Edith Wharton - SSC 11

by Uncollected Stories (v2. 1)

  At length the white line about the chancel swayed, broke, and dissolved itself; the choir burst into another victorious hymn, and the little veiled figures came fluttering back to their seats. In the ensuing disturbance, Maurice rose with a quick whisper to his mother—”Let me pass—I’m going out. I can’t stand the incense”—and while Mrs. Birkton made way for him, startled and disappointed, his glance fell for a moment on Annette’s illuminated face, as she moved toward her seat with fixed eyes and folded hands. Her whole gaze was bent upon the inner vision; she did not even see him as he brushed her dress in passing out.

  It was like a new birth to get out into the snow again, and Maurice, after a sharp breath or two, stepped forth rapidly against the wind, courting the tingle of the barbed flakes upon his face.

  He did not go home until late that evening, and when he entered the kitchen, he was met by the festal spectacle of the supper-table adorned with a cluster of white lilies and a delicate array of fruit and angel-cake. Annette, in her habitual dress of dark stuff, looked more familiar and less supernal than before, and though her face still shone, it now seemed to Maurice that he could discern the mingling of a gratified childish vanity with the mystical emotions of the morning.

  “I’m so glad you have come, dear,” Mrs. Birkton exclaimed, her countenance still dewy with a pleasant agitation. “Annette, is the chicken ready? We have a broiled chicken for you, Maurice, dear, and a little mayonnaise of tomatoes.”

  As she spoke her eye turned toward the supper-table, dumbly challenging his praise.

  “How nice it looks,” he murmured, obediently.

  “It is all owing to you, dear,” his mother replied. “We asked Mr. Helfenridge to come to supper, too; we thought you would like to have him.”

  “Is he coming?” Maurice asked, abruptly.

  “No, he couldn’t unfortunately. He said he had promised to go to his sister’s.”

  They sat down, Annette mutely radiant at the head of the table, with her mother and Maurice at the sides; but to the dismay of the two women Maurice refused to partake of the delicacies which they had prepared. He had a headache, he said; but he sat watching them eat, in spite of his mother’s entreaties that he should go and lie down in his own room.

  When supper was over, however, he rose and bade them good-night; Annette’s kiss was mingled with an inarticulate whisper of gratitude, but he pushed her gently aside, and the women heard him cross the passage-way and shut himself into his own room.

  In a few moments, however, he was aroused by a timorous knock, which he recognized as his mother’s.

  “Come in,” he called, and Mrs. Birkton stepped apologetically across the threshold.

  “Maurice, is your head very bad?”

  “No, no—it’s not bad at all. I only want to be quiet.”

  “I know, dear, and I’m very sorry to disturb you. But here is the rest of this money—I can’t keep it, you know, Maurice. Annette’s dress and shoes and veil, and the carriage and supper, and the new strings for my bonnet, only cost twenty-seven dollars and a half, and I can’t possibly keep the rest unless you will let me use it for the household expenses, as usual.”

  Maurice sprang up, white to the lips.

  “For God’s sake, mother, understand me. I don’t want the money—I won’t touch it. I can provide plenty for the household; I haven’t let you starve yet. And this is Annette’s; yours and hers. If you won’t spend it for yourself let Annette put it in the savings-bank; or let her throw it into the street; I don’t care what becomes of it—but don’t speak to me of it again. I’m sick to death of hearing about it!”

  Mrs. Birkton shrank back, trembling at his unwonted tone. She was afraid that he was going to be really ill, and her one thought was to withdraw without increasing his agitation.

  “Very well, dear—just as you please,” she said, deprecatingly. “It was foolish of me to trouble you. Don’t think of it again, but go to bed and try to sleep. I ought not to have disturbed you.”

  And she slipped back into the passage-way, stealthily closing the door.

  Maurice had no thought of going to bed. He sank into his arm-chair, which he had pushed close to the gas-stove, and sat staring at the hard yellow brilliance of the polished radiator.

  Helfenridge had gone to see Annette confirmed, but he had not been willing to come to supper; and Maurice knew him too well not to penetrate the shallow excuse which had satisfied Mrs. Birkton. Well, Helfenridge was right; no man can handle pitch without being defiled. And once a man’s hand is soiled, why should his friends care to touch it?

  After all, no cheap condonation of Helfenridge’s would have helped Maurice now; rather did he feel a tonic force in his friend’s disapproval. It showed Helfenridge to be the better and stronger man; and there was a kind of dispassionate consolation in that. If one had to fail it was better that the other should hold fast than be dragged down with him; and Helfenridge had always been the firmer-footed of the two.

  So Maurice mused, letting the desolate hours travel on unregarded; till suddenly his vigil was disturbed by a knock, sharp and resolute this time, which made him start to his feet.

  “Helfenridge!” he exclaimed, and there on the threshold stood his friend.

  Maurice, on seeing him enter, had felt an involuntary thrill of relief, as though he were regaining his moral footing, but the illusion was transient and left him to sink back into profounder depths of self-accusal.

  “I thought you weren’t coming. You would have been quite right not to come,” he said, without asking his friend to sit down.

