Edith Wharton

“ After the betrothal dinner she had said a tender goodnight to her mother, and the next evening, as she rushed up to dress after her long outing with Chris, had stopped at Kate’s door to wave a loving hand and call out: “He says you’ve been so perfect to him—” That was all. Kate Clephane’s own memories told her that to some natures happiness comes like a huge landslide burying all the past and spreading a fresh surface to life’s sowings: and it was from herself, she reflected, that Anne had inherited her capacity for such all-obliterating bliss. ”

“ She knew he had always loved her; had not Anne betrayed that it was her guardian who had persuaded her to recall her unknown mother? Kate Clephane owed him everything, then—all her happiness and all her sorrow! He knew everything of her life—or nearly everything. To whom else could she turn with the peculiar sense of security which that certitude gave? She felt sorry that she had received his tentative advance so coldly, so inarticulately. After all, he might yet be her refuge—her escape. She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine what life would be—years and years of it—at Fred Landers’s side. ”

“ Kate wondered when there was ever time to enjoy anything, with that perpetual alarm-clock in one’s breast.
Her glance travelled on to her own daughter. Anne seemed eager too, but not at such a pace, or about such a multiplicity of unrelated things. Perhaps, though, it was only the fact of being taller, statelier—old-fashioned words still fitted Anne—which gave her that air of boyish aloofness. But no; it was the mystery of her eyes—those eyes which, as Kate had told her, she had chosen for herself from some forgotten ancestral treasury into which none of the others had dipped. ”

“ She had been too careless and impetuous in her own youth to be worthy to form and guide this rare creature; and while she seemed to be rushing blindly to her destruction, Providence had saved the best part of her in saving Anne. All these scrupulous self-controlled people—Enid and Hendrik Drover, Fred Landers, even the arch enemy, old Mrs. Clephane—had taken up the task she had flung aside, and carried it out as she could never have done. And she had somehow run the mad course allotted to her, and come out of it sane and sound, to find them all waiting there to give her back her daughter. ”

“ Of course she would not have felt any of these things if Anne had not been the Anne she was. It was from Anne’s presence, her smile, her voice, the mystery of her eyes even, that the healing flowed. If Kate Clephane had an apprehension left, it was her awe—almost—of that completeness of Anne’s. Was it possible, humanly possible, that one could cast away one’s best treasure, and come back after nearly twenty years to find it there, not only as rare as one had remembered it, but ripened, enriched, as only beautiful things are enriched and ripened by time? ”

“ She could not picture herself living alone in a little house in New York, dependent on Drovers and Tresseltons, and on the good Fred Landers, for [87] her moral sustenance. To be with Anne, to play the part of Anne’s mother—the one part, she now saw, that fate had meant her for—that was what she wanted with all her starved and world-worn soul. To be the background, the atmosphere, of her daughter’s life; to depend on Anne, to feel that Anne depended on her; it was the one perfect companionship she had ever known, the only close tie unmarred by dissimulation and distrust. ”

“ From the moment when she had seen Anne’s lids drop on that secret vision, the mother had known that her days of quietude were over. Anne’s choice might be perfect; she, Kate Clephane, might live out the rest of her days in peace between Anne and Anne’s husband. But the mere possibility of a husband made everything incalculable again.
The morning brought better counsel. There was Anne herself, in her riding-habit, aglow from an early canter, and bringing in her mother’s breakfast, without a trace of mystery in her clear eyes. ”

“ The use the girl made of her authority was so different—as if the old Mrs. Clephane in her spoke from a milder sphere—and it was so sweet to be compelled, to have things decided for one, to be told what one wanted and what was best for one. For years Kate Clephane had had to order [59] herself about: to tell herself to rest and not to worry, to eat when she wasn’t hungry, to sleep when she felt staring wide-awake. She would have preferred, on the whole, that evening, to slip into a tea-gown and go down to a quiet dinner, alone with her daughter and perhaps Fred Landers ”

“ Life had seemed, at last, so simple, so merciful, so soothing; and here were all the old mysteries and duplicities pressing on her again. She stopped, out of breath, and finding herself at the extreme northern end of the Park, with the first street-lights beginning to gem the bare trees. The need to be with Anne suddenly seized her. Perhaps, by dropping a careless word or two, she might learn something from her daughter—learn at least if the baleful Lilla were using the girl as a confidant, as that brief scene in the studio had once suggested. ”

