It was an enchanting sight and the two men looked on enjoying it.
“She is telling you that she is going to love you as her sister,” Darya said. “You must not be shy, Olivia. We believe that love is the best gift of all and never to be withheld when it exists. I can tell you that Leilamani does not often give it so freely. She is a proud little thing, this wife of mine!”
“Tell her I am happy that I came and I hope she will let me come often,” Olivia said. It was too little to say, when Leilamani poured over her this warmth of affection and trust, but she was confused. She was aware of strange feelings within her, a melting of inner hardness that she did not know she had, a softening of her heart, a new perception of woman, something that Leilamani was which she was not and which she was not sure she wanted to be, and yet which attracted her strongly. Leilamani was a mixture of witchery and wisdom, youth and age, simplicity and complexity, emotion and shrewd common sense. She felt crude and bigboned and harsh, she wanted to go away and she wanted to stay and gaze at Leilamani. She was repelled by her and yet she longed to embrace her. She was jealous of her beauty and delighted by it. It was an overwhelming, inexplicably exciting hour and when it ended and they came away, she was exhausted. She was not at all sure that she was going to like India entire or even that she could bear it always.
That night in his bed when he was drowsing off to sleep in the darkness and the whining of the mosquitoes was dying away in his ears, David was astonished to hear the patter of Olivia’s bare feet on the floor. He woke up at once for never had she dared to walk at night in the dark or without her shoes.
“Olivia, is that you?” He sat up and felt for the matches and the candle always inside the net.
“Yes, don’t light the candle.”
“Why not? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Oh, David, love me!”
“But darling, I do love you!”
“Oh, but more, more, more!”
She was half sobbing and he did not know what to make of it. He lifted the net and pulled her inside. “Come in, dearest. Why are you crying? Are you ill?”
To none of his questions did she reply. Here was an Olivia he had never seen before, melted in weeping and clinging to him, passionate and demanding and insistent.
“Oh love me — love me—” she was crying, and at last he abandoned himself to her, passion rising and then rising again to climax and finally to exhaustion. Never, never had he allowed himself to be absorbed like this, never had he been compelled beyond his own control.
When it was over and she was asleep he could not sleep. For the first time since their marriage he had a sense of sin. What he had done, what she had compelled him to do, was not good. He had never seen this demand in her before but it was not right for him. He lay deeply troubled and after a time he rose and went into the bathing room and washed his body clean from head to foot. Then he put on clean garments and went into his study and closed the door. He fit the lamp and tried to read some scriptures but the words were empty, and would be empty until he had acknowledged his sin. He had been overcome. She had tempted him, yes, but he would not use that excuse as old as Adam. His soul was his own, and he had not kept it undefiled.
He turned the lamp low and got down on his knees by his desk and bowed his head and sent up his prayer in shame and contrition.
“God, forgive me—”
After a long while he felt comfort pervade him slowly, like light rising over a mountain, but his prayer was not finished. He lifted his head and prayed again, “God, give me strength.”
And while he prayed, Olivia slept.
VIII
THE WEATHER TURNED AND grew cool, as cool as Poona weather ever was, but Olivia was languid. Her days were spent in a routine, pleasant enough but unchanging, and she marvelled that she did not mind. She was getting very lazy, she told herself, and it was an effort to return the dinners to which she and David had been invited, most important of which was a dinner due the Governor and his wife. She made the effort, because David insisted that he must be friendly with Government or he could not do his work. It was difficult, nationalism was rising, Government was irritable and irritated. Americans were suspected of being sympathetic with the nationalist movement and ultimately with independence for India. History was against them.
“I am very glad to find that you are sound, Mr. MacArd,” the Governor said somewhat patronizingly at the dinner table.
Olivia, at the opposite end of the oval table, listened for David’s reply.
“I am against revolution, Your Excellency,” David replied calmly. “That is not to say I am against change. I am doing my best to educate young Indians who will wish eventually to rule their own country, doubtless, but it will be within the scheme of evolutionary order and not in my time or yours, probably.”
“Oh, well, as to that,” the Governor said tolerantly, “we shall of course give them a gradual independence as they are fit for it. Certainly they are not fit for it now, with four fifths of the people illiterate and ignorant.”
Olivia spoke too quickly. “Your Excellency, I’ve wondered so much why they are like this after hundreds of years of enlightened rule under the British Empire.”
She dared not look at David. Instead she fastened her eyes brightly and defiantly upon the Governor’s dignified square face. His voice sharpened. “Oh, come now, Mrs. MacArd, don’t you go saying such things. It will take more than a few hundred years to change India completely. Consider her condition when we came in, and how long it took us merely to establish order. A hundred years passed before we could begin really to govern. As it is, we are still not responsible for the entire country. There are the Native Princes. We are not tyrants, you know. We don’t force things down Indian throats.”
A general movement swayed the guests into conversation, as though by common impulse they moved to cover Olivia’s question. Nothing more must be said, and Olivia’s brief emergence was drowned. She yielded, as she yielded in everything nowadays. She sat quietly smiling, eating with good appetite for she was always hungry, to her own surprise, and yet food gave her no energy.
The evening passed, and when the guests were gone she waited for David to reprove her for the question, but he did not. He was aloof, but he was always aloof now, and she supposed it was because he was so busy. The buildings were going up rapidly, and he was already receiving students. Ramsay was with him every day and on some days all day long, and she saw very little of her husband.
The servants put out the lights, and they went to their rooms. She clung to his arm as they walked down the hall.
“Are you tired?” David asked.
“A little,” she confessed. Tomorrow she would tell him that she was always tired and perhaps something was wrong with her. But she did not want to tell him tonight, she was too tired for explanation. He stood aside for her to enter their room and she swept past him, holding up her long silken skirts with both hands.
In the doorway she paused. “Did I look pretty tonight?” she asked.
He hesitated and she saw his eyes grow wary. “Very pretty,” he said calmly.
Why don’t you kiss me? That was what she had been about to say. When she saw the withdrawal in his eyes she leaned and kissed his cheek.
“Good night, David.”
“Good night, Olivia. But why now, my dear?”
“I think I shall sleep in the guest room tonight. I am tired.”
He waited a second, two seconds, before he replied. “A good idea, perhaps. You look a little pale.”