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John Greenleaf Whittier - "Narrative and Legendary Poems, Complete"

The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton Part Two

E >> Edith Wharton >> The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton Part Two




She stood up, a dull ache in every bone. The silence of the room
frightened her. She remembered, now, having heard the front door
close a long time ago: the sound suddenly re-echoed through her
brain. Her husband must have left the house, then--her HUSBAND?
She no longer knew in what terms to think: the simplest phrases
had a poisoned edge. She sank back into her chair, overcome by a
strange weakness. The clock struck ten--it was only ten o'clock!
Suddenly she remembered that she had not ordered dinner . . . or
were they dining out that evening? DINNER--DINING OUT--the old
meaningless phraseology pursued her! She must try to think of
herself as she would think of some one else, a some one
dissociated from all the familiar routine of the past, whose
wants and habits must gradually be learned, as one might spy out
the ways of a strange animal. . .

The clock struck another hour--eleven. She stood up again and
walked to the door: she thought she would go up stairs to her
room. HER room? Again the word derided her. She opened the
door, crossed the narrow hall, and walked up the stairs. As she
passed, she noticed Westall's sticks and umbrellas: a pair of his
gloves lay on the hall table. The same stair-carpet mounted
between the same walls; the same old French print, in its narrow
black frame, faced her on the landing. This visual continuity
was intolerable. Within, a gaping chasm; without, the same
untroubled and familiar surface. She must get away from it
before she could attempt to think. But, once in her room, she
sat down on the lounge, a stupor creeping over her. . .

Gradually her vision cleared. A great deal had happened in the
interval--a wild marching and countermarching of emotions,
arguments, ideas--a fury of insurgent impulses that fell back
spent upon themselves. She had tried, at first, to rally, to
organize these chaotic forces. There must be help somewhere, if
only she could master the inner tumult. Life could not be broken
off short like this, for a whim, a fancy; the law itself would
side with her, would defend her. The law? What claim had she
upon it? She was the prisoner of her own choice: she had been
her own legislator, and she was the predestined victim of the
code she had devised. But this was grotesque, intolerable--a mad
mistake, for which she could not be held accountable! The law
she had despised was still there, might still be invoked . . .
invoked, but to what end? Could she ask it to chain Westall to
her side? SHE had been allowed to go free when she claimed her
freedom--should she show less magnanimity than she had exacted?
Magnanimity? The word lashed her with its irony--one does not
strike an attitude when one is fighting for life! She would
threaten, grovel, cajole . . . she would yield anything to keep
her hold on happiness. Ah, but the difficulty lay deeper! The
law could not help her--her own apostasy could not help her. She
was the victim of the theories she renounced. It was as though
some giant machine of her own making had caught her up in its
wheels and was grinding her to atoms. . .

It was afternoon when she found herself out-of-doors. She walked
with an aimless haste, fearing to meet familiar faces. The day
was radiant, metallic: one of those searching American days so
calculated to reveal the shortcomings of our street-cleaning and
the excesses of our architecture. The streets looked bare and
hideous; everything stared and glittered. She called a passing
hansom, and gave Mrs. Van Sideren's address. She did not know
what had led up to the act; but she found herself suddenly
resolved to speak, to cry out a warning. it was too late to save
herself--but the girl might still be told. The hansom rattled up
Fifth Avenue; she sat with her eyes fixed, avoiding recognition.
At the Van Siderens' door she sprang out and rang the bell.
Action had cleared her brain, and she felt calm and self-
possessed. She knew now exactly what she meant to say.

The ladies were both out . . . the parlor-maid stood waiting for
a card. Julia, with a vague murmur, turned away from the door
and lingered a moment on the sidewalk. Then she remembered that
she had not paid the cab-driver. She drew a dollar from her
purse and handed it to him. He touched his hat and drove off,
leaving her alone in the long empty street. She wandered away
westward, toward strange thoroughfares, where she was not likely
to meet acquaintances. The feeling of aimlessness had returned.
Once she found herself in the afternoon torrent of Broadway,
swept past tawdry shops and flaming theatrical posters, with a
succession of meaningless faces gliding by in the opposite
direction. . .

