“Please, Amelia!”
“Oh, very well, Edith! Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to tell me.”
“Amelia, there’s nothing to tell.”
“Then why did you suddenly invite me to dinner?”
“Because I was lonely. I dreaded coming back to this great dark old house. And—and—”
“Be careful,” Amelia said. “You’re getting in the mood for anything. I’ll have some more of the asparagus, Weston.”
…“So why don’t you come with me?” Jared asked.
His voice came clear and strong over the telephone. It was a crisp fine morning, the day before Christmas, and she had been wondering how she would spend the holiday. Millicent and her family had already moved to San Francisco, they had made telephone exchanges. The children were enchanted with the beautiful playgrounds, the beaches, the parks.
“And you?” Edith inquired.
“I’m going to have a maid,” Millicent cried, “and of course I’m enchanted. Tom has a good raise.”
“Then he’s on his way up and all is well,” she had said.
With this she had not forgotten her daughter exactly, but she was at ease about her and could forget her if she liked, very much as she habitually forgot Tony because really she was not needed any more, and so was free this morning to linger over breakfast, answer the telephone when it rang, and hear Jared’s clear voice at her ear. She gazed out the wide French windows meanwhile. The sky was cloudlessly blue, but the last leaves were fluttering down from the big oak tree by the east terrace. She had finished breakfast, and was deciding what to do with the day, something vigorous, she had thought, for she was feeling unusually well, and awake, impatient for physical exercise, perhaps a canter alone along the edge of the woods.
“But when?” she asked, uncertain.
“I’ll pick you up this afternoon and we’ll motor down the eastern coast. Have pity on me. My old uncle is in the Virgin Islands—he hates the cold. And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend Christmas with than you.”
“You don’t want to go to Vermont?”
“No. I want to take you to strange places where neither of us has ever been. Let’s just wander.”
She considered for a moment. On the inside pane of the wide window a late bee buzzed frantically, lost from its fellows, and she let herself be diverted.
“There’s a bee buzzing on the window. If I let it out will it freeze?”
“No,” he said. “It will find its way home.”
“Then wait a minute,” she said.
She opened the window and brushed the bee outdoors with her handkerchief. It flew away instantly, but the cold sweet air rushed into the room and she let it blow upon her face. The sharp chill stung her flesh and stirred her blood, she had not realized how close the air in this old house was, a scent not unpleasant, of leatherbound books and many Oriental rugs and hothouse flowers. A rush of impetuous desire for freshness and new vigor swept over her and she closed the window.
“I’ll be ready,” she called into the telephone.
“Good—at half past two,” he said.
…The road wound in and out along the coast. For miles the sea was hidden, the road entering the forest and then as suddenly emerging again to the curve of a bay or a beach. The sun slipped slowly downward in the western sky and they stopped at twilight at an inn, an old mansion, its pillared portico reaching to the roof. Jared pulled up at the entrance.
“We’ve been very quiet,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied.
Neither of them had felt like talking, it seemed. He had driven the small convertible in concentrated thought and she had not interrupted. A few times he had noticed the landscape.
“Those rocks down there by the sea—” he said.
“As though they had been tumbled there by a giant—” she replied.
The air had been golden with sunlight through the afternoon, turning at sunset to rose and crimson. Evening star and a crescent moon hung over the trees and a beneficent calm pervaded her—and him, too, she felt, a relaxed mood which was in itself communication between them. She was happy in his presence, she now realized, happier than she had been for a long time, happier perhaps than she had ever been. Certainly with no one had she felt this conviction of life and its goodness, this ease of presence with another human being. She turned to him impulsively and found him looking at her, dark eyes questioning.
“Shall we stop here? Dine and then walk on the beach?”
“Yes,” she said. “In this air—what is that scent? Fines, I think. It is too late in the year for flowers, though it’s still warm in this climate.”
