The Age of Desire

by Jennie Fields

  Edith is amazed that she has so far avoided Teddy’s influenza. Instead, it’s Henry who falls ill. Two days after his arrival, he asks Alfred White to inform Edith that he is seriously, possibly fatally indisposed.

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am. That is what he told me to convey,” Alfred says, looking at his shoes.

  Edith hurries to Henry’s room and taps on the door.

  “May I come in?” she asks.

  “If you dare,” he says. Henry looks like a great beached whale, lying in the middle of the lit bateau with the covers neatly tucked under his armpits.

  “I think I shall die,” he says. “You’ll have to have a piano mover remove me from this lovely bedroom,” he announces. He moans and lies back on his pillow. Edith notes that he has put on a beautiful silk dressing gown and wears an ascot. Quite an effort for just lying in bed.

  “We’ll take very good care of you,” she assures him.

  She arranges for much tea with honey, all sorts of croissants and toast and stewed chicken to be brought to his room.

  Later in the afternoon, Henry asks for Anna. Soft, serious Anna enters his room, shuts the door and doesn’t come out for an hour.

  Edith, feeling a tad jealous, monitors the door. When Anna emerges, Edith ushers her away from Henry’s room. “What on earth did he speak to you about?” she asks.

  “He told me what he wanted us to do if he died.”

  Edith can’t help but laugh. “He’s not going to die. He simply has a head cold.”

  “I took notes,” Anna says, and with only the faintest smile holds up a pad of paper filled from top to bottom.

  “We’ll have to have these framed for future reference,” Edith says. “Good heavens. He wants only black horses in his funeral procession. No cars. Very old-fashioned of him.”

  A week later, when Henry is himself again, guests begin to arrive once more, including Henry’s particular request: the journalist Mr. Morton Fullerton.

  Fullerton arrives on a Tuesday afternoon bearing an elegant top hat, a walking stick and a nosegay of roses, violets and daisies for Edith.

  “For me? Or Henry?”

  “You, of course,” he says.

  “Oh lovely! I appreciate flowers so much this time of year!” She strokes the slick lavender silk gracing the stems. “Thank you.”

  “The magic of hothouses,” he says. “I hear you are quite the gardener.”

  “And who told you that?”

  “Charles Eliot Norton.”

  “You know Mr. Norton?”

  The well-known Harvard scholar is the father of Sally Norton, one of Edith’s dearest friends. Edith feels flattered that Fullerton bothered to mention her to them.

  “He influenced me more than anyone at Harvard. I know all the Nortons, and they seem to know you. I don’t wish to be brazen, Mrs. Wharton. But the Nortons say I must visit you when I’m in Massachusetts. That your house is the ‘embodiment of you.’”

  “The embodiment of me. Hmmm. Largish and white?”

  He looks her up and down with a grin. “Well put together. Elegant.”

  Fullerton’s good looks make Edith uncomfortable. She’s heard that the glaciers in the Alaska territory hold such an extraordinary azure color they seem to have trapped the sky beneath the ice. And that’s how Morton Fullerton’s eyes strike her. Caught in the black fringe of his long lashes, they are glistening, chilling, reflective. “Oh, and Sally says I must smell the pine trees at night from your terrace.”

  Wise Sally. To step out on The Mount’s terrace in the moonlight, after a pulsingly hot day, and feel the cool breath of pine is one of Edith’s greatest pleasures. “I’ll count on you visiting me, then?” she asks.

  “We’ll shake on it.” he offers his hand. With her hand enfolded in his, an odd sense of peace comes over her. She reluctantly lets go, but her very skin seems to vibrate.

  “Please excuse me while I get Mr. James.” She hears a girlish lilt to her own voice.

  Henry is thrilled to see Fullerton. His face lights up like a starving man being presented a chocolate cream pie. He pulls up one of the Louis XIV tapestry chairs to sit closer.

  “My boy,” he says, “you’re looking well. The world of journalism hasn’t ruined you, I see.”

  “I am quite good at hiding the damage,” Fullerton says. “And you, Mr. James, are looking fine, despite your brush with death.”

