Edith Wharton - SSC 11
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Mrs. Corbett was silent. All the men of her family, all the men of her friends’ families, had fought in the war; Mrs. Hayne’s husband had been killed at Bull Run, and one of Delia’s cousins at Gettysburg. Ever since she could remember it had been regarded as a matter of course by those about her that every man of her husband’s generation who was neither lame, halt, nor blind should have fought in the war. Husbands had left their wives, fathers their children, young men their sweethearts, in answer to that summons; and those who had been deaf to it she had never heard designated by any name but one.
But all that had happened long ago; for years it had ceased to be a part of her consciousness. She had forgotten about the war; about her uncle who fell at Bull Run, and her cousin who was killed at Gettysburg. Now, of a sudden, it all came back to her, and she asked herself the question which her aunt had just put to her—why had her husband not been in the war? What else could he have been doing?
But the very word, as she repeated it, struck her as incongruous; Corbett was a man who never did anything. His elaborate intellectual processes bore no flower of result; he simply was—but had she not hitherto found that sufficient? She rose from her seat, turning away from Mrs. Hayne.
“I really don’t know,” she said, coldly. “I never asked him.”
IV.
Two weeks later the Corbetts returned to Europe. Corbett had really been charmed with his visit, and had in fact shown a marked inclination to outstay the date originally fixed for their departure. But Delia was firm; she did not wish to remain in Boston. She acknowledged that she was sorry to leave her Aunt Mary; but she wanted to get home.
“You turncoat!” Corbett said, laughing. “Two months ago you reserved that sacred designation for Boston.”
“One can’t tell where it is until one tries,” she answered, vaguely.
“You mean that you don’t want to come back and live in Boston?”
“Oh, no—no!”
“Very well. But pray take note of the fact that I’m very sorry to leave. Under your Aunt Mary’s tutelage I’m becoming a passionate patriot.”
Delia turned away in silence. She was counting the moments which led to their departure. She longed with an unreasoning intensity to get away from it all; from the dreary house in Mount Vernon Street, with its stencilled hall and hideous drawing-room, its monotonous food served in unappetizing profusion; from the rarefied atmosphere of philanthropy and reform which she had once found so invigorating; and most of all from the reproval of her aunt’s altruistic activities. The recollection of her husband’s delightful house in Paris, so framed for a noble leisure, seemed to mock the aesthetic barrenness of Mrs. Hayne’s environment. Delia thought tenderly of the mellow bindings, the deep-piled rugs, the pictures, bronzes, and tapestries; of the “first nights” at the Français, the eagerly discussed conferences on art or literature, the dreaming hours in galleries and museums, and all the delicate enjoyments of the life to which she was returning. It would be like passing from a hospital-ward to a flower-filled drawing-room; how could her husband linger on the threshold?
Corbett, who observed her attentively, noticed that a change had come over her during the last two weeks of their stay in Mount Vernon Street. He wondered uneasily if she were capricious; a man who has formed his own habits upon principles of the finest selection does not care to think that he has married a capricious woman. Then he reflected that the love of Paris is an insidious disease, breaking out when its victim least looks for it, and concluded that Delia was suffering from some such unexpected attack.
Delia certainly was suffering. Ever since Mrs. Hayne had asked her that innocent question—”Why shouldn’t your husband have been in the war?”—she had been repeating it to herself day and night with the monotonous iteration of a monomaniac. Whenever Corbett came into the room, with that air of giving the simplest act its due value which made episodes of his entrances she was tempted to cry out to him—”Why weren’t you in the war?” When she heard him, at a dinner, point one of his polished epigrams, or smilingly demolish the syllogism of an antagonist, her pride in his achievement was chilled by the question—”Why wasn’t he in the war?” When she saw him, in the street, give a coin to a crossing-sweeper, or lift his hat ceremoniously to one of Mrs. Hayne’s maid-servants (he was always considerate of poor people and servants) her approval winced under the reminder—”Why wasn’t he in the war?” And when they were alone together, all through the spell of his talk and the exquisite pervasion of his presence ran the embittering undercurrent, “Why wasn’t he in the war?”
At times she hated herself for the thought; it seemed a disloyalty to life’s best gift. After all, what did it matter now? The war was over and forgotten; it was what the newspapers call “a dead issue.” And why should any act of her husband’s youth affect their present happiness together? Whatever he might once have been, he was perfect now; admirable in every relation of life; kind, generous, upright; a loyal friend, an accomplished gentleman, and, above all, the man she loved. Yes—but why had he not been in the war? And so began again the reiterant torment of the question. It rose up and lay down with her; it watched with her through sleepless nights, and followed her into the street; it mocked her from the eyes of strangers, and she dreaded lest her husband should read it in her own. In her saner moments she told herself that she was under the influence of a passing mood, which would vanish at the contact of her wonted life in Paris. She had become over-strung in the high air of Mrs. Hayne’s moral enthusiasms; all she needed was to descend again to regions of more temperate virtue. This thought increased her impatience to be gone; and the days seemed interminable which divided her from departure.
