Part 2

None

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Afterward by Edith Wharton, Part two

(00:21):
read by Charles Blickmore Afterward, Chapter three. One of the
strangest things she was to afterward recall out of all
the next day's strangeness was the sudden and complete recovery
of her sense of security. It was in the air
when she woke in her low sealed, dusky room. It

(00:41):
went with her downstairs to the breakfast table, flashed out
of her from the fire, and reduplicated itself from the
flanks of the urn and the sturdy flutings of the
Georgian teapot. It was as if, in some roundabout way,
all her diffused fears of the previous day, with their
moment of sharp concentration about the news paper article, as

(01:01):
if this dim questioning of the future and startled return
upon the past had between them liquidated the arrears of
some haunting moral obligation. If she had indeed been careless
of her husband's affairs, it was her new state seemed
to prove, because her faith in him instinctively justified such carelessness,
and his right to her faith had now affirmed itself

(01:23):
in the very face of menace and suspicion. She had
never seen him more untroubled, more naturally and unconsciously himself,
than after the cross examination to which she had subjected him.
It was almost as if he had been aware of
her doubts and had wanted the air cleared as much
as she did. It was as clear thank heaven as

(01:44):
the bright outer light that surprised her almost with a
touch of summer, when she issued from the house for
her daily round of the gardens. She had left Boyne
at his desk, indulging herself as she passed the library
door by a last peep at his quiet face where
he bent pipe in mouth above his papers. And now

(02:05):
she had her own morning's task to perform. The task
involved on such charmed winter days, almost as much happy
loitering about the different quarters of her domain as if
spring were already at work there. There were such endless
possibilities still before her, such opportunities to bring out the
latent graces of the old place without a single irreverent

(02:28):
touch of alteration, that the winter was all too short
to plant what spring and autumn executed, and her recovered
sense of safety gave on this particular morning a peculiar
zest to her progress through the sweet still place. She
went first to the kitchen garden, where the espalliard pear

(02:49):
trees drew complicated patterns on the walls, and pigeons were
fluttering and preening about the silvery slated roof of their cot.
There was something wrongung about the piping of the hot house,
and she was expecting an authority from Dorchester who was
to drive out between trains and make a diagnosis of
the boiler. But when she dipped into the damp heat

(03:12):
of the greenhouses, among the spiced scents and waxy pinks
and reds of old fashioned exotics, even the flora of
lying was in the note, she learned that the great
Man had not arrived, and the day, being too rare
to waste in an artificial atmosphere, she came out again
and paced along the springy turf of the Bowling Green

(03:35):
to the gardens behind the house. At their farther end
rose a grass terrace, looking across the fish pond and
yew hedges to the long house front with its twisted
chimney stacks and blue roof angles, all drenched in the
pale gold moisture of the air. Seen thus across the

(03:57):
level tracery of the gardens, it sent her, from open
windows and hospitably smoking chimneys, the look of some warm
human presence of a mind slowly ripened on a sunny
wall of experience. She had never before had such a
sense of her intimacy with it, such a conviction that
its secrets were all beneficent, kept, as they said to children,

(04:21):
for one's good, such a trust in its power to
gather up her life and neds into the harmonious pattern
of the long, long story. It sat there, weaving in
the sun. She heard steps behind her, and turned, expecting
to see the gardener accompanied by the engineer from Dorchester.
But only one figure was in sight, that of a youngish,

(04:45):
slightly built man, who, for reasons she could not on
the spot have given, did not remotely resemble her notion
of an authority on hot house boilers. The newcomer, on
seeing her, lifted his hat and pawed with the air
of a gentleman, perhaps a traveler who wishes to make
it known that his intrusion is involuntary lying occasionally attracted

(05:09):
the more cultivated traveler, and Mary half expected to see
the stranger dissemble a camera or justify his presence by
producing it. But he made no gesture of any sort,
and after a moment, she asked, in a tone responding
to the courteous hesitation of his attitude, is there anyone
you wish to see? I came to see mister Boyne,

(05:32):
he answered. His intonation, rather than his accent, was faintly American,
and Mary, at the note, looked at him more closely.
The brim of his soft felt hat cast a shade
on his face, which thus obscured wore to her short
sighted gaze a look of seriousness, as of a person
arriving on business and civilly, but firmly aware of his rights.

