Edith Wharton - SSC 09 Read Free

paused, though my expectant silence seemed to encourage
her to continue. “It’s a very sad case: I must try to explain. Long ago, as a
girl, my friend fell in love with a married man—a man unhappily married.” She
moistened her lips, which had become parched and colourless. “You mustn’t judge
them too severely…. He had great nobility of character—the highest
standards—but the situation was too cruel. His wife was insane; at that time
there was no legal release in such cases. If you were married to a lunatic only
death could free you. It was a most unhappy affair—the poor girl pitied her
friend profoundly. Their little boy …” Suddenly she stood up with a proud and
noble movement and leaned to me across the desk. “I am that woman,” she said.
                 She
straightened herself and stood there, trembling, erect, like a swathed figure
of woe on an illustrious grave. I thought: “What this inexpressive woman was
meant to express is grief—” and marvelled at the wastefulness of Nature. But
suddenly she dropped back into her chair, bowed her face against the desk, and
burst into sobs. Her sobs were not violent; they were soft, low, almost rhythmical, with lengthening intervals between, like
the last drops of rain after a long down-pour; and I said to myself: “She’s
cried so much that this must be the very end.”
                 She
opened the jet bag, took out a delicate handkerchief, and dried her eyes. Then
she turned to me again. “It’s the first time I’ve ever spoken of this … to any
human being except one.”
                 I
laid my hand on hers. “It was no use—my pretending,” she went on, as if
appealing to me for justification.
                 “Is
it ever? And why should you, with an old friend?” I rejoined, attempting to
comfort her.
                 “Ah, but I’ve had to—for so many years; to be silent has become my
second nature.” She paused, and then continued in a softer tone: “My
baby was so beautiful … do you know, Mr. Norcutt, I’m sure I should know him
anywhere…. Just two years and one month older than my second boy, Philip … the
one you knew.” Again she hesitated, and then, in a warmer burst of confidence,
and scarcely above a whisper: “We christened the eldest Stephen. We knew it was
dangerous: it might give a clue—but I felt I must give him his father’s name,
the name I loved best. … It was all I could keep of my baby. And Stephen
understood; he consented. …”
                 I
sat and stared at her. What! This child of hers that she was telling me of was
the child of Stephen Glenn? The two had had a child two years before the birth
of their lawful son Philip? And consequently nearly a year
before their marriage? I listened in a stupor, trying to reconstruct in
my mind the image of a new, of another, Stephen Glenn, of the suffering
reckless man behind the varnished image familiar to me. Now and then I
murmured: “Yes … yes …” just to help her to go on.
                 “Of
course it was impossible to keep the baby with me. Think—at my uncle’s! My poor
uncle … he would have died of it….”
                 “And
so you died instead?”
                 I
had found the right word; her eyes filled again, and she stretched her hands to
mine. “Ah, you’ve understood! Thank you. Yes; I died,” She added: “Even when
Philip was born I didn’t come to life again—not wholly. Because there was
always Stevie … part of me belonged to Stevie forever.”
                 “But
when you and Glenn were able to marry, why—?”
                 She
hung her head, and the blood rose to her worn temples. “Ah,
why? … Listen; you mustn’t blame my husband. Try to remember what life
was thirty years ago in New York . He had his professional standing to consider. A woman with a shadow on
her was damned. … I couldn’t