  Henry apparently doesn’t hear the irony in his voice, for he goes on in flinching detail describing the misery of his week in bed. Fullerton furrows his brows with appropriate concern.

  “I am sure Mrs. Wharton was relieved that you didn’t die chez Wharton. It would have been a blot on her reputation as the consummate hostess.”

  “I am too thoughtful to die in someone else’s home,” Henry says with a harrumph.

  The bonne arrives with a spread for tea: tea cakes, pastries and small sandwiches. Henry isn’t too shy to fill his plate with little pleasures. Fullerton merely sips his brew. He must be in his early forties, but his body appears fit and disciplined. His face unlined. There’s no mark of indulgence in drink or gluttony.

  “I hear that Charles Du Bos is translating The House of Mirth for you,” Fullerton says, turning to Edith.

  “Yes, I’m hoping to have it serialized here. To place it in Le Temps or Revue de Paris. Do you think that’s a good idea? That’s how it was done in New York.”

  “A very good idea. But the Revue de Paris is the better choice. It’s a natural fit for your work. I could speak to the chief editor there, Rivoire. I know him well.”

  “Could you?” She races on lest she lose her nerve. “And let me ask you, Mr. Fullerton: when Charlie is done with the translation, would you look at it? I am a disastrous proofreader even in English. My brain supplies all the missing words and I don’t see the gap. But in French . . .” She makes a moue and a poofing sound, as the French do to express complete hopelessness. “I imagine you are much better at it.”

  He smiles very slowly, and his eyes meet hers. “Nothing would give me more pleasure,” he says.

  “I’ll write as soon as the manuscript arrives,” she tells him.

  When Fullerton is gone, Henry grips Edith’s hand with childish passion. “He’s an extraordinary fellow, isn’t he? A beautiful, extraordinary fellow.” Edith cannot help but agree.

  Edith hasn’t been sleeping well. Her nights are filled with dreams that wind around her so tightly she wakes in the dark, aching and imprinted by the sheets. What was the dream she just had? That she and the Comtesse de Noailles were going bathing together in the sea. Edith can’t remember the last time she really stepped into the ocean. Sometime in her twenties in Newport. The unpredictability of the waves frightened her. Walter once said, “You’d control the Atlantic if you could, wouldn’t you, Edith? That’s why you’re afraid of it, you know. Because it pays you no heed.” But in this dream, she and de Noailles were going to swim. And de Noailles started removing her own clothes right at the shoreline, encouraging Edith to do the same.

  “There’s no one here. Don’t be shy.”

  She helped Edith untie her corset.

  “Evil thing,” she called it, tossing it down onto the sand.

  De Noailles wanted them to swim naked. Completely naked. The sea wasn’t cold like it is in Newport. It was warm like bathwater, bright turquoise like the Mediterranean. Undressed, Anna’s skin was dusky and glowing, her nipples as richly colored as autumn apples.

  “Come in! Come in,” she called out to Edith, stepping in deeper and deeper, until the water reached her neck and she was swept into the bright waves. Laughing and luxuriating in the broth-warm ocean, she waved and smiled. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders. She was a water nymph, a siren, calling Edith forth. But Edith stood shivering on the edge of the surf. If only she cou
ld make herself go into the water, it would be warmer. Far warmer. Gooseflesh sprouted on her arms, her exposed thighs. Why couldn’t she make herself go in? It should have been so easy. So enticing. But she couldn’t step in beyond her knees. What did it matter that the warm waves were so inviting when she couldn’t sally forth?

  She shivers now in her bed. Alone and awake, she wishes she could close her eyes and swim.

  The motorcar is packed. With Charles Cook, the chauffeur, at the wheel, Teddy, Henry and Edith set off to explore France. Nicette climbs right into Henry’s lap and he declares by lunch that he has fallen in love with her. If she were a woman, he says, he would throw all caution to the wind and give up his bachelorhood immediately. The weather is lovely and a breeze whooshes in through the open windows. The car flies on its big India rubber tires. They all exclaim that they can barely feel the road.

