Free Edith Wharton - SSC 10 by The World Over (v2.1)

Charlotte mused. It was true that the elder Mrs.
Ashby had a fearless tongue, but she was the last woman in the world to say or
hint anything before her grandchildren at which the most scrupulous parent
could take offense. Charlotte looked at her husband in perplexity.
                 “I
don’t understand.”
                 He
continued to turn on her the same troubled and entreating gaze. “Don’t try to,”
he muttered.
                 “Not
try to?”
                 “Not
now—not yet.” He put up his hands and pressed them against his temples. “Can’t
you see that there’s no use in insisting? I can’t go away, no matter how much I
might want to.”
                 Charlotte still scrutinized him gravely. “The
question is , do you want to?”
                 He
returned her gaze for a moment; then his lips began to tremble, and he said,
hardly above his breath: “I want—anything you want.”
                 “And
yet—”
                 “Don’t
ask me. I can’t leave—I can’t!”
                 “You
mean that you can’t go away out of reach of those letters!”
                 Her
husband had been standing before her in an uneasy half-hesitating attitude; now
he turned abruptly away and walked once or twice up and down the length of the
room, his head bent, his eyes fixed on the carpet.
                 Charlotte felt her resentfulness rising with her
fears. “It’s that,” she persisted. “Why not admit it? You can’t live without
them.”
                 He
continued his troubled pacing of the room; then he stopped short, dropped into
a chair and covered his face with his hands. From the shaking of his shoulders, Charlotte saw that he was weeping. She had never seen
a man cry, except her father after her mother’s death, when she was a little
girl; and she remembered still how the sight had frightened her. She was
frightened now; she felt that her husband was being dragged away from her into
some mysterious bondage, and that she must use up her last atom of strength in
the struggle for his freedom, and for hers.
                 “Kenneth—Kenneth!”
she pleaded, kneeling down beside him. “Won’t you listen to me? Won’t you try
to see what I’m suffering? I’m not unreasonable, darling; really not. I don’t
suppose I should ever have noticed the letters if it hadn’t been for their
effect on you. It’s not my way to pry into other people’s affairs; and even if
the effect had been different—yes, yes; listen to me—if I’d seen that the
letters made you happy, that you were watching eagerly for them, counting the
days between their coming, that you wanted them, that they gave you something I
haven’t known how to give—why, Kenneth, I don’t say I shouldn’t have suffered
from that, too; but it would have been in a different way, and I should have had
the courage to hide what I felt, and the hope that some day you’d come to feel
about me as you did about the writer of the letters. But what I can’t bear is
to see how you dread them, how they make you suffer, and yet how you can’t live
without them and won’t go away lest you should miss one during your absence. Or
perhaps,” she added, her voice breaking into a cry of accusation—”perhaps it’s
because she’s actually forbidden you to leave. Kenneth, you must answer me! Is
that the reason? Is it because she’s forbidden you that you won’t go away with
me?”
                 She
continued to kneel at his side, and raising her hands, she drew his gently
down. She was ashamed of her persistence, ashamed of uncovering that baffled
disordered face, yet resolved that no such scruples should arrest her. His eyes
were lowered, the muscles of his face quivered; she was making him suffer even
more than she suffered herself. Yet this no longer restrained her.