Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (31 page)

 
          
“I
don’t believe it,” said Grandmamma, in a low voice of warning, protest and
appeal. I saw Hubert steal a grateful look at her.

 
          
But
nobody else listened: every eye still strained through the window.
Livery-stable “hacks,” of the old blue-curtained variety, were driving up to
carry off the fair fugitives; for the day was bitterly cold, and lit by one of
those harsh New York suns of which every ray seems an icicle. Into these
ancient vehicles the ladies, now regaining their composure, were being piled
with their removable possessions, while their kid-gloved callers (“So like the
White Rabbit!” Kate exulted) appeared and reappeared in the doorway, gallantly
staggering after them under bags, reticules, bird-cages, pet dogs and heaped-up
finery. But to all this—as even I, a little boy, was aware—nobody in
Grandmamma’s window paid the slightest attention. The thoughts of one and all,
with a mute and guarded eagerness, were still following the movements of those
two who were so obviously unrelated to the rest. The whole business—discovery,
comment, silent visual pursuit—could hardly, all told, have filled a minute,
perhaps not as much; before the sixty seconds were over, Mrs. Hazeldean and
Henry Prest had been lost in the crowd, and, while the hotel continued to empty
itself into the street, had gone their joint or separate ways. But in my
grandmother’s window the silence continued unbroken.

 
          
“Well,
it’s over: here are the firemen coming out again,” someone said at length.

 
          
We
youngsters were all alert at that; yet I felt that the grown-ups lent but a
half-hearted attention to the splendid sight which was New York’s only pageant:
the piling of scarlet ladders on scarlet carts, the leaping up on the engine of
the helmeted flame-fighters, and the disciplined plunge forward of each pair of
broad-chested black steeds, as one after another the chariots of fire rattled
off.

 
          
Silently,
almost morosely, we withdrew to the drawing-room hearth; where, after an
interval of languid monosyllables, my mother, rising first, slipped her knitting
into its bag, and turning on me with renewed severity, said: “This racing after
fire-engines is what makes you too sleepy to prepare your lessons:—a comment so
wide of the mark that once again I perceived, without understanding, the extent
of the havoc wrought in her mind by the sight of Mrs. Hazeldean and Henry Prest
coming out of the Fifth Avenue Hotel together.

 
          
It
was not until many years later that chance enabled me to relate this fugitive
impression to what had preceded and what came after it.

 
          
  

 
          
Mrs.
Hazeldean paused at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. The crowd
attracted by the fire still enveloped her; it was safe to halt and take breath.

 
          
Her
companion, she knew, had gone in the opposite direction. Their movements, on
such occasions, were as well-ordered and as promptly executed as those of the
New York Fire Brigade; and after their precipitate descent to the hall, the
discovery that the police had barred their usual exit, and the quick: “You’re
all right?” to which her imperceptible nod had responded, she was sure he had
turned down Twenty-third Street toward Sixth Avenue.

 
          
“The
Parretts’ windows were full of people,” was her first thought.

 
          
She
dwelt on it a moment, and then reflected: “Yes, but in all that crowd and
excitement nobody would have beenthinking of
me
!”

 
          
Instinctively
she put her hand to her veil, as though recalling that her features had been
exposed when she ran out, and unable to remember whether she had covered them
in time or not.

 
          
“What
a fool I am! It can’t have been off my face for more than a second—” but
immediately afterward another disquieting possibility assailed her. “I’m almost
sure I saw Sillerton Jackson’s head in one of the windows, just behind Sabina
Wesson’s. No one else has that particularly silvery gray hair.” She shivered,
for everyone in New York knew that Sillerton Jackson saw everything, and could
piece together seemingly unrelated fragments of fact with the art of a skilled
china-mender.

 
          
Meanwhile,
after sending through her veil the circular glance which she always shot about
her at that particular corner, she had begun to walk up Broadway. She walked
well—fast, but not too fast; easily, assuredly, with the air of a woman who
knows that she has a good figure, and expects rather than fears to be
identified by it. But under this external appearance of ease she was covered
with cold beads of sweat.

 
          
Broadway,
as usual at that hour, and on a holiday, was nearly deserted; the promenading
public still slowly poured up and down Fifth Avenue.

 
          
“Luckily
there was such a crowd when we came out of the hotel that no one could possibly
have noticed me,” she murmured over again, reassured by the sense of having the
long thoroughfare to herself. Composure and presence of mind were so necessary
to a woman in her situation that they had become almost a second nature to her,
and in a few minutes her thick uneven heart-beats began to subside and to grow
steadier. As if to test their regularity, she paused before a florist’s window,
and looked appreciatively at the jars of roses and forced lilac, the compact
bunches of lilies-of-the-valley and violets, the first pots of close-budded
azaleas. Finally she opened the shop-door, and after examining the Jacqueminots
and Marshal Niels, selected with care two perfect specimens of a new
silvery-pink rose, waited for the florist to wrap them in cotton-wool, and
slipped their long stems into her muff for more complete protection.

 
          
“It’s
so simple, after all,” she said to herself as she walked on. “I’ll tell him
that as I was coming up Fifth Avenue from Cousin Cecilia’s I heard the
fire-engines turning into
Twenty-third
Street, and ran
after them. Just what
he
would have
done…once…” she ended on a sigh.

