Pearl Buck - Come, My Beloved

“There are eight bedrooms on this floor,” she said, “and six on the floor above. My father wanted a big family and he loved to have guests. You cannot imagine what this house was when I was a child. We lived here the year around, and my father had his own road built to the railroad station. It would have to be repaired, but the roadbed is still good.”

She was a competent and clever girl, he could see, besides being handsome. She had a proud carriage in spite of a manner almost unsophisticated, but she was not in the least like the girls he knew in New York, the daughters of Fifth Avenue families, and the children of his mother’s friends. She had perhaps been educated abroad, and yet he did not believe so. Perhaps she had simply grown up with her parents here. He could not remember her name among the debutantes of any recent years, but then he had been much away from home.

“This is my own room,” she said throwing open a door. “I like it better than any place in the world.”

He looked about half shyly; he had never looked into a girl’s room before, and this was one strangely feminine for so strong a young girl. The color was rose, the canopied bed was draped in rosy curtains and rose and net were at the windows. The carpet was a bed of flowers.

“It is very pretty,” he said.

“I love — I love — I love it,” she said passionately.

“I wish you could stay here,” he said.

“But I can’t,” she rejoined, pressing her lips together.

She shut the door abruptly. “I won’t show you Mother’s room — she wouldn’t like it because she hasn’t made her bed. She doesn’t like me to make it. I make mine before I go outdoors. You see how neat my room is? I am like that.”

“Beautifully neat,” he agreed with a glint of laughter.

She suspected the laughter and frowned quickly. “There is no need to show you the kitchens. Everything is done well and you would not need to make changes, unless you had many people here.”

“Such changes could be made later,” he agreed.

They went downstairs, and Mrs. Dessard was still sitting in the chair. She had gone to sleep, however, her head leaning against the cushioned back.

“Poor petite Mama,” Olivia whispered. “She is always tired. Yes, we must sell this house. I see it, and I thank God you came today. It makes up my mind.”

They tiptoed out of the house and he stood on the terrace overlooking the river.

“Are you religious?” Olivia asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly.

“I also do not know,” she said. “Before my father died, I was not religious, but somehow his death has made me wish to be so, if I know how. That is, I feel now that I would like to believe in God, I mean, really to believe.”

“I know,” David said.

He turned to her and saw in her dark eyes an honest yearning. He had never met a girl like this, someone so naive and yet so adult.

“I wish we might be friends.” He spoke these words with an eagerness not usual to him.

“I would like that also,” she said frankly. “I have never had a friend. When Papa was alive we were always coming and going, there was no time.”

They clasped hands suddenly and strongly. “I will come back,” he promised and he left her standing there on the terrace gazing after him.

He reached home late and tired. “Where’s my father?” he asked Enderby as the door opened.

“In the liberry, sir,” Enderby answered. Reproach was heavy in his voice. “He’s fit to be tied.”

“I’ll go to him first,” David said.

So he went straight to the library and there found his father waiting in motionless anxiety. He knew very well that still terror. He had seen his father waiting like that when his mother died.

MacArd looked up grimly. “Well,” he grunted. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. “You’re late.”

“Terribly,” David said, “I should have telephoned, but there was a train waiting when I reached the station, the last, they said, until ten o’clock. I jumped on and thought to explain when I got here.”

“You had better get washed and come into the dining room,” MacArd said. “The dinner must be dried up.”

“You shouldn’t have waited, Father.”

To this MacArd did not reply. He walked away slowly. He felt weak, exhausted by fright. His quick imagination, so valuable when he was making a plan, could be a curse when it came to someone close to him, the only one close to him since Leila died. He had not imagined it possible for her to die, and since she had, the existence of his son seemed fragile. Yet he must not protect David, it would ruin him. He ought to have had a dozen children. It was impossible to substitute for one’s own flesh and blood, but the sooner he got on with his project the better, it would take his mind off himself and his vulnerability.

In the dining room Enderby pulled out the heavy oak chair at the head of the table and rang for the soup to be brought in. He stood looking solemn and thinking that Mr. MacArd should not wait longer for his meal. He was not as young as he once was and the death of his wife had aged him too fast. The second man brought in the tray with the soup tureen and Enderby took up the silver ladle, and filled a plate and put it before his master. At the same moment David came into the room, his face red from quick scrubbing and his hair wet.

“I didn’t take time to change, Father,” he said in apology.

“Doesn’t matter for once,” MacArd replied gruffly. He began to eat his soup, an excellent beef broth laced with a dry sherry — very comforting. The plate was empty before he spoke again.

“Well?” he inquired.

David smiled at his father. “What have I been doing all day, I suppose? I think I’ve found the spot. Of course you have to see it.”

“Barton said something about it,” MacArd said in the same gruff voice.

David hastened on. “Yes — well, I saw the spot he meant, it’s very fine, but I found another nearer the river and it seems to me even better. There’s already a road to the railroad station, only about two miles, I walked it and it wasn’t bad. There’s a house on the spot already, it’s for sale, a mansion I ought to call it, twenty rooms, pillared porch, you know the sort of thing—”

“Come, come, catch your breath,” MacArd commanded.

Enderby took the soup plates away and the second man brought in a fish filet and steamed potatoes. Enderby put down fresh plates and served the second course.

“Now,” MacArd said, “go back and tell me exactly what you found.”

David, between bites, told him, dwelling upon the magnificence of the house set upon a leveled hill above the sweeping curve of the Hudson. He described the rooms, the plenteous lands about it, space enough to build a dozen dormitories and halls, the great oak trees and maples, the view across the river for a hundred miles.

“And who did you say owns the house?” MacArd asked.

He had eaten his fish in silence and now Enderby took the plates away and the second man brought in roast beef and vegetables in covered silver dishes.

“A Mrs. Dessard and her daughter,” David said. “Mrs. Dessard said she had met Mother at Mrs. Astor’s house.”

“Dessard — Dessard,” MacArd said, reflecting. “Where have I heard that name?” But he could not remember.

“The family was originally French, though of course now they are American,” David said. “Mr. Dessard failed in the panic, and then he died, and they have struggled along ever since. They have a small house in Paris but Olivia—”

MacArd frowned. “Olivia?”

“I should have said Miss Dessard,” David said hastily.

MacArd ate for a while without speaking and David devoted himself to his plate. He ate slowly and fastidiously and his father ate quickly, and disliked to be kept waiting.