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

she could never be too grateful to

Dr. Bencomb for having made them promise not to go

to Naples on account of the fever.

 

“But you must have three weeks to do India properly,”

her husband conceded, anxious to have it understood

that he was no frivolous globe-trotter.

 

And at this point the ladies went up to the drawing-room.

 

In the library, in spite of weightier presences, Lawrence

Lefferts predominated.

 

The talk, as usual, had veered around to the Beauforts,

and even Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge

Merry, installed in the honorary armchairs tacitly

reserved for them, paused to listen to the younger man’s

philippic.

 

Never had Lefferts so abounded in the sentiments

that adorn Christian manhood and exalt the sanctity of

the home. Indignation lent him a scathing eloquence,

and it was clear that if others had followed his example,

and acted as he talked, society would never have

been weak enough to receive a foreign upstart like

Beaufort—no, sir, not even if he’d married a van der

Luyden or a Lanning instead of a Dallas. And what

chance would there have been, Lefferts wrathfully

questioned, of his marrying into such a family as the Dallases,

if he had not already wormed his way into certain

houses, as people like Mrs. Lemuel Struthers had managed

to worm theirs in his wake? If society chose to

open its doors to vulgar women the harm was not

great, though the gain was doubtful; but once it got in

the way of tolerating men of obscure origin and tainted

wealth the end was total disintegration—and at no

distant date.

 

“If things go on at this pace,” Lefferts thundered,

looking like a young prophet dressed by Poole, and

who had not yet been stoned, “we shall see our children

fighting for invitations to swindlers’ houses, and

marrying Beaufort’s bastards.”

 

“Oh, I say—draw it mild!” Reggie Chivers and young

Newland protested, while Mr. Selfridge Merry looked

genuinely alarmed, and an expression of pain and disgust

settled on Mr. van der Luyden’s sensitive face.

 

“Has he got any?” cried Mr. Sillerton Jackson,

pricking up his ears; and while Lefferts tried to turn the

question with a laugh, the old gentleman twittered into

Archer’s ear: “Queer, those fellows who are always

wanting to set things right. The people who have the

worst cooks are always telling you they’re poisoned

when they dine out. But I hear there are pressing reasons

for our friend Lawrence’s diatribe:—typewriter

this time, I understand… .”

 

The talk swept past Archer like some senseless river

running and running because it did not know enough

to stop. He saw, on the faces about him, expressions of

interest, amusement and even mirth. He listened to the

younger men’s laughter, and to the praise of the Archer

Madeira, which Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Merry

were thoughtfully celebrating. Through it all he was

dimly aware of a general attitude of friendliness toward

himself, as if the guard of the prisoner he felt himself to

be were trying to soften his captivity; and the perception

increased his passionate determination to be free.

 

In the drawing-room, where they presently joined the

ladies, he met May’s triumphant eyes, and read in them

the conviction that everything had “gone off” beautifully.

She rose from Madame Olenska’s side, and immediately

Mrs. van der Luyden beckoned the latter to a

seat on the gilt sofa where she throned. Mrs. Selfridge

Merry bore across the room to join them, and it became

clear to Archer that here also a conspiracy of

rehabilitation and obliteration was going on. The silent

organisation which held his little world together was

determined to put itself on record as never for a moment

having questioned the propriety of Madame Olenska’s

conduct, or the completeness of Archer’s domestic

felicity. All these amiable and inexorable persons were

resolutely engaged in pretending to each other that they

had never heard of, suspected, or even conceived possible,

the least hint to the contrary; and from this tissue

of elaborate mutual dissimulation Archer once more

disengaged the fact that New York believed him to be

Madame Olenska’s lover. He caught the glitter of victory

in his wife’s eyes, and for the first time understood

that she shared the belief. The discovery roused a laughter

of inner devils that reverberated through all his

efforts to discuss the Martha Washington ball with

Mrs. Reggie Chivers and little Mrs. Newland; and so

the evening swept on, running and running like a senseless

river that did not know how to stop.

 

At length he saw that Madame Olenska had risen

and was saying goodbye. He understood that in a

moment she would be gone, and tried to remember

what he had said to her at dinner; but he could not

recall a single word they had exchanged.

 

She went up to May, the rest of the company making

a circle about her as she advanced. The two young

women clasped hands; then May bent forward and

kissed her cousin.

 

“Certainly our hostess is much the handsomer of the

two,” Archer heard Reggie Chivers say in an undertone

to young Mrs. Newland; and he remembered Beaufort’s

coarse sneer at May’s ineffectual beauty.

 

A moment later he was in the hall, putting Madame

Olenska’s cloak about her shoulders.

 

Through all his confusion of mind he had held fast

to the resolve to say nothing that might startle or

disturb her. Convinced that no power could now turn

him from his purpose he had found strength to let

events shape themselves as they would. But as he

followed Madame Olenska into the hall he thought with a

sudden hunger of being for a moment alone with her at

the door of her carriage.

 

“Is your carriage here?” he asked; and at that

moment Mrs. van der Luyden, who was being majestically

inserted into her sables, said gently: “We are driving

dear Ellen home.”