  “I didn’t mean to come,” Helfenridge answered, taking off his coat. “Your mother asked me to supper, but I refused. I couldn’t see my way clear at first—even in church that little white seraph didn’t seem to justify it for a moment; but I have been thinking hard all day—and now I’ve come.”

  He held out his hand, but Maurice made no motion to take it.

  “It’s no use,” he said, heavily. “No amount of thinking will make it right. What’s that in the Bible about doing evil that good may come? That’s what I’ve done. I’ve done evil that good might come—but it hasn’t come—it can’t. The fellow in the Bible was right. You think Annette’s dress was white? I tell you it was black—black as pitch.”

  “No, no,” said Helfenridge, taking the chair which Maurice had not offered him. “The whole business is horribly mixed up, like most human affairs, but there’s a germ of right in it somewhere, and the best thing we can do now is to nurse that and get it to flower.”

  “To flower?—bah—a poison-ivy—”

  “Some poisons are valuable medicines,” said Helfenridge.

  “Oh, stop—drop that inane metaphor. I tell you there’s no excuse for what I did; and what’s worse there’s no reparation. I’d give myself up, I’d go and proclaim the whole thing—but what good would that do? Smother everybody in mud—Annette, and my mother, and that poor woman! Helfenridge—”

  “Well?”

  “That woman—Mrs. Tolquitt—was in church with her little girl, who was confirmed. Think of it, will you! Her little girl was confirmed with Annette! And they sat next to us—only a few seats off. Helfenridge, I never knew she had a little girl.”

  “I don’t suppose we any of us know much about anybody else,” said Helfenridge.

  “And there she sat crying—crying, I tell you. Just such tears as my mother’s—glad and proud and sorry all at once!”

  “Yes, I saw her.”

  “You saw her—and you’re here now?”

  “I’m here, Maurice, because I know what you’re suffering.”

  They were both silent, Helfenridge seated with bowed head, Birkton stirring uneasily about the room with the thwarted movements of a caged animal.

  At length he flung himself down in the chair in front of his desk and hid his face against his arms. Helfenridge heard his sobs.

  It seemed a long time before either of them spoke; but finally Helfenridge rose and t
ouched his friend’s shoulder.

  “My eyes are clearer than yours just now,” he said, “and I shouldn’t be here if I didn’t see a way out of it.”

  “A way out of it?”

  “Yes, only it’s no empirical remedy: geschehen ist geschehen. But you spoke just now of the biblical axiom that good can’t come out of evil; well, no generalization of that sort is final. It seems to me, on the contrary, that this good can come out of evil; that having done evil once it may become impossible to do it again. One ill act may become the strongest rampart one can build against further ill-doing. It divides things, it classifies them. It may be the means of lifting one forever out of the region of quibbles and compromises and moral subtleties, in which we who are curious in emotions are apt to loiter till we get a shaking up of some sort. It’s horrible to make a stepping-stone out of a poor woman’s anguish and humiliation; but the anguish and humiliation can’t be prevented now; and who knows? in the occult economy of things they may be of some use to her if they help somebody else.”

  Maurice flung off his hand with a passionate gesture. “Quibbles and compromises and moral subtleties! What else is your reasoning made up of, I should like to know? It’s nothing but the basest Liguorianism. The plain fact is that I’m a damned blackguard, not fit to look decent people in the face again.”

  His head sank once more upon his outstretched arms, and Helfenridge drew back.

  “Shall I go then, Maurice?”

  “Yes, go; it’s worse when you’re here.”

  Helfenridge for a few moments stood irresolute, as if waiting for his friend to recall him; but Maurice still sat without moving, bowed beneath the immensity of his shame.

  “Well, I’m going,” Helfenridge reluctantly declared.

  Maurice made no reply; his shoulders still shook, although his grief had grown noiseless.

  “Remember, Maurice,” his friend conjured him, “that whatever you do your mother and sister mustn’t find out about this business. That’s your first duty now, to hide the whole thing from them.”

  Still there came no answer. Helfenridge turned to the door and slowly opened it, glancing back as he did so at Maurice’s downcast head; then he stepped out into the passage-way. But as the door closed behind him a new impulse, uncontrollable in its suddenness, made him turn back abruptly and re-enter the room.

  “Look here, Maurice, listen to me,” he exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to tell you—but, hang it all, there’s no use in your taking it like this. Blason was waiting for Mrs. Tolquitt outside the church, and I saw them drive away together in her brougham, with the little girl between them.”

  (Scribner’s 15, May 1894)

  

  The Valley of Childish Things and Other Emblems.

  I.

  Once upon a time a number of children lived together in the Valley of Childish Things, playing all manner of delightful games, and studying the same lesson-books. But one day a little girl, one of their number, decided that it was time to see something of the world about which the lesson-books had taught her; and as none of the other children cared to leave their games, she set out alone to climb the pass which led out of the valley.

  It was a hard climb, but at length she reached a cold, bleak table-land beyond the mountains. Here she saw cities and men, and learned many useful arts, and in so doing grew to be a woman. But the table-land was bleak and cold, and when she had served her apprenticeship she decided to return to her old companions in the Valley of Childish Things, and work with them instead of with strangers.

