Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

He took the photographs one by one from his grandfather’s fine old hand. The first one showed only the aged man, sitting at ease in an armchair. The next showed a faint suggestion of mist descending behind the chair. In each picture the mist grew stronger and more defined, until in its center there appeared clearly and more clearly the lively face of a beautiful woman.

Her body remained mist, but the eyes, the features, were illuminated.

“You see her,” his grandfather exclaimed triumphantly. “It is as she was when she was at her most beautiful, in health and maturity, before illness and age attacked.”

“Does she speak to you, Grandfather?” he asked.

“I do not hear as I hear you,” his grandfather replied, “but I am aware of communication—yes. I cannot explain it to you. It is an awareness. Whether you could hear a voice, were she to appear now, I cannot tell you. I do not know whether she would appear in that case. I rather imagine that it requires some effort on her part, just as it does on mine, for us to cross the barriers.”

His grandfather spoke so naturally, with such acceptance and faith, that he asked no more questions.

“Thank you, Grandfather,” he said.

His grandfather put the pictures carefully in their sequence and into the box. Then in a gentle voice, infused with love, he said quietly, “Dear boy, it is time for you to continue your travels. I have no right to hold you here in this old house, inhabited by an old man and the spirit of a woman who lives beyond. It has been joy to have you here. You must return many times. If I die, too soon, before your return, I have arranged that Sung will keep the house in order for you. If we both die, the house will still be kept. In each of the capital cities of countries you visit, money will be held for you. You must set forth and find the center of your interest. You are a creator, but you must find your interest and then dedicate yourself to that interest—not to the act of creativity. Merely to want to create will make it impossible for you to do so. You must find an interest greater than yourself—a love, perhaps—and then the power to create will set you on fire.”

“I understand, Grandfather,” he said quietly. “Thank you for sending me away. You set me free, even from myself.”

HE WAS ON A SHIP, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, on his way eastward—a wandering, meandering way—to China, as once his grandfather had gone. He might have flown and been there in a few hours, but he wanted to know more, see more, much more, before he reached the ancient country that had meant and still meant so much to his grandfather. And so he chose the slow approach, hoping to see the old countries of the West, in order that he might have the contrast of Asia, and also because he wanted time in which to know the sea. His life had been spent inland, in a landlocked state, until he came to New York, and though he had often gone there to the harbor and watched the great ships draw anchor, he stood firm upon the land. Now he was upon a ship, the sea was rough, the sky gray. He had a small cabin to himself, and there were few passengers, for it was out of season.

Perhaps because it was out of season and the passengers so few, he came to know the captain and the first mate and some of the men. These seamen were different from land men. He wondered and watched them; he listened to their simple tales, simple in language but sometimes telling of fearful experiences of being lost at sea. Lost at sea! His imagination, always too quick, saw the piteously small lifeboats tossing upon the illimitable ocean, the beautiful, cruel ocean. And yet he came to love the sea, his favorite spot upon the ship the prow, where he stood hour after hour, leaning his elbows on the stout mahogany top rail, polished by the captain’s command every day. There he stood, like a carved figurehead of youth, watching the ship’s pointed bow divide the green waters into two huge white-topped waves. He watched and he felt, storing away the sights of the vivid changing sea, the purple sky, the white waves, remembering forever the clean cut of the ship, the feel of the fresh salt wind upon his face and in his hair, watching and feeling. He ate prodigious meals of simple, hearty food, he slept dreamlessly at night, soothed by the rise and fall of the ship, and woke again to another day, wishing the voyage would never end and then longing for it to end because there was so much to see beyond.

It was on the third day that he saw the woman. She had not appeared before, her place at the captain’s table always empty. He had not known of her existence. She had perhaps been seasick and stayed in her cabin. The sea had been rough until this third day, a high wind in spite of sunshine and a clear sky, the wind perhaps the fringe of a distant storm. But the ship rolled easily, built narrow for its length for speed, perhaps? At any rate, the woman’s place had been empty at the captain’s table. Suddenly she appeared at the wide door of the dining saloon and there she stood, gazing somewhat uncertainly about her. She had dressed for dinner in a green gown, long-sleeved but low-necked and, fitting her slender figure, it fell straight and narrow to her feet. Even her shoes were green. Above her straightness her hair was swept back into a great knot at the back of her head, bright-red hair, shining in the lamplight like a casque of gold. He had never seen so beautiful a human being and he stared at her. But so did they all. A silence fell on the passengers. And she looked at them unsmiling, out of dark eyes, so brown they were almost black.

The captain got to his feet and pulled out her chair. “Come in, Lady Mary. It’s good to see you at last. We’ve been waitin’ these three days.”

He was a Scotsman, the burr heavy on his tongue. She gave him a glint of a smile then and walked slowly toward his table. And suddenly, as she passed Rann’s table, the ship gave a great lurch, hit by a huge wave, the seventh wave of a seventh wave, the second mate had told him, and she would have fallen had he not leaped to his feet to catch her in his arms and keep her steady.

“Thank you,” she said in a clear soft voice.

She clung to his arm nevertheless until she reached her seat. Then he returned to his own place, aware only of the softness of her slender body under the green satin dress. Yet she was not very young, he thought, trying not to look at her though glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. Her profile was turned to him, a lovely profile, too strong perhaps for strict beauty, but somehow very beautiful. And if she was not young, neither was she old—perhaps thirty or thirty-five? But that was twice as old as he, though not old enough, not really, to be his mother. He could not imagine her being a mother. Lady Mary, the captain had called her, and that meant she was English and perhaps even lived in a castle somewhere. But it was not likely that she would notice a boy. Nor did he indeed wish for her notice. He was too young, too young except to see, as he saw everything, the vividness of her coloring and her supple grace. She was listening to something the captain was saying, a half smile on her lips. She was eating, too, with a frank appetite that somehow surprised him because she was so slender.

People were talking again, accustomed now to her presence, but he scarcely listened, except as he always listened, saying little himself but storing away unconsciously the sound of these voices, the changing expressions of their faces, their postures, their ways of eating, all details of life while though useless, it seemed, in themselves, he could not help accumulating because it was how he lived.

He would have forgotten Lady Mary, perhaps, as no more than part of the ship’s life, this small contained world, confined between sea and sky, except that the next day, a windy bright morning, when he stood at his usual place at the ship’s prow, he felt a hand on his arm, and turning saw her there, buttoned from neck to knees in a silver gray mackintosh.