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

painting representing two Cardinals carousing,

in an octagonal ebony frame set with medallions of onyx.

 

“Shall I fetch her?” he proposed. “I can easily get

away from the office in time to meet the brougham at

the ferry, if May will send it there.” His heart was

beating excitedly as he spoke.

 

Mrs. Welland heaved a sigh of gratitude, and May, who

had moved away to the window, turned to shed on him

a beam of approval. “So you see, Mamma, everything

WILL be settled twenty-four hours in advance,” she said,

stooping over to kiss her mother’s troubled forehead.

 

May’s brougham awaited her at the door, and she was

to drive Archer to Union Square, where he could pick

up a Broadway car to carry him to the office. As she

settled herself in her corner she said: “I didn’t want to

worry Mamma by raising fresh obstacles; but how can

you meet Ellen tomorrow, and bring her back to New

York, when you’re going to Washington?”

 

“Oh, I’m not going,” Archer answered.

 

“Not going? Why, what’s happened?” Her voice was

as clear as a bell, and full of wifely solicitude.

 

“The case is off—postponed.”

 

“Postponed? How odd! I saw a note this morning

from Mr. Letterblair to Mamma saying that he was

going to Washington tomorrow for the big patent case

that he was to argue before the Supreme Court. You

said it was a patent case, didn’t you?”

 

“Well—that’s it: the whole office can’t go. Letterblair

decided to go this morning.”

 

“Then it’s NOT postponed?” she continued, with an

insistence so unlike her that he felt the blood rising to

his face, as if he were blushing for her unwonted lapse

from all the traditional delicacies.

 

“No: but my going is,” he answered, cursing the

unnecessary explanations that he had given when he

had announced his intention of going to Washington,

and wondering where he had read that clever liars give

details, but that the cleverest do not. It did not hurt

him half as much to tell May an untruth as to see her

trying to pretend that she had not detected him.

 

“I’m not going till later on: luckily for the

convenience of your family,” he continued, taking base

refuge in sarcasm. As he spoke he felt that she was looking

at him, and he turned his eyes to hers in order not to

appear to be avoiding them. Their glances met for a

second, and perhaps let them into each other’s meanings

more deeply than either cared to go.

 

“Yes; it IS awfully convenient,” May brightly agreed,

“that you should be able to meet Ellen after all; you

saw how much Mamma appreciated your offering to

do it.”

 

“Oh, I’m delighted to do it.” The carriage stopped,

and as he jumped out she leaned to him and laid her

hand on his. “Goodbye, dearest,” she said, her eyes so

blue that he wondered afterward if they had shone on

him through tears.

 

He turned away and hurried across Union Square,

repeating to himself, in a sort of inward chant: “It’s all

of two hours from Jersey City to old Catherine’s. It’s

all of two hours—and it may be more.”

 

XXIX.

 

His wife’s dark blue brougham (with the wedding

varnish still on it) met Archer at the ferry, and

conveyed him luxuriously to the Pennsylvania terminus

in Jersey City.

 

It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps

were lit in the big reverberating station. As he paced

the platform, waiting for the Washington express, he

remembered that there were people who thought there

would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through

which the trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run

straight into New York. They were of the brotherhood

of visionaries who likewise predicted the building of

ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the

invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity,

telephonic communication without wires, and other

Arabian Night marvels.

 

“I don’t care which of their visions comes true,”

Archer mused, “as long as the tunnel isn’t built yet.” In

his senseless school-boy happiness he pictured Madame

Olenska’s descent from the train, his discovery of her a

long way off, among the throngs of meaningless faces,

her clinging to his arm as he guided her to the carriage,

their slow approach to the wharf among slipping horses,

laden carts, vociferating teamsters, and then the startling

quiet of the ferry-boat, where they would sit side

by side under the snow, in the motionless carriage,

while the earth seemed to glide away under them,

rolling to the other side of the sun. It was incredible,

the number of things he had to say to her, and in what

eloquent order they were forming themselves on his

lips …

 

The clanging and groaning of the train came nearer,

and it staggered slowly into the station like a prey-laden monster into its lair. Archer pushed forward,

elbowing through the crowd, and staring blindly into

window after window of the high-hung carriages. And

then, suddenly, he saw Madame Olenska’s pale and

surprised face close at hand, and had again the mortified

sensation of having forgotten what she looked like.

 

They reached each other, their hands met, and he

drew her arm through his. “This way—I have the

carriage,” he said.

 

After that it all happened as he had dreamed. He

helped her into the brougham with her bags, and had

afterward the vague recollection of having properly

reassured her about her grandmother and given her a

summary of the Beaufort situation (he was struck by

the softness of her: “Poor Regina!”). Meanwhile the

carriage had worked its way out of the coil about the

station, and they were crawling down the slippery

incline to the wharf, menaced by swaying coal-carts,

bewildered horses, dishevelled express-wagons, and an

empty hearse—ah, that hearse! She shut her eyes as it

passed, and clutched at Archer’s hand.

