Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (37 page)

 
          
Still
for a moment, she made no reply, but stood gazing about her as if she had the
sudden sense of unseen presences between them. At length she gave a faint
laugh. It visibly ruffled her visitor.

 
          
“I’m
not conscious,” he began again, “of having said anything particularly
laughable—” He stopped and scrutinized her narrowly, as though checked by the
thought that there might be something not quite normal…Then, apparently
reassured, he half-murmured his only French phrase: “La joie fait peur…eh?”

 
          
She
did not seem to hear. “I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said, “but only at the
coincidences of life. It was in this room that my husband asked me to marry
him.”

 
          
“Ah?”
Her suitor appeared politely doubtful of the good taste, or the opportunity, of
producing this reminiscence. But he made another call on his magnanimity.
“Really?
But, I say, my dear, I couldn’t be expected to know
it, could I? If I’d guessed that such a painful association—”

 
          
“Painful?”
She turned upon him.
“A painful association?
Do you
think that was what I meant?” Her voice sank. “This room is sacred to me.”

 
          
She
had her eyes on his face, which, perhaps because of its architectural
completeness, seemed to lack the mobility necessary to follow such a leap of
thought. It was so ostensibly a solid building, and not a nomad’s tent. He
struggled with a ruffled pride, rose again to playful magnanimity, and
murmured: “Compassionate angel!”

 
          
“Oh,
compassionate?
To whom?
Do you imagine—did I ever say
anything to make you doubt the truth of what I’m telling you?”

 
          
His
brows fretted: his temper was up. “
Say
anything? No,” he insinuated ironically; then, in a hasty plunge after his lost
forbearance, added with exquisite mildness: “Your tact was perfect… always.
I’ve invariably done you that justice. No one could have been more thoroughly
the…the lady. I never failed to admire your good-breeding in avoiding any
reference to your… your other life.”

 
          
She
faced him steadily. “Well, that other life
was
my life—my only life! Now you know.”

 
          
There
was a silence. Henry Prest drew out a monogrammed handkerchief and passed it over
his dry lips. As he did so, a whiff of his eau de Cologne reached her, and she
winced a little. It was evident that he was seeking what to say next;
wondering, rather helplessly, how to get back his lost command of the
situation. He finally induced his features to break again into a persuasive
smile.

 
          
“Not
your
only
life, dearest,” he
reproached her.

 
          
She
met it instantly. “Yes; so you thought—because I chose you should.”

 
          
“You
chose—?” The smile became incredulous.

 
          
“Oh, deliberately.
But I suppose I’ve no excuse that you
would not dislike to hear…Why shouldn’t we break off now?”

 
          
“Break
off…this conversation?” His tone was aggrieved. “Of course I’ve no wish to
force myself—”

 
          
She
interrupted him with a raised hand. “Break off for good, Henry.”

 
          
“For good?”
He stared, and gave a quick swallow, as though
the dose were choking him.
“For good?
Are you really—?
You and I?
Is this serious, Lizzie?”

 
          
“Perfectly.
But if you prefer to hear…what can only be
painful…”

 
          
He
straightened himself, threw back his shoulders, and said in an uncertain voice:
“I hope you don’t take me for a coward.”

 
          
She
made no direct reply, but continued: “Well, then, you thought I loved you, I
suppose—”

 
          
He
smiled again, revived his moustache with a slight twist, and gave a hardly
perceptible shrug. “You…ah…managed to produce the illusion…”

 
          
“Oh,
well, yes: a woman
can
—so easily!
That’s what men often forget. You thought I was a lovelorn mistress; and I was
only an expensive prostitute.”

 
          
“
Elizabeth
!” he gasped, pale now to the ruddy eyelids.
She saw that the word had wounded more than his pride, and that, before
realizing the insult to his love, he was shuddering at the offence to his
taste. Mistress! Prostitute! Such words were banned. No one reproved coarseness
of language in women more than Henry Prest; one of Mrs. Hazeldean’s greatest
charms (as he had just told her) had been her way of remaining, “through it
all,” so ineffably “the lady.” He looked at her as if a fresh doubt of her
sanity had assailed him.

 
          
“Shall
I go on?” she smiled.

 
          
He
bent his head stiffly. “I am still at a loss to imagine for what purpose you
made a fool of me.”

 
          
“Well,
then, it was as I say. I wanted money—money for my husband.”

 
          
He
moistened his lips.
“For your husband?”

