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

years ago, their giving a party for a black man on

the day of Julia Mingott’s the dansant? Luckily this

time there’s nothing else going on that I know of—for

of course some of us will have to go.”

 

Mr. Welland sighed nervously. “`Some of us,’ my

dear—more than one? Three o’clock is such a very

awkward hour. I have to be here at half-past three to

take my drops: it’s really no use trying to follow

Bencomb’s new treatment if I don’t do it systematically;

and if I join you later, of course I shall miss my

drive.” At the thought he laid down his knife and fork

again, and a flush of anxiety rose to his finely-wrinkled

cheek.

 

“There’s no reason why you should go at all, my

dear,” his wife answered with a cheerfulness that had

become automatic. “I have some cards to leave at the

other end of Bellevue Avenue, and I’ll drop in at about

half-past three and stay long enough to make poor

Amy feel that she hasn’t been slighted.” She glanced

hesitatingly at her daughter. “And if Newland’s afternoon

is provided for perhaps May can drive you out

with the ponies, and try their new russet harness.”

 

It was a principle in the Welland family that people’s

days and hours should be what Mrs. Welland called

“provided for.” The melancholy possibility of having

to “kill time” (especially for those who did not care for

whist or solitaire) was a vision that haunted her as the

spectre of the unemployed haunts the philanthropist.

Another of her principles was that parents should never

(at least visibly) interfere with the plans of their

married children; and the difficulty of adjusting this respect

for May’s independence with the exigency of Mr. Welland’s

claims could be overcome only by the exercise of

an ingenuity which left not a second of Mrs. Welland’s

own time unprovided for.

 

“Of course I’ll drive with Papa—I’m sure Newland

will find something to do,” May said, in a tone that

gently reminded her husband of his lack of response. It

was a cause of constant distress to Mrs. Welland that

her son-in-law showed so little foresight in planning his

days. Often already, during the fortnight that he had

passed under her roof, when she enquired how he

meant to spend his afternoon, he had answered

paradoxically: “Oh, I think for a change I’ll just save it

instead of spending it—” and once, when she and May

had had to go on a long-postponed round of afternoon

calls, he had confessed to having lain all the afternoon

under a rock on the beach below the house.

 

“Newland never seems to look ahead,” Mrs. Welland

once ventured to complain to her daughter; and

May answered serenely: “No; but you see it doesn’t

matter, because when there’s nothing particular to do

he reads a book.”

 

“Ah, yes—like his father!” Mrs. Welland agreed, as

if allowing for an inherited oddity; and after that the

question of Newland’s unemployment was tacitly

dropped.

 

Nevertheless, as the day for the Sillerton reception

approached, May began to show a natural solicitude

for his welfare, and to suggest a tennis match at the

Chiverses’, or a sail on Julius Beaufort’s cutter, as a

means of atoning for her temporary desertion. “I shall

be back by six, you know, dear: Papa never drives later

than that—” and she was not reassured till Archer said

that he thought of hiring a runabout and driving up

the island to a stud-farm to look at a second horse for

her brougham. They had been looking for this horse

for some time, and the suggestion was so acceptable

that May glanced at her mother as if to say: “You see

he knows how to plan out his time as well as any of

us.”

 

The idea of the stud-farm and the brougham horse

had germinated in Archer’s mind on the very day when

the Emerson Sillerton invitation had first been

mentioned; but he had kept it to himself as if there were

something clandestine in the plan, and discovery might

prevent its execution. He had, however, taken the

precaution to engage in advance a runabout with a pair of

old livery-stable trotters that could still do their

eighteen miles on level roads; and at two o’clock, hastily

deserting the luncheon-table, he sprang into the light

carriage and drove off.

 

The day was perfect. A breeze from the north drove

little puffs of white cloud across an ultramarine sky,

with a bright sea running under it. Bellevue Avenue

was empty at that hour, and after dropping the stable-lad at the corner of Mill Street Archer turned down

the Old Beach Road and drove across Eastman’s Beach.

 

He had the feeling of unexplained excitement with

which, on half-holidays at school, he used to start off

into the unknown. Taking his pair at an easy gait, he

counted on reaching the stud-farm, which was not far

beyond Paradise Rocks, before three o’clock; so that,

after looking over the horse (and trying him if he

seemed promising) he would still have four golden

hours to dispose of.

 

As soon as he heard of the Sillerton’s party he had

said to himself that the Marchioness Manson would

certainly come to Newport with the Blenkers, and that

Madame Olenska might again take the opportunity of

spending the day with her grandmother. At any rate,

the Blenker habitation would probably be deserted,

and he would be able, without indiscretion, to satisfy a

vague curiosity concerning it. He was not sure that he

wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever

since he had looked at her from the path above the bay

he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see

the place she was living in, and to follow the movements

of her imagined figure as he had watched the

real one in the summer-house. The longing was with

him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving,

like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink

once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see

beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to,

for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to

Madame Olenska or to hear her voice. He simply felt

that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of

earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea

enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.

