The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton | Page 3

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The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton A Ten-Volume Collection
Volume One

Contents of Volume One
Stories KERFOL.........................March 1916 MRS. MANSTEY'S
VIEW............July 1891 THE BOLTED DOOR................March 1909
THE DILETTANTE.................December 1903 THE HOUSE OF THE
DEAD HAND.....August 1904
Verse THE PARTING DAY................February 1880
AEROPAGUS......................March 1880 A
FAILURE......................April 1880 PATIENCE.......................April
1880 WANTS..........................May 1880 THE LAST
GIUSTIANINI...........October 1889
EURYALUS.......................December 1889
HAPPINESS......................December 1889
Bibliography
EDITH WHARTON BIBLIOGRAPHY: SHORT STORIES AND

POEMS........Judy Boss

KERFOL as first published in Scribner's Magazine, March 1916
I
"You ought to buy it," said my host; "it's just the place for a
solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while to
own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead
broke, and it's going for a song--you ought to buy it."
It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my friend
Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my unsociable
exterior I have always had secret yearnings for domesticity) that I took
his hint one autumn afternoon and went to Kerfol. My friend was
motoring over to Quimper on business: he dropped me on the way, at a
cross-road on a heath, and said: "First turn to the right and second to
the left. Then straight ahead till you see an avenue. If you meet any
peasants, don't ask your way. They don't understand French, and they
would pretend they did and mix you up. I'll be back for you here by
sunset--and don't forget the tombs in the chapel."
I followed Lanrivain's directions with the hesitation occasioned by the
usual difficulty of remembering whether he had said the first turn to the
right and second to the left, or the contrary. If I had met a peasant I
should certainly have asked, and probably been sent astray; but I had
the desert landscape to myself, and so stumbled on the right turn and
walked on across the heath till I came to an avenue. It was so unlike
any other avenue I have ever seen that I instantly knew it must be THE
avenue. The grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a great height and
then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long tunnel through which
the autumn light fell faintly. I know most trees by name, but I haven't to
this day been able to decide what those trees were. They had the tall
curve of elms, the tenuity of poplars, the ashen colour of olives under a
rainy sky; and they stretched ahead of me for half a mile or more
without a break in their arch. If ever I saw an avenue that

unmistakeably led to something, it was the avenue at Kerfol. My heart
beat a little as I began to walk down it.
Presently the trees ended and I came to a fortified gate in a long wall.
Between me and the wall was an open space of grass, with other grey
avenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs mossed
with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled with wild
shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the drawbridge had been
replaced by a stone arch, and the portcullis by an iron gate. I stood for a
long time on the hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and letting
the influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: "If I wait long
enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs--" and I
rather hoped he wouldn't turn up too soon.
I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done it, it
struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with that great blind
house looking down at me, and all the empty avenues converging on
me. It may have been the depth of the silence that made me so
conscious of my gesture. The squeak of my match sounded as loud as
the scraping of a brake, and I almost fancied I heard it fall when I
tossed it onto the grass. But there was more than that: a sense of
irrelevance, of littleness,