They were living in the mission house again where the young woman had been born and had grown up. David MacArd had not yet returned, and privately Mrs. Fordham considered that he had deserted the ranks of the missionaries, although Mr. Fordham, who was less spiritual than she was, had pointed out the advantage of the new Mrs. MacArd being the daughter of a British Government official.
They had been amazed at little old Miss Parker, however. She had suddenly screamed at them both.
“Worshipers of Mammon! That’s what you are! David MacArd never was a missionary and you know he wasn’t! His own glory, that’s all he ever wanted. A humble and a contrite heart, Oh God—”
She suddenly began to sob in loud hoarse snorts, to the consternation of the good Fordhams.
“She’s crazy,” Mrs. Fordham gasped.
“I’m afraid so,” Mr. Fordham agreed.
But he was kind to the sobbing crazed little soul, and a few days later he took her to Bombay himself and put her on a steamer for home. Somewhere in a quiet small asylum in New Hampshire Miss Parker lived out her life, refusing to speak anything but Marathi to her attendants, and even the Fordhams had forgotten her.
“I don’t think you ought to be married before Ted’s father comes back,” Mrs. Fordham now said to Ruthie.
She was conscious of conflict within her heart as she gazed at her pretty daughter whom she did not in the least understand. Ruthie was not at all like herself when she had been young in a small Ohio town. She feared Ruthie was neither religious nor conscientious, and yet Indians loved the girl with adoration, and she could not understand why.
Ruthie did not care to improve anybody. She was gentle and mild, she was kind because it was the easiest way, not with intention of performing good works. She was careless and she did not mind dust and dirt, she was reckless enough to eat all Indian food however spiced and peppered. She had no sense of shame, and while she understood the slightest nuance of caste and never offended anyone, she mingled with Brahmans and untouchables alike though never at the same time. Children clung to her and she treated them with easy love and let them do what they willed, because she did not want to bother. She was at home anywhere, and Mrs. Fordham knew that the ladies in purdah counted all the days between Ruthie’s visits because she gossiped with everyone and told everything and did not know the meaning of the word secret. She carried back to her parents unspeakable tales of life behind high walls where she was a beloved visitor and however horrible the tales she told them all in the clear level childish voice with which she asked for a second serving of sliced mango. She feared no insect or beast and went without a hat in the midday sun if she felt inclined, although her routine was that of an Indian, for she rose early, and she spent the four middle hours of the day asleep, refusing the punkah because it was tedious for the punkah boy to pull the rope. She was not a good teacher in the lower school because she let the girls laugh and talk and she had no conscience about their not learning anything. When a girl fell ill in the foreign dormitories and it was too far for her family to come, that girl always cried for Ruthie, who came and sat beside her and held her hand and told her she need not take the medicines unless she wished, speaking in whatever language the girl best understood. With all this Ruthie did not say her prayers at night, and in many ways Mrs. Fordham felt she could not really be called a missionary. So far as Mrs. Fordham knew, Ruthie never even told anyone about Jesus, and when she pointed out to her daughter the opportunity she was missing, Ruthie said she felt she did not know enough herself.
“But you could learn, Ruthie,” Mrs. Fordham often remonstrated.
“I suppose I could,” Ruthie always said agreeably.
“I don’t believe Dr. MacArd will want Ted to marry me,” Ruthie said now without rancor.
She did not intend to tell anybody that she had first suggested the idea of marriage to that tall and adorable young man with whom she had fallen in love the moment she saw him. There were many things she told to no one, in spite of all she did tell.
“Then we certainly ought to wait,” Mrs. Fordham said in some alarm.
“Why?” Ruthie said in innocence. “We had better get it over with before he comes.”
Mr. Fordham, when the question was put to him, agreed with his daughter, not in order to escape MacArd wrath, but because he was indignant that his daughter might be considered not good enough for anybody.
“We are plain Christian people,” he said, “and we are good enough even for the MacArds.”
Thus it was settled. Ruthie wrote to Ted that she would just as lief get married now, if he were willing, and then they could have a Christmas together in Vhai. The wedding would be small, she said, and she would just as lief not have many white people come to it, and she would ask only her best Indian friends. If he wanted to wait until his father came home, she would wait, but she would just as lief not.
This letter Ted received at the end of a day of unusual exhaustion after his clinic, and doubts beset him. He was probably doing the wrong thing, but the affair had gone too far now to stop. He divined that even in this a subtle India had influenced him, so that marriage seemed not so much a matter of romantic love for two individuals as a convenience in his life. It would be very convenient as well as pleasant to have a sweet-tempered girl busy about his house and managing the details of housekeeping for his comfort. A girl from America, or England, or even from the levels of white society in India, would never live in Vhai, even for love. After all, Ruthie was unique.
These thoughts occupied several hours of the breathless night, when the burning darkness sat on his chest like a hot and furry beast. He slept at last, convinced that Ruthie was his fate.
A pleasant fate, he decided, in the midst of the marriage ceremony, when she stood up beside him in a short white linen dress. She had cut her hair very short and it curled in flat ends close to her head. He looked down on this feathery mass of gold, and saw upon her sunbrowned cheek a soft fruity down. Her lips were red and her brown eyes serious. Mr. Fordham was performing the rites and the university chapel was crowded with staring, lively Indians. None of the English were there, and only a few white missionaries of other sects in Poona. He knew them all from childhood but of their children not many had grown up and come back.
“Do you, Theodore, take this woman—” Mr. Fordham’s voice trembled slightly. He questioned now the wisdom of his performing the ceremony in Dr. MacArd’s absence. But Ruthie had persisted and as usual he had yielded.
“I do,” Ted said almost gaily.
“Do you, Ruth, take this man—” he spoke each word clearly and almost sternly for Ruthie’s ears and she replied with unconcern, “Yes, indeed I do, Father.”
It was over, they walked down the aisle to the wedding march which Mrs. Fordham forced out of the wheezy baby organ, and there was no nonsense about rice. Rice was much too precious to throw about and the Indians would not have understood it. They did not have a reception or any food because castes were too complicating. Ruthie went back to the mission house and put on a thin brown cotton frock for traveling, she bade her parents good-by, pursing her full soft lips to kiss them heartily on each cheek and to hug her ayah, and then she turned to Ted, who was waiting.
“I’m ready, Ted, let’s go.”
They got into a tonga, the driver suggested to his horse that he begin his duty, and thus they left the mission house. Mr. and Mrs. Fordham stood side by side on the porch and watched them out of the gate. When the gate shut they turned to each other.
“Well?” Mr. Fordham asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, hesitating. “I never saw a couple just like them.”