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THE DESCENT OF MAN AND OTHER STORIES
THE DESCENT OF MAN AND OTHER STORIES EDITH WHARTON TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE DESCENT OF MAN AND OTHER STORIES
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 woods
the air of rejuvenation he brought with him was due less to the
influences of the climate than to the companionship he had enjoyed
on his travels. To Mrs. Linyard's observant eye he had appeared to
set out alone; but an invisible traveller had in fact accompanied
him and if his heart beat high it was simply at the pitch of his
adventure: for the 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 of
romance pledged to a flesh-and-blood abduction. The most fascinating
female is apt to be encumbered with luggage and scruples: to take up
a good deal of room in the present and overlap inconveniently into
the future; whereas an idea can accommodate itself to a single
molecule of the brain or expand to the circumference of the horizon.
The Professor's companion had to the utmost this quality of
adaptability. As the express train whirled him away from the
somewhat inelastic circle of Mrs. Linyard's affections his idea
seemed to be sitting opposite him and their eyes met every moment
or two in a glance of joyous complicity; yet when a friend of the
family presently joined him and began to talk about college matters
the idea slipped out of sight in a flash and the Professor would
have had no difficulty in proving that he was alone.
But if from the outset he found his idea the most agreeable of
fellow-travellers it was only in the aromatic solitude of the woods
that he tasted the full savour of his adventure. There during the
long cool August days lying full length on the pine-needles and
gazing up into the sky he would meet the eyes of his companion
bending over him like a nearer heaven. And what eyes they
were!--clear yet unfathomable bubbling with inexhaustible laughter
yet drawing their freshness and sparkle from the central depths of
thought! To a man who for twenty years 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 by an unbroken
and relentless domesticity. Now for the first time since his
marriage chance had given him six weeks to himself and he was
coming home with his lungs full of liberty.
It must not be inferred that the Professor's domestic relations were
defective: they were in fact so complete that it was almost
impossible to get away from them. It is the happy husbands who are
really in bondage; the little rift within the lute is often a
passage to freedom. Marriage had given the Professor exactly what he
had sought in it; a comfortable lining to life. The impossibility of
rising to sentimental crises had made him scrupulously careful not
to shirk the practical obligations of the bond. He took as it were a
sociological view of his case and modestly regarded himself as a
brick in that foundation on which the state is supposed to rest.
Perhaps if Mrs. Linyard had cared about entomology or had taken
sides in the war over the transmission of acquired characteristics
he might have had a less impersonal notion of marriage; but he was
unconscious of any deficiency in their relation and if consulted
would probably have declared that he didn't want any woman bothering
with his beetles. His real life had always lain in the universe of
thought in that enchanted region which to those who have lingered
there comes to have so much more colour and substance than the
painted curtain hanging before it. The Professor's particular veil
of Maia was a narrow strip of homespun woven in a monotonous
pattern; but he had only to lift it to step into an empire.
This unseen universe was thronged with the most seductive shapes:
the Professor moved Sultan-like through a seraglio of ideas. But of
all the lovely apparitions that wove their spells about him none
had ever worn quite so persuasive an aspect as this latest
favourite. For the others were mostly rather grave companions
serious-minded and elevating enough to have passed muster in a
Ladies' Debating Club; but this new fancy of the Professor's was
simply one embodied laugh. It was in other words the smile of
relaxation at the end of a long day's toil: the flash of irony that
the laborious mind projects irresistibly over labour
conscientiously performed. The Professor had always been a hard
worker. If he was an indulgent friend to his ideas he was also a
stern task-master to them. For in addition to their other duties
they had to support his family: to pay the butcher and baker and
provide for Jack's schooling and Millicent's dresses. The
Professor's household was a modest one yet it tasked his ideas to
keep it up to his wife's standard. Mrs. Linyard was not an exacting
wife and she took enough pride in her husband's attainments to pay
for her honours by turning Millicent's dresses and darning Jack's
socks and going to the College receptions year after year in the
same black silk with shiny seams. It consoled her to see an
occasional mention of Professor Linyard's remarkable monograph on
the Ethical Reactions of the Infusoria or an allusion to his
investigations into the Unconscious Cerebration of the Amoeba.
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Unpublished Work 
