Читать книгу Edith Wharton: Complete Works - Edith Wharton - Страница 12

Lady Breton of Lowood.

“A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”

Tennyson: Locksley Hall.

It is sometimes wonderful to me how little it takes to make people happy. How short a time is needed to bury a grief, how little is needed to cover it! What Salvandy once said in a political sense, “Nous dansons sur un volcan,” is equally true of life. We trip lightly over new graves & gulfs of sorrow & separation; we piece & patch & draw together the torn woof of our happiness; yet sometimes our silent sorrows break through the slight barrier we have built to ward them off, & look us sternly in the face—

A month after Guy Hastings & Egerton started on their wanderings southward, Miss Rivers’ engagement to Lord Breton of Lowood was made known to the fashionable world, & a month after that (during which the fashionable world had time to wag its tongue over the nine-day’s wonder of the old peer’s being caught by that “fast little chit”) Georgie became Lady Breton. As a county paper observed: “The brilliant espousals were celebrated with all the magnificence of wealth directed by taste.” Georgie, under her floating mist of lace went up the aisle with a slow step, & not a few noticed how intensely pale she was; but when she came out on her husband’s arm her colour had revived & she walked quickly & bouyantly. Of course Mrs. Rivers was in tears; & Kate & Julia, in their new rôle of bridemaids fluttered about everywhere; & Miss Blackstone put on a gown of Bismarck-coloured poplin (her favourite shade) & a bonnet of surprising form & rainbow tints, in honour of the occasion. But perhaps the real moment of Georgie’s triumph was when the carriage rolled through the grand gateways of Lowood, & after long windings through stately trees & slopes of shaven lawn, passed before the door of her new home. Her heart beat high as Lord Breton, helping her to descend, led her on his arm through the wide hall lined by servants; she felt now that no stakes would have been too high to win this exquisite moment of possessorship. A fortnight after this brought on the bright, busy Christmas season; & as Lord Breton was desirous of keeping it festively, invitations were sent out right & left. Georgie, although perhaps she had not as much liberty as she had dreamed, found her husband sufficiently indulgent, unless his express wishes were crossed; when, as the game-keeper once remarked, “His lordship were quite piq nacious.” She enjoyed, too, the character of Lady Bountiful, & the tribute of obsequious flattery which everybody is ready to pay to the mistress of a hospitable house; but it was not long before she felt that these passing triumphs, which her girlish fancy had exaggerated, palled on her in proportion as they became an understood part of her life; praise loses half its sweetness when it is expected. At first she would not confess to herself the great want that seemed to be growing undefinably into her life; but as the gulf widened, she could not overlook it. There is but one Lethe for those who are haunted by a life’s mistake; & Georgie plunged into it. I have hinted that she had had a reputation for fastness in her unmarried days; this reputation, which grew as much out of a natural vivacity & daring as out of anything marked in her conduct, grew to be a truth after she became Lady Breton. She dashed into the crowd to escape the ghosts that peopled her solitude with vague reproaches; & as the incompleteness of her mischosen life grew upon her day by day it gave new impetus to the sort of moral opium-eating which half-stifled memory. Lord Breton did not care to stay her; he took a certain pride in the glitter that his young wife’s daring manners carried with them; for in pretty women, fastness has always more or less fascination. And Georgie had to perfection the talent of being “fast.” She was never coarse, never loud, never disagreeably masculine; but there was a resistless, saucy élan about her that carried her a little beyond the average bounds laid for a lady’s behaviour. It seemed as though her life never stood still, but rushed on with the hurry & brawl of the streamlet that cannot hide the stones clogging its flow. Altogether, she fancied herself happy; but there were moments when she might have said, with Miss Ingelow: “My old sorrow wakes & cries”; moments when all the hubbub of the present could not drown the low reproach of the past. It was a very thin partition that divided Georgie from her skeleton.

