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

face in

his hands.

 

The silence that followed lay on them with the weight

of things final and irrevocable. It seemed to Archer to

be crushing him down like his own grave-stone; in all

the wide future he saw nothing that would ever lift that

load from his heart. He did not move from his place, or

raise his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went

on staring into utter darkness.

 

“At least I loved you—” he brought out.

 

On the other side of the hearth, from the sofa-corner

where he supposed that she still crouched, he heard a

faint stifled crying like a child’s. He started up and

came to her side.

 

“Ellen! What madness! Why are you crying? Nothing’s

done that can’t be undone. I’m still free, and

you’re going to be.” He had her in his arms, her face

like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain terrors

shrivelling up like ghosts at sunrise. The one thing that

astonished him now was that he should have stood for

five minutes arguing with her across the width of the

room, when just touching her made everything so simple.

 

She gave him back all his kiss, but after a moment he

felt her stiffening in his arms, and she put him aside

and stood up.

 

“Ah, my poor Newland—I suppose this had to be.

But it doesn’t in the least alter things,” she said, looking

down at him in her turn from the hearth.

 

“It alters the whole of life for me.”

 

“No, no—it mustn’t, it can’t. You’re engaged to

May Welland; and I’m married.”

 

He stood up too, flushed and resolute. “Nonsense!

It’s too late for that sort of thing. We’ve no right to lie

to other people or to ourselves. We won’t talk of your

marriage; but do you see me marrying May after this?”

 

She stood silent, resting her thin elbows on the mantelpiece,

her profile reflected in the glass behind her. One

of the locks of her chignon had become loosened and

hung on her neck; she looked haggard and almost old.

 

“I don’t see you,” she said at length, “putting that

question to May. Do you?”

 

He gave a reckless shrug. “It’s too late to do

anything else.”

 

“You say that because it’s the easiest thing to say at

this moment—not because it’s true. In reality it’s too

late to do anything but what we’d both decided on.”

 

“Ah, I don’t understand you!”

 

She forced a pitiful smile that pinched her face

instead of smoothing it. “You don’t understand because

you haven’t yet guessed how you’ve changed things for

me: oh, from the first—long before I knew all you’d

done.”

 

“All I’d done?”

 

“Yes. I was perfectly unconscious at first that people

here were shy of me—that they thought I was a dreadful

sort of person. It seems they had even refused to

meet me at dinner. I found that out afterward; and

how you’d made your mother go with you to the van

der Luydens’; and how you’d insisted on announcing

your engagement at the Beaufort ball, so that I might

have two families to stand by me instead of one—”

 

At that he broke into a laugh.

 

“Just imagine,” she said, “how stupid and unobservant

I was! I knew nothing of all this till Granny

blurted it out one day. New York simply meant peace

and freedom to me: it was coming home. And I was so

happy at being among my own people that every one I

met seemed kind and good, and glad to see me. But

from the very beginning,” she continued, “I felt there

was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me

reasons that I understood for doing what at first seemed

so hard and—unnecessary. The very good people didn’t

convince me; I felt they’d never been tempted. But you

knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside

tugging at one with all its golden hands—and yet you

hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness

bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That

was what I’d never known before—and it’s better than

anything I’ve known.”

 

She spoke in a low even voice, without tears or

visible agitation; and each word, as it dropped from

her, fell into his breast like burning lead. He sat bowed

over, his head between his hands, staring at the hearthrug,

and at the tip of the satin shoe that showed under

her dress. Suddenly he knelt down and kissed the shoe.

 

She bent over him, laying her hands on his shoulders,

and looking at him with eyes so deep that he remained

motionless under her gaze.

 

“Ah, don’t let us undo what you’ve done!” she cried.

“I can’t go back now to that other way of thinking. I

can’t love you unless I give you up.”

 

His arms were yearning up to her; but she drew

away, and they remained facing each other, divided by

the distance that her words had created. Then, abruptly,

his anger overflowed.

 

“And Beaufort? Is he to replace me?”

 

As the words sprang out he was prepared for an

answering flare of anger; and he would have welcomed

it as fuel for his own. But Madame Olenska only grew

a shade paler, and stood with her arms hanging down

before her, and her head slightly bent, as her way was

when she pondered a question.

