Edith Wharton - SSC 10 (7 page)

 
          
“Kenneth!”
she exclaimed, and went out into the hall.

 
          
The
letter clutched in his hand, her husband turned and looked at her. “Where were
you?” he said, in a low bewildered voice, like a man waked out of his sleep.

 
          
“In the library, waiting for you.”
She tried to steady her
voice: “What’s the matter! What’s in that letter? You look ghastly.”

 
          
Her
agitation seemed to calm him, and he instantly put the envelope into his pocket
with a slight laugh. “Ghastly? I’m sorry. I’ve had a hard day in the office—one
or two complicated cases. I look dog-tired, I suppose.”

 
          
“You
didn’t look tired when you came in. It was only when you opened that letter—”

 
          
He
had followed her into the library, and they stood gazing at each other.
Charlotte noticed how quickly he had regained his self-control; his profession
had trained him to rapid mastery of face and voice. She saw at once that she
would be at a disadvantage in any attempt to surprise his secret, but at the
same moment she lost all desire to manoeuvre, to trick him into betraying
anything he wanted to conceal. Her wish was still to penetrate the mystery, but
only that she might help him to bear the burden it implied. “Even if it
is
another woman,” she thought.

 
          
“Kenneth,”
she said, her heart beating excitedly, “I waited here on purpose to see you
come in. I wanted to watch you while you opened that letter.”

 
          
His
face, which had paled, turned to dark red; then it paled again. “That letter?
Why especially that letter?”

 
          
“Because
I’ve noticed that whenever one of those letters comes it seems to have such a
strange effect on you.”

 
          
A
line of anger she had never seen before came out between his eyes, and she said
to herself: “The upper part of his face is too narrow; this is the first time I
ever noticed it.”

 
          
She
heard him continue, in the cool and faintly ironic tone of the prosecuting
lawyer making a point: “Ah; so you’re in the habit of watching people open
their letters when they don’t know you’re there?”

 
          
“Not
in the habit. I never did such a thing before. But I had to find out what she
writes to you, at regular intervals, in those gray envelopes.”

 
          
He
weighed this for a moment; then: “The intervals have not been regular,” he
said.

 
          
“Oh,
I daresay you’ve kept a better account of the dates than I have,” she retorted,
her magnanimity vanishing at his tone. “All I know is that every time that
woman writes to you—”

 
          
“Why
do you assume it’s a woman?”

 
          
“It’s
a woman’s writing. Do you deny it?”

 
          
He
smiled. “No, I don’t deny it. I asked only because the writing is generally
supposed to look more like a man’s.”

 
          
Charlotte
passed this over impatiently. “And this woman—what does she write to you
about?”

 
          
Again
he seemed to consider a moment.
“About business.”

 
          
“Legal business?”

 
          
“In a way, yes.
Business in general.”

 
          
“You
look after her affairs for her?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“You’ve
looked after them for a long time?”

 
          
“Yes.
A very long time.”

 
          
“Kenneth,
dearest, won’t you tell me who she is?”

 
          
“No.
I can’t.” He paused, and brought out, as if with a certain hesitation:
“Professional secrecy.”

 
          
The
blood rushed from
Charlotte
’s heart to her temples. “Don’t say that—don’t!”

 
          
“Why not?”

 
          
“Because
I saw you kiss the letter.”

 
          
The
effect of the words was so disconcerting that she instantly repented having spoken
them. Her husband, who had submitted to her cross-questioning with a sort of
contemptuous composure, as though he were humouring an unreasonable child,
turned on her a face of terror and distress. For a minute he seemed unable to
speak; then, collecting himself with an effort, he stammered out: “The writing
is very faint; you must have seen me holding the letter close to my eyes to try
to decipher it.” “No; I saw you kissing it.” He was silent. “Didn’t I see you
kissing it?”

 
          
He
sank back into indifference.
“Perhaps.”

 
          
“Kenneth!
You stand there and say that—to me?”

 
          
“What
possible difference can it make to you? The letter is on business, as I told
you. Do you suppose I’d lie about it? The writer is a very old friend whom I
haven’t seen for a long time.”

 
          
“Men
don’t kiss business letters, even from women who are very old friends, unless
they have been their lovers, and still regret them.”

 
          
He
shrugged his shoulders slightly and turned away, as if he considered the
discussion at an end and
were
faintly disgusted at the
turn it had taken.

