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

be done,” she said. “Granny

knows what she wants, and we must carry out all her

wishes. Shall I write the telegram for you, Auntie? If it

goes at once Ellen can probably catch tomorrow morning’s

train.” She pronounced the syllables of the name

with a peculiar clearness, as if she had tapped on two

silver bells.

 

“Well, it can’t go at once. Jasper and the pantry-boy

are both out with notes and telegrams.”

 

May turned to her husband with a smile. “But here’s

Newland, ready to do anything. Will you take the

telegram, Newland? There’ll be just time before luncheon.”

 

Archer rose with a murmur of readiness, and she

seated herself at old Catherine’s rosewood “Bonheur

du Jour,” and wrote out the message in her large

immature hand. When it was written she blotted it

neatly and handed it to Archer.

 

“What a pity,” she said, “that you and Ellen will

cross each other on the way!—Newland,” she added,

turning to her mother and aunt, “is obliged to go to

Washington about a patent law-suit that is coming up

before the Supreme Court. I suppose Uncle Lovell will

be back by tomorrow night, and with Granny improving

so much it doesn’t seem right to ask Newland to

give up an important engagement for the firm—does

it?”

 

She paused, as if for an answer, and Mrs. Welland

hastily declared: “Oh, of course not, darling. Your

Granny would be the last person to wish it.” As Archer

left the room with the telegram, he heard his mother-in-law add, presumably to Mrs. Lovell Mingott: “But

why on earth she should make you telegraph for Ellen

Olenska—” and May’s clear voice rejoin: “Perhaps it’s

to urge on her again that after all her duty is with her

husband.”

 

The outer door closed on Archer and he walked

hastily away toward the telegraph office.

 

XXVIII.

 

Ol-ol—howjer spell it, anyhow?” asked the tart

young lady to whom Archer had pushed his wife’s

telegram across the brass ledge of the Western Union

office.

 

“Olenska—O-len-ska,” he repeated, drawing back

the message in order to print out the foreign syllables

above May’s rambling script.

 

“It’s an unlikely name for a New York telegraph

office; at least in this quarter,” an unexpected voice

observed; and turning around Archer saw Lawrence

Lefferts at his elbow, pulling an imperturbable moustache

and affecting not to glance at the message.

 

“Hallo, Newland: thought I’d catch you here. I’ve

just heard of old Mrs. Mingott’s stroke; and as I was

on my way to the house I saw you turning down this

street and nipped after you. I suppose you’ve come

from there?”

 

Archer nodded, and pushed his telegram under the

lattice.

 

“Very bad, eh?” Lefferts continued. “Wiring to the

family, I suppose. I gather it IS bad, if you’re including

Countess Olenska.”

 

Archer’s lips stiffened; he felt a savage impulse to

dash his fist into the long vain handsome face at his side.

 

“Why?” he questioned.

 

Lefferts, who was known to shrink from discussion,

raised his eyebrows with an ironic grimace that warned

the other of the watching damsel behind the lattice.

Nothing could be worse “form” the look reminded

Archer, than any display of temper in a public place.

 

Archer had never been more indifferent to the

requirements of form; but his impulse to do Lawrence

Lefferts a physical injury was only momentary. The

idea of bandying Ellen Olenska’s name with him at

such a time, and on whatsoever provocation, was

unthinkable. He paid for his telegram, and the two young

men went out together into the street. There Archer,

having regained his self-control, went on: “Mrs. Mingott

is much better: the doctor feels no anxiety whatever”;

and Lefferts, with profuse expressions of relief,

asked him if he had heard that there were beastly bad

rumours again about Beaufort… .

 

That afternoon the announcement of the Beaufort failure

was in all the papers. It overshadowed the report of

Mrs. Manson Mingott’s stroke, and only the few who

had heard of the mysterious connection between the

two events thought of ascribing old Catherine’s illness

to anything but the accumulation of flesh and years.

 

The whole of New York was darkened by the tale of

Beaufort’s dishonour. There had never, as Mr. Letterblair

said, been a worse case in his memory, nor, for that

matter, in the memory of the far-off Letterblair who

had given his name to the firm. The bank had continued

to take in money for a whole day after its failure

was inevitable; and as many of its clients belonged to

one or another of the ruling clans, Beaufort’s duplicity

seemed doubly cynical. If Mrs. Beaufort had not taken

the tone that such misfortunes (the word was her own)

were “the test of friendship,” compassion for her might

have tempered the general indignation against her husband.

As it was—and especially after the object of her

nocturnal visit to Mrs. Manson Mingott had become

known—her cynicism was held to exceed his; and she

had not the excuse—nor her detractors the satisfaction—

of pleading that she was “a foreigner.” It was some

comfort (to those whose securities were not in jeopardy)

to be able to remind themselves that Beaufort

WAS; but, after all, if a Dallas of South Carolina took

his view of the case, and glibly talked of his soon being

“on his feet again,” the argument lost its edge, and

there was nothing to do but to accept this awful evidence

of the indissolubility of marriage. Society must

manage to get on without the Beauforts, and there was

an end of it—except indeed for such hapless victims of

the disaster as Medora Manson, the poor old Miss

Lannings, and certain other misguided ladies of good

family who, if only they had listened to Mr. Henry van

der Luyden …

 

“The best thing the Beauforts can do,” said Mrs.

