Edith Wharton - Novel 15 Read Online Free Page A

           “And
will be, if you respect my wishes, my dear,” he always added. “I like to see a
handsome figure well set-off, and not to have our friends imagine, when they
come to dine, that Mrs. Raycie is sick above-stairs, and I’ve replaced her by a
poor relation in allapacca.” In compliance with which Mrs. Raycie, at once
flattered and terrified, spent her last penny in adorning herself and her
daughters, and had to stint their bedroom fires, and the servants’ meals, in
order to find a penny for any private necessity.
                 Mr.
Raycie had long since convinced his wife that this method of dealing with her,
if not lavish, was suitable, and in fact “handsome”; when she spoke of the
subject to her relations it was with tears of gratitude for her husband’s
kindness in assuming the management of her property. As he managed it
exceedingly well, her hard-headed brothers (glad to have the responsibility off
their hands, and convinced that, if left to herself, she would have muddled her
money away in ill-advised charities) were disposed to share her approval of Mr.
Raycie; though her old mother sometimes said helplessly: “When I think that
Lucy Ann can’t as much as have a drop of gruel brought up to her without his
weighing the oatmeal…” But even that was only whispered, lest Mr. Raycie’s
mysterious faculty of hearing what was said behind his back should bring sudden
reprisals on the venerable lady to whom he always alluded, with a tremor in his
genial voice, as “my dear mother-in-law—unless indeed she will allow me to call
her, more briefly but more truly, my dear mother.”
                 To
Lewis, hitherto, Mr. Raycie had meted the same measure as to the females of the
household. He had dressed him well, educated him expensively, lauded him to the
skies—and counted every penny of his allowance. Yet there was a difference; and
Lewis was as well aware of it as any one.
                 The
dream, the ambition, the passion of Mr. Raycie’s life, was (as his son knew) to
found a Family; and he had only Lewis to found it with. He believed in
primogeniture, in heirlooms, in entailed estates, in all the ritual of the
English “landed” tradition. No one was louder than he in praise of the
democratic institutions under which he lived; but he never thought of them as
affecting that more private but more important institution, the Family; and to
the Family all his care and all his thoughts were given. The result, as Lewis
dimly guessed, was, that upon his own shrinking and inadequate head was centred
all the passion contained in the vast expanse of Mr. Raycie’s breast. Lewis was his very own, and Lewis represented what was most dear
to him; and for both these reasons Mr. Raycie set an inordinate value on the
boy (a quite different thing, Lewis thought from loving him).
                 Mr.
Raycie was particularly proud of his son’s taste for letters. Himself not a
wholly unread man, he admired intensely what he called the “cultivated
gentleman”—and that was what Lewis was evidently going to be. Could he have
combined with this tendency a manlier frame, and an
interest in the few forms of sport then popular among gentlemen, Mr. Raycie’s
satisfaction would have been complete; but whose is, in this disappointing
world? Meanwhile he flattered himself that, Lewis being still young and
malleable, and his health certainly mending, two years of travel and adventure
might send him back a very different figure, physically as well as mentally.
Mr. Raycie had himself travelled in his youth, and was persuaded that the
experience was formative; he secretly hoped for the return of a bronzed and
broadened Lewis, seasoned by independence and adventure, and having discreetly
sown his wild oats in foreign pastures, where they would not contaminate the
home crop.
                 All
this Lewis guessed; and he guessed as well that these two