“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.”
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?”