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

asked

himself if he were becoming subject to hallucinations.

 

And now he and his wife were pacing slowly down

the nave, carried forward on the light Mendelssohn

ripples, the spring day beckoning to them through widely

opened doors, and Mrs. Welland’s chestnuts, with big

white favours on their frontlets, curvetting and showing

off at the far end of the canvas tunnel.

 

The footman, who had a still bigger white favour on

his lapel, wrapped May’s white cloak about her, and

Archer jumped into the brougham at her side. She

turned to him with a triumphant smile and their hands

clasped under her veil.

 

“Darling!” Archer said—and suddenly the same black

abyss yawned before him and he felt himself sinking

into it, deeper and deeper, while his voice rambled on

smoothly and cheerfully: “Yes, of course I thought I’d

lost the ring; no wedding would be complete if the

poor devil of a bridegroom didn’t go through that. But

you DID keep me waiting, you know! I had time to

think of every horror that might possibly happen.”

 

She surprised him by turning, in full Fifth Avenue,

and flinging her arms about his neck. “But none ever

CAN happen now, can it, Newland, as long as we two

are together?”

 

Every detail of the day had been so carefully thought

out that the young couple, after the wedding-breakfast,

had ample time to put on their travelling-clothes,

descend the wide Mingott stairs between laughing bridesmaids

and weeping parents, and get into the brougham

under the traditional shower of rice and satin slippers;

and there was still half an hour left in which to drive to

the station, buy the last weeklies at the bookstall with

the air of seasoned travellers, and settle themselves in

the reserved compartment in which May’s maid had

already placed her dove-coloured travelling cloak and

glaringly new dressing-bag from London.

 

The old du Lac aunts at Rhinebeck had put their

house at the disposal of the bridal couple, with a readiness

inspired by the prospect of spending a week in

New York with Mrs. Archer; and Archer, glad to escape

the usual “bridal suite” in a Philadelphia or Baltimore

hotel, had accepted with an equal alacrity.

 

May was enchanted at the idea of going to the country,

and childishly amused at the vain efforts of the

eight bridesmaids to discover where their mysterious

retreat was situated. It was thought “very English” to

have a country-house lent to one, and the fact gave a

last touch of distinction to what was generally

conceded to be the most brilliant wedding of the year; but

where the house was no one was permitted to know,

except the parents of bride and groom, who, when

taxed with the knowledge, pursed their lips and said

mysteriously: “Ah, they didn’t tell us—” which was

manifestly true, since there was no need to.

 

Once they were settled in their compartment, and the

train, shaking off the endless wooden suburbs, had

pushed out into the pale landscape of spring, talk

became easier than Archer had expected. May was still,

in look and tone, the simple girl of yesterday, eager to

compare notes with him as to the incidents of the

wedding, and discussing them as impartially as a bridesmaid

talking it all over with an usher. At first Archer

had fancied that this detachment was the disguise of an

inward tremor; but her clear eyes revealed only the

most tranquil unawareness. She was alone for the first

time with her husband; but her husband was only the

charming comrade of yesterday. There was no one

whom she liked as much, no one whom she trusted as

completely, and the culminating “lark” of the whole

delightful adventure of engagement and marriage was

to be off with him alone on a journey, like a grownup

person, like a “married woman,” in fact.

 

It was wonderful that—as he had learned in the

Mission garden at St. Augustine—such depths of feeling

could coexist with such absence of imagination. But

he remembered how, even then, she had surprised him

by dropping back to inexpressive girlishness as soon as

her conscience had been eased of its burden; and he

saw that she would probably go through life dealing to

the best of her ability with each experience as it came,

but never anticipating any by so much as a stolen

glance.

 

Perhaps that faculty of unawareness was what gave

her eyes their transparency, and her face the look of

representing a type rather than a person; as if she

might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue or a

Greek goddess. The blood that ran so close to her fair

skin might have been a preserving fluid rather than a

ravaging element; yet her look of indestructible

youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor dull, but only

primitive and pure. In the thick of this meditation

Archer suddenly felt himself looking at her with the

startled gaze of a stranger, and plunged into a reminiscence

of the wedding-breakfast and of Granny Mingott’s

immense and triumphant pervasion of it.

 

May settled down to frank enjoyment of the subject.

“I was surprised, though—weren’t you?—that aunt

Medora came after all. Ellen wrote that they were

neither of them well enough to take the journey; I do

wish it had been she who had recovered! Did you see

the exquisite old lace she sent me?”

 

He had known that the moment must come sooner

or later, but he had somewhat imagined that by force

of willing he might hold it at bay.

 

“Yes—I—no: yes, it was beautiful,” he said, looking

at her blindly, and wondering if, whenever he heard

those two syllables, all his carefully built-up world

would tumble about him like a house of cards.

 

“Aren’t you tired? It will be good to have some tea

when we arrive—I’m sure the aunts have got everything

beautifully ready,” he rattled on, taking her hand

in his; and her mind rushed away instantly to the

magnificent tea and coffee service of Baltimore silver

which the Beauforts had sent, and which “went” so

perfectly with uncle Lovell Mingott’s trays and sidedishes.

