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

under its heavy furs, the cleverly

planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the way a dark

curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above

the ear. His mind, as always when they first met, was

wholly absorbed in the delicious details that made her

herself and no other. Presently he rose and approached

the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves were

crowded with small broken objects—hardly recognisable

domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles—made

of glass, of clay, of discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.

 

“It seems cruel,” she said, “that after a while nothing

matters … any more than these little things, that used

to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and

now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass

and labelled: `Use unknown.’”

 

“Yes; but meanwhile—”

 

“Ah, meanwhile—”

 

As she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her

hands thrust in a small round muff, her veil drawn

down like a transparent mask to the tip of her nose,

and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirring

with her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that

this pure harmony of line and colour should ever suffer

the stupid law of change.

 

“Meanwhile everything matters—that concerns you,”

he said.

 

She looked at him thoughtfully, and turned back to

the divan. He sat down beside her and waited; but

suddenly he heard a step echoing far off down the

empty rooms, and felt the pressure of the minutes.

 

“What is it you wanted to tell me?” she asked, as if

she had received the same warning.

 

“What I wanted to tell you?” he rejoined. “Why,

that I believe you came to New York because you were

afraid.”

 

“Afraid?”

 

“Of my coming to Washington.”

 

She looked down at her muff, and he saw her hands

stir in it uneasily.

 

“Well—?”

 

“Well—yes,” she said.

 

“You WERE afraid? You knew—?”

 

“Yes: I knew …”

 

“Well, then?” he insisted.

 

“Well, then: this is better, isn’t it?” she returned with

a long questioning sigh.

 

“Better—?”

 

“We shall hurt others less. Isn’t it, after all, what you

always wanted?”

 

“To have you here, you mean—in reach and yet out

of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It’s the

very reverse of what I want. I told you the other day

what I wanted.”

 

She hesitated. “And you still think this—worse?”

 

“A thousand times!” He paused. “It would be easy

to lie to you; but the truth is I think it detestable.”

 

“Oh, so do I!” she cried with a deep breath of relief.

 

He sprang up impatiently. “Well, then—it’s my turn

to ask: what is it, in God’s name, that you think

better?”

 

She hung her head and continued to clasp and unclasp

her hands in her muff. The step drew nearer, and

a guardian in a braided cap walked listlessly through

the room like a ghost stalking through a necropolis.

They fixed their eyes simultaneously on the case opposite

them, and when the official figure had vanished

down a vista of mummies and sarcophagi Archer spoke

again.

 

“What do you think better?”

 

Instead of answering she murmured: “I promised

Granny to stay with her because it seemed to me that

here I should be safer.”

 

“From me?”

 

She bent her head slightly, without looking at him.

 

“Safer from loving me?”

 

Her profile did not stir, but he saw a tear overflow

on her lashes and hang in a mesh of her veil.

 

“Safer from doing irreparable harm. Don’t let us be

like all the others!” she protested.

 

“What others? I don’t profess to be different from

my kind. I’m consumed by the same wants and the

same longings.”

 

She glanced at him with a kind of terror, and he saw

a faint colour steal into her cheeks.

 

“Shall I—once come to you; and then go home?” she

suddenly hazarded in a low clear voice.

 

The blood rushed to the young man’s forehead.

“Dearest!” he said, without moving. It seemed as if he

held his heart in his hands, like a full cup that the least

motion might overbrim.

 

Then her last phrase struck his ear and his face

clouded. “Go home? What do you mean by going

home?”

 

“Home to my husband.”

 

“And you expect me to say yes to that?”

 

She raised her troubled eyes to his. “What else is

there? I can’t stay here and lie to the people who’ve

been good to me.”

 

“But that’s the very reason why I ask you to come

away!”

 

“And destroy their lives, when they’ve helped me to

remake mine?”

 

Archer sprang to his feet and stood looking down on

her in inarticulate despair. It would have been easy to

say: “Yes, come; come once.” He knew the power she

would put in his hands if she consented; there would

be no difficulty then in persuading her not to go back

to her husband.

 

But something silenced the word on his lips. A sort

of passionate honesty in her made it inconceivable that

he should try to draw her into that familiar trap. “If I

were to let her come,” he said to himself, “I should

have to let her go again.” And that was not to be

imagined.

 

But he saw the shadow of the lashes on her wet

cheek, and wavered.

 

“After all,” he began again, “we have lives of our

own… . There’s no use attempting the impossible.

You’re so unprejudiced about some things, so used, as

you say, to looking at the Gorgon, that I don’t know

why you’re afraid to face our case, and see it as it

really is—unless you think the sacrifice is not worth

making.”

 

She stood up also, her lips tightening under a rapid

frown.

 

“Call it that, then—I must go,” she said, drawing her

little watch from her bosom.

