The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton

  XXV.

  Once more on the boat, and in the presence of others, Archer felt atranquillity of spirit that surprised as much as it sustained him.

  The day, according to any current valuation, had been a ratherridiculous failure; he had not so much as touched Madame Olenska's handwith his lips, or extracted one word from her that gave promise offarther opportunities. Nevertheless, for a man sick with unsatisfiedlove, and parting for an indefinite period from the object of hispassion, he felt himself almost humiliatingly calm and comforted. Itwas the perfect balance she had held between their loyalty to othersand their honesty to themselves that had so stirred and yettranquillized him; a balance not artfully calculated, as her tears andher falterings showed, but resulting naturally from her unabashedsincerity. It filled him with a tender awe, now the danger was over,and made him thank the fates that no personal vanity, no sense ofplaying a part before sophisticated witnesses, had tempted him to tempther. Even after they had clasped hands for good-bye at the Fall Riverstation, and he had turned away alone, the conviction remained with himof having saved out of their meeting much more than he had sacrificed.

  He wandered back to the club, and went and sat alone in the desertedlibrary, turning and turning over in his thoughts every separate secondof their hours together. It was clear to him, and it grew more clearunder closer scrutiny, that if she should finally decide on returningto Europe--returning to her husband--it would not be because her oldlife tempted her, even on the new terms offered. No: she would go onlyif she felt herself becoming a temptation to Archer, a temptation tofall away from the standard they had both set up. Her choice would beto stay near him as long as he did not ask her to come nearer; and itdepended on himself to keep her just there, safe but secluded.

  In the train these thoughts were still with him. They enclosed him ina kind of golden haze, through which the faces about him looked remoteand indistinct: he had a feeling that if he spoke to hisfellow-travellers they would not understand what he was saying. Inthis state of abstraction he found himself, the following morning,waking to the reality of a stifling September day in New York. Theheat-withered faces in the long train streamed past him, and hecontinued to stare at them through the same golden blur; but suddenly,as he left the station, one of the faces detached itself, came closerand forced itself upon his consciousness. It was, as he instantlyrecalled, the face of the young man he had seen, the day before,passing out of the Parker House, and had noted as not conforming totype, as not having an American hotel face.

  The same thing struck him now; and again he became aware of a dim stirof former associations. The young man stood looking about him with thedazed air of the foreigner flung upon the harsh mercies of Americantravel; then he advanced toward Archer, lifted his hat, and said inEnglish: "Surely, Monsieur, we met in London?"

  "Ah, to be sure: in London!" Archer grasped his hand with curiosityand sympathy. "So you DID get here, after all?" he exclaimed, castinga wondering eye on the astute and haggard little countenance of youngCarfry's French tutor.

  "Oh, I got here--yes," M. Riviere smiled with drawn lips. "But not forlong; I return the day after tomorrow." He stood grasping his lightvalise in one neatly gloved hand, and gazing anxiously, perplexedly,almost appealingly, into Archer's face.

  "I wonder, Monsieur, since I've had the good luck to run across you, ifI might--"

  "I was just going to suggest it: come to luncheon, won't you? Downtown, I mean: if you'll look me up in my office I'll take you to a verydecent restaurant in that quarter."

  M. Riviere was visibly touched and surprised. "You're too kind. But Iwas only going to ask if you would tell me how to reach some sort ofconveyance. There are no porters, and no one here seems to listen--"

  "I know: our American stations must surprise you. When you ask for aporter they give you chewing-gum. But if you'll come along I'llextricate you; and you must really lunch with me, you know."

  The young man, after a just perceptible hesitation, replied, withprofuse thanks, and in a tone that did not carry complete conviction,that he was already engaged; but when they had reached the comparativereassurance of the street he asked if he might call that afternoon.

  Archer, at ease in the midsummer leisure of the office, fixed an hourand scribbled his address, which the Frenchman pocketed with reiteratedthanks and a wide flourish of his hat. A horse-car received him, andArcher walked away.

  Punctually at the hour M. Riviere appeared, shaved, smoothed-out, butstill unmistakably drawn and serious. Archer was alone in his office,and the young man, before accepting the seat he proffered, beganabruptly: "I believe I saw you, sir, yesterday in Boston."

  The statement was insignificant enough, and Archer was about to framean assent when his words were checked by something mysterious yetilluminating in his visitor's insistent gaze.

  "It is extraordinary, very extraordinary," M. Riviere continued, "thatwe should have met in the circumstances in which I find myself."

  "What circumstances?" Archer asked, wondering a little crudely if heneeded money.

