Edith Wharton - SSC 11

by Uncollected Stories (v2. 1)

“They all forgot to read the story for gazing at its author?”

  “Apparently.” There was a painful pause. The review dropped from his lax hand.

  “Your tea—?” she suggested, stiffly.

  “Oh, yes; to be sure…. Thanks.”

  There was another silence, during which the act of pouring out the milk, and the dropping of the sugar into the cup, seemed to assume enormous magnitude, and make an echoing noise. At length Ivy said, with an effort at lightness, “Since I know who you are, Mr. Harbard,—would you mind telling me what you were laughing at in my story?”

  He leaned back against the pillows and wrinkled his forehead anxiously.

  “My dear Miss Spang, not in the least—if I could.”

  “If you could?”

  “Yes; I mean in any understandable way.”

  “In other words, you think it so silly that you don’t dare to tell me anything more?”

  He shook his head. “No; but it’s queer—it’s puzzling. You’ve got hold of a wonderfully good subject: and that’s the main thing, of course—”

  Ivy interrupted him eagerly. “The subject is the main thing?”

  “Why, naturally; it’s only the people without invention who tell you it isn’t.”

  “Oh,” she gasped, trying to readjust her carefully acquired theory of esthetics.

  “You’ve got hold of an awfully good subject,” Harbard continued; “but you’ve rather mauled it, haven’t you?”

  She sat before him with her head drooping, and the blood running back from her pale cheeks. Two tears had gathered on her lashes.

  “There!” the novelist cried out irritably. “I knew that as soon as I was frank you’d resent it! What was the earthly use of asking me?”

  She made no answer, and he added, lowering his voice a little, “Are you very angry with me, really?”

  “No, of course not,” she declared with a stony gayety.

  “I’m so glad you’re not; because I do want most awfully to ask you for one of these photographs,” he concluded.

  She rose abruptly from her seat. To save her life she could not conceal her disappointment. But she picked up the tray with feverish animation.

  “A photograph? Of course—with pleasure. And now, if you’ve quite finished. I’m afraid I must run back to my teapot.”

  Harold Harbard lay on the bed and looked at her. As she reached the door he said, “Miss Spang!”

  “Yes?” she rejoined, pausing reluctantly.

  “You were angry just now because I didn’t admire your story; and now you’re angrier still because I do admire your photograph. Do you wonder that we novelists find such an inexhaustible field in Woman?”

  (Woman’s Home Companion 46, September 1919)

  

  All Souls’.

  Queer and inexplicable as the business was, on the surface it appeared fairly simple—at the time, at least; but with the passing of years, and owing to there not having been a single witness of what happened except Sara Clayburn herself, the stories about it have become so exaggerated, and often so ridiculously inaccurate, that it seems necessary that some one connected with the affair, though not actually present—I repeat that when it happened my cousin was (or thought she was) quite alone in her house—should record the few facts actually known.

  In those days I was often at Whitegates (as the place had always been called)—I was there, in fact, not long before, and almost immediately after, the strange happenings of those thirty-six hours. Jim Clayburn and his widow were both my cousins, and because of that, and of my intimacy with them, both families think I am more likely than anybody else to be able to get at the facts, as far as they can be called facts, and as anybody can get at them. So I have written down, as clearly as I could, the gist of the various talks I had with cousin Sara, when she could be got to talk—it wasn’t often—about what occurred during that mysterious week-end.

  I read the other day in a book by a fashionable essayist that ghosts went out when electric light came in. What nonsense! The writer, though he is fond of dabbling, in a literary way, in the supernatural, hasn’t even reached the threshold of his subject. As between turreted castles patrolled by headless victims with clanking chains, and the comfortable suburban house with a refrigerator and central heating where you feel, as soon as you’re in it, that there’s something wrong, give me the latter for sending a chill down the spine! And, by the way, haven’t you noticed that it’s generally not the high-strung and imaginative who see ghosts, but the calm matter-of-fact people who don’t believe in them, and are sure they wouldn’t mind if they did see one? Well, that was the case with Sara Clayburn and her house. The house, in spite of its age—it was built, I believe, about 1780—was open, airy, high-ceilinged, with electricity, central heating and all the modern appliances; and its mistress was—well, very much like her house. And, anyhow, this isn’t exactly a ghost-story, and I’ve dragged in the analogy only as a way of showing you what kind of woman my cousin was, and how unlikely it would have seemed that what happened at Whitegates should have happened just there—or to her.

