As he gave Mrs. Wharton time to collect herself, Brownell was reminded of the most astonishing rumor he had heard concerning the Whartons: that Mrs. Wharton had taken a lover.
It seemed unlikely. The woman was nearly half a century old and had never seemed in any way inclined toward that sort of thing, preferring to surround herself with men who for various and discreet reasons had never married. True, she had seemed moved by Phillips’s earnest talk of love and breaking free. But now, looking at her creased, careworn face, Brownell could not credit it. This was a woman drained, not fulfilled.
He felt a soft, rustling presence; the Pekingese was nuzzling his ankle. Withdrawing his feet with as much tact as possible, Brownell said, “This little fellow is a change.”
“I am in the mood for change,” she said quietly.
“Yes, but … das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten.”
He had spoken quickly, and her German was rusty.
“Babies and bathwater,” he explained. “Don’t throw them out together.”
“I am not ending my life in America,” she assured him. “Merely selling a house in New York.”
“But don’t abandon New York as your subject,” he said. “If people want stories of Americans abroad”—or in the wilds of Massachusetts, he thought—“let them read Henry James.”
“I do detest it when people call me the female Henry James.”
“Better surely than when they called you the male Henry James,” he said and was pleased when it raised a faint smile.
The train clattered below them, this time at high speed, causing the lid of the porcelain teapot to rattle. The sugar shifted in its Meissen bowl like sand. The silverware jumped. Moving gingerly in her chair, Edith wondered how anyone lived in this appalling city. How were their nerves not severed and jangling like violin strings pulled to the breaking point? How were their brains not scrambled, their bodies exhausted? The noise alone. In the streets, people, horses, cars, trucks, so many and so crammed, one was left to pick one’s way through fearfully on foot, praying not to be in the way should something suddenly lurch forward without reason.
The city of her childhood had been balanced. So many homes, so many people, room enough that everyone might occupy their own small space in peace. But the number of people in New York had exploded since then from a sedate million or so to five million. All pace and proportion had been destroyed. Instead growth, rampant and indiscriminate. You saw it in the multitude of redbrick buildings, cheaply built and already decaying. The steel, vast brute girders slammed every which way—horizontal, perpendicular—the dripping skeletal supports for elevated trains and the first stark outlines of ever taller, ever uglier buildings. It made one feel as if one were living in a factory, not a city.
And the wires‚ everywhere wires—electric wires, telegraph wires, flung across the city like black spittle. Oh, we must all be connected, insisted the great minds. Leaving her to ask, Truly, must we? Does it bring happiness, being shoved in all together, connection without discernment? Connection without choice?
The busy, busy Mr. Phillips might say this was progress. But was it progress, she wondered, a city so chaotic anything might happen to anyone and no one would take the slightest notice?
“Do New York,” Henry James had commanded. But this had never been a place where she heard her own mind, for all that her mind conjured visions of it that people took for truth. She couldn’t bear to tell the excellent Mr. Brownell that she feared writing about New York because she had lost the feel of it. It had grown beyond her.
She had, in her fragile chair of the Palm Garden, worked herself into a fury. Her anger sluggishly churned in her stomach like a heavy meal, until she felt disgusted with herself. She was old and, worse than old, ridiculous.
“Forgive me, Mr. Brownell. I seem to be impossible these days. You shall have your book, I promise.”
“And shall it be a story of New York?”
His tone was gentle, cajoling, and she smiled, even as she thought, What on earth would that be? It was impossible now to see New York as anything other than something always becoming something else. The train hurtled through once again, its rumble seeming to say, This is the city now, but soon we will be bigger, noisier, more crowded. Love nothing, attach your affections to no street, no building nor park, for we will knock it over in an instant and rebuild. Brutality masked as dynamism. Why, she wanted to ask the most patient Brownell, would you want a story about that?
At her feet, Choumai was restless. Gathering him on to her lap, she said she would try.
Appeased, Brownell inquired as to her plans. Three works of Millet were on view at the American Art Galleries—did that interest her? At Carnegie Hall, the violinist Mischa Elman was giving a recital—that could be charming. Grace Vanderbilt was giving a dinner dance—no doubt she would attend.
“No doubt I shall not attend,” she corrected. “Grace Vanderbilt’s house is a Thermopylae of bad taste.” In a gentler vein, she added, “But I am going to Alice Vanderbilt’s musicale this evening. Caruso and Miss Emmy Destinn are to perform. Tomorrow is my birthday.” She waved off his congratulations. “It is a well-worn tradition, it requires no great celebration.”
