The Age of Innocence
secrecy and peril of the affair than by such charms and qualities as
he possessed. When the fact dawned on him it nearly broke his heart,
but now it seemed the redeeming feature of the case. The affair, in
short, had been of the kind that most of the young men of his age had
been through, and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbed
belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and
respected and those one enjoyed--and pitied. In this view they were
sedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts and other elderly female
relatives, who all shared Mrs. Archer's belief that when "such things
happened" it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always
criminal of the woman. All the elderly ladies whom Archer knew regarded
any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulous and
designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches. The
only thing to do was to persuade him, as early as possible, to marry a
nice girl, and then trust to her to look after him.
In the complicated old European communities, Archer began to guess,
love-problems might be less simple and less easily classified. Rich and
idle and ornamental societies must produce many more such situations;
and there might even be one in which a woman naturally sensitive
and aloof would yet, from the force of circumstances, from sheer
defencelessness and loneliness, be drawn into a tie inexcusable by
conventional standards.
On reaching home he wrote a line to the Countess Olenska, asking at
what hour of the next day she could receive him, and despatched it by
a messenger-boy, who returned presently with a word to the effect that
she was going to Skuytercliff the next morning to stay over Sunday with
the van der Luydens, but that he would find her alone that evening
after dinner. The note was written on a rather untidy half-sheet,
without date or address, but her hand was firm and free. He was amused
at the idea of her week-ending in the stately solitude of Skuytercliff,
but immediately afterward felt that there, of all places, she would
most feel the chill of minds rigorously averted from the "unpleasant."
He was at Mr. Letterblair's punctually at seven, glad of the pretext
for excusing himself soon after dinner. He had formed his own opinion
from the papers entrusted to him, and did not especially want to go
into the matter with his senior partner. Mr. Letterblair was a widower,
and they dined alone, copiously and slowly, in a dark shabby room hung
with yellowing prints of "The Death of Chatham" and "The Coronation of
Napoleon." On the sideboard, between fluted Sheraton knife-cases, stood
a decanter of Haut Brion, and another of the old Lanning port (the gift
of a client), which the wastrel Tom Lanning had sold off a year or two
before his mysterious and discreditable death in San Francisco--an
incident less publicly humiliating to the family than the sale of the
cellar.
After a velvety oyster soup came shad and cucumbers, then a young
broiled turkey with corn fritters, followed by a canvas-back with
currant jelly and a celery mayonnaise. Mr. Letterblair, who lunched
on a sandwich and tea, dined deliberately and deeply, and insisted
on his guest's doing the same. Finally, when the closing rites had
been accomplished, the cloth was removed, cigars were lit, and Mr.
Letterblair, leaning back in his chair and pushing the port westward,
said, spreading his back agreeably to the coal fire behind him: "The
whole family are against a divorce. And I think rightly."
Archer instantly felt himself on the other side of the argument. "But
why, sir? If there ever was a case--"
"Well--what's the use? _she's_ here--he's there; the Atlantic's between
them. She'll never get back a dollar more of her money than what he's
voluntarily returned to her: their damned heathen marriage settlements
take precious good care of that. As things go over there, Olenski's
acted generously: he might have turned her out without a penny."
The young man knew this and was silent.
"I understand, though," Mr. Letterblair continued, "that she attaches
no importance to the money. Therefore, as the family say, why not let
well enough alone?"
Archer had gone to the house an hour earlier in full agreement with Mr.
Letterblair's view; but put into words by this selfish, well-fed and
supremely indifferent old man it suddenly became the Pharisaic voice of
a society wholly absorbed in barricading itself against the unpleasant.
"I think that's for her to decide."
"H'm--have you considered the consequences if she decides for divorce?"
"You mean the threat in her husband's letter? What weight would that
carry? It's no more than the vague charge of an angry blackguard."
"Yes; but it might make some unpleasant talk if he really defends the
suit."
"Unpleasant--!" said Archer explosively.
Mr. Letterblair looked at him from under enquiring eyebrows, and the
young man, aware of the uselessness of trying to explain what was in
his mind, bowed acquiescently while his senior continued: "Divorce is
always unpleasant."
"You agree with me?" Mr. Letterblair resumed, after a waiting silence.
"Naturally," said Archer.
"Well, then, I may count on you; the Mingotts may count on you; to use
your influence against the idea?"
Archer hesitated. "I can't pledge myself till I've seen the Countess
Olenska," he said at length.
"Mr. Archer, I don't understand you. Do you want to marry into a family
with a scandalous divorce-suit hanging over it?"
"I don't think that has anything to do with the case."
Mr. Letterblair put down his glass of port and fixed on his young
partner a cautious and apprehensive gaze.
Archer understood that he ran the risk of having his mandate withdrawn,
and for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect. Now that the
job had been thrust on him he did not propose to relinquish it; and,
to guard against the possibility, he saw that he must reassure the
unimaginative old man who was the legal conscience of the Mingotts.