  When Jim Clayburn died the family all thought that, as the couple had no children, his widow would give up Whitegates and move either to New York or Boston—for being of good Colonial stock, with many relatives and friends, she would have found a place ready for her in either. But Sally Clayburn seldom did what other people expected, and in this case she did exactly the contrary: she stayed at Whitegates.

  “What, turn my back on the old house—tear up all the family roots, and go and hang myself up in a bird-cage flat in one of those new sky-scrapers in Lexington Avenue, with a bunch of chickweed and a cuttle-fish to replace my good Connecticut mutton? No, thank you. Here I belong, and here I stay till my executors hand the place over to Jim’s next of kin—that stupid fat Presley boy… Well, don’t let’s talk about him. But I tell you what—I’ll keep him out of here as long as I can.” And she did—for being still in the early fifties when her husband died, and a muscular, resolute figure of a woman, she was more than a match for the fat Presley boy, and attended his funeral a few years ago, in correct mourning, with a faint smile under her veil.

  Whitegates was a pleasant hospitable-looking house, on a height overlooking the stately windings of the Connecticut river; but it was five or six miles from Norrington, the nearest town, and its situation would certainly have seemed remote and lonely to modern servants. Luckily, however, Sara Clayburn had inherited from her mother-in-law two or three old stand-bys who seemed as much a part of the family tradition as the roof they lived under; and I never heard of her having any trouble in her domestic arrangements.

  The house, in Colonial days, had been four-square, with four spacious rooms on the ground-floor, an oak-floored hall dividing them, the usual kitchen-extension at the back, and a good attic under the roof. But Jim’s grand-parents, when interest in the “Colonial” began to revive, in the early ‘eighties, had added two wings, at right angles to the south front, so that the old “circle” before the front door became a grassy court, enclosed on three sides, with a big elm in the middle. Thus the house was turned into a roomy dwelling, in which the last three generations of Clayburns had exercised a large hospitality; but the architect had respected the character of the old house, and the enlargement made it more comfortable without lessening its simplicity. There was a lot of land about it, and Jim Clayburn, like his fathers before him, farmed it, not without profit, and played a considerable and respected part in state politics. The Clayburns were always spoken of as a “good influence” in the county, and the townspeople were glad when they learned that Sara did not mean to desert the place—”though it must be lonesome, winters, living all alone up there atop of that hill”, they remarked as the days shortened, and the first snow began to pile up under the quadruple row of elms along the common.

  Well, if I’ve given you a sufficiently clear idea of Whitegates and the Clayburns—who shared with their old house a sort of reassuring
orderliness and dignity—I’ll efface myself, and tell the tale, not in my cousin’s words, for they were too confused and fragmentary, but as I built it up gradually out of her half-avowals and nervous reticences. If the thing happened at all—and I must leave you to judge of that—I think it must have happened in this way…

  

  I.

  The morning had been bitter, with a driving sleet—though it was only the last day of October—but after lunch a watery sun showed for a while through banked-up woolly clouds, and tempted Sara Clayburn out. She was an energetic walker, and given, at that season, to tramping three or four miles along the valley road, and coming back by way of Shaker’s wood. She had made her usual round, and was following the main drive to the house when she overtook a plainly dressed woman walking in the same direction. If the scene had not been so lonely—the way to Whitegates at the end of an autumn day was not a frequented one—Mrs. Clayburn might not have paid any attention to the woman, for she was in no way noticeable; but when she caught up with the intruder my cousin was surprised to find that she was a stranger—for the mistress of Whitegates prided herself on knowing, at least by sight, most of her country neighbours. It was almost dark, and the woman’s face was hardly visible; but Mrs. Clayburn told me she recalled her as middle-aged, plain and rather pale.

