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

>good-looking,” the carnivorous old lady declared.

 

In the hall, while Mrs. Welland and May drew on

their furs, Archer saw that the Countess Olenska was

looking at him with a faintly questioning smile.

 

“Of course you know already—about May and me,”

he said, answering her look with a shy laugh. “She

scolded me for not giving you the news last night at the

Opera: I had her orders to tell you that we were

engaged—but I couldn’t, in that crowd.”

 

The smile passed from Countess Olenska’s eyes to

her lips: she looked younger, more like the bold brown

Ellen Mingott of his boyhood. “Of course I know; yes.

And I’m so glad. But one doesn’t tell such things first in

a crowd.” The ladies were on the threshold and she

held out her hand.

 

“Goodbye; come and see me some day,” she said,

still looking at Archer.

 

In the carriage, on the way down Fifth Avenue, they

talked pointedly of Mrs. Mingott, of her age, her spirit,

and all her wonderful attributes. No one alluded to

Ellen Olenska; but Archer knew that Mrs. Welland

was thinking: “It’s a mistake for Ellen to be seen, the

very day after her arrival, parading up Fifth Avenue at

the crowded hour with Julius Beaufort—” and the young

man himself mentally added: “And she ought to know

that a man who’s just engaged doesn’t spend his time

calling on married women. But I daresay in the set

she’s lived in they do—they never do anything else.”

And, in spite of the cosmopolitan views on which he

prided himself, he thanked heaven that he was a New

Yorker, and about to ally himself with one of his own

kind.

 

V.

 

The next evening old Mr. Sillerton Jackson came to

dine with the Archers.

 

Mrs. Archer was a shy woman and shrank from

society; but she liked to be well-informed as to its

doings. Her old friend Mr. Sillerton Jackson applied to

the investigation of his friends’ affairs the patience of a

collector and the science of a naturalist; and his sister,

Miss Sophy Jackson, who lived with him, and was

entertained by all the people who could not secure her

much-sought-after brother, brought home bits of minor

gossip that filled out usefully the gaps in his picture.

 

Therefore, whenever anything happened that Mrs.

Archer wanted to know about, she asked Mr. Jackson

to dine; and as she honoured few people with her

invitations, and as she and her daughter Janey were an

excellent audience, Mr. Jackson usually came himself

instead of sending his sister. If he could have dictated

all the conditions, he would have chosen the evenings

when Newland was out; not because the young man

was uncongenial to him (the two got on capitally at

their club) but because the old anecdotist sometimes

felt, on Newland’s part, a tendency to weigh his

evidence that the ladies of the family never showed.

 

Mr. Jackson, if perfection had been attainable on

earth, would also have asked that Mrs. Archer’s food

should be a little better. But then New York, as far

back as the mind of man could travel, had been divided

into the two great fundamental groups of the Mingotts

and Mansons and all their clan, who cared about eating

and clothes and money, and the Archer-Newland-van-der-Luyden tribe, who were devoted to travel,

horticulture and the best fiction, and looked down on

the grosser forms of pleasure.

 

You couldn’t have everything, after all. If you dined

with the Lovell Mingotts you got canvasback and

terrapin and vintage wines; at Adeline Archer’s you

could talk about Alpine scenery and “The Marble Faun”;

and luckily the Archer Madeira had gone round the

Cape. Therefore when a friendly summons came from

Mrs. Archer, Mr. Jackson, who was a true eclectic,

would usually say to his sister: “I’ve been a little gouty

since my last dinner at the Lovell Mingotts’—it will do

me good to diet at Adeline’s.”

 

Mrs. Archer, who had long been a widow, lived with

her son and daughter in West Twenty-eighth Street. An

upper floor was dedicated to Newland, and the two

women squeezed themselves into narrower quarters

below. In an unclouded harmony of tastes and interests

they cultivated ferns in Wardian cases, made macrame

lace and wool embroidery on linen, collected American

revolutionary glazed ware, subscribed to “Good Words,”

and read Ouida’s novels for the sake of the Italian

atmosphere. (They preferred those about peasant life,

because of the descriptions of scenery and the pleasanter

sentiments, though in general they liked novels about

people in society, whose motives and habits were more

comprehensible, spoke severely of Dickens, who “had

never drawn a gentleman,” and considered Thackeray

less at home in the great world than Bulwer—who,

however, was beginning to be thought old-fashioned.)

Mrs. and Miss Archer were both great lovers of

scenery. It was what they principally sought and admired

on their occasional travels abroad; considering

architecture and painting as subjects for men, and chiefly

for learned persons who read Ruskin. Mrs. Archer had

been born a Newland, and mother and daughter, who

were as like as sisters, were both, as people said, “true

Newlands”; tall, pale, and slightly round-shouldered,

with long noses, sweet smiles and a kind of drooping

distinction like that in certain faded Reynolds portraits.

Their physical resemblance would have been complete

if an elderly embonpoint had not stretched Mrs. Archer’s

black brocade, while Miss Archer’s brown and

purple poplins hung, as the years went on, more and

more slackly on her virgin frame.

 

Mentally, the likeness between them, as Newland

was aware, was less complete than their identical

mannerisms often made it appear. The long habit of living

together in mutually dependent intimacy had given them

the same vocabulary, and the same habit of beginning

their phrases “Mother thinks” or “Janey thinks,”

according as one or the other wished to advance an

opinion of her own; but in reality, while Mrs. Archer’s

serene unimaginativeness rested easily in the accepted

and familiar, Janey was subject to starts and aberrations

of fancy welling up from springs of suppressed

romance.

