Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (32 page)

 
          
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She
returned to the library, where the fire was beginning to send a bright blaze
through the twilight. It flashed on the bindings of Hazeldean’s many books, and
she smiled absently at the welcome it held out. A latch-key rattled, and she
heard her husband’s step, and the sound of his cough below in the hall.

 
          
“What
madness—what madness!” she murmured.

 
          
Slowly—how
slowly for a young man!—he mounted the stairs, and still coughing came into the
library. She ran to him and took him in her arms.

 
          
“Charlie!
How could you?
In this weather?
It’s nearly dark!”

 
          
His
long thin face lit up with a deprecating smile. “I suppose Susan’s betrayed me,
eh? Don’t be cross. You’ve missed such a show! The Fifth Avenue Hotel’s been on
fire.”

 
          
“Yes;
I know.” She paused, just perceptibly. I
didn’t
miss it, though—I rushed across
Madison Square
for a look at it myself.”

 
          
“You
did? You were there too? What
fun!
” The idea appeared
to fill him with boyish amusement.

 
          
“Naturally
I was! On my way home from Cousin Cecilia’s…”

 
          
“Ah, of course.
I’d forgotten you were going there. But how
odd, then, that we didn’t meet!”

 
          
“If
we
had
I should have dragged you home
long ago. I’ve been in at least half an hour, and the fire was already over
when I got there. What a baby you are to have stayed out so long, staring at
smoke and a fire-engine!”

 
          
He
smiled, still holding her, and passing his gaunt hand softly and wistfully over
her head. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve been indoors, safely
sheltered,
and drinking old Mrs. Parrett’s punch. The old lady saw me from her window, and
sent one of the Wesson boys across the street to fetch me in. They had just
finished a family luncheon. And Sillerton Jackson, who was there, drove me
home. So you see,—”

 
          
He
released her, and moved toward the fire, and she stood motionless, staring
blindly ahead, while the thoughts spun through her mind like a mill-race.

 
          
“Sillerton
Jackson—” she echoed, without in the least knowing what she said.

 
          
“Yes;
he has the gout again—luckily for me!—and his sister’s brougham came to the
Parretts’ to fetch him.”

 
          
She
collected herself. “You’re coughing more than you did yesterday,” she accused
him.

 
          
“Oh,
well—the air’s sharpish. But I shall be all right presently …Oh, those roses!”
He paused in admiration before his writing-table.

 
          
Her
face glowed with a reflected pleasure, though all the while
the names he had pronounced—“The Parretts, the Wessons, Sillerton Jackson”—were
clanging through her brain like a death-knell.

 
          
“They
are
lovely, aren’t they?” she beamed.

 
          
“Much too lovely for me.
You must take them down to the
drawing-room.”

 
          
“No;
we’re going to have tea up here.”

 
          
“That’s
jolly—it means there’ll be no visitors, I hope?”

 
          
She
nodded, smiling.

 
          
“Good!
But the roses—no, they mustn’t be wasted on this desert air. You’ll wear them
in your dress this evening?”

 
          
She
started perceptibly, and moved slowly back toward the hearth.

 
          
“This
evening
?…
Oh, I’m not going to Mrs. Struthers’s” she
said, remembering.

 
          
“Yes,
you are. Dearest—I want you to!”

 
          
“But
what shall you do alone all the evening? With that cough, you won’t go to sleep
till late.”

 
          
“Well,
if I don’t I’ve a lot of new books to keep me busy.”

 
          
“Oh, your books—!”
She made a little gesture, half teasing,
half impatient, in the direction of the freshly cut volumes stacked up beside
his student lamp. It was an old joke between them that she had never been able
to believe anyone could really “care for reading.” Long as she and her husband
had lived together, this passion of his remained for her as much of a mystery
as on the day when she had first surprised him, mute and absorbed, over what
the people she had always lived with would have called “a deep book.” It was
her first encounter with a born reader; or at least, the few she had known had
been, like her stepmother, the retired opera-singer, feverish devourers of
circulating library fiction: she had never before lived in a house with books
in it. Gradually she had learned to take a pride in Hazeldean’s reading, as if
it had been some rare accomplishment; she had perceived that it reflected
credit on him, and was even conscious of its adding to the charm of his talk, a
charm she had always felt without being able to define it. But still, in her
heart of hearts she regarded books as a mere expedient, and felt sure that they
were only an aid to patience, like jackstraws or a game of patience, with the
disadvantage of requiring a greater mental effort.

 
          
“Shan’t
you be too tired to read tonight?” she questioned wistfully.

 
          
“Too tired?
Why, you goose, reading is the greatest rest in
the world!—I want you to go to Mrs. Struthers’s dear; I want to see you again
in that black velvet dress,” he added with his coaxing smile.

 
          
The
parlourmaid brought in the tray, and Mrs. Hazeldean busied herself with the
tea-caddy. Her husband had stretched himself out in the deep armchair which was
his habitual seat. He crossed his arms behind his neck, leaning his head back
wearily against them, so that, as she glanced at him across the hearth, she saw
the salient muscles in his long neck, and the premature wrinkles about his ears
and chin. The lower part of his face was singularly ravaged; only the eyes,
those quiet ironic grey eyes, and the white forehead above them, reminded her
of what he had been seven years before. Only seven years!

