The Age of Innocence
that Madame Olenska's name had evoked it.
They went upstairs, and he turned into the library. She usually
followed him; but he heard her passing down the passage to her bedroom.
"May!" he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a slight
glance of surprise at his tone.
"This lamp is smoking again; I should think the servants might see that
it's kept properly trimmed," he grumbled nervously.
"I'm so sorry: it shan't happen again," she answered, in the firm
bright tone she had learned from her mother; and it exasperated Archer
to feel that she was already beginning to humour him like a younger Mr.
Welland. She bent over to lower the wick, and as the light struck up on
her white shoulders and the clear curves of her face he thought: "How
young she is! For what endless years this life will have to go on!"
He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding
blood in his veins. "Look here," he said suddenly, "I may have to go to
Washington for a few days--soon; next week perhaps."
Her hand remained on the key of the lamp as she turned to him slowly.
The heat from its flame had brought back a glow to her face, but it
paled as she looked up.
"On business?" she asked, in a tone which implied that there could
be no other conceivable reason, and that she had put the question
automatically, as if merely to finish his own sentence.
"On business, naturally. There's a patent case coming up before
the Supreme Court--" He gave the name of the inventor, and went on
furnishing details with all Lawrence Lefferts's practised glibness,
while she listened attentively, saying at intervals: "Yes, I see."
"The change will do you good," she said simply, when he had finished;
"and you must be sure to go and see Ellen," she added, looking him
straight in the eyes with her cloudless smile, and speaking in the
tone she might have employed in urging him not to neglect some irksome
family duty.
It was the only word that passed between them on the subject; but in
the code in which they had both been trained it meant: "Of course you
understand that I know all that people have been saying about Ellen,
and heartily sympathise with my family in their effort to get her to
return to her husband. I also know that, for some reason you have not
chosen to tell me, you have advised her against this course, which
all the older men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree
in approving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Ellen
defies us all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which
Mr. Sillerton Jackson probably gave you, this evening, the hint that
has made you so irritable.... Hints have indeed not been wanting; but
since you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you this
one myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind can
communicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand
that I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in Washington, and are
perhaps going there expressly for that purpose; and that, since you
are sure to see her, I wish you to do so with my full and explicit
approval--and to take the opportunity of letting her know what the
course of conduct you have encouraged her in is likely to lead to."
Her hand was still on the key of the lamp when the last word of this
mute message reached him. She turned the wick down, lifted off the
globe, and breathed on the sulky flame.
"They smell less if one blows them out," she explained, with her bright
housekeeping air. On the threshold she turned and paused for his kiss.
XXVII.
Wall Street, the next day, had more reassuring reports of Beaufort's
situation. They were not definite, but they were hopeful. It was
generally understood that he could call on powerful influences in case
of emergency, and that he had done so with success; and that evening,
when Mrs. Beaufort appeared at the Opera wearing her old smile and a
new emerald necklace, society drew a breath of relief.
New York was inexorable in its condemnation of business irregularities.
So far there had been no exception to its tacit rule that those who
broke the law of probity must pay; and every one was aware that even
Beaufort and Beaufort's wife would be offered up unflinchingly to
this principle. But to be obliged to offer them up would be not only
painful but inconvenient. The disappearance of the Beauforts would
leave a considerable void in their compact little circle; and those who
were too ignorant or too careless to shudder at the moral catastrophe
bewailed in advance the loss of the best ball-room in New York.
Archer had definitely made up his mind to go to Washington. He was
waiting only for the opening of the law-suit of which he had spoken
to May, so that its date might coincide with that of his visit; but
on the following Tuesday he learned from Mr. Letterblair that the
case might be postponed for several weeks. Nevertheless, he went home
that afternoon determined in any event to leave the next evening.
The chances were that May, who knew nothing of his professional
life, and had never shown any interest in it, would not learn of the
postponement, should it take place, nor remember the names of the
litigants if they were mentioned before her; and at any rate he could
no longer put off seeing Madame Olenska. There were too many things
that he must say to her.
On the Wednesday morning, when he reached his office, Mr. Letterblair
met him with a troubled face. Beaufort, after all, had not managed to
"tide over"; but by setting afloat the rumour that he had done so he
had reassured his depositors, and heavy payments had poured into the
bank till the previous evening, when disturbing reports again began to
predominate. In consequence, a run on the bank had begun, and its doors
were likely to close before the day was over. The ugliest things were
being said of Beaufort's dastardly manœuvre, and his failure promised
to be one of the most discreditable in the history of Wall Street.
