Edith Wharton

The Greater Inclination Edith Wharton

She stayed a month at Villa d'Este, and Danyers was with her daily. She showed an unaffectedpleasure in his society; a pleasure so obviously founded on their common veneration of Rendle, thatthe young man could enjoy it without fear of fatuity. At first he was merely one more grain offrankincense on the altar of her insatiable divinity; but gradually a more personal note crept intotheir intercourse. If she still liked him only because he appreciated Rendle, she at least perceptiblydistinguished him from the herd of Rendle's appreciators. Her attitude toward the great man's memory struck Danyers as perfect. She neither proclaimednor disavowed her identity. She was frankly Silvia to those who knew and cared; but there was notrace of the Egeria in her pose. She spoke often of Rendle's books, but seldom of himself; there wasno posthumous conjugality, no use of the possessive tense, in her abounding reminiscences. Of themaster's intellectual life, of his habits of thought and work, she never wearied of talking. She knewthe history of each poem; by what scene or episode each image had been evoked; how many timesthe words in a certain line had been transposed; how long a certain adjective had been sought, andwhat had at last suggested it; she could even explain that one impenetrable line, the torment ofcritics, the joy of detractors, the last line of The Old Odysseus. Danyers felt that in talking of these things she was no mere echo of Rendle's thought. If heridentity had appeared to be merged in his it was because they thought alike, not because he hadthought for her. Posterity is apt to regard the women whom poets have sung as chance pegs onwhich they hung their garlands; but Mrs. Anerton's mind was like some fertile garden wherein, inevitably, Rendle's imagination had rooted itself and flowered. Danyers began to see how manythreads of his complex mental tissue the poet had owed to the blending of her temperament withhis; in a certain sense Silvia had herself created the Sonnets to Silvia. To be the custodian of Rendle's inner self, the door, as it were, to the sanctuary, had at firstseemed to Danyers so comprehensive a privilege that he had the sense, as his friendship with Mrs. Anerton advanced, of forcing his way into a life already crowded. What room was there, among suchtowering memories, for so small an actuality as his? Quite suddenly, after this, he discovered thatMrs. Memorall knew better: his fortunate friend was bored as well as lonely