Edith Wharton - SSC 11

by Uncollected Stories (v2. 1)

  Even Uncle James came down from Boston to talk the wonder over. He called Theodora a “sly baggage,” and proposed that she should give him her earnings to invest in a new patent grease-trap company. From what Kathleen Kyd had told him, he thought Theodora would probably get a thousand dollars for her story. He concluded by suggesting that she should base her next romance on the subject of sanitation, making the heroine nearly die of sewer-gas poisoning because her parents won’t listen to the handsome young doctor next door, when he warns them that their plumbing is out of order. That was a subject that would interest everybody, and do a lot more good than the sentimental trash most women wrote.

  At last the great day came. Theodora had left an order with the bookseller for the midsummer number of the Home Circle, and before the shop was open she was waiting on the sidewalk. She clutched the precious paper and ran home without opening it. Her excitement was almost more than she could bear. Not heeding her father’s call to breakfast, she rushed up-stairs and locked herself in her room. Her hands trembled so that she could hardly turn the pages. At last—yes, there it was: “April Showers.”

  The paper dropped from her hands. What name had she read beneath the title? Had her emotion blinded her?

  “April Showers, by Kathleen Kyd.”

  Kathleen Kyd! Oh, cruel misprint! Oh, dastardly typographer! Through tears of rage and disappointment Theodora looked again: yes, there was no mistaking the hateful name. Her glance ran on. She found herself reading a first paragraph that she had never seen before. She read farther. All was strange. The horrible truth burst upon her: It was not her story!

  *****

  She never knew how she got back to the station. She struggled through the crowd on the platform, and a gold-banded arm pushed her into the train just starting for Norton. It would be dark when she reached home; but that didn’t matter—nothing mattered now. She sank into her seat, closing her eyes in the vain attempt to shut out the vision of the last few hours; but minute by minute memory forced her to relive it; she felt like a rebellious school child dragged forth to repeat the same detested “piece.”

  Although she did not know Boston well, she had made her way easily enough to the Home Circle building; at least, she supposed she had, since she remembered nothing till she found herself ascending the editorial stairs as easily as one does incredible things in dreams. She must have walked very fast, for her heart was beating furiously, and she had barely breath to whisper the editor’s name to a young man who looked out at her from a glass case, like a zoological specimen. The young man led her past other glass cases containing similar specimens to an inner enclosure which seemed filled by an enormous presence. Theodora felt herself enveloped in the presence, submerged by it, gasping for air as she sank under its rising surges.

  Gradually fragments of speech floated to the surface. “‘April Showers?’ Mrs. Kyd’s new serial? Your manuscript, you say? You have a letter from me? The name, please? Evidently some unfortunate misunderstanding. One moment.” And then a bell ringing, a zoological specimen ordered to unlock a safe, her name asked for again, the manuscript, her own precious manuscript, tied with Aunt Julia’s ribbon, laid on the table before her, and her outcries, her protests, her interrogations, drowned in a flood of bland apology: “An unfortunate accident—Mrs. Kyd’s manuscript received the same day—extraordinary coincidence in the choice of a title—duplicate answers sent by mistake—Miss Dace’s novel hardly suited to their purpose—should of course have been returned—regrettable oversight—accidents would happen—sure she understood.”

  The voice went on, like the steady pressure of a surgeon’s hand on a shrieking nerve. When it stopped she was in the street. A cab nearly ran her down, and a car-bell jangled furiously in her ears. She clutched her manuscript, carrying it tenderly through the crowd, like a live thing that had been hurt. She could not bear to look at its soiled edges and the ink-stain on Aunt Julia’s ribbon.

  The train stopped with a jerk, and she opened her eyes. It was dark, and by the windy flare of gas on the platform she saw the Norton passengers getting out. She stood up stiffly and followed them. A warm wind blew into her face the fragrance of the summer woods, and she remembered how, two months earlier, she had knelt among the dead leaves, pressing her lips to the first shoots of green. Then for the first time she thought of home. She had fled away in the morning without a word, and her heart sank at the thought of her mother’s fears. And her father—how angry he would be! She bent her head under the coming storm of his derision.

