Come, My Beloved

by Pearl S. Buck

  This was the moment to tell Darya of his plans for his life and so he began, and he drew for Darya the future that he would make and how to his great school he would draw the best of India’s youth and inspire them with strength and knowledge, and he would gather the finest of teachers and the strongest of faith from everywhere. What his father had not done, he would do.

  Darya listened, his eyes flashing, humorous, sceptical, tender, but David talked stubbornly on.

  “And shall you make all these young Indians into Christians?” Darya demanded at last.

  “Not against their will,” David said.

  “Ah, you will charm them,” Darya protested. “I know your western ways! You will surround them with comforts and you will make them believe that your running water and your clean rooms and soft beds, your great libraries and your vast rooms and healthy food are all the result of your religion and so you will make Christians out of them. And then the young doctors will all want great hospitals and electrical machines and they will not want to live in the villages and the teachers will not want to teach in village schools and the girls will want to marry men who can give them houses like yours and that is what they will think is Christianity.”

  “Is there any reason why a man cannot be Christian and live in a clean house lighted by electricity instead of by smoky oil?” David demanded.

  “He must walk the way, my friend,” Darya said. “He cannot come out of the village directly into your Christian America. He has to go back to his village that he left and make it over with his own hands, my friend.”

  “As you do, doubtless,” David said with un-Christian malice.

  “Ah, but I am not a villager,” Darya retorted. “It would be false for me to pretend that I must do what I am not born to do.”

  “Nevertheless, I too must do what I think I am born to do,” David insisted, “under God’s guidance,” he added.

  “By all means,” Darya agreed. “Let us not quarrel. Build your school and I will send my sons to it. But do not expect them to go into villages. They will come back here and ask me to put in electricity and I will refuse because I do not like electricity.”

  “Who said you must have electricity?” David demanded.

  “It is the inevitable result of your Christianity,” Darya said. His mood changed suddenly and he was all coaxing again. “Be happy, David. It is all I ask.”

  The two young men fell silent and after a while, David slept. When he woke the children were gone, but Darya was there reclining upon cushions and reading a book by the light of a small lamp of brass bung on the wall behind his shoulder;

  “Do not go home,” Darya said coaxingly, “stay here with me, David. My house is your house. You are too lonely.”

  “I have had a wonderful sleep,” David said, “a restful cool sleep. But I must go back, Darya.”

  Darya teased him. “You are determined to be a saint, are you?”

  “Not that,” David replied.

  It was dark, and when they came out a servant was waiting with a lantern to see that no snakes lay in the path to the gate, and when they reached the gate Darya bade the servant light the way for David to the mission house.

  “Serpents come out in the summer darkness, and you must be safe,” he said.

  They parted and David walked behind the man and the dust rose and stung his nostrils. The night was black and stifling and the light of the lantern shone through a golden haze. At the gate he gave the man some money and the gate-man lit a torch and went before him into the house, again to guard him from the creeping serpents of the night. The house was still and hot and David went upstairs alone by the light of a lamp he had lit and now carried in his hand, and his footsteps echoed upon the bare floors. He entered his room and looked about him as a habit to see whether scorpions or centipedes were anywhere near. Lizards were harmless, they clung to the walls and the ceiling and ate the mosquitoes and therefore were friendly and sometimes in the night he heard them fall with a soft plop upon the cotton roof of his mosquito net. He undressed and poured water over himself in his bathroom and then went naked to bed.

  For some reason, against his controlled will, in that night he dreamed a hot and throbbing dream of Olivia. He dreamed that she had come, that she was here, and that he held her in his arms. He dreamed that when morning came she did not go away, that she stayed here, she lived here, and they were happy together. It was the first time he had dreamed of her since he came to India and when he woke in the darkness before dawn he knew that what had set him dreaming was Darya’s wife. Darya loved her, and how strange that her name was Leila—Leilamani! He had been astonished to hear it spoken, and he had not wanted to tell Darya that Leila had been his mother’s name. And thinking of his mother he fell into memories of his home and of his boyhood, and then of Olivia again and she came near to him and her eyes were as dark as Leilamani’s eyes.