“Pines warmed by the day’s sun,” he said. “And shall we stay here for the night? At this season the inn will be nearly empty, I daresay—people at home for Christmas, but you and I are making our own Christmas.”
“Let us stay,” she said.
He gave her a look, passionate and deep, and for an instant she wondered what it meant. There could be no question, surely there could be no question about rooms, separate rooms. She was startled to discover in herself the question answered, hidden in her own being a reluctant yearning to forget her years and her reserves. She was no longer any man’s wife. She was free to be what she wished to be, to do what she wanted to do. There was no need to refuse herself—or him—anything that pleased them. She had fulfilled all duties to others.
“Then I will engage our rooms,” he said.
He left her in the car while he entered the office of the inn and she sat alone, a sweet intoxication pervading her. She recognized it without ever having felt it before, a powerful attraction to this man, an attraction of mind first, but so complete that it flowed through her body in a warm current. She tried to stay it, to control it, to analyze it. Let her remember herself. Let her ask herself what she truly wanted—no complications, she told herself, no foolish complications of emotion. Above all, no heartbreak at this time of her life.
He came back in a moment, very cheerful, very composed.
“I got adjoining rooms,” he said. “If you want anything you can call me.”
…She woke in the night as usual after five hours of sleep. That was her habit—five hours of deep dreamless sleep and then she woke absolutely, her mind clear and aware. Moonlight streamed through the open window and the air was crisply chill. She pulled the covers about her shoulders and breathed deeply. There was a smell of the sea, the softly rushing sound of distant surf. This was how it would be in her house on the cliff when she slept there alone. Only now she was not alone. That is to say, Jared was on the other side of the closed door, not locked, only closed. She was suddenly acutely aware that it was not locked, only closed.
“There’s no telephone between rooms in an old inn like this,” Jared had said. “I’ll not lock the door in case of—anything.”
She had not replied. Instead she had stood quite still in the center of this big square room with its four-poster double bed.
“I hate to say good night,” Jared said.
“It was a delightful dinner,” she said. “I didn’t know how hungry I was.”
“Oh, I’m always a hungry beast.” He twisted his handsome mouth in a wry smile as he spoke.
“You should be to cover that big skeleton of yours,” she said.
He had not replied to this. Instead, after an instant of looking at her intently, he had put his arms about her and kissed her full on her lips.
“Good night, you darling,” he said, and opening the door between the rooms, he closed it firmly.
…Now, lying in the big bed, she thought of the kiss. He had simply given it, taken it, without asking and without comment. She felt again the young warmth of his lips against hers as she remembered the moment. But was she not being ridiculous? What was a kiss nowadays? Women kissed men, men kissed women, with no feeling beyond a cheerful friendliness. Ah, but not she! She had never been one to give kisses easily or to welcome them. Even with Arnold th
ey had seemed—unnecessary. As for Edwin, his kisses had been those of a child—or an old, old man, tender but pure. So what had this kiss been, this kiss which she still felt upon her lips? Then she rebuked herself again. The truth was that no one kissed her nowadays and she kissed no one. This one kiss lingered in her memory now merely because it was unaccustomed.
Then at this moment, as though to refute this self-deception, her body rose to defy her. She was suddenly seized by a surge of physical longing such as she had not known for years. No, let her be honest with herself. She had never known such longing, perhaps because she had always before this had the means of satisfaction. Now a door stood between and it was only closed, not locked. Suppose the impossible, suppose she got up from this alien bed, suppose she wrapped her rose silk negligée about her—it lay there on the chair—and suppose that she opened the door softly into that other room and then went in, even if it were only to stand and look at him as he slept. And if he woke and saw her standing there—
No, it could not be done. Perhaps, if she could be sure that he would not wake? But how could that be sure? And suppose his eyes opened, how could she know what she would see there? She did not know him well enough. She could not risk the possible rejection. She was too proud. Of course there were women who could cast away all pride, women who would count on physical response whatever the cost, but she knew herself. She could not escape herself, shamed. She would walk in shame, thereafter, and then whom would she have? She had only herself.
