The Age of Innocence
place," he added with a flash of sarcasm.
"Yes, isn't it? One feels that," she cried, missing the mockery. "Being
here is like--like--being taken on a holiday when one has been a good
little girl and done all one's lessons."
The analogy was well meant, but did not altogether please him. He did
not mind being flippant about New York, but disliked to hear any one
else take the same tone. He wondered if she did not begin to see what a
powerful engine it was, and how nearly it had crushed her. The Lovell
Mingotts' dinner, patched up in extremis out of all sorts of social
odds and ends, ought to have taught her the narrowness of her escape;
but either she had been all along unaware of having skirted disaster,
or else she had lost sight of it in the triumph of the van der Luyden
evening. Archer inclined to the former theory; he fancied that her New
York was still completely undifferentiated, and the conjecture nettled
him.
"Last night," he said, "New York laid itself out for you. The van der
Luydens do nothing by halves."
"No: how kind they are! It was such a nice party. Every one seems to
have such an esteem for them."
The terms were hardly adequate; she might have spoken in that way of a
tea-party at the dear old Miss Lannings'.
"The van der Luydens," said Archer, feeling himself pompous as
he spoke, "are the most powerful influence in New York society.
Unfortunately--owing to her health--they receive very seldom."
She unclasped her hands from behind her head, and looked at him
meditatively.
"Isn't that perhaps the reason?"
"The reason--?"
"For their great influence; that they make themselves so rare."
He coloured a little, stared at her--and suddenly felt the penetration
of the remark. At a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and they
collapsed. He laughed, and sacrificed them.
Nastasia brought the tea, with handleless Japanese cups and little
covered dishes, placing the tray on a low table.
"But you'll explain these things to me--you'll tell me all I ought to
know," Madame Olenska continued, leaning forward to hand him his cup.
"It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at
so long that I'd ceased to see them."
She detached a small gold cigarette-case from one of her bracelets,
held it out to him, and took a cigarette herself. On the chimney were
long spills for lighting them.
"Ah, then we can both help each other. But I want help so much more.
You must tell me just what to do."
It was on the tip of his tongue to reply: "Don't be seen driving about
the streets with Beaufort--" but he was being too deeply drawn into the
atmosphere of the room, which was her atmosphere, and to give advice
of that sort would have been like telling some one who was bargaining
for attar-of-roses in Samarkand that one should always be provided with
arctics for a New York winter. New York seemed much farther off than
Samarkand, and if they were indeed to help each other she was rendering
what might prove the first of their mutual services by making him look
at his native city objectively. Viewed thus, as through the wrong end
of a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant; but then
from Samarkand it would.
A flame darted from the logs and she bent over the fire, stretching her
thin hands so close to it that a faint halo shone about the oval nails.
The light touched to russet the rings of dark hair escaping from her
braids, and made her pale face paler.
"There are plenty of people to tell you what to do," Archer rejoined,
obscurely envious of them.
"Oh--all my aunts? And my dear old Granny?" She considered the idea
impartially. "They're all a little vexed with me for setting up for
myself--poor Granny especially. She wanted to keep me with her; but I
had to be free--" He was impressed by this light way of speaking of the
formidable Catherine, and moved by the thought of what must have given
Madame Olenska this thirst for even the loneliest kind of freedom. But
the idea of Beaufort gnawed him.
"I think I understand how you feel," he said. "Still, your family can
advise you; explain differences; show you the way."
She lifted her thin black eyebrows. "Is New York such a labyrinth? I
thought it so straight up and down--like Fifth Avenue. And with all the
cross streets numbered!" She seemed to guess his faint disapproval of
this, and added, with the rare smile that enchanted her whole face: "If
you knew how I like it for just _that_--the straight-up-and-downness,
and the big honest labels on everything!"
He saw his chance. "Everything may be labelled--but everybody is not."
"Perhaps. I may simplify too much--but you'll warn me if I do." She
turned from the fire to look at him. "There are only two people here
who make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could explain
things to me: you and Mr. Beaufort."
Archer winced at the joining of the names, and then, with a quick
readjustment, understood, sympathised and pitied. So close to the
powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely
in their air. But since she felt that he understood her also, his
business would be to make her see Beaufort as he really was, with all
he represented--and abhor it.
He answered gently: "I understand. But just at first don't let go of
your old friends' hands: I mean the older women, your Granny Mingott,
Mrs. Welland, Mrs. van der Luyden. They like and admire you--they want
to help you."
She shook her head and sighed. "Oh, I know--I know! But on condition
that they don't hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it in those
very words when I tried.... Does no one want to know the truth here,
Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people
who only ask one to pretend!" She lifted her hands to her face, and he
saw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob.
"Madame Olenska!--Oh, don't, Ellen," he cried, starting up and bending
over her. He drew down one of her hands, clasping and chafing it like a
child's while he murmured reassuring words; but in a moment she freed
herself, and looked up at him with wet lashes.
