The Age of Innocence
irritably. Then he remembered that he had not put a card with the
roses, and was vexed at having spoken of them. He wanted to say: "I
called on your cousin yesterday," but hesitated. If Madame Olenska had
not spoken of his visit it might seem awkward that he should. Yet not
to do so gave the affair an air of mystery that he disliked. To shake
off the question he began to talk of their own plans, their future, and
Mrs. Welland's insistence on a long engagement.
"If you call it long! Isabel Chivers and Reggie were engaged for two
years: Grace and Thorley for nearly a year and a half. Why aren't we
very well off as we are?"
It was the traditional maidenly interrogation, and he felt ashamed of
himself for finding it singularly childish. No doubt she simply echoed
what was said for her; but she was nearing her twenty-second birthday,
and he wondered at what age "nice" women began to speak for themselves.
"Never, if we won't let them, I suppose," he mused, and recalled his
mad outburst to Mr. Sillerton Jackson: "Women ought to be as free as we
are--"
It would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young
woman's eyes, and bid her look forth on the world. But how many
generations of the women who had gone to her making had descended
bandaged to the family vault? He shivered a little, remembering some of
the new ideas in his scientific books, and the much-cited instance of
the Kentucky cave-fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because they
had no use for them. What if, when he had bidden May Welland to open
hers, they could only look out blankly at blankness?
"We might be much better off. We might be altogether together--we might
travel."
Her face lit up. "That would be lovely," she owned: she would love to
travel. But her mother would not understand their wanting to do things
so differently.
"As if the mere 'differently' didn't account for it!" the wooer
insisted.
"Newland! You're so original!" she exulted.
His heart sank, for he saw that he was saying all the things that young
men in the same situation were expected to say, and that she was making
the answers that instinct and tradition taught her to make--even to the
point of calling him original.
"Original! We're all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the
same folded paper. We're like patterns stencilled on a wall. Can't you
and I strike out for ourselves, May?"
He had stopped and faced her in the excitement of their discussion, and
her eyes rested on him with a bright unclouded admiration.
"Mercy--shall we elope?" she laughed.
"If you would--"
"You _do_ love me, Newland! I'm so happy."
"But then--why not be happier?"
"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?"
"Why not--why not--why not?"
She looked a little bored by his insistence. She knew very well that
they couldn't, but it was troublesome to have to produce a reason.
"I'm not clever enough to argue with you. But that kind of thing is
rather--vulgar, isn't it?" she suggested, relieved to have hit on a
word that would assuredly extinguish the whole subject.
"Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar?"
She was evidently staggered by this. "Of course I should hate it--so
would you," she rejoined, a trifle irritably.
He stood silent, beating his stick nervously against his boot-top;
and feeling that she had indeed found the right way of closing the
discussion, she went on light-heartedly: "Oh, did I tell you that I
showed Ellen my ring? She thinks it the most beautiful setting she ever
saw. There's nothing like it in the rue de la Paix, she said. I do love
you, Newland, for being so artistic!"
The next afternoon, as Archer, before dinner, sat smoking sullenly in
his study, Janey wandered in on him. He had failed to stop at his club
on the way up from the office where he exercised the profession of the
law in the leisurely manner common to well-to-do New Yorkers of his
class. He was out of spirits and slightly out of temper, and a haunting
horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour besieged his
brain.
"Sameness--sameness!" he muttered, the word running through his head
like a persecuting tune as he saw the familiar tall-hatted figures
lounging behind the plate-glass; and because he usually dropped in
at the club at that hour he had gone home instead. He knew not only
what they were likely to be talking about, but the part each one would
take in the discussion. The Duke of course would be their principal
theme; though the appearance in Fifth Avenue of a golden-haired lady
in a small canary-coloured brougham with a pair of black cobs (for
which Beaufort was generally thought responsible) would also doubtless
be thoroughly gone into. Such "women" (as they were called) were few
in New York, those driving their own carriages still fewer, and the
appearance of Miss Fanny Ring in Fifth Avenue at the fashionable hour
had profoundly agitated society. Only the day before, her carriage had
passed Mrs. Lovell Mingott's, and the latter had instantly rung the
little bell at her elbow and ordered the coachman to drive her home.
"What if it had happened to Mrs. van der Luyden?" people asked each
other with a shudder. Archer could hear Lawrence Lefferts, at that very
hour, holding forth on the disintegration of society.
He raised his head irritably when his sister Janey entered, and then
quickly bent over his book (Swinburne's "Chastelard"--just out) as
if he had not seen her. She glanced at the writing-table heaped with
books, opened a volume of the "Contes Drolatiques," made a wry face
over the archaic French, and sighed: "What learned things you read!"
"Well--?" he asked, as she hovered Cassandra-like before him.
"Mother's very angry."
"Angry? With whom? About what?"
"Miss Sophy Jackson has just been here. She brought word that her
brother would come in after dinner: she couldn't say very much, because
he forbade her to: he wishes to give all the details himself. He's with
cousin Louisa van der Luyden now."
"For heaven's sake, my dear girl, try a fresh start. It would take an
omniscient Deity to know what you're talking about."
