The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton

  XVIII.

  "What are you two plotting together, aunt Medora?" Madame Olenska criedas she came into the room.

  She was dressed as if for a ball. Everything about her shimmered andglimmered softly, as if her dress had been woven out of candle-beams;and she carried her head high, like a pretty woman challenging aroomful of rivals.

  "We were saying, my dear, that here was something beautiful to surpriseyou with," Mrs. Manson rejoined, rising to her feet and pointing archlyto the flowers.

  Madame Olenska stopped short and looked at the bouquet. Her colour didnot change, but a sort of white radiance of anger ran over her likesummer lightning. "Ah," she exclaimed, in a shrill voice that theyoung man had never heard, "who is ridiculous enough to send me abouquet? Why a bouquet? And why tonight of all nights? I am notgoing to a ball; I am not a girl engaged to be married. But somepeople are always ridiculous."

  She turned back to the door, opened it, and called out: "Nastasia!"

  The ubiquitous handmaiden promptly appeared, and Archer heard MadameOlenska say, in an Italian that she seemed to pronounce withintentional deliberateness in order that he might follow it:"Here--throw this into the dustbin!" and then, as Nastasia staredprotestingly: "But no--it's not the fault of the poor flowers. Tellthe 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 maygive her pleasure ... The boy is out, you say? Then, my dear one, runyourself; here, put my cloak over you and fly. I want the thing out ofthe 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 turnedback into the drawing-room, shutting the door sharply. Her bosom wasrising high under its lace, and for a moment Archer thought she wasabout to cry; but she burst into a laugh instead, and looking from theMarchioness to Archer, asked abruptly: "And you two--have you madefriends!"

  "It's for Mr. Archer to say, darling; he has waited patiently while youwere dressing."

  "Yes--I gave you time enough: my hair wouldn't go," Madame Olenskasaid, raising her hand to the heaped-up curls of her chignon. "Butthat reminds me: I see Dr. Carver is gone, and you'll be late at theBlenkers'. Mr. Archer, will you put my aunt in the carriage?"

  She followed the Marchioness into the hall, saw her fitted into amiscellaneous heap of overshoes, shawls and tippets, and called fromthe doorstep: "Mind, the carriage is to be back for me at ten!" Thenshe 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 herparlour-maid as "my dear one," and send her out on an errand wrapped inher own opera-cloak; and Archer, through all his deeper feelings,tasted the pleasurable excitement of being in a world where actionfollowed on emotion with such Olympian speed.

  Madame Olenska did not move when he came up behind her, and for asecond their eyes met in the mirror; then she turned, threw herselfinto 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 flashedup into her face she glanced at him with laughing eyes and said: "Whatdo you think of me in a temper?"

  Archer paused a moment; then he answered with sudden resolution: "Itmakes 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 andamusements 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 manythings!"

  Archer hesitated again, and again took his risk. "Is your aunt'sromanticism 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 trueand something untrue. But why do you ask? What has she been tellingyou?"

  He looked away into the fire, and then back at her shining presence.His heart tightened with the thought that this was their last eveningby that fireside, and that in a moment the carriage would come to carryher away.

  "She says--she pretends that Count Olenski has asked her to persuadeyou to go back to him."

  Madame Olenska made no answer. She sat motionless, holding hercigarette in her half-lifted hand. The expression of her face had notchanged; and Archer remembered that he had before noticed her apparentincapacity 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: poordarling! 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 waswith them as a sort of paid companion. Really, I don't know why shecame."

  "But you do believe she has a letter from your husband?"

  Again Madame Olenska brooded silently; then she said: "After all, itwas to be expected."

  The young man rose and went to lean against the fireplace. A suddenrestlessness possessed him, and he was tongue-tied by the sense thattheir minutes were numbered, and that at any moment he might hear thewheels 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 faceand spread over her neck and shoulders. She blushed seldom andpainfully, 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 owntroubles. I know you think the Wellands are unreasonable about yourmarriage, and of course I agree with you. In Europe people don'tunderstand our long American engagements; I suppose they are not ascalm as we are." She pronounced the "we" with a faint emphasis thatgave it an ironic sound.

  Archer felt the irony but did not dare to take it up. After all, shehad perhaps purposely deflected the conversation from her own affairs,and after the pain his last words had evidently caused her he felt thatall he could do was to follow her lead. But the sense of the waninghour made him desperate: he could not bear the thought that a barrierof words should drop between them again.

  "Yes," he said abruptly; "I went south to ask May to marry me afterEaster. There's no reason why we shouldn't be married then."

  "And May adores you--and yet you couldn't convince her? I thought hertoo 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 franktalk--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 someone that I--care for more."

  Madame Olenska examined this curiously. "But if she thinks that--whyisn't she in a hurry too?"

  "Because she's not like that: she's so much nobler. She insists allthe 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 fixedeyes. Down the quiet street Archer heard the approaching trot of herhorses.

  "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 himand asked: "This other woman--does she love you?"

  "Oh, there's no other woman; I mean, the person that May was thinkingof 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 andgloves 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 Ishould be too lonely. Why not come with me?"

