The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton

  XXXI.

  Archer had been stunned by old Catherine's news. It was only naturalthat Madame Olenska should have hastened from Washington in response toher grandmother's summons; but that she should have decided to remainunder her roof--especially now that Mrs. Mingott had almost regainedher health--was less easy to explain.

  Archer was sure that Madame Olenska's decision had not been influencedby the change in her financial situation. He knew the exact figure ofthe small income which her husband had allowed her at their separation.Without the addition of her grandmother's allowance it was hardlyenough to live on, in any sense known to the Mingott vocabulary; andnow that Medora Manson, who shared her life, had been ruined, such apittance would barely keep the two women clothed and fed. Yet Archerwas convinced that Madame Olenska had not accepted her grandmother'soffer from interested motives.

  She had the heedless generosity and the spasmodic extravagance ofpersons used to large fortunes, and indifferent to money; but she couldgo without many things which her relations considered indispensable,and Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Welland had often been heard todeplore that any one who had enjoyed the cosmopolitan luxuries of CountOlenski's establishments should care so little about "how things weredone." Moreover, as Archer knew, several months had passed since herallowance had been cut off; yet in the interval she had made no effortto regain her grandmother's favour. Therefore if she had changed hercourse it must be for a different reason.

  He did not have far to seek for that reason. On the way from the ferryshe had told him that he and she must remain apart; but she had said itwith her head on his breast. He knew that there was no calculatedcoquetry in her words; she was fighting her fate as he had fought his,and clinging desperately to her resolve that they should not breakfaith with the people who trusted them. But during the ten days whichhad elapsed since her return to New York she had perhaps guessed fromhis silence, and from the fact of his making no attempt to see her,that he was meditating a decisive step, a step from which there was noturning back. At the thought, a sudden fear of her own weakness mighthave seized her, and she might have felt that, after all, it was betterto accept the compromise usual in such cases, and follow the line ofleast resistance.

  An hour earlier, when he had rung Mrs. Mingott's bell, Archer hadfancied that his path was clear before him. He had meant to have aword alone with Madame Olenska, and failing that, to learn from hergrandmother on what day, and by which train, she was returning toWashington. In that train he intended to join her, and travel with herto Washington, or as much farther as she was willing to go. His ownfancy inclined to Japan. At any rate she would understand at oncethat, wherever she went, he was going. He meant to leave a note forMay that should cut off any other alternative.

  He had fancied himself not only nerved for this plunge but eager totake it; yet his first feeling on hearing that the course of events waschanged had been one of relief. Now, however, as he walked home fromMrs. Mingott's, he was conscious of a growing distaste for what laybefore him. There was nothing unknown or unfamiliar in the path he waspresumably to tread; but when he had trodden it before it was as a freeman, who was accountable to no one for his actions, and could lendhimself with an amused detachment to the game of precautions andprevarications, concealments and compliances, that the part required.This procedure was called "protecting a woman's honour"; and the bestfiction, combined with the after-dinner talk of his elders, had longsince initiated him into every detail of its code.

  Now he saw the matter in a new light, and his part in it seemedsingularly diminished. It was, in fact, that which, with a secretfatuity, he had watched Mrs. Thorley Rushworth play toward a fond andunperceiving husband: a smiling, bantering, humouring, watchful andincessant lie. A lie by day, a lie by night, a lie in every touch andevery look; a lie in every caress and every quarrel; a lie in everyword and in every silence.

  It was easier, and less dastardly on the whole, for a wife to play sucha part toward her husband. A woman's standard of truthfulness wastacitly held to be lower: she was the subject creature, and versed inthe arts of the enslaved. Then she could always plead moods andnerves, and the right not to be held too strictly to account; and evenin the most strait-laced societies the laugh was always against thehusband.

  But in Archer's little world no one laughed at a wife deceived, and acertain measure of contempt was attached to men who continued theirphilandering after marriage. In the rotation of crops there was arecognised season for wild oats; but they were not to be sown more thanonce.

  Archer had always shared this view: in his heart he thought Leffertsdespicable. But to love Ellen Olenska was not to become a man likeLefferts: for the first time Archer found himself face to face with thedread argument of the individual case. Ellen Olenska was like no otherwoman, he was like no other man: their situation, therefore, resembledno one else's, and they were answerable to no tribunal but that oftheir own judgment.

  Yes, but in ten minutes more he would be mounting his own doorstep; andthere were May, and habit, and honour, and all the old decencies thathe and his people had always believed in ...

