“Let me think about it,” she told him. “If I can arrange things—”
He intervened with urgency. “There is no one to think of now except yourself, is there? And possibly a bit about me? The old heart ticktocks away, but it reminds me that it won’t go on forever.”
She laughed. “Shame on you! Blackmailing me!”
“Of course! All’s fair in love—”
“I’ll call you tonight.”
“I shan’t sleep until you do.”
Thus they parted and she was alone again, yet not alone, for she realized in this instant that she might never be alone again unless she could recover from the new presence in her thoughts. However she strove to think of other places, other people, the activities of her daily life, her delights of which she had many, her duties and absorptions accumulated through years of living in the same city, the same house, the new presence of Jared pervaded. In dawning panic she felt the need to escape, and how better to escape than to hasten to Edwin and, devoting herself to him, drive out that other?
Without waiting for nightfall upon decision she fled to the telephone and called. “Edwin, I have arranged everything. I will come tomorrow. I’ll drive myself and arrive in time to dine with you.”
“Blessed be tomorrow, darling—and blessed be you for answering my need!”
His voice was bright with joy and she was made hopeful. Let her be satisfied in comforting one who needed her rather than dwelling upon her own need! And what, for that matter, was her need? In reality, what was it, brutally put, but an incipient and dangerous infatuation, the consequence, in all probability, of her solitary life? For she was still unready to resume her old life of luncheons and dinners and such engagements, and uncertain indeed of ever resuming them and, in this uncertainty, inclined to new interests to be sought and defined, but assuredly not in the person of a young invader, a chance acquaintance who, if pursued or allowed to pursue, might threaten the entire structure of her reasonable and dignified life. Escape she must, therefore, and in the spirit of one seeking escape, she left the house early the next day after a restless moonlit night and was well on her way by midmorning.
It was a happy thought to drive herself in the small convertible car, concentration preventing the thoughts from which she was in flight. Speed and motion, the wind blowing back her hair, for she had put down the top of the car, gave the illusion of actual escape. A few days with Edwin would set her right, bring her back to reality. She would take shelter in the safety of his love for her and love him, as indeed she did, too, but quietly and with the respect due his age and great fame. Let her be honored by love and not roused by it—although perhaps she had made a mistake in allowing him to come to her room? Yes, it was a mistake. Tonight she would tell him so.
“Edwin, my dear,” she would begin. “We are past the age, you and I, when we need the physical expression of love. If others knew of it, they would construe it wrongly. It might even be shocking to them. Let us therefore be content with good talk and sitting side by side. Dear Edwin—” Here she would pause, here she might take his hand in hers and press it.
In reality, after arriving just in time for dinner in the shadowy dining room lit only by candles in ancient silver candlesticks, and after his rapturous greeting of her, she perceived that he looked thin and somehow pathetic in his loneliness. She put off saying anything that might dampen his joy in her coming, put it off indeed until after dinner and then put it off again because he wanted to talk about the book he was writing on the possibility and impossibility of immortality. He drew her hand through his arm when they rose from the table and directed their steps toward the drawing room, where a wood fire was burning against the chill of evening in the mountains. They seated themselves side by side on the settee facing the chimney piece, and he began at once, keeping her left hand on his arm by his covering right hand.
“One can’t test one’s own thoughts, you know, darling—and I am not at all sure of the validity of the philosophy I am hewing out of this old brain of mine. Is it too soon after dinner to think grave thoughts?”
“Not if you are thinking them,” she said, smiling.
He was silent for a long, moment, perhaps to collect those thoughts, perhaps to change the playful mood in which they had dined to his usual philosophical searching. Then he began afresh.
“You have had a very profound influence upon me, Edith, and therefore upon my thinking. I have rewritten several chapters in my philosophy which I had thought was permanent. You have brought a new urgency upon me to consider death, its finality, its meaning. I want to prove that death is not final. I want to assure myself that I continue because you continue. As for others, let them continue if they wish. It is my immortality which I must prove and to myself first. Therefore I have been considering death anew. Is it an end, or is it an entrance? But what is this self of mine which can consider death as though it were a state separate from the self? Ah, it’s the separateness that is so significant! I contemplate death as though I were continuing after its arrival, exactly as I contemplate it before its arrival. I, therefore, survive since I can contemplate myself afterward as well as before. Is that specious, my darling? Be frank—I urge the truth! Don’t let my new anxiety to live beyond the grave lead me into false paths!”
The magic of his beautiful, resonant voice, still strong, persuaded her interest. She was a stranger to philosophy in his sense of the word, and although she had studied philosophy in college, she had read enough since to know that modern philosophy had changed much that was old—Josiah Royce, for example, whose books had been her testaments in her senior year at Radcliffe.
“At least death is an interruption,” she suggested now.
“Granted,” he said heartily, “but only an interruption. The contemplating self, released from its temporary phase, would proceed to its next activity. Of that I need not speak, for assuredly in any activity you and I would find one another. It is the moment of death that I must analyze, if such analysis is possible. Is this moment only a fraction of time or is it—eternity?” His voice fell to a sudden whisper upon that awesome word.
