Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (27 page)

 
          
Colonel
Ruscott specialized in chivalry. For him the war was “the blue and the grey,”
the rescue of lovely Southern girls, anecdotes about Old Glory, and the
carrying of vital despatches through the enemy lines. Enchantments seemed to
have abounded in his path during the four years which had been so drab and
desolate to many; and the punch (to the amusement of us youngsters, who were
not above drawing him) always evoked from his memory countless situations in
which by prompt, respectful yet insinuating action, he had stamped his image
indelibly on some proud Southern heart, while at the same time discovering
where Jackson’s guerillas lay, or at what point the river was fordable.

 
          
And
there sat Hayley Delane, so much younger than the others, yet seeming at such
times so much their elder that I thought to myself: “But if
he
stopped growing up at nineteen,
they’re still in long-clothes!” But it was only morally that he had gone on
growing. Intellectually they were all on a par. When the last new play at
Wallack’s was discussed, or my mother tentatively alluded to the last new novel
by the author of ‘Robert Elsmere’ (it was her theory that, as long as the hostess
was present at a man’s dinner she should keep the talk at the highest level),
Delane’s remarks were no more penetrating than his neighbours’—and he was
almost sure not to have read the novel.

 
          
It
was when any social question was raised: any of the problems concerning club
administration, charity, or the relation between “gentlemen” and the community,
that he suddenly stood out from them, not so much opposed as aloof.

 
          
He
would sit listening, stroking my sister’s long skye-terrier (who, defying all
rules, had jumped up to his knees at dessert), with a grave half-absent look on
his heavy face; and just as my mother (I knew) was thinking how bored he was,
that big smile of his would reach out and light up his dimple, and he would
say, with enough diffidence to mark his respect for his elders, yet a complete
independence of their views: “After all, what does it matter who makes the
first move? The thing is to get the business done.”

 
          
That
was always the gist of it. To everyone else, my father included, what mattered
in everything, from Diocesan Meetings to Patriarchs Balls, was just what Delane
seemed so heedless of: the standing of the people who made up the committee or
headed the movement. To Delane, only the movement itself counted; if the thing
was worth doing, he pronounced in his slow lazy way, get it done somehow, even
if its backers
were
Methodists or
Congregationalists, or people who dined in the middle of the day.

 
          
“If
they were convicts from Sing Sing I shouldn’t care,” he affirmed, his hand lazily
flattering the dog’s neck as I had seen it caress Byrne’s terrified poney.

 
          
“Or
lunatics out of Bloomingdale—as these ‘reformers’ usually are,” my father
added, softening the remark with his indulgent smile.

 
          
“Oh,
well,” Delane murmured, his attention flagging, “I daresay we’re well enough
off as we are.”

 
          
“Especially,”
added Major Detrancy with a playful sniff, “with the punch in the offing, as I
perceive it to be.”

 
          
The
punch struck the note for my mother’s withdrawal. She rose with her shy circular
smile, while the gentlemen, all on their feet protested gallantly at her
desertion.

 
          
“Abandoning
us to go back to Mr. Elsmere—we shall be jealous of the gentleman!” Colonel
Ruscott declared, chivalrously reaching the door first; and as he opened it my
father said, again with his indulgent smile: “Ah, my wife—she’s a great
reader.”

 
          
Then
the punch was brought.

 
          
  

 
          
“You’ll
admit,” Mrs. Delane challenged me, “that Hayley’s perfect.”

 
          
Don’t
imagine you have yet done with Mrs. Delane, any more than Delane had, or I.
Hitherto I have shown you only one side, or rather one phase, of her; that
during which, for obvious reasons, Hayley became an obstacle or a burden. In
the intervals between her great passions, when somebody had to occupy the
vacant throne in her bosom, her husband was always reinstated there; and during
these interlunar periods he and the children were her staple subjects of
conversation. If you had met her then for the first time you would have taken
her for the perfect wife and mother, and wondered if Hayley ever got a day off;
and you would not have been far wrong in conjecturing that he seldom did.

 
          
Only
these intervals were rather widely spaced, and usually of short duration; and
at other times, his wife being elsewhere engaged, it was Delane who
elder-brothered his big boys and their little sister. Sometimes, on these
occasions—when Mrs. Delane was abroad or at Newport—Delane used to carry me off
for a week to the quiet old house in the New Jersey hills, full of Hayley and
Delane portraits, of heavy mahogany furniture and the mingled smell of lavender
bags and leather—leather boots, leather gloves, leather luggage, all the aromas
that emanate from the cupboards and passages of a house inhabited by hard
riders.

 
          
When
his wife was at home he never seemed to notice the family portraits or the old
furniture. Leila carried off her own regrettable origin by professing a
democratic scorn of ancestors in general. “I know enough bores in the flesh
without bothering to remember all the dead ones,” she said one day, when I had
asked her the name of a stern-visaged old forbear in breast-plate and buff
jerkin who hung on the library wall: and Delane, so practised in sentimental
duplicities, winked jovially at the children, as who should say: “There’s the
proper American spirit for you, my dears! That’s the way we all ought to feel.”