 
          
“Kenneth!”
Charlotte
moved toward him and caught hold of his
arm.

 
          
He
paused with a look of weariness and laid his hand over hers. “Won’t you believe
me?” he asked gently.

 
          
“How
can I? I’ve watched these letters come to you—for months now they’ve been
coming. Ever since we came back from the
West Indies
—one of them greeted me the very day we
arrived. And after each one of them I see their mysterious effect on you, I see
you disturbed, unhappy, as if someone were trying to estrange you from me.”

 
          
“No, dear; not that.
Never!”

 
          
She
drew back and looked at him with passionate entreaty. “Well, then, prove it to
me, darling. It’s so easy!”

 
          
He
forced a smile. “It’s not easy to prove anything to a woman who’s once taken an
idea into her head.”

 
          
“You’ve
only got to show me the letter.”

 
          
His
hand slipped from hers and he drew back and shook his head.

 
          
“You
won’t?”

 
          
“I
can’t.”

 
          
“Then
the woman who wrote it is your mistress.”

 
          
“No, dear.
No.”

 
          
“Not now, perhaps.
I suppose she’s trying to get you back,
and you’re struggling, out of pity for me.
My poor Kenneth!”

 
          
“I
swear to you she never was my mistress.”

 
          
Charlotte
felt the tears rushing to her eyes. “Ah,
that’s worse, then—that’s hopeless! The prudent ones are the
kind
that keep
their hold on a man. We all know that.” She lifted her hands
and hid her face in them.

 
          
Her
husband remained silent; he offered neither consolation nor denial, and at
length, wiping away her tears, she raised her eyes almost timidly to his.

 
          
“Kenneth,
think! We’ve been married such a short time. Imagine what you’re making me
suffer. You say you can’t show me this letter. You refuse even to explain it.”

 
          
“I’ve
told you the letter is on business. I will swear to that too.”

 
          
“A
man will swear to anything to screen a woman. If you want me to believe you, at
least tell me her name. If you’ll do that, I promise you I won’t ask to see the
letter.”

 
          
There
was a long interval of suspense, during which she felt her heart beating
against her ribs in quick admonitory knocks, as if warning her of the danger
she was incurring.

 
          
“I
can’t,” he said at length.

 
          
“Not
even her name?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“You
can’t tell me anything more?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
Again
a pause; this time they seemed both to have reached the end of their arguments
and to be helplessly facing each other across a baffling waste of
incomprehension.

 
          
Charlotte
stood breathing rapidly, her hands against
her breast. She felt as if she had run a hard race and missed the goal. She had
meant to move her husband and had succeeded only in irritating him; and this
error of reckoning seemed to change him into a stranger, a mysterious
incomprehensible being whom no argument or entreaty of hers could reach. The
curious thing was that she was aware in him of no hostility or even impatience,
but only of
a remoteness
, an inaccessibility, far more
difficult to overcome. She felt herself excluded, ignored, blotted out of his
life. But after a moment or two, looking at him more calmly, she saw that he
was suffering as much as she was. His distant guarded face was drawn with pain;
the coming of the gray envelope, though it always cast a shadow, had never
marked him as deeply as this discussion with his wife.

 
          
Charlotte
took heart; perhaps, after all, she had not
spent her last shaft. She drew nearer and once more laid her hand on his arm.
“Poor Kenneth!
If you knew how sorry I am for you—”

 
          
She
thought he winced slightly at this expression of sympathy, but he took her hand
and pressed it.

 
          
“I
can think of nothing worse than to be incapable of loving long,” she continued;
“to feel the beauty of a great love and to be too unstable to bear its burden.”

 
          
He
turned on her a look of wistful reproach. “Oh, don’t say that of me.
Unstable!”

 
          
She
felt herself at last on the right tack, and her voice trembled with excitement
as she went on: “Then what about me and this other woman? Haven’t you already
forgotten Elsie twice within a year?”

 
          
She
seldom pronounced his first wife’s name; it did not come naturally to her
tongue. She flung it out now as if she were flinging some dangerous explosive
into the open space between them, and drew back a step, waiting to hear the
mine go off.

 
          
Her
husband did not move; his expression grew sadder, but showed no resentment. “I
have never forgotten Elsie,” he said.

 
          
Charlotte
could not repress a faint laugh. “Then, you
poor dear, between the three of us—”

 
          
“There
are not—” he began; and then broke off and put his hand to his forehead.