Short Fiction · Eden (6/13) (2/2)

Later, when the meal was done, Eden returned to the drawing room. Mrs. Manhattan was unregretted. The summer had been fertile enough in entertainments to satiate her for a twelvemonth. She had come and gone, eaten and fasted, danced and driven, with no other result than the discovery that the companionship of her husband was better than anything else. To her thinking he needed only an incentive to conquer the ballot. There was no reason why he should not leave Wall Street for broader spheres. She had met senators by the dozen, and he was wiser than them all. He might be Treasurer of State if he so willed, or failing that, minister to the Court of St. James. Even an inferior mission such as that to the Hague or to Brussels would be better than the Street. It was inane, she told herself, to pass one’s life in going down town and coming up again merely that another million might be put aside. An existence such as that might be alluring to Jerolomon or Bleecker Bleecker, but for her husband there were other summits to be scaled.

And as Eden, prettily flushed by the possibilities which her imagination disclosed spectacular-wise for her own delight, sat companioned by fancies, determining, if incentive were necessary, that incentive should come from her, the portiere was drawn aside and the butler announced Mr. Arnswald.

“I ventured to come in,” he said, apologetically, “although I knew Mr. Usselex was not at home. I wanted⁠—”

“One might have thought your evenings were otherwise occupied,” Eden interrupted, a little fiercely. The intercepted note of the preceding evening rankled still. That the young man should receive a letter from a strange woman was, she admitted to herself, a matter which did not concern her in the slightest. But it was impertinent on his part to suffer that letter to be sent to him at her house.

“This evening, however, as you see⁠—” he began blandly enough, but Eden interrupted him again.

“What did you think of it last night?” she asked, with the inappositeness that was peculiar to her.

“You are clairvoyant enough, Mrs. Usselex, to know untold what I thought. It was of that I wished to speak to you. It is rare that such an opportunity is given me.”

“To hear Wagner?”

“No, not to hear Wagner particularly.” He hesitated and looked down at his pointed shoes, and at the moment Eden for the life of her could not help thinking of a dissolute young god arrayed in modern guise. After all, she reflected, it is probably the woman’s fault.

“No, not that,” he continued, and looked up at her again, his polar-eyes ablaze with unexpected auroras. “Not that; but think what it is for a man to love a woman, to divine that that love is returned, and yet to feel himself as far from her as death is from life. Think what it must be for him to love that woman so well that he would not haggle over ten years, no, nor ten hundred years of years, could he pass an hour with her, and then by way of contrast to find himself suddenly side by side with her, listening to such music as we heard last night.”

“Mr. Arnswald, you are out of your senses,” Eden exclaimed. A suspicion had entered her mind and declined to be dismissed.

“Am I not?” he answered. “Tell me that I am. I need to be told it. Yet last night, for the first time, it seemed to me that perhaps all might still be well. It was hope that I found with you, Mrs. Usselex; it was more than hope, it was life.”

And as his eyes rekindled, Eden told herself that his attitude could have but one signification.

“I’ll not play Guinevere to your Lancelot,” she murmured. And turning her back on him she left the room.