 

She turned away, and he followed and caught her by

the wrist. “Well, then: come to me once,” he said, his

head turning suddenly at the thought of losing her; and

for a second or two they looked at each other almost

like enemies.

 

“When?” he insisted. “Tomorrow?”

 

She hesitated. “The day after.”

 

“Dearest—!” he said again.

 

She had disengaged her wrist; but for a moment they

continued to hold each other’s eyes, and he saw that

her face, which had grown very pale, was flooded with

a deep inner radiance. His heart beat with awe: he felt

that he had never before beheld love visible.

 

“Oh, I shall be late—goodbye. No, don’t come any

farther than this,” she cried, walking hurriedly away

down the long room, as if the reflected radiance in his

eyes had frightened her. When she reached the door she

turned for a moment to wave a quick farewell.

 

Archer walked home alone. Darkness was falling when

he let himself into his house, and he looked about at

the familiar objects in the hall as if he viewed them

from the other side of the grave.

 

The parlour-maid, hearing his step, ran up the stairs

to light the gas on the upper landing.

 

“Is Mrs. Archer in?”

 

“No, sir; Mrs. Archer went out in the carriage after

luncheon, and hasn’t come back.”

 

With a sense of relief he entered the library and flung

himself down in his armchair. The parlour-maid followed,

bringing the student lamp and shaking some

coals onto the dying fire. When she left he continued to

sit motionless, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his

clasped hands, his eyes fixed on the red grate.

 

He sat there without conscious thoughts, without

sense of the lapse of time, in a deep and grave amazement

that seemed to suspend life rather than quicken it.

“This was what had to be, then … this was what had

to be,” he kept repeating to himself, as if he hung in

the clutch of doom. What he had dreamed of had been

so different that there was a mortal chill in his rapture.

 

The door opened and May came in.

 

“I’m dreadfully late—you weren’t worried, were you?”

she asked, laying her hand on his shoulder with one of

her rare caresses.

 

He looked up astonished. “Is it late?”

 

“After seven. I believe you’ve been asleep!” She

laughed, and drawing out her hat pins tossed her velvet

hat on the sofa. She looked paler than usual, but sparkling

with an unwonted animation.

 

“I went to see Granny, and just as I was going away

Ellen came in from a walk; so I stayed and had a long

talk with her. It was ages since we’d had a real talk… .”

She had dropped into her usual armchair, facing his,

and was running her fingers through her rumpled hair.

He fancied she expected him to speak.

 

“A really good talk,” she went on, smiling with what

seemed to Archer an unnatural vividness. “She was so

dear—just like the old Ellen. I’m afraid I haven’t been

fair to her lately. I’ve sometimes thought—”

 

Archer stood up and leaned against the mantelpiece,

out of the radius of the lamp.

 

“Yes, you’ve thought—?” he echoed as she paused.

 

“Well, perhaps I haven’t judged her fairly. She’s so

different—at least on the surface. She takes up such

odd people—she seems to like to make herself conspicuous.

I suppose it’s the life she’s led in that fast European

society; no doubt we seem dreadfully dull to her.

But I don’t want to judge her unfairly.”

 

She paused again, a little breathless with the

unwonted length of her speech, and sat with her lips

slightly parted and a deep blush on her cheeks.

 

Archer, as he looked at her, was reminded of the

glow which had suffused her face in the Mission Garden

at St. Augustine. He became aware of the same

obscure effort in her, the same reaching out toward

something beyond the usual range of her vision.

 

“She hates Ellen,” he thought, “and she’s trying to

overcome the feeling, and to get me to help her to

overcome it.”

 

The thought moved him, and for a moment he was

on the point of breaking the silence between them, and

throwing himself on her mercy.

 

“You understand, don’t you,” she went on, “why

the family have sometimes been annoyed? We all did

what we could for her at first; but she never seemed to

understand. And now this idea of going to see Mrs.

Beaufort, of going there in Granny’s carriage! I’m afraid

she’s quite alienated the van der Luydens …”

 

“Ah,” said Archer with an impatient laugh. The

open door had closed between them again.

 

“It’s time to dress; we’re dining out, aren’t we?” he

asked, moving from the fire.

 

She rose also, but lingered near the hearth. As he

walked past her she moved forward impulsively, as

though to detain him: their eyes met, and he saw that

hers were of the same swimming blue as when he had

left her to drive to Jersey City.

 

She flung her arms about his neck and pressed her

cheek to his.

 

“You haven’t kissed me today,” she said in a whisper;

and he felt her tremble in his arms.

 

XXXII.

 

At the court of the Tuileries,” said Mr. Sillerton

Jackson with his reminiscent smile, “such things

were pretty openly tolerated.”

 

The scene was the van der Luydens’ black walnut

dining-room in Madison Avenue, and the time the evening

after Newland Archer’s visit to the Museum of

Art. Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden had