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diff --git a/24133.txt b/24133.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..04d9350 --- /dev/null +++ b/24133.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1639 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Run, by Edith Wharton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Long Run + 1916 + +Author: Edith Wharton + +Release Date: January 3, 2008 [EBook #24133] +[Last updated: September 19, 2017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG RUN *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +THE LONG RUN + +By Edith Wharton + +Copyright, 1916, By Charles Scribner's Sons + + +_The shade of those our days that had no tongue._ + + + + +I + +It was last winter, after a twelve years' absence from New York, that +I saw again, at one of the Jim Cumnors' dinners, my old friend Halston +Merrick. + +The Cumnors' house is one of the few where, even after such a lapse +of time, one can be sure of finding familiar faces and picking up old +threads; where for a moment one can abandon one's self to the illusion +that New York humanity is a shade less unstable than its bricks and +mortar. And that evening in particular I remember feeling that there +could be no pleasanter way of re-entering the confused and careless +world to which I was returning than through the quiet softly-lit +diningroom in which Mrs. Cumnor, with a characteristic sense of my +needing to be broken in gradually, had contrived to assemble so many +friendly faces. + +I was glad to see them all, including the three or four I did not know, +or failed to recognize, but had no difficulty in passing as in the +tradition and of the group; but I was most of all glad--as I rather +wonderingly found--to set eyes again on Halston Merrick. + +He and I had been at Harvard together, for one thing, and had shared +there curiosities and ardours a little outside the current tendencies: +had, on the whole, been more critical than our comrades, and less +amenable to the accepted. Then, for the next following years, Merrick +had been a vivid and promising figure in young American life. Handsome, +careless, and free, he had wandered and tasted and compared. After +leaving Harvard he had spent two years at Oxford; then he had accepted +a private secretaryship to our Ambassador in England, and had come back +from this adventure with a fresh curiosity about public affairs at home, +and the conviction that men of his kind should play a larger part in +them. This led, first, to his running for a State Senatorship which he +failed to get, and ultimately to a few months of intelligent activity in +a municipal office. Soon after being deprived of this post by a change +of party he had published a small volume of delicate verse, and, a year +later, an odd uneven brilliant book on Municipal Government. After that +one hardly knew where to look for his next appearance; but chance rather +disappointingly solved the problem by killing off his father and placing +Halston at the head of the Merrick Iron Foundry at Yonkers. + +His friends had gathered that, whenever this regrettable contingency +should occur, he meant to dispose of the business and continue his life +of free experiment. As often happens in just such cases, however, it was +not the moment for a sale, and Merrick had to take over the management +of the foundry. Some two years later he had a chance to free himself; +but when it came he did not choose to take it. This tame sequel to an +inspiriting start was disappointing to some of us, and I was among those +disposed to regret Merrick's drop to the level of the prosperous. Then +I went away to a big engineering job in China, and from there to Africa, +and spent the next twelve years out of sight and sound of New York +doings. + +During that long interval I heard of no new phase in Merrick's +evolution, but this did not surprise me, as I had never expected from +him actions resonant enough to cross the globe. All I knew--and this did +surprise me--was that he had not married, and that he was still in the +iron business. All through those years, however, I never ceased to wish, +in certain situations and at certain turns of thought, that Merrick were +in reach, that I could tell this or that to Merrick. I had never, in the +interval, found any one with just his quickness of perception and just +his sureness of response. + +After dinner, therefore, we irresistibly drew together. In Mrs. Cumnor's +big easy drawing-room cigars were allowed, and there was no break in the +communion of the sexes; and, this being the case, I ought to have sought +a seat beside one of the ladies among whom we were allowed to remain. +But, as had generally happened of old when Merrick was in sight, I found +myself steering straight for him past all minor ports of call. + +There had been no time, before dinner, for more than the barest +expression of satisfaction at meeting, and our seats had been at +opposite ends of the longish table, so that we got our first real look +at each other in the secluded corner to which Mrs. Cumnor's vigilance +now directed us. + +Merrick was still handsome in his stooping tawny way: handsomer perhaps, +with thinnish hair and more lines in his face, than in the young excess +of his good looks. He was very glad to see me and conveyed his gladness +by the same charming smile; but as soon as we began to talk I felt +a change. It was not merely the change that years and experience and +altered values bring. There was something more fundamental the matter +with Merrick, something dreadful, unforeseen, unaccountable: Merrick had +grown conventional and dull. + +In the glow of his frank pleasure in seeing me I was ashamed to analyze +the nature of the change; but presently our talk began to flag--fancy a +talk with Merrick flagging!--and self-deception became impossible as I +watched myself handing out platitudes with the gesture of the salesman +offering something to a purchaser "equally good." The worst of it was +that Merrick--Merrick, who had once felt everything!--didn't seem to +feel the lack of spontaneity in my remarks, but hung on them with a +harrowing faith in the resuscitating power of our past. It was as if he +hugged the empty vessel of our friendship without perceiving that the +last drop of its essence was dry. + +But after all, I am exaggerating. Through my surprise and disappointment +I felt a certain sense of well-being in the mere physical presence of my +old friend. I liked looking at the way his dark hair waved away from +the forehead, at the tautness of his dry brown cheek, the thoughtful +backward tilt of his head, the way his brown eyes mused upon the +scene through lowered lids. All the past was in his way of looking and +sitting, and I wanted to stay near him, and felt that he wanted me +to stay; but the devil of it was that neither of us knew what to talk +about. + +It was this difficulty which caused me, after a while, since I could not +follow Merrick's talk, to follow his eyes in their roaming circuit of +the room. + +At the moment when our glances joined, his had paused on a lady +seated at some distance from our corner. Immersed, at first, in the +satisfaction of finding myself again with Merrick, I had been only half +aware of this lady, as of one of the few persons present whom I did not +know, or had failed to remember. There was nothing in her appearance to +challenge my attention or to excite my curiosity, and I don't suppose I +should have looked at her again if I had not noticed that my friend was +doing so. + +She was a woman of about forty-seven, with fair faded hair and a young +figure. Her gray dress was handsome but ineffective, and her pale and +rather serious face wore a small unvarying smile which might have +been pinned on with her ornaments. She was one of the women in whom +increasing years show rather what they have taken than what they have +bestowed, and only on looking closely did one see that what they had +taken must have been good of its kind. + +Phil Cumnor and another man were talking to her, and the very intensity +of the