Edith Wharton - Novella 01 Read Online Free PDF

her
again.” Jack rapped the floor impatiently with his stick. “What? Expose
yourself to the contempt & insult, or still worse, the pity, of a woman who
has jilted you? For Heaven’s sake, lad, keep hold of your senses!” “You think I
oughtn’t to go, then?” said Guy, anxiously. “Go!—out of the fryingpan into the
fire I should call it,” stormed Jack, pacing up & down the littered room. “No.
He must be a poor-spirited fellow who swims back for salvation to the ship that
his pitched him overboard! No. Come abroad with me, as soon as you can get your
traps together, & let the whole thing go to the deuce as fast as it can.”
Jack paused to let his words take effect; & Guy sat, with his head leaning
on his hand, still studying the ruins of the fire. At last he sprang up &
caught his shrewd-headed friend by the hand. “By Jove, Jack, you’re right. What
have we got to live for but our art? Come along. Let’s go to Italy—tomorrow, if
you can, Jack!” And go they did, the next day. As his friends used to say of
him, “Jack’s the fellow for an emergency.” His real, anxious affection for Guy,
& his disinterested kind-heartedness conquered every obstacle to so hasty
& unexpected a departure; & four days after he parted with Georgie in
the drawingroom of Holly Lodge, Guy Hastings was on his way to Calais, looking
forward, through the distorting spectacles of a disappointed love, to a long,
dreary waste of life which was only one degree better than its alternative, the
utter chaos of death.
                   
     
  V.
 
 
                 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 role 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