  M. Riviere continued to study him with tentative eyes. "I have come,not to look for employment, as I spoke of doing when we last met, buton a special mission--"

  "Ah--!" Archer exclaimed. In a flash the two meetings had connectedthemselves in his mind. He paused to take in the situation thussuddenly lighted up for him, and M. Riviere also remained silent, as ifaware that what he had said was enough.

  "A special mission," Archer at length repeated.

  The young Frenchman, opening his palms, raised them slightly, and thetwo men continued to look at each other across the office-desk tillArcher roused himself to say: "Do sit down"; whereupon M. Rivierebowed, took a distant chair, and again waited.

  "It was about this mission that you wanted to consult me?" Archerfinally asked.

  M. Riviere bent his head. "Not in my own behalf: on that score I--Ihave fully dealt with myself. I should like--if I may--to speak to youabout the Countess Olenska."

  Archer had known for the last few minutes that the words were coming;but when they came they sent the blood rushing to his temples as if hehad been caught by a bent-back branch in a thicket.

  "And on whose behalf," he said, "do you wish to do this?"

  M. Riviere met the question sturdily. "Well--I might say HERS, if itdid not sound like a liberty. Shall I say instead: on behalf ofabstract justice?"

  Archer considered him ironically. "In other words: you are CountOlenski's messenger?"

  He saw his blush more darkly reflected in M. Riviere's sallowcountenance. "Not to YOU, Monsieur. If I come to you, it is on quiteother grounds."

  "What right have you, in the circumstances, to BE on any other ground?"Archer retorted. "If you're an emissary you're an emissary."

  The young man considered. "My mission is over: as far as the CountessOlenska goes, it has failed."

  "I can't help that," Archer rejoined on the same note of irony.

  "No: but you can help--" M. Riviere paused, turned his hat about inhis still carefully gloved hands, looked into its lining and then backat Archer's face. "You can help, Monsieur, I am convinced, to make itequally a failure with her family."

  Archer pushed back his chair and stood up. "Well--and by God I will!"he exclaimed. He stood with his hands in his pockets, staring downwrathfully at the little Frenchman, whose face, though he too hadrisen, was still an inch or two below the line of Archer's eyes.

  M. Riviere paled to his normal hue: paler than that his complexioncould hardly turn.

  "Why the devil," Archer explosively continued, "should you havethought--since I suppose you're appealing to me on the ground of myrelationship to Madame Olenska--that I should take a view contrary tothe rest of her family?"

  The change of expression in M. Riviere's face was for a time his onlyanswer. His look passed from timidity to absolute distress: for ayoung man of his usually resourceful mien it would have been difficultto appear more disarmed an
d defenceless. "Oh, Monsieur--"

  "I can't imagine," Archer continued, "why you should have come to mewhen there are others so much nearer to the Countess; still less whyyou thought I should be more accessible to the arguments I suppose youwere sent over with."

  M. Riviere took this onslaught with a disconcerting humility. "Thearguments I want to present to you, Monsieur, are my own and not thoseI was sent over with."

  "Then I see still less reason for listening to them."

  M. Riviere again looked into his hat, as if considering whether theselast words were not a sufficiently broad hint to put it on and be gone.Then he spoke with sudden decision. "Monsieur--will you tell me onething? Is it my right to be here that you question? Or do you perhapsbelieve the whole matter to be already closed?"

  His quiet insistence made Archer feel the clumsiness of his ownbluster. M. Riviere had succeeded in imposing himself: Archer,reddening slightly, dropped into his chair again, and signed to theyoung man to be seated.

  "I beg your pardon: but why isn't the matter closed?"

  M. Riviere gazed back at him with anguish. "You do, then, agree withthe rest of the family that, in face of the new proposals I havebrought, it is hardly possible for Madame Olenska not to return to herhusband?"

  "Good God!" Archer exclaimed; and his visitor gave out a low murmur ofconfirmation.

  "Before seeing her, I saw--at Count Olenski's request--Mr. LovellMingott, with whom I had several talks before going to Boston. Iunderstand that he represents his mother's view; and that Mrs. MansonMingott's influence is great throughout her family."

  Archer sat silent, with the sense of clinging to the edge of a slidingprecipice. The discovery that he had been excluded from a share inthese negotiations, and even from the knowledge that they were on foot,caused him a surprise hardly dulled by the acuter wonder of what he waslearning. He saw in a flash that if the family had ceased to consulthim it was because some deep tribal instinct warned them that he was nolonger on their side; and he recalled, with a start of comprehension, aremark of May's during their drive home from Mrs. Manson Mingott's onthe day of the Archery Meeting: "Perhaps, after all, Ellen would behappier with her husband."

