The Age of Innocence
Mrs. Manson laid a purple finger on her lips. "Nothing directly--but
does she suspect? Who can tell? The truth is, Mr. Archer, I have been
waiting to see you. From the moment I heard of the firm stand you had
taken, and of your influence over her, I hoped it might be possible to
count on your support--to convince you ..."
"That she ought to go back? I would rather see her dead!" cried the
young man violently.
"Ah," the Marchioness murmured, without visible resentment. For a while
she sat in her arm-chair, opening and shutting the absurd ivory fan
between her mittened fingers; but suddenly she lifted her head and
listened.
"Here she comes," she said in a rapid whisper; and then, pointing to
the bouquet on the sofa: "Am I to understand that you prefer _that_, Mr.
Archer? After all, marriage is marriage ... and my niece is still a
wife..."
XVIII.
"What are you two plotting together, aunt Medora?" Madame Olenska cried
as she came into the room.
She was dressed as if for a ball. Everything about her shimmered and
glimmered softly, as if her dress had been woven out of candle-beams;
and she carried her head high, like a pretty woman challenging a
roomful of rivals.
"We were saying, my dear, that here was something beautiful to surprise
you with," Mrs. Manson rejoined, rising to her feet and pointing archly
to the flowers.
Madame Olenska stopped short and looked at the bouquet. Her colour did
not change, but a sort of white radiance of anger ran over her like
summer lightning. "Ah," she exclaimed, in a shrill voice that the young
man had never heard, "who is ridiculous enough to send me a bouquet?
Why a bouquet? And why tonight of all nights? I am not going to a ball;
I am not a girl engaged to be married. But some people are always
ridiculous."
She turned back to the door, opened it, and called out: "Nastasia!"
The ubiquitous handmaiden promptly appeared, and Archer heard
Madame Olenska say, in an Italian that she seemed to pronounce
with intentional deliberateness in order that he might follow it:
"Here--throw this into the dustbin!" and then, as Nastasia stared
protestingly: "But no--it's not the fault of the poor flowers. Tell
the boy to carry them to the house three doors away, the house of Mr.
Winsett, the dark gentleman who dined here. His wife is ill--they may
give her pleasure ... The boy is out, you say? Then, my dear one, run
yourself; here, put my cloak over you and fly. I want the thing out of
the house immediately! And, as you live, don't say they come from me!"
She flung her velvet opera cloak over the maid's shoulders and turned
back into the drawing-room, shutting the door sharply. Her bosom was
rising high under its lace, and for a moment Archer thought she was
about to cry; but she burst into a laugh instead, and looking from the
Marchioness to Archer, asked abruptly: "And you two--have you made
friends!"
"It's for Mr. Archer to say, darling; he has waited patiently while you
were dressing."
"Yes--I gave you time enough: my hair wouldn't go," Madame Olenska
said, raising her hand to the heaped-up curls of her chignon. "But
that reminds me: I see Dr. Carver is gone, and you'll be late at the
Blenkers'. Mr. Archer, will you put my aunt in the carriage?"
She followed the Marchioness into the hall, saw her fitted into a
miscellaneous heap of overshoes, shawls and tippets, and called from
the doorstep: "Mind, the carriage is to be back for me at ten!" Then
she returned to the drawing-room, where Archer, on re-entering it,
found her standing by the mantelpiece, examining herself in the mirror.
It was not usual, in New York society, for a lady to address her
parlour-maid as "my dear one," and send her out on an errand wrapped
in her own opera-cloak; and Archer, through all his deeper feelings,
tasted the pleasurable excitement of being in a world where action
followed on emotion with such Olympian speed.
Madame Olenska did not move when he came up behind her, and for a
second their eyes met in the mirror; then she turned, threw herself
into her sofa-corner, and sighed out: "There's time for a cigarette."
He handed her the box and lit a spill for her; and as the flame flashed
up into her face she glanced at him with laughing eyes and said: "What
do you think of me in a temper?"
Archer paused a moment; then he answered with sudden resolution: "It
makes me understand what your aunt has been saying about you."
"I knew she'd been talking about me. Well?"
"She said you were used to all kinds of things--splendours and
amusements and excitements--that we could never hope to give you here."
Madame Olenska smiled faintly into the circle of smoke about her lips.
"Medora is incorrigibly romantic. It has made up to her for so many
things!"
Archer hesitated again, and again took his risk. "Is your aunt's
romanticism always consistent with accuracy?"
"You mean: does she speak the truth?" Her niece considered. "Well, I'll
tell you: in almost everything she says, there's something true and
something untrue. But why do you ask? What has she been telling you?"
He looked away into the fire, and then back at her shining presence.
His heart tightened with the thought that this was their last evening
by that fireside, and that in a moment the carriage would come to carry
her away.
"She says--she pretends that Count Olenski has asked her to persuade
you to go back to him."
Madame Olenska made no answer. She sat motionless, holding her
cigarette in her half-lifted hand. The expression of her face had not
changed; and Archer remembered that he had before noticed her apparent
incapacity for surprise.
"You knew, then?" he broke out.
She was silent for so long that the ash dropped from her cigarette. She
brushed it to the floor. "She has hinted about a letter: poor darling!
