Edith Wharton

“ But the little colloquy, broken up by the announcement of luncheon, could of course result in nothing more definite than this reminiscent emotion.
No, she could not yet tell how her own case was to be fitted into the new order of things; but there were more people—“older people” Leila had put it—arriving by the afternoon train, and that evening at dinner she would doubtless be able to judge. She began to wonder nervously who the new-comers might be. Probably she would be spared the embarrassment of finding old acquaintances among them; but it was odd that her daughter had mentioned no names. ”

“ The huge threat of New York was imminent now, dwarfing, under long reaches of embattled masonry, the great deck she stood on and all the little specks of life it carried. One of them, drifting nearer, took the shape of her maid, followed by luggage-laden stewards, and signing to her that it was time to go below. As they descended to the main deck, the throng swept her against Mrs. Lorin Boulger’s shoulder, and she heard the ambassadress call out to some one, over the vexed sea of hats: “So sorry! I should have been delighted, but I’ve promised to spend Sunday with some friends at Lenox.” ”

“ I believe that at first my sister-in-law wouldn’t let the girls come down when Susy dined with her.”
“Well, isn’t your cousin’s present attitude the best possible proof that times have changed?”
“Yes, yes; I know.” She leaned forward from her sofa-corner, fixing her eyes on his thin kindly face, which gleamed on her indistinctly through her tears. “If it’s true, it’s—it’s dazzling. She says Leila’s perfectly happy. It’s as if an angel had gone about lifting gravestones, and the buried people walked again, and the living didn’t shrink from them.” ”

“ Probably no one in the house with me stopped to consider that my case and Leila’s were identical. They only remembered that I’d done something which, at the time I did it, was condemned by society. My case has been passed on and classified: I’m the woman who has been cut for nearly twenty years. The older people have half forgotten why, and the younger ones have never really known: it’s simply become a tradition to cut me. And traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.”
Ide sat motionless while she spoke. ”

“ It had become to her of the first importance to get away as soon as she could, and the little place in Florence, which held her past in every fold of its curtains and between every page of its books, seemed now to her the one spot where that past would be endurable to look upon.
She was not unhappy during the intervening days. The sight of Leila’s well-being, the sense of Leila’s tenderness, were, after all, what she had come for; and of these she had had full measure. Leila had never been happier or more tender ”

“ Susy Suffern’s explanation did not end till after ten o’clock, and she had just gone when Franklin Ide, who, complying with an old New York tradition, had caused himself to be preceded by a long white box of roses, was shown into Mrs. Lidcote’s sitting-room.
He came forward with his shy half-humorous smile and, taking her hand, looked at her for a moment without speaking.
“It’s all right,” he then pronounced.
Mrs. Lidcote returned his smile. “It’s extraordinary. Everything’s changed. Even Susy has changed; and you know the extent to which Susy used to represent the old New York. ”

“ How confess to him what had been on her lips when he made the offer: “I’ve seen what it did to one man; and there must never, never be another”? The tacit ignoring of her past had been the element in which their friendship lived, and she could not suddenly, to him of all men, begin to talk of herself like a guilty woman in a play. Somehow, in the end, she had managed it, had averted a direct explanation, had made him understand that her life was over, that she existed only for her daughter, and that a more definite word from him would have been almost a breach of delicacy. ”

“ I’m sure Leila’d be happier if you would. Really, you’re much too tired to come down.”
“What nonsense, Susy!” Mrs. Lidcote spoke with a sudden sharpness, her hand stretched to the bell. “When do we dine? At half-past eight? Then I must really send you packing. At my age it takes time to dress.”
Miss Suffern, thus projected toward the threshold, lingered there to repeat: “Leila’ll never forgive herself if you make an effort you’re not up to.” ”

“ Where indeed in this crowded, topsy-turvey world, with its headlong changes and helter-skelter readjustments, its new tolerances and indifferences and accommodations, was there room for a character fashioned by slower sterner processes and a life broken under their inexorable pressure? And then, in a flash, she viewed the chaos from a new angle, and order seemed to move upon the void. If the old processes were changed, her case was changed with them; she, too, was a part of the general readjustment, a tiny fragment of the new pattern worked out in bolder freer harmonies. ”

