Edith Wharton - SSC 10

 

 

The World Over.

 

 

   1936   

 

Contents

 

Charm Incorporated.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

Pomegranate Seed.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

Confession.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Roman Fever.

I.

II.

The Looking-Glass.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

Duration.

I.

II.

III.

 

 

 Charm Incorporated.

 

 

 I.
 
 

            Jim! I’m afraid… I’m dreadfully afraid…”

            James Targatt’s wife knelt by his armchair, the dark hair flung off her forehead, her dark eyes large with tears as they yearned up at him through those incredibly long lashes.

            “Afraid? Why—what’s the matter?” he retorted, annoyed at being disturbed in the slow process of digesting the dinner he had just eaten at Nadeja’s last new restaurant—a Ukrainian one this time. For they went to a different restaurant every night, usually, at Nadeja’s instigation, hunting out the most exotic that New York at the high tide of its prosperity had to offer. “That sturgeon stewed in cream—” he thought wearily. “Well, what is it?”

            “It’s Boris, darling. I’m afraid Boris is going to marry a film-star. That Halma Hoboe, you know… She’s the greatest of them all…” By this time the tears were running down Nadeja’s cheeks. Targatt averted his mind from the sturgeon long enough to wonder if he would ever begin to understand his wife, much less his wife’s family.

            “Halma Hoboe? Well, why on earth shouldn’t he? Has she got her divorce from the last man all right?”

            “Yes, of course.” Nadeja was still weeping. “But I thought perhaps you’d mind Boris’s leaving us. He will have to stay out at Hollywood now, he says. And I shall miss my brother so dreadfully. Hollywood’s very far from New York—no? We shall all miss Boris, shan’t we, James?”

            “Yes, yes. Of course. Great boy, Boris! Funny, to be related to a movie-star. ‘My sister-in-law, Halma Hoboe’. Well, as long as he couldn’t succeed on the screen himself—” said Targatt, suddenly sounding a latent relief, which came to the surface a moment later. “She’ll have to pay his bills now,” he muttered, too low for his wife to hear. He reached out for a second cigar, let his head sink back comfortably against the chair-cushions, and thought to himself: “Well, perhaps the luck’s turning…” For it was the first time, in the eight years of his marriage to Nadeja, that any information imparted to him concerning her family had not immediately led up to his having to draw another cheque.

              

 

 II.
 
 

            James Targatt had always been on his guard against any form of sentimental weakness; yet now, as he looked back on his life, he began to wonder if the one occasion on which he had been false to this principle might not turn out to be his best stroke of business.

            He had not had much difficulty in guarding himself against marriage. He had never felt an abstract yearning for fatherhood, or believed that to marry an old-fashioned affectionate girl, who hated society, and wanted to stay at home and darn and scrub, would really help an ambitious man in his career. He thought it was probably cheaper in the end to have your darning and scrubbing done for you by professionals, even if they came from one of those extortionate valeting establishments that used, before the depression, to charge a dollar a minute for such services. And eventually he found a stranded German widow who came to him on starvation wages, fed him well and inexpensively, and kept the flat looking as fresh and shiny as a racing-yacht. So there was no earthly obligation for him to marry; and when he suddenly did so, no question of expediency had entered into the arrangement.

            He supposed afterward that what had happened to him was what people called falling in love. He had never allowed for that either, and even now he was not sure if it was the right name for the knock-down blow dealt to him by his first sight of Nadeja. Her name told you her part of the story clearly enough. She came straight out of that struggling mass of indistinguishable human misery that Targatt called “Wardrift”. One day—he still wondered how, for he was always fiercely on his guard against such intrusions—she had forced her way into his office, and tried to sell him (of all things!) a picture painted by her brother Serge. They were all starving, she said; and very likely it was true. But that had not greatly moved him. He had heard the same statement made too often by too many people, and it was too painfully connected in his mind with a dreaded and rapidly increasing form of highway robbery called “Appeals”. Besides, Targatt’s imagination was not particularly active, and as he was always sure of a good meal himself, it never much disturbed him to be told that others were not. So he couldn’t to this day have told you how it came about that he bought Serge’s picture on the spot, and married Nadeja a few weeks afterward. He had been knocked on the head—sandbagged; a regular hold-up. That was the only way to describe it.

            Nadeja made no attempt to darn or scrub for him—which was perhaps just as well, as he liked his comforts. On the contrary, she made friends at once with the German widow, and burdened that industrious woman with the additional care of her own wardrobe, which was negligible before her marriage, but increased rapidly after she became Mrs.