Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (40 page)

 
          
These
things pleaded in favour of poor Lizzie Hazeldean, though to superficial
observers her daily life seemed to belie the plea. She had known no way of
smoothing her husband’s last years but by being false to him; but once he was
dead, she expiated her betrayal by a rigidity of conduct for which she asked no
reward but her own inner satisfaction. As she grew older, and her friends
scattered, married, or were kept away from one cause or another, she filled her
depleted circle with a less fastidious hand. One met in her drawing-room dull
men, common men, men who too obviously came there because they were not invited
elsewhere, and hoped to use her as a social stepping-stone. She was aware of
the difference—her eyes said so whenever I found one of these new-comers
installed in my arm-chair—but never, by word or sign, did she admit it. She
said to me once: “You find it duller here than it used to be. It’s my fault,
perhaps; I think I knew better how to draw out my old friends.” And another
day: “Remember, the people you meet here now come out of kindness. I’m an old
woman, and I consider nothing else.” That was all.

 
          
She
went more assiduously than ever to the theatre and the opera; she performed for
her friends a hundred trivial services; in her eagerness to be always busy she
invented superfluous attentions, oppressed people by offering assistance they
did not need, verged at times—for all her tact—on the officiousness of the
desperately lonely. At her little suppers she surprised us with exquisite
flowers and novel delicacies. The champagne and cigars grew better and better
as the quality of the guests declined; and sometimes, as the last of her dull
company dispersed, I used to see her, among the scattered ash-trays and liqueur
decanters, turn a stealthy glance at her reflection in the mirror, with haggard
eyes which seemed to ask: “Will even
these
come back to-morrow?”

 
          
I
should be loth to leave the picture at this point; my last vision of her is
more satisfying. I had been away, travelling for a year at the other end of the
world; the day I came back I ran across Hubert Wesson at my club. Hubert had
grown pompous and heavy. He drew me into a corner, and said, turning red, and
glancing cautiously over his shoulder: “Have you seen our old friend Mrs.
Hazeldean? She’s very ill, I hear.”

 
          
I
was about to take up the “I hear”; then I remembered that in my absence Hubert
had married, and that his caution was probably a tribute to his new state. I
hurried at once to Mrs. Hazeldean’s; and on her door-step, to my surprise, I
ran against a Catholic priest, who looked gravely at me, bowed and passed out.

 
          
I
was unprepared for such an encounter, for my old friend had never spoken to me
of religious matters. The spectacle of her father’s career had presumably
shaken whatever incipient faith was in her; though in her little-girlhood, as
she often told me, she had been as deeply impressed by Dr. Winter’s eloquence
as any grown-up member of his flock. But now, as soon as I laid eyes on her, I
understood. She was very ill, she was visibly dying; and in her extremity,
fate, not always kind, had sent her the solace which she needed. Had some
obscure inheritance of religious feeling awaked in her? Had she remembered that
her poor father, after his long life of mental and moral vagabondage, had
finally found rest in the ancient fold? I never knew the explanation—she
probably never knew it herself.

 
          
But
she knew that she had found what she wanted. At last she could talk of Charles,
she could confess her sin, she could be absolved of it. Since cards and suppers
and chatter were over, what more blessed barrier could she find against
solitude? All her life, henceforth, was a long preparation for that daily hour
of expansion and consolation. And then this merciful visitor, who understood
her so well, could also tell her things about Charles: knew where he was, how
he felt, what exquisite daily attentions could still be paid to him, and how,
with all unworthiness washed away, she might at last hope to reach him. Heaven
could never seem strange, so interpreted; each time that I saw her, during the
weeks of her slow fading, she was more and more like a traveller with her face
turned homeward, yet smilingly resigned to await her summons. The house no
longer seemed lonely, nor the hours tedious; there had even been found for her,
among the books she had so often tried to read, those books which had long
looked at her with such hostile faces, two or three (they were always on her
bed) containing messages from the world where Charles was waiting.

 
          
Thus
provided and led, one day she went to him.

 
          
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