Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (21 page)

 
          
In
a case as unusual as Tina Ralston’s, however, it was no great surprise to any
one that tradition should have been disregarded. In the first place, everybody
knew that she was no more Tina Ralston than you or I; unless, indeed, one were
to credit the rumours about poor Jim’s unsuspected “past,” and his widow’s
magnanimity. But the opinion of the majority was against this. People were
reluctant to charge a dead man with an offense from which he could not clear
himself; and the Ralstons unanimously declared that, thoroughly as they
disapproved of Mrs. James Ralston’s action, they were convinced that she would
not have adopted Tina if her doing so could have been construed as “casting a
slur” on her late husband.

 
          
No:
the girl was perhaps a Lovell—though even that idea was not generally held—but
she was certainly not a Ralston. Her brown eyes and flighty ways too obviously
excluded her from the clan for any formal excommunication to be needful. In
fact, most people believed that—as Dr. Lanskell had always affirmed—her origin
was really undiscoverable, that she represented one of the unsolved mysteries
which occasionally perplex and irritate well-regulated societies, and that her
adoption by Delia Ralston was simply one more proof of the Lovell clannishness,
since the child had been taken in by Mrs. Ralston only because her cousin
Charlotte was so attached to it. To say that Mrs. Ralston’s son and daughter
were pleased with the idea of Tina’s adoption would be an exaggeration; but
they abstained from comment, minimizing the effect of their mother’s whim by a
dignified silence. It was the old
New York
way for families thus to screen the
eccentricities of an individual member, and where there was “money enough to go
round” the heirs would have been thought vulgarly grasping to protest at the
alienation of a small sum from the general inheritance.

 
          
Nevertheless,
Delia Ralston, from the moment of Tina’s adoption, was perfectly aware of a
different attitude on the part of both her children. They dealt with her
patiently, almost parentally, as with a minor in whom one juvenile lapse has
been condoned, but who must be subjected, in consequence, to a stricter
vigilance; and society treated her in the same indulgent but guarded manner.

 
          
She
had (it was Sillerton Jackson who first phrased it) an undoubted way of “carrying
things off”; since that dauntless woman, Mrs. Manson Mingott, had broken her
husband’s will, nothing so like her attitude had been seen in New York. But
Mrs. Ralston’s method was different, and less easy to analyze. What Mrs. Manson
Mingott had accomplished by dint of epigram, invective, insistency and runnings
to and fro, the other achieved without raising her voice or seeming to take a
step from the beaten path. When she had persuaded Jim Ralston to take in the
foundling baby, it had been done in the turn of a hand, one didn’t know when or
how; and the next day he and she were as untroubled and beaming as usual. And
now, this adoption—! Well, she had pursued the same method; as Sillerton
Jackson said, she behaved as if her adopting Tina had always been an understood
thing, as if she wondered that people should wonder. And in face of her wonder
theirs seemed foolish, and they gradually desisted.

 
          
In
reality, behind Delia’s assurance there was a tumult of doubts and
uncertainties. But she had once learned that one can do almost anything
(perhaps even murder) if one does not attempt to explain it; and the lesson had
never been forgotten. She had never explained the taking over of the foundling
baby; nor was she now going to explain its adoption. She was just going about
her business as if nothing had happened that needed to be accounted for; and a
long inheritance of moral modesty helped her to keep her questionings to
herself.

 
          
These
questionings were in fact less concerned with public opinion than with
Charlotte Lovell’s private thoughts.
Charlotte
, after her first moment of tragic
resistance, had shown herself pathetically, almost painfully, grateful. That
she had reason to be, Tina’s attitude abundantly revealed. Tina, during the
first days after her return from the Vandergrave ball, had shown a closed and
darkened face that terribly reminded Delia of the ghastliness of Charlotte
Lovell’s sudden reflection, years before, in Delia’s own bedroom mirror. The
first chapter of the mother’s history was already written in the daughter’s
eyes; and the Spender blood in Tina might well precipitate the sequence. During
those few days of silent observation Delia discovered, with terror and
compassion, the justification of
Charlotte
’s fears. The girl had nearly been lost to
them both: at all costs such a risk must not be renewed.

 
          
The
Halsey’s, on the whole, had behaved admirably. Lanning wished to marry dear
Delia Ralston’s
protégée
—who was
shortly, it was understood, to take her adopted mother’s name, and inherit her
fortune. To what better could a Halsey aspire than one more alliance with a
Ralston? The families had always inter-married. The Halsey parents gave their
blessing with a precipitation which showed that they too had their anxieties,
and that the relief of seeing Lanning “settled” would more than compensate for
the conceivable drawbacks of the marriage; though, once it was decided on, they
would not admit even to themselves that such drawbacks existed. Old
New York
always thought away whatever interfered
with the perfect propriety of its arrangements.

 
          
Charlotte
Lovell of course perceived and recognized all this. She accepted the
situation—in her private hours with Delia—as one more in the long list of
mercies bestowed on an undeserving sinner. And one phrase of hers perhaps gave
the clue to her acceptance: “Now at least she’ll never suspect the truth.” It
had come to be the poor creature’s ruling purpose that her child should never
guess the tie between them…

 
          
But
Delia’s chief support was the sight of Tina. The older woman, whose whole life
had been shaped and coloured by the faint reflection of a rejected happiness,
hung dazzled in the light of bliss accepted. Sometimes, as she watched Tina’s
changing face, she felt as though her own blood were beating in it, as though
she could read every thought and emotion feeding those tumultuous currents.
Tina’s love was a stormy affair, with continual ups and downs of rapture and
depression, arrogance and self-abasement; Delia saw displayed before her, with
an artless frankness, all the visions, cravings and imaginings of her own
stifled youth.