attention she bestowed on them betrayed the straining of +rebellious thoughts. She never let her eyes stray or her smile drop; and +at the proper moment I saw she was ready with the proper sentiment. + +The party, like most of those that Mrs. Cumnor gathered about her, was +not composed of exceptional beings. The people of the old vanished +New York set were not exceptional: they were mostly cut on the same +convenient and unobtrusive pattern; but they were often exceedingly +"nice." And this obsolete quality marked every look and gesture of the +lady I was scrutinizing. + +While these reflections were passing through my mind I was aware that +Merrick's eyes rested still on her. I took a cross-section of his look +and found in it neither surprise nor absorption, but only a certain +sober pleasure just about at the emotional level of the rest of the +room. + +If he continued to look at her, his expression seemed to say, it was +only because, all things considered, there were fewer reasons for +looking at anybody else. + +This made me wonder what were the reasons for looking at _her_; and as +a first step toward enlightenment I said:--"I'm sure I've seen the lady +over there in gray--" + +Merrick detached his eyes and turned them on me with a wondering look. + +"Seen her? You know her." He waited. "_Don't_ you know her? It's Mrs. +Reardon." + +I wondered that he should wonder, for I could not remember, in +the Cumnor group or elsewhere, having known any one of the name he +mentioned. + +"But perhaps," he continued, "you hadn't heard of her marriage? You knew +her as Mrs. Trant." + +I gave him back his stare. "Not Mrs. Philip Trant?" + +"Yes; Mrs. Philip Trant." + +"Not Paulina?" + +"Yes--Paulina," he said, with a just perceptible delay before the name. + +In my surprise I continued to stare at him. He averted his eyes from +mine after a moment, and I saw that they had strayed back to her. "You +find her so changed?" he asked. + +Something in his voice acted as a warning signal, and I tried to reduce +my astonishment to less unbecoming proportions. "I don't find that she +looks much older." + +"No. Only different?" he suggested, as if there were nothing new to him +in my perplexity. + +"Yes--awfully different." + +"I suppose we're all awfully different. To you, I mean--coming from so +far?" + +"I recognized all the rest of you," I said, hesitating. "And she used to +be the one who stood out most." + +There was a flash, a wave, a stir of something deep down in his eyes. +"Yes," he said. "_That's_ the difference." + +"I see it is. She--she looks worn down. Soft but blurred, like the +figures in that tapestry behind her." + +He glanced at her again, as if to test the exactness of my analogy. + +"Life wears everybody down," he said. + +"Yes--except those it makes more distinct. They're the rare ones, of +course; but she _was_ rare." + +He stood up suddenly, looking old and tired. "I believe I'll be off. I +wish you'd come down to my place for Sunday.... No, don't shake hands--I +want to slide away unawares." + +He had backed away to the threshold and was turning the noiseless +door-knob. Even Mrs. Cumnor's doorknobs had tact and didn't tell. + +"Of course I'll come," I promised warmly. In the last ten minutes he had +begun to interest me again. + +"All right Good-bye." Half through the door he paused to add:--"_She_ +remembers you. You ought to speak to her." + +"I'm going to. But tell me a little more." I thought I saw a shade +of constraint on his face, and did not add, as I had meant to: "Tell +me--because she interests me--what wore her down?" Instead, I asked: +"How soon after Trant's death did she remarry?" + +He seemed to make an effort of memory. "It was seven years ago, I +think." + +"And is Reardon here to-night?" + +"Yes; over there, talking to Mrs. Cumnor." + +I looked across the broken groupings and saw a large glossy man with +straw-coloured hair and a red face, whose shirt and shoes and complexion +seemed all to have received a coat of the same expensive varnish. + +As I looked there was a drop in the talk about us, and I heard Mr. +Reardon pronounce in a big booming voice: "What I say is: what's the +good of disturbing things? Thank the Lord, I'm content with what I've +got!" + +"Is _that_ her husband? What's he like?" + +"Oh, the best fellow in the world," said Merrick, going. + + + + +II + +Merrick had a little place at Riverdale, where he went occasionally to +be near the Iron Works, and where he hid his week-ends when the world +was too much with him. + +Here, on the following Saturday afternoon I found him awaiting me in a +pleasant setting of books and prints and faded parental furniture. + +We dined late, and smoked and talked afterward in his book-walled study +till the terrier on the hearth-rug stood up and yawned for bed. When +we took the hint and moved toward the staircase I felt, not that I +had found the old Merrick again, but that I was on his track, had come +across traces of his passage here and there in the thick jungle that had +grown up between us. But I had a feeling that when I finally came on the +man himself he might be dead.... + +As we started upstairs he turned back with one of his abrupt shy +movements, and walked into the study. + +"Wait a bit!" he called to me. + +I waited, and he came out in a moment carrying a limp folio. + +"It's typewritten. Will you take a look at it? I've been trying to get +to work again," he explained, thrusting the manuscript into my hand. + +"What? Poetry, I hope?" I exclaimed. + +He shook his head with a gleam of derision. "No--just general +considerations. The fruit of fifty years of inexperience." + +He showed me to my room and said good-night. + +***** + +The following afternoon we took a long walk inland, across the hills, +and I said to Merrick what I could of his book. Unluckily there wasn't +much to say. The essays were judicious, polished and cultivated; but +they lacked the freshness and audacity of his youthful work. I tried +to conceal my opinion behind the usual generalisations, but he broke +through these feints with a quick thrust to the heart of my meaning. + +"It's worn down--blurred? Like the figures in the Cumnors' tapestry?" + +I hesitated. "It's a little too damned resigned," I said. + +"Ah," he exclaimed, "so am I. Resigned." He switched the bare brambles +by the roadside. "A man can't serve two masters." + +"You mean business and literature?" + +"No; I mean theory and instinct. The gray tree and the green. You've +got to choose which fruit you'll try; and you don't know till afterward +which of the two has the dead core." + +"How can anybody be sure that only one of them has?" + +"I'm sure," said Merrick sharply. + +We turned back to the subject of his essays, and I was astonished at +the detachment with which he criticised and demolished them. Little by +little, as we talked, his old perspective, his old standards came +back to him; but with the difference that they no longer seemed like +functions of his mind but merely like attitudes assumed or dropped at +will. He could still, with an effort, put himself at the angle from +which he had formerly seen things; but it was with the effort of a man +climbing mountains after a sedentary life in the plain. + +I tried to cut the talk short, but he kept coming back to it with +nervous insistence, forcing me into the last retrenchments of hypocrisy, +and anticipating the verdict I held back. I perceived that a great +deal--immensely more than I could see a reason for--had hung for him on +my opinion of his book. + +Then, as suddenly, his insistence dropped and, as if ashamed of having +forced himself so long on my attention, he began to talk rapidly and +uninterestingly of other things. + +We were alone again that evening, and after dinner, wishing to efface +the impression of the afternoon, and above all to show that I wanted him +to talk about himself, I reverted to his work. "You must need an outlet +of that sort. When a man's once had it in him, as you have--and when +other things begin to dwindle--" + +He laughed. "Your theory is that a man ought to be able to return to