Edith Wharton - SSC 10 by The World Over (v2.1) Read Free Book Online Page B

she had lately
found herself yielding to a nervous apprehension. But there the apprehension
was; and on this particular afternoon—perhaps because she was more tired than
usual, or because of the trouble of finding a new cook or, for some other
ridiculously trivial reason, moral or physical—she found herself unable to
react against the feeling. Latchkey in hand, she looked back down the silent
street to the whirl and illumination of the great thoroughfare beyond, and up
at the sky already aflare with the city’s nocturnal life. “Outside there,” she
thought, “sky-scrapers, advertisements, telephones, wireless, aeroplanes,
movies, motors, and all the rest of the twentieth century; and on the other
side of the door something I can’t explain, can’t relate to them. Something as
old as the world, as mysterious as life… Nonsense! What am I worrying about?
There hasn’t been a letter for three months now—not since the day we came back
from the country after Christmas… Queer that they always seem to come after our
holidays! … Why should I imagine there’s going to be one tonight! ”
                 No
reason why, but that was the worst of it—one of the worst!—that there were days
when she would stand there cold and shivering with the premonition of something
inexplicable, intolerable, to be faced on the other side of the curtained
panes; and when she opened the door and went in, there would be nothing; and on
other days when she felt the same premonitory chill, it was justified by the
sight of the gray envelope. So that ever since the last had come she had taken
to feeling cold and premonitory every evening, because she never opened the
door without thinking the letter might be there.
                 Well,
she’d had enough of it; that was certain. She couldn’t go on like that. If her
husband turned white and had a headache on the days when the letter came, he
seemed to recover afterward; but she couldn’t. With her the strain had become
chronic, and the reason was not far to seek. Her husband knew from whom the
letter came and what was in it; he was prepared beforehand for whatever he had
to deal with, and master of the situation, however bad; whereas she was shut
out in the dark with her conjectures.
                 “I
can’t stand it! I can’t stand it another day!” she exclaimed aloud, as she put
her key in the lock. She turned the key and went in; and there, on the table,
lay the letter.
                   
     
  II.
 
 
                 She
was almost glad of the sight. It seemed to justify everything, to put a seal of
definiteness on the whole blurred business. A letter for her husband; a letter
from a woman—no doubt another vulgar case of “old entanglement”. What a fool
she had been ever to doubt it, to rack her brains for less obvious
explanations! She took up the envelope with a steady contemptuous hand, looked
closely at the faint letters, held it against the light and just discerned the
outline of the folded sheet within. She knew that now she would have no peace
till she found out what was written on that sheet.
                 Her
husband had not come in; he seldom got back from his office before half-past
six or seven, and it was not yet six. She would have time to take the letter up
to the drawing-room, hold it over the tea-kettle which at that hour always
simmered by the fire in expectation of her return ,
solve the mystery and replace the letter where she had found it. No one would
be the wiser, and her gnawing uncertainty would be over. The alternative, of
course, was to question her husband; but to do that seemed even more difficult.
She weighed the letter between thumb and finger, looked at it again under the
light, started up the stairs with the envelope—and came down again and laid it
on the table.
                 “No,
I evidently can’t,” she said, disappointed.