He rose and hooked the door and then he went into the other room and put out the lamp and in the darkness he came back to her and sat down again. Stroking her hands he stroked up her arms and about her neck, down her cheeks and into her little ears. Then, still in the same desperate silence, he opened the tiny buttons of her short-sleeved vest and he stroked her bare skin, her shoulders, her back, and then at last her breasts. When his hand smoothed the rounded curve of her breasts, she gave a great sigh.
“What now,” he whispered, “what now, Livy?”
She trembled, she put her arms about his neck and leaned her head upon his shoulder, and did not speak a word. He took her silence for reply and he lifted her in his strong dark arms and carried her into the house.
Once he halted at the threshold of his sleeping room. She was murmuring against his breast. “What do you say, Livy?”
“I said I want it to happen — whatever will happen, I want it.”
“But we must keep it secret.”
“I want it!”
This once, he was thinking, he was promising himself, only the once and it was not likely that anyone need know. It was very seldom that anything happened the first time, a virgin carries her own protection, and some risk love must take, only the once, and then, of course, they must part.
He had known it from the first, he had never had any hope, none at all. But hopeless love was the worst, the most terrible, the most enduring, and this would be the end.
Yet whose fault but hers that it was not the end? For it was she who went silent-footed through the darkness again and yet again, the mischievous gods protecting her bare feet from serpents and noxious creatures and there was no end to their love.
She was frightened at her own wickedness but she did not cease it. Here was she, the child of Christian parents, she who knew the Commandments and knew too the meaning of goodness and purity and righteousness, those great swelling words which shone like suns above her and in whose light she had supposed she walked, and yet she came and went by night like any magdalen. She did not for one moment confuse the God of her father and her grandfather, and only less intimately her mother’s God, with those local gods she had seen in the temple, not only here in Vhai, but in the great temples of Poona, Ganesh the elephant-headed and Kali, the evil one who lured human creatures to worship wilfulness and crime. She was no longer a child and she knew what the women in the temples did, and how the priests played god to their virginity. She had been repelled from the dark confusion of such worship, she had been glad of the clear simplicity of her own faith, borrowed from her parents, and yet here she was, no better than any temple virgin and with no excuse for sin.
Night after night she went to Jatin, and now, he too, lost his fear in desperation. Let the villagers whisper and cross their eyes and pretend not to see. His love grew monstrous, possessing him like a disease, inflamed by the certainty that any day would decide the hour that Livy must leave him forever. He did not doubt the end, but he seized each day as it came, and waited for each night.
Eleven days and eleven nights thus passed and her father did not suspect, for had he imagined what happened in the night when he slept behind his mosquito net, could it be imagined that he would not speak? He would snatch Livy away and take her at least as far as Poona, and that would be the end, too.
And Jatin did not know how Livy behaved during the day, how quiet she was, how obedient, how sweet-voiced and yielding to her father’s least wish, and how candidly her gaze met her mother’s doubting eyes.
She played with Sara, she mended and sewed and helped her mother pack the trunks for the journey, she served her father’s guests with little cakes, with slices of melon and with sweetmeats and the guests, looking at her, kept their peace. Some knew and some did not, but soon all would know, and Livy felt their knowing, she saw it in their dark speaking eyes, she heard it in their words, for they greeted her intimately, as one of them, or they greeted her with hostility, but now not only as the daughter of her father. She bore their greetings, however they came, for she could not have drawn herself out of the net into which she had thrown herself, and she knew as well as Jatin did, that there was no hope. There was no hope in him, she knew that now, and so she must accept him as he was and snatch what she could in the shortening hours.
At night she went early to her room, the little room at the end of the house, and she let the ayah wait upon her and see her undressed and bathed and upon her bed. Sometimes she was sure that the ayah knew the pretense, but she did not prove it. Unspoken, the ayah was not responsible, but were the words spoken, she would be compelled to tell Livy’s parents, and so she would not know. So far the secret was clear between them, and neither wanted it more clear. Sometimes actually she went to sleep, and once or twice she slept through until dawn and then it was too late. But seven out of the eleven nights she woke, or she did not sleep, and then she slipped across the grassy paths, feeling beneath her feet the dreadful chance of the night-roaming cobra, but none came near, and then she tapped softly at the door, the back door of Jatin’s house, and instantly he let her in, knowing desperately that he destroyed himself by what he did. And yet he received her, he took her into his arms and there was no delay or dallying. They came together quickly and deeply and they clung to one another briefly, their words strangling with love. Then she went away again.
XVIII
MEANWHILE TED STROVE TO put his domain in order so that when he returned to Vhai there might be no loss. He was grateful for the task which kept him busy day and night, so that he need not face himself in the mirror of his own soul. He could not now decide right from wrong. He must have time to consider, to ponder and to meditate. More here was concerned than that Livy had fallen in love with the nearest young man, who happened to be Jatin. This fact, an experience common, he supposed, to every father, had strange deep roots inside himself. Why did his flesh and his mind rise up against the knowledge that Livy wanted to marry Jatin? He could not answer his own question but he was so disturbed by it that he found himself repelled by the very sight of Livy moving about the house in graceful silence, even while his heart yearned over her. When he had time, on the ship and in America, he would look into the hidden mirror and face himself. Not now, however, not on this soil could it be done. He had to get away but first he must get Livy away so that he could be free from the nagging necessity to know where she was every moment of the day. Only when the ayah came out of her room at night and he knew her safely in bed, could he rest and even then it was no rest, for there was Ruth, his wife, watching him thoughtfully and asking no questions. Oh, she had them, he knew, but she would not ask them now, and he could not risk them. They were pent up in her and he dared not release them, nor did he wish to know what she thought, if she were thinking, as perhaps she was not, for she had an Indian trick of simply allowing a matter to rest inside her mind until in silent growth it took on shape of its own, and then she was voluble and persistent. Let that come on the ship, or in America, when he had Livy safely away.
And he did not know, how could he, that every Indian in the compound watched over Livy and that they shielded her from him by complete silence. When he was gone, they would talk endlessly, but now it was the child they protected, the little Livy who had grown up among them and who was part of them while he was not and never could be. He belonged to the white men, but she had come, a solitary little figure, toward them. Whenever she came to Jatin, she came to them. They longed to stretch out their arms and draw her into themselves, but they waited in silence, to see whether he would take her away. Not a hint did they give of the secret, and part of the shield and the covering was their obedience to Ted, their quick willingness to help him prepare everything for the departure.