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

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 bathroom 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 armchairs

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