  It was a weary way back, and her feet were bruised by the stones, and her face was beaten by the weather; but half way down the pass she met a man, who kindly helped her over the roughest places. Like herself, he was lame and weather-beaten; but as soon as he spoke she recognized him as one of her old playmates. He too had been out in the world, and was going back to the valley; and on the way they talked together of the work they meant to do there. He had been a dull boy, and she had never taken much notice of him; but as she listened to his plans for building bridges and draining swamps and cutting roads through the jungle, she thought to herself, “Since he has grown into such a fine fellow, what splendid men and women my other playmates must have become!”

  But what was her surprise to find, on reaching the valley, that her former companions, instead of growing into men and women, had all remained little children. Most of them were playing the same old games, and the few who affected to be working were engaged in such strenuous occupations as building mud-pies and sailing paper boats in basins. As for the lad who had been the favorite companion of her studies, he was playing marbles with all the youngest boys in the valley.

  At first, the children seemed glad to have her back, but soon she saw that her presence interfered with their games; and when she tried to tell them of the great things that were being done on the table-land beyond the mountains, they picked up their toys and went farther down the valley to play.

  Then she turned to her fellow-traveler, who was the only grown man in the valley; but he was on his knees before a dear little girl with blue eyes and a coral necklace, for whom he was making a garden out of cockle-shells and bits of glass, and broken flowers stuck in sand.

  The little girl was clapping her hands and crowing (she was too young to speak articulately); and when she who had grown to be a woman laid her hand on the man’s shoulder, and asked him if he did not want to set to work with her building bridges, draining swamps, and cutting roads through the jungle, he replied that at that particular moment he was too busy.

  And as she turned away, he added in the kindest possible way, “Really, my dear, you ought to have taken better care of your complexion.”

  

  II.

  There was once a maiden lady who lived alone in a commodious brick house facing north and south. The lady was very fond of warmth and sunshine, but unfortunately her room was on the north side of the house, so that in winter she had no sun at all.

  This distressed her so much that, after long deliberation, she sent for an architect, and asked him if it would be possible to turn the house around so that her room should face the south. The architect replied that anything could be done for money; but the estimated cost of turning the house around was so high that the lady, who enjoyed a handsome income, was obliged to reduce her way of living and sell her securities at a sacrifice to raise money enough for the purpose.

  At length, however, the house was turned around, and she felt almost consoled for her impoverishment by the first ray of sunlight which stole through her shutters the next morning.

  That very day she received a visit from an old friend who had been absent a year; and this friend, finding her seated at her window in a flood of sunlight, immediately exclaimed:

  “My dear, how sensible of you to have moved into a south room! I never could understand why you persisted so long in living on the north side of the house.”

  And the following day the architect sent in his bill.

  

  III.

  There was once a little girl who was so very intelligent that her parents feared that she would die.

  But an aged aunt, who had crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel, said, “My dears, let her marry the first man she falls in love with, and she will make such a fool of herself that it will probably save her life.”

  

  IV.

  A thinly clad man, who was trudging afoot through a wintry and shelterless region, met another wrapped in a big black cloak. The cloak hung heavily on its wearer, and seemed to drag him back, but at least it kept off the cold.

  “That’s a fine warm cloak you’ve got,” said the first man through his chattering teeth.

  “Oh,” said the other, “it’s none of my choosing, I promise you. It’s only my old happiness dyed black and made over into a sorrow; but in this weather a man must wear what he’s got.”

  “To think of some people’s luck!” muttered the first man,
as the other passed on. “Now I never had enough happiness to make a sorrow out of.”

  

  V.

  There was once a man who married a sweet little wife; but when he set out with her from her father’s house, he found that she had never been taught to walk. They had a long way to go, and there was nothing for him to do but to carry her; and as he carried her she grew heavier and heavier.

  Then they came to a wide, deep river, and he found that she had never been taught to swim. So he told her to hold fast to his shoulder, and started to swim with her across the river. And as he swam she grew frightened, and dragged him down in her struggles. And the river was deep and wide, and the current ran fast; and once or twice she nearly had him under. But he fought his way through, and landed her safely on the other side; and behold, he found himself in a strange country, beyond all imagining delightful. And as he looked about him and gave thanks, he said to himself:

  “Perhaps if I hadn’t had to carry her over, I shouldn’t have kept up long enough to get here myself.”

  

  VI.

  A soul once cowered in a gray waste, and a mighty shape came by. Then the soul cried out for help, saying, “Shall I be left to perish alone in this desert of Unsatisfied Desires?”

  “But you are mistaken,” the shape replied; “this is the land of Gratified Longings. And, moreover, you are not alone, for the country is full of people; but whoever tarries here grows blind.”

  

  VII.

  There was once a very successful architect who made a great name for himself. At length he built a magnificent temple, to which he devoted more time and thought than to any of the other buildings he had erected; and the world pronounced it his masterpiece. Shortly afterward he died, and when he came before the judgment angel he was not asked how many sins he had committed, but how many houses he had built.