(05:56):
Past experience had made her equally sensible to such claims,
but she was jealous of her husband's mourning hours, and
doubtful of his having given any one the right to
intrude on them. Have you an appointment with my husband?
She asked. The visitor hesitated, as if unprepared for the question.
I think he expects me, he replied. It was Mary's

(06:21):
turn to hesitate you see, this is his time for work.
He never sees any one in the morning. He looked
at her a moment without answering, then, as if accepting
her decision, he began to move away. As he turned,
Mary saw him pause and glance up at the peaceful
house front. Something in his air suggested weariness and disappointment,

(06:44):
the dejection of the traveler who has come from far
off and whose hours are limited by the time table.
It occurred to her that if this worthy case, her
refusal might have made his errand vain, and a sense
of compunction caused her to hasten after him. May I
ask if you have come a long way? He gave

(07:05):
her the same grave look. Yes, I have come a
long way. Then if you'll go into the house, no
doubt my husband will see you now you'll find him
in the library. She did not know why she had
added the last phrase, except from a vague impulse to
atone for her previous inhospitality. The visitor seemed about to

(07:31):
express his thanks, but her attention was distracted by the
approach of the gardener with a companion who bore all
the marks of being the expert from Dorchester. This way,
she said, waving the stranger to the house, and an
instant later she had forgotten him in the absorption of
her meeting with the boiler maker. The encounter led to

(07:54):
such far reaching results that the engineer ended by finding
it expedient to ignore his train, and Mary was beguiled
into spending the remainder of the morning in absorbed confabulation
among the flower pots. When the colloquy ended, she was
surprised to find that it was nearly luncheon time, and

(08:15):
she half expected as she hurried back to the house
to see her husband coming out to meet her, But
she found no one in the court but an under
gardener raking the gravel and the hall. When she entered,
it was so silent that she guessed Boyne to be
still at work. Not wishing to disturb him, she turned

(08:38):
into the drawing room, and there at her writing table,
lost herself in renewed calculations of the outlay to which
the morning's conference had pledged her. The fact that she
could permit herself such follies had not yet lost its novelty,
and somehow, in contrast to the vague fears of the
previous days, it now seemed an element of her recovered security,

(09:01):
of the sense that, as Ned had said, things in
general had never been writer. She was still luxuriating in
a lavish play of figures when the parlor maid from
the threshold roused her with an inquiry as to the
expediency of serving muncheon. It was one of their jokes
that Trimmell announced luncheon as if she were divulging a

(09:24):
state secret, and Mary, intent upon her papers, merely murmured
an absent minded assent. She felt tremble, wavering doubtfully on
the threshold, as if in rebuke of such unconsidered assent.
Then her retreating steps sounded down the passage, and Mary,
pushing away her papers, crossed the hall and went to

(09:47):
the library door. It was still closed, and she wavered
in her turn, disliking to disturb her husband, yet anxious
that he should not exceed his usual measure of work.
As she stood there balancing her impulses, Trimmell returned with
the announcement of luncheon, and Mary, thus impelled, opened the
library door. Boyne was not at his desk, and she

(10:11):
peered about her, expecting to discover him before the book
shelves Somewhere down the length of the room, but her
call brought no response, and gradually it became clear to
her that he was not there. She turned back to
the parlor maid, mister Boyne must be upstairs. Please tell
him that luncheon is ready. Trimmell appeared to hesitate between

(10:33):
the obvious duty of obedience and an equally obvious conviction
of the foolishness of the injunction laid on her. The
struggle resulted in her saying, if you please, ma'am, mister
Boyne's not upstairs, not in his room. Are you sure?
I'm sure, ma'am. Mary consulted the clock. Where is he?
Then he's gone out, Trimmell announced, with the superior air

(10:58):
of one who has respectfully waited for the question that
a well ordered mind would have put first. Mary's conjecture
had been right, then Boyne must have gone to the
gardens to meet her, and since she had missed him,
it was clear that he had taken the shorter way
by the south door instead of going round to the court.