  The night was cloudy, and as she stepped into the darkness beyond the station a hand was slipped in hers. She stood still, too weary to feel frightened, and a voice said, quietly:

  “Don’t walk so fast, child. You look tired.”

  “Father!” Her hand dropped from his, but he recaptured it and drew it through his arm. When she found voice, it was to whisper, “You were at the station?”

  “It’s such a good night I thought I’d stroll down and meet you.”

  Her arm trembled against his. She could not see his face in the dimness, but the light of his cigar looked down on her like a friendly eye, and she took courage to falter out: “Then you knew -”

  “That you’d gone to Boston? Well, I rather thought you had.”

  They walked on slowly, and presently he added, “You see, you left the Home Circle lying in your room.”

  How she blessed the darkness and the muffled sky! She could not have borne the scrutiny of the tiniest star.

  “Then mother wasn’t very much frightened?”

  “Why, no, she didn’t appear to be. She’s been busy all day over some toggery of Bertha’s.”

  Theodora choked. “Father, I’ll—” She groped for words, but they eluded her. “I’ll do things—differently; I haven’t meant—” Suddenly she heard herself bursting out: “It was all a mistake, you know—about my story. They didn’t want it; they won’t have it!” and she shrank back involuntarily from his impending mirth.

  She felt the pressure of his arm, but he didn’t speak, and she figured his mute hilarity. They moved on in silence. Presently he said:

  “It hurts a bit just at first, doesn’t it?”

  “O father!”

  He stood still, and the gleam of his cigar showed a face of unexpected participation.

  “You see I’ve been through it myself.”

  “You, father? You?”

  “Why, yes. Didn’t I ever tell you? I wrote a novel once. I was just out of college, and I didn’t want to be a doctor. No; I wanted to be a genius. So I wrote a novel.”

  The doctor paused, and Theodora clung to him in a mute passion of commiseration. It was as if a drowning creature caught a live hand through the murderous fury of the waves.

  “Father—O father!”

  “It took me a year—a whole year’s hard work; and when I’d finished it the publishers wouldn’t have it, either; not at any price. And that’s why I came down to meet you, because I remembered my walk home.”

  (Youth’s Companion 74, 18 January 1900)

  

  Line of Least Resistance.

  I.

  Millicent was late—as usual. Mr. Mindon, returning unexpectedly from an interrupted yacht-race, reached home with the legitimate hope of finding her at luncheon; but she was still out. “Was she lunching out then?” he asked the butler, who replied, with the air of making an uncalled-for concession to his master’s curiosity, that Mrs. Mindon had given no orders about luncheon.

  Mr. Mindon, on this negative information (it was the kind from which his knowledge of his wife’s movements was mainly drawn), sat down to the grilled cutlet and glass of Vichy that represented his share in the fabulous daily total of the chef’s book. Mr. Mindon’s annual food-consumption probably amounted to about half of one per cent. on his cook’s perquisites, and of the other luxuries of his complicated establishment he enjoyed considerably less than this fraction. Of course, it was nobody’s fault but his own. As Millicent p
ointed out, she couldn’t feed her friends on mutton-chops and Vichy because of his digestive difficulty, nor could she return their hospitality by asking them to play croquet with the children because that happened to be Mr. Mindon’s chosen pastime. If that was the kind of life he wanted to lead he should have married a dyspeptic governess, not a young confiding girl, who little dreamed what marriage meant when she passed from her father’s roof into the clutches of a tyrant with imperfect gastric secretions.

