Edith Wharton - SSC 11

by Uncollected Stories (v2. 1)

  He hung his head and said, more than he could count.

  The judgment angel asked what they were like, and the architect said that he was afraid they were pretty bad.

  “And are you sorry?” asked the angel.

  “Very sorry,” said the architect, with honest contrition.

  “And how about that famous temple that you built just before you died?” the angel continued. “Are you satisfied with that?”

  “Oh, no,” the architect exclaimed. “I really think it has some good points about it,—I did try my best, you know,—but there’s one dreadful mistake that I’d give my soul to go back and rectify.”

  “Well,” said the angel, “you can’t go back and rectify it, but you can take your choice of the following alternatives: either we can let the world go on thinking your temple a masterpiece and you the greatest architect that ever lived, or we can send to earth a young fellow we’ve got here who will discover your mistake at a glance, and point it out so clearly to posterity that you’ll be the laughing-stock of all succeeding generations of architects. Which do you choose?”

  “Oh, well,” said the architect, “if it comes to that, you know—as long as it suits my clients as it is, I really don’t see the use of making such a fuss.”

  

  VIII.

  A man once married a charming young person who agreed with him on every question. At first they were very happy, for the man thought his wife the most interesting companion he had ever met, and they spent their days telling each other what wonderful people they were. But by and by the man began to find his wife rather tiresome. Wherever he went she insisted upon going; whatever he did, she was sure to tell him that it would have been better to do the opposite; and moreover, it gradually dawned upon him that his friends had never thought so highly of her as he did. Having made this discovery, he naturally felt justified in regarding himself as the aggrieved party; she took the same view of her situation, and their life was one of incessant recrimination.

  Finally, after years spent in violent quarrels and short-lived reconciliations, the man grew weary, and decided to divorce his wife.

  He engaged an able lawyer, who assured him that he would have no difficulty in obtaining a divorce; but to his surprise, the judge refused to grant it.

  “But—” said the man, and he began to recapitulate his injuries.

  “That’s all very true,” said the judge, “and nothing would be easier than for you to obtain a divorce if you had only married another person.”

  “What do you mean by another person?” asked the man in astonishment.

  “Well,” replied the judge, “it appears that you inadvertently married yourself; that is a union no court has the power to dissolve.”

  “Oh, said the man; and he was secretly glad, for in his heart he was already longing to make it up again with his wife.

  

  IX.

  There was once a gentleman who greatly disliked to assume any responsibility. Being possessed of ample means and numerous poor relatives, he might have indulged a variety of tastes and even a few virtues; but since there is no occupation that does not bring a few cares in its train, this gentleman resolutely refrained from doing anything.

  He ceased to visit his old mother, who lived in the country, because it made him nervous to catch the train; he subscribed to no charities because it was a bother to write the checks; he received no visits because he did not wish to be under the obligation of returning them; he invited no guests to stay with him, for fear of being bored before they left; he gave no presents because it was so troublesome to choose them; finally, he even gave up asking his friends to dine because it was such a nuisance to tell the cook that they were coming.

  This gentleman took an honest pride in his complete detachment from the trivial importunities of life, and was never tired of ridiculing those who complained of the weight of their responsibilities, justly remarking that if they really wished to be their own masters they had only to follow his example.

  One day, however, one of his servants carelessly left the front door open, and Death walked in unannounced, and begged the gentleman to come along as quickly as possible, as there were a good many more people to be called for that afternoon.

  “But I can’t,” cried the gentleman, in dismay. “I really can’t, you know. I—why, I’ve asked some people to dine with me this evening.”

  “That’s a little too much,” said Death. And the devil carried the gentleman off in a big black bag.

  

  X.

  There was once a man who had seen the Parthenon, and he wished to build his god a temple like it.

  But he was not a skilful man, and, try as he would, he could produce only a mud hut thatched with straw; and he sat down and wept because he could not build a temple for his god.

