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_ Mrs. Quentin, in the late spring afternoon, had turned in at the
doors of the Metropolitan Museum. She had been walking in the Park,
in a solitude oppressed by the ever-present sense of her son's
trouble, and had suddenly remembered that some one had added a
Beltraffio to the collection. It was an old habit of Mrs. Quentin's
to seek in the enjoyment of the beautiful the distraction that most
of her acquaintances appeared to find in each other's company. She
had few friends, and their society was welcome to her only in her
more superficial moods; but she could drug anxiety with a picture as
some women can soothe it with a bonnet.
During the six months that had elapsed since her visit to Miss Fenno
she had been conscious of a pain of which she had supposed herself
no longer capable: as a man will continue to feel the ache of an
amputated arm. She had fancied that all her centres of feeling had
been transferred to Alan; but she now found herself subject to a
kind of dual suffering, in which her individual pang was the keener
in that it divided her from her son's. Alan had surprised her: she
had not foreseen that he would take a sentimental rebuff so hard.
His disappointment took the uncommunicative form of a sterner
application to work. He threw himself into the concerns of the
_Radiator_ with an aggressiveness that almost betrayed itself in the
paper. Mrs. Quentin never read the _Radiator_, but from the glimpses
of it reflected in the other journals she gathered that it was at
least not being subjected to the moral reconstruction which had been
one of Miss Fenno's alternatives.
Mrs. Quentin never spoke to her son of what had happened. She was
superior to the cheap satisfaction of avenging his injury by
depreciating its cause. She knew that in sentimental sorrows such
consolations are as salt in the wound. The avoidance of a subject so
vividly present to both could not but affect the closeness of their
relation. An invisible presence hampered their liberty of speech and
thought. The girl was always between them; and to hide the sense of
her intrusion they began to be less frequently together. It was then
that Mrs. Quentin measured the extent of her isolation. Had she ever
dared to forecast such a situation, she would have proceeded on the
conventional theory that her son's suffering must draw her nearer to
him; and this was precisely the relief that was denied her. Alan's
uncommunicativeness extended below the level of speech, and his
mother, reduced to the helplessness of dead-reckoning, had not even
the solace of adapting her sympathy to his needs. She did not know
what he felt: his course was incalculable to her. She sometimes
wondered if she had become as incomprehensible to him; and it was to
find a moment's refuge from the dogging misery of such conjectures
that she had now turned in at the Museum.
The long line of mellow canvases seemed to receive her into the rich
calm of an autumn twilight. She might have been walking in an
enchanted wood where the footfall of care never sounded. So deep was
the sense of seclusion that, as she turned from her prolonged
communion with the new Beltraffio, it was a surprise to find she was
not alone.
A young lady who had risen from the central ottoman stood in
suspended flight as Mrs. Quentin faced her. The older woman was the
first to regain her self-possession.
"Miss Fenno!" she said.
The girl advanced with a blush. As it faded, Mrs. Quentin noticed a
change in her. There had always been something bright and bannerlike
in her aspect, but now her look drooped, and she hung at half-mast,
as it were. Mrs. Quentin, in the embarrassment of surprising a
secret that its possessor was doubtless unconscious of betraying,
reverted hurriedly to the Beltraffio.
"I came to see this," she said. "It's very beautiful."
Miss Fenno's eye travelled incuriously over the mystic blue reaches
of the landscape. "I suppose so," she assented; adding, after
another tentative pause, "You come here often, don't you?"
"Very often," Mrs. Quentin answered. "I find pictures a great help."
"A help?"
"A rest, I mean...if one is tired or out of sorts."
"Ah," Miss Fenno murmured, looking down.
"This Beltraffio is new, you know," Mrs. Quentin continued. "What a
wonderful background, isn't it? Is he a painter who interests you?"
The girl glanced again at the dusky canvas, as though in a final
endeavor to extract from it a clue to the consolations of art. "I
don't know," she said at length; "I'm afraid I don't understand
pictures." She moved nearer to Mrs. Quentin and held out her hand.
"You're going?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Quentin looked at her. "Let me drive you home," she said,
impulsively. She was feeling, with a shock of surprise, that it gave
her, after all, no pleasure to see how much the girl had suffered.
Miss Fenno stiffened perceptibly. "Thank you; I shall like the
walk."
