Archer, after the first act, had detached himself from the party and made his way to the back of the club box. From there he watched, over various Chivers, Mingott and Rushworth shoulders, the same scene that he had looked at, two years previously, on the night of his first meeting with Ellen Olenska. He had half-expected her to appear again in old Mrs. Mingott’s box, but it remained empty; and he sat motionless, his eyes fastened on it, till suddenly Madame Nilsson’s pure soprano broke out into “M’ama, non m’ama … “
Archer turned to the stage, where, in the familiar setting of giant roses and pen-wiper pansies, the same large blonde victim was succumbing to the same small brown seducer.
From the stage his eyes wandered to the point of the horseshoe where May sat between two older ladies, just as, on that former evening, she had sat between Mrs. Lovell Mingott and her newly-arrived “foreign” cousin. As on that evening, she was all in white; and Archer, who had not noticed what she wore, recognised the blue-white satin and old lace of her wedding dress.
It was the custom, in old New York, for brides to appear in this costly garment during the first year or two of marriage: his mother, he knew, kept hers in tissue paper in the hope that Janey might some day wear it, though poor Janey was reaching the age when pearl grey poplin and no bridesmaids would be thought more “appropriate.”
It struck Archer that May, since their return from Europe, had seldom worn her bridal satin, and the surprise of seeing her in it made him compare her appearance with that of the young girl he had watched with such blissful anticipations two years earlier.
And despite being preoccupied, his mind was momentarily transported back to an earlier time—their honeymoon abroad. The young chambermaid Anne had accompanied them to attend to May’s needs. Newland had suggested that the more experienced Miranda accompany them, but May had steadfastly refused. Newland wondered at the time if his young wife was jealous of Miranda.
Early on in their honeymoon, May tried to pleasure her new husband, but behaved all a dither deciding exactly what she should do. Thus far, her experience of the flesh had focused on her forbidden door, and she did not seem to understand how to use her feminine folds other than to lie on her back and let him enter her, which alone was rather tiresome and plain. It was nothing like the pleasure they had enjoyed before their marriage, when they would cavort, with him touching her, kissing her, teasing her breasts, penetrating her nether region, all the while preserving her sacred virginity.
Just then, Anne entered the room, delivering the towels for the morning ablutions.
Newland suddenly had an idea. It occurred to him that the Italians were masters of love. “I say, Anne, is that Italian cook still about?”
“Margarette? Yes, sir, I believe so.”
Margarette was a tall, thin woman of voluptuous proportions, with sultry eyes that could easily turn into a sexual leer. Her round bottom swayed invitingly when she walked. And if anyone understood the ways of man and woman, it was she.
Newland focused his attention on Anne. “Send the cook right up to see me before she leaves for the evening.”
“Newland, dear, are you hungry?” May asked.
“Not for food, my dear,” he said.
Anne left the room, and the Italian cook was soon in the Archer’s presence. She was dressed in scant attire as if ready to prowl.
“Hello, Margarette,” Newland said. “I understand that you are not married?” He raised one of his brows suggestively.
“Sì, signore,” the woman said, returning the smile, and then she glanced at May in her peignoir. What Newland was asking her was abundantly clear. “Newlyweds are so unaware of the ways of love,” she said.
“Yes, indeed. And I fear that Mrs. Archer has become somewhat bored with me,” he said in jest.
May hurried to his side, her eyes wide with surprise. “Newland, what are you suggesting?”
The cook said in her romantic accent, “It means that love will have no boundaries. We make love the three of us, yes?”
May hardly knew how to respond; however, the lust was apparent in her eyes. She was very close to her maid at home. “If this pleases you Newland, then by all means we should give it a try. After all, we are in Italy, the very cradle of love and sensuality.” She smiled flirtatiously. “When in Rome … but with three of us, I should hardly know what to do.” She reached over and took Newland’s arm.
