The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories

by Edith Wharton

  V

  THERE came a reaction in which she decided to write to him. She even sketched out a letter of sisterly, almost motherly, remonstrance, in which she reminded him that he “still had all his life before him.” But she reflected that so, after all, had she; and that seemed to weaken the argument.

  In the end she decided not to send the letter. He had never spoken to her of his engagement to Gwendolen Matcher, and his letters had contained no allusion to any sentimental disturbance in his life. She had only his few broken words, that night by the river, on which to build her theory of the case. But illuminated by the phrase “an unfortunate attachment” the theory towered up, distinct and immovable, like some high landmark by which travellers shape their course. She had been loved—extraordinarily loved. But he had chosen that she should know of it by his silence rather than by his speech. He had understood that only on those terms could their transcendant communion continue—that he must lose her to keep her. To break that silence would be like spilling a cup of water in a waste of sand. There would be nothing left for her thirst.

  Her life, thenceforward, was bathed in a tranquil beauty. The days flowed by like a river beneath the moon—each ripple caught the brightness and passed it on. She began to take a renewed interest in her familiar round of duties. The tasks which had once seemed colourless and irksome had now a kind of sacrificial sweetness, a symbolic meaning into which she alone was initiated. She had been restless—had longed to travel; now she felt that she should never again care to leave Wentworth. But if her desire to wander had ceased, she travelled in spirit, performing invisible pilgrimages in the footsteps of her friend. She regretted that her one short visit to England had taken her so little out of London—that her acquaintance with the landscape had been formed chiefly through the windows of a railway carriage. She threw herself into the architectural studies of the Higher Thought Club, and distinguished herself, at the spring meetings, by her fluency, her competence, her inexhaustible curiosity on the subject of the growth of English Gothic. She ransacked the shelves of the college library, she borrowed photographs of the cathedrals, she pored over the folio pages of “The Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen.” She was like some banished princess who learns that she has inherited a domain in her own country, who knows that she will never see it, yet feels, wherever she walks, its soil beneath her feet.

  May was half over, and the Higher Thought Club was to hold its last meeting, previous to the college festivities which, in early June, agreeably disorganized the social routine of Wentworth. The meeting was to take place in Margaret Ransom’s drawing-room, and on the day before she sat upstairs preparing for her dual duties as hostess and orator—for she had been invited to read the final paper of the course. In order to sum up with precision her conclusions on the subject of English Gothic she had been rereading an analysis of the structural features of the principal English cathedrals; and she was murmuring over to herself the phrase: “The longitudinal arches of Lincoln have an approximately elliptical form,” when there came a knock on the door, and Maria’s voice announced: “There’s a lady down in the parlour.”

  Margaret’s soul dropped from the heights of the shadowy vaulting to the dead level of an afternoon call at Wentworth.

  “A lady? Did she give no name?”

  Maria became confused. “She only said she was a lady—” and in reply to her mistress’s look of mild surprise: “Well, ma’am, she told me so three or four times over.”

  Margaret laid her book down, leaving it open at the description of Lincoln, and slowly descended the stairs. As she did so, she repeated to herself: “The longitudinal arches are elliptical.”

  On the threshold below, she had the odd impression that her bare and inanimate drawing-room was brimming with life and noise—an impression produced, as she presently perceived, by the resolute forward dash—it was almost a pounce—of the one small figure restlessly measuring its length.

  The dash checked itself within a yard of Margaret, and the lady—a stranger—held back long enough to stamp on her hostess a sharp impression of sallowness, leanness, keenness, before she said, in a voice that might have been addressing an unruly committee meeting: “I am Lady Caroline Duckett—a fact I found it impossible to make clear to the young woman who let me in.”

  A warm wave rushed up from Margaret’s heart to her throat and forehead. She held out both hands impulsively. “Oh, I’m so glad—I’d no idea—”

  Her voice sank under her visitor’s impartial scrutiny.

  “I don’t wonder,” said the latter drily. “I suppose she didn’t mention, either, that my object in calling here was to see Mrs. Ransom?”