  Archer felt that at any cost he must keep her beside him, must make hergive him the rest of her evening. Ignoring her question, he continuedto lean against the chimney-piece, his eyes fixed on the hand in whichshe held her gloves and fan, as if watching to see if he had the powerto make her drop them.

  "May guessed the truth," he said. "There is another woman--but not theone she thinks."

  Ellen Olenska made no answer, and did not move. After a moment he satdown beside her, and, taking her hand, softly unclasped it, so that thegloves and fan fell on the sofa between them.

  She started up, and freeing herself from him moved away to the otherside of the hearth. "Ah, don't make love to me! Too many people havedone that," she said, frowning.

  Archer, changing colour, stood up also: it was the bitterest rebuke shecould have given him. "I have never made love to you," he said, "and Inever shall. But you are the woman I would have married if it had beenpossible for either of us."

  "Possible for either of us?" She looked at him with unfeignedastonishment. "And you say that--when it's you who've made itimpossible?"

  He stared at her, groping in a blackness through which a single arrowof light tore its blinding way.

  "I'VE made it impossible--?"

  "You, you, YOU!" she cried, her lip trembling like a child's on theverge of tears. "Isn't it you who made me give up divorcing--give itup because you showed me how selfish and wicked it was, how one mustsacrifice one's self to preserve the dignity of marriage ... and tospare one's family the publicity, the scandal? And because my familywas going to be your family--for May's sake and for yours--I did whatyou told me, what you proved to me that I ought to do. Ah," she brokeout with a sudden laugh, "I've made no secret of having done it foryou!"

  She sank down on the sofa again, crouching among the festive ripples ofher dress like a stricken masquerader; and the young man stood by thefireplace and continued to gaze at her without moving.

  "Good God," he groaned. "When I thought--"

  "You thought?"

  "Ah, don't ask me what I thought!"

  Still looking at her, he saw the same burning flush creep up her neckto her face. She sat upright, facing him with a rigid dignity.

  "I do ask you."

  "Well, then: there were things in that letter you asked me to read--"

  "My husband's letter?"

  "Yes."

  "I had nothing to fear from that letter: absolutely nothing! All Ifeared was to bring notoriety, scandal, on the family--on you and May."

  "Good God," he groaned again, bowing his face in his hands.

  The silence that followed lay on them with the weight of things finaland irrevocable. It seemed to Archer to be crushing him down like hisown grave-stone; in all the wide future he saw nothing that would everlift that load from his heart. He did not move from his place, orraise his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went on staring intoutter darkness.

  "At least I loved you--" he brought out.

  On the other side of the hearth, from the sofa-corner where he supposedthat she still crouched, he heard a faint stifled crying like achild's. He started up and came to her side.

  "Ellen! What madness! Why are you crying? Nothing's done that can'tbe undone. I'm still free, and you're going to be." He had her in hisarms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vainterrors shrivelling up like ghosts at sunrise. The one thing thatastonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutesarguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching hermade everything so simple.

  She gave him back all his kiss, but after a moment he felt herstiffening in his arms, and she put him aside and stood up.

  "Ah, my poor Newland--I suppose this had to be. But it doesn't in theleast alter things," she said, looking down at him in her turn from thehearth.

  "It alters the whole of life for me."

  "No, no--it mustn't, it can't. You're engaged to May Welland; and I'mmarried."

  He stood up too, flushed and resolute. "Nonsense! It's too late forthat sort of thing. We've no right to lie to other people or toourselves. We won't talk of your marriage; but do you see me marryingMay after this?"

  She stood silent, resting her thin elbows on the mantelpiece, herprofile reflected in the glass behind her. One of the locks of herchignon had become loosened and hung on her neck; she looked haggardand almost old.

  "I don't see you," she said at length, "putting that question to May.Do you?"

  He gave a reckless shrug. "It's too late to do anything else."

  "You say that because it's the easiest thing to say at this moment--notbecause it's true. In reality it's too late to do anything but whatwe'd both decided on."

  "Ah, I don't understand you!"

  She forced a pitiful smile that pinched her face instead of smoothingit. "You don't understand because you haven't yet guessed how you'vechanged things for me: oh, from the first--long before I knew all you'ddone."

  "All I'd done?"

  "Yes. I was perfectly unconscious at first that people here were shyof me--that they thought I was a dreadful sort of person. It seemsthey had even refused to meet me at dinner. I found that outafterward; and how you'd made your mother go with you to the van derLuydens'; and how you'd insisted on announcing your engagement at theBeaufort ball, so that I might have two families to stand by me insteadof one--"

  At that he broke into a laugh.

  "Just imagine," she said, "how stupid and unobservant I was! I knewnothing of all this till Granny blurted it out one day. New Yorksimply meant peace and freedom to me: it was coming home. And I was sohappy at being among my own people that every one I met seemed kind andgood, and glad to see me. But from the very beginning," she continued,"I felt there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasonsthat I understood for doing what at first seemed so hardand--unnecessary. The very good people didn't convince me; I feltthey'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had feltthe world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands--and yet youhated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought bydisloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never knownbefore--and it's better than anything I've known."