 

In the spring twilight the train stopped at the

Rhinebeck station, and they walked along the platform

to the waiting carriage.

 

“Ah, how awfully kind of the van der Luydens—

they’ve sent their man over from Skuytercliff to meet

us,” Archer exclaimed, as a sedate person out of livery

approached them and relieved the maid of her bags.

 

“I’m extremely sorry, sir,” said this emissary, “that a

little accident has occurred at the Miss du Lacs’: a leak

in the water-tank. It happened yesterday, and Mr. van

der Luyden, who heard of it this morning, sent a housemaid

up by the early train to get the Patroon’s house

ready. It will be quite comfortable, I think you’ll find,

sir; and the Miss du Lacs have sent their cook over, so

that it will be exactly the same as if you’d been at

Rhinebeck.”

 

Archer stared at the speaker so blankly that he

repeated in still more apologetic accents: “It’ll be exactly

the same, sir, I do assure you—” and May’s eager voice

broke out, covering the embarrassed silence: “The same

as Rhinebeck? The Patroon’s house? But it will be a

hundred thousand times better—won’t it, Newland?

It’s too dear and kind of Mr. van der Luyden to have

thought of it.”

 

And as they drove off, with the maid beside the

coachman, and their shining bridal bags on the seat

before them, she went on excitedly: “Only fancy, I’ve

never been inside it—have you? The van der Luydens

show it to so few people. But they opened it for Ellen,

it seems, and she told me what a darling little place it

was: she says it’s the only house she’s seen in America

that she could imagine being perfectly happy in.”

 

“Well—that’s what we’re going to be, isn’t it?” cried

her husband gaily; and she answered with her boyish

smile: “Ah, it’s just our luck beginning—the wonderful

luck we’re always going to have together!”

 

XX.

 

Of course we must dine with Mrs. Carfry, dearest,”

Archer said; and his wife looked at him with an

anxious frown across the monumental Britannia ware of

their lodging house breakfast-table.

 

In all the rainy desert of autumnal London there

were only two people whom the Newland Archers

knew; and these two they had sedulously avoided, in

conformity with the old New York tradition that it was

not “dignified” to force one’s self on the notice of one’s

acquaintances in foreign countries.

 

Mrs. Archer and Janey, in the course of their visits to

Europe, had so unflinchingly lived up to this principle,

and met the friendly advances of their fellow-travellers

with an air of such impenetrable reserve, that they had

almost achieved the record of never having exchanged

a word with a “foreigner” other than those employed

in hotels and railway-stations. Their own compatriots—

save those previously known or properly accredited—

they treated with an even more pronounced disdain; so

that, unless they ran across a Chivers, a Dagonet or a

Mingott, their months abroad were spent in an unbroken

tete-a-tete. But the utmost precautions are sometimes

unavailing; and one night at Botzen one of the

two English ladies in the room across the passage (whose

names, dress and social situation were already intimately

known to Janey) had knocked on the door and

asked if Mrs. Archer had a bottle of liniment. The

other lady—the intruder’s sister, Mrs. Carfry—had been

seized with a sudden attack of bronchitis; and Mrs.

Archer, who never travelled without a complete family

pharmacy, was fortunately able to produce the required

remedy.

 

Mrs. Carfry was very ill, and as she and her sister

Miss Harle were travelling alone they were profoundly

grateful to the Archer ladies, who supplied them with

ingenious comforts and whose efficient maid helped to

nurse the invalid back to health.

 

When the Archers left Botzen they had no idea of

ever seeing Mrs. Carfry and Miss Harle again. Nothing,

to Mrs. Archer’s mind, would have been more

“undignified” than to force one’s self on the notice of a

“foreigner” to whom one had happened to render an

accidental service. But Mrs. Carfry and her sister, to

whom this point of view was unknown, and who would

have found it utterly incomprehensible, felt themselves

linked by an eternal gratitude to the “delightful Americans”

who had been so kind at Botzen. With touching

fidelity they seized every chance of meeting Mrs. Archer

and Janey in the course of their continental travels, and

displayed a supernatural acuteness in finding out when

they were to pass through London on their way to or

from the States. The intimacy became indissoluble, and

Mrs. Archer and Janey, whenever they alighted at

Brown’s Hotel, found themselves awaited by two affectionate

friends who, like themselves, cultivated ferns in

Wardian cases, made macrame lace, read the memoirs

of the Baroness Bunsen and had views about the

occupants of the leading London pulpits. As Mrs. Archer

said, it made “another thing of London” to know Mrs.

Carfry and Miss Harle; and by the time that Newland

became engaged the tie between the families was so

firmly established that it was thought “only right” to

send a wedding invitation to the two English ladies,

who sent, in return, a pretty bouquet of pressed Alpine

flowers under glass. And on the dock, when Newland

and his wife sailed for England, Mrs. Archer’s last

word had been: “You must take May to see Mrs.

Carfry.”

 

Newland and his wife had had no idea of obeying

this injunction; but Mrs. Carfry, with her usual acuteness,

had run them down and sent them an invitation

to dine; and it was over this invitation that May Archer

was wrinkling her brows