Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (36 page)

 
          
It
was in Mrs. Mant’s drawing-room that, some half-year later, Mrs. Charles
Hazeldean, after a moment’s hesitation, said to the servant that, yes, he might
show in Mr. Prest.

 
          
Mrs.
Mant was away. She had been leaving for
Washington
to visit a new protégée when Mrs. Hazeldean
arrived from
Europe
, and after a rapid consultation with the
clan had decided that it would not be “decent” to let poor Charles’s widow go
to
an
hotel. Lizzie had therefore the strange
sensation of returning, after nearly nine years, to the house from which her
husband had triumphantly rescued her; of returning there, to be sure, in
comparative independence, and without danger of falling into her former
bondage, yet with every nerve shrinking from all that the scene revived.

 
          
Mrs.
Mant, the next day, had left for
Washington
; but before starting she had tossed a note
across the breakfast-table to her visitor.

 
          
“Very
proper—he was one of Charlie’s oldest friends, I believe?” she said, with her
mild frosty smile. Mrs. Hazeldean glanced at the note, turned it over as if to
examine the signature, and restored it to her hostess.

 
          
“Yes.
But I don’t think I care to see anyone just yet.”

 
          
There
was a pause, during which the butler brought in fresh griddle-cakes,
replenished the hot milk, and withdrew. As the door closed on him, Mrs. Mant
said, with a dangerous cordiality: “No one would misunderstand your receiving
an old friend of your husband’s… like Mr. Prest.”

 
          
Lizzie
Hazeldean cast a sharp glance at the large empty mysterious face across the
table. They
wanted
her to receive
Henry Prest, then? Ah, well…perhaps she understood…

 
          
“Shall
I answer this for you, my dear? Or will you?” Mrs. Mant pursued.

 
          
“Oh,
as you like. But don’t fix a day, please. Later—”

 
          
Mrs.
Mant’s face again became vacuous. She murmured: “You must not shut yourself up
too much. It will not do to be morbid. I’m sorry to have to leave you here
alone—”

 
          
Lizzie’s
eyes filled: Mrs. Mant’s sympathy seemed
more cruel
than her cruelty. Every word that she used had a veiled taunt for its
counterpart.

 
          
“Oh,
you mustn’t think of giving up your visit—”

 
          
“My
dear, how can I? It’s a
duty
. I’ll
send a line to Henry Prest, then…If you would sip a little port at luncheon and
dinner we should have you looking less like a ghost…”

 
          
Mrs.
Mant departed; and two days later—the interval was “decent”—Mr. Henry Prest was
announced. Mrs. Hazeldean had not seen him since the previous New
Year’s day
. Their last words had been exchanged in Mrs.
Struthers’s crimson boudoir, and since then half a year had elapsed. Charles
Hazeldean had lingered for a fortnight; but though there had been ups and
downs, and intervals of hope when none could have criticised his wife for
seeing her friends, her door had been barred against everyone. She had not
excluded Henry Prest more rigorously than the others; he had simply been one of
the many who received, day by day, the same answer: “Mrs. Hazeldean sees no one
but the family.”

 
          
Almost
immediately after her husband’s death she had sailed for
Europe
on a long-deferred visit to her father, who
was now settled at Nice; but from this expedition she had presumably brought
back little comfort, for when she arrived in
New York
her relations were struck by her air of
ill-health and depression. It spoke in her favour, however; they were agreed
that she was behaving with propriety.

 
          
She
looked at Henry Prest as if he were a stranger: so difficult was it, at the
first moment, to fit his robust and splendid person into the region of twilight
shades which, for the last months, she had inhabited. She was beginning to find
that everyone had an air of remoteness; she seemed to see people and life
through the confusing blur of the long crape veil in which it was a widow’s
duty to shroud her affliction. But she gave him her hand without perceptible
reluctance.

 
          
He
lifted it toward his lips, in an obvious attempt to combine gallantry with
condolence, and then, half-way up, seemed to feel that the occasion required
him to release it.

 
          
“Well—you’ll
admit that I’ve been patient!” he exclaimed.

 
          
“Patient?
Yes. What else was there to be?” she rejoined with
a faint smile, as he seated himself beside her, a little too near.

 
          
“Oh, well…of course!
I understood all that. I hope you’ll
believe. But mightn’t you at least have answered my letters—one or two of them?

 
          
She
shook her head. “I couldn’t write.”

 
          
“Not
to anyone? Or not to me?” he queried, with ironic emphasis.

 
          
“I
wrote only the letters I had to—no others.”

 
          
“Ah,
I see.” He laughed slightly. “And you didn’t consider that letters to
me
were among them?”

