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The Floating Press - Edith Wharton

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74 pages

English

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In novels like The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton demonstrated a remarkable talent for exposing the dark underbelly of American high society. In Sanctuary, the tale of doomed marriage propped up by the protagonist's altruism, Wharton further explores the question of whether it is our nature or our upbringing that determines one's character and moral fiber.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775452492
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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SANCTUARY
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EDITH WHARTON

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Sanctuary First published in 1903 ISBN 978-1-775452-49-2 © 2011 The Floating Press While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Part I I II III IV Part II I II III IV V VI VII VIII
Part I
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I
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It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: thesensation is too much the result of selection and elimination to be withinreach of the awakening clutch on life. But Kate Orme, for once, had yieldedherself to happiness; letting it permeate every faculty as a spring rainsoaks into a germinating meadow. There was nothing to account for thissudden sense of beatitude; but was it not this precisely which made itso irresistible, so overwhelming? There had been, within the last twomonths—since her engagement to Denis Peyton—no distinct addition tothe sum of her happiness, and no possibility, she would have affirmed,of adding perceptibly to a total already incalculable. Inwardly andoutwardly the conditions of her life were unchanged; but whereas, before,the air had been full of flitting wings, now they seemed to pause overher and she could trust herself to their shelter.
Many influences had combined to build up the centre of brooding peace inwhich she found herself. Her nature answered to the finest vibrations,and at first her joy in loving had been too great not to bring with it acertain confusion, a readjusting of the whole scenery of life. She foundherself in a new country, wherein he who had led her there was least ableto be her guide. There were moments when she felt that the first strangerin the street could have interpreted her happiness for her more easilythan Denis. Then, as her eye adapted itself, as the lines flowed into eachother, opening deep vistas upon new horizons, she began to enter intopossession of her kingdom, to entertain the actual sense of its belongingto her. But she had never before felt that she also belonged to it; andthis was the feeling which now came to complete her happiness, to give itthe hallowing sense of permanence.
She rose from the writing-table where, list in hand, she had been goingover the wedding-invitations, and walked toward the drawing-room window.Everything about her seemed to contribute to that rare harmony of feelingwhich levied a tax on every sense. The large coolness of the room, its finetraditional air of spacious living, its outlook over field and woodlandtoward the lake lying under the silver bloom of September; the very scentof the late violets in a glass on the writing-table; the rosy-mauve massesof hydrangea in tubs along the terrace; the fall, now and then, of a leafthrough the still air—all, somehow, were mingled in the suffusion ofwell-being that yet made them seem but so much dross upon its current.
The girl's smile prolonged itself at the sight of a figure approaching fromthe lower slopes above the lake. The path was a short cut from the Peytonplace, and she had known that Denis would appear in it at about that hour.Her smile, however, was prolonged not so much by his approach as by hersense of the impossibility of communicating her mood to him. The feelingdid not disturb her. She could not imagine sharing her deepest moods withany one, and the world in which she lived with Denis was too bright andspacious to admit of any sense of constraint. Her smile was in truth atribute to that clear-eyed directness of his which was so often a refugefrom her own complexities.
Denis Peyton was used to being met with a smile. He might have beenpardoned for thinking smiles the habitual wear of the human countenance;and his estimate of life and of himself was necessarily tinged by thecordial terms on which they had always met each other. He had in fact foundlife, from the start, an uncommonly agreeable business, culminating fitlyenough in his engagement to the only girl he had ever wished to marry,and the inheritance, from his unhappy step-brother, of a fortune whichagreeably widened his horizon. Such a combination of circumstances mightwell justify a young man in thinking himself of some account in theuniverse; and it seemed the final touch of fitness that the mourning whichDenis still wore for poor Arthur should lend a new distinction to hissomewhat florid good looks.
