Leilamani had listened, still warm in the curve of Darya’s bare arm, and she grew grave.
“It is very wicked,” she said and then out of pity for the young American whom Darya loved she went on with gentle decision, “And you, beloved, should help your soul’s brother.”
“I?” Darya said, very sleepy.
“You should,” she repeated. “You must write a letter to this Olivia and tell her she is wrong to refuse to marry. Tell her how thin he is and how he is alone in that house. Make her heart soft — you know how to do such things, Darya.”
He laughed at her mildly, too happy to move, but Leilamani would not let him rest. She pushed him with her soft hands and when he would not move, she got out of bed and walked about the room, her long black hair swinging about her, and she sang so that he could not sleep, a song she made up as she went and that told him she would not come into his bed again, though he called her many times, unless he did his brotherly duty now, for tomorrow he would be here and there and she would not be able to catch him and compel, but now he was hers. So between laughing and singing and then being a little angry until she coaxed him with reasonable words, reminding him that he did often say he would do something and then forgot it or delayed until the cause was lost, at last he got up and began to write the letter. When it was done he read it aloud, translating it into their own tongue as he read.
Miss Olivia Dessard:
Dear Sister;
You will consider it strange to receive a letter from me, but I write you for my friend-brother, David MacArd, and I think you have not forgotten him. He is here in Poona, if you do not know it, living alone in the mission house, all other missionaries having departed to the cool hills during the hot season we are now enduring. He is a strong saintly fellow and he wishes to endure as our people are doing. Nevertheless, he is very thin and he suffers from want of wifely care. As his friend and brother, I beg you to reconsider his question and join him. In case he does not ask you again, as I have advised him to do, kindly let me know and I will beg him to take courage. I am sure that you will not find so good a husband wherever you look. I await your reply eagerly.
Your friend and brother,
Darya.
This letter Leilamani approved and when it was sealed and stamped she called for a servant and bade him to take it instantly to the postoffice and put it into the nightbox.
Then she went back into Darya’s bed, where he had already placed himself, and they slept deeply.
VI
BY THE CHANCE OF Leilamani’s insistence, Darya’s letter caught a ship at the last moment, whereas David’s letter was delayed until the next ship, and this made a matter of two weeks and more between the two letters as they reached Olivia’s hands. She had therefore these weeks in which to laugh first at Darya’s efforts, and then to grow thoughtful and then to wonder if David would write to her or not, and if he did what she would say.
When his letter did come, her heart was already prepared, and this was thanks to Leilamani, who she did not know was alive. She took up David’s letter and read it again.
“You may say to yourself, Olivia, that you have no call to the mission field. Well, dearest, do not worry about that. It is not required that a wife must also be a missionary. She will help him, she will strengthen and comfort him, she will be his companion. When I say these words, thinking of you, I grow giddy with love for you. Can such things be — for me?”
She let the pages fall into her lap and looked out of the open window beside which she sat, into the park across the street. It was a small park, she and her mother lived in an unfashionable part of New York, and on the benches old men sat drowsing in the shade of a few grimy trees. She shivered, fascinated again as she often was by their misery, their age, their loneliness, their poverty. Once they had all been young and now they were old and that was the tale of their life. It might be the tale of hers, as the years passed. Oh, she was busy enough, she had friends for the present, family friends, but she had nothing of her own except her mother, and her mother could go with her to India. David had enclosed to her a small snapshot of the mission house, it looked comfortable, set in the big compound and encircled with arched verandas. The air of romance was about it.
She rose with decision, and the letter fell from her lap to the floor. She opened the mahogany desk against the wall and began to write quickly and with resolution.
Dear David—
Well, that was the best she could do. She had never learned to use the words of easy love and she could not pretend.
I have been sitting here at the window for hours, with your letter in my hands, reading it over and over again, wondering what I really want to do, and now when I know what I have decided, wondering whether it is entirely fair to you. For I shall say yes, David. I will be your wife. I don’t know if I am in love with you. If I had to decide that, it might be to say I am not, at least not yet. I don’t know you as you are now. But somehow I feel that I shall love you once we are together, and I will come to India soon—”
She was not easily articulate, words did not flow from her, she had never talked to any one, for example, as easily as she had talked to Darya, but that was because he talked as he breathed, the light from his extraordinary eyes illuminating speech. She had never forgotten him and he made India easier to imagine.
She paused and sat thinking again for a long time. Then she wrote one more sentence. “At least, dear David, I am willing to try it, if you are, and having given my word, I will not take it back.”
When she had written the letter, she sealed it, stamped it, and she put on her hat and jacket and walked to the corner and put the letter in the mail box.
She kept her engagement to herself for days, for she supposed that now she was engaged. The question was should she or should she not tell Mr. MacArd. David had said nothing in his letter to guide her. Perhaps she ought to wait for another letter, or perhaps she ought to write and ask him. But a wilful delicacy had made her determine not to write to David again until she had his letter and that might mean months of waiting before she knew. Moreover, she was not sure that she wanted his decision. Perhaps she should make her own. At any rate, she would not tell her mother until she knew whether she was going to tell Mr. MacArd.
The empty days of summer slipped by. Her friends had left the city and she knew that she and her mother would go nowhere. She had been born too late in her mother’s life, she now realized. Her mother had reached an age where nothing mattered except the quiet of being left alone. When they had moved out of the house finally, the last of her mother’s energy seemed drained away. She had made sure that the money they had received from MacArd was invested so that they could live on it and then she had ceased to think. Olivia had found an apartment they could afford and had settled their furniture into it and had hired an Irish maid to take care of them. Her mother now simply agreed to anything. The old days of battle were over, time and youth had made Olivia the victor and to her surprise she did not enjoy victory. It meant that childhood was past and whatever she did now was her own fault.
She decided, after more days of restless thought, that she should go and see Mr. MacArd herself. That much would be done, and her future would be more clear. It seemed nebulous enough sometimes, in spite of David’s letter which she read over and over, for she was impatient by nature and the long silence after she had written David became unbearable. She knew that distance was the cause, she could see in imagination the ocean and that crossed then the miles upon miles of terrain of many countries and then the sea again. But the hours dragged, nevertheless, and she wanted life to begin.