Edith Wharton - SSC 10 (20 page)

 
          
“And the signature? ‘
Only your D.S.’
Was
that it? I’m right, am I? That was the letter that took you out that evening
after dark?”

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley was still looking at her. It seemed to Mrs. Slade that a slow struggle
was going on behind the voluntarily controlled mask of her small quiet face. “I
shouldn’t have thought she had herself so well in hand,” Mrs. Slade reflected,
almost resentfully. But at this moment Mrs. Ansley spoke. “I don’t know how you
knew. I burned that letter at once.”

 
          
“Yes;
you would, naturally—you’re so prudent!” The sneer was open now. “And if you
burned the letter you’re wondering how on earth I know what was in it. That’s
it, isn’t it?”

 
          
Mrs.
Slade waited, but Mrs. Ansley did not speak.

 
          
“Well,
my dear, I know what was in that letter because I wrote it!”

 
          
“You
wrote it?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
The
two women stood for a minute staring at each other in the last golden light.
Then Mrs. Ansley dropped back into her chair. “Oh,” she murmured, and covered
her face with her hands.

 
          
Mrs.
Slade waited nervously for another word or movement. None came, and at length
she broke out: “I horrify you.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley’s hands dropped to her knees. The face they uncovered was streaked with
tears. “I wasn’t thinking of you. I was thinking—it was the only letter I ever
had from him!”

 
          
“And
I wrote it. Yes; I wrote it! But I was the girl he was engaged to. Did you
happen to remember that?”

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley’s head drooped again. “I’m not trying to excuse myself… I remembered…”

 
          
“And
still you went?”

 
          
“Still
I went.”

 
          
Mrs.
Slade stood looking down on the small bowed figure at her side. The flame of
her wrath had already sunk, and she wondered why she had ever thought there
would be any satisfaction in inflicting so purposeless a wound on her friend.
But she had to justify herself.

 
          
“You
do understand? I’d found out—and I hated you, hated you. I knew you were in
love with Delphin—and I was afraid; afraid of you, of your quiet ways, your
sweetness… your… well, I wanted you out of the way,
that’s
all. Just for a few weeks; just till I was sure of him. So in a blind fury I
wrote that letter… I don’t know why I’m telling you now.”

 
          
“I
suppose,” said Mrs. Ansley slowly, “it’s because you’ve always gone on hating
me.”

 
          
“Perhaps.
Or because I wanted to get the whole thing off my
mind.” She paused. “I’m glad you destroyed the letter. Of course I never
thought you’d die.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley relapsed into silence, and Mrs. Slade, leaning above her, was conscious
of a strange sense of isolation, of being cut off from the warm current of
human communion. “You think me a monster!”

 
          
“I
don’t know… It was the only letter I had, and you say he didn’t write it”

 
          
“Ah,
how you care for him still!”

 
          
“I
cared for that memory,” said Mrs. Ansley.

 
          
Mrs.
Slade continued to look down on her. She seemed physically reduced by the
blow—as if, when she got up, the wind might scatter her like a puff of dust.
Mrs. Slade’s jealousy suddenly leaped up again at the sight. All these years
the woman had been living on that letter. How she must have loved him, to treasure
the mere memory of its ashes! The letter of the man her friend was engaged to.
Wasn’t it she who was the monster?

 
          
“You
tried your best to get him away from me, didn’t you? But you failed; and I kept
him. That’s all.”

 
          
“Yes.
That’s all.”

 
          
“I
wish now I hadn’t told you. I’d no idea you’d feel about it as you do; I
thought you’d be amused. It all happened so long ago, as you say; and you must
do me the justice to remember that I had no reason to think you’d ever taken it
seriously. How could I, when you were married to Horace Ansley two months
afterward? As soon as you could get out of bed your mother rushed you off to
Florence
and married you. People were rather
surprised—they wondered at its being done so quickly; but I thought I knew. I
had an idea you did it out of pique—to be able to say you’d got ahead of
Delphin and me. Kids have such silly reasons for doing the most serious things.
And your marrying so soon convinced me that you’d never really cared.”

 
          
“Yes.
I suppose it would,” Mrs. Ansley assented.

 
          
The
clear heaven overhead was emptied of all its gold. Dusk spread over it,
abruptly darkening the Seven Hills. Here and there lights began to twinkle
through the foliage at their feet. Steps were coming and going on the deserted
terrace—waiters looking out of the doorway at the head of the stairs,
then
reappearing with trays and napkins and flasks of wine.
Tables were moved, chairs straightened. A feeble string of electric lights
flickered out. A stout lady in a dustcoat suddenly appeared, asking in broken
Italian if anyone had seen the elastic band which held together her tattered
Baedeker. She poked with her stick under the table at which she had lunched,
the waiters assisting.

