Pearl Buck - The Goddess Abides

“What do you mean, Amelia?” she had asked. Amelia had shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not speaking from experience, of course, but I’ve heard Mamma say that after Papa died — I was only three — she was so lonely that she was tempted to marry any man that asked her. After she got over that year she knew she didn’t want to marry at all.”

“I shan’t want to marry again, either,” she had murmured. Much as she relied on Amelia for diversion, she had never been able to confide everything to her, especially as Amelia, being rather plain and certainly too blunt, had never been in love, so far as she knew. The crudity of Amelia’s remarks had stayed in her memory, however, and she recalled them now as she replied to Jared.

“How do you see me?” she asked.

“In a great beautiful house somewhere,” he replied promptly, as though he had thought about it. “I see you with servants to wait on you. I hate you to be here alone. I don’t want you to cook my breakfast. I make my own bed for I can’t bear to think of your doing it. Only when you’re at the piano there, or sitting on that high hearth in the firelight, do I feel I’m realty seeing you.”

She was moved by his earnestness. “Thank you,” she said. “And you don’t know how you help me. I’ve known I must go back to the big house but I haven’t had the courage. I came away after my husband’s death, and I’ve lingered on, dreading to go back alone—”

He interrupted her. “I’ll be with you. What I mean is — I’ll come to see you immediately and stay over a weekend, at least, now and then, if you’ll let me.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’m very touched, and you mustn’t for any reason, think it necessary. I shall be quite all right once I’m there — in a day or two. I have friends next door. My husband and I grew up in that neighborhood. In fact, it was a question whether we’d live in his family home or mine. But my house was empty — my father died soon after my marriage and my mother died earlier. I was an only child and so everything was left to me, and I’m really fond of the house.”

She spoke breathlessly, trying to explain all at once and not knowing quite what it was she wanted to explain. He listened raptly until she broke off.

“Perfect,” he said. “That’s where I want to see you, in a house that is your setting. This?” His arm swept the rugged room. “No!”

And then as though he had settled an argument he went abruptly to the piano and began to play a resounding polonaise of Chopin’s creation, and she sank into the deep sofa before the fire and listened, entranced by his new interpretation of familiar music. By his emphasis he eliminated every hint of the pathos that underlay the music and made instead a triumphant assertion of life.

“And what would Chopin have thought of that?” she inquired when he had finished as abruptly as he had begun and rising had come to stand over her, his brooding eyes upon her face.

“I make all music my own,” he replied, not removing his gaze.

And she kept smiling, half shy, half afraid. She did not know him. He was still a stranger. All the more dangerous then was this powerful attraction which had no basis in knowledge. She would have liked to ask him what his thoughts were and dared not. He spoke them without her asking.

“I want you to come skiing with me tomorrow.”

Her reply was instant. “I couldn’t possibly!”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, I have no skis.”

“We can rent them.”

“I haven’t skied for years.”

“That’s an argument for — and this is probably the last good snow of the year.”

“It’s not good snow. Sam says the slopes are icy — warm sun melts them by day and freezes them by night.”

“It might snow tonight. There are clouds on the mountaintop.”

“And a shining moon!”

“Let’s finish this argument in the morning.”

“The answer will be the same.”

“Not if snow falls in the night — no, don’t speak! I shan’t let you.”

He put his hand over her mouth and held it there until, choking with laughter, she pulled it away.

“God, what a soft mouth you have!” he exclaimed, wondering.

“I’d have bitten your hand if it weren’t so hard,” she retorted. “And I don’t want to ski.”

“Stop there,” he cried, “or I’ll do it again. I won’t take no for answer.”

“You shan’t have yes, at any rate,” she retorted.

“For tonight, then, let it be neither yes nor no.”

She rose, half afraid. He looked at her steadily, speculating, but on what? She stepped back, he shook his head.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Your age.”

“You must believe it.”

He shook his head again and then suddenly he reached for her hand, took it, turned it over and kissed the palm. “I’ll never believe it.”

She stood, unresisting, astonished, the kiss in her hand an unexpected gift. He let her hand fall gently to her side.

“Good night,” he said abruptly and crossed the room to the door of his room. There he paused.

“I shall pray for snow,” he said and closed the door.

…In the night the snow fell. She woke after a few hours of restless sleep and rose from her bed and drew aside the gold-colored draperies of the glass doors facing the mountain. The light of her bedside lamp was reflected upon a curtain of soft white flakes thickly falling. The terrace outside was already newly covered. She would never be able to resist his determination now, and already yielding she returned to her bed and slept.

“My prayers are always answered,” he declared in the morning at the breakfast table.

“But I still have no ski clothes,” she said.

“All the more fun! We’ll outfit you at the ski shop, and get on our way. Come on, hurry up, no loitering over coffee, if you please! The sun is climbing fast. A good six inches of snow, though—”

“You’re really rather domineering!”

“It’s my nature,” he agreed cheerfully.

He got up as he spoke, gathering dishes, began washing and drying and putting away while she watched, amused, and finished her coffee.

“You’re very expert,” she said. “I’ve camped all over the world. Last year I was in the Himalayas.”

“Doing what?”

“Studying cosmic rays. Ever hear of a fellow called Tesla?”

“Of course. He wanted to electrify the globe, didn’t he, and provide an eternal source of electric power?”

“God, you’re knowledgeable!”

“I’m my father’s daughter. He believed that Nikola Tesla was infinitely greater as a scientist than Edison was. In fact, he wrote articles about Tesla — and introduced him to millionaire benefactors sometimes.”

“We’ll have to talk about Tesla tonight, before the fire. Now the mountain waits.”

He hustled her ruthlessly, he was impatient and unrelenting, and in half an hour they were in the ski shop, he ordering expertly and refusing argument against the latest in ski clothes, garments of which she had not heard in the years that had passed since she taught the children to ski.

“Skin tight,” he ordered. “That’s for fair weather like today. You feel as though you had nothing on. Fits you like your own skin.”

He studied her critically when she came out of the dressing room in the tight suit that covered her from neck to ankles. He gathered an inch of slack at her waist.

“You can take a smaller size,” he said. “You’ve the waist of a girl.”

He sent her back, and she slid into another suit, and came out again for inspection.

“Perfect,” he declared. “Now for warm-up clothes. No more long underwear these days! You slip on a sort of space suit overtop…And the skis — they’re new, too — plastic core and fiberglass — fine for any kind of snow, ice, crud, moguls, powder. Boots, please, young woman”—this to the bewildered clerk. “Leather on the outside, foam inside, and single buckles, though in my opinion the perfect boot is still to be made. Maybe I’ll think of something someday.”