Archer's heart was beating violently when he rang old Mrs. Mingott's
bell. He had wanted above all things to go alone, for he felt sure the
visit would give him the chance of saying a word in private to the
Countess Olenska. He had determined to wait till the chance presented
itself naturally; and here it was, and here he was on the doorstep.
Behind the door, behind the curtains of the yellow damask room next to
the hall, she was surely awaiting him; in another moment he should see
her, and be able to speak to her before she led him to the sick-room.
He wanted only to put one question: after that his course would be
clear. What he wished to ask was simply the date of her return to
Washington; and that question she could hardly refuse to answer.
But in the yellow sitting-room it was the mulatto maid who waited. Her
white teeth shining like a keyboard, she pushed back the sliding doors
and ushered him into old Catherine's presence.
The old woman sat in a vast throne-like arm-chair near her bed. Beside
her was a mahogany stand bearing a cast bronze lamp with an engraved
globe, over which a green paper shade had been balanced. There was
not a book or a newspaper in reach, nor any evidence of feminine
employment: conversation had always been Mrs. Mingott's sole pursuit,
and she would have scorned to feign an interest in fancywork.
Archer saw no trace of the slight distortion left by her stroke. She
merely looked paler, with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of
her obesity; and, in the fluted mob-cap tied by a starched bow between
her first two chins, and the muslin kerchief crossed over her billowing
purple dressing-gown, she seemed like some shrewd and kindly ancestress
of her own who might have yielded too freely to the pleasures of the
table.
She held out one of the little hands that nestled in a hollow of her
huge lap like pet animals, and called to the maid: "Don't let in any
one else. If my daughters call, say I'm asleep."
The maid disappeared, and the old lady turned to her grandson.
"My dear, am I perfectly hideous?" she asked gaily, launching out one
hand in search of the folds of muslin on her inaccessible bosom. "My
daughters tell me it doesn't matter at my age--as if hideousness didn't
matter all the more the harder it gets to conceal!"
"My dear, you're handsomer than ever!" Archer rejoined in the same
tone; and she threw back her head and laughed.
"Ah, but not as handsome as Ellen!" she jerked out, twinkling at him
maliciously; and before he could answer she added: "Was she so awfully
handsome the day you drove her up from the ferry?"
He laughed, and she continued: "Was it because you told her so that
she had to put you out on the way? In my youth young men didn't desert
pretty women unless they were made to!" She gave another chuckle, and
interrupted it to say almost querulously: "It's a pity she didn't marry
you; I always told her so. It would have spared me all this worry. But
who ever thought of sparing their grandmother worry?"
Archer wondered if her illness had blurred her faculties; but suddenly
she broke out: "Well, it's settled, anyhow: she's going to stay with
me, whatever the rest of the family say! She hadn't been here five
minutes before I'd have gone down on my knees to keep her--if only, for
the last twenty years, I'd been able to see where the floor was!"
Archer listened in silence, and she went on: "They'd talked me over, as
no doubt you know: persuaded me, Lovell, and Letterblair, and Augusta
Welland, and all the rest of them, that I must hold out and cut off her
allowance, till she was made to see that it was her duty to go back
to Olenski. They thought they'd convinced me when the secretary, or
whatever he was, came out with the last proposals: handsome proposals
I confess they were. After all, marriage is marriage, and money's
money--both useful things in their way ... and I didn't know what to
answer--" She broke off and drew a long breath, as if speaking had
become an effort. "But the minute I laid eyes on her, I said: 'You
sweet bird, you! Shut you up in that cage again? Never!' And now it's
settled that she's to stay here and nurse her Granny as long as there's
a Granny to nurse. It's not a gay prospect, but she doesn't mind; and
of course I've told Letterblair that she's to be given her proper
allowance."
The young man heard her with veins aglow; but in his confusion of
mind he hardly knew whether her news brought joy or pain. He had so
definitely decided on the course he meant to pursue that for the moment
he could not readjust his thoughts. But gradually there stole over
him the delicious sense of difficulties deferred and opportunities
miraculously provided. If Ellen had consented to come and live with
her grandmother it must surely be because she had recognised the
impossibility of giving him up. This was her answer to his final
appeal of the other day: if she would not take the extreme step he had
urged, she had at last yielded to half-measures. He sank back into the
thought with the involuntary relief of a man who has been ready to risk
everything, and suddenly tastes the dangerous sweetness of security.