 
          
“Yes;
when he began to be so ill; when he needed comforts, luxury,
the
opportunity to get away. He saved me, when I was a girl, from untold
humiliation and wretchedness. No one else lifted a finger to help me—not one of
my own family. I hadn’t a penny or a friend. Mrs. Mant had grown sick of me,
and was trying to find an excuse to throw me over. Oh, you don’t know what a
girl has to put up with—a girl alone in the world—
who
depends for her clothes, and her food, and the roof over her head, on the whims
of a vain capricious old woman! It was because
he
knew, because he understood, that he married me…He took me out
of misery into blessedness. He put me up above them all…he put me beside
himself. I didn’t care for anything but that; I didn’t care for the money or
the freedom; I cared only for him. I would have followed him into the desert—I
would have gone barefoot to be with him. I would have starved, begged, done
anything for him—
anything
.” She broke
off, her voice lost in a sob. She was no longer aware of Prest’s presence—all
her consciousness was absorbed in the vision she had evoked. “It was
he
who cared—who wanted me to be rich
and independent and admired! He wanted to heap everything on me—during the
first years I could hardly persuade him to keep enough money for himself…And then
he was taken ill; and as he got worse, and gradually dropped out of affairs,
his income grew smaller, and then stopped altogether; and all the while there
were new expenses piling up—nurses, doctors, travel; and he grew frightened;
frightened not for himself but for me …And what was I to do? I had to pay for
things somehow. For the first year I managed to put off paying—then I borrowed
small sums here and there. But that couldn’t last. And all the while I had to
keep on looking pretty and prosperous, or else he began to worry, and think we
were ruined, and wonder what would become of me if he didn’t get well. By the
time you came I was desperate—I would have done anything, anything! He thought
the money came from my Portuguese stepmother. She really was rich, as it
happens. Unluckily my poor father tried to invest her money, and lost it all;
but when they were first married she sent a thousand dollars—and all the rest,
all you gave me, I built on that.”

 
          
She
paused pantingly, as if her tale were at an end. Gradually her consciousness of
present things returned, and she saw Henry Prest, as if far off, a small
indistinct figure looming through the mist of her blurred eyes. She thought to
herself: “He doesn’t believe me,” and the thought exasperated her.

 
          
“You
wonder, I suppose,” she began again, “that a woman should dare confess such
things about herself—”

 
          
He
cleared his throat.
“About herself?
No; perhaps not.
But about her husband.”

 
          
The
blood rushed to her forehead.
“About her husband?
But
you don’t dare to imagine—?”

 
          
“You
leave me,” he rejoined icily, “no other inference that I can see.” She stood
dumbfounded, and he added: “At any rate, it certainly explains your
extraordinary coolness—pluck, I used to think it. I perceive that I needn’t
have taken such precautions.”

 
          
She
considered this. “You think, then, that he knew? You think, perhaps, that I
knew he did?” She pondered again painfully, and then her face lit up. “He never
knew—never! That’s enough for me—and for you it doesn’t matter. Think what you
please. He was happy to the end—that’s all I care for.”

 
          
“There
can be no doubt about your frankness,” he said with pinched lips.

 
          
“There’s
no longer any reason for not being frank.”

 
          
He
picked up his hat, and studiously considered its lining; then he took the
gloves he had laid in it, and drew them thoughtfully through his hands. She
thought: “Thank God, he’s going!”

 
          
But
he set the hat and gloves down on a table, and moved a little nearer to her.
His face looked as ravaged as a reveller’s at daybreak.

 
          
“You—leave
positively nothing to the imagination!” he murmured.

 
          
“I
told you it was useless—” she began; but he interrupted her: “Nothing, that
is—if I believed you.” He moistened his lips again, and tapped them with his
handkerchief. Again she had a whiff of the eau de Cologne. “But I don’t!
he
proclaimed. “Too many memories…too many…proofs, my
dearest…” He stopped, smiling somewhat convulsively. She saw that he imagined
the smile would soothe her.

 
          
She
remained silent, and he began once more, as if appealing to her against her own
verdict: “I know better, Lizzie. In spite of everything, I
know you’re not that kind of woman
.”

 
          
“I
took your money—”

 
          
“As a favour.
I knew the difficulties of your position…I
understood completely. I beg of you never again to allude to—all that.” It
dawned on her that anything would be more endurable to him than to think he had
been a dupe—and one of two dupes! The part was not one that he could conceive
of having played. His pride was up in arms to defend her, not so much for her
sake as for his own. The discovery gave her a baffling sense of helplessness;
against that impenetrable self-sufficiency all her affirmations might spend
themselves in vain.

 
          
“No
man who has had the privilege of being loved by you could ever for a moment…”

 
          
She
raised her head and looked at him. “You have never had that privilege,” she
interrupted.

 
          
His
jaw fell. She saw his eyes pass from uneasy supplication to a cold anger. He
gave a little inarticulate grunt before his voice came back to him.

 
          
“You
spare no pains in degrading yourself in my eyes.”

 
          
“I
am not degrading myself. I am telling you the truth. I needed money. I knew no
way of earning it. You were willing to give it… for what you call the
privilege…”

 
          
“Lizzie,”
he interrupted solemnly, “
don’t
go on! I believe I
enter into all your feelings—I believe I always have. In so sensitive, so
hypersensitive a nature, there are moments when every other feeling is swept
away by scruples…For those scruples I only honour you the more. But I won’t
hear another word now. If I allowed you to go on in your present state
of…nervous exaltation…you might be the first to deplore…I wish to forget
everything you have said…I wish to look forward, not back…: He squared his
shoulders, took a deep breath, and fixed her with a glance of recovered
confidence.
“How little you know me if you believe that I
could fail you
now
!”