 
          
The
corner where Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley sat was still shadowy and deserted. For
a long time neither of them spoke. At length Mrs. Slade began again: “I suppose
I did it as a sort of joke—”

 
          
“A joke?”

 
          
“Well,
girls are ferocious sometimes, you know.
Girls in love
especially.
And I remember laughing to myself all that evening at the
idea that you were waiting around there in the dark, dodging out of sight,
listening for every sound, trying to get in—of course I was upset when I heard
you were so ill afterward.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley had not moved for a long time. But now she turned slowly toward her
companion. “But I didn’t wait. He’d arranged everything. He was there. We were
let in at once,” she said.

 
          
Mrs.
Slade sprang up from her leaning position.
“Delphin there!
They let you in! Ah, now you’re lying!” she burst out with violence.

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley’s voice grew clearer, and full of surprise. “But of course he was there.
Naturally he came—”

 
          
“Came?
How did he know he’d find you there? You must be raving!”

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley hesitated, as though reflecting. “But I answered the letter. I told him
I’d be there. So he came.”

 
          
Mrs.
Slade flung her hands up to her face. “Oh, God—you answered! I never thought of
your answering….”

 
          
“It’s
odd you never thought of it, if you wrote the letter.”

 
          
“Yes.
I was blind with rage.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley rose, and drew her fur scarf about her. “It is cold here. We’d better
go…. I’m sorry for you,” she said, as she clasped the fur about her throat.

 
          
The
unexpected words sent a pang through Mrs. Slade. “Yes; we’d better go.” She
gathered up her bag and cloak. “I don’t know why you should be sorry for me,”
she muttered.

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley stood looking away from her toward the dusky mass of the Colosseum.
“Well—because I didn’t have to wait that night.”

 
          
Mrs.
Slade gave an unquiet laugh. “Yes, I was beaten there. But I oughtn’t to
begrudge it to you, I suppose.
At the end of all these years.
After all, I had everything; I had him for twenty-five years. And you had
nothing but that one letter that he didn’t write.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ansley was again silent. At length she took a step toward the door of the
terrace, and turned back, facing her companion.

 
          
“I
had Barbara,” she said, and began to move ahead of Mrs. Slade toward the
stairway.

 
          
(
Liberty 11
, 10 November 1934)

 
          
  

 
          
Mrs.
Attlee had never been able to understand why there was any harm in giving
people a little encouragement when they needed it.

 
          
Sitting
back in her comfortable armchair by the fire, her working-days over, and her
muscular masseuse’s hands lying swollen and powerless on her knee, she was at
leisure to turn the problem over, and ponder it as there had never been time to
do before.

 
          
Mrs.
Attlee was so infirm now that, when her widowed daughter-in-law was away for
the day, her granddaughter Moyra Attlee had to stay with her until the
kitchen-girl had prepared the cold supper, and could come in and sit in the
parlour.

 
          
“You’d
be surprised, you know, my dear, to find how discouraged the grand people get,
in those big houses with all the help, and the silver dinner plates, and a bell
always handy if the fire wants poking, or the pet dog asks for a drink… And
what’d a masseuse be good for, if she didn’t jolly up their minds a little
along with their muscles?—as Dr. Welbridge used to say to me many a time, when
he’d given me a difficult patient. And he always gave me the most difficult,”
she added proudly.

 
          
She
paused, aware (for even now little escaped her) that Moyra had ceased to
listen, but accepting the fact resignedly, as she did most things in the slow
decline of her days.

 
          
“It’s
a fine afternoon,” she reflected, “and likely she’s fidgety because there’s a
new movie on; or that young fellow’s fixed it up to get back earlier from New
York…”

 
          
She
relapsed into silence, following her thoughts; but presently, as happens with
old people, they came to the surface again.

 
          
“And
I hope I’m a good Catholic, as I said to Father Divott the other day, and at
peace with heaven, if ever I was took suddenly—but no matter what happens I’ve
got to risk my punishment for the wrong I did to Mrs. Clingsland, because as
long as I’ve never repented it there’s no use telling Father Divott about it.
Is there?”

 
          
Mrs.
Attlee heaved an introspective sigh. Like many humble persons of her kind and
creed, she had a vague idea that a sin unrevealed was, as far as the
consequences went, a sin uncommitted; and this conviction had often helped her
in the difficult task of reconciling doctrine and practice.

 
          
  

 
          
Moyra
Attlee interrupted her listless stare down the empty Sunday
street
of the
New
Jersey
suburb, and turned an astonished glance on her grandmother.