With all this stored-up happiness to sustain her, it was curious that she had lately found herself yielding to a nervous apprehension. But there the apprehension was; and on this particular afternoon—perhaps because she was more tired than usual, or because of the trouble of finding a new cook or, for some other ridiculously trivial reason, moral or physical—she found herself unable to react against the feeling. Latch-key in hand, she looked back down the silent street to the whirl and illumination of the great thoroughfare beyond, and up at the sky already aflare with the city’s nocturnal life. “Outside there,” she thought, “sky-scrapers, advertisements, telephones, wireless, aeroplanes, movies, motors, and all the rest of the twentieth century; and on the other side of the door something I can’t explain, can’t relate to them. Something as old as the world, as mysterious as life... Nonsense! What am I worrying about? There hasn’t been a letter for three months now—not since the day we came back from the country after Christmas... Queer that they always seem to come after our holidays!... Why should I imagine there’s going to be one tonight!”
No reason why, but that was the worst of it—one of the worsts!—that there were days when she would stand there cold and shivering with the premonition of something inexplicable, intolerable, to be faced on the other side of the curtained panes; and when she opened the door and went in, there would be nothing; and on other days when she felt the same premonitory chill, it was justified by the sight of the gray envelope. So that ever since the last had come she had taken to feeling cold and premonitory every evening, because she never opened the door without thinking the letter might be there.
Well, she’d had enough of it; that was certain. She couldn’t go on like that. If her husband turned white and had a headache on the days when the letter came, he seemed to recover afterward; but she couldn’t. With her the strain had become chronic, and the reason was not far to seek. Her husband knew from whom the letter came and what was in it; he was prepared beforehand for whatever he had to deal with, and master of the situation, however bad; whereas she was shut out in the dark with her conjectures.
“I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it another day!” she exclaimed aloud, as she put her key in the lock. She turned the key and went in; and there, on the table, lay the letter.
II
She was almost glad of the sight. It seemed to justify everything, to put a seal of definiteness on the whole blurred business. A letter for her husband; a letter from a woman—no doubt another vulgar case of “old entanglement.” What a fool she had been ever to doubt it, to rack her brains for less obvious explanations! She took up the envelope with a steady contemptuous hand, looked closely at the faint letters, held it against the light and just discerned the outline of the folded sheet within. She knew that now she would have no peace till she found out what was written on that sheet.
Her husband had not come in; he seldom got back from his office before half-past six or seven, and it was not yet six. She would have time to take the letter up to the drawing-room, hold it over the tea-kettle which at that hour always simmered by the fire in expectation of her return, solve the mystery and replace the letter where she had found it. No one would be the wiser, and her gnawing uncertainty would be over. The alternative, of course, was to question her husband; but to do that seemed even more difficult. She weighed the letter between thumb and finger, looked at it again under the light, started up the stairs with the envelope—and came down again and laid it on the table.
“No, I evidently can’t,” she said, disappointed.
What should she do, then? She couldn’t go up alone to that warm welcoming room, pour out her tea, look over her correspondence, glance at a book or review—not with that letter lying below and the knowledge that in a little while her husband would come in, open it and turn into the library alone, as he always did on the days when the gray envelope came.
Suddenly she decided. She would wait in the library and see for herself; see what happened between him and the letter when they thought themselves unobserved. She wondered the idea had never occurred to her before. By leaving the door ajar, and sitting in the corner behind it, she could watch him unseen... Well, then, she would watch him! She drew a chair into the corner, sat down, her eyes on the crack, and waited.
As far as she could remember, it was the first time she had ever tried to surprise another person’s secret, but she was conscious of no compunction. She simply felt as if she were fighting her way through a stifling fog that she must at all costs get out of.
At length she heard Kenneth’s latch-key and jumped up. The impulse to rush out and meet him had nearly made her forget why she was there; but she remembered in time and sat down again. From her post she covered the whole range of his movements—saw him enter the hall, draw the key from the door and take off his hat and overcoat. Then he turned to throw his gloves on the hall table, and at that moment he saw the envelope. The light was full on his face, and what Charlotte first noted there was a look of surprise. Evidently he had not expected the letter—had not thought of the possibility of its being there that day. But though he had not expected it, now that he saw it he knew well enough what it contained. He did not open it immediately, but stood motionless, the color slowly ebbing from his face. Apparently he could not make up his mind to touch it; but at length he put out his hand, opened the envelope, and moved with it to the light. In doing so he turned his back on Charlotte, and she saw only his bent head and slightly stooping shoulders. Apparently all the writing was on one page, for he did not turn the sheet but continued to stare at it for so long that he must have reread it a dozen times—or so it seemed to the woman breathlessly watching him. At length she saw him move; he raised the letter still closer to his eyes, as though he had not fully deciphered it. Then he lowered his head, and she saw his lips touch the sheet.
“Kenneth!” she exclaimed, and went out into the hall.
The letter clutched in his hand, her husband turned and looked at her. “Where were you?” he said, in a low bewildered voice, like a man waked out of his sleep.
