Edith Wharton - SSC 10 (11 page)

 
          
“You
can’t make it out either?”

 
          
She
shook her head, and
Charlotte
saw two tears roll down her cheeks.

 
          
“Familiar
as the writing is to you?”
Charlotte
insisted with twitching lips.

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby did not take up the challenge. “I can make out nothing—nothing.”

 
          
“But
you do know the writing?”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby lifted her head timidly; her anxious eyes stole with a glance of
apprehension around the quiet familiar room. “How can I tell? I was startled at
first…”

 
          
“Startled
by the resemblance?”

 
          
“Well,
I thought—”

 
          
“You’d
better say it out, mother! You knew at once it was
her
writing?”

 
          
“Oh,
wait, my dear—wait
.”

 
          
“Wait
for what?”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby looked up; her eyes, travelling slowly past
Charlotte
, were lifted to the blank wall behind her
son’s writing table.

 
          
Charlotte
, following the glance, burst into a shrill
laugh of accusation. “I needn’t wait any longer! You’ve answered me now! You’re
looking straight at the wall where her picture used to hang!”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby lifted her hand with a murmur of warning.
“Sh-h.”

 
          
“Oh,
you needn’t imagine that anything can ever frighten me again!”
Charlotte
cried.

 
          
Her
mother-in-law still leaned against the table. Her lips moved plaintively. “But
we’re going mad—we’re both going mad. We both know such things are impossible.”

 
          
Her
daughter-in-law looked at her with a pitying stare. “I’ve known for a long time
now that everything was possible.”

 
          
“Even this?”

 
          
“Yes, exactly this.”

 
          
“But
this letter—after all, there’s nothing in this letter—”

 
          
“Perhaps
there would be to him. How can I tell? I remember his saying to me once that if
you were used to
a handwriting
the faintest stroke of
it became legible. Now I see what he meant. He
was
used to it.”

 
          
“But
the few strokes that I can make out are so pale. No one could possibly read
that letter.”

 
          
Charlotte
laughed again. “I suppose everything’s pale
about a ghost,” she said stridently.

 
          
“Oh,
my child—my child—don’t say it!”

 
          
“Why
shouldn’t I say it, when even the bare walls cry it out? What difference does
it make if her letters are illegible to you and me? If even you can see her
face on that blank wall, why shouldn’t he read her writing on this blank paper?
Don’t you see that she’s everywhere in this house, and the closer to him because
to everyone else she’s become invisible?”
Charlotte
dropped into a chair and covered her face
with her hands.
A turmoil
of sobbing shook her from
head to foot. At length a touch on her shoulder made her look up, and she saw
her mother-in-law bending over her. Mrs. Ashby’s face seemed to have grown
still smaller and more wasted, but it had resumed its usual quiet look. Through
all her tossing anguish,
Charlotte
felt the impact of that resolute spirit.

 
          
“Tomorrow—tomorrow.
You’ll see. There’ll be some explanation
tomorrow.”

 
          
Charlotte
cut her short.
“An
explanation?
Who’s going to give it, I wonder?”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby drew back and straightened herself heroically. “Kenneth himself will,”
she cried out in a strong voice.
Charlotte
said nothing, and the old woman went on:
“But meanwhile we must act; we must notify the police. Now, without a moment’s
delay. We must do everything—everything.”

 
          
Charlotte
stood up slowly and stiffly; her joints
felt as cramped as an old woman’s. “Exactly as if we thought it could do any
good to do anything?”

 
          
Resolutely
Mrs. Ashby cried: “Yes!” and
Charlotte
went up to the telephone and unhooked the
receiver.

 
          
(
Saturday Evening Post 203
, 25 April
1931)

 
          
  

 
          
This
is the way it began; stupidly, trivially, out of nothing, as fatal things do.

 
          
I
was sitting at the corner table in the hotel restaurant; I mean the left-hand
corner as you enter from the hall… As if that mattered! A table in that angle,
with a view over the mountains, was too good for an unaccompanied traveller,
and I had it only because the head-waiter was a good-natured fellow who … As if
that mattered, either! Why can’t I come to the point?

 
          
The
point is that, entering the restaurant that day with the doubtful step of the
newly-arrived, she was given the table next to me.
Colossal
Event—eh?
But if you’ve ever known what it is, after a winter of
semi-invalidism on the Nile, to be told that, before you’re fit to go back and
take up your job in New York—before that little leak in your lung is patched up
tight—you’ve got to undergo another three or four months of convalescence on
top of an Alp; if you’ve dragged through all those stages of recovery, first
among one pack of hotel idlers, then among another, you’ll know what small
incidents can become Colossal Events against the empty horizon of your
idleness.