The return to Paris, however, did not yield the hoped-for alleviation. The question was still with her, clamoring for a reply, and reinforced, with separation, by the increasing fear of her aunt’s unspoken verdict. That shrewd woman had never again alluded to the subject of her brief colloquy with Delia; up to the moment of his farewell she had been unreservedly cordial to Corbett; but she was not the woman to palter with her convictions.
Delia knew what she must think; she knew what name, in the old days, Corbett would have gone by in her aunt’s uncompromising circle.
Then came a flash of resistance—the heart’s instinct of self-preservation. After all, what did she herself know of her husband’s reasons for not being in the war? What right had she to set down to cowardice a course which might have been enforced by necessity, or dictated by unimpeachable motives? Why should she not put to him the question which she was perpetually asking herself? And not having done so, how dared she condemn him unheard?
A month or more passed in this torturing indecision. Corbett had returned with fresh zest to his accustomed way of life, weaned, by his first glimpse of the Champs Elysées, from his factitious enthusiasm for Boston. He and his wife entertained their friends delightfully, and frequented all the “first nights” and “private views” of the season, and Corbett continued to bring back knowing “bits” from the Hotel Drouot, and rare books from the quays; never had he appeared more cultivated, more decorative and enviable; people agreed that Delia Benson had been uncommonly clever to catch him.
One afternoon he returned later than usual from the club, and, finding his wife alone in the drawing-room, begged her for a cup of tea. Delia reflected, in complying, that she had never seen him look better; his fifty-two years sat upon him like a finish which made youth appear crude, and his voice, as he recounted his afternoon’s doings, had the intimate inflections reserved for her ear.
“By the way,” he said presently, as he set down his tea-cup, “I had almost forgotten that I’ve brought you a present—something I picked up in a little shop in the Rue Bonaparte. Oh, don’t look too expectant; it’s not a chef-d’oeuvre; on the contrary, it’s about as bad as it can be. But you’ll see presently why I bought it.”
As he spoke he drew a small flat parcel from the breast-pocket of his impe
ccable frock-coat and handed it to his wife.
Delia, loosening the paper which wrapped it, discovered within an oval frame studded with pearls and containing the crudely executed miniature of an unknown young man in the uniform of a United States cavalry officer. She glanced inquiringly at Corbett.
“Turn it over,” he said.
She did so, and on the back, beneath two unfamiliar initials, read the brief inscription:
“Fell at Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863.”
The blood rushed to her face as she stood gazing at the words.
“You see now why I bought it?” Corbett continued. “All the pieties of one’s youth seemed to protest against leaving it in the clutches of a Jew pawnbroker in the Rue Bonaparte. It’s awfully bad, isn’t it?—but some poor soul might be glad to think that it had passed again into the possession of fellow-countrymen.” He took it back from her, bending to examine it critically. “What a daub!” he murmured. “I wonder who he was? Do you suppose that by taking a little trouble one might find out and restore it to his people?”
“I don’t know—I dare say,” she murmured, absently.
He looked up at the sound of her voice. “What’s the matter, Delia? Don’t you feel well?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. I was only thinking”—she took the miniature from his hand. “It was kind of you, Laurence, to buy this—it was like you.”
“Thanks for the latter clause,” he returned, smiling.
Delia stood staring at the vivid flesh-tints of the young man who had fallen at Chancellorsville.
“You weren’t very strong at his age, were you, Laurence? Weren’t you often ill?” she asked.
Corbett gave her a surprised glance. “Not that I’m aware of,” he said; “I had the measles at twelve, but since then I’ve been unromantically robust.”
“And you—you were in America until you came abroad to be with your sister?”
“Yes—barring a trip of a few weeks in Europe.”
Delia looked again at the miniature; then she fixed her eyes upon her husband’s.
“Then why weren’t you in the war?” she said.
Corbett answered her gaze for a moment; then his lids dropped, and he shifted his position slightly.
“Really,” he said, with a smile, “I don’t think I know.”
They were the very words which she had used in answering her aunt.
“You don’t know?” she repeated, the question leaping out like an electric shock. “What do you mean when you say that you don’t know?”
“Well—it all happened some time ago,” he answered, still smiling, “and the truth is that I’ve completely forgotten the excellent reasons that I doubtless had at the time for remaining at home.”
“Reasons for remaining at home? But there were none; every man of your age went to the war; no one stayed at home who wasn’t lame, or blind, or deaf, or ill, or—” Her face blazed, her voice broke passionately.
Corbett looked at her with rising amazement.
“Or—?” he said.
“Or a coward,” she flashed out. The miniature dropped from her hands, falling loudly on the polished floor.
The two confronted each other in silence; Corbett was very pale.
“I’ve told you,” he said, at length, “that I was neither lame, deaf, blind, nor ill. Your classification is so simple that it will be easy for you to draw your own conclusion.”
And very quietly, with that admirable air which always put him in the right, he walked out of the room. Delia, left alone, bent down and picked up the miniature; its protecting crystal had been broken by the fall. She pressed it close to her and burst into tears.