  She spoke in a low even voice, without tears or visible agitation; andeach word, as it dropped from her, fell into his breast like burninglead. He sat bowed over, his head between his hands, staring at thehearthrug, and at the tip of the satin shoe that showed under herdress. Suddenly he knelt down and kissed the shoe.

  She bent over him, laying her hands on his shoulders, and looking athim with eyes so deep that he remained motionless under her gaze.

  "Ah, don't let us undo what you've done!" she cried. "I can't go backnow to that other way of thinking. I can't love you unless I give youup."

  His arms were yearning up to her; but she drew away, and they remainedfacing each other, divided by the distance that her words had created.Then, abruptly, his anger overflowed.

  "And Beaufort? Is he to replace me?"

  As the words sprang out he was prepared for an answering flare ofanger; and he would have welcomed it as fuel for his own. But MadameOlenska only gr
ew a shade paler, and stood with her arms hanging downbefore her, and her head slightly bent, as her way was when shepondered a question.

  "He's waiting for you now at Mrs. Struthers's; why don't you go tohim?" Archer sneered.

  She turned to ring the bell. "I shall not go out this evening; tellthe carriage to go and fetch the Signora Marchesa," she said when themaid came.

  After the door had closed again Archer continued to look at her withbitter eyes. "Why this sacrifice? Since you tell me that you'relonely I've no right to keep you from your friends."

  She smiled a little under her wet lashes. "I shan't be lonely now. IWAS lonely; I WAS afraid. But the emptiness and the darkness are gone;when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into aroom where there's always a light."

  Her tone and her look still enveloped her in a soft inaccessibility,and Archer groaned out again: "I don't understand you!"

  "Yet you understand May!"

  He reddened under the retort, but kept his eyes on her. "May is readyto give me up."

  "What! Three days after you've entreated her on your knees to hastenyour marriage?"

  "She's refused; that gives me the right--"

  "Ah, you've taught me what an ugly word that is," she said.

  He turned away with a sense of utter weariness. He felt as though hehad been struggling for hours up the face of a steep precipice, andnow, just as he had fought his way to the top, his hold had given wayand he was pitching down headlong into darkness.

  If he could have got her in his arms again he might have swept away herarguments; but she still held him at a distance by somethinginscrutably aloof in her look and attitude, and by his own awed senseof her sincerity. At length he began to plead again.

  "If we do this now it will be worse afterward--worse for every one--"

  "No--no--no!" she almost screamed, as if he frightened her.

  At that moment the bell sent a long tinkle through the house. They hadheard no carriage stopping at the door, and they stood motionless,looking at each other with startled eyes.

  Outside, Nastasia's step crossed the hall, the outer door opened, and amoment later she came in carrying a telegram which she handed to theCountess Olenska.

  "The lady was very happy at the flowers," Nastasia said, smoothing herapron. "She thought it was her signor marito who had sent them, andshe cried a little and said it was a folly."

  Her mistress smiled and took the yellow envelope. She tore it open andcarried it to the lamp; then, when the door had closed again, shehanded the telegram to Archer.

  It was dated from St. Augustine, and addressed to the Countess Olenska.In it he read: "Granny's telegram successful. Papa and Mamma agreemarriage after Easter. Am telegraphing Newland. Am too happy forwords and love you dearly. Your grateful May."

  Half an hour later, when Archer unlocked his own front-door, he found asimilar envelope on the hall-table on top of his pile of notes andletters. The message inside the envelope was also from May Welland,and ran as follows: "Parents consent wedding Tuesday after Easter attwelve Grace Church eight bridesmaids please see Rector so happy loveMay."

  Archer crumpled up the yellow sheet as if the gesture could annihilatethe news it contained. Then he pulled out a small pocket-diary andturned over the pages with trembling fingers; but he did not find whathe wanted, and cramming the telegram into his pocket he mounted thestairs.

  A light was shining through the door of the little hall-room whichserved Janey as a dressing-room and boudoir, and her brother rappedimpatiently on the panel. The door opened, and his sister stood beforehim in her immemorial purple flannel dressing-gown, with her hair "onpins." Her face looked pale and apprehensive.

  "Newland! I hope there's no bad news in that telegram? I waited onpurpose, in case--" (No item of his correspondence was safe fromJaney.)

  He took no notice of her question. "Look here--what day is Easter thisyear?"

  She looked shocked at such unchristian ignorance. "Easter? Newland!Why, of course, the first week in April. Why?"

  "The first week?" He turned again to the pages of his diary,calculating rapidly under his breath. "The first week, did you say?"He threw back his head with a long laugh.

  "For mercy's sake what's the matter?"

  "Nothing's the matter, except that I'm going to be married in a month."

  Janey fell upon his neck and pressed him to her purple flannel breast."Oh Newland, how wonderful! I'm so glad! But, dearest, why do youkeep on laughing? Do hush, or you'll wake Mamma."