Read Online Edith Wharton - SSC 10 by The World Over (v2.1) - Free Book Online Page B

hour
earlier.
                 “There
it is; he knows what’s in the letter and has fought his battle out again,
whatever it is,” she reflected, “while I’m still in darkness.” She rang and
gave a hurried order that dinner should be served as soon as possible—just a
short meal, whatever could be got ready quickly, as both she and Mr. Ashby were
rather tired and not very hungry.
                 Dinner
was announced, and they sat down to it. At first neither seemed able to find a
word to say; then Ashby began to make conversation with an assumption of ease
that was more oppressive than his silence. “How tired he is! How
terribly overtired!” Charlotte said to herself, pursuing her own thoughts while he rambled on about
municipal politics, aviation, an exhibition of modern
French painting, the health of an old aunt and the installing of the automatic
telephone. “Good heavens, how tired he is!”
                 When
they dined alone they usually went into the library after dinner, and Charlotte curled herself up on the divan with her
knitting while he settled down in his armchair under the lamp and lit a pipe.
But this evening, by tacit agreement, they avoided the room in which their
strange talk had taken place, and went up to Charlotte ’s drawing-room.
                 They
sat down near the fire, and Charlotte said: “Your pipe?” after he had put down his hardly tasted coffee.
                 He
shook his head. “No, not tonight.”
                 “You
must go to bed early; you look terribly tired. I’m sure they overwork you at
the office.”
                 “I
suppose we all overwork at times.”
                 She
rose and stood before him with sudden resolution. “Well, I’m not going to have
you use up your strength slaving in that way. It’s absurd. I can see you’re
ill.” She bent over him and laid her hand on his forehead. “My
poor old Kenneth. Prepare to be taken away soon on a long holiday.”
                 He
looked up at her, startled. “A holiday?”
                 “Certainly. Didn’t you know I was going to carry you off at
Easter? We’re going to start in a fortnight on a month’s voyage to somewhere or
other. On any one of the big cruising steamers.” She
paused and bent closer, touching his forehead with her lips. “I’m tired, too,
Kenneth.”
                 He
seemed to pay no heed to her last words, but sat, his hands on his knees, his
head drawn back a little from her caress, and looked up at her with a stare of
apprehension. “Again? My dear, we can’t; I can’t
possibly go away.”
                 “I
don’t know why you say ‘again’, Kenneth; we haven’t taken a real holiday this
year.”
                 “At
Christmas we spent a week with the children in the country.”
                 “Yes,
but this time I mean away from the children, from servants, from the house.
From everything that’s familiar and fatiguing. Your mother will love to have
Joyce and Peter with her.”
                 He
frowned and slowly shook his head. “No, dear; I can’t leave them with my
mother.”
                 “Why,
Kenneth, how absurd! She adores them. You didn’t hesitate to leave them with
her for over two months when we went to the West Indies .”
                 He
drew a deep breath and stood up uneasily. “That was different.”
                 “Different?
Why?”
                 “I
mean, at that time I didn’t realize”—He broke off as if to choose his words and
then went on: “My mother adores the children, as you say. But she isn’t always
very judicious. Grandmothers always spoil children. And she sometimes talks
before them without thinking.” He turned to his wife with an almost pitiful
gesture of entreaty. “Don’t ask me to, dear.”