“In the library, waiting for you.” She tried to steady her voice: “What’s the matter! What’s in that letter? You look ghastly.”
Her agitation seemed to calm him, and he instantly put the envelope into his pocket with a slight laugh. “Ghastly? I’m sorry. I’ve had a hard day in the office—one or two complicated cases. I look dog-tired, I suppose.”
“You didn’t look tired when you came in. It was only when you opened that letter—”
He had followed her into the library, and they stood gazing at each other. Charlotte noticed how quickly he had regained his self-control; his profession had trained him to rapid mastery of face and voice. She saw at once that she would be at a disadvantage in any attempt to surprise his secret, but at the same moment she lost all desire to maneuver, to trick him into betraying anything he wanted to conceal. Her wish was still to penetrate the mystery, but only that she might help him to bear the burden it implied. “Even if it is another woman,” she thought.
“Kenneth,” she said, her heart beating excitedly, “I waited here on purpose to see you come in. I wanted to watch you while you opened that letter.”
His face, which had paled, turned to dark red; then it paled again. “That letter? Why especially that letter?”
“Because I’ve noticed that whenever one of those letters comes it seems to have such a strange effect on you.”
A line of anger she had never seen before came out between his eyes, and she said to herself: “The upper part of his face is too narrow; this is the first time I ever noticed it.”
She heard him continue, in the cool and faintly ironic tone of the prosecuting lawyer making a point: “Ah; so you’re in the habit of watching people open their letters when they don’t know you’re there?”
“Not in the habit. I never did such a thing before. But I had to find out what she writes to you, at regular intervals, in those gray envelopes.”
He weighted this for a moment; then: “The intervals have not been regular,” he said.
“Oh, I daresay you’ve kept a better account of the dates than I have,” she retorted, her magnanimity vanishing at his tone. “All I know is that every time that woman writes to you—”
“Why do you assume it’s a woman?”
“It’s a woman’s writing. Do you deny it?”
He smiled. “No, I don’t deny it. I asked only because the writing is generally supposed to look more like a man’s.”
Charlotte passed this over impatiently. “And this woman—what does she write to you about?”
Again he seemed to consider a moment. “About business.”
“Legal business?”
“In a way, yes. Business in general.”
“You look after her affairs for her?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve looked after them for a long time?”
“Yes. A very long time.”
“Kenneth, dearest, won’t you tell me who she is?”
“No. I can’t.” He paused, and brought out, as if with a certain hesitation: “Professional secrecy.”
The blood rushed from Charlotte’s heart to her temples. “Don’t say that—don’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because I saw you kiss the letter.”
The effect of the words was so disconcerting that she instantly repented having spoken them. Her husband, who had submitted to her cross-questioning with a sort of contemptuous composure, as though he were humoring an unreasonable child, turned on her a face of terror and distress. For a minute he seemed unable to speak; then, collecting himself with an effort, he stammered out: “The writing is very faint; you must have seen me holding the letter close to my eyes to try to decipher it.”
“No; I saw you kissing it.” He was silent. “Didn’t I see you kissing it?”
He sank back into indifference. “Perhaps.”
“Kenneth! You stand there and say that—to me?”
“What possible difference can it make to you? The letter is on business, as I told you. Do you suppose I’d lie about it? The writer is a very old friend whom I haven’t seen for a long time.”
“Men don’t kiss business letters, even from women who are very old friends, unless they have been their lovers, and still regret them.”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly and turned away, as if he considered the discussion at an end and were faintly disgusted at the turn it had taken.
“Kenneth!” Charlotte moved toward him and caught hold of his arm.
He paused with a look of weariness and laid his hand over hers. “Won’t you believe me?” he asked gently.
“How can I? I’ve watched these letters come to you—for months now they’ve been coming. Ever since we came back from the West Indies—one of them greeted me the very day we arrived. And after each one of them I see their mysterious effect on you, I see you disturbed, unhappy, as if someone were trying to estrange you from me.”
“No, dear; not that. Never!”
She drew back and looked at him with passionate entreaty. “Well, then, prove it to me, darling. It’s so easy!”
He forced a smile. “It’s not easy to prove anything to a woman who’s once taken an idea into her head.”
“You’ve only got to show me the letter.”
His hand slipped from hers and he drew back and shook his head.
“You won’t?”
“I can’t.”
“Then the woman who wrote it is your mistress.”
“No, dear. No.”
“Not now, perhaps. I suppose she’s trying to get you back, and you’re struggling, out of pity for me. My poor Kenneth!”
“I swear to you she never was my mistress.”
Charlotte felt the tears rushing to her eyes. “Ah, that’s worse, then—that’s hopeless! The prudent ones are the kind that keep their hold on a man. We all know that.” She lifted her hands and hid her face in them.
Her husband remained silent; he offered neither consolation nor denial, and at length, wiping away her tears, she raised her eyes almost timidly to his.
