The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (story read aloud TXT) 📕

>“I believe it is suggested; but she denies it.”

 

“Then—”

 

“Will you oblige me, Mr. Archer, by first looking

through these papers? Afterward, when we have talked

the case over, I will give you my opinion.”

 

Archer withdrew reluctantly with the unwelcome

documents. Since their last meeting he had half-unconsciously

collaborated with events in ridding himself of the burden

of Madame Olenska. His hour alone with her by

the firelight had drawn them into a momentary intimacy

on which the Duke of St. Austrey’s intrusion with

Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, and the Countess’s joyous greeting

of them, had rather providentially broken. Two

days later Archer had assisted at the comedy of her

reinstatement in the van der Luydens’ favour, and had

said to himself, with a touch of tartness, that a lady

who knew how to thank all-powerful elderly gentlemen

to such good purpose for a bunch of flowers did not

need either the private consolations or the public

championship of a young man of his small compass. To look

at the matter in this light simplified his own case and

surprisingly furbished up all the dim domestic virtues.

He could not picture May Welland, in whatever

conceivable emergency, hawking about her private difficulties

and lavishing her confidences on strange men; and

she had never seemed to him finer or fairer than in the

week that followed. He had even yielded to her wish

for a long engagement, since she had found the one

disarming answer to his plea for haste.

 

“You know, when it comes to the point, your parents

have always let you have your way ever since you

were a little girl,” he argued; and she had answered,

with her clearest look: “Yes; and that’s what makes it

so hard to refuse the very last thing they’ll ever ask of

me as a little girl.”

 

That was the old New York note; that was the kind

of answer he would like always to be sure of his wife’s

making. If one had habitually breathed the New York

air there were times when anything less crystalline seemed

stifling.

 

The papers he had retired to read did not tell him much

in fact; but they plunged him into an atmosphere in

which he choked and spluttered. They consisted mainly

of an exchange of letters between Count Olenski’s

solicitors and a French legal firm to whom the Countess

had applied for the settlement of her financial

situation. There was also a short letter from the Count to

his wife: after reading it, Newland Archer rose, jammed

the papers back into their envelope, and reentered Mr.

Letterblair’s office.

 

“Here are the letters, sir. If you wish, I’ll see

Madame Olenska,” he said in a constrained voice.

 

“Thank you—thank you, Mr. Archer. Come and

dine with me tonight if you’re free, and we’ll go into

the matter afterward: in case you wish to call on our

client tomorrow.”

 

Newland Archer walked straight home again that

afternoon. It was a winter evening of transparent clearness,

with an innocent young moon above the house-tops; and he wanted to fill his soul’s lungs with the

pure radiance, and not exchange a word with any one

till he and Mr. Letterblair were closeted together after

dinner. It was impossible to decide otherwise than he

had done: he must see Madame Olenska himself rather

than let her secrets be bared to other eyes. A great

wave of compassion had swept away his indifference

and impatience: she stood before him as an exposed

and pitiful figure, to be saved at all costs from farther

wounding herself in her mad plunges against fate.

 

He remembered what she had told him of Mrs.

Welland’s request to be spared whatever was “unpleasant”

in her history, and winced at the thought that it was

perhaps this attitude of mind which kept the New York

air so pure. “Are we only Pharisees after all?” he

wondered, puzzled by the effort to reconcile his instinctive

disgust at human vileness with his equally instinctive

pity for human frailty.

 

For the first time he perceived how elementary his

own principles had always been. He passed for a young

man who had not been afraid of risks, and he knew

that his secret love-affair with poor silly Mrs. Thorley

Rushworth had not been too secret to invest him with

a becoming air of adventure. But Mrs. Rushworth was

“that kind of woman”; foolish, vain, clandestine by

nature, and far more attracted by the secrecy and peril

of the affair than by such charms and qualities as he

possessed. When the fact dawned on him it nearly

broke his heart, but now it seemed the redeeming feature

of the case. The affair, in short, had been of the

kind that most of the young men of his age had been

through, and emerged from with calm consciences and

an undisturbed belief in the abysmal distinction between

the women one loved and respected and those

one enjoyed—and pitied. In this view they were

sedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts and other elderly

female relatives, who all shared Mrs. Archer’s belief

that when “such things happened” it was undoubtedly

foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of

the woman. All the elderly ladies whom Archer knew

regarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily

unscrupulous and designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches. The only

thing to do was to persuade him, as early as possible, to

marry a nice girl, and then trust to her to look after him.

 

In the complicated old European communities, Archer

began to guess, love-problems might be less simple and

less easily classified. Rich and idle and ornamental

societies must produce many more such situations; and

there might even be one in which a woman naturally

sensitive and aloof would yet, from the force of

circumstances, from sheer defencelessness and loneliness, be

drawn into a tie inexcusable by conventional standards.

 

On reaching home he wrote a line to the Countess

Olenska, asking at what hour of the next day she could

receive him, and despatched it by a messenger-boy,

who returned presently with a word to the effect that

she was going to Skuytercliff the next morning to stay

over Sunday with the van der Luydens, but that he

would find her alone that evening after dinner. The

note was written on a rather untidy half-sheet, without

date or address, but her hand was firm and free. He

was amused at the idea of her week-ending in the

stately solitude of Skuytercliff, but immediately afterward

felt that there, of all places, she would most feel

the chill of minds rigorously averted from the “unpleasant.”

 

He was at Mr. Letterblair’s punctually at seven, glad

of the pretext for excusing himself soon after dinner.

He had formed his own opinion from the papers entrusted

to him, and did not especially want to go into

the matter with his senior partner. Mr. Letterblair was

a widower, and they dined alone, copiously and slowly,

in a dark shabby room hung with yellowing prints of

“The Death of Chatham” and “The Coronation of

Napoleon.” On the sideboard, between fluted Sheraton

knife-cases, stood a decanter of Haut Brion, and another

of the old Lanning port (the gift of a client),

which the wastrel Tom Lanning had sold off a year or

two before his mysterious and discreditable death in

San Francisco—an incident less publicly humiliating to

the family than the sale of the cellar.

 

After a velvety oyster soup came shad and cucumbers,

then a young broiled turkey with corn fritters,

followed by a canvasback 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