Edith Wharton - SSC 10 (10 page)

 
          
She
insisted on
Charlotte
’s drinking a glass of sherry and nibbling a
bit of toast; then they returned to the drawing-room, where the fire had been
made up, and the cushions in Mrs. Ashby’s armchair shaken out and smoothed. How
safe and familiar it all looked; and out there, somewhere in the uncertainty
and mystery of the night, lurked the answer to the two women’s conjectures,
like an indistinguishable figure prowling on the threshold.

 
          
At
last
Charlotte
got up and said: “I’d better go back. At
this hour Kenneth will certainly go straight home.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby smiled indulgently. “It’s not very late, my dear. It doesn’t take two
sparrows long to dine.”

 
          
“It’s
after nine.”
Charlotte
bent down to kiss her. “The fact is
,
I can’t
keep still.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby pushed aside her work and rested her two hands on the arms of her chair.
“I’m going with you,” she said, helping herself up.

 
          
Charlotte
protested that it was too late, that it was
not necessary,
that
she would call up as soon as
Kenneth came in, but Mrs. Ashby had already rung for her maid. She was slightly
lame, and stood resting on her stick while her wraps were brought. “If Mr.
Kenneth turns up, tell him he’ll find me at his own house,” she instructed the
maid as the two women got into the taxi which had been summoned. During the
short drive
Charlotte
gave thanks that she was not returning home
alone. There was something warm and substantial in the mere fact of Mrs.
Ashby’s nearness, something that corresponded with the clearness of her eyes
and the texture of her fresh firm complexion. As the taxi drew up she laid her
hand encouragingly on
Charlotte
’s. “You’ll see; there’ll be a message.”

 
          
The
door opened at
Charlotte
’s ring and the two entered.
Charlotte
’s heart beat excitedly; the stimulus of her
mother-in-law’s confidence was beginning to flow through her veins.

 
          
“You’ll
see—you’ll see,” Mrs. Ashby repeated.

 
          
The
maid who opened the door said no, Mr. Ashby had not come in, and there had been
no message from him.

 
          
“You’re
sure the telephone’s not out of order?” his mother suggested; and the maid
said, well, it certainly wasn’t half an hour ago; but she’d just go and ring up
to make sure. She disappeared, and
Charlotte
turned to take off her hat and cloak. As
she did so her eyes lit on the hall table, and there lay a gray envelope, her
husband’s name faintly traced on it. “Oh!” she cried out, suddenly aware that
for the first time in months she had entered her house without wondering if one
of the gray letters would be there.

 
          
“What
is it, my dear?” Mrs. Ashby asked with a glance of surprise.

 
          
Charlotte
did not answer. She took up the envelope
and stood staring at it as if she could force her gaze to penetrate to what was
within. Then an idea occurred to her. She turned and held out the envelope to
her mother-in-law.

 
          
“Do
you know that writing?” she asked.

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby took the letter. She had to feel with her other hand for her eyeglasses,
and when she had adjusted them she lifted the envelope to the light. “Why!” she
exclaimed; and then stopped.
Charlotte
noticed that the letter shook in her
usually firm hand. “But this is addressed to Kenneth,” Mrs. Ashby said at
length, in a low voice. Her tone seemed to imply that she felt her
daughter-in-law’s question to be slightly indiscreet.

 
          
“Yes,
but no matter,”
Charlotte
spoke with sudden decision. “I want to know—do you know the writing?”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby handed back the letter. “No,” she said distinctly.

 
          
The
two women had turned into the library.
Charlotte
switched on the electric light and shut the
door. She still held the envelope in her hand.

 
          
“I’m
going to open it,” she announced.

 
          
She
caught her mother-in-law’s startled glance. “But, dearest—a letter not
addressed to you? My dear, you can’t!”

 
          
“As if I cared about that—now!”
She continued to look
intently at Mrs. Ashby. “This letter may tell me where Kenneth is.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby’s glossy bloom was effaced by a quick pallor; her firm cheeks seemed to
shrink and wither. “Why should it? What makes you believe—
It
can’t possibly—”

 
          
Charlotte
held her eyes steadily on that altered
face. “Ah, then you
do
know the
writing?” she flashed back.

 
          
“Know
the writing? How should I?
With all my son’s correspondents…
What I do know is—” Mrs. Ashby broke off and looked at her daughter-in-law
entreatingly, almost timidly.

 
          
Charlotte
caught her by the wrist.
“Mother!
What do you know? Tell me! You must!”

 
          
“That
I don’t believe any good ever came of a woman’s opening her husband’s letters
behind his back.”