  Try again, Darya had said, try again, David! He lay stretched upon the dry mat, in the blackness, listening to the almost noiseless scuff of lizards, the dry almost silent rustle of their feet. Far off somewhere now, just before the dawn, when, if ever, the Indian night was still, he heard the wiry wailing of a human voice chanting to the subdued beat of a drum. A timid woman might be afraid of India in the night but Olivia was not timid. Yes, he would try again. Darya was right. It was not good for a man to be alone in India. He rose from his bed in the night and lit the candle on his table, he pulled up a bamboo chair, and wrote the first love letter of his life.

  Across the city Darya was also writing to Olivia, and Leilamani was leaning on his shoulder, her hair flowing loose down her back. She watched each curve of the English letters, admiring his skill and adoring his strong brown hand. Only a little while before that hand had caressed her yielding body with yet another skill. They had made sweet love together and when their hearts were quiet again Darya had lain thinking of David, who had no such joy, and then Leilamani had pouted and wanted to know what he was thinking about. So he told her how David, his brother, had no wife, and he told her about the proud tall girl who would not marry him, and then he had to explain that in the strange country across the black waters the young women were wilful and would marry only as they chose.

  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 a
nd 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.

  One morning she woke to changed air and brilliant sunshine. A hurricane had burst over southern waters the week before and the fresh winds had blown northward against the heat and stagnation of the city. She felt every nerve quicken, her muscles were eager to move, and her body urged her will. She would go downtown today and simply announce at the MacArd Building that she wished to see Mr. MacArd. Dress was suddenly important, although for days she had not cared what she wore, and she chose a grey silk skirt and jacket and a soft yellow blouse. She put on one hat after another and settled at last upon a yellow felt, broad-brimmed and soft, too. This was the day and the time, she decided, to look her feminine best, and she put on her yellow kid gloves.

  Thus arrayed after her breakfast she tiptoed into her mother’s room, found her asleep and tiptoed out again. Irene, the maid, was in the kitchen and she left a message that she was going for a long walk and then she was free. She walked the streets with feet made swift by health and excitement. It was a long walk, but the cool wind was a delight, her cheeks grew pink and her black eyes bright. She caught a glimpse of herself in the glass doors of the entrance to the MacArd Building, and the handsome face she saw was the last assurance she needed.

  “Mr. MacArd, please,” she said at the desk. “Miss Olivia Dessard.”

  The tired blonde at the desk glanced at her. “Have you an appointment?”

  “Tell him, please, that I have a letter from his son.”

  She sat down on a red leather chair and waited for a very few minutes when a man came in.

  “Mr. MacArd will see you, Miss Dessard. Please come with me.”

  She rose and followed him through corridors and rooms filled with men and women and typewriters and machines and then through corridors again until heavy mahogany double doors made a barrier. The man opened the doors and there were corridors again and offices but carpeted and quiet now, and then another heavy mahogany door confronted her. This the man opened and there, behind an enormous desk, mahogany again, she saw MacArd sitting reading a letter. He wore pince-nez and a heavy black ribbon and his suit was of black broadcloth, his stiff wing collar was whiter than any snow and hi
s black cravat was of satin. She saw all this quickly as a frame for his grim grey face and the red-grey beard and eyebrows. Underneath the brows, deep set, his small grey eyes stared at her. The pince-nez dropped the length of its ribbon.

  “Well, Miss Dessard! Sit down.”

  The man went away and shut the door softly and she sat down in the upright red leather chair across the desk.

  “Good morning, Mr. MacArd.”

  “Good morning, Miss. What can I do for you?”

  She did not take off her yellow kid gloves but she stretched her right hand across the desk. He seemed to be surprised to see it but he shook it formally without getting up.

  She smiled and leaned her elbows on the desk. “I don’t wonder you are surprised to see me, Mr. MacArd, but I felt I ought to come, although I know you are busy. I have had a letter from your son.”

  “Indeed!” He put down a letter he was still holding in his left hand and stared at her, his eyebrows twitching.

  She went on. “He has asked me to marry him, Mr. MacArd, and I have said I would. I thought you ought to know.”

  She waited motionless, her eyes unwavering as he stared at her. Points of light shone in the deep eyes, and suddenly MacArd laughed.

  “So he’s come to his senses!” he shouted. His hairy face creased in thick wrinkles.