the +Muse as he comes back to his wife after he's ceased to interest other +women?" + +"No; as he comes back to his wife after the day's work is done." A new +thought came to me as I looked at him. "You ought to have had one," I +added. + +He laughed again. "A wife, you mean? So that there'd have been some one +waiting for me even if the Muse decamped?" He went on after a pause: +"I've a notion that the kind of woman worth coming back to wouldn't +be much more patient than the Muse. But as it happens I never +tried--because, for fear they'd chuck me, I put them both out of doors +together." + +He turned his head and looked past me with a queer expression at the low +panelled door at my back. "Out of that very door they went--the two of +'em, on a rainy night like this: and one stopped and looked back, to see +if I wasn't going to call her--and I didn't--and so they both went...." + + + + +III + +"The Muse?" (said Merrick, refilling my glass and stooping to pat the +terrier as he went back to his chair)--"well, you've met the Muse in the +little volume of sonnets you used to like; and you've met the woman too, +and you used to like _her_; though you didn't know her when you saw her +the other evening.... + +"No, I won't ask you how she struck you when you talked to her: I know. +She struck you like that stuff I gave you to read last night. She's +conformed--I've conformed--the mills have caught us and ground us: +ground us, oh, exceedingly small! + +"But you remember what she was; and that's the reason why I'm telling +you this now.... + +"You may recall that after my father's death I tried to sell the Works. +I was impatient to free myself from anything that would keep me tied to +New York. I don't dislike my trade, and I've made, in the end, a fairly +good thing of it; but industrialism was not, at that time, in the line +of my tastes, and I know now that it wasn't what I was meant for. +Above all, I wanted to get away, to see new places and rub up against +different ideas. I had reached a time of life--the top of the first +hill, so to speak--where the distance draws one, and everything in the +foreground seems tame and stale. I was sick to death of the particular +set of conformities I had grown up among; sick of being a pleasant +popular young man with a long line of dinners on my list, and the dead +certainty of meeting the same people, or their prototypes, at all of +them. + +"Well--I failed to sell the Works, and that increased my discontent. +I went through moods of cold unsociability, alternating with sudden +flushes of curiosity, when I gloated over stray scraps of talk overheard +in railway stations and omnibuses, when strange faces that I passed in +the street tantalized me with fugitive promises. I wanted to be among +things that were unexpected and unknown; and it seemed to me that nobody +about me understood in the least what I felt, but that somewhere just +out of reach there was some one who _did_, and whom I must find or +despair.... + +"It was just then that, one evening, I saw Mrs. Trant for the first +time. + +"Yes: I know--you wonder what I mean. I'd known her, of course, as a +girl; I'd met her several times after her marriage; and I'd lately been +thrown with her, quite intimately and continuously, during a succession +of country-house visits. But I had never, as it happened, really _seen_ +her.... + +"It was at a dinner at the Cumnors'; and there she was, in front of the +very tapestry we saw her against the other evening, with people about +her, and her face turned from me, and nothing noticeable or different +in her dress or manner; and suddenly she stood out for me against the +familiar unimportant background, and for the first time I saw a meaning +in the stale phrase of a picture's walking out of its frame. For, +after all, most people _are_ just that to us: pictures, furniture, the +inanimate accessories of our little island-area of sensation. And then +sometimes one of these graven images moves and throws out live filaments +toward us, and the line they make draws us across the world as the +moon-track seems to draw a boat across the water.... + +"There she stood; and as this queer sensation came over me I felt +that she was looking steadily at me, that her eyes were voluntarily, +consciously resting on me with the weight of the very question I was +asking. + +"I went over and joined her, and she turned and walked with me into the +music-room. Earlier in the evening some one had been singing, and +there were low lights there, and a few couples still sitting in those +confidential corners of which Mrs. Cumnor has the art; but we were under +no illusion as to the nature of these presences. We knew that they were +just painted in, and that the whole of life was in us two, flowing back +and forward between us. We talked, of course; we had the attitudes, even +the words, of the others: I remember her telling me her plans for the +spring and asking me politely about mine! As if there were the least +sense in plans, now that this thing had happened! + +"When we went back into the drawing-room I had said nothing to her that +I might not have said to any other woman of the party; but when we shook +hands I knew we should meet the next day--and the next.... + +"That's the way, I take it, that Nature has arranged the beginning of +the great enduring loves; and likewise of the little epidermal flurries. +And how is a man to know where he is going? + +"From the first my feeling for Paulina Trant seemed to me a grave +business; but then the Enemy is given to producing that illusion. Many +a man--I'm talking of the kind with imagination--has thought he was +seeking a soul when all he wanted was a closer view of its tenement. And +I tried--honestly tried--to make myself think I was in the latter case. +Because, in the first place, I didn't, just then, want a big disturbing +influence in my life; and because I didn't want to be a dupe; and +because Paulina Trant was not, according to hearsay, the kind of woman +for whom it was worth while to bring up the big batteries.... + +"But my resistance was only half-hearted. What I really felt--_all_ I +really felt--was the flood of joy that comes of heightened emotion. She +had given me that, and I wanted her to give it to me again. That's as +near as I've ever come to analyzing my state in the beginning. + +"I knew her story, as no doubt you know it: the current version, I +mean. She had been poor and fond of enjoyment, and she had married that +pompous stick Philip Trant because she needed a home, and perhaps also +because she wanted a little luxury. Queer how we sneer at women for +wanting the thing that gives them half their attraction! + +"People shook their heads over the marriage, and divided, prematurely, +into Philip's partisans and hers: for no one thought it would work. +And they were almost disappointed when, after all, it did. She and her +wooden consort seemed to get on well enough. There was a ripple, at one +time, over her friendship with young Jim Dalham, who was always with her +during a summer at Newport and an autumn in Italy; then the talk died +out, and she and Trant were seen together, as before, on terms of +apparent good-fellowship. + +"This was the more surprising because, from the first, Paulina had never +made the least attempt to change her tone or subdue her colours. In the +gray Trant atmosphere she flashed with prismatic fires. She smoked, she +talked subversively, she did as she liked and went where she chose, and +danced over the Trant prejudices and the Trant principles as if they'd +been a ball-room floor; and all without apparent offence to her solemn +husband and his cloud of cousins. I believe her frankness and directness +struck them dumb. She moved like a kind of primitive Una through the +virtuous rout, and never got a finger-mark on her freshness. + +"One of the finest things about her was the fact that she never, for an +instant, used her situation as a means of enhancing her attraction. With +a husband like Trant it would have been so easy! He was a man who always +saw the small sides of big things. He