The Age Of Desire: A Novel Part 4

De Noailles gets up suddenly and walks to the cabinet by the fireplace. She exudes the darkest mysteries of sensuality in every move she makes. In some odd, subtle way, she even stirs Edith. From a shelf she draws a hammered-silver flask. It sparkles in the firelight. Without asking, she pours some of its contents into Edith's tea and then into her own. "We were missing something, weren't we?" she says with a wicked smile, and when she offhandedly touches Edith's hand, Edith feels electricity pa.s.s through her fingertips.

"Anna de Noailles is like no one I've ever met," Edith tells Anna Bahlmann the next afternoon when her secretary carries in her newly typed pages. "Perhaps I will invite her for dinner. You can meet her."

"She would pay no attention to me," Anna says.

"Nonsense. You must see her face-to-face to truly understand her poetry. It's as if she's neither a woman nor a man, but another s.e.x entirely. She's got the mind and the desires of a man and the drive to be heard like a man. And yet all the beauty and allure of a woman. The extraordinary thing is it's all unstudied. She's a force of nature."

"She sounds frightening," Anna says.

"I'll invite her to meet Henry when he's here."

"Well, then, you surely wouldn't want me at the table."

"Of course I would, Tonni. Henry finds you very calming."

"Herz, if you wouldn't mind, may I talk to you about this scene?" Anna asks, selecting a few pages from the batch she's typed. Edith has nearly worn herself out trying to prepare her new novel, The Fruit of the Tree, for serialization in Scribner's Magazine. The new book is bolder and more important, she deems, than any book she's written before. The Fruit of the Tree is about industrial reform, and even addresses a nurse choosing death over life for a patient and friend who suffers after a crippling accident.

But Edith's editor isn't satisfied with the ending. He wants Edith to make the main character's feelings clearer. As a nurse, Justine has opted to give her friend a deathblow of morphine she feels her friend is begging for, rather than force her to live in excruciating pain. After Justine ends up marrying the woman's widower, she never finds the right time to tell him what she's done. When he discovers the truth, she must make a series of confounding choices. Edith has always resisted overexplaining her characters' intentions. Let the psychology speak for itself, she thinks. In life, no one explains themselves, and rarely are people insightful enough to question their own motives. But she has decided this one time to give Mr. Burlingame what he's asked for. He has been annoyingly insistent. Like a fly in her ear. And now she isn't feeling very good about the changes. How disconcerting to have Tonni call it out.

"Have I failed at it?" she asks Anna. "It was a fool's mission."

"Failed. No, but . . ."

Edith feels herself biting her lip, just as she did as a child when Tonni corrected her German grammar or urged her to better support her main theory in an essay on Goethe.

"I wish Burlingame hadn't asked it of me. . . . I think he's wrong."

"So why change it?" Anna says.

"Burlingame thought . . . you agree with me then?"

"It was clear enough before."

"And now it feels like a diatribe."

"He isn't reading carefully enough. It's all there," Anna says.

Edith reaches out and gives Anna a hug, clutches her for a moment as someone might grab a life preserver.

"I shouldn't need a backup on these things. . . . I don't know why I let him talk me into it."

"We all need a backup sometimes." Anna's eyes are as clear as water. Her lashes almost transparent. She stands there, blinking in the sun. "Shall I retype it as it was, then?" Anna asks in a whisper.

"Yes," Edith says. "Please, please do."

Henry James arrives at the Whartons' door with two trunks, four hatboxes and a stained and rather nasty-smelling half-eaten train lunch which he insists be placed immediately on ice. One cannot entirely prepare for a visit from Henry James. He is a jumble of strength, intensity, neediness and vulnerability so tangled, so exquisitely bright, so sharp, so insistent that no matter how well one plans, there is simply no way to know what to expect. Edith sees him as brilliant and flawed. Kind and selfish. Both master and child. Approaching the age of sixty-four, he has grown stout and unwell. During the cold spring trip they took with him the previous year, he was often dyspeptic, and had moments of what Edith thought of as thermostatic issues: he would suddenly and dramatically become hot. Itchy. This would usually occur after dinner. If he was in familiar company, he would apologize profusely, remove his jacket, then his waistcoat and then, with nothing else to remove, he'd go to bed. Edith remembers her mother going through a similar phase as part of "the change." She didn't think men experienced this too.

