The Age of Innocence

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Age of Innocence
Author: Edith Wharton
Posting Date: August 12, 2008 [EBook #541]
Release Date: May, 1996
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF INNOCENCE ***
Produced by Judith Boss and Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines.
The Age of Innocence
by
Edith Wharton
JTABLE 6 18 1
JTABLE 6 16 19
Book I
I.
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was
singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan
distances "above the Forties," of a new Opera House which should
compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European
capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every
winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy.
Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus
keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and
yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic
associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so
problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.
It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the
daily press had already learned to describe as "an exceptionally
brilliant audience" had gathered to hear her, transported through the
slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family
landau, or in the humbler but more convenient "Brown coupe." To come to
the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving
as in one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had the
immense advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion to
democratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in
the line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of
one's own coachman gleamed under the portico of the Academy. It was
one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have
discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more
quickly than they want to get to it.
When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the
curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why
the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven,
alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a
cigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and
finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs.
Archer allowed smoking. But, in the first place, New York was a
metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was "not the
thing" to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not "the
thing" played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the
inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his
forefathers thousands of years ago.
The second reason for his delay was a personal one. He had dawdled
over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over
a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its
realisation. This was especially the case when the pleasure was a
delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were; and on this occasion the
moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality
that--well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima
donna's stage-manager he could not have entered the Academy at a more
significant moment than just as she was singing: "He loves me--he
loves me not--HE LOVES ME!--" and sprinkling the falling daisy petals
with notes as clear as dew.
She sang, of course, "M'ama!" and not "he loves me," since an
unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the
German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be
translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of
English-speaking audiences. This seemed as natural to Newland Archer
as all the other conventions on which his life was moulded: such as the
duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue
enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a
flower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole.
"M'ama ... non m'ama ..." the prima donna sang, and "M'ama!", with a
final burst of love triumphant, as she pressed the dishevelled daisy to
her lips and lifted her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of
the little brown Faust-Capoul, who was vainly trying, in a tight purple
velvet doublet and plumed cap, to look as pure and true as his artless
victim.
Newland Archer, leaning against the wall at the back of the club box,
turned his eyes from the stage and scanned the opposite side of the
house. Directly facing him was the box of old Mrs. Manson Mingott,
whose monstrous obesity had long since made it impossible for her to
attend the Opera, but who was always represented on fashionable nights
by some of the younger members of the family. On this occasion, the
front of the box was filled by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lovell
Mingott, and her daughter, Mrs. Welland; and slightly withdrawn behind
these brocaded matrons sat a young girl in white with eyes ecstatically
fixed on the stagelovers. As Madame Nilsson's "M'ama!" thrilled out
above the silent house (the boxes always stopped talking during the
Daisy Song) a warm pink mounted to the girl's cheek, mantled her brow
to the roots of her fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her
breast to the line where it met a modest tulle tucker fastened with a
single gardenia. She dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of
lilies-of-the-valley on her knee, and Newland Archer saw her
white-gloved finger-tips touch the flowers softly. He drew a breath of
satisfied vanity and his eyes returned to the stage.
No expense had been spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be
very beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the
Opera houses of Paris and Vienna. The foreground, to the footlights,
was covered with emerald green cloth. In the middle distance
symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet hoops formed
the base of shrubs shaped like orange-trees but studded with large pink
and red roses. Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses,
and closely resembling the floral pen-wipers made by female
parishioners for fashionable clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath
the rose-trees; and here and there a daisy grafted on a rose-branch
flowered with a luxuriance prophetic of Mr. Luther Burbank's far-off
prodigies.
In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white
cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue
girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her
muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's
impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his
designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the
ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from
the right wing.
"The darling!" thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the
young girl with the lilies-of-the-valley. "She doesn't even guess what
it's all about." And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a
thrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation
was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity. "We'll
read Faust together ... by the Italian lakes ..." he thought, somewhat
hazily confusing the scene of his projected honey-moon with the
masterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to
reveal to his bride. It was only that afternoon that May Welland had
let him guess that she "cared" (New York's consecrated phrase of maiden
avowal), and already his imagination, leaping ahead of the engagement
ring, the betrothal kiss and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at
his side in some scene of old European witchery.
He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a
simpleton. He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to
develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own
with the most popular married women of the "younger set," in which it
was the recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully
discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he
sometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife
should be as worldly-wise and as eager to please as the married lady
whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years;
without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred
that unhappy being's life, and had disarranged his own plans for a
whole winter.
How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain
itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out; but
he was content to hold his view without analysing it, since he knew it
was that of all the carefully-brushed, white-waistcoated,
button-hole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club
box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their
opera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product
of the system. In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer
felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old
New York gentility; he had probably read more, thought more, and even
seen a good deal more of the world, than any other man of the number.
Singly they betrayed their inferiority; but grouped together they
represented "New York," and the habit of masculine solidarity made him
accept their doctrine on all the issues called moral. He instinctively
felt that in this respect it would be troublesome--and also rather bad
form--to strike out for himself.
"Well--upon my soul!" exclaimed Lawrence Lefferts, turning his
opera-glass abruptly away from the stage. Lawrence Lefferts was, on
the whole, the foremost authority on "form" in New York. He had
probably devoted more time than any one else to the study of this
intricate and fascinating question; but study alone could not account
for his complete and easy competence. One had only to look at him,
from the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his beautiful fair
moustache to the long patent-leather feet at the other end of his lean
and elegant person, to feel that the knowledge of "form" must be
congenital in any one who knew how to wear such good clothes so
carelessly and carry such height with so much lounging grace. As a
young admirer had once said of him: "If anybody can tell a fellow just
when to wear a black tie with evening clothes and when not to, it's
Larry Lefferts." And on the question of pumps versus patent-leather
"Oxfords" his authority had never been disputed.
"My God!" he said; and silently handed his glass to old Sillerton
Jackson.
Newland Archer, following Lefferts's glance, saw with surprise that his
exclamation had been occasioned by the entry of a new figure into old
Mrs. Mingott's box. It was that of a slim young woman, a little less
tall than May Welland, with brown hair growing in close curls about her
temples and held in place by a narrow band of diamonds. The suggestion
of this headdress, which gave her what was then called a "Josephine
look," was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown rather
theatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large
old-fashioned clasp. The wearer of this unusual dress, who seemed
quite unconscious of the attention it was attracting, stood a moment in
the centre of the box, discussing with Mrs. Welland the propriety of
taking the latter's place in the front right-hand corner; then she
yielded with a slight smile, and seated herself in line with Mrs.
Welland's sister-in-law, Mrs. Lovell Mingott, who was installed in the
opposite corner.
Mr. Sillerton Jackson had returned the opera-glass to Lawrence
Lefferts. The whole of the club turned instinctively, waiting to hear
what the old man had to say; for old Mr. Jackson was as great an
authority on "family" as Lawrence Lefferts was on "form." He knew all
the ramifications of New York's cousinships; and could not only
elucidate such complicated questions as that of the connection between
the Mingotts (through the Thorleys) with the Dallases of South
Carolina, and that of the relationship of the elder branch of
Philadelphia Thorleys to the Albany Chiverses (on no account to be
confused with the Manson Chiverses of University Place), but could also
enumerate the leading characteristics of each family: as, for instance,
the fabulous stinginess of the younger lines of Leffertses (the Long
Island ones); or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish
matches; or the insanity recurring in every second generation of the
Albany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused
to intermarry--with the disastrous exception of poor Medora Manson,
who, as everybody knew ... but then her mother was a Rushworth.
In addition to this forest of family trees, Mr. Sillerton Jackson
carried between his narrow hollow temples, and under his soft thatch of
silver hair, a register of most of the scandals and mysteries that had
smouldered under the unruffled surface of New York society within the
last fifty years. So far indeed did his information extend, and so
acutely retentive was his memory, that he was supposed to be the only
man who could have told you who Julius Beaufort, the banker, really
was, and what had become of handsome Bob Spicer, old Mrs. Manson
Mingott's father, who had disappeared so mysteriously (with a large sum
of trust money) less than a year after his marriage, on the very day
that a beautiful Spanish dancer who had been delighting thronged
audiences in the old Opera-house on the Battery had taken ship for
Cuba. But these mysteries, and many others, were closely locked in Mr.
Jackson's breast; for not only did his keen sense of honour forbid his
repeating anything privately imparted, but he was fully aware that his
reputation for discretion increased his opportunities of finding out
what he wanted to know.
The club box, therefore, waited in visible suspense while Mr. Sillerton
Jackson handed back Lawrence Lefferts's opera-glass. For a moment he
silently scrutinised the attentive group out of his filmy blue eyes
overhung by old veined lids; then he gave his moustache a thoughtful
twist, and said simply: "I didn't think the Mingotts would have tried
it on."
II.
Newland Archer, during this brief episode, had been thrown into a
strange state of embarrassment.
It was annoying that the box which was thus attracting the undivided
attention of masculine New York should be that in which his betrothed
was seated between her mother and aunt; and for a moment he could not
identify the lady in the Empire dress, nor imagine why her presence
created such excitement among the initiated. Then light dawned on him,
and with it came a momentary rush of indignation. No, indeed; no one
would have thought the Mingotts would have tried it on!
But they had; they undoubtedly had; for the low-toned comments behind
him left no doubt in Archer's mind that the young woman was May
Welland's cousin, the cousin always referred to in the family as "poor
Ellen Olenska." Archer knew that she had suddenly arrived from Europe
a day or two previously; he had even heard from Miss Welland (not
disapprovingly) that she had been to see poor Ellen, who was staying
with old Mrs. Mingott. Archer entirely approved of family solidarity,
and one of the qualities he most admired in the Mingotts was their
resolute championship of the few black sheep that their blameless stock
had produced. There was nothing mean or ungenerous in the young man's
heart, and he was glad that his future wife should not be restrained by
false prudery from being kind (in private) to her unhappy cousin; but
to receive Countess Olenska in the family circle was a different thing
from producing her in public, at the Opera of all places, and in the
very box with the young girl whose engagement to him, Newland Archer,
was to be announced within a few weeks. No, he felt as old Sillerton
Jackson felt; he did not think the Mingotts would have tried it on!
He knew, of course, that whatever man dared (within Fifth Avenue's
limits) that old Mrs. Manson Mingott, the Matriarch of the line, would
dare. He had always admired the high and mighty old lady, who, in
spite of having been only Catherine Spicer of Staten Island, with a
father mysteriously discredited, and neither money nor position enough
to make people forget it, had allied herself with the head of the
wealthy Mingott line, married two of her daughters to "foreigners" (an
Italian marquis and an English banker), and put the crowning touch to
her audacities by building a large house of pale cream-coloured stone
(when brown sandstone seemed as much the only wear as a frock-coat in
the afternoon) in an inaccessible wilderness near the Central Park.
Old Mrs. Mingott's foreign daughters had become a legend. They never
came back to see their mother, and the latter being, like many persons
of active mind and dominating will, sedentary and corpulent in her
habit, had philosophically remained at home. But the cream-coloured
house (supposed to be modelled on the private hotels of the Parisian
aristocracy) was there as a visible proof of her moral courage; and she
throned in it, among pre-Revolutionary furniture and souvenirs of the
Tuileries of Louis Napoleon (where she had shone in her middle age), as
placidly as if there were nothing peculiar in living above
Thirty-fourth Street, or in having French windows that opened like
doors instead of sashes that pushed up.
Every one (including Mr. Sillerton Jackson) was agreed that old
Catherine had never had beauty--a gift which, in the eyes of New York,
justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.
Unkind people said that, like her Imperial namesake, she had won her
way to success by strength of will and hardness of heart, and a kind of
haughty effrontery that was somehow justified by the extreme decency
and dignity of her private life. Mr. Manson Mingott had died when she
was only twenty-eight, and had "tied up" the money with an additional
caution born of the general distrust of the Spicers; but his bold young
widow went her way fearlessly, mingled freely in foreign society,
married her daughters in heaven knew what corrupt and fashionable
circles, hobnobbed with Dukes and Ambassadors, associated familiarly
with Papists, entertained Opera singers, and was the intimate friend of
Mme. Taglioni; and all the while (as Sillerton Jackson was the first to
proclaim) there had never been a breath on her reputation; the only
respect, he always added, in which she differed from the earlier
Catherine.
Mrs. Manson Mingott had long since succeeded in untying her husband's
fortune, and had lived in affluence for half a century; but memories of
her early straits had made her excessively thrifty, and though, when
she bought a dress or a piece of furniture, she took care that it
should be of the best, she could not bring herself to spend much on the
transient pleasures of the table. Therefore, for totally different
reasons, her food was as poor as Mrs. Archer's, and her wines did
nothing to redeem it. Her relatives considered that the penury of her
table discredited the Mingott name, which had always been associated
with good living; but people continued to come to her in spite of the
"made dishes" and flat champagne, and in reply to the remonstrances of
her son Lovell (who tried to retrieve the family credit by having the
best chef in New York) she used to say laughingly: "What's the use of
two good cooks in one family, now that I've married the girls and can't
eat sauces?"
Newland Archer, as he mused on these things, had once more turned his
eyes toward the Mingott box. He saw that Mrs. Welland and her
sister-in-law were facing their semicircle of critics with the
Mingottian APLOMB which old Catherine had inculcated in all her tribe,
and that only May Welland betrayed, by a heightened colour (perhaps due
to the knowledge that he was watching her) a sense of the gravity of
the situation. As for the cause of the commotion, she sat gracefully
in her corner of the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, and revealing,
as she leaned forward, a little more shoulder and bosom than New York
was accustomed to seeing, at least in ladies who had reasons for
wishing to pass unnoticed.
Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offence against
"Taste," that far-off divinity of whom "Form" was the mere visible
representative and vicegerent. Madame Olenska's pale and serious face
appealed to his fancy as suited to the occasion and to her unhappy
situation; but the way her dress (which had no tucker) sloped away from
her thin shoulders shocked and troubled him. He hated to think of May
Welland's being exposed to the influence of a young woman so careless
of the dictates of Taste.
"After all," he heard one of the younger men begin behind him
(everybody talked through the Mephistopheles-and-Martha scenes), "after
all, just WHAT happened?"
"Well--she left him; nobody attempts to deny that."
"He's an awful brute, isn't he?" continued the young enquirer, a candid
Thorley, who was evidently preparing to enter the lists as the lady's
champion.
"The very worst; I knew him at Nice," said Lawrence Lefferts with
authority. "A half-paralysed white sneering fellow--rather handsome
head, but eyes with a lot of lashes. Well, I'll tell you the sort:
when he wasn't with women he was collecting china. Paying any price
for both, I understand."
There was a general laugh, and the young champion said: "Well,
then----?"
"Well, then; she bolted with his secretary."
"Oh, I see." The champion's face fell.
"It didn't last long, though: I heard of her a few months later living
alone in Venice. I believe Lovell Mingott went out to get her. He
said she was desperately unhappy. That's all right--but this parading
her at the Opera's another thing."
"Perhaps," young Thorley hazarded, "she's too unhappy to be left at
home."
This was greeted with an irreverent laugh, and the youth blushed
deeply, and tried to look as if he had meant to insinuate what knowing
people called a "double entendre."
"Well--it's queer to have brought Miss Welland, anyhow," some one said
in a low tone, with a side-glance at Archer.
"Oh, that's part of the campaign: Granny's orders, no doubt," Lefferts
laughed. "When the old lady does a thing she does it thoroughly."
The act was ending, and there was a general stir in the box. Suddenly
Newland Archer felt himself impelled to decisive action. The desire to
be the first man to enter Mrs. Mingott's box, to proclaim to the
waiting world his engagement to May Welland, and to see her through
whatever difficulties her cousin's anomalous situation might involve
her in; this impulse had abruptly overruled all scruples and
hesitations, and sent him hurrying through the red corridors to the
farther side of the house.
As he entered the box his eyes met Miss Welland's, and he saw that she
had instantly understood his motive, though the family dignity which
both considered so high a virtue would not permit her to tell him so.
The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications
and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other
without a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than any
explanation would have done. Her eyes said: "You see why Mamma
brought me," and his answered: "I would not for the world have had you
stay away."
"You know my niece Countess Olenska?" Mrs. Welland enquired as she
shook hands with her future son-in-law. Archer bowed without extending
his hand, as was the custom on being introduced to a lady; and Ellen
Olenska bent her head slightly, keeping her own pale-gloved hands
clasped on her huge fan of eagle feathers. Having greeted Mrs. Lovell
Mingott, a large blonde lady in creaking satin, he sat down beside his
betrothed, and said in a low tone: "I hope you've told Madame Olenska
that we're engaged? I want everybody to know--I want you to let me
announce it this evening at the ball."
Miss Welland's face grew rosy as the dawn, and she looked at him with
radiant eyes. "If you can persuade Mamma," she said; "but why should
we change what is already settled?" He made no answer but that which
his eyes returned, and she added, still more confidently smiling:
"Tell my cousin yourself: I give you leave. She says she used to play
with you when you were children."
She made way for him by pushing back her chair, and promptly, and a
little ostentatiously, with the desire that the whole house should see
what he was doing, Archer seated himself at the Countess Olenska's side.
"We DID use to play together, didn't we?" she asked, turning her grave
eyes to his. "You were a horrid boy, and kissed me once behind a door;
but it was your cousin Vandie Newland, who never looked at me, that I
was in love with." Her glance swept the horse-shoe curve of boxes.
"Ah, how this brings it all back to me--I see everybody here in
knickerbockers and pantalettes," she said, with her trailing slightly
foreign accent, her eyes returning to his face.
Agreeable as their expression was, the young man was shocked that they
should reflect so unseemly a picture of the august tribunal before
which, at that very moment, her case was being tried. Nothing could be
in worse taste than misplaced flippancy; and he answered somewhat
stiffly: "Yes, you have been away a very long time."
"Oh, centuries and centuries; so long," she said, "that I'm sure I'm
dead and buried, and this dear old place is heaven;" which, for reasons
he could not define, struck Newland Archer as an even more
disrespectful way of describing New York society.
III.
It invariably happened in the same way.
Mrs. Julius Beaufort, on the night of her annual ball, never failed to
appear at the Opera; indeed, she always gave her ball on an Opera night
in order to emphasise her complete superiority to household cares, and
her possession of a staff of servants competent to organise every
detail of the entertainment in her absence.
The Beauforts' house was one of the few in New York that possessed a
ball-room (it antedated even Mrs. Manson Mingott's and the Headly
Chiverses'); and at a time when it was beginning to be thought
"provincial" to put a "crash" over the drawing-room floor and move the
furniture upstairs, the possession of a ball-room that was used for no
other purpose, and left for three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the
year to shuttered darkness, with its gilt chairs stacked in a corner
and its chandelier in a bag; this undoubted superiority was felt to
compensate for whatever was regrettable in the Beaufort past.
Mrs. Archer, who was fond of coining her social philosophy into axioms,
had once said: "We all have our pet common people--" and though the
phrase was a daring one, its truth was secretly admitted in many an
exclusive bosom. But the Beauforts were not exactly common; some
people said they were even worse. Mrs. Beaufort belonged indeed to one
of America's most honoured families; she had been the lovely Regina
Dallas (of the South Carolina branch), a penniless beauty introduced to
New York society by her cousin, the imprudent Medora Manson, who was
always doing the wrong thing from the right motive. When one was
related to the Mansons and the Rushworths one had a "droit de cite" (as
Mr. Sillerton Jackson, who had frequented the Tuileries, called it) in
New York society; but did one not forfeit it in marrying Julius
Beaufort?
The question was: who was Beaufort? He passed for an Englishman, was
agreeable, handsome, ill-tempered, hospitable and witty. He had come
to America with letters of recommendation from old Mrs. Manson
Mingott's English son-in-law, the banker, and had speedily made himself
an important position in the world of affairs; but his habits were
dissipated, his tongue was bitter, his antecedents were mysterious; and
when Medora Manson announced her cousin's engagement to him it was felt
to be one more act of folly in poor Medora's long record of imprudences.
But folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom, and two
years after young Mrs. Beaufort's marriage it was admitted that she had
the most distinguished house in New York. No one knew exactly how the
miracle was accomplished. She was indolent, passive, the caustic even
called her dull; but dressed like an idol, hung with pearls, growing
younger and blonder and more beautiful each year, she throned in Mr.
Beaufort's heavy brown-stone palace, and drew all the world there
without lifting her jewelled little finger. The knowing people said it
was Beaufort himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new
dishes, told the gardeners what hot-house flowers to grow for the
dinner-table and the drawing-rooms, selected the guests, brewed the
after-dinner punch and dictated the little notes his wife wrote to her
friends. If he did, these domestic activities were privately
performed, and he presented to the world the appearance of a careless
and hospitable millionaire strolling into his own drawing-room with the
detachment of an invited guest, and saying: "My wife's gloxinias are a
marvel, aren't they? I believe she gets them out from Kew."
Mr. Beaufort's secret, people were agreed, was the way he carried
things off. It was all very well to whisper that he had been "helped"
to leave England by the international banking-house in which he had
been employed; he carried off that rumour as easily as the rest--though
New York's business conscience was no less sensitive than its moral
standard--he carried everything before him, and all New York into his
drawing-rooms, and for over twenty years now people had said they were
"going to the Beauforts'" with the same tone of security as if they had
said they were going to Mrs. Manson Mingott's, and with the added
satisfaction of knowing they would get hot canvas-back ducks and
vintage wines, instead of tepid Veuve Clicquot without a year and
warmed-up croquettes from Philadelphia.
Mrs. Beaufort, then, had as usual appeared in her box just before the
Jewel Song; and when, again as usual, she rose at the end of the third
act, drew her opera cloak about her lovely shoulders, and disappeared,
New York knew that meant that half an hour later the ball would begin.
The Beaufort house was one that New Yorkers were proud to show to
foreigners, especially on the night of the annual ball. The Beauforts
had been among the first people in New York to own their own red velvet
carpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own footmen, under
their own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the
ball-room chairs. They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the
ladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to
the hostess's bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the
gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all
his wife's friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly
coiffees when they left home.
Then the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that,
instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the
Chiverses') one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed
drawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or), seeing
from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry,
and beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and
tree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold
bamboo.
Newland Archer, as became a young man of his position, strolled in
somewhat late. He had left his overcoat with the silk-stockinged
footmen (the stockings were one of Beaufort's few fatuities), had
dawdled a while in the library hung with Spanish leather and furnished
with Buhl and malachite, where a few men were chatting and putting on
their dancing-gloves, and had finally joined the line of guests whom
Mrs. Beaufort was receiving on the threshold of the crimson
drawing-room.
Archer was distinctly nervous. He had not gone back to his club after
the Opera (as the young bloods usually did), but, the night being fine,
had walked for some distance up Fifth Avenue before turning back in the
direction of the Beauforts' house. He was definitely afraid that the
Mingotts might be going too far; that, in fact, they might have Granny
Mingott's orders to bring the Countess Olenska to the ball.
From the tone of the club box he had perceived how grave a mistake that
would be; and, though he was more than ever determined to "see the
thing through," he felt less chivalrously eager to champion his
betrothed's cousin than before their brief talk at the Opera.
Wandering on to the bouton d'or drawing-room (where Beaufort had had
the audacity to hang "Love Victorious," the much-discussed nude of
Bouguereau) Archer found Mrs. Welland and her daughter standing near
the ball-room door. Couples were already gliding over the floor
beyond: the light of the wax candles fell on revolving tulle skirts, on
girlish heads wreathed with modest blossoms, on the dashing aigrettes
and ornaments of the young married women's coiffures, and on the
glitter of highly glazed shirt-fronts and fresh glace gloves.
Miss Welland, evidently about to join the dancers, hung on the
threshold, her lilies-of-the-valley in her hand (she carried no other
bouquet), her face a little pale, her eyes burning with a candid
excitement. A group of young men and girls were gathered about her,
and there was much hand-clasping, laughing and pleasantry on which Mrs.
Welland, standing slightly apart, shed the beam of a qualified
approval. It was evident that Miss Welland was in the act of
announcing her engagement, while her mother affected the air of
parental reluctance considered suitable to the occasion.
Archer paused a moment. It was at his express wish that the
announcement had been made, and yet it was not thus that he would have
wished to have his happiness known. To proclaim it in the heat and
noise of a crowded ball-room was to rob it of the fine bloom of privacy
which should belong to things nearest the heart. His joy was so deep
that this blurring of the surface left its essence untouched; but he
would have liked to keep the surface pure too. It was something of a
satisfaction to find that May Welland shared this feeling. Her eyes
fled to his beseechingly, and their look said: "Remember, we're doing
this because it's right."
No appeal could have found a more immediate response in Archer's
breast; but he wished that the necessity of their action had been
represented by some ideal reason, and not simply by poor Ellen Olenska.
The group about Miss Welland made way for him with significant smiles,
and after taking his share of the felicitations he drew his betrothed
into the middle of the ball-room floor and put his arm about her waist.
"Now we shan't have to talk," he said, smiling into her candid eyes, as
they floated away on the soft waves of the Blue Danube.
She made no answer. Her lips trembled into a smile, but the eyes
remained distant and serious, as if bent on some ineffable vision.
"Dear," Archer whispered, pressing her to him: it was borne in on him
that the first hours of being engaged, even if spent in a ball-room,
had in them something grave and sacramental. What a new life it was
going to be, with this whiteness, radiance, goodness at one's side!
The dance over, the two, as became an affianced couple, wandered into
the conservatory; and sitting behind a tall screen of tree-ferns and
camellias Newland pressed her gloved hand to his lips.
"You see I did as you asked me to," she said.
"Yes: I couldn't wait," he answered smiling. After a moment he added:
"Only I wish it hadn't had to be at a ball."
"Yes, I know." She met his glance comprehendingly. "But after
all--even here we're alone together, aren't we?"
"Oh, dearest--always!" Archer cried.
Evidently she was always going to understand; she was always going to
say the right thing. The discovery made the cup of his bliss overflow,
and he went on gaily: "The worst of it is that I want to kiss you and
I can't." As he spoke he took a swift glance about the conservatory,
assured himself of their momentary privacy, and catching her to him
laid a fugitive pressure on her lips. To counteract the audacity of
this proceeding he led her to a bamboo sofa in a less secluded part of
the conservatory, and sitting down beside her broke a
lily-of-the-valley from her bouquet. She sat silent, and the world lay
like a sunlit valley at their feet.
"Did you tell my cousin Ellen?" she asked presently, as if she spoke
through a dream.
He roused himself, and remembered that he had not done so. Some
invincible repugnance to speak of such things to the strange foreign
woman had checked the words on his lips.
"No--I hadn't the chance after all," he said, fibbing hastily.
"Ah." She looked disappointed, but gently resolved on gaining her
point. "You must, then, for I didn't either; and I shouldn't like her
to think--"
"Of course not. But aren't you, after all, the person to do it?"
She pondered on this. "If I'd done it at the right time, yes: but now
that there's been a delay I think you must explain that I'd asked you
to tell her at the Opera, before our speaking about it to everybody
here. Otherwise she might think I had forgotten her. You see, she's
one of the family, and she's been away so long that she's
rather--sensitive."
Archer looked at her glowingly. "Dear and great angel! Of course I'll
tell her." He glanced a trifle apprehensively toward the crowded
ball-room. "But I haven't seen her yet. Has she come?"
"No; at the last minute she decided not to."
"At the last minute?" he echoed, betraying his surprise that she should
ever have considered the alternative possible.
"Yes. She's awfully fond of dancing," the young girl answered simply.
"But suddenly she made up her mind that her dress wasn't smart enough
for a ball, though we thought it so lovely; and so my aunt had to take
her home."
"Oh, well--" said Archer with happy indifference. Nothing about his
betrothed pleased him more than her resolute determination to carry to
its utmost limit that ritual of ignoring the "unpleasant" in which they
had both been brought up.
"She knows as well as I do," he reflected, "the real reason of her
cousin's staying away; but I shall never let her see by the least sign
that I am conscious of there being a shadow of a shade on poor Ellen
Olenska's reputation."
IV.
In the course of the next day the first of the usual betrothal visits
were exchanged. The New York ritual was precise and inflexible in such
matters; and in conformity with it Newland Archer first went with his
mother and sister to call on Mrs. Welland, after which he and Mrs.
Welland and May drove out to old Mrs. Manson Mingott's to receive that
venerable ancestress's blessing.
A visit to Mrs. Manson Mingott was always an amusing episode to the
young man. The house in itself was already an historic document,
though not, of course, as venerable as certain other old family houses
in University Place and lower Fifth Avenue. Those were of the purest
1830, with a grim harmony of cabbage-rose-garlanded carpets, rosewood
consoles, round-arched fire-places with black marble mantels, and
immense glazed book-cases of mahogany; whereas old Mrs. Mingott, who
had built her house later, had bodily cast out the massive furniture of
her prime, and mingled with the Mingott heirlooms the frivolous
upholstery of the Second Empire. It was her habit to sit in a window
of her sitting-room on the ground floor, as if watching calmly for life
and fashion to flow northward to her solitary doors. She seemed in no
hurry to have them come, for her patience was equalled by her
confidence. She was sure that presently the hoardings, the quarries,
the one-story saloons, the wooden green-houses in ragged gardens, and
the rocks from which goats surveyed the scene, would vanish before the
advance of residences as stately as her own--perhaps (for she was an
impartial woman) even statelier; and that the cobble-stones over which
the old clattering omnibuses bumped would be replaced by smooth
asphalt, such as people reported having seen in Paris. Meanwhile, as
every one she cared to see came to HER (and she could fill her rooms as
easily as the Beauforts, and without adding a single item to the menu
of her suppers), she did not suffer from her geographic isolation.
The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle
life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump
active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something
as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this
submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in
extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost
unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which
the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation. A
flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a
still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a
miniature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, wave
after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious
armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of
the billows.
The burden of Mrs. Manson Mingott's flesh had long since made it
impossible for her to go up and down stairs, and with characteristic
independence she had made her reception rooms upstairs and established
herself (in flagrant violation of all the New York proprieties) on the
ground floor of her house; so that, as you sat in her sitting-room
window with her, you caught (through a door that was always open, and a
looped-back yellow damask portiere) the unexpected vista of a bedroom
with a huge low bed upholstered like a sofa, and a toilet-table with
frivolous lace flounces and a gilt-framed mirror.
Her visitors were startled and fascinated by the foreignness of this
arrangement, which recalled scenes in French fiction, and architectural
incentives to immorality such as the simple American had never dreamed
of. That was how women with lovers lived in the wicked old societies,
in apartments with all the rooms on one floor, and all the indecent
propinquities that their novels described. It amused Newland Archer
(who had secretly situated the love-scenes of "Monsieur de Camors" in
Mrs. Mingott's bedroom) to picture her blameless life led in the
stage-setting of adultery; but he said to himself, with considerable
admiration, that if a lover had been what she wanted, the intrepid
woman would have had him too.
To the general relief the Countess Olenska was not present in her
grandmother's drawing-room during the visit of the betrothed couple.
Mrs. Mingott said she had gone out; which, on a day of such glaring
sunlight, and at the "shopping hour," seemed in itself an indelicate
thing for a compromised woman to do. But at any rate it spared them
the embarrassment of her presence, and the faint shadow that her
unhappy past might seem to shed on their radiant future. The visit
went off successfully, as was to have been expected. Old Mrs. Mingott
was delighted with the engagement, which, being long foreseen by
watchful relatives, had been carefully passed upon in family council;
and the engagement ring, a large thick sapphire set in invisible claws,
met with her unqualified admiration.
"It's the new setting: of course it shows the stone beautifully, but it
looks a little bare to old-fashioned eyes," Mrs. Welland had explained,
with a conciliatory side-glance at her future son-in-law.
"Old-fashioned eyes? I hope you don't mean mine, my dear? I like all
the novelties," said the ancestress, lifting the stone to her small
bright orbs, which no glasses had ever disfigured. "Very handsome,"
she added, returning the jewel; "very liberal. In my time a cameo set
in pearls was thought sufficient. But it's the hand that sets off the
ring, isn't it, my dear Mr. Archer?" and she waved one of her tiny
hands, with small pointed nails and rolls of aged fat encircling the
wrist like ivory bracelets. "Mine was modelled in Rome by the great
Ferrigiani. You should have May's done: no doubt he'll have it done,
my child. Her hand is large--it's these modern sports that spread the
joints--but the skin is white.--And when's the wedding to be?" she
broke off, fixing her eyes on Archer's face.
"Oh--" Mrs. Welland murmured, while the young man, smiling at his
betrothed, replied: "As soon as ever it can, if only you'll back me
up, Mrs. Mingott."
"We must give them time to get to know each other a little better,
mamma," Mrs. Welland interposed, with the proper affectation of
reluctance; to which the ancestress rejoined: "Know each other?
Fiddlesticks! Everybody in New York has always known everybody. Let
the young man have his way, my dear; don't wait till the bubble's off
the wine. Marry them before Lent; I may catch pneumonia any winter
now, and I want to give the wedding-breakfast."
These successive statements were received with the proper expressions
of amusement, incredulity and gratitude; and the visit was breaking up
in a vein of mild pleasantry when the door opened to admit the Countess
Olenska, who entered in bonnet and mantle followed by the unexpected
figure of Julius Beaufort.
There was a cousinly murmur of pleasure between the ladies, and Mrs.
Mingott held out Ferrigiani's model to the banker. "Ha! Beaufort,
this is a rare favour!" (She had an odd foreign way of addressing men
by their surnames.)
"Thanks. I wish it might happen oftener," said the visitor in his easy
arrogant way. "I'm generally so tied down; but I met the Countess
Ellen in Madison Square, and she was good enough to let me walk home
with her."
"Ah--I hope the house will be gayer, now that Ellen's here!" cried Mrs.
Mingott with a glorious effrontery. "Sit down--sit down, Beaufort:
push up the yellow armchair; now I've got you I want a good gossip. I
hear your ball was magnificent; and I understand you invited Mrs.
Lemuel Struthers? Well--I've a curiosity to see the woman myself."
She had forgotten her relatives, who were drifting out into the hall
under Ellen Olenska's guidance. Old Mrs. Mingott had always professed
a great admiration for Julius Beaufort, and there was a kind of kinship
in their cool domineering way and their short-cuts through the
conventions. Now she was eagerly curious to know what had decided the
Beauforts to invite (for the first time) Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, the
widow of Struthers's Shoe-polish, who had returned the previous year
from a long initiatory sojourn in Europe to lay siege to the tight
little citadel of New York. "Of course if you and Regina invite her
the thing is settled. Well, we need new blood and new money--and I
hear she's still very good-looking," the carnivorous old lady declared.
In the hall, while Mrs. Welland and May drew on their furs, Archer saw
that the Countess Olenska was looking at him with a faintly questioning
smile.
"Of course you know already--about May and me," he said, answering her
look with a shy laugh. "She scolded me for not giving you the news
last night at the Opera: I had her orders to tell you that we were
engaged--but I couldn't, in that crowd."
The smile passed from Countess Olenska's eyes to her lips: she looked
younger, more like the bold brown Ellen Mingott of his boyhood. "Of
course I know; yes. And I'm so glad. But one doesn't tell such things
first in a crowd." The ladies were on the threshold and she held out
her hand.
"Good-bye; come and see me some day," she said, still looking at Archer.
In the carriage, on the way down Fifth Avenue, they talked pointedly of
Mrs. Mingott, of her age, her spirit, and all her wonderful attributes.
No one alluded to Ellen Olenska; but Archer knew that Mrs. Welland was
thinking: "It's a mistake for Ellen to be seen, the very day after her
arrival, parading up Fifth Avenue at the crowded hour with Julius
Beaufort--" and the young man himself mentally added: "And she ought
to know that a man who's just engaged doesn't spend his time calling on
married women. But I daresay in the set she's lived in they do--they
never do anything else." And, in spite of the cosmopolitan views on
which he prided himself, he thanked heaven that he was a New Yorker,
and about to ally himself with one of his own kind.
V.
The next evening old Mr. Sillerton Jackson came to dine with the
Archers.
Mrs. Archer was a shy woman and shrank from society; but she liked to
be well-informed as to its doings. Her old friend Mr. Sillerton
Jackson applied to the investigation of his friends' affairs the
patience of a collector and the science of a naturalist; and his
sister, Miss Sophy Jackson, who lived with him, and was entertained by
all the people who could not secure her much-sought-after brother,
brought home bits of minor gossip that filled out usefully the gaps in
his picture.
Therefore, whenever anything happened that Mrs. Archer wanted to know
about, she asked Mr. Jackson to dine; and as she honoured few people
with her invitations, and as she and her daughter Janey were an
excellent audience, Mr. Jackson usually came himself instead of sending
his sister. If he could have dictated all the conditions, he would
have chosen the evenings when Newland was out; not because the young
man was uncongenial to him (the two got on capitally at their club) but
because the old anecdotist sometimes felt, on Newland's part, a
tendency to weigh his evidence that the ladies of the family never
showed.
Mr. Jackson, if perfection had been attainable on earth, would also
have asked that Mrs. Archer's food should be a little better. But then
New York, as far back as the mind of man could travel, had been divided
into the two great fundamental groups of the Mingotts and Mansons and
all their clan, who cared about eating and clothes and money, and the
Archer-Newland-van-der-Luyden tribe, who were devoted to travel,
horticulture and the best fiction, and looked down on the grosser forms
of pleasure.
You couldn't have everything, after all. If you dined with the Lovell
Mingotts you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines; at Adeline
Archer's you could talk about Alpine scenery and "The Marble Faun"; and
luckily the Archer Madeira had gone round the Cape. Therefore when a
friendly summons came from Mrs. Archer, Mr. Jackson, who was a true
eclectic, would usually say to his sister: "I've been a little gouty
since my last dinner at the Lovell Mingotts'--it will do me good to
diet at Adeline's."
Mrs. Archer, who had long been a widow, lived with her son and daughter
in West Twenty-eighth Street. An upper floor was dedicated to Newland,
and the two women squeezed themselves into narrower quarters below. In
an unclouded harmony of tastes and interests they cultivated ferns in
Wardian cases, made macrame lace and wool embroidery on linen,
collected American revolutionary glazed ware, subscribed to "Good
Words," and read Ouida's novels for the sake of the Italian atmosphere.
(They preferred those about peasant life, because of the descriptions
of scenery and the pleasanter sentiments, though in general they liked
novels about people in society, whose motives and habits were more
comprehensible, spoke severely of Dickens, who "had never drawn a
gentleman," and considered Thackeray less at home in the great world
than Bulwer--who, however, was beginning to be thought old-fashioned.)
Mrs. and Miss Archer were both great lovers of scenery. It was what
they principally sought and admired on their occasional travels abroad;
considering architecture and painting as subjects for men, and chiefly
for learned persons who read Ruskin. Mrs. Archer had been born a
Newland, and mother and daughter, who were as like as sisters, were
both, as people said, "true Newlands"; tall, pale, and slightly
round-shouldered, with long noses, sweet smiles and a kind of drooping
distinction like that in certain faded Reynolds portraits. Their
physical resemblance would have been complete if an elderly embonpoint
had not stretched Mrs. Archer's black brocade, while Miss Archer's
brown and purple poplins hung, as the years went on, more and more
slackly on her virgin frame.
Mentally, the likeness between them, as Newland was aware, was less
complete than their identical mannerisms often made it appear. The
long habit of living together in mutually dependent intimacy had given
them the same vocabulary, and the same habit of beginning their phrases
"Mother thinks" or "Janey thinks," according as one or the other wished
to advance an opinion of her own; but in reality, while Mrs. Archer's
serene unimaginativeness rested easily in the accepted and familiar,
Janey was subject to starts and aberrations of fancy welling up from
springs of suppressed romance.
Mother and daughter adored each other and revered their son and
brother; and Archer loved them with a tenderness made compunctious and
uncritical by the sense of their exaggerated admiration, and by his
secret satisfaction in it. After all, he thought it a good thing for a
man to have his authority respected in his own house, even if his sense
of humour sometimes made him question the force of his mandate.
On this occasion the young man was very sure that Mr. Jackson would
rather have had him dine out; but he had his own reasons for not doing
so.
Of course old Jackson wanted to talk about Ellen Olenska, and of course
Mrs. Archer and Janey wanted to hear what he had to tell. All three
would be slightly embarrassed by Newland's presence, now that his
prospective relation to the Mingott clan had been made known; and the
young man waited with an amused curiosity to see how they would turn
the difficulty.
They began, obliquely, by talking about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers.
"It's a pity the Beauforts asked her," Mrs. Archer said gently. "But
then Regina always does what he tells her; and BEAUFORT--"
"Certain nuances escape Beaufort," said Mr. Jackson, cautiously
inspecting the broiled shad, and wondering for the thousandth time why
Mrs. Archer's cook always burnt the roe to a cinder. (Newland, who had
long shared his wonder, could always detect it in the older man's
expression of melancholy disapproval.)
"Oh, necessarily; Beaufort is a vulgar man," said Mrs. Archer. "My
grandfather Newland always used to say to my mother: 'Whatever you do,
don't let that fellow Beaufort be introduced to the girls.' But at
least he's had the advantage of associating with gentlemen; in England
too, they say. It's all very mysterious--" She glanced at Janey and
paused. She and Janey knew every fold of the Beaufort mystery, but in
public Mrs. Archer continued to assume that the subject was not one for
the unmarried.
"But this Mrs. Struthers," Mrs. Archer continued; "what did you say SHE
was, Sillerton?"
"Out of a mine: or rather out of the saloon at the head of the pit.
Then with Living Wax-Works, touring New England. After the police
broke THAT up, they say she lived--" Mr. Jackson in his turn glanced
at Janey, whose eyes began to bulge from under her prominent lids.
There were still hiatuses for her in Mrs. Struthers's past.
"Then," Mr. Jackson continued (and Archer saw he was wondering why no
one had told the butler never to slice cucumbers with a steel knife),
"then Lemuel Struthers came along. They say his advertiser used the
girl's head for the shoe-polish posters; her hair's intensely black,
you know--the Egyptian style. Anyhow, he--eventually--married her."
There were volumes of innuendo in the way the "eventually" was spaced,
and each syllable given its due stress.
"Oh, well--at the pass we've come to nowadays, it doesn't matter," said
Mrs. Archer indifferently. The ladies were not really interested in
Mrs. Struthers just then; the subject of Ellen Olenska was too fresh
and too absorbing to them. Indeed, Mrs. Struthers's name had been
introduced by Mrs. Archer only that she might presently be able to say:
"And Newland's new cousin--Countess Olenska? Was SHE at the ball too?"
There was a faint touch of sarcasm in the reference to her son, and
Archer knew it and had expected it. Even Mrs. Archer, who was seldom
unduly pleased with human events, had been altogether glad of her son's
engagement. ("Especially after that silly business with Mrs.
Rushworth," as she had remarked to Janey, alluding to what had once
seemed to Newland a tragedy of which his soul would always bear the
scar.)
There was no better match in New York than May Welland, look at the
question from whatever point you chose. Of course such a marriage was
only what Newland was entitled to; but young men are so foolish and
incalculable--and some women so ensnaring and unscrupulous--that it was
nothing short of a miracle to see one's only son safe past the Siren
Isle and in the haven of a blameless domesticity.
All this Mrs. Archer felt, and her son knew she felt; but he knew also
that she had been perturbed by the premature announcement of his
engagement, or rather by its cause; and it was for that reason--because
on the whole he was a tender and indulgent master--that he had stayed
at home that evening. "It's not that I don't approve of the Mingotts'
esprit de corps; but why Newland's engagement should be mixed up with
that Olenska woman's comings and goings I don't see," Mrs. Archer
grumbled to Janey, the only witness of her slight lapses from perfect
sweetness.
She had behaved beautifully--and in beautiful behaviour she was
unsurpassed--during the call on Mrs. Welland; but Newland knew (and his
betrothed doubtless guessed) that all through the visit she and Janey
were nervously on the watch for Madame Olenska's possible intrusion;
and when they left the house together she had permitted herself to say
to her son: "I'm thankful that Augusta Welland received us alone."
These indications of inward disturbance moved Archer the more that he
too felt that the Mingotts had gone a little too far. But, as it was
against all the rules of their code that the mother and son should ever
allude to what was uppermost in their thoughts, he simply replied: "Oh,
well, there's always a phase of family parties to be gone through when
one gets engaged, and the sooner it's over the better." At which his
mother merely pursed her lips under the lace veil that hung down from
her grey velvet bonnet trimmed with frosted grapes.
Her revenge, he felt--her lawful revenge--would be to "draw" Mr.
Jackson that evening on the Countess Olenska; and, having publicly done
his duty as a future member of the Mingott clan, the young man had no
objection to hearing the lady discussed in private--except that the
subject was already beginning to bore him.
Mr. Jackson had helped himself to a slice of the tepid filet which the
mournful butler had handed him with a look as sceptical as his own, and
had rejected the mushroom sauce after a scarcely perceptible sniff. He
looked baffled and hungry, and Archer reflected that he would probably
finish his meal on Ellen Olenska.
Mr. Jackson leaned back in his chair, and glanced up at the candlelit
Archers, Newlands and van der Luydens hanging in dark frames on the
dark walls.
"Ah, how your grandfather Archer loved a good dinner, my dear Newland!"
he said, his eyes on the portrait of a plump full-chested young man in
a stock and a blue coat, with a view of a white-columned country-house
behind him. "Well--well--well ... I wonder what he would have said to
all these foreign marriages!"
Mrs. Archer ignored the allusion to the ancestral cuisine and Mr.
Jackson continued with deliberation: "No, she was NOT at the ball."
"Ah--" Mrs. Archer murmured, in a tone that implied: "She had that
decency."
"Perhaps the Beauforts don't know her," Janey suggested, with her
artless malice.
Mr. Jackson gave a faint sip, as if he had been tasting invisible
Madeira. "Mrs. Beaufort may not--but Beaufort certainly does, for she
was seen walking up Fifth Avenue this afternoon with him by the whole
of New York."
"Mercy--" moaned Mrs. Archer, evidently perceiving the uselessness of
trying to ascribe the actions of foreigners to a sense of delicacy.
"I wonder if she wears a round hat or a bonnet in the afternoon," Janey
speculated. "At the Opera I know she had on dark blue velvet,
perfectly plain and flat--like a night-gown."
"Janey!" said her mother; and Miss Archer blushed and tried to look
audacious.
"It was, at any rate, in better taste not to go to the ball," Mrs.
Archer continued.
A spirit of perversity moved her son to rejoin: "I don't think it was
a question of taste with her. May said she meant to go, and then
decided that the dress in question wasn't smart enough."
Mrs. Archer smiled at this confirmation of her inference. "Poor
Ellen," she simply remarked; adding compassionately: "We must always
bear in mind what an eccentric bringing-up Medora Manson gave her.
What can you expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at
her coming-out ball?"
"Ah--don't I remember her in it!" said Mr. Jackson; adding: "Poor
girl!" in the tone of one who, while enjoying the memory, had fully
understood at the time what the sight portended.
"It's odd," Janey remarked, "that she should have kept such an ugly
name as Ellen. I should have changed it to Elaine." She glanced about
the table to see the effect of this.
Her brother laughed. "Why Elaine?"
"I don't know; it sounds more--more Polish," said Janey, blushing.
"It sounds more conspicuous; and that can hardly be what she wishes,"
said Mrs. Archer distantly.
"Why not?" broke in her son, growing suddenly argumentative. "Why
shouldn't she be conspicuous if she chooses? Why should she slink
about as if it were she who had disgraced herself? She's 'poor Ellen'
certainly, because she had the bad luck to make a wretched marriage;
but I don't see that that's a reason for hiding her head as if she were
the culprit."
"That, I suppose," said Mr. Jackson, speculatively, "is the line the
Mingotts mean to take."
The young man reddened. "I didn't have to wait for their cue, if
that's what you mean, sir. Madame Olenska has had an unhappy life:
that doesn't make her an outcast."
"There are rumours," began Mr. Jackson, glancing at Janey.
"Oh, I know: the secretary," the young man took him up. "Nonsense,
mother; Janey's grown-up. They say, don't they," he went on, "that the
secretary helped her to get away from her brute of a husband, who kept
her practically a prisoner? Well, what if he did? I hope there isn't
a man among us who wouldn't have done the same in such a case."
Mr. Jackson glanced over his shoulder to say to the sad butler:
"Perhaps ... that sauce ... just a little, after all--"; then, having
helped himself, he remarked: "I'm told she's looking for a house. She
means to live here."
"I hear she means to get a divorce," said Janey boldly.
"I hope she will!" Archer exclaimed.
The word had fallen like a bombshell in the pure and tranquil
atmosphere of the Archer dining-room. Mrs. Archer raised her delicate
eye-brows in the particular curve that signified: "The butler--" and
the young man, himself mindful of the bad taste of discussing such
intimate matters in public, hastily branched off into an account of his
visit to old Mrs. Mingott.
After dinner, according to immemorial custom, Mrs. Archer and Janey
trailed their long silk draperies up to the drawing-room, where, while
the gentlemen smoked below stairs, they sat beside a Carcel lamp with
an engraved globe, facing each other across a rosewood work-table with
a green silk bag under it, and stitched at the two ends of a tapestry
band of field-flowers destined to adorn an "occasional" chair in the
drawing-room of young Mrs. Newland Archer.
While this rite was in progress in the drawing-room, Archer settled Mr.
Jackson in an armchair near the fire in the Gothic library and handed
him a cigar. Mr. Jackson sank into the armchair with satisfaction, lit
his cigar with perfect confidence (it was Newland who bought them), and
stretching his thin old ankles to the coals, said: "You say the
secretary merely helped her to get away, my dear fellow? Well, he was
still helping her a year later, then; for somebody met 'em living at
Lausanne together."
Newland reddened. "Living together? Well, why not? Who had the right
to make her life over if she hadn't? I'm sick of the hypocrisy that
would bury alive a woman of her age if her husband prefers to live with
harlots."
He stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar. "Women ought to
be free--as free as we are," he declared, making a discovery of which
he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.
Mr. Sillerton Jackson stretched his ankles nearer the coals and emitted
a sardonic whistle.
"Well," he said after a pause, "apparently Count Olenski takes your
view; for I never heard of his having lifted a finger to get his wife
back."
VI.
That evening, after Mr. Jackson had taken himself away, and the ladies
had retired to their chintz-curtained bedroom, Newland Archer mounted
thoughtfully to his own study. A vigilant hand had, as usual, kept the
fire alive and the lamp trimmed; and the room, with its rows and rows
of books, its bronze and steel statuettes of "The Fencers" on the
mantelpiece and its many photographs of famous pictures, looked
singularly home-like and welcoming.
As he dropped into his armchair near the fire his eyes rested on a
large photograph of May Welland, which the young girl had given him in
the first days of their romance, and which had now displaced all the
other portraits on the table. With a new sense of awe he looked at the
frank forehead, serious eyes and gay innocent mouth of the young
creature whose soul's custodian he was to be. That terrifying product
of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who
knew nothing and expected everything, looked back at him like a
stranger through May Welland's familiar features; and once more it was
borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been
taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas.
The case of the Countess Olenska had stirred up old settled convictions
and set them drifting dangerously through his mind. His own
exclamation: "Women should be free--as free as we are," struck to the
root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as
non-existent. "Nice" women, however wronged, would never claim the
kind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were
therefore--in the heat of argument--the more chivalrously ready to
concede it to them. Such verbal generosities were in fact only a
humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things
together and bound people down to the old pattern. But here he was
pledged to defend, on the part of his betrothed's cousin, conduct that,
on his own wife's part, would justify him in calling down on her all
the thunders of Church and State. Of course the dilemma was purely
hypothetical; since he wasn't a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was
absurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he WERE. But
Newland Archer was too imaginative not to feel that, in his case and
May's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable.
What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty,
as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a
marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal? What if, for some one
of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should
tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other? He reviewed
his friends' marriages--the supposedly happy ones--and saw none that
answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which
he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived
that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the
versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully
trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his
marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a
dull association of material and social interests held together by
ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other. Lawrence
Lefferts occurred to him as the husband who had most completely
realised this enviable ideal. As became the high-priest of form, he
had formed a wife so completely to his own convenience that, in the
most conspicuous moments of his frequent love-affairs with other men's
wives, she went about in smiling unconsciousness, saying that "Lawrence
was so frightfully strict"; and had been known to blush indignantly,
and avert her gaze, when some one alluded in her presence to the fact
that Julius Beaufort (as became a "foreigner" of doubtful origin) had
what was known in New York as "another establishment."
Archer tried to console himself with the thought that he was not quite
such an ass as Larry Lefferts, nor May such a simpleton as poor
Gertrude; but the difference was after all one of intelligence and not
of standards. In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic
world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but
only represented by a set of arbitrary signs; as when Mrs. Welland, who
knew exactly why Archer had pressed her to announce her daughter's
engagement at the Beaufort ball (and had indeed expected him to do no
less), yet felt obliged to simulate reluctance, and the air of having
had her hand forced, quite as, in the books on Primitive Man that
people of advanced culture were beginning to read, the savage bride is
dragged with shrieks from her parents' tent.
The result, of course, was that the young girl who was the centre of
this elaborate system of mystification remained the more inscrutable
for her very frankness and assurance. She was frank, poor darling,
because she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing
to be on her guard against; and with no better preparation than this,
she was to be plunged overnight into what people evasively called "the
facts of life."
The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the
radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship,
her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and
ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance. (She had
advanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the Idyls of the King,
but not to feel the beauty of Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters.) She was
straightforward, loyal and brave; she had a sense of humour (chiefly
proved by her laughing at HIS jokes); and he suspected, in the depths
of her innocently-gazing soul, a glow of feeling that it would be a joy
to waken. But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned
discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were
only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and
innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive
guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious
purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts
and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to
be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might
exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.
There was a certain triteness in these reflections: they were those
habitual to young men on the approach of their wedding day. But they
were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement
of which Newland Archer felt no trace. He could not deplore (as
Thackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing) that he had not a
blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she
was to give to him. He could not get away from the fact that if he had
been brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find
their way about than the Babes in the Wood; nor could he, for all his
anxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected
with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of masculine vanity)
why his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of
experience as himself.
Such questions, at such an hour, were bound to drift through his mind;
but he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision
were due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Olenska. Here he
was, at the very moment of his betrothal--a moment for pure thoughts
and cloudless hopes--pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised
all the special problems he would have preferred to let lie. "Hang
Ellen Olenska!" he grumbled, as he covered his fire and began to
undress. He could not really see why her fate should have the least
bearing on his; yet he dimly felt that he had only just begun to
measure the risks of the championship which his engagement had forced
upon him.
A few days later the bolt fell.
The Lovell Mingotts had sent out cards for what was known as "a formal
dinner" (that is, three extra footmen, two dishes for each course, and
a Roman punch in the middle), and had headed their invitations with the
words "To meet the Countess Olenska," in accordance with the hospitable
American fashion, which treats strangers as if they were royalties, or
at least as their ambassadors.
The guests had been selected with a boldness and discrimination in
which the initiated recognised the firm hand of Catherine the Great.
Associated with such immemorial standbys as the Selfridge Merrys, who
were asked everywhere because they always had been, the Beauforts, on
whom there was a claim of relationship, and Mr. Sillerton Jackson and
his sister Sophy (who went wherever her brother told her to), were some
of the most fashionable and yet most irreproachable of the dominant
"young married" set; the Lawrence Leffertses, Mrs. Lefferts Rushworth
(the lovely widow), the Harry Thorleys, the Reggie Chiverses and young
Morris Dagonet and his wife (who was a van der Luyden). The company
indeed was perfectly assorted, since all the members belonged to the
little inner group of people who, during the long New York season,
disported themselves together daily and nightly with apparently
undiminished zest.
Forty-eight hours later the unbelievable had happened; every one had
refused the Mingotts' invitation except the Beauforts and old Mr.
Jackson and his sister. The intended slight was emphasised by the fact
that even the Reggie Chiverses, who were of the Mingott clan, were
among those inflicting it; and by the uniform wording of the notes, in
all of which the writers "regretted that they were unable to accept,"
without the mitigating plea of a "previous engagement" that ordinary
courtesy prescribed.
New York society was, in those days, far too small, and too scant in
its resources, for every one in it (including livery-stable-keepers,
butlers and cooks) not to know exactly on which evenings people were
free; and it was thus possible for the recipients of Mrs. Lovell
Mingott's invitations to make cruelly clear their determination not to
meet the Countess Olenska.
The blow was unexpected; but the Mingotts, as their way was, met it
gallantly. Mrs. Lovell Mingott confided the case to Mrs. Welland, who
confided it to Newland Archer; who, aflame at the outrage, appealed
passionately and authoritatively to his mother; who, after a painful
period of inward resistance and outward temporising, succumbed to his
instances (as she always did), and immediately embracing his cause with
an energy redoubled by her previous hesitations, put on her grey velvet
bonnet and said: "I'll go and see Louisa van der Luyden."
The New York of Newland Archer's day was a small and slippery pyramid,
in which, as yet, hardly a fissure had been made or a foothold gained.
At its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs. Archer called "plain
people"; an honourable but obscure majority of respectable families who
(as in the case of the Spicers or the Leffertses or the Jacksons) had
been raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans.
People, Mrs. Archer always said, were not as particular as they used to
be; and with old Catherine Spicer ruling one end of Fifth Avenue, and
Julius Beaufort the other, you couldn't expect the old traditions to
last much longer.
Firmly narrowing upward from this wealthy but inconspicuous substratum
was the compact and dominant group which the Mingotts, Newlands,
Chiverses and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined
them to be the very apex of the pyramid; but they themselves (at least
those of Mrs. Archer's generation) were aware that, in the eyes of the
professional genealogist, only a still smaller number of families could
lay claim to that eminence.