  But one who passed by said to him:

  “There are two worse plights than yours. One is to have no god; the other is to build a mud hut and mistake it for the Parthenon.”

  (Century 52, July 1894)

  

  April Showers.

  But Guy’s heart slept under the violets on Muriel’s grave.”

  It was a beautiful ending; Theodora had seen girls cry over last chapters that weren’t half as pathetic. She laid her pen aside and read the words over, letting her voice linger on the fall of the sentence; then, drawing a deep breath, she wrote across the foot of the page the name by which she had decided to become known in literature—Gladys Glyn.

  Down-stairs the library clock struck two. Its muffled thump sounded like an admonitory knock against her bedroom floor. Two o’clock! and she had promised her mother to be up early enough to see that the buttons were sewn on Johnny’s reefer, and that Kate had her cod-liver oil before starting for school!

  Lingeringly, tenderly she gathered up the pages of her novel, -there were five hundred of them,—and tied them with the blue satin ribbon that her Aunt Julia had given her. She had meant to wear the ribbon with her new dotted muslin on Sundays, but this was putting it to a nobler use. She bound it round her manuscript, tying the ends in a pretty bow. Theodora was clever at making bows, and could have trimmed hats beautifully, had not all her spare moments been given to literature. Then, with a last look at the precious pages, she sealed and addressed the package. She meant to send it off next morning to the Home Circle. She knew it would be hard to obtain access to a paper which numbered so many popular authors among its contributors, but she had been encouraged to make the venture by something her Uncle James had said the last time he had come down from Boston.

  He had been telling his brother, Doctor Dace, about his new house out at Brookline. Uncle James was prosperous, and was always moving into new houses with more “modern improvements.” Hygiene was his passion, and he migrated in the wake of sanitary plumbing.

  “The bath-rooms alone are worth the money,” he was saying, cheerfully, “although it is a big rent. But then, when a man’s got no children to save up for—” he glanced compassionately round Doctor Dace’s crowded table—”and it is something to be in a neighborhood where the drainage is A 1. That’s what I was telling our neighbor. Who do you suppose she is, by the way?” He smiled at Theodora. “I rather think that young lady knows all about her. Ever hear of Kathleen Kyd?”

  Kathleen Kyd! The famous “society novelist,” the creator of more “favorite heroines” than all her predecessors put together had ever turned out; the author of “Fashion and Passion,” “An American Duchess,” “Rhona’s Revolt.” Was there any intelligent girl from Maine to California whose heart would not have beat faster at the mention of that name?

  “Why, yes,” Uncle James was saying, “Kathleen Kyd lives next door. Frances G. Wollop is her real name, and her husband’s a dentist. She’s a very pleasant, sociable kind of woman; you’d never think she was a writer. Ever hear how she began to write? She told me the whole story. It seems she was saleswoman in a store, working on starvation wages, with a mo
ther and a consumptive sister to support. Well, she wrote a story one day, just for fun, and sent it to the Home Circle. They’d never heard of her, of course, and she never expected to hear from them. She did, though. They took the story and passed their plate for more. She became a regular contributor and eventually was known all over the country. Now she tells me her books bring her in about ten thousand a year. Rather more than you and I can boast of, eh, John? Well, I hope this household doesn’t contribute to her support.” He glanced sharply at Theodora. “I don’t believe in feeding youngsters on sentimental trash; it’s like sewer-gas—doesn’t smell bad, and infects the system without your knowing it.”

  Theodora listened breathlessly. Kathleen Kyd’s first story had been accepted by the Home Circle, and they had asked for more! Why should Gladys Glyn be less fortunate? Theodora had done a great deal of novel-reading,—far more than her parents were aware of,—and felt herself competent to pronounce upon the quality of her own work. She was almost sure that “April Showers” was a remarkable book. If it lacked Kathleen Kyd’s lightness of touch, it had an emotional intensity never achieved by that brilliant writer. Theodora did not care to amuse her readers; she left that to more frivolous talents. Her aim was to stir the depths of human nature, and she felt she had succeeded. It was a great thing for a girl to be able to feel that about her first novel. Theodora was only seventeen; and she remembered, with a touch of retrospective compassion, that George Eliot had not become famous till she was nearly forty.

