Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

“I’m always straight-out. I suppose that’s the American in me.”

“You’re much more American than you know. There’s a world of difference between you and your father.”

“I do know—sometimes too well! He doesn’t.”

“That’s because he’s all Chinese.”

They were silent then and for so long that he rose. “You’ve given me too much to think about. I’ll say good night, Stephanie.”

“Good night, Rann.”

He stooped and upon a sudden impulse he kissed the crown of her dark hair. He had never done such a thing before. But she did not move. Perhaps she did not even know what he had done.

IT WAS, HOWEVER, A GERMINAL MEANING. In his bed he lay sleepless, thinking first of what Mr. Kung might be planning for him and then for hours thinking with excitement that perhaps indeed he would be a writer. He had written many short pieces, verse and prose, but usually questions he was asking himself. He thought of these as questions, not writing, and merely putting them down clarified the possible answers in his mind if he was unable to find answers in books or from people. The trouble was that people, even the best of them, really knew so little and of books there were so many that he wasted time in searching and scanning. And when he was alone the questions often came in rhythm, especially if he were alone outdoors. He remembered that dewy autumn morning at the castle when, unable to sleep and excited from the night before , he had risen at dawn and gone out into the garden at sunrise. There, caught among the blooming roses in the rose garden he had seen an elaborate cobweb, glittering with dew drops, every drop a diamond in the sunshine and in the center of it the creator, a small black spider, and questions came rhyming out of his mind:

And at this moment he had been interrupted by Lady Mary. She was in her morning mood, distant and even cold. It had been bewildering at first, the frightening heat of her physical passion, and when that was satisfied to exhaustion, her chill reserve. No one but he knew that within her slender, erect frame there lived two such diverse beings. He had learned to accept both, the one who fell upon him with total abandon and the other distant and dignified in the conventional, almost traditional English manner. He had learned a great deal from Lady Mary. It all seemed useless now in the light of what Stephanie had declared last night. He thought of it again with a sense of illuminating capacity. Yes, he could do it. He could be a writer, devoting himself to the art of writing. “A man’s life begins with his work,” Mr. Kung had said. Then that was why he had not felt his own life begin—had not chosen his work until now. Had he really chosen even now? Could one choose one’s life so quickly?

Not answering his own questions, he fell asleep before dawn broke.

“TO SEE PARIS,” STEPHANIE WAS SAYING, “you must walk—walk—walk, unless you are sitting beside a little table somewhere on the sidewalk, drinking an aperitif and watching the people pass by, for the people are Paris too. Of course, we won’t walk everywhere—say, for example, to Montmartre! There’s a funicular—or even the subway, though I hate going underground. It’s sinister.”

“Am I never to spend more time in the Louvre?” he inquired.

They were exactly the same as they had been before the conversation late that night, now four nights ago, in the library. He had not forgotten for a waking moment, however, what she had said, but neither had referred to it again. And subtly he had changed his manner toward Mr. Kung. He did not so obviously sit at his feet, metaphorically speaking. Instead he took books to his room to read or he went on walks. Yesterday, Mr. Kung had seen him on one of these walks and this morning before he left the house, he had summoned Stephanie.

“My child,” he said reprovingly. “Why do you allow our young friend to prowl about the streets alone? Accompany him today!”

“I would like that, Papa,” Stephanie said. “And you, Rann?”

They had exchanged knowing smiles. “I’d love it,” he said with true enthusiasm.

“Then it is arranged,” Mr. Kung said with satisfaction, and so departed.

“Never the Louvre with me!” Stephanie was saying now.

“And why not?” he demanded. “I’ve spent weeks there and have only scratched the surface of all there is to see.”

“That’s just it,” Stephanie replied, “it is too, too big.”

He was inclined to argue, for he felt he had not spent enough time in the Louvre and besides bigness did not frighten him. In many ways Stephanie was very French. She had a delicacy of approach. Or perhaps that was Chinese? He did not know. At any rate, she was delicate in her tastes. She did not like too much of anything at once.

“So,” he continued, “how am I to see the treasures of Paris?”

“One by one, shall we not?” Stephanie said, coaxing. And then she ticked off the fingers of her left hand with her right forefinger. “I will take you to the Cluny medieval treasures; to Arts et Métiers because you are interested in science; to the Carnavalet for everything about Paris herself. As for art, I will take you first to Jeu de Paume. That’s impressionist, of course. And I don’t know anything more satisfying for Oriental art than my father’s collections. But no! I will be generous, I will take you to the Guimet.”

“And Versailles,” he hinted.

She put both delicate hands over her face. “Oh, please! Let us choose Chartres—so much lovelier—and then Rouen! But I want to take you too to the Mouffe.”

“What is the Mouffe?” he demanded, never having heard of it.

“A wonderful old market, hundreds of years old, with such people, such faces, all quarreling over prices at the top of their voices—such fun! We could buy some bread and cheese and go to the Jardin des Plantes and see the fountain.”

They set off with the joy of sunshine and morning and their own youth. He felt free with her, at ease and happier than he had been in his life before. Ever since the night in the library when she had told him she did not want to marry he had been at ease with her. Her independence, her wish to be completely free of marriage and men freed him, too. The months with Lady Mary, a bondage exciting at first and ending in repulsion, had put a shadow upon him, a burden of secret knowledge that faded on this bright summer’s day and the days to follow.

HE KNEW, OF COURSE, THAT this life could not be endless. That a day slipped so easily into another day was only because he was learning so much every day. Stephanie knew many places, many people of many sorts, people among whom she moved without intimacy and yet with knowledge of their personal histories and peculiarities, all of which she recounted to him in such vivid detail that he felt he knew each one, and this though she seldom introduced any by name. He absorbed facts complete with colorful detail.

“Monsieur Lelong,” she announced, “is an excellent teacher in the school I attended as a small child. Unfortunately, he has severe halitosis due to a deranged liver, but he is the soul of goodness.”

They were about to pass at this moment a tall, excessively thin, yellow-faced man in a shabby black suit. She hailed him with the utmost friendliness.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Lelong! Comment allez-vous?”

A few minutes of rapid exchange, and this done, she allowed him to proceed while she described the aging Frenchman’s history in detail, his unrequited love for a much younger teacher who had married another man, and—

He laughed. “It’s you who should write the books, Stephanie—not I!”