Come, My Beloved

  When the guests were seated Ted asked his father, “Shall I tell the Fordhams?”

  “With one explanation,” David replied. “That is, I do not approve.”

  “What is it now?” Mrs. Fordham was as usual lively with curiosity.

  “I am going to live in a village,” Ted said.

  “For good?” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed.

  “I hope so,” Ted said.

  “Mama means is it forever,” Ruthie said, laughing.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But how queer,” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed. “To leave your father, and this lovely house and everything—what for?”

  “I daresay the end of the summer will see him back,” Mr. Fordham said.

  “I don’t know,” Ted said again.

  “A lot of young men think they are going to do something new,” Mr. Fordham said. “I remember when I was young, I had such ideas. But a village can be very uncomfortable.”

  He broke off and they all looked at him. “I don’t know what the authorities will think of it just now,” he went on, answering their looks. “They may take it to be a bit on the revolutionary side, you know.”

  “I shall explain matters to the Viceroy myself,” David said.

  “In that case—” Mr. Fordham stopped.

  “I think it would be fun,” Ruthie said. “I’ve always liked country Indians. They appreciate you and they’re not proud the way the educated ones are. There was an Indian girl in school at home, she was the daughter of a native Prince, one of the very smallest ones, but she wouldn’t speak to me. She looked down on missionaries.”

  Nobody answered this until Mrs. Fordham said piously, “I hope you forgave her, dear.”

  “I let her go her way and I went mine,” Ruthie said.

  “You should have prayed for her,” Mrs. Fordham said.

  “I didn’t bother,” Ruthie replied.

  Ted laughed. He suddenly liked Ruthie, without admiring her in the least. She had grown up lazy, he supposed, as so many missionary children did, waited on by ayahs as he himself had been. The thought occurred to him that he might even now be thinking of a village as an escape, a place of no demands, and, as Ruthie said, of gratitude and appreciation. Gratitude was a habit-forming drug, he had seen white men who needed more and more of it to keep them self-satisfied until they became ridiculous and pompous with false righteousness.

  “We must go home,” Mr. Fordham said. “The gentlemen want to finish their dinner.”

  “Hark,” Ruthie exclaimed. Her eyes widened, listening, and they all listened. Far off they heard the howl of rising wind, it came nearer with a rush, and then they heard the splashes of rain from the purpling sky. The monsoon had come.

  “Run for it,” Mr. Fordham shouted. They ran out of the open door, and Ted stood watching them. Mr. Fordham sprinted ahead, Mrs. Fordham lifted her skirt over her head, letting her white petticoat flutter in the wind, but Ruthie did not hurry at all. She walked slowly, her face lifted to catch the full force of the rain, and she spread her plump little hands palms upward. The wind snatched the curly strands of her hair and pulled at the knot at her neck until it fell upon her shoulders and the rain whipped her cheeks. She was not afraid, and that, too, Ted liked.

  “I admire Ted,” Agnes Linlay wrote in her upright large handwriting, after a suitable number of weeks had passed. “At the same time I quite see how impossible it is to accomplish anything by what he is doing. Believe me, Dr. MacArd, I feel honored by your confidence in me, but Ted and I did not come to an understanding, I might almost say it was quite the contrary, and that we parted upon disagreement. I have been brought up as an English girl is brought up in India, and I suppose I cannot help my own feelings of proper responsibility. I fear we can only wait for Ted to come to his senses, and meanwhile there is no obligation of any sort between us. If he writes to me, as he says he wishes to do, I shall express my own point of view.”

  A dignified young woman, David thought, exactly what he would like to have had for a daughter-in-law, and exactly what Ted needed for a wife. He wrote a careful reply to her, in his own rather fine tight handwriting, expressing the hope, as he put it, that some day they might meet and talk about Ted, and meanwhile he would appreciate anything she could do to keep her point of view before his son. For his own part, he deeply valued what the British Empire was doing to bring the people of India into a position where they could be independent and take their place in the family of modern nations and he deplored the ingratitude of young intellectuals and their leaders, among whom, he was sorry to say, were Indians whom he considered his old friends.

  He did not tell her that he was feeling lonely since his son had left. For Ted was gone. He had stayed only a day or two after the monsoon broke and in pouring rains he had set out to the northeast for the village of Vhai. There, his first letter had reported, he found the whole countryside a lake, reflecting the clouds when the sun burst through for an hour or two at a time. But Vhai itself was on a low hill, a small flattened mountain, and the earthen streets were not too muddy. He had found a little house and had set up his housekeeping, although so far he had not been able to do anything except let the villagers stare at him, which they were able to do because they did not need to work while the rains fell. He was glad he had learned their language, for he exchanged jokes with them, and nothing seemed to them more of a joke, though they liked it, than that he declared that he had come to learn of them. The whole village was only a cluster of earth-walled houses and in this handful of minute homes every sort of small industry went on, spinning and weaving, pottery making and carpentry and grinding meal. The people were on the verge of starvation, of course, but cheerful now that the rains were generous. There was even a little temple to Ganesh in the village, the little fat elephant-headed god of whom the people were fond because he was innocent and tried to do his best.

