The New York Stories of Edith Wharton Read online

  Stooping hurriedly to open the register, which let out a cloud of dust, Mrs. Black advanced to her visitor.

  “I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. Manstey; take a seat, please,” the landlady remarked in her prosperous voice, the voice of a woman who can afford to build extensions. There was no help for it; Mrs. Manstey sat down.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, ma’am?” Mrs. Black continued. “My house is full at present, but I am going to build an extension, and—”

  “It is about the extension that I wish to speak,” said Mrs. Manstey, suddenly. “I am a poor woman, Mrs. Black, and I have never been a happy one. I shall have to talk about myself first to—to make you understand.”

  Mrs. Black, astonished but imperturbable, bowed at this parenthesis.

  “I never had what I wanted,” Mrs. Manstey continued. “It was always one disappointment after another. For years I wanted to live in the country. I dreamed and dreamed about it; but we never could manage it. There was no sunny window in our house, and so all my plants died. My daughter married years ago and went away—besides, she never cared for the same things. Then my husband died and I was left alone. That was seventeen years ago. I went to live at Mrs. Sampson’s, and I have been there ever since. I have grown a little infirm, as you see, and I don’t get out often; only on fine days, if I am feeling very well. So you can understand my sitting a great deal in my window—the back window on the third floor—”

  “Well, Mrs. Manstey,” said Mrs. Black, liberally, “I could give you a back room, I dare say; one of the new rooms in the ex—”

  “But I don’t want to move; I can’t move,” said Mrs. Manstey, almost with a scream. “And I came to tell you that if you build that extension I shall have no view from my window—no view! Do you understand?”

  Mrs. Black thought herself face to face with a lunatic, and she had always heard that lunatics must be humored.

  “Dear me, dear me,” she remarked, pushing her chair back a little way, “that is too bad, isn’t it? Why, I never thought of that. To be sure, the extension will interfere with your view, Mrs. Manstey.”

  “You do understand?” Mrs. Manstey gasped.

  “Of course I do. And I’m real sorry about it, too. But there, don’t you worry, Mrs. Manstey. I guess we can fix that all right.”

  Mrs. Manstey rose from her seat, and Mrs. Black slipped toward the door.

  “What do you mean by fixing it? Do you mean that I can induce you to change your mind about the extension? Oh, Mrs. Black, listen to me. I have two thousand dollars in the bank and I could manage, I know I could manage, to give you a thousand if—” Mrs. Manstey paused; the tears were rolling down her cheeks.

  “There, there, Mrs. Manstey, don’t you worry,” repeated Mrs. Black, soothingly. “I am sure we can settle it. I am sorry that I can’t stay and talk about it any longer, but this is such a busy time of day, with supper to get—”

  Her hand was on the door-knob, but with sudden vigor Mrs. Manstey seized her wrist.

  “You are not giving me a definite answer. Do you mean to say that you accept my proposition?”

  “Why, I’ll think it over, Mrs. Manstey, certainly I will. I wouldn’t annoy you for the world—”

  “But the work is to begin to-morrow, I am told,” Mrs. Manstey persisted.

  Mrs. Black hesitated. “It shan’t begin, I promise you that; I’ll send word to the builder this very night.” Mrs. Manstey tightened her hold.

  “You are not deceiving me, are you?” she said.

  “No—no,” stammered Mrs. Black. “How can you think such a thing of me, Mrs. Manstey?”

  Slowly Mrs. Manstey’s clutch relaxed, and she passed through the open door. “One thousand dollars,” she repeated, pausing in the hall; then she let herself out of the house and hobbled down the steps, supporting herself on the cast-iron railing.

  “My goodness,” exclaimed Mrs. Black, shutting and bolting the hall-door, “I never knew the old woman was crazy! And she looks so quiet and ladylike, too.”

  Mrs. Manstey slept well that night, but early the next morning she was awakened by a sound of hammering. She got to her window with what haste she might and, looking out, saw that Mrs. Black’s yard was full of workmen. Some were carrying loads of brick from the kitchen to the yard, others beginning to demolish the old-fashioned wooden balcony which adorned each story of Mrs. Black’s house. Mrs. Manstey saw that she had been deceived. At first she thought of confiding her trouble to Mrs. Sampson, but a settled discouragement soon took possession of her and she went back to bed, not caring to see what was going on.

