Roman Fever and Other Stories

by Edith Wharton

  “Well—what concern of yours was all this dirty business? Why should she go to you?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s so simple. I was to wheedle his secret out of you.”

  “To oblige that woman?”

  “Yes; or, if I was unwilling to oblige her, then to protect myself.”

  “To protect yourself? Against whom?”

  “Against her telling everyone in the hotel that she and I are in the same box.”

  “She threatened that?”

  “She left me the choice of telling it myself or of doing it for me.”

  “The beast!”

  There was a long silence. Lydia had seated herself on the sofa, beyond the radius of the lamp, and he leaned against the window. His next question surprised her.

  “When did this happen? At what time, I mean?”

  She looked at him vaguely.

  “I don’t know—after luncheon, I think. Yes, I remember; it must have been at about three o’clock.”

  He stepped into the middle of the room and as he approached the light she saw that his brow had cleared.

  “Why do you ask?” she said.

  “Because when I came in, at about half-past three, the mail was just being distributed, and Mrs. Cope was waiting as usual to pounce on her letters; you know she was always watching for the postman. She was standing so close to me that I couldn’t help seeing a big official-looking envelope that was handed to her. She tore it open, gave one look at the inside, and rushed off upstairs like a whirlwind, with the director shouting after her that she had left all her other letters behind. I don’t believe she ever thought of you again after that paper was put into her hand.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was too busy. I was sitting in the window, watching for you, when the five o’clock boat left, and who should go on board, bag and baggage, valet and maid, dressing-bags and poodle, but Mrs. Cope and Trevenna. Just an hour and a half to pack up in! And you should have seen her when they started. She was radiant—shaking hands with everybody—waving her handkerchief from the deck—distributing bows and smiles like an empress. If ever a woman got what she wanted just in the nick of time that woman did. She’ll be Lady Trevenna within a week, I’ll wager.”

  “You think she has her divorce?”

  “I’m sure of it. And she must have got it just after her talk with you.”

  Lydia was silent.

  At length she said, with a kind of reluctance, “She was horribly angry when she left me. It wouldn’t have taken long to tell Lady Susan Condit.”

  “Lady Susan Condit has not been told.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because when I went downstairs half an hour ago I met Lady Susan on the way—”

  He stopped, half smiling.

  “Well?”

  “And she stopped to ask if I thought you would act as patroness to a charity concert she is getting up.”

  In spite of themselves they both broke into a laugh. Lydia’s ended in sobs and she sank down with her face hidden. Gannett bent over her, seeking her hands.

  “That vile woman—I ought to have warned you to keep away from her; I can’t forgive myself! But he spoke to me in confidence; and I never dreamed—well, it’s all over now.”

  Lydia lifted her head.

  “Not for me. It’s only just beginning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She put him gently aside and moved in her turn to the window. Then she went on, with her face turned toward the shimmering blackness of the lake, “You see of course that it might happen again at any moment.”

  “What?”

  “This—this risk of being found out. And we could hardly count again on such a lucky combination of chances, could we?”

  He sat down with a groan.

  Still keeping her face toward the darkness, she said, “I want you to go and tell Lady Susan—and the others.”

  Gannett, who had moved towards her, paused a few feet off.

  “Why do you wish me to do this?” he said at length, with less surprise in his voice than she had been prepared for.

  “Because I’ve behaved basely, abominably, since we came here: letting these people believe we were married—lying with every breath I drew—”

  “Yes, I’ve felt that too,” Gannett exclaimed with sudden energy.

  The words shook her like a tempest: all her thoughts seemed to fall about her in ruins.

  “You—you’ve felt so?”

  “Of course I have.” He spoke with low-voiced vehemence. “Do you suppose I like playing the sneak any better than you do? It’s damnable.”

  He had dropped on the arm of a chair, and they stared at each other like blind people who suddenly see.

  “But you have liked it here,” she faltered.

