Edith Wharton - SSC 09 (15 page)

 
          
“Why
dreadful?” he burst out, unnerved by the continuance of her soft unremitting
sobs. “You must have known she didn’t like it—didn’t you?”

 
          
Through
her lament a whisper issued: “I never dreamed she knew. …”

 
          
“You
mean to say you thought we’d deceived her?
All those months?
In a one-horse place where everybody is on the watch to see what everybody else
is doing? Likely, isn’t it? My God—”

 
          
“I
never dreamed … I never dreamed …” she reiterated.

 
          
His
exasperation broke out again. “Well, now you begin to see what I’ve suffered—”

 
          
“Suffered?
You
suffered?” She uttered a low
sound of derision. “I see what she must have suffered—what we both of us must have
made her suffer.”

 
          
“Ah,
at least you say ‘both of us’!”

 
          
She
made no answer, and through her silence he felt again that she was inwardly
shrinking, averting herself from him. What!
His accomplice
deserting him?
She acknowledged that she was his accomplice—she said
“both of us”—and yet she was drawing back from him, flying from him, leaving
him alone! Ah, no—she shouldn’t escape as easily as that, she shouldn’t leave
him; he couldn’t face that sense of being alone again. “Barbara!” he cried out,
as if the actual distance between them had already doubled.

 
          
She
still remained silent, and he hurried on, almost cringingly: “Don’t think I
blame you, child—don’t think …”

 
          
“Oh,
what does it matter, when I blame myself?” she wailed out, her face in her
hands.

 
          
“Blame
yourself? What folly! When you say you didn’t know—”

 
          
“Of
course I didn’t know! How can you imagine—? But this dreadful thing has
happened; and
you
knew it might
happen … you knew it all along … all the while it was in the back of your mind
… the days when we used to meet here … and the days when we went to Ditson …
oh, that horrible room at Ditson! All that time she was sitting at home alone,
knowing everything, and hating me as if I’d been her murderess. …”

 
          
“Good
God, Barbara! Don’t you suppose I blame myself?”

 
          
“But
if you blamed yourself how could you go on, how could you let me think she
didn’t care?”

 
          
“I
didn’t suppose she did,” he muttered sullenly.

 
          
“But
you say she told you—she warned you! Over and over again she warned you.”

 
          
“Well,
I didn’t want to believe her—and so I didn’t. When a man’s infatuated … Don’t
you see it’s hard enough to bear without all this? Haven’t you any pity for me,
Barbara?”

 
          
“Pity?”
she repeated slowly. “The only pity I feel is for
her
—for what she must have gone through, day after day, week after
week, sitting there all alone and knowing … imagining exactly what you were
saying to me … the way you kissed me … and watching the clock, and counting the
hours … and then having you come back, and explain, and pretend—I suppose you
did
pretend? … and all the while
secretly knowing you were lying, and yet longing to believe you … and having
warned you, and seeing that her warnings made no difference … that you didn’t
care if she died or not … that you were doing all you could to kill her … that
you were probably counting the days till she was dead!” Her passionate
apostrophe broke down in a sob, and again she stood weeping like an
inconsolable child.

 
          
Trenham
was struck silent. It was true. He had never been really able to enter into
poor Milly’s imaginings, the matter of her lonely musings; and here was this
girl to whom, in a flash, that solitary mind lay bare. Yes; that must have been
the way Milly felt—he knew it now—and the way poor Barbara herself would feel if
he ever betrayed her. Ah, but he was never going to betray her—the thought was
monstrous! Never for a moment would he cease to love her. This catastrophe had
bound them together as a happy wooing could never have done. It was her love
for him, her fear for their
future, that
was shaking
her to the soul, giving her this unnatural power to enter into Milly’s mind. If
only he could find words to reassure her, now, at once. But he could not think
of any.

 
          
“Barbara—Barbara,”
he kept on repeating, as if her name were a sort of incantation.

 
          
“Oh,
think of it—those lonely endless hours! I wonder if you ever did think of them
before?
When you used to go home after one of our meetings,
did you remember each time what she’d told you, and begin to wonder, as you got
near the house, if she’d done it
that
day!”

 
          
“Barbara—”

 
          
“Perhaps
you did—perhaps you were even vexed with her for being so slow about it. Were
you?”

 
          
“Oh,
Barbara—Barbara …”

 
          
“And
when the day came at last, were you surprised? Had you got so impatient waiting
that you’d begun to believe she’d never do it? Were there days when you went
almost mad at having to wait so long for your freedom? It was the way I used to
feel when I was rushing for the train to Ditson, and father would call me at
the last minute to write letters for him, or mother to replace her on some
charity committee; there were days when I could have
killed
them, almost, for interfering with me, making me miss one of
our precious hours together.
Killed them
,
I say! Don’t you suppose I know how murderers feel? How
you
feel—for you’re a murderer, you know! And now you come here,
when the earth’s hardly covered her, and try to kiss me, and ask me to marry
you—and think, I suppose, that by doing so you’re covering up her memory more
securely, you’re pounding down the earth on her a little harder. …”

 
          
She
broke off, as if her own words terrified her, and hid her eyes from the vision
they called up.