"Don't tell me," Mrs. Archer would say to her children, "all this
modern newspaper rubbish about a New York aristocracy. If there is
one, neither the Mingotts nor the Mansons belong to it; no, nor the
Newlands or the Chiverses either. Our grandfathers and
great-grandfathers were just respectable English or Dutch merchants,
who came to the colonies to make their fortune, and stayed here because
they did so well. One of your great-grandfathers signed the
Declaration, and another was a general on Washington's staff, and
received General Burgoyne's sword after the battle of Saratoga. These
are things to be proud of, but they have nothing to do with rank or
class. New York has always been a commercial community, and there are
not more than three families in it who can claim an aristocratic origin
in the real sense of the word."
Mrs. Archer and her son and daughter, like every one else in New York,
knew who these privileged beings were: the Dagonets of Washington
Square, who came of an old English county family allied with the Pitts
and Foxes; the Lannings, who had intermarried with the descendants of
Count de Grasse, and the van der Luydens, direct descendants of the
first Dutch governor of Manhattan, and related by pre-revolutionary
marriages to several members of the French and British aristocracy.
The Lannings survived only in the person of two very old but lively
Miss Lannings, who lived cheerfully and reminiscently among family
portraits and Chippendale; the Dagonets were a considerable clan,
allied to the best names in Baltimore and Philadelphia; but the van der
Luydens, who stood above all of them, had faded into a kind of
super-terrestrial twilight, from which only two figures impressively
emerged; those of Mr. and Mrs. Henry van der Luyden.
Mrs. Henry van der Luyden had been Louisa Dagonet, and her mother had
been the granddaughter of Colonel du Lac, of an old Channel Island
family, who had fought under Cornwallis and had settled in Maryland,
after the war, with his bride, Lady Angelica Trevenna, fifth daughter
of the Earl of St. Austrey. The tie between the Dagonets, the du Lacs
of Maryland, and their aristocratic Cornish kinsfolk, the Trevennas,
had always remained close and cordial. Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden had
more than once paid long visits to the present head of the house of
Trevenna, the Duke of St. Austrey, at his country-seat in Cornwall and
at St. Austrey in Gloucestershire; and his Grace had frequently
announced his intention of some day returning their visit (without the
Duchess, who feared the Atlantic).
Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden divided their time between Trevenna, their
place in Maryland, and Skuytercliff, the great estate on the Hudson
which had been one of the colonial grants of the Dutch government to
the famous first Governor, and of which Mr. van der Luyden was still
"Patroon." Their large solemn house in Madison Avenue was seldom
opened, and when they came to town they received in it only their most
intimate friends.
"I wish you would go with me, Newland," his mother said, suddenly
pausing at the door of the Brown coupe. "Louisa is fond of you; and of
course it's on account of dear May that I'm taking this step--and also
because, if we don't all stand together, there'll be no such thing as
Society left."
VII.
Mrs. Henry van der Luyden listened in silence to her cousin Mrs.
Archer's narrative.
It was all very well to tell yourself in advance that Mrs. van der
Luyden was always silent, and that, though non-committal by nature and
training, she was very kind to the people she really liked. Even
personal experience of these facts was not always a protection from the
chill that descended on one in the high-ceilinged white-walled Madison
Avenue drawing-room, with the pale brocaded armchairs so obviously
uncovered for the occasion, and the gauze still veiling the ormolu
mantel ornaments and the beautiful old carved frame of Gainsborough's
"Lady Angelica du Lac."
Mrs. van der Luyden's portrait by Huntington (in black velvet and
Venetian point) faced that of her lovely ancestress. It was generally
considered "as fine as a Cabanel," and, though twenty years had elapsed
since its execution, was still "a perfect likeness." Indeed the Mrs.
van der Luyden who sat beneath it listening to Mrs. Archer might have
been the twin-sister of the fair and still youngish woman drooping
against a gilt armchair before a green rep curtain. Mrs. van der
Luyden still wore black velvet and Venetian point when she went into
society--or rather (since she never dined out) when she threw open her
own doors to receive it. Her fair hair, which had faded without
turning grey, was still parted in flat overlapping points on her
forehead, and the straight nose that divided her pale blue eyes was
only a little more pinched about the nostrils than when the portrait
had been painted. She always, indeed, struck Newland Archer as having
been rather gruesomely preserved in the airless atmosphere of a
perfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in glaciers keep
for years a rosy life-in-death.
Like all his family, he esteemed and admired Mrs. van der Luyden; but
he found her gentle bending sweetness less approachable than the
grimness of some of his mother's old aunts, fierce spinsters who said
"No" on principle before they knew what they were going to be asked.
Mrs. van der Luyden's attitude said neither yes nor no, but always
appeared to incline to clemency till her thin lips, wavering into the
shadow of a smile, made the almost invariable reply: "I shall first
have to talk this over with my husband."
She and Mr. van der Luyden were so exactly alike that Archer often
wondered how, after forty years of the closest conjugality, two such
merged identities ever separated themselves enough for anything as
controversial as a talking-over. But as neither had ever reached a
decision without prefacing it by this mysterious conclave, Mrs. Archer
and her son, having set forth their case, waited resignedly for the
familiar phrase.
Mrs. van der Luyden, however, who had seldom surprised any one, now
surprised them by reaching her long hand toward the bell-rope.
"I think," she said, "I should like Henry to hear what you have told
me."
A footman appeared, to whom she gravely added: "If Mr. van der Luyden
has finished reading the newspaper, please ask him to be kind enough to
come."
She said "reading the newspaper" in the tone in which a Minister's wife
might have said: "Presiding at a Cabinet meeting"--not from any
arrogance of mind, but because the habit of a life-time, and the
attitude of her friends and relations, had led her to consider Mr. van
der Luyden's least gesture as having an almost sacerdotal importance.
Her promptness of action showed that she considered the case as
pressing as Mrs. Archer; but, lest she should be thought to have
committed herself in advance, she added, with the sweetest look:
"Henry always enjoys seeing you, dear Adeline; and he will wish to
congratulate Newland."
The double doors had solemnly reopened and between them appeared Mr.
Henry van der Luyden, tall, spare and frock-coated, with faded fair
hair, a straight nose like his wife's and the same look of frozen
gentleness in eyes that were merely pale grey instead of pale blue.
Mr. van der Luyden greeted Mrs. Archer with cousinly affability,
proffered to Newland low-voiced congratulations couched in the same
language as his wife's, and seated himself in one of the brocade
armchairs with the simplicity of a reigning sovereign.
"I had just finished reading the Times," he said, laying his long
finger-tips together. "In town my mornings are so much occupied that I
find it more convenient to read the newspapers after luncheon."
"Ah, there's a great deal to be said for that plan--indeed I think my
uncle Egmont used to say he found it less agitating not to read the
morning papers till after dinner," said Mrs. Archer responsively.
"Yes: my good father abhorred hurry. But now we live in a constant
rush," said Mr. van der Luyden in measured tones, looking with pleasant
deliberation about the large shrouded room which to Archer was so
complete an image of its owners.
"But I hope you HAD finished your reading, Henry?" his wife interposed.
"Quite--quite," he reassured her.
"Then I should like Adeline to tell you--"
"Oh, it's really Newland's story," said his mother smiling; and
proceeded to rehearse once more the monstrous tale of the affront
inflicted on Mrs. Lovell Mingott.
"Of course," she ended, "Augusta Welland and Mary Mingott both felt
that, especially in view of Newland's engagement, you and Henry OUGHT
TO KNOW."
"Ah--" said Mr. van der Luyden, drawing a deep breath.
There was a silence during which the tick of the monumental ormolu
clock on the white marble mantelpiece grew as loud as the boom of a
minute-gun. Archer contemplated with awe the two slender faded
figures, seated side by side in a kind of viceregal rigidity,
mouthpieces of some remote ancestral authority which fate compelled
them to wield, when they would so much rather have lived in simplicity
and seclusion, digging invisible weeds out of the perfect lawns of
Skuytercliff, and playing Patience together in the evenings.
Mr. van der Luyden was the first to speak.
"You really think this is due to some--some intentional interference of
Lawrence Lefferts's?" he enquired, turning to Archer.
"I'm certain of it, sir. Larry has been going it rather harder than
usual lately--if cousin Louisa won't mind my mentioning it--having
rather a stiff affair with the postmaster's wife in their village, or
some one of that sort; and whenever poor Gertrude Lefferts begins to
suspect anything, and he's afraid of trouble, he gets up a fuss of this
kind, to show how awfully moral he is, and talks at the top of his
voice about the impertinence of inviting his wife to meet people he
doesn't wish her to know. He's simply using Madame Olenska as a
lightning-rod; I've seen him try the same thing often before."
"The LEFFERTSES!--" said Mrs. van der Luyden.
"The LEFFERTSES!--" echoed Mrs. Archer. "What would uncle Egmont have
said of Lawrence Lefferts's pronouncing on anybody's social position?
It shows what Society has come to."
"We'll hope it has not quite come to that," said Mr. van der Luyden
firmly.
"Ah, if only you and Louisa went out more!" sighed Mrs. Archer.
But instantly she became aware of her mistake. The van der Luydens
were morbidly sensitive to any criticism of their secluded existence.
They were the arbiters of fashion, the Court of last Appeal, and they
knew it, and bowed to their fate. But being shy and retiring persons,
with no natural inclination for their part, they lived as much as
possible in the sylvan solitude of Skuytercliff, and when they came to
town, declined all invitations on the plea of Mrs. van der Luyden's
health.
Newland Archer came to his mother's rescue. "Everybody in New York
knows what you and cousin Louisa represent. That's why Mrs. Mingott
felt she ought not to allow this slight on Countess Olenska to pass
without consulting you."
Mrs. van der Luyden glanced at her husband, who glanced back at her.
"It is the principle that I dislike," said Mr. van der Luyden. "As
long as a member of a well-known family is backed up by that family it
should be considered--final."
"It seems so to me," said his wife, as if she were producing a new
thought.
"I had no idea," Mr. van der Luyden continued, "that things had come to
such a pass." He paused, and looked at his wife again. "It occurs to
me, my dear, that the Countess Olenska is already a sort of
relation--through Medora Manson's first husband. At any rate, she will
be when Newland marries." He turned toward the young man. "Have you
read this morning's Times, Newland?"
"Why, yes, sir," said Archer, who usually tossed off half a dozen
papers with his morning coffee.
Husband and wife looked at each other again. Their pale eyes clung
together in prolonged and serious consultation; then a faint smile
fluttered over Mrs. van der Luyden's face. She had evidently guessed
and approved.
Mr. van der Luyden turned to Mrs. Archer. "If Louisa's health allowed
her to dine out--I wish you would say to Mrs. Lovell Mingott--she and I
would have been happy to--er--fill the places of the Lawrence
Leffertses at her dinner." He paused to let the irony of this sink in.
"As you know, this is impossible." Mrs. Archer sounded a sympathetic
assent. "But Newland tells me he has read this morning's Times;
therefore he has probably seen that Louisa's relative, the Duke of St.
Austrey, arrives next week on the Russia. He is coming to enter his
new sloop, the Guinevere, in next summer's International Cup Race; and
also to have a little canvasback shooting at Trevenna." Mr. van der
Luyden paused again, and continued with increasing benevolence:
"Before taking him down to Maryland we are inviting a few friends to
meet him here--only a little dinner--with a reception afterward. I am
sure Louisa will be as glad as I am if Countess Olenska will let us
include her among our guests." He got up, bent his long body with a
stiff friendliness toward his cousin, and added: "I think I have
Louisa's authority for saying that she will herself leave the
invitation to dine when she drives out presently: with our cards--of
course with our cards."
Mrs. Archer, who knew this to be a hint that the seventeen-hand
chestnuts which were never kept waiting were at the door, rose with a
hurried murmur of thanks. Mrs. van der Luyden beamed on her with the
smile of Esther interceding with Ahasuerus; but her husband raised a
protesting hand.
"There is nothing to thank me for, dear Adeline; nothing whatever.
This kind of thing must not happen in New York; it shall not, as long
as I can help it," he pronounced with sovereign gentleness as he
steered his cousins to the door.
Two hours later, every one knew that the great C-spring barouche in
which Mrs. van der Luyden took the air at all seasons had been seen at
old Mrs. Mingott's door, where a large square envelope was handed in;
and that evening at the Opera Mr. Sillerton Jackson was able to state
that the envelope contained a card inviting the Countess Olenska to the
dinner which the van der Luydens were giving the following week for
their cousin, the Duke of St. Austrey.
Some of the younger men in the club box exchanged a smile at this
announcement, and glanced sideways at Lawrence Lefferts, who sat
carelessly in the front of the box, pulling his long fair moustache,
and who remarked with authority, as the soprano paused: "No one but
Patti ought to attempt the Sonnambula."
VIII.
It was generally agreed in New York that the Countess Olenska had "lost
her looks."
She had appeared there first, in Newland Archer's boyhood, as a
brilliantly pretty little girl of nine or ten, of whom people said that
she "ought to be painted." Her parents had been continental wanderers,
and after a roaming babyhood she had lost them both, and been taken in
charge by her aunt, Medora Manson, also a wanderer, who was herself
returning to New York to "settle down."
Poor Medora, repeatedly widowed, was always coming home to settle down
(each time in a less expensive house), and bringing with her a new
husband or an adopted child; but after a few months she invariably
parted from her husband or quarrelled with her ward, and, having got
rid of her house at a loss, set out again on her wanderings. As her
mother had been a Rushworth, and her last unhappy marriage had linked
her to one of the crazy Chiverses, New York looked indulgently on her
eccentricities; but when she returned with her little orphaned niece,
whose parents had been popular in spite of their regrettable taste for
travel, people thought it a pity that the pretty child should be in
such hands.
Every one was disposed to be kind to little Ellen Mingott, though her
dusky red cheeks and tight curls gave her an air of gaiety that seemed
unsuitable in a child who should still have been in black for her
parents. It was one of the misguided Medora's many peculiarities to
flout the unalterable rules that regulated American mourning, and when
she stepped from the steamer her family were scandalised to see that
the crape veil she wore for her own brother was seven inches shorter
than those of her sisters-in-law, while little Ellen was in crimson
merino and amber beads, like a gipsy foundling.
But New York had so long resigned itself to Medora that only a few old
ladies shook their heads over Ellen's gaudy clothes, while her other
relations fell under the charm of her high colour and high spirits.
She was a fearless and familiar little thing, who asked disconcerting
questions, made precocious comments, and possessed outlandish arts,
such as dancing a Spanish shawl dance and singing Neapolitan love-songs
to a guitar. Under the direction of her aunt (whose real name was Mrs.
Thorley Chivers, but who, having received a Papal title, had resumed
her first husband's patronymic, and called herself the Marchioness
Manson, because in Italy she could turn it into Manzoni) the little
girl received an expensive but incoherent education, which included
"drawing from the model," a thing never dreamed of before, and playing
the piano in quintets with professional musicians.
Of course no good could come of this; and when, a few years later, poor
Chivers finally died in a madhouse, his widow (draped in strange weeds)
again pulled up stakes and departed with Ellen, who had grown into a
tall bony girl with conspicuous eyes. For some time no more was heard
of them; then news came of Ellen's marriage to an immensely rich Polish
nobleman of legendary fame, whom she had met at a ball at the
Tuileries, and who was said to have princely establishments in Paris,
Nice and Florence, a yacht at Cowes, and many square miles of shooting
in Transylvania. She disappeared in a kind of sulphurous apotheosis,
and when a few years later Medora again came back to New York, subdued,
impoverished, mourning a third husband, and in quest of a still smaller
house, people wondered that her rich niece had not been able to do
something for her. Then came the news that Ellen's own marriage had
ended in disaster, and that she was herself returning home to seek rest
and oblivion among her kinsfolk.
These things passed through Newland Archer's mind a week later as he
watched the Countess Olenska enter the van der Luyden drawing-room on
the evening of the momentous dinner. The occasion was a solemn one,
and he wondered a little nervously how she would carry it off. She
came rather late, one hand still ungloved, and fastening a bracelet
about her wrist; yet she entered without any appearance of haste or
embarrassment the drawing-room in which New York's most chosen company
was somewhat awfully assembled.
In the middle of the room she paused, looking about her with a grave
mouth and smiling eyes; and in that instant Newland Archer rejected the
general verdict on her looks. It was true that her early radiance was
gone. The red cheeks had paled; she was thin, worn, a little
older-looking than her age, which must have been nearly thirty. But
there was about her the mysterious authority of beauty, a sureness in
the carriage of the head, the movement of the eyes, which, without
being in the least theatrical, struck his as highly trained and full of
a conscious power. At the same time she was simpler in manner than
most of the ladies present, and many people (as he heard afterward from
Janey) were disappointed that her appearance was not more
"stylish"--for stylishness was what New York most valued. It was,
perhaps, Archer reflected, because her early vivacity had disappeared;
because she was so quiet--quiet in her movements, her voice, and the
tones of her low-pitched voice. New York had expected something a good
deal more reasonant in a young woman with such a history.
The dinner was a somewhat formidable business. Dining with the van der
Luydens was at best no light matter, and dining there with a Duke who
was their cousin was almost a religious solemnity. It pleased Archer
to think that only an old New Yorker could perceive the shade of
difference (to New York) between being merely a Duke and being the van
der Luydens' Duke. New York took stray noblemen calmly, and even
(except in the Struthers set) with a certain distrustful hauteur; but
when they presented such credentials as these they were received with
an old-fashioned cordiality that they would have been greatly mistaken
in ascribing solely to their standing in Debrett. It was for just such
distinctions that the young man cherished his old New York even while
he smiled at it.
The van der Luydens had done their best to emphasise the importance of
the occasion. The du Lac Sevres and the Trevenna George II plate were
out; so was the van der Luyden "Lowestoft" (East India Company) and the
Dagonet Crown Derby. Mrs. van der Luyden looked more than ever like a
Cabanel, and Mrs. Archer, in her grandmother's seed-pearls and
emeralds, reminded her son of an Isabey miniature. All the ladies had
on their handsomest jewels, but it was characteristic of the house and
the occasion that these were mostly in rather heavy old-fashioned
settings; and old Miss Lanning, who had been persuaded to come,
actually wore her mother's cameos and a Spanish blonde shawl.
The Countess Olenska was the only young woman at the dinner; yet, as
Archer scanned the smooth plump elderly faces between their diamond
necklaces and towering ostrich feathers, they struck him as curiously
immature compared with hers. It frightened him to think what must have
gone to the making of her eyes.
The Duke of St. Austrey, who sat at his hostess's right, was naturally
the chief figure of the evening. But if the Countess Olenska was less
conspicuous than had been hoped, the Duke was almost invisible. Being
a well-bred man he had not (like another recent ducal visitor) come to
the dinner in a shooting-jacket; but his evening clothes were so shabby
and baggy, and he wore them with such an air of their being homespun,
that (with his stooping way of sitting, and the vast beard spreading
over his shirt-front) he hardly gave the appearance of being in dinner
attire. He was short, round-shouldered, sunburnt, with a thick nose,
small eyes and a sociable smile; but he seldom spoke, and when he did
it was in such low tones that, despite the frequent silences of
expectation about the table, his remarks were lost to all but his
neighbours.
When the men joined the ladies after dinner the Duke went straight up
to the Countess Olenska, and they sat down in a corner and plunged into
animated talk. Neither seemed aware that the Duke should first have
paid his respects to Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Headly Chivers, and
the Countess have conversed with that amiable hypochondriac, Mr. Urban
Dagonet of Washington Square, who, in order to have the pleasure of
meeting her, had broken through his fixed rule of not dining out
between January and April. The two chatted together for nearly twenty
minutes; then the Countess rose and, walking alone across the wide
drawing-room, sat down at Newland Archer's side.
It was not the custom in New York drawing-rooms for a lady to get up
and walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of
another. Etiquette required that she should wait, immovable as an
idol, while the men who wished to converse with her succeeded each
other at her side. But the Countess was apparently unaware of having
broken any rule; she sat at perfect ease in a corner of the sofa beside
Archer, and looked at him with the kindest eyes.
"I want you to talk to me about May," she said.
Instead of answering her he asked: "You knew the Duke before?"
"Oh, yes--we used to see him every winter at Nice. He's very fond of
gambling--he used to come to the house a great deal." She said it in
the simplest manner, as if she had said: "He's fond of wild-flowers";
and after a moment she added candidly: "I think he's the dullest man I
ever met."
This pleased her companion so much that he forgot the slight shock her
previous remark had caused him. It was undeniably exciting to meet a
lady who found the van der Luydens' Duke dull, and dared to utter the
opinion. He longed to question her, to hear more about the life of
which her careless words had given him so illuminating a glimpse; but
he feared to touch on distressing memories, and before he could think
of anything to say she had strayed back to her original subject.
"May is a darling; I've seen no young girl in New York so handsome and
so intelligent. Are you very much in love with her?"
Newland Archer reddened and laughed. "As much as a man can be."
She continued to consider him thoughtfully, as if not to miss any shade
of meaning in what he said, "Do you think, then, there is a limit?"
"To being in love? If there is, I haven't found it!"
She glowed with sympathy. "Ah--it's really and truly a romance?"
"The most romantic of romances!"
"How delightful! And you found it all out for yourselves--it was not
in the least arranged for you?"
Archer looked at her incredulously. "Have you forgotten," he asked
with a smile, "that in our country we don't allow our marriages to be
arranged for us?"
A dusky blush rose to her cheek, and he instantly regretted his words.
"Yes," she answered, "I'd forgotten. You must forgive me if I
sometimes make these mistakes. I don't always remember that everything
here is good that was--that was bad where I've come from." She looked
down at her Viennese fan of eagle feathers, and he saw that her lips
trembled.
"I'm so sorry," he said impulsively; "but you ARE among friends here,
you know."
"Yes--I know. Wherever I go I have that feeling. That's why I came
home. I want to forget everything else, to become a complete American
again, like the Mingotts and Wellands, and you and your delightful
mother, and all the other good people here tonight. Ah, here's May
arriving, and you will want to hurry away to her," she added, but
without moving; and her eyes turned back from the door to rest on the
young man's face.
The drawing-rooms were beginning to fill up with after-dinner guests,
and following Madame Olenska's glance Archer saw May Welland entering
with her mother. In her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of
silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just
alight from the chase.
"Oh," said Archer, "I have so many rivals; you see she's already
surrounded. There's the Duke being introduced."
"Then stay with me a little longer," Madame Olenska said in a low tone,
just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch,
but it thrilled him like a caress.
"Yes, let me stay," he answered in the same tone, hardly knowing what
he said; but just then Mr. van der Luyden came up, followed by old Mr.
Urban Dagonet. The Countess greeted them with her grave smile, and
Archer, feeling his host's admonitory glance on him, rose and
surrendered his seat.
Madame Olenska held out her hand as if to bid him goodbye.
"Tomorrow, then, after five--I shall expect you," she said; and then
turned back to make room for Mr. Dagonet.
"Tomorrow--" Archer heard himself repeating, though there had been no
engagement, and during their talk she had given him no hint that she
wished to see him again.
As he moved away he saw Lawrence Lefferts, tall and resplendent,
leading his wife up to be introduced; and heard Gertrude Lefferts say,
as she beamed on the Countess with her large unperceiving smile: "But
I think we used to go to dancing-school together when we were
children--." Behind her, waiting their turn to name themselves to the
Countess, Archer noticed a number of the recalcitrant couples who had
declined to meet her at Mrs. Lovell Mingott's. As Mrs. Archer
remarked: when the van der Luydens chose, they knew how to give a
lesson. The wonder was that they chose so seldom.
The young man felt a touch on his arm and saw Mrs. van der Luyden
looking down on him from the pure eminence of black velvet and the
family diamonds. "It was good of you, dear Newland, to devote yourself
so unselfishly to Madame Olenska. I told your cousin Henry he must
really come to the rescue."
He was aware of smiling at her vaguely, and she added, as if
condescending to his natural shyness: "I've never seen May looking
lovelier. The Duke thinks her the handsomest girl in the room."
IX.
The Countess Olenska had said "after five"; and at half after the hour
Newland Archer rang the bell of the peeling stucco house with a giant
wisteria throttling its feeble cast-iron balcony, which she had hired,
far down West Twenty-third Street, from the vagabond Medora.
It was certainly a strange quarter to have settled in. Small
dress-makers, bird-stuffers and "people who wrote" were her nearest
neighbours; and further down the dishevelled street Archer recognised a
dilapidated wooden house, at the end of a paved path, in which a writer
and journalist called Winsett, whom he used to come across now and
then, had mentioned that he lived. Winsett did not invite people to
his house; but he had once pointed it out to Archer in the course of a
nocturnal stroll, and the latter had asked himself, with a little
shiver, if the humanities were so meanly housed in other capitals.
Madame Olenska's own dwelling was redeemed from the same appearance
only by a little more paint about the window-frames; and as Archer
mustered its modest front he said to himself that the Polish Count must
have robbed her of her fortune as well as of her illusions.
The young man had spent an unsatisfactory day. He had lunched with the
Wellands, hoping afterward to carry off May for a walk in the Park. He
wanted to have her to himself, to tell her how enchanting she had
looked the night before, and how proud he was of her, and to press her
to hasten their marriage. But Mrs. Welland had firmly reminded him
that the round of family visits was not half over, and, when he hinted
at advancing the date of the wedding, had raised reproachful eye-brows
and sighed out: "Twelve dozen of everything--hand-embroidered--"
Packed in the family landau they rolled from one tribal doorstep to
another, and Archer, when the afternoon's round was over, parted from
his betrothed with the feeling that he had been shown off like a wild
animal cunningly trapped. He supposed that his readings in
anthropology caused him to take such a coarse view of what was after
all a simple and natural demonstration of family feeling; but when he
remembered that the Wellands did not expect the wedding to take place
till the following autumn, and pictured what his life would be till
then, a dampness fell upon his spirit.
"Tomorrow," Mrs. Welland called after him, "we'll do the Chiverses and
the Dallases"; and he perceived that she was going through their two
families alphabetically, and that they were only in the first quarter
of the alphabet.
He had meant to tell May of the Countess Olenska's request--her
command, rather--that he should call on her that afternoon; but in the
brief moments when they were alone he had had more pressing things to
say. Besides, it struck him as a little absurd to allude to the
matter. He knew that May most particularly wanted him to be kind to
her cousin; was it not that wish which had hastened the announcement of
their engagement? It gave him an odd sensation to reflect that, but
for the Countess's arrival, he might have been, if not still a free
man, at least a man less irrevocably pledged. But May had willed it
so, and he felt himself somehow relieved of further responsibility--and
therefore at liberty, if he chose, to call on her cousin without
telling her.
As he stood on Madame Olenska's threshold curiosity was his uppermost
feeling. He was puzzled by the tone in which she had summoned him; he
concluded that she was less simple than she seemed.
The door was opened by a swarthy foreign-looking maid, with a prominent
bosom under a gay neckerchief, whom he vaguely fancied to be Sicilian.
She welcomed him with all her white teeth, and answering his enquiries
by a head-shake of incomprehension led him through the narrow hall into
a low firelit drawing-room. The room was empty, and she left him, for
an appreciable time, to wonder whether she had gone to find her
mistress, or whether she had not understood what he was there for, and
thought it might be to wind the clock--of which he perceived that the
only visible specimen had stopped. He knew that the southern races
communicated with each other in the language of pantomime, and was
mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible. At length
she returned with a lamp; and Archer, having meanwhile put together a
phrase out of Dante and Petrarch, evoked the answer: "La signora e
fuori; ma verra subito"; which he took to mean: "She's out--but you'll
soon see."
What he saw, meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded
shadowy charm of a room unlike any room he had known. He knew that the
Countess Olenska had brought some of her possessions with her--bits of
wreckage, she called them--and these, he supposed, were represented by
some small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze
on the chimney-piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on the
discoloured wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in
old frames.
Newland Archer prided himself on his knowledge of Italian art. His
boyhood had been saturated with Ruskin, and he had read all the latest
books: John Addington Symonds, Vernon Lee's "Euphorion," the essays of
P. G. Hamerton, and a wonderful new volume called "The Renaissance" by
Walter Pater. He talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of Fra
Angelico with a faint condescension. But these pictures bewildered
him, for they were like nothing that he was accustomed to look at (and
therefore able to see) when he travelled in Italy; and perhaps, also,
his powers of observation were impaired by the oddness of finding
himself in this strange empty house, where apparently no one expected
him. He was sorry that he had not told May Welland of Countess
Olenska's request, and a little disturbed by the thought that his
betrothed might come in to see her cousin. What would she think if she
found him sitting there with the air of intimacy implied by waiting
alone in the dusk at a lady's fireside?
But since he had come he meant to wait; and he sank into a chair and
stretched his feet to the logs.
It was odd to have summoned him in that way, and then forgotten him;
but Archer felt more curious than mortified. The atmosphere of the
room was so different from any he had ever breathed that
self-consciousness vanished in the sense of adventure. He had been
before in drawing-rooms hung with red damask, with pictures "of the
Italian school"; what struck him was the way in which Medora Manson's
shabby hired house, with its blighted background of pampas grass and
Rogers statuettes, had, by a turn of the hand, and the skilful use of a
few properties, been transformed into something intimate, "foreign,"
subtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and sentiments. He tried to
analyse the trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and
tables were grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot roses (of
which nobody ever bought less than a dozen) had been placed in the
slender vase at his elbow, and in the vague pervading perfume that was
not what one put on handkerchiefs, but rather like the scent of some
far-off bazaar, a smell made up of Turkish coffee and ambergris and
dried roses.
His mind wandered away to the question of what May's drawing-room would
look like. He knew that Mr. Welland, who was behaving "very
handsomely," already had his eye on a newly built house in East
Thirty-ninth Street. The neighbourhood was thought remote, and the
house was built in a ghastly greenish-yellow stone that the younger
architects were beginning to employ as a protest against the brownstone
of which the uniform hue coated New York like a cold chocolate sauce;
but the plumbing was perfect. Archer would have liked to travel, to
put off the housing question; but, though the Wellands approved of an
extended European honeymoon (perhaps even a winter in Egypt), they were
firm as to the need of a house for the returning couple. The young man
felt that his fate was sealed: for the rest of his life he would go up
every evening between the cast-iron railings of that greenish-yellow
doorstep, and pass through a Pompeian vestibule into a hall with a
wainscoting of varnished yellow wood. But beyond that his imagination
could not travel. He knew the drawing-room above had a bay window, but
he could not fancy how May would deal with it. She submitted
cheerfully to the purple satin and yellow tuftings of the Welland
drawing-room, to its sham Buhl tables and gilt vitrines full of modern
Saxe. He saw no reason to suppose that she would want anything
different in her own house; and his only comfort was to reflect that
she would probably let him arrange his library as he pleased--which
would be, of course, with "sincere" Eastlake furniture, and the plain
new bookcases without glass doors.
The round-bosomed maid came in, drew the curtains, pushed back a log,
and said consolingly: "Verra--verra." When she had gone Archer stood
up and began to wander about. Should he wait any longer? His position
was becoming rather foolish. Perhaps he had misunderstood Madame
Olenska--perhaps she had not invited him after all.
Down the cobblestones of the quiet street came the ring of a stepper's
hoofs; they stopped before the house, and he caught the opening of a
carriage door. Parting the curtains he looked out into the early dusk.
A street-lamp faced him, and in its light he saw Julius Beaufort's
compact English brougham, drawn by a big roan, and the banker
descending from it, and helping out Madame Olenska.
Beaufort stood, hat in hand, saying something which his companion
seemed to negative; then they shook hands, and he jumped into his
carriage while she mounted the steps.
When she entered the room she showed no surprise at seeing Archer
there; surprise seemed the emotion that she was least addicted to.
"How do you like my funny house?" she asked. "To me it's like heaven."
As she spoke she untied her little velvet bonnet and tossing it away
with her long cloak stood looking at him with meditative eyes.
"You've arranged it delightfully," he rejoined, alive to the flatness
of the words, but imprisoned in the conventional by his consuming
desire to be simple and striking.
"Oh, it's a poor little place. My relations despise it. But at any
rate it's less gloomy than the van der Luydens'."
The words gave him an electric shock, for few were the rebellious
spirits who would have dared to call the stately home of the van der
Luydens gloomy. Those privileged to enter it shivered there, and spoke
of it as "handsome." But suddenly he was glad that she had given voice
to the general shiver.
"It's delicious--what you've done here," he repeated.
"I like the little house," she admitted; "but I suppose what I like is
the blessedness of its being here, in my own country and my own town;
and then, of being alone in it." She spoke so low that he hardly heard
the last phrase; but in his awkwardness he took it up.
"You like so much to be alone?"
"Yes; as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely." She sat down
near the fire, said: "Nastasia will bring the tea presently," and
signed to him to return to his armchair, adding: "I see you've already
chosen your corner."
Leaning back, she folded her arms behind her head, and looked at the
fire under drooping lids.
"This is the hour I like best--don't you?"
A proper sense of his dignity caused him to answer: "I was afraid you'd
forgotten the hour. Beaufort must have been very engrossing."
She looked amused. "Why--have you waited long? Mr. Beaufort took me
to see a number of houses--since it seems I'm not to be allowed to stay
in this one." She appeared to dismiss both Beaufort and himself from
her mind, and went on: "I've never been in a city where there seems to
be such a feeling against living in des quartiers excentriques. What
does it matter where one lives? I'm told this street is respectable."
"It's not fashionable."
"Fashionable! Do you all think so much of that? Why not make one's
own fashions? But I suppose I've lived too independently; at any rate,
I want to do what you all do--I want to feel cared for and safe."
He was touched, as he had been the evening before when she spoke of her
need of guidance.
"That's what your friends want you to feel. New York's an awfully safe
place," he added with a flash of sarcasm.
"Yes, isn't it? One feels that," she cried, missing the mockery.
"Being here is like--like--being taken on a holiday when one has been a
good little girl and done all one's lessons."
The analogy was well meant, but did not altogether please him. He did
not mind being flippant about New York, but disliked to hear any one
else take the same tone. He wondered if she did not begin to see what
a powerful engine it was, and how nearly it had crushed her. The
Lovell Mingotts' dinner, patched up in extremis out of all sorts of
social odds and ends, ought to have taught her the narrowness of her
escape; but either she had been all along unaware of having skirted
disaster, or else she had lost sight of it in the triumph of the van
der Luyden evening. Archer inclined to the former theory; he fancied
that her New York was still completely undifferentiated, and the
conjecture nettled him.
"Last night," he said, "New York laid itself out for you. The van der
Luydens do nothing by halves."
"No: how kind they are! It was such a nice party. Every one seems to
have such an esteem for them."
The terms were hardly adequate; she might have spoken in that way of a
tea-party at the dear old Miss Lannings'.
"The van der Luydens," said Archer, feeling himself pompous as he
spoke, "are the most powerful influence in New York society.
Unfortunately--owing to her health--they receive very seldom."
She unclasped her hands from behind her head, and looked at him
meditatively.
"Isn't that perhaps the reason?"
"The reason--?"
"For their great influence; that they make themselves so rare."
He coloured a little, stared at her--and suddenly felt the penetration
of the remark. At a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and
they collapsed. He laughed, and sacrificed them.
Nastasia brought the tea, with handleless Japanese cups and little
covered dishes, placing the tray on a low table.
"But you'll explain these things to me--you'll tell me all I ought to
know," Madame Olenska continued, leaning forward to hand him his cup.
"It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at
so long that I'd ceased to see them."
She detached a small gold cigarette-case from one of her bracelets,
held it out to him, and took a cigarette herself. On the chimney were
long spills for lighting them.
"Ah, then we can both help each other. But I want help so much more.
You must tell me just what to do."
It was on the tip of his tongue to reply: "Don't be seen driving about
the streets with Beaufort--" but he was being too deeply drawn into the
atmosphere of the room, which was her atmosphere, and to give advice of
that sort would have been like telling some one who was bargaining for
attar-of-roses in Samarkand that one should always be provided with
arctics for a New York winter. New York seemed much farther off than
Samarkand, and if they were indeed to help each other she was rendering
what might prove the first of their mutual services by making him look
at his native city objectively. Viewed thus, as through the wrong end
of a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant; but then
from Samarkand it would.
A flame darted from the logs and she bent over the fire, stretching her
thin hands so close to it that a faint halo shone about the oval nails.
The light touched to russet the rings of dark hair escaping from her
braids, and made her pale face paler.
"There are plenty of people to tell you what to do," Archer rejoined,
obscurely envious of them.
"Oh--all my aunts? And my dear old Granny?" She considered the idea
impartially. "They're all a little vexed with me for setting up for
myself--poor Granny especially. She wanted to keep me with her; but I
had to be free--" He was impressed by this light way of speaking of
the formidable Catherine, and moved by the thought of what must have
given Madame Olenska this thirst for even the loneliest kind of
freedom. But the idea of Beaufort gnawed him.
"I think I understand how you feel," he said. "Still, your family can
advise you; explain differences; show you the way."
She lifted her thin black eyebrows. "Is New York such a labyrinth? I
thought it so straight up and down--like Fifth Avenue. And with all
the cross streets numbered!" She seemed to guess his faint disapproval
of this, and added, with the rare smile that enchanted her whole face:
"If you knew how I like it for just THAT--the straight-up-and-downness,
and the big honest labels on everything!"
He saw his chance. "Everything may be labelled--but everybody is not."
"Perhaps. I may simplify too much--but you'll warn me if I do." She
turned from the fire to look at him. "There are only two people here
who make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could explain
things to me: you and Mr. Beaufort."
Archer winced at the joining of the names, and then, with a quick
readjustment, understood, sympathised and pitied. So close to the
powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely
in their air. But since she felt that he understood her also, his
business would be to make her see Beaufort as he really was, with all
he represented--and abhor it.
He answered gently: "I understand. But just at first don't let go of
your old friends' hands: I mean the older women, your Granny Mingott,
Mrs. Welland, Mrs. van der Luyden. They like and admire you--they want
to help you."
She shook her head and sighed. "Oh, I know--I know! But on condition
that they don't hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it in those
very words when I tried.... Does no one want to know the truth here,
Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people
who only ask one to pretend!" She lifted her hands to her face, and he
saw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob.
"Madame Olenska!--Oh, don't, Ellen," he cried, starting up and bending
over her. He drew down one of her hands, clasping and chafing it like
a child's while he murmured reassuring words; but in a moment she freed
herself, and looked up at him with wet lashes.
"Does no one cry here, either? I suppose there's no need to, in
heaven," she said, straightening her loosened braids with a laugh, and
bending over the tea-kettle. It was burnt into his consciousness that
he had called her "Ellen"--called her so twice; and that she had not
noticed it. Far down the inverted telescope he saw the faint white
figure of May Welland--in New York.
Suddenly Nastasia put her head in to say something in her rich Italian.
Madame Olenska, again with a hand at her hair, uttered an exclamation
of assent--a flashing "Gia--gia"--and the Duke of St. Austrey entered,
piloting a tremendous blackwigged and red-plumed lady in overflowing
furs.
"My dear Countess, I've brought an old friend of mine to see you--Mrs.
Struthers. She wasn't asked to the party last night, and she wants to
know you."
The Duke beamed on the group, and Madame Olenska advanced with a murmur
of welcome toward the queer couple. She seemed to have no idea how
oddly matched they were, nor what a liberty the Duke had taken in
bringing his companion--and to do him justice, as Archer perceived, the
Duke seemed as unaware of it himself.
"Of course I want to know you, my dear," cried Mrs. Struthers in a
round rolling voice that matched her bold feathers and her brazen wig.
"I want to know everybody who's young and interesting and charming.
And the Duke tells me you like music--didn't you, Duke? You're a
pianist yourself, I believe? Well, do you want to hear Sarasate play
tomorrow evening at my house? You know I've something going on every
Sunday evening--it's the day when New York doesn't know what to do with
itself, and so I say to it: 'Come and be amused.' And the Duke
thought you'd be tempted by Sarasate. You'll find a number of your
friends."
Madame Olenska's face grew brilliant with pleasure. "How kind! How
good of the Duke to think of me!" She pushed a chair up to the
tea-table and Mrs. Struthers sank into it delectably. "Of course I
shall be too happy to come."
"That's all right, my dear. And bring your young gentleman with you."
Mrs. Struthers extended a hail-fellow hand to Archer. "I can't put a
name to you--but I'm sure I've met you--I've met everybody, here, or in
Paris or London. Aren't you in diplomacy? All the diplomatists come
to me. You like music too? Duke, you must be sure to bring him."
The Duke said "Rather" from the depths of his beard, and Archer
withdrew with a stiffly circular bow that made him feel as full of
spine as a self-conscious school-boy among careless and unnoticing
elders.
He was not sorry for the denouement of his visit: he only wished it had
come sooner, and spared him a certain waste of emotion. As he went out
into the wintry night, New York again became vast and imminent, and May
Welland the loveliest woman in it. He turned into his florist's to
send her the daily box of lilies-of-the-valley which, to his confusion,
he found he had forgotten that morning.
As he wrote a word on his card and waited for an envelope he glanced
about the embowered shop, and his eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses.
He had never seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse was
to send them to May instead of the lilies. But they did not look like
her--there was something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty.
In a sudden revulsion of mood, and almost without knowing what he did,
he signed to the florist to lay the roses in another long box, and
slipped his card into a second envelope, on which he wrote the name of
the Countess Olenska; then, just as he was turning away, he drew the
card out again, and left the empty envelope on the box.
"They'll go at once?" he enquired, pointing to the roses.
The florist assured him that they would.
X.
The next day he persuaded May to escape for a walk in the Park after
luncheon. As was the custom in old-fashioned Episcopalian New York,
she usually accompanied her parents to church on Sunday afternoons; but
Mrs. Welland condoned her truancy, having that very morning won her
over to the necessity of a long engagement, with time to prepare a
hand-embroidered trousseau containing the proper number of dozens.
The day was delectable. The bare vaulting of trees along the Mall was
ceiled with lapis lazuli, and arched above snow that shone like
splintered crystals. It was the weather to call out May's radiance,
and she burned like a young maple in the frost. Archer was proud of
the glances turned on her, and the simple joy of possessorship cleared
away his underlying perplexities.
"It's so delicious--waking every morning to smell lilies-of-the-valley
in one's room!" she said.
"Yesterday they came late. I hadn't time in the morning--"
"But your remembering each day to send them makes me love them so much
more than if you'd given a standing order, and they came every morning
on the minute, like one's music-teacher--as I know Gertrude Lefferts's
did, for instance, when she and Lawrence were engaged."
"Ah--they would!" laughed Archer, amused at her keenness. He looked
sideways at her fruit-like cheek and felt rich and secure enough to
add: "When I sent your lilies yesterday afternoon I saw some rather
gorgeous yellow roses and packed them off to Madame Olenska. Was that
right?"
"How dear of you! Anything of that kind delights her. It's odd she
didn't mention it: she lunched with us today, and spoke of Mr.
Beaufort's having sent her wonderful orchids, and cousin Henry van der
Luyden a whole hamper of carnations from Skuytercliff. She seems so
surprised to receive flowers. Don't people send them in Europe? She
thinks it such a pretty custom."
"Oh, well, no wonder mine were overshadowed by Beaufort's," said Archer
irritably. Then he remembered that he had not put a card with the
roses, and was vexed at having spoken of them. He wanted to say: "I
called on your cousin yesterday," but hesitated. If Madame Olenska had
not spoken of his visit it might seem awkward that he should. Yet not
to do so gave the affair an air of mystery that he disliked. To shake
off the question he began to talk of their own plans, their future, and
Mrs. Welland's insistence on a long engagement.
"If you call it long! Isabel Chivers and Reggie were engaged for two
years: Grace and Thorley for nearly a year and a half. Why aren't we
very well off as we are?"
It was the traditional maidenly interrogation, and he felt ashamed of
himself for finding it singularly childish. No doubt she simply echoed
what was said for her; but she was nearing her twenty-second birthday,
and he wondered at what age "nice" women began to speak for themselves.
"Never, if we won't let them, I suppose," he mused, and recalled his
mad outburst to Mr. Sillerton Jackson: "Women ought to be as free as we
are--"
It would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young
woman's eyes, and bid her look forth on the world. But how many
generations of the women who had gone to her making had descended
bandaged to the family vault? He shivered a little, remembering some
of the new ideas in his scientific books, and the much-cited instance
of the Kentucky cave-fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because
they had no use for them. What if, when he had bidden May Welland to
open hers, they could only look out blankly at blankness?
"We might be much better off. We might be altogether together--we
might travel."
Her face lit up. "That would be lovely," she owned: she would love to
travel. But her mother would not understand their wanting to do things
so differently.
"As if the mere 'differently' didn't account for it!" the wooer
insisted.
"Newland! You're so original!" she exulted.
His heart sank, for he saw that he was saying all the things that young
men in the same situation were expected to say, and that she was making
the answers that instinct and tradition taught her to make--even to the
point of calling him original.
"Original! We're all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the
same folded paper. We're like patterns stencilled on a wall. Can't
you and I strike out for ourselves, May?"
He had stopped and faced her in the excitement of their discussion, and
her eyes rested on him with a bright unclouded admiration.
"Mercy--shall we elope?" she laughed.
"If you would--"
"You DO love me, Newland! I'm so happy."
"But then--why not be happier?"
"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?"
"Why not--why not--why not?"
She looked a little bored by his insistence. She knew very well that
they couldn't, but it was troublesome to have to produce a reason.
"I'm not clever enough to argue with you. But that kind of thing is
rather--vulgar, isn't it?" she suggested, relieved to have hit on a
word that would assuredly extinguish the whole subject.
"Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar?"
She was evidently staggered by this. "Of course I should hate it--so
would you," she rejoined, a trifle irritably.
He stood silent, beating his stick nervously against his boot-top; and
feeling that she had indeed found the right way of closing the
discussion, she went on light-heartedly: "Oh, did I tell you that I
showed Ellen my ring? She thinks it the most beautiful setting she
ever saw. There's nothing like it in the rue de la Paix, she said. I
do love you, Newland, for being so artistic!"
The next afternoon, as Archer, before dinner, sat smoking sullenly in
his study, Janey wandered in on him. He had failed to stop at his club
on the way up from the office where he exercised the profession of the
law in the leisurely manner common to well-to-do New Yorkers of his
class. He was out of spirits and slightly out of temper, and a
haunting horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour
besieged his brain.
"Sameness--sameness!" he muttered, the word running through his head
like a persecuting tune as he saw the familiar tall-hatted figures
lounging behind the plate-glass; and because he usually dropped in at
the club at that hour he had gone home instead. He knew not only what
they were likely to be talking about, but the part each one would take
in the discussion. The Duke of course would be their principal theme;
though the appearance in Fifth Avenue of a golden-haired lady in a
small canary-coloured brougham with a pair of black cobs (for which
Beaufort was generally thought responsible) would also doubtless be
thoroughly gone into. Such "women" (as they were called) were few in
New York, those driving their own carriages still fewer, and the
appearance of Miss Fanny Ring in Fifth Avenue at the fashionable hour
had profoundly agitated society. Only the day before, her carriage had
passed Mrs. Lovell Mingott's, and the latter had instantly rung the
little bell at her elbow and ordered the coachman to drive her home.
"What if it had happened to Mrs. van der Luyden?" people asked each
other with a shudder. Archer could hear Lawrence Lefferts, at that
very hour, holding forth on the disintegration of society.
He raised his head irritably when his sister Janey entered, and then
quickly bent over his book (Swinburne's "Chastelard"--just out) as if
he had not seen her. She glanced at the writing-table heaped with
books, opened a volume of the "Contes Drolatiques," made a wry face
over the archaic French, and sighed: "What learned things you read!"
"Well--?" he asked, as she hovered Cassandra-like before him.
"Mother's very angry."
"Angry? With whom? About what?"
"Miss Sophy Jackson has just been here. She brought word that her
brother would come in after dinner: she couldn't say very much, because
he forbade her to: he wishes to give all the details himself. He's
with cousin Louisa van der Luyden now."
"For heaven's sake, my dear girl, try a fresh start. It would take an
omniscient Deity to know what you're talking about."
"It's not a time to be profane, Newland.... Mother feels badly enough
about your not going to church ..."
With a groan he plunged back into his book.
"NEWLAND! Do listen. Your friend Madame Olenska was at Mrs. Lemuel
Struthers's party last night: she went there with the Duke and Mr.
Beaufort."
At the last clause of this announcement a senseless anger swelled the
young man's breast. To smother it he laughed. "Well, what of it? I
knew she meant to."
Janey paled and her eyes began to project. "You knew she meant to--and
you didn't try to stop her? To warn her?"
"Stop her? Warn her?" He laughed again. "I'm not engaged to be
married to the Countess Olenska!" The words had a fantastic sound in
his own ears.
"You're marrying into her family."
"Oh, family--family!" he jeered.
"Newland--don't you care about Family?"
"Not a brass farthing."
"Nor about what cousin Louisa van der Luyden will think?"
"Not the half of one--if she thinks such old maid's rubbish."
"Mother is not an old maid," said his virgin sister with pinched lips.
He felt like shouting back: "Yes, she is, and so are the van der
Luydens, and so we all are, when it comes to being so much as brushed
by the wing-tip of Reality." But he saw her long gentle face puckering
into tears, and felt ashamed of the useless pain he was inflicting.
"Hang Countess Olenska! Don't be a goose, Janey--I'm not her keeper."
"No; but you DID ask the Wellands to announce your engagement sooner so
that we might all back her up; and if it hadn't been for that cousin
Louisa would never have invited her to the dinner for the Duke."
"Well--what harm was there in inviting her? She was the best-looking
woman in the room; she made the dinner a little less funereal than the
usual van der Luyden banquet."
"You know cousin Henry asked her to please you: he persuaded cousin
Louisa. And now they're so upset that they're going back to
Skuytercliff tomorrow. I think, Newland, you'd better come down. You
don't seem to understand how mother feels."
In the drawing-room Newland found his mother. She raised a troubled
brow from her needlework to ask: "Has Janey told you?"
"Yes." He tried to keep his tone as measured as her own. "But I can't
take it very seriously."
"Not the fact of having offended cousin Louisa and cousin Henry?"
"The fact that they can be offended by such a trifle as Countess
Olenska's going to the house of a woman they consider common."
"Consider--!"
"Well, who is; but who has good music, and amuses people on Sunday
evenings, when the whole of New York is dying of inanition."
"Good music? All I know is, there was a woman who got up on a table
and sang the things they sing at the places you go to in Paris. There
was smoking and champagne."
"Well--that kind of thing happens in other places, and the world still
goes on."
"I don't suppose, dear, you're really defending the French Sunday?"
"I've heard you often enough, mother, grumble at the English Sunday
when we've been in London."
"New York is neither Paris nor London."
"Oh, no, it's not!" her son groaned.
"You mean, I suppose, that society here is not as brilliant? You're
right, I daresay; but we belong here, and people should respect our
ways when they come among us. Ellen Olenska especially: she came back
to get away from the kind of life people lead in brilliant societies."
Newland made no answer, and after a moment his mother ventured: "I was
going to put on my bonnet and ask you to take me to see cousin Louisa
for a moment before dinner." He frowned, and she continued: "I thought
you might explain to her what you've just said: that society abroad is
different ... that people are not as particular, and that Madame
Olenska may not have realised how we feel about such things. It would
be, you know, dear," she added with an innocent adroitness, "in Madame
Olenska's interest if you did."
"Dearest mother, I really don't see how we're concerned in the matter.
The Duke took Madame Olenska to Mrs. Struthers's--in fact he brought
Mrs. Struthers to call on her. I was there when they came. If the van
der Luydens want to quarrel with anybody, the real culprit is under
their own roof."
"Quarrel? Newland, did you ever know of cousin Henry's quarrelling?
Besides, the Duke's his guest; and a stranger too. Strangers don't
discriminate: how should they? Countess Olenska is a New Yorker, and
should have respected the feelings of New York."
"Well, then, if they must have a victim, you have my leave to throw
Madame Olenska to them," cried her son, exasperated. "I don't see
myself--or you either--offering ourselves up to expiate her crimes."
"Oh, of course you see only the Mingott side," his mother answered, in
the sensitive tone that was her nearest approach to anger.
The sad butler drew back the drawing-room portieres and announced:
"Mr. Henry van der Luyden."
Mrs. Archer dropped her needle and pushed her chair back with an
agitated hand.
"Another lamp," she cried to the retreating servant, while Janey bent
over to straighten her mother's cap.
Mr. van der Luyden's figure loomed on the threshold, and Newland Archer
went forward to greet his cousin.
"We were just talking about you, sir," he said.
Mr. van der Luyden seemed overwhelmed by the announcement. He drew off
his glove to shake hands with the ladies, and smoothed his tall hat
shyly, while Janey pushed an arm-chair forward, and Archer continued:
"And the Countess Olenska."
Mrs. Archer paled.
"Ah--a charming woman. I have just been to see her," said Mr. van der
Luyden, complacency restored to his brow. He sank into the chair, laid
his hat and gloves on the floor beside him in the old-fashioned way,
and went on: "She has a real gift for arranging flowers. I had sent
her a few carnations from Skuytercliff, and I was astonished. Instead
of massing them in big bunches as our head-gardener does, she had
scattered them about loosely, here and there ... I can't say how. The
Duke had told me: he said: 'Go and see how cleverly she's arranged her
drawing-room.' And she has. I should really like to take Louisa to
see her, if the neighbourhood were not so--unpleasant."
A dead silence greeted this unusual flow of words from Mr. van der
Luyden. Mrs. Archer drew her embroidery out of the basket into which
she had nervously tumbled it, and Newland, leaning against the
chimney-place and twisting a humming-bird-feather screen in his hand,
saw Janey's gaping countenance lit up by the coming of the second lamp.
"The fact is," Mr. van der Luyden continued, stroking his long grey leg
with a bloodless hand weighed down by the Patroon's great signet-ring,
"the fact is, I dropped in to thank her for the very pretty note she
wrote me about my flowers; and also--but this is between ourselves, of
course--to give her a friendly warning about allowing the Duke to carry
her off to parties with him. I don't know if you've heard--"
Mrs. Archer produced an indulgent smile. "Has the Duke been carrying
her off to parties?"
"You know what these English grandees are. They're all alike. Louisa
and I are very fond of our cousin--but it's hopeless to expect people
who are accustomed to the European courts to trouble themselves about
our little republican distinctions. The Duke goes where he's amused."
Mr. van der Luyden paused, but no one spoke. "Yes--it seems he took
her with him last night to Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's. Sillerton Jackson
has just been to us with the foolish story, and Louisa was rather
troubled. So I thought the shortest way was to go straight to Countess
Olenska and explain--by the merest hint, you know--how we feel in New
York about certain things. I felt I might, without indelicacy, because
the evening she dined with us she rather suggested ... rather let me
see that she would be grateful for guidance. And she WAS."
Mr. van der Luyden looked about the room with what would have been
self-satisfaction on features less purged of the vulgar passions. On
his face it became a mild benevolence which Mrs. Archer's countenance
dutifully reflected.
"How kind you both are, dear Henry--always! Newland will particularly
appreciate what you have done because of dear May and his new
relations."
She shot an admonitory glance at her son, who said: "Immensely, sir.
But I was sure you'd like Madame Olenska."
Mr. van der Luyden looked at him with extreme gentleness. "I never ask
to my house, my dear Newland," he said, "any one whom I do not like.
And so I have just told Sillerton Jackson." With a glance at the clock
he rose and added: "But Louisa will be waiting. We are dining early,
to take the Duke to the Opera."
After the portieres had solemnly closed behind their visitor a silence
fell upon the Archer family.
"Gracious--how romantic!" at last broke explosively from Janey. No one
knew exactly what inspired her elliptic comments, and her relations had
long since given up trying to interpret them.
Mrs. Archer shook her head with a sigh. "Provided it all turns out for
the best," she said, in the tone of one who knows how surely it will
not. "Newland, you must stay and see Sillerton Jackson when he comes
this evening: I really shan't know what to say to him."
"Poor mother! But he won't come--" her son laughed, stooping to kiss
away her frown.
XI.
Some two weeks later, Newland Archer, sitting in abstracted idleness in
his private compartment of the office of Letterblair, Lamson and Low,
attorneys at law, was summoned by the head of the firm.
Old Mr. Letterblair, the accredited legal adviser of three generations
of New York gentility, throned behind his mahogany desk in evident
perplexity. As he stroked his closeclipped white whiskers and ran his
hand through the rumpled grey locks above his jutting brows, his
disrespectful junior partner thought how much he looked like the Family
Physician annoyed with a patient whose symptoms refuse to be classified.
"My dear sir--" he always addressed Archer as "sir"--"I have sent for
you to go into a little matter; a matter which, for the moment, I
prefer not to mention either to Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood." The
gentlemen he spoke of were the other senior partners of the firm; for,
as was always the case with legal associations of old standing in New
York, all the partners named on the office letter-head were long since
dead; and Mr. Letterblair, for example, was, professionally speaking,
his own grandson.
He leaned back in his chair with a furrowed brow. "For family
reasons--" he continued.
Archer looked up.
"The Mingott family," said Mr. Letterblair with an explanatory smile
and bow. "Mrs. Manson Mingott sent for me yesterday. Her
grand-daughter the Countess Olenska wishes to sue her husband for
divorce. Certain papers have been placed in my hands." He paused and
drummed on his desk. "In view of your prospective alliance with the
family I should like to consult you--to consider the case with
you--before taking any farther steps."
Archer felt the blood in his temples. He had seen the Countess Olenska
only once since his visit to her, and then at the Opera, in the Mingott
box. During this interval she had become a less vivid and importunate
image, receding from his foreground as May Welland resumed her rightful
place in it. He had not heard her divorce spoken of since Janey's
first random allusion to it, and had dismissed the tale as unfounded
gossip. Theoretically, the idea of divorce was almost as distasteful
to him as to his mother; and he was annoyed that Mr. Letterblair (no
doubt prompted by old Catherine Mingott) should be so evidently
planning to draw him into the affair. After all, there were plenty of
Mingott men for such jobs, and as yet he was not even a Mingott by
marriage.