“ Anne followed her mechanically. In the high-ceilinged shadowy room Mrs. Clephane sat down in a wooden rocking-chair and the girl stood before her, tall and ghostly in her white linen riding-habit, the dark hair damp on her forehead.
“Come and sit by me, Anne.”
“No. I want you to answer me first—to promise.”
“But, my dear, what you suggest is madness. How can I promise such a thing? And why should it make any difference? Why should any man be humiliated by the fact of marrying a girl with money?”
“Ah, but Chris is different! You don’t know him.” ”

“ Jealous? Was she jealous of her daughter? Was she physically jealous? Was that the real secret of her repugnance, her instinctive revulsion? Was that why she had felt from the first as if some incestuous horror hung between them?
She did not know—it was impossible to analyze her anguish. She knew only that she must fly from it, fly as far as she could from the setting of these last indelible impressions. How had she ever imagined that she could keep her place at Anne’s side—that she could either outstay Chris, or continue to live under the same roof with them? ”

“ Clephane’s intended marriage had completely restored the girl’s serenity. Chris Fenno, detained in Baltimore by his mother’s sudden and somewhat alarming illness, had not yet reappeared; it seemed likely now that he would arrive in New York only the day before the wedding. Anne was to have her mother to herself to the last; and with every art of tenderness and dependence she tried to show her appreciation of these final days, sweet with the sweetness of dear things ending, yet without pain because they were not to precede a real separation. ”

“ It was years since Kate Clephane had thought of those jewels. She smiled at the memory, and at the contrast between the unobtrusive dress Aline had [78] just prepared for her, and all those earlier splendours. The jewels, she supposed, were Anne’s now; since modern young girls dressed as richly as their elders, Anne had no doubt had them reset for her own use. Mrs. Clephane closed her eyes with a smile of pleasure, picturing Anne (as she had not yet seen her) with bare arms and shoulders, and the orient of the pearls merging in that of her young skin. ”

“ For years, as she now saw, she had been sustained by her belief in that “other woman”; only, that she should take shape in Lilla was unbelievably humiliating.
Anne continued to smile softly down on her mother. In her smile there was something veiled [138] and tender, as faint as sunlight refracted from water—a radiance striking up from those mysterious depths that Kate had never yet reached. “We should all be so glad if it happened,” the girl continued; and Kate said to herself: “What she’s really thinking of when she smiles in that way is her own marriage....” ”

“ After all, in this new existence it was Anne who mattered, not Anne’s mother; instantly, after the first plunge, Mrs. Clephane felt herself merged in the blessed anonymity of motherhood. She had never before understood how exposed and defenceless her poor unsupported personality had been through all the lonely years. Her eyes rested on Anne with a new tenderness; the glance crossed Nollie Tresselton’s, and the two triumphed in their shared admiration. “Oh, there’s no one like Anne,” their four eyes told each other. ”

“ Anne had [45] visibly felt that, and with a light kiss slipped out. “She’s perfect,” her mother thought, a little frightened....
She said to herself: “I’m dead tired—” put on a dressing-gown, dismissed the hovering Aline, and lay down by the fire. Then, in the silence, when the door had shut, she understood how excited she was, and how impossible it would be to rest.
Her eyes wandered about the unchanged scene, and into the equally familiar bedroom beyond—the “best spare-room” of old days. There hung the same red-eyed Beatrice Cenci above the double bed. ”

“ With regard to her own future she had sworn Anne to unconditional secrecy. She explained that she did not intend to give Fred Landers a definite answer till after the wedding, and Anne, who had all the Clephane reticence, understood her wish to keep the matter quiet, and even in her guardian’s presence was careful not to betray that she knew of his hopes. She only made him feel that he was more than ever welcome, and touched him by showing an added cordiality at a moment when most girls are deaf and blind to all human concerns but their own. ”

“ And as she stood there, she remembered how once, when she was standing in the same way before a mirror, Chris had come up behind her, and they had laughed at seeing their reflections kiss. How young she had been then—how young! Now, as she looked at herself, she saw behind her the reflection of Fred Landers’s comfortable bulk, sunk in an armchair in after-dinner repose, his shirt-front bulging a little, the lamplight varnishing the top of his head through the thinning hair. A middle-aged couple—perfectly suited to each other in age and appearance. ”

“ Undoubtedly, among the men present, though no quicker-witted than the others, he would have been the one most likely to understand Kate Clephane’s case, could she have put it to him. But to do so—one had only to intercept their glances across the table to be sure of it—would have been to take Lilla also into her confidence; and it suddenly became clear to Mrs. Clephane that no recoil of horror, and no Pharisaical disapproval, would be as intolerable to her as Lilla’s careless stare and Lilla’s lazy: “Why, what on earth’s all the fuss about? Don’t that sort of thing happen all the time?” ”