Archer, summing it up as if she were pronouncing a

diagnosis and prescribing a course of treatment, “is to

go and live at Regina’s little place in North Carolina.

Beaufort has always kept a racing stable, and he had

better breed trotting horses. I should say he had all the

qualities of a successful horsedealer.” Every one agreed

with her, but no one condescended to enquire what the

Beauforts really meant to do.

 

The next day Mrs. Manson Mingott was much better:

she recovered her voice sufficiently to give orders

that no one should mention the Beauforts to her again,

and asked—when Dr. Bencomb appeared—what in the

world her family meant by making such a fuss about

her health.

 

“If people of my age WILL eat chicken-salad in the

evening what are they to expect?” she enquired; and,

the doctor having opportunely modified her dietary,

the stroke was transformed into an attack of indigestion.

But in spite of her firm tone old Catherine did not

wholly recover her former attitude toward life. The

growing remoteness of old age, though it had not

diminished her curiosity about her neighbours, had blunted

her never very lively compassion for their troubles; and

she seemed to have no difficulty in putting the Beaufort

disaster out of her mind. But for the first time she

became absorbed in her own symptoms, and began to

take a sentimental interest in certain members of her

family to whom she had hitherto been contemptuously

indifferent.

 

Mr. Welland, in particular, had the privilege of

attracting her notice. Of her sons-in-law he was the one

she had most consistently ignored; and all his wife’s

efforts to represent him as a man of forceful character

and marked intellectual ability (if he had only “chosen”)

had been met with a derisive chuckle. But his

eminence as a valetudinarian now made him an object

of engrossing interest, and Mrs. Mingott issued an

imperial summons to him to come and compare diets

as soon as his temperature permitted; for old Catherine

was now the first to recognise that one could not be

too careful about temperatures.

 

Twenty-four hours after Madame Olenska’s summons

a telegram announced that she would arrive from Washington

on the evening of the following day. At the

Wellands’, where the Newland Archers chanced to be

lunching, the question as to who should meet her at

Jersey City was immediately raised; and the material

difficulties amid which the Welland household struggled

as if it had been a frontier outpost, lent animation

to the debate. It was agreed that Mrs. Welland could

not possibly go to Jersey City because she was to

accompany her husband to old Catherine’s that afternoon,

and the brougham could not be spared, since, if

Mr. Welland were “upset” by seeing his mother-in-law

for the first time after her attack, he might have to be

taken home at a moment’s notice. The Welland sons

would of course be “down town,” Mr. Lovell Mingott

would be just hurrying back from his shooting, and the

Mingott carriage engaged in meeting him; and one

could not ask May, at the close of a winter afternoon,

to go alone across the ferry to Jersey City, even in her

own carriage. Nevertheless, it might appear inhospitable

—and contrary to old Catherine’s express wishes—if

Madame Olenska were allowed to arrive without any

of the family being at the station to receive her. It was

just like Ellen, Mrs. Welland’s tired voice implied, to

place the family in such a dilemma. “It’s always one

thing after another,” the poor lady grieved, in one of

her rare revolts against fate; “the only thing that makes

me think Mamma must be less well than Dr. Bencomb

will admit is this morbid desire to have Ellen come at

once, however inconvenient it is to meet her.”

 

The words had been thoughtless, as the utterances of

impatience often are; and Mr. Welland was upon them

with a pounce.

 

“Augusta,” he said, turning pale and laying down his

fork, “have you any other reason for thinking that

Bencomb is less to be relied on than he was? Have you

noticed that he has been less conscientious than usual

in following up my case or your mother’s?”

 

It was Mrs. Welland’s turn to grow pale as the

endless consequences of her blunder unrolled themselves

before her; but she managed to laugh, and take a

second helping of scalloped oysters, before she said,

struggling back into her old armour of cheerfulness:

“My dear, how could you imagine such a thing? I only

meant that, after the decided stand Mamma took about

its being Ellen’s duty to go back to her husband, it

seems strange that she should be seized with this sudden

whim to see her, when there are half a dozen other

grandchildren that she might have asked for. But we

must never forget that Mamma, in spite of her wonderful

vitality, is a very old woman.”

 

Mr. Welland’s brow remained clouded, and it was

evident that his perturbed imagination had fastened at

once on this last remark. “Yes: your mother’s a very

old woman; and for all we know Bencomb may not be

as successful with very old people. As you say, my

dear, it’s always one thing after another; and in

another ten or fifteen years I suppose I shall have the

pleasing duty of looking about for a new doctor. It’s

always better to make such a change before it’s absolutely

necessary.” And having arrived at this Spartan

decision Mr. Welland firmly took up his fork.

 

“But all the while,” Mrs. Welland began again, as

she rose from the luncheon-table, and led the way into

the wilderness of purple satin and malachite known as

the back drawing-room, “I don’t see how Ellen’s to be

got here tomorrow evening; and I do like to have

things settled for at least twenty-four hours ahead.”

 

Archer turned from the fascinated contemplation of

a small