“ We’re all imprisoned, of course—all of us middling people, who don’t carry our freedom in our brains. But we’ve accommodated ourselves to our different cells, and if we’re moved suddenly into new ones we’re likely to find a stone wall where we thought there was thin air, and to knock ourselves senseless against it. I saw a man do that once.”
Ide, leaning with folded arms against the windowframe, watched her in silence as she moved restlessly about the room, gathering together some scattered books and tossing a handful of torn letters into the paperbasket. ”

“ There’s no old New York left, it seems. She talked in the most amazing way. She snaps her fingers at the Purshes. She told me—me, that every woman had a right to happiness and that self-expression was the highest duty. She accused me of misunderstanding Leila; she said my point of view was conventional! She was bursting with pride at having been in the secret, and wearing a brooch that Wilbour Barkley’d given her!” Franklin Ide had seated himself in the arm-chair she had pushed forward for him under the electric chandelier. ”

“ But it’s a terrible strain on a man’s devotion. I’m not sure that Leila realizes—”
Ide sounded again his little reassuring laugh. “I’m not sure that you realize. They’re all right.”
It was the very phrase that the young lady in the next seat had applied to the unknown “Leila,” and its recurrence on Ide’s lips flushed Mrs. Lidcote with fresh courage.
“I wish I knew just what you mean. The two young women next to me—the ones with the wonderful hats—have been talking in the same way.”
“What? About Leila?”
“About a Leila; I fancied it might be mine. And about society in general. ”

“ You tell me Leila’s happy. If she’s happy, she doesn’t need you—need you, that is, in the same way as before. You wanted, I know, to be always in reach, always free and available if she should suddenly call you to her or take refuge with you. ”

“ She’s a charming young thing. I hoped I should have another talk with her this evening after dinner.”
“Yes; it’s too bad.” Miss Suffern’s gaze grew vague.
“You do look tired, you know,” she continued, seating herself at the tea-table and preparing to dispense its delicacies. “You must go straight back to your sofa and let me wait on you. The excitement has told on you more than you think, and you mustn’t fight against it any longer. Just stay quietly up here and let yourself go. You’ll have Leila to yourself on Monday.” ”

“ There are narrow-minded women everywhere, but the women who were at Leila’s knew perfectly well that their going there would give her a sort of social sanction, and if they were willing that she should have it, why on earth should they want to withhold it from you?”
“That’s what I told myself a week ago, in this very room, after my first talk with Susy Suffern.” She lifted a misty smile to his anxious eyes. ”

“ I cabled, of course. But I believe she’s at—they’re at—his place somewhere.”
“Oh, Barkley’s; yes, near Lenox, isn’t it? But she’s sure to come to town to meet you.”
He said it so easily and naturally that her own constraint was relieved, and suddenly, before she knew what she meant to do, she had burst out: “She may dislike the idea of seeing people.”
Ide, whose absent short-sighted gaze had been fixed on the slowly gliding water, turned in his seat to stare at his companion.
“Who? Leila?” he said with an incredulous laugh. ”

“ One of them—her name was Mabel—as far as I could make out, her husband found out that she meant to divorce him by noticing that she wore a new engagement-ring.”
“Well, you see Leila did everything ‘regularly,’ as the French say,” Ide rejoined.
“Yes; but are these people in society? The people my neighbours talk about?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It would take an arbitration commission a good many sittings to define the boundaries of society nowadays. But at any rate they’re in New York; and I assure you you’re not; you’re farther and farther from it.” ”

“ Miss Suffern gasped, precipitately refilling her cup.
“The Ashton Gileses; and who else?”
“Well, the Sam Fresbies. But the most important person, of course, is Mrs. Lorin Boulger.”
“Mrs. Boulger? Leila didn’t tell me she was coming.”
“Didn’t she? I suppose she forgot everything when she saw you. But the party was got up for Mrs. Boulger. You see, it’s very important that she should—well, take a fancy to Leila and Wilbour; his being appointed to Rome virtually depends on it. And you know Leila insists on Rome in order to be near you. ”

