“Do I?” she asked, and then, avoiding his eyes, she touched the whip to her horse’s flank and broke again into a gallop.
…“You do try to escape me, you know,” he said an hour later. He had declined luncheon, declaring that he had no time and now he was taking his leave. They stood at the door and he looted down into her upturned face.
She met his gaze frankly. “I don’t try to escape you—it’s just that I—”
She broke off, he waited.
“You’ll be late,” she said.
“I’ll be late,” he agreed, and waited.
“I don’t know how to answer you,” she said at last.
“Ah, that’s better. So next time we’ll find out why you can’t answer me.”
He stooped and kissed her mouth, very swiftly, very lightly, so that she could not step back or turn her head to avoid him. Then he was gone.
…He left an effect behind. She felt his absence so strongly that it became a presence. The silence in the house, his firm declarative voice no longer to be heard, his restlessness, moving from his chair, getting up to look out a window, to play for five minutes at the piano, to go to a bookshelf and pull out a book and glance through it while he talked and then put it back without speaking of it while he talked of something else—an infinite restlessness of the mind invading the body, his whole dominating, brilliant, demanding personality everywhere in the house, all this suddenly no more, was only an affirmation of himself.
She sat down when he was gone, her lips tingling with the kiss, and then as abruptly rose, refusing to recognize the surge of physical longing in her body. Let her recognize its meaning! There had been no great personal excitement in her life with Arnold, but there had been sexual content. He was not distasteful to her, and his approach was with a mature man’s understanding of a wife’s need. He had been considerate and appreciative, and she had been the same toward him, she believed. Certainly she did not want an extramarital love affair as so many women did nowadays, not merely on moral grounds but because she had no need of it. Now let her face the fact that missing the regularity of her somewhat placid life with Arnold and perhaps even the stimulation of Edwin’s touch, her natural desires, long awakened and customarily assuaged, were making demand upon her.
There was no need for shame or even embarrassment in this, a situation severely common enough, she reflected, when a wife lost her husband or a woman her lover. She had simply to face life as it was now and make her choices. She had chosen to live alone and explore her freedom. Therefore she must turn her mind, her imagination, away from Jared as a male. Let her put it as frankly as that, let her think of him as a human being, a friend and no more. Thus she admonished herself. Think no more of how he looks, she decided sternly; think instead of his mind, his interests, his career, all the aspects of his strong personality. There was no reason why she should not enjoy these, in freedom, instead of allowing an emotion to seize control of herself.
I shall prepare myself to be his friend, she thought, and remembering his admiration for her father, she slipped back into the days when she had been her father’s daughter, the only one in his house who understood what he was talking about when he spoke of his work with cosmic rays, the only one who wanted to understand. And she had wanted to understand because she loved him and knew that, successful scientist that he was and famous everywhere in the world, he was lonely in his own house.
“Your mother is a darling good woman,” he used to say to her, “and I’ve been a poor sort of husband, to her, my mind always somewhere else, even when she’s talking to me. It’s no wonder she loses patience with me. I don’t blame her a bit.”
Her answer to this had been silence, then throwing her arms about him, then finally an endless patience with Arnold when he wanted to talk with her, though his work as a lawyer was monotonously dull, she thought, yet if she felt impatient, and she had, very often, she had only to remember her lonely father, and, yes, her impatient, lonely mother, filling her days with household detail, and her own impatience died. Yes, her father was lonely as only scientists can be lonely, working as they do and must with the vast concerns of the universe.
It occurred to her now that Jared, too, must be lonely, young though he was, but so much more brilliant than his fellows and living alone, too, with an old uncle. She could easily mend that loneliness and without thinking of it as a love affair, which indeed was the last experience she wanted. Once during her marriage she had been strongly attracted to a handsome man of her own age, a bitter time it had been, she hated the very memory of it, for the attraction had been purely physical, and she was thankful for that, for if she had been able to respect the man, she could not have resisted him. She had resisted, but she remembered and would always remember the frightening power of her own impulses, compelling her to yield herself until the impulse, resisted, became an actual pain, so intolerable that she had begged Arnold to take her to Europe that summer. Whether he knew why she had been so importunate she never knew and did not want to know even now. He had listened to her pleading, and had not asked why she was weeping while she talked, nor could she tell him why.
“Of course, my dear,” he said. “I shall enjoy a vacation myself. There now—you’re in a state of nerves—I’ve noticed it lately. You do too much—so many charities and so on and the children are at a trying age. I don’t at all like the way Millicent answers you when you speak to her.”
Millicent! That daughter of hers, now a complacent wife and mother, had she known why her mother had been so impatient and abstracted in those days? Had she perhaps ever seen them together, her mother and the extravagantly handsome man with blue eyes and dark hair silvered at the temples—a thin, aggressive, sharply pretty adolescent Millicent, critical with love for her father and jealous of her mother—
She put away such memories and thought of Jared in other terms. She would learn to know his mind, his thought, and in such ways assuage his loneliness, and her own need.
…“But you’re looking so well,” her daughter exclaimed.
“Should I not?” she inquired.
