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Tales Of Men And Ghosts

E >> Edith Wharton >> Tales Of Men And Ghosts



Edited by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com




TALES OF MEN AND GHOSTS

BY

EDITH WHARTON



LONDON

1910






CONTENTS

I _The Bolted Door_
II _His Father's Son_
III _The Daunt Diana_
IV _The Debt_
V _Full Circle_
VI _The Legend_
VII _The Eyes_
VIII _The Blond Beast_
IX _Afterward_
X _The Letters_






THE BOLTED DOOR

I





HUBERT GRANICE, pacing the length of his pleasant lamp-lit library,
paused to compare his watch with the clock on the chimney-piece.

Three minutes to eight.

In exactly three minutes Mr. Peter Ascham, of the eminent legal firm
of Ascham and Pettilow, would have his punctual hand on the
door-bell of the flat. It was a comfort to reflect that Ascham was
so punctual--the suspense was beginning to make his host nervous.
And the sound of the door-bell would be the beginning of the
end--after that there'd be no going back, by God--no going back!

Granice resumed his pacing. Each time he reached the end of the room
opposite the door he caught his reflection in the Florentine mirror
above the fine old walnut _credence_ he had picked up at Dijon--saw
himself spare, quick-moving, carefully brushed and dressed, but
furrowed, gray about the temples, with a stoop which he corrected by
a spasmodic straightening of the shoulders whenever a glass
confronted him: a tired middle-aged man, baffled, beaten, worn out.

As he summed himself up thus for the third or fourth time the door
opened and he turned with a thrill of relief to greet his guest. But
it was only the man-servant who entered, advancing silently over the
mossy surface of the old Turkey rug.

"Mr. Ascham telephones, sir, to say he's unexpectedly detained and
can't be here till eight-thirty."

Granice made a curt gesture of annoyance. It was becoming harder and
harder for him to control these reflexes. He turned on his heel,
tossing to the servant over his shoulder: "Very good. Put off
dinner."

Down his spine he felt the man's injured stare. Mr. Granice had
always been so mild-spoken to his people--no doubt the odd change in
his manner had already been noticed and discussed below stairs. And
very likely they suspected the cause. He stood drumming on the
writing-table till he heard the servant go out; then he threw
himself into a chair, propping his elbows on the table and resting
his chin on his locked hands.

Another half hour alone with it!

He wondered irritably what could have detained his guest. Some
professional matter, no doubt--the punctilious lawyer would have
allowed nothing less to interfere with a dinner engagement, more
especially since Granice, in his note, had said: "I shall want a
little business chat afterward."

But what professional matter could have come up at that
unprofessional hour? Perhaps some other soul in misery had called on
the lawyer; and, after all, Granice's note had given no hint of his
own need! No doubt Ascham thought he merely wanted to make another
change in his will. Since he had come into his little property, ten
years earlier, Granice had been perpetually tinkering with his will.

Suddenly another thought pulled him up, sending a flush to his
sallow temples. He remembered a word he had tossed to the lawyer
some six weeks earlier, at the Century Club. "Yes--my play's as good
as taken. I shall be calling on you soon to go over the contract.
Those theatrical chaps are so slippery--I won't trust anybody but
you to tie the knot for me!" That, of course, was what Ascham would
think he was wanted for. Granice, at the idea, broke into an audible
laugh--a queer stage-laugh, like the cackle of a baffled villain in
a melodrama. The absurdity, the unnaturalness of the sound abashed
him, and he compressed his lips angrily. Would he take to soliloquy
next?

He lowered his arms and pulled open the upper drawer of the
writing-table. In the right-hand corner lay a thick manuscript,
bound in paper folders, and tied with a string beneath which a
letter had been slipped. Next to the manuscript was a small
revolver. Granice stared a moment at these oddly associated objects;
then he took the letter from under the string and slowly began to
open it. He had known he should do so from the moment his hand
touched the drawer. Whenever his eye fell on that letter some
relentless force compelled him to re-read it.

It was dated about four weeks back, under the letter-head of "The
Diversity Theatre." "MY DEAR MR. GRANICE:

"I have given the matter my best consideration for the last month,
and it's no use--the play won't do. I have talked it over with Miss
Melrose--and you know there isn't a gamer artist on our stage--and I
regret to tell you she feels just as I do about it. It isn't the
poetry that scares her--or me either. We both want to do all we can
to help along the poetic drama--we believe the public's ready for
it, and we're willing to take a big financial risk in order to be
the first to give them what they want. _But we don't believe they
could be made to want this._ The fact is, there isn't enough drama
in your play to the allowance of poetry--the thing drags all
through. You've got a big idea, but it's not out of swaddling
clothes.

