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

ribbons, and the careless

thing must have dropped it here. We Blenkers are all

like that … real Bohemians!” Recovering the

sunshade with a powerful hand she unfurled it and

suspended its rosy dome above her head. “Yes, Ellen was

called away yesterday: she lets us call her Ellen, you

know. A telegram came from Boston: she said she

might be gone for two days. I do LOVE the way she does

her hair, don’t you?” Miss Blenker rambled on.

 

Archer continued to stare through her as though she

had been transparent. All he saw was the trumpery

parasol that arched its pinkness above her giggling

head.

 

After a moment he ventured: “You don’t happen to

know why Madame Olenska went to Boston? I hope it

was not on account of bad news?”

 

Miss Blenker took this with a cheerful incredulity.

“Oh, I don’t believe so. She didn’t tell us what was in

the telegram. I think she didn’t want the Marchioness

to know. She’s so romantic-looking, isn’t she? Doesn’t

she remind you of Mrs. Scott-Siddons when she reads

`Lady Geraldine’s Courtship’? Did you never hear her?”

 

Archer was dealing hurriedly with crowding thoughts.

His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled

before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he

saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing

was ever to happen. He glanced about him at the

unpruned garden, the tumble-down house, and the oak-grove under which the dusk was gathering. It had

seemed so exactly the place in which he ought to have

found Madame Olenska; and she was far away, and

even the pink sunshade was not hers …

 

He frowned and hesitated. “You don’t know, I

suppose— I shall be in Boston tomorrow. If I could

manage to see her—”

 

He felt that Miss Blenker was losing interest in him,

though her smile persisted. “Oh, of course; how lovely

of you! She’s staying at the Parker House; it must be

horrible there in this weather.”

 

After that Archer was but intermittently aware of the

remarks they exchanged. He could only remember stoutly

resisting her entreaty that he should await the returning

family and have high tea with them before he drove

home. At length, with his hostess still at his side, he

passed out of range of the wooden Cupid, unfastened his

horses and drove off. At the turn of the lane he saw Miss

Blenker standing at the gate and waving the pink parasol.

 

XXIII.

 

The next morning, when Archer got out of the Fall

River train, he emerged upon a steaming midsummer

Boston. The streets near the station were full of the

smell of beer and coffee and decaying fruit and a shirt-sleeved populace moved through them with the intimate

abandon of boarders going down the passage to

the bathroom.

 

Archer found a cab and drove to the Somerset Club

for breakfast. Even the fashionable quarters had the air

of untidy domesticity to which no excess of heat ever

degrades the European cities. Care-takers in calico

lounged on the doorsteps of the wealthy, and the

Common looked like a pleasure-ground on the morrow

of a Masonic picnic. If Archer had tried to imagine

Ellen Olenska in improbable scenes he could not have

called up any into which it was more difficult to fit her

than this heat-prostrated and deserted Boston.

 

He breakfasted with appetite and method, beginning

with a slice of melon, and studying a morning paper

while he waited for his toast and scrambled eggs. A

new sense of energy and activity had possessed him

ever since he had announced to May the night before

that he had business in Boston, and should take the

Fall River boat that night and go on to New York the

following evening. It had always been understood that

he would return to town early in the week, and when

he got back from his expedition to Portsmouth a letter

from the office, which fate had conspicuously placed

on a corner of the hall table, sufficed to justify his

sudden change of plan. He was even ashamed of the

ease with which the whole thing had been done: it

reminded him, for an uncomfortable moment, of Lawrence

Lefferts’s masterly contrivances for securing his

freedom. But this did not long trouble him, for he was

not in an analytic mood.

 

After breakfast he smoked a cigarette and glanced

over the Commercial Advertiser. While he was thus

engaged two or three men he knew came in, and the

usual greetings were exchanged: it was the same world

after all, though he had such a queer sense of having

slipped through the meshes of time and space.

 

He looked at his watch, and finding that it was

half-past nine got up and went into the writing-room.

There he wrote a few lines, and ordered a messenger to

take a cab to the Parker House and wait for the

answer. He then sat down behind another newspaper and

tried to calculate how long it would take a cab to get to

the Parker House.

 

“The lady was out, sir,” he suddenly heard a waiter’s

voice at his elbow; and he stammered: “Out?—” as if

it were a word in a strange language.

 

He got up and went into the hall. It must be a

mistake: she could not be out at that hour. He flushed

with anger at his own stupidity: why had he not sent

the note as soon as he arrived?

 

He found his hat and stick and went forth into the

street. The city had suddenly become as strange and

vast and empty as if he were a traveller from distant

lands. For a moment he stood on the doorstep hesitating;

then he decided to go to the Parker House. What if

the messenger had been misinformed, and she were still

there?