  At his corner he hesitated, and then walked on down Fifth Avenue.

  Ahead of him, in the winter night, loomed a big unlit house. As hedrew near he thought how often he had seen it blazing with lights, itssteps awninged and carpeted, and carriages waiting in double line todraw up at the curbstone. It was in the conservatory that stretchedits dead-black bulk down the side street that he had taken his firstkiss from May; it was under the myriad candles of the ball-room that hehad seen her appear, tall and silver-shining as a young Diana.

  Now the house was as dark as the grave, except for a faint flare of gasin the basement, and a light in one upstairs room where the blind hadnot been lowered. As Archer reached the corner he saw that thecarriage standing at the door was Mrs. Manson Mingott's. What anopportunity for Sillerton Jackson, if he should chance to pass! Archerhad been greatly moved by old Catherine's account of Madame Olenska'sattitude toward Mrs. Beaufort; it made the righteous reprobation of NewYork seem like a passing by on the other side. But he knew well enoughwhat construction the clubs and drawing-rooms would put on EllenOlenska's visits to her cousin.

  He paused and looked up at the lighted window. No doubt the two womenwere sitting together in that room: Beaufort had probably soughtconsolation elsewhere. There were even rumours that he had left NewYork with Fanny Ring; but Mrs. Beaufort's attitude made the report seemimprobable.

  Archer had the nocturnal perspective of Fifth Avenue almost to himself.At that hour most people were indoors, dressing for dinner; and he wassecretly glad that Ellen's exit was likely to be unobserved. As thethought passed through his mind the door opened, and she came out.Behind her was a faint light, such as might have been carried down thestairs to show her the way. She turned to say a word to some one; thenthe door closed, and she came down the steps.

  "Ellen," he said in a low voice, as she reached the pavement.

  She stopped with a slight start, and just then he saw two young men offashionable cut approaching. There was a familiar air about theirovercoats and the way their smart silk mufflers were folded over theirwhite ties; and he wondered how youths of their quality happened to bedining out so early. Then he remembered that the Reggie Chiverses,whose house was a few doors above, were taking a large party thatevening to see Adelaide Neilson in Romeo and Juliet, and guessed thatthe two were of the number. They passed under a lamp, and herecognised Lawrence Lefferts and a young Chivers.

  A mean desire not to have Madame Olenska seen at the Beauforts' doorvanished as he felt the penetrating warmth of her hand.

  "I shall see you now--we shall be together," he broke out, hardlyknowing what he said.

  "Ah," she answered, "Granny has told you?"

  While he watched her he was aware that Lefferts and Chivers, onreaching the farther side of the street corner, had discreetly struckaway across Fifth Avenue. It was the kind of masculine s
olidarity thathe himself often practised; now he sickened at their connivance. Didshe really imagine that he and she could live like this? And if not,what else did she imagine?

  "Tomorrow I must see you--somewhere where we can be alone," he said, ina voice that sounded almost angry to his own ears.

  She wavered, and moved toward the carriage.

  "But I shall be at Granny's--for the present that is," she added, as ifconscious that her change of plans required some explanation.

  "Somewhere where we can be alone," he insisted.

  She gave a faint laugh that grated on him.

  "In New York? But there are no churches ... no monuments."

  "There's the Art Museum--in the Park," he explained, as she lookedpuzzled. "At half-past two. I shall be at the door ..."

  She turned away without answering and got quickly into the carriage.As it drove off she leaned forward, and he thought she waved her handin the obscurity. He stared after her in a turmoil of contradictoryfeelings. It seemed to him that he had been speaking not to the womanhe loved but to another, a woman he was indebted to for pleasuresalready wearied of: it was hateful to find himself the prisoner of thishackneyed vocabulary.

  "She'll come!" he said to himself, almost contemptuously.

  Avoiding the popular "Wolfe collection," whose anecdotic canvasesfilled one of the main galleries of the queer wilderness of cast-ironand encaustic tiles known as the Metropolitan Museum, they had wandereddown a passage to the room where the "Cesnola antiquities" mouldered inunvisited loneliness.

  They had this melancholy retreat to themselves, and seated on the divanenclosing the central steam-radiator, they were staring silently at theglass cabinets mounted in ebonised wood which contained the recoveredfragments of Ilium.

  "It's odd," Madame Olenska said, "I never came here before."

  "Ah, well--. Some day, I suppose, it will be a great Museum."

  "Yes," she assented absently.

