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

her opportunities and her privileges,

had become simply “Bohemian.” The fact enforced

the contention that she had made a fatal mistake

in not returning to Count Olenski. After all, a young

woman’s place was under her husband’s roof, especially

when she had left it in circumstances that …

well … if one had cared to look into them …

 

“Madame Olenska is a great favourite with the

gentlemen,” said Miss Sophy, with her air of wishing to

put forth something conciliatory when she knew that

she was planting a dart.

 

“Ah, that’s the danger that a young woman like

Madame Olenska is always exposed to,” Mrs. Archer

mournfully agreed; and the ladies, on this conclusion,

gathered up their trains to seek the carcel globes of the

drawing-room, while Archer and Mr. Sillerton Jackson

withdrew to the Gothic library.

 

Once established before the grate, and consoling

himself for the inadequacy of the dinner by the perfection

of his cigar, Mr. Jackson became portentous and

communicable.

 

“If the Beaufort smash comes,” he announced, “there

are going to be disclosures.”

 

Archer raised his head quickly: he could never hear

the name without the sharp vision of Beaufort’s heavy

figure, opulently furred and shod, advancing through

the snow at Skuytercliff.

 

“There’s bound to be,” Mr. Jackson continued, “the

nastiest kind of a cleaning up. He hasn’t spent all his

money on Regina.”

 

“Oh, well—that’s discounted, isn’t it? My belief is

he’ll pull out yet,” said the young man, wanting to

change the subject.

 

“Perhaps—perhaps. I know he was to see some of

the influential people today. Of course,” Mr. Jackson

reluctantly conceded, “it’s to be hoped they can tide

him over—this time anyhow. I shouldn’t like to think

of poor Regina’s spending the rest of her life in some

shabby foreign watering-place for bankrupts.”

 

Archer said nothing. It seemed to him so natural—

however tragic—that money ill-gotten should be cruelly

expiated, that his mind, hardly lingering over Mrs.

Beaufort’s doom, wandered back to closer questions.

What was the meaning of May’s blush when the Countess

Olenska had been mentioned?

 

Four months had passed since the midsummer day

that he and Madame Olenska had spent together; and

since then he had not seen her. He knew that she had

returned to Washington, to the little house which she

and Medora Manson had taken there: he had written

to her once—a few words, asking when they were to

meet again—and she had even more briefly replied:

“Not yet.”

 

Since then there had been no farther communication

between them, and he had built up within himself a

kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his

secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became

the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities;

thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and

feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his

visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he

moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency,

blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional

points of view as an absent-minded man goes

on bumping into the furniture of his own room.

Absent—that was what he was: so absent from everything

most densely real and near to those about him

that it sometimes startled him to find they still

imagined he was there.

 

He became aware that Mr. Jackson was clearing his

throat preparatory to farther revelations.

 

“I don’t know, of course, how far your wife’s family

are aware of what people say about—well, about Madame

Olenska’s refusal to accept her husband’s latest

offer.”

 

Archer was silent, and Mr. Jackson obliquely continued:

“It’s a pity—it’s certainly a pity—that she refused

it.”

 

“A pity? In God’s name, why?”

 

Mr. Jackson looked down his leg to the unwrinkled

sock that joined it to a glossy pump.

 

“Well—to put it on the lowest ground—what’s she

going to live on now?”

 

“Now—?”

 

“If Beaufort—”

 

Archer sprang up, his fist banging down on the black

walnut-edge of the writing-table. The wells of the brass

double-inkstand danced in their sockets.

 

“What the devil do you mean, sir?”

 

Mr. Jackson, shifting himself slightly in his chair,

turned a tranquil gaze on the young man’s burning

face.

 

“Well—I have it on pretty good authority—in fact,

on old Catherine’s herself—that the family reduced

Countess Olenska’s allowance considerably when she

definitely refused to go back to her husband; and as, by

this refusal, she also forfeits the money settled on her

when she married—which Olenski was ready to make

over to her if she returned—why, what the devil do YOU

mean, my dear boy, by asking me what I mean?” Mr.

Jackson good-humouredly retorted.

 

Archer moved toward the mantelpiece and bent over

to knock his ashes into the grate.

 

“I don’t know anything of Madame Olenska’s private

affairs; but I don’t need to, to be certain that what

you insinuate—”

 

“Oh, I don’t: it’s Lefferts, for one,” Mr. Jackson

interposed.

 

“Lefferts—who made love to her and got snubbed

for it!” Archer broke out contemptuously.

 

“Ah—DID he?” snapped the other, as if this were

exactly the fact he had been laying a trap for. He still

sat sideways from the fire, so that his hard old gaze

held Archer’s face as if in a spring of steel.

 

“Well, well: it’s a pity she didn’t go back before

Beaufort’s cropper,” he repeated. “If she goes NOW, and

if he fails, it will only confirm the general impression:

which isn’t by any means peculiar to Lefferts, by the

way.