  “Oh, I’ve liked it—I’ve liked it.” He moved impatiently. “Haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” she burst out; “that’s the worst of it—that’s what I can’t bear. I fancied it was for your sake that I insisted on staying—because you thought you could write here; and perhaps just at first that really was the reason. But afterwards I wanted to stay myself—I loved it.” She broke into a laugh. “Oh, do you see the full derision of it? These people—the very prototypes of the bores you took me away from, with the same fenced-in view of life, the same keep-off-the-grass morality, the same little cautious virtues and the same little frightened vices—well, I’ve clung to them, I’ve delighted in them, I’ve done my best to please them. I’ve toadied Lady Susan, I’ve gossipped with Miss Pinsent, I’ve pretended to be shocked with Mrs. Ainger. Respectability! It was the one thing in life that I was sure I didn’t care about, and it’s grown so precious to me that I’ve stolen it because I couldn’t get it in any other way.”

  She moved across the room and returned to his side with another laugh.

  “I who used to fancy myself unconventional! I must have been born with a card-case in my hand. You should have seen me with that poor woman in the garden. She came to me for help, poor creature, because she fancied that, having ‘sinned,’ as they call it, I might feel some pity for others who had been tempted in the same way. Not I! She didn’t know me. Lady Susan would have been kinder, because Lady Susan wouldn’t have been afraid. I hated the woman—my one thought was not to be seen with her—I could have killed her for guessing my secret. The one thing that mattered to me at that moment was my standing with Lady Susan!”

  Gannett did not speak.

  “And you—you’ve felt it too!” she broke out accusingly. “You’ve enjoyed being with these people as much as I have; you’ve let the chaplain talk to you by the hour about ‘The Reign of Law’ and Professor Drummond. When they asked you to hand the plate in church I was watching you—you wanted to accept”

  She stepped close, laying her hand on his arm.

  “Do you know, I begin to see what marriage is for. It’s to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them—children, duties, visits, bores, relations—the things that protect married people from each other. We’ve been too close together—that has been our sin. We’ve seen the nakedness of each other’s souls.”

  She sank again on the sofa, hiding her face in her hands.

  Gannett stood above her perplexedly: he felt as though she were being swept away by some implacable current while he stood helpless on its bank.

  At length he said, “Lydia, don’t think me a brute—but don’t you see yourself that it won’t do?”

  “Yes, I see it won’t do,” she said without raising her head.

  His face cleared.

  “Then we’ll go to-morrow.”

  “Go—where?”

  “To Paris; to be married.”

  For a long time she made no answer; then she asked slowly, “Would they have us here if we were married?”

  “Have us here?”

  “I mean Lady Susan—and the
others.”

  “Have us here? Of course they would.”

  “Not if they knew—at least, not unless they could pretend not to know.”

  He made an impatient gesture.

  “We shouldn’t come back here, of course; and other people needn’t know—no one need know.”

  She sighed. “Then it’s only another form of deception and a meaner one. Don’t you see that?”

  “I see that we’re not accountable to any Lady Susans on earth!”

  “Then why are you ashamed of what we are doing here?”

  “Because I’m sick of pretending that you’re my wife when you’re not—when you won’t be.”

  She looked at him sadly.

  “If I were your wife you’d have to go on pretending. You’d have to pretend that I’d never been—anything else. And our friends would have to pretend that they believed what you pretended.”

  Gannett pulled off the sofa-tassel and flung it away.

  “You’re impossible,” he groaned.

  “It’s not I—it’s our being together that’s impossible. I only want you to see that marriage won’t help it.”

  “What will help it then?”

  She raised her head.

  “My leaving you.”

  “Your leaving me?” He sat motionless, staring at the tassel which lay at the other end of the room. At length some impulse of retaliation for the pain she was inflicting made him say deliberately.

  “And where would you go if you left me?”

  “Oh!” she cried, wincing.

  He was at her side in an instant.

  “Lydia—Lydia—you know I didn’t mean it; I couldn’t mean it! But you’ve driven me out of my senses; I don’t know what I’m saying. Can’t you get out of this labyrinth of self-torture? It’s destroying us both.”

  “That’s why I must leave you.”

  “How easily you say it!” He drew her hands down and made her face him. “You’re very scrupulous about yourself—and others. But have you thought of me? You have no right to leave me unless you’ve ceased to care—”

  “It’s because I care—”

  “Then I have a right to be heard. If you love me you can’t leave me.”