An hour later, of course, she went to ask her husband’s forgiveness. As a woman of sense she could do no less; and her conduct had been so absurd that it was the more obviously pardonable. Corbett, as he kissed her hand, assured her that he had known it was only nervousness; and after dinner, during which he made himself exceptionally agreeable, he proposed their ending the evening at the Palais Royal, where a new play was being given.
Delia had undoubtedly behaved like a fool, and was prepared to do meet penance for her folly by submitting to the gentle sarcasm of her husband’s pardon; but when the episode was over, and she realized that she had asked her question and received her answer, she knew that she had passed a milestone in her existence. Corbett was perfectly charming; it was inevitable that he should go on being charming to the end of the chapter. It was equally inevitable that she should go on being in love with him; but her love had undergone a modification which the years were not to efface.
Formerly he had been to her like an unexplored country, full of bewitching surprises and recurrent revelations of wonder and beauty; now she had measured and mapped him, and knew beforehand the direction of every path she trod. His answer to her question had given her the clue to the labyrinth; knowing what he had once done, it seemed quite simple to forecast his future conduct. For that long-past action was still a part of his actual being; he had not outlived or disowned it; he had not even seen that it needed defending.
Her ideal of him was shivered like the crystal above the miniature of the warrior of Chancellorsville. She had the crystal replaced by a piece of clear glass which (as the jeweller pointed out to her) cost much less and looked equally well; and for the passionate worship which she had paid her husband she substituted a tolerant affection which possessed precisely the same advantages.
(Scribner’s 18, October 1895)
That Good May Come.
Oh, it’s the same old story,” said Birkton, impatiently. “They’ve all come home to roost, as usual.”
He glanced at a heap of type-written pages which lay on the shabby desk at his elbow; then, pushing back his chair, he began to stride up and down the length of the little bedroom in which he and Helfenridge sat.
“What magazines have you tried?”
“All the good ones—every one. Nobody wants poetry nowadays. One of the editors told me the other day that it ‘was going out.’“
Helfenridge picked up the sheet which lay nearest him and began to read, half to himself, half aloud, with a warmth of undertoned emphasis which made the lines glow.
Neither of the men was far beyond twenty-five. Birkton, the younger of the two, had the musing, irresolute profile of the dreamer of dreams; while his friend, stouter, squarer, of more clayey make, was nevertheless too much like him to prove a useful counterpoise.
“I always liked ‘The Old Odysseus,’” Helfenridge murmured. “There’s something tremendously suggestive in that fancy of yours, that tradition has misrepresented the real feelings of all the great heroes and heroines; or rather, has only handed down to us the official statement of their sentiments, as an epitaph records the obligatory virtues which the defunct ought to have had, if he hadn’t. That theory, now, that Odysseus never really forgot Circe; and that Esther was in love with Haman, and decoyed him to the banquet with Ahasuerus just for the sake of once having him near her and hearing him speak; and that Dante, perhaps, if he could have been brought to book, would have had to confess for caring a great deal more for the pietosa donna of the window than for the mummified memory of a long-dead Beatrice—well, you know, it tallies wonderfully with the inconsequences and surprises that one is always discovering under the superficial fitnesses of life.”
“Ah,” said Birkton, “I meant to get a cycle of poems out of that idea—but what’s the use, when I can’t even get the first one into print?”
“You’ve tried sending ‘The Old Odysseus’?”
Birkton nodded.
“To ‘Scribner’s’ and ‘The Century’?”
“And all the rest.”
“Queer!” protested Helfenridge. “If I were an editor—now this, for instance, is so fine:
“‘Circe, Circe, the sharp anguish of that last long speechless night
With the flame of tears unfallen scorches still mine aching sight;
Still I feel the thunderous blackness of the hot sky overhead,
While we two with close-locked fingers through thy pillared porches strayed,
And athwart the sullen darkness, from the shadow-muffled shore,
Heard aghast the savage summons of the sea’s incoming roar,
Shouting like a voice from Ilium, wailing like a voice from home,
Shrieking through the pillared porches, Up,
Odysseus, wake and come!’
“Devil take it, why isn’t there an audience for that sort of thing? And this line too—
“‘Where Persephone remembers the Trinacrian buds and bees
—what a light, allegretto movement it has, following on all that gloom and horror! Ah—and here’s that delicious little nocturne from ‘The New and the Old.’
“‘Before the yellow dawn is up,
With pomp of shield and shaft,
Drink we of night’s fast ebbing cup
One last delicious draught.
‘The shadowy wine of night is sweet,
With subtle, slumberous fumes
Pressed by the Hours’ melodious feet
From bloodless elder-blooms.’
“There—isn’t that just like a little bacchanalian scene on a Greek gem?”
“Oh, don’t go on,” said Birkton sharply, “I’m sick of them.”
“Don’t say that,” Helfenridge rebuked him. “It’s like disowning one’s own children. But if they say that mythology and classicism and plastik are played out—if they want Manet in place of David, or Cazin instead of Claude—why don’t they like ‘Boulterby Ridge,’ with its grim mystery intensified by a setting of such modern realism? What lines there are in that!
“‘It was dark on Boulterby Ridge, with an ultimate darkness like death,
And the weak wind flagged and gasped like a sick man straining for breath,