 
          
Not
that a New York banker’s office (even before the depression) commanded a very
wide horizon, as I understand horizons; but before arguing that point with me,
wait and see what it’s like to look out day after day on a dead-level of
inoccupation, and you’ll know what a towering affair it may become to have your
temperature go up a point, or a woman you haven’t seen before stroll into the
dining-room, and sit down at the table next to yours.

 
          
But
what magnified this very ordinary incident for me was the immediate sense of
something out of the ordinary in the woman herself.
Beauty?
No; not even. (I say “even” because there are far deadlier weapons, as we all
know.) No, she was not beautiful; she was not particularly young; and though
she carried herself well, and was well dressed (though over-expensively, I
thought), there was nothing in that to single her out in a fashionable crowd.

 
          
What
then? Well, what struck me first in her was a shy but intense curiosity about
everything in that assemblage of commonplace and shop-worn people. Here was a
woman, evidently well-bred and well-off, to whom a fashionable hotel restaurant
in the Engadine during the summer was apparently a sight so unusual, and
composed of elements so novel and inexplicable, that she could hardly remember
to eat in the subdued excitement of watching all that was going on about her.

 
          
As
to
her own
appearance, it obviously did not preoccupy
her—or figured only as an element of her general and rather graceful timidity.
She was so busy observing all the dull commonplace people about her that it had
presumably never occurred to her that she, who was neither dull nor
commonplace, might be herself the subject of observation. (Already I found
myself resenting any too protracted stare from the other tables.)

 
          
Well,
to come down to particulars: she was middling tall, slight, almost thin; pale,
with a long somewhat narrow face and dark hair; and her wide blue-gray eyes
were so light and clear that her hair and complexion seemed dusky in contrast.
A melancholy mouth, which lit up suddenly when she smiled—but her smiles were
rare. Dress, sober, costly, severely “lady-like”; her whole appearance, shall I
say a trifle old-fashioned—or perhaps merely provincial? But certainly it was
not only her dress which singled her out from the standardized beauties at the
other tables. Perhaps it was the fact that her air of social inexperience was
combined with a look, about the mouth and eyes, of having had more experience,
of some other sort, than any woman in the room.

 
          
But of what sort?
That was what baffled me. I could only sum
it up by saying to myself that she was different; which, of course, is what
every man feels about the woman he is about to fall in love with, no matter how
painfully usual she may appear to others. But I had no idea that I was going to
fall in love with the lady at the next table, and when I defined her as “different”
I did not mean it subjectively, did not mean different to
me,
but in herself, mysteriously, and independently of the
particular impression she made on me. In short, she appeared, in spite of her
dress and bearing, to be a little uncertain and ill at ease in the ordinary
social scene, but at home and sure of
herself
elsewhere. Where?

 
          
I
was still asking myself this when she was joined by a companion. One of the
things one learns in travelling is to find out about people by studying their
associates; and I wished that the lady who interested me had not furnished me
with this particular kind of clue. The woman who joined her was probably of
about her own age; but that seemed to be the only point of resemblance between
them. The newcomer was stout, with mahogany-dyed hair, and small eyes set too
close to a coarse nose. Her complexion, through a careless powdering, was
flushed, and netted with little red veins, and her chin sloped back under a
vulgar mouth to a heavy white throat. I had hoped she was only a chance
acquaintance of the dark lady’s; but she took her seat without speaking, and
began to study the
menu
without as
much as a glance at her companion. They were fellow-travellers, then; and
though the newcomer was as richly dressed as the other, and I judged more
fashionably, I detected at once that she was a subordinate, probably a paid
one, and that she sought to conceal it by an exaggerated assumption of
equality. But how could the one woman have chosen the other as a companion? It
disturbed my mental picture of the dark lady to have to fit into it what was
evidently no chance association.

 
          
“Have
you ordered my beer?” the last comer asked, drawing off her long gloves from
thick red fingers crammed with rings (the dark lady wore none, I had noticed.)

 
          
“No,
I haven’t,” said the other.

 
          
Her
tone somehow suggested: “Why should I? Can’t you ask for what you want
yourself?” But a moment later she had signed to the head-waiter, and said, in a
low tone: “Miss Wilpert’s Pilsener, please—as usual.”