  She stood up and wandered across the room. Archer, remaining seated,watched the light movements of her figure, so girlish even under itsheavy furs, the cleverly planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the waya dark curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above theear. His mind, as always when they first met, was wholly absorbed inthe delicious details that made her herself and no other. Presently herose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelveswere crowded with small broken objects--hardly recognisable domesticutensils, ornaments and personal trifles--made of glass, of clay, ofdiscoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.

  "It seems cruel," she said, "that after a while nothing matters ... anymore than these little things, that used to be necessary and importantto forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifyingglass and labelled: 'Use unknown.'"

  "Yes; but meanwhile--"

  "Ah, meanwhile--"

  As she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her hands thrust in asmall round muff, her veil drawn down like a transparent mask to thetip of her nose, and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirringwith her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that this pureharmony of line and colour should ever suffer the stupid law of change.

  "Meanwhile everything matters--that concerns you," he said.

  She looked at him thoughtfully, and turned back to the divan. He satdown beside her and waited; but suddenly he heard a step echoing faroff down the empty rooms, and felt the pressure of the minutes.

  "What is it you wanted to tell me?" she asked, as if she had receivedthe same warning.

  "What I wanted to tell you?" he rejoined. "Why, that I believe youcame to New York because you were afraid."

  "Afraid?"

  "Of my coming to Washington."

  She looked down at her muff, and he saw her hands stir in it uneasily.

  "Well--?"

  "Well--yes," she said.

  "You WERE afraid? You knew--?"

  "Yes: I knew ..."

  "Well, then?" he insisted.

  "Well, then: this is better, isn't it?" she returned with a longquestioning sigh.

  "Better--?"

  "We shall hurt others less. Isn't it, after all, what you alwayswanted?"

  "To have you here, you mean--in reach and yet out of reach? To meetyou in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want. Itold you the other day what I wanted."

  She hesitated. "And you still think this--worse?"

  "A thousand times!" He paused. "It would be easy to lie to you; butthe truth is I think it detestable."

  "Oh, so do I!" she cried with a deep breath of relief.

  He sprang up impatiently. "Well, then--it's my turn to ask: what isit, in God's name, that you think better?"

  She hung her head and continued to clasp and unclasp her hands in hermuff. The step drew nearer, and a guardian in a braided cap walkedlistlessly through the room like a ghost stalking through a necropolis.They fixed their eyes simultaneously on the case opposite them, andwhen the official figure had vanished down a vista of mummies andsarcophagi Archer spoke again.

  "What do you think better?"

  Instead of answering she murmured: "I promised Granny to stay with herbecause it seemed to me that here I should be safer."

  "From me?"

  She bent her head slightly, without looking at him.

  "Safer from loving me?"

  Her profile did not stir, but he saw a tear overflow on her lashes andhang in a mesh of her veil.

  "Safer from doing irreparable harm. Don't let us be like all theothers!" she protested.

  "What others? I don't profess to be different from my kind. I'mconsumed by the same wants and the same longings."

  She glanced at him with a kind of terror, and he saw a faint coloursteal into her cheeks.

  "Shall I--once come to you; and then go home?" she suddenly hazarded ina low clear voice.

  The blood rushed to the young man's forehead. "Dearest!" he said,without moving. It seemed as if he held his heart in his hands, like afull cup that the least motion might overbrim.

  Then her last phrase struck his ear and his face clouded. "Go home?What do you mean by going home?"

  "Home to my husband."

  "And you expect me to say yes to that?"

  She raised her troubled eyes to his. "What else is there? I can'tstay here and lie to the people who've been good to me."

  "But that's the very reason why I ask you to come away!"

  "And destroy their lives, when they've helped me to remake mine?"

  Archer sprang to his feet and stood looking down on her in inarticulatedespair. It would have been easy to say: "Yes, come; come once." Heknew the power she would put in his hands if she consented; there wouldbe no difficulty then in persuading her not to go back to her husband.

  But something silenced the word on his lips. A sort of passionatehonesty in her made it inconceivable that he should try to draw herinto that familiar trap. "If I were to let her come," he said tohimself, "I should have to let her go again." And that was not to beimagined.

  But he saw the shadow of the lashes on her wet cheek, and wavered.

  "After all," he began again, "we have lives of our own.... There's nouse attempting the impossible. You're so unprejudiced about somethings, so used, as you say, to looking at the Gorgon, that I don'tknow why you're afraid to face our case, and see it as it reallyis--unless you think the sacrifice is not worth making."

