The Greater Inclination
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Edith Wharton >> The Greater Inclination
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After my husband died--I am putting things crudely, you see--I had a
return of hope. It was because he loved me, I argued, that he had never
spoken; because he had always hoped some day to make me his wife; because
he wanted to spare me the "reproach." Rubbish! I knew well enough, in my
heart of hearts, that my one chance lay in the force of habit. He had
grown used to me; he was no longer young; he dreaded new people and new
ways; _il avait pris son pli_. Would it not be easier to marry me?
I don't believe he ever thought of it. He wrote me what people call "a
beautiful letter;" he was kind; considerate, decently commiserating; then,
after a few weeks, he slipped into his old way of coming in every
afternoon, and our interminable talks began again just where they had left
off. I heard later that people thought I had shown "such good taste" in
not marrying him.
So we jogged on for five years longer. Perhaps they were the best years,
for I had given up hoping. Then he died.
After his death--this is curious--there came to me a kind of mirage of
love. All the books and articles written about him, all the reviews of the
"Life," were full of discreet allusions to Silvia. I became again the Mrs.
Anerton of the glorious days. Sentimental girls and dear lads like you
turned pink when somebody whispered, "that was Silvia you were talking
to." Idiots begged for my autograph--publishers urged me to write my
reminiscences of him--critics consulted me about the reading of doubtful
lines. And I knew that, to all these people, I was the woman Vincent
Rendle had loved.
After a while that fire went out too and I was left alone with my past.
Alone--quite alone; for he had never really been with me. The intellectual
union counted for nothing now. It had been soul to soul, but never hand in
hand, and there were no little things to remember him by.
Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I crawled into myself as into a
snow-hut. I hated my solitude and yet dreaded any one who disturbed it.
That phase, of course, passed like the others. I took up life again, and
began to read the papers and consider the cut of my gowns. But there was
one question that I could not be rid of, that haunted me night and day.
Why had he never loved me? Why had I been so much to him, and no more? Was
I so ugly, so essentially unlovable, that though a man might cherish me as
his mind's comrade, he could not care for me as a woman? I can't tell you
how that question tortured me. It became an obsession.
My poor friend, do you begin to see? I had to find out what some other man
thought of me. Don't be too hard on me! Listen first--consider. When I
first met Vincent Rendle I was a young woman, who had married early and
led the quietest kind of life; I had had no "experiences." From the hour
of our first meeting to the day of his death I never looked at any other
man, and never noticed whether any other man looked at me. When he died,
five years ago, I knew the extent of my powers no more than a baby. Was it
too late to find out? Should I never know _why?_
Forgive me--forgive me. You are so young; it will be an episode, a mere
"document," to you so soon! And, besides, it wasn't as deliberate, as
cold-blooded as these disjointed lines have made it appear. I didn't plan
it, like a woman in a book. Life is so much more complex than any
rendering of it can be. I liked you from the first--I was drawn to you
(you must have seen that)--I wanted you to like me; it was not a mere
psychological experiment. And yet in a sense it was that, too--I must be
honest. I had to have an answer to that question; it was a ghost that had
to be laid.
At first I was afraid--oh, so much afraid--that you cared for me only
because I was Silvia, that you loved me because you thought Rendle had
loved me. I began to think there was no escaping my destiny.
How happy I was when I discovered that you were growing jealous of my
past; that you actually hated Rendle! My heart beat like a girl's when you
told me you meant to follow me to Venice.
After our parting at Villa d'Este my old doubts reasserted themselves.
What did I know of your feeling for me, after all? Were you capable of
analyzing it yourself? Was it not likely to be two-thirds vanity and
curiosity, and one-third literary sentimentality? You might easily fancy
that you cared for Mary Anerton when you were really in love with Silvia--
the heart is such a hypocrite! Or you might be more calculating than I had
supposed. Perhaps it was you who had been flattering _my_ vanity in the
hope (the pardonable hope!) of turning me, after a decent interval, into a
pretty little essay with a margin.
