Elizabeth felt the strength of Rama and knew she should resent it, but it was a safe pleasant thing to have this sure woman by her side. She seated herself daintily and crossed her hands in her lap. “You haven’t told me yet what has happened.”
Rama smiled grimly. “Poor child, you are come at a bad time. Any time would have been bad, but this is a shameful time.” She stiffened her fingers on her lap again. “Benjamin Wayne was stabbed in the back tonight,” she said. “He died in ten minutes. In two days he’ll be buried.” She looked up at Elizabeth and smiled mirthlessly, as though she had known all this would happen, even to the smallest detail. “Now you know,” she continued. “Ask anything you want tonight. There’s a strain on us and we are not ourselves. A thing like this breaks down our natures for a time. Ask anything you wish tonight. Tomorrow we may be ashamed. When we have buried him, we’ll never mention Benjy any more. In a year we will forget he ever lived.”
Elizabeth sat forward in her chair. This was so different from her picture of homecoming, in which she received the homage of the clan and made herself gracious to them. The room was swimming in a power beyond her control. She sat on the edge of a deep black pool and saw huge pale fishes moving mysteriously in its depth.
“Why was he stabbed?” she asked. “I heard Juanito did it.”
A little smile of affection grew on Rama’s lips. “Why Benjy was a thief,” she said. “He didn’t want the things he stole very much. He stole the precious little decency of girls. Why, he drank to steal a particle of death—and now he has it all. This had to happen, Elizabeth. If you throw a great handful of beans at an upturned thimble, one is pretty sure to go in. Now do you see?
“Juanito came home and found the little thief at work. “We all loved Benjy,” Rama said. “There’s not a frightful span between contempt and love.”
Elizabeth felt lonely and shut out and very weak before Rama’s strength “I’ve come such a long way,” she explained. “And I’ve had no dinner. I haven’t even washed my face.” Her lips began to tremble as she remembered, one by one, the things she was suffering. Rama’s eyes softened and looked at her, seeing the bride Elizabeth now. “And where’s Joseph?” Elizabeth complained. “It’s our first night at home and he’s gone. I haven’t even had a drink of water.”
Rama stood up then, and smoothed down her whispering skirt. “Poor child, I’m sorry; I didn’t think. Come into the kitchen and wash yourself. I’ll make some tea and slice some bread and meat for you.”
The teakettle breathed huskily in the kitchen. Rama cut pieces of roast beef and bread and poured a cup of scalding yellow tea.
“Now come back to the sitting-room, Elizabeth. You can have your supper there where it’s more comfortable.”
Elizabeth made thick sandwiches and ate them hungrily, but it was the hot tea, strong and bitter, that rested her and removed her complaints. Rama had gone back to her chair again. She sat stiffly upright, watching Elizabeth fill her cheeks too full of bread and meat.
“You’re pretty,” Rama said critically. “I wouldn’t have thought Joseph could pick a pretty wife.”
Elizabeth blushed. “What do you mean?” she asked. There were streams of feeling here she couldn’t identify, methods of thinking that wouldn’t enter the categories of her experience or learning. It frightened her and so she smiled amusedly. “Of course he knows that. Why he told me.”
Rama laughed quietly. “I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. I thought he’d pick a wife as he’d pick a cow—to be a good cow, perfect in the activity of cows—to be a good wife and very like a cow. Perhaps he is more human than I thought.” There was a little bitterness in her voice. Her strong white fingers brushed her hair down on each side of the sharp part. “I think I’ll have a cup of tea. I’ll put more water in. It must be poisonously strong.”
“Of course he’s human,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t see why you seem to say he isn’t. He is self-conscious. He’s embarrassed, that is all.” And her mind reverted suddenly to the pass in the hills and the swirling river. She was frightened and put the thought away from her.
Rama smiled pityingly. “No, he isn’t self-conscious,” she explained. “In all the world I think there isn’t a man less self-conscious, Elizabeth.” And then she said compassionately, “You don’t know this man. I’ll tell you about him, not to frighten you, but so you won’t be frightened when you come to know him.”
Her eyes filled with thoughts and her mind ranged for a way to say them. “I can see,” she said, “that you are making excuses already—why—excuses like bushes to hide behind, so you need not face the thoughts you have.” Her hands had lost their sureness; they crawled about like the searching tentacles of a hungry sea creature. “‘He is a child,’ you say to yourself. ‘He dreams.’” Her voice turned sharp and cruel. “He is no child,” she said, “and if he dreams, you will never know his dreams.”
Elizabeth flared angrily. “What are you telling me? He married me. You are trying to make a stranger of him.” Her voice faltered uncertainly. “Why of course I know him. Do you think I would marry a man I didn’t know?”
But Rama only smiled at her. “Don’t be afraid, Elizabeth. You’ve seen things already. There’s no cruelty in him, Elizabeth, I think. You can worship him without fear of being sacrificed.”
The picture of her marriage flashed into Elizabeth’s mind, when, as the service was going on, and the air was filled with its monotone, she had confused her husband with the Christ. “I don’t know what you mean,” she cried. “Why do you say ‘worship’? I’m tired, you know; I’ve been riding all day. Words have meanings that change as I change. What do you mean by ‘worship’?”
Rama drew her chair forward so that she could put her bands on Elizabeth’s knee. “This is a strange time,” she said softly. “I told you at the beginning that a door is open tonight. It’s like an All Souls’ Eve, when the ghosts are loose. Tonight, because our brother has died, a door is open in me, and partly open in you. Thoughts that hide deep in the brain, in the dark, underneath the bone can come out tonight. I will tell you what I’ve thought and held secret. Sometimes in the eyes of other people I’ve seen the same thought, like a shadow in the water.” She patted softly on Elizabeth’s knee as she spoke, patted out a rhythm to her words, and her eyes shone with intensity until there were red lights in them. “I know men,” she continued. “Thomas I know so well that I feel his thought as it is born. And I know his impulse before it is strong enough to set his limbs in motion. Burton I know to the bottom of his meager soul, and Benjy—I knew the sweetness and the laziness of Benjy. I knew how sorry he was to be Benjy, and how he couldn’t help it.” She smiled in reminiscence. “Benjy came in one night when Thomas was not here. He was so lost and sad. I held him in my arms until nearly morning.” Her fingers doubled under, making a loose fist. “I knew them all,” she said hoarsely. “My instinct was never wrong. But Joseph I do not know. I did not know his father.”
Elizabeth was nodding slowly, caught in the rhythm.
Rama continued: “I do not know whether there are men born outside humanity, or whether some men are so human as to make others seem unreal. Perhaps a godling lives on earth now and then. Joseph has strength beyond vision of shattering, he has the calm of mountains, and his emotion is as wild and fierce and sharp as the lightning and just as reasonless as far as I can see or know. When you are away from him, try thinking of him and you’ll see what I mean. His figure will grow huge, until it tops the mountains, and his force will be like the irresistible plunging of the wind. Benjy is dead. You cannot think of Joseph dying. He is eternal. His father died, and it was not a death.” Her mouth moved helplessly, searching for words. She cried as though in pain, “I tell you this man is not a man, unless he is all men. The strength, the resistance, the long and stumbling thinking of all men, and all the joy and suffering, too, cancelling each other out and yet remaining in the contents. He is all these, a repository for a little piece of each man’s soul, and more than that, a symbol of the earth’s soul.”