He waited for the senior partner to continue. Mr. Letterblair unlocked
a drawer and drew out a packet. "If you will run your eye over these
papers--"
Archer frowned. "I beg your pardon, sir; but just because of the
prospective relationship, I should prefer your consulting Mr. Skipworth
or Mr. Redwood."
Mr. Letterblair looked surprised and slightly offended. It was unusual
for a junior to reject such an opening.
He bowed. "I respect your scruple, sir; but in this case I believe
true delicacy requires you to do as I ask. Indeed, the suggestion is
not mine but Mrs. Manson Mingott's and her son's. I have seen Lovell
Mingott; and also Mr. Welland. They all named you."
Archer felt his temper rising. He had been somewhat languidly drifting
with events for the last fortnight, and letting May's fair looks and
radiant nature obliterate the rather importunate pressure of the
Mingott claims. But this behest of old Mrs. Mingott's roused him to a
sense of what the clan thought they had the right to exact from a
prospective son-in-law; and he chafed at the role.
"Her uncles ought to deal with this," he said.
"They have. The matter has been gone into by the family. They are
opposed to the Countess's idea; but she is firm, and insists on a legal
opinion."
The young man was silent: he had not opened the packet in his hand.
"Does she want to marry again?"
"I believe it is suggested; but she denies it."
"Then--"
"Will you oblige me, Mr. Archer, by first looking through these papers?
Afterward, when we have talked the case over, I will give you my
opinion."
Archer withdrew reluctantly with the unwelcome documents. Since their
last meeting he had half-unconsciously collaborated with events in
ridding himself of the burden of Madame Olenska. His hour alone with
her by the firelight had drawn them into a momentary intimacy on which
the Duke of St. Austrey's intrusion with Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, and the
Countess's joyous greeting of them, had rather providentially broken.
Two days later Archer had assisted at the comedy of her reinstatement
in the van der Luydens' favour, and had said to himself, with a touch
of tartness, that a lady who knew how to thank all-powerful elderly
gentlemen to such good purpose for a bunch of flowers did not need
either the private consolations or the public championship of a young
man of his small compass. To look at the matter in this light
simplified his own case and surprisingly furbished up all the dim
domestic virtues. He could not picture May Welland, in whatever
conceivable emergency, hawking about her private difficulties and
lavishing her confidences on strange men; and she had never seemed to
him finer or fairer than in the week that followed. He had even
yielded to her wish for a long engagement, since she had found the one
disarming answer to his plea for haste.
"You know, when it comes to the point, your parents have always let you
have your way ever since you were a little girl," he argued; and she
had answered, with her clearest look: "Yes; and that's what makes it
so hard to refuse the very last thing they'll ever ask of me as a
little girl."
That was the old New York note; that was the kind of answer he would
like always to be sure of his wife's making. If one had habitually
breathed the New York air there were times when anything less
crystalline seemed stifling.
The papers he had retired to read did not tell him much in fact; but
they plunged him into an atmosphere in which he choked and spluttered.
They consisted mainly of an exchange of letters between Count Olenski's
solicitors and a French legal firm to whom the Countess had applied for
the settlement of her financial situation. There was also a short
letter from the Count to his wife: after reading it, Newland Archer
rose, jammed the papers back into their envelope, and reentered Mr.
Letterblair's office.
"Here are the letters, sir. If you wish, I'll see Madame Olenska," he
said in a constrained voice.
"Thank you--thank you, Mr. Archer. Come and dine with me tonight if
you're free, and we'll go into the matter afterward: in case you wish
to call on our client tomorrow."
Newland Archer walked straight home again that afternoon. It was a
winter evening of transparent clearness, with an innocent young moon
above the house-tops; and he wanted to fill his soul's lungs with the
pure radiance, and not exchange a word with any one till he and Mr.
Letterblair were closeted together after dinner. It was impossible to
decide otherwise than he had done: he must see Madame Olenska himself
rather than let her secrets be bared to other eyes. A great wave of
compassion had swept away his indifference and impatience: she stood
before him as an exposed and pitiful figure, to be saved at all costs
from farther wounding herself in her mad plunges against fate.
He remembered what she had told him of Mrs. Welland's request to be
spared whatever was "unpleasant" in her history, and winced at the
thought that it was perhaps this attitude of mind which kept the New
York air so pure. "Are we only Pharisees after all?" he wondered,
puzzled by the effort to reconcile his instinctive disgust at human
vileness with his equally instinctive pity for human frailty.
For the first time he perceived how elementary his own principles had
always been. He passed for a young man who had not been afraid of
risks, and he knew that his secret love-affair with poor silly Mrs.
Thorley Rushworth had not been too secret to invest him with a becoming
air of adventure. But Mrs. Rushworth was "that kind of woman";
foolish, vain, clandestine by nature, and far more attracted by the
secrecy and peril of the affair than by such charms and qualities as he
possessed. When the fact dawned on him it nearly broke his heart, but
now it seemed the redeeming feature of the case. The affair, in short,
had been of the kind that most of the young men of his age had been
through, and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbed
belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and
respected and those one enjoyed--and pitied. In this view they were
sedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts and other elderly female
relatives, who all shared Mrs. Archer's belief that when "such things
happened" it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always
criminal of the woman. All the elderly ladies whom Archer knew
regarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulous
and designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches.
The only thing to do was to persuade him, as early as possible, to
marry a nice girl, and then trust to her to look after him.
In the complicated old European communities, Archer began to guess,
love-problems might be less simple and less easily classified. Rich
and idle and ornamental societies must produce many more such
situations; and there might even be one in which a woman naturally
sensitive and aloof would yet, from the force of circumstances, from
sheer defencelessness and loneliness, be drawn into a tie inexcusable
by conventional standards.
On reaching home he wrote a line to the Countess Olenska, asking at
what hour of the next day she could receive him, and despatched it by a
messenger-boy, who returned presently with a word to the effect that
she was going to Skuytercliff the next morning to stay over Sunday with
the van der Luydens, but that he would find her alone that evening
after dinner. The note was written on a rather untidy half-sheet,
without date or address, but her hand was firm and free. He was amused
at the idea of her week-ending in the stately solitude of Skuytercliff,
but immediately afterward felt that there, of all places, she would
most feel the chill of minds rigorously averted from the "unpleasant."
He was at Mr. Letterblair's punctually at seven, glad of the pretext
for excusing himself soon after dinner. He had formed his own opinion
from the papers entrusted to him, and did not especially want to go
into the matter with his senior partner. Mr. Letterblair was a
widower, and they dined alone, copiously and slowly, in a dark shabby
room hung with yellowing prints of "The Death of Chatham" and "The
Coronation of Napoleon." On the sideboard, between fluted Sheraton
knife-cases, stood a decanter of Haut Brion, and another of the old
Lanning port (the gift of a client), which the wastrel Tom Lanning had
sold off a year or two before his mysterious and discreditable death in
San Francisco--an incident less publicly humiliating to the family than
the sale of the cellar.
After a velvety oyster soup came shad and cucumbers, then a young
broiled turkey with corn fritters, followed by a canvas-back with
currant jelly and a celery mayonnaise. Mr. Letterblair, who lunched on
a sandwich and tea, dined deliberately and deeply, and insisted on his
guest's doing the same. Finally, when the closing rites had been
accomplished, the cloth was removed, cigars were lit, and Mr.
Letterblair, leaning back in his chair and pushing the port westward,
said, spreading his back agreeably to the coal fire behind him: "The
whole family are against a divorce. And I think rightly."
Archer instantly felt himself on the other side of the argument. "But
why, sir? If there ever was a case--"
"Well--what's the use? SHE'S here--he's there; the Atlantic's between
them. She'll never get back a dollar more of her money than what he's
voluntarily returned to her: their damned heathen marriage settlements
take precious good care of that. As things go over there, Olenski's
acted generously: he might have turned her out without a penny."
The young man knew this and was silent.
"I understand, though," Mr. Letterblair continued, "that she attaches
no importance to the money. Therefore, as the family say, why not let
well enough alone?"
Archer had gone to the house an hour earlier in full agreement with Mr.
Letterblair's view; but put into words by this selfish, well-fed and
supremely indifferent old man it suddenly became the Pharisaic voice of
a society wholly absorbed in barricading itself against the unpleasant.
"I think that's for her to decide."
"H'm--have you considered the consequences if she decides for divorce?"
"You mean the threat in her husband's letter? What weight would that
carry? It's no more than the vague charge of an angry blackguard."
"Yes; but it might make some unpleasant talk if he really defends the
suit."
"Unpleasant--!" said Archer explosively.
Mr. Letterblair looked at him from under enquiring eyebrows, and the
young man, aware of the uselessness of trying to explain what was in
his mind, bowed acquiescently while his senior continued: "Divorce is
always unpleasant."
"You agree with me?" Mr. Letterblair resumed, after a waiting silence.
"Naturally," said Archer.
"Well, then, I may count on you; the Mingotts may count on you; to use
your influence against the idea?"
Archer hesitated. "I can't pledge myself till I've seen the Countess
Olenska," he said at length.
"Mr. Archer, I don't understand you. Do you want to marry into a
family with a scandalous divorce-suit hanging over it?"
"I don't think that has anything to do with the case."
Mr. Letterblair put down his glass of port and fixed on his young
partner a cautious and apprehensive gaze.
Archer understood that he ran the risk of having his mandate withdrawn,
and for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect. Now that the job
had been thrust on him he did not propose to relinquish it; and, to
guard against the possibility, he saw that he must reassure the
unimaginative old man who was the legal conscience of the Mingotts.
"You may be sure, sir, that I shan't commit myself till I've reported
to you; what I meant was that I'd rather not give an opinion till I've
heard what Madame Olenska has to say."
Mr. Letterblair nodded approvingly at an excess of caution worthy of
the best New York tradition, and the young man, glancing at his watch,
pleaded an engagement and took leave.
XII.
Old-fashioned New York dined at seven, and the habit of after-dinner
calls, though derided in Archer's set, still generally prevailed. As
the young man strolled up Fifth Avenue from Waverley Place, the long
thoroughfare was deserted but for a group of carriages standing before
the Reggie Chiverses' (where there was a dinner for the Duke), and the
occasional figure of an elderly gentleman in heavy overcoat and muffler
ascending a brownstone doorstep and disappearing into a gas-lit hall.
Thus, as Archer crossed Washington Square, he remarked that old Mr. du
Lac was calling on his cousins the Dagonets, and turning down the
corner of West Tenth Street he saw Mr. Skipworth, of his own firm,
obviously bound on a visit to the Miss Lannings. A little farther up
Fifth Avenue, Beaufort appeared on his doorstep, darkly projected
against a blaze of light, descended to his private brougham, and rolled
away to a mysterious and probably unmentionable destination. It was
not an Opera night, and no one was giving a party, so that Beaufort's
outing was undoubtedly of a clandestine nature. Archer connected it in
his mind with a little house beyond Lexington Avenue in which
beribboned window curtains and flower-boxes had recently appeared, and
before whose newly painted door the canary-coloured brougham of Miss
Fanny Ring was frequently seen to wait.
Beyond the small and slippery pyramid which composed Mrs. Archer's
world lay the almost unmapped quarter inhabited by artists, musicians
and "people who wrote." These scattered fragments of humanity had
never shown any desire to be amalgamated with the social structure. In
spite of odd ways they were said to be, for the most part, quite
respectable; but they preferred to keep to themselves. Medora Manson,
in her prosperous days, had inaugurated a "literary salon"; but it had
soon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it.
Others had made the same attempt, and there was a household of
Blenkers--an intense and voluble mother, and three blowsy daughters who
imitated her--where one met Edwin Booth and Patti and William Winter,
and the new Shakespearian actor George Rignold, and some of the
magazine editors and musical and literary critics.
Mrs. Archer and her group felt a certain timidity concerning these
persons. They were odd, they were uncertain, they had things one
didn't know about in the background of their lives and minds.
Literature and art were deeply respected in the Archer set, and Mrs.
Archer was always at pains to tell her children how much more agreeable
and cultivated society had been when it included such figures as
Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck and the poet of "The Culprit
Fay." The most celebrated authors of that generation had been
"gentlemen"; perhaps the unknown persons who succeeded them had
gentlemanly sentiments, but their origin, their appearance, their hair,
their intimacy with the stage and the Opera, made any old New York
criterion inapplicable to them.
"When I was a girl," Mrs. Archer used to say, "we knew everybody
between the Battery and Canal Street; and only the people one knew had
carriages. It was perfectly easy to place any one then; now one can't
tell, and I prefer not to try."
Only old Catherine Mingott, with her absence of moral prejudices and
almost parvenu indifference to the subtler distinctions, might have
bridged the abyss; but she had never opened a book or looked at a
picture, and cared for music only because it reminded her of gala
nights at the Italiens, in the days of her triumph at the Tuileries.
Possibly Beaufort, who was her match in daring, would have succeeded in
bringing about a fusion; but his grand house and silk-stockinged
footmen were an obstacle to informal sociability. Moreover, he was as
illiterate as old Mrs. Mingott, and considered "fellows who wrote" as
the mere paid purveyors of rich men's pleasures; and no one rich enough
to influence his opinion had ever questioned it.
Newland Archer had been aware of these things ever since he could
remember, and had accepted them as part of the structure of his
universe. He knew that there were societies where painters and poets
and novelists and men of science, and even great actors, were as sought
after as Dukes; he had often pictured to himself what it would have
been to live in the intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of
Merimee (whose "Lettres a une Inconnue" was one of his inseparables),
of Thackeray, Browning or William Morris. But such things were
inconceivable in New York, and unsettling to think of. Archer knew
most of the "fellows who wrote," the musicians and the painters: he met
them at the Century, or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that
were beginning to come into existence. He enjoyed them there, and was
bored with them at the Blenkers', where they were mingled with fervid
and dowdy women who passed them about like captured curiosities; and
even after his most exciting talks with Ned Winsett he always came away
with the feeling that if his world was small, so was theirs, and that
the only way to enlarge either was to reach a stage of manners where
they would naturally merge.
He was reminded of this by trying to picture the society in which the
Countess Olenska had lived and suffered, and also--perhaps--tasted
mysterious joys. He remembered with what amusement she had told him
that her grandmother Mingott and the Wellands objected to her living in
a "Bohemian" quarter given over to "people who wrote." It was not the
peril but the poverty that her family disliked; but that shade escaped
her, and she supposed they considered literature compromising.
She herself had no fears of it, and the books scattered about her
drawing-room (a part of the house in which books were usually supposed
to be "out of place"), though chiefly works of fiction, had whetted
Archer's interest with such new names as those of Paul Bourget,
Huysmans, and the Goncourt brothers. Ruminating on these things as he
approached her door, he was once more conscious of the curious way in
which she reversed his values, and of the need of thinking himself into
conditions incredibly different from any that he knew if he were to be
of use in her present difficulty.
Nastasia opened the door, smiling mysteriously. On the bench in the
hall lay a sable-lined overcoat, a folded opera hat of dull silk with a
gold J. B. on the lining, and a white silk muffler: there was no
mistaking the fact that these costly articles were the property of
Julius Beaufort.
Archer was angry: so angry that he came near scribbling a word on his
card and going away; then he remembered that in writing to Madame
Olenska he had been kept by excess of discretion from saying that he
wished to see her privately. He had therefore no one but himself to
blame if she had opened her doors to other visitors; and he entered the
drawing-room with the dogged determination to make Beaufort feel
himself in the way, and to outstay him.
The banker stood leaning against the mantelshelf, which was draped with
an old embroidery held in place by brass candelabra containing church
candles of yellowish wax. He had thrust his chest out, supporting his
shoulders against the mantel and resting his weight on one large
patent-leather foot. As Archer entered he was smiling and looking down
on his hostess, who sat on a sofa placed at right angles to the
chimney. A table banked with flowers formed a screen behind it, and
against the orchids and azaleas which the young man recognised as
tributes from the Beaufort hot-houses, Madame Olenska sat
half-reclined, her head propped on a hand and her wide sleeve leaving
the arm bare to the elbow.
It was usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were
called "simple dinner dresses": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned
silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the
crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to
show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska,
heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet
bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur.
Archer remembered, on his last visit to Paris, seeing a portrait by the
new painter, Carolus Duran, whose pictures were the sensation of the
Salon, in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with
her chin nestling in fur. There was something perverse and provocative
in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room, and
in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect
was undeniably pleasing.
"Lord love us--three whole days at Skuytercliff!" Beaufort was saying
in his loud sneering voice as Archer entered. "You'd better take all
your furs, and a hot-water-bottle."
"Why? Is the house so cold?" she asked, holding out her left hand to
Archer in a way mysteriously suggesting that she expected him to kiss
it.
"No; but the missus is," said Beaufort, nodding carelessly to the young
man.
"But I thought her so kind. She came herself to invite me. Granny says
I must certainly go."
"Granny would, of course. And I say it's a shame you're going to miss
the little oyster supper I'd planned for you at Delmonico's next
Sunday, with Campanini and Scalchi and a lot of jolly people."
She looked doubtfully from the banker to Archer.
"Ah--that does tempt me! Except the other evening at Mrs. Struthers's
I've not met a single artist since I've been here."
"What kind of artists? I know one or two painters, very good fellows,
that I could bring to see you if you'd allow me," said Archer boldly.
"Painters? Are there painters in New York?" asked Beaufort, in a tone
implying that there could be none since he did not buy their pictures;
and Madame Olenska said to Archer, with her grave smile: "That would
be charming. But I was really thinking of dramatic artists, singers,
actors, musicians. My husband's house was always full of them."
She said the words "my husband" as if no sinister associations were
connected with them, and in a tone that seemed almost to sigh over the
lost delights of her married life. Archer looked at her perplexedly,
wondering if it were lightness or dissimulation that enabled her to
touch so easily on the past at the very moment when she was risking her
reputation in order to break with it.
"I do think," she went on, addressing both men, "that the imprevu adds
to one's enjoyment. It's perhaps a mistake to see the same people
every day."
"It's confoundedly dull, anyhow; New York is dying of dullness,"
Beaufort grumbled. "And when I try to liven it up for you, you go back
on me. Come--think better of it! Sunday is your last chance, for
Campanini leaves next week for Baltimore and Philadelphia; and I've a
private room, and a Steinway, and they'll sing all night for me."
"How delicious! May I think it over, and write to you tomorrow
morning?"
She spoke amiably, yet with the least hint of dismissal in her voice.
Beaufort evidently felt it, and being unused to dismissals, stood
staring at her with an obstinate line between his eyes.
"Why not now?"
"It's too serious a question to decide at this late hour."
"Do you call it late?"
She returned his glance coolly. "Yes; because I have still to talk
business with Mr. Archer for a little while."
"Ah," Beaufort snapped. There was no appeal from her tone, and with a
slight shrug he recovered his composure, took her hand, which he kissed
with a practised air, and calling out from the threshold: "I say,
Newland, if you can persuade the Countess to stop in town of course
you're included in the supper," left the room with his heavy important
step.
For a moment Archer fancied that Mr. Letterblair must have told her of
his coming; but the irrelevance of her next remark made him change his
mind.
"You know painters, then? You live in their milieu?" she asked, her
eyes full of interest.
"Oh, not exactly. I don't know that the arts have a milieu here, any
of them; they're more like a very thinly settled outskirt."
"But you care for such things?"
"Immensely. When I'm in Paris or London I never miss an exhibition. I
try to keep up."
She looked down at the tip of the little satin boot that peeped from
her long draperies.
"I used to care immensely too: my life was full of such things. But
now I want to try not to."
"You want to try not to?"
"Yes: I want to cast off all my old life, to become just like everybody
else here."
Archer reddened. "You'll never be like everybody else," he said.
She raised her straight eyebrows a little. "Ah, don't say that. If
you knew how I hate to be different!"
Her face had grown as sombre as a tragic mask. She leaned forward,
clasping her knee in her thin hands, and looking away from him into
remote dark distances.
"I want to get away from it all," she insisted.
He waited a moment and cleared his throat. "I know. Mr. Letterblair
has told me."
"Ah?"
"That's the reason I've come. He asked me to--you see I'm in the firm."
She looked slightly surprised, and then her eyes brightened. "You mean
you can manage it for me? I can talk to you instead of Mr.
Letterblair? Oh, that will be so much easier!"
Her tone touched him, and his confidence grew with his
self-satisfaction. He perceived that she had spoken of business to
Beaufort simply to get rid of him; and to have routed Beaufort was
something of a triumph.
"I am here to talk about it," he repeated.
She sat silent, her head still propped by the arm that rested on the
back of the sofa. Her face looked pale and extinguished, as if dimmed
by the rich red of her dress. She struck Archer, of a sudden, as a
pathetic and even pitiful figure.
"Now we're coming to hard facts," he thought, conscious in himself of
the same instinctive recoil that he had so often criticised in his
mother and her contemporaries. How little practice he had had in
dealing with unusual situations! Their very vocabulary was unfamiliar
to him, and seemed to belong to fiction and the stage. In face of what
was coming he felt as awkward and embarrassed as a boy.
After a pause Madame Olenska broke out with unexpected vehemence: "I
want to be free; I want to wipe out all the past."
"I understand that."
Her face warmed. "Then you'll help me?"
"First--" he hesitated--"perhaps I ought to know a little more."
She seemed surprised. "You know about my husband--my life with him?"
He made a sign of assent.
"Well--then--what more is there? In this country are such things
tolerated? I'm a Protestant--our church does not forbid divorce in
such cases."
"Certainly not."
They were both silent again, and Archer felt the spectre of Count
Olenski's letter grimacing hideously between them. The letter filled
only half a page, and was just what he had described it to be in
speaking of it to Mr. Letterblair: the vague charge of an angry
blackguard. But how much truth was behind it? Only Count Olenski's
wife could tell.
"I've looked through the papers you gave to Mr. Letterblair," he said
at length.
"Well--can there be anything more abominable?"
"No."
She changed her position slightly, screening her eyes with her lifted
hand.
"Of course you know," Archer continued, "that if your husband chooses
to fight the case--as he threatens to--"
"Yes--?"
"He can say things--things that might be unpl--might be disagreeable to
you: say them publicly, so that they would get about, and harm you even
if--"
"If--?"
"I mean: no matter how unfounded they were."
She paused for a long interval; so long that, not wishing to keep his
eyes on her shaded face, he had time to imprint on his mind the exact
shape of her other hand, the one on her knee, and every detail of the
three rings on her fourth and fifth fingers; among which, he noticed, a
wedding ring did not appear.
"What harm could such accusations, even if he made them publicly, do me
here?"
It was on his lips to exclaim: "My poor child--far more harm than
anywhere else!" Instead, he answered, in a voice that sounded in his
ears like Mr. Letterblair's: "New York society is a very small world
compared with the one you've lived in. And it's ruled, in spite of
appearances, by a few people with--well, rather old-fashioned ideas."
She said nothing, and he continued: "Our ideas about marriage and
divorce are particularly old-fashioned. Our legislation favours
divorce--our social customs don't."
"Never?"
"Well--not if the woman, however injured, however irreproachable, has
appearances in the least degree against her, has exposed herself by any
unconventional action to--to offensive insinuations--"
She drooped her head a little lower, and he waited again, intensely
hoping for a flash of indignation, or at least a brief cry of denial.
None came.
A little travelling clock ticked purringly at her elbow, and a log
broke in two and sent up a shower of sparks. The whole hushed and
brooding room seemed to be waiting silently with Archer.
"Yes," she murmured at length, "that's what my family tell me."
He winced a little. "It's not unnatural--"
"OUR family," she corrected herself; and Archer coloured. "For you'll
be my cousin soon," she continued gently.
"I hope so."
"And you take their view?"
He stood up at this, wandered across the room, stared with void eyes at
one of the pictures against the old red damask, and came back
irresolutely to her side. How could he say: "Yes, if what your
husband hints is true, or if you've no way of disproving it?"
"Sincerely--" she interjected, as he was about to speak.
He looked down into the fire. "Sincerely, then--what should you gain
that would compensate for the possibility--the certainty--of a lot of
beastly talk?"
"But my freedom--is that nothing?"
It flashed across him at that instant that the charge in the letter was
true, and that she hoped to marry the partner of her guilt. How was he
to tell her that, if she really cherished such a plan, the laws of the
State were inexorably opposed to it? The mere suspicion that the
thought was in her mind made him feel harshly and impatiently toward
her. "But aren't you as free as air as it is?" he returned. "Who can
touch you? Mr. Letterblair tells me the financial question has been
settled--"
"Oh, yes," she said indifferently.
"Well, then: is it worth while to risk what may be infinitely
disagreeable and painful? Think of the newspapers--their vileness!
It's all stupid and narrow and unjust--but one can't make over society."
"No," she acquiesced; and her tone was so faint and desolate that he
felt a sudden remorse for his own hard thoughts.
"The individual, in such cases, is nearly always sacrificed to what is
supposed to be the collective interest: people cling to any convention
that keeps the family together--protects the children, if there are
any," he rambled on, pouring out all the stock phrases that rose to his
lips in his intense desire to cover over the ugly reality which her
silence seemed to have laid bare. Since she would not or could not say
the one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let
her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret. Better keep on
the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a
wound he could not heal.
"It's my business, you know," he went on, "to help you to see these
things as the people who are fondest of you see them. The Mingotts,
the Wellands, the van der Luydens, all your friends and relations: if I
didn't show you honestly how they judge such questions, it wouldn't be
fair of me, would it?" He spoke insistently, almost pleading with her
in his eagerness to cover up that yawning silence.
She said slowly: "No; it wouldn't be fair."
The fire had crumbled down to greyness, and one of the lamps made a
gurgling appeal for attention. Madame Olenska rose, wound it up and
returned to the fire, but without resuming her seat.
Her remaining on her feet seemed to signify that there was nothing more
for either of them to say, and Archer stood up also.
"Very well; I will do what you wish," she said abruptly. The blood
rushed to his forehead; and, taken aback by the suddenness of her
surrender, he caught her two hands awkwardly in his.
"I--I do want to help you," he said.
"You do help me. Good night, my cousin."
He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless.
She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat
under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter
night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate.
XIII.
It was a crowded night at Wallack's theatre.
The play was "The Shaughraun," with Dion Boucicault in the title role
and Harry Montague and Ada Dyas as the lovers. The popularity of the
admirable English company was at its height, and the Shaughraun always
packed the house. In the galleries the enthusiasm was unreserved; in
the stalls and boxes, people smiled a little at the hackneyed
sentiments and clap-trap situations, and enjoyed the play as much as
the galleries did.
There was one episode, in particular, that held the house from floor to
ceiling. It was that in which Harry Montague, after a sad, almost
monosyllabic scene of parting with Miss Dyas, bade her good-bye, and
turned to go. The actress, who was standing near the mantelpiece and
looking down into the fire, wore a gray cashmere dress without
fashionable loopings or trimmings, moulded to her tall figure and
flowing in long lines about her feet. Around her neck was a narrow
black velvet ribbon with the ends falling down her back.
When her wooer turned from her she rested her arms against the
mantel-shelf and bowed her face in her hands. On the threshold he
paused to look at her; then he stole back, lifted one of the ends of
velvet ribbon, kissed it, and left the room without her hearing him or
changing her attitude. And on this silent parting the curtain fell.
It was always for the sake of that particular scene that Newland Archer
went to see "The Shaughraun." He thought the adieux of Montague and Ada
Dyas as fine as anything he had ever seen Croisette and Bressant do in
Paris, or Madge Robertson and Kendal in London; in its reticence, its
dumb sorrow, it moved him more than the most famous histrionic
outpourings.
On the evening in question the little scene acquired an added poignancy
by reminding him--he could not have said why--of his leave-taking from
Madame Olenska after their confidential talk a week or ten days earlier.
It would have been as difficult to discover any resemblance between the
two situations as between the appearance of the persons concerned.
Newland Archer could not pretend to anything approaching the young
English actor's romantic good looks, and Miss Dyas was a tall
red-haired woman of monumental build whose pale and pleasantly ugly
face was utterly unlike Ellen Olenska's vivid countenance. Nor were
Archer and Madame Olenska two lovers parting in heart-broken silence;
they were client and lawyer separating after a talk which had given the
lawyer the worst possible impression of the client's case. Wherein,
then, lay the resemblance that made the young man's heart beat with a
kind of retrospective excitement? It seemed to be in Madame Olenska's
mysterious faculty of suggesting tragic and moving possibilities
outside the daily run of experience. She had hardly ever said a word
to him to produce this impression, but it was a part of her, either a
projection of her mysterious and outlandish background or of something
inherently dramatic, passionate and unusual in herself. Archer had
always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a
small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency
to have things happen to them. This tendency he had felt from the
first in Madame Olenska. The quiet, almost passive young woman struck
him as exactly the kind of person to whom things were bound to happen,
no matter how much she shrank from them and went out of her way to
avoid them. The exciting fact was her having lived in an atmosphere so
thick with drama that her own tendency to provoke it had apparently
passed unperceived. It was precisely the odd absence of surprise in
her that gave him the sense of her having been plucked out of a very
maelstrom: the things she took for granted gave the measure of those
she had rebelled against.
Archer had left her with the conviction that Count Olenski's accusation
was not unfounded. The mysterious person who figured in his wife's
past as "the secretary" had probably not been unrewarded for his share
in her escape. The conditions from which she had fled were
intolerable, past speaking of, past believing: she was young, she was
frightened, she was desperate--what more natural than that she should
be grateful to her rescuer? The pity was that her gratitude put her,
in the law's eyes and the world's, on a par with her abominable
husband. Archer had made her understand this, as he was bound to do;
he had also made her understand that simplehearted kindly New York, on
whose larger charity she had apparently counted, was precisely the
place where she could least hope for indulgence.
To have to make this fact plain to her--and to witness her resigned
acceptance of it--had been intolerably painful to him. He felt himself
drawn to her by obscure feelings of jealousy and pity, as if her
dumbly-confessed error had put her at his mercy, humbling yet endearing
her. He was glad it was to him she had revealed her secret, rather
than to the cold scrutiny of Mr. Letterblair, or the embarrassed gaze
of her family. He immediately took it upon himself to assure them both
that she had given up her idea of seeking a divorce, basing her
decision on the fact that she had understood the uselessness of the
proceeding; and with infinite relief they had all turned their eyes
from the "unpleasantness" she had spared them.
"I was sure Newland would manage it," Mrs. Welland had said proudly of
her future son-in-law; and old Mrs. Mingott, who had summoned him for a
confidential interview, had congratulated him on his cleverness, and
added impatiently: "Silly goose! I told her myself what nonsense it
was. Wanting to pass herself off as Ellen Mingott and an old maid,
when she has the luck to be a married woman and a Countess!"
These incidents had made the memory of his last talk with Madame
Olenska so vivid to the young man that as the curtain fell on the
parting of the two actors his eyes filled with tears, and he stood up
to leave the theatre.
In doing so, he turned to the side of the house behind him, and saw the
lady of whom he was thinking seated in a box with the Beauforts,
Lawrence Lefferts and one or two other men. He had not spoken with her
alone since their evening together, and had tried to avoid being with
her in company; but now their eyes met, and as Mrs. Beaufort recognised
him at the same time, and made her languid little gesture of
invitation, it was impossible not to go into the box.
Beaufort and Lefferts made way for him, and after a few words with Mrs.
Beaufort, who always preferred to look beautiful and not have to talk,
Archer seated himself behind Madame Olenska. There was no one else in
the box but Mr. Sillerton Jackson, who was telling Mrs. Beaufort in a
confidential undertone about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's last Sunday
reception (where some people reported that there had been dancing).
Under cover of this circumstantial narrative, to which Mrs. Beaufort
listened with her perfect smile, and her head at just the right angle
to be seen in profile from the stalls, Madame Olenska turned and spoke
in a low voice.
"Do you think," she asked, glancing toward the stage, "he will send her
a bunch of yellow roses tomorrow morning?"
Archer reddened, and his heart gave a leap of surprise. He had called
only twice on Madame Olenska, and each time he had sent her a box of
yellow roses, and each time without a card. She had never before made
any allusion to the flowers, and he supposed she had never thought of
him as the sender. Now her sudden recognition of the gift, and her
associating it with the tender leave-taking on the stage, filled him
with an agitated pleasure.
"I was thinking of that too--I was going to leave the theatre in order
to take the picture away with me," he said.
To his surprise her colour rose, reluctantly and duskily. She looked
down at the mother-of-pearl opera-glass in her smoothly gloved hands,
and said, after a pause: "What do you do while May is away?"
"I stick to my work," he answered, faintly annoyed by the question.
In obedience to a long-established habit, the Wellands had left the
previous week for St. Augustine, where, out of regard for the supposed
susceptibility of Mr. Welland's bronchial tubes, they always spent the
latter part of the winter. Mr. Welland was a mild and silent man, with
no opinions but with many habits. With these habits none might
interfere; and one of them demanded that his wife and daughter should
always go with him on his annual journey to the south. To preserve an
unbroken domesticity was essential to his peace of mind; he would not
have known where his hair-brushes were, or how to provide stamps for
his letters, if Mrs. Welland had not been there to tell him.
As all the members of the family adored each other, and as Mr. Welland
was the central object of their idolatry, it never occurred to his wife
and May to let him go to St. Augustine alone; and his sons, who were
both in the law, and could not leave New York during the winter, always
joined him for Easter and travelled back with him.
It was impossible for Archer to discuss the necessity of May's
accompanying her father. The reputation of the Mingotts' family
physician was largely based on the attack of pneumonia which Mr.
Welland had never had; and his insistence on St. Augustine was
therefore inflexible. Originally, it had been intended that May's
engagement should not be announced till her return from Florida, and
the fact that it had been made known sooner could not be expected to
alter Mr. Welland's plans. Archer would have liked to join the
travellers and have a few weeks of sunshine and boating with his
betrothed; but he too was bound by custom and conventions. Little
arduous as his professional duties were, he would have been convicted
of frivolity by the whole Mingott clan if he had suggested asking for a
holiday in mid-winter; and he accepted May's departure with the
resignation which he perceived would have to be one of the principal
constituents of married life.
He was conscious that Madame Olenska was looking at him under lowered
lids. "I have done what you wished--what you advised," she said
abruptly.
"Ah--I'm glad," he returned, embarrassed by her broaching the subject
at such a moment.
"I understand--that you were right," she went on a little breathlessly;
"but sometimes life is difficult ... perplexing..."
"I know."
"And I wanted to tell you that I DO feel you were right; and that I'm
grateful to you," she ended, lifting her opera-glass quickly to her
eyes as the door of the box opened and Beaufort's resonant voice broke
in on them.
Archer stood up, and left the box and the theatre.
Only the day before he had received a letter from May Welland in which,
with characteristic candour, she had asked him to "be kind to Ellen" in
their absence. "She likes you and admires you so much--and you know,
though she doesn't show it, she's still very lonely and unhappy. I
don't think Granny understands her, or uncle Lovell Mingott either;
they really think she's much worldlier and fonder of society than she
is. And I can quite see that New York must seem dull to her, though
the family won't admit it. I think she's been used to lots of things
we haven't got; wonderful music, and picture shows, and
celebrities--artists and authors and all the clever people you admire.
Granny can't understand her wanting anything but lots of dinners and
clothes--but I can see that you're almost the only person in New York
who can talk to her about what she really cares for."
His wise May--how he had loved her for that letter! But he had not
meant to act on it; he was too busy, to begin with, and he did not
care, as an engaged man, to play too conspicuously the part of Madame
Olenska's champion. He had an idea that she knew how to take care of
herself a good deal better than the ingenuous May imagined. She had
Beaufort at her feet, Mr. van der Luyden hovering above her like a
protecting deity, and any number of candidates (Lawrence Lefferts among
them) waiting their opportunity in the middle distance. Yet he never
saw her, or exchanged a word with her, without feeling that, after all,
May's ingenuousness almost amounted to a gift of divination. Ellen
Olenska was lonely and she was unhappy.
XIV.
As he came out into the lobby Archer ran across his friend Ned Winsett,
the only one among what Janey called his "clever people" with whom he
cared to probe into things a little deeper than the average level of
club and chop-house banter.
He had caught sight, across the house, of Winsett's shabby
round-shouldered back, and had once noticed his eyes turned toward the
Beaufort box. The two men shook hands, and Winsett proposed a bock at
a little German restaurant around the corner. Archer, who was not in
the mood for the kind of talk they were likely to get there, declined
on the plea that he had work to do at home; and Winsett said: "Oh,
well so have I for that matter, and I'll be the Industrious Apprentice
too."
They strolled along together, and presently Winsett said: "Look here,
what I'm really after is the name of the dark lady in that swell box of
yours--with the Beauforts, wasn't she? The one your friend Lefferts
seems so smitten by."
Archer, he could not have said why, was slightly annoyed. What the
devil did Ned Winsett want with Ellen Olenska's name? And above all,
why did he couple it with Lefferts's? It was unlike Winsett to
manifest such curiosity; but after all, Archer remembered, he was a
journalist.
"It's not for an interview, I hope?" he laughed.
"Well--not for the press; just for myself," Winsett rejoined. "The
fact is she's a neighbour of mine--queer quarter for such a beauty to
settle in--and she's been awfully kind to my little boy, who fell down
her area chasing his kitten, and gave himself a nasty cut. She rushed
in bareheaded, carrying him in her arms, with his knee all beautifully
bandaged, and was so sympathetic and beautiful that my wife was too
dazzled to ask her name."
A pleasant glow dilated Archer's heart. There was nothing
extraordinary in the tale: any woman would have done as much for a
neighbour's child. But it was just like Ellen, he felt, to have rushed
in bareheaded, carrying the boy in her arms, and to have dazzled poor
Mrs. Winsett into forgetting to ask who she was.
"That is the Countess Olenska--a granddaughter of old Mrs. Mingott's."
"Whew--a Countess!" whistled Ned Winsett. "Well, I didn't know
Countesses were so neighbourly. Mingotts ain't."
"They would be, if you'd let them."
"Ah, well--" It was their old interminable argument as to the
obstinate unwillingness of the "clever people" to frequent the
fashionable, and both men knew that there was no use in prolonging it.
"I wonder," Winsett broke off, "how a Countess happens to live in our
slum?"
"Because she doesn't care a hang about where she lives--or about any of
our little social sign-posts," said Archer, with a secret pride in his
own picture of her.
"H'm--been in bigger places, I suppose," the other commented. "Well,
here's my corner."
He slouched off across Broadway, and Archer stood looking after him and
musing on his last words.
Ned Winsett had those flashes of penetration; they were the most
interesting thing about him, and always made Archer wonder why they had
allowed him to accept failure so stolidly at an age when most men are
still struggling.
Archer had known that Winsett had a wife and child, but he had never
seen them. The two men always met at the Century, or at some haunt of
journalists and theatrical people, such as the restaurant where Winsett
had proposed to go for a bock. He had given Archer to understand that
his wife was an invalid; which might be true of the poor lady, or might
merely mean that she was lacking in social gifts or in evening clothes,
or in both. Winsett himself had a savage abhorrence of social
observances: Archer, who dressed in the evening because he thought it
cleaner and more comfortable to do so, and who had never stopped to
consider that cleanliness and comfort are two of the costliest items in
a modest budget, regarded Winsett's attitude as part of the boring
"Bohemian" pose that always made fashionable people, who changed their
clothes without talking about it, and were not forever harping on the
number of servants one kept, seem so much simpler and less
self-conscious than the others. Nevertheless, he was always stimulated
by Winsett, and whenever he caught sight of the journalist's lean
bearded face and melancholy eyes he would rout him out of his corner
and carry him off for a long talk.
Winsett was not a journalist by choice. He was a pure man of letters,
untimely born in a world that had no need of letters; but after
publishing one volume of brief and exquisite literary appreciations, of
which one hundred and twenty copies were sold, thirty given away, and
the balance eventually destroyed by the publishers (as per contract) to
make room for more marketable material, he had abandoned his real
calling, and taken a sub-editorial job on a women's weekly, where
fashion-plates and paper patterns alternated with New England
love-stories and advertisements of temperance drinks.
On the subject of "Hearth-fires" (as the paper was called) he was
inexhaustibly entertaining; but beneath his fun lurked the sterile
bitterness of the still young man who has tried and given up. His
conversation always made Archer take the measure of his own life, and
feel how little it contained; but Winsett's, after all, contained still
less, and though their common fund of intellectual interests and
curiosities made their talks exhilarating, their exchange of views
usually remained within the limits of a pensive dilettantism.
"The fact is, life isn't much a fit for either of us," Winsett had once
said. "I'm down and out; nothing to be done about it. I've got only
one ware to produce, and there's no market for it here, and won't be in
my time. But you're free and you're well-off. Why don't you get into
touch? There's only one way to do it: to go into politics."
Archer threw his head back and laughed. There one saw at a flash the
unbridgeable difference between men like Winsett and the
others--Archer's kind. Every one in polite circles knew that, in
America, "a gentleman couldn't go into politics." But, since he could
hardly put it in that way to Winsett, he answered evasively: "Look at
the career of the honest man in American politics! They don't want us."
"Who's 'they'? Why don't you all get together and be 'they'
yourselves?"
Archer's laugh lingered on his lips in a slightly condescending smile.
It was useless to prolong the discussion: everybody knew the melancholy
fate of the few gentlemen who had risked their clean linen in municipal
or state politics in New York. The day was past when that sort of
thing was possible: the country was in possession of the bosses and the
emigrant, and decent people had to fall back on sport or culture.
"Culture! Yes--if we had it! But there are just a few little local
patches, dying out here and there for lack of--well, hoeing and
cross-fertilising: the last remnants of the old European tradition that
your forebears brought with them. But you're in a pitiful little
minority: you've got no centre, no competition, no audience. You're
like the pictures on the walls of a deserted house: 'The Portrait of a
Gentleman.' You'll never amount to anything, any of you, till you roll
up your sleeves and get right down into the muck. That, or emigrate
... God! If I could emigrate ..."
Archer mentally shrugged his shoulders and turned the conversation back
to books, where Winsett, if uncertain, was always interesting.
Emigrate! As if a gentleman could abandon his own country! One could
no more do that than one could roll up one's sleeves and go down into
the muck. A gentleman simply stayed at home and abstained. But you
couldn't make a man like Winsett see that; and that was why the New
York of literary clubs and exotic restaurants, though a first shake
made it seem more of a kaleidoscope, turned out, in the end, to be a
smaller box, with a more monotonous pattern, than the assembled atoms
of Fifth Avenue.
The next morning Archer scoured the town in vain for more yellow roses.
In consequence of this search he arrived late at the office, perceived
that his doing so made no difference whatever to any one, and was
filled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his life.
Why should he not be, at that moment, on the sands of St. Augustine
with May Welland? No one was deceived by his pretense of professional
activity. In old-fashioned legal firms like that of which Mr.
Letterblair was the head, and which were mainly engaged in the
management of large estates and "conservative" investments, there were
always two or three young men, fairly well-off, and without
professional ambition, who, for a certain number of hours of each day,
sat at their desks accomplishing trivial tasks, or simply reading the
newspapers. Though it was supposed to be proper for them to have an
occupation, the crude fact of money-making was still regarded as
derogatory, and the law, being a profession, was accounted a more
gentlemanly pursuit than business. But none of these young men had
much hope of really advancing in his profession, or any earnest desire
to do so; and over many of them the green mould of the perfunctory was
already perceptibly spreading.
It made Archer shiver to think that it might be spreading over him too.
He had, to be sure, other tastes and interests; he spent his vacations
in European travel, cultivated the "clever people" May spoke of, and
generally tried to "keep up," as he had somewhat wistfully put it to
Madame Olenska. But once he was married, what would become of this
narrow margin of life in which his real experiences were lived? He had
seen enough of other young men who had dreamed his dream, though
perhaps less ardently, and who had gradually sunk into the placid and
luxurious routine of their elders.
From the office he sent a note by messenger to Madame Olenska, asking
if he might call that afternoon, and begging her to let him find a
reply at his club; but at the club he found nothing, nor did he receive
any letter the following day. This unexpected silence mortified him
beyond reason, and though the next morning he saw a glorious cluster of
yellow roses behind a florist's window-pane, he left it there. It was
only on the third morning that he received a line by post from the
Countess Olenska. To his surprise it was dated from Skuytercliff,
whither the van der Luydens had promptly retreated after putting the
Duke on board his steamer.
"I ran away," the writer began abruptly (without the usual
preliminaries), "the day after I saw you at the play, and these kind
friends have taken me in. I wanted to be quiet, and think things over.
You were right in telling me how kind they were; I feel myself so safe
here. I wish that you were with us." She ended with a conventional
"Yours sincerely," and without any allusion to the date of her return.
The tone of the note surprised the young man. What was Madame Olenska
running away from, and why did she feel the need to be safe? His first
thought was of some dark menace from abroad; then he reflected that he
did not know her epistolary style, and that it might run to picturesque
exaggeration. Women always exaggerated; and moreover she was not
wholly at her ease in English, which she often spoke as if she were
translating from the French. "Je me suis evadee--" put in that way,
the opening sentence immediately suggested that she might merely have
wanted to escape from a boring round of engagements; which was very
likely true, for he judged her to be capricious, and easily wearied of
the pleasure of the moment.
It amused him to think of the van der Luydens' having carried her off
to Skuytercliff on a second visit, and this time for an indefinite
period. The doors of Skuytercliff were rarely and grudgingly opened to
visitors, and a chilly week-end was the most ever offered to the few
thus privileged. But Archer had seen, on his last visit to Paris, the
delicious play of Labiche, "Le Voyage de M. Perrichon," and he
remembered M. Perrichon's dogged and undiscouraged attachment to the
young man whom he had pulled out of the glacier. The van der Luydens
had rescued Madame Olenska from a doom almost as icy; and though there
were many other reasons for being attracted to her, Archer knew that
beneath them all lay the gentle and obstinate determination to go on
rescuing her.
He felt a distinct disappointment on learning that she was away; and
almost immediately remembered that, only the day before, he had refused
an invitation to spend the following Sunday with the Reggie Chiverses
at their house on the Hudson, a few miles below Skuytercliff.
He had had his fill long ago of the noisy friendly parties at Highbank,
with coasting, ice-boating, sleighing, long tramps in the snow, and a
general flavour of mild flirting and milder practical jokes. He had
just received a box of new books from his London book-seller, and had
preferred the prospect of a quiet Sunday at home with his spoils. But
he now went into the club writing-room, wrote a hurried telegram, and
told the servant to send it immediately. He knew that Mrs. Reggie
didn't object to her visitors' suddenly changing their minds, and that
there was always a room to spare in her elastic house.
XV.
Newland Archer arrived at the Chiverses' on Friday evening, and on
Saturday went conscientiously through all the rites appertaining to a
week-end at Highbank.
In the morning he had a spin in the ice-boat with his hostess and a few
of the hardier guests; in the afternoon he "went over the farm" with
Reggie, and listened, in the elaborately appointed stables, to long and
impressive disquisitions on the horse; after tea he talked in a corner
of the firelit hall with a young lady who had professed herself
broken-hearted when his engagement was announced, but was now eager to
tell him of her own matrimonial hopes; and finally, about midnight, he
assisted in putting a gold-fish in one visitor's bed, dressed up a
burglar in the bath-room of a nervous aunt, and saw in the small hours
by joining in a pillow-fight that ranged from the nurseries to the
basement. But on Sunday after luncheon he borrowed a cutter, and drove
over to Skuytercliff.
People had always been told that the house at Skuytercliff was an
Italian villa. Those who had never been to Italy believed it; so did
some who had. The house had been built by Mr. van der Luyden in his
youth, on his return from the "grand tour," and in anticipation of his
approaching marriage with Miss Louisa Dagonet. It was a large square
wooden structure, with tongued and grooved walls painted pale green and
white, a Corinthian portico, and fluted pilasters between the windows.
From the high ground on which it stood a series of terraces bordered by
balustrades and urns descended in the steel-engraving style to a small
irregular lake with an asphalt edge overhung by rare weeping conifers.
To the right and left, the famous weedless lawns studded with
"specimen" trees (each of a different variety) rolled away to long
ranges of grass crested with elaborate cast-iron ornaments; and below,
in a hollow, lay the four-roomed stone house which the first Patroon
had built on the land granted him in 1612.
Against the uniform sheet of snow and the greyish winter sky the
Italian villa loomed up rather grimly; even in summer it kept its
distance, and the boldest coleus bed had never ventured nearer than
thirty feet from its awful front. Now, as Archer rang the bell, the
long tinkle seemed to echo through a mausoleum; and the surprise of the
butler who at length responded to the call was as great as though he
had been summoned from his final sleep.
Happily Archer was of the family, and therefore, irregular though his
arrival was, entitled to be informed that the Countess Olenska was out,
having driven to afternoon service with Mrs. van der Luyden exactly
three quarters of an hour earlier.
"Mr. van der Luyden," the butler continued, "is in, sir; but my
impression is that he is either finishing his nap or else reading
yesterday's Evening Post. I heard him say, sir, on his return from
church this morning, that he intended to look through the Evening Post
after luncheon; if you like, sir, I might go to the library door and
listen--"
But Archer, thanking him, said that he would go and meet the ladies;
and the butler, obviously relieved, closed the door on him majestically.
A groom took the cutter to the stables, and Archer struck through the
park to the high-road. The village of Skuytercliff was only a mile and
a half away, but he knew that Mrs. van der Luyden never walked, and
that he must keep to the road to meet the carriage. Presently,
however, coming down a foot-path that crossed the highway, he caught
sight of a slight figure in a red cloak, with a big dog running ahead.
He hurried forward, and Madame Olenska stopped short with a smile of
welcome.
"Ah, you've come!" she said, and drew her hand from her muff.
The red cloak made her look gay and vivid, like the Ellen Mingott of
old days; and he laughed as he took her hand, and answered: "I came to
see what you were running away from."
Her face clouded over, but she answered: "Ah, well--you will see,
presently."
The answer puzzled him. "Why--do you mean that you've been overtaken?"
She shrugged her shoulders, with a little movement like Nastasia's, and
rejoined in a lighter tone: "Shall we walk on? I'm so cold after the
sermon. And what does it matter, now you're here to protect me?"
The blood rose to his temples and he caught a fold of her cloak.
"Ellen--what is it? You must tell me."
"Oh, presently--let's run a race first: my feet are freezing to the
ground," she cried; and gathering up the cloak she fled away across the
snow, the dog leaping about her with challenging barks. For a moment
Archer stood watching, his gaze delighted by the flash of the red
meteor against the snow; then he started after her, and they met,
panting and laughing, at a wicket that led into the park.
She looked up at him and smiled. "I knew you'd come!"
"That shows you wanted me to," he returned, with a disproportionate joy
in their nonsense. The white glitter of the trees filled the air with
its own mysterious brightness, and as they walked on over the snow the
ground seemed to sing under their feet.
"Where did you come from?" Madame Olenska asked.
He told her, and added: "It was because I got your note."
After a pause she said, with a just perceptible chill in her voice:
"May asked you to take care of me."
"I didn't need any asking."
"You mean--I'm so evidently helpless and defenceless? What a poor
thing you must all think me! But women here seem not--seem never to
feel the need: any more than the blessed in heaven."
He lowered his voice to ask: "What sort of a need?"
"Ah, don't ask me! I don't speak your language," she retorted
petulantly.
The answer smote him like a blow, and he stood still in the path,
looking down at her.
"What did I come for, if I don't speak yours?"
"Oh, my friend--!" She laid her hand lightly on his arm, and he
pleaded earnestly: "Ellen--why won't you tell me what's happened?"
She shrugged again. "Does anything ever happen in heaven?"
He was silent, and they walked on a few yards without exchanging a
word. Finally she said: "I will tell you--but where, where, where?
One can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house, with
all the doors wide open, and always a servant bringing tea, or a log
for the fire, or the newspaper! Is there nowhere in an American house
where one may be by one's self? You're so shy, and yet you're so
public. I always feel as if I were in the convent again--or on the
stage, before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds."
"Ah, you don't like us!" Archer exclaimed.
They were walking past the house of the old Patroon, with its squat
walls and small square windows compactly grouped about a central
chimney. The shutters stood wide, and through one of the newly-washed
windows Archer caught the light of a fire.
"Why--the house is open!" he said.
She stood still. "No; only for today, at least. I wanted to see it,
and Mr. van der Luyden had the fire lit and the windows opened, so that
we might stop there on the way back from church this morning." She ran
up the steps and tried the door. "It's still unlocked--what luck!
Come in and we can have a quiet talk. Mrs. van der Luyden has driven
over to see her old aunts at Rhinebeck and we shan't be missed at the
house for another hour."
He followed her into the narrow passage. His spirits, which had
dropped at her last words, rose with an irrational leap. The homely
little house stood there, its panels and brasses shining in the
firelight, as if magically created to receive them. A big bed of
embers still gleamed in the kitchen chimney, under an iron pot hung
from an ancient crane. Rush-bottomed arm-chairs faced each other
across the tiled hearth, and rows of Delft plates stood on shelves
against the walls. Archer stooped over and threw a log upon the embers.
Madame Olenska, dropping her cloak, sat down in one of the chairs.
Archer leaned against the chimney and looked at her.
"You're laughing now; but when you wrote me you were unhappy," he said.
"Yes." She paused. "But I can't feel unhappy when you're here."
"I sha'n't be here long," he rejoined, his lips stiffening with the
effort to say just so much and no more.
"No; I know. But I'm improvident: I live in the moment when I'm happy."
The words stole through him like a temptation, and to close his senses
to it he moved away from the hearth and stood gazing out at the black
tree-boles against the snow. But it was as if she too had shifted her
place, and he still saw her, between himself and the trees, drooping
over the fire with her indolent smile. Archer's heart was beating
insubordinately. What if it were from him that she had been running
away, and if she had waited to tell him so till they were here alone
together in this secret room?
"Ellen, if I'm really a help to you--if you really wanted me to
come--tell me what's wrong, tell me what it is you're running away
from," he insisted.
He spoke without shifting his position, without even turning to look at
her: if the thing was to happen, it was to happen in this way, with the
whole width of the room between them, and his eyes still fixed on the
outer snow.
For a long moment she was silent; and in that moment Archer imagined
her, almost heard her, stealing up behind him to throw her light arms
about his neck. While he waited, soul and body throbbing with the
miracle to come, his eyes mechanically received the image of a
heavily-coated man with his fur collar turned up who was advancing
along the path to the house. The man was Julius Beaufort.
"Ah--!" Archer cried, bursting into a laugh.
Madame Olenska had sprung up and moved to his side, slipping her hand
into his; but after a glance through the window her face paled and she
shrank back.
"So that was it?" Archer said derisively.
"I didn't know he was here," Madame Olenska murmured. Her hand still
clung to Archer's; but he drew away from her, and walking out into the
passage threw open the door of the house.
"Hallo, Beaufort--this way! Madame Olenska was expecting you," he said.
During his journey back to New York the next morning, Archer relived
with a fatiguing vividness his last moments at Skuytercliff.
Beaufort, though clearly annoyed at finding him with Madame Olenska,
had, as usual, carried off the situation high-handedly. His way of
ignoring people whose presence inconvenienced him actually gave them,
if they were sensitive to it, a feeling of invisibility, of
nonexistence. Archer, as the three strolled back through the park, was
aware of this odd sense of disembodiment; and humbling as it was to his
vanity it gave him the ghostly advantage of observing unobserved.
Beaufort had entered the little house with his usual easy assurance;
but he could not smile away the vertical line between his eyes. It was
fairly clear that Madame Olenska had not known that he was coming,
though her words to Archer had hinted at the possibility; at any rate,
she had evidently not told him where she was going when she left New
York, and her unexplained departure had exasperated him. The
ostensible reason of his appearance was the discovery, the very night
before, of a "perfect little house," not in the market, which was
really just the thing for her, but would be snapped up instantly if she
didn't take it; and he was loud in mock-reproaches for the dance she
had led him in running away just as he had found it.
"If only this new dodge for talking along a wire had been a little bit
nearer perfection I might have told you all this from town, and been
toasting my toes before the club fire at this minute, instead of
tramping after you through the snow," he grumbled, disguising a real
irritation under the pretence of it; and at this opening Madame Olenska
twisted the talk away to the fantastic possibility that they might one
day actually converse with each other from street to street, or
even--incredible dream!--from one town to another. This struck from
all three allusions to Edgar Poe and Jules Verne, and such platitudes
as naturally rise to the lips of the most intelligent when they are
talking against time, and dealing with a new invention in which it
would seem ingenuous to believe too soon; and the question of the
telephone carried them safely back to the big house.
Mrs. van der Luyden had not yet returned; and Archer took his leave and
walked off to fetch the cutter, while Beaufort followed the Countess
Olenska indoors. It was probable that, little as the van der Luydens
encouraged unannounced visits, he could count on being asked to dine,
and sent back to the station to catch the nine o'clock train; but more
than that he would certainly not get, for it would be inconceivable to
his hosts that a gentleman travelling without luggage should wish to
spend the night, and distasteful to them to propose it to a person with
whom they were on terms of such limited cordiality as Beaufort.
Beaufort knew all this, and must have foreseen it; and his taking the
long journey for so small a reward gave the measure of his impatience.
He was undeniably in pursuit of the Countess Olenska; and Beaufort had
only one object in view in his pursuit of pretty women. His dull and
childless home had long since palled on him; and in addition to more
permanent consolations he was always in quest of amorous adventures in
his own set. This was the man from whom Madame Olenska was avowedly
flying: the question was whether she had fled because his importunities
displeased her, or because she did not wholly trust herself to resist
them; unless, indeed, all her talk of flight had been a blind, and her
departure no more than a manoeuvre.
Archer did not really believe this. Little as he had actually seen of
Madame Olenska, he was beginning to think that he could read her face,
and if not her face, her voice; and both had betrayed annoyance, and
even dismay, at Beaufort's sudden appearance. But, after all, if this
were the case, was it not worse than if she had left New York for the
express purpose of meeting him? If she had done that, she ceased to be
an object of interest, she threw in her lot with the vulgarest of
dissemblers: a woman engaged in a love affair with Beaufort "classed"
herself irretrievably.