"If this was your first play I'd say: _Try again_. But it has been
just the same with all the others you've shown me. And you remember
the result of 'The Lee Shore,' where you carried all the expenses of
production yourself, and we couldn't fill the theatre for a week.
Yet 'The Lee Shore' was a modern problem play--much easier to swing
than blank verse. It isn't as if you hadn't tried all kinds--"

Granice folded the letter and put it carefully back into the
envelope. Why on earth was he re-reading it, when he knew every
phrase in it by heart, when for a month past he had seen it, night
after night, stand out in letters of flame against the darkness of
his sleepless lids?

"_It has been just the same with all the others you've shown me._"

That was the way they dismissed ten years of passionate unremitting
work!

"_You remember the result of 'The Lee Shore.'_"

Good God--as if he were likely to forget it! He re-lived it all now
in a drowning flash: the persistent rejection of the play, his
sudden resolve to put it on at his own cost, to spend ten thousand
dollars of his inheritance on testing his chance of success--the
fever of preparation, the dry-mouthed agony of the "first night,"
the flat fall, the stupid press, his secret rush to Europe to escape
the condolence of his friends!

"_It isn't as if you hadn't tried all kinds._"

No--he had tried all kinds: comedy, tragedy, prose and verse, the
light curtain-raiser, the short sharp drama, the bourgeois-realistic
and the lyrical-romantic--finally deciding that he would no longer
"prostitute his talent" to win popularity, but would impose on the
public his own theory of art in the form of five acts of blank
verse. Yes, he had offered them everything--and always with the same
result.

Ten years of it--ten years of dogged work and unrelieved failure.
The ten years from forty to fifty--the best ten years of his life!
And if one counted the years before, the silent years of dreams,
assimilation, preparation--then call it half a man's life-time: half
a man's life-time thrown away!

And what was he to do with the remaining half? Well, he had settled
that, thank God! He turned and glanced anxiously at the clock. Ten
minutes past eight--only ten minutes had been consumed in that
stormy rush through his whole past! And he must wait another twenty
minutes for Ascham. It was one of the worst symptoms of his case
that, in proportion as he had grown to shrink from human company, he
dreaded more and more to be alone. ... But why the devil was he
waiting for Ascham? Why didn't he cut the knot himself? Since he was
so unutterably sick of the whole business, why did he have to call
in an outsider to rid him of this nightmare of living?

He opened the drawer again and laid his hand on the revolver. It was
a small slim ivory toy--just the instrument for a tired sufferer to
give himself a "hypodermic" with. Granice raised it slowly in one
hand, while with the other he felt under the thin hair at the back
of his head, between the ear and the nape. He knew just where to
place the muzzle: he had once got a young surgeon to show him. And
as he found the spot, and lifted the revolver to it, the inevitable
phenomenon occurred. The hand that held the weapon began to shake,
the tremor communicated itself to his arm, his heart gave a wild
leap which sent up a wave of deadly nausea to his throat, he smelt
the powder, he sickened at the crash of the bullet through his
skull, and a sweat of fear broke out over his forehead and ran down
his quivering face...

He laid away the revolver with an oath and, pulling out a
cologne-scented handkerchief, passed it tremulously over his brow
and temples. It was no use--he knew he could never do it in that
way. His attempts at self-destruction were as futile as his snatches
at fame! He couldn't make himself a real life, and he couldn't get
rid of the life he had. And that was why he had sent for Ascham to
help him...

The lawyer, over the Camembert and Burgundy, began to excuse himself
for his delay.

"I didn't like to say anything while your man was about--but the
fact is, I was sent for on a rather unusual matter--"

"Oh, it's all right," said Granice cheerfully. He was beginning to
feel the usual reaction that food and company produced. It was not
any recovered pleasure in life that he felt, but only a deeper
withdrawal into himself. It was easier to go on automatically with
the social gestures than to uncover to any human eye the abyss
within him.