A feeling of faintness reminded her that she had not eaten since
morning. She turned into a side street of shabby houses, with
rows of ash-barrels behind bent area railings. In a basement
window she saw the sign LADIES' RESTAURANT: a pie and a dish of
doughnuts lay against the dusty pane like petrified food in an
ethnological museum. She entered, and a young woman with a weak
mouth and a brazen eye cleared a table for her near the window.
The table was covered with a red and white cotton cloth and
adorned with a bunch of celery in a thick tumbler and a salt-
cellar full of grayish lumpy salt. Julia ordered tea, and sat a
long time waiting for it. She was glad to be away from the noise
and confusion of the streets. The low-ceilinged room was empty,
and two or three waitresses with thin pert faces lounged in the
background staring at her and whispering together. At last the
tea was brought in a discolored metal teapot. Julia poured a cup
and drank it hastily. It was black and bitter, but it flowed
through her veins like an elixir. She was almost dizzy with
exhilaration. Oh, how tired, how unutterably tired she had been!

She drank a second cup, blacker and bitterer, and now her mind
was once more working clearly. She felt as vigorous, as
decisive, as when she had stood on the Van Siderens' door-step--
but the wish to return there had subsided. She saw now the
futility of such an attempt--the humiliation to which it might
have exposed her. . . The pity of it was that she did not know
what to do next. The short winter day was fading, and she
realized that she could not remain much longer in the restaurant
without attracting notice. She paid for her tea and went out
into the street. The lamps were alight, and here and there a
basement shop cast an oblong of gas-light across the fissured
pavement. In the dusk there was something sinister about the
aspect of the street, and she hastened back toward Fifth Avenue.
She was not used to being out alone at that hour.

At the corner of Fifth Avenue she paused and stood watching the
stream of carriages. At last a policeman caught sight of her and
signed to her that he would take her across. She had not meant
to cross the street, but she obeyed automatically, and presently
found herself on the farther corner. There she paused again for
a moment; but she fancied the policeman was watching her, and
this sent her hastening down the nearest side street. . . After
that she walked a long time, vaguely. . . Night had fallen, and
now and then, through the windows of a passing carriage, she
caught the expanse of an evening waistcoat or the shimmer of an
opera cloak. . .

Suddenly she found herself in a familiar street. She stood still
a moment, breathing quickly. She had turned the corner without
noticing whither it led; but now, a few yards ahead of her, she
saw the house in which she had once lived--her first husband's
house. The blinds were drawn, and only a faint translucence
marked the windows and the transom above the door. As she stood
there she heard a step behind her, and a man walked by in the
direction of the house. He walked slowly, with a heavy middle-
aged gait, his head sunk a little between the shoulders, the red
crease of his neck visible above the fur collar of his overcoat.
He crossed the street, went up the steps of the house, drew forth
a latch-key, and let himself in. . .

There was no one else in sight. Julia leaned for a long time
against the area-rail at the corner, her eyes fixed on the front
of the house. The feeling of physical weariness had returned,
but the strong tea still throbbed in her veins and lit her brain
with an unnatural clearness. Presently she heard another step
draw near, and moving quickly away, she too crossed the street
and mounted the steps of the house. The impulse which had
carried her there prolonged itself in a quick pressure of the
electric bell--then she felt suddenly weak and tremulous, and
grasped the balustrade for support. The door opened and a young
footman with a fresh inexperienced face stood on the threshold.
Julia knew in an instant that he would admit her.

"I saw Mr. Arment going in just now," she said. "Will you ask
him to see me for a moment?"

The footman hesitated. "I think Mr. Arment has gone up to dress
for dinner, madam."

Julia advanced into the hall. "I am sure he will see me--I will
not detain him long," she said. She spoke quietly,
authoritatively, in the tone which a good servant does not
mistake. The footman had his hand on the drawing-room door.

"I will tell him, madam. What name, please?"

Julia trembled: she had not thought of that. "Merely say a
lady," she returned carelessly.

The footman wavered and she fancied herself lost; but at that
instant the door opened from within and John Arment stepped into
the hall. He drew back sharply as he saw her, his florid face
turning sallow with the shock; then the blood poured back to it,
swelling the veins on his temples and reddening the lobes of his
thick ears.

