Pearl Buck - The Goddess Abides

“I see a change in you already,” Amelia now declared, dipping her fingers in a Venetian glass finger bowl.

“Tell me what you see.”

Thus encouraged, Amelia lit a long taper-thin cigar and proceeded. “Well, you are less restrained, more unconscious of yourself, even in the way you walk.”

“I suppose I was always unconsciously conscious of being Arnold’s wife.”

“He criticized you too much.” Amelia’s tone conveyed dislike of Arnold.

“Not really. He was always gentle with me,”

Amelia laughed. “As gentle as iron!”

“Perhaps I needed iron,” she replied mildly.

She decided within herself that she did not like Amelia as much as she had supposed, or perhaps it was that now, living alone and without Arnold to return to for masculine relief, Amelia seemed aggressive and overpowering. She must not, she reflected as Amelia led the way to the drawing room, fall into the mistake of becoming involved with women friends and their ever-narrowing interests in themselves and each other. She must take up an intellectual pursuit, she must discover an individual activity, alone and for herself. It seemed to her at this moment that the new house, built entirely for herself alone, satisfied the immediate answer to the question. But what intellectual pursuit, what mental activity? She remained in Amelia’s house for another half hour, however, her usual graceful, amiable self, that self which Arnold had so admired and, of course, had loved.

“My dear,” he had said more than once, “it is pleasant to live with a quiet woman, and one also beautifully serene.”

It occurred to her that she would miss such remarks when she had time to do so. Just now Edwin’s letters, arriving almost daily, took their place. Arnold’s letters, in their rare moments of separation, had not been at all like Edwin’s.

“I really must go, Amelia,” she said.

“What can you possibly now have to make you hurry away?” Amelia demanded.

She gave Amelia her somewhat absent smile as she rose. “There’s always one thing or another,” she said vaguely, and left.

…The new house now took possession of her. She was glad she had not mailed the letter to Jared, for had she done so she would have shared the house already, somehow. Instead she had taken the letter from her purse and torn it up when she came home from the luncheon with Amelia. Nonexistent though the house was, she was already living in it. The next morning, sitting at the writing table in the library, she was not even impatient for the mail. When the houseman delivered it to her on a silver tray, she saw on top a thick envelope, addressed in Edwin’s surprisingly bold handwriting, but she did not, as usual, open it immediately. Instead she finished the wing to the new house, now taking form in a plan drawn on a large sheet of paper. Then she opened the letter.

“My dear,” he began exactly as though he had not left off, “it now occurs to me that death has at least one important use. There is no human progress without death. Life is never static and thus inevitably it progresses from youth to old age. But the old become too wise, too prudent, and therefore life must begin over and over again in the young, if there is to be progress. For the young do not know enough to be prudent and therefore they attempt the impossible — and achieve it, generation after generation. You see I am seeking excuses to die! I admit it. When you are not here, I feel myself dying. I ought to die. It is time. But I cling to you, my darling. I prolong myself through love. And yet, upon further reflection, I realize that I myself need to die, in order that my life may be complete and whole. It is only when I have end as well as beginning that my individuality is definite. When I say I, it means as a human being. No, I am wrong. Since you opened to me the door of your room, I am set apart from all others against common sense. Time has become my most treasured commodity. ‘You must live long enough to see her again’—this is what I tell my body every night when I lay it down to sleep. It is still necessary that I live, although death waits, impatient.”

She read the letter carefully to the end, then folded its pages, put them in the envelope and slipped the envelope into a secret drawer and locked it with a combination. Her servants, as curious as any now that Arnold was dead and she was, so to speak, alone, would not be averse to reading a letter upon the envelope of which was written so blackly the name of a man. This done, she took up her drawing pencil. As Edwin had written, it was necessary to live, and for her, too, it was necessary. And since it was necessary, what more, logical than that she should have the sort of house she wanted to live in? For she realized that she had never had that house. This vast structure now surrounding her, its twenty-two rooms spreading over acreage, was merely the house in which she had been born, and in which she and Arnold had lived, with their two children.

The house in Vermont, too, had not been built for her alone. No, she wanted a house where there was no place for anyone except herself alone. She could go to Edwin and would go to him when and if she chose, but he could never come to her and so there was no need to make a place for him. She would slip into his life occasionally and slip away again. As for her children, they had their own houses, into which she might or might not go as she pleased, and they had no need of a place in her house. Need there be even a guest room? Her mind flew to that snowy night when Jared Barnow stood at her door. What if he appeared again? But if he never appeared, a room for him would be a waste. Or, for that matter, there was always this huge house, its beautiful rooms empty, and she would simply return here to receive him. She had settled it. She would not have a guest room. The house would be entirely her own. Instead of a guest-room wing, she would have a sunken garden.

…It was perhaps a week later that the telephone rang just before midnight. She had worked ever since her solitary, eight o’clock dinner, drawing in meticulous detail the rooms of her house. Merely because she would be alone in it did not mean it would have only a few rooms, not at all. She wanted her interests separated by walls and spaces, the library separated from the music room, and especially she wanted a contemplation room whose semicircular windows encompassed the sea. She could not imagine how she would furnish this room, but when the time came she would know — and of course there must be the usual rooms for sleep and food and service, but where she dined must be open to gardens and where she slept must be open to the stars.

In the midst of total absorption she heard the muted telephone ringing persistently. Her daughter, she supposed, who, married long before Arnold died, made it a habit to call late at night, on the supposition that her mother lived a life violently social, whereas the fact was that she lived almost as a recluse, making excuse that she had not recovered from Arnold’s death. Thus prepared to hear Millicent’s high and silvery voice, she was unprepared to hear quite another, an impetuous baritone which she instantly recognized as belonging to Jared Barnow.

“It’s fearfully late, I apologize, but my little plane is grounded — something wrong in the engine — and it just occurs to me that this city, which has always been for me an adjunct to the airport, is in reality the place where you live. I could take a room at a hotel. On the other hand—”

He broke off expectantly and she quickly filled in the pause.

“Of course, come here. Have you dined?”

“Yes, in some other city. I’m due in New York tomorrow, but I don’t wish to go ahead and leave my little machine alone, not until I know what’s wrong. I don’t like tinkering strangers.”