  Toward afternoon, however, feeling that she must know the worst, she rose and dressed herself. It was a laborious task, for her hands were stiffer than usual, and the hooks and buttons seemed to evade her.

  When she seated herself in the window, she saw that the workmen had removed the upper part of the balcony, and that the bricks had multiplied since morning. One of the men, a coarse fellow with a bloated face, picked a magnolia blossom and, after smelling it, threw it to the ground; the next man, carrying a load of bricks, trod on the flower in passing.

  “Look out, Jim,” called one of the men to another who was smoking a pipe, “if you throw matches around near those barrels of paper you’ll have the old tinder-box burning down before you know it.” And Mrs. Manstey, leaning forward, perceived that there were several barrels of paper and rubbish under the wooden balcony.

  At length the work ceased and twilight fell. The sunset was perfect and a roseate light, transfiguring the distant spire, lingered late in the west. When it grew dark Mrs. Manstey drew down the shades and proceeded, in her usual methodical manner, to light her lamp. She always filled and lit it with her own hands, keeping a kettle of kerosene on a zinc-covered shelf in a closet. As the lamp-light filled the room it assumed its usual peaceful aspect. The books and pictures and plants seemed, like their mistress, to settle themselves down for another quiet evening, and Mrs. Manstey, as was her wont, drew up her armchair to the table and began to knit.

  That night she could not sleep. The weather had changed and a wild wind was abroad, blotting the stars with close-driven clouds. Mrs. Manstey rose once or twice and looked out of the window; but of the view nothing was discernible save a tardy light or two in the opposite windows. These lights at last went out, and Mrs. Manstey, who had watched for their extinction, began to dress herself. She was in evident haste, for she merely flung a thin dressing-gown over her night-dress and wrapped her head in a scarf; then she opened her closet and cautiously took out the kettle of kerosene. Having slipped a bundle of wooden matches into her pocket she proceeded, with increasing precautions, to unlock her door, and a few moments later she was feeling her way down the dark staircase, led by a glimmer of gas from the lower hall. At length she reached the bottom of the stairs and began the more difficult descent into the utter darkness of the basement. Here, however, she could move more freely, as there was less danger of being overheard; and without much delay she contrived to unlock the iron door leading into the yard. A gust of cold wind smote her as she stepped out and groped shiveringly under the clothes-lines.

  That morning at three o’clock an alarm of fire brought the engines to Mrs. Black’s door, and also brought Mrs. Sampson’s startled boarders to their windows. The wooden balcony at the back of Mrs. Black’s house was ablaze, and among those who watched the progress of the flames was Mrs. Manstey, leaning in her thin dressing-gown from the open window.

  The fire, however, was soon put out, and the frightened occupants of the house, who had fled in scant attire, reassembled at dawn to find that little mischief had been done beyond the cracking of window panes and smoking of ceilings. In fact, the chief sufferer by the fire was Mrs. Manstey, who was found in the morning gasping with pneumonia, a not unnatural result, as everyone remarked, of her having hung out of an open window at her age in a dressing-gown. It was easy to see that she was very ill, but no one had guessed how grave the doctor’s verdict wo
uld be, and the faces gathered that evening about Mrs. Sampson’s table were awe-struck and disturbed. Not that any of the boarders knew Mrs. Manstey well; she “kept to herself,” as they said, and seemed to fancy herself too good for them; but then it is always disagreeable to have anyone dying in the house and, as one lady observed to another: “It might just as well have been you or me, my dear.”

  But it was only Mrs. Manstey; and she was dying, as she had lived, lonely if not alone. The doctor had sent a trained nurse, and Mrs. Sampson, with muffled step, came in from time to time; but both, to Mrs. Manstey, seemed remote and unsubstantial as the figures in a dream. All day she said nothing; but when she was asked for her daughter’s address she shook her head. At times the nurse noticed that she seemed to be listening attentively for some sound which did not come; then again she dozed.

