Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton Read Free Book Online

I can't imagine why you come to ME!"
    He smiled a little, in his queer derisive way. "Doesn't everybody?
The fact is—I didn't want to bother Jim."
    She was silent. She understood; but she resented his knowing that
she understood.
    "Jim has got to be bothered. He's got to look after his father."
    "Yes; but I—Oh, look here, Nona; won't you see?"
    "See what?"
    "Why—that if Jim is worried about his father now—Jim's a queer
chap; he's tried his hand at fifty things, and never stuck to one;
and if he gets a shock now, on top of everything else—"
    Nona felt her lips grow hard: all her pride and tenderness for her
brother stiffened into ice about her heart.
    "I don't know what you mean. Jim's grown up—he's got to face
things."
    "Yes; I know. I've been told the same thing about myself. But
there are things one doesn't ever have a chance to face in this
slippery sliding modern world, because they don't come out into the
open. They just lurk and peep and mouth. My case exactly. What
on earth is there about Aggie that a fellow can FACE?"
    Nona stopped short with a jerk. "We don't happen to be talking
about you and Aggie," she said.
    "Oh, well; I was merely using myself as an example. But there are
plenty of others to choose from."
    Her voice broke into anger. "I don't imagine you're comparing your
married life to Jim's?"
    "Lord, no. God forbid!" He burst into a dry laugh. "When I think
of Aggie's life and Lita's—!"
    "Never mind about Lita's life. What do you know about it, anyhow?
Oh, Stan, why are we quarrelling again?" She felt the tears in her
throat. "What you wanted was only to tell me about poor Arthur.
And I'd guessed that myself—I know something ought to be done.
But WHAT? How on earth can I tell? I'm always being asked by
everybody what ought to be done … and sometimes I feel too
young to be always the one to judge, to decide…"
    Heuston stood watching her in silence. Suddenly he took her hand
and drew it through his arm. She did not resist, and thus linked
they walked on slowly and without further speech through the cold
deserted streets. As they approached more populous regions she
freed her arm from his, and signalled to a taxi.
    "May I come?"
    "No. I'm going to meet Lita at the Cubist Cabaret. I promised to
be there by four."
    "Oh, all right." He looked at her irresolutely as the taxi drew
up. "I wish to God I could always be on hand to help you when
you're bothered!"
    She shook her head.
    "Never?"
    "Not while Aggie—"
    "That means never."
    "Then never." She held out her hand, but he had turned and was
already striding off in the opposite direction. She threw the
address to the chauffeur and got in.
    "Yes; I suppose it IS never," she said to herself. After all,
instead of helping her with the Wyant problem, Stan had only
brought her another: his own—and hers. As long as Aggie Heuston,
a sort of lay nun, absorbed in High Church practices and the
exercise of a bleak but efficient philanthropy, continued to set
her face against divorce, Nona would not admit that Heuston had any
right to force it upon her. "It's her way of loving him," the girl
said to herself for the hundredth time. "She wants to keep him for
herself too—though she doesn't know it; but she does above all
want to save him. And she thinks that's the way to do it. I
rather admire her for thinking that there IS a way to save
people…" She pushed that problem once more into the back of
her mind, and turned her thoughts toward the other and far more
pressing one: that of poor Arthur Wyant's growing infirmity.
Stanley was probably right in not wanting to speak to Jim about it
at that particular moment—though how did Stanley know about Jim's
troubles, and what did he know?—and she herself, after all, was
perhaps the only person to deal with Arthur Wyant. Another interval
of anxious consideration made her decide that the best way would be
to seek her father's advice. After an hour's dancing she would feel
better, more alive and competent, and