Edith Wharton

“ She threw herself into the architectural studies of the Higher Thought Club, and distinguished herself, at the spring meetings, by her fluency, her competence, her inexhaustible curiosity on the subject of the growth of English Gothic. She ransacked the shelves of the college library, she borrowed photographs of the cathedrals, she pored over the folio pages of "The Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen." She was like some banished princess who learns that she has inherited a domain in her own country, who knows that she will never see it, yet feels, wherever she walks, its soil beneath her feet. ”

“ The path descended, as both knew, to the chosen, the inimitable spot of Wentworth: that fugitive curve of the river, where, before hurrying on to glut the brutal industries of South Wentworth and Smedden, it simulated for a few hundred yards the leisurely pace of an ancient university stream, with willows on its banks and a stretch of turf extending from the grounds of Hamblin Hall to the boat houses at the farther bend. ”

“ She wondered if any other woman had lived to whom _nothing had ever happened?_ And then his first letter came. . . .
It was a charming letter--a perfect letter. The little touch of awkwardness and constraint under its boyish spontaneity told her more than whole pages of eloquence. He spoke of their friendship--of their good days together. . . . Ransom, chancing to come in while she read, noticed the foreign stamps; and she was able to hand him the letter, saying gaily: "There's a message for you," and knowing all the while that _her_ message was safe in her heart. ”

“ Hamblin Hall stands at the end of the long green "Campus" with its sextuple line of elms--the boast and the singularity of Wentworth. A pale spring moon, rising above the dome of the University library at the opposite end of the elm-walk, diffused a pearly mildness in the sky, melted to thin haze the shadows of the trees, and turned to golden yellow the lights of the college windows. ”

“ When consciousness emerged, quivering, from this retrospective assault, it pushed Margaret Ransom--feeling herself a mere leaf in the blast--toward the writing-table from which her innocent and voluminous correspondence habitually flowed. She had a letter to write now--much shorter but more difficult than any she had ever been called on to indite. ”

“ Every one was kind to Guy Dawnish--some rather importunately so, as Margaret Ransom had smiled to observe--but it was recognized as fitting that she should be kindest, since he was in a sense her property, since his people in England, by profusely acknowledging her kindness, had given it the domestic sanction without which, to Wentworth, any social relation between the sexes remained unhallowed and to be viewed askance. ”

“ In a world without traditions, without reverence, without stability, such little expiring centres of prejudice and precedent make an irresistible appeal to those instincts for which a democracy has neglected to provide. Wentworth, with its "tone," its backward references, its inflexible aversions and condemnations, its hard moral outline preserved intact against a whirling background of experiment, had been all the poetry and history of Margaret Ransom's life. Yes, what she had really esteemed in her husband was the fact of his being so intense an embodiment of Wentworth ”

“ The Wentworth "tone" is unmistakable: it permeates every part of the social economy, from the _coiffure_ of the ladies to the preparation of the food. It has its sumptuary laws as well as its curriculum of learning. It sits in judgment not only on its own townsmen but on the rest of the world--enlightening, criticising, ostracizing a heedless universe--and non-conformity to Wentworth standards involves obliteration from Wentworth's consciousness. ”

“ A blush, indeed! What had any of them ever had to blush for in all their frozen lives? And what, in Heaven's name, had she? She sat down in the stiff mahogany rocking-chair beside her work-table and tried to collect herself. From childhood she had been taught to "collect herself"--but never before had her small sensations and aspirations been so widely scattered, diffused over so vague and uncharted an expanse. Hitherto they had lain in neatly sorted and easily accessible bundles on the high shelves of a perfectly ordered moral consciousness. ”

“ The Brant girl was their horror--the horror of all right-thinking Wentworth; a laced, whale-boned, frizzle-headed, high-heeled daughter of iniquity, who came--from New York, of course--on long, disturbing, tumultuous visits to a Wentworth aunt, working havoc among the freshmen, and leaving, when she departed, an angry wake of criticism that ruffled the social waters for weeks. _She_, too, had tried her hand at Guy--with ludicrous unsuccess. And now, to be compared to her--to be accused of looking "New Yorky!" Ah, there are times when husbands are obtuse ”

“ Her fair hair had grown too thin--it no longer quite hid the blue veins in her candid forehead--a forehead that one seemed to see turned toward professorial desks, in large bare halls where a snowy winter light fell uncompromisingly on rows of "thoughtful women." Her mouth was thin, too, and a little strained; her lips were too pale; and there were lines in the corners of her eyes. It was a face which had grown middle-aged while it waited for the joys of youth.
Well--but if she could still blush? ”

“ Dawnish."
Lady Caroline gave a stare and a gasp. Her distracted hand groped for her boa and she began to wind it mechanically about her long neck.
"It would really be an enormous help to us--and to poor Gwendolen Matcher," she persisted pleadingly. "And you'd be doing Guy himself a good turn."
Margaret remained silent and motionless while her visitor drew on one of the worn gloves she had pulled off to adjust her veil. Lady Caroline gave the veil a final twitch.
"I've come a tremendously long way," she said, "and, since it isn't you, I can't think why you won't help me. . . ." ”

“ She had, on the contrary, prided herself on being understood by her husband, almost as much as on her own complete comprehension of him. Wentworth laid a good deal of stress on "motives"; and Margaret Ransom and her husband had dwelt in a complete community of motive. It had been the proudest day of her life when, without consulting her, he had refused an offer of partnership in an eminent New York firm because he preferred the distinction of practising in Wentworth, of being known as the legal representative of the University. Wentworth, in fact, had always been the bond between the two ”

“ It's not my fault if you've made me feel that you would understand everything--make allowances for everything--see just how a man may have held out, and fought against a thing--as long as he had the strength. ”

“ It became suddenly vivid to her that there had been many, almost daily, others, since Guy Dawnish's coming to Wentworth. Even the previous winter--the winter of his arrival from England--his visits had been numerous enough to make Wentworth aware that--very naturally--Mrs. Ransom was "looking after" the stray young Englishman committed to her husband's care by an eminent Q. C. whom the Ransoms had known on one of their brief London visits, and with whom Ransom had since maintained professional relations. ”

“ Margaret made a slight movement, but her visitor pressed on without heeding it. "Oh, don't fancy, please, that I'm pretending to take a high moral ground--though his mother does, poor dear! I can perfectly imagine that in a place like this--I've just been driving about it for two hours--a young man of Guy's age would _have_ to provide himself with some sort of distraction, and he's not the kind to go in for anything objectionable. ”

“ I understand that in the States it's different--the young people have only themselves to consider. In England--in our class, I mean--a great deal may depend on a young man's making a good match; and in Guy's case I may say that his mother and sisters (I won't include myself, though I might) have been simply stranded--thrown overboard--by his freak. ”

“ And then--without her having had the courage to ask if the girl in the punt were also Gwendolen Matcher--they passed on to photographs of his rooms at Oxford, of a cousin's studio in London--one of Lord Askern's grandsons was "artistic"--of the rose-hung cottage in Wales to which, on the old Earl's death, his daughter-in-law, Guy's mother, had retired. ”

“ Margaret rose from her chair, outwardly rigid in proportion to her inward tremor.
"You don't understand--" she began.
Lady Caroline brushed the interruption aside. "Oh, but I do--completely! I cast no reflection on your daughter-in-law. Guy has made it quite clear to us that his attachment is--has, in short, not been rewarded. But don't you see that that's the worst part of it? There'd be much more hope of his recovering if Mrs. ”