  She stood up also, her lips tightening under a rapid frown.

  "Call it that, then--I must go," she said, drawing her little watchfrom her bosom.

  She turned away, and he followed and caught her by the wrist. "Well,then: come to me once," he said, his head turning suddenly at thethought of losing her; and for a second or two they looked at eachother almost like enemies.

  "When?" he insisted. "Tomorrow?"

  She hesitated. "The day after."

  "Dearest--!" he said again.

  She had disengaged her w
rist; but for a moment they continued to holdeach other's eyes, and he saw that her face, which had grown very pale,was flooded with a deep inner radiance. His heart beat with awe: hefelt that he had never before beheld love visible.

  "Oh, I shall be late--good-bye. No, don't come any farther than this,"she cried, walking hurriedly away down the long room, as if thereflected radiance in his eyes had frightened her. When she reachedthe door she turned for a moment to wave a quick farewell.

  Archer walked home alone. Darkness was falling when he let himselfinto his house, and he looked about at the familiar objects in the hallas if he viewed them from the other side of the grave.

  The parlour-maid, hearing his step, ran up the stairs to light the gason the upper landing.

  "Is Mrs. Archer in?"

  "No, sir; Mrs. Archer went out in the carriage after luncheon, andhasn't come back."

  With a sense of relief he entered the library and flung himself down inhis armchair. The parlour-maid followed, bringing the student lamp andshaking some coals onto the dying fire. When she left he continued tosit motionless, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his clasped hands,his eyes fixed on the red grate.

  He sat there without conscious thoughts, without sense of the lapse oftime, in a deep and grave amazement that seemed to suspend life ratherthan quicken it. "This was what had to be, then ... this was what hadto be," he kept repeating to himself, as if he hung in the clutch ofdoom. What he had dreamed of had been so different that there was amortal chill in his rapture.

  The door opened and May came in.

  "I'm dreadfully late--you weren't worried, were you?" she asked, layingher hand on his shoulder with one of her rare caresses.

  He looked up astonished. "Is it late?"

  "After seven. I believe you've been asleep!" She laughed, and drawingout her hat pins tossed her velvet hat on the sofa. She looked palerthan usual, but sparkling with an unwonted animation.

  "I went to see Granny, and just as I was going away Ellen came in froma walk; so I stayed and had a long talk with her. It was ages sincewe'd had a real talk...." She had dropped into her usual armchair,facing his, and was running her fingers through her rumpled hair. Hefancied she expected him to speak.

  "A really good talk," she went on, smiling with what seemed to Archeran unnatural vividness. "She was so dear--just like the old Ellen.I'm afraid I haven't been fair to her lately. I've sometimes thought--"

  Archer stood up and leaned against the mantelpiece, out of the radiusof the lamp.

  "Yes, you've thought--?" he echoed as she paused.

  "Well, perhaps I haven't judged her fairly. She's so different--atleast on the surface. She takes up such odd people--she seems to liketo make herself conspicuous. I suppose it's the life she's led in thatfast European society; no doubt we seem dreadfully dull to her. But Idon't want to judge her unfairly."

  She paused again, a little breathless with the unwonted length of herspeech, and sat with her lips slightly parted and a deep blush on hercheeks.

  Archer, as he looked at her, was reminded of the glow which hadsuffused her face in the Mission Garden at St. Augustine. He becameaware of the same obscure effort in her, the same reaching out towardsomething beyond the usual range of her vision.

  "She hates Ellen," he thought, "and she's trying to overcome thefeeling, and to get me to help her to overcome it."

  The thought moved him, and for a moment he was on the point of breakingthe silence between them, and throwing himself on her mercy.

  "You understand, don't you," she went on, "why the family havesometimes been annoyed? We all did what we could for her at first; butshe never seemed to understand. And now this idea of going to see Mrs.Beaufort, of going there in Granny's carriage! I'm afraid she's quitealienated the van der Luydens ..."

  "Ah," said Archer with an impatient laugh. The open door had closedbetween them again.

  "It's time to dress; we're dining out, aren't we?" he asked, movingfrom the fire.

  She rose also, but lingered near the hearth. As he walked past her shemoved forward impulsively, as though to detain him: their eyes met, andhe saw that hers were of the same swimming blue as when he had left herto drive to Jersey City.

  She flung her arms about his neck and pressed her cheek to his.

  "You haven't kissed me today," she said in a whisper; and he felt hertremble in his arms.