thought most of life compressible +into a set of by-laws and the rest unmentionable; and with his stiff +frock-coated and tall-hatted mind, instinctively distrustful of +intelligences in another dress, with his arbitrary classification of +whatever he didn't understand into 'the kind of thing I don't approve +of,' 'the kind of thing that isn't done,' and--deepest depth of +all--'the kind of thing I'd rather not discuss,' he lived in bondage to +a shadowy moral etiquette of which the complex rites and awful penalties +had cast an abiding gloom upon his manner. + +"A woman like his wife couldn't have asked a better foil; yet I'm sure +she never consciously used his dullness to relieve her brilliancy. She +may have felt that the case spoke for itself. But I believe her reserve +was rather due to a lively sense of justice, and to the rare habit (you +said she was rare) of looking at facts as they are, without any throwing +of sentimental lime-lights. She knew Trant could no more help being +Trant than she could help being herself--and there was an end of it. +I've never known a woman who 'made up' so little mentally.... + +"Perhaps her very reserve, the fierceness of her implicit rejection of +sympathy, exposed her the more to--well, to what happened when we met. +She said afterward that it was like having been shut up for months in +the hold of a ship, and coming suddenly on deck on a day that was all +flying blue and silver.... + +"I won't try to tell you what she was. It's easier to tell you what her +friendship made of me; and I can do that best by adopting her metaphor +of the ship. Haven't you, sometimes, at the moment of starting on a +journey, some glorious plunge into the unknown, been tripped up by the +thought: 'If only one hadn't to come back'? Well, with her one had the +sense that one would never have to come back; that the magic ship, would +always carry one farther. And what an air one breathed on it! And, oh, +the wind, and the islands, and the sunsets! + +"I said just now 'her friendship'; and I used the word advisedly. Love +is deeper than friendship, but friendship is a good deal wider. The +beauty of our relation was that it included both dimensions. Our +thoughts met as naturally as our eyes: it was almost as if we loved each +other because we liked each other. The quality of a love may be tested +by the amount of friendship it contains, and in our case there was no +dividing line between loving and liking, no disproportion between them, +no barrier against which desire beat in vain or from which thought fell +back unsatisfied. Ours was a robust passion that could give an open-eyed +account of itself, and not a beautiful madness shrinking away from the +proof.... + +"For the first months friendship sufficed us, or rather gave us so much +by the way that we were in no hurry to reach what we knew it was +leading to. But we were moving there nevertheless, and one day we found +ourselves on the borders. It came about through a sudden decision of +Trant's to start on a long tour with his wife. We had never foreseen +that: he seemed rooted in his New York habits and convinced that the +whole social and financial machinery of the metropolis would cease to +function if he did not keep an eye on it through the columns of his +morning paper, and pronounce judgment on it in the afternoon at his +club. But something new had happened to him: he caught a cold, which was +followed by a touch of pleurisy, and instantly he perceived the intense +interest and importance which ill-health may add to life. He took the +fullest advantage of it. A discerning doctor recommended travel in a +warm climate; and suddenly, the morning paper, the afternoon club, Fifth +Avenue, Wall Street, all the complex phenomena of the metropolis, faded +into insignificance, and the rest of the terrestrial globe, from being +a mere geographical hypothesis, useful in enabling one to determine the +latitude of New York, acquired reality and magnitude as a factor in the +convalescence of Mr. Philip Trant. + +"His wife was absorbed in preparations for the journey. To move him +was like mobilizing an army, and weeks before the date set for their +departure it was almost as if she were already gone. + +"This foretaste of separation showed us what we were to each other. Yet +I was letting her go--and there was no help for it, no way of preventing +it. Resistance was as useless as the vain struggles in a nightmare. She +was Trant's and not mine: part of his luggage when he travelled as she +was part of his household furniture when he stayed at home.... + +"The day she told me that their passages were taken--it was on a +November afternoon, in her drawing-room in town--I turned away from her +and, going to the window, stood looking out at the torrent of traffic +interminably pouring down Fifth Avenue. I watched the senseless +machinery of life revolving in the rain and mud, and tried to picture +myself performing my small function in it after she had gone from me. + +"'It can't be--it can't be!' I exclaimed. + +"'What can't be?' + +"I came back into the room and sat down by her. 'This--this--' I hadn't +any words. 'Two weeks!' I said. 'What's two weeks?" + +"She answered, vaguely, something about their thinking of Spain for the +spring-- + +"'Two weeks--two weeks!' I repeated. 'And the months we've lost--the +days that belonged to us!' + +"'Yes,' she said, 'I'm thankful it's settled.' + +"Our words seemed irrelevant, haphazard. It was as if each were +answering a secret voice, and not what the other was saying. + +"'Don't you _feel_ anything at all?' I remember bursting out at her. +As I asked it the tears were streaming down her face. I felt angry with +her, and was almost glad to note that her lids were red and that she +didn't cry becomingly. I can't express my sensation to you except +by saying that she seemed part of life's huge league against me. And +suddenly I thought of an afternoon we had spent together in the country, +on a ferny hill-side, when we had sat under a beech-tree, and her hand +had lain palm upward in the moss, close to mine, and I had watched a +little black-and-red beetle creeping over it.... + +"The bell rang, and we heard the voice of a visitor and the click of an +umbrella in the umbrella-stand. + +"She rose to go into the inner drawing-room, and I caught her suddenly +by the wrist. 'You understand,' I said, 'that we can't go on like this?' + +"'I understand,' she answered, and moved away to meet her visitor. As I +went out I heard her saying in the other room: 'Yes, we're really off on +the twelfth.'" + + + + +IV + +"I wrote her a long letter that night, and waited two days for a reply. + +"On the third day I had a brief line saying that she was going to spend +Sunday with some friends who had a place near Riverdale, and that she +would arrange to see me while she was there. That was all. + +"It was on a Saturday that I received the note and I came out here the +same night. The next morning was rainy, and I was in despair, for I had +counted on her asking me to take her for a drive or a long walk. It was +hopeless to try to say what I had to say to her in the drawing-room of a +crowded country-house. And only eleven days were left! + +"I stayed indoors all the morning, fearing to go out lest she should +telephone me. But no sign came, and I grew more and more restless and +anxious. She was too free and frank for coquetry, but her silence and +evasiveness made me feel that, for some reason, she did not wish to hear +what she knew I meant to say. Could it be that she was, after all, more +conventional, less genuine, than I had thought? I went again and again +over the whole maddening round of conjecture; but the only conclusion I +could rest in was that, if she loved me as I loved her, she would be as +determined as I was to let no obstacle come between us during the days +that were left. + +"The luncheon-hour came and passed, and there was no word from her. I +had ordered my trap to be ready, so that I might drive over as soon as +she summoned me; but the hours dragged on, the early twilight came, and +I sat here in this very chair, or measured up and down, up and down, the +length of this very rug--and still there was no message and no letter. + +"It had grown quite dark, and I had ordered away, impatiently, the +servant who came in with the lamps: I couldn't _bear_ any definite sign +that the day was over! And I was standing there on the rug, staring at +the door, and noticing a bad crack in its panel, when I heard the +sound of wheels on the gravel. A word at last, no doubt--a line to +explain.... I didn't seem to care much for her reasons, and I stood +where I was and continued to stare at the door. And suddenly it opened +and she came in. + +"The servant followed her with a light, and then went out and closed the +door. Her face looked pale in the lamplight, but her voice was as clear +as a bell. + +"'Well,' she said, 'you see I've come.' + +"I started toward her with hands outstretched. 