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

>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 reentering 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 sofa-corner, 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