  The next morning at daylight she was very low. The nurse called Mrs. Sampson and as the two bent over the old woman they saw her lips move.

  “Lift me up—out of bed,” she whispered.

  They raised her in their arms, and with her stiff hand she pointed to the window.

  “Oh, the window—she wants to sit in the window. She used to sit there all day,” Mrs. Sampson explained. “It can do her no harm, I suppose?”

  “Nothing matters now,” said the nurse.

  They carried Mrs. Manstey to the window and placed her in her chair. The dawn was abroad, a jubilant spring dawn; the spire had already caught a golden ray, though the magnolia and horse-chestnut still slumbered in shadow. In Mrs. Black’s yard all was quiet. The charred timbers of the balcony lay where they had fallen. It was evident that since the fire the builders had not returned to their work. The magnolia had unfolded a few more sculptural flowers; the view was undisturbed.

  It was hard for Mrs. Manstey to breathe; each moment it grew more difficult. She tried to make them open the window, but they would not understand. If she could have tasted the air, sweet with the penetrating ailanthus savor, it would have eased her; but the view at least was there—the spire was golden now, the heavens had warmed from pearl to blue, day was alight from east to west, even the magnolia had caught the sun.

  Mrs. Manstey’s head fell back and smiling she died.

  That day the building of the extension was resumed.

  THAT GOOD MAY COME

  “OH, IT’S the same old story,” said Birkton, impatiently. “They’ve all come home to roost, as usual.”

  He glanced at a heap of typewritten pages which lay on the shabby desk at his elbow; then, pushing back his chair, he began to stride up and down the length of the little bedroom in which he and Helfenridge sat.

  “What magazines have you tried?”

  “All the good ones—every one. Nobody wants poetry nowadays. One of the editors told me the other day that it ‘was going out.’”

  Helfenridge picked up the sheet which lay nearest him and began to read, half to himself, half aloud, with a warmth of undertoned emphasis which made the lines glow.

  Neither of the men was far beyond twenty-five. Birkton, the younger of the two, had the musing, irresolute profile of the dreamer of dreams; while his friend, stouter, squarer, of more clayey make, was nevertheless too much like him to prove a useful counterpoise.

  “I always liked ‘The Old Odysseus,’” Helfenridge murmured. “There’s something tremendously suggestive in that fancy of yours, that tradition has misrepresented the real feelings of all the great heroes and heroines; or rather, has only handed down to us the official statement of their sentiments, as an epitaph records the obligatory virtues which the defunct ought to have had, if he hadn’t. That theory, now, that Odysseus never really forgot Circe; and that Esther was in love with Haman, and decoyed him to the banquet with Ahasuerus just for the sake of once having him near her and hearing him speak; and that Dante, perhaps, if he could have been brought to book, would have had to confess to caring a great deal more for the pietosa donna of the window than for the mummified memory of a long-dead Beatrice—well, you know, it tallies wonderfully with the inconsequences and surprises that one is always discovering under the superficial fitnesses of life.”

  “Ah,” said Birkton, “I meant to get a cycle of poems out of that idea—but what’s the use, when I can’t even get the first one into print?”

  “You’ve tried sending ‘The Old Odysseus’?”

  Birkton nodded.

  “To Scribner’s and The Century?”

  “And all the rest.”

  “Queer!” protested Helfenridge. “If I were an editor—now this, for instance, is so fine:

  “Circe, Circe, the sharp anguish of that last long speechless night

  With the flame of tears unfallen scorches still mine aching sight;

  Still I feel the thunderous blackness of the hot sky overhead,

  While we two with close-locked fingers through thy pillared porches strayed,

  And athwart the sullen darkness, from the shadow-muffled shore,

  Heard aghast the savage summons of the sea’s incoming roar,

  Shouting like a voice from Ilium, wailing like a voice from home,

  Shrieking through thy pillared porches, Up, Odysseus, wake and come!