  It was his fault, of course, but then Millicent had faults too, as she had been known to concede when she perceived that the contemplation of her merits was beginning to pall; and it did seem unjust to Mr. Mindon that their life should be one long adaptation to Millicent’s faults at the expense of his own. Millicent was unpunctual—but that gave a sense of her importance to the people she kept waiting; she had nervous attacks—but they served to excuse her from dull dinners and family visits; she was bad-tempered—but that merely made the servants insolent to Mr. Mindon; she was extravagant—but that simply necessitated Mr. Mindon’s curtailing his summer holiday and giving a closer attention to business. If ever a woman had the qualities of her faults, that woman was Millicent. Like the legendary goose, they laid golden eggs for her, and she nurtured them tenderly in return. If Millicent had been a perfect wife and mother, she and Mr. Mindon would probably have spent their summer in the depressing promiscuity of hotel piazzas. Mr. Mindon was shrewd enough to see that he reaped the advantages of his wife’s imperfect domesticity, and that if her faults were the making of her, she was the making of him. It was therefore unreasonable to be angry with Millicent, even if she were late for luncheon, and Mr. Mindon, who prided himself on being a reasonable man, usually found some other outlet for his wrath.

  On this occasion it was the unpunctuality of the little girls. They came in with their governess some minutes after he was seated: two small Millicents, with all her arts in miniature. They arranged their frocks carefully before seating themselves and turned up their little Greek noses at the food. Already they showed signs of finding fault with as much ease and discrimination as Millicent; and Mr. Mindon knew that this was an accomplishment not to be undervalued. He himself, for example, though Millicent charged him with being a discontented man, had never acquired her proficiency in depreciation; indeed, he sometimes betrayed a mortifying indifference to trifles that afforded opportunity for the display of his wife’s fastidiousness. Mr. Mindon, though no biologist, was vaguely impressed by the way in which that accomplished woman had managed to transmit an acquired characteristic to her children: it struck him with wonder that traits of which he had marked the incipience in Millicent should have become intuitions in her offspring. To rebuke such costly replicas of their mother seemed dangerously like scolding Millicent—and Mr. Mindon’s hovering resentment prudently settled on the governess.

  He pointed out to her that the children were late for luncheon.

  The governess was sorry, but Gladys was always unpunctual. Perhaps her papa would speak to her.

  Mr. Mindon changed the subject. “What’s that at my feet? There’s a dog in the room!”

  He looked round furiously at the butler, who gazed impartially over his head. Mr. Mindon knew that it was proper for him to ignore his servants, but was not sure to what extent they ought to reciprocate his treatment.

  The governess explained that it was Gwendolen’s puppy.

  “Gwendolen’s puppy? Who gave Gwendolen a puppy?”

  “Fwank Antwim,” said Gwendolen through a mouthful of mushroom souffle.

  “Mr. Antrim,” the governess suggested, in a tone that confessed the futility of the correction.

  “We don’t call him Mr. Antrim; we call him Frank; he likes us to,” said Gladys icily.

  “You’ll do no such thing!” her father snapped.

  A soft body came in contact with his toe. He kicked out viciously, and the room was full of yelping.

  “Take the animal out instantly!” he stormed: dogs were animals to Mr. Mindon. The butler continued to gaze over his head, and the two footmen took their cue from the butler.

  “I won’t—I won’t—I won’t let my puppy go!” Gwendolen violently lamented.

  But she should have another, her father assured her—a much handsomer and more expensive one; his darling should have a prize dog; he would telegraph to New York on the instant.

  “I don’t want a pwize dog; I want Fwank’s puppy!”

  Mr. Mindon laid down his fork and walked out of the room, while the governess, cutting up Gwendolen’s nectarine, said, as though pointing out an error in syntax, “You’ve vexed your papa again.”

  “I don’t mind vexing papa—nothing happens,” said Gwendolen, hugging her puppy; while Gladys, disdaining the subject of dispute, contemptuously nibbled caramels. Gladys was two years older than Gwendolen and had outlived the first freshness of her enthusiasm for Frank Antrim, who, with the notorious indiscrimination of the grown-up, always gave the nicest presents to Gwendolen.

