The very air was trembling with intensity. Jehar’s grave voice quivered, he lifted his magnificent head, he closed his eyes, and went into silent prayer.
And Ted, too, was compelled to silence. He could not pray, but he sat immobile, not thinking, not feeling. With his whole will he resisted the magnetism of Jehar. He refused to be compelled.
It was over in a moment. Jehar opened his eyes and gave his natural vivid smile. He rose. “I am glad that you told me yourself. Others will tell me and I shall tell them that I know all, and that whatever you do is according to your conscience. And now, Ted, dear brother, I shall go on my way.”
“Stay with us tonight, Jehar.” He made the invitation, but he did not urge it. He felt suddenly very weary and for some reason depressed. Usually Jehar lifted up his spirit but tonight Jehar could not reach his heart.
“I cannot, Ted,” Jehar replied. “I am expected tomorrow morning some thirty miles south of Vhai and I shall walk through the night.”
They clasped hands again and Jehar put his left hand over their clasped hands.
“Come back,” he said. “At least come back to India.”
“Of course,” Ted said.
Jehar said no more. He stepped back, and looking into Ted’s eyes, held his upraised hands together, palm to palm, in the old Indian greeting and farewell. “I see God in you,” the gesture said.
Ted bowed his head and stood watching half-wistfully the tall figure walking barefoot toward the south.
And after Jehar had gone, he remembered. Why had Jehar said India and not Vhai?
On the last day, Ted called Jatin to him.
“Jatin,” he said, “I leave you in charge of the compound.
You will keep the medical work going and I have sent for a young man from Poona for the schools. Jehar will pass by now and again and hold the church together. You will not miss me too much.”
“We shall miss you,” Jatin said.
He stood before Ted wearing his hospital gown, tall and steadfast, his arms folded.
“Sit down,” Ted said.
Jatin sat down. Whatever his duty was he would not tell of the seven nights. They would be hidden in his memory, deep as jewels in a cave beneath the sea. Life would flow over them, but no one would know.
“I wish to thank you,” Ted said. “You have been very faithful to me. Livy is young and you might have stirred her emotions to the point of no control. Instead you have been kind and strong. You have made her feel that her childish preference for you is to be forgotten. I am grateful for this and yet I feel I should make some sort of apology, for I discern in the whole matter a fault in myself. I say that Livy is too young, and indeed she is, but if I am honest with myself as I wish to be, I know that I — that there is more than this reason for parting you.” So much Jehar had worked in him.
“Please go no further, Mr. MacArd,” Jatin said. “I understand. It is natural for parents to feel that their children should marry within their own kind. Indeed, it may be this is right. At any rate, it is not my wish to insist against you. It is karma between your daughter and me. We were fated to love one another. We are fated by our birth never to marry. I know this and I accept it.”
“I must say more,” Ted insisted. “I am a Christian, Jatin, and it may be that as a Christian I should not have such feelings. I thought I had yielded my life to my God, and yet, perhaps, I have not.”
Jatin smiled. “I would not wish to accept Livy as a sacrifice to your religion.”
Ted could not smile. “It is not Livy, it is I myself. I should perhaps be willing to carry the meaning of love to its ultimate. The very essence of Christian love leads us to the ultimate. I feel a failure in myself. I am not ready to face the ultimate nor to accept it.”
He was surprised by the warmth in Jatin’s face. “Dear sir,” Jatin said impulsively. “Please do not feel you are at fault. The love of which you speak is not only Christian, it is human, and it cannot be forced. Livy is able to feel it, but then she has been born a generation after you. I feel it, though I am not a Christian, but then I have been born a generation after my father. I shall not marry Livy. Sir, I promise you that — it is not within my fate. Livy knows this also. But some day when Livy is married to a man of her own kind, if her child wishes to do what we have wished, then she will allow it. Time and the generations work together with fate, sir, and this is true. This is what I believe.”
“You make me feel small,” Ted said, and he was much troubled.
“Then I do wrong,” Jatin replied.
He rose to his feet. “Let us speak no more and think no more of this matter. What has been cannot be changed, and what is to be has been decided upon.”
That night Livy came to him for the last time and that night he did not take her to his bed. Instead they talked long, in whispers, clinging to one another and at last he spoke his fear.
“If there should be a child, Livy?”
“Oh, I hope there is a child!” she cried.
“No, Livy, I hope there is not. But if there is, you must not keep him.”
“I will keep him, Jatin.”
“No, I forbid it. I cannot live in peace if you are burdened with a child and I cannot share the burden with you.”
“But what should I do?”
“Give him away to someone else. He would be dark, like me. The darkness of our people stains the blood, Livy. Give him to the dark people in your country.”
“But our child would not be a Negro, Jatin,” she cried, shocked at his command.
“Hush—” he put his hand on her mouth. “Let him grow up belonging to them, since he could not belong to us. But perhaps he will never be born and that would be best, for you must be free of me, and I must be free of you, and our burden must not be laid upon a child. This is our fate and so it must be. Yet all that there can be we have had.”
He held her at the last, knowing that only minutes remained, and then he let her go. She clung to him but he pushed her gently from him toward the door.
“Now is the end,” he whispered. “It is over, and we have had everything and it shall not be taken from us. Good-by, Livy, good-by!”
He locked the door and stood, hearing her lean against it and sob. He wept then, but he did not yield and at last he heard her go away.
XIX
THE SHIP PULLED AWAY from the dock and Ted watched the receding shores of Bombay. The last light of sunset was falling from the west upon the green heights of Malabar Hill. A tall clock tower caught the final ray and shone out the hour, and upon the street nearest the shore the colors of the garments that people wore flashed into sudden brightness, amid which the robes of Parsee priests were shining white.
He had a sense of leave-taking that was foreboding in its finality. Would he never see those shores again? Was he leaving India as his father had done, without knowing it? Was something changed in him, some virtue gone? He did not know.
He felt a touch upon his arm and turning his head he saw Ruth at his side. Again, as so often, he saw her apart from himself, a sturdy apple-cheeked woman, neat always and now unfamiliar in a blue serge tailored suit.
“Where is Livy?” he asked involuntarily.
“Downstairs unpacking,” she said. She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.
“Well, we have got her safely away from India,” he said. The strip of water between ship and shore was widening. Twenty feet, twenty-five and soon fifty, and then the miles would mount.
“I suppose so,” Ruth said.