It was long since Julia had seen him, and she was startled at the
change in his appearance. He had thickened, coarsened, settled
down into the enclosing flesh. But she noted this insensibly:
her one conscious thought was that, now she was face to face with
him, she must not let him escape till he had heard her. Every
pulse in her body throbbed with the urgency of her message.

She went up to him as he drew back. "I must speak to you," she
said.

Arment hesitated, red and stammering. Julia glanced at the
footman, and her look acted as a warning. The instinctive
shrinking from a "scene" predominated over every other impulse,
and Arment said slowly: "Will you come this way?"

He followed her into the drawing-room and closed the door.
Julia, as she advanced, was vaguely aware that the room at least
was unchanged: time had not mitigated its horrors. The contadina
still lurched from the chimney-breast, and the Greek slave
obstructed the threshold of the inner room. The place was alive
with memories: they started out from every fold of the yellow
satin curtains and glided between the angles of the rosewood
furniture. But while some subordinate agency was carrying these
impressions to her brain, her whole conscious effort was centred
in the act of dominating Arment's will. The fear that he would
refuse to hear her mounted like fever to her brain. She felt her
purpose melt before it, words and arguments running into each
other in the heat of her longing. For a moment her voice failed
her, and she imagined herself thrust out before she could speak;
but as she was struggling for a word, Arment pushed a chair
forward, and said quietly: "You are not well."

The sound of his voice steadied her. It was neither kind nor
unkind--a voice that suspended judgment, rather, awaiting
unforeseen developments. She supported herself against the back
of the chair and drew a deep breath. "Shall I send for
something?" he continued, with a cold embarrassed politeness.

Julia raised an entreating hand. "No--no--thank you. I am quite
well."

He paused midway toward the bell and turned on her. "Then may I
ask--?"

"Yes," she interrupted him. "I came here because I wanted to see
you. There is something I must tell you."

Arment continued to scrutinize her. "I am surprised at that," he
said. "I should have supposed that any communication you may
wish to make could have been made through our lawyers."

"Our lawyers!" She burst into a little laugh. "I don't think
they could help me--this time."

Arment's face took on a barricaded look. "If there is any
question of help--of course--"

It struck her, whimsically, that she had seen that look when some
shabby devil called with a subscription-book. Perhaps he thought
she wanted him to put his name down for so much in sympathy--or
even in money. . . The thought made her laugh again. She saw
his look change slowly to perplexity. All his facial changes
were slow, and she remembered, suddenly, how it had once diverted
her to shift that lumbering scenery with a word. For the first
time it struck her that she had been cruel. "There IS a question
of help," she said in a softer key: "you can help me; but only by
listening. . . I want to tell you something. . ."

Arment's resistance was not yielding. "Would it not be easier
to--write?" he suggested.

She shook her head. "There is no time to write . . . and it
won't take long." She raised her head and their eyes met. "My
husband has left me," she said.

"Westall--?" he stammered, reddening again.

"Yes. This morning. Just as I left you. Because he was tired
of me."

The words, uttered scarcely above a whisper, seemed to dilate to
the limit of the room. Arment looked toward the door; then his
embarrassed glance returned to Julia.

"I am very sorry," he said awkwardly.

"Thank you," she murmured.

"But I don't see--"

"No--but you will--in a moment. Won't you listen to me?
Please!" Instinctively she had shifted her position putting
herself between him and the door. "It happened this morning,"
she went on in short breathless phrases. "I never suspected
anything--I thought we were--perfectly happy. . . Suddenly he
told me he was tired of me . . . there is a girl he likes better. . .
He has gone to her. . ." As she spoke, the lurking anguish
rose upon her, possessing her once more to the exclusion of every
other emotion. Her eyes ached, her throat swelled with it, and
two painful tears burnt a way down her face.

Arment's constraint was increasing visibly. "This--this is very
unfortunate," he began. "But I should say the law--"

"The law?" she echoed ironically. "When he asks for his
freedom?"

"You are not obliged to give it."

"You were not obliged to give me mine--but you did."

He made a protesting gesture.

