“Your timing is not quite — look, you have to do three things at once, see? Pole plant, upweighting, switch your leading ski, like this! But keep your skis on the snow — very slight upweighting!”
He illustrated in a series of skillful turns and she saw that he was superb on skis, even as he was at the piano. He continued to teach her throughout the day, and she strove to perfect herself, her good body responding to new demands.
“Your traverse,” he was saying, “it’s a little awkward. Don’t pay heed to your shoulders. It’s your hip you must watch — hold the downhill hip back and everything else — body, shoulders, everything — will be ready for the traverse.”
She practiced again and again and not until sunset did she realize her exhaustion and even then it was he who recognized it first.
“I’ve worn you out and damn me for a perfectionist! You ski beautifully and what I’ve been insisting on are just the final touches.”
She protested. “But I’m a perfectionist, too, and I love it!”
He flung his arm about her shoulders. “Good companion! Let’s go home and dine in front of a roaring fire.”
Which they did, he grilling the steaks before the fire while she tossed salad in the great salad bowl of Burmese teak.
They ate in silence, and afterward he turned on stereophonic music and they listened in silence but sleep overcame them.
“I must go to bed,” she murmured, her eyes half closed.
“So must I,” he confessed.
They rose, they stood hesitating, and for a drowsy moment she thought, she imagined, he was about to kiss her. Instead he straightened and stepped back.
“Good night, sweet friend,” he said.
To which she answered nothing and indeed could not, for all her strength was needed for her own control. She would not, she would not invite the kiss, for to what end it might lead she could not foretell and dared not ask.
“Good night,” she said, and stumbled, still half in sleep, across the room to her own door.
In the night she woke to the patter of rain upon the roof. That was the end of snow, then, and of skiing. Tomorrow he would be gone and she alone again. To be alone now seemed intolerable to her. She would leave here and go home to Philadelphia.
…It was still raining in the morning when she came out for breakfast. Jared had already prepared it, table set, orange juice waiting, bacon brown and an omelet turned in the pan.
“The skies are cruel,” he complained, “but it’s just as well, perhaps. I must get back to the lab. I was going to steal another day, fight my conscience, but now there’s no need. You’re tired?”
“A little — no, not tired, just muscle sore.”
“Just as well we can’t be tempted.”
They ate again almost in silence and she wondered, with a slight resentment, if he were on guard. After all, she had not kissed him. On the contrary! But they were both formal this gray morning.
“Shall you be staying long?” he asked when, breakfast over, he prepared to leave.
“No, I am leaving, perhaps tomorrow,” she replied. Then, resentment still alive, she added, “I shall probably stop on the way for a few days with an old friend, Edwin Steadley.”
He heard this coldly. “Well, good-bye,” he said. Then added somewhat gracelessly, she thought, “Of course we’ll meet again.”
“Why not?” she said.
“In the course of human events,” Edwin said, “I cannot live much longer. I do not come of long-lived ancestry, and ancestry seems to count, in the matters of life and death. Already I have lived longer than my parents were able to do. My mother died at sixty-four, surviving my father by three years. He was five years younger than she. Their relationship was a strange one. In some ways he was like a son.”
“I shouldn’t like such a relationship,” she said with decision.
“Ah,” he said, “that’s because you have such an old lover. I could almost be your grandfather. But the truth is, my darling, that young men don’t really know how to love a woman. A young man thinks first of possessing a woman for himself — that is, of impregnating her. At my age a man knows this is impossible, and so he gives himself up to pure love of the woman, without thought of himself. He contemplates her with delight, as I contemplate you. He gives her joy insofar as she accepts his touch, which now is skilled, but in all such matters he thinks only of her. My dear, by the light of the moon, which by some heavenly magic shines at this moment upon your bed, your beautiful body looks like a statue of pale gold. What a fortunate man I am to be thus admitted to your private chamber!”
“I can’t understand how it happened,” she said, smiling up at him through the mist of her fair hair, loose upon the pillows.
“I had the courage to ask,” he replied.
“You asked very confidently,” she said, laughing. “I can’t discern any lack of courage in you. But how is it that I had the courage to accept and how is it that it does not seem strange, and certainly not wrong, that you are here? I have never taken a lover before. Therefore why now?”
“A need to give all and to accept all,” he said.
“And why am I not in the least shy?” she asked him with genuine wonder.
“We are one,” he replied. “Our minds were one, first, and then it became necessary that the oneness be complete.”
“And will it continue?”
“Until I feel death come near. When that moment occurs, I will let you know. Don’t try to stay me or comfort me. I must prepare for the solitary passing. I shall need all my strength for it. Therefore—”
Here he paused so long that, moved to tenderness, she drew him into her arms.
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
But he would not accept pity, even a tender pity. He loosed himself from her and leaned over her, smoothing her long hair from her forehead, and looked down into her eyes. Upon the bedside table the flame of the candle wavered in a slight breeze from the open window so that light and shadow played upon her face.
“I am not afraid,” he told her. “But I have something to say to you, and I want it said now, while I am able to speak the full truth of what I feel. Who knows what it will be when the end draws near? I may be dazed with pain. I may be faint. Death may overtake me in one instant and give me no time. Tell me, my love, are you at peace now? For this moment? We are quite alone in my old house. I sent the housekeeper home — it was some family anniversary — and Henry is away for a short holiday. No one is under this roof except the two of us. We may never again be quite so alone. May I tell you what I want you to know and to remember as long as you live?”
“Tell me,” she said.
He lay down beside her then, not touching her now except that he took her left hand and held it clasped in both his hands on his breast. Upon inexplicable impulse she had taken off her marriage rings tonight when she washed, and now, caressing her hand, he noticed it was ringless.
“You need not have taken off your rings, my love,” he said, and put her hand to his lips.
“I don’t know why I did,” she said somewhat faintly.
“An instinct,” he said.
“Of guilt?” she asked.
“Of honor,” he said, “but quite unnecessary. Love is never guilty. It comes to us, always to be welcomed, from whatever source, at whatever time. One love does not displace another. Each love is added richness.”
“But could I have accepted your love — as I do — if—” She paused and he carried the question to answer.
“If Eloise, my wife, and Arnold, your husband, had been alive? I would have expressed it differently, you would have accepted it differently. We would not be lying here in the naked moonlight. It would not have been necessary as it now is, to me at least, and I think to you, or you would not have accepted me. As it is, I, because I feel death near, you, because death struck into your house, we feel the necessity of bodily contact before the final parting comes, as it must, my darling! So let me say what I want to say.”