  Mrs. Clayburn greeted her, and then added: “You’re going to the house?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the woman answered, in a voice that the Connecticut valley in old days would have called “foreign”, but that would have been unnoticed by ears used to the modern multiplicity of tongues. “No, I couldn’t say where she came from,” Sara always said. “What struck me as queer was that I didn’t know her.”

  She asked the woman, politely, what she wanted, and the woman answered: “Only to see one of the girls.” The answer was natural enough, and Mrs. Clayburn nodded and turned off from the drive to the lower part of the gardens, so that she saw no more of the visitor then or afterward. And, in fact, a half hour later something happened which put the stranger entirely out of her mind. The brisk and light-footed Mrs. Clayburn, as she approached the house, slipped on a frozen puddle, turned her ankle and lay suddenly helpless.

  Price, the butler, and Agnes, the dour old Scottish maid whom Sara had inherited from her mother-in-law, of course knew exactly what to do. In no time they had their mistress stretched out on a lounge, and Dr. Selgrove had been called up from Norrington. When he arrived, he ordered Mrs. Clayburn to bed, did the necessary examining and bandaging, and shook his head over her ankle, which he feared was fractured. He thought, however, that if she would swear not to get up, or even shift the position of her leg, he could spare her the discomfort of putting it in plaster. Mrs. Clayburn agreed, the more promptly as the doctor warned her that any rash movement would prolong her immobility. Her quick imperious nature made the prospect trying, and she was annoyed with herself for having been so clumsy. But the mischief was done, and she immediately thought what an opportunity she would have for going over her accounts and catching up with her correspondence. So she settled down resignedly in her bed.

  “And you won’t miss much, you know, if you have to stay there a few days. It’s beginning to snow, and it looks as if we were in for a good spell of it,” the doctor remarked, glancing through the window as he gathered up his implements. “Well, we don’t often get snow here as early as this; but winter’s got to begin sometime,” he concluded philosophically. At the door he stopped to add: “You don’t want me to send up a nurse from Norrington? Not to nurse you, you know; there’s nothing much to do till I see you again. But this is a pretty lonely place when the snow begins, and I thought maybe—”

  Sara Clayburn laughed. “Lonely? With my old servants? You forget how many winters I’ve spent here alone with them. Two of them were with me in my mother-in-law’s time.”

  “That’s so,” Dr. Selgrove agreed. “You’re a good deal luckier than most people, that way. Well, let me see; this is Saturday. We’ll have to let the inflammation go down before we can X-ray you. Monday morning, first thing, I’ll be here with the X-ray man. If you want me sooner, call me up.” And he was gone.

  

  II.

  The foot, at first, had not been very painful; but toward the small hours Mrs. Clayburn began to suffer. She was a bad patient, like most healthy and active people. Not being used to pain she did not know how to bear it; and the hours of wakefulness and immobility seemed endless. Agnes, before leaving her, had made everything as comfortable as possible. She had put a jug of lemonade within reach, and had even (Mrs. Clayburn thought it odd afterward) insisted on bringing in a tray with sandwiches and a thermos of tea. “In case you’re hungry in the night, madam.”

  “Thank you; but I’m never hungry in the night. And I certainly shan’t be tonight—only thirsty. I think I’m feverish.”

  “Well, there’s the lemonade, madam.”

  “That will do. Take the other things away, please.” (Sara had always hated the sight of unwanted food “messing about” in her room.)

  “Very well, madam. Only you might—”

  “Please take it away,” Mrs. Clayburn repeated irritably.

  “Very good, madam.” But as Agnes went out, her mistress heard her set the tray down softly on a table behind the screen which shut off the door.

  “Obstinate old goose!” she thought, rather touched by the old woman’s insistence.

  Sleep, once it had gone, would not return, and the long black hours moved more and more slowly. How late the dawn came in November! “If only I could move my leg,” she grumbled.

