…The quest ended today in a way so simple, so tragic, that I have no need of further search. A letter from Mei-lan, posted this time from Calcutta, tells me of Gerald’s death. She is not in Calcutta. She is still in Peking, in the house there, awaiting, she tells me, the birth of her first child, Gerald’s child. By some means she smuggled the letter out of China and into India. Perhaps a visiting delegation of Indian diplomats contained one who was Gerald’s friend. To him perhaps she gave the letter to hide in his clothing until he could post it from another country.
The letter is short and written in haste. There are blots on the paper — tears perhaps. I will not repeat its words. I want to forget them and I shall destroy the letter. Its message is simply this: Gerald was shot while trying to escape from Peking. She did not know that he planned to escape.
“I think he longed to see you,” she writes. “I think he dreamed to go somehow to India with the Indians.”
He was always watched, of course. They never trusted him. I do not know whether among the servants there was one who betrayed him. He was not good at packing clothes or making practical arrangements. I always did such things for him. And it is possible that he did not trust even his Chinese wife.
“He did tell me nothing,” she writes. “I think he wished no blame to fall on me. I can always say I do not know.”
…Gerald was shot in the back through the left shoulder and just outside his own gate. He got no further than that. It was early afternoon, the sun was shining, he appeared to be returning to his classes at the university. The gateman stood in the open gate and he saw a man in the hateful uniform step from behind the corner. When Gerald came near, the man shot him with a pistol at close range. Then he disappeared. The gateman dared not shout. He lifted Gerald in his arms and brought him inside and laid him on the stones of the main court. Then he locked the gate.
“We buried him secretly in the small court outside his bedroom,” Mei-lan writes.
Early afternoon in Peking would perhaps be quarter past two here in our valley, quarter past two in the night. Dare I believe?
I do not know. I shall never know. All that I do know is that my beloved is no more. In this world, while I live, I shall not see his face again.
…I have taken up the routine of my days. There is no way to answer the letter, and so I have destroyed it. When I could write calmly, I wrote to Rennie that his father was dead.
“He had made up his mind, it seems, to come to us. That is what she believes, at least — his Chinese wife. He tried to live without us and he could not. Love was stronger in the end than country, stronger than history. This is our comfort. This is the message he sends us, by means of his death. It is enough for us to know. It is enough to make you forgive him, Rennie. Please forgive him! It will make life so much easier for me, so much more happy, if I know you have forgiven your father.”
Here I paused to consider whether I should tell. Rennie that I had seen Gerald clearly at the moment after he had died. His spirit escaping his body came home to me, to be visible for a moment, to be remembered forever. Then I decided that I would not tell Rennie. He would not believe, and perhaps I do not wish to test my own faith. It is not necessary. I can wait until it is time for me to know.
Rennie’s reply was swift. “I do forgive him, Mother. I forgive my father freely and with love, and of my own accord. I do this for my own sake. If it makes you happy, so much the better. And I have told Mary.”
…There is no need for me to write any more upon these blank pages. What I have had to say has been said. The spring has slipped past and it is summer. I have busied myself in everyday matters, always planning toward Rennie’s marriage. Tonight is the eve before the wedding day. It occurs to me that this small book will not be complete unless I tell the story of the wedding, the story which really began that day, long past, upon which I, a gay and heedless girl brimming with ready love, let my heart concentrate in a glance upon a tall slender young man intent upon his books, a studious reserved young man, in whom I divined a profound and faithful lover. I suppose, to be honest, that what I saw first in Gerald was a man so beautiful to look at that I was startled into love.
I said to Mary this evening when we were washing the supper dishes together and Rennie was smoking his pipe on the terrace, for he has taken on manly airs nowadays,
“Mary, my dear,” I said, “I hope that Rennie will be a good lover and husband to you. I had such a good lover and husband in his father, and I hope the capacities are inherited, but I am not sure they are.”
The tall lovely girl smiled her calm smile. “I am sure Rennie has inherited his father’s graces,” she said.
“I had sometimes just to suggest a thing or two to his father,” I said.
“I will remember that, Mother,” she said.
It was the first time she had called me “mother,” and I was overcome with a new joy and stood, dish in one hand and towel in the other. She laughed then and put her arms around me and kissed the top of my head. She is that much taller than I. And I smelled the sweet scent of her bosom and was glad for my son’s sake that she is a sweet-smelling woman, her breath as fresh as flowers without perfume.
…The wedding day has dawned mild and bright. We do not have hot days in June, not usually, and this one was cool and very clear. Early in the morning George Bowen drove up to the gate in a small grey convertible car, a vehicle old and dusty, and I saw him for the first time, a tall fair young man, with the same air of calm that Mary has. He stepped over the door of the car and sauntered into the house, his wrinkled leather bag in his hand, and he was as much at home as if he had come before. I liked him at first sight. He cuffed Rennie amiably, pulled his sister’s ear affectionately, and spoke to me as though he loved me.
“I know you very well,” he said. “I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I first saw Rennie.”
“Put down your bag and sit down to breakfast with us, George,” I said.
“I’ll just wash my hands here at the kitchen sink,” he said.
I liked the way he washed his hands, carefully and clean, as a surgeon does. George is a scientist, nuclear, one of the new young men. I had been a little afraid of him when Rennie talked about him. I saw a young man, brilliant, hard, perhaps unloving, as I suppose scientists must be nowadays. Instead here was this young man, kindly, affectionate, a fine friend for any lonely woman’s son. Between these two for wife and brother, Rennie has his world to grow in.
“Eggs, George?” I asked.
“Please, fried on one side, thanks,” he said, and folded his legs under the table in the breakfast alcove in the kitchen. I try not to be the sentimental motherly female we women are supposed to be, but I confess my heart was won when I saw how George Bowen enjoyed his food.
And all through this preliminary day he has made himself useful in a literal, practical sort of way. He persuaded the vacuum cleaner to work again, he carried chairs and cleaned the garage and was approved by Matt. And best of all was his tender understanding of Rennie and Mary. These two wanted no big wedding, and so about four o’clock in the afternoon they came into the house from wandering in the forest, and they went to their rooms to bathe and change to their wedding garments. Mrs. Matt was in the kitchen with a couple of neighbor women to help with the simple refreshments and she gave me a push.