Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (126 page)

I
was
not
wholly
glad,
just
at
the
moment,
when
a
letter
bounced out
at
me
one
morning,
announcing
that
he
was
to
marry
the
little cousin—by
this
time,
as
I
had
understood
from
earlier
correspondence, a
lovely
girl
of
eighteen.
I
had
looked
forward
to
much
companionship
with
the
Lithway
I
had
known
of
old,
when
he
should
be
free of
his
obsession.
I
had
thought
him
on
the
way
to
freedom;
and
here he
was,
caught
by
a
flesh-and-blood
damsel
who
thrust
me
out
quite as
decisively
as
the
phantasmal
lady
on
the
staircase.
I
had
decency enough
to
be
glad
for
Lithway,
if
not
for
myself;
glad
that
he
could strike
the
old
idyllic
note
and
live
again
delightfully
in
the
moment. I
didn't
go
to
Berlin
to
see
them
married,
but
I
sent
them
my
blessing and
a
very
curious
and
beautiful
eighteenth-century
clock.
I
also promised
to
visit
them
in
America.
I
felt
that,
if
necessary,
I
could face
Braythe,
now
that
the
ghost
was
so
sure
to
be
laid.
No
woman would
stay
in
a
house
where
her
husband
was
carrying
on,
however unwillingly,
an
affair
with
an
apparition;
and,
as
their
address
remained
the
same,
I
believed
that
the
ghost
had
given
up
the
fight.

This
story
has
almost
the
gait
of
history.
I
have
to
sum
up
decades in
a
phrase.
It
is
really
the
span
of
one
man's
whole
life
that
I
am covering,
you
see.
But
have
patience
with
me
while
I
skim
the
intervening
voids,
and
hover
meticulously
over
the
vivid
patches
of detail.
...
It
was
some
two
years
before
I
reached
Braythe.
I
don't remember
particularly
what
went
on
during
those
two
years;
I
only know
that
I
was
a
happy
wanderer.
I
was
always
a
happy
wanderer, it
seems
to
me
as
I
look
back
on
life,
except
for
the
times
when
I sank
by
Lithway's
side
into
his
lethargy—a
lucid
lethargy,
in
which unaccountable
things
happened
very
quietly,
with
an
utter
stillness of
context.
I
do
know
that
I
was
planning
a
hunting-trip
in
British Central
Africa,
and
wrote
Lithway
that
I
had
better
postpone
my visit
until
that
was
over.
He
seemed
so
hurt
to
think
that
I
could prefer
any
place
to
him
that
I
did
put
it
off
until
the
next
year
and made
a
point
of
going
to
the
Lithways'.

I
had
no
forebodings
when
I
got
out
of
Lithway's
car
at
his
gate and
faced
the
second
Mrs.
Lithway,
who
had
framed
her
beauty
in the
clustering
wisteria
of
the
porch.
I
was
immensely
glad
for
Lithway that
he
had
a
creature
like
that
to
companion
him.
Youth
and
beauty are
wonderful
things
to
keep
by
one's
fireside.
There
was
more
than a
touch
of
vicarious
gratitude
in
my
open
admiration
of
Mrs.
Lithway.
He
was
a
person
one
couldn't
help
wanting
good
things
for;
and one
felt
it
a
delicate
personal
attention
to
oneself
when
they
came
to him.