The Other Two

The Other Two by Edith Wharton

Waythorn marries Alice, a woman twice divorced, whose remarriage takes him from courtship confidence into a series of unsettling encounters with her past. On the first night in his own house, newly returned from their honeymoon, Waythorn learns that Alice's first husband, Haskett, has written through his lawyer to claim his court-granted right to visit their sick daughter, Lily, who lies ill with typhoid in the Waythorn household. Waythorn agrees Haskett must be allowed to come, masking his discomfort so as not to trouble Alice. The next day Waythorn, fleeing the house before Haskett's visit, is thrown twice into the company of Alice's second husband, Gus Varick — first crushed beside him on the elevated train, then seated near him at a restaurant. Varick is affable and unbothered, and Waythorn is struck by how little the encounter seems to register with him. That evening Alice reports only that the nurse, not she herself, saw Haskett. Over coffee, Alice absentmindedly pours cognac into Waythorn's cup exactly as she apparently once did for one of her former husbands, and the slip visibly unsettles them both. Business then forces further intimacy: Waythorn's partner Sellers falls ill with gout in the midst of arranging an investment for Varick, and Waythorn must take over the negotiation, meeting Varick professionally and finding him easy and even likable, though the reminder of Varick's past poverty (linked to rumors about his and Alice's failed marriage) stings. As Lily's illness eases, Waythorn comes face to face with Haskett himself, a mild, unpolished, evidently devoted father whose shabby gentility unsettles Waythorn more than Varick's polish did. Waythorn broods over the gulf between Haskett's plain origins and Alice's practiced elegance, imagining her earlier, humbler life with a mix of fascination and distaste, and is troubled by how thoroughly she has erased that self. Haskett later asks Waythorn to intervene about a French governess he distrusts, invoking his legal right to a say in Lily's upbringing. Confronting Alice, Waythorn discovers she had already seen Haskett once and concealed it, and that she had hoped to avoid consulting him further. The governess is dismissed, and Haskett becomes a recurring, unobtrusive presence in the house, visiting Lily regularly; Waythorn gradually grows almost accustomed to him. Socially, Waythorn and Alice also begin accepting Varick, whose presence in their circle Alice manages with practiced tact, neither courting nor avoiding him — behavior society praises as admirable poise but which leaves Waythorn feeling like a shareholder in a wife whose personality has been divided among three husbands. He alternates between resentful irony and resigned, habituated comfort, reasoning that Alice's skill at smoothing domestic life was itself shaped by her prior marriages. The story culminates in a single afternoon when a plumbing mishap forces tea into the library, where Waythorn is unexpectedly sitting with Haskett. Varick then arrives unannounced on business, and all three men — husband, and both predecessors — are thrown together in one room. Before the awkwardness can resolve, Alice enters, greets each in turn with practiced ease, and smooths over the extraordinary situation by inviting everyone to tea, serving all three men from the same tea-table as the narrative closes.

By Edith Wharton · First published 1907 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Social Realism, Satire · 5 chapters · 8,846 words

First lines

WAYTHORN, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come down to dinner.

It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at his thrill of boyish agitation. He was not so old, to be sure -- his glass gave him little more than the five-and-thirty years to which his wife confessed -- but he had fancied himself already in the temperate zone; yet here he was listening for her step with a tender sense of all it symbolized, with some old trail of verse about the garlanded nuptial door-posts floating through his enjoyment of the pleasant room and the good dinner just beyond it.

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Marriage · Infidelity · Love Triangle · Social Class · Upper Class · New York Society · Gilded Age · American Literature · Early 20th Century · Romance · Drama · Psychological Fiction

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The Other Two is listed on Textopian as a short story by Edith Wharton, dated 1907 CE.

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