When you arrived in Venice and we met again--do you remember the music on
the lagoon, that evening, from my balcony?--I was so afraid you would
begin to talk about the book--the book, you remember, was your ostensible
reason for coming. You never spoke of it, and I soon saw your one fear was
_I_ might do so--might remind you of your object in being with me. Then I
knew you cared for me! yes, at that moment really cared! We never
mentioned the book once, did we, during that month in Venice?
I have read my letter over; and now I wish that I had said this to you
instead of writing it. I could have felt my way then, watching your face
and seeing if you understood. But, no, I could not go back to Venice; and
I could not tell you (though I tried) while we were there together. I
couldn't spoil that month--my one month. It was so good, for once in my
life, to get away from literature....
You will be angry with me at first--but, alas! not for long. What I have
done would have been cruel if I had been a younger woman; as it is, the
experiment will hurt no one but myself. And it will hurt me horribly (as
much as, in your first anger, you may perhaps wish), because it has shown
me, for the first time, all that I have missed....
A JOURNEY
As she lay in her berth, staring at the shadows overhead, the rush of the
wheels was in her brain, driving her deeper and deeper into circles of
wakeful lucidity. The sleeping-car had sunk into its night-silence.
Through the wet window-pane she watched the sudden lights, the long
stretches of hurrying blackness. Now and then she turned her head and
looked through the opening in the hangings at her husband's curtains
across the aisle....
She wondered restlessly if he wanted anything and if she could hear him if
he called. His voice had grown very weak within the last months and it
irritated him when she did not hear. This irritability, this increasing
childish petulance seemed to give expression to their imperceptible
estrangement. Like two faces looking at one another through a sheet of
glass they were close together, almost touching, but they could not hear
or feel each other: the conductivity between them was broken. She, at
least, had this sense of separation, and she fancied sometimes that she
saw it reflected in the look with which he supplemented his failing words.
Doubtless the fault was hers. She was too impenetrably healthy to be
touched by the irrelevancies of disease. Her self-reproachful tenderness
was tinged with the sense of his irrationality: she had a vague feeling
that there was a purpose in his helpless tyrannies. The suddenness of the
change had found her so unprepared. A year ago their pulses had beat to
one robust measure; both had the same prodigal confidence in an
exhaustless future. Now their energies no longer kept step: hers still
bounded ahead of life, preempting unclaimed regions of hope and activity,
while his lagged behind, vainly struggling to overtake her.
When they married, she had such arrears of living to make up: her days had
been as bare as the whitewashed school-room where she forced innutritious
facts upon reluctant children. His coming had broken in on the slumber of
circumstance, widening the present till it became the encloser of remotest
chances. But imperceptibly the horizon narrowed. Life had a grudge against
her: she was never to be allowed to spread her wings.
At first the doctors had said that six weeks of mild air would set him
right; but when he came back this assurance was explained as having of
course included a winter in a dry climate. They gave up their pretty
house, storing the wedding presents and new furniture, and went to
Colorado. She had hated it there from the first. Nobody knew her or cared
about her; there was no one to wonder at the good match she had made, or
to envy her the new dresses and the visiting-cards which were still a
surprise to her. And he kept growing worse. She felt herself beset with
difficulties too evasive to be fought by so direct a temperament. She
still loved him, of course; but he was gradually, undefinably ceasing to
be himself. The man she had married had been strong, active, gently
masterful: the male whose pleasure it is to clear a way through the
material obstructions of life; but now it was she who was the protector,
he who must be shielded from importunities and given his drops or his
beef-juice though the skies were falling. The routine of the sick-room
bewildered her; this punctual administering of medicine seemed as idle as
some uncomprehended religious mummery.
There were moments, indeed, when warm gushes of pity swept away her
instinctive resentment of his condition, when she still found his old self
in his eyes as they groped for each other through the dense medium of his
weakness. But these moments had grown rare. Sometimes he frightened her:
his sunken expressionless face seemed that of a stranger; his voice was
weak and hoarse; his thin-lipped smile a mere muscular contraction. Her
hand avoided his damp soft skin, which had lost the familiar roughness of
health: she caught herself furtively watching him as she might have
watched a strange animal. It frightened her to feel that this was the man
she loved; there were hours when to tell him what she suffered seemed the
one escape from her fears. But in general she judged herself more
leniently, reflecting that she had perhaps been too long alone with him,
and that she would feel differently when they were at home again,
surrounded by her robust and buoyant family. How she had rejoiced when the
doctors at last gave their consent to his going home! She knew, of course,
what the decision meant; they both knew. It meant that he was to die; but
they dressed the truth in hopeful euphuisms, and at times, in the joy of
preparation, she really forgot the purpose of their journey, and slipped
into an eager allusion to next year's plans.
