Edith Wharton: New Year's Day, False Dawn, The Old Maid & The Spark (4 Books in One Edition). Edith Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ “Oh, not ALL,” she added, laughing, “for they’d make such a big bundle that you’d soon have a hump in front like Pulcinella — but always at least the last one, just the last one. Promise!”

      “Always, I promise — as long as they’re kind,” he said, still struggling to take a spirited line.

      “Oh, Lewis, they will be, as long as yours are — and long long afterward . . . ”

      Venus failed and vanished in the sun’s uprising.

      3.

      Table of Contents

      THE crucial moment, Lewis had always known, would not be that of his farewell to Treeshy, but of his final interview with his father.

      On that everything hung: his immediate future as well as his more distant prospects. As he stole home in the early sunlight, over the dew-drenched grass, he glanced up apprehensively at Mr. Raycie’s windows, and thanked his stars that they were still tightly shuttered.

      There was no doubt, as Mrs. Raycie said, that her husband’s “using language” before ladies showed him to be in high good humour, relaxed and slippered, as it were — a state his family so seldom saw him in that Lewis had sometimes impertinently wondered to what awful descent from the clouds he and his two sisters owed their timorous being.

      It was all very well to tell himself, as he often did, that the bulk of the money was his mother’s, and that he could turn her round his little finger. What difference did that make? Mr. Raycie, the day after his marriage, had quietly taken over the management of his wife’s property, and deducted, from the very moderate allowance he accorded her, all her little personal expenses, even to the postage-stamps she used, and the dollar she put in the plate every Sunday. He called the allowance her “pin-money,” since, as he often reminded her, he paid all the household bills himself, so that Mrs. Raycie’s quarterly pittance could be entirely devoted, if she chose, to frills and feathers.

      “And will be, if you respect my wishes, my dear,” he always added. “I like to see a handsome figure well set-off, and not to have our friends imagine, when they come to dine, that Mrs. Raycie is sick above-stairs, and I’ve replaced her by a poor relation in allapacca.” In compliance with which Mrs. Raycie, at once flattered and terrified, spent her last penny in adorning herself and her daughters, and had to stint their bedroom fires, and the servants’ meals, in order to find a penny for any private necessity.

      Mr. Raycie had long since convinced his wife that this method of dealing with her, if not lavish, was suitable, and in fact “handsome”; when she spoke of the subject to her relations it was with tears of gratitude for her husband’s kindness in assuming the management of her property. As he managed it exceedingly well, her hard-headed brothers (glad to have the responsibility off their hands, and convinced that, if left to herself, she would have muddled her money away in ill-advised charities) were disposed to share her approval of Mr. Raycie; though her old mother sometimes said helplessly: “When I think that Lucy Ann can’t as much as have a drop of gruel brought up to her without his weighing the oatmeal . . . ” But even that was only whispered, lest Mr. Raycie’s mysterious faculty of hearing what was said behind his back should bring sudden reprisals on the venerable lady to whom he always alluded, with a tremor in his genial voice, as “my dear mother-in-law — unless indeed she will allow me to call her, more briefly but more truly, my dear mother.”

      To Lewis, hitherto, Mr. Raycie had meted the same measure as to the females of the household. He had dressed him well, educated him expensively, lauded him to the skies — and counted every penny of his allowance. Yet there was a difference; and Lewis was as well aware of it as any one.

      The dream, the ambition, the passion of Mr. Raycie’s life, was (as his son knew) to found a Family; and he had only Lewis to found it with. He believed in primogeniture, in heirlooms, in entailed estates, in all the ritual of the English “landed” tradition. No one was louder than he in praise of the democratic institutions under which he lived; but he never thought of them as affecting that more private but more important institution, the Family; and to the Family all his care and all his thoughts were given. The result, as Lewis dimly guessed, was, that upon his own shrinking and inadequate head was centred all the passion contained in the vast expanse of Mr. Raycie’s breast. Lewis was his very own, and Lewis represented what was most dear to him; and for both these reasons Mr. Raycie set an inordinate value on the boy (a quite different thing, Lewis thought from loving him).

      Mr. Raycie was particularly proud of his son’s taste for letters. Himself not a wholly unread man, he admired intensely what he called the “cultivated gentleman” — and that was what Lewis was evidently going to be. Could he have combined with this tendency a manlier frame, and an interest in the few forms of sport then popular among gentlemen, Mr. Raycie’s satisfaction would have been complete; but whose is, in this disappointing world? Meanwhile he flattered himself that, Lewis being still young and malleable, and his health certainly mending, two years of travel and adventure might send him back a very different figure, physically as well as mentally. Mr. Raycie had himself travelled in his youth, and was persuaded that the experience was formative; he secretly hoped for the return of a bronzed and broadened Lewis, seasoned by independence and adventure, and having discreetly sown his wild oats in foreign pastures, where they would not contaminate the home crop.

      All this Lewis guessed; and he guessed as well that these two wander-years were intended by Mr. Raycie to lead up to a marriage and an establishment after Mr. Raycie’s own heart, but in which Lewis was not to have even a consulting voice.

      “He’s going to give me all the advantages — for his own purpose,” the young man summed it up as he went down to join the family at the breakfast table.

      Mr. Raycie was never more resplendent than at that moment of the day and season. His spotless white duck trousers, strapped under kid boots, his thin kerseymere coat, and drab piqué waistcoat crossed below a snowy stock, made him look as fresh as the morning and as appetizing as the peaches and cream banked before him.

      Opposite sat Mrs. Raycie, immaculate also, but paler than usual, as became a mother about to part from her only son; and between the two was Sarah Anne, unusually pink, and apparently occupied in trying to screen her sister’s empty seat. Lewis greeted them, and seated himself at his mother’s right.

      Mr. Raycie drew out his guillochee repeating watch, and detaching it from its heavy gold chain laid it on the table beside him.

      “Mary Adeline is late again. It is a somewhat unusual thing for a sister to be late at the last meal she is to take — for two years — with her only brother.”

      “Oh, Mr. Raycie!” Mrs. Raycie faltered.

      “I say, the idea is peculiar. Perhaps,” said Mr. Raycie sarcastically, “I am going to be blessed with a PECULIAR daughter.”

      “I’m afraid Mary Adeline is beginning a sick headache, sir. She tried to get up, but really could not,” said Sarah Anne in a rush.

      Mr. Raycie’s only reply was to arch ironic eyebrows, and Lewis hastily intervened: “I’m sorry, sir; but it may be my fault — ”

      Mrs. Raycie paled, Sarah Anne, purpled, and Mr. Raycie echoed with punctilious incredulity: “Your — fault?”

      “In being the occasion, sir, of last night’s too-sumptuous festivity — ”

      “Ha — ha — ha!” Mr. Raycie laughed, his thunders instantly dispelled.

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