Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (16 page)

 
          
The
agreeable elderly bachelor, Sillerton Jackson, returning from a prolonged
sojourn in
Paris
(where he was understood to have been made
much of by the highest personages) was immensely struck by Tina’s charms when
he saw her at her coming-out ball, and asked Delia’s permission to come some
evening and dine alone with her and her young people. He complimented the widow
on the rosy beauty of her own young Delia; but the mother’s keen eye perceived
that all the while he was watching Tina, and after dinner he confided to the
older ladies that there was something “very French” in the girl’s way of doing
her hair, and that in the capital of all the Elegances she would have been
pronounced extremely stylish.

 
          
“Oh—”
Delia deprecated, beamingly, while Charlotte Lovell sat bent over her work with
pinched lips; but Tina, who had been laughing with her cousins at the other end
of the room was around upon her elders in a flash.

 
          
“I
heard what Mr. Sillerton said! Yes, I did, Mamma: he says I do my hair
stylishly. Didn’t I always tell you so? I
know
it’s more becoming to let it curl as it wants to than to plaster it down with
bandoline like Aunty’s—”

 
          
“Tina,
Tina—you always think people are admiring you!” Miss Lovell protested.

 
          
“Why
shouldn’t I, when they do?” the girl laughingly challenged; and, turning her
mocking eyes on Sillerton Jackson: “Do tell Aunt Charlotte not to be so
dreadfully old-maidish!”

 
          
Delia
saw the blood rise to Charlotte Lovell’s face. It no longer painted two
brick-rose circles on her thin cheek-bones, but diffused a harsh flush over her
whole countenance, from the collar fastened with an old-fashioned garnet brooch
to the pepper-and-salt hair (with no trace of red left in it) flattened down
over her hollow temples.

 
          
That
evening, when they went up to bed, Delia called Tina into her room.

 
          
“You
ought not to speak to your Aunt Charlotte as you did this evening, dear. It’s
disrespectful—you must see that it hurts her.”

 
          
The
girl overflowed with compunction. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Because I said she was an
old maid? But she
is
, isn’t she,
Mamma? In her inmost soul, I mean. I don’t believe she’s ever been young—ever
thought of fun or admiration or falling in love—do you? That’s why she never
understands me, and you always do, you darling dear Mamma.” With one of her
light movements, Tina was in the widow’s arms.

 
          
“Child,
child,” Delia softly scolded, kissing the dark curls planted in five points on
the girl’s forehead.

 
          
There
was a soft foot-fall in the passage, and Charlotte Lovell stood in the door.
Delia, without moving, sent her a glance of welcome over Tina’s shoulder.

 
          
“Come
in,
Charlotte
. I’m scolding Tina for behaving like a
spoilt baby before Sillerton Jackson. What will he think of her?”

 
          
“Just
what she deserves, probably,”
Charlotte
returned with a cold smile. Tina went
toward her, and her thin lips touched the girl’s proffered forehead just where
Delia’s warm kiss had rested. “Good-night, child,” she said in her dry tone of
dismissal.

 
          
The
door closed on the two women, and Delia signed to
Charlotte
to take the armchair opposite to her own.

 
          
“Not
so near the fire,” Miss Lovell answered. She chose a straight-backed seat, and
sat down with folded hands. Delia’s eyes rested absently on the thin ringless
fingers: she wondered why
Charlotte
never wore her mother’s jewels.

 
          
“I
overheard what you were saying to Tina, Delia. You were scolding her because
she called me an old maid.”

 
          
It
was Delia’s turn to colour. “I scolded her for being disrespectful, dear; if
you heard what I said you can’t think that I was too severe.”

 
          
“Not
too severe: no. I’ve never thought you too severe with Tina; on the contrary.”

 
          
“You
think I spoil her?”

 
          
“Sometimes.”

 
          
Delia
felt an unreasoning resentment. “What was it I said that you object to?”

 
          
Charlotte
returned her glance steadily. “I would
rather she thought me an old maid than—”

 
          
“Oh—”
Delia murmured. With one of her quick leaps of intuition she had entered into
the other’s soul, and once more measured its shuddering loneliness.

 
          
“What
else,”
Charlotte
inexorably pursued, “
Can
she possibly be allowed to think me—ever?”

 
          
“I
see…I see…” the widow faltered.

 
          
“A
ridiculous narrow-minded old maid—nothing else,” Charlotte Lovell insisted,
getting to her feet, “or I shall never feel safe with her.”

 
          
“Goodnight,
my dear,” Delia said compassionately. There were moments when she almost hated
Charlotte
for being Tina’s mother, and others, such
as this, when her heart was wrung by the tragic spectacle of that unavowed
bond.

 
          
Charlotte
seemed to have divined her thought.

 
          
“Oh,
but don’t pity me! She’s mine,” she murmured, going.