 

When he reached the stud-farm a glance showed him

that the horse was not what he wanted; nevertheless he

took a turn behind it in order to prove to himself that

he was not in a hurry. But at three o’clock he shook

out the reins over the trotters and turned into the

by-roads leading to Portsmouth. The wind had dropped

and a faint haze on the horizon showed that a fog was

waiting to steal up the Saconnet on the turn of the tide;

but all about him fields and woods were steeped in

golden light.

 

He drove past grey-shingled farm-houses in orchards,

past hay-fields and groves of oak, past villages with

white steeples rising sharply into the fading sky; and at

last, after stopping to ask the way of some men at

work in a field, he turned down a lane between high

banks of goldenrod and brambles. At the end of the

lane was the blue glimmer of the river; to the left,

standing in front of a clump of oaks and maples, he

saw a long tumble-down house with white paint peeling

from its clapboards.

 

On the road-side facing the gateway stood one of the

open sheds in which the New Englander shelters his

farming implements and visitors “hitch” their “teams.”

Archer, jumping down, led his pair into the shed, and

after tying them to a post turned toward the house.

The patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hay-field; but to the left an overgrown box-garden full of

dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white,

surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow

and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim.

 

Archer leaned for a while against the gate. No one

was in sight, and not a sound came from the open

windows of the house: a grizzled Newfoundland dozing

before the door seemed as ineffectual a guardian as

the arrowless Cupid. It was strange to think that this

place of silence and decay was the home of the turbulent

Blenkers; yet Archer was sure that he was not

mistaken.

 

For a long time he stood there, content to take in the

scene, and gradually falling under its drowsy spell; but

at length he roused himself to the sense of the passing

time. Should he look his fill and then drive away? He

stood irresolute, wishing suddenly to see the inside of

the house, so that he might picture the room that

Madame Olenska sat in. There was nothing to prevent

his walking up to the door and ringing the bell; if, as

he supposed, she was away with the rest of the party,

he could easily give his name, and ask permission to go

into the sitting-room to write a message.

 

But instead, he crossed the lawn and turned toward

the box-garden. As he entered it he caught sight of

something bright-coloured in the summer-house, and

presently made it out to be a pink parasol. The parasol

drew him like a magnet: he was sure it was hers. He

went into the summer-house, and sitting down on the

rickety seat picked up the silken thing and looked at its

carved handle, which was made of some rare wood

that gave out an aromatic scent. Archer lifted the handle

to his lips.

 

He heard a rustle of skirts against the box, and sat

motionless, leaning on the parasol handle with clasped

hands, and letting the rustle come nearer without lifting

his eyes. He had always known that this must

happen …

 

“Oh, Mr. Archer!” exclaimed a loud young voice;

and looking up he saw before him the youngest and

largest of the Blenker girls, blonde and blowsy, in

bedraggled muslin. A red blotch on one of her cheeks

seemed to show that it had recently been pressed against

a pillow, and her half-awakened eyes stared at him

hospitably but confusedly.

 

“Gracious—where did you drop from? I must have

been sound asleep in the hammock. Everybody else has

gone to Newport. Did you ring?” she incoherently

enquired.

 

Archer’s confusion was greater than hers. “I—no—

that is, I was just going to. I had to come up the island

to see about a horse, and I drove over on a chance of

finding Mrs. Blenker and your visitors. But the house

seemed empty—so I sat down to wait.”

 

Miss Blenker, shaking off the fumes of sleep, looked

at him with increasing interest. “The house IS empty.

Mother’s not here, or the Marchioness—or anybody

but me.” Her glance became faintly reproachful. “Didn’t

you know that Professor and Mrs. Sillerton are giving a

garden-party for mother and all of us this afternoon? It

was too unlucky that I couldn’t go; but I’ve had a sore

throat, and mother was afraid of the drive home this

evening. Did you ever know anything so disappointing?

Of course,” she added gaily, “I shouldn’t have minded

half as much if I’d known you were coming.”

 

Symptoms of a lumbering coquetry became visible in

her, and Archer found the strength to break in: “But

Madame Olenska—has she gone to Newport too?”

 

Miss Blenker looked at him with surprise. “Madame

Olenska—didn’t you know she’d been called away?”

 

“Called away?—”

 

“Oh, my best parasol! I lent it to that goose of a

Katie, because it matched her