Edith Wharton

The Old Maid Edith Wharton

THE shepherd continued to steal his kiss from the shepherdess, and the clock in the fallen trunkcontinued to tick out the minutes. Delia, petrified, sat unconscious of their passing, her cousin clasped to her. She was dumb withthe horror and amazement of learning that her own blood ran in the veins of the anonymousfoundling, the "hundred dollar baby" about whom New York had so long furtively jested andconjectured. It was her first contact with the nether side of the smooth social surface, and shesickened at the thought that such things were, and that she, Delia Ralston, should be hearing ofthem in her own house, and from the lips of the victim! For Chatty of course was a victim-butwhose? She had spoken no name, and Delia could put no question: the horror of it sealed her lips. Her mind had instantly raced back over Chatty's past; but she saw no masculine figure in it but JoeRalston's. And to connect Joe with the episode was obviously unthinkable. Some one in the south, then-? But no: Charlotte had been ill when she left-and in a flash Delia understood the realnature of that illness, and of the girl's disappearance. But from such speculations too her mindrecoiled, and instinctively she fastened on something she could still grasp: Joe Ralston's attitudeabout Chatty's paupers. Of course Joe could not let his wife risk bringing contagion into theirhome-that was safe ground to dwell on. Her own Jim would have felt in the same way; and shewould certainly have agreed with him. Her eyes travelled back to the clock. She always thought of Clem Spender when she looked atthe clock, and suddenly she wondered-if things had been different-what he would have said if shehad made such an appeal to him as Charlotte had made to Joe. The thing was hard to imagine; yet ina flash of mental readjustment Delia saw herself as Clem's wife, she saw her children as his, shepictured herself asking him to let her go on caring for the poor waifs in the Mercer Street stable, andshe distinctly heard his laugh and his light answer: "Why on earth did you ask, you little goose? Doyou take me for such a Pharisee as that?