 
          
The
words sounded to
Charlotte
’s irritated ears as flat as a phrase culled from a book of moral
axioms. She laughed impatiently and dropped her mother-in-law’s wrist. “Is that
all? No good can come of this letter, opened or unopened. I know that well
enough. But whatever ill comes, I mean to find out what’s in it.” Her hands had
been trembling as they held the envelope, but now they grew
firm,
and her voice also. She still gazed intently at Mrs. Ashby. “This is the ninth
letter addressed in the same hand that has come for Kenneth since we’ve been
married. Always these same gray envelopes. I’ve kept count of them because
after each one he has been like a man who has had some dreadful shock. It takes
him hours to shake off their effect. I’ve told him so. I’ve told him I must
know from whom they come, because I can see they’re killing him. He won’t
answer my questions; he says he can’t tell me anything about the letters; but
last night he promised to go away with me—to get away from them.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby, with shaking steps, had gone to one of the armchairs and sat down in it,
her head drooping forward on her breast. “Ah,” she murmured.

 
          
“So
now you understand—”

 
          
“Did
he tell you it was to get away from them?”

 
          
“He
said
,
to get away—to get away. He was sobbing so that
he could hardly speak. But I told him I knew that was why.”

 
          
“And
what did he say?”

 
          
“He
took me in his arms and said he’d go wherever I wanted.”

 
          
“Ah,
thank God!” said Mrs. Ashby. There was a silence, during which she continued to
sit with bowed head, and eyes averted from her daughter-in-law. At last she
looked up and spoke. “Are you sure there have been as many as nine?”

 
          
“Perfectly.
This is the ninth. I’ve kept count.”

 
          
“And
he has absolutely refused to explain?”

 
          
“Absolutely.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby spoke through pale contracted lips. “When did they begin to come? Do you
remember?”

 
          
Charlotte
laughed again. “Remember? The first one
came the night we got back from our honeymoon.”

 
          
“All
that time?” Mrs. Ashby lifted her head and spoke with sudden energy. “Then—
Yes
, open it.”

 
          
The
words were so unexpected that
Charlotte
felt the blood in her temples, and her
hands began to tremble again. She tried to slip her finger under the flap of
the envelope, but it was so tightly stuck that she had to hunt on her husband’s
writing table for his ivory letter-opener. As she pushed about the familiar
objects his own hands had so lately touched, they sent through her the icy
chill emanating from the little personal effects of someone newly dead. In the
deep silence of the room the tearing of the paper as she slit the envelope
sounded like a human cry. She drew out the sheet and carried it to the lamp.

 
          
“Well?”
Mrs. Ashby asked below her breath.

 
          
Charlotte
did not move or answer. She was bending
over the page with wrinkled brows, holding it nearer and nearer to the light.
Her sight must be blurred, or else dazzled by the reflection of the lamplight
on the smooth surface of the paper, for, strain her eyes as she would, she
could discern only a few faint strokes,
so
faint and
faltering as to be nearly undecipherable.

 
          
“I
can’t make it out,” she said.

 
          
“What
do you mean, dear?”

 
          
“The
writing’s too indistinct… Wait.”

 
          
She
went back to the table and, sitting down close to Kenneth’s reading lamp,
slipped the letter under a magnifying glass. All this time she was aware that
her mother-in-law was watching her intently.

 
          
“Well?”
Mrs. Ashby breathed.

 
          
“Well,
it’s no clearer. I can’t read it.”

 
          
“You
mean the paper is an absolute blank?”

 
          
“No, not quite.
There is writing on it. I can make out
something like ‘mine’—oh, and ‘come’. It might be ‘come’.”

 
          
Mrs.
Ashby stood up abruptly. Her face was even paler than before. She advanced to
the table and, resting her two hands on it, drew a deep breath. “Let me see,”
she said, as if forcing herself to a hateful effort.

 
          
Charlotte
felt the contagion of her whiteness. “She
knows,” she thought. She pushed the letter across the table. Her mother-in-law
lowered her head over it in silence, but without touching it with her pale
wrinkled hands.

 
          
Charlotte
stood watching her as she herself, when she
had tried to read the letter, had been watched by Mrs. Ashby. The latter
fumbled for her glasses, held them to her eyes, and bent still closer to the
outspread page, in order, as it seemed, to avoid touching it. The light of the
lamp fell directly on her old face, and
Charlotte
reflected what depths of the unknown may
lurk under the clearest and most candid lineaments. She had never seen her
mother-in-law’s features express any but simple and sound emotions—cordiality,
amusement, a kindly sympathy; now and again a flash of wholesome anger. Now
they seemed to wear a look of fear and hatred, of incredulous dismay and almost
cringing defiance. It was as if the spirits warring within her had distorted
her face to their own likeness. At length she raised her head. “I can’t—I can’t,”
she said in a voice of childish distress.