Edith Wharton - SSC 09 (13 page)

 
          
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He
dined hungrily, as he had lunched; and after dinner he took his hat from its
peg in the hall, and said to Jane: “I think I’ll smoke my cigar in the campus.”

 
          
That
was a good idea; he saw at once that she thought it a hopeful sign, his wanting
to take the air after being mewed up in the house for so long. The night was
cold and moonless, and the college grounds, at that hour, would be a desert….
After all, delivering the letters
himself
was the
safest way: openly, at the girl’s own door, without any mystery. … If Malvina,
the Wakes’ old maid, should chance to open the door, he’d pull the packet out
and say at once: “Oh, Malvina, I’ve found some books that Miss Barbara lent me
last year, and as I’m going away—” He had gradually learned that there was
nothing as safe as simplicity.

 
          
He
was reassured by the fact that the night was so dark. It felt queer, unnatural
somehow, to be walking abroad again like the Ambrose Trenham he used to be; he
was glad there were so few people about, and that the Kingsborough suburbs were
so scantily lit. He walked on, his elbow hitting now and then against the
bundle, which bulged out of his pocket. Every time he felt it a sort of nausea
rose in him. Professor Wake’s house stood half way down one of the quietest of
Kingsborough’s outlying streets. It was withdrawn from the road under the
hanging boughs of old elms; he could just catch a glint of light from one or
two windows. And suddenly, as he was almost abreast of the gate, Barbara Wake
came out of it.

 
          
For
a moment she stood glancing about her; then she turned in the direction of the
narrow lane bounding the farther side of the property. What took her there,
Trenham wondered? His first impulse had been to draw back, and let her go her
way; then he saw how providential the encounter was. The lane was dark,
deserted—a mere passage between widely scattered houses, all asleep in their
gardens. The chilly night had sent people home early; there was not a soul in
sight. In another moment the packet would be in her hands, and he would have
left her, just silently raising his hat.

 
          
He
remembered now where she was going. The garage, built in the far corner of the
garden, opened into the lane. The Wakes had no chauffeur, and Barbara, who
drove the car, was sole mistress of the garage and of its keys. Trenham and she
had met there sometimes; a desolate trysting-place! But what could they do, in
a town like Kingsborough? At one time she had talked of setting up a studio—she
dabbled in painting; but the suggestion had alarmed him (he knew the talk it
would create), and he had discouraged her. Most often they took the train and
went to Ditson, a manufacturing town an hour away, where no one knew them…. But
what could she be going to the garage for at this hour?

 
          
The
thought of his wife rushed into Trenham’s mind. The discovery that she had
lived there beside him, knowing all, and that suddenly, when she found she
could not regain his affection, life had seemed worthless, and without a
moment’s hesitation she had left it … why, if he had known the quiet woman at
his side had such springs of passion in her, how differently he would have
regarded her, how little this girl’s insipid endearments would have mattered to
him! He was a man who could not live without tenderness, without demonstrative
tenderness; his own shyness and reticence had to be perpetually broken down,
laughingly scattered to the winds. His wife, he now saw, had been too much like
him, had secretly suffered from the same inhibitions. She had always seemed
ashamed, and frightened by her feeling for him, and half-repelled,
half-fascinated by his response. At times he imagined that she found him
physically distasteful, and wondered how, that being the case, she could be so
fiercely jealous of him. Now he understood that her cold reluctant surrender
concealed a passion so violent that it humiliated her, and so incomprehensible
that she had never mastered its language. She reminded him of a clumsy little
girl he had once known at a dancing class he had been sent to as a boy—a little
girl who had a feverish passion for dancing, but could never learn the steps.
And because he too had felt the irresistible need to join in the immemorial
love-dance he had ended by choosing a partner more skilled in its intricacies….

 
          
These
thoughts wandered through his mind as he stood watching Barbara Wake. Slowly he
took a few steps down the lane; then he halted again. He had not yet made up
his mind what to do. If she were going to the garage to get something she had
forgotten (as was most probable, at that hour) she would no doubt be coming
back in a few moments, and he could meet her and hand her the letters. Above
all, he wanted to avoid going into the garage. To do so at that moment would
have been a profanation of Milly’s memory. He would have liked to efface from
his own all recollection of the furtive hours spent there; but the vision
returned with intolerable acuity as the girl’s slim figure, receding from him,
reached the door. How often he had stood at that corner, under those heavy trees,
watching for her to appear and slip in ahead of him—so that they should not be
seen entering together. The elaborate precautions with which their meetings had
been surrounded—how pitiably futile they now seemed! They had not even achieved
their purpose, but had only belittled his love and robbed it of its
spontaneity. Real passion ought to be free, reckless, audacious, unhampered by
the fear of a wife’s feelings, of the University’s regulations, the President’s
friendship, the deadly risk of losing one’s job and wrecking one’s career. It
seemed to him now that the love he had given to Barbara Wake was almost as
niggardly as that which he had doled out to his wife….

 
          
He
walked down the lane and saw that Barbara was going into the garage. It was so
dark that he could hardly make out her movements; but as he reached the door
she drew out her electric lamp (that recalled memories too), and by its flash
he saw her slim gloveless hand put the key into the lock. The key turned, the
door creaked, and all was darkness….