Millicent herself did not look well, she thought. The young woman had let herself gain weight, and her hair, dark as Arnold's had been, looked unbrushed, even unwashed, and she wore a dull blue suit that needed pressing.
“But you’re rejuvenated,” Millicent insisted so accusingly that her mother laughed.
“And is that sinful?”
They were in her upstairs sitting room, and here Millicent had found her not fifteen minutes ago. But it was her daughter’s habit to let months pass without communication and then drop in upon her without warning.
“No,” Millicent said reluctantly. “Not exactly,” she added. She glanced at the papers on the desk where her mother sat, leaning forward and craning her neck to do so. “What are you drawing?”
“Plans for an imaginary house,” she replied.
“House—that’s what I’ve come about,” Millicent exclaimed. “Your looking so blooming put me off. Tom wants a week’s deer hunting in Vermont and I thought I’d go along with the children if you can lend us the house.”
“Of course,” she said. Then moved by a sudden and inexplicable impulse, she continued, “As a matter of fact, I’ll give you the house, if you like.”
“Why?” Millicent asked bluntly.
She hesitated. “I don’t know exactly—except it’s too lonely there for me.”
“I can understand that,” Millicent said. “There’s no one in the world who could take Father’s place.”
“No. Nor would I wish it otherwise.”
“Of course not.”
They exchanged looks, hers smiling and a little sad, Millicent’s almost curious. Then her daughter rose and, approaching, stooped to kiss her cheek. “I can’t stay, Mother.”
“You need a new suit,” Edith said gently.
“Do I? Well, I won’t get one! Tom’s thinking of a new job. We’d have to move to San Francisco, though.”
“It is far, but what can I do?”
“Go with him, of course—what else? But when?”
“That’s the question. Tom said not to tell you until it’s certain. But it slipped out.”
“I’ll keep it to myself. And what’s distance nowadays? Or time?”
“True! Well, good-bye, Mother. Of course I’ll see you before we go, if we go!”
They clasped hands and she clung to her daughter's hand.
“And if it’s to be, when would it be?”
“We count on the end of the month, in time for Christmas in the new place.”
Her daughter was gone, and she was alone again. Christmas? It meant then that the house would be empty. Tony’s wife wanted their children to have Christmas in their own home. Arnold’s death meant one change after another in her life. This old house remained as it was but everything in it was changed. It had really been his house, then! At least without him all its ways and habits were meaningless. If she continued to live here, she would live in a growing melancholy that in the end would stifle her. She took the receiver from the telephone desk.
“Is this the Wilton Real Estate office? Yes? Then may I speak to Robert Wilton, Senior? A few minutes? I’ll wait—”
She waited until a hearty voice resounded at her ear.
“Yes, Mrs. Chardman! What can I do for you? Do you want to sell your house? I could make a fine sale for you if you—”
“Not yet, thanks! On the contrary, I want to buy.”
“Well, now! You’re moving?”
“There’s a piece of land I want to own. Perhaps I’ll put up a house of sorts, just for myself. It’s by the sea—”
“Understandable, entirely understandable—a place by the sea. I seem to remember you always hankered—but I think Mr. Chardman didn’t quite—still and all, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have what you want now.”
“None at all,” she agreed.
“Where is this land?”
“It’s in North Jersey, near a town but not in it. A part of a great estate, I think, on a cliff with surrounding forest. One passes several of those great old houses—”
She gave exact directions, and heard him breathing heavily as he took notes.
“What’s your price range, Mrs. Chardman?” he asked.
“I just—want it,” she said.
He laughed. “Then I suppose you must have it! Why not?”
“Why not?” she agreed again.
…The filmy flakes of an early snowfall were drifting through the morning air. The sky was gray, a November gray, that morning as she opened the heavy front door. Even the door seemed heavier than usual, and she had more than once complained to Arnold about that door, hanging on immense brass hinges. Weston held the door open a moment now.
“I’m glad, madame, that you decided against driving yourself. It looks like a real snow—so quiet and all.”
“Please tell Agnes not to disturb the papers on my desk upstairs when she is dusting.”
“Yes, madame.”
“I’ll stop somewhere for luncheon but I should be home for dinner.”
“Alone, madame?”
She hesitated. “I think I’ll ask Miss Darwent to dine with me tonight.”
She went to the telephone in the hall and dialed. “Amelia? Yes, it’s Edith. I have an errand today in Jersey, but I’ll be back in time for dinner. Will you dine with me? Eight o’clock—that gives me plenty of time. Oh, good—”
She hung up, and turned to Weston, patiently waiting. “She’ll come, and she likes fresh lobster, remember!"
“Yes, madame.”
She was off, then, and the heavy door shut behind her. The driveway made a circle and from the window of the car, through the drifting snow, she saw for an instant the formidable house of gray stone, standing like a German baronial castle in the midst of tall dark evergreens. Somehow she must escape that castle, but which way escape lay she did not know. And why was she pinning her faith on a house? The land was now about to be hers, however, the site, the place, the view over the ocean, the cliff, the small semicircular steps to the beach. Wilton Senior had accomplished that much. The estate was in the hands of heirs, and they had been eager to sell and, learning of this, she had offered to triple the acreage upon which she had first planned. She now owned sixty acres, far more than she needed, but they gave her room, and a wider view. She would let it grow wild. There would be no formal gardens, no cutting and clipping.