One day, when the last Christmas guests had departed from Lowood, & the new relay had not arrived, Lord Breton, who was shut up with a sharp attack of gout, sent a servant to Georgie’s dressing-room, to say that he would like to see my lady. She came to him at once, for even his company, & his slow, pompous speeches, were better than that dreadful solitude; although gout did not sweeten his temper. “My dear,” he said, “seeing that ivory chess-board in the drawing-room yesterday suggested to me an occupation while I am confined to my chair. I used to be a fair player once. Will you kindly have the board brought up?” As it happened, Georgie had not played a game of chess since the afternoon of her parting with Guy, & her husband’s words, breaking upon a train of sad thought (she had been alone nearly all day) jarred her strangely. “Chess!” she said, with a start. “Oh, I—I had rather not. Excuse me. I hate chess. Couldn’t we play something else?” Lord Breton looked surprised. “Is the game so repugnant to you that I may not ask you to gratify me this afternoon?” he asked, serenely; & Georgie felt almost ashamed of her weakness. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I play very badly, & could only bore you.” “I think I can instruct you,” said Lord Breton, benignly; mistaking her aversion for humility, & delighted at the display of this wife-like virtue. “Oh, no, indeed. I am so stupid about those things. And I don’t like the game.” “I hoped you might conquer your dislike for my sake. You forget that I lead a more monotonous existence than yours, when confined by this unfortunate malady.” Lord Breton’s very tone spoke unutterable things; but if Georgie could have mastered her feeling, the spirit of opposition alone would have been enough to prick her on now. “I am sorry,” she said, coldly, “that my likes & dislikes are not under better control. I cannot play chess.” “You cannot, or will not?” “Whichever you please,” said Georgie, composedly. Lord Breton’s wrath became evident in the contraction of his heavy brows; that a man with his positive ideas about wifely submission, & marital authority, should have his reproofs answered thus! “I do not think,” he observed, “that you consider what you are saying.” “I seldom do,” said Georgia, with engaging frankness. “You know I am quite incorrigible.” “I confess, Lady Breton, I do not care for such trifling.” “I was afraid I was boring you. I am going to drive into Morley. Shall I order you any books from the library?” enquired Georgie, graciously. But as she rose to go, Lord Breton’s ire burst out. “Stay!” he exclaimed, turning red up to his rough eye-brows. “I repeat, Lady Breton, that I do not think you know what you are saying. This trivial evasion of so simple [a] request displeases me; & I must again ask you to sacrifice part of your afternoon to the claims of your husband.” Georgie, who [was] standing with her hand on the door, did not speak; but her eyes gave him back flash for flash. “Will you oblige me by ringing for the chess-board?” continued Lord Breton, rigidly. “Certainly. Perhaps you can get Williamson to play with you,” said Georgie, pulling the bell. (Williamson was my lord’s confidential valet.) “I beg your pardon. I believe I have already asked you to perform that function, Lady Breton.” “And I believe that I have already refused,” said Georgie, regaining her coolness in proportion as her husband grew more irate. At this moment, Williamson appeared, & Lord Breton ordered him to bring up the chessboard. When he was gone, Georgie saw that matters had gone too far for trifling. She had set her whole, strong will against playing the game, & she resolved that Lord Breton should know it at once. “I do not suppose,” she said, looking him directly in the face, “that you mean to drive me into obeying by force. Once for all, I cannot & I will not, do as you ask me. You have insulted me by speaking to me as if I were a perverse child, & not the head of your house; but I don’t mean to lose my temper. I know that gout is very trying.” With this Parthian shot, she turned & left the room. Lord Breton, boiling with rage, called after her—but what can a man tied to his chair with the gout do against a quick-witted strategist in petticoats? Lord Breton began to think that this wife-training was, after all, not mere child’s play. This was the first declaration of open war; but it put Lord Breton on the alert, & spurred Georgie into continual opposition. After all, she said to herself, quarrelling was better than [the] heavy monotony of peace; Lord Breton was perhaps not quite such a bore when worked into a genuine passion, as when trying to be ponderously gallant. Poor Georgie! When she appeared on her husband’s arm at the county balls & dinners in the flash of her diamonds & the rustle of her velvet & lace, it seemed a grand thing to be Lady Breton of Lowood; but often, after those very balls & dinners, when she had sent her hundred-eyed maid away, & stood before the mirror taking off her jewels, she felt that, like Cinderella, after one of those brief triumphs, she was going back to the ashes & rags of reality.

—————