“Kenneth, think! We’ve been married such a short time. Imagine what you’re making me suffer. You say you can’t show me this letter. You refuse even to explain it.”
“I’ve told you the letter is on business. I will swear to that too.”
“A man will swear to anything to screen a woman. If you want me to believe you, at least tell me her name. If you’ll do that, I promise you I won’t ask to see the letter.”
There was a long interval of suspense, during which she felt her heart beating against her ribs in quick admonitory knocks, as if warning her of the danger she was incurring.
“I can’t,” he said at length.
“Not even her name?”
“No.”
“You can’t tell me anything more?”
“No.”
Again a pause; this time they seemed both to have reached the end of their arguments and to be helplessly facing each other across a baffling waste of incomprehension.
Charlotte stood breathing rapidly, her hands against her breast. She felt as if she had run a hard race and missed the goal. She had meant to move her husband and had succeeded only in irritating him; and this error of reckoning seemed to change him into a stranger, a mysterious incomprehensible being whom no argument or entreaty of hers could reach. The curious thing was that she was aware in him of no hostility or even impatience, but only of a remoteness, an inaccessibility, far more difficult to overcome. She felt herself excluded, ignored, blotted out of his life. But after a moment or two, looking at him more calmly, she saw that he was suffering as much as she was. His distant guarded face was drawn with pain; the coming of the gray envelope, though it always cast a shadow, had never marked him as deeply as this discussion with his wife.
Charlotte took heart; perhaps, after all, she had not spent her last shaft. She drew nearer and once more laid her hand on his arm. “Poor Kenneth! If you knew how sorry I am for you—”
She thought he winced slightly at this expression of sympathy, but he took her hand and pressed it.
“I can think of nothing worse than to be incapable of loving long,” she continued; “to feel the beauty of a great love and to be too unstable to bear its burden.”
He turned on her a look of wistful reproach. “Oh, don’t say that of me. Unstable!”
She felt herself at last on the right tack, and her voice trembled with excitement as she went on: “Then what about me and this other woman? Haven’t you already forgotten Elsie twice within a year?”
She seldom pronounced his first wife’s name; it did not come naturally to her tongue. She flung it out now as if she were flinging some dangerous explosive into the open space between them, and drew back a step, waiting to hear the mine go off.
Her husband did not move; his expression grew sadder, but showed no resentment. “I have never forgotten Elsie,” he said.
Charlotte could not repress a faint laugh. “Then, you poor dear, between the three of us—”
“There are not—” he began; and then broke off and put his hand to his forehead.
“Not what?”
“I’m sorry; I don’t believe I know what I’m saying. I’ve got a blinding headache.” He looked wan and furrowed enough for the statement to be true, but she was exasperated by his evasion.
“Ah, yes; the gray-envelope headache!”
She saw the surprise in his eyes. “I’d forgotten how closely I’ve been watched,” he said coldly. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go up and try an hour in the dark, to see if I can get rid of this neuralgia.”
She wavered; then she said, with desperate resolution: “I’m sorry your head aches. But before you go I want to say that sooner or later this question must be settled between us. Someone is trying to separate us, and I don’t care what it costs me to find out who it is.” She looked him steadily in the eyes. “If it
costs me your love, I don’t care! If I can’t have your confidence I don’t want anything from you.”
He still looked at her wistfully. “Give me time.”
“Time for what? It’s only a word to say.”
“Time to show you that you haven’t lost my love or my confidence.”
“Well, I’m waiting.”
He turned toward the door, and then glanced back hesitatingly. “Oh, do wait, my love,” he said, and went out of the room.
She heard his tired step on the stairs and the closing of his bedroom door above. Then she dropped into a chair and buried her face in her folded arms. Her first movement was one of compunction; she seemed to herself to have been hard, unhuman, unimaginative. “Think of telling him that I didn’t care if my insistence cost me his love! The lying rubbish!” She started up to follow him and unsay the meaningless words. But she was checked by a reflection. He had had his way, after all; he had eluded all attacks on his secret, and now he was shut up alone in his room, reading that other woman’s letter.
III
She was still reflecting on this when the surprised parlor-maid came in and found her. No, Charlotte said, she wasn’t going to dress for dinner; Mr. Ashby didn’t want to dine. He was very tired and had gone up to his room to rest; later she would have something brought on a tray to the drawing-room. She mounted the stairs to her bedroom. Her dinner dress was lying on the bed, and at the sight the quiet routine of her daily life took hold of her and she began to feel as if the strange talk she had just had with her husband must have taken place in another world, between two beings who were not Charlotte Gorse and Kenneth Ashby, but phantoms projected by her fevered imagination. She recalled the year since her marriage—her husband’s constant devotion; his persistent, almost too insistent tenderness; the feeling he had given her at times of being too eagerly dependent on her, too searchingly close to her, as if there were not air enough between her soul and his. It seemed preposterous, as she recalled all this, that a few moments ago she should have been accusing him of an intrigue with another woman! But, then, what—
The New York Stories of Edith Wharton Page 46