No, it was worse a thousand times if, judging Beaufort, and probably
despising him, she was yet drawn to him by all that gave him an
advantage over the other men about her: his habit of two continents and
two societies, his familiar association with artists and actors and
people generally in the world's eye, and his careless contempt for
local prejudices. Beaufort was vulgar, he was uneducated, he was
purse-proud; but the circumstances of his life, and a certain native
shrewdness, made him better worth talking to than many men, morally and
socially his betters, whose horizon was bounded by the Battery and the
Central Park. How should any one coming from a wider world not feel
the difference and be attracted by it?
Madame Olenska, in a burst of irritation, had said to Archer that he
and she did not talk the same language; and the young man knew that in
some respects this was true. But Beaufort understood every turn of her
dialect, and spoke it fluently: his view of life, his tone, his
attitude, were merely a coarser reflection of those revealed in Count
Olenski's letter. This might seem to be to his disadvantage with Count
Olenski's wife; but Archer was too intelligent to think that a young
woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that
reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt
against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her, even
though it were against her will.
Thus, with a painful impartiality, did the young man make out the case
for Beaufort, and for Beaufort's victim. A longing to enlighten her
was strong in him; and there were moments when he imagined that all she
asked was to be enlightened.
That evening he unpacked his books from London. The box was full of
things he had been waiting for impatiently; a new volume of Herbert
Spencer, another collection of the prolific Alphonse Daudet's brilliant
tales, and a novel called "Middlemarch," as to which there had lately
been interesting things said in the reviews. He had declined three
dinner invitations in favour of this feast; but though he turned the
pages with the sensuous joy of the book-lover, he did not know what he
was reading, and one book after another dropped from his hand.
Suddenly, among them, he lit on a small volume of verse which he had
ordered because the name had attracted him: "The House of Life." He
took it up, and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he
had ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably
tender, that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary
of human passions. All through the night he pursued through those
enchanted pages the vision of a woman who had the face of Ellen
Olenska; but when he woke the next morning, and looked out at the
brownstone houses across the street, and thought of his desk in Mr.
Letterblair's office, and the family pew in Grace Church, his hour in
the park of Skuytercliff became as far outside the pale of probability
as the visions of the night.
"Mercy, how pale you look, Newland!" Janey commented over the
coffee-cups at breakfast; and his mother added: "Newland, dear, I've
noticed lately that you've been coughing; I do hope you're not letting
yourself be overworked?" For it was the conviction of both ladies
that, under the iron despotism of his senior partners, the young man's
life was spent in the most exhausting professional labours--and he had
never thought it necessary to undeceive them.
The next two or three days dragged by heavily. The taste of the usual
was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as
if he were being buried alive under his future. He heard nothing of
the Countess Olenska, or of the perfect little house, and though he met
Beaufort at the club they merely nodded at each other across the
whist-tables. It was not till the fourth evening that he found a note
awaiting him on his return home. "Come late tomorrow: I must explain
to you. Ellen." These were the only words it contained.
The young man, who was dining out, thrust the note into his pocket,
smiling a little at the Frenchness of the "to you." After dinner he
went to a play; and it was not until his return home, after midnight,
that he drew Madame Olenska's missive out again and re-read it slowly a
number of times. There were several ways of answering it, and he gave
considerable thought to each one during the watches of an agitated
night. That on which, when morning came, he finally decided was to
pitch some clothes into a portmanteau and jump on board a boat that was
leaving that very afternoon for St. Augustine.
XVI.
When Archer walked down the sandy main street of St. Augustine to the
house which had been pointed out to him as Mr. Welland's, and saw May
Welland standing under a magnolia with the sun in her hair, he wondered
why he had waited so long to come.
Here was the truth, here was reality, here was the life that belonged
to him; and he, who fancied himself so scornful of arbitrary
restraints, had been afraid to break away from his desk because of what
people might think of his stealing a holiday!
Her first exclamation was: "Newland--has anything happened?" and it
occurred to him that it would have been more "feminine" if she had
instantly read in his eyes why he had come. But when he answered:
"Yes--I found I had to see you," her happy blushes took the chill from
her surprise, and he saw how easily he would be forgiven, and how soon
even Mr. Letterblair's mild disapproval would be smiled away by a
tolerant family.
Early as it was, the main street was no place for any but formal
greetings, and Archer longed to be alone with May, and to pour out all
his tenderness and his impatience. It still lacked an hour to the late
Welland breakfast-time, and instead of asking him to come in she
proposed that they should walk out to an old orange-garden beyond the
town. She had just been for a row on the river, and the sun that
netted the little waves with gold seemed to have caught her in its
meshes. Across the warm brown of her cheek her blown hair glittered
like silver wire; and her eyes too looked lighter, almost pale in their
youthful limpidity. As she walked beside Archer with her long swinging
gait her face wore the vacant serenity of a young marble athlete.
To Archer's strained nerves the vision was as soothing as the sight of
the blue sky and the lazy river. They sat down on a bench under the
orange-trees and he put his arm about her and kissed her. It was like
drinking at a cold spring with the sun on it; but his pressure may have
been more vehement than he had intended, for the blood rose to her face
and she drew back as if he had startled her.
"What is it?" he asked, smiling; and she looked at him with surprise,
and answered: "Nothing."
A slight embarrassment fell on them, and her hand slipped out of his.
It was the only time that he had kissed her on the lips except for
their fugitive embrace in the Beaufort conservatory, and he saw that
she was disturbed, and shaken out of her cool boyish composure.
"Tell me what you do all day," he said, crossing his arms under his
tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.
To let her talk about familiar and simple things was the easiest way of
carrying on his own independent train of thought; and he sat listening
to her simple chronicle of swimming, sailing and riding, varied by an
occasional dance at the primitive inn when a man-of-war came in. A few
pleasant people from Philadelphia and Baltimore were picknicking at the
inn, and the Selfridge Merrys had come down for three weeks because
Kate Merry had had bronchitis. They were planning to lay out a lawn
tennis court on the sands; but no one but Kate and May had racquets,
and most of the people had not even heard of the game.
All this kept her very busy, and she had not had time to do more than
look at the little vellum book that Archer had sent her the week before
(the "Sonnets from the Portuguese"); but she was learning by heart "How
they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," because it was one of
the first things he had ever read to her; and it amused her to be able
to tell him that Kate Merry had never even heard of a poet called
Robert Browning.
Presently she started up, exclaiming that they would be late for
breakfast; and they hurried back to the tumble-down house with its
pointless porch and unpruned hedge of plumbago and pink geraniums where
the Wellands were installed for the winter. Mr. Welland's sensitive
domesticity shrank from the discomforts of the slovenly southern hotel,
and at immense expense, and in face of almost insuperable difficulties,
Mrs. Welland was obliged, year after year, to improvise an
establishment partly made up of discontented New York servants and
partly drawn from the local African supply.
"The doctors want my husband to feel that he is in his own home;
otherwise he would be so wretched that the climate would not do him any
good," she explained, winter after winter, to the sympathising
Philadelphians and Baltimoreans; and Mr. Welland, beaming across a
breakfast table miraculously supplied with the most varied delicacies,
was presently saying to Archer: "You see, my dear fellow, we camp--we
literally camp. I tell my wife and May that I want to teach them how
to rough it."
Mr. and Mrs. Welland had been as much surprised as their daughter by
the young man's sudden arrival; but it had occurred to him to explain
that he had felt himself on the verge of a nasty cold, and this seemed
to Mr. Welland an all-sufficient reason for abandoning any duty.
"You can't be too careful, especially toward spring," he said, heaping
his plate with straw-coloured griddle-cakes and drowning them in golden
syrup. "If I'd only been as prudent at your age May would have been
dancing at the Assemblies now, instead of spending her winters in a
wilderness with an old invalid."
"Oh, but I love it here, Papa; you know I do. If only Newland could
stay I should like it a thousand times better than New York."
"Newland must stay till he has quite thrown off his cold," said Mrs.
Welland indulgently; and the young man laughed, and said he supposed
there was such a thing as one's profession.
He managed, however, after an exchange of telegrams with the firm, to
make his cold last a week; and it shed an ironic light on the situation
to know that Mr. Letterblair's indulgence was partly due to the
satisfactory way in which his brilliant young junior partner had
settled the troublesome matter of the Olenski divorce. Mr. Letterblair
had let Mrs. Welland know that Mr. Archer had "rendered an invaluable
service" to the whole family, and that old Mrs. Manson Mingott had been
particularly pleased; and one day when May had gone for a drive with
her father in the only vehicle the place produced Mrs. Welland took
occasion to touch on a topic which she always avoided in her daughter's
presence.
"I'm afraid Ellen's ideas are not at all like ours. She was barely
eighteen when Medora Manson took her back to Europe--you remember the
excitement when she appeared in black at her coming-out ball? Another
of Medora's fads--really this time it was almost prophetic! That must
have been at least twelve years ago; and since then Ellen has never
been to America. No wonder she is completely Europeanised."
"But European society is not given to divorce: Countess Olenska thought
she would be conforming to American ideas in asking for her freedom."
It was the first time that the young man had pronounced her name since
he had left Skuytercliff, and he felt the colour rise to his cheek.
Mrs. Welland smiled compassionately. "That is just like the
extraordinary things that foreigners invent about us. They think we
dine at two o'clock and countenance divorce! That is why it seems to
me so foolish to entertain them when they come to New York. They
accept our hospitality, and then they go home and repeat the same
stupid stories."
Archer made no comment on this, and Mrs. Welland continued: "But we do
most thoroughly appreciate your persuading Ellen to give up the idea.
Her grandmother and her uncle Lovell could do nothing with her; both of
them have written that her changing her mind was entirely due to your
influence--in fact she said so to her grandmother. She has an
unbounded admiration for you. Poor Ellen--she was always a wayward
child. I wonder what her fate will be?"
"What we've all contrived to make it," he felt like answering. "If
you'd all of you rather she should be Beaufort's mistress than some
decent fellow's wife you've certainly gone the right way about it."
He wondered what Mrs. Welland would have said if he had uttered the
words instead of merely thinking them. He could picture the sudden
decomposure of her firm placid features, to which a lifelong mastery
over trifles had given an air of factitious authority. Traces still
lingered on them of a fresh beauty like her daughter's; and he asked
himself if May's face was doomed to thicken into the same middle-aged
image of invincible innocence.
Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the
innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against
experience!
"I verily believe," Mrs. Welland continued, "that if the horrible
business had come out in the newspapers it would have been my husband's
death-blow. I don't know any of the details; I only ask not to, as I
told poor Ellen when she tried to talk to me about it. Having an
invalid to care for, I have to keep my mind bright and happy. But Mr.
Welland was terribly upset; he had a slight temperature every morning
while we were waiting to hear what had been decided. It was the horror
of his girl's learning that such things were possible--but of course,
dear Newland, you felt that too. We all knew that you were thinking of
May."
"I'm always thinking of May," the young man rejoined, rising to cut
short the conversation.
He had meant to seize the opportunity of his private talk with Mrs.
Welland to urge her to advance the date of his marriage. But he could
think of no arguments that would move her, and with a sense of relief
he saw Mr. Welland and May driving up to the door.
His only hope was to plead again with May, and on the day before his
departure he walked with her to the ruinous garden of the Spanish
Mission. The background lent itself to allusions to European scenes;
and May, who was looking her loveliest under a wide-brimmed hat that
cast a shadow of mystery over her too-clear eyes, kindled into
eagerness as he spoke of Granada and the Alhambra.
"We might be seeing it all this spring--even the Easter ceremonies at
Seville," he urged, exaggerating his demands in the hope of a larger
concession.
"Easter in Seville? And it will be Lent next week!" she laughed.
"Why shouldn't we be married in Lent?" he rejoined; but she looked so
shocked that he saw his mistake.
"Of course I didn't mean that, dearest; but soon after Easter--so that
we could sail at the end of April. I know I could arrange it at the
office."
She smiled dreamily upon the possibility; but he perceived that to
dream of it sufficed her. It was like hearing him read aloud out of
his poetry books the beautiful things that could not possibly happen in
real life.
"Oh, do go on, Newland; I do love your descriptions."
"But why should they be only descriptions? Why shouldn't we make them
real?"
"We shall, dearest, of course; next year." Her voice lingered over it.
"Don't you want them to be real sooner? Can't I persuade you to break
away now?"
She bowed her head, vanishing from him under her conniving hat-brim.
"Why should we dream away another year? Look at me, dear! Don't you
understand how I want you for my wife?"
For a moment she remained motionless; then she raised on him eyes of
such despairing dearness that he half-released her waist from his hold.
But suddenly her look changed and deepened inscrutably. "I'm not sure
if I DO understand," she said. "Is it--is it because you're not
certain of continuing to care for me?"
Archer sprang up from his seat. "My God--perhaps--I don't know," he
broke out angrily.
May Welland rose also; as they faced each other she seemed to grow in
womanly stature and dignity. Both were silent for a moment, as if
dismayed by the unforeseen trend of their words: then she said in a low
voice: "If that is it--is there some one else?"
"Some one else--between you and me?" He echoed her words slowly, as
though they were only half-intelligible and he wanted time to repeat
the question to himself. She seemed to catch the uncertainty of his
voice, for she went on in a deepening tone: "Let us talk frankly,
Newland. Sometimes I've felt a difference in you; especially since our
engagement has been announced."
"Dear--what madness!" he recovered himself to exclaim.
She met his protest with a faint smile. "If it is, it won't hurt us to
talk about it." She paused, and added, lifting her head with one of
her noble movements: "Or even if it's true: why shouldn't we speak of
it? You might so easily have made a mistake."
He lowered his head, staring at the black leaf-pattern on the sunny
path at their feet. "Mistakes are always easy to make; but if I had
made one of the kind you suggest, is it likely that I should be
imploring you to hasten our marriage?"
She looked downward too, disturbing the pattern with the point of her
sunshade while she struggled for expression. "Yes," she said at
length. "You might want--once for all--to settle the question: it's
one way."
Her quiet lucidity startled him, but did not mislead him into thinking
her insensible. Under her hat-brim he saw the pallor of her profile,
and a slight tremor of the nostril above her resolutely steadied lips.
"Well--?" he questioned, sitting down on the bench, and looking up at
her with a frown that he tried to make playful.
She dropped back into her seat and went on: "You mustn't think that a
girl knows as little as her parents imagine. One hears and one
notices--one has one's feelings and ideas. And of course, long before
you told me that you cared for me, I'd known that there was some one
else you were interested in; every one was talking about it two years
ago at Newport. And once I saw you sitting together on the verandah at
a dance--and when she came back into the house her face was sad, and I
felt sorry for her; I remembered it afterward, when we were engaged."
Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat clasping and
unclasping her hands about the handle of her sunshade. The young man
laid his upon them with a gentle pressure; his heart dilated with an
inexpressible relief.
"My dear child--was THAT it? If you only knew the truth!"
She raised her head quickly. "Then there is a truth I don't know?"
He kept his hand over hers. "I meant, the truth about the old story
you speak of."
"But that's what I want to know, Newland--what I ought to know. I
couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong--an unfairness--to
somebody else. And I want to believe that it would be the same with
you. What sort of a life could we build on such foundations?"
Her face had taken on a look of such tragic courage that he felt like
bowing himself down at her feet. "I've wanted to say this for a long
time," she went on. "I've wanted to tell you that, when two people
really love each other, I understand that there may be situations which
make it right that they should--should go against public opinion. And
if you feel yourself in any way pledged ... pledged to the person we've
spoken of ... and if there is any way ... any way in which you can
fulfill your pledge ... even by her getting a divorce ... Newland,
don't give her up because of me!"
His surprise at discovering that her fears had fastened upon an episode
so remote and so completely of the past as his love-affair with Mrs.
Thorley Rushworth gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view.
There was something superhuman in an attitude so recklessly unorthodox,
and if other problems had not pressed on him he would have been lost in
wonder at the prodigy of the Wellands' daughter urging him to marry his
former mistress. But he was still dizzy with the glimpse of the
precipice they had skirted, and full of a new awe at the mystery of
young-girlhood.
For a moment he could not speak; then he said: "There is no pledge--no
obligation whatever--of the kind you think. Such cases don't
always--present themselves quite as simply as ... But that's no matter
... I love your generosity, because I feel as you do about those things
... I feel that each case must be judged individually, on its own
merits ... irrespective of stupid conventionalities ... I mean, each
woman's right to her liberty--" He pulled himself up, startled by the
turn his thoughts had taken, and went on, looking at her with a smile:
"Since you understand so many things, dearest, can't you go a little
farther, and understand the uselessness of our submitting to another
form of the same foolish conventionalities? If there's no one and
nothing between us, isn't that an argument for marrying quickly, rather
than for more delay?"
She flushed with joy and lifted her face to his; as he bent to it he
saw that her eyes were full of happy tears. But in another moment she
seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and
timorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative
were all for others, and that she had none for herself. It was evident
that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied
composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had
dropped back into the usual, as a too-adventurous child takes refuge in
its mother's arms.
Archer had no heart to go on pleading with her; he was too much
disappointed at the vanishing of the new being who had cast that one
deep look at him from her transparent eyes. May seemed to be aware of
his disappointment, but without knowing how to alleviate it; and they
stood up and walked silently home.
XVII.
"Your cousin the Countess called on mother while you were away," Janey
Archer announced to her brother on the evening of his return.
The young man, who was dining alone with his mother and sister, glanced
up in surprise and saw Mrs. Archer's gaze demurely bent on her plate.
Mrs. Archer did not regard her seclusion from the world as a reason for
being forgotten by it; and Newland guessed that she was slightly
annoyed that he should be surprised by Madame Olenska's visit.
"She had on a black velvet polonaise with jet buttons, and a tiny green
monkey muff; I never saw her so stylishly dressed," Janey continued.
"She came alone, early on Sunday afternoon; luckily the fire was lit in
the drawing-room. She had one of those new card-cases. She said she
wanted to know us because you'd been so good to her."
Newland laughed. "Madame Olenska always takes that tone about her
friends. She's very happy at being among her own people again."
"Yes, so she told us," said Mrs. Archer. "I must say she seems
thankful to be here."
"I hope you liked her, mother."
Mrs. Archer drew her lips together. "She certainly lays herself out to
please, even when she is calling on an old lady."
"Mother doesn't think her simple," Janey interjected, her eyes screwed
upon her brother's face.
"It's just my old-fashioned feeling; dear May is my ideal," said Mrs.
Archer.
"Ah," said her son, "they're not alike."
Archer had left St. Augustine charged with many messages for old Mrs.
Mingott; and a day or two after his return to town he called on her.
The old lady received him with unusual warmth; she was grateful to him
for persuading the Countess Olenska to give up the idea of a divorce;
and when he told her that he had deserted the office without leave, and
rushed down to St. Augustine simply because he wanted to see May, she
gave an adipose chuckle and patted his knee with her puff-ball hand.
"Ah, ah--so you kicked over the traces, did you? And I suppose Augusta
and Welland pulled long faces, and behaved as if the end of the world
had come? But little May--she knew better, I'll be bound?"
"I hoped she did; but after all she wouldn't agree to what I'd gone
down to ask for."
"Wouldn't she indeed? And what was that?"
"I wanted to get her to promise that we should be married in April.
What's the use of our wasting another year?"
Mrs. Manson Mingott screwed up her little mouth into a grimace of mimic
prudery and twinkled at him through malicious lids. "'Ask Mamma,' I
suppose--the usual story. Ah, these Mingotts--all alike! Born in a
rut, and you can't root 'em out of it. When I built this house you'd
have thought I was moving to California! Nobody ever HAD built above
Fortieth Street--no, says I, nor above the Battery either, before
Christopher Columbus discovered America. No, no; not one of them wants
to be different; they're as scared of it as the small-pox. Ah, my dear
Mr. Archer, I thank my stars I'm nothing but a vulgar Spicer; but
there's not one of my own children that takes after me but my little
Ellen." She broke off, still twinkling at him, and asked, with the
casual irrelevance of old age: "Now, why in the world didn't you marry
my little Ellen?"
Archer laughed. "For one thing, she wasn't there to be married."
"No--to be sure; more's the pity. And now it's too late; her life is
finished." She spoke with the cold-blooded complacency of the aged
throwing earth into the grave of young hopes. The young man's heart
grew chill, and he said hurriedly: "Can't I persuade you to use your
influence with the Wellands, Mrs. Mingott? I wasn't made for long
engagements."
Old Catherine beamed on him approvingly. "No; I can see that. You've
got a quick eye. When you were a little boy I've no doubt you liked to
be helped first." She threw back her head with a laugh that made her
chins ripple like little waves. "Ah, here's my Ellen now!" she
exclaimed, as the portieres parted behind her.
Madame Olenska came forward with a smile. Her face looked vivid and
happy, and she held out her hand gaily to Archer while she stooped to
her grandmother's kiss.
"I was just saying to him, my dear: 'Now, why didn't you marry my
little Ellen?'"
Madame Olenska looked at Archer, still smiling. "And what did he
answer?"
"Oh, my darling, I leave you to find that out! He's been down to
Florida to see his sweetheart."
"Yes, I know." She still looked at him. "I went to see your mother,
to ask where you'd gone. I sent a note that you never answered, and I
was afraid you were ill."
He muttered something about leaving unexpectedly, in a great hurry, and
having intended to write to her from St. Augustine.
"And of course once you were there you never thought of me again!" She
continued to beam on him with a gaiety that might have been a studied
assumption of indifference.
"If she still needs me, she's determined not to let me see it," he
thought, stung by her manner. He wanted to thank her for having been
to see his mother, but under the ancestress's malicious eye he felt
himself tongue-tied and constrained.
"Look at him--in such hot haste to get married that he took French
leave and rushed down to implore the silly girl on his knees! That's
something like a lover--that's the way handsome Bob Spicer carried off
my poor mother; and then got tired of her before I was weaned--though
they only had to wait eight months for me! But there--you're not a
Spicer, young man; luckily for you and for May. It's only my poor
Ellen that has kept any of their wicked blood; the rest of them are all
model Mingotts," cried the old lady scornfully.
Archer was aware that Madame Olenska, who had seated herself at her
grandmother's side, was still thoughtfully scrutinising him. The
gaiety had faded from her eyes, and she said with great gentleness:
"Surely, Granny, we can persuade them between us to do as he wishes."
Archer rose to go, and as his hand met Madame Olenska's he felt that
she was waiting for him to make some allusion to her unanswered letter.
"When can I see you?" he asked, as she walked with him to the door of
the room.
"Whenever you like; but it must be soon if you want to see the little
house again. I am moving next week."
A pang shot through him at the memory of his lamplit hours in the
low-studded drawing-room. Few as they had been, they were thick with
memories.
"Tomorrow evening?"
She nodded. "Tomorrow; yes; but early. I'm going out."
The next day was a Sunday, and if she were "going out" on a Sunday
evening it could, of course, be only to Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's. He
felt a slight movement of annoyance, not so much at her going there
(for he rather liked her going where she pleased in spite of the van
der Luydens), but because it was the kind of house at which she was
sure to meet Beaufort, where she must have known beforehand that she
would meet him--and where she was probably going for that purpose.
"Very well; tomorrow evening," he repeated, inwardly resolved that he
would not go early, and that by reaching her door late he would either
prevent her from going to Mrs. Struthers's, or else arrive after she
had started--which, all things considered, would no doubt be the
simplest solution.
It was only half-past eight, after all, when he rang the bell under the
wisteria; not as late as he had intended by half an hour--but a
singular restlessness had driven him to her door. He reflected,
however, that Mrs. Struthers's Sunday evenings were not like a ball,
and that her guests, as if to minimise their delinquency, usually went
early.
The one thing he had not counted on, in entering Madame Olenska's hall,
was to find hats and overcoats there. Why had she bidden him to come
early if she was having people to dine? On a closer inspection of the
garments besides which Nastasia was laying his own, his resentment gave
way to curiosity. The overcoats were in fact the very strangest he had
ever seen under a polite roof; and it took but a glance to assure
himself that neither of them belonged to Julius Beaufort. One was a
shaggy yellow ulster of "reach-me-down" cut, the other a very old and
rusty cloak with a cape--something like what the French called a
"Macfarlane." This garment, which appeared to be made for a person of
prodigious size, had evidently seen long and hard wear, and its
greenish-black folds gave out a moist sawdusty smell suggestive of
prolonged sessions against bar-room walls. On it lay a ragged grey
scarf and an odd felt hat of semiclerical shape.
Archer raised his eyebrows enquiringly at Nastasia, who raised hers in
return with a fatalistic "Gia!" as she threw open the drawing-room door.
The young man saw at once that his hostess was not in the room; then,
with surprise, he discovered another lady standing by the fire. This
lady, who was long, lean and loosely put together, was clad in raiment
intricately looped and fringed, with plaids and stripes and bands of
plain colour disposed in a design to which the clue seemed missing.
Her hair, which had tried to turn white and only succeeded in fading,
was surmounted by a Spanish comb and black lace scarf, and silk
mittens, visibly darned, covered her rheumatic hands.
Beside her, in a cloud of cigar-smoke, stood the owners of the two
overcoats, both in morning clothes that they had evidently not taken
off since morning. In one of the two, Archer, to his surprise,
recognised Ned Winsett; the other and older, who was unknown to him,
and whose gigantic frame declared him to be the wearer of the
"Macfarlane," had a feebly leonine head with crumpled grey hair, and
moved his arms with large pawing gestures, as though he were
distributing lay blessings to a kneeling multitude.
These three persons stood together on the hearth-rug, their eyes fixed
on an extraordinarily large bouquet of crimson roses, with a knot of
purple pansies at their base, that lay on the sofa where Madame Olenska
usually sat.
"What they must have cost at this season--though of course it's the
sentiment one cares about!" the lady was saying in a sighing staccato
as Archer came in.
The three turned with surprise at his appearance, and the lady,
advancing, held out her hand.
"Dear Mr. Archer--almost my cousin Newland!" she said. "I am the
Marchioness Manson."
Archer bowed, and she continued: "My Ellen has taken me in for a few
days. I came from Cuba, where I have been spending the winter with
Spanish friends--such delightful distinguished people: the highest
nobility of old Castile--how I wish you could know them! But I was
called away by our dear great friend here, Dr. Carver. You don't know
Dr. Agathon Carver, founder of the Valley of Love Community?"
Dr. Carver inclined his leonine head, and the Marchioness continued:
"Ah, New York--New York--how little the life of the spirit has reached
it! But I see you do know Mr. Winsett."
"Oh, yes--I reached him some time ago; but not by that route," Winsett
said with his dry smile.
The Marchioness shook her head reprovingly. "How do you know, Mr.
Winsett? The spirit bloweth where it listeth."
"List--oh, list!" interjected Dr. Carver in a stentorian murmur.
"But do sit down, Mr. Archer. We four have been having a delightful
little dinner together, and my child has gone up to dress. She expects
you; she will be down in a moment. We were just admiring these
marvellous flowers, which will surprise her when she reappears."
Winsett remained on his feet. "I'm afraid I must be off. Please tell
Madame Olenska that we shall all feel lost when she abandons our
street. This house has been an oasis."
"Ah, but she won't abandon YOU. Poetry and art are the breath of life
to her. It IS poetry you write, Mr. Winsett?"
"Well, no; but I sometimes read it," said Winsett, including the group
in a general nod and slipping out of the room.
"A caustic spirit--un peu sauvage. But so witty; Dr. Carver, you DO
think him witty?"
"I never think of wit," said Dr. Carver severely.
"Ah--ah--you never think of wit! How merciless he is to us weak
mortals, Mr. Archer! But he lives only in the life of the spirit; and
tonight he is mentally preparing the lecture he is to deliver presently
at Mrs. Blenker's. Dr. Carver, would there be time, before you start
for the Blenkers' to explain to Mr. Archer your illuminating discovery
of the Direct Contact? But no; I see it is nearly nine o'clock, and we
have no right to detain you while so many are waiting for your message."
Dr. Carver looked slightly disappointed at this conclusion, but, having
compared his ponderous gold time-piece with Madame Olenska's little
travelling-clock, he reluctantly gathered up his mighty limbs for
departure.
"I shall see you later, dear friend?" he suggested to the Marchioness,
who replied with a smile: "As soon as Ellen's carriage comes I will
join you; I do hope the lecture won't have begun."
Dr. Carver looked thoughtfully at Archer. "Perhaps, if this young
gentleman is interested in my experiences, Mrs. Blenker might allow you
to bring him with you?"
"Oh, dear friend, if it were possible--I am sure she would be too
happy. But I fear my Ellen counts on Mr. Archer herself."
"That," said Dr. Carver, "is unfortunate--but here is my card." He
handed it to Archer, who read on it, in Gothic characters:
+---------------------------+
| Agathon Carver |
| The Valley of Love |
| Kittasquattamy, N. Y. |
+---------------------------+
Dr. Carver bowed himself out, and Mrs. Manson, with a sigh that might
have been either of regret or relief, again waved Archer to a seat.
"Ellen will be down in a moment; and before she comes, I am so glad of
this quiet moment with you."
Archer murmured his pleasure at their meeting, and the Marchioness
continued, in her low sighing accents: "I know everything, dear Mr.
Archer--my child has told me all you have done for her. Your wise
advice: your courageous firmness--thank heaven it was not too late!"
The young man listened with considerable embarrassment. Was there any
one, he wondered, to whom Madame Olenska had not proclaimed his
intervention in her private affairs?
"Madame Olenska exaggerates; I simply gave her a legal opinion, as she
asked me to."
"Ah, but in doing it--in doing it you were the unconscious instrument
of--of--what word have we moderns for Providence, Mr. Archer?" cried
the lady, tilting her head on one side and drooping her lids
mysteriously. "Little did you know that at that very moment I was
being appealed to: being approached, in fact--from the other side of
the Atlantic!"
She glanced over her shoulder, as though fearful of being overheard,
and then, drawing her chair nearer, and raising a tiny ivory fan to her
lips, breathed behind it: "By the Count himself--my poor, mad, foolish
Olenski; who asks only to take her back on her own terms."
"Good God!" Archer exclaimed, springing up.
"You are horrified? Yes, of course; I understand. I don't defend poor
Stanislas, though he has always called me his best friend. He does not
defend himself--he casts himself at her feet: in my person." She
tapped her emaciated bosom. "I have his letter here."
"A letter?--Has Madame Olenska seen it?" Archer stammered, his brain
whirling with the shock of the announcement.
The Marchioness Manson shook her head softly. "Time--time; I must have
time. I know my Ellen--haughty, intractable; shall I say, just a shade
unforgiving?"
"But, good heavens, to forgive is one thing; to go back into that
hell--"
"Ah, yes," the Marchioness acquiesced. "So she describes it--my
sensitive child! But on the material side, Mr. Archer, if one may
stoop to consider such things; do you know what she is giving up?
Those roses there on the sofa--acres like them, under glass and in the
open, in his matchless terraced gardens at Nice! Jewels--historic
pearls: the Sobieski emeralds--sables,--but she cares nothing for all
these! Art and beauty, those she does care for, she lives for, as I
always have; and those also surrounded her. Pictures, priceless
furniture, music, brilliant conversation--ah, that, my dear young man,
if you'll excuse me, is what you've no conception of here! And she had
it all; and the homage of the greatest. She tells me she is not
thought handsome in New York--good heavens! Her portrait has been
painted nine times; the greatest artists in Europe have begged for the
privilege. Are these things nothing? And the remorse of an adoring
husband?"
As the Marchioness Manson rose to her climax her face assumed an
expression of ecstatic retrospection which would have moved Archer's
mirth had he not been numb with amazement.
He would have laughed if any one had foretold to him that his first
sight of poor Medora Manson would have been in the guise of a messenger
of Satan; but he was in no mood for laughing now, and she seemed to him
to come straight out of the hell from which Ellen Olenska had just
escaped.
"She knows nothing yet--of all this?" he asked abruptly.
Mrs. Manson laid a purple finger on her lips. "Nothing directly--but
does she suspect? Who can tell? The truth is, Mr. Archer, I have been
waiting to see you. From the moment I heard of the firm stand you had
taken, and of your influence over her, I hoped it might be possible to
count on your support--to convince you ..."
"That she ought to go back? I would rather see her dead!" cried the
young man violently.
"Ah," the Marchioness murmured, without visible resentment. For a
while she sat in her arm-chair, opening and shutting the absurd ivory
fan between her mittened fingers; but suddenly she lifted her head and
listened.
"Here she comes," she said in a rapid whisper; and then, pointing to
the bouquet on the sofa: "Am I to understand that you prefer THAT, Mr.
Archer? After all, marriage is marriage ... and my niece is still a
wife..."
XVIII.
"What are you two plotting together, aunt Medora?" Madame Olenska cried
as she came into the room.
She was dressed as if for a ball. Everything about her shimmered and
glimmered softly, as if her dress had been woven out of candle-beams;
and she carried her head high, like a pretty woman challenging a
roomful of rivals.
"We were saying, my dear, that here was something beautiful to surprise
you with," Mrs. Manson rejoined, rising to her feet and pointing archly
to the flowers.
Madame Olenska stopped short and looked at the bouquet. Her colour did
not change, but a sort of white radiance of anger ran over her like
summer lightning. "Ah," she exclaimed, in a shrill voice that the
young man had never heard, "who is ridiculous enough to send me a
bouquet? Why a bouquet? And why tonight of all nights? I am not
going to a ball; I am not a girl engaged to be married. But some
people are always ridiculous."
She turned back to the door, opened it, and called out: "Nastasia!"
The ubiquitous handmaiden promptly appeared, and Archer heard Madame
Olenska say, in an Italian that she seemed to pronounce with
intentional deliberateness in order that he might follow it:
"Here--throw this into the dustbin!" and then, as Nastasia stared
protestingly: "But no--it's not the fault of the poor flowers. Tell
the boy to carry them to the house three doors away, the house of Mr.
Winsett, the dark gentleman who dined here. His wife is ill--they may
give her pleasure ... The boy is out, you say? Then, my dear one, run
yourself; here, put my cloak over you and fly. I want the thing out of
the house immediately! And, as you live, don't say they come from me!"
She flung her velvet opera cloak over the maid's shoulders and turned
back into the drawing-room, shutting the door sharply. Her bosom was
rising high under its lace, and for a moment Archer thought she was
about to cry; but she burst into a laugh instead, and looking from the
Marchioness to Archer, asked abruptly: "And you two--have you made
friends!"
"It's for Mr. Archer to say, darling; he has waited patiently while you
were dressing."
"Yes--I gave you time enough: my hair wouldn't go," Madame Olenska
said, raising her hand to the heaped-up curls of her chignon. "But
that reminds me: I see Dr. Carver is gone, and you'll be late at the
Blenkers'. Mr. Archer, will you put my aunt in the carriage?"
She followed the Marchioness into the hall, saw her fitted into a
miscellaneous heap of overshoes, shawls and tippets, and called from
the doorstep: "Mind, the carriage is to be back for me at ten!" Then
she returned to the drawing-room, where Archer, on re-entering it,
found her standing by the mantelpiece, examining herself in the mirror.
It was not usual, in New York society, for a lady to address her
parlour-maid as "my dear one," and send her out on an errand wrapped in
her own opera-cloak; and Archer, through all his deeper feelings,
tasted the pleasurable excitement of being in a world where action
followed on emotion with such Olympian speed.
Madame Olenska did not move when he came up behind her, and for a
second their eyes met in the mirror; then she turned, threw herself
into her sofa-corner, and sighed out: "There's time for a cigarette."
He handed her the box and lit a spill for her; and as the flame flashed
up into her face she glanced at him with laughing eyes and said: "What
do you think of me in a temper?"
Archer paused a moment; then he answered with sudden resolution: "It
makes me understand what your aunt has been saying about you."
"I knew she'd been talking about me. Well?"
"She said you were used to all kinds of things--splendours and
amusements and excitements--that we could never hope to give you here."
Madame Olenska smiled faintly into the circle of smoke about her lips.
"Medora is incorrigibly romantic. It has made up to her for so many
things!"
Archer hesitated again, and again took his risk. "Is your aunt's
romanticism always consistent with accuracy?"
"You mean: does she speak the truth?" Her niece considered. "Well,
I'll tell you: in almost everything she says, there's something true
and something untrue. But why do you ask? What has she been telling
you?"
He looked away into the fire, and then back at her shining presence.
His heart tightened with the thought that this was their last evening
by that fireside, and that in a moment the carriage would come to carry
her away.
"She says--she pretends that Count Olenski has asked her to persuade
you to go back to him."
Madame Olenska made no answer. She sat motionless, holding her
cigarette in her half-lifted hand. The expression of her face had not
changed; and Archer remembered that he had before noticed her apparent
incapacity for surprise.
"You knew, then?" he broke out.
She was silent for so long that the ash dropped from her cigarette.
She brushed it to the floor. "She has hinted about a letter: poor
darling! Medora's hints--"
"Is it at your husband's request that she has arrived here suddenly?"
Madame Olenska seemed to consider this question also. "There again:
one can't tell. She told me she had had a 'spiritual summons,'
whatever that is, from Dr. Carver. I'm afraid she's going to marry Dr.
Carver ... poor Medora, there's always some one she wants to marry.
But perhaps the people in Cuba just got tired of her! I think she was
with them as a sort of paid companion. Really, I don't know why she
came."
"But you do believe she has a letter from your husband?"
Again Madame Olenska brooded silently; then she said: "After all, it
was to be expected."
The young man rose and went to lean against the fireplace. A sudden
restlessness possessed him, and he was tongue-tied by the sense that
their minutes were numbered, and that at any moment he might hear the
wheels of the returning carriage.
"You know that your aunt believes you will go back?"
Madame Olenska raised her head quickly. A deep blush rose to her face
and spread over her neck and shoulders. She blushed seldom and
painfully, as if it hurt her like a burn.
"Many cruel things have been believed of me," she said.
"Oh, Ellen--forgive me; I'm a fool and a brute!"
She smiled a little. "You are horribly nervous; you have your own
troubles. I know you think the Wellands are unreasonable about your
marriage, and of course I agree with you. In Europe people don't
understand our long American engagements; I suppose they are not as
calm as we are." She pronounced the "we" with a faint emphasis that
gave it an ironic sound.
Archer felt the irony but did not dare to take it up. After all, she
had perhaps purposely deflected the conversation from her own affairs,
and after the pain his last words had evidently caused her he felt that
all he could do was to follow her lead. But the sense of the waning
hour made him desperate: he could not bear the thought that a barrier
of words should drop between them again.
"Yes," he said abruptly; "I went south to ask May to marry me after
Easter. There's no reason why we shouldn't be married then."
"And May adores you--and yet you couldn't convince her? I thought her
too intelligent to be the slave of such absurd superstitions."
"She IS too intelligent--she's not their slave."
Madame Olenska looked at him. "Well, then--I don't understand."
Archer reddened, and hurried on with a rush. "We had a frank
talk--almost the first. She thinks my impatience a bad sign."
"Merciful heavens--a bad sign?"
"She thinks it means that I can't trust myself to go on caring for her.
She thinks, in short, I want to marry her at once to get away from some
one that I--care for more."
Madame Olenska examined this curiously. "But if she thinks that--why
isn't she in a hurry too?"
"Because she's not like that: she's so much nobler. She insists all
the more on the long engagement, to give me time--"
"Time to give her up for the other woman?"
"If I want to."
Madame Olenska leaned toward the fire and gazed into it with fixed
eyes. Down the quiet street Archer heard the approaching trot of her
horses.
"That IS noble," she said, with a slight break in her voice.
"Yes. But it's ridiculous."
"Ridiculous? Because you don't care for any one else?"
"Because I don't mean to marry any one else."
"Ah." There was another long interval. At length she looked up at him
and asked: "This other woman--does she love you?"
"Oh, there's no other woman; I mean, the person that May was thinking
of is--was never--"
"Then, why, after all, are you in such haste?"
"There's your carriage," said Archer.
She half-rose and looked about her with absent eyes. Her fan and
gloves lay on the sofa beside her and she picked them up mechanically.
"Yes; I suppose I must be going."
"You're going to Mrs. Struthers's?"
"Yes." She smiled and added: "I must go where I am invited, or I
should be too lonely. Why not come with me?"
Archer felt that at any cost he must keep her beside him, must make her
give him the rest of her evening. Ignoring her question, he continued
to lean against the chimney-piece, his eyes fixed on the hand in which
she held her gloves and fan, as if watching to see if he had the power
to make her drop them.
"May guessed the truth," he said. "There is another woman--but not the
one she thinks."
Ellen Olenska made no answer, and did not move. After a moment he sat
down beside her, and, taking her hand, softly unclasped it, so that the
gloves and fan fell on the sofa between them.
She started up, and freeing herself from him moved away to the other
side of the hearth. "Ah, don't make love to me! Too many people have
done that," she said, frowning.
Archer, changing colour, stood up also: it was the bitterest rebuke she
could have given him. "I have never made love to you," he said, "and I
never shall. But you are the woman I would have married if it had been
possible for either of us."
"Possible for either of us?" She looked at him with unfeigned
astonishment. "And you say that--when it's you who've made it
impossible?"
He stared at her, groping in a blackness through which a single arrow
of light tore its blinding way.
"I'VE made it impossible--?"
"You, you, YOU!" she cried, her lip trembling like a child's on the
verge of tears. "Isn't it you who made me give up divorcing--give it
up because you showed me how selfish and wicked it was, how one must
sacrifice one's self to preserve the dignity of marriage ... and to
spare one's family the publicity, the scandal? And because my family
was going to be your family--for May's sake and for yours--I did what
you told me, what you proved to me that I ought to do. Ah," she broke
out with a sudden laugh, "I've made no secret of having done it for
you!"
She sank down on the sofa again, crouching among the festive ripples of
her dress like a stricken masquerader; and the young man stood by the
fireplace and continued to gaze at her without moving.
"Good God," he groaned. "When I thought--"
"You thought?"
"Ah, don't ask me what I thought!"
Still looking at her, he saw the same burning flush creep up her neck
to her face. She sat upright, facing him with a rigid dignity.
"I do ask you."
"Well, then: there were things in that letter you asked me to read--"
"My husband's letter?"
"Yes."
"I had nothing to fear from that letter: absolutely nothing! All I
feared was to bring notoriety, scandal, on the family--on you and May."
"Good God," he groaned again, bowing his face in his hands.
The silence that followed lay on them with the weight of things final
and irrevocable. It seemed to Archer to be crushing him down like his
own grave-stone; in all the wide future he saw nothing that would ever
lift that load from his heart. He did not move from his place, or
raise his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went on staring into
utter darkness.
"At least I loved you--" he brought out.
On the other side of the hearth, from the sofa-corner where he supposed
that she still crouched, he heard a faint stifled crying like a
child's. He started up and came to her side.
"Ellen! What madness! Why are you crying? Nothing's done that can't
be undone. I'm still free, and you're going to be." He had her in his
arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain
terrors shrivelling up like ghosts at sunrise. The one thing that
astonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes
arguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her
made everything so simple.
She gave him back all his kiss, but after a moment he felt her
stiffening in his arms, and she put him aside and stood up.
"Ah, my poor Newland--I suppose this had to be. But it doesn't in the
least alter things," she said, looking down at him in her turn from the
hearth.
"It alters the whole of life for me."
"No, no--it mustn't, it can't. You're engaged to May Welland; and I'm
married."
He stood up too, flushed and resolute. "Nonsense! It's too late for
that sort of thing. We've no right to lie to other people or to
ourselves. We won't talk of your marriage; but do you see me marrying
May after this?"
She stood silent, resting her thin elbows on the mantelpiece, her
profile reflected in the glass behind her. One of the locks of her
chignon had become loosened and hung on her neck; she looked haggard
and almost old.
"I don't see you," she said at length, "putting that question to May.
Do you?"
He gave a reckless shrug. "It's too late to do anything else."
"You say that because it's the easiest thing to say at this moment--not
because it's true. In reality it's too late to do anything but what
we'd both decided on."
"Ah, I don't understand you!"
She forced a pitiful smile that pinched her face instead of smoothing
it. "You don't understand because you haven't yet guessed how you've
changed things for me: oh, from the first--long before I knew all you'd
done."
"All I'd done?"
"Yes. I was perfectly unconscious at first that people here were shy
of me--that they thought I was a dreadful sort of person. It seems
they had even refused to meet me at dinner. I found that out
afterward; and how you'd made your mother go with you to the van der
Luydens'; and how you'd insisted on announcing your engagement at the
Beaufort ball, so that I might have two families to stand by me instead
of one--"
At that he broke into a laugh.
"Just imagine," she said, "how stupid and unobservant I was! I knew
nothing of all this till Granny blurted it out one day. New York
simply meant peace and freedom to me: it was coming home. And I was so
happy at being among my own people that every one I met seemed kind and
good, and glad to see me. But from the very beginning," she continued,
"I felt there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasons
that I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard
and--unnecessary. The very good people didn't convince me; I felt
they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt
the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands--and yet you
hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by
disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known
before--and it's better than anything I've known."
She spoke in a low even voice, without tears or visible agitation; and
each word, as it dropped from her, fell into his breast like burning
lead. He sat bowed over, his head between his hands, staring at the
hearthrug, and at the tip of the satin shoe that showed under her
dress. Suddenly he knelt down and kissed the shoe.
She bent over him, laying her hands on his shoulders, and looking at
him with eyes so deep that he remained motionless under her gaze.
"Ah, don't let us undo what you've done!" she cried. "I can't go back
now to that other way of thinking. I can't love you unless I give you
up."
His arms were yearning up to her; but she drew away, and they remained
facing each other, divided by the distance that her words had created.
Then, abruptly, his anger overflowed.
"And Beaufort? Is he to replace me?"
As the words sprang out he was prepared for an answering flare of
anger; and he would have welcomed it as fuel for his own. But Madame
Olenska only grew a shade paler, and stood with her arms hanging down
before her, and her head slightly bent, as her way was when she
pondered a question.
"He's waiting for you now at Mrs. Struthers's; why don't you go to
him?" Archer sneered.
She turned to ring the bell. "I shall not go out this evening; tell
the carriage to go and fetch the Signora Marchesa," she said when the
maid came.
After the door had closed again Archer continued to look at her with
bitter eyes. "Why this sacrifice? Since you tell me that you're
lonely I've no right to keep you from your friends."
She smiled a little under her wet lashes. "I shan't be lonely now. I
WAS lonely; I WAS afraid. But the emptiness and the darkness are gone;
when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a
room where there's always a light."
Her tone and her look still enveloped her in a soft inaccessibility,
and Archer groaned out again: "I don't understand you!"
"Yet you understand May!"
He reddened under the retort, but kept his eyes on her. "May is ready
to give me up."
"What! Three days after you've entreated her on your knees to hasten
your marriage?"
"She's refused; that gives me the right--"
"Ah, you've taught me what an ugly word that is," she said.
He turned away with a sense of utter weariness. He felt as though he
had been struggling for hours up the face of a steep precipice, and
now, just as he had fought his way to the top, his hold had given way
and he was pitching down headlong into darkness.
If he could have got her in his arms again he might have swept away her
arguments; but she still held him at a distance by something
inscrutably aloof in her look and attitude, and by his own awed sense
of her sincerity. At length he began to plead again.
"If we do this now it will be worse afterward--worse for every one--"
"No--no--no!" she almost screamed, as if he frightened her.
At that moment the bell sent a long tinkle through the house. They had
heard no carriage stopping at the door, and they stood motionless,
looking at each other with startled eyes.
Outside, Nastasia's step crossed the hall, the outer door opened, and a
moment later she came in carrying a telegram which she handed to the
Countess Olenska.
"The lady was very happy at the flowers," Nastasia said, smoothing her
apron. "She thought it was her signor marito who had sent them, and
she cried a little and said it was a folly."
Her mistress smiled and took the yellow envelope. She tore it open and
carried it to the lamp; then, when the door had closed again, she
handed the telegram to Archer.
It was dated from St. Augustine, and addressed to the Countess Olenska.
In it he read: "Granny's telegram successful. Papa and Mamma agree
marriage after Easter. Am telegraphing Newland. Am too happy for
words and love you dearly. Your grateful May."
Half an hour later, when Archer unlocked his own front-door, he found a
similar envelope on the hall-table on top of his pile of notes and
letters. The message inside the envelope was also from May Welland,
and ran as follows: "Parents consent wedding Tuesday after Easter at
twelve Grace Church eight bridesmaids please see Rector so happy love
May."
Archer crumpled up the yellow sheet as if the gesture could annihilate
the news it contained. Then he pulled out a small pocket-diary and
turned over the pages with trembling fingers; but he did not find what
he wanted, and cramming the telegram into his pocket he mounted the
stairs.
A light was shining through the door of the little hall-room which
served Janey as a dressing-room and boudoir, and her brother rapped
impatiently on the panel. The door opened, and his sister stood before
him in her immemorial purple flannel dressing-gown, with her hair "on
pins." Her face looked pale and apprehensive.
"Newland! I hope there's no bad news in that telegram? I waited on
purpose, in case--" (No item of his correspondence was safe from
Janey.)
He took no notice of her question. "Look here--what day is Easter this
year?"
She looked shocked at such unchristian ignorance. "Easter? Newland!
Why, of course, the first week in April. Why?"
"The first week?" He turned again to the pages of his diary,
calculating rapidly under his breath. "The first week, did you say?"
He threw back his head with a long laugh.
"For mercy's sake what's the matter?"
"Nothing's the matter, except that I'm going to be married in a month."
Janey fell upon his neck and pressed him to her purple flannel breast.
"Oh Newland, how wonderful! I'm so glad! But, dearest, why do you
keep on laughing? Do hush, or you'll wake Mamma."
Book II
XIX.
The day was fresh, with a lively spring wind full of dust. All the old
ladies in both families had got out their faded sables and yellowing
ermines, and the smell of camphor from the front pews almost smothered
the faint spring scent of the lilies banking the altar.
Newland Archer, at a signal from the sexton, had come out of the vestry
and placed himself with his best man on the chancel step of Grace
Church.
The signal meant that the brougham bearing the bride and her father was
in sight; but there was sure to be a considerable interval of
adjustment and consultation in the lobby, where the bridesmaids were
already hovering like a cluster of Easter blossoms. During this
unavoidable lapse of time the bridegroom, in proof of his eagerness,
was expected to expose himself alone to the gaze of the assembled
company; and Archer had gone through this formality as resignedly as
through all the others which made of a nineteenth century New York
wedding a rite that seemed to belong to the dawn of history.
Everything was equally easy--or equally painful, as one chose to put
it--in the path he was committed to tread, and he had obeyed the
flurried injunctions of his best man as piously as other bridegrooms
had obeyed his own, in the days when he had guided them through the
same labyrinth.
So far he was reasonably sure of having fulfilled all his obligations.
The bridesmaids' eight bouquets of white lilac and lilies-of-the-valley
had been sent in due time, as well as the gold and sapphire
sleeve-links of the eight ushers and the best man's cat's-eye
scarf-pin; Archer had sat up half the night trying to vary the wording
of his thanks for the last batch of presents from men friends and
ex-lady-loves; the fees for the Bishop and the Rector were safely in
the pocket of his best man; his own luggage was already at Mrs. Manson
Mingott's, where the wedding-breakfast was to take place, and so were
the travelling clothes into which he was to change; and a private
compartment had been engaged in the train that was to carry the young
couple to their unknown destination--concealment of the spot in which
the bridal night was to be spent being one of the most sacred taboos of
the prehistoric ritual.
"Got the ring all right?" whispered young van der Luyden Newland, who
was inexperienced in the duties of a best man, and awed by the weight
of his responsibility.
Archer made the gesture which he had seen so many bridegrooms make:
with his ungloved right hand he felt in the pocket of his dark grey
waistcoat, and assured himself that the little gold circlet (engraved
inside: Newland to May, April ---, 187-) was in its place; then,
resuming his former attitude, his tall hat and pearl-grey gloves with
black stitchings grasped in his left hand, he stood looking at the door
of the church.
Overhead, Handel's March swelled pompously through the imitation stone
vaulting, carrying on its waves the faded drift of the many weddings at
which, with cheerful indifference, he had stood on the same chancel
step watching other brides float up the nave toward other bridegrooms.
"How like a first night at the Opera!" he thought, recognising all the
same faces in the same boxes (no, pews), and wondering if, when the
Last Trump sounded, Mrs. Selfridge Merry would be there with the same
towering ostrich feathers in her bonnet, and Mrs. Beaufort with the
same diamond earrings and the same smile--and whether suitable
proscenium seats were already prepared for them in another world.
After that there was still time to review, one by one, the familiar
countenances in the first rows; the women's sharp with curiosity and
excitement, the men's sulky with the obligation of having to put on
their frock-coats before luncheon, and fight for food at the
wedding-breakfast.
"Too bad the breakfast is at old Catherine's," the bridegroom could
fancy Reggie Chivers saying. "But I'm told that Lovell Mingott
insisted on its being cooked by his own chef, so it ought to be good if
one can only get at it." And he could imagine Sillerton Jackson adding
with authority: "My dear fellow, haven't you heard? It's to be served
at small tables, in the new English fashion."
Archer's eyes lingered a moment on the left-hand pew, where his mother,
who had entered the church on Mr. Henry van der Luyden's arm, sat
weeping softly under her Chantilly veil, her hands in her grandmother's
ermine muff.
"Poor Janey!" he thought, looking at his sister, "even by screwing her
head around she can see only the people in the few front pews; and
they're mostly dowdy Newlands and Dagonets."
On the hither side of the white ribbon dividing off the seats reserved
for the families he saw Beaufort, tall and redfaced, scrutinising the
women with his arrogant stare. Beside him sat his wife, all silvery
chinchilla and violets; and on the far side of the ribbon, Lawrence
Lefferts's sleekly brushed head seemed to mount guard over the
invisible deity of "Good Form" who presided at the ceremony.
Archer wondered how many flaws Lefferts's keen eyes would discover in
the ritual of his divinity; then he suddenly recalled that he too had
once thought such questions important. The things that had filled his
days seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like the wrangles of
mediaeval schoolmen over metaphysical terms that nobody had ever
understood. A stormy discussion as to whether the wedding presents
should be "shown" had darkened the last hours before the wedding; and
it seemed inconceivable to Archer that grown-up people should work
themselves into a state of agitation over such trifles, and that the
matter should have been decided (in the negative) by Mrs. Welland's
saying, with indignant tears: "I should as soon turn the reporters
loose in my house." Yet there was a time when Archer had had definite
and rather aggressive opinions on all such problems, and when
everything concerning the manners and customs of his little tribe had
seemed to him fraught with world-wide significance.
"And all the while, I suppose," he thought, "real people were living
somewhere, and real things happening to them ..."
"THERE THEY COME!" breathed the best man excitedly; but the bridegroom
knew better.
The cautious opening of the door of the church meant only that Mr.
Brown the livery-stable keeper (gowned in black in his intermittent
character of sexton) was taking a preliminary survey of the scene
before marshalling his forces. The door was softly shut again; then
after another interval it swung majestically open, and a murmur ran
through the church: "The family!"
Mrs. Welland came first, on the arm of her eldest son. Her large pink
face was appropriately solemn, and her plum-coloured satin with pale
blue side-panels, and blue ostrich plumes in a small satin bonnet, met
with general approval; but before she had settled herself with a
stately rustle in the pew opposite Mrs. Archer's the spectators were
craning their necks to see who was coming after her. Wild rumours had
been abroad the day before to the effect that Mrs. Manson Mingott, in
spite of her physical disabilities, had resolved on being present at
the ceremony; and the idea was so much in keeping with her sporting
character that bets ran high at the clubs as to her being able to walk
up the nave and squeeze into a seat. It was known that she had
insisted on sending her own carpenter to look into the possibility of
taking down the end panel of the front pew, and to measure the space
between the seat and the front; but the result had been discouraging,
and for one anxious day her family had watched her dallying with the
plan of being wheeled up the nave in her enormous Bath chair and
sitting enthroned in it at the foot of the chancel.
The idea of this monstrous exposure of her person was so painful to her
relations that they could have covered with gold the ingenious person
who suddenly discovered that the chair was too wide to pass between the
iron uprights of the awning which extended from the church door to the
curbstone. The idea of doing away with this awning, and revealing the
bride to the mob of dressmakers and newspaper reporters who stood
outside fighting to get near the joints of the canvas, exceeded even
old Catherine's courage, though for a moment she had weighed the
possibility. "Why, they might take a photograph of my child AND PUT IT
IN THE PAPERS!" Mrs. Welland exclaimed when her mother's last plan was
hinted to her; and from this unthinkable indecency the clan recoiled
with a collective shudder. The ancestress had had to give in; but her
concession was bought only by the promise that the wedding-breakfast
should take place under her roof, though (as the Washington Square
connection said) with the Wellands' house in easy reach it was hard to
have to make a special price with Brown to drive one to the other end
of nowhere.
Though all these transactions had been widely reported by the Jacksons
a sporting minority still clung to the belief that old Catherine would
appear in church, and there was a distinct lowering of the temperature
when she was found to have been replaced by her daughter-in-law. Mrs.
Lovell Mingott had the high colour and glassy stare induced in ladies
of her age and habit by the effort of getting into a new dress; but
once the disappointment occasioned by her mother-in-law's
non-appearance had subsided, it was agreed that her black Chantilly
over lilac satin, with a bonnet of Parma violets, formed the happiest
contrast to Mrs. Welland's blue and plum-colour. Far different was the
impression produced by the gaunt and mincing lady who followed on Mr.
Mingott's arm, in a wild dishevelment of stripes and fringes and
floating scarves; and as this last apparition glided into view Archer's
heart contracted and stopped beating.