At last the day of leaving came. She had a dreadful fear that they would
never get away; that somehow at the last moment he would fail her; that
the doctors held one of their accustomed treacheries in reserve; but
nothing happened. They drove to the station, he was installed in a seat
with a rug over his knees and a cushion at his back, and she hung out of
the window waving unregretful farewells to the acquaintances she had
really never liked till then.
The first twenty-four hours had passed off well. He revived a little and
it amused him to look out of the window and to observe the humours of the
car. The second day he began to grow weary and to chafe under the
dispassionate stare of the freckled child with the lump of chewing-gum.
She had to explain to the child's mother that her husband was too ill to
be disturbed: a statement received by that lady with a resentment visibly
supported by the maternal sentiment of the whole car....
That night he slept badly and the next morning his temperature frightened
her: she was sure he was growing worse. The day passed slowly, punctuated
by the small irritations of travel. Watching his tired face, she traced in
its contractions every rattle and jolt of the tram, till her own body
vibrated with sympathetic fatigue. She felt the others observing him too,
and hovered restlessly between him and the line of interrogative eyes. The
freckled child hung about him like a fly; offers of candy and picture-
books failed to dislodge her: she twisted one leg around the other and
watched him imperturbably. The porter, as he passed, lingered with vague
proffers of help, probably inspired by philanthropic passengers swelling
with the sense that "something ought to be done;" and one nervous man in a
skull-cap was audibly concerned as to the possible effect on his wife's
health.
The hours dragged on in a dreary inoccupation. Towards dusk she sat down
beside him and he laid his hand on hers. The touch startled her. He seemed
to be calling her from far off. She looked at him helplessly and his smile
went through her like a physical pang.
"Are you very tired?" she asked.
"No, not very."
"We'll be there soon now."
"Yes, very soon."
"This time to-morrow--"
He nodded and they sat silent. When she had put him to bed and crawled
into her own berth she tried to cheer herself with the thought that in
less than twenty-four hours they would be in New York. Her people would
all be at the station to meet her--she pictured their round unanxious
faces pressing through the crowd. She only hoped they would not tell him
too loudly that he was looking splendidly and would be all right in no
time: the subtler sympathies developed by long contact with suffering were
making her aware of a certain coarseness of texture in the family
sensibilities.
Suddenly she thought she heard him call. She parted the curtains and
listened. No, it was only a man snoring at the other end of the car. His
snores had a greasy sound, as though they passed through tallow. She lay
down and tried to sleep... Had she not heard him move? She started up
trembling... The silence frightened her more than any sound. He might not
be able to make her hear--he might be calling her now... What made her
think of such things? It was merely the familiar tendency of an over-tired
mind to fasten itself on the most intolerable chance within the range of
its forebodings.... Putting her head out, she listened; but she could not
distinguish his breathing from that of the other pairs of lungs about her.
She longed to get up and look at him, but she knew the impulse was a mere
vent for her restlessness, and the fear of disturbing him restrained
her.... The regular movement of his curtain reassured her, she knew not
why; she remembered that he had wished her a cheerful good-night; and the
sheer inability to endure her fears a moment longer made her put them from
her with an effort of her whole sound tired body. She turned on her side
and slept.
She sat up stiffly, staring out at the dawn. The train was rushing through
a region of bare hillocks huddled against a lifeless sky. It looked like
the first day of creation. The air of the car was close, and she pushed up
her window to let in the keen wind. Then she looked at her watch: it was
seven o'clock, and soon the people about her would be stirring. She
slipped into her clothes, smoothed her dishevelled hair and crept to the
dressing-room. When she had washed her face and adjusted her dress she
felt more hopeful. It was always a struggle for her not to be cheerful in
the morning. Her cheeks burned deliciously under the coarse towel and the
wet hair about her temples broke into strong upward tendrils. Every inch
of her was full of life and elasticity. And in ten hours they would be at
home!