  “Oh, yes—won’t you sit down?” Margaret pushed a chair forward. She seated herself at a little distance, brain and heart humming with a confused interchange of signals. This dark sharp woman was his aunt—the “clever aunt” who had had such a hard life, but had always managed to keep her head above water. Margaret remembered that Guy had spoken of her kindness—perhaps she would seem kinder when they had talked together a little. Meanwhile the first impression she produced was of an amplitude out of all proportion to her somewhat scant exterior. With her small flat figure, her shabby heterogeneous dress, she was as dowdy as any Professor’s wife at Wentworth; but her dowdiness (Margaret borrowed a literary analogy to define it), her dowdiness was somehow “of the centre.” Like the insignificant emissary of a great power, she was to be judged rather by her passports than her person.

  While Margaret was receiving these impressions, Lady Caroline, with quick bird-like twists of her head, was gathering others from the pale void spaces of the drawing-room. Her eyes, divided by a sharp nose like a bill, seemed to be set far enough apart to see at separate angles; but suddenly she bent both of them on Margaret.

  “This is Mrs. Ransom’s house?” she asked, with an emphasis on the verb that gave a distinct hint of unfulfilled expectations.

  Margaret assented.

  “Because your American houses, especially in the provincial towns, all look so remarkably alike, that I thought I might have been mistaken; and as my time is extremely limited—in fact I’m sailing on Wednesday—”

  She paused long enough to let Margaret say: “I had no idea you were in this country.”

  Lady Caroline made no attempt to take this up. “And so much of it,” she carried on her sentence, “has been wasted in talking to people I really hadn’t the slightest desire to see, that you must excuse me if I go straight to the point.”

  Margaret felt a sudden tension of the heart. “Of course,” she said while a voice within her cried: “He is dead—he has left me a message.”

  There was another pause; then Lady Caroline went on, with increasing asperity: “So that—in short—if I could see Mrs. Ransom at once—”

  Margaret looked up in surprise. “I am Mrs. Ransom,” she said.

  The other stared a moment, with much the same look of cautious incredulity that had marked her inspection of the drawing-room. Then light came to her.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. I should have said that I wished to see Mrs. Robert Ransom, not Mrs. Ransom. But I understood that in the States you don’t make those distinctions.” She paused a moment, and then went on, before Margaret could answer: “Perhaps, after all, it’s as well that I should see you instead, since you’re evidently one of the household—your son and his wife live with you, I suppose? Yes, on the whole, then, it’s better—I shall be able to talk so much more frankly.” She spoke as if, as a rule, circumstances prevented her giving rein to this propensity. “And frankness, of course, is the only way out of this—this extremely tiresome complication. You know, I suppose, that my nephew thinks he’s in love with your daughter-in-law?”

  Margaret made a slight movement, but her visitor pressed on without heeding it. “Oh, don’t fancy, please, that I’m pretending to take a high moral ground—though his mother does, poor dear! I can perfectly imagine that in a place like this—I’ve just been driving abo
ut it for two hours—a young man of Guy’s age would have to provide himself with some sort of distraction, and he’s not the kind to go in for anything objectionable. Oh, we quite allow for that—we should allow for the whole affair, if it hadn’t so preposterously ended in his throwing over the girl he was engaged to, and upsetting an arrangement that affected a number of people besides himself. I understand that in the States it’s different—the young people have only themselves to consider. In England—in our class, I mean—a great deal may depend on a young man’s making a good match; and in Guy’s case I may say that his mother and sisters (I won’t include myself, though I might) have been simply stranded—thrown overboard—by his freak. You can understand how serious it is when I tell you that it’s that and nothing else that has brought me all the way to America. And my first idea was to go straight to your daughter-in-law, since her influence is the only thing we can count on now, and put it to her fairly, as I’m putting it to you. But, on the whole, I dare say it’s better to see you first—you might give me an idea of the line to take with her. I’m prepared to throw myself on her mercy!”

  Margaret rose from her chair, outwardly rigid in proportion to her inward tremor.