 
          
What
the girl really thought of her adoption it was not easy to discover. She had
been given, at fourteen, the current version of her origin, and had accepted it
as carelessly as a happy child accepts some remote and inconceivable fact which
does not alter the familiar order of things. And she accepted her adoption in
the same spirit. She knew that the name of Ralston had been given to her to
facilitate her marriage with Lanning Halsey; and Delia had the impression that
all irrelevant questionings were submerged in an overwhelming gratitude. “I’ve
always thought of you as my Mamma; and now, you dearest, you really are,” Tina
had whispered, her cheek against Delia’s; and Delia had laughed back: “Well, if
the lawyers can make me so!” But there the matter dropped, swept away on the
current of Tina’s bliss. They were all, in those days, Delia, Charlotte, even
the gallant Lanning, rather like straws whirling about on a sunlit torrent.

 
          
The
golden flood bore them onward, nearer and nearer to the enchanted date; and
Delia, deep in bridal preparations, wondered at the comparative indifference
with which she had ordered and inspected her own daughter’s
twelve-dozen-of-everything. There had been nothing to quicken the pulse in
young Delia’s placid bridal; but as Tina’s wedding day approached imagination
burgeoned like the year. The wedding was to be celebrated at
Lovell Place
, the old house on the Sound where Delia
Lovell had herself been married, and where, since her mother’s death, she spent
her summers. Although the neighbourhood was already overspread with a net-work
of mean streets, the old house, with its thin colonnaded verandah, still looked
across an uncurtailed lawn and leafy shrubberies to the narrows of Hell Gate;
and the drawing-rooms kept their frail slender settees, their Sheraton consoles
and cabinets. It had been thought useless to discard them for more fashionable
furniture, since the growth of the city made it certain that the place must
eventually be sold.

 
          
Tina,
like Mrs. Ralston, was to have a “house-wedding,” though Episcopalian society
was beginning to disapprove of such ceremonies, which were regarded as the
despised pis-aller of Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians and other altarless
sects. In Tina’s case, however, both Delia and Charlotte felt that the greater
privacy of a marriage in the house made up for its more secular character; and
the Halseys favoured their decision. The ladies accordingly settled themselves
at
Lovell
Place
before the end of June, and every morning young Lanning Halsey’s
cat-boat was seen beating across the bay, and furling its sail at the anchorage
below the lawn.

 
          
There
had never been a fairer June in any one’s memory. The damask roses and
mignonette below the verandah had never sent such a breath of summer through
the tall French windows; the gnarled orange-trees brought out from the old
arcaded orange-house had never been so thickly blossomed; the very haycocks on
the lawn gave out whiffs of Araby.

 
          
The
evening before the wedding Delia Ralston sat on the verandah watching the moon
rise across the Sound. She was tired with the multitude of last preparations,
and sad at the thought of Tina’s going. On the following evening the house
would be empty: till death came, she and Charlotte would sit alone together
beside the evening lamp. Such repinings were foolish—they were, she reminded
herself, “not like her.” But too many memories stirred and murmured in her: her
heart was haunted. As she closed the door on the silent drawing room—already
transformed into a chapel, with its lace-hung altar, the tall alabaster vases
awaiting their white roses and June lilies, the strip of red carpet dividing
the rows of chairs from door to chancel—she felt that it had perhaps been a
mistake to come back to Lovell Place for the wedding. She saw herself again, in
her high-waisted “India Mull” embroidered with daisies, her flat satin sandals,
her Brussels veil—saw again her reflection in the sallow pier-glass as she had
left that same room on Jim Ralston’s triumphant arm, and the one terrified
glance she had exchanged with her own image before she took her stand under the
bell of white roses in the hall, and smiled upon the congratulating company.
Ah, what a different image the pier-glass would reflect tomorrow!

 
          
Charlotte
Lovell’s brisk step sounded indoors, and she came out and joined Mrs. Ralston.

 
          
“I’ve
been to the kitchen to tell Melissa Grimes that she’d better count on at least
two hundred plates of ice-cream.”

 
          
“
two
hundred? Yes—I suppose she had, with all the
Philadelphia
connection coming.” Delia pondered. “How
about the doylies?” she enquired.

 
          
“With
your aunt Cecila Vandergrave’s we shall manage beautifully.”

 
          
“Yes.
Thank you,
Charlotte
, for taking all this trouble.”

 
          
“Oh—”
Charlotte
protested, with her flitting sneer; and
Delia perceived the irony of thanking a mother for occupying herself with the
details of her own daughter’s wedding.

 
          
“Do
sit down, Chatty,” she murmured, feeling herself redden at her blunder.

 
          
Charlotte
, with a sigh of fatigue, sat down on the
nearest chair.

 
          
“We
shall have a beautiful day tomorrow,” she said, pensively surveying the placid
heaven.

 
          
“Yes.
Where is Tina?”

 
          
“She
was very tired. I’ve sent her upstairs to lie down.”

 
          
This
seemed so eminently suitable that Delia made no immediate answer. After an
interval she said: “We shall miss her.”