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

it afterward,

when we were engaged.”

 

Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat

clasping and unclasping her hands about the handle of

her sunshade. The young man laid his upon them with

a gentle pressure; his heart dilated with an inexpressible relief.

 

“My dear child—was THAT it? If you only knew the

truth!”

 

She raised her head quickly. “Then there is a truth I

don’t know?”

 

He kept his hand over hers. “I meant, the truth

about the old story you speak of.”

 

“But that’s what I want to know, Newland—what I

ought to know. I couldn’t have my happiness made out

of a wrong—an unfairness—to somebody else. And I

want to believe that it would be the same with you.

What sort of a life could we build on such foundations?”

 

Her face had taken on a look of such tragic courage

that he felt like bowing himself down at her feet. “I’ve

wanted to say this for a long time,” she went on. “I’ve

wanted to tell you that, when two people really love

each other, I understand that there may be situations

which make it right that they should—should go against

public opinion. And if you feel yourself in any way

pledged … pledged to the person we’ve spoken of …

and if there is any way … any way in which you can

fulfill your pledge … even by her getting a divorce

… Newland, don’t give her up because of me!”

 

His surprise at discovering that her fears had

fastened upon an episode so remote and so completely of

the past as his love-affair with Mrs. Thorley Rushworth

gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view.

There was something superhuman in an attitude so

recklessly unorthodox, and if other problems had not

pressed on him he would have been lost in wonder at

the prodigy of the Wellands’ daughter urging him to

marry his former mistress. But he was still dizzy with

the glimpse of the precipice they had skirted, and full

of a new awe at the mystery of young-girlhood.

 

For a moment he could not speak; then he said:

“There is no pledge—no obligation whatever—of the

kind you think. Such cases don’t always—present themselves

quite as simply as … But that’s no matter … I

love your generosity, because I feel as you do about

those things … I feel that each case must be judged

individually, on its own merits … irrespective of stupid

conventionalities … I mean, each woman’s right

to her liberty—” He pulled himself up, startled by the

turn his thoughts had taken, and went on, looking at

her with a smile: “Since you understand so many things,

dearest, can’t you go a little farther, and understand

the uselessness of our submitting to another form of

the same foolish conventionalities? If there’s no one

and nothing between us, isn’t that an argument for

marrying quickly, rather than for more delay?”

 

She flushed with joy and lifted her face to his; as he

bent to it he saw that her eyes were full of happy tears.

But in another moment she seemed to have descended

from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous

girlhood; and he understood that her courage and

initiative were all for others, and that she had none for

herself. It was evident that the effort of speaking had

been much greater than her studied composure betrayed,

and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped

back into the usual, as a too-adventurous child takes

refuge in its mother’s arms.

 

Archer had no heart to go on pleading with her; he

was too much disappointed at the vanishing of the new

being who had cast that one deep look at him from her

transparent eyes. May seemed to be aware of his

disappointment, but without knowing how to alleviate it;

and they stood up and walked silently home.

 

XVII.

 

Your cousin the Countess called on mother while

you were away,” Janey Archer announced to her

brother on the evening of his return.

 

The young man, who was dining alone with his

mother and sister, glanced up in surprise and saw Mrs.

Archer’s gaze demurely bent on her plate. Mrs. Archer

did not regard her seclusion from the world as a reason

for being forgotten by it; and Newland guessed that

she was slightly annoyed that he should be surprised by

Madame Olenska’s visit.

 

“She had on a black velvet polonaise with jet

buttons, and a tiny green monkey muff; I never saw her so

stylishly dressed,” Janey continued. “She came alone,

early on Sunday afternoon; luckily the fire was lit in

the drawing-room. She had one of those new card-cases. She said she wanted to know us because you’d

been so good to her.”

 

Newland laughed. “Madame Olenska always takes

that tone about her friends. She’s very happy at being

among her own people again.”

 

“Yes, so she told us,” said Mrs. Archer. “I must say

she seems thankful to be here.”

 

“I hope you liked her, mother.”

 

Mrs. Archer drew her lips together. “She certainly

lays herself out to please, even when she is calling on

an old lady.”

 

“Mother doesn’t think her simple,” Janey interjected,

her eyes screwed upon her brother’s face.

 

“It’s just my old-fashioned feeling; dear May is my

ideal,” said Mrs. Archer.

 

“Ah,” said her son, “they’re not alike.”

 

Archer had left St. Augustine charged with many

messages for old Mrs. Mingott; and a day or two after his

return to town he called on her.

 

The old lady received him with unusual warmth; she

was grateful to him for persuading the Countess Olenska

to give up the idea of a divorce; and when he told her

that he had deserted the office without leave, and rushed

down to St. Augustine simply because he wanted to see

May, she gave an adipose chuckle and patted his knee

with her puff-ball hand.

 

“Ah, ah—so you kicked over the traces, did you?