"You saw that the law couldn't help you--didn't you?" she went
on. "That is what I see now. The law represents material
rights--it can't go beyond. If we don't recognize an inner law . . .
the obligation that love creates . . . being loved as well as
loving . . . there is nothing to prevent our spreading ruin
unhindered . . . is there?" She raised her head plaintively,
with the look of a bewildered child. "That is what I see now . . .
what I wanted to tell you. He leaves me because he's tired . . .
but I was not tired; and I don't understand why he is. That's
the dreadful part of it--the not understanding: I hadn't realized
what it meant. But I've been thinking of it all day, and things
have come back to me--things I hadn't noticed . . . when you and
I. . ." She moved closer to him, and fixed her eyes on his with
the gaze that tries to reach beyond words. "I see now that YOU
didn't understand--did you?"

Their eyes met in a sudden shock of comprehension: a veil seemed
to be lifted between them. Arment's lip trembled.

"No," he said, "I didn't understand."

She gave a little cry, almost of triumph. "I knew it! I knew
it! You wondered--you tried to tell me--but no words came. . .
You saw your life falling in ruins . . . the world slipping from
you . . . and you couldn't speak or move!"

She sank down on the chair against which she had been leaning.
"Now I know--now I know," she repeated.

"I am very sorry for you," she heard Arment stammer.

She looked up quickly. "That's not what I came for. I don't
want you to be sorry. I came to ask you to forgive me . . . for
not understanding that YOU didn't understand. . . That's all I
wanted to say." She rose with a vague sense that the end had
come, and put out a groping hand toward the door.

Arment stood motionless. She turned to him with a faint smile.

"You forgive me?"

"There is nothing to forgive--"

"Then will you shake hands for good-by?" She felt his hand in
hers: it was nerveless, reluctant.

"Good-by," she repeated. "I understand now."

She opened the door and passed out into the hall. As she did so,
Arment took an impulsive step forward; but just then the footman,
who was evidently alive to his obligations, advanced from the
background to let her out. She heard Arment fall back. The
footman threw open the door, and she found herself outside in the
darkness.



The End of The Reckoning




Verse



BOTTICELLI'S MADONNA IN THE LOUVRE.


WHAT strange presentiment, O Mother, lies
On thy waste brow and sadly-folded lips,
Forefeeling the Light's terrible eclipse
On Calvary, as if love made thee wise,
And thou couldst read in those dear infant eyes
The sorrow that beneath their smiling sleeps,
And guess what bitter tears a mother weeps
When the cross darkens her unclouded skies?

Sad Lady, if some mother, passing thee,
Should feel a throb of thy foreboding pain,
And think--"My child at home clings so to me,
With the same smile . . . and yet in vain, in vain,
Since even this Jesus died on Calvary"--
Say to her then: "He also rose again."




THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI.


ILARIA, thou that wert so fair and dear
That death would fain disown thee, grief made wise
With prophecy thy husband's widowed eyes
And bade him call the master's art to rear
Thy perfect image on the sculptured bier,
With dreaming lids, hands laid in peaceful guise
Beneath the breast that seems to fall and rise,
And lips that at love's call should answer, "Here!"

First-born of the Renascence, when thy soul
Cast the sweet robing of the flesh aside,
Into these lovelier marble limbs it stole,
Regenerate in art's sunrise clear and wide
As saints who, having kept faith's raiment whole,
Change it above for garments glorified.




THE SONNET.

PURE form, that like some chalice of old time
Contain'st the liquid of the poet's thought
Within thy curving hollow, gem-enwrought
With interwoven traceries of rhyme,
While o'er thy brim the bubbling fancies climb,
What thing am I, that undismayed have sought
To pour my verse with trembling hand untaught
Into a shape so small yet so sublime?
Because perfection haunts the hearts of men,
Because thy sacred chalice gathered up
The wine of Petrarch, Shakspere, Shelley--then
Receive these tears of failure as they drop
(Sole vintage of my life), since I am fain
To pour them in a consecrated cup.




TWO BACKGROUNDS.

I.

LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR.


HERE by the ample river's argent sweep,
Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls,
A tower-crowned Cybele in armored sleep
The city lies, fat plenty in her halls,
With calm, parochial spires that hold in fee
The friendly gables clustered at their base,
And, equipoised o'er tower and market-place,
The Gothic minster's winged immensity;
And in that narrow burgh, with equal mood,
Two placid hearts, to all life's good resigned,
Might, from the altar to the lych-gate, find
Long years of peace and dreamless plenitude.