'You've come--you've +come!' I stammered. + +"Yes; it was like her to come in that way--without dissimulation or +explanation or excuse. It was like her, if she gave at all, to give not +furtively or in haste, but openly, deliberately, without stinting +the measure or counting the cost. But her quietness and serenity +disconcerted me. She did not look like a woman who has yielded +impetuously to an uncontrollable impulse. There was something almost +solemn in her face. + +"The effect of it stole over me as I looked at her, suddenly subduing +the huge flush of gratified longing. + +"'You're here, here, here!' I kept repeating, like a child singing over +a happy word. + +"'You said,' she continued, in her grave clear voice, 'that we couldn't +go on as we were--' + +"'Ah, it's divine of you!' I held out my arms to her. + +"She didn't draw back from them, but her faint smile said, 'Wait,' and +lifting her hands she took the pins from her hat, and laid the hat on +the table. + +"As I saw her dear head bare in the lamp-light, with the thick hair +waving away from the parting, I forgot everything but the bliss and +wonder of her being here--here, in my house, on my hearth--that +fourth rose from the corner of the rug is the exact spot where she was +standing.... + +"I drew her to the fire, and made her sit down in the chair you're in, +and knelt down by her, and hid my face on her knees. She put her hand on +my head, and I was happy to the depths of my soul. + +"'Oh, I forgot--' she exclaimed suddenly. I lifted my head and our eyes +met. Hers were smiling. + +"She reached out her hand, opened the little bag she had tossed down +with her hat, and drew a small object from it. 'I left my trunk at the +station. Here's the check. Can you send for it?' she asked. + +"Her trunk--she wanted me to send for her trunk! Oh, yes--I see your +smile, your 'lucky man!' Only, you see, I didn't love her in that way. +I knew she couldn't come to my house without running a big risk of +discovery, and my tenderness for her, my impulse to shield her, was +stronger, even then, than vanity or desire. Judged from the point of +view of those emotions I fell terribly short of my part. I hadn't any +of the proper feelings. Such an act of romantic folly was so unlike her +that it almost irritated me, and I found myself desperately wondering +how I could get her to reconsider her plan without--well, without +seeming to want her to. + +"It's not the way a novel hero feels; it's probably not the way a man in +real life ought to have felt. But it's the way I felt--and she saw it. + +"She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me with deep, deep +eyes. 'Then you didn't expect me to stay?' she asked. + +"I caught her hands and pressed them to me, stammering out that I hadn't +dared to dream.... + +"'You thought I'd come--just for an hour?' + +"'How could I dare think more? I adore you, you know, for what +you've done! But it would be known if you--if you stayed on. My +servants--everybody about here knows you. I've no right to expose you to +the risk.' She made no answer, and I went on tenderly: 'Give me, if you +will, the next few hours: there's a train that will get you to town by +midnight. And then we'll arrange something--in town--where it's safer +for you--more easily managed.... It's beautiful, it's heavenly of you +to have come; but I love you too much--I must take care of you and think +for you--' + +"I don't suppose it ever took me so long to say so few words, and +though they were profoundly sincere they sounded unutterably shallow, +irrelevant and grotesque. She made no effort to help me out, but sat +silent, listening, with her meditative smile. 'It's my duty, dearest, as +a man,' I rambled on. The more I love you the more I'm bound--' + +"'Yes; but you don't understand,' she interrupted. + +"She rose as she spoke, and I got up also, and we stood and looked at +each other. + +"'I haven't come for a night; if you want me I've come for always,' she +said. + +"Here again, if I give you an honest account of my feelings I shall +write myself down as the poor-spirited creature I suppose I am. There +wasn't, I swear, at the moment, a grain of selfishness, of personal +reluctance, in my feeling. I worshipped every hair of her head--when we +were together I was happy, when I was away from her something was gone +from every good thing; but I had always looked on our love for each +other, our possible relation to each other, as such situations are +looked on in what is called society. I had supposed her, for all her +freedom and originality, to be just as tacitly subservient to that view +as I was: ready to take what she wanted on the terms on which society +concedes such taking, and to pay for it by the usual restrictions, +concealments and hypocrisies. In short, I supposed that she would 'play +the game'--look out for her own safety, and expect me to look out for +it. It sounds cheap enough, put that way--but it's the rule we live +under, all of us. And the amazement of finding her suddenly outside of +it, oblivious of it, unconscious of it, left me, for an awful minute, +stammering at her like a graceless dolt.... Perhaps it wasn't even a +minute; but in it she had gone the whole round of my thoughts. + +"'It's raining,' she said, very low. 'I suppose you can telephone for a +trap?' + +"There was no irony or resentment in her voice. She walked slowly across +the room and paused before the Brangwyn etching over there. 'That's a +good impression. _Will_ you telephone, please?' she repeated. + +"I found my voice again, and with it the power of movement. I followed +her and dropped at her feet. 'You can't go like this!' I cried. + +"She looked down on me from heights and heights. 'I can't stay like +this,' she answered. + +"I stood up and we faced each other like antagonists. 'You don't know,' +I accused her passionately, 'in the least what you're asking me to ask +of you!' + +"'Yes, I do: _everything_,' she breathed. + +"'And it's got to be that or nothing?' + +"'Oh, on both sides,' she reminded me. + +"'_Not_ on both sides. It's not fair. That's why--' + +"'Why you won't?' + +"'Why I cannot--may not!' + +"'Why you'll take a night and not a life?' + +"The taunt, for a woman usually so sure of her aim, fell so short of +the mark that its only effect was to increase my conviction of her +helplessness. The very intensity of my longing for her made me tremble +where she was fearless. I had to protect her first, and think of my own +attitude afterward. + +"She was too discerning not to see this too. Her face softened, grew +inexpressibly appealing, and she dropped again into that chair you're +in, leaned forward, and looked up with her grave smile. + +"'You think I'm beside myself--raving? (You're not thinking of yourself, +I know.) I'm not: I never was saner. Since I've known you I've often +thought this might happen. This thing between us isn't an ordinary +thing. If it had been we shouldn't, all these months, have drifted. We +should have wanted to skip to the last page--and then throw down the +book. We shouldn't have felt we could _trust_ the future as we did. We +were in no hurry because we knew we shouldn't get tired; and when two +people feel that