  She lay still and strained her ears for the first steps of the servants. Whitegates was an early house, its mistress setting the example; it would surely not be long now before one of the women came. She was tempted to ring for Agnes, but refrained. The woman had been up late, and this was Sunday morning, when the household was always allowed a little extra time. Mrs. Clayburn reflected restlessly: “I was a fool not to let her leave the tea beside the bed, as she wanted to. I wonder if I could get up and get it?” But she remembered the doctor’s warning, and dared not move. Anything rather than risk prolonging her imprisonment…

  Ah, there was the stable-clock striking. How loud it sounded in the snowy stillness! One—two—three—four—five…

  What? Only five? Three hours and a quarter more before she could hope to hear the door-handle turned… After a while she dozed off again, uncomfortably.

  Another sound aroused her. Again the stable-clock. She listened. But the room was still in deep darkness, and only six strokes fell… She thought of reciting something to put her to sleep; but she seldom read poetry, and being naturally a good sleeper, she could not remember any of the usual devices against insomnia. The whole of her leg felt like lead now. The bandages had grown terribly tight—her ankle must have swollen… She lay staring at the dark windows, watching for the first glimmer of dawn. At last she saw a pale filter of daylight through the shutters. One by one the objects between the bed and the window recovered first their outline, then their bulk, and seemed to be stealthily re-grouping themselves, after goodness knows what secret displacements during the night. Who that has lived in an old house could possibly believe that the furniture in it stays still all night? Mrs. Clayburn almost fancied she saw one little slender-legged table slipping hastily back into its place.

  “It knows Agnes is coming, and it’s afraid,” she thought whimsically. Her bad night must have made her imaginative, for such nonsense as that about the furniture had never occurred to her before…

  At length, after hours more, as it seemed, the stable-clock struck eight. Only another quarter of an hour. She watched the hand moving slowly across the face of the little clock beside her bed… Ten minutes … five … only five! Agnes was as punctual as destiny … in two minutes now she would come. The two minutes passed, and she did not come. Poor Agnes—she had looked pale and tired the night before. She had overslept herself, no doubt—or
perhaps she felt ill, and would send the housemaid to replace her. Mrs. Clayburn waited.

  She waited half an hour; then she reached up to the bell at the head of the bed. Poor old Agnes—her mistress felt guilty about waking her. But Agnes did not appear—and after a considerable interval Mrs. Clayburn, now with a certain impatience, rang again. She rang once; twice; three times—but still no one came.

  Once more she waited; then she said to herself: “There must be something wrong with the electricity.” Well—she could find out by switching on the bed-lamp at her elbow (how admirably the room was equipped with every practical appliance!). She switched it on—but no light came. Electric current cut off; and it was Sunday, and nothing could be done about it till the next morning. Unless it turned out to be just a burnt-out fuse, which Price could remedy. Well, in a moment now some one would surely come to her door.

  It was nine o’clock before she admitted to herself that something uncommonly strange must have happened in the house. She began to feel a nervous apprehension; but she was not the woman to encourage it. If only she had had the telephone put in her room, instead of out on the landing! She measured mentally the distance to be travelled, remembered Dr. Selgrove’s admonition, and wondered if her broken ankle would carry her there. She dreaded the prospect of being put in plaster, but she had to get to the telephone, whatever happened.

  She wrapped herself in her dressing-gown, found a walking stick, and resting heavily on it, dragged herself to the door. In her bedroom the careful Agnes had closed and fastened the shutters, so that it was not much lighter there than at dawn; but outside in the corridor the cold whiteness of the snowy morning seemed almost reassuring. Mysterious things—dreadful things—were associated with darkness; and here was the wholesome prosaic daylight come again to banish them. Mrs. Clayburn looked about her and listened. Silence. A deep nocturnal silence in that day-lit house, in which five people were presumably coming and going about their work. It was certainly strange… She looked out of the window, hoping to see some one crossing the court or coming along the drive. But no one was in sight, and the snow seemed to have the place to itself: a quiet steady snow. It was still falling, with a business-like regularity, muffling the outer world in layers on layers of thick white velvet, and intensifying the silence within. A noiseless world—were people so sure that absence of noise was what they wanted? Let them first try a lonely country-house in a November snow-storm!