"You may be sure, sir, that I shan't commit myself till I've reported
to you; what I meant was that I'd rather not give an opinion till I've
heard what Madame Olenska has to say."
Mr. Letterblair nodded approvingly at an excess of caution worthy of
the best New York tradition, and the young man, glancing at his watch,
pleaded an engagement and took leave.
XII.
Old-fashioned New York dined at seven, and the habit of after-dinner
calls, though derided in Archer's set, still generally prevailed. As
the young man strolled up Fifth Avenue from Waverley Place, the long
thoroughfare was deserted but for a group of carriages standing before
the Reggie Chiverses' (where there was a dinner for the Duke), and the
occasional figure of an elderly gentleman in heavy overcoat and muffler
ascending a brownstone doorstep and disappearing into a gas-lit hall.
Thus, as Archer crossed Washington Square, he remarked that old Mr.
du Lac was calling on his cousins the Dagonets, and turning down the
corner of West Tenth Street he saw Mr. Skipworth, of his own firm,
obviously bound on a visit to the Miss Lannings. A little farther up
Fifth Avenue, Beaufort appeared on his doorstep, darkly projected
against a blaze of light, descended to his private brougham, and rolled
away to a mysterious and probably unmentionable destination. It was
not an Opera night, and no one was giving a party, so that Beaufort's
outing was undoubtedly of a clandestine nature. Archer connected it
in his mind with a little house beyond Lexington Avenue in which
beribboned window curtains and flower-boxes had recently appeared, and
before whose newly painted door the canary-coloured brougham of Miss
Fanny Ring was frequently seen to wait.
Beyond the small and slippery pyramid which composed Mrs. Archer's
world lay the almost unmapped quarter inhabited by artists, musicians
and "people who wrote." These scattered fragments of humanity had
never shown any desire to be amalgamated with the social structure.
In spite of odd ways they were said to be, for the most part, quite
respectable; but they preferred to keep to themselves. Medora Manson,
in her prosperous days, had inaugurated a "literary salon"; but it had
soon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it.
Others had made the same attempt, and there was a household of
Blenkers--an intense and voluble mother, and three blowsy daughters
who imitated her--where one met Edwin Booth and Patti and William
Winter, and the new Shakespearian actor George Rignold, and some of the
magazine editors and musical and literary critics.
Mrs. Archer and her group felt a certain timidity concerning these
persons. They were odd, they were uncertain, they had things one didn't
know about in the background of their lives and minds. Literature and
art were deeply respected in the Archer set, and Mrs. Archer was always
at pains to tell her children how much more agreeable and cultivated
society had been when it included such figures as Washington Irving,
Fitz-Greene Halleck and the poet of "The Culprit Fay." The most
celebrated authors of that generation had been "gentlemen"; perhaps
the unknown persons who succeeded them had gentlemanly sentiments, but
their origin, their appearance, their hair, their intimacy with the
stage and the Opera, made any old New York criterion inapplicable to
them.
"When I was a girl," Mrs. Archer used to say, "we knew everybody
between the Battery and Canal Street; and only the people one knew had
carriages. It was perfectly easy to place any one then; now one can't
tell, and I prefer not to try."
Only old Catherine Mingott, with her absence of moral prejudices and
almost parvenu indifference to the subtler distinctions, might have
bridged the abyss; but she had never opened a book or looked at a
picture, and cared for music only because it reminded her of gala
nights at the Italiens, in the days of her triumph at the Tuileries.
Possibly Beaufort, who was her match in daring, would have succeeded
in bringing about a fusion; but his grand house and silk-stockinged
footmen were an obstacle to informal sociability. Moreover, he was as
illiterate as old Mrs. Mingott, and considered "fellows who wrote" as
the mere paid purveyors of rich men's pleasures; and no one rich enough
to influence his opinion had ever questioned it.
Newland Archer had been aware of these things ever since he could
remember, and had accepted them as part of the structure of his
universe. He knew that there were societies where painters and poets
and novelists and men of science, and even great actors, were as sought
after as Dukes; he had often pictured to himself what it would have
been to live in the intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of
Mérimée (whose "Lettres à une Inconnue" was one of his inseparables),
of Thackeray, Browning or William Morris. But such things were
inconceivable in New York, and unsettling to think of. Archer knew most
of the "fellows who wrote," the musicians and the painters: he met them
at the Century, or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that were
beginning to come into existence. He enjoyed them there, and was bored
with them at the Blenkers', where they were mingled with fervid and
dowdy women who passed them about like captured curiosities; and even
after his most exciting talks with Ned Winsett he always came away with
the feeling that if his world was small, so was theirs, and that the
only way to enlarge either was to reach a stage of manners where they
would naturally merge.
He was reminded of this by trying to picture the society in which the
Countess Olenska had lived and suffered, and also--perhaps--tasted
mysterious joys. He remembered with what amusement she had told him