The Age of Innocence
that her grandmother Mingott and the Wellands objected to her living in
a "Bohemian" quarter given over to "people who wrote." It was not the
peril but the poverty that her family disliked; but that shade escaped
her, and she supposed they considered literature compromising.
She herself had no fears of it, and the books scattered about her
drawing-room (a part of the house in which books were usually supposed
to be "out of place"), though chiefly works of fiction, had whetted
Archer's interest with such new names as those of Paul Bourget,
Huysmans, and the Goncourt brothers. Ruminating on these things as he
approached her door, he was once more conscious of the curious way in
which she reversed his values, and of the need of thinking himself into
conditions incredibly different from any that he knew if he were to be
of use in her present difficulty.
Nastasia opened the door, smiling mysteriously. On the bench in the
hall lay a sable-lined overcoat, a folded opera hat of dull silk with
a gold J. B. on the lining, and a white silk muffler: there was no
mistaking the fact that these costly articles were the property of
Julius Beaufort.
Archer was angry: so angry that he came near scribbling a word on his
card and going away; then he remembered that in writing to Madame
Olenska he had been kept by excess of discretion from saying that he
wished to see her privately. He had therefore no one but himself to
blame if she had opened her doors to other visitors; and he entered
the drawing-room with the dogged determination to make Beaufort feel
himself in the way, and to outstay him.
The banker stood leaning against the mantelshelf, which was draped
with an old embroidery held in place by brass candelabra containing
church candles of yellowish wax. He had thrust his chest out,
supporting his shoulders against the mantel and resting his weight
on one large patent-leather foot. As Archer entered he was smiling
and looking down on his hostess, who sat on a sofa placed at right
angles to the chimney. A table banked with flowers formed a screen
behind it, and against the orchids and azaleas which the young man
recognised as tributes from the Beaufort hot-houses, Madame Olenska sat
half-reclined, her head propped on a hand and her wide sleeve leaving
the arm bare to the elbow.
It was usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were
called "simple dinner dresses": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned
silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the
crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to
show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska,
heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet
bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur.
Archer remembered, on his last visit to Paris, seeing a portrait by the
new painter, Carolus Duran, whose pictures were the sensation of the
Salon, in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with
her chin nestling in fur. There was something perverse and provocative
in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room, and
in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect
was undeniably pleasing.
"Lord love us--three whole days at Skuytercliff!" Beaufort was saying
in his loud sneering voice as Archer entered. "You'd better take all
your furs, and a hot-water-bottle."
"Why? Is the house so cold?" she asked, holding out her left hand to
Archer in a way mysteriously suggesting that she expected him to kiss
it.
"No; but the missus is," said Beaufort, nodding carelessly to the young
man.
"But I thought her so kind. She came herself to invite me. Granny says
I must certainly go."
"Granny would, of course. And I say it's a shame you're going to miss
the little oyster supper I'd planned for you at Delmonico's next
Sunday, with Campanini and Scalchi and a lot of jolly people."
She looked doubtfully from the banker to Archer.
"Ah--that does tempt me! Except the other evening at Mrs. Struthers's
I've not met a single artist since I've been here."
"What kind of artists? I know one or two painters, very good fellows,
that I could bring to see you if you'd allow me," said Archer boldly.
"Painters? Are there painters in New York?" asked Beaufort, in a tone
implying that there could be none since he did not buy their pictures;
and Madame Olenska said to Archer, with her grave smile: "That would
be charming. But I was really thinking of dramatic artists, singers,
actors, musicians. My husband's house was always full of them."
She said the words "my husband" as if no sinister associations were
connected with them, and in a tone that seemed almost to sigh over the
lost delights of her married life. Archer looked at her perplexedly,
wondering if it were lightness or dissimulation that enabled her to
touch so easily on the past at the very moment when she was risking her
reputation in order to break with it.
"I do think," she went on, addressing both men, "that the _imprévu_ adds
to one's enjoyment. It's perhaps a mistake to see the same people every
day."
"It's confoundedly dull, anyhow; New York is dying of dullness,"
Beaufort grumbled. "And when I try to liven it up for you, you go
back on me. Come--think better of it! Sunday is your last chance, for
Campanini leaves next week for Baltimore and Philadelphia; and I've a
private room, and a Steinway, and they'll sing all night for me."
"How delicious! May I think it over, and write to you tomorrow morning?"
She spoke amiably, yet with the least hint of dismissal in her voice.
Beaufort evidently felt it, and being unused to dismissals, stood
staring at her with an obstinate line between his eyes.
"Why not now?"
"It's too serious a question to decide at this late hour."
"Do you call it late?"
She returned his glance coolly. "Yes; because I have still to talk
business with Mr. Archer for a little while."
"Ah," Beaufort snapped. There was no appeal from her tone, and with a
slight shrug he recovered his composure, took her hand, which he kissed
with a practised air, and calling out from the threshold: "I say,
Newland, if you can persuade the Countess to stop in town of course
you're included in the supper," left the room with his heavy important
step.