  Her eyes defied him.

  “Why not?”

  He dropped her hands and rose from her side.

  “Can you?” he said sadly.

  The hour was late and the lamp flickered and sank. She stood up with a shiver and turned toward the door of her room.

  V.

  AT daylight a sound in Lydia’s room woke Gannett from a troubled sleep. He sat up and listened. She was moving about softly, as though fearful of disturbing him. He heard her push back one of the creaking shutters; then there was a moment’s silence, which seemed to indicate that she was waiting to see if the noise had roused him.

  Presently she began to move again. She had spent a sleepless night, probably, and was dressing to go down to the garden for a breath of air. Gannett rose also; but some undefinable instinct made his movements as cautious as hers. He stole to his window and looked out through the slats of the shutter.

  It had rained in the night and the dawn was gray and lifeless.

  The cloud-muffled hills across the lake were reflected in its surface as in a tarnished mirror. In the garden, the birds were beginning to shake the drops from the motionless laurustinus-boughs.

  An immense pity for Lydia filled Gannett’s soul. Her seeming intellectual independence had blinded him for a time to the feminine cast of her mind. He had never thought of her as a woman who wept and clung: there was a lucidity in her intuitions that made them appear to be the result of reasoning. Now he saw the cruelty he had committed in detaching her from the normal conditions of life; he felt, too, the insight with which she had hit upon the real cause of their suffering. Their life was “impossible,” as she had said—and its worst penalty was that it had made any other life impossible for them. Even had his love lessened, he was bound to her now by a hundred ties of pity and self-reproach; and she, poor child! must turn back to him as Latude returned to his cell . . .

  A new sound startled him: it was the stealthy closing of Lydia’s door. He crept to his own and heard her footsteps passing down the corridor. Then he went back to the window and looked out.

  A minute or two later he saw her go down the steps of the porch and enter the garden. From his post of observation her face was invisible, but something about her appearance struck him. She wore a long travelling cloak and under its folds he detected the outline of a bag or bundle. He drew a deep breath and stood watching her.

  She walked quickly down the laurustinus alley toward the gate; there she paused a moment, glancing about the little shady square. The stone benches under the trees were empty, and she seemed to gather resolution from the solitude about her, for she crossed the square to the steam-boat landing, and he saw her pause before the ticket-office at the head of the wharf. Now she was buying her ticket. Gannett turned his head a moment to look at the clock: the boat was due in five minutes. He had time to jump into his clothes and overtake her—

  He made no attempt to move; an obscure reluctance restrained him. If any thought emerged from the tumult of his sensations, it was that he must let her go if she wished it. He had spoken last night of his rights: what were they? At the last issue, he and she were two separate beings, not made one by the miracle of common forebearances, duties, abnegations, but bound together in a noyade of passion that left them resisting yet clinging as they went down.

  After buying her ticket, Lydia had stood for a moment looking out across the lake; then he saw her seat herself on one of the benches near the landing. He and she, at that moment, were both listening for the same sound: the whistle of the boat as it rounded the nearest promontory. Gannett turned again to glance at the clock: the boat was due now.

  Where would she go? What would her life be when she had left him? She had no near relations and few friends. There was money enough . . . but she asked so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. He thought of her as walking barefooted through a stony waste. No one would understand her—no one would pity her—and he, who did both, was powerless to come to her aid . . .

  He saw that she had risen from the bench and walked toward the edge of the lake. She stood looking in the direction from which the steamboat was to come; then she turned to the ticket-office, doubtless to ask the cause of the delay. After that she went back to the bench and sat down with bent head. What was she thinking of?

  The whistle sounded; she started up, and Gannett involuntarily made a movement toward the door. But he turned back and continued to watch her. She stood motionless, her eyes on the trail of smoke that preceded the appearance of the boat. Then the little craft rounded the point, a dead-white object on the leaden water: a minute later it was puffing and backing at the wharf.

  The few passengers who were waiting—two or three peasants and a snuffy priest—were clustered near the ticket-office. Lydia stood apart under the trees.