  “You don’t understand—” she began.

  Lady Caroline brushed the interruption aside. “Oh, but I do—completely! I cast no reflection on your daughter-in-law. Guy has made it quite clear to us that his attachment is—has, in short, not been rewarded. But don’t you see that that’s the worst part of it? There’d be much more hope of his recovering if Mrs. Robert Ransom had—had—”

  Margaret’s voice broke from her in a cry. “I am Mrs. Robert Ransom,” she said.

  If Lady Caroline Duckett had hitherto given her hostess the impression of a person not easily silenced, this fact added sensibly to the effect produced by the intense stillness which now fell on her.

  She sat quite motionless, her large bangled hands clasped about the meagre fur boa she had unwound from her neck on entering, her rusty black veil pushed up to the edge of a “fringe” of doubtful authenticity, her thin lips parted on a gasp that seemed to sharpen itself on the edges of her teeth. So overwhelming and helpless was her silence that Margaret began to feel a motion of pity beneath her indignation—a desire at least to facilitate the excuses which must terminate their disastrous colloquy. But when Lady Caroline found voice she did not use it to excuse herself.

  “You can’t be,” she said, quite simply.

  “Can’t be?” Margaret stammered, with a flushing cheek.

  “I mean, it’s some mistake. Are there two Mrs. Robert Ransoms in the same town? Your family arrangements are so extremely puzzling.” She had a farther rush of enlightenment. “Oh, I see! I ought of course to have asked for Mrs. Robert Ransom ‘Junior’!”

  The idea sent her to her feet with a haste which showed her impatience to make up for lost time.

  “There is no other Mrs. Robert Ransom at Wentworth,” said Margaret.

  “No other—no ‘Junior’? Are you sure?“ Lady Caroline fell back into her seat again. “Then I simply don’t see,” she murmured helplessly.

  Margaret’s blush had fixed itself on her throbbing forehead. She remained standing, while her strange visitor continued to gaze at her with a perturbation in which the consciousness of indiscretion had evidently as yet no part.

  “I simply don’t see,” she repeated.

  Suddenly she sprang up, and advancing to Margaret laid an inspired hand on her arm. “But, my dear woman, you can help us out all the same; you can help us to find out who it is—and you will, won’t you? Because, as it’s not you, you can’t in the least mind what I’ve been saying—”

  Margaret, freeing her arm from her visitor’s hold, drew back a step; but Lady Caroline instantly rejoined her.

  “Of course, I can see that if it had been, you might have been annoyed: I dare say I put the case stupidly—but I’m so bewildered by this new development—by his using you all this time as a pretext—that I really don’t know where to turn for light on the mystery—”

  She had Margaret in her imperious grasp again, but the latter broke from her with a more resolute gesture.

  “I’m afraid I have no light to give you,” she began; but once more Lady Caroline caught her up.

  “Oh, but do please understand me! I condemn Guy most strongly for using your name—when we all know you’d been so amazingly kind to him! I haven’t a word to say in his defence—but of course the important thing now is: who is the woman, since you’re not?”

  The question rang out loudly, as if all the pale puritan corners of the room flung it back with a shudder at the speaker. In the silence that ensued Margaret felt the blood ebbing back to her heart; then she said, in a distinct and level voice: “I know nothing of the history of Mr. Dawnish.”

  Lady Caroline gave a stare and a gasp. Her distracted hand groped for her boa and she began to wind it mechanically about her long neck.

  “It would really be an enormous help to us—and to poor Gwendolen Matcher,” she persisted pleadingly. “And you’d be doing Guy himself a good turn.”

  Margaret remained silent and motionless while her visitor drew on one of the worn gloves she had pulled off to adjust her veil. Lady Caroline gave the veil a final twitch.

  “I’ve come a tremendously long way,” she said, “and, since it isn’t you, I can’t think why you won’t help me….”

  When the door had closed on her visitor Margaret Ransom went slowly up the stairs to her room. As she dragged her feet from one step to another, she remembered how she had sprung up the same steep flight after that visit of Guy Dawnish’s when she had looked in the glass and seen on her face the blush of youth.

