Pearl Buck - The Goddess Abides

“Yesterday was such a wonderful day, Jared! I saw you as I hadn’t seen you before. And I thought I knew you! We’ve really been together a good deal, haven’t we? And yet it took yesterday, and seeing you with that amputee, to show me what you really are — a scientist, yes, and much more — a man brilliant but compassionate, strong but gentle. I love you — of course I love you — how can I help it? But it was only yesterday that made me know I love you. I shall always love you. I’m so grateful that I do. Once long ago — or it seems very long ago — a dear old man, a very great man he was, too, loved me. And he paid me a high honor. He told me that his love for me kept him alive — not only living but alive, so that his brain could stay clear and he could do his work. That, he taught me, was the great service of love — that it gives life to the lover as well as to the beloved. I’ve never forgotten what he taught me — about love.” She was silent for a moment. Then she repeated softly what Edwin once had said. “Love keeps me not only living but alive.”

He got up and walked to the tall windows and stared moodily into the shadowy gardens. A young moon rose over the pointed evergreens at the far end.

She continued, as though she talked to herself.

“I’m old enough to know that your loving me is — a miracle. I don’t understand it — I can only accept it and be grateful for it. It makes my own life beautiful. It makes me want to be useful to you in any way I can. I want to pour my life into yours, so that you’ll be all you dream of being — do all you dream of doing — which you would be and do without me, of course, but perhaps my loving you, as I do, will bring you more belief in yourself than you might have had alone — I mean, without me at this moment of your life, for of course there will be many others, many people, certainly one above all—”

She broke off lest she weep. Instead she smiled at him. She lifted the small glass of benedictine and took one sip and put it down again. The words had poured forth, from what source in her being she did not know, nor did she know why she had thought of Edwin. But she was herself again, her true self, and this, too, she must wait to understand, and be content to wait.

He came back to her slowly, pausing on his way to look at a bookshelf, to examine a painting on the wall. Then he returned to her side.

“Tell me,” he said. “Why was yesterday so important?”

“Because I saw the man you are meant to be,” she told him. “And I will do nothing to prevent that man.”

…When she was alone again, when she was upstairs in her own room, she felt dazed and yet at rest. She did not know how the words had been spoken, but they had come from a hidden part of her being. Yet now, as she recalled the moments, she realized that for a brief instant as though in a vision, she had seen side by side the man he had been only yesterday, the assured absorbed man, knowing what his work was and doing it well and finding content therein, and the man he had been today, distraught, bewildered, overwhelmed by discovering that he loved her. These two men, both of which he was, had drawn from her the words she had not known were in her, yet they were waiting to be spoken, and spoken they shaped the decision she had not known how to make. Between the two she must choose and she had chosen.

They had parted almost immediately, aware of a mutual exhaustion, and though at her bedroom door he had taken her in his arms again and kissed her, which kiss she had returned, it had been gently done, both in the giving and taking, and she knew that tonight she would open no door between them, nor would he. What she had now to do was to determine what was her place in his life. For she would love him forever. That she knew. So, knowing, what was the fulfillment of supreme love? What could it be except the fulfillment of the beloved?

She slept well that night, her inner tension released, and woke to find herself calm and rested. She lay for a while, watching the rays of the morning sun fall across the floor through the windows opening to the eastern sky. She had no sense of haste, the urgency in her was gone, and when at last she rose and made herself ready for the day, she was instinctively not surprised that Weston stood at the foot of the stairs.

“Mr. Barnow went away early this morning, madame. He left this note for you.”

“I hope you gave him his breakfast,” she said, with a serenity that surprised her.

“He would only have coffee, madame,” Weston replied, and led the way to the breakfast room.

She followed, but not directly, pausing to go out on the terrace and breathe deeply of the fragrant morning air. The locust trees were in bloom and their fragrance had attracted the bees. Long ago, when she was a child, her father had ordered hives to be set in the far end of the garden on the theory that honey was the most healthy sweet for children and then had planted young locust trees, now grown to these giants, their rugged trunks black under the branches heavy with white blossoms. Out of tender memory she had kept the hives and each autumn the gardener removed boxes of clear white honey, still fragrant with the scent of locust.

She stood for a few minutes, looking down the aisle of trees, at the far end of which was the pool and in the pool the white marble statue of the woman standing on a rock. The scene, so familiar to her that she seldom saw it, was today as freshly beautiful as though she had been away to some far place and only now had come home again. Peace pervaded her, an inner peace which enabled her to contemplate her surroundings, yes, and even her life, with new appreciation. She had made her choice and it was a right choice and she was at peace with herself.

Alone at the breakfast table and facing the southern windows, she saw the grape arbors in full leaf, the gardener was there with a stepladder and he was trimming the vines so that the strength of the vines might produce a richer fruit. Alone, she wondered that she was not lonely. She had been so often restless without Jared. When he was not with her she listened for the telephone, she listened for the opening of a door, the sound of a voice. His habit of appearing without telling her that he was coming was exasperating but exciting and kept her tense. Yet she had never said “Let me know,” for she valued his sudden need of her and his impulse to go at once to find her. When a difficulty arose in his laboratory, a technical problem or a disagreement with his superior, his recourse was to come to her and talk, until in talking he found solution, his own solution at that, for what she might say seemed to her of no importance. His lucid mind could provide its own solutions. And all this while she was holding in her hand the envelope he had left with Weston to give to her. She tore it open and drew out the single sheet it contained.

Dearest:

From now on that is what you are to me. No matter who else comes — or goes — that one word is what you are, and will always be, to me. No change is possible. Why you said what you said yesterday, why you did what you did, I do not ask, because, whatever the reason, it was right. I know.

I am yours always,

Jared

She folded the sheet and put it back in the envelope. When she went to her sitting room she would lock it in her desk to keep and to read again and again. Their love was established in the only way it could be established. She need never again wait or listen for his coming. She understood why he had left her today and she knew that he would always come back. She had made it possible for him to return to his work. She had given him his freedom even from love, and so he would love her forever. Thus musing, and smiling to herself, she ate her breakfast and thought of him with peace. Only of him she thought as she went about her day. With no planning for the future she thought of him and felt alive and strong and well.