"She couldn't have gone back--it was impossible!" he exclaimed.
"Ah, my dear, I always knew you were on her side; and that's why I sent
for you today, and why I said to your pretty wife, when she proposed
to come with you: 'No, my dear, I'm pining to see Newland, and I don't
want anybody to share our transports.' For you see, my dear--" she drew
her head back as far as its tethering chins permitted, and looked him
full in the eyes--"you see, we shall have a fight yet. The family don't
want her here, and they'll say it's because I've been ill, because I'm
a weak old woman, that she's persuaded me. I'm not well enough yet to
fight them one by one, and you've got to do it for me."
"I?" he stammered.
"You. Why not?" she jerked back at him, her round eyes suddenly as
sharp as pen-knives. Her hand fluttered from its chair-arm and lit on
his with a clutch of little pale nails like bird-claws. "Why not?" she
searchingly repeated.
Archer, under the exposure of her gaze, had recovered his
self-possession.
"Oh, I don't count--I'm too insignificant."
"Well, you're Letterblair's partner, ain't you? You've got to get at
them through Letterblair. Unless you've got a reason," she insisted.
"Oh, my dear, I back you to hold your own against them all without my
help; but you shall have it if you need it," he reassured her.
"Then we're safe!" she sighed; and smiling on him with all her ancient
cunning she added, as she settled her head among the cushions: "I
always knew you'd back us up, because they never quote you when they
talk about its being her duty to go home."
He winced a little at her terrifying perspicacity, and longed to ask:
"And May--do they quote her?" But he judged it safer to turn the
question.
"And Madame Olenska? When am I to see her?" he said.
The old lady chuckled, crumpled her lids, and went through the
pantomime of archness. "Not today. One at a time, please. Madame
Olenska's gone out."
He flushed with disappointment, and she went on: "She's gone out, my
child: gone in my carriage to see Regina Beaufort."
She paused for this announcement to produce its effect. "That's what
she's reduced me to already. The day after she got here she put on her
best bonnet, and told me, as cool as a cucumber, that she was going to
call on Regina Beaufort. 'I don't know her; who is she?' says I. 'She's
your grand-niece, and a most unhappy woman,' she says. 'She's the wife
of a scoundrel,' I answered. 'Well,' she says, 'and so am I, and yet
all my family want me to go back to him.' Well, that floored me, and I
let her go; and finally one day she said it was raining too hard to go
out on foot, and she wanted me to lend her my carriage. 'What for?' I
asked her; and she said: 'To go and see cousin Regina'--_cousin_! Now,
my dear, I looked out of the window, and saw it wasn't raining a drop;
but I understood her, and I let her have the carriage.... After all,
Regina's a brave woman, and so is she; and I've always liked courage
above everything."
Archer bent down and pressed his lips on the little hand that still lay
on his.
"Eh--eh--eh! Whose hand did you think you were kissing, young man--your
wife's, I hope?" the old lady snapped out with her mocking cackle; and
as he rose to go she called out after him: "Give her her Granny's love;
but you'd better not say anything about our talk."
XXXI.
Archer had been stunned by old Catherine's news. It was only natural
that Madame Olenska should have hastened from Washington in response to
her grandmother's summons; but that she should have decided to remain
under her roof--especially now that Mrs. Mingott had almost regained
her health--was less easy to explain.
Archer was sure that Madame Olenska's decision had not been influenced
by the change in her financial situation. He knew the exact figure of
the small income which her husband had allowed her at their separation.
Without the addition of her grandmother's allowance it was hardly
enough to live on, in any sense known to the Mingott vocabulary; and
now that Medora Manson, who shared her life, had been ruined, such a
pittance would barely keep the two women clothed and fed. Yet Archer
was convinced that Madame Olenska had not accepted her grandmother's
offer from interested motives.