  “Devil take it, why isn’t there an audience for that sort of thing? And this line too—

  “Where Persephone remembers the Trinacrian buds and bees—

  “what a light, allegretto movement it has, following on all that gloom and horror! Ah—and here’s that delicious little nocturne from ‘The New and the Old.’

  “Before the yellow dawn is up,

  With pomp of shield and shaft,

  Drink we of night’s fast ebbing cup

  One last delicious draught.

  “The shadowy wine of night is sweet,

  With subtle, slumberous fumes

  Pressed by the Hours’ melodious feet

  From bloodless elder blooms.

  “There—isn’t that just like a little bacchanalian scene on a Greek gem?”

  “Oh, don’t go on,” said Birkton sharply, “I’m sick of them.”

  “Don’t say that,” Helfenridge rebuked him. “It’s like disowning one’s own children. But if they say that mythology and classicism and plastik are played out—if they want Manet in place of David, or Cazin instead of Claude—why don’t they like ‘Boulterby Ridge,’ with its grim mystery intensified by a setting of such modern realism? What lines there are in that!

  “It was dark on Boulterby Ridge, with an ultimate darkness like death,

  And the weak wind flagged and gasped like a sick man straining for breath,

  And one star’s ineffectual flicker shot pale through a gap in the gloom,

  As faint as the taper that struggles with night in the sick man’s room.

  “There’s something about that beginning that makes me feel quietly cold from head to foot. And how charming the description of the girl is:

  “She walked with a springing step, as if to some inner tune,

  And her cheeks had the lucent pink of maple wings in June.

  “There’s Millet and nature for you! And then when he meets her ghost on Boulterby Ridge—

  “White in the palpable black as a lily moored on a moat—

  “what a contrast, eh? And the deadly hopeless chill of the last line, too—

  “For the grave is deeper than grief, and longer than life is death.

  “By Jove, I don’t see how that could be improved!”

  “Neither do I,” said Birkton, bitterly, “more’s the pity.”

  “And what comes next? Ah, that strange sonnet on the Cinquecento. Did you ever carry out your scheme of writing a series of sonnets embodying all the great epochs of art?”

  “No,” said Birkton, indifferently.

  “It seems a pity, after such a fine beginning. Now just listen to this—listen to it as if it had been written by somebody else:

  “Strange hour of art’s august ascendency

  When Sin and Beauty, the old
lovers, met

  In a new paradise, still sword-beset

  With monkish terrors, but wherein the tree

  Of knowledge held its golden apples free

  To lips unstayed by hell’s familiar threat;

  And men, grown mad upon the fruit they ate,

  Dreamed a wild dream of lust and liberty;

  Strange hour, when the dead gods arose in Rome

  From altars where the mass was sacrificed,

  When Phryne flaunted on the tiaraed tomb

  Of him who dearly sold the grace unpriced.

  And, twixt old shames and infamies to come,

  Celline in his prison talked with Christ!

  “There now, don’t you call that a very happy definition of the most magical moment the world has ever known?”

  “Don’t,” said Birkton, with an impatient gesture. “You’re very good, old man, but don’t go on.”

  Helfenridge, with a sigh, replaced the loose sheets on the desk.

  “Well,” he repeated, “I can’t understand it. But the tide’s got to turn, Maurice—it’s got to. Don’t forget that.”

  Birkton laughed drearily.

  “Haven’t you had a single opening—not one since I saw you?”

  “Not one; at least nothing to speak of,” said Birkton, reddening. “I’ve had one offer, but what do you suppose it was? Do you remember that idiotic squib that I wrote the other day about Mrs. Tolquitt’s being seen alone with Dick Blason at Koster & Bial? The thing I read that night in Bradley’s rooms after supper?”

  Helfenridge nodded.

  “Well, I’m sorry I read it now. Somebody must have betrayed me (of course, though no names are mentioned, they all knew who was meant), for who should turn up yesterday but Baker Buley, the editor of the Social Kite, with an offer of a hundred and fifty dollars for my poem.”

  “You didn’t, Maurice—?”

  “Hang you, Helfenridge, what do you take me for? I told him to go to the devil.”