Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (20 page)

 
          
She
raised astonished eyes. “He knew—?”

 
          
“Yes:
he came to me. And—well—in the baby’s interest I violated professional secrecy.
That’s how Tina got a home. You’re not going to denounce me, are you?”

 
          
“Oh,
Dr. Lanskell—” Her eyes filled with painful tears. “Jim knew? And didn’t tell
me?”

 
          
“No.
People didn’t tell each other things much in those days, did they? But he
admired you enormously for what you did. And if you assume—as I suppose you
do—that he’s now in a world of completer enlightenment, why not take it for
granted that he’ll admire you still more for what you’re going to do?
Presumably,” the Doctor concluded sardonically, “people realize in heaven that
it’s a devilish sight harder, on earth, to do a brave thing at forty-five than
at twenty-five.”

 
          
“Ah,
that’s what I was thinking this morning,” she confessed.

 
          
“Well.
You’re going to prove the contrary this afternoon.” He looked at his watch,
stood up and laid a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “Let people think what they
choose; and send young Delia to me if she gives you any trouble. Your boy
won’t, you know, nor John Junius either; it must have been a woman who invented
that third-and-fourth generation idea…”

 
          
An
elderly maid-servant looked in, and Delia rose; but on the threshold she
halted.

 
          
“I
have an idea
it’s
Charlotte
I may have to send to you.”

 
          
“
Charlotte
?”

 
          
“She’ll
hate what I’m going to do, you know.”

 
          
Dr.
Lanskell lifted his silver eyebrows. “Yes: poor
Charlotte
! I suppose she’s jealous? That’s where the
truth of the third-and-fourth generation business comes in, after all. Somebody
always has to foot the bill.”

 
          
“Ah—if only Tina doesn’t!”

 
          
“Well—that’s
just what
Charlotte
will come to recognize in time. So your
course is clear.”

 
          
He
guided her out through the dining-room, where some poor people and one or two
old patients were already waiting.

 
          
Delia’s
course, in truth, seemed clear enough till, that
afternoon,
she summoned
Charlotte
alone to her bedroom. Tina was lying down with a headache: it was in
those days the accepted state of young ladies in sentimental dilemmas, and
greatly simplified the communion of their elders.

 
          
Delia
and Charlotte had exchanged only conventional phrases over their
midday
meal; but Delia still had the sense that
her cousin’s decision was final. The events of the previous evening had no
doubt confirmed
Charlotte
’s view that the time had come for such a decision.

 
          
Miss
Lovell, closing the bedroom door with her dry deliberateness, advanced toward
the chintz lounge between the windows.

 
          
“You
wanted to see me, Delia?”

 
          
“Yes.
Oh, don’t sit there,” Mrs. Ralston exclaimed uncontrollably.

 
          
Charlotte
stared: was it possible that she did not
remember the sobs of anguish she had once smothered in those very cushions?

 
          
“Not—?”

 
          
“No;
come nearer to me. Sometimes I think I’m a little deaf,” Delia nervously
explained, pushing a chair up to her own.

 
          
“Ah.”
Charlotte
seated herself. “I hadn’t remarked it. But
if you are, it may have saved you from hearing at what hour of the morning Tina
came back from the Vandergraves’ last night. She would never forgive
herself—inconsiderate as she is—if she thought she’d waked you.”

 
          
“She
didn’t wake me,” Delia answered. Inwardly she thought: “
Charlotte
’s mind is made up; I shan’t be able to move
her.”

 
          
“I
suppose Tina enjoyed herself very much at the ball?” she continued.

 
          
“Well,
she’s paying for it with a headache. Such excitements are not meant for her,
I’ve already told you—”

 
          
“Yes,”
Mrs. Ralston interrupted. “It’s to continue our talk of last night that I’ve
asked you to come up.”

 
          
“To continue it?”
The brick-red circles appeared on
Charlotte
’s dried cheeks. “Is it worth while? I think
I ought to tell you at once that my mind’s made up. I suppose you’ll admit that
I know what’s best for Tina.”

 
          
“Yes;
of course. But won’t you at least allow me a share in your decision?”

 
          
“A share?”

 
          
Delia
leaned forward, laying a warm hand on her cousin’s interlocked fingers. “
Charlotte
, once in this room, years ago, you asked me
to help you—you believed I could. Won’t you believe it again?”

 
          
Charlotte
’s lips grew rigid. “I believe the time has
come for me to help myself.”

 
          
“At the cost of Tina’s happiness?”

 
          
“No; but to spare her greater unhappiness.”

 
          
“But
Charlotte
, Tina’s happiness is all I want.”

 
          
“Oh,
I know. You’ve done all you could for my child.”