  No, there was no doubt about the merit of “April Showers.” But would not an inferior work have had a better chance of success? Theodora recalled the early struggles of famous authors, the notorious antagonism of publishers and editors to any new writer of exceptional promise. Would it not be wiser to write the book down to the average reader’s level, reserving for some later work the great “effects” into which she had thrown all the fervor of her imagination? The thought was sacrilege! Never would she lay hands on the sacred structure she had reared; never would she resort to the inartistic expedient of modifying her work to suit the popular taste. Better obscure failure than a vulgar triumph. The great authors never stooped to such concessions, and Theodora felt herself included in their ranks by the firmness with which she rejected all thought of conciliating an unappreciative public. The manuscript should be sent as it was.

  She woke with a start and a heavy sense of apprehension. The Home Circle had refused “April Showers!” No, that couldn’t be it; there lay the precious manuscript, waiting to be posted. What was it, then? Ah, that ominous thump below stairs—nine o’clock striking! It was Johnny’s buttons!

  She sprang out of bed in dismay. She had been so determined not to disappoint her mother about Johnny’s buttons! Mrs. Dace, helpless from chronic rheumatism, had to entrust the care of the household to her eldest daughter; and Theodora honestly meant to see that Johnny had his full complement of buttons, and that Kate and Bertha went to school tidy. Unfortunately, the writing of a great novel leaves little time or memory for the lesser obligations of life, and Theodora usually found that her good intentions matured too late for practical results.

  Her contrition was softened by the thought that literary success would enable her to make up for all the little negligences of which she was guilty. She meant to spend all her money on her family; and already she had visions of a wheeled chair for her mother, a fresh wallpaper for the doctor’s shabby office, bicycles for the girls, and Johnny’s establishment at a boarding-school where sewing on his buttons would be included in the curriculum. If her parents could have guessed her intentions, they would not have found fault with her as they did: and Doctor Dace, on this particular morning, would not have looked up to say, with his fagged, ironical air:

  “I suppose you didn’t get home from the ball till morning.”

  Theodora’s sense of being in the right enabled her to take the thrust with a dignity that would have awed the unfeeling parent of fiction.

  “I’m sorry to be late, father,” she said.

  Doctor Dace, who could never be counted on to behave like a father in a book, shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

  “Your sentiments do you credit, but they haven’t kept your mother’s breakfast warm.”

  “Hasn’t mother’s tray gone up yet?”

  “Who was to take it, I should like to know? The girls came down so late that I had to hustle them off before they’d finished breakfast, and Johnny’s hands were so dirty that I sent him back to his room to make himself decent. It’s a pretty thing for the doctor’s children to be the dirtiest little savages in Norton!”

  Theodora had hastily prepared her mother’s tray, leaving her own breakfast untouched. As she entered the room up-stairs, Mrs. Dace’s patient face turned to her with a smile much harder to bear than her father’s reproaches.

  “Mother, I’m so sorry—”

  “No matter, dear. I suppose Johnny’s buttons kept you. I can’t think what that boy does to his clothes!”

  Theodora set the tray down without speaking. It was impossible to own to having forgotten Johnny’s buttons without revealing the cause of her forgetfulness. For a few weeks longer she must bear to be misunderstood; then—ah, then if her novel were accepted, how gladly would she forget and forgive! But what if it were refused? She turned aside to hide the dismay that flushed her face. Well, then she would admit the truth—she would ask her parents’ pardon, and settle down without a murmur to an obscure existence of mending and combing.