about each other they must live together--or part. I +don't see what else they can do. A little trip along the coast won't +answer. It's the high seas--or else being tied up to Lethe wharf. And +I'm for the high seas, my dear!' + +"Think of sitting here--here, in this room, in this chair--and listening +to that, and seeing the tight on her hair, and hearing the sound of her +voice! I don't suppose there ever was a scene just like it.... + +"She was astounding--inexhaustible; through all my anguish of resistance +I found a kind of fierce joy in following her. It was lucidity at white +heat: the last sublimation of passion. She might have been an angel +arguing a point in the empyrean if she hadn't been, so completely, a +woman pleading for her life.... + +"Her life: that was the thing at stake! She couldn't do with less of it +than she was capable of; and a woman's life is inextricably part of the +man's she cares for. + +"That was why, she argued, she couldn't accept the usual solution: +couldn't enter into the only relation that society tolerates between +people situated like ourselves. Yes: she knew all the arguments on +_that_ side: didn't I suppose she'd been over them and over them? She +knew (for hadn't she often said it of others?) what is said of the woman +who, by throwing in her lot with her lover's, binds him to a lifelong +duty which has the irksomeness without the dignity of marriage. Oh, +she could talk on that side with the best of them: only she asked me to +consider the other--the side of the man and woman who love each other +deeply and completely enough to want their lives enlarged, and not +diminished, by their love. What, in such a case--she reasoned--must be +the inevitable effect of concealing, denying, disowning, the central +fact, the motive power of one's existence? She asked me to picture the +course of such a love: first working as a fever in the blood, distorting +and deflecting everything, making all other interests insipid, all other +duties irksome, and then, as the acknowledged claims of life regained +their hold, gradually dying--the poor starved passion!--for want of the +wholesome necessary food of common living and doing, yet leaving life +impoverished by the loss of all it might have been. + +"'I'm not talking, dear--' I see her now, leaning toward me with shining +eyes: 'I'm not talking of the people who haven't enough to fill their +days, and to whom a little mystery, a little manoeuvring, gives an +illusion of importance that they can't afford to miss; I'm talking of +you and me, with all our tastes and curiosities and activities; and I +ask you what our love would become if we had to keep it apart from our +lives, like a pretty useless animal that we went to peep at and feed +with sweetmeats through its cage?' + +"I won't, my dear fellow, go into the other side of our strange duel: +the arguments I used were those that most men in my situation would +have felt bound to use, and that most women in Paulina's accept +instinctively, without even formulating them. The exceptionalness, the +significance, of the case lay wholly in the fact that she had formulated +them all and then rejected them.... + +"There was one point I didn't, of course, touch on; and that was the +popular conviction (which I confess I shared) that when a man and a +woman agree to defy the world together the man really sacrifices much +more than the woman. I was not even conscious of thinking of this at the +time, though it may have lurked somewhere in the shadow of my scruples +for her; but she dragged it out into the daylight and held me face to +face with it. + +"'Remember, I'm not attempting to lay down any general rule,' she +insisted; 'I'm not theorizing about Man and Woman, I'm talking about you +and me. How do I know what's best for the woman in the next house? Very +likely she'll bolt when it would have been better for her to stay at +home. And it's the same with the man: he'll probably do the wrong thing. +It's generally the weak heads that commit follies, when it's the strong +ones that ought to: and my point is that you and I are both strong +enough to behave like fools if we want to.... + +"'Take your own case first--because, in spite of the sentimentalists, +it's the man who stands to lose most. You'll have to give up the Iron +Works: which you don't much care about--because it won't be particularly +agreeable for us to live in New York: which you don't care much about +either. But you won't be sacrificing what is called "a career." You made +up your mind long ago that your best chance of self-development, and +consequently of general usefulness, lay in thinking rather than doing; +and, when we first met, you were already planning to sell out your +business, and travel and write. Well! Those ambitions are of a kind +that won't be harmed by your dropping out of your social setting. On +the contrary, such work as you want to do ought to gain by it, +because you'll be brought nearer to life-as-it-is, in contrast to +life-as-a-visiting-list....' + +"She threw back her head with a sudden laugh. 'And the joy of not having +any more visits to make! I wonder if you've ever thought of _that?_ Just +at first, I mean; for society's getting so deplorably lax that, little +by little, it will edge up to us--you'll see! I don't want to idealize +the situation, dearest, and I won't conceal from you that in time we +shall be called on. But, oh, the fun we shall have had in the interval! +And then, for the first time we shall be able to dictate our own terms, +one of which will be that no bores need apply. Think of being cured of +all one's chronic bores! We shall feel as jolly as people do after a +successful operation.' + +"I don't know why this nonsense sticks in my mind when some of the +graver things we said are less distinct. Perhaps it's because of a +certain iridescent quality of feeling that made her gaiety seem like +sunshine through a shower.... + +"'You ask me to think of myself?' she went on. 'But the beauty of our +being together will be that, for the first time, I shall dare to! Now +I have to think of all the tedious trifles I can pack the days with, +because I'm afraid--I'm afraid--to hear the voice of the real me, down +below, in the windowless underground hole where I keep her.... + +"'Remember again, please, it's not Woman, it's Paulina Trant, +I'm talking of. The woman in the next house may have all sorts of +reasons--honest reasons--for staying there. There may be some one +there who needs her badly: for whom the light would go out if she went. +Whereas to Philip I've been simply--well, what New York was before he +decided to travel: the most important thing in life till he made up his +mind to leave it; and now merely the starting-place of several lines of +steamers. Oh, I didn't have to love you to know that! I only had to live +with _him_.... If he lost his eye-glasses he'd think it was the fault of +the eye-glasses; he'd really feel that the eyeglasses had been careless. +And he'd be convinced that no others would suit him quite as well. +But at the optician's he'd probably be told that he needed something a +little different, and after that he'd feel that the old eye-glasses had +never suited him at all, and that _that_ was their fault too....' + +"At one moment--but I don't recall when--I remember she stood up with +one of her quick movements, and came toward me, holding out her arms. +'Oh, my dear, I'm pleading for my life; do you suppose I shall ever want +for arguments?' she cried.... + +"After that, for a bit, nothing much remains with me except a sense of +darkness and of conflict. The one spot of daylight in my whirling brain +was the conviction that I couldn't--whatever happened--profit by the +sudden impulse she had acted on, and allow her to take, in a moment of +passion, a decision that was to shape her whole life. I couldn't so +much as lift my little finger to keep her with me then, unless I were +prepared to accept for her as well as for myself the full consequences +of the future she had planned for us.... + +"Well--there's the point: I wasn't. I felt in her--poor fatuous idiot +that I was!