(11:18):
She crossed the hole to the French window opening directly
on the yew garden, but the parlor maid, after another
moment of inner conflict, decided to bring out, please, ma'am.
Mister Boyne didn't go that way. Mary turned back. Where
did he go? And when he went out of the
front door up the drive, madam? It was a matter

(11:40):
of principle with Trimmele never to answer more than one
question at a time up the drive. At this hour,
Mary went to the door herself and glanced across the
court through the tunnel of bare limes that its perspective
was as empty as when she had scanned it on entering.
Did mister Boyne leave no message? Trimmele seemed to surrender

(12:04):
herself to a last struggle with the forces of chaos. No, ma'am,
he just went out with the gentleman. The gentleman. What gentleman?
Mary wheeled about, as if to front this new factor.
The gentleman who called, ma'am, said Trimble resignedly. When did
a gentleman call? Do explain yourself, Tremble? Only the fact

(12:28):
that Mary was very hungry, and that she wanted to
consult her husband about the greenhouses would have caused her
to lay so unusual in an injunction on her attendant.
And even now she was detached enough to note in
Trimmele's eye the dawning defiance of the respectful subordinate who
had been pressed too hard. I couldn't exactly say the hour, ma'am,

(12:51):
because I didn't let the gentleman in, she replied, with
an air of discreetly ignoring the irregularity of her mistress's course.
You didn't let him in, no, ma'am. When the bell rang,
our dressing and Agnes go and ask. Agnes, then said Mary,
Trimmele still wore her look of patient magnanimity. Agnes wouldn't know, ma'am,

(13:16):
for she had unfortunately burnt her hand and trimming the
wick of the new lamp from town. Trimmell, as Mary
was aware, had always been opposed to the new lamp,
and so missus Dockett sent the kitchen maid instead. Mary
looked again at the clock. It's after two, Go and
ask the kitchen maid if mister Boyne left any word.

(13:39):
She went in to luncheon without waiting, and Trimmell presently
brought her there. The kitchen maid's statement that the gentleman
had called about eleven o'clock, and that mister Boyne had
gone out with him without leaving any message. The kitchen
maid did not even know the caller's name, for he
had written it on a slip of paper, which he
had folded in hand to her, with the injunction to

(14:01):
deliver it at once to mister Boyne. Mary finished her
luncheon still wondering, and when it was over, and Trimmele
had brought the coffee to the drawing room, her wonder
had deepened to a first faint tinge of disquietude. It
was unlike Boyne to absent himself without explanation at so
unwonted an hour, and the difficulty of identifying the visitor

(14:23):
whose summons he had apparently obeyed made his disappearance the
more unaccountable. Mary Boyne's experience as the wife of a
busy engineer, subject to sudden calls and compelled to keep
irregular hours, had trained her to the philosophic acceptance of surprises.
But since Boyne's withdrawal from business, he had adopted a

(14:47):
Benedictine regularity of life, as if to make up for
the dispersed and agitated years. With their stand up lunches
and dinners rattled down to the joltings of the die cars,
he cultivated the last refinements of punctuality and monotony, discouraging
his wife's fancy for the unexpected, and declaring that to

(15:12):
a delicate taste there were infinite gradations of pleasure in
the recurrences of habit. Still, since no life can completely
defend itself from the unforeseen, it was evident that all
Boyne's precautions would sooner or later prove unavailable, and Mary
concluded that he had cut short a tiresome visit by

(15:35):
walking with his caller to the station, or at least
accompanying him for part of the way. This conclusion relieved
her from further preoccupation, and she went out herself to
take up her conference with the gardener. Thence, she walked
to the village post office a mile or so away,

(15:56):
and when she turned toward home, the early twilight setting in,
she had taken a footpath across the downs and its. Boyne, meanwhile,
had probably returned from the station by the high road.
There was little likelihood of their meeting. She felt sure, however,
of his having reached the house before her, so sure

(16:19):
that when she entered it herself, without even pausing to
inquire of Trimmel, she made directly for the library, but
the library was still empty, and with an unwonted exactness
of visual memory, she observed that the papers on her
husband's desk lay precisely as they had lain when she
had gone in to call him to luncheon. Then of

(16:41):
a sudden she was seized by a vague dread of
the unknown. She had closed the door behind her on entering,
and as she stood alone in the long silent room,
her dread seemed to take shape and sound, to be there,
breathing and lurking among the shadows. Her short sighted eyes
strained through them, half discerning an actual presence, something aloof