 
          
She
was silent, and he stood up and took a turn across the room. His face was
redder than usual, and now and then a twitch passed over it. She saw that he
felt the barrier of her crape, and that it left him baffled and resentful. A
struggle was still perceptibly going on in him between his traditional standard
of behaviour at such a meeting, and primitive impulses renewed by the memory of
their last hours together. When he turned back and paused before her his ruddy
flush had paled, and he stood there, frowning, uncertain, and visibly resenting
the fact that she made him so.

 
          
“You
sit there like a stone!” he said.

 
          
“I
feel like a stone.”

 
          
“Oh,
come—!”

 
          
She
knew well enough what he was thinking: that the only way to bridge over such a
bad beginning was to get the woman into your arms—and talk afterward. It was
the classic move. He had done it dozens of times, no doubt, and was evidently
asking himself why the deuce he couldn’t do it now…But something in her look
must have benumbed him. He sat down again beside her.

 
          
“What
you must have been through, dearest!” He waited and coughed. “I can understand
your being—all broken up. But I know nothing; remember
,
I know nothing as to what actually happened…”

 
          
“Nothing
happened.”

 
          
“As to—what we feared?
No hint—?”

 
          
She
shook her head.

 
          
He
cleared his throat before the next question. “And you don’t think that in your
absence he may have spoken—to anyone?”

 
          
“Never!”

 
          
“Then,
my dear, we seem to have had the most unbelievable good luck; and I can’t see—”

 
          
He
had edged slowly nearer, and now laid a large ringed hand on her sleeve. How
well she knew those rings—the two dull gold snakes with malevolent jewelled
eyes! She sat as motionless as if their coils were about her, till slowly his
tentative grasp relaxed.

 
          
“Lizzie,
you know”—his tone was discouraged—“this is morbid…”

 
          
“Morbid?”

 
          
“When
you’re safe out of the worst scrape…and free, my darling,
free
! Don’t you realize it? I suppose the strain’s been too much
for you; but I want you to feel that now—”

 
          
She
stood up suddenly, and put half the length of the room between them.

 
          
“Stop!
Stop! Stop!” she almost screamed, as she had screamed
long ago at Mrs. Mant.

 
          
He
stood up also, darkly red under his rich sunburn, and forced a smile.

 
          
“Really,”
he protested, “all things considered—and after a separation of six months!” She
was silent. “My dear,” he continued mildly, “will you tell me what you expect
me to think?”

 
          
“Oh,
don’t take that tone,” she murmured.

 
          
“What
tone?”

 
          
“As
if—as if—you still imagined we could go back—”

 
          
She
saw his face fall. Had he ever before, she wondered, stumbled upon an obstacle
in that smooth walk of his? It flashed over her that this was the danger
besetting men who had a “way with women”—the day came when they might follow it
too blindly.

 
          
The
reflection evidently occurred to him almost as soon as it did to her. He
summoned another propitiatory smile, and drawing near, took her hand gently.
“But I don’t want to go back…I want to go forward, dearest…Now that at last
you’re free.”

 
          
She
seized on the word as if she had been waiting for her cue. “Free! Oh, that’s
it—
free
! Can’t you see, can’t you
understand, that I mean to stay free?”

 
          
Again
a shadow of distrust crossed his face, and the smile he had begun for her
reassurance seemed to remain on his lips for his own.

 
          
“But
of course! Can you imagine that I want to put you in chains? I want you to be
as free as you please—free to love me as much as you choose!” He was visibly
pleased with the last phrase.

 
          
She
drew away her hand, but not unkindly. “I’m sorry—I
am
sorry, Henry. But you don’t understand.”

 
          
“What
don’t I understand?”

 
          
“That
what you ask is quite impossible—ever. I can’t go on… in the old way…”

 
          
She
saw his face working nervously.
“In the old way?
You
mean—?” Before she could explain he hurried on with an increasing majesty of
manner: “Don’t answer! I see—I understand. When you spoke of freedom just now I
was misled for a moment—I frankly own I was—into thinking that, after your
wretched marriage, you might prefer discreeter ties…an apparent independence
which would leave us both…I say
apparent
,
for on my side there has never been the least wish to conceal…But if I was
mistaken, if on the contrary what you wish is…is to take advantage of your
freedom to regularize our…our attachment…”

 
          
She
said nothing, not because she had any desire to have him complete the phrase,
but because she found nothing to say. To all that concerned their common past
she was aware of offering a numbed soul. But her silence evidently perplexed
him, and in his perplexity he began to lose his footing, and to flounder in a
sea of words.

 
          
“Lizzie!
Do you hear me? If I was mistaken, I say—and I hope I’m not above owning that
at times I
may
be mistaken; if I
was—why, by God, my dear, no woman ever heard me speak the words before; but
here I am to have and to hold, as the Book says! Why, hadn’t you realized it?
Lizzie, look up—!
I’m asking you to marry
me
.”