  The boat lay alongside now; the gang-plank was run out and the peasants went on board with their baskets of vegetables, followed by the priest. Still Lydia did not move. A bell began to ring querulously; there was a shriek of steam, and someone must have called to her that she would be late, for she started forward, as though in answer to a summons. She moved waveringly, and at the edge of the wharf she paused. Gannett saw a sailor beckon to her; the bell rang again and she stepped upon the gang-plank.

  Half-way down the short incline to the deck she stopped again; then she turned and ran back to the land. The gang-plank was drawn in, the bell ceased to ring, and the boat backed out into the lake. Lydia, with slow steps, was walking toward the garden . . .

  As she approached the hotel she looked up furtively and Gannett drew back into the room. He sat down beside a table; a Bradshaw lay at his elbow, and mechanically, without knowing what he did, he began looking out the trains to Paris . . .

  The Angel at the
Grave

  I.

  THE House stood a few yards back from the elm-shaded village street, in that semi-publicity sometimes cited as a democratic protest against old-world standards of domestic exclusiveness. This candid exposure to the public eye is more probably a result of the gregariousness which, in the New England bosom, oddly coexists with a shrinking from direct social contact; most of the inmates of such houses preferring that furtive intercourse which is the result of observations through shuttered windows and a categorical acquaintance with the neighboring clothes-lines. The House, however, faced its public with a difference. For sixty years it had written itself with a capital letter, had self-consciously squared itself in the eye of an admiring nation. The most searching inroads of village intimacy hardly counted in a household that opened on the universe; and a lady whose door-bell was at any moment liable to be rung by visitors from London or Vienna was not likely to flutter up-stairs when she observed a neighbor “stepping over.”

  The solitary inmate of the Anson House owed this induration of the social texture to the most conspicuous accident in her annals: the fact that she was the only granddaughter of the great Orestes Anson. She had been born, as it were, into a museum, and cradled in a glass case with a label; the first foundations of her consciousness being built on the rock of her grandfather’s celebrity. To a little girl who acquires her earliest knowledge of literature through a Reader embellished with fragments of her ancestor’s prose, that personage necessarily fills an heroic space in the foreground of life. To communicate with one’s past through the impressive medium of print, to have, as it were, a footing in every library in the country, and an acknowledged kinship with that world-diffused clan, the descendants of the great, was to be pledged to a standard of manners that amazingly simplified the lesser relations of life. The village street on which Paulina Anson’s youth looked out led to all the capitals of Europe; and over the roads of intercommunication unseen caravans bore back to the elm-shaded House the tribute of an admiring world.

  Fate seemed to have taken a direct share in fitting Paulina for her part as the custodian of this historic dwelling. It had long been secretly regarded as a “visitation” by the great man’s family that he had left no son and that his daughters were not “intellectual.” The ladies themselves were the first to lament their deficiency, to own that nature had denied them the gift of making the most of their opportunities. A profound veneration for their parent and an unswerving faith in his doctrines had not amended their congenital incapacity to understand what he had written. Laura, who had her moments of mute rebellion against destiny, had sometimes thought how much easier it would have been if their progenitor had been a poet; for she could recite, with feeling, portions of The Culprit Fay and of the poems of Mrs. Hemans; and Phoebe, who was more conspicuous for memory than imagination, kept an album filled with “selections.” But the great man was a philosopher; and to both daughters respiration was difficult on the cloudy heights of metaphysic. The situation would have been intolerable but for the fact that, while Phoebe and Laura were still at school, their father’s fame had passed from the open ground of conjecture to the chill privacy of certitude. Dr. Anson had in fact achieved one of those anticipated immortalities not uncommon at a time when people were apt to base their literary judgments on their emotions, and when to affect plain food and despise England went a long way toward establishing a man’s intellectual preeminence. Thus, when the daughters were called on to strike a filial attitude about their parent’s pedestal, there was little to do but to pose gracefully and point upward; and there are spines to which the immobility of worship is not a strain. A legend had by this time crystallized about the great Orestes, and it was of more immediate interest to the public to hear what brand of tea he drank, and whether he took off his boots in the hall, than to rouse the drowsy echo of his dialectic. A great man never draws so near his public as when it has become unnecessary to read his books and is still interesting to know what he eats for breakfast.