(17:07):
that watched and knew, And in the recoil from that
intangible presence, she threw herself on the bell rope and
gave it a sharp pull. The sharp summons brought Trimmell
imprecipitately with a lamp, and Mary breathed again at this
sobering reappearance of the usual. You may bring tea if

(17:31):
mister Boyne is in, she said, to justify her ring
very well, madam. But mister Boyne is not in, said Trimmell,
putting down the lamp. Not in, you mean he's come
back and gone out again. No, ma'am, he's never been back.
The dread stirred again, and Mary knew that now it

(17:53):
had her fast. Not since he went out with the gentleman,
Not since he went out with the gentleman. But who
was the gentleman? Mary insisted, with the shrill note of
some one trying to be heard through a confusion of noises,
that I couldn't say, ma'am. Trimmell, standing there by the

(18:13):
lamp seemed suddenly to grow less round and rosy, as
though eclipsed by the same creeping shade of apprehension. But
the kitchen maid knows. Wasn't it the kitchen maid who
let him in? She doesn't know either, ma'am, for he
wrote his name on a folded paper. Mary, through her agitation,
was aware that they were both designating the unknown visitor

(18:36):
by a vague pronoun instead of the conventional formula, which
till then had kept their illusions within the bounds of conformity.
And at the same moment her mind caught at the
suggestions of the folded paper. But he must have a name.
Where's the paper? She moved to the desk and began

(18:57):
to turn over the documents that littered it. The first
that caught her eye was an unfinished letter in her
husband's hand, with his pen lying across it, as though
dropped there at a sudden summons, my dear Parvis, who
was Parvis? I have just received your letter announcing Elwell's death,

(19:19):
And while I suppose there is now no further risk
of trouble, it might be safer. She tossed the sheet
aside and continued her search. But no folded paper was
discoverable among the letters and pages of manuscript, which had
been swept together in a heap, as if by a
hurried or a startled gesture. But the kitchen maid saw

(19:42):
him send her here, she commanded, wondering at her dullness
in not thinking sooner of so simple a solution. Trimmell
vanished in a flash, as if thankful to be out
of the room, and when she reappeared conducting the agitated underling,
Mary had regained herself possession and had her questions ready.

(20:03):
The gentleman was a stranger, yes, that she understood, But
what had he said? And above all what had he
looked like? The first question was easily enough answered for
the disconcerting reason that he had said so little, had
merely asked for mister Boyne, and scribbling something on a
piece of paper, had requested that it should at once

(20:25):
be carried in to him. Then you don't know what
he wrote. You're not sure it was his name. The
kitchen maid was not sure, but supposing it was, since
he had written it in answer to her inquiry as
to whom she should announce. And when you carried the
paper into mister Boyne, what did he say? The kitchen

(20:46):
maid did not think that mister Boyne had said anything,
but she could not be sure, for just as she
had handed him the paper and he was opening it,
she had become aware that the visitor had followed her
into the library, and she had slipped out, leaving the
two gentlemen together. But then, if you left them in
the library, how do you know that they went out

(21:06):
of the house. This question plunged the witness into a
momentary inarticulateness, from which she was rescued by Trimmell, who,
by means of ingenious circumlocutions, elicited the statement that before
she could cross the hall to the back passage, she
had heard the two gentlemen behind her and had seen

(21:28):
them go out of the front door together. Then if
you saw the strange gentleman twice, you must be able
to tell me what he looked like. But with this
final challenge to her powers of expression, it became clear
that the limit of the kitchen Maid's endurance had been reached.
The obligation of going to the front door to show

(21:50):
in a visitor was in itself so subversive of the
fundamental order of things that it had thrown her faculties
into hopeless disarray, and she could only stammer out after
various panting efforts. His hat, mum was different, like if
you might say different? How different? Mary flashed out her

(22:11):
own mind in the same instant, leaping back to an
image left on it that morning, and then lost under
layers of subsequent impressions. His hat had a wide brim,
you meine, and his face was pale, a youngish face.
Mary pressed her with a white lipped intensity of interrogation.