But if any man could, it's fitting that it be Henry, for, despite his rich masculine voice and dominant presence, there is a femininity about him that Edith can't help noting. She sees it in his sensuous lips and his perfectly manicured hands. And in his eyes. Henry has the clear, gentle eyes of a child.

Henry once confided in Edith that as a child he was mortified by a stammer so profound it took a Herculean effort for him to share even the simplest thoughts, so even now each spoken word bears the weight of a dictionary falling off a shelf. It often takes him so long to get to the point, a simple story can grow to four, six, eight times its natural size. While Edith knows she's in for an exquisite ride, others are often not as indulgent.

At the dinner party she throws on the night of his arrival, Henry is in grand form, spinning a single story that dominates the entire dinner from soup to dessert. It is a long-winded narrative, even for Henry, and though to Edith it seems wonderful, she sees it strains the patience of even the most tolerant of her guests.

After Henry has retired, Teddy, still pale from a week's bout of influenza, struts into Edith's boudoir and perches heavily on the edge of her bed, sighing.

"Must everything Henry says be a literary reference?" he says. "I never had a cla.s.s at Harvard so wearisome."

Edith takes a deep breath. "Some things are worth waiting for."

"But every time he speaks, I fear the train will never reach the station."

She rises and comes over to him, pressing her hand against his forehead. "You're still feverish, dear," she says. "Go to bed. We want you well for our motor trip."

"Promise me you will not let Mr. James go on while we are trapped in the motorcar with him, Puss."

"I can't control Henry," she says.

"Well, give it a try." He sniffs, shuffles into his own room and closes the door sharply behind him.

Edith is amazed that she has so far avoided Teddy's influenza. Instead, it's Henry who falls ill. Two days after his arrival, he asks Alfred White to inform Edith that he is seriously, possibly fatally indisposed.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am. That is what he told me to convey," Alfred says, looking at his shoes.

Edith hurries to Henry's room and taps on the door.

"May I come in?" she asks.

"If you dare," he says. Henry looks like a great beached whale, lying in the middle of the lit bateau with the covers neatly tucked under his armpits.

"I think I shall die," he says. "You'll have to have a piano mover remove me from this lovely bedroom," he announces. He moans and lies back on his pillow. Edith notes that he has put on a beautiful silk dressing gown and wears an ascot. Quite an effort for just lying in bed.

"We'll take very good care of you," she a.s.sures him.

She arranges for much tea with honey, all sorts of croissants and toast and stewed chicken to be brought to his room.

Later in the afternoon, Henry asks for Anna. Soft, serious Anna enters his room, shuts the door and doesn't come out for an hour.

Edith, feeling a tad jealous, monitors the door. When Anna emerges, Edith ushers her away from Henry's room. "What on earth did he speak to you about?" she asks.

"He told me what he wanted us to do if he died."

Edith can't help but laugh. "He's not going to die. He simply has a head cold."

"I took notes," Anna says, and with only the faintest smile holds up a pad of paper filled from top to bottom.

"We'll have to have these framed for future reference," Edith says. "Good heavens. He wants only black horses in his funeral procession. No cars. Very old-fashioned of him."

A week later, when Henry is himself again, guests begin to arrive once more, including Henry's particular request: the journalist Mr. Morton Fullerton.

Fullerton arrives on a Tuesday afternoon bearing an elegant top hat, a walking stick and a nosegay of roses, violets and daisies for Edith.

"For me? Or Henry?"

"You, of course," he says.

"Oh lovely! I appreciate flowers so much this time of year!" She strokes the slick lavender silk gracing the stems. "Thank you."

"The magic of hothouses," he says. "I hear you are quite the gardener."

"And who told you that?"

"Charles Eliot Norton."

"You know Mr. Norton?"

The well-known Harvard scholar is the father of Sally Norton, one of Edith's dearest friends. Edith feels flattered that Fullerton bothered to mention her to them.

