The Age of Desire (8 page)

“Comtesse, when I read your poem “Imprint,” I cried. It made me realize how little
I
leave behind.” And then, in flawless French, Anna Bahlmann recites the beginning of the poem.

“So vigorously will I lean on life,

So strongly will I hold and embrace it,

That before I lose the sweetness of day

It will be heated from my touch.”

Anna de Noailles’s soft lips part with surprise.

“It spoke to me,” Anna Bahlmann goes on to say. “It urged me to make a mark.”

“Truly, Miss Bahlmann?” The Comtesse raises her extraordinary dark eyebrows. “I too often hope in vain that my poems will do more than amuse people. You are proof that I have made
my
mark on someone,” she says humbly. “I am inexpressibly touched.”

When the tea is over, she embraces Anna. “Imprint the world,” she whispers into her ear loud enough for Edith to hear. The door closes behind her.

Edith and Anna Bahlmann are left standing in the hall with the Comtesse’s lingering scent. Edith takes in the figure of the woman who hovers by her every single day: so transparent in her gray gown, like a wisp of smoke threatening to disperse. She wonders if she has ever really
seen
her before.

Anna Bahlmann lies neck-deep in the servants’ tub, caressing the cool nickel faucet with her toes, whispering aloud the same poem she quoted to the Comtesse. She is pleased that the cool tile plumps her whisper with watery sibilance.

“That before I lose the sweetness of day It will be heated from my touch.”

Anna has spent a lifetime allowing poetry to tie neat bows around her life. How gratifying that this time her habit of finding herself in poetry has managed to please the poet herself.

How little the world around Anna has ever been heated by her touch! And yet is there anyone she knows who experiences more from the universe than she? Who else sees beauty in the branchings on the underside of a leaf, thrills at the perfect middle C of a streetcar bell, is electrified by the perfume of rain on cobbles? Edith. Edith is the only other person she knows who finds splendor in the mundane. And that is why she loves her, why she has devoted herself to her. From the moment she laid eyes on the earnest ten-year-old with ripples of strawberry hair, she knew she’d met her match. A walk in the woods with Edith was a revelation for both of them. A letter from Miss E. Jones burst with description, with news that no one else would have relished.

Yes, Edith was intractable sometimes. She wanted the world to be as she expected. Once, as a twelve-year-old, she tore every page out of a Dickens book because it disappointed her. Another time, she wouldn’t write to Anna for a whole month when they were apart, because Anna, called away in an emergency, left the Jones’s household unexpectedly.

“You could at least have warned us,” Edith said as Anna packed and her young charge watched, her mouth in a jealous twist. Just as Anna was closing the case, Edith grabbed Anna’s already packed shawl and yanked it from the bag. “In fact, I won’t let you go. You’ve just come.”

“Edith, no one could have guessed Ilsa Barnard would come down with scarlet fever. They need me to take care of her.”

“But you are
not
a nurse, Tonni! Let them hire a nurse.”

Anna took the furious little girl and held her to her breast. “I’d choose you over Ilsa, you know, if I had the choice. We’ll see each other soon. Would you like to keep my shawl in the meanwhile?”

Edith gazed at the nimbus of blue yarn crushed in her fist, sheer and glistening as spider silk.

“No.” she said, throwing it back on the bed. “I don’t want to be reminded of someone so . . . so . . .
inconstant
!” After a month of silence with not a single reply to Anna’s faithful letters, she wrote, “I have enjoyed all your letters, Tonni. Do come back soon. I have had some very important thoughts about Goethe and no one to share them with. And mother is at a loss without you.” How relieved Anna felt, knowing Edith couldn’t stay angry at her for long.

For the last thirty-five years, the very center of Anna’s life, the touchstone, has been Edith. How can Anna help feeling unspeakably pained when she knows Edith is laughing at her, as she surely was this afternoon in de Noailles’s presence? Would Edith have become the writer she is if Anna had not walked in the woods with her and discussed the leaves, the people they met, the reasons things happened? If Anna had not read poems aloud to her, had not made Edith parse the poet’s intentions in every line, had not opened her eyes to new ideas, new ways of thinking? Has Edith come to believe she taught it all to herself? Anna kicks the faucet with her toe. The radiating sting fills her eyes with tears. How lucky she is that she’s in the bath, where no one can see.

For Edith, the best part about Henry James’s visit is that Morton Fullerton drops by often now: sometimes in the morning, when Edith is writing, sometimes for afternoon tea. She is sorry to miss him when he arrives too early. And she discovers that she is a bit jealous of the abundant attention he pays Henry. On his third visit, he brings the proofread manuscript of
The House of Mirth
with him. Even at a quick glance, Edith can see he’s done a fine, exacting job.

“I owe you a great deal for this, Mr. Fullerton,” she says, eager to see all the marks he’s made.

“Since Henry is nowhere to be found,” Fullerton says, “perhaps you’ll honor me with a walk, Mrs. Wharton. It’s the nicest day of the year so far. And you can consider it a payment of sorts, especially since you have been so cruelly ignoring me of late.”

“Ignoring you?”

“Well, the last few times I’ve come to visit, you haven’t even appeared. I find that very wounding.”

