Souls Belated

Souls Belated by Edith Wharton

"Souls Belated" opens on a train beyond Milan, where Lydia and Gannett, unmarried and travelling together, receive a divorce decree naming Lydia and her husband Tillotson. Lydia has left Tillotson's stifling, conventional Fifth Avenue household—dominated by his mother's rigid propriety—because of her love for Gannett, though she has told herself otherwise. Now that the decree has arrived, Gannett proposes marriage. Lydia refuses, arguing passionately that marrying now, simply because society demands it, would be a "vulgar fraud," a cowardly capitulation to the very conventions and people she and Gannett scorned when they ran off together. She insists their bond needs no ceremony and extracts from him a promise never to raise the subject again. That evening they arrive at a lakeside hotel, the Hotel Bellosguardo, meaning to stay only one night en route to a village near Monte Rosa. Instead, when Gannett shows renewed interest in writing after a long fallow period, Lydia insists they settle there so he can work. The hotel is presided over socially by Lady Susan Condit, whose approval sets "the tone" for the other guests—among them the gossipy Miss Pinsent and the deferential Mrs. Ainger. Lydia and Gannett, passing as a married couple, are readily accepted into this small, self-satisfied society, and Lydia finds herself, to her own dismay, courting its good opinion. Two months pass; Gannett writes nothing. A flamboyant new couple arrives, Mr. and Mrs. Linton, whom Lady Susan pointedly snubs and the other guests follow in ignoring. One day Mrs. Linton approaches Lydia directly, revealing that she is actually Mrs. Cope, travelling with Lord Trevenna under an assumed name, and begs Lydia to find out what Trevenna confided to Gannett the previous night, fearing his family is scheming to separate them before her divorce is final. When Lydia refuses to spy for her, Mrs. Cope threatens to expose Lydia and Gannett's own unmarried status to Lady Susan and the household. Lydia sits alone in shock, forced to confront how completely she has come to crave the respectability she once claimed to despise. Returning to their rooms, Lydia tells Gannett what happened. He is anxious but then recalls that Mrs. Cope received an official-looking letter that afternoon and departed the hotel within the hour with Trevenna—evidently her divorce came through, resolving the threat. Relief gives way to a deeper crisis: Lydia, weeping, admits that her real horror was not exposure itself but discovering how desperately she wanted Lady Susan's esteem—how she has "toadied" and lied to the very bores she once mocked. Gannett confesses he has felt the same false comfort in their respectable pretense. Lydia declares that marriage would only formalize the deception and proposes instead that she leave him, reasoning that two people who love each other need the ordinary obstacles—duties, others, distance—that keep them from destroying each other through too much intimacy. Gannett protests that she has no right to leave him unless she has stopped loving him; she insists it is precisely because she loves him that she must go. He argues she can't do it if she still loves him; she asks why not, and he has no answer. At dawn, Gannett wakes to hear Lydia dressing quietly and, watching through the shutters, sees her leave with a travelling cloak and bag, cross to the steamboat landing, and buy a ticket. He does not go after her, reflecting on their situation as an inescapable bond of passion rather than the "common forbearances" of ordinary marriage, and on how friendless and ill-equipped for solitary life she is. He watches her board the boat's gangplank—then stop, turn back, and return toward the hotel garden instead of sailing away. As she approaches, he steps back from the window so as not to be seen watching her. He sits down at the table and, almost without conscious decision, begins looking up train times to Paris in a Bradshaw guide.

By Edith Wharton · First published 1916 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Romance, Drama · 5 chapters · 14,215 words

First lines

Their railway-carriage had been full when the train left Bologna; but at / the first station beyond Milan their only remaining companion -- a courtly / person who ate garlic out of a carpet-bag -- had left his crumb-strewn / seat with a bow.

Lydia's eye regretfully followed the shiny broadcloth of his retreating / back till it lost itself in the cloud of touts and cab-drivers hanging / about the station; then she glanced across at Gannett and caught the / same regret in his look. They were both sorry to be alone.

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Romance · Novel · Classic · Literary Fiction · American Literature · Social Class · Marriage · Love Triangle · Family Drama · Society Life · Upper Class · Wealth

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