Edith Wharton - SSC 09 by Human Nature (v2.1) Read Free Book Online Page A

could meet next year in America! As soon as
Stephen is strong enough I want him to come back and live with me in his
father’s house.” This seemed a natural wish; and it struck me that it might
also be the means of effecting a break with the
Browns. But Mrs. Glenn shook her head.
                 “Chrissy
says a winter in New York would amuse them both tremendously.”
                 I
was not so sure that it would amuse Stephen, and therefore did not base much
hope on the plan. The one thing Stephen wanted was to get back to Paris and
paint: it would presumably be his mother’s lot to settle down there when his
health permitted.
                 I
heard nothing more until I got back to Washington the following spring; then I
had a line from Stephen. The winter in the Engadine had been a deadly bore, but
had really done him good, and his mother was just leaving for Paris to look for
an apartment. She meant to take one on a long lease, and have the furniture of
the New York house sent out—it would be jolly getting it arranged. As for him,
the doctors said he was well enough to go on with his painting, and, as I knew,
it was the one thing he cared for; so I might cast off all anxiety about the
family. That was all—and perhaps I should have obeyed if Mrs. Glenn had also
written. But no word, no message even, came from her; and as she always wrote
when there was good news to give, her silence troubled me.
                 It
was in the course of the same summer, during a visit to Bar Harbour, that one
evening, dining with a friend, I found myself next to a slight pale girl with
large gray eyes, who suddenly turned them on me reproachfully. “Then you don’t
know me? I’m Thora.”
                 I
looked my perplexity, and she added: “Aren’t you Steve Glenn’s great friend?
He’s always talking of you.” My memory struggled with a tangle of oddments,
from which I finally extricated the phrase in the Herald about Miss Thora Dacy and the fancy-dress ball at St.
Moritz. “You’re the young lady who won the Boydon Brown prize in a costume
designed by the well-known artist, Mr. Stephen Glenn!”
                 Her
charming face fell. “If you know me only through that newspaper rubbish … I had
an idea the well-known artist might have told you about me.”
                 “He’s
not much of a correspondent.”
                 “No;
but I thought—”
                 “Why
won’t you tell me yourself instead?”
                 Dinner
was over, and the company had moved out to a wide, starlit verandah looking
seaward. I found a corner for two, and installed myself there with my new
friend, who was also Stephen’s. “I like him awfully—don’t you?” she began at
once. I liked her way of saying it; I liked her direct gaze; I found myself
thinking: “But this may turn out to be the solution!” For I felt sure that, if
circumstances ever gave her the right to take part in the coming struggle over
Stephen, Thora Dacy would be on the side of the angels.
                 As
if she had guessed my thought she continued: “And I do love Mrs. Glenn
too—don’t you?”
                 I
assured her that I did, and she added: “And Steve loves her—I’m sure he does!”
                 “Well,
if he didn’t—!” I exclaimed indignantly.
                 “That’s
the way I feel; he ought to. Only, you see, Mrs. Brown—the Browns adopted him
when he was a baby, didn’t they, and brought him up as if he’d been their own
child? I suppose they must know him better than any of us do; and Mrs. Brown
says he can’t help feeling bitter about—I don’t know all the circumstances, but
his mother did desert him soon after he was born, didn’t she? And if it hadn’t
been for the Browns—”
                 “The Browns—the Browns! It’s a pity they don’t leave it