“Good-by, Miss Dessard! And, say, I thank you for coming. I’m glad that my fool son is going to marry you, and I’ll send you a wedding present. No, look here! I’ll put money in the bank for you every year. A woman likes some money of her own.”
“Please don’t, Mr. MacArd,” she begged in instant distress.
“Yes, I will, too. Now don’t you say a word. I shall do it anyway. Why not? I want to do it.”
She felt tears come to her eyes, to her own dismay. She could not change him. He was so big, so stubborn, so hateful and so pitiful. He would never see anything as it really was, and he could not be changed. Oh, that was the most terrible, pitiful thing, that he could never be changed! She tried to smile and then turned and hurried from the room, for of course she could never make him understand why she had to weep for him, but she had to, because she could not help it.
The monsoon winds came late, but they came at last and for days the thirsty land soaked up the falling rain. In the homes of rich and poor alike the people slept night and day to the sound of the soft thunder. The terrible tension of heat and dryness had exhausted them, for even though they sat waiting for the rains they had not been able to sleep. The animals had wandered restlessly to and fro over the countryside and through the streets, looking for food and water, and men were idle because there was no use in scratching the dry surface of the fields with their shallow plows. In Poona business was at a standstill. Money was gone and all but the rich were living on borrowed cash until the rains came. Now that the winds had risen, had driven the clouds over the sea and mountains, now that the rains fell, the weary people slept through the hours without waking. As soon as there were a few days between rains, they must get out into the fields, but for the present it was no sin to sleep.
In the mission house David, too, could scarcely keep awake. His Marathi teacher did not come for a week, and alone he struggled with the books he was learning to read. On such a day the postman arrived drenched and late and handed him letters wrapped in oiled paper. One, he saw instantly, was from Olivia, and moved by excitement he gave the postman a coin. The man smiled, white teeth flashing and dark skin gleaming in the rain. He was shivering, the heat of the summer had changed to a damp coolness and his cotton garments, scanty enough, clung like wet paper to his thin frame.
“May the letter bring you good news, Sahib,” he cried, and trudged away as pleased as though the good news were his own.
David went into the house, touched, as he so often was, by the warmth and humanity of an Indian. There was no distance to overcome, the least kindness overwhelmed these people, the most habitual gentleness was enough to win their adoration. They were ready to love. Yet they were not childish. It was simply that they had lived so long and in such misery that their hearts were worn bare and the nerves quivered.
He opened the envelope, eager and fearful at once. If the news were good, if Olivia were willing to marry him, what joy! And if she were not? In the weeks that he had waited for this letter he had steadfastly calmed his impatience, he had refused to be restless. He had consciously used the means of prayer to subdue his own longings, earnestly desiring more than anything else that the will of God be done. If she refused him he would never marry. He would devote himself to India. Living alone, studying the ancient tests, Hebrew, Greek, and Marathi, had sharpened his spiritual senses and defined the reality of God.
He looked down at the open pages and his eyes took in Olivia’s letter whole. Then his heart filled. He had not believed that she would accept him, but here were her own words. She did accept him, she would come to be with him, his wife, his own. He read the letter word by word, while the rain fell hard upon the roof over his head and dripped from the eaves of the verandas in the flower beds. It was a short letter, written in her firm clear black handwriting, so plain against the dull blue of the paper. There was no sound but the fall of the rain and the beat of his blood in his ears while the tremendous certainty flooded his being. His life was changed, his difficulties were gone, his loneliness was over.
He fell upon his knees and lifted his face, he held up the letter as though to show it to all-seeing eyes. Then he tried to pray and could not because his heart was running over. India had shaped him already more than he knew. He had been worn down by loneliness and heat and the pressing misery about him. His body was thin, his nerves were taut and his heart was naked to every blow. Happiness, too sudden, had undone him, and he felt hot and uncontrollable tears under his closed eyelids.
He wanted to tell Darya later in the day when he was calm again, and he clothed himself in his English mackintosh and took a big English umbrella that belonged to Mr. Fordham and splashed his way across the city to the compound. Then he pounded on the locked gate. A sleepy watchman stirred himself at last and peered through slanting lines of rain, scratching his belly as he stood barefoot.
“My master is sleeping, Sahib,” he remonstrated. “We are all asleep. I dare not wake my master.”
“Will you go and see if he sleeps?” David urged.
He stood in the gateman’s house and waited, and after a long time, the man came back again.
“He was sleeping, Sahib, but he turned in his bed, and so I told him that you were here and he bids you enter. But everyone else is asleep.”
“I shall not stay long,” David promised.
He followed the man through the drenched gardens and into the part of the house where Darya lived and there he found his friend, lying, it was true, on a cushioned couch, a silk afghan drawn over him against the sudden coolness.
Darya put out a languid hand. “David! Has something happened?”
“I had to come,” David said. He stood looking down on Darya and their hands clasped. “I have a letter from Olivia. She has agreed to marry me.”
Darya sprang from the couch and flung his arms about David. “My dearest friend! There is nothing I had rather hear. Now you are going to have a wife.”
“I shall be married here,” David said, “I want you to be my best man — you know our customs.”
“I will be whatever you say,” Darya cried ardently. “You are my brother and she will be my sister. Come here, we will sit side by side, and now tell me everything.”
“There is only that to tell,” David said, but he sat down, and Darya seized his hand again and held it between both his own in his warm Indian fashion, and while David was speechless he began to pour out his talk, the fluid eloquent silvery flow, describing Olivia as he remembered her and as she would look when she came. David listened, half entranced, half embarrassed. It was all very Indian but he was alone with Darya and since it did not matter, it was even pleasant.
Suddenly Darya paused and looked at David with mischief in his dark expressive eyes. “Dare I tell you?” he asked.
“Tell me what?” David demanded.
Darya drew up his long legs and wrapped his arms about his knees. “Will you promise not to be angry with me?”
“Why should I be angry?”
“One never knows with you western men. You get angry suddenly and oddly.”
David laughed. “I feel that nothing can make me angry at the moment.”
“Well, then, I had better tell you quickly. Another day you might not be so mellow. I wrote to Olivia!”
“You wrote to her?”
“Before you did, perhaps—”
“But why?”
“I told her you needed her and that she must marry you.” And making haste before the consternation of David’s look, he described the midnight scene when Leilamani had compelled him to work a kindness for his brother, his friend, and so he had written a letter and she had hastened to send it.