Edith Wharton - SSC 10 (17 page)

 
          
“Nonsense,
Miss Wilpert. Of course I won’t take your orders to go away.”

 
          
She
rested her elbows on the table, and her chin on her crossed hands. I saw she
was making an immense effort to control herself. “See here, young man, now you
listen…”

 
          
Still
I sat silent, and she sat looking at me, her thick lower lip groping queerly,
as if it were feeling for words she could not find.

 
          
“I
tell you—” she stammered.

 
          
I
stood up. “If vague threats are all you have to tell me, perhaps we’d better
bring our talk to an end.”

 
          
She
rose also.
“To an end?
Any minute,
if you’ll agree to go away.”

 
          
“Can’t
you see that such arguments are wasted on me?”

 
          
“You
mean to see her?”

 
          
“Of
course I do—at once, if you’ll excuse me.”

 
          
She
drew back unsteadily, and put herself between me and the door. “You’re going to
her now? But I tell you, you can’t! You’ll half kill her. Is that what you’re
after?”

 
          
“What
I’m after, first of all, is to put an end to this useless talk,” I said, moving
toward the door. She flung herself heavily backward, and stood against it,
stretching out her two arms to block my way. “She can’t marry—she can’t marry
you!” she screamed.

 
          
I
stood silent, my hands in my pockets. “You—you don’t believe me?” she repeated.

 
          
“I’ve
nothing more to say to you, Miss Wilpert.”

 
          
“Ah,
you’ve nothing more to say to me? Is that the tune? Then I’ll tell you that
I’ve something more to say to you; and you’re not going out of this room till
you’ve heard it. And you’ll wish you were dead when you have.”

 
          
“If
it’s anything about Mrs. Ingram, I refuse to hear it; and if you force me to,
it will be exactly as if you were speaking to a man
who’s
stone deaf. So you’d better ask yourself if it’s worth while.”

 
          
She
leaned against the door, her heavy head dropped queerly forward.
“Worth while—worth while?
It’ll be worth your while not to
hear it—I’ll give you a last chance,” she said.

 
          
“I
should be much obliged if you’d leave my room, Miss Wilpert.”

 
          
“‘Much
obliged’?” she simpered, mimicking me. “You’d be much obliged, would you? Hear
him, girls—ain’t he stylish? Well, I’m going to leave your room in a minute,
young gentleman; but not till you’ve heard your death-sentence.”

 
          
I
smiled. “I shan’t hear it, you know. I shall be stone deaf.”

 
          
She
gave a little screaming laugh, and her arms dropped to her sides. “Stone deaf,
he says. And to the day of his death he’ll never get out of his ears what I’m
going to tell him…” She moved forward again, lurching a little; she seemed to
be trying to take the few steps back to the table, and I noticed that she had
left her hand-bag on it. I took it up. “You want your bag?”

 
          
“My bag?”
Her jaw fell slightly, and began to tremble again.
“Yes, yes … my
bag … give
it to me. Then you’ll know
all about Kate Spain…” She got as far as the armchair, dropped into it sideways,
and sat with hanging head, and arms lolling at her sides. She seemed to have
forgotten about the bag, though I had put it beside her.

 
          
I
stared at her, horrified. Was she as drunk as all that—or was she ill, and
desperately ill? I felt cold about the heart, and went up, and took hold of
her. “Miss Wilpert—won’t you get up? Aren’t you well?”

 
          
Her
swollen lips formed a thin laugh, and I saw a thread of foam in their corners.
“Kate Spain… I’ll tell you…” Her head sank down onto her creased white throat.
Her arms hung lifeless; she neither spoke nor moved.

 
          
  

 
          
After
the first moment of distress and bewilderment, and the two or three agitated
hours spent in consultations, telephonings, engaging of nurses, and enquiring
about nursing homes, I was at last able to have a few words with Mrs. Ingram.

 
          
Miss
Wilpert’s case was clear enough; a stroke produced by sudden excitement, which
would certainly—as the doctors summoned from
Milan
advised us—result in softening of the
brain, probably followed by death in a few weeks. The direct cause had been the
poor woman’s fit of rage against me; but the doctors told me privately that in
her deteriorated condition any shock might have brought about the same result.
Continual over-indulgence in food and drink—in drink especially—had made her,
physiologically, an old woman before her time; all her organs were worn out,
and the best that could be hoped was that the bodily resistance which sometimes
develops when the mind fails would not keep her too long from dying.

 
          
I
had to break this as gently as I could to Mrs. Ingram, and at the same time to
defend myself against the painful inferences she might draw from the way in
which the attack had happened. She knew—as the whole horrified
pension
knew—that Miss Wilpert had been
taken suddenly ill in my room; and any one living on the same floor must have
been aware that an angry discussion had preceded the attack. But Kate Ingram
knew more;
she,
and she alone, knew why Cassie Wilpert
had gone to my room, and when I found myself alone with her I instantly read
that knowledge in her face. This being so, I thought it better to make no
pretence.

