Edith Wharton - SSC 09 (16 page)

 
          
“Thank
you, Jane; sorry I kept you up,” he muttered, nodding to her as he went
upstairs.

 
          
(
Woman’s Home companion 60
,
January/February 1933)

 
          
  

 
          
As
John Kilvert got out of the motor at the Fusina landing-stage, and followed his
neat suit-cases on board the evening boat for
Venice
, he growled to himself inconsequently:
“Always on wheels! When what I really want is to walk—”

 
          
To walk?
How absurd!
Would he even have
known how to, any longer?
In youth he had excelled in the manly
exercises then fashionable: lawn tennis, racquets, golf and the rest. He had
even managed, till well over forty, to combine the more violent of these with
his busy life of affairs in
New York
, and since then, with devout regularity and
some success, had conformed to the national ritual of golf. But the muscles
used for a mere walk were probably long since atrophied; and, indeed, so little
did this modest form of exercise enter into the possibilities of his life that
in his sudden outburst he had used the word metaphorically, meaning that all at
once his existence seemed to him too cushioned, smooth and painless—he didn’t
know why.

 
          
Perhaps
it was the lucky accident of finding himself on board the wrong boat—the
unfashionable boat; an accident caused by the chauffeur’s having mistaken a
turn soon after they left Padua, missed the newly opened
“autostrada,”
and slipped through reed-grown byways to the Fusina
water-side. It was a hot Sunday afternoon in September, and a throng of dull
and dingy-looking holiday-makers were streaming across the gang-plank onto the
dirty deck, and setting down with fretful babies, withered flowers, and baskets
stuffed with provisions from the mainland on the narrow uncomfortable bench
along the rail. Perhaps it was that—at any rate the discomfort did not annoy
John Kilvert; on the contrary, it gave him a vague glow of satisfaction.
Camping for an hour on this populous garlicky boat would be almost the
equivalent of walking from
Padua
to Fusina instead of gliding there in the commodious Fiat he had hired
at
Milan
. And to begin with, why had he hired it?
Why hadn’t the train been good enough for him? What was the matter with him, anyhow?
… He hadn’t meant to include
Venice
in his holiday that summer. He had settled
down in Paris to do some systematic sightseeing in the Ile-de-France: French
church architecture was his hobby, he had collected a library on the subject,
and liked going on archaeological trips (also in a commodious motor, with a
pause for lunch at the most reputed restaurants) in company with a shy shabby
French archaeologist who could guide and explain, and save him the labour of
reading all the books he bought. But he concealed his archaeological interests
from most of his American friends because they belonged to a cosmopolitan group
who thought that motors were made for speeding, not sight-seeing, and that
Paris
existed merely to launch new fashions, new
plays and new restaurants, for rich and easily bored Americans. John Kilvert,
at fifty-five, had accepted this point of view with the weary tolerance which
had long since replaced indignation in his moral make-up.

 
          
And
now, after all, his plans had been upset by a telegram from Sara Roseneath,
insisting that he should come to Venice at once to help her about her
fancy-dress for the great historical ball which was to be given at the Ducal
Palace (an unheard-of event, looming in cosmopolitan society far higher than declarations
of war, or peace treaties). And he had started.

 
          
But why, again—why?
Sara Roseneath was an old friend, of
course; an old love. He had been half disposed to marry her once, when she was
Sara Court; but she had chosen a richer man, and now that she was widowed,
though he had no idea of succeeding to the late Roseneath, he and she had
drifted into a semi-sentimental friendship, occasionally went on little tours
together, and were expected by their group to foregather whenever they were
both in New York, or when they met in Paris or London.
A
safe, prudent arrangement, gradually fading into an intimacy scarcely calmer
than the romance that went before.
It was all she wanted of the
emotional life (practical life being so packed with entertainments, dressmakers,
breathless travel and all sorts of fashionable rivalries); and it was all he
had to give in return for what she was able to offer. What held him, then?
Partly habit, a common stock of relations and allusions, the knowledge that her
exactions would never be more serious than this urgent call to help her to
design a fancy-dress—and partly, of course, what survived in her, carefully
preserved by beauty-doctors and gymnastic trainers, of the physical graces
which had first captured him.

 
          
Nevertheless
he was faintly irritated with both himself and her for having suffered this
journey to be imposed on him. Of course it was his own fault; if he had refused
to come she would have found half a dozen whippersnappers to devise a
fancy-dress for her. And she would not have been really angry; only gently
surprised and disappointed. She would have said: “I thought I could
always
count on you in an emergency!” An
emergency—this still handsome but middle-aged woman, to whom a fancy ball
represented an event! There is no frivolity, he thought, like that of the
elderly….
Venice
in September was a place wholly detestable
to him, and that he should be summoned there to assist a spoilt woman in the
choice of a fancy-dress shed an ironic light on the contrast between his old
ambitions and his present uses. The whole affair was silly and distasteful, and
he wished he could shake off his social habits and break once for all with the
trivial propinquities which had created them….

 
          
The
slatternly woman who sat crammed close against him moved a little to readjust
the arm supporting her sleep-drunken baby, and her elbow pressed uncomfortably
against Kilvert’s ribs. He got up and wandered forward. As the passengers came
on board he had noticed two people—a man and a woman—whose appearance singled
them out from the workaday crowd. Not that they fitted in with his standard of
personal seemliness; the woman was bare-headed, with blown hair, untidy and
turning gray, and the man, in worn shapeless homespun, with a short beard
turning gray also, was as careless in dress and bearing as his companion.
Still, blowsy and shabby as they were, they were evidently persons of education
and refinement, and Kilvert, having found a corner for himself in the forward
part of the boat, began to watch them with a certain curiosity.