  It’s late April when they return to Paris, a jolly crew. Henry says he’s practically had the time of his life. Edith is tickled by the disclaimer of the word “practically,” but she feels closer to him than she imagined possible. As persnickety and full of irony as he can be—and often is—he experiences everything with a childlike pleasure that she deems the essential element of a good traveler, and in this case, a charming companion. By the time they return to Paris, even Teddy is calling him “good old HJ.”

  Henry stays on at the Rue de Varenne through much of May, and the Bourgets—Paul and Minnie—visit with him often. Paul has grown fond of Henry, has all the patience in the world for his stories and declares him a genius.

  One afternoon, Anna de Noailles comes for tea and to meet the great Monsieur James. She arrives in her silken dress, dewy and flushed as though she has walked all the way from the Right Bank. After Edith’s dream of de Noailles naked in the ocean, she feels shy to be alone with her. And since Henry is still out with the Bourgets, Edith is relieved to recall her promise to invite Anna Bahlmann to meet La Comtesse. Coaxed from her room, Anna sits very still on a distant settee in her dull gray dress and gazes at de Noailles with wide eyes. She speaks only when Anna de Noailles asks, “Aren’t you going to have a taste of these uncanny little cakes, Miss Bahlmann? Honestly, you will be a changed woman.” Anna shrinks back into the pillows and demurs, “Non, merci.”

  “Miss Bahlmann clearly doesn’t wish to be a changed woman,” Edith says, laughing. Just then she catches Anna’s pained eyes and feels a moment’s remorse. But then Tonni leans forward.

  “Comtesse, when I read your poem “Imprint,” I cried. It made me realize how little I leave behind.” And then, in flawless French, Anna Bahlmann recites the beginning of the poem.

  “So vigorously will I lean on life,

  So strongly will I hold and embrace it,

  That before I lose the sweetness of day

  It will be heated from my touch.”

  Anna de Noailles’s soft lips part with surprise.

  “It spoke to me,” Anna Bahlmann goes on to say. “It urged me to make a mark.”

  “Truly, Miss Bahlmann?” The Comtesse raises her extraordinary dark eyebrows. “I too often hope in vain that my poems will do more than amuse people. You are proof that I have made my mark on someone,” she says humbly. “I am inexpressibly touched.”

  When the tea is over, she embraces Anna. “Imprint the world,” she whispers into her ear loud enough for Edith to hear. The door closes behind her.

  Edith and Anna Bahlmann are left standing in the hall with the Comtesse’s lingering scent. Edith takes in the figure of the woman who hovers by her every single day: so transparent in her gray gown, like a wisp of smoke threatening to disperse. She wonders if she has ever really seen her before.

  Anna Bahlmann lies neck-deep in the servants’ tub, caressing the cool nickel faucet with her toes, whispering aloud the same poem she quoted to the Comtesse. She is pleased that the cool tile plumps her whisper with watery sibilance.

  “That before I lose the sweetness of day It will be heated from my touch.”

  Anna has spent a lifetime allowing poetry to tie neat bows around her life. How gratifying that this time her habit of finding herself in poetry has managed to please the poet herself.

  How little the world around Anna has ever been heated by her touch! And yet is there anyone she knows who experiences more from the universe than she? Who else sees beauty in the branchings on the underside of a leaf, thrills at the perfect middle C of a streetcar bell, is electrified by the perfume of rain on cobbles? Edith. Edith is the only other person she knows who finds splendor in the mundane. And that is why she loves her, why she has devoted herself to her. From the moment she laid eyes on the earnest ten-year-old with ripples of strawberry hair, she knew she’d met her match. A walk in the woods with Edith was a revelation for both of them. A letter from Miss E. Jones burst with description, with news that no one else would have relished.

  Yes, Edith was intractable sometimes. She wanted the world to be as she expected. Once, as a twelve-year-old, she tore every page out of a Dickens book because it disappointed her. Another time, she wouldn’t write to Anna for a whole month when they were apart, because Anna, called away in an emergency, left the Jones’s household unexpectedly.

  “You could at least have warned us,” Edith said as Anna packed and her young charge watched, her mouth in a jealous twist. Just as Anna was closing the case, Edith grabbed Anna’s already packed shawl and yanked it from the bag. “In fact, I won’t let you go. You’ve just come.”