She considered, deeply thoughtful, “I suppose,” she said at last and hesitating very much, for though she had thought long about Arnold’s death, yet she felt humble before this virile old philosopher, “I suppose that one approach might be to limit the definition of death by eliminating what we know it is not. For example, we know that the body returns to dust and is no more in its present components.”
“Exactly,” he exclaimed triumphantly; “therefore let us eliminate the body. That’s used and put aside forever. But what’s left, the self—can we go further than to say that at least the idea of its continuance is a reality? Or to put it otherwise, how much of a reality is the mere idea of it? Take atomic energy, released as fission between atomic elements. It existed first as an idea, did it not? It existed, but how much and how long? If the idea were right, then it was real to that degree. If it had been wrong—and ideas can be mistaken and therefore wrong, and therefore unreal—it would have existed briefly or not at all. Yet might it not, for all that, have existed in itself and forever, as an idea? In other words again, the beginning of any reality is contained in an idea.”
“Springs from an idea?” she suggested.
He repudiated this. “No, the idea is the first reality.”
“The possibility of reality,” she amended.
“Aha, I’ve got you!” he cried in triumph. “Then the possibility is in itself a reality, isn’t it?”
She pondered and made reply. “But possibility is not continuance!”
“No, but continuance is not entirely negated, so long as there is the possibility of continuance.”
She laughed. “So how to get out of this tangle?”
He did not laugh or even smile. Indeed he became intensely serious. Releasing her hand, which all this time he had continued to hold, he seemed to forget her presence.
“By the intuitions,” he mused.
“If perpetuity is the reality of space, of energy, of atoms themselves, shall it be denied to us, who know our being? I reject the absurdity!”
She listened, enthralled, caught and held in the brilliant outpouring of words and logic and so continued for hours. When at last the clock struck twelve he stopped abruptly. “Good heavens, how I go on! And your angelic patience! Come to bed, my love.”
And in her bedazzlement, quite forgetting that she had planned otherwise, she let herself be led away.
…In the night she felt herself enfolded and, waking, she found him at her side. In the moonlight she saw his face above her, amazing in its strong beauty. Age revealed the outlines of perfect bone structure, the eyes, still burning bright, were steel blue beneath silvered brows. He had a tender mouth, not small, not large, the lips delicately sculptured, and suddenly she felt them on her own, passionately tender.
“I have been watching my love asleep,” he murmured, “so beautiful in sleep, my darling!”
“Have you not slept?” she asked.
“I will not,” he replied. “I want to know you are here—every moment I want to know. You give me certainty. I shall survive. I know, because I live! There is that substance in life which cannot yield to death. Plato was convinced of it, long ago. I have the right to live, my beloved. It would be too great an injustice, too irrational a waste, were I to die—I or any other who demands life. Survival will be because it ought to be. This is the great moral imperative.”
Enfolded, uplifted and encouraged, she felt her love for him rise upward as though on wings. She adored him with a sense of worship. His spirit, bold and brave, the ardor of his nature, the brilliance of his mind, piercing beyond knowledge, awed her and gave her protection. If there were one in whom she could put her trust, this was he. She drew him to her, she for the first time the aggressor, and kissed him full upon the mouth, feeling meanwhile delight and pain—delight because she loved him in a way she had not known before, with a pure pleasure, and pain because she must live in this body of hers years beyond him. But now, at this brief moment, brief because it could not be shared beyond the span of years, she felt herself swept clean of every other love. She had loved Arnold but without worship. Indeed, he would have been shy of worship, protested against it, rejected it because it made him uncomfortable. But Edwin had the greatness of simplicity.
“I love you,” she told him. “You speak of reality. Well, this is reality. I love you. True, I love you in a way I don’t understand, but I love you.”
He received this assurance with large calm. “Then we shall meet beyond the grave. The power to love—I to love you is easy enough, my darling, but you to love me, this gives me guarantee. Love pierces through all that is false, all that is ephemeral. Love finds reality, love creates the longing to live forever, and the longing is the promise of immortality. ‘He that loveth aright,’ Plato tells us, ‘is born of the immortal One.’ O my darling, thank you!”
He released her, he fell back on his pillow and, breathing a deep sigh of peace, was instantly asleep.
…She returned home the next morning and a few weeks passed, three or four, even five, possibly, for she scarcely marked the days. They were peaceful weeks, vaguely happy, vague because she made no effort. Amelia was in Europe for three months, and she had no word from Jared. She was almost grateful for his silence, for it gave her space in which to live with herself alone, to sort herself out, to discover her needs, if she had them, her hopes, if hope was necessary. Friends came to call, to tell her how well she looked, how glad they were that she was recovering sensibly from Arnold’s death. She listened, she smiled, she was silent. What she was beginning to understand was that a new self was appearing within her. With the passing of Arnold, a life had passed, her previous life, childhood and girlhood, her young womanhood, her wifehood. All things now were to be made new, what and how she did not know, but the cause was in herself, the cause and the source. She must wait for the self to unfold.