  She had said to herself that after the manuscript had been sent, she would have time to look after the children and catch up with the mending; but she had reckoned without the postman. He came three times a day; and for an hour before each ring she was too excited to do anything but wonder if he would bring an answer this time, and for an hour afterward she moved about in a leaden stupor of disappointment. The children had never been so trying. They seemed to be always coming to pieces, like cheap furniture; one would have supposed they had been put together with bad glue. Mrs. Dace worried herself ill over Johnny’s tatters, Bertha’s bad marks at school, and Kate’s open abstention from cod-liver oil; and Doctor Dace, coming back late from a long round of visits to a fireless office with a smoky lamp, called out furiously to know if Theodora would kindly come down and remove the “East, West, home’s best” that hung above the empty grate.

  In the midst of it all, Miss Sophy Brill called. It was very kind of her to come, for she was the busiest woman in Norton. She made it her duty to look after other people’s affairs, and there was not a house in town but had the benefit of her personal supervision. She generally came when things were going wrong, and the sight of her bonnet on the door-step was a surer sign of calamity than a crape bow on the bell. After she left, Mrs. Dace looked very sad, and the doctor punished Johnny for warbling down the entry:

  “Miss Sophy Brill

  Is a bitter pill!” while Theodora, locking herself in her room, resolved with tears that she would never write another novel.

  The week was a long nightmare. Theodora could neither eat nor sleep. She was up early enough, but instead of looking after the children and seeing that breakfast was ready, she wandered down the road to meet the postman, and came back wan and empty-handed, oblivious of her morning duties. She had no idea how long the suspense would last; but she didn’t see how authors could live if they were kept waiting more than a week.

  Then suddenly, one afternoon—she never quite knew how or when it happened—she found herself with a Home Circle envelope in her hands, and her dazzled eyes flashing over a wild dance of words that wouldn’t settle down and make sense.

  “Dear Madam:” [They called her Madam! And then; yes, the words were beginning to fall into line now.] “Your novel, ‘April Showers,’ has been received, and we are glad to accept it on the usual terms. A serial on which we were counting for immediate publication has been delayed by the author’s illness, and the first chapters of ‘April Showers’ will therefore
appear in our midsummer number. Thanking you for favoring us with your manuscript, we remain,” and so forth.

  Theodora found herself in the wood beyond the schoolhouse. She was kneeling on the ground, brushing aside the dead leaves and pressing her lips to the little bursting green things that pushed up eager tips through last year’s decay. It was spring—spring! Everything was crowding toward the light, and in her own heart hundreds of germinating hopes had burst into sudden leaf. She wondered if the thrust of those little green fingers hurt the surface of the earth as her springing raptures hurt—yes, actually hurt! -her hot, constricted breast! She looked up through interlacing boughs at a tender, opaque blue sky full of the coming of a milky moon. She seemed enveloped in an atmosphere of loving comprehension. The brown earth throbbed with her joy, the tree-tops trembled with it, and a sudden star broke through the branches like an audible “I know!”

  Theodora, on the whole, behaved very well. Her mother cried, her father whistled and said he supposed he must put up with grounds in his coffee now, and be thankful if he ever got a hot meal again; while the children took the most deafening and harassing advantage of what seemed a sudden suspension of the laws of nature.

  Within a week everybody in Norton knew that Theodora had written a novel, and that it was coming out in the Home Circle. On Sundays, when she walked up the aisle, her friends dropped their prayer-books and the soprano sang false in her excitement. Girls with more pin-money than Theodora had ever dreamed of copied her hats and imitated her way of speaking. The local paper asked her for a poem; her old school-teachers stopped to shake hands and grew shy over their congratulations; and Miss Sophy Brill came to call. She had put on her Sunday bonnet, and her manner was almost abject. She ventured, very timidly, to ask her young friend how she wrote, whether it “just came to her,” and if she had found that the kind of pen she used made any difference; and wound up by begging Theodora to write a sentiment in her album.