And I suppose Augusta and Welland pulled long faces,

and behaved as if the end of the world had come? But

little May—she knew better, I’ll be bound?”

 

“I hoped she did; but after all she wouldn’t agree to

what I’d gone down to ask for.”

 

“Wouldn’t she indeed? And what was that?”

 

“I wanted to get her to promise that we should be

married in April. What’s the use of our wasting another year?”

 

Mrs. Manson Mingott screwed up her little mouth

into a grimace of mimic prudery and twinkled at him

through malicious lids. “`Ask Mamma,’ I suppose—

the usual story. Ah, these Mingotts—all alike! Born in

a rut, and you can’t root ‘em out of it. When I built

this house you’d have thought I was moving to California!

Nobody ever HAD built above Fortieth Street—no,

says I, nor above the Battery either, before Christopher

Columbus discovered America. No, no; not one of

them wants to be different; they’re as scared of it as the

small-pox. Ah, my dear Mr. Archer, I thank my stars

I’m nothing but a vulgar Spicer; but there’s not one of

my own children that takes after me but my little

Ellen.” She broke off, still twinkling at him, and asked,

with the casual irrelevance of old age: “Now, why in

the world didn’t you marry my little Ellen?”

 

Archer laughed. “For one thing, she wasn’t there to

be married.”

 

“No—to be sure; more’s the pity. And now it’s too

late; her life is finished.” She spoke with the cold-blooded complacency of the aged throwing earth into

the grave of young hopes. The young man’s heart grew

chill, and he said hurriedly: “Can’t I persuade you to

use your influence with the Wellands, Mrs. Mingott? I

wasn’t made for long engagements.”

 

Old Catherine beamed on him approvingly. “No; I

can see that. You’ve got a quick eye. When you were a

little boy I’ve no doubt you liked to be helped first.”

She threw back her head with a laugh that made her

chins ripple like little waves. “Ah, here’s my Ellen

now!” she exclaimed, as the portieres parted behind

her.

 

Madame Olenska came forward with a smile. Her

face looked vivid and happy, and she held out her hand

gaily to Archer while she stooped to her grandmother’s

kiss.

 

“I was just saying to him, my dear: `Now, why

didn’t you marry my little Ellen?’”

 

Madame Olenska looked at Archer, still smiling. “And

what did he answer?”

 

“Oh, my darling, I leave you to find that out! He’s

been down to Florida to see his sweetheart.”

 

“Yes, I know.” She still looked at him. “I went to see

your mother, to ask where you’d gone. I sent a note

that you never answered, and I was afraid you were

ill.”

 

He muttered something about leaving unexpectedly,

in a great hurry, and having intended to write to her

from St. Augustine.

 

“And of course once you were there you never thought

of me again!” She continued to beam on him with a

gaiety that might have been a studied assumption of

indifference.

 

“If she still needs me, she’s determined not to let me

see it,” he thought, stung by her manner. He wanted to

thank her for having been to see his mother, but under

the ancestress’s malicious eye he felt himself tongue-tied and constrained.

 

“Look at him—in such hot haste to get married that

he took French leave and rushed down to implore the

silly girl on his knees! That’s something like a lover—

that’s the way handsome Bob Spicer carried off my

poor mother; and then got tired of her before I was

weaned—though they only had to wait eight months

for me! But there—you’re not a Spicer, young man;

luckily for you and for May. It’s only my poor Ellen

that has kept any of their wicked blood; the rest of

them are all model Mingotts,” cried the old lady

scornfully.

 

Archer was aware that Madame Olenska, who had

seated herself at her grandmother’s side, was still

thoughtfully scrutinising him. The gaiety had faded

from her eyes, and she said with great gentleness: “Surely,

Granny, we can persuade them between us to do as he

wishes.”

 

Archer rose to go, and as his hand met Madame

Olenska’s he felt that she was waiting for him to make

some allusion to her unanswered letter.

 

“When can I see you?” he asked, as she walked with

him to the door of the room.

 

“Whenever you like; but it must be soon if you want

to see the little house again. I am moving next week.”

 

A pang shot through him at the memory of his

lamplit hours in the low-studded drawing-room. Few

as they had been, they were thick with memories.

 

“Tomorrow evening?”

 

She nodded. “Tomorrow; yes; but early. I’m going

out.”

 

The next day was a Sunday, and if she were “going

out” on a Sunday evening it could, of course, be only

to Mrs. Lemuel Struthers’s. He felt a slight movement

of annoyance, not so much at her going there (for he

rather liked her going where she pleased in spite of the

van der Luydens), but because it was the kind of house

at which she was sure to meet Beaufort, where she

must have known beforehand that she would meet

him—and where she was probably going for that

purpose.

 

“Very well; tomorrow evening,” he repeated, inwardly

resolved that he would not go early, and that by reaching

her door late he would either prevent her from

going to Mrs. Struthers’s, or else arrive after she had

started—which, all things considered, would no