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The Pretext: Part IV · The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and other Stories

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  Section twenty one of The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories by Edith
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  Wharton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The pretext Part four.
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  They met again inevitably before Dawnish left, but the thing she feared did
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  not happen. He did not try to see her alone. It even became
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  clear to her, in looking back, that he had deliberately avoided doing so.
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  And this seemed merely an added proof of his understanding, of that deep,
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  undefinable communion that set them alone in an empty world, as if on
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  a peak above the clouds. The five days passed in a flash, and
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  when the last one came, it brought to Margaret Ransom an hour of weakness,
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  of profound disorganization, when old barriers fell, old convictions faded, when
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  to be alone with him for a moment became, after all, the one
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  craving of her heart. She knew he was coming that afternoon to say good
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  bye, and she knew also that Ransom was to be away at South Wentworth.
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  She waited alone in her pale little drawing room, with its scant cacamonos,
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  its one or two chilly reproductions from the antique, its slippery Chippendale chairs.
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  At length, the bell rang, and her world became a rosy blur,
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  through which she presently discerned the austere form of Missus Sperry, wife of
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  the professor of Paleontology, who had come to talk over with her the next
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  winter's program for the Higher Thought Club. They debated the question for an hour,
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  and when Missus Sperry departed, Margaret had a confused impression that the course
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  was to deal with the influence of the First Crusade on the development of a
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  European architecture, but the sentient part of her knew only that Danish had not
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  come. He bobbed in, as he would have put it, after dinner,
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  having it appeared, run across Ransom early in the day, and learned
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  that the latter would be absent till evening. Margaret was in the study with
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  her husband when the door opened and Donish stood there. Ransom, who had
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  not had time to dress, was seated at his desk, a pile of
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  shabby law books at his elbow, the light from a hanging lamp falling on
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  his grayish stubble of hair, his sallow forehead and spectacled eyes Donnish, towering
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  higher than usual against the shadows of the room, and refined by his unusual
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  pallor hung a moment on the threshold, then came in, explaining himself profusely,
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  laughing, accepting a cigar, letting Ransom push an arm chair forward.
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  Adonish. She had never seen ill At ease, ejaculatory, yet somehow more
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  mature, more obscurely in command of himself. Margaret drew back, seating herself
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  in the shade in such a way that she saw her husband's head first,
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  and beyond it their visitors Relieved against the dusk the book shelves. Her heart
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  was still. She felt no throbbing in her throat or temples. All her
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  life seemed concentrated in the hand that lay on her knee, the hand he
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  would touch when they said good bye. Afterward. Her heart rang all the
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  changes, and there was a mood in which she reproached herself for cowardice,
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  for having deliberately missed her one moment with him, the moment in which she
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  might have sounded the depths of life for joy or anguish. But that mood
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  was fleeting and infrequent. In quieter hours, she blushed for it. She
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  even trembled to think that he might have guessed such a regret in her.
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  It seemed to convict her of a lad lack of fineness that he should have
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  had in his youth and his power. A tenderer, surer sense of the
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  peril of a rash touch, should have handled the case so much more delicately.
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  At first, her days were fire and the night's long solemn vigils.
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  Her thoughts were no longer vulgarized and defaced by any notion of guilt, of
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  mental disloyalty. She was ashamed now of her shame. What had happened was
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  as much outside the sphere of her marriage as some transaction in a star.
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  It had simply given her a secret life of incommunicable joys, as if all
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  the wasted springs of her youth had been stored in some hidden pool, and
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  she could return there now to bathe in them. After that there came a
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  phase of loneliness, through which the life about her loomed phantasmal and remote.
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  She thought the dead must feel, thus repeating the vain gestures of the living
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  beside substigian shore. She wondered if any other woman had lived to whom nothing
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  had ever happened. And then his first letter came. It was a charming
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  letter, a perfect letter. The little touch of awkwardness and constraint under its
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  boyish spontaneity told her more than the whole pages of eloquence. He spoke of
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  their friendship, of their good days together. Ransom, chancing to come in
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  while she read, noticed the foreign stamps, and she was able to hand
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  him the letter, saying gaily, there's a message for you, and knowing
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  all the while that her message was safe in her heart. On the days
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  when the letters came, the outlines of things grew indistinct, and she could
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  never afterward remember what she had done or how the business of life had been
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  carried on. It was always a surprise when she found dinner on the tape
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  as usual, and Ransom seated opposite to her, running over the evening paper.
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  But though Donnish continued to write with all the English loyalty to the outward
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  observances of friendship, his communications came only at intervals of several weeks, and
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  between them she had time to repossess herself, to regain some sort of normal
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  contact with life and the customary the recurring gradually reclaimed her. The net of
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  habit tightened again. Her daily life became real, and her one momentary escape
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  from it an exquisite illusion. Not that she ceased to believe in the miracle
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  that had befallen her. She still treasured the reality of her one moment beside
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  the river. What reason was there for doubting it? She could hear the
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  ring of truth in young Donnish's voice. It's not my fault. If you've
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  made me feel that, you would understand everything. No, she believed in
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  her miracle, and the belief sweetened and illumined her life. But she came
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  to see that what was for her the transformation of her whole being, might
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  well have been for her companion, a mere passing explosion of gratitude, a
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  boyish good fellowship touched with the pang of leave taking. She even reached the
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  point of telling herself that it was better. So this view of the episode,
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  so defended it from the alternating extremes of self reproach and derision, so
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  enshrined it in a pale immortality to which she could make her secret pilgrimages without
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  reproach. For a long time, she had not been able to pass by
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  the bench under the willows. She even avoided the Elm walk till autumn had
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  stripped its branches. But every day now she noted a step toward recovery.
