The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton

  XXVI.

  Every year on the fifteenth of October Fifth Avenue opened itsshutters, unrolled its carpets and hung up its triple layer ofwindow-curtains.

  By the first of November this household ritual was over, and societyhad begun to look about and take stock of itself. By the fifteenth theseason was in full blast, Opera and theatres were putting forth theirnew attractions, dinner-engagements were accumulating, and dates fordances being fixed. And punctually at about this time Mrs. Archeralways said that New York was very much changed.

  Observing it from the lofty stand-point of a non-participant, she wasable, with the help of Mr. Sillerton Jackson and Miss Sophy, to traceeach new crack in its surface, and all the strange weeds pushing upbetween the ordered rows of social vegetables. It had been one of theamusements of Archer's youth to wait for this annual pronouncement ofhis mother's, and to hear her enumerate the minute signs ofdisintegration that his careless gaze had overlooked. For New York, toMrs. Archer's mind, never changed without changing for the worse; andin this view Miss Sophy Jackson heartily concurred.

  Mr. Sillerton Jackson, as became a man of the world, suspended hisjudgment and listened with an amused impartiality to the lamentationsof the ladies. But even he never denied that New York had changed; andNewland Archer, in the winter of the second year of his marriage, washimself obliged to admit that if it had not actually changed it wascertainly changing.

  These points had been raised, as usual, at Mrs. Archer's Thanksgivingdinner. At the date when she was officially enjoined to give thanksfor the blessings of the year it was her habit to take a mournfulthough not embittered stock of her world, and wonder what there was tobe thankful for. At any rate, not the state of society; society, if itcould be said to exist, was rather a spectacle on which to call downBiblical imprecations--and in fact, every one knew what the ReverendDr. Ashmore meant when he chose a text from Jeremiah (chap. ii., verse25) for his Thanksgiving sermon. Dr. Ashmore, the new Rector of St.Matthew's, had been chosen because he was very "advanced": his sermonswere considered bold in thought and novel in language. When hefulminated against fashionable society he always spoke of its "trend";and to Mrs. Archer it was terrifying and yet fascinating to feelherself part of a community that was trending.

  "There's no doubt that Dr. Ashmore is right: there IS a marked trend,"she said, as if it were something visible and measurable, like a crackin a house.

  "It was odd, though, to preach about it on Thanksgiving," Miss Jacksonopined; and her hostess drily rejoined: "Oh, he means us to givethanks for what's left."

  Archer had been wont to smile at these annual vaticinations of hismother's; but this year even he was obliged to acknowledge, as helistened to an enumeration of the changes, that the "trend" was visible.

  "The extravagance in dress--" Miss Jackson began. "Sillerton took meto the first night of the Opera, and I can only tell you that JaneMerry's dress was the only one I recognised from last year; and eventhat had had the front panel changed. Yet I know she got it out fromWorth only two years ago, because my seamstress always goes in to makeover her Paris dresses before she wears them."

  "Ah, Jane Merry is one of US," said Mrs. Archer sighing, as if it werenot such an enviable thing to be in an age when ladies were beginningto flaunt abroad their Paris dresses as soon as they were out of theCustom House, instead of letting them mellow under lock and key, in themanner of Mrs. Archer's contemporaries.

  "Yes; she's one of the few. In my youth," Miss Jackson rejoined, "itwas considered vulgar to dress in the newest fashions; and AmySillerton has always told me that in Boston the rule was to put awayone's Paris dresses for two years. Old Mrs. Baxter Pennilow, who dideverything handsomely, used to import twelve a year, two velvet, twosatin, two silk, and the other six of poplin and the finest cashmere.It was a standing order, and as she was ill for two years before shedied they found forty-eight Worth dresses that had never been taken outof tissue paper; and when the girls left off their mourning they wereable to wear the first lot at the Symphony concerts without looking inadvance of the fashion."

  "Ah, well, Boston is more conservative than New York; but I alwaysthink it's a safe rule for a lady to lay aside her French dresses forone season," Mrs. Archer conceded.

