Read Online The Eternal Wonder by Pearl S. Buck - Free Book Online Page A

mother’s voice called up the stairs.
    “The gingerbread is just perfect, Rannie!”
    Her voice sounded natural, and almost gay. He went downstairs then and into the brightly lighted kitchen.
    “I’ve also made Irish stew,” she said, “and a tossed salad. The gingerbread is for dessert.”
    She had set the table fortheir evening meal in the kitchen and this she had never done before. Until now they had always eaten dinner in the dining room. He could not imagine his father eating this meal inthe kitchen. Now he sat down, glad that his mother had put these two places here, so differently from their usual meal. Suddenly he was very hungry and later was ashamed of himself that he ate every bit of the Irish stew and salad she put before him and still ate two huge helpings of the hot gingerbread and its sweet, spiced sauce. Afterward he felt full and sleepy and they went early to bed.
    IN THE MORNING SHE SET the table again in the kitchen. He had not slept well, waking fitfully and often to think of his father lying alone on the hill. His imagination, always too quick to summon reality, brought to life before him the picture of his father’s body lying in the grave. He saw, again, every detail of the dead thing once his father but now no more. He saw the closed eyes, the sternly set mouth, and even the pale folded hands. The hands were the most dead. His father had beautiful hands, strong and well shaped, active hands, working, gesturing, always expressive. The stillness of his father’s hands he could not forget.
    “Would you like scrambled eggs, Rannie?” his mother asked.
    She was calm this morning. But he could tell by her eyes that she had wept in the night, unsleeping.
    “Thank you, Mother,” he said, and again was ashamed that he could be so hungry in the midst of sorrow.
    His mother scrambled eggs and made bacon and set them before him. Then she went to the window and fetched a pot containing an amaryllis bulb. A handful of sturdy green leaves surroundedathick stem that bore two open flowers, still in bud but almost ready to open. She set the pot on the table.
    “Those two flowers opened yesterday,” she said. “I wonder if the third one will open today. Three is the perfect number for amaryllis, I always think.”
    She spoke conversationally, almost as though he were a stranger, or only aneighbor, a visitor, but he understood that she was trying to begin life again, that she was determined not to weep again, at least in his presence, and he tried to help her.
    “The bud looks as though it were ready to open now,” he said.
    He ate his breakfast slowly. His mother drank coffee and buttered a thin slice of toast.
    “Won’t you eat an egg, Mother?” he asked, suddenly anxious. She was all he had now. Their relatives were all far away and he did not know them except by hearsay.
    “I will eat when I can,” his mother said. “It will take time to get back to myself. Today I must get his clothes packed into boxes to send to the Salvation Army.”
    “Shall I help you?” he asked.
    “No, dear,” she said. “I think I want to do it alone. He wanted you to have all his books, of course. But you should use the study now as your own. Feel free to change it as you like.”
    He knew it was not easy for her to speak these words, but she was trying to do what his father wished—to give him freedom. But freedom for what?
    Suddenly he noticed the amaryllis bud. It was already half-open! While they had been talking, between long silences, the bud had become almost a flower, though not quite full-blown. He pointed it out to his mother. She laughed, for a moment forgetting.
    “Why, so it has,” she exclaimed. “I never knew an amaryllis bud could open so quickly. But then I’ve never sat in front of one just as I am sitting here now.”
    She gazed, half-dreaming, at the flower. “It’s symbolic, somehow—the opening of a new flower at this moment when we’re so sad. It means something—I don’t quite know