She lay rigid with desire, refusing to move, refusing to rise, refusing to walk across the floor, refusing the very imagination of what it would be to open the door and see him lying there, even sleeping. She forbade it to herself, until at last the throbbing of her body subsided and she slept.
…In the morning when she woke the memory of the night remained vividly with her, nevertheless. She lay remembering, and she listened. He was already up. Through the thin wooden door she could hear him moving about, and she listened for a moment and then got out of her bed and turned on the shower and dressed, putting on another suit than the one she had worn yesterday with her sable jacket. She wanted to be beautiful today, really beautiful, and aware that she was changeful in her looks, sometimes looking almost plain, she took pains with every detail. Ah, but she had not cared until now! Amelia was disgustingly right. Though she had no lover, yet the possibility of love produced a new vitality, stemming from the enlivened heart, the quickened bloodstream. Life became worth living again. The experience of the night had changed him for her, and she knew now she could love him. Yet she would not let herself say, even in the silence of her heart, that already she loved him. She was too sophisticated for that. She did not know him well enough, and might never know him well enough, for the completeness and the complexity of the true meaning of love, a word she never allowed herself to use as she daily heard it used, carelessly, and in regard to a multiplicity of objects and persons, expressing mere fondness or exaggerated liking.
No, she recognized the longing of last night for what it was, a yearning in her loneliness for a companionship most easily and simply expressed through a shared physical experience. She was grateful that she had forbidden herself. Nothing could be less gratifying to her than such an experience, prematurely expressed, so that afterward their relationship would have come to an abrupt end.
Their relationship—what was it? She asked herself the question and her only answer was another question. What could their relationship be, accepting as they must the difference in their ages? Let her crucify herself upon that fact! Yet had she not been even younger than some of Edwin’s children? Ah, but he was a venerable man, a philosopher, dreaming of love as a philosophy, the shadow of himself as he lay beside her, a white ghost in the night. She had loved him for his beauty but her love had not been impelled by longing. She gave it gladly because he deserved every gift she could give, and this for no other reason except that he was worthy. Nor had she now any regret whatsoever.
Arnold of course would never have understood, nor, she guessed, could Jared, if he ever knew. For that matter, she herself did not understand. Probably her nature being human and no less selfish than that of other persons, she needed the comfort of Edwin’s adoration. Perhaps that was all it was, an inglorious need, just as for years she had accepted Arnold’s faithful love as her husband, returning what she could of her own love as his wife, which was, nevertheless, as she very well knew, much less in measure than his.
It occurred to her later, as she sat facing Jared at the breakfast table, that she was in grave danger of loving him as she had never before loved anyone. The morning sun shone full on him, she having chosen to sit with her back to the window, and thus she saw all too delightfully well his clear dark eyes, the firm line of his brow, his straight nose and beautifully sculptured mouth, all details of a totally unnecessary beauty. He was lit with a morning joy, ready to laugh, hungry for food and eager for pleasure—and innocent, she thought, touchingly innocent, at least so far as she was concerned. She rubbed salt relentlessly into the wound of this conviction.
“Tell me,” she said, “how it is that you are not with that pretty girl of yours?”
He was eating scrambled eggs assiduously.
“She is pretty,” he said, “but she has a handicap—a huge noisy father. He’s divorced and married again. I wouldn’t mind his noise, if it were occasionally a little more than that, but it isn’t. Just noise—noise—noise.”
“Come now,” she said laughing. “Define this noise.”
“Well, hail-fellow-well-met, back-slapping, h’are ya, Jared, old boy stuff!”
“How did she come to have such a father?”
“She’s not like that, at all, herself.”
“No? What is she like?”
“Rather tall, but not very. Quiet. I think perhaps she’s stubborn, or perhaps only pertinacious. Or again, maybe she’s not quiet except when she’s with me and she thinks that’s the way I like her to be.”
“Why not just encourage her to be herself?”
