The Project Gutenberg EBook of Autres Temps..., by Edith Wharton

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Title: Autres Temps...
1916

Author: Edith Wharton

Release Date: January 3, 2008 [EBook #24132]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUTRES TEMPS... ***

Produced by David Widger

AUTRES TEMPS...

By Edith Wharton

Copyright, 1916, By Charles Scribner's Sons

I

Mrs. Lidcote, as the huge menacing mass of New York defined itself far
off across the waters, shrank back into her corner of the deck and sat
listening with a kind of unreasoning terror to the steady onward drive
of the screws.

She had set out on the voyage quietly enough,--in what she called her
"reasonable" mood,--but the week at sea had given her too much time to
think of things and had left her too long alone with the past.

When she was alone, it was always the past that occupied her. She
couldn't get away from it, and she didn't any longer care to. During
her long years of exile she had made her terms with it, had learned
to accept the fact that it would always be there, huge, obstructing,
encumbering, bigger and more dominant than anything the future could
ever conjure up. And, at any rate, she was sure of it, she understood
it, knew how to reckon with it; she had learned to screen and manage and
protect it as one does an afflicted member of one's family.

There had never been any danger of her being allowed to forget the past.
It looked out at her from the face of every acquaintance, it appeared
suddenly in the eyes of strangers when a word enlightened them: "Yes,
_the_ Mrs. Lidcote, don't you know?" It had sprung at her the first day
out, when, across the dining-room, from the captain's table, she had
seen Mrs. Lorin Boulger's revolving eye-glass pause and the eye behind
it grow as blank as a dropped blind. The next day, of course, the
captain had asked: "You know your ambassadress, Mrs. Boulger?" and she
had replied that, No, she seldom left Florence, and hadn't been to Rome
for more than a day since the Boulgers had been sent to Italy. She was
so used to these phrases that it cost her no effort to repeat them. And
the captain had prom