He had taken it for granted that the Marchioness Manson was still in
Washington, where she had gone some four weeks previously with her
niece, Madame Olenska. It was generally understood that their abrupt
departure was due to Madame Olenska's desire to remove her aunt from
the baleful eloquence of Dr. Agathon Carver, who had nearly succeeded
in enlisting her as a recruit for the Valley of Love; and in the
circumstances no one had expected either of the ladies to return for
the wedding. For a moment Archer stood with his eyes fixed on Medora's
fantastic figure, straining to see who came behind her; but the little
procession was at an end, for all the lesser members of the family had
taken their seats, and the eight tall ushers, gathering themselves
together like birds or insects preparing for some migratory manoeuvre,
were already slipping through the side doors into the lobby.
"Newland--I say: SHE'S HERE!" the best man whispered.
Archer roused himself with a start.
A long time had apparently passed since his heart had stopped beating,
for the white and rosy procession was in fact half way up the nave, the
Bishop, the Rector and two white-winged assistants were hovering about
the flower-banked altar, and the first chords of the Spohr symphony
were strewing their flower-like notes before the bride.
Archer opened his eyes (but could they really have been shut, as he
imagined?), and felt his heart beginning to resume its usual task. The
music, the scent of the lilies on the altar, the vision of the cloud of
tulle and orange-blossoms floating nearer and nearer, the sight of Mrs.
Archer's face suddenly convulsed with happy sobs, the low benedictory
murmur of the Rector's voice, the ordered evolutions of the eight pink
bridesmaids and the eight black ushers: all these sights, sounds and
sensations, so familiar in themselves, so unutterably strange and
meaningless in his new relation to them, were confusedly mingled in his
brain.
"My God," he thought, "HAVE I got the ring?"--and once more he went
through the bridegroom's convulsive gesture.
Then, in a moment, May was beside him, such radiance streaming from her
that it sent a faint warmth through his numbness, and he straightened
himself and smiled into her eyes.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here," the Rector began ...
The ring was on her hand, the Bishop's benediction had been given, the
bridesmaids were a-poise to resume their place in the procession, and
the organ was showing preliminary symptoms of breaking out into the
Mendelssohn March, without which no newly-wedded couple had ever
emerged upon New York.
"Your arm--I SAY, GIVE HER YOUR ARM!" young Newland nervously hissed;
and once more Archer became aware of having been adrift far off in the
unknown. What was it that had sent him there, he wondered? Perhaps
the glimpse, among the anonymous spectators in the transept, of a dark
coil of hair under a hat which, a moment later, revealed itself as
belonging to an unknown lady with a long nose, so laughably unlike the
person whose image she had evoked that he asked himself if he were
becoming subject to hallucinations.
And now he and his wife were pacing slowly down the nave, carried
forward on the light Mendelssohn ripples, the spring day beckoning to
them through widely opened doors, and Mrs. Welland's chestnuts, with
big white favours on their frontlets, curvetting and showing off at the
far end of the canvas tunnel.
The footman, who had a still bigger white favour on his lapel, wrapped
May's white cloak about her, and Archer jumped into the brougham at her
side. She turned to him with a triumphant smile and their hands
clasped under her veil.
"Darling!" Archer said--and suddenly the same black abyss yawned before
him and he felt himself sinking into it, deeper and deeper, while his
voice rambled on smoothly and cheerfully: "Yes, of course I thought
I'd lost the ring; no wedding would be complete if the poor devil of a
bridegroom didn't go through that. But you DID keep me waiting, you
know! I had time to think of every horror that might possibly happen."
She surprised him by turning, in full Fifth Avenue, and flinging her
arms about his neck. "But none ever CAN happen now, can it, Newland,
as long as we two are together?"
Every detail of the day had been so carefully thought out that the
young couple, after the wedding-breakfast, had ample time to put on
their travelling-clothes, descend the wide Mingott stairs between
laughing bridesmaids and weeping parents, and get into the brougham
under the traditional shower of rice and satin slippers; and there was
still half an hour left in which to drive to the station, buy the last
weeklies at the bookstall with the air of seasoned travellers, and
settle themselves in the reserved compartment in which May's maid had
already placed her dove-coloured travelling cloak and glaringly new
dressing-bag from London.
The old du Lac aunts at Rhinebeck had put their house at the disposal
of the bridal couple, with a readiness inspired by the prospect of
spending a week in New York with Mrs. Archer; and Archer, glad to
escape the usual "bridal suite" in a Philadelphia or Baltimore hotel,
had accepted with an equal alacrity.
May was enchanted at the idea of going to the country, and childishly
amused at the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where
their mysterious retreat was situated. It was thought "very English"
to have a country-house lent to one, and the fact gave a last touch of
distinction to what was generally conceded to be the most brilliant
wedding of the year; but where the house was no one was permitted to
know, except the parents of bride and groom, who, when taxed with the
knowledge, pursed their lips and said mysteriously: "Ah, they didn't
tell us--" which was manifestly true, since there was no need to.
Once they were settled in their compartment, and the train, shaking off
the endless wooden suburbs, had pushed out into the pale landscape of
spring, talk became easier than Archer had expected. May was still, in
look and tone, the simple girl of yesterday, eager to compare notes
with him as to the incidents of the wedding, and discussing them as
impartially as a bridesmaid talking it all over with an usher. At
first Archer had fancied that this detachment was the disguise of an
inward tremor; but her clear eyes revealed only the most tranquil
unawareness. She was alone for the first time with her husband; but
her husband was only the charming comrade of yesterday. There was no
one whom she liked as much, no one whom she trusted as completely, and
the culminating "lark" of the whole delightful adventure of engagement
and marriage was to be off with him alone on a journey, like a grownup
person, like a "married woman," in fact.
It was wonderful that--as he had learned in the Mission garden at St.
Augustine--such depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of
imagination. But he remembered how, even then, she had surprised him
by dropping back to inexpressive girlishness as soon as her conscience
had been eased of its burden; and he saw that she would probably go
through life dealing to the best of her ability with each experience as
it came, but never anticipating any by so much as a stolen glance.
Perhaps that faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their
transparency, and her face the look of representing a type rather than
a person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue
or a Greek goddess. The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might
have been a preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her
look of indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor
dull, but only primitive and pure. In the thick of this meditation
Archer suddenly felt himself looking at her with the startled gaze of a
stranger, and plunged into a reminiscence of the wedding-breakfast and
of Granny Mingott's immense and triumphant pervasion of it.
May settled down to frank enjoyment of the subject. "I was surprised,
though--weren't you?--that aunt Medora came after all. Ellen wrote
that they were neither of them well enough to take the journey; I do
wish it had been she who had recovered! Did you see the exquisite old
lace she sent me?"
He had known that the moment must come sooner or later, but he had
somewhat imagined that by force of willing he might hold it at bay.
"Yes--I--no: yes, it was beautiful," he said, looking at her blindly,
and wondering if, whenever he heard those two syllables, all his
carefully built-up world would tumble about him like a house of cards.
"Aren't you tired? It will be good to have some tea when we
arrive--I'm sure the aunts have got everything beautifully ready," he
rattled on, taking her hand in his; and her mind rushed away instantly
to the magnificent tea and coffee service of Baltimore silver which the
Beauforts had sent, and which "went" so perfectly with uncle Lovell
Mingott's trays and side-dishes.
In the spring twilight the train stopped at the Rhinebeck station, and
they walked along the platform to the waiting carriage.
"Ah, how awfully kind of the van der Luydens--they've sent their man
over from Skuytercliff to meet us," Archer exclaimed, as a sedate
person out of livery approached them and relieved the maid of her bags.
"I'm extremely sorry, sir," said this emissary, "that a little accident
has occurred at the Miss du Lacs': a leak in the water-tank. It
happened yesterday, and Mr. van der Luyden, who heard of it this
morning, sent a housemaid up by the early train to get the Patroon's
house ready. It will be quite comfortable, I think you'll find, sir;
and the Miss du Lacs have sent their cook over, so that it will be
exactly the same as if you'd been at Rhinebeck."
Archer stared at the speaker so blankly that he repeated in still more
apologetic accents: "It'll be exactly the same, sir, I do assure
you--" and May's eager voice broke out, covering the embarrassed
silence: "The same as Rhinebeck? The Patroon's house? But it will be
a hundred thousand times better--won't it, Newland? It's too dear and
kind of Mr. van der Luyden to have thought of it."
And as they drove off, with the maid beside the coachman, and their
shining bridal bags on the seat before them, she went on excitedly:
"Only fancy, I've never been inside it--have you? The van der Luydens
show it to so few people. But they opened it for Ellen, it seems, and
she told me what a darling little place it was: she says it's the only
house she's seen in America that she could imagine being perfectly
happy in."
"Well--that's what we're going to be, isn't it?" cried her husband
gaily; and she answered with her boyish smile: "Ah, it's just our luck
beginning--the wonderful luck we're always going to have together!"
XX.
"Of course we must dine with Mrs. Carfry, dearest," Archer said; and
his wife looked at him with an anxious frown across the monumental
Britannia ware of their lodging house breakfast-table.
In all the rainy desert of autumnal London there were only two people
whom the Newland Archers knew; and these two they had sedulously
avoided, in conformity with the old New York tradition that it was not
"dignified" to force one's self on the notice of one's acquaintances in
foreign countries.
Mrs. Archer and Janey, in the course of their visits to Europe, had so
unflinchingly lived up to this principle, and met the friendly advances
of their fellow-travellers with an air of such impenetrable reserve,
that they had almost achieved the record of never having exchanged a
word with a "foreigner" other than those employed in hotels and
railway-stations. Their own compatriots--save those previously known
or properly accredited--they treated with an even more pronounced
disdain; so that, unless they ran across a Chivers, a Dagonet or a
Mingott, their months abroad were spent in an unbroken tete-a-tete.
But the utmost precautions are sometimes unavailing; and one night at
Botzen one of the two English ladies in the room across the passage
(whose names, dress and social situation were already intimately known
to Janey) had knocked on the door and asked if Mrs. Archer had a bottle
of liniment. The other lady--the intruder's sister, Mrs. Carfry--had
been seized with a sudden attack of bronchitis; and Mrs. Archer, who
never travelled without a complete family pharmacy, was fortunately
able to produce the required remedy.
Mrs. Carfry was very ill, and as she and her sister Miss Harle were
travelling alone they were profoundly grateful to the Archer ladies,
who supplied them with ingenious comforts and whose efficient maid
helped to nurse the invalid back to health.
When the Archers left Botzen they had no idea of ever seeing Mrs.
Carfry and Miss Harle again. Nothing, to Mrs. Archer's mind, would
have been more "undignified" than to force one's self on the notice of
a "foreigner" to whom one had happened to render an accidental service.
But Mrs. Carfry and her sister, to whom this point of view was unknown,
and who would have found it utterly incomprehensible, felt themselves
linked by an eternal gratitude to the "delightful Americans" who had
been so kind at Botzen. With touching fidelity they seized every
chance of meeting Mrs. Archer and Janey in the course of their
continental travels, and displayed a supernatural acuteness in finding
out when they were to pass through London on their way to or from the
States. The intimacy became indissoluble, and Mrs. Archer and Janey,
whenever they alighted at Brown's Hotel, found themselves awaited by
two affectionate friends who, like themselves, cultivated ferns in
Wardian cases, made macrame lace, read the memoirs of the Baroness
Bunsen and had views about the occupants of the leading London pulpits.
As Mrs. Archer said, it made "another thing of London" to know Mrs.
Carfry and Miss Harle; and by the time that Newland became engaged the
tie between the families was so firmly established that it was thought
"only right" to send a wedding invitation to the two English ladies,
who sent, in return, a pretty bouquet of pressed Alpine flowers under
glass. And on the dock, when Newland and his wife sailed for England,
Mrs. Archer's last word had been: "You must take May to see Mrs.
Carfry."
Newland and his wife had had no idea of obeying this injunction; but
Mrs. Carfry, with her usual acuteness, had run them down and sent them
an invitation to dine; and it was over this invitation that May Archer
was wrinkling her brows across the tea and muffins.
"It's all very well for you, Newland; you KNOW them. But I shall feel
so shy among a lot of people I've never met. And what shall I wear?"
Newland leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. She looked
handsomer and more Diana-like than ever. The moist English air seemed
to have deepened the bloom of her cheeks and softened the slight
hardness of her virginal features; or else it was simply the inner glow
of happiness, shining through like a light under ice.
"Wear, dearest? I thought a trunkful of things had come from Paris
last week."
"Yes, of course. I meant to say that I shan't know WHICH to wear."
She pouted a little. "I've never dined out in London; and I don't want
to be ridiculous."
He tried to enter into her perplexity. "But don't Englishwomen dress
just like everybody else in the evening?"
"Newland! How can you ask such funny questions? When they go to the
theatre in old ball-dresses and bare heads."
"Well, perhaps they wear new ball-dresses at home; but at any rate Mrs.
Carfry and Miss Harle won't. They'll wear caps like my mother's--and
shawls; very soft shawls."
"Yes; but how will the other women be dressed?"
"Not as well as you, dear," he rejoined, wondering what had suddenly
developed in her Janey's morbid interest in clothes.
She pushed back her chair with a sigh. "That's dear of you, Newland;
but it doesn't help me much."
He had an inspiration. "Why not wear your wedding-dress? That can't
be wrong, can it?"
"Oh, dearest! If I only had it here! But it's gone to Paris to be
made over for next winter, and Worth hasn't sent it back."
"Oh, well--" said Archer, getting up. "Look here--the fog's lifting.
If we made a dash for the National Gallery we might manage to catch a
glimpse of the pictures."
The Newland Archers were on their way home, after a three months'
wedding-tour which May, in writing to her girl friends, vaguely
summarised as "blissful."
They had not gone to the Italian Lakes: on reflection, Archer had not
been able to picture his wife in that particular setting. Her own
inclination (after a month with the Paris dressmakers) was for
mountaineering in July and swimming in August. This plan they
punctually fulfilled, spending July at Interlaken and Grindelwald, and
August at a little place called Etretat, on the Normandy coast, which
some one had recommended as quaint and quiet. Once or twice, in the
mountains, Archer had pointed southward and said: "There's Italy"; and
May, her feet in a gentian-bed, had smiled cheerfully, and replied:
"It would be lovely to go there next winter, if only you didn't have to
be in New York."
But in reality travelling interested her even less than he had
expected. She regarded it (once her clothes were ordered) as merely an
enlarged opportunity for walking, riding, swimming, and trying her hand
at the fascinating new game of lawn tennis; and when they finally got
back to London (where they were to spend a fortnight while he ordered
HIS clothes) she no longer concealed the eagerness with which she
looked forward to sailing.
In London nothing interested her but the theatres and the shops; and
she found the theatres less exciting than the Paris cafes chantants
where, under the blossoming horse-chestnuts of the Champs Elysees, she
had had the novel experience of looking down from the restaurant
terrace on an audience of "cocottes," and having her husband interpret
to her as much of the songs as he thought suitable for bridal ears.
Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage. It
was less trouble to conform with the tradition and treat May exactly as
all his friends treated their wives than to try to put into practice
the theories with which his untrammelled bachelorhood had dallied.
There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest
notion that she was not free; and he had long since discovered that
May's only use of the liberty she supposed herself to possess would be
to lay it on the altar of her wifely adoration. Her innate dignity
would always keep her from making the gift abjectly; and a day might
even come (as it once had) when she would find strength to take it
altogether back if she thought she were doing it for his own good. But
with a conception of marriage so uncomplicated and incurious as hers
such a crisis could be brought about only by something visibly
outrageous in his own conduct; and the fineness of her feeling for him
made that unthinkable. Whatever happened, he knew, she would always be
loyal, gallant and unresentful; and that pledged him to the practice of
the same virtues.
All this tended to draw him back into his old habits of mind. If her
simplicity had been the simplicity of pettiness he would have chafed
and rebelled; but since the lines of her character, though so few, were
on the same fine mould as her face, she became the tutelary divinity of
all his old traditions and reverences.
Such qualities were scarcely of the kind to enliven foreign travel,
though they made her so easy and pleasant a companion; but he saw at
once how they would fall into place in their proper setting. He had no
fear of being oppressed by them, for his artistic and intellectual life
would go on, as it always had, outside the domestic circle; and within
it there would be nothing small and stifling--coming back to his wife
would never be like entering a stuffy room after a tramp in the open.
And when they had children the vacant corners in both their lives would
be filled.
All these things went through his mind during their long slow drive
from Mayfair to South Kensington, where Mrs. Carfry and her sister
lived. Archer too would have preferred to escape their friends'
hospitality: in conformity with the family tradition he had always
travelled as a sight-seer and looker-on, affecting a haughty
unconsciousness of the presence of his fellow-beings. Once only, just
after Harvard, he had spent a few gay weeks at Florence with a band of
queer Europeanised Americans, dancing all night with titled ladies in
palaces, and gambling half the day with the rakes and dandies of the
fashionable club; but it had all seemed to him, though the greatest fun
in the world, as unreal as a carnival. These queer cosmopolitan women,
deep in complicated love-affairs which they appeared to feel the need
of retailing to every one they met, and the magnificent young officers
and elderly dyed wits who were the subjects or the recipients of their
confidences, were too different from the people Archer had grown up
among, too much like expensive and rather malodorous hot-house exotics,
to detain his imagination long. To introduce his wife into such a
society was out of the question; and in the course of his travels no
other had shown any marked eagerness for his company.
Not long after their arrival in London he had run across the Duke of
St. Austrey, and the Duke, instantly and cordially recognising him, had
said: "Look me up, won't you?"--but no proper-spirited American would
have considered that a suggestion to be acted on, and the meeting was
without a sequel. They had even managed to avoid May's English aunt,
the banker's wife, who was still in Yorkshire; in fact, they had
purposely postponed going to London till the autumn in order that their
arrival during the season might not appear pushing and snobbish to
these unknown relatives.
"Probably there'll be nobody at Mrs. Carfry's--London's a desert at
this season, and you've made yourself much too beautiful," Archer said
to May, who sat at his side in the hansom so spotlessly splendid in her
sky-blue cloak edged with swansdown that it seemed wicked to expose her
to the London grime.
"I don't want them to think that we dress like savages," she replied,
with a scorn that Pocahontas might have resented; and he was struck
again by the religious reverence of even the most unworldly American
women for the social advantages of dress.
"It's their armour," he thought, "their defence against the unknown,
and their defiance of it." And he understood for the first time the
earnestness with which May, who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her
hair to charm him, had gone through the solemn rite of selecting and
ordering her extensive wardrobe.
He had been right in expecting the party at Mrs. Carfry's to be a small
one. Besides their hostess and her sister, they found, in the long
chilly drawing-room, only another shawled lady, a genial Vicar who was
her husband, a silent lad whom Mrs. Carfry named as her nephew, and a
small dark gentleman with lively eyes whom she introduced as his tutor,
pronouncing a French name as she did so.
Into this dimly-lit and dim-featured group May Archer floated like a
swan with the sunset on her: she seemed larger, fairer, more
voluminously rustling than her husband had ever seen her; and he
perceived that the rosiness and rustlingness were the tokens of an
extreme and infantile shyness.
"What on earth will they expect me to talk about?" her helpless eyes
implored him, at the very moment that her dazzling apparition was
calling forth the same anxiety in their own bosoms. But beauty, even
when distrustful of itself, awakens confidence in the manly heart; and
the Vicar and the French-named tutor were soon manifesting to May their
desire to put her at her ease.
In spite of their best efforts, however, the dinner was a languishing
affair. Archer noticed that his wife's way of showing herself at her
ease with foreigners was to become more uncompromisingly local in her
references, so that, though her loveliness was an encouragement to
admiration, her conversation was a chill to repartee. The Vicar soon
abandoned the struggle; but the tutor, who spoke the most fluent and
accomplished English, gallantly continued to pour it out to her until
the ladies, to the manifest relief of all concerned, went up to the
drawing-room.
The Vicar, after a glass of port, was obliged to hurry away to a
meeting, and the shy nephew, who appeared to be an invalid, was packed
off to bed. But Archer and the tutor continued to sit over their wine,
and suddenly Archer found himself talking as he had not done since his
last symposium with Ned Winsett. The Carfry nephew, it turned out, had
been threatened with consumption, and had had to leave Harrow for
Switzerland, where he had spent two years in the milder air of Lake
Leman. Being a bookish youth, he had been entrusted to M. Riviere, who
had brought him back to England, and was to remain with him till he
went up to Oxford the following spring; and M. Riviere added with
simplicity that he should then have to look out for another job.
It seemed impossible, Archer thought, that he should be long without
one, so varied were his interests and so many his gifts. He was a man
of about thirty, with a thin ugly face (May would certainly have called
him common-looking) to which the play of his ideas gave an intense
expressiveness; but there was nothing frivolous or cheap in his
animation.
His father, who had died young, had filled a small diplomatic post, and
it had been intended that the son should follow the same career; but an
insatiable taste for letters had thrown the young man into journalism,
then into authorship (apparently unsuccessful), and at length--after
other experiments and vicissitudes which he spared his listener--into
tutoring English youths in Switzerland. Before that, however, he had
lived much in Paris, frequented the Goncourt grenier, been advised by
Maupassant not to attempt to write (even that seemed to Archer a
dazzling honour!), and had often talked with Merimee in his mother's
house. He had obviously always been desperately poor and anxious
(having a mother and an unmarried sister to provide for), and it was
apparent that his literary ambitions had failed. His situation, in
fact, seemed, materially speaking, no more brilliant than Ned
Winsett's; but he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who
loved ideas need hunger mentally. As it was precisely of that love
that poor Winsett was starving to death, Archer looked with a sort of
vicarious envy at this eager impecunious young man who had fared so
richly in his poverty.
"You see, Monsieur, it's worth everything, isn't it, to keep one's
intellectual liberty, not to enslave one's powers of appreciation,
one's critical independence? It was because of that that I abandoned
journalism, and took to so much duller work: tutoring and private
secretaryship. There is a good deal of drudgery, of course; but one
preserves one's moral freedom, what we call in French one's quant a
soi. And when one hears good talk one can join in it without
compromising any opinions but one's own; or one can listen, and answer
it inwardly. Ah, good conversation--there's nothing like it, is there?
The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing. And so I have never
regretted giving up either diplomacy or journalism--two different forms
of the same self-abdication." He fixed his vivid eyes on Archer as he
lit another cigarette. "Voyez-vous, Monsieur, to be able to look life
in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it? But, after
all, one must earn enough to pay for the garret; and I confess that to
grow old as a private tutor--or a 'private' anything--is almost as
chilling to the imagination as a second secretaryship at Bucharest.
Sometimes I feel I must make a plunge: an immense plunge. Do you
suppose, for instance, there would be any opening for me in America--in
New York?"
Archer looked at him with startled eyes. New York, for a young man who
had frequented the Goncourts and Flaubert, and who thought the life of
ideas the only one worth living! He continued to stare at M. Riviere
perplexedly, wondering how to tell him that his very superiorities and
advantages would be the surest hindrance to success.
"New York--New York--but must it be especially New York?" he stammered,
utterly unable to imagine what lucrative opening his native city could
offer to a young man to whom good conversation appeared to be the only
necessity.
A sudden flush rose under M. Riviere's sallow skin. "I--I thought it
your metropolis: is not the intellectual life more active there?" he
rejoined; then, as if fearing to give his hearer the impression of
having asked a favour, he went on hastily: "One throws out random
suggestions--more to one's self than to others. In reality, I see no
immediate prospect--" and rising from his seat he added, without a
trace of constraint: "But Mrs. Carfry will think that I ought to be
taking you upstairs."
During the homeward drive Archer pondered deeply on this episode. His
hour with M. Riviere had put new air into his lungs, and his first
impulse had been to invite him to dine the next day; but he was
beginning to understand why married men did not always immediately
yield to their first impulses.
"That young tutor is an interesting fellow: we had some awfully good
talk after dinner about books and things," he threw out tentatively in
the hansom.
May roused herself from one of the dreamy silences into which he had
read so many meanings before six months of marriage had given him the
key to them.
"The little Frenchman? Wasn't he dreadfully common?" she questioned
coldly; and he guessed that she nursed a secret disappointment at
having been invited out in London to meet a clergyman and a French
tutor. The disappointment was not occasioned by the sentiment
ordinarily defined as snobbishness, but by old New York's sense of what
was due to it when it risked its dignity in foreign lands. If May's
parents had entertained the Carfrys in Fifth Avenue they would have
offered them something more substantial than a parson and a
schoolmaster.
But Archer was on edge, and took her up.
"Common--common WHERE?" he queried; and she returned with unusual
readiness: "Why, I should say anywhere but in his school-room. Those
people are always awkward in society. But then," she added
disarmingly, "I suppose I shouldn't have known if he was clever."
Archer disliked her use of the word "clever" almost as much as her use
of the word "common"; but he was beginning to fear his tendency to
dwell on the things he disliked in her. After all, her point of view
had always been the same. It was that of all the people he had grown
up among, and he had always regarded it as necessary but negligible.
Until a few months ago he had never known a "nice" woman who looked at
life differently; and if a man married it must necessarily be among the
nice.
"Ah--then I won't ask him to dine!" he concluded with a laugh; and May
echoed, bewildered: "Goodness--ask the Carfrys' tutor?"
"Well, not on the same day with the Carfrys, if you prefer I shouldn't.
But I did rather want another talk with him. He's looking for a job in
New York."
Her surprise increased with her indifference: he almost fancied that
she suspected him of being tainted with "foreignness."
"A job in New York? What sort of a job? People don't have French
tutors: what does he want to do?"
"Chiefly to enjoy good conversation, I understand," her husband
retorted perversely; and she broke into an appreciative laugh. "Oh,
Newland, how funny! Isn't that FRENCH?"
On the whole, he was glad to have the matter settled for him by her
refusing to take seriously his wish to invite M. Riviere. Another
after-dinner talk would have made it difficult to avoid the question of
New York; and the more Archer considered it the less he was able to fit
M. Riviere into any conceivable picture of New York as he knew it.
He perceived with a flash of chilling insight that in future many
problems would be thus negatively solved for him; but as he paid the
hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge
in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the
most difficult in marriage. "After that I suppose we shall have pretty
nearly finished rubbing off each other's angles," he reflected; but the
worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very
angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep.
XXI.
The small bright lawn stretched away smoothly to the big bright sea.
The turf was hemmed with an edge of scarlet geranium and coleus, and
cast-iron vases painted in chocolate colour, standing at intervals
along the winding path that led to the sea, looped their garlands of
petunia and ivy geranium above the neatly raked gravel.
Half way between the edge of the cliff and the square wooden house
(which was also chocolate-coloured, but with the tin roof of the
verandah striped in yellow and brown to represent an awning) two large
targets had been placed against a background of shrubbery. On the
other side of the lawn, facing the targets, was pitched a real tent,
with benches and garden-seats about it. A number of ladies in summer
dresses and gentlemen in grey frock-coats and tall hats stood on the
lawn or sat upon the benches; and every now and then a slender girl in
starched muslin would step from the tent, bow in hand, and speed her
shaft at one of the targets, while the spectators interrupted their
talk to watch the result.
Newland Archer, standing on the verandah of the house, looked curiously
down upon this scene. On each side of the shiny painted steps was a
large blue china flower-pot on a bright yellow china stand. A spiky
green plant filled each pot, and below the verandah ran a wide border
of blue hydrangeas edged with more red geraniums. Behind him, the
French windows of the drawing-rooms through which he had passed gave
glimpses, between swaying lace curtains, of glassy parquet floors
islanded with chintz poufs, dwarf armchairs, and velvet tables covered
with trifles in silver.
The Newport Archery Club always held its August meeting at the
Beauforts'. The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet,
was beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the latter
game was still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions,
and as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses and graceful attitudes
the bow and arrow held their own.
Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised
him that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions
to it had so completely changed. It was Newport that had first brought
home to him the extent of the change. In New York, during the previous
winter, after he and May had settled down in the new greenish-yellow
house with the bow-window and the Pompeian vestibule, he had dropped
back with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal of
this daily activity had served as a link with his former self. Then
there had been the pleasurable excitement of choosing a showy grey
stepper for May's brougham (the Wellands had given the carriage), and
the abiding occupation and interest of arranging his new library,
which, in spite of family doubts and disapprovals, had been carried out
as he had dreamed, with a dark embossed paper, Eastlake book-cases and
"sincere" arm-chairs and tables. At the Century he had found Winsett
again, and at the Knickerbocker the fashionable young men of his own
set; and what with the hours dedicated to the law and those given to
dining out or entertaining friends at home, with an occasional evening
at the Opera or the play, the life he was living had still seemed a
fairly real and inevitable sort of business.
But Newport represented the escape from duty into an atmosphere of
unmitigated holiday-making. Archer had tried to persuade May to spend
the summer on a remote island off the coast of Maine (called,
appropriately enough, Mount Desert), where a few hardy Bostonians and
Philadelphians were camping in "native" cottages, and whence came
reports of enchanting scenery and a wild, almost trapper-like existence
amid woods and waters.
But the Wellands always went to Newport, where they owned one of the
square boxes on the cliffs, and their son-in-law could adduce no good
reason why he and May should not join them there. As Mrs. Welland
rather tartly pointed out, it was hardly worth while for May to have
worn herself out trying on summer clothes in Paris if she was not to be
allowed to wear them; and this argument was of a kind to which Archer
had as yet found no answer.
May herself could not understand his obscure reluctance to fall in with
so reasonable and pleasant a way of spending the summer. She reminded
him that he had always liked Newport in his bachelor days, and as this
was indisputable he could only profess that he was sure he was going to
like it better than ever now that they were to be there together. But
as he stood on the Beaufort verandah and looked out on the brightly
peopled lawn it came home to him with a shiver that he was not going to
like it at all.
It was not May's fault, poor dear. If, now and then, during their
travels, they had fallen slightly out of step, harmony had been
restored by their return to the conditions she was used to. He had
always foreseen that she would not disappoint him; and he had been
right. He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a
perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless
sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had
represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of
an unescapable duty.
He could not say that he had been mistaken in his choice, for she had
fulfilled all that he had expected. It was undoubtedly gratifying to
be the husband of one of the handsomest and most popular young married
women in New York, especially when she was also one of the
sweetest-tempered and most reasonable of wives; and Archer had never
been insensible to such advantages. As for the momentary madness which
had fallen upon him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himself
to regard it as the last of his discarded experiments. The idea that
he could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying the Countess
Olenska had become almost unthinkable, and she remained in his memory
simply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.
But all these abstractions and eliminations made of his mind a rather
empty and echoing place, and he supposed that was one of the reasons
why the busy animated people on the Beaufort lawn shocked him as if
they had been children playing in a grave-yard.
He heard a murmur of skirts beside him, and the Marchioness Manson
fluttered out of the drawing-room window. As usual, she was
extraordinarily festooned and bedizened, with a limp Leghorn hat
anchored to her head by many windings of faded gauze, and a little
black velvet parasol on a carved ivory handle absurdly balanced over
her much larger hatbrim.
"My dear Newland, I had no idea that you and May had arrived! You
yourself came only yesterday, you say? Ah,
business--business--professional duties ... I understand. Many
husbands, I know, find it impossible to join their wives here except
for the week-end." She cocked her head on one side and languished at
him through screwed-up eyes. "But marriage is one long sacrifice, as I
used often to remind my Ellen--"
Archer's heart stopped with the queer jerk which it had given once
before, and which seemed suddenly to slam a door between himself and
the outer world; but this break of continuity must have been of the
briefest, for he presently heard Medora answering a question he had
apparently found voice to put.
"No, I am not staying here, but with the Blenkers, in their delicious
solitude at Portsmouth. Beaufort was kind enough to send his famous
trotters for me this morning, so that I might have at least a glimpse
of one of Regina's garden-parties; but this evening I go back to rural
life. The Blenkers, dear original beings, have hired a primitive old
farm-house at Portsmouth where they gather about them representative
people ..." She drooped slightly beneath her protecting brim, and
added with a faint blush: "This week Dr. Agathon Carver is holding a
series of Inner Thought meetings there. A contrast indeed to this gay
scene of worldly pleasure--but then I have always lived on contrasts!
To me the only death is monotony. I always say to Ellen: Beware of
monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins. But my poor child is
going through a phase of exaltation, of abhorrence of the world. You
know, I suppose, that she has declined all invitations to stay at
Newport, even with her grandmother Mingott? I could hardly persuade
her to come with me to the Blenkers', if you will believe it! The life
she leads is morbid, unnatural. Ah, if she had only listened to me
when it was still possible ... When the door was still open ... But
shall we go down and watch this absorbing match? I hear your May is
one of the competitors."
Strolling toward them from the tent Beaufort advanced over the lawn,
tall, heavy, too tightly buttoned into a London frock-coat, with one of
his own orchids in its buttonhole. Archer, who had not seen him for
two or three months, was struck by the change in his appearance. In
the hot summer light his floridness seemed heavy and bloated, and but
for his erect square-shouldered walk he would have looked like an
over-fed and over-dressed old man.
There were all sorts of rumours afloat about Beaufort. In the spring
he had gone off on a long cruise to the West Indies in his new
steam-yacht, and it was reported that, at various points where he had
touched, a lady resembling Miss Fanny Ring had been seen in his
company. The steam-yacht, built in the Clyde, and fitted with tiled
bath-rooms and other unheard-of luxuries, was said to have cost him
half a million; and the pearl necklace which he had presented to his
wife on his return was as magnificent as such expiatory offerings are
apt to be. Beaufort's fortune was substantial enough to stand the
strain; and yet the disquieting rumours persisted, not only in Fifth
Avenue but in Wall Street. Some people said he had speculated
unfortunately in railways, others that he was being bled by one of the
most insatiable members of her profession; and to every report of
threatened insolvency Beaufort replied by a fresh extravagance: the
building of a new row of orchid-houses, the purchase of a new string of
race-horses, or the addition of a new Meissonnier or Cabanel to his
picture-gallery.
He advanced toward the Marchioness and Newland with his usual
half-sneering smile. "Hullo, Medora! Did the trotters do their
business? Forty minutes, eh? ... Well, that's not so bad,
considering your nerves had to be spared." He shook hands with Archer,
and then, turning back with them, placed himself on Mrs. Manson's other
side, and said, in a low voice, a few words which their companion did
not catch.
The Marchioness replied by one of her queer foreign jerks, and a "Que
voulez-vous?" which deepened Beaufort's frown; but he produced a good
semblance of a congratulatory smile as he glanced at Archer to say:
"You know May's going to carry off the first prize."
"Ah, then it remains in the family," Medora rippled; and at that moment
they reached the tent and Mrs. Beaufort met them in a girlish cloud of
mauve muslin and floating veils.
May Welland was just coming out of the tent. In her white dress, with
a pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath of ivy on her hat, she
had the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had entered the Beaufort
ball-room on the night of her engagement. In the interval not a
thought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through her
heart; and though her husband knew that she had the capacity for both
he marvelled afresh at the way in which experience dropped away from
her.
She had her bow and arrow in her hand, and placing herself on the
chalk-mark traced on the turf she lifted the bow to her shoulder and
took aim. The attitude was so full of a classic grace that a murmur of
appreciation followed her appearance, and Archer felt the glow of
proprietorship that so often cheated him into momentary well-being.
Her rivals--Mrs. Reggie Chivers, the Merry girls, and divers rosy
Thorleys, Dagonets and Mingotts, stood behind her in a lovely anxious
group, brown heads and golden bent above the scores, and pale muslins
and flower-wreathed hats mingled in a tender rainbow. All were young
and pretty, and bathed in summer bloom; but not one had the nymph-like
ease of his wife, when, with tense muscles and happy frown, she bent
her soul upon some feat of strength.
"Gad," Archer heard Lawrence Lefferts say, "not one of the lot holds
the bow as she does"; and Beaufort retorted: "Yes; but that's the only
kind of target she'll ever hit."
Archer felt irrationally angry. His host's contemptuous tribute to
May's "niceness" was just what a husband should have wished to hear
said of his wife. The fact that a coarseminded man found her lacking
in attraction was simply another proof of her quality; yet the words
sent a faint shiver through his heart. What if "niceness" carried to
that supreme degree were only a negation, the curtain dropped before an
emptiness? As he looked at May, returning flushed and calm from her
final bull's-eye, he had the feeling that he had never yet lifted that
curtain.
She took the congratulations of her rivals and of the rest of the
company with the simplicity that was her crowning grace. No one could
ever be jealous of her triumphs because she managed to give the feeling
that she would have been just as serene if she had missed them. But
when her eyes met her husband's her face glowed with the pleasure she
saw in his.
Mrs. Welland's basket-work pony-carriage was waiting for them, and they
drove off among the dispersing carriages, May handling the reins and
Archer sitting at her side.
The afternoon sunlight still lingered upon the bright lawns and
shrubberies, and up and down Bellevue Avenue rolled a double line of
victorias, dog-carts, landaus and "vis-a-vis," carrying well-dressed
ladies and gentlemen away from the Beaufort garden-party, or homeward
from their daily afternoon turn along the Ocean Drive.
"Shall we go to see Granny?" May suddenly proposed. "I should like to
tell her myself that I've won the prize. There's lots of time before
dinner."
Archer acquiesced, and she turned the ponies down Narragansett Avenue,
crossed Spring Street and drove out toward the rocky moorland beyond.
In this unfashionable region Catherine the Great, always indifferent to
precedent and thrifty of purse, had built herself in her youth a
many-peaked and cross-beamed cottage-orne on a bit of cheap land
overlooking the bay. Here, in a thicket of stunted oaks, her verandahs
spread themselves above the island-dotted waters. A winding drive led
up between iron stags and blue glass balls embedded in mounds of
geraniums to a front door of highly-varnished walnut under a striped
verandah-roof; and behind it ran a narrow hall with a black and yellow
star-patterned parquet floor, upon which opened four small square rooms
with heavy flock-papers under ceilings on which an Italian
house-painter had lavished all the divinities of Olympus. One of these
rooms had been turned into a bedroom by Mrs. Mingott when the burden of
flesh descended on her, and in the adjoining one she spent her days,
enthroned in a large armchair between the open door and window, and
perpetually waving a palm-leaf fan which the prodigious projection of
her bosom kept so far from the rest of her person that the air it set
in motion stirred only the fringe of the anti-macassars on the
chair-arms.
Since she had been the means of hastening his marriage old Catherine
had shown to Archer the cordiality which a service rendered excites
toward the person served. She was persuaded that irrepressible passion
was the cause of his impatience; and being an ardent admirer of
impulsiveness (when it did not lead to the spending of money) she
always received him with a genial twinkle of complicity and a play of
allusion to which May seemed fortunately impervious.
She examined and appraised with much interest the diamond-tipped arrow
which had been pinned on May's bosom at the conclusion of the match,
remarking that in her day a filigree brooch would have been thought
enough, but that there was no denying that Beaufort did things
handsomely.
"Quite an heirloom, in fact, my dear," the old lady chuckled. "You
must leave it in fee to your eldest girl." She pinched May's white arm
and watched the colour flood her face. "Well, well, what have I said
to make you shake out the red flag? Ain't there going to be any
daughters--only boys, eh? Good gracious, look at her blushing again
all over her blushes! What--can't I say that either? Mercy me--when
my children beg me to have all those gods and goddesses painted out
overhead I always say I'm too thankful to have somebody about me that
NOTHING can shock!"
Archer burst into a laugh, and May echoed it, crimson to the eyes.
"Well, now tell me all about the party, please, my dears, for I shall
never get a straight word about it out of that silly Medora," the
ancestress continued; and, as May exclaimed: "Cousin Medora? But I
thought she was going back to Portsmouth?" she answered placidly: "So
she is--but she's got to come here first to pick up Ellen. Ah--you
didn't know Ellen had come to spend the day with me? Such fol-de-rol,
her not coming for the summer; but I gave up arguing with young people
about fifty years ago. Ellen--ELLEN!" she cried in her shrill old
voice, trying to bend forward far enough to catch a glimpse of the lawn
beyond the verandah.
There was no answer, and Mrs. Mingott rapped impatiently with her stick
on the shiny floor. A mulatto maid-servant in a bright turban,
replying to the summons, informed her mistress that she had seen "Miss
Ellen" going down the path to the shore; and Mrs. Mingott turned to
Archer.
"Run down and fetch her, like a good grandson; this pretty lady will
describe the party to me," she said; and Archer stood up as if in a
dream.
He had heard the Countess Olenska's name pronounced often enough during
the year and a half since they had last met, and was even familiar with
the main incidents of her life in the interval. He knew that she had
spent the previous summer at Newport, where she appeared to have gone a
great deal into society, but that in the autumn she had suddenly
sub-let the "perfect house" which Beaufort had been at such pains to
find for her, and decided to establish herself in Washington. There,
during the winter, he had heard of her (as one always heard of pretty
women in Washington) as shining in the "brilliant diplomatic society"
that was supposed to make up for the social short-comings of the
Administration. He had listened to these accounts, and to various
contradictory reports on her appearance, her conversation, her point of
view and her choice of friends, with the detachment with which one
listens to reminiscences of some one long since dead; not till Medora
suddenly spoke her name at the archery match had Ellen Olenska become a
living presence to him again. The Marchioness's foolish lisp had
called up a vision of the little fire-lit drawing-room and the sound of
the carriage-wheels returning down the deserted street. He thought of
a story he had read, of some peasant children in Tuscany lighting a
bunch of straw in a wayside cavern, and revealing old silent images in
their painted tomb ...
The way to the shore descended from the bank on which the house was
perched to a walk above the water planted with weeping willows.
Through their veil Archer caught the glint of the Lime Rock, with its
white-washed turret and the tiny house in which the heroic light-house
keeper, Ida Lewis, was living her last venerable years. Beyond it lay
the flat reaches and ugly government chimneys of Goat Island, the bay
spreading northward in a shimmer of gold to Prudence Island with its
low growth of oaks, and the shores of Conanicut faint in the sunset
haze.
From the willow walk projected a slight wooden pier ending in a sort of
pagoda-like summer-house; and in the pagoda a lady stood, leaning
against the rail, her back to the shore. Archer stopped at the sight
as if he had waked from sleep. That vision of the past was a dream,
and the reality was what awaited him in the house on the bank overhead:
was Mrs. Welland's pony-carriage circling around and around the oval at
the door, was May sitting under the shameless Olympians and glowing
with secret hopes, was the Welland villa at the far end of Bellevue
Avenue, and Mr. Welland, already dressed for dinner, and pacing the
drawing-room floor, watch in hand, with dyspeptic impatience--for it
was one of the houses in which one always knew exactly what is
happening at a given hour.
"What am I? A son-in-law--" Archer thought.
The figure at the end of the pier had not moved. For a long moment the
young man stood half way down the bank, gazing at the bay furrowed with
the coming and going of sailboats, yacht-launches, fishing-craft and
the trailing black coal-barges hauled by noisy tugs. The lady in the
summer-house seemed to be held by the same sight. Beyond the grey
bastions of Fort Adams a long-drawn sunset was splintering up into a
thousand fires, and the radiance caught the sail of a catboat as it
beat out through the channel between the Lime Rock and the shore.
Archer, as he watched, remembered the scene in the Shaughraun, and
Montague lifting Ada Dyas's ribbon to his lips without her knowing that
he was in the room.
"She doesn't know--she hasn't guessed. Shouldn't I know if she came up
behind me, I wonder?" he mused; and suddenly he said to himself: "If
she doesn't turn before that sail crosses the Lime Rock light I'll go
back."
The boat was gliding out on the receding tide. It slid before the Lime
Rock, blotted out Ida Lewis's little house, and passed across the
turret in which the light was hung. Archer waited till a wide space of
water sparkled between the last reef of the island and the stern of the
boat; but still the figure in the summer-house did not move.
He turned and walked up the hill.
"I'm sorry you didn't find Ellen--I should have liked to see her
again," May said as they drove home through the dusk. "But perhaps she
wouldn't have cared--she seems so changed."
"Changed?" echoed her husband in a colourless voice, his eyes fixed on
the ponies' twitching ears.
"So indifferent to her friends, I mean; giving up New York and her
house, and spending her time with such queer people. Fancy how
hideously uncomfortable she must be at the Blenkers'! She says she
does it to keep cousin Medora out of mischief: to prevent her marrying
dreadful people. But I sometimes think we've always bored her."
Archer made no answer, and she continued, with a tinge of hardness that
he had never before noticed in her frank fresh voice: "After all, I
wonder if she wouldn't be happier with her husband."
He burst into a laugh. "Sancta simplicitas!" he exclaimed; and as she
turned a puzzled frown on him he added: "I don't think I ever heard
you say a cruel thing before."
"Cruel?"
"Well--watching the contortions of the damned is supposed to be a
favourite sport of the angels; but I believe even they don't think
people happier in hell."
"It's a pity she ever married abroad then," said May, in the placid
tone with which her mother met Mr. Welland's vagaries; and Archer felt
himself gently relegated to the category of unreasonable husbands.
They drove down Bellevue Avenue and turned in between the chamfered
wooden gate-posts surmounted by cast-iron lamps which marked the
approach to the Welland villa. Lights were already shining through its
windows, and Archer, as the carriage stopped, caught a glimpse of his
father-in-law, exactly as he had pictured him, pacing the drawing-room,
watch in hand and wearing the pained expression that he had long since
found to be much more efficacious than anger.
The young man, as he followed his wife into the hall, was conscious of
a curious reversal of mood. There was something about the luxury of
the Welland house and the density of the Welland atmosphere, so charged
with minute observances and exactions, that always stole into his
system like a narcotic. The heavy carpets, the watchful servants, the
perpetually reminding tick of disciplined clocks, the perpetually
renewed stack of cards and invitations on the hall table, the whole
chain of tyrannical trifles binding one hour to the next, and each
member of the household to all the others, made any less systematised
and affluent existence seem unreal and precarious. But now it was the
Welland house, and the life he was expected to lead in it, that had
become unreal and irrelevant, and the brief scene on the shore, when he
had stood irresolute, halfway down the bank, was as close to him as the
blood in his veins.
All night he lay awake in the big chintz bedroom at May's side,
watching the moonlight slant along the carpet, and thinking of Ellen
Olenska driving home across the gleaming beaches behind Beaufort's
trotters.
XXII.
"A party for the Blenkers--the Blenkers?"
Mr. Welland laid down his knife and fork and looked anxiously and
incredulously across the luncheon-table at his wife, who, adjusting her
gold eye-glasses, read aloud, in the tone of high comedy:
"Professor and Mrs. Emerson Sillerton request the pleasure of Mr. and
Mrs. Welland's company at the meeting of the Wednesday Afternoon Club
on August 25th at 3 o'clock punctually. To meet Mrs. and the Misses
Blenker.
"Red Gables, Catherine Street. R. S. V. P."
"Good gracious--" Mr. Welland gasped, as if a second reading had been
necessary to bring the monstrous absurdity of the thing home to him.
"Poor Amy Sillerton--you never can tell what her husband will do next,"
Mrs. Welland sighed. "I suppose he's just discovered the Blenkers."
Professor Emerson Sillerton was a thorn in the side of Newport society;
and a thorn that could not be plucked out, for it grew on a venerable
and venerated family tree. He was, as people said, a man who had had
"every advantage." His father was Sillerton Jackson's uncle, his
mother a Pennilow of Boston; on each side there was wealth and
position, and mutual suitability. Nothing--as Mrs. Welland had often
remarked--nothing on earth obliged Emerson Sillerton to be an
archaeologist, or indeed a Professor of any sort, or to live in Newport
in winter, or do any of the other revolutionary things that he did.
But at least, if he was going to break with tradition and flout society
in the face, he need not have married poor Amy Dagonet, who had a right
to expect "something different," and money enough to keep her own
carriage.
No one in the Mingott set could understand why Amy Sillerton had
submitted so tamely to the eccentricities of a husband who filled the
house with long-haired men and short-haired women, and, when he
travelled, took her to explore tombs in Yucatan instead of going to
Paris or Italy. But there they were, set in their ways, and apparently
unaware that they were different from other people; and when they gave
one of their dreary annual garden-parties every family on the Cliffs,
because of the Sillerton-Pennilow-Dagonet connection, had to draw lots
and send an unwilling representative.
"It's a wonder," Mrs. Welland remarked, "that they didn't choose the
Cup Race day! Do you remember, two years ago, their giving a party for
a black man on the day of Julia Mingott's the dansant? Luckily this
time there's nothing else going on that I know of--for of course some
of us will have to go."
Mr. Welland sighed nervously. "'Some of us,' my dear--more than one?
Three o'clock is such a very awkward hour. I have to be here at
half-past three to take my drops: it's really no use trying to follow
Bencomb's new treatment if I don't do it systematically; and if I join
you later, of course I shall miss my drive." At the thought he laid
down his knife and fork again, and a flush of anxiety rose to his
finely-wrinkled cheek.
"There's no reason why you should go at all, my dear," his wife
answered with a cheerfulness that had become automatic. "I have some
cards to leave at the other end of Bellevue Avenue, and I'll drop in at
about half-past three and stay long enough to make poor Amy feel that
she hasn't been slighted." She glanced hesitatingly at her daughter.
"And if Newland's afternoon is provided for perhaps May can drive you
out with the ponies, and try their new russet harness."
It was a principle in the Welland family that people's days and hours
should be what Mrs. Welland called "provided for." The melancholy
possibility of having to "kill time" (especially for those who did not
care for whist or solitaire) was a vision that haunted her as the
spectre of the unemployed haunts the philanthropist. Another of her
principles was that parents should never (at least visibly) interfere
with the plans of their married children; and the difficulty of
adjusting this respect for May's independence with the exigency of Mr.
Welland's claims could be overcome only by the exercise of an ingenuity
which left not a second of Mrs. Welland's own time unprovided for.
"Of course I'll drive with Papa--I'm sure Newland will find something
to do," May said, in a tone that gently reminded her husband of his
lack of response. It was a cause of constant distress to Mrs. Welland
that her son-in-law showed so little foresight in planning his days.
Often already, during the fortnight that he had passed under her roof,
when she enquired how he meant to spend his afternoon, he had answered
paradoxically: "Oh, I think for a change I'll just save it instead of
spending it--" and once, when she and May had had to go on a
long-postponed round of afternoon calls, he had confessed to having
lain all the afternoon under a rock on the beach below the house.
"Newland never seems to look ahead," Mrs. Welland once ventured to
complain to her daughter; and May answered serenely: "No; but you see
it doesn't matter, because when there's nothing particular to do he
reads a book."
"Ah, yes--like his father!" Mrs. Welland agreed, as if allowing for an
inherited oddity; and after that the question of Newland's unemployment
was tacitly dropped.
Nevertheless, as the day for the Sillerton reception approached, May
began to show a natural solicitude for his welfare, and to suggest a
tennis match at the Chiverses', or a sail on Julius Beaufort's cutter,
as a means of atoning for her temporary desertion. "I shall be back by
six, you know, dear: Papa never drives later than that--" and she was
not reassured till Archer said that he thought of hiring a run-about
and driving up the island to a stud-farm to look at a second horse for
her brougham. They had been looking for this horse for some time, and
the suggestion was so acceptable that May glanced at her mother as if
to say: "You see he knows how to plan out his time as well as any of
us."
The idea of the stud-farm and the brougham horse had germinated in
Archer's mind on the very day when the Emerson Sillerton invitation had
first been mentioned; but he had kept it to himself as if there were
something clandestine in the plan, and discovery might prevent its
execution. He had, however, taken the precaution to engage in advance
a runabout with a pair of old livery-stable trotters that could still
do their eighteen miles on level roads; and at two o'clock, hastily
deserting the luncheon-table, he sprang into the light carriage and
drove off.
The day was perfect. A breeze from the north drove little puffs of
white cloud across an ultramarine sky, with a bright sea running under
it. Bellevue Avenue was empty at that hour, and after dropping the
stable-lad at the corner of Mill Street Archer turned down the Old
Beach Road and drove across Eastman's Beach.
He had the feeling of unexplained excitement with which, on
half-holidays at school, he used to start off into the unknown. Taking
his pair at an easy gait, he counted on reaching the stud-farm, which
was not far beyond Paradise Rocks, before three o'clock; so that, after
looking over the horse (and trying him if he seemed promising) he would
still have four golden hours to dispose of.
As soon as he heard of the Sillerton's party he had said to himself
that the Marchioness Manson would certainly come to Newport with the
Blenkers, and that Madame Olenska might again take the opportunity of
spending the day with her grandmother. At any rate, the Blenker
habitation would probably be deserted, and he would be able, without
indiscretion, to satisfy a vague curiosity concerning it. He was not
sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since
he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted,
irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and
to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the
real one in the summer-house. The longing was with him day and night,
an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man
for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not
see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was
not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her
voice. He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the
spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it,
the rest of the world might seem less empty.
When he reached the stud-farm a glance showed him that the horse was
not what he wanted; nevertheless he took a turn behind it in order to
prove to himself that he was not in a hurry. But at three o'clock he
shook out the reins over the trotters and turned into the by-roads
leading to Portsmouth. The wind had dropped and a faint haze on the
horizon showed that a fog was waiting to steal up the Saconnet on the
turn of the tide; but all about him fields and woods were steeped in
golden light.
He drove past grey-shingled farm-houses in orchards, past hay-fields
and groves of oak, past villages with white steeples rising sharply
into the fading sky; and at last, after stopping to ask the way of some
men at work in a field, he turned down a lane between high banks of
goldenrod and brambles. At the end of the lane was the blue glimmer of
the river; to the left, standing in front of a clump of oaks and
maples, he saw a long tumble-down house with white paint peeling from
its clapboards.
On the road-side facing the gateway stood one of the open sheds in
which the New Englander shelters his farming implements and visitors
"hitch" their "teams." Archer, jumping down, led his pair into the
shed, and after tying them to a post turned toward the house. The
patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hay-field; but to the left
an overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled
a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white,
surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but
continued to take ineffectual aim.
Archer leaned for a while against the gate. No one was in sight, and
not a sound came from the open windows of the house: a grizzled
Newfoundland dozing before the door seemed as ineffectual a guardian as
the arrowless Cupid. It was strange to think that this place of
silence and decay was the home of the turbulent Blenkers; yet Archer
was sure that he was not mistaken.
For a long time he stood there, content to take in the scene, and
gradually falling under its drowsy spell; but at length he roused
himself to the sense of the passing time. Should he look his fill and
then drive away? He stood irresolute, wishing suddenly to see the
inside of the house, so that he might picture the room that Madame
Olenska sat in. There was nothing to prevent his walking up to the
door and ringing the bell; if, as he supposed, she was away with the
rest of the party, he could easily give his name, and ask permission to
go into the sitting-room to write a message.
But instead, he crossed the lawn and turned toward the box-garden. As
he entered it he caught sight of something bright-coloured in the
summer-house, and presently made it out to be a pink parasol. The
parasol drew him like a magnet: he was sure it was hers. He went into
the summer-house, and sitting down on the rickety seat picked up the
silken thing and looked at its carved handle, which was made of some
rare wood that gave out an aromatic scent. Archer lifted the handle to
his lips.
He heard a rustle of skirts against the box, and sat motionless,
leaning on the parasol handle with clasped hands, and letting the
rustle come nearer without lifting his eyes. He had always known that
this must happen ...
"Oh, Mr. Archer!" exclaimed a loud young voice; and looking up he saw
before him the youngest and largest of the Blenker girls, blonde and
blowsy, in bedraggled muslin. A red blotch on one of her cheeks seemed
to show that it had recently been pressed against a pillow, and her
half-awakened eyes stared at him hospitably but confusedly.
"Gracious--where did you drop from? I must have been sound asleep in
the hammock. Everybody else has gone to Newport. Did you ring?" she
incoherently enquired.
Archer's confusion was greater than hers. "I--no--that is, I was just
going to. I had to come up the island to see about a horse, and I
drove over on a chance of finding Mrs. Blenker and your visitors. But
the house seemed empty--so I sat down to wait."
Miss Blenker, shaking off the fumes of sleep, looked at him with
increasing interest. "The house IS empty. Mother's not here, or the
Marchioness--or anybody but me." Her glance became faintly
reproachful. "Didn't you know that Professor and Mrs. Sillerton are
giving a garden-party for mother and all of us this afternoon? It was
too unlucky that I couldn't go; but I've had a sore throat, and mother
was afraid of the drive home this evening. Did you ever know anything
so disappointing? Of course," she added gaily, "I shouldn't have
minded half as much if I'd known you were coming."
Symptoms of a lumbering coquetry became visible in her, and Archer
found the strength to break in: "But Madame Olenska--has she gone to
Newport too?"
Miss Blenker looked at him with surprise. "Madame Olenska--didn't you
know she'd been called away?"
"Called away?--"
"Oh, my best parasol! I lent it to that goose of a Katie, because it
matched her ribbons, and the careless thing must have dropped it here.
We Blenkers are all like that ... real Bohemians!" Recovering the
sunshade with a powerful hand she unfurled it and suspended its rosy
dome above her head. "Yes, Ellen was called away yesterday: she lets
us call her Ellen, you know. A telegram came from Boston: she said she
might be gone for two days. I do LOVE the way she does her hair, don't
you?" Miss Blenker rambled on.
Archer continued to stare through her as though she had been
transparent. All he saw was the trumpery parasol that arched its
pinkness above her giggling head.
After a moment he ventured: "You don't happen to know why Madame
Olenska went to Boston? I hope it was not on account of bad news?"
Miss Blenker took this with a cheerful incredulity. "Oh, I don't
believe so. She didn't tell us what was in the telegram. I think she
didn't want the Marchioness to know. She's so romantic-looking, isn't
she? Doesn't she remind you of Mrs. Scott-Siddons when she reads 'Lady
Geraldine's Courtship'? Did you never hear her?"
Archer was dealing hurriedly with crowding thoughts. His whole future
seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless
emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever
to happen. He glanced about him at the unpruned garden, the
tumble-down house, and the oak-grove under which the dusk was
gathering. It had seemed so exactly the place in which he ought to
have found Madame Olenska; and she was far away, and even the pink
sunshade was not hers ...
He frowned and hesitated. "You don't know, I suppose--I shall be in
Boston tomorrow. If I could manage to see her--"
He felt that Miss Blenker was losing interest in him, though her smile
persisted. "Oh, of course; how lovely of you! She's staying at the
Parker House; it must be horrible there in this weather."