“Leave it to me,” Margarette said. “I will show you everything you ever need to know.” She slipped her meager dress over her head and stood completely naked before the Archers, smiling wickedly, and then advanced on May. With a deft flip of the wrist, she slipped the strap of May’s nightgown off her shoulder and began kissing her neck. She glided her hands across the fabric of May’s gown and down to the edge of her nightgown and slowly began raising it.
Newland stood watching, taking in the marvelous sight, while feeling his manhood begin to harden.
“Newland?” May looked at him.
“Enjoy,” Margarette said to her. “We have all evening, yes?” She raised the nightgown over May’s head and tossed it aside.
“Do relax, dear,” Newland said. “I am quite certain you’ll enjoy this.” Then Newland removed his nightshirt, leaving him dressed only in his muslin pants.
Margarette began caressing May’s breasts. Fighting it at first, May finally surrendered to the other woman’s touch. Margarette leaned forward, lifted her hips to Newland and then lowered her mouth to one of May’s breasts and began circling one of the nipples with her tongue, while clasping the other with her fingers. May rested her hands on the woman’s shoulders, closed her eyes, and began to moan softly.
Newland moved behind Margarette and began exploring the lines of her body, feeling her voluptuous breasts, and then moved lower to her feminine folds. She was dripping with desire, and he could not wait to be inside of her.
Margarette ran her hands lower. She grasped May’s hip with one hand. With the other, she began sliding her fingers through May’s moist orchid. Then she dipped inside of May, and began strumming a finger through her creamy vessel.
“Oh, yes,” May said, undulating her hips.
Newland began massaging Margarette’s pearl, and she responded by lifting her hips higher.
“My button,” May said to Margarette.
Margarette urged May down to the bed, where she fell pleasantly, throwing her arms up behind her. May lifted her legs and spread them wide open. No one needed to encourage her any further.
Margarette clasped May’s thighs and lowered herself to May’s orchid. “Oh, so delicious, so moist,” Margarette said and then slid her tongue through the milky passion. Then Margarette raised her own hips and began circling them slowly, inviting Newland to enter her.
Newland unfastened the drawstring on his night pants, let them fall to the floor, and then kicked them to the side. He grasped the swarthy woman’s full bottom cheeks and began sliding his member through her cream. She was so hot, so ready, that on his next slide, he entered her sheath, filling her luscious cavity. Margarette moaned and squeezed his member tightly. Newland groaned with desire and began sliding through her velvety purse.
Continuing to lick May’s pearl, Margarette slid a hand to May’s sheath, inserted it again, and began strumming it to the same rhythm of Newland’s thrusting. Together the three continued pleasuring each other, moving in a perfect harmony.
Margarette’s body tightened first, her hips moved more demandingly. Then May gasped.
“Oh, yes,” May cried. “Yes.”
Margarette was next, and crying out in Italian, she announced that she too had crested. However, Newland had not finished. He withdrew his member from Margarette and had her move above May so that her bottom and folds faced him. Then he entered May’s sheath and began sliding through her creamy passion, while tasting Margarette’s cream.
Both women, reinvigorated with lust, began writhing to his strokes, and a moment later, they were kissing, swirling their tongues with open mou
ths so that Newland could see them. Newland felt a deeper arousal at seeing the women kiss; that he lost control of himself, letting his carnal urges control him. He beat madly until overwhelmed, and at last, released a veritable deluge of his seed inside his wife’s sheath. Reveling with satisfaction, he continued to beat and taste awhile longer, and when he recovered his senses, he withdrew from the women and fell to the bed.
