I had now given up all hope of returning to India in the near future.
I had promised my wife that I would return home within a year. The
year was gone without any prospect of my return, so I decided to
send for her and the children.
On the boat bringing them to South Africa, Ramdas, my third son,
broke his arm while playing with the ship's captain. The captain
looked after him well and had him attended to by the ship's doctor.
Ramdas landed with his hand in a sling. The doctor had advised that,
as soon as we reached home, the wound should be dressed by a
qualified doctor. But this was the time when I was full of faith in
my experiments in earth treatment. I had even succeeded in
persuading some of my clients who had faith in my quackery to try
the earth and water treatment.
What then was I to do for Ramdas? He was just eight years old. I
asked him if he would mind my dressing his wound. With a smile he
said he did not mind at all. It was not possible for him at that age
to decide what was the best thing for him, but he knew very well the
distinction between quackery and proper medical treatment. And he
knew my habit of home treatment and had faith enough to trust
himself to me. In fear and trembling I undid the bandage, washed the
wound, applied a clean earth poultice and tied the arm up again.
This sort of dressing went on daily for about a month until the
wound was completely healed. There was no hitch, and the wound took
no more time to heal than the ship's doctor had said it would under
the usual treatment.
This and other experiments enhanced my faith in such household
remedies, and I now proceeded with them with more self-confidence. I
widened the sphere of their application, trying the earth and water
and fasting treatment in cases of wounds, fevers, dyspepsia,
jaundice and other complaints, with success on most occasions. But
nowadays I have not the confidence I had in South Africa, and
experience has even shown that these experiments involve obvious
risks.
The reference here, therefore, to these experiments is not meant to
demonstrate their success. I cannot claim complete success for any
experiment. Even medical men can make no such claim for their
experiments. My object is only to show that he who would go in for
novel experiments must begin with himself. That leads to a quicker
discovery of truth, and God always protects the honest experimenter.
The risks involved in experiments in cultivating intimate contacts
with Europeans were as grave as those in the nature cure
experiments. Only those risks were of a different kind. But in
cultivating those contacts I never so much as thought of the risks.
I invited Polak to come and stay with me, and we began to live like
blood brothers. The lady who was soon to be Mrs. Polak and he had
been engaged for some years, but the marriage had been postponed for
a propitious time. I have an impression that Polak wanted to put
some money by before he settled down to a married life. He knew
Ruskin much better than I, but his Western surroundings were a bar
against his translating Ruskin's teaching immediately into practice.
But I pleaded with him: 'When there is a heart union, as in your
case, it is hardly right to postpone marriage merely for financial
considerations. If poverty is a bar, poor men can never marry. And
then you are now staying with me. There is no question of household
expenses. I think you should get married as soon as possible.' As I
have said in a previous chapter, I had never to argue a thing twice
with Polak. He appreciated the force of my argument, and immediately
opened correspondence on the subject with Mrs. Polak, who was then
in England. She gladly accepted the proposal and in a few months
reached Johannesburg. Any expense over the wedding was out of the
question, not even a special dress was thought necessary. They
needed no religious rites to seal the bond. Mrs. Polak was a
Christian by birth and Polak a Jew. Their common religion was the
religion of ethics.
I may mention in passing an amusing incident in connection with this
wedding. The Registrar of European marriages in the Transvaal could
not register between black or coloured people. In the wedding in
question, I acted as the best man. Not that we could not have got a
European friend for the purpose, but Polak would not brook the
suggestion. So we three went to the Registrar of marriages. How
could he be sure that the parties to a marriage in which I acted as
the best man would be whites? He proposed to postpone registration
pending inquiries. The next day was a Sunday. The day following was
New Year's Day, a public holiday. To postpone the date of a solemnly
arranged wedding on such a flimsy pretext was more than one could
put up with. I knew the Chief Magistrate, who was head of the
Registration Department. So I appeared before him with the couple.
He laughed and gave me a note to the Registrar and the marriage was
duly registered.
Up to now the Europeans living with us had been more or less known
to me before. But now an English lady who was an utter stranger to
us entered the family. I do not remember our ever having had a
difference with the newly married couple, but even if Mrs. Polak and
my wife had some unpleasant experiences, they would have been no more
than what happens in the best-regulated homogeneous families. And let
it be remembered that mine would be considered an essentially
heterogeneous family, where people of all kinds and temperaments
were freely admitted. When we come to think of it, the distinction
between heterogeneous and homogeneous is discovered to be merely
imaginary. We are all one family.
I had better celebrate West's wedding also in this chapter. At this
stage of my life, my ideas about brahmacharya had not fully
matured, and so I was interesting myself in getting all my bachelor
friends married. When, in due course, West made a pilgrimage to Louth
to see his parents, I advised him to return married if
possible. Phoenix was the common home, and as we were all supposed
to have become farmers, we were not afraid of marriage and its usual
consequences. West returned with Mrs. West, a beautiful young lady
from Leicester. She came of a family of shoemakers working in a
Leicester factory. I have called her beautiful, because it was her
moral beauty that at once attracted me. True beauty after all
consists in purity of heart. With Mr. West had come his
mother-in-law too. The old lady is still alive. She put us all to
shame by her industry and her buoyant, cheerful nature.
In the same way as I persuaded these European friends to marry, I
encouraged the Indian friends to send for their families from home.
Phoenix thus developed into a little village, half a dozen families
having come and settled and begun to increase there.