 

“If only it doesn’t mean—poor Granny!”

 

“Oh, no, no—she’s much better—she’s all right, really.

There—we’ve passed it!” he exclaimed, as if that

made all the difference. Her hand remained in his, and

as the carriage lurched across the gang-plank onto the

ferry he bent over, unbuttoned her tight brown glove,

and kissed her palm as if he had kissed a relic. She

disengaged herself with a faint smile, and he said:

“You didn’t expect me today?”

 

“Oh, no.”

 

“I meant to go to Washington to see you. I’d made

all my arrangements—I very nearly crossed you in the

train.”

 

“Oh—” she exclaimed, as if terrified by the narrowness

of their escape.

 

“Do you know—I hardly remembered you?”

 

“Hardly remembered me?”

 

“I mean: how shall I explain? I—it’s always so. EACH

TIME YOU HAPPEN TO ME ALL OVER AGAIN.”

 

“Oh, yes: I know! I know!”

 

“Does it—do I too: to you?” he insisted.

 

She nodded, looking out of the window.

 

“Ellen—Ellen—Ellen!”

 

She made no answer, and he sat in silence, watching

her profile grow indistinct against the snow-streaked

dusk beyond the window. What had she been doing in

all those four long months, he wondered? How little

they knew of each other, after all! The precious moments

were slipping away, but he had forgotten everything

that he had meant to say to her and could only

helplessly brood on the mystery of their remoteness

and their proximity, which seemed to be symbolised by

the fact of their sitting so close to each other, and yet

being unable to see each other’s faces.

 

“What a pretty carriage! Is it May’s?” she asked,

suddenly turning her face from the window.

 

“Yes.”

 

“It was May who sent you to fetch me, then? How

kind of her!”

 

He made no answer for a moment; then he said

explosively: “Your husband’s secretary came to see me

the day after we met in Boston.”

 

In his brief letter to her he had made no allusion to

M. Riviere’s visit, and his intention had been to bury

the incident in his bosom. But her reminder that they

were in his wife’s carriage provoked him to an impulse

of retaliation. He would see if she liked his reference to

Riviere any better than he liked hers to May! As on

certain other occasions when he had expected to shake

her out of her usual composure, she betrayed no sign of

surprise: and at once he concluded: “He writes to her,

then.”

 

“M. Riviere went to see you?”

 

“Yes: didn’t you know?”

 

“No,” she answered simply.

 

“And you’re not surprised?”

 

She hesitated. “Why should I be? He told me in

Boston that he knew you; that he’d met you in England

I think.”

 

“Ellen—I must ask you one thing.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I wanted to ask it after I saw him, but I couldn’t

put it in a letter. It was Riviere who helped you to

get away—when you left your husband?”

 

His heart was beating suffocatingly. Would she meet

this question with the same composure?

 

“Yes: I owe him a great debt,” she answered, without

the least tremor in her quiet voice.

 

Her tone was so natural, so almost indifferent, that

Archer’s turmoil subsided. Once more she had managed,

by her sheer simplicity, to make him feel stupidly

conventional just when he thought he was flinging

convention to the winds.

 

“I think you’re the most honest woman I ever met!”

he exclaimed.

 

“Oh, no—but probably one of the least fussy,” she

answered, a smile in her voice.

 

“Call it what you like: you look at things as they

are.”

 

“Ah—I’ve had to. I’ve had to look at the Gorgon.”

 

“Well—it hasn’t blinded you! You’ve seen that she’s

just an old bogey like all the others.”

 

“She doesn’t blind one; but she dries up one’s tears.”

 

The answer checked the pleading on Archer’s lips: it

seemed to come from depths of experience beyond his

reach. The slow advance of the ferry-boat had ceased,

and her bows bumped against the piles of the slip with

a violence that made the brougham stagger, and flung

Archer and Madame Olenska against each other. The

young man, trembling, felt the pressure of her shoulder,

and passed his arm about her.

 

“If you’re not blind, then, you must see that this

can’t last.”

 

“What can’t?”

 

“Our being together—and not together.”

 

“No. You ought not to have come today,” she said

in an altered voice; and suddenly she turned, flung her

arms about him and pressed her lips to his. At the same

moment the carriage began to move, and a gas-lamp at

the head of the slip flashed its light into the window.

She drew away, and they sat silent and motionless

while the brougham struggled through the congestion

of carriages about the ferry-landing. As they gained the

street Archer began to speak hurriedly.

 

“Don’t be afraid of me: you needn’t squeeze yourself

back into your corner like that. A stolen kiss isn’t what

I want. Look: I’m not even trying to touch the sleeve of

your jacket. Don’t suppose that I don’t understand

your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between

us dwindle into an ordinary hole-and-corner love-affair.

I couldn’t have spoken like this yesterday, because when

we’ve been apart, and I’m looking forward to seeing

you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But

then you come; and you’re so much more than I

remembered, and what I want of you is so much more

than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes

of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still

beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind,

just quietly trusting to