"My dear fellow, it's sacrilege to keep a dinner waiting--especially
the production of an artist like yours." Mr. Ascham sipped his
Burgundy luxuriously. "But the fact is, Mrs. Ashgrove sent for me."

Granice raised his head with a quick movement of surprise. For a
moment he was shaken out of his self-absorption.

"_Mrs. Ashgrove?_"

Ascham smiled. "I thought you'd be interested; I know your passion
for _causes celebres_. And this promises to be one. Of course it's
out of our line entirely--we never touch criminal cases. But she
wanted to consult me as a friend. Ashgrove was a distant connection
of my wife's. And, by Jove, it _is_ a queer case!" The servant
re-entered, and Ascham snapped his lips shut.

Would the gentlemen have their coffee in the dining-room?

"No--serve it in the library," said Granice, rising. He led the way
back to the curtained confidential room. He was really curious to
hear what Ascham had to tell him.

While the coffee and cigars were being served he fidgeted about the
library, glancing at his letters--the usual meaningless notes and
bills--and picking up the evening paper. As he unfolded it a
headline caught his eye.

"ROSE MELROSE WANTS TO PLAY POETRY.

"THINKS SHE HAS FOUND HER POET."

He read on with a thumping heart--found the name of a young author
he had barely heard of, saw the title of a play, a "poetic drama,"
dance before his eyes, and dropped the paper, sick, disgusted. It
was true, then--she _was_ "game"--it was not the manner but the
matter she mistrusted!

Granice turned to the servant, who seemed to be purposely lingering.
"I shan't need you this evening, Flint. I'll lock up myself."

He fancied the man's acquiescence implied surprise. What was going
on, Flint seemed to wonder, that Mr. Granice should want him out of
the way? Probably he would find a pretext for coming back to see.
Granice suddenly felt himself enveloped in a network of espionage.

As the door closed he threw himself into an armchair and leaned
forward to take a light from Ascham's cigar.

"Tell me about Mrs. Ashgrove," he said, seeming to himself to speak
stiffly, as if his lips were cracked.

"Mrs. Ashgrove? Well, there's not much to _tell_."

"And you couldn't if there were?" Granice smiled.

"Probably not. As a matter of fact, she wanted my advice about her
choice of counsel. There was nothing especially confidential in our
talk."

"And what's your impression, now you've seen her?"

"My impression is, very distinctly, _that nothing will ever be
known._"

"Ah--?" Granice murmured, puffing at his cigar.

"I'm more and more convinced that whoever poisoned Ashgrove knew his
business, and will consequently never be found out. That's a capital
cigar you've given me."

"You like it? I get them over from Cuba." Granice examined his own
reflectively. "Then you believe in the theory that the clever
criminals never _are_ caught?"

"Of course I do. Look about you--look back for the last dozen
years--none of the big murder problems are ever solved." The lawyer
ruminated behind his blue cloud. "Why, take the instance in your own
family: I'd forgotten I had an illustration at hand! Take old Joseph
Lenman's murder--do you suppose that will ever be explained?"

As the words dropped from Ascham's lips his host looked slowly about
the library, and every object in it stared back at him with a stale
unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room! It
was as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of. He cleared his
throat slowly; then he turned his head to the lawyer and said: "I
could explain the Lenman murder myself."

Ascham's eye kindled: he shared Granice's interest in criminal
cases.

"By Jove! You've had a theory all this time? It's odd you never
mentioned it. Go ahead and tell me. There are certain features in
the Lenman case not unlike this Ashgrove affair, and your idea may
be a help."

Granice paused and his eye reverted instinctively to the table
drawer in which the revolver and the manuscript lay side by side.
What if he were to try another appeal to Rose Melrose? Then he
looked at the notes and bills on the table, and the horror of taking
up again the lifeless routine of life--of performing the same
automatic gestures another day--displaced his fleeting vision.

"I haven't a theory. I _know_ who murdered Joseph Lenman."

Ascham settled himself comfortably in his chair, prepared for
enjoyment.

"You _know?_ Well, who did?" he laughed.

"I did," said Granice, rising.

He stood before Ascham, and the lawyer lay back staring up at him.
Then he broke into another laugh.

"Why, this is glorious! You murdered him, did you? To inherit his
money, I suppose? Better and better! Go on, my boy! Unbosom
yourself! Tell me all about it! Confession is good for the soul."

Granice waited till the lawyer had shaken the last peal of laughter
from his throat; then he repeated doggedly: "I murdered him."