“ All at once she felt herself strong and resolute; all the old forces of dissimulation were pouring back through her veins. The accusing red faded from her face, and she lay there and quietly met the question in Anne’s eyes.
“Anne!” she simply said, with a little shrug.
“Oh, mother—mother! I think I must be going mad!” Anne was on her knees at the bedside, her face buried in the coverlet. It was easier to speak to her while her eyes were hidden, and Kate laid a hand on her hair. ”

“ The episode of the jewels had moved the mother strangely. It had brought Anne closer than a hundred confidences or endearments. As Kate sat there in the dark, she saw, detached against the blackness of her closed [82] lids, a child stumbling with unsteady steps across a windy beach, a funny flushed child with sand in her hair and in the creases of her fat legs, who clutched to her breast something she was bringing to her mother. “It’s for mummy,” she said solemnly, opening her pink palms on a dead star-fish. ”

“ Clephane did not turn her head; her colour did not change. These violets were not from the little lame boy whose bouquet had flushed her with mysterious hopes on the day when her daughter’s cable had called her home; the boy she had set up for life (it had been her first thought after landing) because of that happy coincidence. Today’s violets embodied neither hope nor mystery. She knew from whom they came, and what stage in what game they represented; and lifting them from the tray after a brief sniff, she poured out her chocolate with a steady hand. ”

“ At length she returned, bringing with her some studies of magnolias that were freer and more vigorous than any of her previous work. She greeted her mother with her usual tenderness, and to Kate her coming was like a lifting of clouds and opening of windows; the mother had never supposed that anything in her life could ever again strike such deep roots as this passion for her daughter. ”

“ You want to kill me?” The girl was close to her, in a white glare of passion. “Ah, it’s true—why should you care what happens to me? After all, we’re only strangers to each other.”
Kate Clephane’s first thought was: “I mustn’t let her see how it hurts—” not because of the fear of increasing her daughter’s suffering, but to prevent her finding out how she could inflict more pain. Anne, at that moment, looked as if the discovery would have been exquisite to her. ”

“ His gay scorn of it, not only expressed but acted upon, had been one of his chief charms to her, after all her years in the Clephane atmosphere of thrifty wealth, and the showy opulence of the months with Hylton Davies. Chris Fenno, quite simply and naturally, had laughed with her at the cares of the anxious rich, and rejoiced that those, at least, would never weigh on either of them. But that was long ago; long at least in a life as full of chances and changes as his. ”

“ Clephane wondered what they had to tell.
Leaning against one of the piers of the nave she evoked all those imaginary confessions, and thought how trivial, how childish they would seem, compared to what she carried in her breast.... What a help it must be to turn to somebody who could tell one firmly, positively what to do—to be able to lay down one’s moral torture like a heavy load at the end of the day! Dr. Arklow had none of the authority which the habit of the confessional must give. ”

“ But Kate Clephane’s daughter—her own Anne! She closed her eyes and tried to face the look in Anne’s as the truth dawned on her.
“You—you, mother? The mother I’ve come to adore—the mother I can’t live without, even with all my other happiness? You?”
Yes—perhaps that would be the worst of it, the way Anne would look at her and say “You?” For, once the girl knew the truth, her healthy youth might so revolt from Chris’s baseness, Chris’s duplicity, that the shock of the discovery would be its own cure. ”

“ The drawing-room was empty, and she went up to her own room. There, as usual, the fire shone invitingly, fresh flowers opened in the lamplight. All was warmth, peace, intimacy. As she sat down by the fireside she seemed to see Fred Landers’s heavy [273] figure in the opposite armchair, his sturdy square-toed boots turned to the hearth. She remembered how, one day, as he sat there, she had said to herself that it might be pleasant to see him there always. Now, in the extremity of her loneliness, the thought returned. ”

“ The hall was already filling up with a jocund bustle of Drovers and Tresseltons. Young, middle-aged and elderly, they poured out of successive motors, all ruddy, prosperous, clamouring for food. Hardly distinguishable from the family were the week-end friends returning with them from one sportive spectacle or another. As Kate Clephane stood among them, going through the mechanical gestures of greeting and small-talk, she felt so tenuous and spectral that she almost wondered how she could be visible to their hearty senses. ”