Pearl Buck - The Goddess Abides

“No,” she said, “and I get up early, too.”

They parted then with nod and smile, and when she had cleared the table and washed the dishes she sat down at the piano and played softly while the fire died to ash.

…And then later, when she had finished her ritual of bath and brushing her long fair hair, when she was lying in the big bed in her own room, the fire blazing upon the high stone hearth, she fulfilled the end of each day, she lifted the telephone from its place and dialed seven digits and she listened until she heard the gentle old voice.

“Is that you, my darling?” the voice inquired.

“It is I,” she said.

“I have been waiting for you — a long evening, waiting.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. Henry had an errand in the village. I have been rereading my essay on myth in the crowd mind. The boundary between myth and reality is very delicate. Myth is the dream, the hope, the faith, the vision of possibility which grows naturally into planning, and so possibility is very close indeed to reality, may indeed at any moment become reality, and that is its ineffable magic, its luring charm. Do I bore you, my love? I am company only for myself, I am afraid, and yet you will never know what you supply me now — King David and his Bathsheba — I doubt they talked, you know! I imagine it was just the warmth of her young flesh against his — no talk needed. Lacking that, I talk—”

He broke into mild laughter, and she laughed with him.

“You are laughing at me?” he inquired. “I don’t mind, dear child — so that I make you laugh.”

“I am not laughing at you,” she told him. “I am thinking how glad I shall be when I get so old that I, too, can say anything I like. Have you taken your medicine today?”

“Oh, yes — Henry sees to that.”

“Where are you now?”

“If you must know, you inquisitive female, I am just out of my bath, wrapped in a large towel, dripping water on the floor.”

“Oh, Edwin,” she protested. “You are incorrigible. Yes, you are, talking to me while you catch cold! Put on your pajamas at once and get into bed. Are you wearing your flannel, ones?”

“Yes, darling. Henry put the summer ones away. He put them away the first day of October as usual, and then it turned warm — Indian summer, you know — but be wouldn’t get them out again, so I had to roast until snow fell. But you know all that. I hope you’ve forgotten tomorrow is my birthday?”

“I’ve forgotten how old you are, if that’s what you mean!”

“Seventy-six, my dear love, and I still feel a stir in my central parts when I hear your voice.”

“Edwin!”

“You reproach me?”

“Good night, good night, and I repeat — you’re incorrigible!”

“God’s blessing on you, sweetheart! When are you coming to see me?”

“Soon — very soon.”

She put the receiver into its place again and lay back on her pillows, smiling. How could she explain to anyone the comfort of knowing that she was the center of an old philosopher’s amiable heart? That was what she had missed most when Arnold died. She had ceased to be first with anyone, meaning of course, heterosexual that she was, first with any man. Though Edwin Steadley stirred no central part of her, she allowed him to love her, although of what love was compounded at such an age, she did not know. Perhaps it was only a formula, words to which he had been so long accustomed in the thirty years of happy marriage with Eloise, his wife, dead these twenty-four years, that they had become habit. How long ago could be measured in the terms of her own life, for when Eloise died she had been a girl of eighteen, teasing her mother to let her cut her long hair. She had thought of Edwin as an old man even then, although in reality he had been at the height of his career as a famous philosopher, and she had been his pupil in college.

Handsome and virile she had thought him, in spite of his age, and filled with an élan that she had not associated with philosophy until she knew him. How much of this was due to Eloise it would be hard to guess, but a great deal, doubtless, for she had been articulate and ardent, and madly in love with him, developing, no doubt, every element of sex in him. She guessed at that, for Arnold had developed her in the same way, drawing her out of virgin shyness and leading her to her fullest womanhood, until since his death she had felt the currents of her sexuality stopped and protesting. Yet the original delicacy held. She was still to be sought and not to do the seeking.

The fire was dying here in her bedroom, too, and she fell asleep.

Jared Barnow was gone and so swiftly had the time passed that she could not believe the clock said nine o’clock in the morning. They had talked over the breakfast table until suddenly the clock in the corner had chimed the hour and he had leaped to his feet.

“My God, I came to ski! You make me forget. Here, I’ll help with the dishes.”

“No, no—”

“But, of course—”

In the end she had persuaded him and had seen him off, and then had remembered and had called him. “Come back if you don’t find something nearer to the slopes!”

“Thanks!” he had shouted.

She watched him tramp down the hill to the valley road which in turn would lead him up to the ski area on the mountain opposite her window. When he was out of sight in the intervening forest, she turned to the room again. It was strangely empty, a room too huge, as Arnold had always told her.

“It’s a room to get lost in,” he had said one evening when the fire was casting shadows in the distant corners, and suddenly now although the sun was shining through the windows, she felt lost.

She finished the dishes, and then went into the room that had been Arnold’s but now was her guest room. The bed was neatly made, and everything in order. Then he must have planned to come back again? Otherwise he would have left the bed unmade. Or if he had made the bed he would have put aside the sheets. Why did she keep thinking about him? She would call Edwin and tell him about the guest and so free herself, perhaps. This much she had learned about being alone, that she could mull over something and worry herself with it until she did nothing else.

“Although I shouldn’t use Edwin merely to ease myself,” she murmured, and went to the telephone and took off the receiver and dialed. Ten o’clock? He would be at his desk, writing his memoirs, the history of a long and distinguished life, spent among famous men of letters and learning.

She heard his voice on the telephone at her ear. “Yes? Who is it?”

“It’s I.”

“Oh, my darling — how wonderful to hear from you at the beginning of day!”

“I shouldn’t be interrupting your work but I need to hear your voice. The house seems empty.”

“It makes me happy that you need me.”

No, it is not fair of me, she thought, to use him because I miss someone else, and besides it is impossible that I miss someone I met only yesterday and that someone a man young enough to be my son. It is only that I cannot accustom myself to living alone — not yet.

“When are you coming to see me?” the voice inquired over the telephone.

It had been agreed long ago, without words, that when they met it was she who must go to him. The hazards of traveling were too much for him now, but beyond that fact was her own inclination to keep this house jealously for herself. Even her children she did not welcome here, preferring to put them up in the guest house nearby. This house was hers, inviolate now that Arnold was gone. There were times which she would not acknowledge that even he had sometimes been an intruder, But she had never known herself as she really was until now when she was alone.