Mrs. Quentin dropped her hand with a corresponding movement of
withdrawal, and a momentary wave of antagonism seemed to sweep the
two women apart. Then, as Mrs. Quentin, bowing slightly, again
addressed herself to the picture, she felt a sudden touch on her
arm.
"Mrs. Quentin," the girl faltered, "I really came here because I saw
your carriage." Her eyes sank, and then fluttered back to her
hearer's face. "I've been horribly unhappy!" she exclaimed.
Mrs. Quentin was silent. If Hope Fenno had expected an immediate
response to her appeal, she was disappointed. The older woman's face
was like a veil dropped before her thoughts.
"I've thought so often," the girl went on precipitately, "of what
you said that day you came to see me last autumn. I think I
understand now what you meant--what you tried to make me see....
Oh, Mrs. Quentin," she broke out, "I didn't mean to tell you this--I
never dreamed of it till this moment--but you _do_ remember what you
said, don't you? You must remember it! And now that I've met you in
this way, I can't help telling you that I believe--I begin to
believe--that you were right, after all."
Mrs. Quentin had listened without moving; but now she raised her
eyes with a slight smile. "Do you wish me to say this to Alan?" she
asked.
The girl flushed, but her glance braved the smile. "Would he still
care to hear it?" she said fearlessly.
Mrs. Quentin took momentary refuge in a renewed inspection of the
Beltraffio; then, turning, she said, with a kind of reluctance: "He
would still care."
"Ah!" broke from the girl.
During this exchange of words the two speakers had drifted
unconsciously toward one of the benches. Mrs. Quentin glanced about
her: a custodian who had been hovering in the doorway sauntered into
the adjoining gallery, and they remained alone among the silvery
Vandykes and flushed bituminous Halses. Mrs. Quentin sank down on
the bench and reached a hand to the girl.
"Sit by me," she said.
Miss Fenno dropped beside her. In both women the stress of emotion
was too strong for speech. The girl was still trembling, and Mrs.
Quentin was the first to regain her composure.
"You say you've suffered," she began at last. "Do you suppose _I_
haven't?"
"I knew you had. That made it so much worse for me--that I should
have been the cause of your suffering for Alan!"
Mrs. Quentin drew a deep breath. "Not for Alan only," she said. Miss
Fenno turned on her a wondering glance. "Not for Alan only. _That_
pain every woman expects--and knows how to bear. We all know our
children must have such disappointments, and to suffer with them is
not the deepest pain. It's the suffering apart--in ways they don't
understand." She breathed deeply. "I want you to know what I mean.
You were right--that day--and I was wrong."
"Oh," the girl faltered.
Mrs. Quentin went on in a voice of passionate lucidity. "I knew it
then--I knew it even while I was trying to argue with you--I've
always known it! I didn't want my son to marry you till I heard your
reasons for refusing him; and then--then I longed to see you his
wife!"
"Oh, Mrs. Quentin!"
"I longed for it; but I knew it mustn't be."
"Mustn't be?"
Mrs. Quentin shook her head sadly, and the girl, gaining courage
from this mute negation, cried with an uncontrollable escape of
feeling:
"It's because you thought me hard, obstinate narrow-minded? Oh, I
understand that so well! My self-righteousness must have seemed so
petty! A girl who could sacrifice a man's future to her own moral
vanity--for it _was_ a form of vanity; you showed me that plainly
enough--how you must have despised me! But I am not that girl
now--indeed I'm not. I'm not impulsive--I think things out. I've
thought this out. I know Alan loves me--I know _how_ he loves
me--and I believe I can help him--oh, not in the ways I had fancied
before--but just merely by loving him." She paused, but Mrs. Quentin
made no sign. "I see it all so differently now. I see what an
influence love itself may be--how my believing in him, loving him,
accepting him just as he is, might help him more than any theories,
any arguments. I might have seen this long ago in looking at
_you_--as he often told me--in seeing how you'd kept yourself apart
from--from--Mr. Quentin's work and his--been always the beautiful
side of life to them--kept their faith alive in spite of
themselves--not by interfering, preaching, reforming, but by--just
loving them and being there--" She looked at Mrs. Quentin with a
simple nobleness. "It isn't as if I cared for the money, you know;
if I cared for that, I should be afraid--"
"You will care for it in time," Mrs. Quentin said suddenly.