"Does no one cry here, either? I suppose there's no need to, in
heaven," she said, straightening her loosened braids with a laugh, and
bending over the tea-kettle. It was burnt into his consciousness that
he had called her "Ellen"--called her so twice; and that she had not
noticed it. Far down the inverted telescope he saw the faint white
figure of May Welland--in New York.
Suddenly Nastasia put her head in to say something in her rich Italian.
Madame Olenska, again with a hand at her hair, uttered an exclamation
of assent--a flashing "Gia--gia"--and the Duke of St. Austrey entered,
piloting a tremendous black-wigged and red-plumed lady in overflowing
furs.
"My dear Countess, I've brought an old friend of mine to see you--Mrs.
Struthers. She wasn't asked to the party last night, and she wants to
know you."
The Duke beamed on the group, and Madame Olenska advanced with a
murmur of welcome toward the queer couple. She seemed to have no idea
how oddly matched they were, nor what a liberty the Duke had taken in
bringing his companion--and to do him justice, as Archer perceived, the
Duke seemed as unaware of it himself.
"Of course I want to know you, my dear," cried Mrs. Struthers in a
round rolling voice that matched her bold feathers and her brazen wig.
"I want to know everybody who's young and interesting and charming.
And the Duke tells me you like music--didn't you, Duke? You're a
pianist yourself, I believe? Well, do you want to hear Sarasate play
tomorrow evening at my house? You know I've something going on every
Sunday evening--it's the day when New York doesn't know what to do with
itself, and so I say to it: 'Come and be amused.' And the Duke thought
you'd be tempted by Sarasate. You'll find a number of your friends."
Madame Olenska's face grew brilliant with pleasure. "How kind! How good
of the Duke to think of me!" She pushed a chair up to the tea-table and
Mrs. Struthers sank into it delectably. "Of course I shall be too happy
to come."
"That's all right, my dear. And bring your young gentleman with you."
Mrs. Struthers extended a hail-fellow hand to Archer. "I can't put a
name to you--but I'm sure I've met you--I've met everybody, here, or in
Paris or London. Aren't you in diplomacy? All the diplomatists come to
me. You like music too? Duke, you must be sure to bring him."
The Duke said "Rather" from the depths of his beard, and Archer
withdrew with a stiffly circular bow that made him feel as full of
spine as a self-conscious school-boy among careless and unnoticing
elders.
He was not sorry for the denouement of his visit: he only wished it had
come sooner, and spared him a certain waste of emotion. As he went out
into the wintry night, New York again became vast and imminent, and May
Welland the loveliest woman in it. He turned into his florist's to send
her the daily box of lilies-of-the-valley which, to his confusion, he
found he had forgotten that morning.
As he wrote a word on his card and waited for an envelope he glanced
about the embowered shop, and his eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses.
He had never seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse was
to send them to May instead of the lilies. But they did not look like
her--there was something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty.
In a sudden revulsion of mood, and almost without knowing what he did,
he signed to the florist to lay the roses in another long box, and
slipped his card into a second envelope, on which he wrote the name of
the Countess Olenska; then, just as he was turning away, he drew the
card out again, and left the empty envelope on the box.
"They'll go at once?" he enquired, pointing to the roses.
The florist assured him that they would.
X.
The next day he persuaded May to escape for a walk in the Park after
luncheon. As was the custom in old-fashioned Episcopalian New York,
she usually accompanied her parents to church on Sunday afternoons;
but Mrs. Welland condoned her truancy, having that very morning won
her over to the necessity of a long engagement, with time to prepare a
hand-embroidered trousseau containing the proper number of dozens.
The day was delectable. The bare vaulting of trees along the Mall
was ceiled with lapis lazuli, and arched above snow that shone like
splintered crystals. It was the weather to call out May's radiance, and
she burned like a young maple in the frost. Archer was proud of the
glances turned on her, and the simple joy of possessorship cleared away
his underlying perplexities.
"It's so delicious--waking every morning to smell lilies-of-the-valley
in one's room!" she said.
"Yesterday they came late. I hadn't time in the morning--"
"But your remembering each day to send them makes me love them so much
more than if you'd given a standing order, and they came every morning
on the minute, like one's music-teacher--as I know Gertrude Lefferts's
did, for instance, when she and Lawrence were engaged."
"Ah--they would!" laughed Archer, amused at her keenness. He looked
sideways at her fruit-like cheek and felt rich and secure enough to
add: "When I sent your lilies yesterday afternoon I saw some rather
gorgeous yellow roses and packed them off to Madame Olenska. Was that
right?"
"How dear of you! Anything of that kind delights her. It's odd she
didn't mention it: she lunched with us today, and spoke of Mr.
Beaufort's having sent her wonderful orchids, and cousin Henry van der
Luyden a whole hamper of carnations from Skuytercliff. She seems so
surprised to receive flowers. Don't people send them in Europe? She
thinks it such a pretty custom."
"Oh, well, no wonder mine were overshadowed by Beaufort's," said Archer