  Ted was happy. He was free, the ecstatic gaiety held, and he lived from day to day. The rains would cease in due time, and the lake grow dry and become fields of rice and mustard and beans. He would not visit Poona soon, he wrote his father. He was learning very much, and the people were no longer afraid of him.

  He did not write to Agnes for many months, not until the winds blew cool from the foothills of the Himalayas, and not until his life was established in the mud house, and the routine of his days was clear. In the early morning he rose and taught two hours of school for anyone in Vhai who wanted to read and write. Then his pupils went to work and he set up a small dispensary under the overhang of his thatched roof, and there the sick came to him from an ever widening area, and he healed some, persuaded some he could not heal to go to the nearest hospital and agonized over those who went home to die. The afternoon was spent in arbitrating petty quarrels, with which Vhai was seething, and thus in patient talk and shy advice the day passed and night fell. It was a simple routine, accomplishing much less than he dreamed of for the future, but it was established, and so he could write to Agnes at last.

  “You and I had no chance really to know these people when we were growing up. I wish I could share with you the stories that happen every day here in Vhai, the extraordinary, the sad, the sweet stories of this everyday village life. It is so much more exciting than the life we lived behind our compound walls. Here in the village street, and in the scraps of gardens behind each house, walled with earth for a tiny privacy, I see human life and see it whole. My darling”—and these were his only words of love—“does it offend you that they have put up an image of Jesus now in the temple? But he looks like Jehar, who is a Christian sadhu. Perhaps Jesus did look like that. He stands beside Ganesh, but they have made him tall.”

  Two words in the letter moved her to write to him immediately. “Ted, I cannot let you call me your darling. I do not know how to tell you and so I will just tell you. I have promised to marry your father.”

  No news came to Vhai, no gossip from the outer world, and his father’s letters had given him no warning. He understood
that deep reserve, or perhaps even delicacy, which made it necessary for Agnes to be the one to speak first. Had he lived in the mission house he might have seen the strange disparate friendship growing between her and the man who was his own father. But he had seen nothing. He had lived his joyous life in the village, the joy isolating him for a time, at least, even from the need of love, so that he had not written her sooner. He had to imagine from her letter and his father’s, which now came promptly, and thus he discovered that it was he who had brought them together. They had written letters about him, and then in September his father had gone to Calcutta to see her, distressed indeed because of his own new feelings. His father made it plain that he was distressed.

  “I never thought to put another woman in your mother’s place, but I have been driven by loneliness since you left, and in my loneliness a friendship has developed with Miss Linlay.” This was his father’s scanty explanation.

  Ted did not leave the village for the wedding, and the wedding journey which was to have been to China and Japan was instead to New York. The speechless old man, father and grandfather, was dying.

  David and his young wife reached New York on a fine bright day, when the city was in its brightest beauty. A wind blew from the sea, and the sky was brilliantly clear. He was happy as he had never dreamed of being happy again, the fair-haired English girl at his side was wife and daughter both, he had somehow won her for himself, and pride and complacency filled his heart. He loved her not as he had loved Olivia, but with tender fondness and infrequent passion. Fortunately she too was cool. He had been troubled, before the wedding, lest the long years of celibacy might make him diffident with her, but it was not so. She had delicacy and good breeding, a taste at once understanding and compliant, and there had been no confusion between them. When the marriage was consummated finally, his last loneliness disappeared and with it his slight enduring sense of guilt toward his son. Though she said that she knew now she could never have married a man so young as Ted, though she affirmed her love for him, David had felt guilt until the final act which made her all his own.

  To his old home he took his English wife, and she settled into the rooms which had been his mother’s and he was proud to see how well she liked them and how much at home she was.

  “It might be an old London house,” she said, wandering here and there, looking at everything. The French taffeta and the satins which his mother had chosen a lifetime ago had scarcely faded and were not worn.

  “These stuffs are very fine,” Agnes said. “I love the old materials.”

  He embraced her tenderly, and because she was as shy as he, he pressed her the more warmly to his breast. There was no need here for withdrawal. Olivia demanded but this woman would never make demands and so he need not fear her. His life had fallen into pleasant places. God was good.

  “Go to your father now, dear,” she said reasonably. “I will wait.”

  His father did not know him. He stood beside the massive bed and stared down at a large skeleton, elongated and immovable. The grey eyes were open and saw nothing, the whole effort was for life drawn in with each shallow breath and almost lost when each breath went out.

  The nurse stood by, large and placid. “He can’t last long, poor man,” she sighed. “Any day, any hour now. I’m glad you got here, Dr. MacArd.”

  “Has he asked for me?”

  “He don’t ask for anybody, Dr. MacArd. He’s too busy drawing his breath.”

  “Call me if I am needed. I shall not leave the house.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He tiptoed out again and went back to the sunlit rooms where Agnes waited.

  “I don’t want you to see him as he is now, dear,” he said. She lay on the chaise longue where his mother used to lie, the satin cover drawn up and a book in her hand. She put down the book and he took her hand.

  “It can’t last but a few hours, at most a day or so. Then when he is at peace—”

  “Thank you, dear,” she said. “It’s very thoughtful of you.”

