Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Other Two, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Social Etiquette and Illusions
Marriage and Gender Inequality
Social Advancement
Summary
Analysis
Waythorn leaves for work the next morning, “earlier than usual.” The thought of Haskett’s visit “drove him forth.” He makes plans to stay out all day—perhaps arranging to have dinner at his club later on. He closes his front door and realizes that “before he opened it again it would have admitted another man,” Haskett, “who had as much right to enter it as himself.”
Waythorn’s insecurities show in his decision to leave for work early in order to avoid Haskett. He is deeply unsettled at the thought of an outsider entering his private home, especially when he “had as much right to enter it as himself.” Haskett has a “right to enter” because he is Lily’s father and Alice’s ex-husband. Haskett’s relationship to Waythorn’s family and the rights it affords him bothers Mr. Waythorn.
Themes
Waythorn rides the exceptionally crowded “elevated” train to work. A man moves into a space uncomfortably close to him. Waythorn sees that the man is Gus Varick, Alice’s second husband. Their close proximity renders it impossible to avoid engaging one another in conversation, and so they make friendly, if mildly awkward, small-talk. “Lord,” announces Varick, “I was beginning to feel like a pressed flower.” He then informs Waythorn that Waythorn’s senior partner at his office, Mr. Sellers, has fallen ill. Sellers’s illness is particularly annoying for Varick, as Sellers had just taken him on as a client. The train arrives at Varick’s stop, and the two men part ways.
The crowded train is a marked contrast to the quiet, peaceful home. The reader is meant to see how the chaos unsettles Mr. Waythorn. Wharton purposely places Waythorn’s interaction with Varick next to the announcement of Haskett’s visit to illustrate how suddenly and intensely the two ex-husbands have entered into Waythorn’s life.
Themes
Literary Devices
At the office, Waythorn confirms Varick’s information—Sellers has indeed fallen ill with gout. The senior clerk relays Sellers’s apology for all the extra work his illness will create for Waythorn. Waythorn is glad to get the extra work, as it will require him to stop by Sellers’s house to touch base on his way home from work.
The confirmation of Sellers’s illness foreshadows the conflict (Waythorn ultimately having to take on Varick as a client) to come. Waythorn’s enthusiasm for extra work emphasizes the lengths he’s willing to go to avoid an awkward interaction with Haskett.
Themes
Waythorn leaves to eat lunch and crosses paths with Varick once more, though Varick fails to notice Waythorn. Varick, who is known “to be fond of good living,” feasts on camembert and café double with cognac. As Waythorn observes his wife’s ex-husband, he considers if Varick is at all rattled by their awkward encounter on the train: “Had the morning’s meeting left no more trace in his thoughts than on his face?” he wonders.
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Waythorn arrives home after seven. He and Alice reunite in the drawing-room and recount their days to one another. Waythorn, “with a curious pang,” observes that his wife “found a childish pleasure in rehearsing the trivial incidents of her day.” The couple eats dinner and then retreats to the library for coffee and liqueurs. Alice appears “singularly soft and girlish in her rosy pale dress, against the dark leather of one of his bachelor armchairs.” Waythorn notes, glumly, that “a day earlier the contrast would have charmed him.”
Waythorn’s goal of avoiding Haskett was successful, so the home becomes a place of peace and comfort once more. But Waythorn is still somewhat rattled by his run-in with Varick (evident in the observation that “a day earlier” his wife’s pretty pink dress contrasted against his manly leather chair “would have charmed him), so he counteracts his insecurities by belittling his wife, noting her “childish pleasure” at telling him about her day.
Themes
Tensely, Waythorn inquires about Haskett’s visit. After a slight pause, Alice says that though she didn’t see Haskett herself, the visit was fine. Alice pours coffee into her husband’s cup, followed by cognac. Waythorn reacts with a “sudden exclamation,” then composes himself enough to say “I don’t take cognac in my coffee.”
Waythorn’s “sudden exclamation” is triggered by his recollection of the decadent Varick pouring cognac into his coffee at the restaurant earlier that day. He imagines that Mrs. Waythorn accidentally did for him something she was in the habit of doing for Varick when they were married. Waythorn is upset by Mrs. Waythorn’s past bleeding into her life with him in the present.
Themes
Literary Devices
