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

sailing

and riding, varied by an occasional dance at the

primitive inn when a man-of-war came in. A few pleasant

people from Philadelphia and Baltimore were

picknicking at the inn, and the Selfridge Merrys had

come down for three weeks because Kate Merry had

had bronchitis. They were planning to lay out a lawn

tennis court on the sands; but no one but Kate and

May had racquets, and most of the people had not

even heard of the game.

 

All this kept her very busy, and she had not had time

to do more than look at the little vellum book that

Archer had sent her the week before (the “Sonnets

from the Portuguese”); but she was learning by heart

“How they brought the Good News from Ghent to

Aix,” because it was one of the first things he had ever

read to her; and it amused her to be able to tell him

that Kate Merry had never even heard of a poet called

Robert Browning.

 

Presently she started up, exclaiming that they would

be late for breakfast; and they hurried back to the

tumble-down house with its pointless porch and unpruned

hedge of plumbago and pink geraniums where

the Wellands were installed for the winter. Mr.

Welland’s sensitive domesticity shrank from the discomforts

of the slovenly southern hotel, and at immense

expense, and in face of almost insuperable difficulties,

Mrs. Welland was obliged, year after year, to improvise

an establishment partly made up of discontented

New York servants and partly drawn from the local

African supply.

 

“The doctors want my husband to feel that he is in

his own home; otherwise he would be so wretched that

the climate would not do him any good,” she

explained, winter after winter, to the sympathising

Philadelphians and Baltimoreans; and Mr. Welland, beaming

across a breakfast table miraculously supplied with the

most varied delicacies, was presently saying to Archer:

“You see, my dear fellow, we camp—we literally camp.

I tell my wife and May that I want to teach them how

to rough it.”

 

Mr. and Mrs. Welland had been as much surprised

as their daughter by the young man’s sudden arrival;

but it had occurred to him to explain that he had felt

himself on the verge of a nasty cold, and this seemed to

Mr. Welland an all-sufficient reason for abandoning

any duty.

 

“You can’t be too careful, especially toward spring,”

he said, heaping his plate with straw-coloured griddle-cakes and drowning them in golden syrup. “If I’d only

been as prudent at your age May would have been

dancing at the Assemblies now, instead of spending her

winters in a wilderness with an old invalid.”

 

“Oh, but I love it here, Papa; you know I do. If only

Newland could stay I should like it a thousand times

better than New York.”

 

“Newland must stay till he has quite thrown off his

cold,” said Mrs. Welland indulgently; and the young

man laughed, and said he supposed there was such a

thing as one’s profession.

 

He managed, however, after an exchange of telegrams

with the firm, to make his cold last a week; and

it shed an ironic light on the situation to know that

Mr. Letterblair’s indulgence was partly due to the

satisfactory way in which his brilliant young junior partner

had settled the troublesome matter of the Olenski

divorce. Mr. Letterblair had let Mrs. Welland know that

Mr. Archer had “rendered an invaluable service” to the

whole family, and that old Mrs. Manson Mingott had

been particularly pleased; and one day when May had

gone for a drive with her father in the only vehicle the

place produced Mrs. Welland took occasion to touch

on a topic which she always avoided in her daughter’s

presence.

 

“I’m afraid Ellen’s ideas are not at all like ours. She

was barely eighteen when Medora Manson took her

back to Europe—you remember the excitement when

she appeared in black at her coming-out ball? Another

of Medora’s fads—really this time it was almost

prophetic! That must have been at least twelve years ago;

and since then Ellen has never been to America. No

wonder she is completely Europeanised.”

 

“But European society is not given to divorce: Countess

Olenska thought she would be conforming to American

ideas in asking for her freedom.” It was the first

time that the young man had pronounced her name

since he had left Skuytercliff, and he felt the colour rise

to his cheek.

 

Mrs. Welland smiled compassionately. “That is just

like the extraordinary things that foreigners invent about

us. They think we dine at two o’clock and countenance

divorce! That is why it seems to me so foolish to

entertain them when they come to New York. They

accept our hospitality, and then they go home and

repeat the same stupid stories.”

 

Archer made no comment on this, and Mrs. Welland

continued: “But we do most thoroughly appreciate your

persuading Ellen to give up the idea. Her grandmother

and her uncle Lovell could do nothing with her; both

of them have written that her changing her mind was

entirely due to your influence—in fact she said so to

her grandmother. She has an unbounded admiration

for you. Poor Ellen—she was always a wayward child.

I wonder what her fate will be?”

 

“What we’ve all contrived to make it,” he felt like

answering. “if you’d all of you rather she should be

Beaufort’s mistress than some decent fellow’s wife you’ve

certainly gone the right way about it.”

