The mother's recompense

by Edith Wharton

“This man you are going to marry has—”

No; Kate Clephane could go no farther than that. Such confessions were not to be made; were not for a daughter’s ears. She began the phrase to herself again and again, but could not end it....

And, after all, she suddenly thought, Dr. Arklow himself, having given the injunction, had at once qualified, had virtually withdrawn it. In declaring that such an abomination must at all costs be prevented he had spoken with the firmness of a priest; but almost at once the man had intervened, and had suggested to the hypothetical mother the alternative of not speaking at all, if only she could be sure of never betraying herself in the future, of sacrificing everything to the supreme object of avoiding what he called sterile pain. Those tentative, half-apologetic words now effaced the others in Kate’s mind. Though spoken with the accent of authority—and almost under his breath—she knew they represented what he really felt. But where should she find the courage to conform to them?

She had left the Park, aimlessly, unseeingly, and was walking eastward through a half-built street in the upper Nineties. The thought of returning home—re-entering that house where the white dress still lay on the bed—was unbearable. She walked on and on.... Suddenly she came upon an ugly sandstone church-front with a cross above the doorway. The leathern swing-doors were flapping back and forth, women passing in and out. Kate Clephane pushed open one of the doors and looked in. The day was fading, and in the dusky interior lights fluttered like butterflies about the paper flowers of the altar. There was no service, but praying figures were scattered here and there. Against the brown-washed walls of the aisles she observed a row of confessionals of varnished wood, like cigar-boxes set on end; before one or two, women were expectantly kneeling. Mrs. Clephane wondered what they had to tell.

Leaning against one of the piers of the nave she evoked all those imaginary confessions, and thought how trivial, how childish they would seem, compared to what she carried in her breast.... What a help it must be to turn to somebody who could tell one firmly, positively what to do—to be able to lay down one’s moral torture like a heavy load at the end of the day! Dr. Arklow had none of the authority which the habit of the confessional must give. He could only vaguely sympathize and deplore, and try to shuffle the horror out of sight as soon as he caught an unwilling glimpse of it. But these men whose office it was to bind and to unbind—who spoke as the mere impersonal mouth-pieces of a mighty Arbitrator, letting neither moral repugnance nor false delicacy interfere with the sacred task of alleviation and purification—how different must they be! Her eyes filled at the thought of laying her burden in such hands.

And why not? Why not entrust her anonymous secret to one of those anonymous ears? In talking to Dr. Arklow she had felt that both he and she were paralyzed by the personal relation, and all the embarrassments and complications arising from it. When she spoke of her friend in distress, and he replied with the same evasive formula, both were conscious of the evasion, and hampered by it. And so it had been from the first—there was not an ear into which she dared pour her agony. What if, now, at once, she were to join those unknown penitents? It was possible, she knew—she had but a step to take....

She did not take it. Her unrest drove her forth again into the darkening street, drove her homeward with uncertain steps, in the mood of forlorn expectancy of those who, having failed to exert their will, wait helplessly on the unforeseen. After all, how could one tell? Chris must, in his own degree, be suffering as she was suffering. Why not stick to her old plan of waiting, holding on, enduring everything, in the hope of wearing him out? She reached the door of her house, set her teeth, and went in. Overhead, she remembered with a shudder, the white dress waited, with all that it implied....

The drawing-room was empty, and she went up to her own room. There, as usual, the fire shone invitingly, fresh flowers opened in the lamplight. All was warmth, peace, intimacy. As she sat down by the fireside she seemed to see Fred Landers’s heavy figure in the opposite armchair, his sturdy square-toed boots turned to the hearth. She remembered how, one day, as he sat there, she had said to herself that it might be pleasant to see him there always. Now, in the extremity of her loneliness, the thought returned. Since then he had confessed his own hope to her—shyly, obliquely, apologetically; but under his stammering words she had recognized the echo of a long desire. She knew he had always loved her; had not Anne betrayed that it was her guardian who had persuaded her to recall her unknown mother? Kate Clephane owed him everything, then—all her happiness and all her sorrow! He knew everything of her life—or nearly everything. To whom else could she turn with the peculiar sense of security which that certitude gave? She felt sorry that she had received his tentative advance so coldly, so inarticulately. After all, he might yet be her refuge—her escape. She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine what life would be—years and years of it—at Fred Landers’s side. To feel the nearness of that rugged patient kindness; would it not lighten her misery, make the thoughts and images that were torturing her less palpable, less acute, less real?

She sat there for a long time, brooding. Now and then a step passing her door, or a burst of voices on the landing, told her that Anne was probably receiving some of her friends in her own rooms at the other end of the passage. The wedding presents were already arriving; Anne, with a childish pleasure that was unlike her usual aloofness from material things, had set them out on a long table in her sitting-room. The mother pictured the eager group inspecting and admiring, the talk of future plans, the discussion of all the details of the wedding. The date for it would soon be fixed; ostensibly, her own visit to Dr. Arklow had been made for the purpose. But at the last moment her courage had failed her, and she had said vaguely, in leaving, that she would let him know.

As she sat there, she saw her daughter’s pale illuminated face as though it were before her. Anne’s happiness shone through her, making her opaque and guarded features luminous and transparent; and the mother could measure, from her own experience, the amount of heat and force that fed that incandescence. She herself had always had a terrible way of being happy—and that way was Anne’s.