THE DILETTANTE (Stories)

THE DILETTANTE (Stories) by Edith Wharton

Thursdale, a man who has spent his life perfecting the art of emotional detachment, breaks his habitual visiting pattern to call on Mrs. Margaret Vervain, an old confidante with whom he has maintained a long, carefully undefined relationship built on tact, reticence, and never-spoken feeling. He has just seen off Ruth Gaynor, his newly announced fiancée, at the station after her visit to town, and he wants to discuss with Mrs. Vervain how gracefully she handled meeting Miss Gaynor two days earlier. Thursdale prides himself on having trained Mrs. Vervain, over seven years, into a woman who never betrays emotion and always reads his cues correctly; he regards their relationship as his finest achievement in the "science of evasion" that has replaced the raw, crude passions of his youth. At Mrs. Vervain's house, he finds her oddly startled by his arrival, though she quickly recovers her usual composure. As they talk, it emerges that Miss Gaynor came to see Mrs. Vervain again that same morning, unannounced to Thursdale, by her own prior arrangement. Thursdale is unsettled to learn this, since Miss Gaynor said nothing of it at the station. Mrs. Vervain gradually reveals what passed between them: Miss Gaynor wanted to know, in the plainest terms, whether Mrs. Vervain and Thursdale had ever been lovers. Mrs. Vervain told her the truth — that nothing had ever "happened" between them, that she had no status, that she had never stood anywhere in the sense Miss Gaynor meant. Rather than being reassured, Miss Gaynor was disturbed by this revelation. She does not accept that the relationship was innocent in any comfortable sense; instead she is horrified by what she perceives as the real offense — that Thursdale had, over years, taken everything of value from Mrs. Vervain's feelings while giving nothing binding in return, "sifting and sorting" her to suit his taste, "burning out the gold and leaving a heap of cinders," letting her be used and discarded while every part of her belonged to him. Miss Gaynor accused Thursdale of being like Shylock, extracting his pound of flesh from Mrs. Vervain's heart, and said she despises Mrs. Vervain for having allowed it. Miss Gaynor stated she would have understood open love or plain indifference, but not this suspended, undefined intermediate state; she declared she wants a man "with a past" — someone whose feelings have been actually tested and spent — rather than one who has kept everything, including his own heart, so carefully withheld. Thursdale is shaken by this account, particularly by the news that Ruth despises him for what he did to Mrs. Vervain, not for any actual impropriety. He asks exactly what was said, and Mrs. Vervain repeats Miss Gaynor's accusations as closely as she can recall them. Thursdale, stricken, prepares to leave to see if a letter from Miss Gaynor is waiting at his rooms — he assumes their engagement is now in jeopardy or over. Mrs. Vervain, in a sudden reversal of her lifelong discretion, offers Thursdale an extraordinary out: she proposes that he tell Miss Gaynor she, Mrs. Vervain, lied — that he should let people believe, retroactively and in "imagination," that there had indeed been a past affair between them, so that Miss Gaynor's accusation would be satisfied and the engagement saved. She insists she is willing to sacrifice her own reputation for his sake, saying that in this way she would "not have been wasted." Thursdale is moved by the offer and kisses her hand in gratitude, but he refuses it: he argues that even if the fabrication rescued him in Miss Gaynor's eyes, it would not change what he actually is — he would go on being the same man, "sifting and sorting" as before, and the deception would only shift his eventual failure onto Miss Gaynor rather than avert it. He says he must "take his punishment alone," meaning he intends to go home and face whatever letter awaits him honestly. As he turns to leave, Mrs. Vervain tells him there will be no letter and no punishment for either of them: since Miss Gaynor has now seen him and spoken to him again since her morning visit, she will have already recalled any letter she might have sent, by telegraph, from the first station along her journey home. Thursdale, forcing a smile, replies that regardless, he will already have read it by the time any recall could take effect, and departs. Mrs. Vervain is left alone, hiding her eyes from what the narrative calls "the dreadful emptiness of the room."

By Edith Wharton · First published 1903 · Genre: Drama, Romance, Psychological Fiction · 5,128 words

First lines

It was on an impulse hardly needing the arguments he found himself / advancing in its favor, that Thursdale, on his way to the club, turned / as usual into Mrs. Vervain's street.

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Short Stories · American Literature · Early 20th Century · Social Commentary · Upper Class · Leisure Class · Wealth and Privilege · Morality Tales · Psychological Insight · Character Studies · Satire · Wit and Humor

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