 
          
  

 
          
Delia
Ralston sometimes felt that the real events of her life did not begin until
both her children had contracted—so safely and suitably—their irreproachable
New York
alliances. The boy had married first,
choosing a Vandergrave in whose father’s bank at Albany he was to have an
immediate junior partnership; and young Delia (as her mother had foreseen she
would) had selected John Junius, the safest and soundest of the many young
Halseys, and, followed him to his parent’s house the year after her brother’s
marriage.

 
          
After
young Delia had left the house in
Gramercy
Park
it was inevitable that Tina should take the
centre front of its narrow stage. Tina had reached the marriageable age, she
was admired and sought after; but what hope was there of her finding a husband?
The two watchful women did not propound this question to each other; but Delia
Ralston, brooding over it day by day, and taking it up with her when she
mounted at night to her bedroom, knew that Charlotte Lovell, at the same hour,
carried the same problem with her to the floor above.

 
          
The
two cousins, during their eight years of life together, had seldom openly
disagreed. Indeed, it might almost have been said that there was nothing open
in their relation. Delia would have had it otherwise: after they had once
looked so deeply into each other’s souls it seemed unnatural that a veil should
fall between them. But she understood that Tina’s ignorance of her origin must
at all costs be preserved, and that Charlotte Lovell, abrupt, passionate and
inarticulate, knew of no other security than to wall herself up in perpetual
silence.

 
          
So
far had she carried this self-imposed reticence that Mrs. Ralston was surprised
at her suddenly asking, soon after young Delia’s marriage, to be allowed to
move down into the small bedroom next to Tina’s that had been left vacant by
the bride’s departure.

 
          
“But
you’ll be so much less comfortable there, Chatty. Have you thought of that? Or
is it on account of the stairs?”

 
          
“No;
it’s not the stairs,”
Charlotte
answered with her usual bluntness. How could she avail herself of the
pretext Delia offered her, when Delia knew that she still ran up and down the
three flights like a girl? “It’s because I should be next to Tina,” she said,
in a low voice that jarred like an untuned string.

 
          
“Oh—very
well.
As you please.”
Mrs. Ralston could not tell why
she felt suddenly irritated by the request, unless it were that she had already
amused herself with the idea of fitting up the vacant room as a sitting-room
for Tina. She had meant to do it in pink and pale green, like an opening
flower.

 
          
“Of
course, if there is any reason—”
Charlotte
suggested, as if reading her thought.

 
          
“None whatever; except that—well, I’d meant to surprise Tina by
doing the room up as a sort of little boudoir where she could have her books
and things, and see her girl friends.”

 
          
“You’re
too kind Delia; but Tina mustn’t have boudoirs,” Miss Lovell answered
ironically, the green specks showing in her eyes.

 
          
“Very
well: as you please,” Delia repeated, in the same irritated tone. “I’ll have
your things brought down tomorrow.”

 
          
Charlotte
paused in the doorway. “You’re sure there’s
no other reason?”

 
          
“Other reason?
Why should there be?” The two women looked at
each other almost with hostility, and
Charlotte
turned to go.

 
          
The
talk once over, Delia was annoyed with herself for having yielded to
Charlotte
’s wish. Why must it always be she who gave
in, she who, after all, was the mistress of the house, and to whom both
Charlotte and Tina might almost be said to owe their very existence, or at
least all that made it worth having? Yet whenever any question arose about the
girl it was invariably Charlotte who gained her point, Delia who yielded: it
seemed as if Charlotte, in her mute obstinate way, were determined to take
every advantage of the dependence that made it impossible for a woman of
Delia’s nature to oppose her.

 
          
In
truth, Delia had looked forward more than she knew to the quiet talks with Tina
to which the little boudoir would have lent itself. While her own daughter
inhabited the room, Mrs. Ralston had been in the habit of spending an hour
there every evening, chatting with the two girls while they undressed, and
listening to their comments on the incidents of the day. She always knew
beforehand exactly what her own girl would say; but Tina’s views and opinions
were a perpetual delicious shock to her. Not that they were strange or
unfamiliar; there were moments when they seemed to well straight up from the
dumb depths of Delia’s own past. Only they expressed feelings she had never
uttered, ideas she had hardly avowed to herself: Tina sometimes said things
which Delia Ralston, in far-off self-communions, had imagined herself saying to
Clement Spender.

 
          
And
now there would be an end to these evening talks: if
Charlotte
had asked to be lodged next to her
daughter, might it not conceivably be because she wished them to end? It had
never before occurred to Delia that her influence over Tina might be resented;
now the discovery flashed a light far down into the abyss which had always
divided the two women. But a moment later Delia reproached herself for
attributing feelings of jealousy to her cousin. Was it not rather to herself
that she should have ascribed them?
Charlotte
, as Tina’s mother, had every right to wish
to be near her, near her in all senses of the word; what claim had Delia to
oppose to that natural privilege? The next morning she gave the order that
Charlotte
’s things should be taken down to the room
next to Tina’s.