Miss Fenno drew back, releasing her hand. "In time?"
"Yes; when there's nothing else left." She stared a moment at the
pictures. "My poor child," she broke out, "I've heard all you say so
often before!"
"You've heard it?"
"Yes--from myself. I felt as you do, I argued as you do, I acted as
I mean to prevent your doing, when I married Alan's father."
The long empty gallery seemed to reverberate with the girl's
startled exclamation--"Oh, Mrs. Quentin--"
"Hush; let me speak. Do you suppose I'd do this if you were the kind
of pink-and-white idiot he ought to have married? It's because I see
you're alive, as I was, tingling with beliefs, ambitions, energies,
as I was--that I can't see you walled up alive, as I was, without
stretching out a hand to save you!" She sat gazing rigidly forward,
her eyes on the pictures, speaking in the low precipitate tone of
one who tries to press the meaning of a lifetime into a few
breathless sentences.
"When I met Alan's father," she went on, "I knew nothing of his--his
work. We met abroad, where I had been living with my mother. That
was twenty-six years ago, when the _Radiator_ was less--less
notorious than it is now. I knew my husband owned a newspaper--a
great newspaper--and nothing more. I had never seen a copy of the
_Radiator_; I had no notion what it stood for, in politics--or in
other ways. We were married in Europe, and a few months afterward we
came to live here. People were already beginning to talk about the
_Radiator_. My husband, on leaving college, had bought it with some
money an old uncle had left him, and the public at first was merely
curious to see what an ambitious, stirring young man without any
experience of journalism was going to make out of his experiment.
They found first of all that he was going to make a great deal of
money out of it. I found that out too. I was so happy in other ways
that it didn't make much difference at first; though it was pleasant
to be able to help my mother, to be generous and charitable, to live
in a nice house, and wear the handsome gowns he liked to see me in.
But still it didn't really count--it counted so little that when,
one day, I learned what the _Radiator_ was, I would have gone out
into the streets barefooted rather than live another hour on the
money it brought in...." Her voice sank, and she paused to steady
it. The girl at her side did not speak or move. "I shall never
forget that day," she began again. "The paper had stripped bare some
family scandal--some miserable bleeding secret that a dozen unhappy
people had been struggling to keep out of print--that _would_ have
been kept out if my husband had not--Oh, you must guess the rest! I
can't go on!"
She felt a hand on hers. "You mustn't go on, Mrs. Quentin," the girl
whispered.
"Yes, I must--I must! You must be made to understand." She drew a
deep breath. "My husband was not like Alan. When he found out how I
felt about it he was surprised at first--but gradually he began to
see--or at least I fancied he saw--the hatefulness of it. At any
rate he saw how I suffered, and he offered to give up the whole
thing--to sell the paper. It couldn't be done all of a sudden, of
course--he made me see that--for he had put all his money in it, and
he had no special aptitude for any other kind of work. He was a born
journalist--like Alan. It was a great sacrifice for him to give up
the paper, but he promised to do it--in time--when a good
opportunity offered. Meanwhile, of course, he wanted to build it up,
to increase the circulation--and to do that he had to keep on in the
same way--he made that clear to me. I saw that we were in a vicious
circle. The paper, to sell well, had to be made more and more
detestable and disgraceful. At first I rebelled--but somehow--I
can't tell you how it was--after that first concession the ground
seemed to give under me: with every struggle I sank deeper. And
then--then Alan was born. He was such a delicate baby that there was
very little hope of saving him. But money did it--the money from the
paper. I took him abroad to see the best physicians--I took him to a
warm climate every winter. In hot weather the doctors recommended
sea air, and we had a yacht and cruised every summer. I owed his
life to the _Radiator_. And when he began to grow stronger the habit
was formed--the habit of luxury. He could not get on without the
things he had always been used to. He pined in bad air; he drooped
under monotony and discomfort; he throve on variety, amusement,
travel, every kind of novelty and excitement. And all I wanted for
him his inexhaustible foster-mother was there to give!