After that Archer was but intermittently aware of the remarks they
exchanged. He could only remember stoutly resisting her entreaty that
he should await the returning family and have high tea with them before
he drove home. At length, with his hostess still at his side, he
passed out of range of the wooden Cupid, unfastened his horses and
drove off. At the turn of the lane he saw Miss Blenker standing at the
gate and waving the pink parasol.
XXIII.
The next morning, when Archer got out of the Fall River train, he
emerged upon a steaming midsummer Boston. The streets near the station
were full of the smell of beer and coffee and decaying fruit and a
shirt-sleeved populace moved through them with the intimate abandon of
boarders going down the passage to the bathroom.
Archer found a cab and drove to the Somerset Club for breakfast. Even
the fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity to which no
excess of heat ever degrades the European cities. Care-takers in
calico lounged on the door-steps of the wealthy, and the Common looked
like a pleasure-ground on the morrow of a Masonic picnic. If Archer
had tried to imagine Ellen Olenska in improbable scenes he could not
have called up any into which it was more difficult to fit her than
this heat-prostrated and deserted Boston.
He breakfasted with appetite and method, beginning with a slice of
melon, and studying a morning paper while he waited for his toast and
scrambled eggs. A new sense of energy and activity had possessed him
ever since he had announced to May the night before that he had
business in Boston, and should take the Fall River boat that night and
go on to New York the following evening. It had always been understood
that he would return to town early in the week, and when he got back
from his expedition to Portsmouth a letter from the office, which fate
had conspicuously placed on a corner of the hall table, sufficed to
justify his sudden change of plan. He was even ashamed of the ease
with which the whole thing had been done: it reminded him, for an
uncomfortable moment, of Lawrence Lefferts's masterly contrivances for
securing his freedom. But this did not long trouble him, for he was
not in an analytic mood.
After breakfast he smoked a cigarette and glanced over the Commercial
Advertiser. While he was thus engaged two or three men he knew came
in, and the usual greetings were exchanged: it was the same world after
all, though he had such a queer sense of having slipped through the
meshes of time and space.
He looked at his watch, and finding that it was half-past nine got up
and went into the writing-room. There he wrote a few lines, and
ordered a messenger to take a cab to the Parker House and wait for the
answer. He then sat down behind another newspaper and tried to
calculate how long it would take a cab to get to the Parker House.
"The lady was out, sir," he suddenly heard a waiter's voice at his
elbow; and he stammered: "Out?--" as if it were a word in a strange
language.
He got up and went into the hall. It must be a mistake: she could not
be out at that hour. He flushed with anger at his own stupidity: why
had he not sent the note as soon as he arrived?
He found his hat and stick and went forth into the street. The city
had suddenly become as strange and vast and empty as if he were a
traveller from distant lands. For a moment he stood on the door-step
hesitating; then he decided to go to the Parker House. What if the
messenger had been misinformed, and she were still there?
He started to walk across the Common; and on the first bench, under a
tree, he saw her sitting. She had a grey silk sunshade over her
head--how could he ever have imagined her with a pink one? As he
approached he was struck by her listless attitude: she sat there as if
she had nothing else to do. He saw her drooping profile, and the knot
of hair fastened low in the neck under her dark hat, and the long
wrinkled glove on the hand that held the sunshade. He came a step or
two nearer, and she turned and looked at him.
"Oh"--she said; and for the first time he noticed a startled look on
her face; but in another moment it gave way to a slow smile of wonder
and contentment.
"Oh"--she murmured again, on a different note, as he stood looking down
at her; and without rising she made a place for him on the bench.
"I'm here on business--just got here," Archer explained; and, without
knowing why, he suddenly began to feign astonishment at seeing her.
"But what on earth are you doing in this wilderness?" He had really no
idea what he was saying: he felt as if he were shouting at her across
endless distances, and she might vanish again before he could overtake
her.
"I? Oh, I'm here on business too," she answered, turning her head
toward him so that they were face to face. The words hardly reached
him: he was aware only of her voice, and of the startling fact that not
an echo of it had remained in his memory. He had not even remembered
that it was low-pitched, with a faint roughness on the consonants.
"You do your hair differently," he said, his heart beating as if he had
uttered something irrevocable.
"Differently? No--it's only that I do it as best I can when I'm
without Nastasia."
"Nastasia; but isn't she with you?"
"No; I'm alone. For two days it was not worth while to bring her."
"You're alone--at the Parker House?"
She looked at him with a flash of her old malice. "Does it strike you
as dangerous?"
"No; not dangerous--"
"But unconventional? I see; I suppose it is." She considered a
moment. "I hadn't thought of it, because I've just done something so
much more unconventional." The faint tinge of irony lingered in her
eyes. "I've just refused to take back a sum of money--that belonged to
me."
Archer sprang up and moved a step or two away. She had furled her
parasol and sat absently drawing patterns on the gravel. Presently he
came back and stood before her.
"Some one--has come here to meet you?"
"Yes."
"With this offer?"
She nodded.
"And you refused--because of the conditions?"
"I refused," she said after a moment.
He sat down by her again. "What were the conditions?"
"Oh, they were not onerous: just to sit at the head of his table now
and then."
There was another interval of silence. Archer's heart had slammed
itself shut in the queer way it had, and he sat vainly groping for a
word.
"He wants you back--at any price?"
"Well--a considerable price. At least the sum is considerable for me."
He paused again, beating about the question he felt he must put.
"It was to meet him here that you came?"
She stared, and then burst into a laugh. "Meet him--my husband? HERE?
At this season he's always at Cowes or Baden."
"He sent some one?"
"Yes."
"With a letter?"
She shook her head. "No; just a message. He never writes. I don't
think I've had more than one letter from him." The allusion brought
the colour to her cheek, and it reflected itself in Archer's vivid
blush.
"Why does he never write?"
"Why should he? What does one have secretaries for?"
The young man's blush deepened. She had pronounced the word as if it
had no more significance than any other in her vocabulary. For a
moment it was on the tip of his tongue to ask: "Did he send his
secretary, then?" But the remembrance of Count Olenski's only letter
to his wife was too present to him. He paused again, and then took
another plunge.
"And the person?"--
"The emissary? The emissary," Madame Olenska rejoined, still smiling,
"might, for all I care, have left already; but he has insisted on
waiting till this evening ... in case ... on the chance ..."
"And you came out here to think the chance over?"
"I came out to get a breath of air. The hotel's too stifling. I'm
taking the afternoon train back to Portsmouth."
They sat silent, not looking at each other, but straight ahead at the
people passing along the path. Finally she turned her eyes again to
his face and said: "You're not changed."
He felt like answering: "I was, till I saw you again;" but instead he
stood up abruptly and glanced about him at the untidy sweltering park.
"This is horrible. Why shouldn't we go out a little on the bay?
There's a breeze, and it will be cooler. We might take the steamboat
down to Point Arley." She glanced up at him hesitatingly and he went
on: "On a Monday morning there won't be anybody on the boat. My train
doesn't leave till evening: I'm going back to New York. Why shouldn't
we?" he insisted, looking down at her; and suddenly he broke out:
"Haven't we done all we could?"
"Oh"--she murmured again. She stood up and reopened her sunshade,
glancing about her as if to take counsel of the scene, and assure
herself of the impossibility of remaining in it. Then her eyes
returned to his face. "You mustn't say things like that to me," she
said.
"I'll say anything you like; or nothing. I won't open my mouth unless
you tell me to. What harm can it do to anybody? All I want is to
listen to you," he stammered.
She drew out a little gold-faced watch on an enamelled chain. "Oh,
don't calculate," he broke out; "give me the day! I want to get you
away from that man. At what time was he coming?"
Her colour rose again. "At eleven."
"Then you must come at once."
"You needn't be afraid--if I don't come."
"Nor you either--if you do. I swear I only want to hear about you, to
know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met--it
may be another hundred before we meet again."
She still wavered, her anxious eyes on his face. "Why didn't you come
down to the beach to fetch me, the day I was at Granny's?" she asked.
"Because you didn't look round--because you didn't know I was there. I
swore I wouldn't unless you looked round." He laughed as the
childishness of the confession struck him.
"But I didn't look round on purpose."
"On purpose?"
"I knew you were there; when you drove in I recognised the ponies. So
I went down to the beach."
"To get away from me as far as you could?"
She repeated in a low voice: "To get away from you as far as I could."
He laughed out again, this time in boyish satisfaction. "Well, you see
it's no use. I may as well tell you," he added, "that the business I
came here for was just to find you. But, look here, we must start or
we shall miss our boat."
"Our boat?" She frowned perplexedly, and then smiled. "Oh, but I must
go back to the hotel first: I must leave a note--"
"As many notes as you please. You can write here." He drew out a
note-case and one of the new stylographic pens. "I've even got an
envelope--you see how everything's predestined! There--steady the
thing on your knee, and I'll get the pen going in a second. They have
to be humoured; wait--" He banged the hand that held the pen against
the back of the bench. "It's like jerking down the mercury in a
thermometer: just a trick. Now try--"
She laughed, and bending over the sheet of paper which he had laid on
his note-case, began to write. Archer walked away a few steps, staring
with radiant unseeing eyes at the passersby, who, in their turn, paused
to stare at the unwonted sight of a fashionably-dressed lady writing a
note on her knee on a bench in the Common.
Madame Olenska slipped the sheet into the envelope, wrote a name on it,
and put it into her pocket. Then she too stood up.
They walked back toward Beacon Street, and near the club Archer caught
sight of the plush-lined "herdic" which had carried his note to the
Parker House, and whose driver was reposing from this effort by bathing
his brow at the corner hydrant.
"I told you everything was predestined! Here's a cab for us. You
see!" They laughed, astonished at the miracle of picking up a public
conveyance at that hour, and in that unlikely spot, in a city where
cab-stands were still a "foreign" novelty.
Archer, looking at his watch, saw that there was time to drive to the
Parker House before going to the steamboat landing. They rattled
through the hot streets and drew up at the door of the hotel.
Archer held out his hand for the letter. "Shall I take it in?" he
asked; but Madame Olenska, shaking her head, sprang out and disappeared
through the glazed doors. It was barely half-past ten; but what if the
emissary, impatient for her reply, and not knowing how else to employ
his time, were already seated among the travellers with cooling drinks
at their elbows of whom Archer had caught a glimpse as she went in?
He waited, pacing up and down before the herdic. A Sicilian youth with
eyes like Nastasia's offered to shine his boots, and an Irish matron to
sell him peaches; and every few moments the doors opened to let out hot
men with straw hats tilted far back, who glanced at him as they went
by. He marvelled that the door should open so often, and that all the
people it let out should look so like each other, and so like all the
other hot men who, at that hour, through the length and breadth of the
land, were passing continuously in and out of the swinging doors of
hotels.
And then, suddenly, came a face that he could not relate to the other
faces. He caught but a flash of it, for his pacings had carried him to
the farthest point of his beat, and it was in turning back to the hotel
that he saw, in a group of typical countenances--the lank and weary,
the round and surprised, the lantern-jawed and mild--this other face
that was so many more things at once, and things so different. It was
that of a young man, pale too, and half-extinguished by the heat, or
worry, or both, but somehow, quicker, vivider, more conscious; or
perhaps seeming so because he was so different. Archer hung a moment
on a thin thread of memory, but it snapped and floated off with the
disappearing face--apparently that of some foreign business man,
looking doubly foreign in such a setting. He vanished in the stream of
passersby, and Archer resumed his patrol.
He did not care to be seen watch in hand within view of the hotel, and
his unaided reckoning of the lapse of time led him to conclude that, if
Madame Olenska was so long in reappearing, it could only be because she
had met the emissary and been waylaid by him. At the thought Archer's
apprehension rose to anguish.
"If she doesn't come soon I'll go in and find her," he said.
The doors swung open again and she was at his side. They got into the
herdic, and as it drove off he took out his watch and saw that she had
been absent just three minutes. In the clatter of loose windows that
made talk impossible they bumped over the disjointed cobblestones to
the wharf.
Seated side by side on a bench of the half-empty boat they found that
they had hardly anything to say to each other, or rather that what they
had to say communicated itself best in the blessed silence of their
release and their isolation.
As the paddle-wheels began to turn, and wharves and shipping to recede
through the veil of heat, it seemed to Archer that everything in the
old familiar world of habit was receding also. He longed to ask Madame
Olenska if she did not have the same feeling: the feeling that they
were starting on some long voyage from which they might never return.
But he was afraid to say it, or anything else that might disturb the
delicate balance of her trust in him. In reality he had no wish to
betray that trust. There had been days and nights when the memory of
their kiss had burned and burned on his lips; the day before even, on
the drive to Portsmouth, the thought of her had run through him like
fire; but now that she was beside him, and they were drifting forth
into this unknown world, they seemed to have reached the kind of deeper
nearness that a touch may sunder.
As the boat left the harbour and turned seaward a breeze stirred about
them and the bay broke up into long oily undulations, then into ripples
tipped with spray. The fog of sultriness still hung over the city, but
ahead lay a fresh world of ruffled waters, and distant promontories
with light-houses in the sun. Madame Olenska, leaning back against the
boat-rail, drank in the coolness between parted lips. She had wound a
long veil about her hat, but it left her face uncovered, and Archer was
struck by the tranquil gaiety of her expression. She seemed to take
their adventure as a matter of course, and to be neither in fear of
unexpected encounters, nor (what was worse) unduly elated by their
possibility.
In the bare dining-room of the inn, which he had hoped they would have
to themselves, they found a strident party of innocent-looking young
men and women--school-teachers on a holiday, the landlord told
them--and Archer's heart sank at the idea of having to talk through
their noise.
"This is hopeless--I'll ask for a private room," he said; and Madame
Olenska, without offering any objection, waited while he went in search
of it. The room opened on a long wooden verandah, with the sea coming
in at the windows. It was bare and cool, with a table covered with a
coarse checkered cloth and adorned by a bottle of pickles and a
blueberry pie under a cage. No more guileless-looking cabinet
particulier ever offered its shelter to a clandestine couple: Archer
fancied he saw the sense of its reassurance in the faintly amused smile
with which Madame Olenska sat down opposite to him. A woman who had
run away from her husband--and reputedly with another man--was likely
to have mastered the art of taking things for granted; but something in
the quality of her composure took the edge from his irony. By being so
quiet, so unsurprised and so simple she had managed to brush away the
conventions and make him feel that to seek to be alone was the natural
thing for two old friends who had so much to say to each other....
XXIV.
They lunched slowly and meditatively, with mute intervals between
rushes of talk; for, the spell once broken, they had much to say, and
yet moments when saying became the mere accompaniment to long duologues
of silence. Archer kept the talk from his own affairs, not with
conscious intention but because he did not want to miss a word of her
history; and leaning on the table, her chin resting on her clasped
hands, she talked to him of the year and a half since they had met.
She had grown tired of what people called "society"; New York was kind,
it was almost oppressively hospitable; she should never forget the way
in which it had welcomed her back; but after the first flush of novelty
she had found herself, as she phrased it, too "different" to care for
the things it cared about--and so she had decided to try Washington,
where one was supposed to meet more varieties of people and of opinion.
And on the whole she should probably settle down in Washington, and
make a home there for poor Medora, who had worn out the patience of all
her other relations just at the time when she most needed looking after
and protecting from matrimonial perils.
"But Dr. Carver--aren't you afraid of Dr. Carver? I hear he's been
staying with you at the Blenkers'."
She smiled. "Oh, the Carver danger is over. Dr. Carver is a very
clever man. He wants a rich wife to finance his plans, and Medora is
simply a good advertisement as a convert."
"A convert to what?"
"To all sorts of new and crazy social schemes. But, do you know, they
interest me more than the blind conformity to tradition--somebody
else's tradition--that I see among our own friends. It seems stupid to
have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another
country." She smiled across the table. "Do you suppose Christopher
Columbus would have taken all that trouble just to go to the Opera with
the Selfridge Merrys?"
Archer changed colour. "And Beaufort--do you say these things to
Beaufort?" he asked abruptly.
"I haven't seen him for a long time. But I used to; and he
understands."
"Ah, it's what I've always told you; you don't like us. And you like
Beaufort because he's so unlike us." He looked about the bare room and
out at the bare beach and the row of stark white village houses strung
along the shore. "We're damnably dull. We've no character, no colour,
no variety.--I wonder," he broke out, "why you don't go back?"
Her eyes darkened, and he expected an indignant rejoinder. But she sat
silent, as if thinking over what he had said, and he grew frightened
lest she should answer that she wondered too.
At length she said: "I believe it's because of you."
It was impossible to make the confession more dispassionately, or in a
tone less encouraging to the vanity of the person addressed. Archer
reddened to the temples, but dared not move or speak: it was as if her
words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive
off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock about it if it
were left undisturbed.
"At least," she continued, "it was you who made me understand that
under the dullness there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate
that even those I most cared for in my other life look cheap in
comparison. I don't know how to explain myself"--she drew together her
troubled brows--"but it seems as if I'd never before understood with
how much that is hard and shabby and base the most exquisite pleasures
may be paid."
"Exquisite pleasures--it's something to have had them!" he felt like
retorting; but the appeal in her eyes kept him silent.
"I want," she went on, "to be perfectly honest with you--and with
myself. For a long time I've hoped this chance would come: that I
might tell you how you've helped me, what you've made of me--"
Archer sat staring beneath frowning brows. He interrupted her with a
laugh. "And what do you make out that you've made of me?"
She paled a little. "Of you?"
"Yes: for I'm of your making much more than you ever were of mine. I'm
the man who married one woman because another one told him to."
Her paleness turned to a fugitive flush. "I thought--you promised--you
were not to say such things today."
"Ah--how like a woman! None of you will ever see a bad business
through!"
She lowered her voice. "IS it a bad business--for May?"
He stood in the window, drumming against the raised sash, and feeling
in every fibre the wistful tenderness with which she had spoken her
cousin's name.
"For that's the thing we've always got to think of--haven't we--by your
own showing?" she insisted.
"My own showing?" he echoed, his blank eyes still on the sea.
"Or if not," she continued, pursuing her own thought with a painful
application, "if it's not worth while to have given up, to have missed
things, so that others may be saved from disillusionment and
misery--then everything I came home for, everything that made my other
life seem by contrast so bare and so poor because no one there took
account of them--all these things are a sham or a dream--"
He turned around without moving from his place. "And in that case
there's no reason on earth why you shouldn't go back?" he concluded for
her.
Her eyes were clinging to him desperately. "Oh, IS there no reason?"
"Not if you staked your all on the success of my marriage. My
marriage," he said savagely, "isn't going to be a sight to keep you
here." She made no answer, and he went on: "What's the use? You gave
me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me
to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring--that's all."
"Oh, don't say that; when I'm enduring it!" she burst out, her eyes
filling.
Her arms had dropped along the table, and she sat with her face
abandoned to his gaze as if in the recklessness of a desperate peril.
The face exposed her as much as if it had been her whole person, with
the soul behind it: Archer stood dumb, overwhelmed by what it suddenly
told him.
"You too--oh, all this time, you too?"
For answer, she let the tears on her lids overflow and run slowly
downward.
Half the width of the room was still between them, and neither made any
show of moving. Archer was conscious of a curious indifference to her
bodily presence: he would hardly have been aware of it if one of the
hands she had flung out on the table had not drawn his gaze as on the
occasion when, in the little Twenty-third Street house, he had kept his
eye on it in order not to look at her face. Now his imagination spun
about the hand as about the edge of a vortex; but still he made no
effort to draw nearer. He had known the love that is fed on caresses
and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not
to be superficially satisfied. His one terror was to do anything which
might efface the sound and impression of her words; his one thought,
that he should never again feel quite alone.
But after a moment the sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There
they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their
separate destinies that they might as well have been half the world
apart.
"What's the use--when you will go back?" he broke out, a great hopeless
HOW ON EARTH CAN I KEEP YOU? crying out to her beneath his words.
She sat motionless, with lowered lids. "Oh--I shan't go yet!"
"Not yet? Some time, then? Some time that you already foresee?"
At that she raised her clearest eyes. "I promise you: not as long as
you hold out. Not as long as we can look straight at each other like
this."
He dropped into his chair. What her answer really said was: "If you
lift a finger you'll drive me back: back to all the abominations you
know of, and all the temptations you half guess." He understood it as
clearly as if she had uttered the words, and the thought kept him
anchored to his side of the table in a kind of moved and sacred
submission.
"What a life for you!--" he groaned.
"Oh--as long as it's a part of yours."
"And mine a part of yours?"
She nodded.
"And that's to be all--for either of us?"
"Well; it IS all, isn't it?"
At that he sprang up, forgetting everything but the sweetness of her
face. She rose too, not as if to meet him or to flee from him, but
quietly, as though the worst of the task were done and she had only to
wait; so quietly that, as he came close, her outstretched hands acted
not as a check but as a guide to him. They fell into his, while her
arms, extended but not rigid, kept him far enough off to let her
surrendered face say the rest.
They may have stood in that way for a long time, or only for a few
moments; but it was long enough for her silence to communicate all she
had to say, and for him to feel that only one thing mattered. He must
do nothing to make this meeting their last; he must leave their future
in her care, asking only that she should keep fast hold of it.
"Don't--don't be unhappy," she said, with a break in her voice, as she
drew her hands away; and he answered: "You won't go back--you won't go
back?" as if it were the one possibility he could not bear.
"I won't go back," she said; and turning away she opened the door and
led the way into the public dining-room.
The strident school-teachers were gathering up their possessions
preparatory to a straggling flight to the wharf; across the beach lay
the white steam-boat at the pier; and over the sunlit waters Boston
loomed in a line of haze.
XXV.
Once more on the boat, and in the presence of others, Archer felt a
tranquillity of spirit that surprised as much as it sustained him.
The day, according to any current valuation, had been a rather
ridiculous failure; he had not so much as touched Madame Olenska's hand
with his lips, or extracted one word from her that gave promise of
farther opportunities. Nevertheless, for a man sick with unsatisfied
love, and parting for an indefinite period from the object of his
passion, he felt himself almost humiliatingly calm and comforted. It
was the perfect balance she had held between their loyalty to others
and their honesty to themselves that had so stirred and yet
tranquillized him; a balance not artfully calculated, as her tears and
her falterings showed, but resulting naturally from her unabashed
sincerity. It filled him with a tender awe, now the danger was over,
and made him thank the fates that no personal vanity, no sense of
playing a part before sophisticated witnesses, had tempted him to tempt
her. Even after they had clasped hands for good-bye at the Fall River
station, and he had turned away alone, the conviction remained with him
of having saved out of their meeting much more than he had sacrificed.
He wandered back to the club, and went and sat alone in the deserted
library, turning and turning over in his thoughts every separate second
of their hours together. It was clear to him, and it grew more clear
under closer scrutiny, that if she should finally decide on returning
to Europe--returning to her husband--it would not be because her old
life tempted her, even on the new terms offered. No: she would go only
if she felt herself becoming a temptation to Archer, a temptation to
fall away from the standard they had both set up. Her choice would be
to stay near him as long as he did not ask her to come nearer; and it
depended on himself to keep her just there, safe but secluded.
In the train these thoughts were still with him. They enclosed him in
a kind of golden haze, through which the faces about him looked remote
and indistinct: he had a feeling that if he spoke to his
fellow-travellers they would not understand what he was saying. In
this state of abstraction he found himself, the following morning,
waking to the reality of a stifling September day in New York. The
heat-withered faces in the long train streamed past him, and he
continued to stare at them through the same golden blur; but suddenly,
as he left the station, one of the faces detached itself, came closer
and forced itself upon his consciousness. It was, as he instantly
recalled, the face of the young man he had seen, the day before,
passing out of the Parker House, and had noted as not conforming to
type, as not having an American hotel face.
The same thing struck him now; and again he became aware of a dim stir
of former associations. The young man stood looking about him with the
dazed air of the foreigner flung upon the harsh mercies of American
travel; then he advanced toward Archer, lifted his hat, and said in
English: "Surely, Monsieur, we met in London?"
"Ah, to be sure: in London!" Archer grasped his hand with curiosity
and sympathy. "So you DID get here, after all?" he exclaimed, casting
a wondering eye on the astute and haggard little countenance of young
Carfry's French tutor.
"Oh, I got here--yes," M. Riviere smiled with drawn lips. "But not for
long; I return the day after tomorrow." He stood grasping his light
valise in one neatly gloved hand, and gazing anxiously, perplexedly,
almost appealingly, into Archer's face.
"I wonder, Monsieur, since I've had the good luck to run across you, if
I might--"
"I was just going to suggest it: come to luncheon, won't you? Down
town, I mean: if you'll look me up in my office I'll take you to a very
decent restaurant in that quarter."
M. Riviere was visibly touched and surprised. "You're too kind. But I
was only going to ask if you would tell me how to reach some sort of
conveyance. There are no porters, and no one here seems to listen--"
"I know: our American stations must surprise you. When you ask for a
porter they give you chewing-gum. But if you'll come along I'll
extricate you; and you must really lunch with me, you know."
The young man, after a just perceptible hesitation, replied, with
profuse thanks, and in a tone that did not carry complete conviction,
that he was already engaged; but when they had reached the comparative
reassurance of the street he asked if he might call that afternoon.
Archer, at ease in the midsummer leisure of the office, fixed an hour
and scribbled his address, which the Frenchman pocketed with reiterated
thanks and a wide flourish of his hat. A horse-car received him, and
Archer walked away.
Punctually at the hour M. Riviere appeared, shaved, smoothed-out, but
still unmistakably drawn and serious. Archer was alone in his office,
and the young man, before accepting the seat he proffered, began
abruptly: "I believe I saw you, sir, yesterday in Boston."
The statement was insignificant enough, and Archer was about to frame
an assent when his words were checked by something mysterious yet
illuminating in his visitor's insistent gaze.
"It is extraordinary, very extraordinary," M. Riviere continued, "that
we should have met in the circumstances in which I find myself."
"What circumstances?" Archer asked, wondering a little crudely if he
needed money.
M. Riviere continued to study him with tentative eyes. "I have come,
not to look for employment, as I spoke of doing when we last met, but
on a special mission--"
"Ah--!" Archer exclaimed. In a flash the two meetings had connected
themselves in his mind. He paused to take in the situation thus
suddenly lighted up for him, and M. Riviere also remained silent, as if
aware that what he had said was enough.
"A special mission," Archer at length repeated.
The young Frenchman, opening his palms, raised them slightly, and the
two men continued to look at each other across the office-desk till
Archer roused himself to say: "Do sit down"; whereupon M. Riviere
bowed, took a distant chair, and again waited.
"It was about this mission that you wanted to consult me?" Archer
finally asked.
M. Riviere bent his head. "Not in my own behalf: on that score I--I
have fully dealt with myself. I should like--if I may--to speak to you
about the Countess Olenska."
Archer had known for the last few minutes that the words were coming;
but when they came they sent the blood rushing to his temples as if he
had been caught by a bent-back branch in a thicket.
"And on whose behalf," he said, "do you wish to do this?"
M. Riviere met the question sturdily. "Well--I might say HERS, if it
did not sound like a liberty. Shall I say instead: on behalf of
abstract justice?"
Archer considered him ironically. "In other words: you are Count
Olenski's messenger?"
He saw his blush more darkly reflected in M. Riviere's sallow
countenance. "Not to YOU, Monsieur. If I come to you, it is on quite
other grounds."
"What right have you, in the circumstances, to BE on any other ground?"
Archer retorted. "If you're an emissary you're an emissary."
The young man considered. "My mission is over: as far as the Countess
Olenska goes, it has failed."
"I can't help that," Archer rejoined on the same note of irony.
"No: but you can help--" M. Riviere paused, turned his hat about in
his still carefully gloved hands, looked into its lining and then back
at Archer's face. "You can help, Monsieur, I am convinced, to make it
equally a failure with her family."
Archer pushed back his chair and stood up. "Well--and by God I will!"
he exclaimed. He stood with his hands in his pockets, staring down
wrathfully at the little Frenchman, whose face, though he too had
risen, was still an inch or two below the line of Archer's eyes.
M. Riviere paled to his normal hue: paler than that his complexion
could hardly turn.
"Why the devil," Archer explosively continued, "should you have
thought--since I suppose you're appealing to me on the ground of my
relationship to Madame Olenska--that I should take a view contrary to
the rest of her family?"
The change of expression in M. Riviere's face was for a time his only
answer. His look passed from timidity to absolute distress: for a
young man of his usually resourceful mien it would have been difficult
to appear more disarmed and defenceless. "Oh, Monsieur--"
"I can't imagine," Archer continued, "why you should have come to me
when there are others so much nearer to the Countess; still less why
you thought I should be more accessible to the arguments I suppose you
were sent over with."
M. Riviere took this onslaught with a disconcerting humility. "The
arguments I want to present to you, Monsieur, are my own and not those
I was sent over with."
"Then I see still less reason for listening to them."
M. Riviere again looked into his hat, as if considering whether these
last words were not a sufficiently broad hint to put it on and be gone.
Then he spoke with sudden decision. "Monsieur--will you tell me one
thing? Is it my right to be here that you question? Or do you perhaps
believe the whole matter to be already closed?"
His quiet insistence made Archer feel the clumsiness of his own
bluster. M. Riviere had succeeded in imposing himself: Archer,
reddening slightly, dropped into his chair again, and signed to the
young man to be seated.
"I beg your pardon: but why isn't the matter closed?"
M. Riviere gazed back at him with anguish. "You do, then, agree with
the rest of the family that, in face of the new proposals I have
brought, it is hardly possible for Madame Olenska not to return to her
husband?"
"Good God!" Archer exclaimed; and his visitor gave out a low murmur of
confirmation.
"Before seeing her, I saw--at Count Olenski's request--Mr. Lovell
Mingott, with whom I had several talks before going to Boston. I
understand that he represents his mother's view; and that Mrs. Manson
Mingott's influence is great throughout her family."
Archer sat silent, with the sense of clinging to the edge of a sliding
precipice. The discovery that he had been excluded from a share in
these negotiations, and even from the knowledge that they were on foot,
caused him a surprise hardly dulled by the acuter wonder of what he was
learning. He saw in a flash that if the family had ceased to consult
him it was because some deep tribal instinct warned them that he was no
longer on their side; and he recalled, with a start of comprehension, a
remark of May's during their drive home from Mrs. Manson Mingott's on
the day of the Archery Meeting: "Perhaps, after all, Ellen would be
happier with her husband."
Even in the tumult of new discoveries Archer remembered his indignant
exclamation, and the fact that since then his wife had never named
Madame Olenska to him. Her careless allusion had no doubt been the
straw held up to see which way the wind blew; the result had been
reported to the family, and thereafter Archer had been tacitly omitted
from their counsels. He admired the tribal discipline which made May
bow to this decision. She would not have done so, he knew, had her
conscience protested; but she probably shared the family view that
Madame Olenska would be better off as an unhappy wife than as a
separated one, and that there was no use in discussing the case with
Newland, who had an awkward way of suddenly not seeming to take the
most fundamental things for granted.
Archer looked up and met his visitor's anxious gaze. "Don't you know,
Monsieur--is it possible you don't know--that the family begin to doubt
if they have the right to advise the Countess to refuse her husband's
last proposals?"
"The proposals you brought?"
"The proposals I brought."
It was on Archer's lips to exclaim that whatever he knew or did not
know was no concern of M. Riviere's; but something in the humble and
yet courageous tenacity of M. Riviere's gaze made him reject this
conclusion, and he met the young man's question with another. "What is
your object in speaking to me of this?"
He had not to wait a moment for the answer. "To beg you, Monsieur--to
beg you with all the force I'm capable of--not to let her go back.--Oh,
don't let her!" M. Riviere exclaimed.
Archer looked at him with increasing astonishment. There was no
mistaking the sincerity of his distress or the strength of his
determination: he had evidently resolved to let everything go by the
board but the supreme need of thus putting himself on record. Archer
considered.
"May I ask," he said at length, "if this is the line you took with the
Countess Olenska?"
M. Riviere reddened, but his eyes did not falter. "No, Monsieur: I
accepted my mission in good faith. I really believed--for reasons I
need not trouble you with--that it would be better for Madame Olenska
to recover her situation, her fortune, the social consideration that
her husband's standing gives her."
"So I supposed: you could hardly have accepted such a mission
otherwise."
"I should not have accepted it."
"Well, then--?" Archer paused again, and their eyes met in another
protracted scrutiny.
"Ah, Monsieur, after I had seen her, after I had listened to her, I
knew she was better off here."
"You knew--?"
"Monsieur, I discharged my mission faithfully: I put the Count's
arguments, I stated his offers, without adding any comment of my own.
The Countess was good enough to listen patiently; she carried her
goodness so far as to see me twice; she considered impartially all I
had come to say. And it was in the course of these two talks that I
changed my mind, that I came to see things differently."
"May I ask what led to this change?"
"Simply seeing the change in HER," M. Riviere replied.
"The change in her? Then you knew her before?"
The young man's colour again rose. "I used to see her in her husband's
house. I have known Count Olenski for many years. You can imagine
that he would not have sent a stranger on such a mission."
Archer's gaze, wandering away to the blank walls of the office, rested
on a hanging calendar surmounted by the rugged features of the
President of the United States. That such a conversation should be
going on anywhere within the millions of square miles subject to his
rule seemed as strange as anything that the imagination could invent.
"The change--what sort of a change?"
"Ah, Monsieur, if I could tell you!" M. Riviere paused. "Tenez--the
discovery, I suppose, of what I'd never thought of before: that she's
an American. And that if you're an American of HER kind--of your
kind--things that are accepted in certain other societies, or at least
put up with as part of a general convenient give-and-take--become
unthinkable, simply unthinkable. If Madame Olenska's relations
understood what these things were, their opposition to her returning
would no doubt be as unconditional as her own; but they seem to regard
her husband's wish to have her back as proof of an irresistible longing
for domestic life." M. Riviere paused, and then added: "Whereas it's
far from being as simple as that."
Archer looked back to the President of the United States, and then down
at his desk and at the papers scattered on it. For a second or two he
could not trust himself to speak. During this interval he heard M.
Riviere's chair pushed back, and was aware that the young man had
risen. When he glanced up again he saw that his visitor was as moved
as himself.
"Thank you," Archer said simply.
"There's nothing to thank me for, Monsieur: it is I, rather--" M.
Riviere broke off, as if speech for him too were difficult. "I should
like, though," he continued in a firmer voice, "to add one thing. You
asked me if I was in Count Olenski's employ. I am at this moment: I
returned to him, a few months ago, for reasons of private necessity
such as may happen to any one who has persons, ill and older persons,
dependent on him. But from the moment that I have taken the step of
coming here to say these things to you I consider myself discharged,
and I shall tell him so on my return, and give him the reasons. That's
all, Monsieur."
M. Riviere bowed and drew back a step.
"Thank you," Archer said again, as their hands met.
XXVI.
Every year on the fifteenth of October Fifth Avenue opened its
shutters, unrolled its carpets and hung up its triple layer of
window-curtains.
By the first of November this household ritual was over, and society
had begun to look about and take stock of itself. By the fifteenth the
season was in full blast, Opera and theatres were putting forth their
new attractions, dinner-engagements were accumulating, and dates for
dances being fixed. And punctually at about this time Mrs. Archer
always said that New York was very much changed.
Observing it from the lofty stand-point of a non-participant, she was
able, with the help of Mr. Sillerton Jackson and Miss Sophy, to trace
each new crack in its surface, and all the strange weeds pushing up
between the ordered rows of social vegetables. It had been one of the
amusements of Archer's youth to wait for this annual pronouncement of
his mother's, and to hear her enumerate the minute signs of
disintegration that his careless gaze had overlooked. For New York, to
Mrs. Archer's mind, never changed without changing for the worse; and
in this view Miss Sophy Jackson heartily concurred.
Mr. Sillerton Jackson, as became a man of the world, suspended his
judgment and listened with an amused impartiality to the lamentations
of the ladies. But even he never denied that New York had changed; and
Newland Archer, in the winter of the second year of his marriage, was
himself obliged to admit that if it had not actually changed it was
certainly changing.
These points had been raised, as usual, at Mrs. Archer's Thanksgiving
dinner. At the date when she was officially enjoined to give thanks
for the blessings of the year it was her habit to take a mournful
though not embittered stock of her world, and wonder what there was to
be thankful for. At any rate, not the state of society; society, if it
could be said to exist, was rather a spectacle on which to call down
Biblical imprecations--and in fact, every one knew what the Reverend
Dr. Ashmore meant when he chose a text from Jeremiah (chap. ii., verse
25) for his Thanksgiving sermon. Dr. Ashmore, the new Rector of St.
Matthew's, had been chosen because he was very "advanced": his sermons
were considered bold in thought and novel in language. When he
fulminated against fashionable society he always spoke of its "trend";
and to Mrs. Archer it was terrifying and yet fascinating to feel
herself part of a community that was trending.
"There's no doubt that Dr. Ashmore is right: there IS a marked trend,"
she said, as if it were something visible and measurable, like a crack
in a house.
"It was odd, though, to preach about it on Thanksgiving," Miss Jackson
opined; and her hostess drily rejoined: "Oh, he means us to give
thanks for what's left."
Archer had been wont to smile at these annual vaticinations of his
mother's; but this year even he was obliged to acknowledge, as he
listened to an enumeration of the changes, that the "trend" was visible.
"The extravagance in dress--" Miss Jackson began. "Sillerton took me
to the first night of the Opera, and I can only tell you that Jane
Merry's dress was the only one I recognised from last year; and even
that had had the front panel changed. Yet I know she got it out from
Worth only two years ago, because my seamstress always goes in to make
over her Paris dresses before she wears them."
"Ah, Jane Merry is one of US," said Mrs. Archer sighing, as if it were
not such an enviable thing to be in an age when ladies were beginning
to flaunt abroad their Paris dresses as soon as they were out of the
Custom House, instead of letting them mellow under lock and key, in the
manner of Mrs. Archer's contemporaries.
"Yes; she's one of the few. In my youth," Miss Jackson rejoined, "it
was considered vulgar to dress in the newest fashions; and Amy
Sillerton has always told me that in Boston the rule was to put away
one's Paris dresses for two years. Old Mrs. Baxter Pennilow, who did
everything handsomely, used to import twelve a year, two velvet, two
satin, two silk, and the other six of poplin and the finest cashmere.
It was a standing order, and as she was ill for two years before she
died they found forty-eight Worth dresses that had never been taken out
of tissue paper; and when the girls left off their mourning they were
able to wear the first lot at the Symphony concerts without looking in
advance of the fashion."
"Ah, well, Boston is more conservative than New York; but I always
think it's a safe rule for a lady to lay aside her French dresses for
one season," Mrs. Archer conceded.
"It was Beaufort who started the new fashion by making his wife clap
her new clothes on her back as soon as they arrived: I must say at
times it takes all Regina's distinction not to look like ... like ..."
Miss Jackson glanced around the table, caught Janey's bulging gaze, and
took refuge in an unintelligible murmur.
"Like her rivals," said Mr. Sillerton Jackson, with the air of
producing an epigram.
"Oh,--" the ladies murmured; and Mrs. Archer added, partly to distract
her daughter's attention from forbidden topics: "Poor Regina! Her
Thanksgiving hasn't been a very cheerful one, I'm afraid. Have you
heard the rumours about Beaufort's speculations, Sillerton?"
Mr. Jackson nodded carelessly. Every one had heard the rumours in
question, and he scorned to confirm a tale that was already common
property.
A gloomy silence fell upon the party. No one really liked Beaufort,
and it was not wholly unpleasant to think the worst of his private
life; but the idea of his having brought financial dishonour on his
wife's family was too shocking to be enjoyed even by his enemies.
Archer's New York tolerated hypocrisy in private relations; but in
business matters it exacted a limpid and impeccable honesty. It was a
long time since any well-known banker had failed discreditably; but
every one remembered the social extinction visited on the heads of the
firm when the last event of the kind had happened. It would be the
same with the Beauforts, in spite of his power and her popularity; not
all the leagued strength of the Dallas connection would save poor
Regina if there were any truth in the reports of her husband's unlawful
speculations.
The talk took refuge in less ominous topics; but everything they
touched on seemed to confirm Mrs. Archer's sense of an accelerated
trend.
"Of course, Newland, I know you let dear May go to Mrs. Struthers's
Sunday evenings--" she began; and May interposed gaily: "Oh, you know,
everybody goes to Mrs. Struthers's now; and she was invited to Granny's
last reception."
It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York managed its transitions:
conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all
good faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age.
There was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally
she) had surrendered the keys, what was the use of pretending that it
was impregnable? Once people had tasted of Mrs. Struthers's easy
Sunday hospitality they were not likely to sit at home remembering that
her champagne was transmuted Shoe-Polish.
"I know, dear, I know," Mrs. Archer sighed. "Such things have to be, I
suppose, as long as AMUSEMENT is what people go out for; but I've never
quite forgiven your cousin Madame Olenska for being the first person to
countenance Mrs. Struthers."
A sudden blush rose to young Mrs. Archer's face; it surprised her
husband as much as the other guests about the table. "Oh, ELLEN--" she
murmured, much in the same accusing and yet deprecating tone in which
her parents might have said: "Oh, THE BLENKERS--."
It was the note which the family had taken to sounding on the mention
of the Countess Olenska's name, since she had surprised and
inconvenienced them by remaining obdurate to her husband's advances;
but on May's lips it gave food for thought, and Archer looked at her
with the sense of strangeness that sometimes came over him when she was
most in the tone of her environment.
His mother, with less than her usual sensitiveness to atmosphere, still
insisted: "I've always thought that people like the Countess Olenska,
who have lived in aristocratic societies, ought to help us to keep up
our social distinctions, instead of ignoring them."
May's blush remained permanently vivid: it seemed to have a
significance beyond that implied by the recognition of Madame Olenska's
social bad faith.
"I've no doubt we all seem alike to foreigners," said Miss Jackson
tartly.
"I don't think Ellen cares for society; but nobody knows exactly what
she does care for," May continued, as if she had been groping for
something noncommittal.
"Ah, well--" Mrs. Archer sighed again.
Everybody knew that the Countess Olenska was no longer in the good
graces of her family. Even her devoted champion, old Mrs. Manson
Mingott, had been unable to defend her refusal to return to her
husband. The Mingotts had not proclaimed their disapproval aloud:
their sense of solidarity was too strong. They had simply, as Mrs.
Welland said, "let poor Ellen find her own level"--and that,
mortifyingly and incomprehensibly, was in the dim depths where the
Blenkers prevailed, and "people who wrote" celebrated their untidy
rites. It was incredible, but it was a fact, that Ellen, in spite of
all her opportunities and her privileges, had become simply "Bohemian."
The fact enforced the contention that she had made a fatal mistake in
not returning to Count Olenski. After all, a young woman's place was
under her husband's roof, especially when she had left it in
circumstances that ... well ... if one had cared to look into them ...
"Madame Olenska is a great favourite with the gentlemen," said Miss
Sophy, with her air of wishing to put forth something conciliatory when
she knew that she was planting a dart.
"Ah, that's the danger that a young woman like Madame Olenska is always
exposed to," Mrs. Archer mournfully agreed; and the ladies, on this
conclusion, gathered up their trains to seek the carcel globes of the
drawing-room, while Archer and Mr. Sillerton Jackson withdrew to the
Gothic library.
Once established before the grate, and consoling himself for the
inadequacy of the dinner by the perfection of his cigar, Mr. Jackson
became portentous and communicable.
"If the Beaufort smash comes," he announced, "there are going to be
disclosures."
Archer raised his head quickly: he could never hear the name without
the sharp vision of Beaufort's heavy figure, opulently furred and shod,
advancing through the snow at Skuytercliff.
"There's bound to be," Mr. Jackson continued, "the nastiest kind of a
cleaning up. He hasn't spent all his money on Regina."
"Oh, well--that's discounted, isn't it? My belief is he'll pull out
yet," said the young man, wanting to change the subject.
"Perhaps--perhaps. I know he was to see some of the influential people
today. Of course," Mr. Jackson reluctantly conceded, "it's to be hoped
they can tide him over--this time anyhow. I shouldn't like to think of
poor Regina's spending the rest of her life in some shabby foreign
watering-place for bankrupts."
Archer said nothing. It seemed to him so natural--however tragic--that
money ill-gotten should be cruelly expiated, that his mind, hardly
lingering over Mrs. Beaufort's doom, wandered back to closer questions.
What was the meaning of May's blush when the Countess Olenska had been
mentioned?
Four months had passed since the midsummer day that he and Madame
Olenska had spent together; and since then he had not seen her. He
knew that she had returned to Washington, to the little house which she
and Medora Manson had taken there: he had written to her once--a few
words, asking when they were to meet again--and she had even more
briefly replied: "Not yet."
Since then there had been no farther communication between them, and he
had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned
among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the
scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he
brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him,
his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual
life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency,
blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view
as an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own
room. Absent--that was what he was: so absent from everything most
densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him
to find they still imagined he was there.
He became aware that Mr. Jackson was clearing his throat preparatory to
farther revelations.
"I don't know, of course, how far your wife's family are aware of what
people say about--well, about Madame Olenska's refusal to accept her
husband's latest offer."
Archer was silent, and Mr. Jackson obliquely continued: "It's a
pity--it's certainly a pity--that she refused it."
"A pity? In God's name, why?"
Mr. Jackson looked down his leg to the unwrinkled sock that joined it
to a glossy pump.
"Well--to put it on the lowest ground--what's she going to live on now?"
"Now--?"
"If Beaufort--"
Archer sprang up, his fist banging down on the black walnut-edge of the
writing-table. The wells of the brass double-inkstand danced in their
sockets.
"What the devil do you mean, sir?"
Mr. Jackson, shifting himself slightly in his chair, turned a tranquil
gaze on the young man's burning face.
"Well--I have it on pretty good authority--in fact, on old Catherine's
herself--that the family reduced Countess Olenska's allowance
considerably when she definitely refused to go back to her husband; and
as, by this refusal, she also forfeits the money settled on her when
she married--which Olenski was ready to make over to her if she
returned--why, what the devil do YOU mean, my dear boy, by asking me
what I mean?" Mr. Jackson good-humouredly retorted.
Archer moved toward the mantelpiece and bent over to knock his ashes
into the grate.
"I don't know anything of Madame Olenska's private affairs; but I don't
need to, to be certain that what you insinuate--"
"Oh, I don't: it's Lefferts, for one," Mr. Jackson interposed.
"Lefferts--who made love to her and got snubbed for it!" Archer broke
out contemptuously.
"Ah--DID he?" snapped the other, as if this were exactly the fact he
had been laying a trap for. He still sat sideways from the fire, so
that his hard old gaze held Archer's face as if in a spring of steel.
"Well, well: it's a pity she didn't go back before Beaufort's cropper,"
he repeated. "If she goes NOW, and if he fails, it will only confirm
the general impression: which isn't by any means peculiar to Lefferts,
by the way."
"Oh, she won't go back now: less than ever!" Archer had no sooner said
it than he had once more the feeling that it was exactly what Mr.
Jackson had been waiting for.
The old gentleman considered him attentively. "That's your opinion,
eh? Well, no doubt you know. But everybody will tell you that the few
pennies Medora Manson has left are all in Beaufort's hands; and how the
two women are to keep their heads above water unless he does, I can't
imagine. Of course, Madame Olenska may still soften old Catherine,
who's been the most inexorably opposed to her staying; and old
Catherine could make her any allowance she chooses. But we all know
that she hates parting with good money; and the rest of the family have
no particular interest in keeping Madame Olenska here."
Archer was burning with unavailing wrath: he was exactly in the state
when a man is sure to do something stupid, knowing all the while that
he is doing it.
He saw that Mr. Jackson had been instantly struck by the fact that
Madame Olenska's differences with her grandmother and her other
relations were not known to him, and that the old gentleman had drawn
his own conclusions as to the reasons for Archer's exclusion from the
family councils. This fact warned Archer to go warily; but the
insinuations about Beaufort made him reckless. He was mindful,
however, if not of his own danger, at least of the fact that Mr.
Jackson was under his mother's roof, and consequently his guest. Old
New York scrupulously observed the etiquette of hospitality, and no
discussion with a guest was ever allowed to degenerate into a
disagreement.
"Shall we go up and join my mother?" he suggested curtly, as Mr.
Jackson's last cone of ashes dropped into the brass ashtray at his
elbow.
On the drive homeward May remained oddly silent; through the darkness,
he still felt her enveloped in her menacing blush. What its menace
meant he could not guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the fact
that Madame Olenska's name had evoked it.
They went upstairs, and he turned into the library. She usually
followed him; but he heard her passing down the passage to her bedroom.
"May!" he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a slight
glance of surprise at his tone.
"This lamp is smoking again; I should think the servants might see that
it's kept properly trimmed," he grumbled nervously.
"I'm so sorry: it shan't happen again," she answered, in the firm
bright tone she had learned from her mother; and it exasperated Archer
to feel that she was already beginning to humour him like a younger Mr.
Welland. She bent over to lower the wick, and as the light struck up
on her white shoulders and the clear curves of her face he thought:
"How young she is! For what endless years this life will have to go
on!"
He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding
blood in his veins. "Look here," he said suddenly, "I may have to go
to Washington for a few days--soon; next week perhaps."
Her hand remained on the key of the lamp as she turned to him slowly.
The heat from its flame had brought back a glow to her face, but it
paled as she looked up.
"On business?" she asked, in a tone which implied that there could be
no other conceivable reason, and that she had put the question
automatically, as if merely to finish his own sentence.
"On business, naturally. There's a patent case coming up before the
Supreme Court--" He gave the name of the inventor, and went on
furnishing details with all Lawrence Lefferts's practised glibness,
while she listened attentively, saying at intervals: "Yes, I see."
"The change will do you good," she said simply, when he had finished;
"and you must be sure to go and see Ellen," she added, looking him
straight in the eyes with her cloudless smile, and speaking in the tone
she might have employed in urging him not to neglect some irksome
family duty.
It was the only word that passed between them on the subject; but in
the code in which they had both been trained it meant: "Of course you
understand that I know all that people have been saying about Ellen,
and heartily sympathise with my family in their effort to get her to
return to her husband. I also know that, for some reason you have not
chosen to tell me, you have advised her against this course, which all
the older men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree in
approving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Ellen defies
us all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which Mr.
Sillerton Jackson probably gave you, this evening, the hint that has
made you so irritable.... Hints have indeed not been wanting; but
since you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you this
one myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind can
communicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand
that I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in Washington, and are
perhaps going there expressly for that purpose; and that, since you are
sure to see her, I wish you to do so with my full and explicit
approval--and to take the opportunity of letting her know what the
course of conduct you have encouraged her in is likely to lead to."
Her hand was still on the key of the lamp when the last word of this
mute message reached him. She turned the wick down, lifted off the
globe, and breathed on the sulky flame.
"They smell less if one blows them out," she explained, with her bright
housekeeping air. On the threshold she turned and paused for his kiss.
XXVII.
Wall Street, the next day, had more reassuring reports of Beaufort's
situation. They were not definite, but they were hopeful. It was
generally understood that he could call on powerful influences in case
of emergency, and that he had done so with success; and that evening,
when Mrs. Beaufort appeared at the Opera wearing her old smile and a
new emerald necklace, society drew a breath of relief.
New York was inexorable in its condemnation of business irregularities.
So far there had been no exception to its tacit rule that those who
broke the law of probity must pay; and every one was aware that even
Beaufort and Beaufort's wife would be offered up unflinchingly to this
principle. But to be obliged to offer them up would be not only
painful but inconvenient. The disappearance of the Beauforts would
leave a considerable void in their compact little circle; and those who
were too ignorant or too careless to shudder at the moral catastrophe
bewailed in advance the loss of the best ball-room in New York.
Archer had definitely made up his mind to go to Washington. He was
waiting only for the opening of the law-suit of which he had spoken to
May, so that its date might coincide with that of his visit; but on the
following Tuesday he learned from Mr. Letterblair that the case might
be postponed for several weeks. Nevertheless, he went home that
afternoon determined in any event to leave the next evening. The
chances were that May, who knew nothing of his professional life, and
had never shown any interest in it, would not learn of the
postponement, should it take place, nor remember the names of the
litigants if they were mentioned before her; and at any rate he could
no longer put off seeing Madame Olenska. There were too many things
that he must say to her.
On the Wednesday morning, when he reached his office, Mr. Letterblair
met him with a troubled face. Beaufort, after all, had not managed to
"tide over"; but by setting afloat the rumour that he had done so he
had reassured his depositors, and heavy payments had poured into the
bank till the previous evening, when disturbing reports again began to
predominate. In consequence, a run on the bank had begun, and its
doors were likely to close before the day was over. The ugliest things
were being said of Beaufort's dastardly manoeuvre, and his failure
promised to be one of the most discreditable in the history of Wall
Street.
The extent of the calamity left Mr. Letterblair white and
incapacitated. "I've seen bad things in my time; but nothing as bad as
this. Everybody we know will be hit, one way or another. And what
will be done about Mrs. Beaufort? What CAN be done about her? I pity
Mrs. Manson Mingott as much as anybody: coming at her age, there's no
knowing what effect this affair may have on her. She always believed
in Beaufort--she made a friend of him! And there's the whole Dallas
connection: poor Mrs. Beaufort is related to every one of you. Her
only chance would be to leave her husband--yet how can any one tell her
so? Her duty is at his side; and luckily she seems always to have been
blind to his private weaknesses."
There was a knock, and Mr. Letterblair turned his head sharply. "What
is it? I can't be disturbed."
A clerk brought in a letter for Archer and withdrew. Recognising his
wife's hand, the young man opened the envelope and read: "Won't you
please come up town as early as you can? Granny had a slight stroke
last night. In some mysterious way she found out before any one else
this awful news about the bank. Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and the
idea of the disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a
temperature and can't leave his room. Mamma needs you dreadfully, and
I do hope you can get away at once and go straight to Granny's."
Archer handed the note to his senior partner, and a few minutes later
was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car, which he exchanged at
Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth
Avenue line. It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious vehicle
dropped him at old Catherine's. The sitting-room window on the ground
floor, where she usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure
of her daughter, Mrs. Welland, who signed a haggard welcome as she
caught sight of Archer; and at the door he was met by May. The hall
wore the unnatural appearance peculiar to well-kept houses suddenly
invaded by illness: wraps and furs lay in heaps on the chairs, a
doctor's bag and overcoat were on the table, and beside them letters
and cards had already piled up unheeded.
May looked pale but smiling: Dr. Bencomb, who had just come for the
second time, took a more hopeful view, and Mrs. Mingott's dauntless
determination to live and get well was already having an effect on her
family. May led Archer into the old lady's sitting-room, where the
sliding doors opening into the bedroom had been drawn shut, and the
heavy yellow damask portieres dropped over them; and here Mrs. Welland
communicated to him in horrified undertones the details of the
catastrophe. It appeared that the evening before something dreadful
and mysterious had happened. At about eight o'clock, just after Mrs.
Mingott had finished the game of solitaire that she always played after
dinner, the door-bell had rung, and a lady so thickly veiled that the
servants did not immediately recognise her had asked to be received.
The butler, hearing a familiar voice, had thrown open the sitting-room
door, announcing: "Mrs. Julius Beaufort"--and had then closed it again
on the two ladies. They must have been together, he thought, about an
hour. When Mrs. Mingott's bell rang Mrs. Beaufort had already slipped
away unseen, and the old lady, white and vast and terrible, sat alone
in her great chair, and signed to the butler to help her into her room.
She seemed, at that time, though obviously distressed, in complete
control of her body and brain. The mulatto maid put her to bed,
brought her a cup of tea as usual, laid everything straight in the
room, and went away; but at three in the morning the bell rang again,
and the two servants, hastening in at this unwonted summons (for old
Catherine usually slept like a baby), had found their mistress sitting
up against her pillows with a crooked smile on her face and one little
hand hanging limp from its huge arm.
The stroke had clearly been a slight one, for she was able to
articulate and to make her wishes known; and soon after the doctor's
first visit she had begun to regain control of her facial muscles. But
the alarm had been great; and proportionately great was the indignation
when it was gathered from Mrs. Mingott's fragmentary phrases that
Regina Beaufort had come to ask her--incredible effrontery!--to back up
her husband, see them through--not to "desert" them, as she called
it--in fact to induce the whole family to cover and condone their
monstrous dishonour.
"I said to her: 'Honour's always been honour, and honesty honesty, in
Manson Mingott's house, and will be till I'm carried out of it feet
first,'" the old woman had stammered into her daughter's ear, in the
thick voice of the partly paralysed. "And when she said: 'But my
name, Auntie--my name's Regina Dallas,' I said: 'It was Beaufort when
he covered you with jewels, and it's got to stay Beaufort now that he's
covered you with shame.'"
So much, with tears and gasps of horror, Mrs. Welland imparted,
blanched and demolished by the unwonted obligation of having at last to
fix her eyes on the unpleasant and the discreditable. "If only I could
keep it from your father-in-law: he always says: 'Augusta, for pity's
sake, don't destroy my last illusions'--and how am I to prevent his
knowing these horrors?" the poor lady wailed.
"After all, Mamma, he won't have SEEN them," her daughter suggested;
and Mrs. Welland sighed: "Ah, no; thank heaven he's safe in bed. And
Dr. Bencomb has promised to keep him there till poor Mamma is better,
and Regina has been got away somewhere."
Archer had seated himself near the window and was gazing out blankly at
the deserted thoroughfare. It was evident that he had been summoned
rather for the moral support of the stricken ladies than because of any
specific aid that he could render. Mr. Lovell Mingott had been
telegraphed for, and messages were being despatched by hand to the
members of the family living in New York; and meanwhile there was
nothing to do but to discuss in hushed tones the consequences of
Beaufort's dishonour and of his wife's unjustifiable action.