“ Ide followed her gesture, and then turned his eyes back to her face. “You didn’t mean to see me, then, or even to let me know that you were going till you’d left?”
“I felt it would be easier to explain to you in a letter—”
“What in God’s name is there to explain?” She made no reply, and he pressed on: “It can’t be that you’re worried about Leila, for Charlotte Wynn told me she’d been there last week, and there was a big party arriving when she left: Fresbies and Gileses, and Mrs. Lorin Boulger—all the board of examiners! If Leila has passed that, she’s got her degree.” ”

“ I know how you’ve always hated people.” (Hated people! Had Leila forgotten why?) “And that’s why I told Susy that if you preferred to go with her to Ridgefield on Sunday I should perfectly understand, and patiently wait for our good hug. But you didn’t really mind them at luncheon, did you, dearest?” ”

“ His attitude allowed her to imagine that compassion was not the basis of his feeling for her, and it was part of her joy in his friendship that it was the one relation seemingly unconditioned by her state, the only one in which she could think and feel and behave like any other woman. ”

“ Lorin Boulger should be favorably impressed, in order that Wilbour may have the best possible chance of getting Borne.”
“I told Leila you’d feel that, dear. You see, it’s actually on your account—so that they may get a post near you—that Leila invited Mrs. Boulger.”
“Yes, I see that.” Mrs. Lidcote, abruptly rising from her seat, turned her eyes to the clock. “But, as you say, it’s getting late. Oughtn’t we to dress for dinner?”
Miss Suffern, at the suggestion, stood up also, an agitated hand among her bugles. “I do wish I could persuade you to stay up here this evening. ”

“ She looked at him intently. “Then you don’t think Margaret Wynn meant to cut me?”
“I think your ideas are absurd.”
She paused for a perceptible moment without taking this up; then she said, at a tangent: “I’m sailing tomorrow early. I meant to write to you—there’s the letter I’d begun.” ”

“ I know what it means to have a clan against one. They’re stronger than any number of separate friends. The Purshes will never forgive Leila for leaving Horace. Why, his mother opposed his marrying her because of—of me. She tried to get Leila to promise that she wouldn’t see me when they went to Europe on their honeymoon. ”

“ She told me to explain—she’s so dreadfully sorry not to be able to give you a sitting-room just at first. They’re thinking of Egypt for next winter, unless, of course, Wilbour gets his appointment. Oh, didn’t she write you about that? Why, he wants Borne, you know—the second secretaryship. Or, rather, he wanted England; but Leila insisted that if they went abroad she must be near you. And of course what she says is law. Oh, they quite hope they’ll get it. You see Horace’s uncle is in the Cabinet,—one of the assistant secretaries,—and I believe he has a good deal of pull—”
“Horace’s uncle? ”

“ Susy Suffern peered at her, a little fluttered. “Leila sent me up to keep you company. She thought it would be cozier for you to stay here. She was afraid you were feeling rather tired.”
“I was; but I’ve had the whole afternoon to rest in. And this wonderful sofa to help me.”
“Leila told me to tell you that she’d rush up for a minute before dinner, after everybody had arrived; but the train is always dreadfully late. She’s in despair at not giving you a sitting-room; she wanted to know if I thought you really minded.”
“Of course I don’t mind. It’s not like Leila to think I should.” Mrs. ”

“ Susy said she was afraid I might be upset at her having people to stay, and that, if I minded, she wouldn’t urge me to come. But if they don’t mind, why should I? And of course, if they’re willing to go to Leila it must mean—”
“Of course. I’m glad you recognize that,” Franklin Ide exclaimed abruptly. He stood up and went over to her, taking her hand with one of his quick gestures. “There’s something I want to say to you,” he began—
The next morning, in the train, through all the other contending thoughts in Mrs. ”