(22:31):
But if the kitchen Maid found any adequate answer to
this challenge, it was swept away for her listener down
the rushing current of her own convictions. The stranger, the
stranger in the garden. Why had Mary not thought of
him before. She needed no one now to tell her
that it was he who had called for her husband

(22:52):
and had gone away with him. But who was he?
And why had Boyne obeyed him? Chapter four? It leaped
out at her suddenly, like a grin out of the dark.
That they had often called England so little, such a

(23:16):
confoundedly hard place to get lost in, a confoundedly hard
place to get lost in. That had been her husband's phrase.
And now, with the whole machinery of official investigation sweeping
its flashlights from shore to shore and across the dividing straits,
Now with Boyne's name blazing from the walls of every

(23:38):
town and village, his portrait, how that wrung her hawked
up and down the country like the image of a
hunted criminal. Now, the little compact populous island, so policed,
surveyed and administered, revealed itself as a sphinxlike guardian of
abysmal mysteries, staring back into his wife anguished eyes, as

(24:02):
if with the wicked joy of knowing something they would
never know. In the fortnight since Boyne's disappearance, there had
been no word of him, no trace of his movements,
even the usual misleading reports that Ray's expectancy in tortured
Bosoms had been few and fleeting. No one but the

(24:24):
kitchen maid had seen Boyne leave the house, and no
one else had seen the gentleman who accompanied him. All
inquiries in the neighborhood failed to elicit the memory of
a stranger's presence that day in the neighborhood of lying,
and no one had met Edward Boyne, either alone or
in company, in any of the neighboring villages, or on

(24:46):
the road across the Downs, or at either of the
local railway stations. The sunny English noon had swallowed him
as completely as if he had gone out into Sumerian night. Mary,
while every official means of investigation was working at its
highest pressure, had ransacked her husband's papers for any trace

(25:10):
of antecedent, complications, of entanglements, or obligations unknown to her
that might throw a ray into the darkness. But if
any such had existed in the background of Boyne's life,
they had vanished, like the slip of paper on which
the visitor had written his name. There remained no possible
thread of guidance, except if it were indeed an exception.

(25:34):
The letter which Boyne had apparently been in the act
of writing when he received his mysterious summons. That letter,
read and reread by his wife and submitted by her
to the police, yielded little enough to feed conjecture I
have just heard of Elwell's death, and while I suppose
that there is now no further risk of trouble, it

(25:55):
might be safer that was all. The risk of trouble
was easily explained by the newspaper clipping which had apprized
Mary of the suit brought against her husband by one
of his associates in the Blue Star Enterprise. The only
new information conveyed by the letter was the fact of
its showing Boyn when he wrote it, to be still

(26:16):
apprehensive of the results of the suit, though he had
told his wife that it had been withdrawn, and though
the letter itself proved that the plaintiff was dead. It
took several days of cabling to fix the identity of
the parvis to whom the fragment was addressed. But even
after these inquiries had shown him to be a Walkishaw lawyer,

(26:37):
no new facts concerning the Ellwell suit were elicited. He
appeared to have had no direct concern in it, but
to have been conversant with the facts merely as an
acquaintance and possible intermediary, And he declared himself unable to
guess with what object Boyne intended to seek his assistance.

(26:58):
This negative information, nation sole fruit of the first fortnight's search,
was not increased by a jot. During the slow weeks
that followed, Mary knew that the investigations were still being
carried on, but she had a vague sense of their
gradually slackening as the actual march of time seemed to slacken.

(27:21):
It was as though the day's flying horror struck from
the shrouded image of the one inscrutable day, gained assurance
as the distance lengthened, till at last they fell back
into their normal gait. And so with the human imaginations
at work on the dark event. No doubt it occupied
them still, but week by week and hour by hour,

(27:43):
it grew less, absorbing, took up less space, was slowly
but inevitably crowded out of the foreground of consciousness by
the new problems perpetually bubbling up from the cloudy cauldron
of human experience. Even Merry Boyne's consciousness gradually felt the
same lowering of velocity. It still swayed with the incessant

(28:06):
oscillations of conjecture, but they were slower, more rhythmical in
their beat. There were even moments of weariness, when, like
the victim of some poison which leaves the brain clear
but holds the body motionless, she saw herself domesticated with
the horror, accepting its perpetual presence as one of the

(28:27):
fixed conditions of life. These moments lengthened into hours and days,
till she passed into a phase of stolid acquiescence. She
watched the routine of daily life with the incurious eye
of a savage, on whom the meaningless processes of civilization
make but the faintest impression. She had come to regard