Kate Orme was not without an amused perception of her future husband'spoint of view; but she could enter into it with the tolerance whichallows for the inconscient element in all our judgments. There was, forinstance, no one more sentimentally humane than Denis's mother, thesecond Mrs. Peyton, a scented silvery person whose lavender silks andneutral-tinted manner expressed a mind with its blinds drawn down towardall the unpleasantness of life; yet it was clear that Mrs. Peyton saw a"dispensation" in the fact that her step-son had never married, and thathis death had enabled Denis, at the right moment, to step gracefully intoaffluence. Was it not, after all, a sign of healthy-mindedness to take thegifts of the gods in this religious spirit, discovering fresh evidence of"design" in what had once seemed the sad fact of Arthur's inaccessibilityto correction? Mrs. Peyton, beautifully conscious of having done her "best"for Arthur, would have thought it unchristian to repine at the providentialfailure of her efforts. Denis's deductions were, of course, a little lessdirect than his mother's. He had, besides, been fond of Arthur, and hisefforts to keep the poor fellow straight had been less didactic and morespontaneous. Their result read itself, if not in any change in Arthur'scharacter, at least in the revised wording of his will; and Denis's moralsense was pleasantly fortified by the discovery that it very substantiallypaid to be a good fellow.
The sense of general providentialness on which Mrs. Peyton reposed had infact been confirmed by events which reduced Denis's mourning to a meretribute of respect—since it would have been a mockery to deplore thedisappearance of any one who had left behind him such an unsavory wake aspoor Arthur. Kate did not quite know what had happened: her father was asfirmly convinced as Mrs. Peyton that young girls should not be admitted toany open discussion of life. She could only gather, from the silences andevasions amid which she moved, that a woman had turned up—a woman who wasof course "dreadful," and whose dreadfulness appeared to include a sortof shadowy claim upon Arthur. But the claim, whatever it was, had beenpromptly discredited. The whole question had vanished and the woman withit. The blinds were drawn again on the ugly side of things, and life wasresumed on the usual assumption that no such side existed. Kate knew onlythat a darkness had crossed her sky and left it as unclouded as before.
Was it, perhaps, she now asked herself, the very lifting of thecloud—remote, unthreatening as it had been—which gave such new serenityto her heaven? It was horrible to think that one's deepest security wasa mere sense of escape—that happiness was no more than a reprieve. Theperversity of such ideas was emphasized by Peyton's approach. He had thegift of restoring things to their normal relations, of carrying one overthe chasms of life through the closed tunnel of an incurious cheerfulness.All that was restless and questioning in the girl subsided in his presence,and she was content to take her love as a gift of grace, which began justwhere the office of reason ended. She was more than ever, to-day, in thismood of charmed surrender. More than ever he seemed the keynote of theaccord between herself and life, the centre of a delightful complicity inevery surrounding circumstance. One could not look at him without seeingthat there was always a fair wind in his sails.
It was carrying him toward her, as usual, at a quick confident pace,which nevertheless lagged a little, she noticed, as he emerged from thebeech-grove and struck across the lawn. He walked as though he were tired.She had meant to wait for him on the terrace, held in check by her usualinclination to linger on the threshold of her pleasures; but now somethingdrew her toward him, and she went quickly down the steps and across thelawn.
"Denis, you look tired. I was afraid something had happened."
She had slipped her hand through his arm, and as they moved forward sheglanced up at him, struck not so much by any new look in his face as by thefact that her approach had made no change in it.
"I am rather tired.—Is your father in?"
"Papa?" She looked up in surprise. "He went to town yesterday. Don't youremember?"
"Of course—I'd forgotten. You're alone, then?" She dropped his arm andstood before him. He was very pale now, with the furrowed look of extremephysical weariness.
"Denis—are you ill? Has anything happened?"
He forced a smile. "Yes—but you needn't look so frightened."
She drew a deep breath of reassurance. He was safe, after all! Andall else, for a moment, seemed to swing below the rim of her world.
"Your mother—?" she then said, with a fresh start of fear.
"It's not my mother." They had reached the terrace, and he moved toward thehouse. "Let us go indoors. There's such a beastly glare out here."
He seemed to find relief in the cool obscurity of the drawing-room, where,after the brightness of the afternoon light, their faces were almostindistinguishable to each other. She sat down, and he moved a few pacesaway. Before the writing-table he paused to look at the neatly sorted heapsof wedding-cards.
"They are to be sent out to-morrow?"
"Yes."