The extent of the calamity left Mr. Letterblair white and
incapacitated. "I've seen bad things in my time; but nothing as bad
as this. Everybody we know will be hit, one way or another. And what
will be done about Mrs. Beaufort? What _can_ be done about her? I pity
Mrs. Manson Mingott as much as anybody: coming at her age, there's no
knowing what effect this affair may have on her. She always believed
in Beaufort--she made a friend of him! And there's the whole Dallas
connection: poor Mrs. Beaufort is related to every one of you. Her only
chance would be to leave her husband--yet how can any one tell her so?
Her duty is at his side; and luckily she seems always to have been
blind to his private weaknesses."
There was a knock, and Mr. Letterblair turned his head sharply. "What
is it? I can't be disturbed."
A clerk brought in a letter for Archer and withdrew. Recognising his
wife's hand, the young man opened the envelope and read: "Won't you
please come up town as early as you can? Granny had a slight stroke
last night. In some mysterious way she found out before any one else
this awful news about the bank. Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and
the idea of the disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a
temperature and can't leave his room. Mamma needs you dreadfully, and I
do hope you can get away at once and go straight to Granny's."
Archer handed the note to his senior partner, and a few minutes later
was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car, which he exchanged at
Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth
Avenue line. It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious vehicle
dropped him at old Catherine's. The sitting-room window on the ground
floor, where she usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure
of her daughter, Mrs. Welland, who signed a haggard welcome as she
caught sight of Archer; and at the door he was met by May. The hall
wore the unnatural appearance peculiar to well-kept houses suddenly
invaded by illness: wraps and furs lay in heaps on the chairs, a
doctor's bag and overcoat were on the table, and beside them letters
and cards had already piled up unheeded.
May looked pale but smiling: Dr. Bencomb, who had just come for the
second time, took a more hopeful view, and Mrs. Mingott's dauntless
determination to live and get well was already having an effect on
her family. May led Archer into the old lady's sitting-room, where
the sliding doors opening into the bedroom had been drawn shut, and
the heavy yellow damask portières dropped over them; and here Mrs.
Welland communicated to him in horrified undertones the details of the
catastrophe. It appeared that the evening before something dreadful
and mysterious had happened. At about eight o'clock, just after Mrs.
Mingott had finished the game of solitaire that she always played after
dinner, the door-bell had rung, and a lady so thickly veiled that the
servants did not immediately recognise her had asked to be received.
The butler, hearing a familiar voice, had thrown open the sitting-room
door, announcing: "Mrs. Julius Beaufort"--and had then closed it again
on the two ladies. They must have been together, he thought, about an
hour. When Mrs. Mingott's bell rang Mrs. Beaufort had already slipped
away unseen, and the old lady, white and vast and terrible, sat alone
in her great chair, and signed to the butler to help her into her room.
She seemed, at that time, though obviously distressed, in complete
control of her body and brain. The mulatto maid put her to bed, brought
her a cup of tea as usual, laid everything straight in the room, and
went away; but at three in the morning the bell rang again, and the
two servants, hastening in at this unwonted summons (for old Catherine
usually slept like a baby), had found their mistress sitting up against
her pillows with a crooked smile on her face and one little hand
hanging limp from its huge arm.
The stroke had clearly been a slight one, for she was able to
articulate and to make her wishes known; and soon after the doctor's
first visit she had begun to regain control of her facial muscles. But
the alarm had been great; and proportionately great was the indignation
when it was gathered from Mrs. Mingott's fragmentary phrases that
Regina Beaufort had come to ask her--incredible effrontery!--to back
up her husband, see them through--not to "desert" them, as she called
it--in fact to induce the whole family to cover and condone their
monstrous dishonour.
"I said to her: 'Honour's always been honour, and honesty honesty, in
Manson Mingott's house, and will be till I'm carried out of it feet
first,'" the old woman had stammered into her daughter's ear, in the
thick voice of the partly paralysed. "And when she said: 'But my name,
Auntie--my name's Regina Dallas,' I said: 'It was Beaufort when he
covered you with jewels, and it's got to stay Beaufort now that he's
covered you with shame.'"
So much, with tears and gasps of horror, Mrs. Welland imparted,
blanched and demolished by the unwonted obligation of having at last to
fix her eyes on the unpleasant and the discreditable. "If only I could
keep it from your father-in-law: he always says: 'Augusta, for pity's
sake, don't destroy my last illusions'--and how am I to prevent his
knowing these horrors?" the poor lady wailed.
"After all, Mamma, he won't have _seen_ them," her daughter suggested;
and Mrs. Welland sighed: "Ah, no; thank heaven he's safe in bed. And
Dr. Bencomb has promised to keep him there till poor Mamma is better,
and Regina has been got away somewhere."
Archer had seated himself near the window and was gazing out blankly
at the deserted thoroughfare. It was evident that he had been summoned
rather for the moral support of the stricken ladies than because of