(28:50):
herself as part of the routine, as spoke of the
wheel revolving in its motion. She felt almost like the
furniture of the room in which she sat, and insensate
object to be dusted and pushed about with the chairs
and tables. And this deepening apathy held her fast at Lyne,
in spite of the entreaties of friends and the usual

(29:12):
medical recommendations of change. Her friends supposed that her refusal
to move was inspired by the belief that her husband
would one day return to the spot from which she
had vanished, and a beautiful legend grew up about this
imaginary state of waiting. But in reality she had no
such belief. The depths of anguish inclosing her were no

(29:35):
longer lighted by flashes of hope. She was sure that
Boyne would never come back, that he had gone out
of her sight as completely as if death had itself.
Had waited that day on the threshold, she had even
renounced one by one the various theories as to his disappearance,
which had been advanced by the press, the police, and

(29:57):
her own agonized imagination. In sheer lassitude, her mind turned
from these alternatives of horror and sank back into the
blank fact that he was gone. No, she would never
know what had become of him. No one would ever know.
But the house knew, the library in which she spent

(30:19):
her long, lonely evenings knew, for it was here that
the last scene had been enacted. Here that the stranger
had come and spoken the word which had caused Boyne
to rise and follow him. The floor she trod had
felt his tread the books and the shelves, had seen
his face, and there were moments when the intense consciousness

(30:40):
of the old dusky walls seemed about to break out
into some audible revelation of their secret. But the revelation
never came, and she knew it would never come. Lying
was not one of the garrulous old houses that betrayed
the secrets entrusted to them. Its very legend proved that

(31:01):
it had always been the mute accomplice, the incorruptible custodian
of the mysteries it had surprised, and Mary Boyne, sitting
face to face with its silence, felt the futility of
seeking to break it by any human means. Chapter five.

(31:26):
I don't say it wasn't straight, and yet I don't
say it was straight. It was business. Mary at the words,
lifted her head with a start and looked intently at
the speaker. When half an hour before a card with
mister Parvis on it had been brought up to her,
she had been immediately aware that the name had been

(31:47):
a part of her consciousness ever since she had read
it at the head of Boyne's unfinished letter. In the library,
she had found awaiting her, a small, sallow man with
a bald head and gold eyeglasses. And it sent a
tremor through her to know that this was the person
to whom her husband's last known thought had been directed.

(32:07):
Parvis Civilly, but without vain preamble, in the manner of
a man who has his watch in his hand, had
set forth the object of his visit. He had run
over to England on business, and finding himself in the
neighborhood of Dorchester, had not wished to leave it without
paying his respects to missus Boyne, and without asking her

(32:28):
if the occasion offered what she meant to do about
bob Elwell's family. The words touched the spring of some
obscure dread in Mary's bosom. Did her visitor, after all,
know what Boyne had meant by his unfinished phrase? She
asked for an elucidation of his question, and noticed at

(32:48):
once that he had seemed surprised at her continued ignorance
of the subject. Was it possible that she really knew
as little? As she said, I know nothing. You must
tell me. She faltered out, and her visitor thereupon proceeded
to unfold his story. It threw even to her confused

(33:13):
perceptions and imperfectly initiated vision, a lurid glare on the
whole hazy episode of the Blue Star mine. Her husband
had made his money in that brilliant speculation at the
cost of getting ahead of some one less alert to
seize the chance, and the victim of his ingenuity was

(33:34):
young Robert Elwell, who had put him on to the
Blue star scheme. Parvis, at Mary's first cry, had thrown
her a sobering glance through his impartial glasses. Bob Elwell
wasn't smart enough, that's all. If he had been, he
might have turned round and served Boyne the same way.
It's the kind of thing that happens every day in business.