 

He wondered what Mrs. Welland would have said if

he had uttered the words instead of merely thinking

them. He could picture the sudden decomposure of her

firm placid features, to which a lifelong mastery over

trifles had given an air of factitious authority. Traces

still lingered on them of a fresh beauty like her daughter’s;

and he asked himself if May’s face was doomed

to thicken into the same middle-aged image of invincible

innocence.

 

Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of

innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against

imagination and the heart against experience!

 

“I verily believe,” Mrs. Welland continued, “that if

the horrible business had come out in the newspapers it

would have been my husband’s death-blow. I don’t

know any of the details; I only ask not to, as I told

poor Ellen when she tried to talk to me about it.

Having an invalid to care for, I have to keep my mind

bright and happy. But Mr. Welland was terribly upset;

he had a slight temperature every morning while we

were waiting to hear what had been decided. It was the

horror of his girl’s learning that such things were

possible—but of course, dear Newland, you felt that

too. We all knew that you were thinking of May.”

 

“I’m always thinking of May,” the young man

rejoined, rising to cut short the conversation.

 

He had meant to seize the opportunity of his private

talk with Mrs. Welland to urge her to advance the date

of his marriage. But he could think of no arguments

that would move her, and with a sense of relief he saw

Mr. Welland and May driving up to the door.

 

His only hope was to plead again with May, and on

the day before his departure he walked with her to the

ruinous garden of the Spanish Mission. The background

lent itself to allusions to European scenes; and May,

who was looking her loveliest under a wide-brimmed

hat that cast a shadow of mystery over her too-clear

eyes, kindled into eagerness as he spoke of Granada

and the Alhambra.

 

“We might be seeing it all this spring—even the

Easter ceremonies at Seville,” he urged, exaggerating

his demands in the hope of a larger concession.

 

“Easter in Seville? And it will be Lent next week!”

she laughed.

 

“Why shouldn’t we be married in Lent?” he

rejoined; but she looked so shocked that he saw his

mistake.

 

“Of course I didn’t mean that, dearest; but soon

after Easter—so that we could sail at the end of April. I

know I could arrange it at the office.”

 

She smiled dreamily upon the possibility; but he

perceived that to dream of it sufficed her. It was like

hearing him read aloud out of his poetry books the

beautiful things that could not possibly happen in real

life.

 

“Oh, do go on, Newland; I do love your descriptions.”

 

“But why should they be only descriptions? Why

shouldn’t we make them real?”

 

“We shall, dearest, of course; next year.” Her voice

lingered over it.

 

“Don’t you want them to be real sooner? Can’t I

persuade you to break away now?”

 

She bowed her head, vanishing from him under her

conniving hatbrim.

 

“Why should we dream away another year? Look at

me, dear! Don’t you understand how I want you for

my wife?”

 

For a moment she remained motionless; then she

raised on him eyes of such despairing dearness that he

half-released her waist from his hold. But suddenly her

look changed and deepened inscrutably. “I’m not sure

if I DO understand,” she said. “Is it—is it because

you’re not certain of continuing to care for me?”

 

Archer sprang up from his seat. “My God—perhaps—I

don’t know,” he broke out angrily.

 

May Welland rose also; as they faced each other she

seemed to grow in womanly stature and dignity. Both

were silent for a moment, as if dismayed by the unforeseen

trend of their words: then she said in a low voice:

“If that is it—is there some one else?”

 

“Some one else—between you and me?” He echoed

her words slowly, as though they were only half-intelligible and he wanted time to repeat the question

to himself. She seemed to catch the uncertainty of his

voice, for she went on in a deepening tone: “Let us

talk frankly, Newland. Sometimes I’ve felt a difference

in you; especially since our engagement has been

announced.”

 

“Dear—what madness!” he recovered himself to

exclaim.

 

She met his protest with a faint smile. “If it is, it

won’t hurt us to talk about it.” She paused, and added,

lifting her head with one of her noble movements: “Or

even if it’s true: why shouldn’t we speak of it? You

might so easily have made a mistake.”

 

He lowered his head, staring at the black leaf-pattern

on the sunny path at their feet. “Mistakes are always

easy to make; but if I had made one of the kind you

suggest, is it likely that I should be imploring you to

hasten our marriage?”

 

She looked downward too, disturbing the pattern

with the point of her sunshade while she struggled for

expression. “Yes,” she said at length. “You might want—

once for all—to settle the question: it’s one way.”

 

Her quiet lucidity startled him, but did not mislead

him into thinking her insensible. Under her hatbrim 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