 
          
At
Thirty-first
Street she turned the corner with a quicker
step. The house she was approaching was low and narrow; but the Christmas holly
glistening between frilled curtains, the well-scrubbed steps, the shining bell
and door-knob, gave it a welcoming look. From garret to basement it beamed like
the abode of a happy couple.

 
          
As
Lizzie Hazeldean reached the door a curious change came over her. She was
conscious of it at once—she had so often said to herself, when her little house
rose before her: “It makes me feel younger as soon as I turn the corner.” And it
was true even today. In spite of her agitation she was aware that the lines
between her eyebrows were smoothing themselves out, and that a kind of inner
lightness was replacing the heavy tumult of her breast. The lightness revealed
itself in her movements, which grew as quick as a girl’s as she ran up the
steps. She rang twice—it was her signal—and turned an unclouded smile on her
elderly parlourmaid.

 
          
“Is
Mr. Hazeldean in the library, Susan? I hope you’ve kept up the fire for him.”

 
          
“Oh,
yes, ma’am. But Mr. Hazeldean’s not in,” said Susan, returning the smile
respectfully.

 
          
“
Not in
?
With his
cold—and in this weather?”

 
          
“That’s
what I told him, ma’am. But he just laughed—”

 
          
“Just
laughed? What do you mean, Susan?” Lizzie Hazeldean felt herself turning pale.
She rested her hand quickly on the hall table.

 
          
“Well,
ma’am, the minute he heard the fire-engine, off he rushed like a boy. It seems
the Fifth Avenue Hotel’s on fire: there’s where he’s gone.”

 
          
The
blood left Mrs. Hazeldean’s lips; she felt it shuddering back to her heart. But
a second later she spoke in a tone of natural and good-humoured impatience.

 
          
“What
madness! How long ago—can you remember?” Instantly, she felt the possible
imprudence of the question, and added: “The doctor said he ought not to be out
more than a quarter of an hour, and only at the sunniest time of the day.”

 
          
“I
know that, ma’am, and so I reminded him. But he’s been gone nearly an hour, I
should say.”

 
          
A
sense of deep fatigue overwhelmed Mrs. Hazeldean. She felt as if she had walked
for miles against an icy gale: her breath came laboriously.

 
          
“How
could you let him go?” she wailed; then, as the parlourmaid again smiled
respectfully, she added: “Oh, I know—sometimes one can’t stop him. He gets so
restless, being shut up with these long colds.”

 
          
“That’s
what I
do
feel, ma’am.”

 
          
Mistress
and maid exchanged a glance of sympathy, and Susan felt herself emboldened to
suggest: “Perhaps the outing will do him good,” with the tendency of her class
to encourage favoured invalids in disobedience.

 
          
Mrs.
Hazeldean’s look grew severe. “Susan! I’ve often warned you against talking to
him in that way—”

 
          
Susan
reddened, and assumed a pained expression. “How can you think it, ma’am?—me
that never say anything to anybody, as all in the house will bear witness.”

 
          
Her
mistress made an impatient movement. “Oh, well, I daresay he won’t be long. The
fire’s over.”

 
          
“Ah—you
knew of it too, then, ma’am?”

 
          
“Of the fire?
Why, of course. I
saw
it, even—” Mrs. Hazeldean smiled. “I was walking home from
Washington Square
—from Miss Cecilia Winter’s—and at the
corner of
Twenty-third
Street
there was a huge crowd, and clouds of
smoke…It’s very odd that I shouldn’t have run across Mr. Hazeldean.” She looked
limpidly at the parlourmaid.” But, then, of course, in all that crowd and
confusion …”

 
          
Half-way
up the stairs she turned to call back: “Make up a good fire in the library,
please, and bring the tea up. It’s too cold in the drawing-room.”

 
          
The
library was on the upper landing. She went in, drew the two roses from her
muff, tenderly unswathed them, and put them in a slim glass on her husband’s
writing-table. In the doorway she paused to smile at this touch of summer in
the firelit wintry room; but a moment later her frown of anxiety reappeared.
She stood listening intently for the sound of a latch-key; then, hearing
nothing, passed on to her bedroom.

 
          
It
was a rosy room, hung with one of the new English chintzes, which also covered
the deep sofa, and the bed with its rose-lined pillow-covers. The carpet was
cherry red, the toilet-table ruffled and looped like a ball-dress. Ah, how she
and Susan had ripped and sewn and hammered, and pieced together old scraps of
lace and ribbon and muslin, in the making of that airy monument! For weeks
after she had done over the room her husband never came into it without saying:
“I can’t think how you managed to squeeze all this loveliness out of that last
cheque of your stepmother’s.”

 
          
On
the dressing-table Lizzie Hazeldean noticed a long florist’s box, one end of
which had been cut open to give space to the still longer stems of a bunch of
roses. She snipped the string, and extracted from the box an envelope which she
flung into the fire without so much as a glance at its contents. Then she
pushed the flowers aside, and after rearranging her dark hair before the
mirror, carefully dressed herself in a loose garment of velvet and lace which
lay awaiting her on the sofa, beside her high-heeled slippers and stockings of
open-work silk.

 
          
She
had been one of the first women in
New York
to have tea every afternoon at five, and to
put off her walking-dress for a tea-gown.