Edith Wharton
Expiation
About the print version
Expiation
Edith Wharton
Cosmopolitan Magazine Company
New York
1908
Note: Wharton, Edith. Cosmopolitan34 (Dec. 1908): 209-222.
Published: 1908
EXPIATION
BY EDITH WHARTON
I.
"IT WAS IN FACT THE BISHOP OSSINING." Drawn by C. M. Reigen.
"I CAN never," said Mrs. Fetherel, "hear the bell ring without a shudder."
Her unruffled aspect -- she was the kind of woman whose emotions never
communicate themselves to her clothes -- and the conventional background of the
New York drawing-room, with its pervading implication of an imminent tea-tray
and of an atmosphere in which the social functions have become purely reflex,
lent to her declaration a relief not lost on her cousin Mrs. Clinch, who, from
the other side of the fireplace, agreed with a glance at the clock,that it was
the hour for bores.
"Bores!" cried Mrs. Fetherel impatiently. "If I shuddered at them>, I should
have a chronic ague!"
She leaned forward and laid a sparkling finger on her cousin's shabby black
knee. "I mean the newspaper clippings," she whispered.
Mrs. Clinch returned a glance of intelligence. "They've begun already?"
"Not yet; but they're sure to now, at any minute, my publisher tells me."
Mrs. Fetherel's look of apprehension sat oddly on her small features, which
had an air of neat symmetry somehow suggestive of being set in order every
morning by the housemaid. Some one (there were rumors that it was her cousin)
had once said that Paula Fetherel would have been very pretty if she hadn't
looked so like a moral axiom in a copy-book hand.
Mrs. Clinch received her confidence with a smile. "Well," she said, "I
suppose you were prepared for the consequences of authorship?"
Mrs. Fetherel blushed brightly. "It isn't their coming," she owned -- "it's
their coming now."
"Now?"
"The Bishop's in town."
Mrs. Clinch leaned back and shaped her lips to a whistle which deflected in
a laugh. "Well!" she said.
"You see!" Mrs. Fetherel triumphed.
"Well -- weren't you prepared for the Bishop?"
"Not now -- at least, I hadn't thought of his seeing the clippings."
"And why should he see them?"
"Bella -- won't you understand? It's John."
"John?"
"Who has taken the most unexpected tone -- one might almost say out of
perversity."
"Oh, perversity -- " Mrs. Clinch murmured, observing her cousin between lids
wrinkled by amusement. "What tone has John taken?"
Mrs. Fetherel threw out her answer with the desperate gesture of a woman who
lays bare the traces of a marital fist. "The tone of being proud of my book."
The measure of Mrs. Clinch's enjoyment overflowed in laughter.
"Oh, you may laugh," Mrs. Fetherel insisted, "but it's no joke to me. In the
first place, John's liking the book is so -- so -- such a false note -- it puts
me in such a ridiculous position; and then it has set him watching for the
reviews -- who would ever have suspected John of knowing that books were
reviewed? Why, he's actually found out about the Clipping Bureau, and whenever
the postman rings I hear John rush out of the library to see if there are any yellow envelopes. Of
course, when they do come he'll bring them into the drawing-room and read them
aloud to everybody who happens to be here -- and the Bishop is sure to happen to
be here!"
Mrs. Clinch repressed her amusement. "The picture you draw is a lurid one,"
she conceded, "but your modesty strikes me as abnormal, especially in an author.
The chances are that some of the clippings will be rather pleasant reading. The
critics are not all union men."
Mrs. Fetherel stared. "Union men?"
"Well, I mean they don't all belong to the well-known
Society-for-the-Persecution-of-Rising-Authors. Some of them have even been known
to defy its regulations and say a good word for a new writer."
"Oh, I dare say," said Mrs. Fetherel, with the laugh her cousin's epigram
exacted. "But you don't quite see my point. I'm not at all nervous about the
success of my book -- my publisher tells me I have no need to be -- but I am
afraid of its being a succés de scandale."