(33:57):
I guess it's what the scientists call the survival of
the fittest see, said mister Parvis, evidently pleased with the
aptness of his analogy. Mary felt a physical shrinking from
the next question she tried to frame. It was as
though the words on her lips had a taste that
nauseated her. But then you accuse my husband of doing

(34:20):
something dishonorable, mister Parvis surveyed the question dispassionately. Oh no,
I don't I don't even say it wasn't straight. He
glanced up and down the long lines of books, as
if one of them might have supplied him with the
definition he sought. I don't say it wasn't straight, and

(34:41):
yet I don't say it was straight. It was business.
After all, no definition in his category could be more
comprehensive than that. Mary sat staring at him with a
look of terror. He seemed to her like the indifferent
emissary of some evil power. But mister Ellwell's lawyers apparently

(35:02):
did not take your view, since I suppose the suit
was withdrawn by their advice. Oh yes, they knew he
hadn't a leg to stand on technically. It was when
they advised him to withdraw the suit that he got desperate.
You see, he'd borrowed most of the money he lost
in the Blue Star, and he was up a tree.
That's why he shot himself when they told him he
had no show. The horror was sweeping over Mary in

(35:27):
great deafening waves. He shot himself. He killed himself because
of that. Well, he didn't kill himself exactly. He dragged
on two months before he died. Parbus admitted the statement
as unemotionally as a gramophone grinding out its record. You
mean that he tried to kill himself and failed and

(35:49):
tried again. Oh, he didn't have to try again, said
Parvis grimly. They sat opposite each other in silence. He's
swinging his eye glasses thoughtfully about his finger. She motionless,
her arms stretched along her knees in an attitude of
rigid tension. But if you knew all this, she began

(36:13):
at length, hardly able to force her voice above a whisper.
How is it that when I wrote you at the
time of my husband's disappearance, you said you didn't understand
his letter? Parvis received this without perceptible embarrassment. Why I
didn't understand it, strictly speaking, and it wasn't the time
to talk about it. If I had, the Ellwell business

(36:34):
was settled when the suit was withdrawn. Nothing I could
have told you would have helped you to find your husband.
Mary continued to scrutinize him. Then why are you telling
me now? Still? Parvis did not hesitate well to begin with.
I supposed you knew more than you appear to, I
mean about the circumstances of Elwell's death. And then people

(36:56):
are talking of it now. The whole matter has been
raked up again, and I thought, if you didn't know,
you ought to. She remained silent, and he continued, you see,
it's only come out lately when a bad state. Elwell's
affairs were in His wife's a proud woman, and she
fought on as long as she could, going out to

(37:16):
work and taking sewing at home when she got too sick,
something with the heart, I believe, But she had his
mother to look after and the children, and she broke
down under it and finally had to ask for help.
That called attention to the case, and the papers took
it up, and a subscription was started. Everybody out there
liked Bob Elwell, and most of the prominent names in

(37:39):
the place are down in the list. And people began
to wonder why Barbus broke off to fumble in an
inner pocket. Here, he continued, here's an account of the
whole thing from the Sentinel. A little sensational, of course,
but I guess you'd better look over it. He held
out a newspaper to Mary, who unfolded it slowly, remembering

(38:00):
as she did so. The evening when in that same room,
the perusal of a clipping from the Sentinel had first
shaken the depths of her security. As she opened the paper,
her eyes shrinking from the glaring headlines, widow of Boyne's
victim forced to appeal for aid, ran down the column
of text to two portraits inserted in it. The first

(38:23):
was her husband's, taken from a photograph made the year
they had come to England. It was the picture of
him that she liked best, the one that stood on
the writing table upstairs in her bedroom. As the eyes
in the photograph met hers, she felt it would be
impossible to read what was said of him, and closed
her lids. With the sharpness of the pain I thought

(38:45):
of you felt disposed to put your name down. She
heard Parvis continue. She opened her eyes with an effort,
and they fell on the other portrait. It was that
of a youngish man, slightly built, with features somewhat blurred
by the shadow of a projecting hat brim. Where had
she seen that outline before? She stared at it confusedly,

(39:07):
her heart hammering in her ears. Then she gave a cry,
this is the man, the man who came for my husband.
She heard Parvis start to his feet and was Dimly
aware that she had slipped backward into the corner of
the sofa and that he was bending above her in alarm,
she straightened herself and reached out for the paper, which

(39:27):
she had dropped. It's the man, I should know him anywhere,
she persisted, in a voice that sounded to her own
ears like a scream. Parvis's answer seemed to come to
her from far off down, endless fog muffled windings. Missus Boyne,
you're not very well. Shall I call somebody? Shall I
get a glass of water? No? No, no. She threw

(39:49):
herself toward him, her hand frantically clutching newspaper. I tell you,
it's the man. I know him. He spoke to me
in the garden. Par took the journal from her, directing
his glasses to the portrait. It can't be Missus Boyne.
It's Robert Elwell. Robert Elwell. Her white stare seemed to

(40:12):
travel into space. Then it was Robert Elwell who came
for him, came for Boyne the day he went away
from here. Parbas's voice dropped as hers rose. He bent over,
laying a fraternal hand on her as if to coax
her gently back into her seat, why Elwell was dead.