  Mr. Mindon, crossing his marble hall between goddesses whose dishabille was still slightly disconcerting to his traditions, stepped out on the terrace above the cliffs. The lawn looked as expensive as a velvet carpet woven in one piece; the flower-borders contained only exotics; and the stretch of blue-satin Atlantic had the air of being furrowed only by the keels of pleasure-boats. The scene, to Mr. Mindon’s imagination, never lost the keen edge of its costliness; he had yet to learn Millicent’s trick of regarding a Newport villa as a mere pied à terre; but he could not help reflecting that, after all, it was to him she owed her fine sense of relativity. There are certain things one must possess in order not to be awed by them, and it was he who had enabled Millicent to take a Newport villa for granted. And still she was not satisfied! She had reached the point where taking the exceptional as a matter of course becomes in itself a matter of course; and Millicent could not live without novelty. That was the worst of it: she discarded her successes as rapidly as her gowns; Mr. Mindon felt a certain breathlessness in retracing her successive manifestations. And yet he had always made allowances: literally and figuratively, he had gone on making larger and larger allowances, till his whole income, as well as his whole point of view, was practically at Millicent’s disposal. But, after all, there was a principle of give and take—if only Millicent could have been brought to see it! One of Millicent’s chief sources of strength lay in her magnificent obtuseness: there were certain obligations that simply didn’t exist for her, because she couldn’t be brought to see them, and the principle of give and take (a favorite principle of Mr. Mindon’s) was one of them.

  There was Frank Antrim, for instance. Mr. Mindon, who had a high sense of propriety, had schooled himself, not without difficulty, into thinking Antrim a charming fellow. No one was more alive than Mr. Mindon to the expediency of calling the Furies the Eumenides. He knew that as long as he chose to think Frank Antrim a charming fellow, everything was as it should be and his home a temple of the virtues. But why on earth did Millicent let the fellow give presents to the children? Mr. Mindon was dimly conscious that Millicent had been guilty of the kind of failure she would least have liked him to detect—a failure in taste,—and a certain exultation tempered his resentment. To anyone who had suffered as Mr. Mindon had from Millicent’s keenness in noting such lapses in others, it was not unpleasant to find that she could be “bad form.” A sense of unwonted astuteness fortified Mr. Mindon’s wrath. He felt that he had every reason to be angry with Millicent, and decided to go and scold the governess; then he remembered that it was bad for him to lose his temper after eating, and, drawing a small phial from his pocket, he took a pepsin tablet instead.

  Having vented his wrath in action, he felt calmer, but scarcely more happy. A marble nymph smiled at him from the terrace; but he knew how much nymphs cost, and was not sure that they were worth the price. Beyond the shrubberies he caught a glimpse of domed glass. His green-houses were the finest in Newport; but since he neither ate fruit n
or wore orchids, they yielded at best an indirect satisfaction. At length he decided to go and play with the little girls; but on entering the nursery he found them dressing for a party, with the rapt gaze and fevered cheeks with which Millicent would presently perform the same rite. They took no notice of him, and he crept downstairs again.

  His study table was heaped with bills, and as it was bad for his digestion to look over them after luncheon, he wandered on into the other rooms. He did not stay long in the drawing-room: it evoked too vividly the evening hours when he delved for platitudes under the inattentive gaze of listeners who obviously resented his not being somebody else. Much of Mr. Mindon’s intercourse with ladies was clouded by the sense of this resentment, and he sometimes avenged himself by wondering if they supposed he would talk to them if he could help it. The sight of the dining-room door increased his depression by recalling the long dinners where, with the pantry-draught on his neck, he languished between the dullest women of the evening. He turned away; but the ball-room beyond roused even more disturbing associations: an orchestra playing all night (Mr. Mindon crept to bed at eleven), carriages shouted for under his windows, and a morrow like the day after an earthquake.

  In the library he felt less irritated but not more cheerful. Mr. Mindon had never quite known what the library was for: it was like one of those mysterious ruins over which archaeology endlessly disputes. It could not have been intended for reading, since no one in the house ever read, except an under-housemaid charged with having set fire to her bed in her surreptitious zeal for fiction; and smoking was forbidden there, because the hangings held the odor of tobacco. Mr. Mindon felt a natural pride in being rich enough to permit himself a perfectly useless room; but not liking to take the bloom from its inutility by sitting in it, he passed on to Millicent’s boudoir.