 
          
“Yes;
as usual.
Only nobody ever remembers
it! I used to be a lot better served when I had to wait on myself.”

 
          
The
dark lady gave a faint laugh of protest.

 
          
Miss
Wilpert, after a critical glance at the dish presented to her, transferred a
copious portion to her plate, and squared herself before it. I could almost
imagine a napkin tucked into the neck of her dress, below the crease in her
heavy white throat.

 
          
“There
were three women ahead of me at the hairdresser’s,” she grumbled.

 
          
The
dark lady glanced at her absently. “It doesn’t matter.”

 
          
“What
doesn’t matter?” snapped her companion. “That I should be kept there two hours,
and have to wait till
two o’clock
for my lunch?”

 
          
“I
meant that your being late didn’t matter to me.”

 
          
“I
daresay not,” retorted Miss Wilpert. She poured down a draught of Pilsener, and
set the empty glass beside her plate. “So you’re in the ‘nothing matters’ mood
again, are you?” she said, looking critically at her companion.

 
          
The
latter smiled faintly. “Yes.”

 
          
“Well,
then—what are we staying here for? You needn’t sacrifice yourself for me, you
know.”

 
          
A
lady, finishing her lunch, crossed the room, and in passing out stopped to
speak to my neighbour. “Oh, Mrs. Ingram” (so her name was Ingram), “can’t we
persuade you to join us at bridge when you’ve had your coffee?”

 
          
Mrs.
Ingram smiled, but shook her head. “Thank you so much. But you know I don’t
play cards.”

 
          
“Principles!”
jerked out Miss Wilpert, wiping her rouged lips after a second glass of
Pilsener. She waved her fat hand toward the retreating lady. “I’ll join up with
you in half an hour,” she cried in a penetrating tone.

 
          
“Oh,
do,” said the lady with an indifferent nod.

 
          
I
had finished my lunch, drunk my coffee, and smoked more than my strict ration
of cigarettes. There was no other excuse for lingering, and I got up and walked
out of the restaurant. My friend Antoine, the head-waiter, was standing near
the door, and in passing I let my lips shape the inaudible question: “The lady
at the next table?”

 
          
Antoine
knew every one, and also every one’s history. I wondered why he hesitated for a
moment before replying: “Ah—Mrs. Ingram? Yes.
From
California
.”

 
          
“Er—regular visitor?”

 
          
“No.
I think on her first trip to
Europe
.”

 
          
“Ah.
Then the other lady’s showing her about?”

 
          
Antoine
gave a shrug. “I think not. She seems also new.”

 
          
“I
like the table you’ve given me, Antoine,” I remarked; and he nodded
compliantly.

 
          
I
was surprised, therefore, that when I came down to dinner that evening I had
been assigned to another seat, on the farther side of the restaurant. I asked
for Antoine, but it was his evening off, and the understudy who replaced him
could only say that I had been moved by Antoine’s express orders. “Perhaps it
was on account of the draught, sir.”

 
          
“Draught
be
blowed! Can’t I be given back my table?”

 
          
He
was very sorry, but, as I could see, the table had been allotted to an infirm
old lady, whom it would be difficult, and indeed impossible, to disturb.

 
          
“Very
well, then. At lunch tomorrow I shall expect to have it back,” I said severely.

 
          
In
looking back over the convalescent life, it is hard to recall the exaggerated
importance every trifle assumes when there are only trifles to occupy one. I
was furious at having had my place changed; and still more so when, the next
day at lunch, Antoine, as a matter of course, conducted me to the table I had
indignantly rejected the night before.

 
          
“What
does this mean? I told you I wanted to go back to that corner table—”

 
          
Not
a muscle moved in his non-committal yet all-communicating face.
“So sorry, sir.”

 
          
“Sorry?
Why, you promised me—”

 
          
“What
can I do? Those ladies have our most expensive suite; and they’re here for the
season.”

 
          
“Well,
what’s the matter with the ladies? I’ve no objection to them. They’re my
compatriots.”

 
          
Antoine
gave me a spectral smile. “That appears to be the reason, sir.”

 
          
“The reason?
They’ve given you a reason for asking to have
me moved?”

 
          
“The
big red one did. The other, Mrs. Ingram, as you can see, is quite
different—though both are a little odd,” he added thoughtfully.

 
          
“Well—the
big red one?”

 
          
“The
dame de compagnie.
You must excuse me, sir; but she says she doesn’t like Americans. And as the
management are anxious to oblige Mrs. Ingram—”