Pearl Buck - Come, My Beloved

He remembered the way she had looked that summer’s day in her duster and veil, her face vivid, her eyes dark and alive, and he felt again the symbolism of her words. Was there indeed an eternal source for man’s life, a primal cause, a true reason for the little span of years? He had passed through his first phase of grief, the vivid moment of return had passed and his melancholy now was expressed in vague and thoughtful questions to which he could find no answer. He was lonely and he had begun to long for the companionship of others who were like himself as he now was, and not as he used to be in college. It was impossible to return to the childishness of sports and games and routined lessons. He must penetrate far more deeply into learning, but where and how should he begin? He turned over in his mind the plan his father had put before him. For a moment it seemed preposterous and he doubted his father understood fully what he himself had conceived. A school for religion could grow far beyond the confines of expressed theology. If a body of young and inquiring minds gathered into such a center, who knew what together they might discover? He allowed his imagination to play about the school, developing a place very different from that which his father planned, a place fulfilling a deeper concept, providing an energy not yet in motion, establishing a channel between man and God, such as had never yet been found, discovering if indeed God did exist. When he faced his primary question he could almost hear his mother cry out to him across the space between. She, who had never read theology or cared to hear the reasoning of logicians, accepted the being of God as the simplest explanation of created form and beauty. From whence had come the earth and its flowering if not from Someone?

“It is so much easier to believe than to doubt,” she had said to him.

He finished his coffee and went to the telephone and called Dr. Barton.

“This is David MacArd, Dr. Barton.”

“Oh yes, David, what can I do for you?”

“My father has just told me of his great idea. He suggests that I might be useful to you.”

“Yes, indeed.” The ministerial voice was professionally cheerful. “I have just been looking at some sites. That’s the first thing, isn’t it? The place is important, the repose, the proper isolation and yet not too remote from railroad stations. The practical combined with the spiritual, eh, David? Come along to my study, my dear boy. You’ll find me in a fog of confusion. I shall be glad of your listening ear.”

“Very well, I’ll be there soon.”

He hung up and then climbed the wide stairs slowly. The house was as still as a tomb and on a sunny morning like this he was glad to be out of it.

The air in Dr. Barton’s office was warm and slightly fragrant, as though a fire had been lit, sprinkled with incense and allowed to go out again. The dying smell of old leather-bound books and the mildly acid taint of printer’s ink mingled with the scent of an immense bowl of roses on a table under the window.

“My wife’s contribution to the day’s work,” Dr. Barton said when he saw David’s eyes straying again and again to the roses.

“They make me think of my mother,” he said.

“Ah, we miss her,” Dr. Barton replied, with emotion that just escaped being unctuous. “But it doesn’t do to think of the past, dear boy.”

“She doesn’t belong to the past,” David said.

“Ah no, of course not,” Dr. Barton agreed quickly. “Shall we proceed, David? I don’t want to hurry you, if you feel you would like to talk a while of your dear mother—”

“No, it was only the roses.” He drew his chair to the desk and took up the sheets of paper that Dr. Barton had put down.

“You will see,” the minister said, “that I have nothing conclusive. A fine tract of land lies over here northwest of the city. It can be had for ten thousand dollars. There are good building sites on it. What would you say to running up there today and seeing it for yourself? Then you could corroborate what I am planning to tell your father on Friday at noon, when he has kindly invited me to come and have luncheon with him again, a report of progress, so to speak. It is a great responsibility.”

“I would like to go and may I take this map?”

“By all means,” Dr. Barton said. He was secretly a little glad to be rid of so grave a young man to whom nevertheless he must be cordial, since he was the son of a benefactor. Why, he wondered, had MacArd decided to offer his own son as an aide? Did he distrust, possibly, the minister’s practical judgment? He took out his watch. “There is a train in just three quarters of an hour which will get you there nicely before noon. It is only an hour’s run. At the station you can ask for the livery stable, it is not too far, and half an hour’s drive with horse and buggy will get you to the spot. There’s an old farmhouse near by. Just ask for Miller’s Creek. There’s a train back at five o’clock.”

David took the map and studied it a moment. The dismissal was a trifle too swift.

“What do you make out of my father’s plan, Dr. Barton?” he asked after a moment. He folded the map and put it into his pocket.

The minister looked surprised. “A very noble idea,” he replied. “A center of the best training for young leaders of the church.”

“My father emphasized to me the practical missionary aspect,” David said.

“Ah yes,” Dr. Barton replied in his swift smooth agreement. “Quite rightly. The church militant is a missionary one. ‘Go ye into all the world,’ and so forth. A civilizing uplifting influence, proclaiming the gospel, teaching men the right, revealing the true faith. This is an age of expansion, and if our country can carry aloft the banner of God, we cannot fail.”

David leaned back in the comfortable chair, his hands in his pockets, his eyes intense and thoughtful upon Dr. Barton’s smooth-shaven, well-fed face. It would be unwise, if not useless, to argue at this point when there was not even a piece of land for the school. Later he would talk with his father. He was astute enough to divine by instinct that Dr. Barton looked upon him as a potential enemy, wanting no son between himself and the father.

He rose. “I had better move on if I am to catch that train.”

Dr. Barton was still anxious. “Will you report direct to me, dear boy? I feel responsible to your father.”

“Certainly,” David said. “I realize that I am supposed to be helping you, sir.”

They shook hands and he left the close sweet air of the study and went into the outer freshness. It was one of the city’s rare days, the winds blew in from the sea and cleansed the streets of smoke and mist. He headed for the station, reaching it early enough to buy a couple of sandwiches for his luncheon later on in the hills. In the train the car was almost empty at this hour of the day, and he sat by a window and gazed at fleeting tenements and dirty streets, comparing them in his mind with the crowded sidewalks in Bombay and the dusty squalor of Indian villages. Why should his father dream of sending missionaries to India and China or to any part of the foreign world when here not five miles from his own door were heathen as valid as any to be found? He knew very well the answer to this. His father would declare again, as he had often declared before, that idleness, the fruit of laziness, was the sole cause for poverty in a rich country, and he would give himself as proof. Had he not been poor, the son of a country parson, and had he not raised himself without help until today he was one of the richest men in the world? What he had done others could do in any free and Christian country.

“But could I?” David inquired of himself. He did not believe that he could, if he had been born in a filthy room level with the track. He looked into one sordid cell after another as the train rolled by and he saw dirty children, frowsy women, unshaven men, broken furniture. Had he been born there he could not have pulled himself out of ft. Crushed, by such fate, who would have delivered him? No one, for no one came to deliver such people.