"He influenced me more than anyone at Harvard. I know all the Nortons, and they seem to know you. I don't wish to be brazen, Mrs. Wharton. But the Nortons say I must visit you when I'm in Ma.s.sachusetts. That your house is the 'embodiment of you.'"

"The embodiment of me. Hmmm. Largish and white?"

He looks her up and down with a grin. "Well put together. Elegant."

Fullerton's good looks make Edith uncomfortable. She's heard that the glaciers in the Alaska territory hold such an extraordinary azure color they seem to have trapped the sky beneath the ice. And that's how Morton Fullerton's eyes strike her. Caught in the black fringe of his long lashes, they are glistening, chilling, reflective. "Oh, and Sally says I must smell the pine trees at night from your terrace."

Wise Sally. To step out on The Mount's terrace in the moonlight, after a pulsingly hot day, and feel the cool breath of pine is one of Edith's greatest pleasures. "I'll count on you visiting me, then?" she asks.

"We'll shake on it." he offers his hand. With her hand enfolded in his, an odd sense of peace comes over her. She reluctantly lets go, but her very skin seems to vibrate.

"Please excuse me while I get Mr. James." She hears a girlish lilt to her own voice.

Henry is thrilled to see Fullerton. His face lights up like a starving man being presented a chocolate cream pie. He pulls up one of the Louis XIV tapestry chairs to sit closer.

"My boy," he says, "you're looking well. The world of journalism hasn't ruined you, I see."

"I am quite good at hiding the damage," Fullerton says. "And you, Mr. James, are looking fine, despite your brush with death."

Henry apparently doesn't hear the irony in his voice, for he goes on in flinching detail describing the misery of his week in bed. Fullerton furrows his brows with appropriate concern.

"I am sure Mrs. Wharton was relieved that you didn't die chez Wharton. It would have been a blot on her reputation as the consummate hostess."

"I am too thoughtful to die in someone else's home," Henry says with a harrumph.

The bonne arrives with a spread for tea: tea cakes, pastries and small sandwiches. Henry isn't too shy to fill his plate with little pleasures. Fullerton merely sips his brew. He must be in his early forties, but his body appears fit and disciplined. His face unlined. There's no mark of indulgence in drink or gluttony.

"I hear that Charles Du Bos is translating The House of Mirth for you," Fullerton says, turning to Edith.

"Yes, I'm hoping to have it serialized here. To place it in Le Temps or Revue de Paris. Do you think that's a good idea? That's how it was done in New York."

"A very good idea. But the Revue de Paris is the better choice. It's a natural fit for your work. I could speak to the chief editor there, Rivoire. I know him well."

"Could you?" She races on lest she lose her nerve. "And let me ask you, Mr. Fullerton: when Charlie is done with the translation, would you look at it? I am a disastrous proofreader even in English. My brain supplies all the missing words and I don't see the gap. But in French . . ." She makes a moue and a poofing sound, as the French do to express complete hopelessness. "I imagine you are much better at it."

He smiles very slowly, and his eyes meet hers. "Nothing would give me more pleasure," he says.

"I'll write as soon as the ma.n.u.script arrives," she tells him.

When Fullerton is gone, Henry grips Edith's hand with childish pa.s.sion. "He's an extraordinary fellow, isn't he? A beautiful, extraordinary fellow." Edith cannot help but agree.

Edith hasn't been sleeping well. Her nights are filled with dreams that wind around her so tightly she wakes in the dark, aching and imprinted by the sheets. What was the dream she just had? That she and the Comtesse de Noailles were going bathing together in the sea. Edith can't remember the last time she really stepped into the ocean. Sometime in her twenties in Newport. The unpredictability of the waves frightened her. Walter once said, "You'd control the Atlantic if you could, wouldn't you, Edith? That's why you're afraid of it, you know. Because it pays you no heed." But in this dream, she and de Noailles were going to swim. And de Noailles started removing her own clothes right at the sh.o.r.eline, encouraging Edith to do the same.

"There's no one here. Don't be shy."

She helped Edith untie her corset.

"Evil thing," she called it, tossing it down onto the sand.