Mrs. Lovell Mingott, who had been in another room writing notes,
presently reappeared, and added her voice to the discussion. In THEIR
day, the elder ladies agreed, the wife of a man who had done anything
disgraceful in business had only one idea: to efface herself, to
disappear with him. "There was the case of poor Grandmamma Spicer;
your great-grandmother, May. Of course," Mrs. Welland hastened to add,
"your great-grandfather's money difficulties were private--losses at
cards, or signing a note for somebody--I never quite knew, because
Mamma would never speak of it. But she was brought up in the country
because her mother had to leave New York after the disgrace, whatever
it was: they lived up the Hudson alone, winter and summer, till Mamma
was sixteen. It would never have occurred to Grandmamma Spicer to ask
the family to 'countenance' her, as I understand Regina calls it;
though a private disgrace is nothing compared to the scandal of ruining
hundreds of innocent people."
"Yes, it would be more becoming in Regina to hide her own countenance
than to talk about other people's," Mrs. Lovell Mingott agreed. "I
understand that the emerald necklace she wore at the Opera last Friday
had been sent on approval from Ball and Black's in the afternoon. I
wonder if they'll ever get it back?"
Archer listened unmoved to the relentless chorus. The idea of absolute
financial probity as the first law of a gentleman's code was too deeply
ingrained in him for sentimental considerations to weaken it. An
adventurer like Lemuel Struthers might build up the millions of his
Shoe Polish on any number of shady dealings; but unblemished honesty
was the noblesse oblige of old financial New York. Nor did Mrs.
Beaufort's fate greatly move Archer. He felt, no doubt, more sorry for
her than her indignant relatives; but it seemed to him that the tie
between husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity, should be
indissoluble in misfortune. As Mr. Letterblair had said, a wife's
place was at her husband's side when he was in trouble; but society's
place was not at his side, and Mrs. Beaufort's cool assumption that it
was seemed almost to make her his accomplice. The mere idea of a
woman's appealing to her family to screen her husband's business
dishonour was inadmissible, since it was the one thing that the Family,
as an institution, could not do.
The mulatto maid called Mrs. Lovell Mingott into the hall, and the
latter came back in a moment with a frowning brow.
"She wants me to telegraph for Ellen Olenska. I had written to Ellen,
of course, and to Medora; but now it seems that's not enough. I'm to
telegraph to her immediately, and to tell her that she's to come alone."
The announcement was received in silence. Mrs. Welland sighed
resignedly, and May rose from her seat and went to gather up some
newspapers that had been scattered on the floor.
"I suppose it must be done," Mrs. Lovell Mingott continued, as if
hoping to be contradicted; and May turned back toward the middle of the
room.
"Of course it must be done," she said. "Granny knows what she wants,
and we must carry out all her wishes. Shall I write the telegram for
you, Auntie? If it goes at once Ellen can probably catch tomorrow
morning's train." She pronounced the syllables of the name with a
peculiar clearness, as if she had tapped on two silver bells.
"Well, it can't go at once. Jasper and the pantry-boy are both out
with notes and telegrams."
May turned to her husband with a smile. "But here's Newland, ready to
do anything. Will you take the telegram, Newland? There'll be just
time before luncheon."
Archer rose with a murmur of readiness, and she seated herself at old
Catherine's rosewood "Bonheur du Jour," and wrote out the message in
her large immature hand. When it was written she blotted it neatly and
handed it to Archer.
"What a pity," she said, "that you and Ellen will cross each other on
the way!--Newland," she added, turning to her mother and aunt, "is
obliged to go to Washington about a patent law-suit that is coming up
before the Supreme Court. I suppose Uncle Lovell will be back by
tomorrow night, and with Granny improving so much it doesn't seem right
to ask Newland to give up an important engagement for the firm--does
it?"
She paused, as if for an answer, and Mrs. Welland hastily declared:
"Oh, of course not, darling. Your Granny would be the last person to
wish it." As Archer left the room with the telegram, he heard his
mother-in-law add, presumably to Mrs. Lovell Mingott: "But why on
earth she should make you telegraph for Ellen Olenska--" and May's
clear voice rejoin: "Perhaps it's to urge on her again that after all
her duty is with her husband."
The outer door closed on Archer and he walked hastily away toward the
telegraph office.
XXVIII.
"Ol-ol--howjer spell it, anyhow?" asked the tart young lady to whom
Archer had pushed his wife's telegram across the brass ledge of the
Western Union office.
"Olenska--O-len-ska," he repeated, drawing back the message in order to
print out the foreign syllables above May's rambling script.
"It's an unlikely name for a New York telegraph office; at least in
this quarter," an unexpected voice observed; and turning around Archer
saw Lawrence Lefferts at his elbow, pulling an imperturbable moustache
and affecting not to glance at the message.
"Hallo, Newland: thought I'd catch you here. I've just heard of old
Mrs. Mingott's stroke; and as I was on my way to the house I saw you
turning down this street and nipped after you. I suppose you've come
from there?"
Archer nodded, and pushed his telegram under the lattice.
"Very bad, eh?" Lefferts continued. "Wiring to the family, I suppose.
I gather it IS bad, if you're including Countess Olenska."
Archer's lips stiffened; he felt a savage impulse to dash his fist into
the long vain handsome face at his side.
"Why?" he questioned.
Lefferts, who was known to shrink from discussion, raised his eye-brows
with an ironic grimace that warned the other of the watching damsel
behind the lattice. Nothing could be worse "form" the look reminded
Archer, than any display of temper in a public place.
Archer had never been more indifferent to the requirements of form; but
his impulse to do Lawrence Lefferts a physical injury was only
momentary. The idea of bandying Ellen Olenska's name with him at such
a time, and on whatsoever provocation, was unthinkable. He paid for
his telegram, and the two young men went out together into the street.
There Archer, having regained his self-control, went on: "Mrs. Mingott
is much better: the doctor feels no anxiety whatever"; and Lefferts,
with profuse expressions of relief, asked him if he had heard that
there were beastly bad rumours again about Beaufort....
That afternoon the announcement of the Beaufort failure was in all the
papers. It overshadowed the report of Mrs. Manson Mingott's stroke,
and only the few who had heard of the mysterious connection between the
two events thought of ascribing old Catherine's illness to anything but
the accumulation of flesh and years.
The whole of New York was darkened by the tale of Beaufort's dishonour.
There had never, as Mr. Letterblair said, been a worse case in his
memory, nor, for that matter, in the memory of the far-off Letterblair
who had given his name to the firm. The bank had continued to take in
money for a whole day after its failure was inevitable; and as many of
its clients belonged to one or another of the ruling clans, Beaufort's
duplicity seemed doubly cynical. If Mrs. Beaufort had not taken the
tone that such misfortunes (the word was her own) were "the test of
friendship," compassion for her might have tempered the general
indignation against her husband. As it was--and especially after the
object of her nocturnal visit to Mrs. Manson Mingott had become
known--her cynicism was held to exceed his; and she had not the
excuse--nor her detractors the satisfaction--of pleading that she was
"a foreigner." It was some comfort (to those whose securities were not
in jeopardy) to be able to remind themselves that Beaufort WAS; but,
after all, if a Dallas of South Carolina took his view of the case, and
glibly talked of his soon being "on his feet again," the argument lost
its edge, and there was nothing to do but to accept this awful evidence
of the indissolubility of marriage. Society must manage to get on
without the Beauforts, and there was an end of it--except indeed for
such hapless victims of the disaster as Medora Manson, the poor old
Miss Lannings, and certain other misguided ladies of good family who,
if only they had listened to Mr. Henry van der Luyden ...
"The best thing the Beauforts can do," said Mrs. Archer, summing it up
as if she were pronouncing a diagnosis and prescribing a course of
treatment, "is to go and live at Regina's little place in North
Carolina. Beaufort has always kept a racing stable, and he had better
breed trotting horses. I should say he had all the qualities of a
successful horsedealer." Every one agreed with her, but no one
condescended to enquire what the Beauforts really meant to do.
The next day Mrs. Manson Mingott was much better: she recovered her
voice sufficiently to give orders that no one should mention the
Beauforts to her again, and asked--when Dr. Bencomb appeared--what in
the world her family meant by making such a fuss about her health.
"If people of my age WILL eat chicken-salad in the evening what are
they to expect?" she enquired; and, the doctor having opportunely
modified her dietary, the stroke was transformed into an attack of
indigestion. But in spite of her firm tone old Catherine did not
wholly recover her former attitude toward life. The growing remoteness
of old age, though it had not diminished her curiosity about her
neighbours, had blunted her never very lively compassion for their
troubles; and she seemed to have no difficulty in putting the Beaufort
disaster out of her mind. But for the first time she became absorbed
in her own symptoms, and began to take a sentimental interest in
certain members of her family to whom she had hitherto been
contemptuously indifferent.
Mr. Welland, in particular, had the privilege of attracting her notice.
Of her sons-in-law he was the one she had most consistently ignored;
and all his wife's efforts to represent him as a man of forceful
character and marked intellectual ability (if he had only "chosen") had
been met with a derisive chuckle. But his eminence as a valetudinarian
now made him an object of engrossing interest, and Mrs. Mingott issued
an imperial summons to him to come and compare diets as soon as his
temperature permitted; for old Catherine was now the first to recognise
that one could not be too careful about temperatures.
Twenty-four hours after Madame Olenska's summons a telegram announced
that she would arrive from Washington on the evening of the following
day. At the Wellands', where the Newland Archers chanced to be
lunching, the question as to who should meet her at Jersey City was
immediately raised; and the material difficulties amid which the
Welland household struggled as if it had been a frontier outpost, lent
animation to the debate. It was agreed that Mrs. Welland could not
possibly go to Jersey City because she was to accompany her husband to
old Catherine's that afternoon, and the brougham could not be spared,
since, if Mr. Welland were "upset" by seeing his mother-in-law for the
first time after her attack, he might have to be taken home at a
moment's notice. The Welland sons would of course be "down town," Mr.
Lovell Mingott would be just hurrying back from his shooting, and the
Mingott carriage engaged in meeting him; and one could not ask May, at
the close of a winter afternoon, to go alone across the ferry to Jersey
City, even in her own carriage. Nevertheless, it might appear
inhospitable--and contrary to old Catherine's express wishes--if Madame
Olenska were allowed to arrive without any of the family being at the
station to receive her. It was just like Ellen, Mrs. Welland's tired
voice implied, to place the family in such a dilemma. "It's always one
thing after another," the poor lady grieved, in one of her rare revolts
against fate; "the only thing that makes me think Mamma must be less
well than Dr. Bencomb will admit is this morbid desire to have Ellen
come at once, however inconvenient it is to meet her."
The words had been thoughtless, as the utterances of impatience often
are; and Mr. Welland was upon them with a pounce.
"Augusta," he said, turning pale and laying down his fork, "have you
any other reason for thinking that Bencomb is less to be relied on than
he was? Have you noticed that he has been less conscientious than
usual in following up my case or your mother's?"
It was Mrs. Welland's turn to grow pale as the endless consequences of
her blunder unrolled themselves before her; but she managed to laugh,
and take a second helping of scalloped oysters, before she said,
struggling back into her old armour of cheerfulness: "My dear, how
could you imagine such a thing? I only meant that, after the decided
stand Mamma took about its being Ellen's duty to go back to her
husband, it seems strange that she should be seized with this sudden
whim to see her, when there are half a dozen other grandchildren that
she might have asked for. But we must never forget that Mamma, in
spite of her wonderful vitality, is a very old woman."
Mr. Welland's brow remained clouded, and it was evident that his
perturbed imagination had fastened at once on this last remark. "Yes:
your mother's a very old woman; and for all we know Bencomb may not be
as successful with very old people. As you say, my dear, it's always
one thing after another; and in another ten or fifteen years I suppose
I shall have the pleasing duty of looking about for a new doctor. It's
always better to make such a change before it's absolutely necessary."
And having arrived at this Spartan decision Mr. Welland firmly took up
his fork.
"But all the while," Mrs. Welland began again, as she rose from the
luncheon-table, and led the way into the wilderness of purple satin and
malachite known as the back drawing-room, "I don't see how Ellen's to
be got here tomorrow evening; and I do like to have things settled for
at least twenty-four hours ahead."
Archer turned from the fascinated contemplation of a small painting
representing two Cardinals carousing, in an octagonal ebony frame set
with medallions of onyx.
"Shall I fetch her?" he proposed. "I can easily get away from the
office in time to meet the brougham at the ferry, if May will send it
there." His heart was beating excitedly as he spoke.
Mrs. Welland heaved a sigh of gratitude, and May, who had moved away to
the window, turned to shed on him a beam of approval. "So you see,
Mamma, everything WILL be settled twenty-four hours in advance," she
said, stooping over to kiss her mother's troubled forehead.
May's brougham awaited her at the door, and she was to drive Archer to
Union Square, where he could pick up a Broadway car to carry him to the
office. As she settled herself in her corner she said: "I didn't want
to worry Mamma by raising fresh obstacles; but how can you meet Ellen
tomorrow, and bring her back to New York, when you're going to
Washington?"
"Oh, I'm not going," Archer answered.
"Not going? Why, what's happened?" Her voice was as clear as a bell,
and full of wifely solicitude.
"The case is off--postponed."
"Postponed? How odd! I saw a note this morning from Mr. Letterblair
to Mamma saying that he was going to Washington tomorrow for the big
patent case that he was to argue before the Supreme Court. You said it
was a patent case, didn't you?"
"Well--that's it: the whole office can't go. Letterblair decided to go
this morning."
"Then it's NOT postponed?" she continued, with an insistence so unlike
her that he felt the blood rising to his face, as if he were blushing
for her unwonted lapse from all the traditional delicacies.
"No: but my going is," he answered, cursing the unnecessary
explanations that he had given when he had announced his intention of
going to Washington, and wondering where he had read that clever liars
give details, but that the cleverest do not. It did not hurt him half
as much to tell May an untruth as to see her trying to pretend that she
had not detected him.
"I'm not going till later on: luckily for the convenience of your
family," he continued, taking base refuge in sarcasm. As he spoke he
felt that she was looking at him, and he turned his eyes to hers in
order not to appear to be avoiding them. Their glances met for a
second, and perhaps let them into each other's meanings more deeply
than either cared to go.
"Yes; it IS awfully convenient," May brightly agreed, "that you should
be able to meet Ellen after all; you saw how much Mamma appreciated
your offering to do it."
"Oh, I'm delighted to do it." The carriage stopped, and as he jumped
out she leaned to him and laid her hand on his. "Good-bye, dearest,"
she said, her eyes so blue that he wondered afterward if they had shone
on him through tears.
He turned away and hurried across Union Square, repeating to himself,
in a sort of inward chant: "It's all of two hours from Jersey City to
old Catherine's. It's all of two hours--and it may be more."
XXIX.
His wife's dark blue brougham (with the wedding varnish still on it)
met Archer at the ferry, and conveyed him luxuriously to the
Pennsylvania terminus in Jersey City.
It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the big
reverberating station. As he paced the platform, waiting for the
Washington express, he remembered that there were people who thought
there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the
trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York.
They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the
building of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the
invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephonic
communication without wires, and other Arabian Night marvels.
"I don't care which of their visions comes true," Archer mused, "as
long as the tunnel isn't built yet." In his senseless school-boy
happiness he pictured Madame Olenska's descent from the train, his
discovery of her a long way off, among the throngs of meaningless
faces, her clinging to his arm as he guided her to the carriage, their
slow approach to the wharf among slipping horses, laden carts,
vociferating teamsters, and then the startling quiet of the ferry-boat,
where they would sit side by side under the snow, in the motionless
carriage, while the earth seemed to glide away under them, rolling to
the other side of the sun. It was incredible, the number of things he
had to say to her, and in what eloquent order they were forming
themselves on his lips ...
The clanging and groaning of the train came nearer, and it staggered
slowly into the station like a prey-laden monster into its lair.
Archer pushed forward, elbowing through the crowd, and staring blindly
into window after window of the high-hung carriages. And then,
suddenly, he saw Madame Olenska's pale and surprised face close at
hand, and had again the mortified sensation of having forgotten what
she looked like.
They reached each other, their hands met, and he drew her arm through
his. "This way--I have the carriage," he said.
After that it all happened as he had dreamed. He helped her into the
brougham with her bags, and had afterward the vague recollection of
having properly reassured her about her grandmother and given her a
summary of the Beaufort situation (he was struck by the softness of
her: "Poor Regina!"). Meanwhile the carriage had worked its way out
of the coil about the station, and they were crawling down the slippery
incline to the wharf, menaced by swaying coal-carts, bewildered horses,
dishevelled express-wagons, and an empty hearse--ah, that hearse! She
shut her eyes as it passed, and clutched at Archer's hand.
"If only it doesn't mean--poor Granny!"
"Oh, no, no--she's much better--she's all right, really. There--we've
passed it!" he exclaimed, as if that made all the difference. Her hand
remained in his, and as the carriage lurched across the gang-plank onto
the ferry he bent over, unbuttoned her tight brown glove, and kissed
her palm as if he had kissed a relic. She disengaged herself with a
faint smile, and he said: "You didn't expect me today?"
"Oh, no."
"I meant to go to Washington to see you. I'd made all my
arrangements--I very nearly crossed you in the train."
"Oh--" she exclaimed, as if terrified by the narrowness of their escape.
"Do you know--I hardly remembered you?"
"Hardly remembered me?"
"I mean: how shall I explain? I--it's always so. EACH TIME YOU HAPPEN
TO ME ALL OVER AGAIN."
"Oh, yes: I know! I know!"
"Does it--do I too: to you?" he insisted.
She nodded, looking out of the window.
"Ellen--Ellen--Ellen!"
She made no answer, and he sat in silence, watching her profile grow
indistinct against the snow-streaked dusk beyond the window. What had
she been doing in all those four long months, he wondered? How little
they knew of each other, after all! The precious moments were slipping
away, but he had forgotten everything that he had meant to say to her
and could only helplessly brood on the mystery of their remoteness and
their proximity, which seemed to be symbolised by the fact of their
sitting so close to each other, and yet being unable to see each
other's faces.
"What a pretty carriage! Is it May's?" she asked, suddenly turning her
face from the window.
"Yes."
"It was May who sent you to fetch me, then? How kind of her!"
He made no answer for a moment; then he said explosively: "Your
husband's secretary came to see me the day after we met in Boston."
In his brief letter to her he had made no allusion to M. Riviere's
visit, and his intention had been to bury the incident in his bosom.
But her reminder that they were in his wife's carriage provoked him to
an impulse of retaliation. He would see if she liked his reference to
Riviere any better than he liked hers to May! As on certain other
occasions when he had expected to shake her out of her usual composure,
she betrayed no sign of surprise: and at once he concluded: "He writes
to her, then."
"M. Riviere went to see you?"
"Yes: didn't you know?"
"No," she answered simply.
"And you're not surprised?"
She hesitated. "Why should I be? He told me in Boston that he knew
you; that he'd met you in England I think."
"Ellen--I must ask you one thing."
"Yes."
"I wanted to ask it after I saw him, but I couldn't put it in a letter.
It was Riviere who helped you to get away--when you left your husband?"
His heart was beating suffocatingly. Would she meet this question with
the same composure?
"Yes: I owe him a great debt," she answered, without the least tremor
in her quiet voice.
Her tone was so natural, so almost indifferent, that Archer's turmoil
subsided. Once more she had managed, by her sheer simplicity, to make
him feel stupidly conventional just when he thought he was flinging
convention to the winds.
"I think you're the most honest woman I ever met!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, no--but probably one of the least fussy," she answered, a smile in
her voice.
"Call it what you like: you look at things as they are."
"Ah--I've had to. I've had to look at the Gorgon."
"Well--it hasn't blinded you! You've seen that she's just an old bogey
like all the others."
"She doesn't blind one; but she dries up one's tears."
The answer checked the pleading on Archer's lips: it seemed to come
from depths of experience beyond his reach. The slow advance of the
ferry-boat had ceased, and her bows bumped against the piles of the
slip with a violence that made the brougham stagger, and flung Archer
and Madame Olenska against each other. The young man, trembling, felt
the pressure of her shoulder, and passed his arm about her.
"If you're not blind, then, you must see that this can't last."
"What can't?"
"Our being together--and not together."
"No. You ought not to have come today," she said in an altered voice;
and suddenly she turned, flung her arms about him and pressed her lips
to his. At the same moment the carriage began to move, and a gas-lamp
at the head of the slip flashed its light into the window. She drew
away, and they sat silent and motionless while the brougham struggled
through the congestion of carriages about the ferry-landing. As they
gained the street Archer began to speak hurriedly.
"Don't be afraid of me: you needn't squeeze yourself back into your
corner like that. A stolen kiss isn't what I want. Look: I'm not even
trying to touch the sleeve of your jacket. Don't suppose that I don't
understand your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between us
dwindle into an ordinary hole-and-corner love-affair. I couldn't have
spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm
looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great
flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered,
and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now
and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit
perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my
mind, just quietly trusting to it to come true."
For a moment she made no reply; then she asked, hardly above a whisper:
"What do you mean by trusting to it to come true?"
"Why--you know it will, don't you?"
"Your vision of you and me together?" She burst into a sudden hard
laugh. "You choose your place well to put it to me!"
"Do you mean because we're in my wife's brougham? Shall we get out and
walk, then? I don't suppose you mind a little snow?"
She laughed again, more gently. "No; I shan't get out and walk,
because my business is to get to Granny's as quickly as I can. And
you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities."
"I don't know what you mean by realities. The only reality to me is
this."
She met the words with a long silence, during which the carriage rolled
down an obscure side-street and then turned into the searching
illumination of Fifth Avenue.
"Is it your idea, then, that I should live with you as your
mistress--since I can't be your wife?" she asked.
The crudeness of the question startled him: the word was one that women
of his class fought shy of, even when their talk flitted closest about
the topic. He noticed that Madame Olenska pronounced it as if it had a
recognised place in her vocabulary, and he wondered if it had been used
familiarly in her presence in the horrible life she had fled from. Her
question pulled him up with a jerk, and he floundered.
"I want--I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words
like that--categories like that--won't exist. Where we shall be simply
two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each
other; and nothing else on earth will matter."
She drew a deep sigh that ended in another laugh. "Oh, my dear--where
is that country? Have you ever been there?" she asked; and as he
remained sullenly dumb she went on: "I know so many who've tried to
find it; and, believe me, they all got out by mistake at wayside
stations: at places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte Carlo--and it
wasn't at all different from the old world they'd left, but only rather
smaller and dingier and more promiscuous."
He had never heard her speak in such a tone, and he remembered the
phrase she had used a little while before.
"Yes, the Gorgon HAS dried your tears," he said.
"Well, she opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say that she blinds
people. What she does is just the contrary--she fastens their eyelids
open, so that they're never again in the blessed darkness. Isn't there
a Chinese torture like that? There ought to be. Ah, believe me, it's
a miserable little country!"
The carriage had crossed Forty-second Street: May's sturdy
brougham-horse was carrying them northward as if he had been a Kentucky
trotter. Archer choked with the sense of wasted minutes and vain words.
"Then what, exactly, is your plan for us?" he asked.
"For US? But there's no US in that sense! We're near each other only
if we stay far from each other. Then we can be ourselves. Otherwise
we're only Newland Archer, the husband of Ellen Olenska's cousin, and
Ellen Olenska, the cousin of Newland Archer's wife, trying to be happy
behind the backs of the people who trust them."
"Ah, I'm beyond that," he groaned.
"No, you're not! You've never been beyond. And I have," she said, in
a strange voice, "and I know what it looks like there."
He sat silent, dazed with inarticulate pain. Then he groped in the
darkness of the carriage for the little bell that signalled orders to
the coachman. He remembered that May rang twice when she wished to
stop. He pressed the bell, and the carriage drew up beside the
curbstone.
"Why are we stopping? This is not Granny's," Madame Olenska exclaimed.
"No: I shall get out here," he stammered, opening the door and jumping
to the pavement. By the light of a street-lamp he saw her startled
face, and the instinctive motion she made to detain him. He closed the
door, and leaned for a moment in the window.
"You're right: I ought not to have come today," he said, lowering his
voice so that the coachman should not hear. She bent forward, and
seemed about to speak; but he had already called out the order to drive
on, and the carriage rolled away while he stood on the corner. The
snow was over, and a tingling wind had sprung up, that lashed his face
as he stood gazing. Suddenly he felt something stiff and cold on his
lashes, and perceived that he had been crying, and that the wind had
frozen his tears.
He thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked at a sharp pace down
Fifth Avenue to his own house.
XXX.
That evening when Archer came down before dinner he found the
drawing-room empty.
He and May were dining alone, all the family engagements having been
postponed since Mrs. Manson Mingott's illness; and as May was the more
punctual of the two he was surprised that she had not preceded him. He
knew that she was at home, for while he dressed he had heard her moving
about in her room; and he wondered what had delayed her.
He had fallen into the way of dwelling on such conjectures as a means
of tying his thoughts fast to reality. Sometimes he felt as if he had
found the clue to his father-in-law's absorption in trifles; perhaps
even Mr. Welland, long ago, had had escapes and visions, and had
conjured up all the hosts of domesticity to defend himself against them.
When May appeared he thought she looked tired. She had put on the
low-necked and tightly-laced dinner-dress which the Mingott ceremonial
exacted on the most informal occasions, and had built her fair hair
into its usual accumulated coils; and her face, in contrast, was wan
and almost faded. But she shone on him with her usual tenderness, and
her eyes had kept the blue dazzle of the day before.
"What became of you, dear?" she asked. "I was waiting at Granny's, and
Ellen came alone, and said she had dropped you on the way because you
had to rush off on business. There's nothing wrong?"
"Only some letters I'd forgotten, and wanted to get off before dinner."
"Ah--" she said; and a moment afterward: "I'm sorry you didn't come to
Granny's--unless the letters were urgent."
"They were," he rejoined, surprised at her insistence. "Besides, I
don't see why I should have gone to your grandmother's. I didn't know
you were there."
She turned and moved to the looking-glass above the mantel-piece. As
she stood there, lifting her long arm to fasten a puff that had slipped
from its place in her intricate hair, Archer was struck by something
languid and inelastic in her attitude, and wondered if the deadly
monotony of their lives had laid its weight on her also. Then he
remembered that, as he had left the house that morning, she had called
over the stairs that she would meet him at her grandmother's so that
they might drive home together. He had called back a cheery "Yes!" and
then, absorbed in other visions, had forgotten his promise. Now he was
smitten with compunction, yet irritated that so trifling an omission
should be stored up against him after nearly two years of marriage. He
was weary of living in a perpetual tepid honeymoon, without the
temperature of passion yet with all its exactions. If May had spoken
out her grievances (he suspected her of many) he might have laughed
them away; but she was trained to conceal imaginary wounds under a
Spartan smile.
To disguise his own annoyance he asked how her grandmother was, and she
answered that Mrs. Mingott was still improving, but had been rather
disturbed by the last news about the Beauforts.
"What news?"
"It seems they're going to stay in New York. I believe he's going into
an insurance business, or something. They're looking about for a small
house."
The preposterousness of the case was beyond discussion, and they went
in to dinner. During dinner their talk moved in its usual limited
circle; but Archer noticed that his wife made no allusion to Madame
Olenska, nor to old Catherine's reception of her. He was thankful for
the fact, yet felt it to be vaguely ominous.
They went up to the library for coffee, and Archer lit a cigar and took
down a volume of Michelet. He had taken to history in the evenings
since May had shown a tendency to ask him to read aloud whenever she
saw him with a volume of poetry: not that he disliked the sound of his
own voice, but because he could always foresee her comments on what he
read. In the days of their engagement she had simply (as he now
perceived) echoed what he told her; but since he had ceased to provide
her with opinions she had begun to hazard her own, with results
destructive to his enjoyment of the works commented on.
Seeing that he had chosen history she fetched her workbasket, drew up
an arm-chair to the green-shaded student lamp, and uncovered a cushion
she was embroidering for his sofa. She was not a clever needle-woman;
her large capable hands were made for riding, rowing and open-air
activities; but since other wives embroidered cushions for their
husbands she did not wish to omit this last link in her devotion.
She was so placed that Archer, by merely raising his eyes, could see
her bent above her work-frame, her ruffled elbow-sleeves slipping back
from her firm round arms, the betrothal sapphire shining on her left
hand above her broad gold wedding-ring, and the right hand slowly and
laboriously stabbing the canvas. As she sat thus, the lamplight full
on her clear brow, he said to himself with a secret dismay that he
would always know the thoughts behind it, that never, in all the years
to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a
weakness, a cruelty or an emotion. She had spent her poetry and
romance on their short courting: the function was exhausted because the
need was past. Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother,
and mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr.
Welland. He laid down his book and stood up impatiently; and at once
she raised her head.
"What's the matter?"
"The room is stifling: I want a little air."
He had insisted that the library curtains should draw backward and
forward on a rod, so that they might be closed in the evening, instead
of remaining nailed to a gilt cornice, and immovably looped up over
layers of lace, as in the drawing-room; and he pulled them back and
pushed up the sash, leaning out into the icy night. The mere fact of
not looking at May, seated beside his table, under his lamp, the fact
of seeing other houses, roofs, chimneys, of getting the sense of other
lives outside his own, other cities beyond New York, and a whole world
beyond his world, cleared his brain and made it easier to breathe.
After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few minutes he heard
her say: "Newland! Do shut the window. You'll catch your death."
He pulled the sash down and turned back. "Catch my death!" he echoed;
and he felt like adding: "But I've caught it already. I AM dead--I've
been dead for months and months."
And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild suggestion. What
if it were SHE who was dead! If she were going to die--to die
soon--and leave him free! The sensation of standing there, in that
warm familiar room, and looking at her, and wishing her dead, was so
strange, so fascinating and overmastering, that its enormity did not
immediately strike him. He simply felt that chance had given him a new
possibility to which his sick soul might cling. Yes, May might
die--people did: young people, healthy people like herself: she might
die, and set him suddenly free.
She glanced up, and he saw by her widening eyes that there must be
something strange in his own.
"Newland! Are you ill?"
He shook his head and turned toward his arm-chair. She bent over her
work-frame, and as he passed he laid his hand on her hair. "Poor May!"
he said.
"Poor? Why poor?" she echoed with a strained laugh.
"Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you,"
he rejoined, laughing also.
For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed
over her work: "I shall never worry if you're happy."
"Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless I can open the windows!"
"In THIS weather?" she remonstrated; and with a sigh he buried his head
in his book.
Six or seven days passed. Archer heard nothing from Madame Olenska,
and became aware that her name would not be mentioned in his presence
by any member of the family. He did not try to see her; to do so while
she was at old Catherine's guarded bedside would have been almost
impossible. In the uncertainty of the situation he let himself drift,
conscious, somewhere below the surface of his thoughts, of a resolve
which had come to him when he had leaned out from his library window
into the icy night. The strength of that resolve made it easy to wait
and make no sign.
Then one day May told him that Mrs. Manson Mingott had asked to see
him. There was nothing surprising in the request, for the old lady was
steadily recovering, and she had always openly declared that she
preferred Archer to any of her other grandsons-in-law. May gave the
message with evident pleasure: she was proud of old Catherine's
appreciation of her husband.
There was a moment's pause, and then Archer felt it incumbent on him to
say: "All right. Shall we go together this afternoon?"
His wife's face brightened, but she instantly answered: "Oh, you'd much
better go alone. It bores Granny to see the same people too often."
Archer's heart was beating violently when he rang old Mrs. Mingott's
bell. He had wanted above all things to go alone, for he felt sure the
visit would give him the chance of saying a word in private to the
Countess Olenska. He had determined to wait till the chance presented
itself naturally; and here it was, and here he was on the doorstep.
Behind the door, behind the curtains of the yellow damask room next to
the hall, she was surely awaiting him; in another moment he should see
her, and be able to speak to her before she led him to the sick-room.
He wanted only to put one question: after that his course would be
clear. What he wished to ask was simply the date of her return to
Washington; and that question she could hardly refuse to answer.
But in the yellow sitting-room it was the mulatto maid who waited. Her
white teeth shining like a keyboard, she pushed back the sliding doors
and ushered him into old Catherine's presence.
The old woman sat in a vast throne-like arm-chair near her bed. Beside
her was a mahogany stand bearing a cast bronze lamp with an engraved
globe, over which a green paper shade had been balanced. There was not
a book or a newspaper in reach, nor any evidence of feminine
employment: conversation had always been Mrs. Mingott's sole pursuit,
and she would have scorned to feign an interest in fancywork.
Archer saw no trace of the slight distortion left by her stroke. She
merely looked paler, with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of
her obesity; and, in the fluted mob-cap tied by a starched bow between
her first two chins, and the muslin kerchief crossed over her billowing
purple dressing-gown, she seemed like some shrewd and kindly ancestress
of her own who might have yielded too freely to the pleasures of the
table.
She held out one of the little hands that nestled in a hollow of her
huge lap like pet animals, and called to the maid: "Don't let in any
one else. If my daughters call, say I'm asleep."
The maid disappeared, and the old lady turned to her grandson.
"My dear, am I perfectly hideous?" she asked gaily, launching out one
hand in search of the folds of muslin on her inaccessible bosom. "My
daughters tell me it doesn't matter at my age--as if hideousness didn't
matter all the more the harder it gets to conceal!"
"My dear, you're handsomer than ever!" Archer rejoined in the same
tone; and she threw back her head and laughed.
"Ah, but not as handsome as Ellen!" she jerked out, twinkling at him
maliciously; and before he could answer she added: "Was she so awfully
handsome the day you drove her up from the ferry?"
He laughed, and she continued: "Was it because you told her so that
she had to put you out on the way? In my youth young men didn't desert
pretty women unless they were made to!" She gave another chuckle, and
interrupted it to say almost querulously: "It's a pity she didn't
marry you; I always told her so. It would have spared me all this
worry. But who ever thought of sparing their grandmother worry?"
Archer wondered if her illness had blurred her faculties; but suddenly
she broke out: "Well, it's settled, anyhow: she's going to stay with
me, whatever the rest of the family say! She hadn't been here five
minutes before I'd have gone down on my knees to keep her--if only, for
the last twenty years, I'd been able to see where the floor was!"
Archer listened in silence, and she went on: "They'd talked me over,
as no doubt you know: persuaded me, Lovell, and Letterblair, and
Augusta Welland, and all the rest of them, that I must hold out and cut
off her allowance, till she was made to see that it was her duty to go
back to Olenski. They thought they'd convinced me when the secretary,
or whatever he was, came out with the last proposals: handsome
proposals I confess they were. After all, marriage is marriage, and
money's money--both useful things in their way ... and I didn't know
what to answer--" She broke off and drew a long breath, as if speaking
had become an effort. "But the minute I laid eyes on her, I said:
'You sweet bird, you! Shut you up in that cage again? Never!' And
now it's settled that she's to stay here and nurse her Granny as long
as there's a Granny to nurse. It's not a gay prospect, but she doesn't
mind; and of course I've told Letterblair that she's to be given her
proper allowance."
The young man heard her with veins aglow; but in his confusion of mind
he hardly knew whether her news brought joy or pain. He had so
definitely decided on the course he meant to pursue that for the moment
he could not readjust his thoughts. But gradually there stole over him
the delicious sense of difficulties deferred and opportunities
miraculously provided. If Ellen had consented to come and live with
her grandmother it must surely be because she had recognised the
impossibility of giving him up. This was her answer to his final
appeal of the other day: if she would not take the extreme step he had
urged, she had at last yielded to half-measures. He sank back into the
thought with the involuntary relief of a man who has been ready to risk
everything, and suddenly tastes the dangerous sweetness of security.
"She couldn't have gone back--it was impossible!" he exclaimed.
"Ah, my dear, I always knew you were on her side; and that's why I sent
for you today, and why I said to your pretty wife, when she proposed to
come with you: 'No, my dear, I'm pining to see Newland, and I don't
want anybody to share our transports.' For you see, my dear--" she
drew her head back as far as its tethering chins permitted, and looked
him full in the eyes--"you see, we shall have a fight yet. The family
don't want her here, and they'll say it's because I've been ill,
because I'm a weak old woman, that she's persuaded me. I'm not well
enough yet to fight them one by one, and you've got to do it for me."
"I?" he stammered.
"You. Why not?" she jerked back at him, her round eyes suddenly as
sharp as pen-knives. Her hand fluttered from its chair-arm and lit on
his with a clutch of little pale nails like bird-claws. "Why not?" she
searchingly repeated.
Archer, under the exposure of her gaze, had recovered his
self-possession.
"Oh, I don't count--I'm too insignificant."
"Well, you're Letterblair's partner, ain't you? You've got to get at
them through Letterblair. Unless you've got a reason," she insisted.
"Oh, my dear, I back you to hold your own against them all without my
help; but you shall have it if you need it," he reassured her.
"Then we're safe!" she sighed; and smiling on him with all her ancient
cunning she added, as she settled her head among the cushions: "I
always knew you'd back us up, because they never quote you when they
talk about its being her duty to go home."
He winced a little at her terrifying perspicacity, and longed to ask:
"And May--do they quote her?" But he judged it safer to turn the
question.
"And Madame Olenska? When am I to see her?" he said.
The old lady chuckled, crumpled her lids, and went through the
pantomime of archness. "Not today. One at a time, please. Madame
Olenska's gone out."
He flushed with disappointment, and she went on: "She's gone out, my
child: gone in my carriage to see Regina Beaufort."
She paused for this announcement to produce its effect. "That's what
she's reduced me to already. The day after she got here she put on her
best bonnet, and told me, as cool as a cucumber, that she was going to
call on Regina Beaufort. 'I don't know her; who is she?' says I.
'She's your grand-niece, and a most unhappy woman,' she says. 'She's
the wife of a scoundrel,' I answered. 'Well,' she says, 'and so am I,
and yet all my family want me to go back to him.' Well, that floored
me, and I let her go; and finally one day she said it was raining too
hard to go out on foot, and she wanted me to lend her my carriage.
'What for?' I asked her; and she said: 'To go and see cousin
Regina'--COUSIN! Now, my dear, I looked out of the window, and saw it
wasn't raining a drop; but I understood her, and I let her have the
carriage.... After all, Regina's a brave woman, and so is she; and
I've always liked courage above everything."
Archer bent down and pressed his lips on the little hand that still lay
on his.
"Eh--eh--eh! Whose hand did you think you were kissing, young
man--your wife's, I hope?" the old lady snapped out with her mocking
cackle; and as he rose to go she called out after him: "Give her her
Granny's love; but you'd better not say anything about our talk."
XXXI.
Archer had been stunned by old Catherine's news. It was only natural
that Madame Olenska should have hastened from Washington in response to
her grandmother's summons; but that she should have decided to remain
under her roof--especially now that Mrs. Mingott had almost regained
her health--was less easy to explain.
Archer was sure that Madame Olenska's decision had not been influenced
by the change in her financial situation. He knew the exact figure of
the small income which her husband had allowed her at their separation.
Without the addition of her grandmother's allowance it was hardly
enough to live on, in any sense known to the Mingott vocabulary; and
now that Medora Manson, who shared her life, had been ruined, such a
pittance would barely keep the two women clothed and fed. Yet Archer
was convinced that Madame Olenska had not accepted her grandmother's
offer from interested motives.
She had the heedless generosity and the spasmodic extravagance of
persons used to large fortunes, and indifferent to money; but she could
go without many things which her relations considered indispensable,
and Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Welland had often been heard to
deplore that any one who had enjoyed the cosmopolitan luxuries of Count
Olenski's establishments should care so little about "how things were
done." Moreover, as Archer knew, several months had passed since her
allowance had been cut off; yet in the interval she had made no effort
to regain her grandmother's favour. Therefore if she had changed her
course it must be for a different reason.
He did not have far to seek for that reason. On the way from the ferry
she had told him that he and she must remain apart; but she had said it
with her head on his breast. He knew that there was no calculated
coquetry in her words; she was fighting her fate as he had fought his,
and clinging desperately to her resolve that they should not break
faith with the people who trusted them. But during the ten days which
had elapsed since her return to New York she had perhaps guessed from
his silence, and from the fact of his making no attempt to see her,
that he was meditating a decisive step, a step from which there was no
turning back. At the thought, a sudden fear of her own weakness might
have seized her, and she might have felt that, after all, it was better
to accept the compromise usual in such cases, and follow the line of
least resistance.
An hour earlier, when he had rung Mrs. Mingott's bell, Archer had
fancied that his path was clear before him. He had meant to have a
word alone with Madame Olenska, and failing that, to learn from her
grandmother on what day, and by which train, she was returning to
Washington. In that train he intended to join her, and travel with her
to Washington, or as much farther as she was willing to go. His own
fancy inclined to Japan. At any rate she would understand at once
that, wherever she went, he was going. He meant to leave a note for
May that should cut off any other alternative.
He had fancied himself not only nerved for this plunge but eager to
take it; yet his first feeling on hearing that the course of events was
changed had been one of relief. Now, however, as he walked home from
Mrs. Mingott's, he was conscious of a growing distaste for what lay
before him. There was nothing unknown or unfamiliar in the path he was
presumably to tread; but when he had trodden it before it was as a free
man, who was accountable to no one for his actions, and could lend
himself with an amused detachment to the game of precautions and
prevarications, concealments and compliances, that the part required.
This procedure was called "protecting a woman's honour"; and the best
fiction, combined with the after-dinner talk of his elders, had long
since initiated him into every detail of its code.
Now he saw the matter in a new light, and his part in it seemed
singularly diminished. It was, in fact, that which, with a secret
fatuity, he had watched Mrs. Thorley Rushworth play toward a fond and
unperceiving husband: a smiling, bantering, humouring, watchful and
incessant lie. A lie by day, a lie by night, a lie in every touch and
every look; a lie in every caress and every quarrel; a lie in every
word and in every silence.
It was easier, and less dastardly on the whole, for a wife to play such
a part toward her husband. A woman's standard of truthfulness was
tacitly held to be lower: she was the subject creature, and versed in
the arts of the enslaved. Then she could always plead moods and
nerves, and the right not to be held too strictly to account; and even
in the most strait-laced societies the laugh was always against the
husband.
But in Archer's little world no one laughed at a wife deceived, and a
certain measure of contempt was attached to men who continued their
philandering after marriage. In the rotation of crops there was a
recognised season for wild oats; but they were not to be sown more than
once.
Archer had always shared this view: in his heart he thought Lefferts
despicable. But to love Ellen Olenska was not to become a man like
Lefferts: for the first time Archer found himself face to face with the
dread argument of the individual case. Ellen Olenska was like no other
woman, he was like no other man: their situation, therefore, resembled
no one else's, and they were answerable to no tribunal but that of
their own judgment.
Yes, but in ten minutes more he would be mounting his own doorstep; and
there were May, and habit, and honour, and all the old decencies that
he and his people had always believed in ...
At his corner he hesitated, and then walked on down Fifth Avenue.
Ahead of him, in the winter night, loomed a big unlit house. As he
drew near he thought how often he had seen it blazing with lights, its
steps awninged and carpeted, and carriages waiting in double line to
draw up at the curbstone. It was in the conservatory that stretched
its dead-black bulk down the side street that he had taken his first
kiss from May; it was under the myriad candles of the ball-room that he
had seen her appear, tall and silver-shining as a young Diana.
Now the house was as dark as the grave, except for a faint flare of gas
in the basement, and a light in one upstairs room where the blind had
not been lowered. As Archer reached the corner he saw that the
carriage standing at the door was Mrs. Manson Mingott's. What an
opportunity for Sillerton Jackson, if he should chance to pass! Archer
had been greatly moved by old Catherine's account of Madame Olenska's
attitude toward Mrs. Beaufort; it made the righteous reprobation of New
York seem like a passing by on the other side. But he knew well enough
what construction the clubs and drawing-rooms would put on Ellen
Olenska's visits to her cousin.
He paused and looked up at the lighted window. No doubt the two women
were sitting together in that room: Beaufort had probably sought
consolation elsewhere. There were even rumours that he had left New
York with Fanny Ring; but Mrs. Beaufort's attitude made the report seem
improbable.
Archer had the nocturnal perspective of Fifth Avenue almost to himself.
At that hour most people were indoors, dressing for dinner; and he was
secretly glad that Ellen's exit was likely to be unobserved. As the
thought passed through his mind the door opened, and she came out.
Behind her was a faint light, such as might have been carried down the
stairs to show her the way. She turned to say a word to some one; then
the door closed, and she came down the steps.
"Ellen," he said in a low voice, as she reached the pavement.
She stopped with a slight start, and just then he saw two young men of
fashionable cut approaching. There was a familiar air about their
overcoats and the way their smart silk mufflers were folded over their
white ties; and he wondered how youths of their quality happened to be
dining out so early. Then he remembered that the Reggie Chiverses,
whose house was a few doors above, were taking a large party that
evening to see Adelaide Neilson in Romeo and Juliet, and guessed that
the two were of the number. They passed under a lamp, and he
recognised Lawrence Lefferts and a young Chivers.
A mean desire not to have Madame Olenska seen at the Beauforts' door
vanished as he felt the penetrating warmth of her hand.
"I shall see you now--we shall be together," he broke out, hardly
knowing what he said.
"Ah," she answered, "Granny has told you?"
While he watched her he was aware that Lefferts and Chivers, on
reaching the farther side of the street corner, had discreetly struck
away across Fifth Avenue. It was the kind of masculine solidarity that
he himself often practised; now he sickened at their connivance. Did
she really imagine that he and she could live like this? And if not,
what else did she imagine?
"Tomorrow I must see you--somewhere where we can be alone," he said, in
a voice that sounded almost angry to his own ears.
She wavered, and moved toward the carriage.
"But I shall be at Granny's--for the present that is," she added, as if
conscious that her change of plans required some explanation.
"Somewhere where we can be alone," he insisted.
She gave a faint laugh that grated on him.
"In New York? But there are no churches ... no monuments."
"There's the Art Museum--in the Park," he explained, as she looked
puzzled. "At half-past two. I shall be at the door ..."
She turned away without answering and got quickly into the carriage.
As it drove off she leaned forward, and he thought she waved her hand
in the obscurity. He stared after her in a turmoil of contradictory
feelings. It seemed to him that he had been speaking not to the woman
he loved but to another, a woman he was indebted to for pleasures
already wearied of: it was hateful to find himself the prisoner of this
hackneyed vocabulary.
"She'll come!" he said to himself, almost contemptuously.
Avoiding the popular "Wolfe collection," whose anecdotic canvases
filled one of the main galleries of the queer wilderness of cast-iron
and encaustic tiles known as the Metropolitan Museum, they had wandered
down a passage to the room where the "Cesnola antiquities" mouldered in
unvisited loneliness.
They had this melancholy retreat to themselves, and seated on the divan
enclosing the central steam-radiator, they were staring silently at the
glass cabinets mounted in ebonised wood which contained the recovered
fragments of Ilium.
"It's odd," Madame Olenska said, "I never came here before."
"Ah, well--. Some day, I suppose, it will be a great Museum."
"Yes," she assented absently.
She stood up and wandered across the room. Archer, remaining seated,
watched the light movements of her figure, so girlish even under its
heavy furs, the cleverly planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the way
a dark curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above the
ear. His mind, as always when they first met, was wholly absorbed in
the delicious details that made her herself and no other. Presently he
rose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves
were crowded with small broken objects--hardly recognisable domestic
utensils, ornaments and personal trifles--made of glass, of clay, of
discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.
"It seems cruel," she said, "that after a while nothing matters ... any
more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important
to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying
glass and labelled: 'Use unknown.'"
"Yes; but meanwhile--"
"Ah, meanwhile--"
As she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her hands thrust in a
small round muff, her veil drawn down like a transparent mask to the
tip of her nose, and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirring
with her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that this pure
harmony of line and colour should ever suffer the stupid law of change.
"Meanwhile everything matters--that concerns you," he said.
She looked at him thoughtfully, and turned back to the divan. He sat
down beside her and waited; but suddenly he heard a step echoing far
off down the empty rooms, and felt the pressure of the minutes.
"What is it you wanted to tell me?" she asked, as if she had received
the same warning.
"What I wanted to tell you?" he rejoined. "Why, that I believe you
came to New York because you were afraid."
"Afraid?"
"Of my coming to Washington."
She looked down at her muff, and he saw her hands stir in it uneasily.
"Well--?"
"Well--yes," she said.
"You WERE afraid? You knew--?"
"Yes: I knew ..."
"Well, then?" he insisted.
"Well, then: this is better, isn't it?" she returned with a long
questioning sigh.
"Better--?"
"We shall hurt others less. Isn't it, after all, what you always
wanted?"
"To have you here, you mean--in reach and yet out of reach? To meet
you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want. I
told you the other day what I wanted."
She hesitated. "And you still think this--worse?"
"A thousand times!" He paused. "It would be easy to lie to you; but
the truth is I think it detestable."
"Oh, so do I!" she cried with a deep breath of relief.
He sprang up impatiently. "Well, then--it's my turn to ask: what is
it, in God's name, that you think better?"
She hung her head and continued to clasp and unclasp her hands in her
muff. The step drew nearer, and a guardian in a braided cap walked
listlessly through the room like a ghost stalking through a necropolis.
They fixed their eyes simultaneously on the case opposite them, and
when the official figure had vanished down a vista of mummies and
sarcophagi Archer spoke again.
"What do you think better?"
Instead of answering she murmured: "I promised Granny to stay with her
because it seemed to me that here I should be safer."
"From me?"
She bent her head slightly, without looking at him.
"Safer from loving me?"
Her profile did not stir, but he saw a tear overflow on her lashes and
hang in a mesh of her veil.
"Safer from doing irreparable harm. Don't let us be like all the
others!" she protested.
"What others? I don't profess to be different from my kind. I'm
consumed by the same wants and the same longings."
She glanced at him with a kind of terror, and he saw a faint colour
steal into her cheeks.
"Shall I--once come to you; and then go home?" she suddenly hazarded in
a low clear voice.
The blood rushed to the young man's forehead. "Dearest!" he said,
without moving. It seemed as if he held his heart in his hands, like a
full cup that the least motion might overbrim.
Then her last phrase struck his ear and his face clouded. "Go home?
What do you mean by going home?"
"Home to my husband."
"And you expect me to say yes to that?"
She raised her troubled eyes to his. "What else is there? I can't
stay here and lie to the people who've been good to me."
"But that's the very reason why I ask you to come away!"
"And destroy their lives, when they've helped me to remake mine?"
Archer sprang to his feet and stood looking down on her in inarticulate
despair. It would have been easy to say: "Yes, come; come once." He
knew the power she would put in his hands if she consented; there would
be no difficulty then in persuading her not to go back to her husband.
But something silenced the word on his lips. A sort of passionate
honesty in her made it inconceivable that he should try to draw her
into that familiar trap. "If I were to let her come," he said to
himself, "I should have to let her go again." And that was not to be
imagined.
But he saw the shadow of the lashes on her wet cheek, and wavered.
"After all," he began again, "we have lives of our own.... There's no
use attempting the impossible. You're so unprejudiced about some
things, so used, as you say, to looking at the Gorgon, that I don't
know why you're afraid to face our case, and see it as it really
is--unless you think the sacrifice is not worth making."
She stood up also, her lips tightening under a rapid frown.
"Call it that, then--I must go," she said, drawing her little watch
from her bosom.
She turned away, and he followed and caught her by the wrist. "Well,
then: come to me once," he said, his head turning suddenly at the
thought of losing her; and for a second or two they looked at each
other almost like enemies.
"When?" he insisted. "Tomorrow?"
She hesitated. "The day after."
"Dearest--!" he said again.
She had disengaged her wrist; but for a moment they continued to hold
each other's eyes, and he saw that her face, which had grown very pale,
was flooded with a deep inner radiance. His heart beat with awe: he
felt that he had never before beheld love visible.
"Oh, I shall be late--good-bye. No, don't come any farther than this,"
she cried, walking hurriedly away down the long room, as if the
reflected radiance in his eyes had frightened her. When she reached
the door she turned for a moment to wave a quick farewell.
Archer walked home alone. Darkness was falling when he let himself
into his house, and he looked about at the familiar objects in the hall
as if he viewed them from the other side of the grave.
The parlour-maid, hearing his step, ran up the stairs to light the gas
on the upper landing.
"Is Mrs. Archer in?"
"No, sir; Mrs. Archer went out in the carriage after luncheon, and
hasn't come back."
With a sense of relief he entered the library and flung himself down in
his armchair. The parlour-maid followed, bringing the student lamp and
shaking some coals onto the dying fire. When she left he continued to
sit motionless, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his clasped hands,
his eyes fixed on the red grate.
He sat there without conscious thoughts, without sense of the lapse of
time, in a deep and grave amazement that seemed to suspend life rather
than quicken it. "This was what had to be, then ... this was what had
to be," he kept repeating to himself, as if he hung in the clutch of
doom. What he had dreamed of had been so different that there was a
mortal chill in his rapture.
The door opened and May came in.
"I'm dreadfully late--you weren't worried, were you?" she asked, laying
her hand on his shoulder with one of her rare caresses.
He looked up astonished. "Is it late?"
"After seven. I believe you've been asleep!" She laughed, and drawing
out her hat pins tossed her velvet hat on the sofa. She looked paler
than usual, but sparkling with an unwonted animation.
"I went to see Granny, and just as I was going away Ellen came in from
a walk; so I stayed and had a long talk with her. It was ages since
we'd had a real talk...." She had dropped into her usual armchair,
facing his, and was running her fingers through her rumpled hair. He
fancied she expected him to speak.
"A really good talk," she went on, smiling with what seemed to Archer
an unnatural vividness. "She was so dear--just like the old Ellen.
I'm afraid I haven't been fair to her lately. I've sometimes thought--"
Archer stood up and leaned against the mantelpiece, out of the radius
of the lamp.
"Yes, you've thought--?" he echoed as she paused.
"Well, perhaps I haven't judged her fairly. She's so different--at
least on the surface. She takes up such odd people--she seems to like
to make herself conspicuous. I suppose it's the life she's led in that
fast European society; no doubt we seem dreadfully dull to her. But I
don't want to judge her unfairly."
She paused again, a little breathless with the unwonted length of her
speech, and sat with her lips slightly parted and a deep blush on her
cheeks.
Archer, as he looked at her, was reminded of the glow which had
suffused her face in the Mission Garden at St. Augustine. He became
aware of the same obscure effort in her, the same reaching out toward
something beyond the usual range of her vision.
"She hates Ellen," he thought, "and she's trying to overcome the
feeling, and to get me to help her to overcome it."
The thought moved him, and for a moment he was on the point of breaking
the silence between them, and throwing himself on her mercy.
"You understand, don't you," she went on, "why the family have
sometimes been annoyed? We all did what we could for her at first; but
she never seemed to understand. And now this idea of going to see Mrs.
Beaufort, of going there in Granny's carriage! I'm afraid she's quite
alienated the van der Luydens ..."
"Ah," said Archer with an impatient laugh. The open door had closed
between them again.
"It's time to dress; we're dining out, aren't we?" he asked, moving
from the fire.
She rose also, but lingered near the hearth. As he walked past her she
moved forward impulsively, as though to detain him: their eyes met, and
he saw that hers were of the same swimming blue as when he had left her
to drive to Jersey City.
She flung her arms about his neck and pressed her cheek to his.
"You haven't kissed me today," she said in a whisper; and he felt her
tremble in his arms.
XXXII.
"At the court of the Tuileries," said Mr. Sillerton Jackson with his
reminiscent smile, "such things were pretty openly tolerated."
The scene was the van der Luydens' black walnut dining-room in Madison
Avenue, and the time the evening after Newland Archer's visit to the
Museum of Art. Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden had come to town for a few
days from Skuytercliff, whither they had precipitately fled at the
announcement of Beaufort's failure. It had been represented to them
that the disarray into which society had been thrown by this deplorable
affair made their presence in town more necessary than ever. It was
one of the occasions when, as Mrs. Archer put it, they "owed it to
society" to show themselves at the Opera, and even to open their own
doors.
"It will never do, my dear Louisa, to let people like Mrs. Lemuel
Struthers think they can step into Regina's shoes. It is just at such
times that new people push in and get a footing. It was owing to the
epidemic of chicken-pox in New York the winter Mrs. Struthers first
appeared that the married men slipped away to her house while their
wives were in the nursery. You and dear Henry, Louisa, must stand in
the breach as you always have."
Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden could not remain deaf to such a call, and
reluctantly but heroically they had come to town, unmuffled the house,
and sent out invitations for two dinners and an evening reception.
On this particular evening they had invited Sillerton Jackson, Mrs.
Archer and Newland and his wife to go with them to the Opera, where
Faust was being sung for the first time that winter. Nothing was done
without ceremony under the van der Luyden roof, and though there were
but four guests the repast had begun at seven punctually, so that the
proper sequence of courses might be served without haste before the
gentlemen settled down to their cigars.
Archer had not seen his wife since the evening before. He had left
early for the office, where he had plunged into an accumulation of
unimportant business. In the afternoon one of the senior partners had
made an unexpected call on his time; and he had reached home so late
that May had preceded him to the van der Luydens', and sent back the
carriage.
Now, across the Skuytercliff carnations and the massive plate, she
struck him as pale and languid; but her eyes shone, and she talked with
exaggerated animation.
The subject which had called forth Mr. Sillerton Jackson's favourite
allusion had been brought up (Archer fancied not without intention) by
their hostess. The Beaufort failure, or rather the Beaufort attitude
since the failure, was still a fruitful theme for the drawing-room
moralist; and after it had been thoroughly examined and condemned Mrs.
van der Luyden had turned her scrupulous eyes on May Archer.
"Is it possible, dear, that what I hear is true? I was told your
grandmother Mingott's carriage was seen standing at Mrs. Beaufort's
door." It was noticeable that she no longer called the offending lady
by her Christian name.
May's colour rose, and Mrs. Archer put in hastily: "If it was, I'm
convinced it was there without Mrs. Mingott's knowledge."
"Ah, you think--?" Mrs. van der Luyden paused, sighed, and glanced at
her husband.