 

Archer’s heart gave a jerk, and Madame Olenska,

clasping her cloak and fan with one hand, held out the

other to him. “Goodbye,” she said.

 

“Goodbye—but I shall see you soon in Paris,” he

answered aloud—it seemed to him that he had shouted

it.

 

“Oh,” she murmured, “if you and May could

come—!”

 

Mr. van der Luyden advanced to give her his arm,

and Archer turned to Mrs. van der Luyden. For a

moment, in the billowy darkness inside the big landau,

he caught the dim oval of a face, eyes shining steadily—

and she was gone.

 

As he went up the steps he crossed Lawrence Lefferts

coming down with his wife. Lefferts caught his host by

the sleeve, drawing back to let Gertrude pass.

 

“I say, old chap: do you mind just letting it be

understood that I’m dining with you at the club tomorrow

night? Thanks so much, you old brick! Good-night.”

 

“It DID go off beautifully, didn’t it?” May questioned

from the threshold of the library.

 

Archer roused himself with a start. As soon as the

last carriage had driven away, he had come up to the

library and shut himself in, with the hope that his wife,

who still lingered below, would go straight to her room.

But there she stood, pale and drawn, yet radiating the

factitious energy of one who has passed beyond fatigue.

 

“May I come and talk it over?” she asked.

 

“Of course, if you like. But you must be awfully

sleepy—”

 

“No, I’m not sleepy. I should like to sit with you a

little.”

 

“Very well,” he said, pushing her chair near the fire.

 

She sat down and he resumed his seat; but neither

spoke for a long time. At length Archer began abruptly:

“Since you’re not tired, and want to talk, there’s something

I must tell you. I tried to the other night—.”

 

She looked at him quickly. “Yes, dear. Something

about yourself?”

 

“About myself. You say you’re not tired: well, I am.

Horribly tired …”

 

In an instant she was all tender anxiety. “Oh, I’ve

seen it coming on, Newland! You’ve been so wickedly

overworked—”

 

“Perhaps it’s that. Anyhow, I want to make a break—”

 

“A break? To give up the law?”

 

“To go away, at any rate—at once. On a long trip,

ever so far off—away from everything—”

 

He paused, conscious that he had failed in his attempt

to speak with the indifference of a man who

longs for a change, and is yet too weary to welcome it.

Do what he would, the chord of eagerness vibrated.

“Away from everything—” he repeated.

 

“Ever so far? Where, for instance?” she asked.

 

“Oh, I don’t know. India—or Japan.”

 

She stood up, and as he sat with bent head, his chin

propped on his hands, he felt her warmly and fragrantly

hovering over him.

 

“As far as that? But I’m afraid you can’t, dear …”

she said in an unsteady voice. “Not unless you’ll take

me with you.” And then, as he was silent, she went on,

in tones so clear and evenly-pitched that each separate

syllable tapped like a little hammer on his brain: “That

is, if the doctors will let me go … but I’m afraid they

won’t. For you see, Newland, I’ve been sure since this

morning of something I’ve been so longing and hoping

for—”

 

He looked up at her with a sick stare, and she sank

down, all dew and roses, and hid her face against his

knee.

 

“Oh, my dear,” he said, holding her to him while his

cold hand stroked her hair.

 

There was a long pause, which the inner devils filled

with strident laughter; then May freed herself from his

arms and stood up.

 

“You didn’t guess—?”

 

“Yes—I; no. That is, of course I hoped—”

 

They looked at each other for an instant and again

fell silent; then, turning his eyes from hers, he asked

abruptly: “Have you told any one else?”

 

“Only Mamma and your mother.” She paused, and

then added hurriedly, the blood flushing up to her

forehead: “That is—and Ellen. You know I told you

we’d had a long talk one afternoon—and how dear she

was to me.”

 

“Ah—” said Archer, his heart stopping.

 

He felt that his wife was watching him intently. “Did

you MIND my telling her first, Newland?”

 

“Mind? Why should I?” He made a last effort to

collect himself. “But that was a fortnight ago, wasn’t

it? I thought you said you weren’t sure till today.”

 

Her colour burned deeper, but she held his gaze.

“No; I wasn’t sure then—but I told her I was. And you

see I was right!” she exclaimed, her blue eyes wet with

victory.

 

XXXIV.

 

Newland Archer sat at the writing-table in his library

in East Thirty-ninth Street.

 

He had just got back from a big official reception for

the inauguration of the new galleries at the Metropolitan

Museum, and the spectacle of those great spaces

crowded with the spoils of the ages, where the throng

of fashion circulated through a series of scientifically

catalogued treasures, had suddenly pressed on a rusted

spring of memory.

 

“Why, this used to be one of the old Cesnola rooms,”

he heard some one say; and instantly everything about

him vanished, and he was sitting alone on a hard

leather divan against a radiator, while a slight figure in

a long sealskin cloak moved away down the meagrely-fitted vista of the old Museum.

 

The vision had roused a host of other associations,

and he sat looking with new eyes at the library which,

for over thirty years, had been the scene of his solitary

musings and of all the family confabulations.

 

It was the room in which most of the