To her surprise, Olivia liked India, or perhaps her particular bit of India. In the morning the well-trained servants brought her tea and toast. Today she lay in bed and waited for the noiseless footsteps and she feigned sleep.
“Memsahib!”
She heard the apologetic whisper and opened her eyes upon the fragile figure of the boy, a dark-skinned half-grown man, the son of the cook. He set the tray on the table.
“Thank you,” she said sleepily.
He stole away upon bare feet and she bestirred herself indolently and alone. An hour earlier David had left the enormous bed. The coolness of the morning held the best hours for his study and prayer. She got out of bed and examined her slippers lest some homing noxious insect had sheltered there in the night. They were safe and she drew them on. The sun had risen perhaps half an hour ago but the room was already hot. She combed back her hair and braided it freshly, and going into the bathroom, she brushed her teeth from the carafe of boiled water. All water taken into the mouth must be boiled, that she had learned. Then she took off her muslin nightgown and poured water over herself from the jar of tepid water. It ran down her slender body to the tiled floor which sloped to a drain. She liked this sort of bath, it was quick and refreshing, and she dried herself on a soft towel and drew on a chemise. She had already learned to dress for comfort. Mrs. Fordham wore corsets but Olivia had put hers away into the trunk of garments that she had decided would never do for India. A chemise and a petticoat and then her muslin dress, bare feet in sandals, because her skirts were long, and while she dressed she sipped the strong Indian tea and nibbled dry toast. No butter — the butter came in tin cans from Australia and it was a soft yellow oil by the time one opened the can. She would have none of it, not even in the vegetables. But the dry toast, the dark almost bitter tea with condensed milk and lumpy sugar, were good food after a hot night. She would not eat again until noon, they had English tea at four and did not dine until dark. One needed to eat often but never much in this climate. She left the room as it was, her garments thrown where she had taken them off. There were servants enough, some paid, some unpaid except for eating the scraps from the kitchen, and she never asked how many there were. Mrs. Fordham might not approve of her, Mrs. Fordham who had to live rigorously on a missionary’s salary, but Olivia did not care. Old Mr. MacArd put the checks unannounced into her private account in an English bank in Bombay. She found it pleasant, after all, and David asked no questions. He let her do as she liked, and when Mrs. Fordham suggested one day that she was not a proper missionary he had agreed.
“I asked Olivia to be my wife.” He had learned to be very firm with the Fordhams. “I didn’t ask her to be a missionary. That is not within my power.”
Still, Olivia tried at times to please the stout Christians. She was fond of Mrs. Fordham in an easy way, and she liked Mr. Fordham warmly. They were good. But it did seem a waste for them to spend so much time on poor and low caste people and why, she asked David, when there were Indians like Darya, did not he and the Fordhams make them into Christians?
Even Mr. and Mrs. Fordham had cast longing looks from afar at the proud and wealthy young Indian.
“If you could only win him for Christ,” they said wistfully to David.
But Darya evaded Christ with his usual careless and half humorous grace.
“One’s religion is as personal as one’s marriage,” he declared. “I would not dream, dear David, of persuading you to my Hindu faith, and you, my friend, are too delicately attuned to me to try to change me. Is it not so with us?”
Who could deny such charm? Olivia felt it as delicious as ever, and it must not be distrusted.
“Do leave Darya his own religion,” she had then told David, to which he had made no reply.
Meanwhile she had not yet met Leilamani, nor even had more than a glimpse of Darya and the exchange of greetings and a few questions. He had seemed almost shy in her presence.
“After you are settled, and after your honeymoon,” he said. “When you are quite at home here in Poona, I will invite you to my house, and you shall meet Leilamani.”
He had not yet invited them and when only yesterday she had wondered aloud at the delay, David had said, “Darya always does exactly as he pleases, Olivia. You’ll have to wait.”
His manner was remote, his voice firm and a glance showed her that he was the other David, the missionary and not the lover. But she was too happy to be wounded, content perhaps being the more exact word for her state of mind, for content was large and all embracing, and happiness was sharp and particular and must be reserved for special moments.
She finished her tea and toast and wandered out of her room. In the house the shades were drawn against the sun and the house was shadowy if not with coolness at least with its semblance. The bare floors were polished, the furniture dustless and a servant had filled the vases with fresh flowers. Olivia did not try to grow flowers but the servants found green branches and blossoms strange to her, or sometimes only huge fern leaves and small palms. She drifted across the big bare rooms for which she had never bought furniture, after all, in Bombay. She had not wanted to buy for a house she had not yet seen and so they had come straight to Poona, and she had left the house as it was. The few pieces of furniture of exquisite workmanship, some Chinese tables and cabinets, and Indian brocades thrown across their dark and shining surfaces were enough. She had not hung curtains in the heat, the jalousies were enough, too, and she did not like paintings on the walls. She was contemptuous of the English interiors, rooms as stuffy as any in London, and even less did she like the inexpensive but similar effects that Mrs. Fordham made with rattan and wicker. No cushions, not in this heat, and the insects lurking!
“The house is a bit bare though, dearie,” Mrs. Fordham said.
“I like bareness,” Olivia said.
She went to find David without much hope, for at this hour he might be anywhere, sitting with some thoughtful visitor, or working with the architect on his boundless plans for a vast school.
He took his own way as ruthlessly as his father did for purposes entirely different, and she knew that he planned an enormous compound, a center of education and health and religion. Some day this center would be known all over India, thanks to the MacArd millions. What, she often wondered, would David have been as the son of a poor man?
She found him in his study at the huge table he had ordered made for his plans. A young Anglo-Indian architect was with him and they were earnestly poring over the plans for another dormitory, an addition to the proposed college for men.
The Anglo-Indian saw her first. He was a slender graceful young man, his olive skin, his blue brown eyes, his straight hair dark but not black, revealing his mixed race. He was English, and his presence passionately proclaimed him the son of an English father. He had purposely forgot his mother, whose inherited features he had, for she was Indian.
“Good morning, Mrs. MacArd,” he exclaimed with his slight exaggeration of Oxford accent, the little extravagance of manner which revealed his Indian blood. “I have been so hoping you would come in, you know, you have such an extrornary sense of design, such a quick eye for balance, it’s always such a relief to be shown one’s faults but so delightfully.”
Olivia smiled and put out her hand, aware of looking charming in her soft white muslin frock. India had made her feminine, she had relaxed, her lips were no longer taut or her body tense. But that perhaps was partly marriage and the certainty at last that she could and did love the man to whom she was married. Religion, dedication, whatever one wanted to call it, had made David strong and dominant, and love had taught her the joy of submission. In her way she supposed she had longed to submit and now she could submit without loss of herself. The young Anglo-Indian’s eyes were unpleasantly moist as he gazed at her and she withdrew her hand.