  When she reached her room she bolted the door as she had done that day, and again looked at herself in the narrow mirror above her dressing-table. It was just a year since then—the elms were budding again, the willows hanging their green veil above the bench by the river. But there was no trace of youth left in her face—she saw it now as others had doubtless always seen it. If it seemed as it did to Lady Caroline Duckett, what look must it have worn to the fresh gaze of young Guy Dawnish?

  A pretext—she had been a pretext. He had used her name to screen some one else—or perhaps merely to escape from a situation of which he was weary. She did not care to conjecture what his motive had been—everything connected with him had grown so remote and alien. She felt no anger—only an unspeakable sadness, a sadness which she knew would never be appeased.

  She looked at herself long and steadily; she wished to clear her eyes of all illusions. Then she turned away and took her usual seat beside her work-table. From where she sat she could look down the empty elm-shaded street, up which, at this hour every day, she was sure to see her husband’s figure advancing. She would see it presently—she would see it for many years to come. She had a sudden aching sense of the length of the years that stretched before her. Strange that one who was not young should still, in all likelihood, have so long to live!

  Nothing was changed in the setting of her life, perhaps nothing would ever change in it. She would certainly live and die in Wentworth. And meanwhile the days would go on as usual, bringing the usual obligations. As the word flitted through her brain she remembered that she had still to put the finishing touches to the paper she was to read the next afternoon at the meeting of the Higher Thought Club.

  The book she had been reading lay face downward beside her, where she had left it an hour ago. She took it up, and slowly and painfully, like a child laboriously spelling out the syllables, she went on with the rest of the sentence:

  —“and they spring from a level not much above that of the springing of the transverse and diagonal ribs, which are so arranged as to give a convex curve to the surface of the vaulting conoid.”

  THE VERDICT

  I HAD always thought Jack Gisburn rather a cheap genius—though a good fellow enough—so it was no great surprise to me to hear that, in the height of
his glory, he had dropped his painting, married a rich widow, and established himself in a villa on the Riviera. (Though I rather thought it would have been Rome or Florence.)

  “The height of his glory”—that was what the women called it. I can hear Mrs. Gideon Thwing—his last Chicago sitter—deploring his unaccountable abdication. “Of course it’s going to send the value of my picture ‘way up; but I don’t think of that, Mr. Rickham—the loss to Arrt is all I think of.” The word, on Mrs. Thwing’s lips, multiplied its rs as though they were reflected in an endless vista of mirrors. And it was not only the Mrs. Thwings who mourned. Had not the exquisite Hermia Croft, at the last Grafton Gallery show, stopped me before Gisburn’s “Moon-dancers” to say, with tears in her eyes: “We shall not look upon its like again”?

  Well!—even through the prism of Hermia’s tears I felt able to face the fact with equanimity. Poor Jack Gisburn! The women had made him—it was fitting that they should mourn him. Among his own sex fewer regrets were heard, and in his own trade hardly a murmur. Professional jealousy? Perhaps. If it were, the honour of the craft was vindicated by little Claude Nutley, who, in all good faith, brought out in the Burlington a very handsome “obituary” on Jack—one of those showy articles stocked with random technicalities that I have heard (I won’t say by whom) compared to Gisburn’s painting. And so—his resolve being apparently irrevocable—the discussion gradually died out, and, as Mrs. Thwing had predicted, the price of “Gisburns” went up.

  It was not till three years later that, in the course of a few weeks’ idling on the Riviera, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder why Gisburn had given up his painting. On reflection, it really was a tempting problem. To accuse his wife would have been too easy—his fair sitters had been denied the solace of saying that Mrs. Gisburn had “dragged him down.” For Mrs. Gisburn—as such—had not existed till nearly a year after Jack’s resolve had been taken. It might be that he had married her—since he liked his ease—because he didn’t want to go on painting; but it would have been hard to prove that he had given up his painting because he had married her.