  Even in the tumult of new discoveries Archer remembered his indignantexclamation, and the fact that since then his wife had never namedMadame Olenska to him. Her careless allusion had no doubt been thestraw held up to see which way the wind blew; the result had beenreported to the family, and thereafter Archer had been tacitly omittedfrom their counsels. He admired the tribal discipline which made Maybow to this decision. She would not have done so, he knew, had herconscience protested; but she probably shared the family view thatMadame Olenska would be better off as an unhappy wife than as aseparated one, and that there was no use in discussing the case withNewland, who had an awkward way of suddenly not seeming to take themost fundamental things for granted.

  Archer looked up and met his visitor's anxious gaze. "Don't you know,Monsieur--is it possible you don't know--that the family begin to doubtif they have the right to advise the Countess to refuse her husband'slast proposals?"

  "The proposals you brought?"

  "The proposals I brought."

  It was on Archer's lips to exclaim that whatever he knew or did notknow was no concern of M. Riviere's; but something in the humble andyet courageous tenacity of M. Riviere's gaze made him reject thisconclusion, and he met the young man's question with another. "What isyour object in speaking to me of this?"

  He had not to wait a moment for the answer. "To beg you, Monsieur--tobeg you with all the force I'm capable of--not to let her go back.--Oh,don't let her!" M. Riviere exclaimed.

  Archer looked at him with increasing astonishment. There was nomistaking the sincerity of his distress or the strength of hisdetermination: he had evidently resolved to let everything go by theboard but the supreme need of thus putting himself on record. Archerconsidered.

  "May I ask," he said at length, "if this is the line you took with theCountess Olenska?"

  M. Riviere reddened, but his eyes did not falter. "No, Monsieur: Iaccepted my mission in good faith. I really believed--for reasons Ineed not trouble you with--that it would be better for Madame Olenskato recover her situation, her fortune, the social consideration thather husband's standing gives her."

  "So I supposed: you could hardly have accepted such a missionotherwise."

  "I should not have accepted it."

  "Well, then--?" Archer paused again, and their eyes met in anotherprotracted scrutiny.

  "Ah, Monsieur, after I had seen her, after I had listened to her, Iknew she was better off here."

  "You knew--?"

  "Monsieur, I discharged my mission faithfully: I put the Count'sarguments, I stated his offers, without adding any comment of my own.The Countess was good enough to listen patiently; she carried hergoodness so far as to see me twice; she considered impartially all Ihad come to say. And it was in the course of these two talks that Ichanged my mind, that I came to see things differently."

  "May I ask what led to this change?"

  "Simply seeing the change in HER," M. Riviere replied.

  "The change in her? Then you knew her before?"

  The young man's colour again rose. "I used to see her in her husband'shouse. I have known Count Olenski for many years. You can imaginethat he would not have sent a stranger on such a mission."

  Archer's gaze, wandering away to the blank walls of the office, restedon a hanging calendar surmounted by the rugged features of thePresident of the United States. That such a conversation should begoing on anywhere within the millions of square miles subject to hisrule seemed as strange as anything that the imagination could invent.

  "The change--what sort of a change?"

  "Ah, Monsieur, if I could tell you!" M. Riviere paused. "Tenez--thediscovery, I suppose, of what I'd never thought of before: that she'san American. And that if you're an American of HER kind--of yourkind--things that are accepted in certain other societies, or at leastput up with as part of a general convenient give-and-take--becomeunthinkable, simply unthinkable. If Madame Olenska's relationsunderstood what these things were, their opposition to her returningwould no doubt be as unconditional as her own; but they seem to regardher husband's wish to have her back as proof of an irresistible longingfor domestic life." M. Riviere paused, and then added: "Whereas it'sfar from being as simple as that."

  Archer looked back to the President of the United States, and then downat his desk and at the papers scattered on it. For a second or two hecould not trust himself to speak. During this interval he heard M.Riviere's chair pushed back, and was aware that the young man hadrisen. When he glanced up again he saw that his visitor was as movedas himself.

  "Thank you," Archer said simply.

  "There's nothing to thank me for, Monsieur: it is I, rather--" M.Riviere broke off, as if speech for him too were difficult. "I shouldlike, though," he continued in a firmer voice, "to add one thing. Youasked me if I was in Count Olenski's employ. I am at this moment: Ireturned to him, a few months ago, for reasons of private necessitysuch as may happen to any one who has persons, ill and older persons,dependent on him. But from the moment that I have taken the step ofcoming here to say these things to you I consider myself discharged,and I shall tell him so on my return, and give him the reasons. That'sall, Monsieur."

  M. Riviere bowed and drew back a step.

  "Thank you," Archer said again, as their hands met.