"It's not a time to be profane, Newland.... Mother feels badly enough
about your not going to church ..."
With a groan he plunged back into his book.
"_Newland_! Do listen. Your friend Madame Olenska was at Mrs. Lemuel
Struthers's party last night: she went there with the Duke and Mr.
Beaufort."
At the last clause of this announcement a senseless anger swelled the
young man's breast. To smother it he laughed. "Well, what of it? I knew
she meant to."
Janey paled and her eyes began to project. "You knew she meant to--and
you didn't try to stop her? To warn her?"
"Stop her? Warn her?" He laughed again. "I'm not engaged to be married
to the Countess Olenska!" The words had a fantastic sound in his own
ears.
"You're marrying into her family."
"Oh, family--family!" he jeered.
"Newland--don't you care about Family?"
"Not a brass farthing."
"Nor about what cousin Louisa van der Luyden will think?"
"Not the half of one--if she thinks such old maid's rubbish."
"Mother is not an old maid," said his virgin sister with pinched lips.
He felt like shouting back: "Yes, she is, and so are the van der
Luydens, and so we all are, when it comes to being so much as brushed
by the wing-tip of Reality." But he saw her long gentle face puckering
into tears, and felt ashamed of the useless pain he was inflicting.
"Hang Countess Olenska! Don't be a goose, Janey--I'm not her keeper."
"No; but you _did_ ask the Wellands to announce your engagement sooner
so that we might all back her up; and if it hadn't been for that cousin
Louisa would never have invited her to the dinner for the Duke."
"Well--what harm was there in inviting her? She was the best-looking
woman in the room; she made the dinner a little less funereal than the
usual van der Luyden banquet."
"You know cousin Henry asked her to please you: he persuaded
cousin Louisa. And now they're so upset that they're going back to
Skuytercliff tomorrow. I think, Newland, you'd better come down. You
don't seem to understand how mother feels."
In the drawing-room Newland found his mother. She raised a troubled
brow from her needlework to ask: "Has Janey told you?"
"Yes." He tried to keep his tone as measured as her own. "But I can't
take it very seriously."
"Not the fact of having offended cousin Louisa and cousin Henry?"
"The fact that they can be offended by such a trifle as Countess
Olenska's going to the house of a woman they consider common."
"Consider--!"
"Well, who is; but who has good music, and amuses people on Sunday
evenings, when the whole of New York is dying of inanition."
"Good music? All I know is, there was a woman who got up on a table and
sang the things they sing at the places you go to in Paris. There was
smoking and champagne."
"Well--that kind of thing happens in other places, and the world still
goes on."
"I don't suppose, dear, you're really defending the French Sunday?"
"I've heard you often enough, mother, grumble at the English Sunday
when we've been in London."
"New York is neither Paris nor London."
"Oh, no, it's not!" her son groaned.
"You mean, I suppose, that society here is not as brilliant? You're
right, I daresay; but we belong here, and people should respect our
ways when they come among us. Ellen Olenska especially: she came back
to get away from the kind of life people lead in brilliant societies."
Newland made no answer, and after a moment his mother ventured: "I was
going to put on my bonnet and ask you to take me to see cousin Louisa
for a moment before dinner." He frowned, and she continued: "I thought
you might explain to her what you've just said: that society abroad
is different ... that people are not as particular, and that Madame
Olenska may not have realised how we feel about such things. It would
be, you know, dear," she added with an innocent adroitness, "in Madame
Olenska's interest if you did."
"Dearest mother, I really don't see how we're concerned in the matter.
The Duke took Madame Olenska to Mrs. Struthers's--in fact he brought
Mrs. Struthers to call on her. I was there when they came. If the van
der Luydens want to quarrel with anybody, the real culprit is under
their own roof."
"Quarrel? Newland, did you ever know of cousin Henry's quarrelling?
Besides, the Duke's his guest; and a stranger too. Strangers don't
discriminate: how should they? Countess Olenska is a New Yorker, and
should have respected the feelings of New York."
"Well, then, if they must have a victim, you have my leave to throw
Madame Olenska to them," cried her son, exasperated. "I don't see
myself--or you either--offering ourselves up to expiate her crimes."
"Oh, of course you see only the Mingott side," his mother answered, in
the sensitive tone that was her nearest approach to anger.
The sad butler drew back the drawing-room portières and announced: "Mr.
Henry van der Luyden."
Mrs. Archer dropped her needle and pushed her chair back with an
agitated hand.
"Another lamp," she cried to the retreating servant, while Janey bent
over to straighten her mother's cap.
Mr. van der Luyden's figure loomed on the threshold, and Newland Archer
went forward to greet his cousin.
"We were just talking about you, sir," he said.
Mr. van der Luyden seemed overwhelmed by the announcement. He drew off
his glove to shake hands with the ladies, and smoothed his tall hat
shyly, while Janey pushed an arm-chair forward, and Archer continued:
"And the Countess Olenska."
Mrs. Archer paled.
"Ah--a charming woman. I have just been to see her," said Mr. van der
Luyden, complacency restored to his brow. He sank into the chair, laid