She had the heedless generosity and the spasmodic extravagance of
persons used to large fortunes, and indifferent to money; but she could
go without many things which her relations considered indispensable,
and Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Welland had often been heard to
deplore that any one who had enjoyed the cosmopolitan luxuries of Count
Olenski's establishments should care so little about "how things were
done." Moreover, as Archer knew, several months had passed since her
allowance had been cut off; yet in the interval she had made no effort
to regain her grandmother's favour. Therefore if she had changed her
course it must be for a different reason.
He did not have far to seek for that reason. On the way from the ferry
she had told him that he and she must remain apart; but she had said
it with her head on his breast. He knew that there was no calculated
coquetry in her words; she was fighting her fate as he had fought his,
and clinging desperately to her resolve that they should not break
faith with the people who trusted them. But during the ten days which
had elapsed since her return to New York she had perhaps guessed from
his 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 no
turning back. At the thought, a sudden fear of her own weakness might
have seized her, and she might have felt that, after all, it was better
to accept the compromise usual in such cases, and follow the line of
least resistance.
An hour earlier, when he had rung Mrs. Mingott's bell, Archer had
fancied that his path was clear before him. He had meant to have a
word alone with Madame Olenska, and failing that, to learn from her
grandmother on what day, and by which train, she was returning to
Washington. In that train he intended to join her, and travel with her
to Washington, or as much farther as she was willing to go. His own
fancy inclined to Japan. At any rate she would understand at once that,
wherever she went, he was going. He meant to leave a note for May that
should cut off any other alternative.
He had fancied himself not only nerved for this plunge but eager to
take it; yet his first feeling on hearing that the course of events
was changed had been one of relief. Now, however, as he walked home
from Mrs. Mingott's, he was conscious of a growing distaste for what
lay before him. There was nothing unknown or unfamiliar in the path he
was presumably to tread; but when he had trodden it before it was as
a free man, who was accountable to no one for his actions, and could
lend himself with an amused detachment to the game of precautions and
prevarications, concealments and compliances, that the part required.
This procedure was called "protecting a woman's honour"; and the best
fiction, combined with the after-dinner talk of his elders, had long
since initiated him into every detail of its code.
Now he saw the matter in a new light, and his part in it seemed
singularly diminished. It was, in fact, that which, with a secret
fatuity, he had watched Mrs. Thorley Rushworth play toward a fond and
unperceiving husband: a smiling, bantering, humouring, watchful and
incessant lie. A lie by day, a lie by night, a lie in every touch and
every look; a lie in every caress and every quarrel; a lie in every
word and in every silence.
It was easier, and less dastardly on the whole, for a wife to play
such a part toward her husband. A woman's standard of truthfulness was
tacitly held to be lower: she was the subject creature, and versed in
the arts of the enslaved. Then she could always plead moods and nerves,
and the right not to be held too strictly to account; and even in the
most strait-laced societies the laugh was always against the husband.
But in Archer's little world no one laughed at a wife deceived, and a
certain measure of contempt was attached to men who continued their
philandering after marriage. In the rotation of crops there was a
recognised season for wild oats; but they were not to be sown more than
once.
Archer had always shared this view: in his heart he thought Lefferts
despicable. But to love Ellen Olenska was not to become a man like
Lefferts: for the first time Archer found himself face to face with the
dread argument of the individual case. Ellen Olenska was like no other
woman, he was like no other man: their situation, therefore, resembled
no one else's, and they were answerable to no tribunal but that of
their own judgment.
Yes, but in ten minutes more he would be mounting his own doorstep; and
there were May, and habit, and honour, and all the old decencies that
he 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 he
drew near he thought how often he had seen it blazing with lights, its
steps awninged and carpeted, and carriages waiting in double line to
draw up at the curbstone. It was in the conservatory that stretched its
dead-black bulk down the side street that he had taken his first kiss
from May; it was under the myriad candles of the ball-room that he had
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 gas
in the basement, and a light in one upstairs room where the blind had
not been lowered. As Archer reached the corner he saw that the carriage
standing at the door was Mrs. Manson Mingott's. What an opportunity
for Sillerton Jackson, if he should chance to pass! Archer had been
greatly moved by old Catherine's account of Madame Olenska's attitude
toward Mrs. Beaufort; it made the righteous reprobation of New York
seem like a passing by on the other side. But he knew well enough what
construction the clubs and drawing-rooms would put on Ellen Olenska's
visits to her cousin.