  "It was Beaufort who started the new fashion by making his wife clapher new clothes on her back as soon as they arrived: I must say attimes it takes all Regina's distinction not to look like ... like ..."Miss Jackson glanced around the table, caught Janey's bulging gaze, andtook refuge in an unintelligible murmur.

  "Like her rivals," said Mr. Sillerton Jackson, with the air ofproducing an epigram.

  "Oh,--" the ladies murmured; and Mrs. Archer added, partly to distracther daughter's attention from forbidden topics: "Poor Regina! HerThanksgiving hasn't been a very cheerful one, I'm afraid. Have youheard the rumours about Beaufort's speculations, Sillerton?"

  Mr. Jackson nodded carelessly. Every one had heard the rumours inquestion, and he scorned to confirm a tale that was already commonproperty.

  A gloomy silence fell upon the party. No one really liked Beaufort,and it was not wholly unpleasant to think the worst of his privatelife; but the idea of his having brought financial dishonour on hiswife's family was too shocking to be enjoyed even by his enemies.Archer's New York tolerated hypocrisy in private relations; but inbusiness matters it exacted a limpid and impeccable honesty. It was along time since any well-known banker had failed discreditably; butevery one remembered the social extinction visited on the heads of thefirm when the last event of the kind had happened. It would be thesame with the Beauforts, in spite of his power and her popularity; notall the leagued strength of the Dallas connection would save poorRegina if there were any truth in the reports of her husband's unlawfulspeculations.

  The talk took refuge in less ominous topics; but everything theytouched on seemed to confirm Mrs. Archer's sense of an acceleratedtrend.

  "Of course, Newland, I know you let dear May go to Mrs. Struthers'sSunday evenings--" she began; and May interposed gaily: "Oh, you know,everybody goes to Mrs. Struthers's now; and she was invited to Granny'slast reception."

  It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York managed its transitions:conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in allgood faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age.There was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generallyshe) had surrendered the keys, what was the use of pretending that itwas impregnable? Once people had tasted of Mrs. Struthers's easySunday hospitality they were not likely to sit at home remembering thather champagne was transmuted Shoe-Polish.

  "I know, dear, I know," Mrs. Archer sighed. "Such things have to be, Isuppose, as long as AMUSEMENT is what people go out for; but I've neverquite forgiven your cousin Madame Olenska for being the first person tocountenance Mrs. Struthers."

  A sudden blush rose to young Mrs. Archer's face; it surprised herhusband as much as the other guests about the table. "Oh, ELLEN--" shemurmured, much in the same accusing and yet deprecating tone in whichher parents might have said: "Oh, THE BLENKERS--."

  It was the note which the family had taken to sounding on the mentionof the Countess Olenska's name, since she had surprised andinconvenienced them by remaining obdurate to her husband's advances;but on May's lips it gave food for thought, and Archer looked at herwith the sense of strangeness that sometimes came over him when she wasmost in the tone of her environment.

  His mother, with less than her usual sensitiveness to atmosphere, stillinsisted: "I've always thought that people like the Countess Olenska,who have lived in aristocratic societies, ought to help us to keep upour social distinctions, instead of ignoring them."

  May's blush remained permanently vivid: it seemed to have asignificance beyond that implied by the recognition of Madame Olenska'ssocial bad faith.

  "I've no doubt we all seem alike to foreigners," said Miss Jacksontartly.

  "I don't think Ellen cares for society; but nobody knows exactly what
she does care for," May continued, as if she had been groping forsomething noncommittal.

  "Ah, well--" Mrs. Archer sighed again.

  Everybody knew that the Countess Olenska was no longer in the goodgraces of her family. Even her devoted champion, old Mrs. MansonMingott, had been unable to defend her refusal to return to herhusband. The Mingotts had not proclaimed their disapproval aloud:their sense of solidarity was too strong. They had simply, as Mrs.Welland said, "let poor Ellen find her own level"--and that,mortifyingly and incomprehensibly, was in the dim depths where theBlenkers prevailed, and "people who wrote" celebrated their untidyrites. It was incredible, but it was a fact, that Ellen, in spite ofall her opportunities and her privileges, had become simply "Bohemian."The fact enforced the contention that she had made a fatal mistake innot returning to Count Olenski. After all, a young woman's place wasunder her husband's roof, especially when she had left it incircumstances that ... well ... if one had cared to look into them ...