De Noailles wanted them to swim naked. Completely naked. The sea wasn't cold like it is in Newport. It was warm like bathwater, bright turquoise like the Mediterranean. Undressed, Anna's skin was dusky and glowing, her nipples as richly colored as autumn apples.

"Come in! Come in," she called out to Edith, stepping in deeper and deeper, until the water reached her neck and she was swept into the bright waves. Laughing and luxuriating in the broth-warm ocean, she waved and smiled. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders. She was a water nymph, a siren, calling Edith forth. But Edith stood shivering on the edge of the surf. If only she could make herself go into the water, it would be warmer. Far warmer. Gooseflesh sprouted on her arms, her exposed thighs. Why couldn't she make herself go in? It should have been so easy. So enticing. But she couldn't step in beyond her knees. What did it matter that the warm waves were so inviting when she couldn't sally forth?

She shivers now in her bed. Alone and awake, she wishes she could close her eyes and swim.

The motorcar is packed. With Charles Cook, the chauffeur, at the wheel, Teddy, Henry and Edith set off to explore France. Nicette climbs right into Henry's lap and he declares by lunch that he has fallen in love with her. If she were a woman, he says, he would throw all caution to the wind and give up his bachelorhood immediately. The weather is lovely and a breeze whooshes in through the open windows. The car flies on its big India rubber tires. They all exclaim that they can barely feel the road.

It's late April when they return to Paris, a jolly crew. Henry says he's practically had the time of his life. Edith is tickled by the disclaimer of the word "practically," but she feels closer to him than she imagined possible. As persnickety and full of irony as he can be-and often is-he experiences everything with a childlike pleasure that she deems the essential element of a good traveler, and in this case, a charming companion. By the time they return to Paris, even Teddy is calling him "good old HJ."

Henry stays on at the Rue de Varenne through much of May, and the Bourgets-Paul and Minnie-visit with him often. Paul has grown fond of Henry, has all the patience in the world for his stories and declares him a genius.

One afternoon, Anna de Noailles comes for tea and to meet the great Monsieur James. She arrives in her silken dress, dewy and flushed as though she has walked all the way from the Right Bank. After Edith's dream of de Noailles naked in the ocean, she feels shy to be alone with her. And since Henry is still out with the Bourgets, Edith is relieved to recall her promise to invite Anna Bahlmann to meet La Comtesse. Coaxed from her room, Anna sits very still on a distant settee in her dull gray dress and gazes at de Noailles with wide eyes. She speaks only when Anna de Noailles asks, "Aren't you going to have a taste of these uncanny little cakes, Miss Bahlmann? Honestly, you will be a changed woman." Anna shrinks back into the pillows and demurs, "Non, merci."

"Miss Bahlmann clearly doesn't wish to be a changed woman," Edith says, laughing. Just then she catches Anna's pained eyes and feels a moment's remorse. But then Tonni leans forward.

"Comtesse, when I read your poem "Imprint," I cried. It made me realize how little I leave behind." And then, in flawless French, Anna Bahlmann recites the beginning of the poem.

"So vigorously will I lean on life, So strongly will I hold and embrace it, That before I lose the sweetness of day It will be heated from my touch."

Anna de Noailles's soft lips part with surprise.

"It spoke to me," Anna Bahlmann goes on to say. "It urged me to make a mark."

"Truly, Miss Bahlmann?" The Comtesse raises her extraordinary dark eyebrows. "I too often hope in vain that my poems will do more than amuse people. You are proof that I have made my mark on someone," she says humbly. "I am inexpressibly touched."

When the tea is over, she embraces Anna. "Imprint the world," she whispers into her ear loud enough for Edith to hear. The door closes behind her.

Edith and Anna Bahlmann are left standing in the hall with the Comtesse's lingering scent. Edith takes in the figure of the woman who hovers by her every single day: so transparent in her gray gown, like a wisp of smoke threatening to disperse. She wonders if she has ever really seen her before.

Anna Bahlmann lies neck-deep in the servants' tub, caressing the cool nickel faucet with her toes, whispering aloud the same poem she quoted to the Comtesse. She is pleased that the cool tile plumps her whisper with watery sibilance.