 
          
Trenham
stood without moving. He had gathered up the letters, and they lay in a neat
pile on the floor between himself and her, because there seemed no other place
to put them. He said to himself (reflecting how many million men must have said
the same thing at such moments): “After this she’ll calm down, and by tomorrow
she’ll be telling me how sorry she is….” But the reflection did not seem to
help him. She might forget—but he would not. He had forgotten too easily
before; he had an idea that his future would be burdened with long arrears of
remembrance. Just as the girl described Milly, so he would see her in the years
to come. He would have to pay the interest on his oblivion; and it would not
help much to have Barbara pay it with him. The job was probably one that would
have to be accomplished alone. At last words shaped themselves without his knowing
it. “I’d better go,” he said.

 
          
Unconsciously
he had expected an answer; an appeal; a protest, perhaps. But none came. He
moved away a few steps in the direction of the door. As he did so he heard
Barbara break into a laugh, and the sound, so unnatural in that place, and at
that moment, brought him abruptly to a halt.

 
          
“Yes—?”
he said, half turning, as though she had called him.

 
          
“And
I sent a wreath—I sent her a wreath! It’s on her grave now—it hasn’t even had
time to fade!”

 
          
“Oh—”
he gasped, as if she had struck him across the face. They stood forlornly
confronting each other. Her last words seemed to have created an icy void
between them. Within
himself
a voice whispered: “She
can’t find anything worse than that.” But he saw by the faint twitch of her
lips that she was groping, groping—

 
          
“And
the worst of it is,” she broke out, “that if I didn’t go away, and we were to
drag on here together, after a time I might even drift into forgiving you.”

 
          
Yes;
she was right; that was certainly the worst of it. Human imagination could not
go beyond that, he thought. He moved away again stiffly.

 
          
“Well,
you
are
going away, aren’t you?” he
said.

 
          
“Yes;
I’m going.”

 
          
He
walked back slowly through the dark deserted streets.
His
brain, reeling with the shock of the encounter, gradually cleared, and looked
about on the new world within itself.
At first the inside of his head
was like a deserted house out of which all the furniture has been moved, down
to the last familiar encumbrances. It was empty, absolutely empty. But
gradually a small speck of consciousness appeared in the dreary void, like a
mouse scurrying across bare floors. He stopped on a street corner to say to
himself: “But after all nothing is changed—absolutely nothing. I went there to
tell her that we should probably never want to see each other again; and she
agreed with me. She agreed with me—that’s all.”

 
          
It
was a relief, almost, to have even that little thought stirring about in the
resonant void of his brain. He walked on more quickly, reflecting, as he
reached his own corner: “In a minute it’s going to rain.” He smiled a little at
his unconscious precaution in hurrying home to escape the rain. “Jane will
begin to fret—she’ll be sure to notice that I didn’t take my umbrella.” And his
cold heart felt
a faint
warmth at the thought that
some one in the huge hostile world would really care whether he had taken his
umbrella or not. “But probably she’s in bed and asleep,” he mused,
despondently.

 
          
On
his door-step he paused and began to grope for his latch-key. He felt
impatiently in one pocket after another—but the key was not to be found. He had
an idea that he had left it lying on his study table when he came in
after—after what? Why, that very morning, after the funeral! He had flung the
key down among his papers—and Jane would never notice that it was there. She
would never think of looking; she had been bidden often enough on no account to
meddle with the things on his desk. And besides she would take for granted that
he had the key in his pocket. And here he stood, in the middle of the night,
locked out of his own house—

 
          
A
sudden exasperation possessed him. He was aware that he must have lost all
sense of proportion, all perspective, for he felt as baffled and as angry as
when Barbara’s furious words had beaten down on him. Yes; it made him just as
unhappy to find himself locked out of his house—he could have sat down on the
door-step and cried. And here was the rain beginning….

 
          
He
put his hand to the bell; but did the front door bell ring in the far-off attic
where the maids were lodged? And was there the least chance of the faint tinkle
from the pantry mounting two flights, and penetrating to their sleep-muffled
ears? Utterly improbable, he knew. And if he couldn’t make them hear he would
have to spend the night at a hotel—the night of his wife’s funeral! And the
next morning all Kingsborough would know of it, from the President of the
University to the boy who delivered the milk….

 
          
But
his hand had hardly touched the bell when he felt a vibration of life in the
house. First there was a faint flash of light through the transom above the
front door; then, scarcely distinguishable from the noises of the night, a step
sounded far off: it grew louder on the hall floor, and after an interval that
seemed endless the door was flung open by a Jane still irreproachably capped
and aproned.

 
          
“Why,
Jane—I didn’t think you’d be awake! I forgot my key. …”

 
          
“I
know, sir. I found it. I was waiting.” She took his wet coat from him.
“Dear, dear!
And you hadn’t your umbrella.”

 
          
He
stepped into his own hall, and heard her close and bar the door behind him. He
liked to listen to that familiar slipping of the bolts and clink of the chain.
He liked to think that she minded about his not having his umbrella. It was his
own house, after all—and this friendly hand was shutting him safely into it.
The dreadful sense of loneliness melted a little at the old reassuring touch of
habit.