The Age of Desire (42 page)

There is one question I must clear up. Is it possible for you and I to meet tonight?

In the very next post, he proposes a café and time.

He is smiling when she walks in. A great improvement over their last meeting. And his eyes seem to twinkle as they used to.

“Wonderful to see you,” he says.

“Is it?” she asks.

“Absolutely. Especially seeing you looking so well. What have you done to look so . . . so healthy, so rested?”

She can’t help being pleased to see herself through his eyes as improved.

“Good travel. Good writing,” she says. “England was a wonderful place to begin my year.”

He leans forward. “I’ve missed you,” he says. ‘You are exceptionally special to me, you know.”

She would like to feel outraged, after all he’s put her through. But God knows she’s pined for him. She hasn’t felt so brimming with life since last spring.

With menus to shield them from each other, they order dinner, and she peers around at the other diners. Mostly couples, huddling over their candles. Some laughing. Most talking.

He doesn’t ask her what it is she wanted to ask him. Just like him to have so little curiosity. At last, she knows she’s the one who must broach the subject.

“Henry says I must ask you to tell me . . .” How can she put it? “He says an ‘evil’ is weighing you down, and that I must insist you tell me what it is.”

Morton smiles faintly, says, “Oh.”

“Perhaps he shouldn’t have told me. But I’ve felt there was something you’ve been hiding for a long time. If you just could tell me . . . Will you? Please.”

He nods. She shivers, wondering suddenly whether she indeed wants to be enlightened.

The waiter comes between them with a basket of bread, fills their water glasses. Morton waits until he has crossed the room toward the kitchen.

“Don’t tell me later that you wish I’d never said a word,” Morton says.

“I won’t.”

“I’m . . .” Morton leans forward and whispers. “You won’t like this, and . . . I’m not proud of it.”

“Say it, Morton.”

“I’m being blackmailed.”

Edith expels a lungful of air all at once, and finds it hard to form any words. Morton doesn’t speak. He does nonchalantly nod at someone across the room, however.

“Who is blackmailing you?” she asks at last.

“My landlady.”

“And why would your landlady try to . . . extort money from you?” Extort somehow seems a less odious word to Edith.

“I owe her rent,” Morton says. He’s not blushing. Not looking embarrassed. He almost looks proud. It ripples the hair on the back of her neck.

“And what is she holding as ransom?”

“She has letters of mine.”

“Letters?”

“Personal letters.”

“I didn’t think they were business letters,” Edith says huffily. “Why are they so . . . valuable?”

“Valuable to no one but the people who wrote them. I want you to understand they’re old letters from two people. . . . Both are, I guess you’d say,
public figures
. One is something of a
royal
figure. A
royal married
figure. The other . . . a . . . politician.”

“Go on. Who? You may as well tell me.”

“And if I told you who they are, what would prevent me from tattling about you with others? My affairs are my affairs. And best kept to myself. All of this happened a long time ago. . . .”

“I see,” she says, though still fails to see, and now is uncomfortably curious.

“It’s why I was uneasy when I saw you before Christmas. My landlady said that she was watching me then. I do believe sometimes she was following me. You’re becoming well known too, Edith. I didn’t want her to hunt for
your
letters. She’s away right now. Down in Nice.”

“And you’re still living in her house?”

Morton nods.

“But why don’t you move out, for heaven’s sakes?”

“She’d retaliate. Besides, I . . . she’s not a bad person, per se.”

Suddenly Edith knows. Knows more than she wants to know.

“You’ve been intimate with them all, haven’t you? The two who wrote you letters. They’re love letters.
And
this landlady. You’ve had a relation with her as well?”

Morton looks into his wineglass, then takes a large swig, as if for courage.

“You can think what you like.”

Edith knows precisely what to think. If any woman lived life with the sexual abandon of Morton Fullerton, what name would they attach to her? She’s heard Fullerton called a “boulevardier” by Anna de Noailles. She’s heard rumors from Eliot. But she never imagined his conquests were so haphazard. Or so incautious. She realizes that one of the authors of the love letters, the politician, must be a man. Maybe the royal figure as well. What would a letter revealing
that
do to a public figure? What did it do to Oscar Wilde?

“Are you still
romantically
involved with the landlady?”

Morton shakes his head. “Not at the moment.”

“No, at the moment you’re sitting in a café. . . . And the letter writers?”

“Heavens, no. I have no idea where they are anymore. Either of them.”

Impetuously, she reaches out and grabs his hand.

“Let me help you, then,” she says.

“Help me? How?”

“What do you owe her? I have money. If we could lift this terrible weight off your shoulders, things might be different.” Between us, she can’t help thinking. But why, oh, why, does she want him so, when every word out of his mouth reveals him to be a cad? If only the heart weren’t so capricious, so unable to absorb logic!

Morton stares at the tablecloth for a moment, traces the jacquard pattern with his finger. When he looks up, his face has reddened.

“I am perhaps not the most honorable of men, Edith. But I don’t think I’d stoop so low as to take your money.”

Edith feels relieved at his words but presses on.

“Why not?”

“Because then I’d be beholden to you. I’d be trading one trap for another.”

Edith finds herself aghast, half-standing with outrage. “That’s the most odious thing you’ve ever said to me!”