--that lack of objective imagination which had always seemed +to me to account, at least in part, for many of the so-called heroic +qualities in women. When their feelings are involved they simply can't +look ahead. Her unfaltering logic notwithstanding, I felt this about +Paulina as I listened. She had a specious air of knowing where she was +going, but she didn't. She seemed the genius of logic and understanding, +but the demon of illusion spoke through her lips.... + +"I said just now that I hadn't, at the outset, given my own side of the +case a thought. It would have been truer to say that I hadn't given it a +_separate_ thought. But I couldn't think of her without seeing myself as +a factor--the chief factor--in her problem, and without recognizing that +whatever the experiment made of me, that it must fatally, in the end, +make of her. If I couldn't carry the thing through she must break +down with me: we should have to throw our separate selves into +the melting-pot of this mad adventure, and be 'one' in a terrible +indissoluble completeness of which marriage is only an imperfect +counterpart.... + +"There could be no better proof of her extraordinary power over me, and +of the way she had managed to clear the air of sentimental illusion, +than the fact that I presently found myself putting this before her with +a merciless precision of touch. + +"'If we love each other enough to do a thing like this, we must love +each other enough to see just what it is we're going to do.' + +"So I invited her to the dissecting-table, and I see now the fearless +eye with which she approached the cadaver. 'For that's what it is, you +know,' she flashed out at me, at the end of my long demonstration. 'It's +a dead body, like all the instances and examples and hypothetical cases +that ever were! What do you expect to learn from that? The first great +anatomist was the man who stuck his knife in a heart that was beating; +and the only way to find out what doing a thing will be like is to do +it!' + +"She looked away from me suddenly, as if she were fixing her eyes on +some vision on the outer rim of consciousness. 'No: there's one other +way,' she exclaimed; 'and that is, _not_ to do it! To abstain and +refrain; and then see what we become, or what we don't become, in +the long run, and to draw our inferences. That's the game that almost +everybody about us is playing, I suppose; there's hardly one of the dull +people one meets at dinner who hasn't had, just once, the chance of a +berth on a ship that was off for the Happy Isles, and hasn't refused it +for fear of sticking on a sand-bank! + +"'I'm doing my best, you know,' she continued, 'to see the sequel as +you see it, as you believe it's your duty to me to see it. I know the +instances you're thinking of: the listless couples wearing out their +lives in shabby watering places, and hanging on the favour of hotel +acquaintances; or the proud quarrelling wretches shut up alone in a fine +house because they're too good for the only society they can get, and +trying to cheat their boredom by squabbling with their tradesmen and +spying on their servants. No doubt there are such cases; but I don't +recognize either of us in those dismal figures. Why, to do it would be +to admit that our life, yours and mine, is in the people about us +and not in ourselves; that we're parasites and not self-sustaining +creatures; and that the lives we're leading now are so brilliant, full +and satisfying that what we should have to give up would surpass even +the blessedness of being together!' + +"At that stage, I confess, the solid ground of my resistance began to +give way under me. It was not that my convictions were shaken, but that +she had swept me into a world whose laws were different, where one could +reach out in directions that the slave of gravity hasn't pictured. But +at the same time my opposition hardened from reason into instinct. I +knew it was her voice, and not her logic, that was unsettling me. I knew +that if she'd written out her thesis and sent it me by post I should +have made short work of it; and again the part of me which I called +by all the finest names: my chivalry, my unselfishness, my superior +masculine experience, cried out with one voice: 'You can't let a woman +use her graces to her own undoing--you can't, for her own sake, let her +eyes convince you when her reasons don't!' + +"And then, abruptly, and for the first time, a doubt entered me: a +doubt of her perfect moral honesty. I don't know how else to describe +my feeling that she wasn't playing fair, that in coming to my house, in +throwing herself at my head (I called things by their names), she +had perhaps not so much obeyed an irresistible impulse as deeply, +deliberately reckoned on the dissolvent effect of her generosity, her +rashness and her beauty.... + +"From the moment that this mean doubt raised its head in me I was once +more the creature of all the conventional scruples: I was repeating, +before the looking-glass of my self-consciousness, all the stereotyped +gestures of the 'man of honour.'... Oh, the sorry figure I must have +cut! You'll understand my dropping the curtain on it as quickly as I +can.... + +"Yet I remember, as I made my point, being struck by its impressiveness. +I was suffering and enjoying my own suffering. I told her that, whatever +step we decided to take, I owed it to her to insist on its being taken +soberly, deliberately-- + +"('No: it's "advisedly," isn't it? Oh, I was thinking of the Marriage +Service,' she interposed with a faint laugh.) + +"--that if I accepted, there, on the spot, her headlong beautiful gift +of herself, I should feel I had taken an unfair advantage of her, an +advantage which she would be justified in reproaching me with afterward; +that I was not afraid to tell her this because she was intelligent +enough to know that my scruples were the surest proof of the quality of +my love; that I refused to owe my happiness to an unconsidered impulse; +that we must see each other again, in her own house, in less agitating +circumstances, when she had had time to reflect on my words, to study +her heart and look into the future.... + +"The factitious exhilaration produced by uttering these beautiful +sentiments did not last very long, as you may imagine. It fell, little +by little, under her quiet gaze, a gaze in which there was neither +contempt nor irony nor wounded pride, but only a tender wistfulness of +interrogation; and I think the acutest point in my suffering was reached +when she said, as I ended: 'Oh; yes, of course I understand.' + +"'If only you hadn't come to me here!' I blurted out in the torture of +my soul. + +"She was on the threshold when I said it, and she turned and laid her +hand gently on mine. 'There was no other way,' she said; and at the +moment it seemed to me like some hackneyed phrase in a novel that she +had used without any sense of its meaning. + +"I don't remember what I answered or what more we either of us said. At +the end a desperate longing to take her in my arms and keep her with me +swept aside everything else, and I went up to her, pleading, stammering, +urging I don't know what.... But she held me back with a quiet look, +and went. I had ordered the carriage, as she asked me to; and my last +definite recollection is of watching her drive off in the rain.... + +"I had her promise that she would see me, two days later, at her house +in town, and that we should then have what I called 'a decisive talk'; +but I don't think that even at the moment I was the dupe of my phrase. I +knew, and she knew, that the end had come...." + + + + +V + +"It was about that time (Merrick went on after a long pause) that I +definitely decided not to sell the Works, but to stick to my job and +conform my life to it. + +"I can't describe to you the rage of conformity that possessed me. +Poetry, ideas--all the picture-making processes stopped. A kind of dull +self-discipline seemed to me the only exercise worthy of a reflecting +mind. I _had_ to justify my great refusal, and I tried to do it by +plunging