Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

“What are you thinking?” she demanded.

He looked at her. They were here in her room afterward, long after midnight. She was lying on the white satin canopied bed beside him, naked.

“What does this mean to you?” he asked in reply.

She put up her arms and drew his head to her warm breasts.

“It keeps me young,” she said.

IT WAS A SIMPLE STATEMENT, simply made, and with it she had given him her lovely smile. At the moment it had seemed no more. But he woke before dawn, alone in his own room. The moonlight had wakened him and, as though that cold light illumined his mind, the full enormity of what she had said revealed itself to him. His mother was right. He was being used. He pondered upon this truth. Lady Mary needed a male body to stimulate and satisfy her own need. He was young, physically he was in the full fresh vigor of his sexual manhood. Into that narrow passage of her body his strong thrust excited, exalted, and satisfied her. That was all he was to her, an instrument of gratification. He was used as a machine might be used and was he not more than a machine? Was he not also spirit?

Yet let him be just a machine, if this was what she wished. Did he in turn demand more of her? He was fastidious in his own way, nevertheless. He could never have lent the use of his body, of which he was proud, if not indeed even somewhat vain, to a mere Ruthie, any more than he had been able to accept the strange caresses of Donald Sharpe. He did not love Lady Mary, but her beauty charmed him—her beauty and her breeding. In a way, he supposed, it was a sort of love. But was there anything lasting, or even meaningful for him about such love? Still, perhaps, it was more than she felt for him. She had spoken only of herself, and for such ends, that he felt at this lonely moment degraded and therefore outraged. He would not be used. He would not have his body used. His body was his own possession—solely his own. And then he had made up his mind. It was time for him to move on his way. Beyond this castle the whole world still waited. It was the world to which he belonged. All people were his people. No one woman was his only woman, no one man his only friend. He was going his own way, where he did not know, but onward. His world was in readiness somewhere beyond this castle.

THE FAREWELL WAS EASY, AFTER ALL. He had dreaded it, though only a little because he was resolute, and yet somewhat because in his own way he was also tender of heart. She had been kind, in her English, offhand fashion, and he was not sure whether after all she had an attachment. Even though she might replace him, undoubtedly would replace him in time, still a vague sort of fondness held them lightly together. He felt it in himself. She was lovely in her cool fashion, delicate even in her passion—no, “delicate” was not the word. She could be abandoned but always with taste; if the words were not too contradictory. She could not offend. Her very frankness was never offensive. Her clarity of expressed desire was pure.

Then when, he had pondered, was the suitable hour for the farewell? Now that he had decided upon it, he was impatient for it to be over. One night he packed his bags, the third night after the decision. He had avoided going to her room, and so delicate was her perception that she had seemed also indifferent to him. By this very indifference, studied and graceful, he knew she was preparing herself for the unavoidable separation. The next morning, his bags packed and breakfast over, although they had lingered at the breakfast table that had been laid for them outside on the terrace, it being a perfect early spring morning, he began, not abruptly, but as though they had spoken before of his departure.

“I shall never be able to thank you enough,” he said.

“When are you going?” she asked.

“Today,” he said.

“And where?” she asked. She sipped her coffee and did not look at him.

“To London and then to France, and then southward across Italy and perhaps even to India. I shan’t stay anywhere—as I have stayed here.”

“Ah, you’ll like India,” she said almost indifferently. Still she did not look at him.

“What shall I find there?” he asked.

“Whatever it is you are looking for,” she said. She touched a bell and the butler appeared.

“Have a car ready to take Mr. Colfax to the station at once. He’ll catch a train for London.”

“Yes, madam,” the butler said, and disappeared.

Mr. Colfax! She had never called him that before and he looked at her, his eyebrows lifted in question.

“Aren’t you going?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “But—”

She rose from the table. “I’m not sending you away,” she continued. “It’s only that I’ve learned that if something is over, it’s better to have it over at once.”

“Yes,” he said.

He rose too, and they stood facing each other, he taller than she. Yonder in the rose garden where a fountain played, a bird sang three clear notes, a cadence, and stopped abruptly.

“Oh, Rann,” she said in a whisper.

And suddenly he saw that she was sad. But what could he say except to stammer his thanks?

“I do thank you—I thank you most awfully—”

She did not hear him. She was talking to herself.

“I’d give anything to be your age—I’d give all I’ve ever had—I would and I would; I would indeed!”

She put her arms about him and held him and then pushed him away. “I’m going to the village for shopping. When I come back, you’ll be gone.”

He stood watching her as she walked away in her usual light, quick fashion. She did not turn her head, and he knew now that she was gone from him forever, and he was returned to himself—free as perhaps he had never before been free.

WHEN HE ARRIVED IN LONDON he took a taxi to the small hotel his grandfather had told him about.

“We had expected you much earlier, Mr. Colfax,” the desk clerk said to him. “Your grandfather had led us to believe you would be here some months ago. There is a letter here from some solicitors but nothing more than that.”

“I’ve been visiting a friend I met on the ship on the way over,” he said by way of explanation. “Now I’ll be here for a few days, then I’ll be going to Paris.”

“Very good, sir,” the clerk said. “Your room is all ready.”

The letter from his grandfather’s London legal firm told him of funds his grandfather had made available for him, and by telephone he told them he would not be needing the money in London and they insisted he take the name and address of the firm in Paris where it would be forwarded to him. He walked around London for a while and found it much the same as New York and other cities he had visited and decided the sooner he went on to Paris the better for him. He had heard that Paris was a city with a soul, unlike any other city in the world.

PARIS WAS IN THE MIDST OF AUGUST HEAT. It was a changeable city, and he had loved it immediately, partly because it was changeable and difficult to understand and therefore enchanting. In June it had been like a young girl his own age. Indeed, it had swarmed with young girls. They were new to him and he was fascinated by them but not more by them than he was by the beauty of the city itself, its history, which led him into libraries; its paintings, which led him to weeks in the Louvre; its magnificence—which led him into Versailles, and cathedrals. But now there were days when he simply wandered about the streets, stopping at outdoor cafés, sometimes walking as far as the Bois de Boulogne to throw himself on the ancient French earth and lie there, submitting himself to it. He imagined, or felt, emanation from that earth, as indeed he had felt too in England. Lady Mary more than a few times had stopped the small car she drove herself, when she was alone with him, when they were out merely to enjoy a fine mild day, or when she wanted to show him an old village, or open a picnic basket or make excuse, he now suspected—at any rate, she had stopped the car in some remote spot, shielded by hedgerows, and declaring herself weary, had spread a car rug, usually folded in the backseat, and there in the hedges, in the warm glow of approaching spring, she had stirred him to make love. Make love! He disliked the phrase. Could one make love? There was a compulsion hidden in the word “make.” Now, today, far away from her, and lying alone under the trees in this French forest, he admitted his own too-ready response to her physical stimulation. He had allowed himself to be overcome not by her so much as by himself. He carried within himself his own constant temptation and therefore he must blame himself. But was there need to blame himself for his male nature? No, his reason replied, for he was not responsible for his own parts. His responsibility lay only in the choice of which part of him was to be his master. There was far more to him, he knew, than the enjoyment of his physical being. His world was still not in himself. Or else, he was only a small single world, however composite, in a world of other worlds, and his undying sense of curiosity and wonder—that powerful inner force that impelled him to every adventure—made him a part of every other world. Knowledge was his deepest hunger and now especially the knowledge of people, of what they were and thought, and did. And when he was replete with this knowledge, if ever he were, what would he do with it?