“Mr. Fullerton! I didn’t ‘appear’ because I was writing.”

“And you find literature more important than me?” His blue eyes twinkle. He holds out his elbow. “Let’s go out before the sun decides it has better things to do.”

The air is soft and persuasive and the sun, rather than deserting them, splashes itself all along the high-walled
hôtels particuliers
of the Rue de Varenne. Except for a few walkers, the squeal of passing prams and an occasional distant horse clop, there is no sound but their shoes on the pavement. They are nearly the same height, and their feet find a lilting rhythm.

“So tell me,” Fullerton says, “have you ever known anyone like Lily Bart? Someone who’s his own worst enemy?”

She glances over at him. “Isn’t everyone?”

“No. You don’t strike me as someone who risks enough to do damage to herself.”

She is startled by his statement. Does she seem so very dull to him?

“I think I should be insulted.”

“You shouldn’t. I don’t find risk takers particularly appealing,” he says. “I find them less appealing every year.”

“I would like to be a risk taker.” Edith envisions Anna de Noailles.

“What good would risk do you?” Fullerton says jauntily. “You know what you like. And you seem to have everything you could want.”

Edith smiles to herself. “You don’t know me at all, Mr. Fullerton.”

The lawns of Les Invalides roll out green and fragrant before them. After the narrow streets, the open space exhales verdant airiness.

“I know why
I
find Lily Bart so compelling.” A shadow clouds his eyes for just a moment. “What can be more tragic than someone destroying his own chance at happiness? It’s the classic theme. The seductive glow of the wrong option. Wrong options always seem to have ribbons on them for me.”

“For you, Mr. Fullerton?”

“I think I’m doing everything right and most of the time I’m just flat-out wrong. And I live with the consequences. I am a very bad sport. I don’t like consequences. They’re so untidy.”

She is charmed by his forthrightness. She thinks him a very rare man, indeed, who can view his own failings with such a cool eye.

In the garden, they locate a bench and sit side by side. She can sense his body heat, and takes in his odor of driftwood and lavender. Edith feels something she hasn’t felt in a long time and cannot name. She’s been happy of late, but this feeling of expansion dizzies her.

“Look there.” He points. “See that honeybee?” On the hedge behind them, a honeybee as fat as a blackberry is trying to wedge himself greedily into the narrow trumpet of a pink flower. Fullerton turns his gaze to her and says, “That’s how drawn I am to you.”

Edith, speechless, feels her cheeks redden.

Seeing her discomfort, he seems to shift gears. “You are far more disciplined than I, for one thing. Were you always like that? Is it something I can learn?”

Her mouth is very dry. “I had tutors who insisted on discipline. I suspect you could learn it too.”

“My school reports all declared that’s what I lack most. You, on the other hand, were, no doubt, a stellar student.”

“I’ve always had to motivate myself. No one’s ever expected anything from me,” she says.

He smiles softly. “I do.”

She observes his perfect Greek head, his smoothly shaven chin and combed mustache, his gloved hands. She has never seen neater gloves. Entirely buttoned. Teddy has never buttoned a glove in his life. What does Fullerton want from her? Why should he waste his ammunition on such untasty game—a long-married woman whose beauty has never been her greatest asset?

“We should go back,” she says. It’s Lucretia whispering in her ear:
Why hope
for much? You can only fail.
How strong this need of hers to close off options, to make things safe. Only on the page can she take risks. She abhors this about herself.

They walk back in near silence. Still, their bodies seem to cleave to one another.

“I’m leaving soon, you know,” she says. “I’m off to America. Do you have any plans to make a crossing this summer?”

“My family
has
been asking me to come.”

“You could visit me at The Mount.”

“And view your gardens; take in the much ballyhooed scent of those pines.”

They stop by the gate and look at each other. Their mutual gaze extends beyond the fleeting nod of parting friends. Edith relishes the moment to dwell on the extraordinary perfection of his face. Has she ever thought a face so lyrical?

“I don’t think I’ll come up and see Henry today after all, if you don’t mind,” Fullerton says at last.

“No?”

“He doesn’t even need to know I’ve come to call. I really came to see you.”

Edith is bewildered. Is he really trying to woo her? Or is it wishful thinking on her part?

“Thank you for the lovely walk,” she says. “And the proofreading. I’m eager to see what you’ve marked.”

“My pleasure.” He bows his head formally. She hopes he might grasp her hand and kiss it as he has done before; she longs for him to do so, but instead he draws away suddenly and walks toward the Rue du Bac. His gait says he knows he’s being watched, and also, somehow—Edith is certain—that leaving her has cost him a great deal of energy.

Henry oversees the packing of his many trunks and heads off for a few weeks in Italy before returning to England (“
For Life!
” he says). Edith and Teddy have their own trunks packed. George Vanderbilt wants his apartment back and they must move to Edith’s brother’s much smaller residence in the Sixteenth Arrondissement. The little house feels cramped and puts Teddy too near at hand so that Edith is surrounded by his bumping about and sighing. In Harry Jones’s house, Edith finds it impossible to write or to entertain comfortably. Anna Bahlmann has to share a mean little room in the attic with Catherine Gross and both are unhappy. When the staff isn’t happy, everyone feels it.