She stepped to her husband's berth: it was time for him to take his early
glass of milk. The window-shade was down, and in the dusk of the curtained
enclosure she could just see that he lay sideways, with his face away from
her. She leaned over him and drew up the shade. As she did so she touched
one of his hands. It felt cold....
She bent closer, laying her hand on his arm and calling him by name. He
did not move. She spoke again more loudly; she grasped his shoulder and
gently shook it. He lay motionless. She caught hold of his hand again: it
slipped from her limply, like a dead thing. A dead thing? ... Her breath
caught. She must see his face. She leaned forward, and hurriedly,
shrinkingly, with a sickening reluctance of the flesh, laid her hands on
his shoulders and turned him over. His head fell back; his face looked
small and smooth; he gazed at her with steady eyes.
She remained motionless for a long time, holding him thus; and they looked
at each other. Suddenly she shrank back: the longing to scream, to call
out, to fly from him, had almost overpowered her. But a strong hand
arrested her. Good God! If it were known that he was dead they would be
put off the train at the next station--
In a terrifying flash of remembrance there arose before her a scene she
had once witnessed in travelling, when a husband and wife, whose child had
died in the train, had been thrust out at some chance station. She saw
them standing on the platform with the child's body between them; she had
never forgotten the dazed look with which they followed the receding
train. And this was what would happen to her. Within the next hour she
might find herself on the platform of some strange station, alone with her
husband's body.... Anything but that! It was too horrible--She quivered
like a creature at bay.
As she cowered there, she felt the train moving more slowly. It was coming
then--they were approaching a station! She saw again the husband and wife
standing on the lonely platform; and with a violent gesture she drew down
the shade to hide her husband's face.
Feeling dizzy, she sank down on the edge of the berth, keeping away from
his outstretched body, and pulling the curtains close, so that he and she
were shut into a kind of sepulchral twilight. She tried to think. At all
costs she must conceal the fact that he was dead. But how? Her mind
refused to act: she could not plan, combine. She could think of no way but
to sit there, clutching the curtains, all day long....
She heard the porter making up her bed; people were beginning to move
about the car; the dressing-room door was being opened and shut. She tried
to rouse herself. At length with a supreme effort she rose to her feet,
stepping into the aisle of the car and drawing the curtains tight behind
her. She noticed that they still parted slightly with the motion of the
car, and finding a pin in her dress she fastened them together. Now she
was safe. She looked round and saw the porter. She fancied he was watching
her.
"Ain't he awake yet?" he enquired.
"No," she faltered.
"I got his milk all ready when he wants it. You know you told me to have
it for him by seven."
She nodded silently and crept into her seat.
At half-past eight the train reached Buffalo. By this time the other
passengers were dressed and the berths had been folded back for the day.
The porter, moving to and fro under his burden of sheets and pillows,
glanced at her as he passed. At length he said: "Ain't he going to get up?
You know we're ordered to make up the berths as early as we can."
She turned cold with fear. They were just entering the station.
"Oh, not yet," she stammered. "Not till he's had his milk. Won't you get
it, please?"
"All right. Soon as we start again."
When the train moved on he reappeared with the milk. She took it from him
and sat vaguely looking at it: her brain moved slowly from one idea to
another, as though they were stepping-stones set far apart across a
whirling flood. At length she became aware that the porter still hovered
expectantly.
"Will I give it to him?" he suggested.
"Oh, no," she cried, rising. "He--he's asleep yet, I think--"
She waited till the porter had passed on; then she unpinned the curtains
and slipped behind them. In the semi-obscurity her husband's face stared
up at her like a marble mask with agate eyes. The eyes were dreadful. She
put out her hand and drew down the lids. Then she remembered the glass of
milk in her other hand: what was she to do with it? She thought of raising
the window and throwing it out; but to do so she would have to lean across
his body and bring her face close to his. She decided to drink the milk.
She returned to her seat with the empty glass and after a while the porter
came back to get it.
"When'll I fold up his bed?" he asked.