He paused and looked up at the lighted window. No doubt the two women
were sitting together in that room: Beaufort had probably sought
consolation elsewhere. There were even rumours that he had left New
York with Fanny Ring; but Mrs. Beaufort's attitude made the report seem
improbable.
Archer had the nocturnal perspective of Fifth Avenue almost to himself.
At that hour most people were indoors, dressing for dinner; and he was
secretly glad that Ellen's exit was likely to be unobserved. As the
thought passed through his mind the door opened, and she came out.
Behind her was a faint light, such as might have been carried down the
stairs to show her the way. She turned to say a word to some one; then
the 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
of fashionable cut approaching. There was a familiar air about their
overcoats and the way their smart silk mufflers were folded over their
white ties; and he wondered how youths of their quality happened to
be dining out so early. Then he remembered that the Reggie Chiverses,
whose house was a few doors above, were taking a large party that
evening to see Adelaide Neilson in Romeo and Juliet, and guessed that
the two were of the number. They passed under a lamp, and he recognised
Lawrence Lefferts and a young Chivers.
A mean desire not to have Madame Olenska seen at the Beauforts' door
vanished as he felt the penetrating warmth of her hand.
"I shall see you now--we shall be together," he broke out, hardly
knowing what he said.
"Ah," she answered, "Granny has told you?"
While he watched her he was aware that Lefferts and Chivers, on
reaching the farther side of the street corner, had discreetly struck
away across Fifth Avenue. It was the kind of masculine solidarity that
he himself often practised; now he sickened at their connivance. Did
she 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, in
a 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 if
conscious 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 looked
puzzled. "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 hand
in the obscurity. He stared after her in a turmoil of contradictory
feelings. It seemed to him that he had been speaking not to the woman
he loved but to another, a woman he was indebted to for pleasures
already wearied of: it was hateful to find himself the prisoner of this
hackneyed vocabulary.
"She'll come!" he said to himself, almost contemptuously.
Avoiding the popular "Wolfe collection," whose anecdotic canvases
filled one of the main galleries of the queer wilderness of cast-iron
and encaustic tiles known as the Metropolitan Museum, they had wandered
down a passage to the room where the "Cesnola antiquities" mouldered in
unvisited loneliness.
They had this melancholy retreat to themselves, and seated on the divan
enclosing the central steam-radiator, they were staring silently at the
glass cabinets mounted in ebonised wood which contained the recovered
fragments 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 its
heavy furs, the cleverly planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the way
a dark curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above the
ear. His mind, as always when they first met, was wholly absorbed in
the delicious details that made her herself and no other. Presently he
rose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves
were crowded with small broken objects--hardly recognisable domestic
utensils, ornaments and personal trifles--made of glass, of clay, of
discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.
"It seems cruel," she said, "that after a while nothing matters ... any
more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important
to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying
glass and labelled: 'Use unknown.'"
"Yes; but meanwhile--"
"Ah, meanwhile--"
As she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her hands thrust in a
small round muff, her veil drawn down like a transparent mask to the
tip of her nose, and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirring
with her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that this pure
harmony 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 sat
down beside her and waited; but suddenly he heard a step echoing far
off 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 received
the same warning.
"What I wanted to tell you?" he rejoined. "Why, that I believe you came
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 long
questioning sigh.
"Better--?"
"We shall hurt others less. Isn't it, after all, what you always
wanted?"
"To have you here, you mean--in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you
in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want. I told
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; but the
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 is it,
in God's name, that you think better?"
She hung her head and continued to clasp and unclasp her hands in her
muff. The step drew nearer, and a guardian in a braided cap walked
listlessly through the room like a ghost stalking through a necropolis.
They fixed their eyes simultaneously on the case opposite them, and
when the official figure had vanished down a vista of mummies and
sarcophagi Archer spoke again.
"What do you think better?"
Instead of answering she murmured: "I promised Granny to stay with her
because it seemed to me that here I should be safer."