  On the fourth day when he went as usual he heard his father’s voice, still strangely strong. He entered and saw that the nurse was at the bedside, pressing the old man’s shoulders.

  “Lie down, do, Mr. MacArd. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “What’s this?” David inquired.

  “He come to, all of a sudden,” the nurse exclaimed.

  From his pillow MacArd stared at his son, his dry lips open. The nurse had cut off the famous beard, and the jutting chin and thick pale mouth were plain.

  “Where’s Olivia?” he demanded.

  He was glad he had not let Agnes come into the room with him. “Father, Olivia died more than twenty years ago.”

  “Olivia dead, too?”

  “Long ago, Father.”

  “Leila,” old MacArd muttered, “Leila, Leila, Leila—”

  “Hush,” the nurse said, “now you are beginning to fret again.”

  The snow-white bushy eyebrows lifted with old fury.

  “Shut up,” the old man bawled. “Shut up, woman!”

  The effort was too much. Upon the wave of wrath he stiffened with sudden amazement, thrust up his naked chin and died.

  “I’d rather like to live here,” Agnes said. The old Victorian house, though surrounded now by skyscrapers and business offices, made her think of London.

  “Then we will some day,” David said. “I have my work to think of still.”

  “Of course,” she said quickly. “I was only imagining. We’ll be happy in India, though I’ll never be a proper missionary’s wife, David. You know that?”

  He stopped himself from saying that he had told Olivia long ago that he did not expect her, either, to be a missionary’s wife.

  “Only be happy,” he said instead. He was relieved that she seemed inclined to be happy in spite of the disconcerting discovery that an American physician had made, that she would be unable to have a child. He had been fearful that he might at this age have young children, a possibility which alarmed him and made him somewhat ashamed. His dignity might be threatened perhaps, certainly in India, if his sexual reawakening were made so manifest. Then she had felt that there should be an examination while they were in a city where the physicians were excellent, and so after the funeral of his father, that notable funeral in St. James Cathedral, where the church had been filled with white-haired men and women in broadcloth and satins, had come this news that there could be no children. Whatever heirs there were to be for the MacArd fortunes, must come from Ted. He did not mind; indeed he was glad. Doubtless Ted would marry. Young men in India inevitably married. A woman would bring Ted out of that village and make him sensible again.

  XV

  IN THE VILLAGE, TED was expecting his first visitor from outside. Darya was freed from jail again, and he was coming to Vhai. While he was in jail he had heard of the lively young white man, American, for what Englishman could do such a thing, who had left his home and gone to Vhai to live like an Indian, though he was a Christian. His father was even a rich man.

  “What is the rich father’s name?” Darya had inquired, guessing who it was.

  “MacArd, Sahib—”

  “Ah,” Darya said, “it was I who told that young man to go to the village.”

  “And he obeyed you,” the new fellow prisoner said, admiring him.

  “Ah,” Darya said, “I have known that young man from the hour he was born.

  So, freed, he went immediately to the village of Vhai and found Ted, his fair skin blackened with the sun and his blue eyes like lamps in the darkness. The village was all astir and agitated with Darya’s coming, whose name was almost as great as Gandhi’s own, and Ted’s glory rose.

  “Now,” Darya said, gazing at the tall young man grown excessively thin on village fare, “you are a true Indian. You might have come from Kashmir, you know, with those blue eyes. Aha, even a dhoti, and very skillfully worn!”

  “Thanks,” Ted grinned. “It’s cooler.”

&
nbsp; The crowd stood to listen and to admire.

  “And this is your house,” Darya went on, gazing at the neat earthen house, now enlarged to two rooms and a small veranda, made of rough wooden posts and covered with thatch. “How do you support yourself?”

  “Still on the old bounty, I fear,” Ted said.

  “Expensive poverty, eh?” Darya said, half teasing. “The sadhu tradition is good, but you do not travel, eh?”

  “I have not yet learned here all that I want to know,” Ted said. He made a sweeping gesture with his hands to include the crowd, and they fell back a few feet and grinned with modesty and shyness.

  “The best of teachers,” Darya declared courteously.

  They went into the little house then and sat down on mats on the earthen floor and they talked. Darya’s tongue was eager to wag after the many months in jail, and Ted was eager to listen to someone his superior, to receive instead of to give. The villagers were kind and good and they taught him much but their words were the words of children, while Darya’s language flowed in Hindustani or Marathi or Gujerati or English, or French or German, whatever language he chose, a dazzling array of tongues, all fluent and acute together.

  “Gandhi is in Yarvada prison,” he began. “He is not well, and I hear there may have to be an operation. If so, he will be freed. Until I can talk with him, I must not plan the next strategy. To resist without violence demands the utmost in wisdom, in attack, in endurance. Violence is simple and easy, it is the sword of the stupid and dull-witted, and it always leaves chaos. To carry on a positive revolution without violence—ah, that is a challenge to intelligence!” Darya spoke with relish, a lively enjoyment upon his lean and vivid face. Prison had sharpened and refined both mind and body and had charged his spirit with compulsive energy.