II.

MONA LISA.


Yon strange blue city crowns a scarped steep
No mortal foot hath bloodlessly essayed;
Dreams and illusions beacon from its keep,
But at the gate an Angel bares his blade;
And tales are told of those who thought to gain
At dawn its ramparts; but when evening fell
Far off they saw each fading pinnacle
Lit with wild lightnings from the heaven of pain;
Yet there two souls, whom life's perversities
Had mocked with want in plenty, tears in mirth,
Might meet in dreams, ungarmented of earth,
And drain Joy's awful chalice to the lees.




EXPERIENCE.


I.

LIKE Crusoe with the bootless gold we stand
Upon the desert verge of death, and say:
"What shall avail the woes of yesterday
To buy to-morrow's wisdom, in the land
Whose currency is strange unto our hand?
In life's small market they have served to pay
Some late-found rapture, could we but delay
Till Time hath matched our means to our demand."

But otherwise Fate wills it, for, behold,
Our gathered strength of individual pain,
When Time's long alchemy hath made it gold,
Dies with us--hoarded all these years in vain,
Since those that might be heir to it the mould
Renew, and coin themselves new griefs again.


II.

O, Death, we come full-handed to thy gate,
Rich with strange burden of the mingled years,
Gains and renunciations, mirth and tears,
And love's oblivion, and remembering hate,
Nor know we what compulsion laid such freight
Upon our souls--and shall our hopes and fears
Buy nothing of thee, Death? Behold our wares,
And sell us the one joy for which we wait.
Had we lived longer, life had such for sale,
With the last coin of sorrow purchased cheap,
But now we stand before thy shadowy pale,
And all our longings lie within thy keep--
Death, can it be the years shall naught avail?

"Not so," Death answered, "they shall purchase sleep."




CHARTRES.


I.

IMMENSE, august, like some Titanic bloom,
The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core,
Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or,
Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom,
And stamened with keen flamelets that illume
The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor,
By surging worshippers thick-thronged of yore,
A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb,
The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea--
For these alone the finials fret the skies,
The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free,
While from the triple portals, with grave eyes,
Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity,
The cloud of witnesses still testifies.


II.

The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatize
The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold.
A rigid fetich in her robe of gold
The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes,
Enthroned beneath her votive canopies,
Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold.
The rest is solitude; the church, grown old,
Stands stark and gray beneath the burning skies.
Wellnigh again its mighty frame-work grows
To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn
From hot humanity's impatient woes;
The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn,
And in the east one giant window shows
The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn.




LIFE.


LIFE, like a marble block, is given to all,
A blank, inchoate mass of years and days,
Whence one with ardent chisel swift essays
Some shape of strength or symmetry to call;
One shatters it in bits to mend a wall;
One in a craftier hand the chisel lays,
And one, to wake the mirth in Lesbia's gaze,
Carves it apace in toys fantastical.

But least is he who, with enchanted eyes
Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be,
Muses which god he shall immortalize
In the proud Parian's perpetuity,
Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies
That the night cometh wherein none shall see.




AN AUTUMN SUNSET


I

LEAGUERED in fire
The wild black promontories of the coast extend
Their savage silhouettes;
The sun in universal carnage sets,
And, halting higher,
The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,
Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,
That, balked, yet stands at bay.
Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day
In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,
A wan valkyrie whose wide pinions shine
Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,
And in her lifted hand swings high o'erhead,
Above the waste of war,
The silver torch-light of the evening star
Wherewith to search the faces of the dead.


II

Lagooned in gold,
Seem not those jetty promontories rather
The outposts of some ancient land forlorn,
Uncomforted of morn,
Where old oblivions gather,
The melancholy, unconsoling fold
Of all things that go utterly to death
And mix no more, no more
With life's perpetually awakening breath?
Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore,
Over such sailless seas,
To walk with hope's slain importunities
In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not
All things be there forgot,
Save the sea's golden barrier and the black
Closecrouching promontories?
Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories,
Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade,
A spectre self-destroyed,
So purged of all remembrance and sucked back
Into the primal void,
That should we on that shore phantasmal meet
I should not know the coming of your feet?

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