"I'm afraid," Mr. van der Luyden said, "that Madame Olenska's kind
heart may have led her into the imprudence of calling on Mrs. Beaufort."
"Or her taste for peculiar people," put in Mrs. Archer in a dry tone,
while her eyes dwelt innocently on her son's.
"I'm sorry to think it of Madame Olenska," said Mrs. van der Luyden;
and Mrs. Archer murmured: "Ah, my dear--and after you'd had her twice
at Skuytercliff!"
It was at this point that Mr. Jackson seized the chance to place his
favourite allusion.
"At the Tuileries," he repeated, seeing the eyes of the company
expectantly turned on him, "the standard was excessively lax in some
respects; and if you'd asked where Morny's money came from--! Or who
paid the debts of some of the Court beauties ..."
"I hope, dear Sillerton," said Mrs. Archer, "you are not suggesting
that we should adopt such standards?"
"I never suggest," returned Mr. Jackson imperturbably. "But Madame
Olenska's foreign bringing-up may make her less particular--"
"Ah," the two elder ladies sighed.
"Still, to have kept her grandmother's carriage at a defaulter's door!"
Mr. van der Luyden protested; and Archer guessed that he was
remembering, and resenting, the hampers of carnations he had sent to
the little house in Twenty-third Street.
"Of course I've always said that she looks at things quite
differently," Mrs. Archer summed up.
A flush rose to May's forehead. She looked across the table at her
husband, and said precipitately: "I'm sure Ellen meant it kindly."
"Imprudent people are often kind," said Mrs. Archer, as if the fact
were scarcely an extenuation; and Mrs. van der Luyden murmured: "If
only she had consulted some one--"
"Ah, that she never did!" Mrs. Archer rejoined.
At this point Mr. van der Luyden glanced at his wife, who bent her head
slightly in the direction of Mrs. Archer; and the glimmering trains of
the three ladies swept out of the door while the gentlemen settled down
to their cigars. Mr. van der Luyden supplied short ones on Opera
nights; but they were so good that they made his guests deplore his
inexorable punctuality.
Archer, after the first act, had detached himself from the party and
made his way to the back of the club box. From there he watched, over
various Chivers, Mingott and Rushworth shoulders, the same scene that
he had looked at, two years previously, on the night of his first
meeting with Ellen Olenska. He had half-expected her to appear again
in old Mrs. Mingott's box, but it remained empty; and he sat
motionless, his eyes fastened on it, till suddenly Madame Nilsson's
pure soprano broke out into "M'ama, non m'ama ..."
Archer turned to the stage, where, in the familiar setting of giant
roses and pen-wiper pansies, the same large blonde victim was
succumbing to the same small brown seducer.
From the stage his eyes wandered to the point of the horseshoe where
May sat between two older ladies, just as, on that former evening, she
had sat between Mrs. Lovell Mingott and her newly-arrived "foreign"
cousin. As on that evening, she was all in white; and Archer, who had
not noticed what she wore, recognised the blue-white satin and old lace
of her wedding dress.
It was the custom, in old New York, for brides to appear in this costly
garment during the first year or two of marriage: his mother, he knew,
kept hers in tissue paper in the hope that Janey might some day wear
it, though poor Janey was reaching the age when pearl grey poplin and
no bridesmaids would be thought more "appropriate."
It struck Archer that May, since their return from Europe, had seldom
worn her bridal satin, and the surprise of seeing her in it made him
compare her appearance with that of the young girl he had watched with
such blissful anticipations two years earlier.
Though May's outline was slightly heavier, as her goddesslike build had
foretold, her athletic erectness of carriage, and the girlish
transparency of her expression, remained unchanged: but for the slight
languor that Archer had lately noticed in her she would have been the
exact image of the girl playing with the bouquet of
lilies-of-the-valley on her betrothal evening. The fact seemed an
additional appeal to his pity: such innocence was as moving as the
trustful clasp of a child. Then he remembered the passionate
generosity latent under that incurious calm. He recalled her glance of
understanding when he had urged that their engagement should be
announced at the Beaufort ball; he heard the voice in which she had
said, in the Mission garden: "I couldn't have my happiness made out of
a wrong--a wrong to some one else;" and an uncontrollable longing
seized him to tell her the truth, to throw himself on her generosity,
and ask for the freedom he had once refused.
Newland Archer was a quiet and self-controlled young man. Conformity
to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second
nature. It was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic
and conspicuous, anything Mr. van der Luyden would have deprecated and
the club box condemned as bad form. But he had become suddenly
unconscious of the club box, of Mr. van der Luyden, of all that had so
long enclosed him in the warm shelter of habit. He walked along the
semi-circular passage at the back of the house, and opened the door of
Mrs. van der Luyden's box as if it had been a gate into the unknown.
"M'ama!" thrilled out the triumphant Marguerite; and the occupants of
the box looked up in surprise at Archer's entrance. He had already
broken one of the rules of his world, which forbade the entering of a
box during a solo.
Slipping between Mr. van der Luyden and Sillerton Jackson, he leaned
over his wife.
"I've got a beastly headache; don't tell any one, but come home, won't
you?" he whispered.
May gave him a glance of comprehension, and he saw her whisper to his
mother, who nodded sympathetically; then she murmured an excuse to Mrs.
van der Luyden, and rose from her seat just as Marguerite fell into
Faust's arms. Archer, while he helped her on with her Opera cloak,
noticed the exchange of a significant smile between the older ladies.
As they drove away May laid her hand shyly on his. "I'm so sorry you
don't feel well. I'm afraid they've been overworking you again at the
office."
"No--it's not that: do you mind if I open the window?" he returned
confusedly, letting down the pane on his side. He sat staring out into
the street, feeling his wife beside him as a silent watchful
interrogation, and keeping his eyes steadily fixed on the passing
houses. At their door she caught her skirt in the step of the
carriage, and fell against him.
"Did you hurt yourself?" he asked, steadying her with his arm.
"No; but my poor dress--see how I've torn it!" she exclaimed. She bent
to gather up a mud-stained breadth, and followed him up the steps into
the hall. The servants had not expected them so early, and there was
only a glimmer of gas on the upper landing.
Archer mounted the stairs, turned up the light, and put a match to the
brackets on each side of the library mantelpiece. The curtains were
drawn, and the warm friendly aspect of the room smote him like that of
a familiar face met during an unavowable errand.
He noticed that his wife was very pale, and asked if he should get her
some brandy.
"Oh, no," she exclaimed with a momentary flush, as she took off her
cloak. "But hadn't you better go to bed at once?" she added, as he
opened a silver box on the table and took out a cigarette.
Archer threw down the cigarette and walked to his usual place by the
fire.
"No; my head is not as bad as that." He paused. "And there's
something I want to say; something important--that I must tell you at
once."
She had dropped into an armchair, and raised her head as he spoke.
"Yes, dear?" she rejoined, so gently that he wondered at the lack of
wonder with which she received this preamble.
"May--" he began, standing a few feet from her chair, and looking over
at her as if the slight distance between them were an unbridgeable
abyss. The sound of his voice echoed uncannily through the homelike
hush, and he repeated: "There is something I've got to tell you ...
about myself ..."
She sat silent, without a movement or a tremor of her lashes. She was
still extremely pale, but her face had a curious tranquillity of
expression that seemed drawn from some secret inner source.
Archer checked the conventional phrases of self-accusal that were
crowding to his lips. He was determined to put the case baldly,
without vain recrimination or excuse.
"Madame Olenska--" he said; but at the name his wife raised her hand as
if to silence him. As she did so the gaslight struck on the gold of
her wedding-ring.
"Oh, why should we talk about Ellen tonight?" she asked, with a slight
pout of impatience.
"Because I ought to have spoken before."
Her face remained calm. "Is it really worth while, dear? I know I've
been unfair to her at times--perhaps we all have. You've understood
her, no doubt, better than we did: you've always been kind to her. But
what does it matter, now it's all over?"
Archer looked at her blankly. Could it be possible that the sense of
unreality in which he felt himself imprisoned had communicated itself
to his wife?
"All over--what do you mean?" he asked in an indistinct stammer.
May still looked at him with transparent eyes. "Why--since she's going
back to Europe so soon; since Granny approves and understands, and has
arranged to make her independent of her husband--"
She broke off, and Archer, grasping the corner of the mantelpiece in
one convulsed hand, and steadying himself against it, made a vain
effort to extend the same control to his reeling thoughts.
"I supposed," he heard his wife's even voice go on, "that you had been
kept at the office this evening about the business arrangements. It
was settled this morning, I believe." She lowered her eyes under his
unseeing stare, and another fugitive flush passed over her face.
He understood that his own eyes must be unbearable, and turning away,
rested his elbows on the mantel-shelf and covered his face. Something
drummed and clanged furiously in his ears; he could not tell if it were
the blood in his veins, or the tick of the clock on the mantel.
May sat without moving or speaking while the clock slowly measured out
five minutes. A lump of coal fell forward in the grate, and hearing
her rise to push it back, Archer at length turned and faced her.
"It's impossible," he exclaimed.
"Impossible--?"
"How do you know--what you've just told me?"
"I saw Ellen yesterday--I told you I'd seen her at Granny's."
"It wasn't then that she told you?"
"No; I had a note from her this afternoon.--Do you want to see it?"
He could not find his voice, and she went out of the room, and came
back almost immediately.
"I thought you knew," she said simply.
She laid a sheet of paper on the table, and Archer put out his hand and
took it up. The letter contained only a few lines.
"May dear, I have at last made Granny understand that my visit to her
could be no more than a visit; and she has been as kind and generous as
ever. She sees now that if I return to Europe I must live by myself,
or rather with poor Aunt Medora, who is coming with me. I am hurrying
back to Washington to pack up, and we sail next week. You must be very
good to Granny when I'm gone--as good as you've always been to me.
Ellen.
"If any of my friends wish to urge me to change my mind, please tell
them it would be utterly useless."
Archer read the letter over two or three times; then he flung it down
and burst out laughing.
The sound of his laugh startled him. It recalled Janey's midnight
fright when she had caught him rocking with incomprehensible mirth over
May's telegram announcing that the date of their marriage had been
advanced.
"Why did she write this?" he asked, checking his laugh with a supreme
effort.
May met the question with her unshaken candour. "I suppose because we
talked things over yesterday--"
"What things?"
"I told her I was afraid I hadn't been fair to her--hadn't always
understood how hard it must have been for her here, alone among so many
people who were relations and yet strangers; who felt the right to
criticise, and yet didn't always know the circumstances." She paused.
"I knew you'd been the one friend she could always count on; and I
wanted her to know that you and I were the same--in all our feelings."
She hesitated, as if waiting for him to speak, and then added slowly:
"She understood my wishing to tell her this. I think she understands
everything."
She went up to Archer, and taking one of his cold hands pressed it
quickly against her cheek.
"My head aches too; good-night, dear," she said, and turned to the
door, her torn and muddy wedding-dress dragging after her across the
room.
XXXIII.
It was, as Mrs. Archer smilingly said to Mrs. Welland, a great event
for a young couple to give their first big dinner.
The Newland Archers, since they had set up their household, had
received a good deal of company in an informal way. Archer was fond of
having three or four friends to dine, and May welcomed them with the
beaming readiness of which her mother had set her the example in
conjugal affairs. Her husband questioned whether, if left to herself,
she would ever have asked any one to the house; but he had long given
up trying to disengage her real self from the shape into which
tradition and training had moulded her. It was expected that well-off
young couples in New York should do a good deal of informal
entertaining, and a Welland married to an Archer was doubly pledged to
the tradition.
But a big dinner, with a hired chef and two borrowed footmen, with
Roman punch, roses from Henderson's, and menus on gilt-edged cards, was
a different affair, and not to be lightly undertaken. As Mrs. Archer
remarked, the Roman punch made all the difference; not in itself but by
its manifold implications--since it signified either canvas-backs or
terrapin, two soups, a hot and a cold sweet, full decolletage with
short sleeves, and guests of a proportionate importance.
It was always an interesting occasion when a young pair launched their
first invitations in the third person, and their summons was seldom
refused even by the seasoned and sought-after. Still, it was
admittedly a triumph that the van der Luydens, at May's request, should
have stayed over in order to be present at her farewell dinner for the
Countess Olenska.
The two mothers-in-law sat in May's drawing-room on the afternoon of
the great day, Mrs. Archer writing out the menus on Tiffany's thickest
gilt-edged bristol, while Mrs. Welland superintended the placing of the
palms and standard lamps.
Archer, arriving late from his office, found them still there. Mrs.
Archer had turned her attention to the name-cards for the table, and
Mrs. Welland was considering the effect of bringing forward the large
gilt sofa, so that another "corner" might be created between the piano
and the window.
May, they told him, was in the dining-room inspecting the mound of
Jacqueminot roses and maidenhair in the centre of the long table, and
the placing of the Maillard bonbons in openwork silver baskets between
the candelabra. On the piano stood a large basket of orchids which Mr.
van der Luyden had had sent from Skuytercliff. Everything was, in
short, as it should be on the approach of so considerable an event.
Mrs. Archer ran thoughtfully over the list, checking off each name with
her sharp gold pen.
"Henry van der Luyden--Louisa--the Lovell Mingotts--the Reggie
Chiverses--Lawrence Lefferts and Gertrude--(yes, I suppose May was
right to have them)--the Selfridge Merrys, Sillerton Jackson, Van
Newland and his wife. (How time passes! It seems only yesterday that
he was your best man, Newland)--and Countess Olenska--yes, I think
that's all...."
Mrs. Welland surveyed her son-in-law affectionately. "No one can say,
Newland, that you and May are not giving Ellen a handsome send-off."
"Ah, well," said Mrs. Archer, "I understand May's wanting her cousin to
tell people abroad that we're not quite barbarians."
"I'm sure Ellen will appreciate it. She was to arrive this morning, I
believe. It will make a most charming last impression. The evening
before sailing is usually so dreary," Mrs. Welland cheerfully continued.
Archer turned toward the door, and his mother-in-law called to him:
"Do go in and have a peep at the table. And don't let May tire herself
too much." But he affected not to hear, and sprang up the stairs to
his library. The room looked at him like an alien countenance composed
into a polite grimace; and he perceived that it had been ruthlessly
"tidied," and prepared, by a judicious distribution of ash-trays and
cedar-wood boxes, for the gentlemen to smoke in.
"Ah, well," he thought, "it's not for long--" and he went on to his
dressing-room.
Ten days had passed since Madame Olenska's departure from New York.
During those ten days Archer had had no sign from her but that conveyed
by the return of a key wrapped in tissue paper, and sent to his office
in a sealed envelope addressed in her hand. This retort to his last
appeal might have been interpreted as a classic move in a familiar
game; but the young man chose to give it a different meaning. She was
still fighting against her fate; but she was going to Europe, and she
was not returning to her husband. Nothing, therefore, was to prevent
his following her; and once he had taken the irrevocable step, and had
proved to her that it was irrevocable, he believed she would not send
him away.
This confidence in the future had steadied him to play his part in the
present. It had kept him from writing to her, or betraying, by any
sign or act, his misery and mortification. It seemed to him that in
the deadly silent game between them the trumps were still in his hands;
and he waited.
There had been, nevertheless, moments sufficiently difficult to pass;
as when Mr. Letterblair, the day after Madame Olenska's departure, had
sent for him to go over the details of the trust which Mrs. Manson
Mingott wished to create for her granddaughter. For a couple of hours
Archer had examined the terms of the deed with his senior, all the
while obscurely feeling that if he had been consulted it was for some
reason other than the obvious one of his cousinship; and that the close
of the conference would reveal it.
"Well, the lady can't deny that it's a handsome arrangement," Mr.
Letterblair had summed up, after mumbling over a summary of the
settlement. "In fact I'm bound to say she's been treated pretty
handsomely all round."
"All round?" Archer echoed with a touch of derision. "Do you refer to
her husband's proposal to give her back her own money?"
Mr. Letterblair's bushy eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. "My
dear sir, the law's the law; and your wife's cousin was married under
the French law. It's to be presumed she knew what that meant."
"Even if she did, what happened subsequently--." But Archer paused.
Mr. Letterblair had laid his pen-handle against his big corrugated
nose, and was looking down it with the expression assumed by virtuous
elderly gentlemen when they wish their youngers to understand that
virtue is not synonymous with ignorance.
"My dear sir, I've no wish to extenuate the Count's transgressions;
but--but on the other side ... I wouldn't put my hand in the fire ...
well, that there hadn't been tit for tat ... with the young
champion...." Mr. Letterblair unlocked a drawer and pushed a folded
paper toward Archer. "This report, the result of discreet enquiries
..." And then, as Archer made no effort to glance at the paper or to
repudiate the suggestion, the lawyer somewhat flatly continued: "I
don't say it's conclusive, you observe; far from it. But straws show
... and on the whole it's eminently satisfactory for all parties that
this dignified solution has been reached."
"Oh, eminently," Archer assented, pushing back the paper.
A day or two later, on responding to a summons from Mrs. Manson
Mingott, his soul had been more deeply tried.
He had found the old lady depressed and querulous.
"You know she's deserted me?" she began at once; and without waiting
for his reply: "Oh, don't ask me why! She gave so many reasons that
I've forgotten them all. My private belief is that she couldn't face
the boredom. At any rate that's what Augusta and my daughters-in-law
think. And I don't know that I altogether blame her. Olenski's a
finished scoundrel; but life with him must have been a good deal gayer
than it is in Fifth Avenue. Not that the family would admit that: they
think Fifth Avenue is Heaven with the rue de la Paix thrown in. And
poor Ellen, of course, has no idea of going back to her husband. She
held out as firmly as ever against that. So she's to settle down in
Paris with that fool Medora.... Well, Paris is Paris; and you can keep
a carriage there on next to nothing. But she was as gay as a bird, and
I shall miss her." Two tears, the parched tears of the old, rolled down
her puffy cheeks and vanished in the abysses of her bosom.
"All I ask is," she concluded, "that they shouldn't bother me any more.
I must really be allowed to digest my gruel...." And she twinkled a
little wistfully at Archer.
It was that evening, on his return home, that May announced her
intention of giving a farewell dinner to her cousin. Madame Olenska's
name had not been pronounced between them since the night of her flight
to Washington; and Archer looked at his wife with surprise.
"A dinner--why?" he interrogated.
Her colour rose. "But you like Ellen--I thought you'd be pleased."
"It's awfully nice--your putting it in that way. But I really don't
see--"
"I mean to do it, Newland," she said, quietly rising and going to her
desk. "Here are the invitations all written. Mother helped me--she
agrees that we ought to." She paused, embarrassed and yet smiling, and
Archer suddenly saw before him the embodied image of the Family.
"Oh, all right," he said, staring with unseeing eyes at the list of
guests that she had put in his hand.
When he entered the drawing-room before dinner May was stooping over
the fire and trying to coax the logs to burn in their unaccustomed
setting of immaculate tiles.
The tall lamps were all lit, and Mr. van der Luyden's orchids had been
conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and
knobby silver. Mrs. Newland Archer's drawing-room was generally
thought a great success. A gilt bamboo jardiniere, in which the
primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to
the bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze
reduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and arm-chairs of pale
brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered
with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames;
and tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the
palms.
"I don't think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted up," said May,
rising flushed from her struggle, and sending about her a glance of
pardonable pride. The brass tongs which she had propped against the
side of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband's
answer; and before he could restore them Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden
were announced.
The other guests quickly followed, for it was known that the van der
Luydens liked to dine punctually. The room was nearly full, and Archer
was engaged in showing to Mrs. Selfridge Merry a small highly-varnished
Verbeckhoven "Study of Sheep," which Mr. Welland had given May for
Christmas, when he found Madame Olenska at his side.
She was excessively pale, and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser
and heavier than ever. Perhaps that, or the fact that she had wound
several rows of amber beads about her neck, reminded him suddenly of
the little Ellen Mingott he had danced with at children's parties, when
Medora Manson had first brought her to New York.
The amber beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps
unbecoming: her face looked lustreless and almost ugly, and he had
never loved it as he did at that minute. Their hands met, and he
thought he heard her say: "Yes, we're sailing tomorrow in the
Russia--"; then there was an unmeaning noise of opening doors, and
after an interval May's voice: "Newland! Dinner's been announced.
Won't you please take Ellen in?"
Madame Olenska put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand
was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the
evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street
drawing-room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have
taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on
his sleeve, and he said to himself: "If it were only to see her hand
again I should have to follow her--."
It was only at an entertainment ostensibly offered to a "foreign
visitor" that Mrs. van der Luyden could suffer the diminution of being
placed on her host's left. The fact of Madame Olenska's "foreignness"
could hardly have been more adroitly emphasised than by this farewell
tribute; and Mrs. van der Luyden accepted her displacement with an
affability which left no doubt as to her approval. There were certain
things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and
thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal
rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. There
was nothing on earth that the Wellands and Mingotts would not have done
to proclaim their unalterable affection for the Countess Olenska now
that her passage for Europe was engaged; and Archer, at the head of his
table, sat marvelling at the silent untiring activity with which her
popularity had been retrieved, grievances against her silenced, her
past countenanced, and her present irradiated by the family approval.
Mrs. van der Luyden shone on her with the dim benevolence which was her
nearest approach to cordiality, and Mr. van der Luyden, from his seat
at May's right, cast down the table glances plainly intended to justify
all the carnations he had sent from Skuytercliff.
Archer, who seemed to be assisting at the scene in a state of odd
imponderability, as if he floated somewhere between chandelier and
ceiling, wondered at nothing so much as his own share in the
proceedings. As his glance travelled from one placid well-fed face to
another he saw all the harmless-looking people engaged upon May's
canvas-backs as a band of dumb conspirators, and himself and the pale
woman on his right as the centre of their conspiracy. And then it came
over him, in a vast flash made up of many broken gleams, that to all of
them he and Madame Olenska were lovers, lovers in the extreme sense
peculiar to "foreign" vocabularies. He guessed himself to have been,
for months, the centre of countless silently observing eyes and
patiently listening ears; he understood that, by means as yet unknown
to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had
been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife
on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything, or had ever imagined
anything, and that the occasion of the entertainment was simply May
Archer's natural desire to take an affectionate leave of her friend and
cousin.
It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood":
the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed
decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more
ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to
them.
As these thoughts succeeded each other in his mind Archer felt like a
prisoner in the centre of an armed camp. He looked about the table,
and guessed at the inexorableness of his captors from the tone in
which, over the asparagus from Florida, they were dealing with Beaufort
and his wife. "It's to show me," he thought, "what would happen to
ME--" and a deathly sense of the superiority of implication and analogy
over direct action, and of silence over rash words, closed in on him
like the doors of the family vault.
He laughed, and met Mrs. van der Luyden's startled eyes.
"You think it laughable?" she said with a pinched smile. "Of course
poor Regina's idea of remaining in New York has its ridiculous side, I
suppose;" and Archer muttered: "Of course."
At this point, he became conscious that Madame Olenska's other
neighbour had been engaged for some time with the lady on his right.
At the same moment he saw that May, serenely enthroned between Mr. van
der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge Merry, had cast a quick glance down the
table. It was evident that the host and the lady on his right could
not sit through the whole meal in silence. He turned to Madame
Olenska, and her pale smile met him. "Oh, do let's see it through," it
seemed to say.
"Did you find the journey tiring?" he asked in a voice that surprised
him by its naturalness; and she answered that, on the contrary, she had
seldom travelled with fewer discomforts.
"Except, you know, the dreadful heat in the train," she added; and he
remarked that she would not suffer from that particular hardship in the
country she was going to.
"I never," he declared with intensity, "was more nearly frozen than
once, in April, in the train between Calais and Paris."
She said she did not wonder, but remarked that, after all, one could
always carry an extra rug, and that every form of travel had its
hardships; to which he abruptly returned that he thought them all of no
account compared with the blessedness of getting away. She changed
colour, and he added, his voice suddenly rising in pitch: "I mean to
do a lot of travelling myself before long." A tremor crossed her face,
and leaning over to Reggie Chivers, he cried out: "I say, Reggie, what
do you say to a trip round the world: now, next month, I mean? I'm
game if you are--" at which Mrs. Reggie piped up that she could not
think of letting Reggie go till after the Martha Washington Ball she
was getting up for the Blind Asylum in Easter week; and her husband
placidly observed that by that time he would have to be practising for
the International Polo match.
But Mr. Selfridge Merry had caught the phrase "round the world," and
having once circled the globe in his steam-yacht, he seized the
opportunity to send down the table several striking items concerning
the shallowness of the Mediterranean ports. Though, after all, he
added, it didn't matter; for when you'd seen Athens and Smyrna and
Constantinople, what else was there? And Mrs. Merry said she could
never be too grateful to Dr. Bencomb for having made them promise not
to go to Naples on account of the fever.
"But you must have three weeks to do India properly," her husband
conceded, anxious to have it understood that he was no frivolous
globe-trotter.
And at this point the ladies went up to the drawing-room.
In the library, in spite of weightier presences, Lawrence Lefferts
predominated.
The talk, as usual, had veered around to the Beauforts, and even Mr.
van der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge Merry, installed in the honorary
arm-chairs tacitly reserved for them, paused to listen to the younger
man's philippic.
Never had Lefferts so abounded in the sentiments that adorn Christian
manhood and exalt the sanctity of the home. Indignation lent him a
scathing eloquence, and it was clear that if others had followed his
example, and acted as he talked, society would never have been weak
enough to receive a foreign upstart like Beaufort--no, sir, not even if
he'd married a van der Luyden or a Lanning instead of a Dallas. And
what chance would there have been, Lefferts wrathfully questioned, of
his marrying into such a family as the Dallases, if he had not already
wormed his way into certain houses, as people like Mrs. Lemuel
Struthers had managed to worm theirs in his wake? If society chose to
open its doors to vulgar women the harm was not great, though the gain
was doubtful; but once it got in the way of tolerating men of obscure
origin and tainted wealth the end was total disintegration--and at no
distant date.
"If things go on at this pace," Lefferts thundered, looking like a
young prophet dressed by Poole, and who had not yet been stoned, "we
shall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers' houses,
and marrying Beaufort's bastards."
"Oh, I say--draw it mild!" Reggie Chivers and young Newland protested,
while Mr. Selfridge Merry looked genuinely alarmed, and an expression
of pain and disgust settled on Mr. van der Luyden's sensitive face.
"Has he got any?" cried Mr. Sillerton Jackson, pricking up his ears;
and while Lefferts tried to turn the question with a laugh, the old
gentleman twittered into Archer's ear: "Queer, those fellows who are
always wanting to set things right. The people who have the worst
cooks are always telling you they're poisoned when they dine out. But
I hear there are pressing reasons for our friend Lawrence's
diatribe:--typewriter this time, I understand...."
The talk swept past Archer like some senseless river running and
running because it did not know enough to stop. He saw, on the faces
about him, expressions of interest, amusement and even mirth. He
listened to the younger men's laughter, and to the praise of the Archer
Madeira, which Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Merry were thoughtfully
celebrating. Through it all he was dimly aware of a general attitude
of friendliness toward himself, as if the guard of the prisoner he felt
himself to be were trying to soften his captivity; and the perception
increased his passionate determination to be free.
In the drawing-room, where they presently joined the ladies, he met
May's triumphant eyes, and read in them the conviction that everything
had "gone off" beautifully. She rose from Madame Olenska's side, and
immediately Mrs. van der Luyden beckoned the latter to a seat on the
gilt sofa where she throned. Mrs. Selfridge Merry bore across the room
to join them, and it became clear to Archer that here also a conspiracy
of rehabilitation and obliteration was going on. The silent
organisation which held his little world together was determined to put
itself on record as never for a moment having questioned the propriety
of Madame Olenska's conduct, or the completeness of Archer's domestic
felicity. All these amiable and inexorable persons were resolutely
engaged in pretending to each other that they had never heard of,
suspected, or even conceived possible, the least hint to the contrary;
and from this tissue of elaborate mutual dissimulation Archer once more
disengaged the fact that New York believed him to be Madame Olenska's
lover. He caught the glitter of victory in his wife's eyes, and for
the first time understood that she shared the belief. The discovery
roused a laughter of inner devils that reverberated through all his
efforts to discuss the Martha Washington ball with Mrs. Reggie Chivers
and little Mrs. Newland; and so the evening swept on, running and
running like a senseless river that did not know how to stop.
At length he saw that Madame Olenska had risen and was saying good-bye.
He understood that in a moment she would be gone, and tried to remember
what he had said to her at dinner; but he could not recall a single
word they had exchanged.
She went up to May, the rest of the company making a circle about her
as she advanced. The two young women clasped hands; then May bent
forward and kissed her cousin.
"Certainly our hostess is much the handsomer of the two," Archer heard
Reggie Chivers say in an undertone to young Mrs. Newland; and he
remembered Beaufort's coarse sneer at May's ineffectual beauty.
A moment later he was in the hall, putting Madame Olenska's cloak about
her shoulders.
Through all his confusion of mind he had held fast to the resolve to
say nothing that might startle or disturb her. Convinced that no power
could now turn him from his purpose he had found strength to let events
shape themselves as they would. But as he followed Madame Olenska into
the hall he thought with a sudden hunger of being for a moment alone
with her at the door of her carriage.
"Is your carriage here?" he asked; and at that moment Mrs. van der
Luyden, who was being majestically inserted into her sables, said
gently: "We are driving dear Ellen home."
Archer's heart gave a jerk, and Madame Olenska, clasping her cloak and
fan with one hand, held out the other to him. "Good-bye," she said.
"Good-bye--but I shall see you soon in Paris," he answered aloud--it
seemed to him that he had shouted it.
"Oh," she murmured, "if you and May could come--!"
Mr. van der Luyden advanced to give her his arm, and Archer turned to
Mrs. van der Luyden. For a moment, in the billowy darkness inside the
big landau, he caught the dim oval of a face, eyes shining
steadily--and she was gone.
As he went up the steps he crossed Lawrence Lefferts coming down with
his wife. Lefferts caught his host by the sleeve, drawing back to let
Gertrude pass.
"I say, old chap: do you mind just letting it be understood that I'm
dining with you at the club tomorrow night? Thanks so much, you old
brick! Good-night."
"It DID go off beautifully, didn't it?" May questioned from the
threshold of the library.
Archer roused himself with a start. As soon as the last carriage had
driven away, he had come up to the library and shut himself in, with
the hope that his wife, who still lingered below, would go straight to
her room. But there she stood, pale and drawn, yet radiating the
factitious energy of one who has passed beyond fatigue.
"May I come and talk it over?" she asked.
"Of course, if you like. But you must be awfully sleepy--"
"No, I'm not sleepy. I should like to sit with you a little."
"Very well," he said, pushing her chair near the fire.
She sat down and he resumed his seat; but neither spoke for a long
time. At length Archer began abruptly: "Since you're not tired, and
want to talk, there's something I must tell you. I tried to the other
night--."
She looked at him quickly. "Yes, dear. Something about yourself?"
"About myself. You say you're not tired: well, I am. Horribly tired
..."
In an instant she was all tender anxiety. "Oh, I've seen it coming on,
Newland! You've been so wickedly overworked--"
"Perhaps it's that. Anyhow, I want to make a break--"
"A break? To give up the law?"
"To go away, at any rate--at once. On a long trip, ever so far
off--away from everything--"
He paused, conscious that he had failed in his attempt to speak with
the indifference of a man who longs for a change, and is yet too weary
to welcome it. Do what he would, the chord of eagerness vibrated.
"Away from everything--" he repeated.
"Ever so far? Where, for instance?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know. India--or Japan."
She stood up, and as he sat with bent head, his chin propped on his
hands, he felt her warmly and fragrantly hovering over him.
"As far as that? But I'm afraid you can't, dear ..." she said in an
unsteady voice. "Not unless you'll take me with you." And then, as he
was silent, she went on, in tones so clear and evenly-pitched that each
separate syllable tapped like a little hammer on his brain: "That is,
if the doctors will let me go ... but I'm afraid they won't. For you
see, Newland, I've been sure since this morning of something I've been
so longing and hoping for--"
He looked up at her with a sick stare, and she sank down, all dew and
roses, and hid her face against his knee.
"Oh, my dear," he said, holding her to him while his cold hand stroked
her hair.
There was a long pause, which the inner devils filled with strident
laughter; then May freed herself from his arms and stood up.
"You didn't guess--?"
"Yes--I; no. That is, of course I hoped--"
They looked at each other for an instant and again fell silent; then,
turning his eyes from hers, he asked abruptly: "Have you told any one
else?"
"Only Mamma and your mother." She paused, and then added hurriedly,
the blood flushing up to her forehead: "That is--and Ellen. You know
I told you we'd had a long talk one afternoon--and how dear she was to
me."
"Ah--" said Archer, his heart stopping.
He felt that his wife was watching him intently. "Did you MIND my
telling her first, Newland?"
"Mind? Why should I?" He made a last effort to collect himself. "But
that was a fortnight ago, wasn't it? I thought you said you weren't
sure till today."
Her colour burned deeper, but she held his gaze. "No; I wasn't sure
then--but I told her I was. And you see I was right!" she exclaimed,
her blue eyes wet with victory.
XXXIV.
Newland Archer sat at the writing-table in his library in East
Thirty-ninth Street.
He had just got back from a big official reception for the inauguration
of the new galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, and the spectacle of
those great spaces crowded with the spoils of the ages, where the
throng of fashion circulated through a series of scientifically
catalogued treasures, had suddenly pressed on a rusted spring of memory.
"Why, this used to be one of the old Cesnola rooms," he heard some one
say; and instantly everything about him vanished, and he was sitting
alone on a hard leather divan against a radiator, while a slight figure
in a long sealskin cloak moved away down the meagrely-fitted vista of
the old Museum.
The vision had roused a host of other associations, and he sat looking
with new eyes at the library which, for over thirty years, had been the
scene of his solitary musings and of all the family confabulations.
It was the room in which most of the real things of his life had
happened. There his wife, nearly twenty-six years ago, had broken to
him, with a blushing circumlocution that would have caused the young
women of the new generation to smile, the news that she was to have a
child; and there their eldest boy, Dallas, too delicate to be taken to
church in midwinter, had been christened by their old friend the Bishop
of New York, the ample magnificent irreplaceable Bishop, so long the
pride and ornament of his diocese. There Dallas had first staggered
across the floor shouting "Dad," while May and the nurse laughed behind
the door; there their second child, Mary (who was so like her mother),
had announced her engagement to the dullest and most reliable of Reggie
Chivers's many sons; and there Archer had kissed her through her
wedding veil before they went down to the motor which was to carry them
to Grace Church--for in a world where all else had reeled on its
foundations the "Grace Church wedding" remained an unchanged
institution.
It was in the library that he and May had always discussed the future
of the children: the studies of Dallas and his young brother Bill,
Mary's incurable indifference to "accomplishments," and passion for
sport and philanthropy, and the vague leanings toward "art" which had
finally landed the restless and curious Dallas in the office of a
rising New York architect.
The young men nowadays were emancipating themselves from the law and
business and taking up all sorts of new things. If they were not
absorbed in state politics or municipal reform, the chances were that
they were going in for Central American archaeology, for architecture
or landscape-engineering; taking a keen and learned interest in the
prerevolutionary buildings of their own country, studying and adapting
Georgian types, and protesting at the meaningless use of the word
"Colonial." Nobody nowadays had "Colonial" houses except the
millionaire grocers of the suburbs.
But above all--sometimes Archer put it above all--it was in that
library that the Governor of New York, coming down from Albany one
evening to dine and spend the night, had turned to his host, and said,
banging his clenched fist on the table and gnashing his eye-glasses:
"Hang the professional politician! You're the kind of man the country
wants, Archer. If the stable's ever to be cleaned out, men like you
have got to lend a hand in the cleaning."
"Men like you--" how Archer had glowed at the phrase! How eagerly he
had risen up at the call! It was an echo of Ned Winsett's old appeal
to roll his sleeves up and get down into the muck; but spoken by a man
who set the example of the gesture, and whose summons to follow him was
irresistible.
Archer, as he looked back, was not sure that men like himself WERE what
his country needed, at least in the active service to which Theodore
Roosevelt had pointed; in fact, there was reason to think it did not,
for after a year in the State Assembly he had not been re-elected, and
had dropped back thankfully into obscure if useful municipal work, and
from that again to the writing of occasional articles in one of the
reforming weeklies that were trying to shake the country out of its
apathy. It was little enough to look back on; but when he remembered
to what the young men of his generation and his set had looked
forward--the narrow groove of money-making, sport and society to which
their vision had been limited--even his small contribution to the new
state of things seemed to count, as each brick counts in a well-built
wall. He had done little in public life; he would always be by nature
a contemplative and a dilettante; but he had had high things to
contemplate, great things to delight in; and one great man's friendship
to be his strength and pride.
He had been, in short, what people were beginning to call "a good
citizen." In New York, for many years past, every new movement,
philanthropic, municipal or artistic, had taken account of his opinion
and wanted his name. People said: "Ask Archer" when there was a
question of starting the first school for crippled children,
reorganising the Museum of Art, founding the Grolier Club, inaugurating
the new Library, or getting up a new society of chamber music. His
days were full, and they were filled decently. He supposed it was all
a man ought to ask.
Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of
it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined
would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first
prize in a lottery. There were a hundred million tickets in HIS
lottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too
decidedly against him. When he thought of Ellen Olenska it was
abstractly, serenely, as one might think of some imaginary beloved in a
book or a picture: she had become the composite vision of all that he
had missed. That vision, faint and tenuous as it was, had kept him
from thinking of other women. He had been what was called a faithful
husband; and when May had suddenly died--carried off by the infectious
pneumonia through which she had nursed their youngest child--he had
honestly mourned her. Their long years together had shown him that it
did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept
the dignity of a duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of
ugly appetites. Looking about him, he honoured his own past, and
mourned for it. After all, there was good in the old ways.
His eyes, making the round of the room--done over by Dallas with
English mezzotints, Chippendale cabinets, bits of chosen blue-and-white
and pleasantly shaded electric lamps--came back to the old Eastlake
writing-table that he had never been willing to banish, and to his
first photograph of May, which still kept its place beside his inkstand.
There she was, tall, round-bosomed and willowy, in her starched muslin
and flapping Leghorn, as he had seen her under the orange-trees in the
Mission garden. And as he had seen her that day, so she had remained;
never quite at the same height, yet never far below it: generous,
faithful, unwearied; but so lacking in imagination, so incapable of
growth, that the world of her youth had fallen into pieces and rebuilt
itself without her ever being conscious of the change. This hard
bright blindness had kept her immediate horizon apparently unaltered.
Her incapacity to recognise change made her children conceal their
views from her as Archer concealed his; there had been, from the first,
a joint pretence of sameness, a kind of innocent family hypocrisy, in
which father and children had unconsciously collaborated. And she had
died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious
households like her own, and resigned to leave it because she was
convinced that, whatever happened, Newland would continue to inculcate
in Dallas the same principles and prejudices which had shaped his
parents' lives, and that Dallas in turn (when Newland followed her)
would transmit the sacred trust to little Bill. And of Mary she was
sure as of her own self. So, having snatched little Bill from the
grave, and given her life in the effort, she went contentedly to her
place in the Archer vault in St. Mark's, where Mrs. Archer already lay
safe from the terrifying "trend" which her daughter-in-law had never
even become aware of.
Opposite May's portrait stood one of her daughter. Mary Chivers was as
tall and fair as her mother, but large-waisted, flat-chested and
slightly slouching, as the altered fashion required. Mary Chivers's
mighty feats of athleticism could not have been performed with the
twenty-inch waist that May Archer's azure sash so easily spanned. And
the difference seemed symbolic; the mother's life had been as closely
girt as her figure. Mary, who was no less conventional, and no more
intelligent, yet led a larger life and held more tolerant views. There
was good in the new order too.
The telephone clicked, and Archer, turning from the photographs,
unhooked the transmitter at his elbow. How far they were from the days
when the legs of the brass-buttoned messenger boy had been New York's
only means of quick communication!
"Chicago wants you."
Ah--it must be a long-distance from Dallas, who had been sent to
Chicago by his firm to talk over the plan of the Lakeside palace they
were to build for a young millionaire with ideas. The firm always sent
Dallas on such errands.
"Hallo, Dad--Yes: Dallas. I say--how do you feel about sailing on
Wednesday? Mauretania: Yes, next Wednesday as ever is. Our client
wants me to look at some Italian gardens before we settle anything, and
has asked me to nip over on the next boat. I've got to be back on the
first of June--" the voice broke into a joyful conscious laugh--"so we
must look alive. I say, Dad, I want your help: do come."
Dallas seemed to be speaking in the room: the voice was as near by and
natural as if he had been lounging in his favourite arm-chair by the
fire. The fact would not ordinarily have surprised Archer, for
long-distance telephoning had become as much a matter of course as
electric lighting and five-day Atlantic voyages. But the laugh did
startle him; it still seemed wonderful that across all those miles and
miles of country--forest, river, mountain, prairie, roaring cities and
busy indifferent millions--Dallas's laugh should be able to say: "Of
course, whatever happens, I must get back on the first, because Fanny
Beaufort and I are to be married on the fifth."
The voice began again: "Think it over? No, sir: not a minute. You've
got to say yes now. Why not, I'd like to know? If you can allege a
single reason--No; I knew it. Then it's a go, eh? Because I count on
you to ring up the Cunard office first thing tomorrow; and you'd better
book a return on a boat from Marseilles. I say, Dad; it'll be our last
time together, in this kind of way--. Oh, good! I knew you would."
Chicago rang off, and Archer rose and began to pace up and down the
room.
It would be their last time together in this kind of way: the boy was
right. They would have lots of other "times" after Dallas's marriage,
his father was sure; for the two were born comrades, and Fanny
Beaufort, whatever one might think of her, did not seem likely to
interfere with their intimacy. On the contrary, from what he had seen
of her, he thought she would be naturally included in it. Still,
change was change, and differences were differences, and much as he
felt himself drawn toward his future daughter-in-law, it was tempting
to seize this last chance of being alone with his boy.
There was no reason why he should not seize it, except the profound one
that he had lost the habit of travel. May had disliked to move except
for valid reasons, such as taking the children to the sea or in the
mountains: she could imagine no other motive for leaving the house in
Thirty-ninth Street or their comfortable quarters at the Wellands' in
Newport. After Dallas had taken his degree she had thought it her duty
to travel for six months; and the whole family had made the
old-fashioned tour through England, Switzerland and Italy. Their time
being limited (no one knew why) they had omitted France. Archer
remembered Dallas's wrath at being asked to contemplate Mont Blanc
instead of Rheims and Chartres. But Mary and Bill wanted
mountain-climbing, and had already yawned their way in Dallas's wake
through the English cathedrals; and May, always fair to her children,
had insisted on holding the balance evenly between their athletic and
artistic proclivities. She had indeed proposed that her husband should
go to Paris for a fortnight, and join them on the Italian lakes after
they had "done" Switzerland; but Archer had declined. "We'll stick
together," he said; and May's face had brightened at his setting such a
good example to Dallas.
Since her death, nearly two years before, there had been no reason for
his continuing in the same routine. His children had urged him to
travel: Mary Chivers had felt sure it would do him good to go abroad
and "see the galleries." The very mysteriousness of such a cure made
her the more confident of its efficacy. But Archer had found himself
held fast by habit, by memories, by a sudden startled shrinking from
new things.
Now, as he reviewed his past, he saw into what a deep rut he had sunk.
The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for
doing anything else. At least that was the view that the men of his
generation had taken. The trenchant divisions between right and wrong,
honest and dishonest, respectable and the reverse, had left so little
scope for the unforeseen. There are moments when a man's imagination,
so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily
level, and surveys the long windings of destiny. Archer hung there and
wondered....
What was left of the little world he had grown up in, and whose
standards had bent and bound him? He remembered a sneering prophecy of
poor Lawrence Lefferts's, uttered years ago in that very room: "If
things go on at this rate, our children will be marrying Beaufort's
bastards."
It was just what Archer's eldest son, the pride of his life, was doing;
and nobody wondered or reproved. Even the boy's Aunt Janey, who still
looked so exactly as she used to in her elderly youth, had taken her
mother's emeralds and seed-pearls out of their pink cotton-wool, and
carried them with her own twitching hands to the future bride; and
Fanny Beaufort, instead of looking disappointed at not receiving a
"set" from a Paris jeweller, had exclaimed at their old-fashioned
beauty, and declared that when she wore them she should feel like an
Isabey miniature.
Fanny Beaufort, who had appeared in New York at eighteen, after the
death of her parents, had won its heart much as Madame Olenska had won
it thirty years earlier; only instead of being distrustful and afraid
of her, society took her joyfully for granted. She was pretty, amusing
and accomplished: what more did any one want? Nobody was narrow-minded
enough to rake up against her the half-forgotten facts of her father's
past and her own origin. Only the older people remembered so obscure
an incident in the business life of New York as Beaufort's failure, or
the fact that after his wife's death he had been quietly married to the
notorious Fanny Ring, and had left the country with his new wife, and a
little girl who inherited her beauty. He was subsequently heard of in
Constantinople, then in Russia; and a dozen years later American
travellers were handsomely entertained by him in Buenos Ayres, where he
represented a large insurance agency. He and his wife died there in
the odour of prosperity; and one day their orphaned daughter had
appeared in New York in charge of May Archer's sister-in-law, Mrs. Jack
Welland, whose husband had been appointed the girl's guardian. The
fact threw her into almost cousinly relationship with Newland Archer's
children, and nobody was surprised when Dallas's engagement was
announced.
Nothing could more dearly give the measure of the distance that the
world had travelled. People nowadays were too busy--busy with reforms
and "movements," with fads and fetishes and frivolities--to bother much
about their neighbours. And of what account was anybody's past, in the
huge kaleidoscope where all the social atoms spun around on the same
plane?
Newland Archer, looking out of his hotel window at the stately gaiety
of the Paris streets, felt his heart beating with the confusion and
eagerness of youth.
It was long since it had thus plunged and reared under his widening
waistcoat, leaving him, the next minute, with an empty breast and hot
temples. He wondered if it was thus that his son's conducted itself in
the presence of Miss Fanny Beaufort--and decided that it was not. "It
functions as actively, no doubt, but the rhythm is different," he
reflected, recalling the cool composure with which the young man had
announced his engagement, and taken for granted that his family would
approve.
"The difference is that these young people take it for granted that
they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took
it for granted that we shouldn't. Only, I wonder--the thing one's so
certain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?"
It was the day after their arrival in Paris, and the spring sunshine
held Archer in his open window, above the wide silvery prospect of the
Place Vendome. One of the things he had stipulated--almost the only
one--when he had agreed to come abroad with Dallas, was that, in Paris,
he shouldn't be made to go to one of the newfangled "palaces."
"Oh, all right--of course," Dallas good-naturedly agreed. "I'll take
you to some jolly old-fashioned place--the Bristol say--" leaving his
father speechless at hearing that the century-long home of kings and
emperors was now spoken of as an old-fashioned inn, where one went for
its quaint inconveniences and lingering local colour.
Archer had pictured often enough, in the first impatient years, the
scene of his return to Paris; then the personal vision had faded, and
he had simply tried to see the city as the setting of Madame Olenska's
life. Sitting alone at night in his library, after the household had
gone to bed, he had evoked the radiant outbreak of spring down the
avenues of horse-chestnuts, the flowers and statues in the public
gardens, the whiff of lilacs from the flower-carts, the majestic roll
of the river under the great bridges, and the life of art and study and
pleasure that filled each mighty artery to bursting. Now the spectacle
was before him in its glory, and as he looked out on it he felt shy,
old-fashioned, inadequate: a mere grey speck of a man compared with the
ruthless magnificent fellow he had dreamed of being....
Dallas's hand came down cheerily on his shoulder. "Hullo, father: this
is something like, isn't it?" They stood for a while looking out in
silence, and then the young man continued: "By the way, I've got a
message for you: the Countess Olenska expects us both at half-past
five."
He said it lightly, carelessly, as he might have imparted any casual
item of information, such as the hour at which their train was to leave
for Florence the next evening. Archer looked at him, and thought he
saw in his gay young eyes a gleam of his great-grandmother Mingott's
malice.
"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Dallas pursued. "Fanny made me swear to do
three things while I was in Paris: get her the score of the last
Debussy songs, go to the Grand-Guignol and see Madame Olenska. You
know she was awfully good to Fanny when Mr. Beaufort sent her over from
Buenos Ayres to the Assomption. Fanny hadn't any friends in Paris, and
Madame Olenska used to be kind to her and trot her about on holidays.
I believe she was a great friend of the first Mrs. Beaufort's. And
she's our cousin, of course. So I rang her up this morning, before I
went out, and told her you and I were here for two days and wanted to
see her."
Archer continued to stare at him. "You told her I was here?"
"Of course--why not?" Dallas's eye brows went up whimsically. Then,
getting no answer, he slipped his arm through his father's with a
confidential pressure.
"I say, father: what was she like?"
Archer felt his colour rise under his son's unabashed gaze. "Come, own
up: you and she were great pals, weren't you? Wasn't she most awfully
lovely?"
"Lovely? I don't know. She was different."
"Ah--there you have it! That's what it always comes to, doesn't it?
When she comes, SHE'S DIFFERENT--and one doesn't know why. It's
exactly what I feel about Fanny."
His father drew back a step, releasing his arm. "About Fanny? But, my
dear fellow--I should hope so! Only I don't see--"
"Dash it, Dad, don't be prehistoric! Wasn't she--once--your Fanny?"
Dallas belonged body and soul to the new generation. He was the
first-born of Newland and May Archer, yet it had never been possible to
inculcate in him even the rudiments of reserve. "What's the use of
making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out," he
always objected when enjoined to discretion. But Archer, meeting his
eyes, saw the filial light under their banter.
"My Fanny?"
"Well, the woman you'd have chucked everything for: only you didn't,"
continued his surprising son.
"I didn't," echoed Archer with a kind of solemnity.
"No: you date, you see, dear old boy. But mother said--"
"Your mother?"
"Yes: the day before she died. It was when she sent for me alone--you
remember? She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would
be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you
most wanted."
Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyes
remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the
window. At length he said in a low voice: "She never asked me."
"No. I forgot. You never did ask each other anything, did you? And
you never told each other anything. You just sat and watched each
other, and guessed at what was going on underneath. A deaf-and-dumb
asylum, in fact! Well, I back your generation for knowing more about
each other's private thoughts than we ever have time to find out about
our own.--I say, Dad," Dallas broke off, "you're not angry with me? If
you are, let's make it up and go and lunch at Henri's. I've got to
rush out to Versailles afterward."
Archer did not accompany his son to Versailles. He preferred to spend
the afternoon in solitary roamings through Paris. He had to deal all
at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate
lifetime.
After a little while he did not regret Dallas's indiscretion. It
seemed to take an iron band from his heart to know that, after all,
some one had guessed and pitied.... And that it should have been his
wife moved him indescribably. Dallas, for all his affectionate
insight, would not have understood that. To the boy, no doubt, the
episode was only a pathetic instance of vain frustration, of wasted
forces. But was it really no more? For a long time Archer sat on a
bench in the Champs Elysees and wondered, while the stream of life
rolled by....
A few streets away, a few hours away, Ellen Olenska waited. She had
never gone back to her husband, and when he had died, some years
before, she had made no change in her way of living. There was nothing
now to keep her and Archer apart--and that afternoon he was to see her.
He got up and walked across the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries
gardens to the Louvre. She had once told him that she often went
there, and he had a fancy to spend the intervening time in a place
where he could think of her as perhaps having lately been. For an hour
or more he wandered from gallery to gallery through the dazzle of
afternoon light, and one by one the pictures burst on him in their
half-forgotten splendour, filling his soul with the long echoes of
beauty. After all, his life had been too starved....
Suddenly, before an effulgent Titian, he found himself saying: "But
I'm only fifty-seven--" and then he turned away. For such summer
dreams it was too late; but surely not for a quiet harvest of
friendship, of comradeship, in the blessed hush of her nearness.
He went back to the hotel, where he and Dallas were to meet; and
together they walked again across the Place de la Concorde and over the
bridge that leads to the Chamber of Deputies.
Dallas, unconscious of what was going on in his father's mind, was
talking excitedly and abundantly of Versailles. He had had but one
previous glimpse of it, during a holiday trip in which he had tried to
pack all the sights he had been deprived of when he had had to go with
the family to Switzerland; and tumultuous enthusiasm and cock-sure
criticism tripped each other up on his lips.
As Archer listened, his sense of inadequacy and inexpressiveness
increased. The boy was not insensitive, he knew; but he had the
facility and self-confidence that came of looking at fate not as a
master but as an equal. "That's it: they feel equal to things--they
know their way about," he mused, thinking of his son as the spokesman
of the new generation which had swept away all the old landmarks, and
with them the sign-posts and the danger-signal.
Suddenly Dallas stopped short, grasping his father's arm. "Oh, by
Jove," he exclaimed.
They had come out into the great tree-planted space before the
Invalides. The dome of Mansart floated ethereally above the budding
trees and the long grey front of the building: drawing up into itself
all the rays of afternoon light, it hung there like the visible symbol
of the race's glory.
Archer knew that Madame Olenska lived in a square near one of the
avenues radiating from the Invalides; and he had pictured the quarter
as quiet and almost obscure, forgetting the central splendour that lit
it up. Now, by some queer process of association, that golden light
became for him the pervading illumination in which she lived. For
nearly thirty years, her life--of which he knew so strangely
little--had been spent in this rich atmosphere that he already felt to
be too dense and yet too stimulating for his lungs. He thought of the
theatres she must have been to, the pictures she must have looked at,
the sober and splendid old houses she must have frequented, the people
she must have talked with, the incessant stir of ideas, curiosities,
images and associations thrown out by an intensely social race in a
setting of immemorial manners; and suddenly he remembered the young
Frenchman who had once said to him: "Ah, good conversation--there is
nothing like it, is there?"
Archer had not seen M. Riviere, or heard of him, for nearly thirty
years; and that fact gave the measure of his ignorance of Madame
Olenska's existence. More than half a lifetime divided them, and she
had spent the long interval among people he did not know, in a society
he but faintly guessed at, in conditions he would never wholly
understand. During that time he had been living with his youthful
memory of her; but she had doubtless had other and more tangible
companionship. Perhaps she too had kept her memory of him as something
apart; but if she had, it must have been like a relic in a small dim
chapel, where there was not time to pray every day....
They had crossed the Place des Invalides, and were walking down one of
the thoroughfares flanking the building. It was a quiet quarter, after
all, in spite of its splendour and its history; and the fact gave one
an idea of the riches Paris had to draw on, since such scenes as this
were left to the few and the indifferent.
The day was fading into a soft sun-shot haze, pricked here and there by
a yellow electric light, and passers were rare in the little square
into which they had turned. Dallas stopped again, and looked up.
"It must be here," he said, slipping his arm through his father's with
a movement from which Archer's shyness did not shrink; and they stood
together looking up at the house.
It was a modern building, without distinctive character, but
many-windowed, and pleasantly balconied up its wide cream-coloured
front. On one of the upper balconies, which hung well above the
rounded tops of the horse-chestnuts in the square, the awnings were
still lowered, as though the sun had just left it.
"I wonder which floor--?" Dallas conjectured; and moving toward the
porte-cochere he put his head into the porter's lodge, and came back to
say: "The fifth. It must be the one with the awnings."
Archer remained motionless, gazing at the upper windows as if the end
of their pilgrimage had been attained.
"I say, you know, it's nearly six," his son at length reminded him.
The father glanced away at an empty bench under the trees.
"I believe I'll sit there a moment," he said.
"Why--aren't you well?" his son exclaimed.
"Oh, perfectly. But I should like you, please, to go up without me."
Dallas paused before him, visibly bewildered. "But, I say, Dad: do you
mean you won't come up at all?"
"I don't know," said Archer slowly.
"If you don't she won't understand."
"Go, my boy; perhaps I shall follow you."
Dallas gave him a long look through the twilight.
"But what on earth shall I say?"
"My dear fellow, don't you always know what to say?" his father
rejoined with a smile.
"Very well. I shall say you're old-fashioned, and prefer walking up
the five flights because you don't like lifts."
His father smiled again. "Say I'm old-fashioned: that's enough."
Dallas looked at him again, and then, with an incredulous gesture,
passed out of sight under the vaulted doorway.
Archer sat down on the bench and continued to gaze at the awninged
balcony. He calculated the time it would take his son to be carried up
in the lift to the fifth floor, to ring the bell, and be admitted to
the hall, and then ushered into the drawing-room. He pictured Dallas
entering that room with his quick assured step and his delightful
smile, and wondered if the people were right who said that his boy
"took after him."
Then he tried to see the persons already in the room--for probably at
that sociable hour there would be more than one--and among them a dark
lady, pale and dark, who would look up quickly, half rise, and hold out
a long thin hand with three rings on it.... He thought she would be
sitting in a sofa-corner near the fire, with azaleas banked behind her
on a table.
"It's more real to me here than if I went up," he suddenly heard
himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose
its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each
other.
He sat for a long time on the bench in the thickening dusk, his eyes
never turning from the balcony. At length a light shone through the
windows, and a moment later a man-servant came out on the balcony, drew
up the awnings, and closed the shutters.
At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got
up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel.
A Note on the Text
The Age of Innocence first appeared in four large installments in The
Pictorial Review, from July to October 1920. It was published that
same year in book form by D. Appleton and Company in New York and in
London. Wharton made extensive stylistic, punctuation, and spelling
changes and revisions between the serial and book publication, and more
than thirty subsequent changes were made after the second impression of
the book edition had been run off. This authoritative text is
reprinted from the Library of America edition of Novels by Edith
Wharton, and is based on the sixth impression of the first edition,
which incorporates the last set of extensive revisions that are
obviously authorial.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF INNOCENCE ***
***** This file should be named 541.txt or 541.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/541/
Produced by Judith Boss and Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines.
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.net/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.net),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
gbnewby@pglaf.org
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.net
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.