climate, by the ease with which she gratifies the sensual side of man's nature, and by the intellectual loneliness in which she makes her foreign rulers live—had India by these means warped his moral sense? Or had his good life in Christian England been a foolish fanaticism and was his life here the true living of a free soul?