“Well, you see, as I said, I don’t know what that is. Did I ever tell you that I love your hands?”
“No. What makes you think of them at this instant?”
“I’m looking at them—that’s why. They’re telling hands.”
She gazed down at her ringless hands. “What does that mean?”
“They tell me what you are.”
She resisted the impulse to ask what that was. Instead she pressed the crown of thorns upon her head.
“If you know hands so well, why can’t you tell what your girl is like?”
“Oh, her hands!” He laughed shortly and then was suddenly grave. “I wish you wouldn’t call her my girl. She’s—well, not that, anyway.”
“But?”
“I don’t know. It’s a problem.”
“She is?”
“No. I am. Perhaps I shouldn’t marry. I’m too involved in this work I’ve chosen. Even now, sitting here opposite you on this glorious morning, with a whole glorious day ahead of us, I am thinking about something I’m trying to do—to create, that is. It’s an artificial hand, a great improvement over anything we have now. Perhaps I was looking at your hands without knowing why I did, exactly. A man such as I am—I’m always at my work. It’s in me, the inventing, the planning. Take the hand, for instance—”
He held up his own right hand, spare and shapely. “The saddest thing about someone’s losing a hand is that the feeling power is gone. A hand is not only an implement, it’s a sense organ. It’s the eye of a blind man, it’s the tongue of those who cannot speak. I am working on an artificial hand which is so articulated that it can almost feel. Surgeons tell amputees that artificial hands can work for them but they can’t feel. Well, I’m about to make one that does feel—at least it feels shapes and maybe even textures. There’ll be feeling fingers instead of a hook or a claw. Think of touching a woman’s cheek with a hook or a claw—or think of never being able to feel a
woman’s cheek at all!”
“You are an artist,” she said. “But then all scientists are artists, my father used to say. You think like an artist, at any rate, and I can see that you want what you create to be a work of art.”
He put down his knife and fork, and beckoned the waiter.
“Coffee again, please, and get the check ready. And you’re very intuitive, Edith! I want to see something that I can see only half blindly, as a musician goes about creating a symphony. He hasn’t any idea of how to do it, but he blunders along, inventing as he goes. That’s me, too. It’s only the artist in a human being that makes him creative. Without it he’s no more than a technician. God, but it’s fun to talk to you! I hope you don’t mind my calling you Edith? It’s a beautiful name and it suits you perfectly.”
“If you like it, use it,” she said.
“I am Jared, of course.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I should have thought of it before, but we’ve been close even without names. I often wonder why I am so close to you—I’ve never had this feeling before, not with anyone. But the minute I saw you—remember that snowy night? You opened the door of your Vermont house to me and I was startled because I felt I’d found someone I’d been looking for, though I hadn’t been conscious of looking for anyone. At that moment I knew that somehow—I didn’t know how and I still don’t know—my life would be linked with yours as long as we live.”
She heard these grave words with dread and exultation. For he spoke them gravely, his voice earnest, his eyes gazing steadfastly into hers, and she received them as gravely. This was not the light speech of a playful young man to an older woman. He was not such a young man. Lighthearted and whimsical as he could be at times, he was profoundly serious as she had already perceived, weighted she sometimes felt by the very magnitude of his talents. She had never known so talented a human being, she herself talented enough to recognize the effect of overburdening talent. Some of her own loneliness through the years, she had suspected, came from her recognition that neither of her children had inherited the brilliance of her father’s gifts. Accustomed as she had become to his special affection throughout her childhood and youth, she sometimes felt, half guiltily, that this had made Arnold and the children she had had by him dull by comparison. For this guilt she had tried to atone by meticulous attention to what she had considered duty. Now there was no longer need to think of duty and in the delight of this new relationship she recaptured, too, some of the joy of her youth. Concepts, ideas, words that she had not used except with her father flowed now from the storage of her memory, waiting to be spoken when needed.
The Goddess Abides: A Novel Page 10