“I guess there isn’t a couple just like them,” he replied. “But I believe they will suit each other. Anyway, they know India and what they have to cope with.”
“What they have to cope with,” Mrs. Fordham said with some spirit, “is each other.”
Mr. Fordham avoided this and looked at his watch. “It’s time for me to get out to the west chapel. I have to preach there this afternoon, wedding or no wedding, and I am taking a load of tracts.”
“Ruthie, I want to say something to you.”
It was the middle of the afternoon of their wedding day and the train was rocking along in the hot dust.
“Do,” Ruthie replied. She opened her eyes and yawned. “I’m ashamed that I went to sleep, but I usually do sleep in the afternoon.”
They had lunched on the train, a poor imitation of a wretched English meal. After it they had returned to their own compartment and she had placed herself compactly upon one of the wooden benches, her cloth handbag under her head for a pillow, and had slept for two hours. He was amazed, and when she woke he remarked that had he known she wished to sleep he would have told his servant, Baj, now their servant, to open the bedding for her so that she might have been comfortable. To this she had made no reply but he saw her cheeks flush a very pretty dark pink, and he knew the time had come to say what he had to say.
“We haven’t had much time for talk,” he went on. “But there is plenty of time ahead, and so we needn’t hurry things.”
He had done much thinking in the days before his marriage and he had prayed more than usual for wisdom and self-control and the fruit of prayer was that he had made up his mind he would not take Ruthie in a hasty carnal fashion. They must be friends before they became lovers. Only thus could he respect himself and her, but mostly himself, because it was necessary for him, and he feared that she was so soft, so yielding, so childish, that she would do whatever he said, without knowing his deepest necessity, which was not of the flesh, but the spirit.
“Tell me what you mean,” she said. “You needn’t be afraid of me. I’m not a bit shy. Heavens, I guess I couldn’t grow up in India and see all I’ve seen and hear all I’ve heard and still be the least shy.”
He felt relieved by her frankness.
“I will say what I have in mind,” he replied, “and yet I want you to understand at the same time why I have made the decision.”
“Decision?” she repeated, her pansy eyes opening wide at him.
“I am a normal man, I suppose,” he said with plenty of his own shyness now. “It would be easy enough for me just to—”
“I know,” she said, “go on, please.”
“I would like to — to wait until it means something more to us than just the — flesh,” he said. “I can put it in a verse of the Scripture, perhaps. ‘That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us.’ I think our marriage is going to be a good thing, Ruthie, but I want to keep it in the Holy Spirit, and spirit must come first.”
She pondered. “Hasn’t it come in you?”
“Not yet,” he replied. This was very hard. “I feel the flesh, but not the spirit.”
“I feel the flesh, too,” she said rather sadly. “And I wouldn’t like to wait too long, because, honestly, I want a baby, Ted, just as soon as possible. I would like to have a lot of children.”
He stared at her. He had not thought of a baby, but of course she had. His motherless life had not taught him to think of children, and so he had thought only of himself, and his soul.
But she was not thinking of herself, she simply wanted a baby, and that, after all, was the purpose of marriage. The people of Vhai were right. They married their sons and daughters to each other so that there might be children born, but he had been making of marriage a complexity entirely his own, of spirit and sinful flesh.
He laughed suddenly. Ruthie was right and he was wrong and there was no reason why she should not have children as soon as she wanted them. Why should he prudishly deny her children because he wanted to test the quality of his soul?
“What is making you laugh?” she inquired.
The heat of the train had forced little rills of sweat down the sides of her cheeks and her curls were damp about her forehead. The shaking car had scattered dust from its cracks and this mingled with her sweat to make delicate lines of mud.
“I wonder if my face is as dirty as yours,” he said gaily. “Come here and let me wipe it off.”
So she came to his side where he sat, and he blessed the solitude of English trains which locked them alone in a compartment together until they reached the next station, three hours away.
“It’s not dirt,” she protested, “just earth blown off the fields.”
He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the stains away, tenderness mounting in him. Her brown eyes were lovely, deep and soft, the lashes thick and dark, and her face was really like a pansy, just as he had thought when he first saw her. His heart began to beat hard and his breath quickened. This was not love, of course, but love would come. He could not possibly feel all this without its ending in love. She had small richly convoluted ears set close to her head, and a pretty neck. He glanced down and saw the rise of her breasts, where her frock opened, then hastily looked upward and caught the full pleading look of her eyes.
She said in her honest fashion, “You haven’t kissed me — did you mean not to do that, too?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered helplessly, “I don’t know just what I do mean.”
He looked at her lips now, parted and fresh, her small teeth white between, and suddenly he bent his head.
Part IV
XVI
“LIVY, I’M SCARED TO tell your father,” Ruth said. She looked at the dark and beautiful girl who was their eldest child. They should have sent Livy home to school in Ohio long ago, but they had let her stay on even after the three boys went, who were younger. She had begged to stay because she said she had no friends in America.
“You’ll soon make friends,” her father had said.
“But here I have them already,” Livy had replied too quickly.
They should have sent her anyway, Ruth thought, gazing at Livy with quiet troubled eyes. Ten was the oldest you ought to keep them and Livy was sixteen. They had sent her to an English boarding school last year, and she was back in Vhai again for her long vacation. She had changed too much in the year, or maybe they had not noticed before how much she had grown. Girls grew up fast in this hot climate. Livy was a woman, slender but full-breasted, and her face had lost its childish curves. She looked like the picture of Ted’s mother.
“I’m not frightened of Father,” Livy said. She spoke with a soft English accent which she had learned from her schoolmates, and which she chose to speak.
She was a quiet girl, self-repressed, torn by rebellion against the deep caste feelings of English girls. She believed passionately in her mother’s literal acceptance of all Indians as human beings. Her father accepted too, but Livy was shrewd and intelligent and years ago she had observed that her father and mother were two different people. Her father believed as a Christian that Indians should be treated exactly as white people and he was careful to do this, but here was the difference, he was too careful, while her mother was entirely careless because she could not help treating everybody the same and Livy knew that of the two her mother was the more powerful. Her father could never belong wholly to Vhai, but her mother could and she did belong here as much as the banyan tree with its hundred roots.