“Well, good-by and good luck,” the young officer said, and he put out his hand.
It was a final farewell to more than himself and Olivia had felt it so.
“Good-by,” she said, just touching his hand.
She stepped aboard the launch an hour later, her mother following, and they left the ship behind. The launch churned the water into foam and the small Indian craft rocked on the waves.
“Sit down, Mamma,” she commanded, and Mrs. Dessard sat down, a quiet grey-clad figure, her withered face anxious under her white straw hat. After insisting that she could not possibly go to India, at the last agitated moment she had decided that neither could she possibly allow Olivia to come so far to marry a man she scarcely knew. She had not enjoyed a moment of the journey, and she was not cheerful even yet. She had heard that India was hot and she hated heat and was afraid of snakes. When Olivia was properly married, she would go home at once.
Olivia did not sit down. She stood at the rail and stared at the dock, coming nearer so quickly, and the glare of the sun stung her eyeballs.
She had risen at dawn, but how quickly the sun had driven away the mysterious beauty of the early morning! The island, upon which Bombay was built, rose gleaming across the water and its outlines quivered in a haze of heat. Around the launch plunging now toward the land, a brisk hot wind dashed the water into small blue waves, white-lipped.
Mrs. Dessard sat on a deck chair in silence, gazing doubtfully shoreward, and Olivia, too, was silent. A few minutes more and she would see David. The first sight was important, but she must not let it be all-important, for it was too late now for change or return. Indeed, there was nothing to which she cared to return.
Then she saw him on the dock. He stood, tall and singular, motionless, rigid, shining white in his linen suit and sun helmet among the vivid swarming people. She leaned over the rail, waving her green silk scarf, and he saw her and lifted his helmet.
They stood looking at each other across the moving multitude and the narrowing water, searching for what they could not yet see. Had he changed? She thought he had, he looked much taller or had she only forgotten, or was it the strange white suit? He had grown a brown beard and though it was trimmed closely to a point, it made him look very different from the young man she remembered. He was much older, his face looked dark, but that was the beard. He stood motionless now, his hands clasped in front of him while the launch edged against the dock. But the moment the gangplank was fixed he came forward and she stood waiting, and for the first time her heart began to beat suddenly and quickly. She had really committed herself and her life, not only to David but to India, a man and a country she did not know. She turned her back to the shore and leaned against the rail. It was hot, the wind had died suddenly. The green linen of her traveling dress hugged her body too close and the narrow brim of her straw hat did not shield her face against the sun. But if she moved away he might not find her in the crowd and so she waited although it was only for a few minutes, and almost too soon, before she had time to still her heart, she saw his white figure threading its way among the people who pushed on the deck, the porters, the hotel agents, the English come to meet friends.
He came up to her simply and it seemed to her not shyly, and he bent and kissed her cheek. She felt the brush of his soft beard on her face, she saw the kindling of his dark eyes. He took her hand and held it hard.
“Olivia — darling—”
“David!”
It was impossible to say more in the midst of the crowd, they stood holding hands, looking at each other but not quite fully, for Mrs. Dessard came toward them.
“David, I’m very glad to see you. It’s been a fearfully long trip. Heavens, so this is India!”
She shook hands with him, and waved her hand toward the shore. “What a lot of people!”
“There are a lot of people wherever you go in India,” David agreed. “One gets used to it. They are very good, actually, very friendly, that is. Where are the bags, Olivia? We’ll have to get them through customs.”
He motioned to a man from the Grand Hotel where he had taken rooms, the man came forward and David directed him calmly. Yes, Olivia thought watching him, David was changed. He was self-assured, almost a little too superior in manner, she thought, the old diffidence was gone, and with it something of the touching charm. He was more of a man and that, perhaps, she would like. Did she love him? It was hard to tell all in a moment, now that he was changed. Perhaps she could love him easily. It was exciting, this marrying someone she did not quite know.
“We had better get out of this sun,” David said with quiet authority. “I have a carriage waiting just outside the dock. We can go to the hotel and when you are settled, Mrs. Dessard, we can discuss plans. I hope you will want to get to Poona as soon as possible, Olivia. Everybody is expecting you, and for me the waiting has seemed very long.”
“You young people must decide,” Mrs. Dessard said. The sun was hot indeed and she felt little rills of perspiration running down the sides of her face.
They followed David. He had given their keys to the agent and the bags, he told them, were safe enough, “Indians are not more honest than other men,” he observed as they walked along, “but once you have entrusted something to an Indian, he will be honest at least until the job is done.”
Olivia was a stranger, he thought she had changed and she was more beautiful and she was older. Would he have the courage the moment they were alone to kiss her as he had dreamed of doing? The kiss as he had dreamed it was to be exchanged when they met, but it had been impossible either to give or to receive in the midst of the crowd, and certainly too, he would not give Olivia his first kiss before Mrs. Dessard. Nevertheless, he was not going to wait either until they reached Poona. Mrs. Fordham had been very stern with him about love.
“Indians are not used to our freedom between the sexes,” she had declared. “It is extremely important that you are never seen alone with your fiancée. For that reason I do think the wedding should take place as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, please, no demonstrations — no fondling or — or kisses!”
The carriage was waiting and he helped Mrs. Dessard into it, and then Olivia and then he took his place, and he found her firm small hand and held it under the covering of her full green skirt. She was cool and beautiful in green, the heat did not change her lovely pallor, and her straw hat shaded her dark eyes. He felt a suffocation about his heart as they sat side by side, her slender thigh pressed delicately against him, and to restrain his love, which must not be spoken or shown, not yet, he began to talk about the streets through which they passed, the people they saw in their many costumes, Hindus, Moslems, Parsees, black Jews. But all the time he was talking for Mrs. Dessard he was passionately caressing Olivia’s hand, his fingers, searching the palm, pressing its softness, and she sat motionless, not hearing what he said, gazing about and seeing nothing for all her attention, all her consciousness were fixed upon their joined hands and his searching fingers, and she did not know whether she liked it. Still, she did not draw her hand away.
He found his moment, he seized it upstairs in the hotel, when Mrs. Dessard was in her room, directing the disposal of the bags. He threw open the door into the next room.
“This is your room, Olivia, and mine is on the next floor.”
Then he pushed the door though not quite shut, and behind it he took her in his arms at last and kissed her on the mouth, a kiss as long and deep as his dreams, his first true kiss.
“Olivia!” Mrs. Dessard called. “Where are you? The man wants to bring in your bags.”
She tore herself away. “Here, Mamma!”