 

He started to walk across the Common; and on the

first bench, under a tree, he saw her sitting. She had a

grey silk sunshade over her head—how could he ever

have imagined her with a pink one? As he approached

he was struck by her listless attitude: she sat there as if

she had nothing else to do. He saw her drooping profile,

and the knot of hair fastened low in the neck

under her dark hat, and the long wrinkled glove on the

hand that held the sunshade. He came a step or two

nearer, and she turned and looked at him.

 

“Oh”—she said; and for the first time he noticed a

startled look on her face; but in another moment it

gave way to a slow smile of wonder and contentment.

 

“Oh”—she murmured again, on a different note, as

he stood looking down at her; and without rising she

made a place for him on the bench.

 

“I’m here on business—just got here,” Archer

explained; and, without knowing why, he suddenly began

to feign astonishment at seeing her. “But what on earth

are you doing in this wilderness?” He had really no

idea what he was saying: he felt as if he were shouting

at her across endless distances, and she might vanish

again before he could overtake her.

 

“I? Oh, I’m here on business too,” she answered,

turning her head toward him so that they were face to

face. The words hardly reached him: he was aware

only of her voice, and of the startling fact that not an

echo of it had remained in his memory. He had not

even remembered that it was low-pitched, with a faint

roughness on the consonants.

 

“You do your hair differently,” he said, his heart

beating as if he had uttered something irrevocable.

 

“Differently? No—it’s only that I do it as best I can

when I’m without Nastasia.”

 

“Nastasia; but isn’t she with you?”

 

“No; I’m alone. For two days it was not worth while

to bring her.”

 

“You’re alone—at the Parker House?”

 

She looked at him with a flash of her old malice.

“Does it strike you as dangerous?”

 

“No; not dangerous—”

 

“But unconventional? I see; I suppose it is.” She

considered a moment. “I hadn’t thought of it, because

I’ve just done something so much more unconventional.”

The faint tinge of irony lingered in her eyes. “I’ve just

refused to take back a sum of money—that belonged to

me.”

 

Archer sprang up and moved a step or two away.

She had furled her parasol and sat absently drawing

patterns on the gravel. Presently he came back and

stood before her.

 

“Some one—has come here to meet you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“With this offer?”

 

She nodded.

 

“And you refused—because of the conditions?”

 

“I refused,” she said after a moment.

 

He sat down by her again. “What were the conditions?”

 

“Oh, they were not onerous: just to sit at the head of

his table now and then.”

 

There was another interval of silence. Archer’s heart

had slammed itself shut in the queer way it had, and he

sat vainly groping for a word.

 

“He wants you back—at any price?”

 

“Well—a considerable price. At least the sum is

considerable for me.”

 

He paused again, beating about the question he felt

he must put.

 

“It was to meet him here that you came?”

 

She stared, and then burst into a laugh. “Meet

him—my husband? HERE? At this season he’s always at

Cowes or Baden.”

 

“He sent some one?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“With a letter?”

 

She shook her head. “No; just a message. He never

writes. I don’t think I’ve had more than one letter from

him.” The allusion brought the colour to her cheek,

and it reflected itself in Archer’s vivid blush.

 

“Why does he never write?”

 

“Why should he? What does one have secretaries

for?”

 

The young man’s blush deepened. She had pronounced

the word as if it had no more significance than any

other in her vocabulary. For a moment it was on the

tip of his tongue to ask: “Did he send his secretary,

then?” But the remembrance of Count Olenski’s only

letter to his wife was too present to him. He paused

again, and then took another plunge.

 

“And the person?”—

 

“The emissary? The emissary,” Madame Olenska

rejoined, still smiling, “might, for all I care, have left

already; but he has insisted on waiting till this evening

… in case … on the chance …”

 

“And you came out here to think the chance over?”

 

“I came out to get a breath of air. The hotel’s too

stifling. I’m taking the afternoon train back to Portsmouth.”

 

They sat silent, not looking at each other, but straight

ahead at the people passing along the path. Finally she

turned her eyes again to his face and said: “You’re not

changed.”

 

He felt like answering: “I was, till I saw you again;”

but instead he stood up abruptly and glanced about

him at the untidy sweltering park.

 

“This is horrible. Why shouldn’t we go out a little on

the bay? There’s a breeze, and it will be cooler. We

might take the steamboat down to Point Arley.” She

glanced up at him hesitatingly and he went on: “On a

Monday morning there won’t be anybody on the boat.

My train doesn’t leave till evening: I’m going back to

New York. Why shouldn’t we?” he insisted, looking

down at her; and suddenly he broke out: “Haven’t we

done all we could?”

 

“Oh”—she murmured again. She stood up and

reopened her sunshade, glancing about her as if to take

counsel of the scene, and assure herself of the impossibility

of remaining in it. Then her eyes returned to his

face. “You mustn’t say things like that to me,” she

said.