The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton
A Ten-Volume Collection
Volume One
Contents of Volume One
Stories
KERFOL.........................March 1916
MRS. MANSTEY'S VIEW............July 1891
THE BOLTED DOOR................March 1909
THE DILETTANTE.................December 1903
THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD HAND.....August 1904
Verse
THE PARTING DAY................February 1880
AEROPAGUS......................March 1880
A FAILURE......................April 1880
PATIENCE.......................April 1880
WANTS..........................May 1880
THE LAST GIUSTIANINI...........October 1889
EURYALUS.......................December 1889
HAPPINESS......................December 1889
Bibliography
EDITH WHARTON BIBLIOGRAPHY:
SHORT STORIES AND POEMS........Judy Boss
KERFOL
as first published in
Scribner's Magazine, March 1916
I
"You ought to buy it," said my host; "just the place for a
solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth
while to own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present
people are dead broke, and going for a song--you ought to
buy it."
It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my
friend Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my
unsociable exterior I have always had secret yearnings for
domesticity) that I took his hint one autumn afternoon and went
to Kerfol. My friend was motoring over to Quimper on business:
he dropped me on the way, at a cross-road on a heath, and said:
"First turn to the right and second to the left. Then straight
ahead till you see an avenue. If you meet any peasants, ask your way. They understand French, and they would
pretend they did and mix you up. be back for you here by
sunset--and forget the tombs in the chapel."
I followed Lanrivain's directions with the hesitation occasioned
by the usual difficulty of remembering whether he had said the
first turn to the right and second to the left, or the contrary.
If I had met a peasant I should certainly have asked, and
probably been sent astray; but I had the desert landscape to
myself, and so stumbled on the right turn and walked on across
the heath till I came to an avenue. It was so unlike any other
avenue I have ever seen that I instantly knew it must be THE
avenue. The grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a great
height and then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long
tunnel through which the autumn light fell faintly. I know most
trees by name, but I haven't to this day been able to decide what
those trees were. They had the tall curve of elms, the tenuity
of poplars, the ashen colour of olives under a rainy sky; and
they stretched ahead of me for half a mile or more without a
break in their arch. If ever I saw an avenue that unmistakeably
led to something, it was the avenue at Kerfol. My heart beat a
little as I began to walk down it.
Presently the trees ended and I came to a fortified gate in a
long wall. Between me and the wall was an open space of grass,
with other grey avenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were
tall slate roofs mossed with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of
a keep. A moat filled with wild shrubs and brambles surrounded
the place; the drawbridge had been replaced by a stone arch, and
the portcullis by an iron gate. I stood for a long time on the
hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and letting the
influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: "If I wait
long enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs--"
and I rather hoped he wouldn't turn up too soon.
I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done
it, it struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with
that great blind house looking down at me, and all the empty
avenues converging on me. It may have been the depth of the
silence that made me so conscious of my gesture. The squeak of
my match sounded as loud as the scraping of a brake, and I almost
fancied I heard it fall when I tossed it onto the grass. But
there was more than that: a sense of irrelevance, of littleness,
of childish bravado, in sitting there puffing my cigarette-smoke
into the face of such a past.
I knew nothing of the history of Kerfol--I was new to Brittany,
and Lanrivain had never mentioned the name to me till the day
before--but one couldn't as much as glance at that pile without
feeling in it a long accumulation of history. What kind of
history I was not prepared to guess: perhaps only the sheer
weight of many associated lives and deaths which gives a kind of
majesty to all old houses. But the aspect of Kerfol suggested
something more--a perspective of stern and cruel memories
stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur of
darkness.
Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken
with the present. As it stood there, lifting its proud roofs and
gables to the sky, it might have been its own funeral monument.
"Tombs in the chapel? The whole place is a tomb!" I reflected.
I hoped more and more that the guardian would not come. The
details of the place, however striking, would seem trivial
compared with its collective impressiveness; and I wanted only to
sit there and be penetrated by the weight of its silence.
"It's the very place for you!" Lanrivain had said; and I was
overcome by the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any
living being that Kerfol was the place for him. "Is it possible
that any one could NOT see--?" I wondered. I did not finish the
thought: what I meant was undefinable. I stood up and wandered
toward the gate. I was beginning to want to know more; not to
SEE more--I was by now so sure it was not a question of seeing-but to feel more: feel all the place had to communicate. "But to
get in one will have to rout out the keeper," I thought
reluctantly, and hesitated. Finally I crossed the bridge and
tried the iron gate. It yielded, and I walked under the tunnel
formed by the thickness of the chemin de ronde. At the farther
end, a wooden barricade had been laid across the entrance, and
beyond it I saw a court enclosed in noble architecture. The main
building faced me; and I now discovered that one half was a mere
ruined front, with gaping windows through which the wild growths
of the moat and the trees of the park were visible. The rest of
the house was still in its robust beauty. One end abutted on the
round tower, the other on the small traceried chapel, and in an
angle of the building stood a graceful well-head adorned with
mossy urns. A few roses grew against the walls, and on an upper
window-sill I remember noticing a pot of fuchsias.
My sense of the pressure of the invisible began to yield to my
architectural interest. The building was so fine that I felt a
desire to explore it for its own sake. I looked about the court,
wondering in which corner the guardian lodged. Then I pushed
open the barrier and went in. As I did so, a little dog barred
my way. He was such a remarkably beautiful little dog that for a
moment he made me forget the splendid place he was defending. I
was not sure of his breed at the time, but have since learned
that it was Chinese, and that he was of a rare variety called the
"Sleeve-dog." He was very small and golden brown, with large
brown eyes and a ruffled throat: he looked rather like a large
tawny chrysanthemum. I said to myself: "These little beasts
always snap and scream, and somebody will be out in a minute."
The little animal stood before me, forbidding, almost menacing:
there was anger in his large brown eyes. But he made no sound,
he came no nearer. Instead, as I advanced, he gradually fell
back, and I noticed that another dog, a vague rough brindled
thing, had limped up. "There'll be a hubbub now," I thought; for
at the same moment a third dog, a long-haired white mongrel,
slipped out of a doorway and joined the others. All three stood
looking at me with grave eyes; but not a sound came from them.
As I advanced they continued to fall back on muffled paws, still
watching me. "At a given point, they'll all charge at my ankles:
one of the dodges that dogs who live together put up on
one," I thought. I was not much alarmed, for they were neither
large nor formidable. But they let me wander about the court as
I pleased, following me at a little ...
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