 
          
“You
saw Miss Wilpert, I suppose, before she came to me?” I asked.

 
          
She
made a faint assenting motion; I saw that she was too shaken to speak.

 
          
“And
she told you, probably, that she was going to tell me I must not marry you.”

 
          
“Yes—she
told me.”

 
          
I
sat down beside her and took her hand. “I don’t know what she meant,” I went
on, “or how she intended to prevent it; for before she could say anything
more—”

 
          
Kate
Ingram turned to me quickly. I could see the life rushing back to her stricken
face. “You mean—she didn’t say anything more?”

 
          
“She
had no time to.”

 
          
“Not
a word more?”

 
          
“Nothing—”

 
          
Mrs.
Ingram gave me one long look; then her head sank between her hands. I sat
beside her in silence, and at last she dropped her hands and looked up again.
“You’ve been very good to me,” she said.

 
          
“Then,
my dear, you must be good too. I want you to go to your room at once and take a
long rest. Everything is arranged; the nurse has come. Early tomorrow morning
the ambulance will be here. You can trust me to see that things are looked
after.”

 
          
Her
eyes rested on me, as if she were trying to grope for the thoughts beyond this
screen of words. “You’re sure she said nothing more?” she repeated.

 
          
“On my honour, nothing.”

 
          
She
got up and went obediently to her room.

 
          
It
was perfectly clear to me that Mrs. Ingram’s docility during those first grim
days was due chiefly to the fact of her own helplessness. Little of the
practical experience of every-day life had come into her melancholy existence,
and I was not surprised that, in a strange country and among unfamiliar faces,
she should turn to me for support. The shock of what had occurred, and God
knows what secret dread behind it, had prostrated the poor creature, and the
painful details still to be dealt with made my nearness a necessity. But, as
far as our personal relations were concerned, I knew that sooner or later an
emotional reaction would come.

 
          
For
the moment it was kept off by other cares. Mrs. Ingram turned to me as to an
old friend, and I was careful to make no other claim on her. She was installed
at the nursing-home in
Milan
to which her companion had been transported; and I saw her there two or
three times daily. Happily for the sick woman, the end was near; she never
regained consciousness, and before the month was out she was dead. Her life
ended without a struggle, and Mrs. Ingram was spared the sight of protracted
suffering; but the shock of the separation was inevitable. I knew she did not
love Cassie Wilpert, and I measured her profound isolation when I saw that the
death of this woman left her virtually alone.

 
          
When
we returned from the funeral I drove her back to the hotel where she had
engaged rooms, and she asked me to come to see her there the next afternoon.

 
          
At
Orta, after Cassie Wilpert’s sudden seizure, and before the arrival of the
doctors, I had handed her bag over to Mrs. Ingram, and had said: “You’d better
lock it up. If she gets worse the police might ask for it.”

 
          
She
turned ashy pale.
“The police—?”

 
          
“Oh,
you know there are endless formalities of that kind in all Latin countries. I
should advise you to look through the bag yourself, and see if there’s anything
in it she might prefer not to have you keep. If there is, you’d better destroy
it.”

 
          
I
knew at the time that she had guessed I was referring to some particular paper;
but she took the bag from me without speaking. And now, when I came to the
hotel at her summons, I wondered whether she would allude to the matter,
whether in the interval it had passed out of her mind, or whether she had
decided to say nothing. There was no doubt that the bag had contained something
which Miss Wilpert was determined that I should see; but, after all, it might
have been only a newspaper report of the
Spain
trial. The unhappy creature’s brain was
already so confused that she might have attached importance to some document
that had no real significance. I hoped it was so, for my one desire was to put
out of my mind the memory of Cassie Wilpert, and of what her association with
Mrs. Ingram had meant.

 
          
At
the hotel I was asked to come up to Mrs. Ingram’s private sitting-room. She
kept me waiting for a little while, and when she appeared she looked so frail
and ill in her black dress that I feared she might be on the verge of a nervous
break-down.

 
          
“You
look too tired to see any one today. You ought to go straight to bed and let me
send for the doctor,” I said.

 
          
“No—no.”
She shook her head, and signed to me to sit down. “It’s only … the strangeness
of everything. I’m not used to being alone. I think I’d better go away from
here tomorrow,” she began excitedly.

 
          
“I
think you had, dear. I’ll make any arrangements you like, if you’ll tell me
where you want to go. And I’ll come and join you, and arrange as soon as
possible about our marriage. Such matters can be managed fairly quickly in
France
.”

 
          
“In
France
?” she echoed absently, with a little smile.

 
          
“Or
wherever else you like. We might go to
Rome
.”