 
          
Perhaps,
however, he detected a tinge of irritation in my own look, for that evening, as
we sat over the fire after Leila had yawned herself off to bed, he glanced up
at the armoured image, and said: “That’s old Durward Hayley—the friend of Sir
Harry Vane the Younger and all that lot. I have some curious letters somewhere…
But Leila’s right, you know,” he added loyally.

 
          
“In
not being interested?”

 
          
“In regarding all that old past as dead.
It
is
dead. We’ve got no use for it over
here. That’s what that queer fellow in
Washington
always used to say to me…”

 
          
“What
queer fellow in
Washington
?”

 
          
“Oh,
a sort of big backwoodsman who was awfully good to me when I was in hospital…after
Bull Run
…”

 
          
I
sat up abruptly. It was the first time that Delane had mentioned his life
during the war. I thought my hand was on the clue; but it wasn’t.

 
          
“You
were in hospital in
Washington
?”

 
          
“Yes; for a longish time.
They didn’t know much about
disinfecting wounds in those days…But Leila,” he resumed, with his smiling
obstinacy, “Leila’s dead right, you know. It’s a better world now. Think of
what has been done to relieve suffering since then!” When he pronounced the
word “suffering” the vertical furrows in his forehead deepened as though he
felt the actual pang of his old wound. “Oh, I believe in progress every bit as
much as
she
does—I believe we’re
working out toward something better. If we weren’t…” He shrugged his mighty
shoulders, reached lazily for the adjoining tray, and mixed my glass of
whiskey-and-soda.

 
          
“But
the war—you were wounded at
Bull Run
?”

 
          
“Yes.”
He looked at his watch. “But I’m off to bed now. I promised the children to
take them for an early canter tomorrow, before lessons, and I have to have my
seven or eight hours of sleep to feel fit. I’m getting on, you see. Put out the
lights when you come up.”

 
          
No;
he wouldn’t talk about the war.

 
          
It
was not long afterward that Mrs. Delane appealed to me to testify to Hayley’s
perfection. She had come back from her last absence—a six weeks’ flutter at
Newport
—rather painfully subdued and
pinched-looking. For the first time I saw in the corners of her mouth that
middle-aged droop which has nothing to do with the loss of teeth. “How
common-looking she’ll be in a few years!” I thought uncharitably.

 
          
“Perfect—perfect,”
she insisted; and then, plaintively: “And yet—”

 
          
I
echoed coldly: “And yet?”

 
          
“With the children, for instance.
He’s everything to them.
He’s cut me out with my own children.” She was half joking, half whimpering.

 
          
Presently
she stole an eye-lashed look at me, and added: “And at times he’s so
hard
.”

 
          
“Delane?”

 
          
“Oh,
I know you won’t believe it. But in business matters—have you never noticed?
You wouldn’t admit it, I suppose. But there are times when one simply can’t
move him.” We were in the library, and she glanced up at the breast-plated
forbear. “He’s as hard to the touch as
that
.”
She pointed to the steel convexity.

 
          
“Not
the Delane I know,” I murmured, embarrassed by these confidences.

 
          
“Ah,
you think you know him?” she half-sneered; then, with a dutiful accent: “I’ve
always said he was a perfect father—and he’s made the children think so. And
yet—”

 
          
He
came in, and dropping a pale smile on him she drifted away, calling to her
children.

 
          
I
thought to myself: “She’s getting on, and something has told her so at
Newport
.
Poor thing!”

 
          
Delane
looked as preoccupied as she did; but he said nothing till after she had left
us that evening. Then he suddenly turned to me.

 
          
“Look
here. You’re a good friend of ours. Will you help me to think out a rather
bothersome question?”

 
          
“Me, sir?”
I said, surprised by the “ours,” and overcome by
so solemn an appeal from my elder.

 
          
He
made a wan grimace. “Oh, don’t call me ‘sir’; not during this talk.” He paused,
and then added: “You’re remembering the difference in our ages. Well, that’s
just why I’m asking you. I want the opinion of somebody who hasn’t had time to
freeze into his rut—as most of my contemporaries have. The fact is, I’m trying
to make my wife see that we’ve got to let her father come and live with us.”

 
          
My
open-mouthed amazement must have been marked enough to pierce his gloom, for he
gave a slight laugh. “Well, yes—”

 
          
I
sat dumbfounded. All
New York
knew what Delane thought of his suave father-in-law. He had married
Leila in spite of her antecedents; but Bill Gracy, at the outset, had been
given to understand that he would not be received under the Delane roof.
Mollified by the regular payment of a handsome allowance, the old gentleman,
with tears in his eyes, was wont to tell his familiars that personally he
didn’t blame his son-in-law. “Our tastes differ: that’s all. Hayley’s not a bad
chap at heart; give you my word he isn’t.” And the familiars, touched by such
magnanimity, would pledge Hayley in the champagne provided by his last
remittance.