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  And at last a day came, when walking along the river, she said
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  to herself as she approached the I used not to be able to pass here
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  without thinking of him, and now I am not thinking of him at all.
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  This seemed such convincing proof of her recovery that she began, as spring
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  returned, to permit herself now and then a quiet session on the bench,
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  a dedicated hour, from which she went back, fortified to her task.
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  She had not heard from her friend for six weeks or more. The intervals
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  between his letters were growing longer, but that was best too, and she
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  was not anxious, for she knew he had obtained the post he had been
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  preparing for, and that his active life in London had begun. The thought
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  reminded her one mild March day that in leaving the house, she had thrust
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  in her reticule a letter from a Wentworth friend who was abroad on a holiday.
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  The envelope bore the London post mark, a fact showing that the lady's
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  face was turned toward home. Margaret seated herself on her bench, and,
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  drawing out the letter, began to read it. The London described was that
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  of shops and museums, as remote as possible from the setting of guy Donish's
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  existence. But suddenly Margaret's eye fell on his name, and the page began
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  to tremble in her hands. I heard such a funny thing yesterday about your
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  friend, mister Donish. We went to a tea at Professor Bunce's. I
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  do wish you knew the Bunces. Their atmosphere is so uplifting. And there
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  I met that miss Bruce Pringle, who came out last year to take a
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  course in histology at the annex. Of course, she asked about you and
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  mister Ransom, and then she told me she had just seen mister Donnish's aunt,
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  the clever one. He was always talking about lady Caroline something, and
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  that they were all in a dreadful state about him. I wonder if you
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  knew he was engaged when he went to America. He never mentioned it to
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  us. She said it was not a positive engagement, but an understanding with
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  a girl he had always been devoted to who lives near their place in Wiltshire,
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  and both families expected the marriage to take place as soon as he got
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  back. It seems the girl is an heiress. You know how low the
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  English ideals are compared with ours. And Miss Bruce Pringle said his relations were
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  perfectly delighted at his being provided for, as she called it. Well,
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  when he got back he asked the girl to release him, and she and
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  her family were furious, and so were his people. But he holds out
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  and won't marry her, and won't give a reason except that he has formed
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  an unfortunate attachment. Did you ever hear anything so peculiar? His aunt,
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  who is quite wild about it, says it must have happened at Wentworth,
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  because he didn't go anywhere else in America. Do you suppose it could have
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  been the Brandt girl? But unfortunate when everybody knows she would have jumped at
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  him. Margaret folded the letter and looked out across the river. It was
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  not the same river, but a mystic current shot with moonlight. The bare
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  willows wove a leafy veil above her head, and beside her. She felt
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  the nearness of youth and tempestuous tenderness. It had all happened just here,
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  on this very seat by the river. It had come to her and passed
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  her by, and she had not held out a hand to detain it.
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  Well, was it not by that very abstention made more deeply and ineffaceably hers,
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  she could argue. Thus, while she had thought the episode on his
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  side a mere transient effect of propinquity, But now that she knew it had
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  altered the whole course of his life, Now that it took on substance and
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  reality, asserted a separate existence outside of her own troubled consciousness, Now it
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  seemed almost cowardly to have missed her share in it. She walked home in
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  a dream now, and then when she passed an acquaintance, she wondered if
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  the pain and glory were written on her face. But Missus Sperry, who
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  stopped her at the corner of Maverick Street to say a word about the next
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  meeting of the Higher Thought Club, seemed to remark no change in her.
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  When she reached home, Ransom had not yet returned from the office, and
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  she went straight to the library to tidy his writing table. It was part
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  of her daily duty to bring order out of the chaos of his papers,
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  and of late she had fastened on such small recurring tasks as some one falling
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  over a precipice might snatch at the weak bushes in its clefts. When she
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  had sorted the letters, she took up some pamphlets and newspapers, glancing over
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  them to see if they were to be kept. Among the papers was a
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  page torn from a London time of the previous month. Her eye ran down
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  its columns, and suddenly a paragraph flamed out. We are requested to state
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  that the marriage arranged between mister guide Anish, son of the late Colonel the
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  Honorable Roderick Downish of Maltby, Wiltshire, and Gwendolen, daughter of Samuel Natcher,
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  Esquire of Armingham Towers, Wiltshire, will not take place. Margaret dropped
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  the paper and sat down, hiding her face against the stained baze of the
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  desk. She remembered the photograph of the tennis court at Guy's. She remembered
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  the handsome girl at whom Guy Donish looked up laughing. A gust of tears
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  shook her, loosening the dry surface of conventional feeling welling up from unsuspected debts.
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  She was sorry, very sorry, yet so glad, so ineffably impenitently
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  glad. End of Section twenty one