 
          
She
felt a rush of tears: no, there were times when fate was too cruel, the future
too horrible to contemplate, and the past—the past, oh, how much worse! And
there he
sat,
coughing, coughing—and thinking God
knows what, behind those quiet half-closed lids. At such times he grew so
mysteriously remote that she felt lonelier than when he was not in the room.

 
          
“Charlie!”

 
          
He
roused himself, “Yes?”

 
          
“Here’s
your tea.”

 
          
He
took it from her in silence, and she began, nervously, to wonder why he was not
talking. Was it because he was afraid it might make him cough again, afraid she
would be worried, and scold him? Or was it because he was thinking—thinking of
things he had heard at old Mrs. Parrett’s, or on the drive home with Sillerton
Jackson… hints they might have dropped…insinuations…she didn’t know what…or of
something he had
seen
, perhaps, from
old Mrs. Parrett’s window? She looked across at his white forehead, so smooth
and impenetrable in the lamplight, and thought: “Oh, God, it’s like a locked
door. I shall dash my brains out against it some day!”

 
          
For,
after all, it was not impossible that he had actually seen her, seen her from
Mrs. Parrett’s window, or even from the crowd around the door of the hotel. For
all she knew, he might have been near enough, in that
crowd,
to put out his hand and touch her. And he might have held back, benumbed,
aghast, not believing his own eyes… She couldn’t tell. She had never yet made
up her mind how he would look, how he would behave, what he would say, if ever
he
did
see or hear anything…

 
          
No!
That was the worst of it. They had lived together for nearly nine years—and how
closely!—and nothing that she knew of him, or had observed in him, enabled her
to forecast exactly what, in that particular case, his state of mind and his
attitude would be. In his profession, she knew, he was celebrated for his
shrewdness and insight; in personal matters he often seemed, to her alert mind,
oddly absent-minded and indifferent. Yet that might be merely his instinctive
way of saving his strength for things he considered more important. There were
times when she was sure he was quite deliberate and self-controlled enough to
feel in one way and behave in another: perhaps even to have thought out a
course in advance—just as, at the first bad symptoms of illness, he had calmly
made his will, and planned everything about her future, the house and the
servants…No, she couldn’t tell; there always hung over her the thin glittering
menace of a danger she could neither define nor localize—like that avenging
lightning which groped for the lovers in the horrible poem he had once read
aloud to her (what a choice!) on a lazy afternoon of their wedding journey, as
they lay stretched under Italian stone-pines.

 
          
The
maid came in to draw the curtains and light the lamps. The fire glowed, the
scent of the roses drifted on the warm air, and the clock ticked out the
minutes, and softly struck a half hour, while Mrs. Hazeldean continued to ask
herself, as she so often had before: “Now, what would be the
natural
thing for me to say?”

 
          
And
suddenly the words escaped from her, she didn’t know how: “I wonder you didn’t
see me coming out of the hotel—for I actually squeezed my way in.”

 
          
Her
husband made no answer. Her heart jumped convulsively; then she lifted her eyes
and saw that he was asleep. How placid his face looked—years younger than when
he was awake! The immensity of her relief rushed over her in a warm glow, the
counterpart of the icy sweat which had sent her chattering homeward from the
fire. After all, if he could fall asleep, fall into such a peaceful sleep ass
that—tired, no doubt, by his imprudent walk, and the exposure to the cold—it
meant, beyond all doubt, beyond all conceivable dread, that he knew nothing,
had seen nothing, suspected nothing: that she was safe, safe, safe!

 
          
The
violence of the reaction made her long to spring to her feet and move about the
room. She saw a crooked picture that she wanted to
straighten,
she would have liked to give the roses another tilt in their glass. But there
he sat, quietly sleeping, and the long habit of vigilance made her respect his
rest, watching over it as patiently as if it had been a sick child’s.

 
          
She
drew a contented breath. Now she could afford to think of his outing only as it
might affect his health; and she knew that this sudden drowsiness, even if it
were a sign of extreme fatigue, was also the natural restorative for that
fatigue. She continued to sit behind the tea-
tray,
her
hands folded, her eyes on his face, while the peace of the scene entered into
her, and held her under brooding wings.

 
          
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At
Mrs. Struthers’s, at
eleven o’clock
that evening, the long over-lit drawing-rooms
were already thronged with people.

 
          
Lizzie
Hazeldean paused on the threshold and looked about her. The habit of pausing to
get her bearings, of sending a circular glance around any assemblage of people,
any drawing-room, concert-hall or theatre that she entered, had become so
instinctive that she would have been surprised had anyone pointed out to her
the unobservant expression and careless movements of the young women of her
acquaintance, who also looked about them, it is true, but with the vague unseeing
stare of youth, and of beauty conscious only of itself.