May moved close to him and threw a leg over his loins. Margarette put her leg on the other side of him. “You aren’t tired yet, are you, Newland?” May said. Then she smiled wickedly at Margarette. The night was only beginning …
As Newland looked at May in her wedding dress, he remembered with great fondness the night of their honeymoon in Italy with Margarette and how she had opened his innocent wife’s eyes to the wanton pleasure of the flesh. Before that night, she had been so childlike. Though May’s outline was slightly heavier, as her goddesslike build had foretold, her athletic erectness of carriage, and the girlish transparency of her expression, remained unchanged: but for the slight languor that Archer had lately noticed in her she would have been the exact image of the girl playing with the bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her betrothal evening. The fact seemed an additional appeal to his pity: such innocence was as moving as the trustful clasp of a child. Then he remembered the passionate generosity latent under that incurious calm. He recalled her glance of understanding when he had urged that their engagement should be announced at the Beaufort ball; he heard the voice in which she had said, in the Mission garden: “I couldn’t have my happiness made out of a wrong—a wrong to some one else;” and an uncontrollable longing seized him to tell her the truth, to throw himself on her generosity, and ask for the freedom he had once refused.
Newland Archer was a quiet and self-controlled young man. Conformity to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second nature. It was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic and conspicuous, anything Mr. van der Luyden would have deprecated and the club box condemned as bad form. But he had become suddenly unconscious of the club box, of Mr. van der Luyden, of all that had so long enclosed him in the warm shelter of habit. He walked along the semicircular passage at the back of the house, and opened the door of Mrs. van der Luyden’s box as if it had been a gate into the unknown.
“M’ama!” thrilled out the triumphant Marguerite; and the occupants of the box looked up in surprise at Archer’s entrance. He had already broken one of the rules of his world, which forbade the entering of a box during a solo.
Slipping between Mr. van der Luyden and Sillerton Jackson, he leaned over his wife.
“I’ve got a beastly headache; don’t tell any one, but come home, won’t you?” he whispered.
May gave him a glance of comprehension, and he saw her whisper to his mother, who nodded sympathetically; then she murmured an excuse to Mrs. van der Luyden, and rose from her seat just as Marguerite fell into Faust’s arms. Archer, while he helped her on with her Opera cloak, noticed the exchange of a significant smile between the older ladies.
As they drove away May laid her hand shyly on his. “I’m so sorry you don’t feel well. I’m afraid they’ve been overworking you again at the office.”
“No—it’s not that: do you mind if I open the window?” he returned confusedly, letting down the pane on his side. He sat staring out into the street, feeling his wife beside him as a silent watchful interrogation, and keeping his eyes steadily fixed on the passing houses. At their door she caught her skirt in the step of the carriage, and fell against him.
“Did you hurt yourself?” he asked, steadying her with his arm.
“No; but my poor dress—see how I’ve torn it!” she exclaimed. She bent to gather up a mud-stained breadth, and followed him up the steps into the hall. The servants had not expected them so early, and there was only a glimmer of gas on the upper landing.
Archer mounted the stairs, turned up the light, and put a match to the brackets on each side of the library mantelpiece. The curtains were drawn, and the warm friendly aspect of the room smote him like that of a familiar face met during an unavowable errand. So many, so very many errands Newland had run.
He noticed that his wife was very pale, and asked if he should get her some brandy.
“Oh, no,” she exclaimed with a momentary flush, as she took off her cloak. “But hadn’t you better go to bed at once?” she added, as he opened a silver box on the table and took out a cigarette.
Archer threw down the cigarette and walked to his usual place by the fire.
“No; my head is not as bad as that.” He paused. “And there’s something I want to say; something important—that I must tell you at once.”
She had dropped into an armchair, and raised her head as he spoke. “Yes, dear?” she rejoined, so gently that he wondered at the lack of wonder with which she received this preamble.
“May—” he began, standing a few feet from her chair, and looking over at her as if the slight distance between them were an unbridgeable abyss. The sound of his voice echoed uncannily through the homelike hush, and he repeated: “There is something I’ve got to tell you … about myself … “
She sat silent, without a movement or a tremor of her lashes. She was still extremely pale, but her face had a curious tranquillity of expression that seemed drawn from some secret inner source.
