THE DESCENT OF MAN
AND OTHER STORIES
BY EDITH WHARTON
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Descent of Man
The Other Two
Expiation
The Lady's Maid's Bell
The Mission of Jane
The Reckoning
The Letter
The Dilettante
The Quicksand
A Venetian Night's Entertainment
THE DESCENT OF MAN
I
When Professor Linyard came back from his holiday in the Maine woodsthe air of rejuvenation he brought with him was due less to theinfluences of the climate than to the companionship he had enjoyed onhis travels. To Mrs. Linyard's observant eye he had appeared to set outalone; but an invisible traveller had in fact accompanied him, and ifhis heart beat high it was simply at the pitch of his adventure: forthe Professor had eloped with an idea.
No one who has not tried the experiment can divine its exhilaration.Professor Linyard would not have changed places with any hero ofromance pledged to a flesh-and-blood abduction. The most fascinatingfemale is apt to be encumbered with luggage and scruples: to take up agood deal of room in the present and overlap inconveniently into thefuture; whereas an idea can accommodate itself to a single molecule ofthe brain or expand to the circumference of the horizon. TheProfessor's companion had to the utmost this quality of adaptability.As the express train whirled him away from the somewhat inelasticcircle of Mrs. Linyard's affections, his idea seemed to be sittingopposite him, and their eyes met every moment or two in a glance ofjoyous complicity; yet when a friend of the family presently joined himand began to talk about college matters, the idea slipped out of sightin a flash, and the Professor would have had no difficulty in provingthat he was alone.
But if, from the outset, he found his idea the most agreeable offellow-travellers, it was only in the aromatic solitude of the woodsthat he tasted the full savour of his adventure. There, during the longcool August days, lying full length on the pine-needles and gazing upinto the sky, he would meet the eyes of his companion bending over himlike a nearer heaven. And what eyes they were!—clear yet unfathomable,bubbling with inexhaustible laughter, yet drawing their freshness andsparkle from the central depths of thought! To a man who for twentyyears had faced an eye reflecting the obvious with perfect accuracy,these escapes into the inscrutable had always been peculiarly inviting;but hitherto the Professor's mental infidelities had been restricted byan unbroken and relentless domesticity. Now, for the first time sincehis marriage, chance had given him six weeks to himself, and he wascoming home with his lungs full of liberty.
It must not be inferred that the Professor's domestic relations weredefective: they were in fact so complete that it was almost impossibleto get away from them. It is the happy husbands who are really inbondage; the little rift within the lute is often a passage