Edith Wharton - Novella 01 Read Online Free PDF Page B

dreamed, found her
husband sufficiently indulgent, unless his express wishes were crossed; when,
as the game-keeper once remarked, “His lordship were quite pinacious.” 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 elan 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