Archer checked the conventional phrases of self-accusal that were crowding to his lips. He was determined to put the case baldly, without vain recrimination or excuse.
“Madame Olenska—” he said; but at the name his wife raised her hand as if to silence him. As she did so the gaslight struck on the gold of her wedding-ring.
“Oh, why should we talk about Ellen tonight?” she asked, with a slight pout of impatience.
“Because I ought to have spoken before.”
Her face remained calm. “Is it really worth while, dear? I know I’ve been unfair to her at times—perhaps we all have. You’ve understood her, no doubt, better than we did: you’ve always been kind to her. But what does it matter, now it’s all over?”
Archer looked at her blankly. Could it be possible that the sense of unreality in which he felt himself imprisoned had communicated itself to his wife?
“All over—what do you mean?” he asked in an indistinct stammer.
May still looked at him with transparent eyes. “Why—since she’s going back to Europe so soon; since Granny approves and understands, and has arranged to make her independent of her husband—”
She broke off, and Archer, grasping the corner of the mantelpiece in one convulsed hand, and steadying himself against it, made a vain effort to extend the same control to his reeling thoughts.
“I supposed,” he heard his wife’s even voice go on, “that you had been kept at the office this evening about the business arrangements. It was settled this morning, I believe.” She lowered her eyes under his unseeing stare, and another fugitive flush passed over her face.
He understood that his own eyes must be unbearable, and turning away, rested his elbows on the mantelshelf and covered his face. Something drummed and clanged furiously in his ears; he could not tell if it were the blood in his veins, or the tick of the clock on the mantel.
May sat without moving or speaking while the clock slowly measured out five minutes. A lump of coal fell forward in the grate, and hearing her rise to push it back, Archer at length turned and faced her.
“It’s impossible,” he exclaimed.
“Impossible—?”
“How do you know—what you’ve just told me?”
“I saw Ellen yesterday—I told you I’d seen her at Granny’s.”
“It wasn’t then that she told you?”
“No; I had a note from her this afternoon.—Do you want to see it?”
He could not find his voice, and she went out of the room, and came back almost immediately.
“I thought you knew,” she said simply.
She laid a sheet of paper on
the table, and Archer put out his hand and took it up. The letter contained only a few lines.
“May dear, I have at last made Granny understand that my visit to her could be no more than a visit; and she has been as kind and generous as ever. She sees now that if I return to Europe I must live by myself, or rather with poor Aunt Medora, who is coming with me. I am hurrying back to Washington to pack up, and we sail next week. You must be very good to Granny when I’m gone—as good as you’ve always been to me. Ellen.
“If any of my friends wish to urge me to change my mind, please tell them it would be utterly useless.”
Archer read the letter over two or three times; then he flung it down and burst out laughing.
The sound of his laugh startled him. It recalled Janey’s midnight fright when she had caught him rocking with incomprehensible mirth over May’s telegram announcing that the date of their marriage had been advanced.
“Why did she write this?” he asked, checking his laugh with a supreme effort.
May met the question with her unshaken candour. “I suppose because we talked things over yesterday—”
“What things?”
“I told her I was afraid I hadn’t been fair to her—hadn’t always understood how hard it must have been for her here, alone among so many people who were relations and yet strangers; who felt the right to criticise, and yet didn’t always know the circumstances.” She paused. “I knew you’d been the one friend she could always count on; and I wanted her to know that you and I were the same—in all our feelings.”
She hesitated, as if waiting for him to speak, and then added slowly: “She understood my wishing to tell her this. I think she understands everything.”
She went up to Archer, and taking one of his cold hands pressed it quickly against her cheek.
“My head aches too; goodnight, dear,” she said, and turned to the door, her torn and muddy wedding-dress dragging after her across the room.
Chapter 15
It was, as Mrs. Archer smilingly said to Mrs. Welland, a great event for a young couple to give their first big dinner.
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