The two men looked at each other for a long moment, and this time
Ascham did not laugh.

"Granice!"

"I murdered him--to get his money, as you say."

There was another pause, and Granice, with a vague underlying sense
of amusement, saw his guest's look change from pleasantry to
apprehension.

"What's the joke, my dear fellow? I fail to see."

"It's not a joke. It's the truth. I murdered him." He had spoken
painfully at first, as if there were a knot in his throat; but each
time he repeated the words he found they were easier to say.

Ascham laid down his extinct cigar.

"What's the matter? Aren't you well? What on earth are you driving
at?"

"I'm perfectly well. But I murdered my cousin, Joseph Lenman, and I
want it known that I murdered him."

"_You want it known?_"

"Yes. That's why I sent for you. I'm sick of living, and when I try
to kill myself I funk it." He spoke quite naturally now, as if the
knot in his throat had been untied.

"Good Lord--good Lord," the lawyer gasped.

"But I suppose," Granice continued, "there's no doubt this would be
murder in the first degree? I'm sure of the chair if I own up?"

Ascham drew a long breath; then he said slowly: "Sit down, Granice.
Let's talk."






II





GRANICE told his story simply, connectedly.

He began by a quick survey of his early years--the years of drudgery
and privation. His father, a charming man who could never say "no,"
had so signally failed to say it on certain essential occasions that
when he died he left an illegitimate family and a mortgaged estate.
His lawful kin found themselves hanging over a gulf of debt, and
young Granice, to support his mother and sister, had to leave
Harvard and bury himself at eighteen in a broker's office. He
loathed his work, and he was always poor, always worried and in
ill-health. A few years later his mother died, but his sister, an
ineffectual neurasthenic, remained on his hands. His own health gave
out, and he had to go away for six months, and work harder than ever
when he came back. He had no knack for business, no head for
figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries of commerce. He
wanted to travel and write--those were his inmost longings. And as
the years dragged on, and he neared middle-age without making any
more money, or acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair possessed
him. He tried writing, but he always came home from the office so
tired that his brain could not work. For half the year he did not
reach his dim up-town flat till after dark, and could only "brush
up" for dinner, and afterward lie on the lounge with his pipe, while
his sister droned through the evening paper. Sometimes he spent an
evening at the theatre; or he dined out, or, more rarely, strayed
off with an acquaintance or two in quest of what is known as
"pleasure." And in summer, when he and Kate went to the sea-side for
a month, he dozed through the days in utter weariness. Once he fell
in love with a charming girl--but what had he to offer her, in God's
name? She seemed to like him, and in common decency he had to drop
out of the running. Apparently no one replaced him, for she never
married, but grew stoutish, grayish, philanthropic--yet how sweet
she had been when he had first kissed her! One more wasted life, he
reflected...

But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have sold
his soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was _in
him_--he could not remember when it had not been his deepest-seated
instinct. As the years passed it became a morbid, a relentless
obsession--yet with every year the material conditions were more and
more against it. He felt himself growing middle-aged, and he watched
the reflection of the process in his sister's wasted face. At
eighteen she had been pretty, and as full of enthusiasm as he. Now
she was sour, trivial, insignificant--she had missed her chance of
life. And she had no resources, poor creature, was fashioned simply
for the primitive functions she had been denied the chance to
fulfil! It exasperated him to think of it--and to reflect that even
now a little travel, a little health, a little money, might
transform her, make her young and desirable... The chief fruit of
his experience was that there is no such fixed state as age or
youth--there is only health as against sickness, wealth as against
poverty; and age or youth as the outcome of the lot one draws.

At this point in his narrative Granice stood up, and went to lean
against the mantel-piece, looking down at Ascham, who had not moved
from his seat, or changed his attitude of rigid fascinated
attention.

"Then came the summer when we went to Wrenfield to be near old
Lenman--my mother's cousin, as you know. Some of the family always
mounted guard over him--generally a niece or so. But that year they
were all scattered, and one of the nieces offered to lend us her
cottage if we'd relieve her of duty for two months. It was a
nuisance for me, of course, for Wrenfield is two hours from town;
but my mother, who was a slave to family observances, had always
been good to the old man, so it was natural we should be called
on--and there was the saving of rent and the good air for Kate. So
we went.