 

“He’s waiting for you now at Mrs. Struthers’s; why

don’t you go to him?” Archer sneered.

 

She turned to ring the bell. “I shall not go out this

evening; tell the carriage to go and fetch the Signora

Marchesa,” she said when the maid came.

 

After the door had closed again Archer continued to

look at her with bitter eyes. “Why this sacrifice? Since

you tell me that you’re lonely I’ve no right to keep you

from your friends.”

 

She smiled a little under her wet lashes. “I shan’t be

lonely now. I WAS lonely; I WAS afraid. But the emptiness

and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into

myself now I’m like a child going at night into a room

where there’s always a light.”

 

Her tone and her look still enveloped her in a soft

inaccessibility, and Archer groaned out again: “I don’t

understand you!”

 

“Yet you understand May!”

 

He reddened under the retort, but kept his eyes on

her. “May is ready to give me up.”

 

“What! Three days after you’ve entreated her on

your knees to hasten your marriage?”

 

“She’s refused; that gives me the right—”

 

“Ah, you’ve taught me what an ugly word that is,”

she said.

 

He turned away with a sense of utter weariness. He

felt as though he had been struggling for hours up the

face of a steep precipice, and now, just as he had

fought his way to the top, his hold had given way and

he was pitching down headlong into darkness.

 

If he could have got her in his arms again he might

have swept away her arguments; but she still held him

at a distance by something inscrutably aloof in her look

and attitude, and by his own awed sense of her sincerity.

At length he began to plead again.

 

“If we do this now it will be worse afterward—worse

for every one—”

 

“No—no—no!” she almost screamed, as if he frightened her.

 

At that moment the bell sent a long tinkle through

the house. They had heard no carriage stopping at the

door, and they stood motionless, looking at each other

with startled eyes.

 

Outside, Nastasia’s step crossed the hall, the outer

door opened, and a moment later she came in carrying

a telegram which she handed to the Countess Olenska.

 

“The lady was very happy at the flowers,” Nastasia

said, smoothing her apron. “She thought it was her

signor marito who had sent them, and she cried a little

and said it was a folly.”

 

Her mistress smiled and took the yellow envelope.

She tore it open and carried it to the lamp; then, when

the door had closed again, she handed the telegram to

Archer.

 

It was dated from St. Augustine, and addressed to

the Countess Olenska. In it he read: “Granny’s telegram

successful. Papa and Mamma agree marriage after

Easter. Am telegraphing Newland. Am too happy

for words and love you dearly. Your grateful May.”

 

Half an hour later, when Archer unlocked his own

front-door, he found a similar envelope on the hall-table

on top of his pile of notes and letters. The message

inside the envelope was also from May Welland, and

ran as follows: “Parents consent wedding Tuesday after

Easter at twelve Grace Church eight bridesmaids

please see Rector so happy love May.”

 

Archer crumpled up the yellow sheet as if the gesture

could annihilate the news it contained. Then he pulled

out a small pocket-diary and turned over the pages

with trembling fingers; but he did not find what he

wanted, and cramming the telegram into his pocket he

mounted the stairs.

 

A light was shining through the door of the little

hall-room which served Janey as a dressing-room and

boudoir, and her brother rapped impatiently on the

panel. The door opened, and his sister stood before

him in her immemorial purple flannel dressing-gown,

with her hair “on pins.” Her face looked pale and

apprehensive.

 

“Newland! I hope there’s no bad news in that

telegram? I waited on purpose, in case—” (No item of his

correspondence was safe from Janey.)

 

He took no notice of her question. “Look here—

what day is Easter this year?”

 

She looked shocked at such unchristian ignorance.

“Easter? Newland! Why, of course, the first week in

April. Why?”

 

“The first week?” He turned again to the pages of

his diary, calculating rapidly under his breath. “The

first week, did you say?” He threw back his head with

a long laugh.

 

“For mercy’s sake what’s the matter?”

 

“Nothing’s the matter, except that I’m going to be

married in a month.”

 

Janey fell upon his neck and pressed him to her

purple flannel breast. “Oh Newland, how wonderful!

I’m so glad! But, dearest, why do you keep on laughing?

Do hush, or you’ll wake Mamma.”