"Mercy!" said Mrs. Clinch, sitting up.
The butler and footman at this moment appeared with the tea-tray, and when
they had withdrawn, Mrs. Fetherel, bending her brightly rippled head above the
kettle, continued in a murmur of avowal, "The title, even, is a kind of
challenge."
"'Fast and Loose,'" Mrs. Clinch mused. "Yes, it ought to take."
"I didn't choose it for that reason!" the author protested. "I should have
preferred something quieter -- less pronounced; but I was determined not to
shirk the responsibility of what I had written. I want people to know beforehand
exactly what kind of book they are buying."
"Well," said Mrs. Clinch, "that's a degree of conscientiousness that I've
never met with before. So few books fulfil the promise of their titles that
experienced readers never expect the fare to come up to the menu."
"'Fast and Loose' will be no disappointment on that score,"her cousin
significantly returned. "I've handled the subject without gloves. I've called a
spade a spade."
"You simply make my mouth water! And to think I haven't been able to read it
yet because every spare minute of my time has been given to correcting the
proofs of 'How the Birds Keep Christmas'! There's an instance of the hardships
of an author's life!"
Mrs. Fetherel's eye clouded. "Don't joke, Bella, please. I suppose to
experienced authors there's always something absurd in the nervousness of a new
writer, but in my case so much is at stake; I've put so much of myself into this
book and I'm so afraid of being misunderstood . . . of being, as it were, in
advance of my time . . . like poor Flaubert. . . . I know you'll think me
ridiculous . . . and if only my own reputation were at stake, I should never
give it a thought . . . but the idea of dragging John's name through the mire .
. ."
Mrs. Clinch, who had risen and gathered her cloak about her,stood surveying
from her genial height her cousin's agitated countenance.
"Why did you use John's name, then?"
"That's another of my difficulties! I had to. There would have been no merit
in publishing such a book under an assumed name; it would have been an act of
moral cowardice. 'Fast and Loose' is not an ordinary novel. A writer who dares
to show up the hollowness of social conventions must have the courage of her
convictions and be willing to accept the consequences of defying society. Can
you imagine Ibsen or Tolstoy writing under a false name?" Mrs. Fetherel lifted a
tragic eye to her cousin. "You don't know, Bella, how often I've envied you
since I began to write. I used to wonder sometimes -- you won't mind my saying
so? -- why, with all your cleverness, you hadn't taken up some more exciting
subject than natural history; but I see now how wise you were. Whatever happens,
you will never be denounced by the press!"
"Is that what you're afraid of?" asked Mrs. Clinch, as she grasped the
bulging umbrella which rested against her chair. "My dear, if I had ever had the
good luck to be denounced by the press, my brougham would be waiting at the door
for me at this very moment, and I shouldn't have to ruin this umbrella by using
it in the rain.
Why, you innocent, if I'd ever felt the slightest aptitude for showing up social
conventions, do you suppose I should waste my time writing 'Nests Ajar' and 'How
to Smell the Flowers'? There's a fairly steady demand for pseudo-science and
colloquial ornithology, but it's nothing, simply nothing, to the ravenous call
for attacks on social institutions -- especially by those inside the
institutions!"
There was often, to her cousin, a lack of taste in Mrs.Clinch's
pleasantries, and on this occasion they seemed more than usually irrelevant.
"'Fast and Loose' was not written with the idea of a large sale."
Mrs. Clinch was unperturbed. "Perhaps that's just as well,"she returned,
with a philosophic shrug. "The surprise will be all the pleasanter, I mean. For
of course it's going to sell tremendously; especially if you can get the press
to denounce it."
"Bella, how can you? I sometimes think you say such things expressly to
tease me; and yet I should think you of all women would understand my purpose in
writing such a book. It has always seemed to me that the message I had to
deliver was not for myself alone, but for all the other women in the world who
have ...
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