myself up to the eyes into the very conditions I had been +instinctively struggling to get away from. The only possible consolation +would have been to find in a life of business routine and social +submission such moral compensations as may reward the citizen if they +fail the man; but to attain to these I should have had to accept the +old delusion that the social and the individual man are two. Now, on +the contrary, I found soon enough that I couldn't get one part of my +machinery to work effectively while another wanted feeding: and that in +rejecting what had seemed to me a negation of action I had made all my +action negative. + +"The best solution, of course, would have been to fall in love with +another woman; but it was long before I could bring myself to wish that +this might happen to me.... Then, at length, I suddenly and violently +desired it; and as such impulses are seldom without some kind of +imperfect issue I contrived, a year or two later, to work myself up into +the wished-for state.... She was a woman in society, and with all +the awe of that institution that Paulina lacked. Our relation was +consequently one of those unavowed affairs in which triviality is the +only alternative to tragedy. Luckily we had, on both sides, risked only +as much as prudent people stake in a drawingroom game; and when the +match was over I take it that we came out fairly even. + +"My gain, at all events, was of an unexpected kind. The adventure +had served only to make me understand Paulina's abhorrence of such +experiments, and at every turn of the slight intrigue I had felt how +exasperating and belittling such a relation was bound to be between two +people who, had they been free, would have mated openly. And so from a +brief phase of imperfect forgetting I was driven back to a deeper and +more understanding remembrance.... + +"This second incarnation of Paulina was one of the strangest episodes +of the whole strange experience. Things she had said during our +extraordinary talk, things I had hardly heard at the time, came back to +me with singular vividness and a fuller meaning. I hadn't any longer +the cold consolation of believing in my own perspicacity: I saw that her +insight had been deeper and keener than mine. + +"I remember, in particular, starting up in bed one sleepless night as +there flashed into my head the meaning of her last words: 'There was +no other way'; the phrase I had half-smiled at at the time, as a +parrot-like echo of the novel-heroine's stock farewell. I had never, up +to that moment, wholly understood why Paulina had come to my house that +night. I had never been able to make that particular act--which could +hardly, in the light of her subsequent conduct, be dismissed as a blind +surge of passion--square with my conception of her character. She was +at once the most spontaneous and the steadiest-minded woman I had +ever known, and the last to wish to owe any advantage to surprise, to +unpreparedness, to any play on the spring of sex. The better I came, +retrospectively, to know her, the more sure I was of this, and the less +intelligible her act appeared. And then, suddenly, after a night of +hungry restless thinking, the flash of enlightenment came. She had come +to my house, had brought her trunk with her, had thrown herself at my +head with all possible violence and publicity, in order to give me a +pretext, a loophole, an honourable excuse, for doing and saying--why, +precisely what I had said and done! + +"As the idea came to me it was as if some ironic hand had touched an +electric button, and all my fatuous phrases had leapt out on me in fire. + +"Of course she had known all along just the kind of thing I should +say if I didn't at once open my arms to her; and to save my pride, my +dignity, my conception of the figure I was cutting in her eyes, she had +recklessly and magnificently provided me with the decentest pretext a +man could have for doing a pusillanimous thing.... + +"With that discovery the whole case took a different aspect. It hurt +less to think of Paulina--and yet it hurt more. The tinge of bitterness, +of doubt, in my thoughts of her had had a tonic quality. It was harder +to go on persuading myself that I had done right as, bit by bit, my +theories crumbled under the test of time. Yet, after all, as she herself +had said, one could judge of results only in the long run.... + +"The Trants stayed away for two years; and about a year after they got +back, you may remember, Trant was killed in a railway accident. You know +Fate's way of untying a knot after everybody has given up tugging at it! + +"Well--there I was, completely justified: all my weaknesses turned into +merits! I had 'saved' a weak woman from herself, I had kept her to the +path of duty, I had spared her the humiliation of scandal and the misery +of self-reproach; and now I had only to put out my hand and take my +reward. + +"I had avoided Paulina since her return, and she had made no effort to +see me. But after Trant's death I wrote her a few lines, to which she +sent a friendly answer; and when a decent interval had elapsed, and I +asked if I might call on her, she answered at once that she would see +me. + +"I went to her house with the fixed intention of asking her to marry +me--and I left it without having done so. Why? I don't know that I can +tell you. Perhaps you would have had to sit there opposite her, knowing +what I did and feeling as I did, to understand why. She was kind, she +was compassionate--I could see she didn't want to make it hard for me. +Perhaps she even wanted to make it easy. But there, between us, was the +memory of the gesture I hadn't made, forever parodying the one I was +attempting! There wasn't a word I could think of that hadn't an echo in +it of words of hers I had been deaf to; there wasn't an appeal I could +make that didn't mock the appeal I had rejected. I sat there and talked +of her husband's death, of her plans, of my sympathy; and I knew she +understood; and knowing that, in a way, made it harder.... The door-bell +rang and the footman came in to ask if she would receive other visitors. +She looked at me a moment and said 'Yes,' and I got up and shook hands +and went away. + +"A few days later she sailed for Europe, and the next time we met she +had married Reardon...." + + + + +VI + +It was long past midnight, and the terrier's hints became imperious. + +Merrick rose from his chair, pushed back a fallen log and put up the +fender. He walked across the room and stared a moment at the Brangwyn +etching before which Paulina Trant had paused at a memorable turn of +their talk. Then he came back and laid his hand on my shoulder. + +"She summed it all up, you know, when she said that one way of finding +out whether a risk is worth taking is _not_ to take it, and then to see +what one becomes in the long run, and draw one's inferences. The long +run--well, we've run it, she and I. I know what I've become, but that's +nothing to the misery of knowing what she's become. She had to have some +kind of life, and she married Reardon. Reardon's a very good fellow in +his way; but the worst of it is that it's not her way.... + +"No: the worst of it is that now she and I meet as friends. We dine at +the same houses, we talk about the same people, we play bridge together, +and I lend her books. And sometimes Reardon slaps me on the back and +says: 'Come in and dine with us, old man! What you want is to be cheered +up!' And I go and dine with them, and he tells me how jolly comfortable +she makes him, and what an ass I am not to marry; and she presses on +me a second helping of _poulet Maryland_, and I smoke one of Reardon's +cigars, and at half-past ten I get into my overcoat, and walk back alone +to my rooms...." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Long Run, by Edith Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONG RUN *** + +***** This file should be named 24133.txt or 24133.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/3/24133/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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