  “Edith, no one could have guessed Ilsa Barnard would come down with scarlet fever. They need me to take care of her.”

  “But you are not a nurse, Tonni! Let them hire a nurse.”

  Anna took the furious little girl and held her to her breast. “I’d choose you over Ilsa, you know, if I had the choice. We’ll see each other soon. Would you like to keep my shawl in the meanwhile?”

  Edith gazed at the nimbus of blue yarn crushed in her fist, sheer and glistening as spider silk.

  “No.” she said, throwing it back on the bed. “I don’t want to be reminded of someone so . . . so . . . inconstant!” After a month of silence with not a single reply to Anna’s faithful letters, she wrote, “I have enjoyed all your letters, Tonni. Do come back soon. I have had some very important thoughts about Goethe and no one to share them with. And mother is at a loss without you.” How relieved Anna felt, knowing Edith couldn’t stay angry at her for long.

  For the last thirty-five years, the very center of Anna’s life, the touchstone, has been Edith. How can Anna help feeling unspeakably pained when she knows Edith is laughing at her, as she surely was this afternoon in de Noailles’s presence? Would Edith have become the writer she is if Anna had not walked in the woods with her and discussed the leaves, the people they met, the reasons things happened? If Anna had not read poems aloud to her, had not made Edith parse the poet’s intentions in every line, had not opened her eyes to new ideas, new ways of thinking? Has Edith come to believe she taught it all to herself? Anna kicks the faucet with her toe. The radiating sting fills her eyes with tears. How lucky she is that she’s in the bath, where no one can see.

  For Edith, the best part about Henry James’s visit is that Morton Fullerton drops by often now: sometimes in the morning, when Edith is writing, sometimes for afternoon tea. She is sorry to miss him when he arrives too early. And she discovers that she is a bit jealous of the abundant attention he pays Henry. On his third visit, he brings the proofread manuscript of The House of Mirth with him. Even at a quick glance, Edith can see he’s done a fine, exacting job.

  “I owe you a great deal for this, Mr. Fullerton,” she says, eager to see all the marks he’s made.

  “Since Henry is nowhere to be found,” Fullerton says, “perhaps you’ll honor me with a walk, Mrs. Wharton. It’s the nicest day of the year so far. And you can consider it a payment of sorts, especially since you h
ave been so cruelly ignoring me of late.”

  “Ignoring you?”

  “Well, the last few times I’ve come to visit, you haven’t even appeared. I find that very wounding.”

  “Mr. Fullerton! I didn’t ‘appear’ because I was writing.”

  “And you find literature more important than me?” His blue eyes twinkle. He holds out his elbow. “Let’s go out before the sun decides it has better things to do.”

  The air is soft and persuasive and the sun, rather than deserting them, splashes itself all along the high-walled hôtels particuliers of the Rue de Varenne. Except for a few walkers, the squeal of passing prams and an occasional distant horse clop, there is no sound but their shoes on the pavement. They are nearly the same height, and their feet find a lilting rhythm.

  “So tell me,” Fullerton says, “have you ever known anyone like Lily Bart? Someone who’s his own worst enemy?”

  She glances over at him. “Isn’t everyone?”

  “No. You don’t strike me as someone who risks enough to do damage to herself.”

  She is startled by his statement. Does she seem so very dull to him?

  “I think I should be insulted.”

  “You shouldn’t. I don’t find risk takers particularly appealing,” he says. “I find them less appealing every year.”

  “I would like to be a risk taker.” Edith envisions Anna de Noailles.

  “What good would risk do you?” Fullerton says jauntily. “You know what you like. And you seem to have everything you could want.”

  Edith smiles to herself. “You don’t know me at all, Mr. Fullerton.”

  The lawns of Les Invalides roll out green and fragrant before them. After the narrow streets, the open space exhales verdant airiness.

  “I know why I find Lily Bart so compelling.” A shadow clouds his eyes for just a moment. “What can be more tragic than someone destroying his own chance at happiness? It’s the classic theme. The seductive glow of the wrong option. Wrong options always seem to have ribbons on them for me.”