(40:34):
Don't you remember? Mary sat with her eyes fixed on
the picture, unconscious of what he was saying. Don't you
remember Boyne's unfinished letter to me, the one you found
on his desk that day. It was written just after
he'd heard of Elwell's death. She noticed an odd shake
in Parbus's unemotional voice. Surely you remember, he urged her. Yes,

(40:58):
she remembered. That was the profoundest horror of it. Elwell
had died the day before her husband's disappearance, and this
was Elwell's portrait, And it was the portrait of the
man who had spoken to her in the garden. She
lifted her head and looked slowly about the library. The

(41:20):
library could have borne witness that it was also the
portrait of the man who had come in that day
to call Boyne from his unfinished letter. Through the misty
surgings of her brain, she heard the faint boom of
half forgotten words, words spoken by alid As Stare on
the lawn at Pangbourn, before Boyne and his wife had

(41:40):
ever seen the house at lying or had imagined that
they might one day live here. This was the man
who spoke to me, she repeated. She looked again at Parvis.
He was trying to conceal his disturbance under what he
probably imagined to be an expression of indulgent miseration, But

(42:01):
the edges of his lips were blue. He thinks me mad,
But I'm not mad, she reflected, and suddenly there flashed
upon her a way of justifying her strange affirmation. She
sat quiet, controlling the quiver of her lips, and waiting
till she could trust her voice. Then she said, looking

(42:22):
straight at Parvis, will you answer me one question? Please?
When was it that Robert Elwell tried to kill himself? When?
When Parvis stammered, yes, the date, please try to remember,
she saw that he was growing still more afraid of her.
I have a reason, she insisted, Yes, yea, yes, only

(42:45):
I can't remember about two months before I should say
I want the date, she repeated. Parvis picked up the newspaper.
We might see here, he said, still humoring her, He
ran his eyes down the page. Here, here it is
last October. The She caught the words from him, the twentieth,

(43:05):
wasn't it. With a sharp look at her, he verified, yes,
the twentieth. Then you did know I know now. Her
gaze continued to travel past him. Sunday the twentieth, That
was the day he came first. Parvis's voice was almost inaudible.

(43:27):
Came here first, Yes, you saw him twice? Then, yes, twice.
She just breathed it at him. He came first on
the twentieth of October. I remember the date because it
was the day we went up Meldon Steep for the
first time. She felt a faint gasp of inward laughter

(43:47):
at the thought that but for that, she might have forgotten.
Parvis continued to scrutinize her, as if trying to intercept
her gaze. We saw him from the roof, she went on.
He came down the line Avenue toward the house. He
was dressed just as he is in that picture. My
husband saw him first. He was frightened and ran down

(44:08):
ahead of me, but there was no one there. He
had vanished. Ellwell had vanished. Parvis faltered. Yes. Their two
whispers seemed to grope for each other. I couldn't think
what had happened. I see now. He tried to come then,
but he wasn't dead enough. He couldn't reach us. He

(44:30):
had to wait for two months to die, And then
he came back again, and Ned went with him. She
nodded at Parvis with the look of triumph of a
child who has worked out a difficult puzzle. But suddenly
she lifted her hands with a desperate gesture, pressing them
to her temples. Oh my God, I sent him to Ned,

(44:54):
I told him where to go. I sent him to
this room, she screamed. She fe the walls of books
rushed towards her like inward falling ruins, and she heard Parvis,
a long way off through the ruins, crying to her
and struggling to get at her. But she was numb
to his touch. She did not know what he was saying.

(45:14):
Through the tumult, she heard but one clear note, the
voice of a leid astare speaking on the lawn at Pangbourne.
You won't know till afterward, it said, you won't know
till long, long afterward. The End of Afterward by Edith

(45:37):
Wharton