"My husband said nothing, but he must have seen how things were
going. There was no more talk of giving up the _Radiator_. He never
reproached me with my inconsistency, but I thought he must despise
me, and the thought made me reckless. I determined to ignore the
paper altogether--to take what it gave as though I didn't know where
it came from. And to excuse this I invented the theory that one may,
so to speak, purify money by putting it to good uses. I gave away a
great deal in charity--I indulged myself very little at first. All
the money that was not spent on Alan I tried to do good with. But
gradually, as my boy grew up, the problem became more complicated.
How was I to protect Alan from the contamination I had let him live
in? I couldn't preach by example--couldn't hold up his father as a
warning, or denounce the money we were living on. All I could do was
to disguise the inner ugliness of life by making it beautiful
outside--to build a wall of beauty between him and the facts of
life, turn his tastes and interests another way, hide the _Radiator_
from him as a smiling woman at a ball may hide a cancer in her
breast! Just as Alan was entering college his father died. Then I
saw my way clear. I had loved my husband--and yet I drew my first
free breath in years. For the _Radiator_ had been left to Alan
outright--there was nothing on earth to prevent his selling it when
he came of age. And there was no excuse for his not selling it. I
had brought him up to depend on money, but the paper had given us
enough money to gratify all his tastes. At last we could turn on the
monster that had nourished us. I felt a savage joy in the thought--I
could hardly bear to wait till Alan came of age. But I had never
spoken to him of the paper, and I didn't dare speak of it now. Some
false shame kept me back, some vague belief in his ignorance. I
would wait till he was twenty-one, and then we should be free.
"I waited--the day came, and I spoke. You can guess his answer, I
suppose. He had no idea of selling the _Radiator_. It wasn't the
money he cared for--it was the career that tempted him. He was a
born journalist, and his ambition, ever since he could remember, had
been to carry on his father's work, to develop, to surpass it. There
was nothing in the world as interesting as modern journalism. He
couldn't imagine any other kind of life that wouldn't bore him to
death. A newspaper like the _Radiator_ might be made one of the
biggest powers on earth, and he loved power, and meant to have all
he could get. I listened to him in a kind of trance. I couldn't find
a word to say. His father had had scruples--he had none. I seemed to
realize at once that argument would be useless. I don't know that I
even tried to plead with him--he was so bright and hard and
inaccessible! Then I saw that he was, after all, what I had made
him--the creature of my concessions, my connivances, my evasions.
That was the price I had paid for him--I had kept him at that cost!
"Well--I _had_ kept him, at any rate. That was the feeling that
survived. He was my boy, my son, my very own--till some other woman
took him. Meanwhile the old life must go on as it could. I gave up
the struggle. If at that point he was inaccessible, at others he was
close to me. He has always been a perfect son. Our tastes grew
together--we enjoyed the same books, the same pictures, the same
people. All I had to do was to look at him in profile to see the
side of him that was really mine. At first I kept thinking of the
dreadful other side--but gradually the impression faded, and I kept
my mind turned from it, as one does from a deformity in a face one
loves. I thought I had made my last compromise with life--had hit on
a _modus vivendi_ that would last my time.
"And then he met you. I had always been prepared for his marrying,
but not a girl like you. I thought he would choose a sweet thing who
would never pry into his closets--he hated women with ideas! But as
soon as I saw you I knew the struggle would have to begin again. He
is so much stronger than his father--he is full of the most
monstrous convictions. And he has the courage of them, too--you saw
last year that his love for you never made him waver. He believes in
his work; he adores it--it is a kind of hideous idol to which he
would make human sacrifices! He loves you still--I've been honest
with you--but his love wouldn't change him. It is you who would have
to change--to die gradually, as I have died, till there is only one
live point left in me. Ah, if one died completely--that's simple
enough! But something persists--remember that--a single point, an
aching nerve of truth. Now and then you may drug it--but a touch
wakes it again, as your face has waked it in me. There's always
enough of one's old self left to suffer with...."
She stood up and faced the girl abruptly. "What shall I tell Alan?"
she said.
Miss Fenno sat motionless, her eyes on the ground. Twilight was
falling on the gallery--a twilight which seemed to emanate not so
much from the glass dome overhead as from the crepuscular depths
into which the faces of the pictures were receding. The custodian's
step sounded warningly down the corridor. When the girl looked up
she was alone.
THE END.
The Quicksand, by Edith Wharton. _
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