 

Mother and daughter adored each other and revered

their son and brother; and Archer loved them with a

tenderness made compunctious and uncritical by the

sense of their exaggerated admiration, and by his secret

satisfaction in it. After all, he thought it a good thing

for a man to have his authority respected in his own

house, even if his sense of humour sometimes made

him question the force of his mandate.

 

On this occasion the young man was very sure that

Mr. Jackson would rather have had him dine out; but

he had his own reasons for not doing so.

 

Of course old Jackson wanted to talk about Ellen

Olenska, and of course Mrs. Archer and Janey wanted

to hear what he had to tell. All three would be slightly

embarrassed by Newland’s presence, now that his

prospective relation to the Mingott clan had been made

known; and the young man waited with an amused

curiosity to see how they would turn the difficulty.

 

They began, obliquely, by talking about Mrs. Lemuel

Struthers.

 

“It’s a pity the Beauforts asked her,” Mrs. Archer

said gently. “But then Regina always does what he tells

her; and BEAUFORT—”

 

“Certain nuances escape Beaufort,” said Mr. Jackson,

cautiously inspecting the broiled shad, and wondering

for the thousandth time why Mrs. Archer’s cook

always burnt the roe to a cinder. (Newland, who had

long shared his wonder, could always detect it in the

older man’s expression of melancholy disapproval.)

 

“Oh, necessarily; Beaufort is a vulgar man,” said

Mrs. Archer. “My grandfather Newland always used

to say to my mother: `Whatever you do, don’t let that

fellow Beaufort be introduced to the girls.’ But at least

he’s had the advantage of associating with gentlemen;

in England too, they say. It’s all very mysterious—”

She glanced at Janey and paused. She and Janey knew

every fold of the Beaufort mystery, but in public Mrs.

Archer continued to assume that the subject was not

one for the unmarried.

 

“But this Mrs. Struthers,” Mrs. Archer continued;

“what did you say SHE was, Sillerton?”

 

“Out of a mine: or rather out of the saloon at the

head of the pit. Then with Living Wax-Works, touring

New England. After the police broke THAT up, they say

she lived—” Mr. Jackson in his turn glanced at Janey,

whose eyes began to bulge from under her prominent

lids. There were still hiatuses for her in Mrs. Struthers’s

past.

 

“Then,” Mr. Jackson continued (and Archer saw he

was wondering why no one had told the butler never to

slice cucumbers with a steel knife), “then Lemuel Struthers

came along. They say his advertiser used the girl’s

head for the shoe-polish posters; her hair’s intensely

black, you know—the Egyptian style. Anyhow, he—

eventually—married her.” There were volumes of

innuendo in the way the “eventually” was spaced, and

each syllable given its due stress.

 

“Oh, well—at the pass we’ve come to nowadays, it

doesn’t matter,” said Mrs. Archer indifferently. The

ladies were not really interested in Mrs. Struthers

just then; the subject of Ellen Olenska was too fresh

and too absorbing to them. Indeed, Mrs. Struthers’s

name had been introduced by Mrs. Archer only that

she might presently be able to say: “And Newland’s

new cousin—Countess Olenska? Was SHE at the ball too?”

 

There was a faint touch of sarcasm in the reference

to her son, and Archer knew it and had expected it.

Even Mrs. Archer, who was seldom unduly pleased

with human events, had been altogether glad of her

son’s engagement. (“Especially after that silly business

with Mrs. Rushworth,” as she had remarked to Janey,

alluding to what had once seemed to Newland a tragedy

of which his soul would always bear the scar.)

 

There was no better match in New York than May

Welland, look at the question from whatever point you

chose. Of course such a marriage was only what

Newland was entitled to; but young men are so foolish

and incalculable—and some women so ensnaring and

unscrupulous—that it was nothing short of a miracle to

see one’s only son safe past the Siren Isle and in the

haven of a blameless domesticity.

 

All this Mrs. Archer felt, and her son knew she felt;

but he knew also that she had been perturbed by the

premature announcement of his engagement, or rather

by its cause; and it was for that reason—because on the

whole he was a tender and indulgent master—that he

had stayed at home that evening. “It’s not that I don’t

approve of the Mingotts’ esprit de corps; but why

Newland’s engagement should be mixed up with that

Olenska woman’s comings and goings I don’t see,”

Mrs. Archer grumbled to Janey, the only witness of her

slight lapses from perfect sweetness.

 

She had behaved beautifully—and in beautiful

behaviour she was unsurpassed—during the call on Mrs.

Welland; but Newland knew (and his betrothed doubtless

guessed) that all through the visit she and Janey

were nervously on the watch for Madame Olenska’s

possible intrusion; and when they left the house

together she had permitted herself to say to her son: “I’m

thankful that Augusta Welland received us alone.”

 

These indications of inward disturbance moved Archer

the more that he too felt that the Mingotts had gone a

little too far. But, as it was against all the rules of their

code that the mother and son should ever allude to

what was uppermost in their thoughts, he simply replied:

“Oh, well, there’s always a phase of family parties

to be gone through when one gets engaged, and the

sooner it’s over the better.” At which his mother merely

pursed her lips under the lace veil that hung down from

her grey velvet bonnet trimmed with