 
          
First
he speculated about their nationality; but that was hard to determine. The
woman was dusky, almost swarthy, under her sunburn; her untidy hair was still
streaked with jet, and the eyes under her dense black eyebrows were of a rich
burning brown. The man’s eyes were
gray,
his nose was
straight, his complexion and hair vaguely pepper-and-salt, like his clothes. He
had taken off his stalking-cap, disclosing thick hair brushed back carelessly
from a high wide forehead. His brow and his high cheekbones were burnt to a
deeper bronze than his companion’s, but his long nervous hands showed whiter at
the wrists than hers. For the rest, they seemed of about the same age, and
though there was no trace of youth about either of them their vigorous maturity
seemed to give out a strong emotional glow. Such had been Kilvert’s impression
as they came on board, hurriedly, almost precipitately, after all the other
passengers were seated. The woman had come first, and the man, after a perceptible
interval, had scrambled over the side as the boat was actually beginning to put
off. Where had they come from, Kilvert wondered, why such haste and such
agitation? They had no luggage, no wraps, the woman, gloveless and cloakless,
apparently had not even a hat.

 
          
For
a while Kilvert had lost them in the crowd; but now, going forward, he found
them wedged between the prow of the boat and the low sky-light of the forward
cabin. They had not found seats, but they seemed hardly aware of it; the woman
was perched on the edge of the closed sky-light, the man, facing her, leaned
against the side of the boat, his hands braced against the rail. Both turned
their backs to the low misty line along the horizon that was rapidly defining
itself as a distant view of
Venice
. Kilvert’s first thought was: “I don’t believe they even know where
they are.”

 
          
A
fat passenger perched on a coil of rope had spied the seat which Kilvert had
left, and the latter was able to possess
himself
of
the vacated rope. From where he sat he was only a few yards from the man and
woman he had begun to watch; just too far to catch their words, or even to make
quite sure of the language they were speaking (he wavered between Hungarian,
and Austrian German smattered with English), but near enough to observe the
play of their facial muscles and the corresponding gestures of their dramatic
bodies.

 
          
Husband and wife?
No—he dismissed the idea as it shaped
itself. They were too acutely aware of each other, what each said (whatever its
import might be) came to the other with too sharp an impact of surprise for
habit to have dulled their intercourse.
Lovers, then—as he
and Sara had once been, for a discreet interval?
Kilvert winced at the
comparison. He tried, but in vain, to picture Sara Roseneath and himself, in
the hour of their rapture, dashing headlong and hatless on board a dirty boat
crowded with perspiring work-people, and fighting out the last phase of their
amorous conflict between coils of tarry rope and bulging baskets of farm
produce. In fact there had been no conflict; he and Sara had ceased their
sentimental relations without shedding of blood. But then they had only
strolled around the edge of the crater, picking flowers, while these two seemed
writhing in its depths.

 
          
As
Kilvert settled himself on his coil of rope their conversation came to an end.
The man walked abruptly away, striding the length of the crowded deck (in his
absorption he seemed unaware of the obstacles in his advance), while the woman,
propped against her precarious ledge, remained motionless, her eyes fixed, her
rough gray head, with the streaks of wavy jet, bowed as under a crushing
thought. “They’ve quarrelled,” Kilvert said to himself with a half-envious
pang.

 
          
The
woman sat there for several minutes. Her only motion was to clasp and unclasp
her long sunburnt fingers. Kilvert noticed that her hands, which were large for
her height, had the same nervous suppleness as the man’s; high-strung
intellectual hands, as eloquent as her burning brown eyes. As she continued to sit
alone their look deepened from feverish fire to a kind of cloudy resignation,
as though to say that now the worst was over. “Ah, quarrelled irremediably—”
Kilvert thought, disappointed.

 
          
Then
the man came back. He forced his way impatiently through the heaped-up bags and
babies, regained his place at his companion’s side, and stood looking down at
her, sadly but not resignedly. An unappeased entreaty was in his gaze. Kilvert
became aware that the struggle was far from being over, and his own muscles unconsciously
braced themselves for the renewal of the conflict. “He won’t give up—he
won’t
give up!” he exulted inwardly.

 
          
The
man lowered his head above his companion, and spoke to her in pressing
inaudible tones. She listened quietly, without stirring, but Kilvert noticed
that her lower lip trembled a little. Was her mouth beautiful? He was not yet
sure. It had something of the sinuous strength of her long hands, and the
complexity of its curves made it a matchless vehicle for the expression of
irony, bitterness and grief.
An actress’s mouth, perhaps;
over-elastic, subtly drawn, capable of being beautiful or ugly as her own
emotions were.
It struck Kilvert that her whole face, indeed her whole
body, was like that: a vehicle, an instrument, a language rather than a plastic
fact. Kilvert’s interest deepened to excitement as he watched her.

 
          
She
began to speak, at first very low and gravely; then more eagerly, passionately,
passing (as he imagined) from pleading, from tenderness and regret, to the
despair of an accepted renouncement. “Ah, don’t tempt me—don’t begin it all
over again!” her eyes and lips seemed to be saying in tortured remonstrance, as
his gray head bent above her and their urgent whispers were interwoven….