For a moment Archer fancied that Mr. Letterblair must have told her of
his coming; but the irrelevance of her next remark made him change his
mind.
"You know painters, then? You live in their milieu?" she asked, her
eyes full of interest.
"Oh, not exactly. I don't know that the arts have a milieu here, any of
them; they're more like a very thinly settled outskirt."
"But you care for such things?"
"Immensely. When I'm in Paris or London I never miss an exhibition. I
try to keep up."
She looked down at the tip of the little satin boot that peeped from
her long draperies.
"I used to care immensely too: my life was full of such things. But now
I want to try not to."
"You want to try not to?"
"Yes: I want to cast off all my old life, to become just like everybody
else here."
Archer reddened. "You'll never be like everybody else," he said.
She raised her straight eyebrows a little. "Ah, don't say that. If you
knew how I hate to be different!"
Her face had grown as sombre as a tragic mask. She leaned forward,
clasping her knee in her thin hands, and looking away from him into
remote dark distances.
"I want to get away from it all," she insisted.
He waited a moment and cleared his throat. "I know. Mr. Letterblair has
told me."
"Ah?"
"That's the reason I've come. He asked me to--you see I'm in the firm."
She looked slightly surprised, and then her eyes brightened. "You mean
you can manage it for me? I can talk to you instead of Mr. Letterblair?
Oh, that will be so much easier!"
Her tone touched him, and his confidence grew with his
self-satisfaction. He perceived that she had spoken of business to
Beaufort simply to get rid of him; and to have routed Beaufort was
something of a triumph.
"I am here to talk about it," he repeated.
She sat silent, her head still propped by the arm that rested on the
back of the sofa. Her face looked pale and extinguished, as if dimmed
by the rich red of her dress. She struck Archer, of a sudden, as a
pathetic and even pitiful figure.
"Now we're coming to hard facts," he thought, conscious in himself
of the same instinctive recoil that he had so often criticised in
his mother and her contemporaries. How little practice he had had in
dealing with unusual situations! Their very vocabulary was unfamiliar
to him, and seemed to belong to fiction and the stage. In face of what
was coming he felt as awkward and embarrassed as a boy.
After a pause Madame Olenska broke out with unexpected vehemence: "I
want to be free; I want to wipe out all the past."
"I understand that."
Her face warmed. "Then you'll help me?"
"First--" he hesitated--"perhaps I ought to know a little more."
She seemed surprised. "You know about my husband--my life with him?"
He made a sign of assent.
"Well--then--what more is there? In this country are such things
tolerated? I'm a Protestant--our church does not forbid divorce in such
cases."
"Certainly not."
They were both silent again, and Archer felt the spectre of Count
Olenski's letter grimacing hideously between them. The letter filled
only half a page, and was just what he had described it to be in
speaking of it to Mr. Letterblair: the vague charge of an angry
blackguard. But how much truth was behind it? Only Count Olenski's wife
could tell.
"I've looked through the papers you gave to Mr. Letterblair," he said
at length.
"Well--can there be anything more abominable?"
"No."
She changed her position slightly, screening her eyes with her lifted
hand.
"Of course you know," Archer continued, "that if your husband chooses
to fight the case--as he threatens to--"
"Yes--?"
"He can say things--things that might be unpl--might be disagreeable to
you: say them publicly, so that they would get about, and harm you even
if--"
"If--?"
"I mean: no matter how unfounded they were."
She paused for a long interval; so long that, not wishing to keep his
eyes on her shaded face, he had time to imprint on his mind the exact
shape of her other hand, the one on her knee, and every detail of the
three rings on her fourth and fifth fingers; among which, he noticed, a
wedding ring did not appear.
"What harm could such accusations, even if he made them publicly, do me
here?"
It was on his lips to exclaim: "My poor child--far more harm than
anywhere else!" Instead, he answered, in a voice that sounded in his
ears like Mr. Letterblair's: "New York society is a very small world
compared with the one you've lived in. And it's ruled, in spite of
appearances, by a few people with--well, rather old-fashioned ideas."
She said nothing, and he continued: "Our ideas about marriage and
divorce are particularly old-fashioned. Our legislation favours
divorce--our social customs don't."
"Never?"
"Well--not if the woman, however injured, however irreproachable, has
appearances in the least degree against her, has exposed herself by any
unconventional action to--to offensive insinuations--"
She drooped her head a little lower, and he waited again, intensely
hoping for a flash of indignation, or at least a brief cry of denial.
None came.
A little travelling clock ticked purringly at her elbow, and a log
broke in two and sent up a shower of sparks. The whole hushed and
brooding room seemed to be waiting silently with Archer.
"Yes," she murmured at length, "that's what my family tell me."
He winced a little. "It's not unnatural--"