Edith Wharton
The Choice
About the print version
The Choice
Edith Wharton
Century Magazine
New York
November 1908
Published: 1908
Chapter 1
I
Stilling, that night after dinner, had surpassed himself. He always did,
Wrayford reflected, when the small fry from Highfield came to dine. He, Cobham
Stilling, who had to find his bearings, keep to his level, in the big, heedless,
oppressive world of New York, dilated and grew vast in the congenial medium of
Highfield. The Red House was the biggest house of the Highfield summer colony,
as Cobham Stilling was its biggest man. No one else within a radius of a hundred
miles (on a conservative estimate) had as many horses, as many greenhouses, as
many servants, and assuredly no one else had two motors, or a motor-boat for the
lake.
The motor-boat was Stilling's latest hobby, and he rode -- or sailed -- it in
and out of the conversation all the evening, to the obvious edification of every
one present save his wife and his visitor, Austin Wrayford. The interest of the
latter two, who, from opposite ends of the drawing-room, exchanged a fleeting
glance when Stilling again launched his craft on the thin current of the talk --
the interest of Mrs. Stilling and Wrayford, had already lost its edge by
protracted conversational contact with the subject.
But the dinner-guests -- the Rector, Mr. Swordsley, and Mrs. Swordsley, Lucy
and Agnes Granger and their brother Addison, and young Jack Emmerton from
Harvard -- were all, for divers reasons, stirred to the proper pitch of feeling.
Mr. Swordsley, no doubt, was saying to himself: "If my good parishioner here can
afford to buy a motor-boat, in addition to all the other expenditures which an
establishment like this must entail, I certainly need not scruple to appeal to
him again for a contribution toward our Galahad Club." The Granger girls,
meanwhile, were evoking visions of lakeside picnics, not unadorned with the
presence of young Mr. Emmerton; while that youth himself speculated as to
whether his affable host would let him, when he came back on his next vacation,
"learn to run the thing himself"; and Mr. Addison Granger, the elderly bachelor
brother of the volatile Lucy and Agnes, mentally formulated the precise phrase
in which, in his next letter to his cousin Professor Spildyke of the University
of East Latmos, he should allude to "our last delightful trip in my old friend
Cobham Stilling's ten-thousand-dollar motor-launch" -- for East Latmos was still
in that primitive stage of social culture on which such figures impinge.
Isabel Stilling, sitting beside Mrs. Swordsley, her head slightly bent above
the needlework with which, on such occasions, it was her old-fashioned habit to
be engaged -- Isabel also had doubtless her reflections to make. As Wrayford
leaned back in his corner, and looked at her across the bright, flower-filled
drawing-room, he noted first of all -- for the hundredth time -- the flexible
play of her hands above the embroidery-frame, the shadow of the dusky, wavy hair
on her forehead, the tired droop of the lids over her somewhat full gray eyes.
He noted this, taking in unconsciously, at the same time, the indescribable
quality in her attitude, in the fall of her dress and the turn of her head, that
set her, for him, in a separate world; then he said to himself: "She's certainly
thinking 'Where on earth will he get the money to pay for it?'"
But at the same moment, from his inevitable position on the hearth-rug, cigar in mouth, his hands in his waistcoat pockets, Stilling was impressively
perorating.
"I said, 'If I have the thing at all, I want the best that can be got.'
That's my way, you know, Swordsley; I suppose I'm what you'd call fastidious.
Always was, about everything, from cigars to wom-" -- his eye met the
apprehensive glance of Mrs. Swordsley, who looked, in evening dress, like her
husband with his clerical coat cut slightly lower -- "so I said, 'If I have the
thing at all, I want the best that can be got.' Nothing makeshift for me, no
second-best. I never cared for the cheap and showy. I always say frankly to a
man, 'If you can't give me a first-rate cigar, for the Lord's sake, let me smoke
my own.' Well, if you have my standards, you can't buy a thing in a minute. You
must look round, compare, select. I found there were lots of motor-boats on the
market, just as there's lots of stuff called champagne. But I said to myself,
'Ten to one there's only one fit to buy, just as there's only one champagne fit
for a gentleman to drink.' Argued like a lawyer, eh, Austin?" He tossed this
jovially toward Wrayford. "Take me for one of your own trade, wouldn't you?
Well, I'm not such a fool as I look. I suppose you fellows who are tied to the
treadmill, -- oh, excuse me, Swordsley, but work's work, isn't it? -- I suppose
you think a man like me has nothing to do but take it easy -- loll through life
like a woman. By George, sir, I'd like either of you to see the time it takes --
I won't say the brains -- but just the time it takes to pick out a good
motor-boat. Why, I went -- "
Mrs. Stilling set her embroidery-frame noiselessly on the low table at her
side, and turned her head toward Wrayford. "Would you mind ringing for the
tray?"
The interruption helped Mrs. Swordsley to waver to her feet. "I think we
really ought to be going; my husband has an early service to-morrow."
Her host sounded an immediate protest. "Going already? Nothing of the sort!
Why, the night's still young, as the poet says. Long way from here to the
rectory? Nonsense! In our little twenty-horse motor we do it in five minutes --
don't we, Belle? Ah, you're walking, to be sure -- " Stilling's indulgent
gesture seemed to concede that, in such a case, allowances must be made, and
that he was the last man not to make them. "Well, then, Swordsley -- " He held
out a thick, red hand that seemed to exude beneficience, and the clergyman,
pressing it, ventured to murmur a suggestion.
"What, that Galahad Club, again? Why, I thought my wife -- Isabel, didn't we
-- No? Well, it must have been my mother, then. And of course, you know,
anything my good mother gives is -- well -- virtually -- You haven't asked her?
Sure? I could have sworn; I get so many of these appeals. And in these times,
you know, we have to go cautiously. I'm sure you recognize that yourself,
Swordsley. With my obligations -- here now, to show you don't bear malice, have
a brandy and soda before you go. Nonsense, man! This brandy isn't liquor; it's
liqueur. I picked it up last year in London -- last of a famous lot from Lord
St. Oswyn's cellar. Laid down here, it stood me at -- Eh?" he broke off as his
wife moved toward him. "Ah, yes, of course. Miss Lucy, Miss Agnes -- a drop of
soda-water? Look here, Addison, you won't refuse my tipple, I know. Well, take a
cigar, at any rate, Swordsley. And, by the way, I'm afraid you'll have to go
round the long way by the avenue to-night. Sorry, Mrs. Swordsley, but I forgot
to tell them to leave the gate on the lane unlocked. Well, it's a jolly night,
and I daresay you won't mind the extra turn along the lake. And, by Jove! if the
moon's out, you can get a glimpse of the motor-boat as you turn the point. She's
moored just out beyond our boat-house; and it's a privilege to look at her, I
can tell you!"
THE dispersal of the remaining guests carried Stilling out into the hall,
where his pleasantries echoed genially under the oak rafters while the Granger
girls were being muffled for the drive and the carriages summoned from the
stables.
By a common impulse Mrs. Stilling and Wrayford had moved together toward the
hearth, which was masked from the door into the hall by a tall screen of
lacquer. Wrayford leaned his elbow against the chimney-piece, and Mrs. Stilling
stood motionless beside him, her clasped hands hanging down before her. The rose
on her breast stirred slightly.
"Have you any more work to do with him to-night?" she asked below her breath.
Wrayford shook his head. "We wound it all up before dinner. He doesn't want
to talk about it any more than he can help."
"It's so bad?"
"No; but he's got to pull up."
She paused, looking down at ...
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