 
          
The
glimpse of her hand reminded him of the first time he had dared to hold it in
his and press a kiss on the palm. They had met accidentally in the train, both
of them on their way home from Boston, and he had proposed that they should get
off at the last station before Kingsborough, and walk back by a short cut he
knew, through the woods and along the King river. It was a shining summer day,
and the girl had been amused at the idea and had accepted…. He could see now
every line, every curve of her hand, a quick strong young hand, with long
fingers, slightly blunt at the tips, and a sensuous elastic palm. It would be
queer to have to carry on life without ever again knowing the feel of that
hand….

 
          
Of
course he would go away; he would have to. If possible he would leave the
following week. Perhaps the Faculty would let him advance his Sabbatical year.
If not, they would probably let him off for the winter term, and perhaps after
that he might make up his mind to resign, and look for a professorship
elsewhere—in the south, or in California—as far away from that girl as
possible. Meanwhile what he wanted was to get away to some hot climate, steamy,
tropical, where one could lie out all night on a white beach and hear the palms
chatter to the waves, and the trade-winds blow from God knew where … one of
those fiery flowery islands where marriage and love were not regarded so
solemnly, and a man could follow his instinct without calling down a
catastrophe, or feeling himself morally degraded…. Above all, he never wanted
to see again a woman who argued and worried and reproached, and dramatized
things that ought to be as simple as eating and drinking….

 
          
Barbara,
he had to admit, had never been frightened or worried,
had
never reproached him. The girl had the true sporting instinct; he never
remembered her being afraid of risks, or nervous about “appearances.” Once or
twice, at moments when detection seemed imminent, she had half frightened him
by her cool resourcefulness. He sneered at the remembrance.
“An
old hand, no doubt!”
But the sneer did not help him. Whose fault was it
if the girl had had to master the arts of dissimulation?
Whose
but his? He alone (he saw in sudden terror) was responsible for what he
supposed would be called her downfall. Poor child—poor Barbara! Was it possible
that he, the seducer, the corrupter, had presumed to judge her? The thought was
monstrous…. His resentment had already vanished like a puff of mist. The
feeling of his responsibility, which had seemed so abhorrent, was now almost
sweet to him. He was responsible—he owed her something! Thank heaven for that!
For now he could raise his passion into a duty, and thus disguised and
moralized, could once more—oh, could he, dared he?—admit it openly into his
life. The mere possibility made him suddenly feel less cold and desolate. That
the something-not-himself that made for Righteousness should take on the tender
lineaments, the human warmth of love, should come to sit by his hearth in the
shape of Barbara—how warm, how happy and reassured it made him! He had a swift
vision of her, actually sitting there in the shabby old leather chair (he would
have it recovered), her slim feet on the faded
Turkey
rug (he would have it replaced). It was
almost a pity—he thought madly—that they would probably not be able to stay on
at Kingsborough, there, in that very house where for so long he had not even
dared to look at her letters…. Of course, if they did decide to, he would have
it all done over for her.

 
          
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The
garage door creaked and again he saw the flash of the electric lamp on her bare
hand as she turned the key; then she moved toward him in the darkness.

 
          
“Barbara!”

 
          
She
stopped short at his whisper. They drew closer to each other. “You wanted to
see me?” she whispered back. Her voice flowed over him like summer air.

 
          
“Can
we go in there—?” he gestured.

 
          
“Into the garage?
Yes—I suppose so.”

 
          
They
turned and walked in silence through the obscurity. The comfort of her nearness
was indescribable.

 
          
She
unlocked the door again, and he followed her in. “Take care; I left the
wheel-jack somewhere,” she warned him. Automatically he produced a match, and
she lit the candle in an old broken-paned lantern that hung on a nail against
the wall. How familiar it all was—how often he had brought out his match-box
and she had lit that candle! In the little pool of yellowish light they stood
and looked at each other.

 
          
“You
didn’t expect me?” he stammered.

 
          
“I’m
not sure I didn’t,” she returned softly, and he just caught her smile in the half-light.
The divineness of it!

 
          
“I
didn’t suppose I should see you. I just wandered out. …” He suddenly felt the
difficulty of accounting for himself.

 
          
“My poor Ambrose!”
She laid her hand on his arm. “How I’ve
ached for you—”

 
          
Yes;
that was right; the tender sympathizing friend … anything else, at that moment,
would have been unthinkable. He drew a breath of relief and self-satisfaction.
Her pity made him feel almost heroic—had he not lost sight of his own
sufferings in the thought of hers? “It’s been awful—” he muttered.

 
          
“Yes;
I know.”

 
          
She
sat down on the step of the old Packard, and he found a wooden stool and
dragged it into the candle-ray.

 
          
“I’m
glad you came,” she began, still in the same soft healing voice, “because I’m
going away tomorrow early, and—”

 
          
He
started to his feet, upsetting the stool with a crash. “Going away?
Early tomorrow?”
Why hadn’t he known of this? He felt weak
and injured. Where could she be going in this sudden way? If they hadn’t
happened to meet, would he have known nothing of it till she was gone? His
heart grew small and cold.