  "Madame Olenska is a great favourite with the gentlemen," said MissSophy, with her air of wishing to put forth something conciliatory whenshe knew that she was planting a dart.

  "Ah, that's the danger that a young woman like Madame Olenska is alwaysexposed to," Mrs. Archer mournfully agreed; and the ladies, on thisconclusion, gathered up their trains to seek the carcel globes of thedrawing-room, while Archer and Mr. Sillerton Jackson withdrew to theGothic library.

  Once established before the grate, and consoling himself for theinadequacy of the dinner by the perfection of his cigar, Mr. Jacksonbecame portentous and communicable.

  "If the Beaufort smash comes," he announced, "there are going to bedisclosures."

  Archer raised his head quickly: he could never hear the name withoutthe sharp vision of Beaufort's heavy figure, opulently furred and shod,advancing through the snow at Skuytercliff.

  "There's bound to be," Mr. Jackson continued, "the nastiest kind of acleaning up. He hasn't spent all his money on Regina."

  "Oh, well--that's discounted, isn't it? My belief is he'll pull outyet," said the young man, wanting to change the subject.

  "Perhaps--perhaps. I know he was to see some of the influential peopletoday. Of course," Mr. Jackson reluctantly conceded, "it's to be hopedthey can tide him over--this time anyhow. I shouldn't like to think ofpoor Regina's spending the rest of her life in some shabby foreignwatering-place for bankrupts."

  Archer said nothing. It seemed to him so natural--however tragic--thatmoney ill-gotten should be cruelly expiated, that his mind, hardlylingering over Mrs. Beaufort's doom, wandered back to closer questions.What was the meaning of May's blush when the Countess Olenska had beenmentioned?

  Four months had passed since the midsummer day that he and MadameOlenska had spent together; and since then he had not seen her. Heknew that she had returned to Washington, to the little house which sheand Medora Manson had taken there: he had written to her once--a fewwords, asking when they were to meet again--and she had even morebriefly replied: "Not yet."

  Since then there had been no farther communication between them, and hehad built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she thronedamong his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became thescene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither hebrought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him,his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actuallife, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency,blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of viewas an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his ownroom. Absent--that was what he was: so absent from everything mostdensely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled himto find they still imagined he was there.

  He became aware that Mr. Jackson was clearing his throat preparatory tofarther revelations.

  "I don't know, of course, how far your wife's family are aware of whatpeople say about--well, about Madame Olenska's refusal to accept herhusband's latest offer."

  Archer was silent, and Mr. Jackson obliquely continued: "It's apity--it's certainly a pity--that she refused it."

  "A pity? In God's name, why?"

  Mr. Jackson looked down his leg to the unwrinkled sock that joined itto a glossy pump.

  "Well--to put it on the lowest ground--what's she going to live on now?"

  "Now--?"

  "If Beaufort--"

  Archer sprang up, his fist banging down on the black walnut-edge of thewriting-table. The wells of the brass double-inkstand danced in theirsockets.

  "What the devil do you mean, sir?"

  Mr. Jackson, shifting himself slightly in his chair, turned a tranquilgaze on the young man's burning face.

  "Well--I have it on pretty good authority--in fact, on old Catherine'sherself--that the family reduced Countess Olenska's allowanceconsiderably when she definitely refused to go back to her husband; andas, by this refusal, she also forfeits the money settled on her whenshe married--which Olenski was ready to make over to her if shereturned--why, what the devil do YOU mean, my dear boy, by asking mewhat I mean?" Mr. Jackson good-humouredly retorted.

  Archer moved toward the mantelpiece and bent over to knock his ashesinto the grate.

  "I don't know anything of Madame Olenska's private affairs; but I don'tneed to, to be certain that what you insinuate--"

  "Oh, I don't: it's Lefferts, for one," Mr. Jackson interposed.