"Oh, not now--not yet; he's ill--he's very ill. Can't you let him stay as
he is? The doctor wants him to lie down as much as possible."
He scratched his head. "Well, if he's _really_ sick--"
He took the empty glass and walked away, explaining to the passengers that
the party behind the curtains was too sick to get up just yet.
She found herself the centre of sympathetic eyes. A motherly woman with an
intimate smile sat down beside her.
"I'm real sorry to hear your husband's sick. I've had a remarkable amount
of sickness in my family and maybe I could assist you. Can I take a look
at him?"
"Oh, no--no, please! He mustn't be disturbed."
The lady accepted the rebuff indulgently.
"Well, it's just as you say, of course, but you don't look to me as if
you'd had much experience in sickness and I'd have been glad to assist
you. What do you generally do when your husband's taken this way?"
"I--I let him sleep."
"Too much sleep ain't any too healthful either. Don't you give him any
medicine?"
"Y--yes."
"Don't you wake him to take it?"
"Yes."
"When does he take the next dose?"
"Not for--two hours--"
The lady looked disappointed. "Well, if I was you I'd try giving it
oftener. That's what I do with my folks."
After that many faces seemed to press upon her. The passengers were on
their way to the dining-car, and she was conscious that as they passed
down the aisle they glanced curiously at the closed curtains. One lantern-
jawed man with prominent eyes stood still and tried to shoot his
projecting glance through the division between the folds. The freckled
child, returning from breakfast, waylaid the passers with a buttery
clutch, saying in a loud whisper, "He's sick;" and once the conductor came
by, asking for tickets. She shrank into her corner and looked out of the
window at the flying trees and houses, meaningless hieroglyphs of an
endlessly unrolled papyrus.
Now and then the train stopped, and the newcomers on entering the car
stared in turn at the closed curtains. More and more people seemed to
pass--their faces began to blend fantastically with the images surging in
her brain....
Later in the day a fat man detached himself from the mist of faces. He had
a creased stomach and soft pale lips. As he pressed himself into the seat
facing her she noticed that he was dressed in black broadcloth, with a
soiled white tie.
"Husband's pretty bad this morning, is he?"
"Yes."
"Dear, dear! Now that's terribly distressing, ain't it?" An apostolic
smile revealed his gold-filled teeth.
"Of course you know there's no sech thing as sickness. Ain't that a lovely
thought? Death itself is but a deloosion of our grosser senses. On'y lay
yourself open to the influx of the sperrit, submit yourself passively to
the action of the divine force, and disease and dissolution will cease to
exist for you. If you could indooce your husband to read this little
pamphlet--"
The faces about her again grew indistinct. She had a vague recollection of
hearing the motherly lady and the parent of the freckled child ardently
disputing the relative advantages of trying several medicines at once, or
of taking each in turn; the motherly lady maintaining that the competitive
system saved time; the other objecting that you couldn't tell which remedy
had effected the cure; their voices went on and on, like bell-buoys
droning through a fog.... The porter came up now and then with questions
that she did not understand, but that somehow she must have answered since
he went away again without repeating them; every two hours the motherly
lady reminded her that her husband ought to have his drops; people left
the car and others replaced them...
Her head was spinning and she tried to steady herself by clutching at her
thoughts as they swept by, but they slipped away from her like bushes on
the side of a sheer precipice down which she seemed to be falling.
Suddenly her mind grew clear again and she found herself vividly picturing
what would happen when the train reached New York. She shuddered as it
occurred to her that he would be quite cold and that some one might
perceive he had been dead since morning.
She thought hurriedly:--"If they see I am not surprised they will suspect
something. They will ask questions, and if I tell them the truth they
won't believe me--no one would believe me! It will be terrible"--and she
kept repeating to herself:--"I must pretend I don't know. I must pretend I
don't know. When they open the curtains I must go up to him quite
naturally--and then I must scream." ... She had an idea that the scream
would be very hard to do.
Gradually new thoughts crowded upon her, vivid and urgent: she tried to
separate and restrain them, but they beset her clamorously, like her
school-children at the end of a hot day, when she was too tired to silence
them. Her head grew confused, and she felt a sick fear of forgetting her
part, of betraying herself by some unguarded word or look.
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