“Nonetheless, I wish you many happy returns,” said Brownell.
He was pleased at having rounded off a difficult meeting with emollient pleasantries and was preparing his farewell when Mrs. Wharton said suddenly, “As a matter of fact, I shall be seeing Mr. James during my stay.”
“… Oh?”
“As well as Walter Berry and Morton Fullerton. I wrote you about Mr. Fullerton—he’s a journalist, very good on Paris. I’ve asked them to dine with me here at the Belmont.”
Brownell kept his face composed, even as he remembered that Walter Berry was an old friend of Mrs. Wharton’s—and one of the names whispered by those who accused her of having a lover. “Quite the gathering of minds.”
“The best minds I know. I…” Abstracted, she patted the little dog on her lap. “I have a question I wish to put to them.”
“Matter of life and death, eh?”
He spoke in jest, expecting levity in return. But Mrs. Wharton’s expression remained serious.
“Perhaps.”
As Mrs. Wharton described her dinner plans, David Graham Phillips was charging down Park Avenue. He had stayed at the hotel longer than he meant to, and now he was late. Not for any particular person or event; he was simply not where he wanted to be and had not done all that he wanted to do that day. Leaving the Belmont, he had considered taking the subway for the sake of speed. But it was only just over a mile to his apartment near Gramercy Park, and whenever possible, he preferred to walk. Once you became dependent on motorized transport, you lost all memory of the body’s capabilities. Then you lost the capabilities themselves. You became an inert … thing to be carted around, pushed whatever way they wanted you to go.
Slowing, he reviewed that last thought. It was limp; why? Thing was wrong. Sloppy. He tried it again.
You became one of the idle …
No, still not right.
Freedom, you lost your freedom. Yes. As this assertion came to him, he envisioned it on a piece of paper, in bold black ink, anticipated the physical release of setting it down.
As he swung onto Thirty-Fourth Street, he imagined throwing off the furred, bejeweled weight of Mrs. Wharton. The conversation had been aggravating. Worse than aggravating—pointless. And yet even now he could not leave it. There were things he should have said, better ways to say what he did. He should have challenged the silly woman more; if he couldn’t change her mind—there wasn’t much to change with that old New York type—he should have at least made her feel her limitations more keenly. Made her see that yes, she could live her life such as it was, but for God’s sake, have the decency to shut up about it. His point about Lily Bart had ended up sounding like praise. Which had not been his intention.
Two people, a couple with a dog, came his way. The dog’s leash and their bodies spread the length of the block, forcing Phillips to choose: He could take himself to either edge of the street, sidling along the margins, or he could hold to his path and push through, no matter if he yanked the dog off its feet or shoved the girl sideways. The girl was a noddle-head, wittering on about the sweetest little pair of court shoes, pale blue with rhinestones …
On rhinestones, he increased his speed. Alarmed, the couple shuffled right. As he passed, the dog yapped. The young lady cried, “Rude!” The American Girl, he thought in disgust. Her chin angled demurely into her velvet collar, her gaze lowered so she could peek up at opportune times. Not yet a “Gone to Pieces” woman, but a Parasite most certainly …
Then he thought of another young girl, her head low, her eyes lowered, not in flirtation but in misery, and shame curled through him. There was nothing so wrong with this girl. She was only doing what she’d been told to: bartering herself.
As always, when he got too heated, he made a mental list: everything he needed to do in the time he had left. He thought of the proofs for his next book, just delivered from the publisher. It was his masterpiece—he was certain of that. The new ending was the best thing he’d ever done.
He had written many fine books. But none of them belonged so purely to her. It was his gift—her struggle as it should be told, without all the foolish morality myths a lesser writer might impose on it. He envisioned her turning the pages, her delicate fingers on her lips as she realized …
He hoped he was there to see it.
As he neared home, he felt calmer. The day had not been wasted after all. He became aware that he had been walking with his fists raised, swinging his arms for greater momentum. Perhaps he had gotten a bit worked up. In the sharp, frigid air, his hands were cold stone, and he put them into his coat pockets. As he did, he felt the crumple of paper.
He had received the note that morning. It had been pushed through the letter slot. Really, he decided, it was impressive he hadn’t given it a thought until now.
It read, Tomorrow Is Your Last Day.
It was signed David Graham Phillips.
He thought that rather funny.