  "Lefferts--who made love to her and got snubbed for it!" Archer brokeout contemptuously.

  "Ah--DID he?" snapped the other, as if this were exactly the fact hehad been laying a trap for. He still sat sideways from the fire, sothat his hard old gaze held Archer's face as if in a spring of steel.

  "Well, well: it's a pity she didn't go back before Beaufort's cropper,"he repeated. "If she goes NOW, and if he fails, it will only confirmthe general impression: which isn't by any means peculiar to Lefferts,by the way."

  "Oh, she won't go back now: less than ever!" Archer had no sooner saidit than he had once more the feeling that it was exactly what Mr.Jackson had been waiting for.

  The old gentleman considered him attentively. "That's your opinion,eh? Well, no doubt you know. But everybody will tell you that the fewpennies Medora Manson has left are all in Beaufort's hands; and how thetwo women are to keep their heads above water unless he does, I can'timagine. Of course, Madame Olenska may still soften old Catherine,who's been the most inexorably opposed to her staying; and oldCatherine could make her any allowance she chooses. But we all knowthat she hates parting with good money; and the rest of the family haveno particular interest in keeping Madame Olenska here."

  Archer was burning with unavailing wrath: he was exactly in the statewhen a man is sure to do something stupid, knowing all the while thathe is doing it.

  He saw that Mr. Jackson had been instantly struck by the fact thatMadame Olenska's differences with her grandmother and her otherrelations were not known to him, and that the old gentleman had drawnhis own conclusions as to the reasons for Archer's exclusion from thefamily councils. This fact warned Archer to go warily; but theinsinuations about Beaufort made him reckless. He was mindful,however, if not of his own danger, at least of the fact that Mr.Jackson was under his mother's roof, and consequently his guest. OldNew York scrupulously observed the etiquette of hospitality, and nodiscussion with a guest was ever allowed to degenerate into adisagreement.

  "Shall we go up and join my mother?" he suggested curtly, as Mr.Jackson's last cone of ashes dropped into the brass ashtray at hiselbow.

  On the drive homeward May remained oddly silent; through the darkness,he still felt her enveloped in her menacing blush. What its menacemeant he could not guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the factthat Madame Olenska's name had evoked it.

  They went upstairs, and he turned into the library. She usuallyfollowed him; but he heard her passing down the passage to her bedroom.

  "May!" he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a
slightglance of surprise at his tone.

  "This lamp is smoking again; I should think the servants might see thatit's kept properly trimmed," he grumbled nervously.

  "I'm so sorry: it shan't happen again," she answered, in the firmbright tone she had learned from her mother; and it exasperated Archerto 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 upon 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 goon!"

  He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the boundingblood in his veins. "Look here," he said suddenly, "I may have to goto 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 itpaled as she looked up.

  "On business?" she asked, in a tone which implied that there could beno other conceivable reason, and that she had put the questionautomatically, as if merely to finish his own sentence.

  "On business, naturally. There's a patent case coming up before theSupreme Court--" He gave the name of the inventor, and went onfurnishing 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 himstraight in the eyes with her cloudless smile, and speaking in the toneshe might have employed in urging him not to neglect some irksomefamily duty.

  It was the only word that passed between them on the subject; but inthe code in which they had both been trained it meant: "Of course youunderstand that I know all that people have been saying about Ellen,and heartily sympathise with my family in their effort to get her toreturn to her husband. I also know that, for some reason you have notchosen to tell me, you have advised her against this course, which allthe older men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree inapproving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Ellen defiesus all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which Mr.Sillerton Jackson probably gave you, this evening, the hint that hasmade you so irritable.... Hints have indeed not been wanting; butsince you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you thisone myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind cancommunicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understandthat I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in Washington, and areperhaps going there expressly for that purpose; and that, since you aresure to see her, I wish you to do so with my full and explicitapproval--and to take the opportunity of letting her know what thecourse 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 thismute message reached him. She turned the wick down, lifted off theglobe, and breathed on the sulky flame.

  "They smell less if one blows them out," she explained, with her brighthousekeeping air. On the threshold she turned and paused for his kiss.