Meanwhile she worked on the plans for her house. In the mornings after her late breakfast, she worked, planning every detail, every color, every device. She was a good mathematician, and she used a slide rule skillfully. She would be her own architect, and soon she would go in search of a site. Then she would find a contractor. And this old house in which she still lived, what would become of it? Give it away? Sell it? With it she would be selling a lifetime of memories. That decision, too, must wait. She was not sure yet of her own destiny, She brooded often and long upon her new self, and this brooding separated her from the past. More than a house must be planned. A woman must live in the new house. Would she live alone?
She was in the library one morning, thus meditating, while she glanced over her mail. Still no word from Jared, but then he never wrote letters. If he wanted communication it would be by telegram or telephone. There was, however, a letter from Edwin. She was not quite sure from the handwriting on the envelope. It was sprawling and uncertain, not like Edwin’s surprisingly firm, black writing. But it was from him, as she perceived when she opened it, a few lines straggling off into nothingness.
“O my darling, the change has come! I am stricken. ‘Te morituri salutamus.’ It is I who am about to die—I alone. I die, as I have lived, in the faith that we shall meet again—”
That was all—no explanation, no description, simply he was dying. She started to her feet, but the telephone, ringing suddenly and sharply, stayed her. She took the receiver and heard a man’s voice.
“Mrs. Chardman?”
“I am she.”
“This is Stephen Steadley. You are a friend of my father. He has asked me to tell you. He is dying. It is a matter of a few days, perhaps hours.”
“I opened his letter just a few minutes ago and I was afraid—”
“Everything is being done. It’s his heart, of course. We are all here, my brothers, my sister and I—the doctors.”
“Is he conscious?”
“Very much so. Very interested in the process of dying, in spite of—difficulties.”
“Pain?”
“Yes, but he refused sedation. He wants to know, he says—”
His voice broke and she liked him for it. “You know we have been very close—friends,” she said.
“He adores you. We’ve all been so grateful that you broke through his profound loneliness. None of us could do it.”
“He broke through mine, too.”
It was all she could say. She could not ask the question, Shall I come? She could not ask it of herself. She saw him lying on the bed, that beautiful dying body, stretched in death.
“Good-bye,” she said softly.
“Good-bye?” his son repeated, surprised. “Oh, yes, well, I’ll let you know immediately.”
Immediately Edwin dies, she thought, but said nothing, her voice choked with tears. She put up the receiver, and sat with her head between her hands, her elbows on the desk. She had known, of course, had always known, that this moment must come. But now it had come and she must be ready to hear that he was no more. Should she go to him? How could she decide? Would not her presence sharpen for him the agony of separation? Better to leave him with his children; better to let him slip away into the unknown with his children about his bed.
She rose, undecided, and finding house and gardens intolerable she got into her small convertible, which she always drove herself, leaving her larger car to her chauffeur, and alone she drove toward the sea. The coastline of Jersey was impossibly crowded and she drove northward toward Southampton. Somewhere beyond Red Hills she would, perhaps, find a lonely cliff by the sea and there imagine a spot where her house could stand apart. By midnight she could be back. Yet what was the haste? Death would not wait and she knew she could not go to Edwin to see him die.
…At sunset she found the spot for which she searched. Between two towns she found a cliff and upon the cliff an emptiness. Doubtless it belonged to the owner of some great estate, but she would persuade him to sell. It belonged to such a p
erson for at one side of the cliff, almost hidden by overhanging trees, dwarfed by sea winds, she discovered a narrow stairway leading to a small white beach between rocks. The steps were not often used, for they were covered with fallen leaves and moss, but they could be used, although she resisted the idea of using them now, because she was alone and if she slipped there would be no one to discover her plight, and darkness was falling fast, for the days were growing shorter. She must go back.
…It was midnight before she reached home and Weston was waiting for her.
“The telephone, madame. You’re to call, if you please, this number. And you had me worried, madame, if I may say so, you being alone like that and the night being black and no moon.”
“Thank you, Weston,” she said, moving to the telephone.
He bowed and went away and she rang and waited. In a moment the same voice answered, which this morning she had heard.
“Mrs. Chardman?”
“It is I.”
“I’ve been waiting. My father died at six o’clock. His last moments were very painful. We were all about his bed. But the strangest change is taking place, a transfiguration. All the lines of pain are fading away. A beautiful peace—”
The voice broke.
“He was very beautiful,” she said softly.
The voice began bravely. “Yes—much more beautiful than any of his children. The funeral will be on Thursday. Will you come?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to think of him as dead. For me he lives—forever.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Silence then and she put up the receiver. That part of her life, that strange interlude which she could never explain to anyone, and would never, that, too, was over. She sat for minutes in remembering thought. Somehow she felt no bereavement. She would be forever grateful for what Edwin had given her. Into the void of her loneliness he had poured love, generous unselfish love, asking no return except her occasional presence. She was glad the love had been fruitful for him, too, inspiring nun to a philosophical search which he might not otherwise have undertaken. She had brought him comfort.
The Goddess Abides: A Novel Page 7