The morning slipped away in silence. The chauffeur drove smoothly and swiftly. Arnold had trained him to a controlled speed but she had increased the speed to the limit in recent months and without sign of protest or surprise he had accepted the change as though he understood why she wanted now to be driven faster. What he thought she did not know, a silent man, still young in her terms, at least—perhaps forty? She knew nothing about him and it never occurred to her to ask. Now, however, shut in by the snow, she felt the silence oppressive and broke it.
“William, are you married—children and so on?”
“No, ma’am. I live with my old mother.”
“Old? How old?”
“Sixty-three, ma’am.”
“In Philadelphia?”
“At present, ma’am. We used to live in North Jersey. My mother was housekeeper in one of them big old houses. That’s how I know where to go now, ma’am. I grew up in those parts.”
“Oh? And did you know the Medhursts?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s where my mother worked.”
“How strange! I’ve bought some of the Medhurst land.”
“So I’ve heard, ma’am.”
She fell into surprised silence. Nothing in her life could be really private, she supposed, for Arnold had been well known in financial circles. But why should she care? She was herself the daughter of a famous man, the widow of a prosperous one. She had no need of secrets, and would have none, she decided firmly. To have no secrets was to be truly free. And so in this mood of freedom she arrived at her destination where she found Wilton Senior waiting in his car. He came to her at once.
“I brought the necessary papers for you to sign, Mrs. Chardman. I think everything is in order, provided you’re satisfied.”
“Let me just look at my view and see if it is all I remembered.”
The snow had momentarily ceased and she walked to the edge of the cliff and looked over the heaving gray sea. There was no wind to drive the waves to whitecaps, but far below her the surf broke heavily against the rocks that surrounded the beach. The chauffeur came to her side, also.
“I used to run down them steps, ma’am, when I was a kid, that is, and in the early morning before the family was up—all except Master Robert—Bob they called him. He wasn’t so much older than me. There’s good crabbing on that beach when the tide goes out.”
“The steps don’t look very safe now,” she observed.
“No, ma’am. But I could put them into shape easily enough. I’m handy that way.”
“Perhaps I’ll ask you to do it for me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He went away when she said no more, and she continued to look out over the sea. Whether she ever built the house, this land was now hers. The house could be or could never be, but she stood firmly on her own land. The snow was beginning to fall again. She felt the flakes cold against her face, like the touch of cold fingertips, and she turned to Wilton Senior.
“I am ready to sign the papers,” she said.
…“Whatever became of that house you were going to build?” Amelia inquired over the dinner table.
She had been absorbed in the lobster and until now she had asked no questions. Indeed, there had been no time, for Edith had been late. The snow had increased into a quiet storm, so that when Weston opened the heavy door it was to inform her immediately that Miss Darwent had already arrived and was waiting in the library, the drawing room being too chilly for her, since the north wind had begun to b
low on that side of the house.
“Tell her I’ll be down in five minutes—I’ll just change—and dinner can be served at once.”
“Yes, madame”" He hesitated and then went on, “I did tell the chauffeur when you were to be back, madame.”
She paused at the foot of the stairs to smile, remembering the jealous hostility between these two faithful servants. “It wasn’t his fault. The snow is already deep.”
“Very well, madame.”
In a few minutes she and Amelia were at the table in the dining room, where a fire blazed under the marble chimney piece. Amelia had drunk her clear soup promptly and was now busy with broiled lobster and melted butter, her napkin tucked into her collar.
“It’s still only in the mind,” Edith replied.
“You’ll never find a more comfortable house than this,” Amelia said. She was cracking a huge claw in a pair of pincers, and it gave way suddenly with a loud report.
“It will have a different sort of comfort,” Edith said, and then smiling at her old friend, she went on, “If I had anything to tell you, I would tell you, Amelia. The truth is, I am in a curious state of mind, not confused really, but searching. I haven’t quite found myself, I don’t quite know what I want, or where it can be found. I’m just—enjoying life in a queer sort of way, perhaps not really facing anything—I don’t know.”
Amelia put down claw and pincers. “You’re idle, that’s what. You need something to do. Why don’t you find a charity or something?”
“I don’t want or need busy work,” Edith replied. “I have my music—and books I haven’t read and—”
“And what?” Amelia demanded when she paused.
“And friends. That’s why I asked you to come here tonight. I haven’t seen you—”
Amelia interrupted. “Who is that long-legged fellow who has been here a couple of times?”
“He’s someone I happened to meet last whiter in Vermont. He is an admirer of my father—”
“Not of you?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Amelia!”
“Well, you’re ripe for it. I know—I’ve watched my friends when they’ve become widows after having faithful husbands like Arnold, especially pretty widows!”
The Goddess Abides: A Novel Page 9