fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007 - Ethical Culture ...

When the letter reached Desiree she went with it to her husband’sstudy, and laid it open upon the desk before which he sat. Shewas like a stone image: silent, white, motionless after she placedit there.In silence he ran his cold eyes over the written words.He said nothing. “Shall I go, Armand?” she asked in tones sharpwith agonized suspense.“Yes, go.”“Do you want me to go?”“Yes, I want you to go.”He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly withhim; and felt, somehow, that he was paying Him back in kindwhen he stabbed thus into his wife’s soul. Moreover he no longerloved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought uponhis home and his name.She turned away like one stunned by a blow, and walked slowlytowards the door, hoping he would call her back.“Good-by, Armand,” she moaned.He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.Desiree went in search of her child. Zandrine was pacing thesombre gallery with it. She took the little one from the nurse’s armswith no word of explanation, and descending the steps, walkedaway, under the live-oak branches.It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in thestill fields the negroes were picking cotton.Desiree had not changed the thin white garment nor the slipperswhich she wore. Her hair was uncovered and the sun’s rays broughta golden gleam from its brown meshes. She did not take the broad,beaten road which led to the far-off plantation of Valmonde. Shewalked across a deserted field, where the stubble bruised her tenderfeet, so delicately shod, and tore her thin gown to shreds.She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thickalong the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not comeback again.Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L’Abri. Inthe centre of the smoothly swept back yard was a great bonfire.Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway that commanded a viewof the spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroesthe material which kept this fire ablaze.A graceful cradle of willow, with all its dainty furbishings, waslaid upon the pyre, which had already been fed with the richnessof a priceless layette. Then there were silk gowns, and velvet andsatin ones added to these; laces, too, and embroideries; bonnetsand gloves; for the corbeille had been of rare quality.The last thing to go was a tiny bundle of letters; innocent littlescribblings that Desiree had sent to him during the days of theirespousal. There was the remnant of one back in the drawer fromwhich he took them. But it was not Desiree’s; it was part of an oldletter from his mother to his father. He read it. She was thankingGod for the blessing of her husband’s love:--“But above all,” she wrote, “night and day, I thank the good Godfor having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will neverknow that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that iscursed with the brand of slavery.”Edith Wharton: The Other TwoWAYTHORN, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for hiswife to come down to dinner.It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprisedat his thrill of boyish agitation. He was not so old, to be sure --his glass gave him little more than the five-and-thirty years towhich his wife confessed -- but he had fancied himself alreadyin the temperate zone; yet here he was listening for her stepwith a tender sense of all it symbolized, with some old trail ofverse about the garlanded nuptial door-posts floating throughhis enjoyment of the pleasant room and the good dinner justbeyond it.They had been hastily recalled from their honeymoon bythe illness of Lily Haskett, the child of Mrs. Waythorn’sfirst marriage. The little girl, at Waythorn’s desire, had beentransferred to his house on the day of her mother’s wedding,and the doctor, on their arrival, broke the news that she wasill with typhoid, but declared that all the symptoms werefavorable. Lily could show twelve years of unblemished health,and the case promised to be a light one. The nurse spoke asreassuringly, and after a moment of alarm Mrs. Waythorn hadadjusted herself to the situation. She was very fond of Lily --her affection for the child had perhaps been her decisive charmin Waythorn’s eyes -- but she had the perfectly balanced nerveswhich her little girl had inherited, and no woman ever wastedless tissue in unproductive worry. Waythorn was therefore quiteprepared to see her come in presently, a little late because of alast look at Lily, but as serene and well-appointed as if her goodnightkiss had been laid on the brow of health. Her composurewas restful to him; it acted as ballast to his somewhat unstablesensibilities. As he pictured her bending over the child’s bedhe thought how soothing her presence must be in illness: hervery step would prognosticate recovery.His own life had been a gray one, from temperament ratherthan circumstance, and he had been drawn to her by theunperturbed gayety which kept her fresh and elastic at anage when most women’s activities are growing either slack orfebrile. He knew what was said about her; for, popular as shewas, there had always been a faint undercurrent of detraction.When she had appeared in New York, nine or ten years earlier,as the pretty Mrs. Haskett whom Gus Varick had unearthedsomewhere -- was it in Pittsburgh or Utica? -- society, whilepromptly accepting her, had reserved the right to cast a doubton its own discrimination. Inquiry, however, established herundoubted connection with a socially reigning family, andexplained her recent divorce as the natural result of a runawaymatch at seventeen; and as nothing was known of Mr. Haskettit was easy to believe the worst of him.257