Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

The quiet, steady voice, rich in its mellow tones, reached to his soul. Something crystallized in him, a form, a desire, almost clear enough to be defined as purpose. His range of possibilities assumed boundaries. As yet he had never said to himself that he would become this certain person or that certain person. He had taken each day, each experience, each revelation of new knowledge through a book or a human being or by his own discovery for enough in itself. The impact was never of his own making. It came and he made the most of it. Now he was stunned at the sudden knowledge of himself. Before he could break the pit of silence into which he had fallen, Mr. Kung spoke.

“I am tired, my children. I must leave you.”

He struck a small brass gong on the table beside his chair. The door opened; a Chinese manservant entered and, approaching Mr. Kung, he held out his arm. Hand upon this arm, Mr. Kung smiled at the two who rose to their feet, and left the room.

They sat down again, Stephanie now upon a hassock before the dying fire. She did not speak nor did he. How could he speak when he was so dazed within himself, such questions pressing him—art, yes but which art? How to discover his own talent, if he had a talent? He had never spoken to anyone out of his own depths. He had always been the listener, the learner. With Lady Mary no speech beyond the most casual had ever been necessary. Their communication was always physical, without the necessity of words, each absorbed in individual ways. Besides, he did not know if he wanted to speak to anyone. What was there yet to be put into words? I want to create—what? Something of beauty, something of meaning, something to relieve the terrible inner pressure of this need! How could he put this into words? And would she understand? They had never talked of inward feelings, thoughts, desires—

“I will tell you something very strange,” she said. Her voice was dreamlike.

“Yes?” he said.

“Never has my father left me alone with a man before. Man or boy, I have never been left alone with him. I wonder why he leaves me alone with you?”

“I hope—because he trusts me.”

“Oh, there is more to it than that,” she said positively.

She lifted her head to fling back her long, straight black hair and looked at him.

“Why do you think so?” he asked.

“He is planning something,” she said. “I don’t know what it is, but he is planning. He has been very different since you came into this house. I know him. He is very different.”

“In what way?”

“Not his usual arrogant self. Oh, he has never been loud, you know, always quiet—absorbed in his art collections—but arrogant. It was necessary for me to tell him everything I did, where I was going—he always managed to keep me too busy with what he needed done—I’ve had little time to myself since I grew too old for a governess. He’s always watched me—or had people watching me.”

“How can you bear that?” he demanded.

“I understand him,” she said simply.

She was looking at the fire and her hair was hanging over her face again. He saw only the lovely profile. Until now he had not truly examined it, but now he noticed each detail, not because it was her profile but because it was lovely. An awareness had awakened in him since he had been in this house. An awareness of beauty. There was more to know than knowledge. There was beauty. The awareness swelled again into a yearning to create beauty of his own. Again how? And what?

Out of the sheer need, he spoke. “Stephanie!”

She did not look up. “Yes?”

“Do you think you know me? Even a little!”

She shook the long dark hair. “No.”

“Why not?” he pleaded.

“Because I have never known anyone like you,” she said, lifting her head and looking at him straightly.

“Am I so—difficult?”

“Yes—because you know everything already.”

“Except myself.”

“You don’t know what you want to do?”

“Do you?”

“Of course. I want to help my father in his business, but above all I want to learn how to be independent.”

“Surely you’ll marry!”

“I’ve never seen anyone I want to marry.”

“There’s time—you’re only as old as I am!”

“Do you want to marry?”

“No!”

“Then there’s the two of us. And now I can tell you safely what my father wants and why he won’t let you go when you talk of leaving. I suppose you’ve noticed that?”

“Yes, but I haven’t wanted to go—not really! I learn so much from him—and there are all these books! I haven’t needed much persuasion to stay. Haven’t you noticed?”

“My father has his own way of getting people to do what he wants—gentle but relentless.”

“So what does he want?”

“He wants us to marry each other, of course.”

He was shocked. “But why?”

“So that he’ll have a son, stupid!”

“But I thought he didn’t like Americans!”

“He likes you.”

“Wouldn’t he rather have a Chinese?”

“He knows I won’t marry a Chinese—ever!”

“No?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s too much in me that’s not Chinese. And yet there’s too much Chinese in me to marry a Frenchman—or any white man. So—I won’t marry.”

“Does he know that?”

“No, and it’s not necessary for him to know it. It would be to refuse him a son forever. He wants me to marry a man who will take our family name and carry it on. It’s the legal way—the custom—in the China he knew. For him there’s no other China.”

He was silent, trying to sort out his feelings. Shocked, vaguely alarmed and then reassured because neither of them wanted marriage, and yet somehow fascinated—no, that was too strong a word—somehow stirred, in ways that were a result of what Lady Mary had taught him.…

“Well,” he exclaimed abruptly and, recognizing Lady Mary symptoms in himself, he rose to his feet. “At least we understand each other, but we’ll be friends, eh? I like you enormously, of course—more than any other girl I’ve ever known, though in a way you’re the only girl I’ve ever known.”

“You’re the only man—young, that is—I’ve ever known. Someone living in the house, that is—”

“So we’ll just go on being friends,” he decided.

Then he remembered his own previous confession and sat down again.

“Since you don’t really know me,” he said, “but you do know others and you are wise for your years with your father, what do you see me as—tentatively, I mean, and perhaps far in the future… very far?”

She looked at him again, for she had kept subsiding into gazing into the dying fire. Now, looking at him with a peculiar clairvoyance, she answered with astonishing assurance.

“Oh, a writer, of course. Yes, indeed, from our very first meeting. In fact, you know, I thought that’s what you were, sitting at the little table staring at everyone as though you’d never seen people before.”

“A writer!” he repeated, his voice a whisper. “I’ve been told this before and of course I’ve thought of it a great deal myself but I’ve never reached a concrete decision. And you’ve known all along!”

“Oh, yes, definitely!”

He was sobered by a stab of doubt. “You might be wrong!”

“I am right. You’ll see.”

But he could not be sure all at once like that. “Well,” he said slowly. “I’ll have to think. It will take a deal of thinking—a great, great deal. Of course I’ve thought of it, as I said, but only among many other possibilities. But to have you so sure—well, it’s upsetting in a way. Almost compulsive—”

“You asked me!”

“And I’m not blaming you—but to have you come at me like that!”