 
          
“No, not all.”
Delia rose, and stood before her cousin with
a kind of solemnity. “But now I’m going to.” It was as if she had pronounced a
vow.

 
          
Charlotte
Lovell looked up at her with a glitter of apprehension in her hunted eyes.

 
          
“If
you mean that you’re going to use your influence with the Halsey’s—I’m very
grateful to you; I shall always be grateful. But I don’t want a compulsory
marriage for my child.”

 
          
Delia
flushed at the other’s incomprehension. It seemed to her that her tremendous
purpose must be written on her face. “I’m going to adopt Tina—give her my
name,” she announced.

 
          
Charlotte
Lovell stared at her stonily. “Adopt her—adopt her?”

 
          
“Don’t
you see, dear, the difference it will make? There’s my mother’s money—the
Lovell money; it’s not much, to be sure; but Jim always wanted it to go back to
the Lovells. And my Delia and her brother are so handsomely provided for.
There’s no reason why my little fortune shouldn’t go to Tina. And why she
shouldn’t be known as Tina Ralston.”

 
          
Delia
paused. “I believe—I think I know—that Jim would have approved of that too.”

 
          
“Approved?”

 
          
“Yes.
Can’t you see that when he let me take the child he must have foreseen and
accepted whatever—whatever might eventually come of it?”

 
          
Charlotte
stood up also. “Thank you, Delia. But
nothing more must come of it, except our leaving you; our leaving you now. I’m
sure that’s what Jim would have approved.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ralston drew back a step or two.
Charlotte
’s cold resolution benumbed her courage, and
she could find no immediate reply.

 
          
“Ah,
then it’s easier for you to sacrifice Tina’s happiness than your pride?” she
exclaimed.

 
          
“My pride?
I’ve no right to any pride, except in my child.
And that I’ll never sacrifice.”

 
          
“No
one asks you to. You’re not reasonable. You’re cruel. All I want is to be
allowed to help Tina, and you speak as if I were interfering with your rights.”

 
          
“My rights?”
Charlotte
echoed the words with a desolate laugh.
“What are they? I have no rights, either before the law or in the heart of my
own child.”

 
          
“How
can you say such things? You know how Tina loves you.”

 
          
“Yes;
compassionately—as I used to love my old-maid aunts. There were two of them—you
remember? Like withered babies! We children used to be warned never to say
anything that might shock Aunt Josie or Aunt Nonie; exactly as I heard you
telling Tina the other night—”

 
          
“Oh—”
Delia murmured.

 
          
Charlotte
Lovell continued to stand before her, haggard, rigid, unrelenting. “No, it’s
gone on long enough. I mean to tell her everything; and to take her away.”

 
          
“To tell her about her birth?”

 
          
“I
was never ashamed of it,”
Charlotte
panted.

 
          
“You
do sacrifice her, then—sacrifice her to your desire for mastery?”

 
          
The
two women faced each other, both with weapons spent. Delia, through the tremor
of her own indignation, saw her antagonist waver, step backward, sink down with
a broken murmur on the lounge.
Charlotte
hid her face in the cushions, clenching
them with violent hands. The same fierce maternal passion that had once flung
her down upon those same cushions was now bowing her still lower, in the throes
of a bitterer renunciation. Delia seemed to hear the old cry: “But how can I
give up my baby?” Her own momentary resentment melted, and she bent over the
mother’s labouring shoulders.

 
          
“Chatty—it
won’t be like giving her up this time. Can’t we just go on loving her
together?”

 
          
Charlotte
did not answer. For a long time she lay
silent, immovable, her face hidden: she seemed to fear to turn it to the face
bent down to her. But presently Delia was aware of a gradual relaxing of the
stretched muscles, and saw that one of her cousin’s arms was faintly stirring
and groping. She lowered her hand to the seeking fingers, and it was caught and
pressed to
Charlotte
’s lips.

 
          
  

 
          
Tina
Lovell—now Miss Clementina Ralston—was to be married in July to Lanning Halsey.
The engagement had been announced only in the previous April; and the female
elders of the tribe had begun by crying out against the indelicacy of so brief
a betrothal. It was unanimously agreed in the New York of those times that
“young people should be given the chance to get to know each other”; though the
greater number of the couples constituting New York society had played together
as children, and been born of parents as long and as familiarly acquainted, yet
some mysterious law of decorum required that the newly affianced should always
be regarded as being also newly known to each other. In the southern states
things were differently conducted: headlong engagements, even runaway
marriages, were not uncommon in their annals; but such rashness was less
consonant with the sluggish blood of
New York
, where the pace of life was still set with
a Dutch deliberateness.