The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
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 Englishspeaking
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 silverbacked
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 penwipers
made by female parishioners for fashionable
clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath the rosetrees;
and here and there a daisy grafted on a rosebranch
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-thevalley.
"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, buttonhole-
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 righthand
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 lowtoned
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 creamcoloured
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 Mephistophelesand-
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 sideglance
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 sonin-
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 drawingrooms,
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 drawingrooms
(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 cabbagerose-
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 cobblestones
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 loopedback
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-Newlandvan-
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 drawingroom
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 chintzcurtained
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 generousminded
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 greatgrandfathers
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 lowpitched
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 drawingroom.
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 chimneypiece,
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 greenishyellow
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 greenishyellow
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 streetlamp
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 teakettle.
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 hailfellow
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 lightheartedly:
"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 plateglass;
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 housetops;
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 simpleminded
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 candies 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 oldfashioned
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 claptrap
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 dumblyconfessed
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 fashionplates
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 bookseller,
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 griddlecakes
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 halfintelligible
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 cardcases.
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 coldblooded
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 tonguetied
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-medown"
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 hearthrug,
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 timepiece
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 Carter |
| 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 sofacorner,
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 weddingbreakfast
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 sidedishes.
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 weddingdress?
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 fellowbeings.
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 squareshouldered
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 nymphlike
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 cottageorne
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 ponycarriage
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 drawingroom
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 summerhouse
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 luncheontable
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 longhaired
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 stablelad
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 hayfield;
but to the left an overgrown box-garden full of
dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summerhouse
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 oakgrove
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 shirtsleeved
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 fashionablydressed
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 Twentythird
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-andtake--
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 nonparticipant,
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 wellknown
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 greatgrandfather'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-inlaw
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.