"You never knew Joseph Lenman? Well, picture to yourself an amoeba
or some primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan's microscope.
He was large, undifferentiated, inert--since I could remember him he
had done nothing but take his temperature and read the _Churchman_.
Oh, and cultivate melons--that was his hobby. Not vulgar,
out-of-door melons--his were grown under glass. He had miles of it
at Wrenfield--his big kitchen-garden was surrounded by blinking
battalions of green-houses. And in nearly all of them melons were
grown--early melons and late, French, English, domestic--dwarf
melons and monsters: every shape, colour and variety. They were
petted and nursed like children--a staff of trained attendants
waited on them. I'm not sure they didn't have a doctor to take their
temperature--at any rate the place was full of thermometers. And
they didn't sprawl on the ground like ordinary melons; they were
trained against the glass like nectarines, and each melon hung in a
net which sustained its weight and left it free on all sides to the
sun and air...

"It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one of
his own melons--the pale-fleshed English kind. His life, apathetic
and motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable warm ventilated
atmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries. The cardinal rule of
his existence was not to let himself be 'worried.' . . I remember
his advising me to try it myself, one day when I spoke to him about
Kate's bad health, and her need of a change. 'I never let myself
worry,' he said complacently. 'It's the worst thing for the
liver--and you look to me as if you had a liver. Take my advice and
be cheerful. You'll make yourself happier and others too.' And all
he had to do was to write a cheque, and send the poor girl off for a
holiday!

"The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us
already. The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for us
and the others. But his life was a good deal sounder than mine or
Kate's--and one could picture him taking extra care of it for the
joke of keeping us waiting. I always felt that the sight of our
hungry eyes was a tonic to him.

"Well, I tried to see if I couldn't reach him through his vanity. I
flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons. And he
was taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine
days he was driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and
waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat
Turk in his seraglio. When he bragged to me of the expense of
growing them I was reminded of a hideous old Lothario bragging of
what his pleasures cost. And the resemblance was completed by the
fact that he couldn't eat as much as a mouthful of his melons--had
lived for years on buttermilk and toast. 'But, after all, it's my
only hobby--why shouldn't I indulge it?' he said sentimentally. As
if I'd ever been able to indulge any of mine! On the keep of those
melons Kate and I could have lived like gods...

"One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell to
drag herself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend the
afternoon with cousin Joseph. It was a lovely soft September
afternoon--a day to lie under a Roman stone-pine, with one's eyes on
the sky, and let the cosmic harmonies rush through one. Perhaps the
vision was suggested by the fact that, as I entered cousin Joseph's
hideous black walnut library, I passed one of the under-gardeners, a
handsome full-throated Italian, who dashed out in such a hurry that
he nearly knocked me down. I remember thinking it queer that the
fellow, whom I had often seen about the melon-houses, did not bow to
me, or even seem to see me.

"Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows,
his fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the last number
of the _Churchman_ at his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat
melon--the fattest melon I'd ever seen. As I looked at it I pictured
the ecstasy of contemplation from which I must have roused him, and
congratulated myself on finding him in such a mood, since I had made
up my mind to ask him a favour. Then I noticed that his face,
instead of looking as calm as an egg-shell, was distorted and
whimpering--and without stopping to greet me he pointed passionately
to the melon.

"'Look at it, look at it--did you ever see such a beauty? Such
firmness--roundness--such delicious smoothness to the touch?' It was
as if he had said 'she' instead of 'it,' and when he put out his
senile hand and touched the melon I positively had to look the other
way.

"Then he told me what had happened. The Italian under-gardener, who
had been specially recommended for the melon-houses--though it was
against my cousin's principles to employ a Papist--had been assigned
to the care of the monster: for it had revealed itself, early in its
existence, as destined to become a monster, to surpass its plumpest,
pulpiest sisters, carry off prizes at agricultural shows, and be
photographed and celebrated in every gardening paper in the land.
The Italian had done well--seemed to have a sense of responsibility.
And that very morning he had been ordered to pick the melon, which
was to be shown next day at the county fair, and to bring it in for
Mr. Lenman to gaze on its blonde virginity. But in picking it, what
had the damned scoundrelly Jesuit done but drop it--drop it crash on
the sharp spout of a watering-pot, so that it received a deep gash
in its firm pale rotundity, and was henceforth but a bruised,
ruined, fallen melon?

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