 

“Oh, she won’t go back now: less than ever!” Archer

had no sooner said it than he had once more the feeling

that it was exactly what Mr. Jackson had been waiting

for.

 

The old gentleman considered him attentively. “That’s

your opinion, eh? Well, no doubt you know. But everybody

will tell you that the few pennies Medora Manson

has left are all in Beaufort’s hands; and how the

two women are to keep their heads above water unless

he does, I can’t imagine. Of course, Madame Olenska

may still soften old Catherine, who’s been the most

inexorably opposed to her staying; and old Catherine

could make her any allowance she chooses. But we all

know that she hates parting with good money; and the

rest of the family have no particular interest in keeping

Madame Olenska here.”

 

Archer was burning with unavailing wrath: he was

exactly in the state when a man is sure to do something

stupid, knowing all the while that he is doing it.

 

He saw that Mr. Jackson had been instantly struck

by the fact that Madame Olenska’s differences with her

grandmother and her other relations were not known

to him, and that the old gentleman had drawn his own

conclusions as to the reasons for Archer’s exclusion

from the family councils. This fact warned Archer to

go warily; but the insinuations about Beaufort made

him reckless. He was mindful, however, if not of his

own danger, at least of the fact that Mr. Jackson was

under his mother’s roof, and consequently his guest.

Old New York scrupulously observed the etiquette of

hospitality, and no discussion with a guest was ever

allowed to degenerate into a disagreement.

 

“Shall we go up and join my mother?” he suggested

curtly, as Mr. Jackson’s last cone of ashes dropped into

the brass ashtray at his elbow.

 

On the drive homeward May remained oddly silent;

through the darkness, he still felt her enveloped in her

menacing blush. What its menace meant he could not

guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the fact that

Madame Olenska’s name had evoked it.

 

They went upstairs, and he turned into the library.

She usually followed him; but he heard her passing

down the passage to her bedroom.

 

“May!” he called out impatiently; and she came

back, with a slight glance of surprise at his tone.

 

“This lamp is smoking again; I should think the

servants might see that it’s kept properly trimmed,” he

grumbled nervously.

 

“I’m so sorry: it shan’t happen again,” she answered,

in the firm bright tone she had learned from her mother;

and it exasperated Archer to feel that she was already

beginning to humour him like a younger Mr. Welland.

She bent over to lower the wick, and as the light struck

up on her white shoulders and the clear curves of her

face he thought: “How young she is! For what endless

years this life will have to go on!”

 

He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth

and the bounding blood in his veins. “Look here,” he

said suddenly, “I may have to go to Washington for a

few days—soon; next week perhaps.”

 

Her hand remained on the key of the lamp as she

turned to him slowly. The heat from its flame had

brought back a glow to her face, but it paled as she

looked up.

 

“On business?” she asked, in a tone which implied

that there could be no other conceivable reason, and

that she had put the question automatically, as if merely

to finish his own sentence.

 

“On business, naturally. There’s a patent case coming

up before the Supreme Court—” He gave the name

of the inventor, and went on furnishing details with all

Lawrence Lefferts’s practised glibness, while she listened

attentively, saying at intervals: “Yes, I see.”

 

“The change will do you good,” she said simply,

when he had finished; “and you must be sure to go and

see Ellen,” she added, looking him straight in the eyes

with her cloudless smile, and speaking in the tone she

might have employed in urging him not to neglect some

irksome family duty.

 

It was the only word that passed between them on

the subject; but in the code in which they had both

been trained it meant: “Of course you understand that

I know all that people have been saying about Ellen,

and heartily sympathise with my family in their effort

to get her to return to her husband. I also know that,

for some reason you have not chosen to tell me, you

have advised her against this course, which all the older

men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree in

approving; and that it is owing to your encouragement

that Ellen defies us all, and exposes herself to the kind

of criticism of which Mr. Sillerton Jackson probably

gave you, this evening, the hint that has made you so

irritable… . Hints have indeed not been wanting; but

since you appear unwilling to take them from others, I

offer you this one myself, in the only form in which

well-bred people of our kind can communicate

unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand

that I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in

Washington, and are perhaps going there expressly for

that purpose; and that, since you are sure to see her, I

wish you to do so with my full and explicit approval—

and to take the opportunity of letting her know what

the course of conduct you have encouraged her in is

likely to lead to.”

 

Her hand was still on the key of the lamp when the

last word of this mute message reached him. She turned

the wick down, lifted off the globe, and breathed on

the sulky flame.

 

“They smell less if one blows them out,” she explained,

with her bright housekeeping air. On the threshold

she turned and paused for his kiss.

 

XXVII.

 

Wall Street, the next day, had more reassuring

reports of Beaufort’s situation. They were not

definite, but they were hopeful. It was generally understood

that he could call on powerful influences in case

of emergency, and that he