Medora's hints--"
"Is it at your husband's request that she has arrived here suddenly?"
Madame Olenska seemed to consider this question also. "There again: one
can't tell. She told me she had had a 'spiritual summons,' whatever
that is, from Dr. Carver. I'm afraid she's going to marry Dr. Carver
... poor Medora, there's always some one she wants to marry. But
perhaps the people in Cuba just got tired of her! I think she was with
them as a sort of paid companion. Really, I don't know why she came."
"But you do believe she has a letter from your husband?"
Again Madame Olenska brooded silently; then she said: "After all, it
was to be expected."
The young man rose and went to lean against the fireplace. A sudden
restlessness possessed him, and he was tongue-tied by the sense that
their minutes were numbered, and that at any moment he might hear the
wheels of the returning carriage.
"You know that your aunt believes you will go back?"
Madame Olenska raised her head quickly. A deep blush rose to her
face and spread over her neck and shoulders. She blushed seldom and
painfully, as if it hurt her like a burn.
"Many cruel things have been believed of me," she said.
"Oh, Ellen--forgive me; I'm a fool and a brute!"
She smiled a little. "You are horribly nervous; you have your own
troubles. I know you think the Wellands are unreasonable about your
marriage, and of course I agree with you. In Europe people don't
understand our long American engagements; I suppose they are not as
calm as we are." She pronounced the "we" with a faint emphasis that
gave it an ironic sound.
Archer felt the irony but did not dare to take it up. After all, she
had perhaps purposely deflected the conversation from her own affairs,
and after the pain his last words had evidently caused her he felt that
all he could do was to follow her lead. But the sense of the waning
hour made him desperate: he could not bear the thought that a barrier
of words should drop between them again.
"Yes," he said abruptly; "I went south to ask May to marry me after
Easter. There's no reason why we shouldn't be married then."
"And May adores you--and yet you couldn't convince her? I thought her
too intelligent to be the slave of such absurd superstitions."
"She _is_ too intelligent--she's not their slave."
Madame Olenska looked at him. "Well, then--I don't understand."
Archer reddened, and hurried on with a rush. "We had a frank
talk--almost the first. She thinks my impatience a bad sign."
"Merciful heavens--a bad sign?"
"She thinks it means that I can't trust myself to go on caring for her.
She thinks, in short, I want to marry her at once to get away from some
one that I--care for more."
Madame Olenska examined this curiously. "But if she thinks that--why
isn't she in a hurry too?"
"Because she's not like that: she's so much nobler. She insists all the
more on the long engagement, to give me time--"
"Time to give her up for the other woman?"
"If I want to."
Madame Olenska leaned toward the fire and gazed into it with fixed
eyes. Down the quiet street Archer heard the approaching trot of her
horses.
"That _is_ noble," she said, with a slight break in her voice.
"Yes. But it's ridiculous."
"Ridiculous? Because you don't care for any one else?"
"Because I don't mean to marry any one else."
"Ah." There was another long interval. At length she looked up at him
and asked: "This other woman--does she love you?"
"Oh, there's no other woman; I mean, the person that May was thinking
of is--was never--"
"Then, why, after all, are you in such haste?"
"There's your carriage," said Archer.
She half-rose and looked about her with absent eyes. Her fan and gloves
lay on the sofa beside her and she picked them up mechanically.
"Yes; I suppose I must be going."
"You're going to Mrs. Struthers's?"
"Yes." She smiled and added: "I must go where I am invited, or I should
be too lonely. Why not come with me?"
Archer felt that at any cost he must keep her beside him, must make her
give him the rest of her evening. Ignoring her question, he continued
to lean against the chimney-piece, his eyes fixed on the hand in which
she held her gloves and fan, as if watching to see if he had the power
to make her drop them.
"May guessed the truth," he said. "There is another woman--but not the
one she thinks."
Ellen Olenska made no answer, and did not move. After a moment he sat
down beside her, and, taking her hand, softly unclasped it, so that the
gloves and fan fell on the sofa between them.
She started up, and freeing herself from him moved away to the other
side of the hearth. "Ah, don't make love to me! Too many people have
done that," she said, frowning.
Archer, changing colour, stood up also: it was the bitterest rebuke she
could have given him. "I have never made love to you," he said, "and I
never shall. But you are the woman I would have married if it had been
possible for either of us."
"Possible for either of us?" She looked at him with unfeigned
astonishment. "And you say that--when it's you who've made it
impossible?"
He stared at her, groping in a blackness through which a single arrow
of light tore its blinding way.
"_I've_ made it impossible--?"
"You, you, _you_!" she cried, her lip trembling like a child's on the
verge of tears. "Isn't it you who made me give up divorcing--give it
up because you showed me how selfish and wicked it was, how one must
sacrifice one's self to preserve the dignity of marriage ... and to
spare one's family the publicity, the scandal? And because my family
was going to be your family--for May's sake and for yours--I did what
you told me, what you proved to me that I ought to do. Ah," she broke
out with a sudden laugh, "I've made no secret of having done it for
you!"
She sank down on the sofa again, crouching among the festive ripples of
her dress like a stricken masquerader; and the young man stood by the