“I didn’t mean that. It just came out wrong. Sit. Sit down. I’m not saying you’re trying to trap me. I can see that’s what you might have thought I meant. I just don’t want to feel that our relationship is based on my owing you money, that’s all. I’m already struggling with the very same situation.”

“It’s
not
the very same situation
,” Edith says, venom in her voice. Edith wonders—could he possibly see her as no better, no more desirable, than his landlady? A lonely woman who is turning to him for pleasure. She feels sick to her stomach. A burning has begun in her throat. Oh, the irony that she, a woman who has always detested surprises, swerves in the path, has chosen as her only lover a man who delivers nothing but bolts of lightning. She shakes her head, turns toward the door.

“I have places to be,” she says.

“We haven’t eaten.”

“That’s never stopped
you
from leaving a meal.”

His eyes become childlike, pleading. He grabs her hand. His silken touch shakes her. “Sit down, dearest. Won’t you?”

She does. She doesn’t know why. He has an undeniable power over her.

“Is this . . . this
situation
why you didn’t write me this summer?” she asked.

“Yes. I was in much worse shape in the middle of the summer. I’ve paid off some of my debt to her now. I thought if I stopped writing you, you might stop writing me. I didn’t want her to get hold of your letters.”

“But why didn’t you just tell me? If you’d explained . . .”

He shrugs. “Perhaps I should have.”

“Yes. You should have.”

“Ah, but what would you have thought of me?”

“It was what I thought of myself when you didn’t write that hurt so much.”

The meal comes and she can barely swallow for the aching in her throat. She has wanted to know for months and months what mystery has separated him from her. But hearing all that he’s told her, she thinks the mystery is far more complicated than she imagined. What sort of man would get involved in such a scandal? Walter, for instance, would never have allowed such a thing to happen.

But how different Walter is from Morton. Brilliant Morton. Childish Morton. In some ways, he is hardly more than an adolescent. A creature so beautiful that persons of all sorts wish to possess him: men, women. Who could resist him?

Against her will, as she shreds the
blanquette de veau
with the tines of her fork, she is suddenly in that chestnut-shadowed room in the inn, wearing only her bloomers, or cradled by the moss beneath the lilacs, entirely naked. These memories are so visceral. So real! How dangerous he seems to her at the moment. And the hurt she’s had to bear from him is too fresh. Yet she can’t help wondering, can’t help praying that their
affaire de coeur
isn’t over. Over before it’s barely begun.

“The thing is,” he says, “I don’t know when I can clear things up. I really have no idea how to find that sort of money.”

Edith forces herself out of the delicious lost memories and into the noisy café again. “Did you
never
pay her rent? How long have you lived there?”

“For years.”

“And for years you didn’t pay rent?”

“She didn’t ask me to.” She stares into his guileless eyes and is disturbed by what she sees.

“Ah . . .”

He sets down his fork, looking satisfied and full. The bill lies between them, fluttering in a breeze from the door.

“I need to go,” she says suddenly. “I have guests staying with me.”

He makes no move to lay out money, to pay.

“This one’s yours, Morton,” she says, standing up. “I wouldn’t want you to feel trapped by my generosity.”

“Edith . . .”

“I take it you have a
few
francs in that wallet of yours,” she says.

He nods guiltily.

Then she pulls her wraps crisply and leaves the restaurant without looking back.

“Miss Bahlmann, let me put it plainly.” Dr. Kinnicut has finally telephoned. And Anna has risen from the dinner table to speak to him. “Very simply, he’s fallen into melancholy again, a serious depression. And he’s starting to have the old problem with his teeth. And the pain in his head as well. He’s barely been out of his room, which is why it took me so long to see him. I finally knocked on his door.”

“But what are we to do?” Anna asks. “We’re to leave in just a week’s time for France. The whole household.”

“Yes, he told me. And I think you should all go. A change may do him good. He wants to go. I’ve given him some medicine. I rather doubt it will do much but keep him rather numb. Alleviate some of the pain. He never did go back to Hot Springs again, did he?”

“No.”

“He should have.”

“Should I insist he go now? I don’t know that he would listen if I urged him to go.”

“He wants to be with his wife. He said so. Even though he’s not keen on Paris. He also told me he wants you nearby. You seem to make him feel secure. He spoke of you continually.”

“I’ll be traveling with him,” Anna says, feeling the shock of the doctor’s words to her fingertips.

“Well, as much as possible, keep an eye on him.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be sure to do that.”

“And whatever you do, Miss Bahlmann, don’t let him wander out on the deck alone. Many a hurting soul has given in to the lure of the sea.”

Dr. Kinnicut’s words make her stomach tighten.

“No, sir. Good advice.”

“Have you warned Mrs. Wharton?”

“I was afraid to upset her. She seems to be so happy right now. . . .”

“No. Don’t disturb her. Pull her aside when you arrive and explain what I said. The poor woman’s suffered enough through his ups and downs. Last I saw her, it was taking a toll on her.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Is she sleeping better?”

“She writes that she is.”

“Between you and me, I fear Mr. Wharton is a very sick man. When he had his episode last year, and then the cure in Hot Springs, well, I felt it was an isolated incident. Now, seeing him like this two years running is very disturbing indeed.”