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Packed
in the family landau they rolled from one tribal doorstep to another, and
Archer, when the afternoon's round was over, parted from his betrothed with
the feeling that he had been shown off like a wild animal cunningly trapped.
He supposed that his readings in anthropology caused him to take such
a coarse view of what was after all a simple and natural demonstration of
family feeling; but when he remembered that the Wellands did not expect the
wedding to take place till the following autumn, and pictured what his life
would be till then, a dampness fell upon his spirit.
"Tomorrow,"
Mrs. Welland called after him, "we'll do the Chiverses and the Dallases";
and he perceived that she was going through their two families
alphabetically, and that they were only in the first quarter of the
alphabet.
He
had meant to tell May of the Countess Olenska's request--her command,
rather--that he should call on her that afternoon; but in the brief moments
when they were alone he had had more pressing things to say. Besides, it
struck him as a little absurd to allude to the matter.
He knew that May most particularly wanted him to be kind to her
cousin; was it not that wish which had hastened the announcement of their
engagement? It gave him an odd sensation to reflect that, but for the
Countess's arrival, he might have been, if not still a free man, at least a
man less irrevocably pledged. But May had willed it so, and he felt himself
somehow relieved of further responsibility--and therefore at liberty, if he
chose, to call on her cousin without telling her.
As
he stood on Madame Olenska's threshold curiosity was his uppermost feeling.
He was puzzled by the tone in which she had summoned him; he
concluded that she was less simple than she seemed.
The
door was opened by a swarthy foreign-looking maid, with a prominent bosom
under a gay neckerchief, whom he vaguely fancied to be Sicilian.
She welcomed him with all her white teeth, and answering his
enquiries by a head-shake of incomprehension led him through the narrow hall
into a low firelit drawing- room. The room was empty, and she left him, for an appreciable
time, to wonder whether she had gone to find her mistress, or whether she
had not understood what he was there for, and thought it might be to wind
the clock--of which he perceived that the only visible specimen had stopped.
He knew that the southern races communicated with each other in the
language of pantomime, and was mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so
unintelligible. At length she
returned with a lamp; and Archer, having meanwhile put together a phrase out
of Dante and Petrarch, evoked the answer: "La signora e fuori; ma verra
subito"; which he took to mean: "She's
out--but you'll soon see."
What
he saw, meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded shadowy charm of
a room unlike any room he had known. He
knew that the Countess Olenska had brought some of her possessions with
her--bits of wreckage, she called them--and these, he supposed, were
represented by some small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little
Greek bronze on the chimney- piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on
the discoloured wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in old
frames.
Newland
Archer prided himself on his knowledge of Italian art.
His boyhood had been saturated with Ruskin, and he had read all the
latest books: John Addington Symonds, Vernon Lee's "Euphorion,"
the essays of P. G. Hamerton, and a wonderful new volume called "The
Renaissance" by Walter Pater. He talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of Fra Angelico
with a faint condescension. But
these pictures bewildered him, for they were like nothing that he was
accustomed to look at (and therefore able to see) when he travelled in
Italy; and perhaps, also, his powers of observation were impaired by the
oddness of finding himself in this strange empty house, where apparently no
one expected him. He was sorry that he had not told May Welland of Countess
Olenska's request, and a little disturbed by the thought that his betrothed
might come in to see her cousin. What
would she think if she found him sitting there with the air of intimacy
implied by waiting alone in the dusk at a lady's fireside?
But
since he had come he meant to wait; and he sank into a chair and stretched
his feet to the logs.
It
was odd to have summoned him in that way, and then forgotten him; but Archer
felt more curious than mortified. The
atmosphere of the room was so different from any he had ever breathed that
self-consciousness vanished in the sense of adventure.
He had been before in drawing-rooms hung with red damask, with
pictures "of the Italian school"; what struck him was the way in
which Medora Manson's shabby hired house, with its blighted background of
pampas grass and Rogers statuettes, had, by a turn of the hand, and the
skilful use of a few properties, been transformed into something intimate,
"foreign," subtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and
sentiments. He tried to analyse
the trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and tables were
grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot roses (of which nobody ever
bought less than a dozen) had been placed in the slender vase at his elbow,
and in the vague pervading perfume that was not what one put on
handkerchiefs, but rather like the scent of some far-off bazaar, a smell
made up of Turkish coffee and ambergris and dried roses.
His
mind wandered away to the question of what May's drawing-room would look
like. He knew that Mr. Welland,
who was behaving "very handsomely," already had his eye on a newly
built house in East Thirty-ninth Street.
The neighbourhood was thought remote, and the house was built in a
ghastly greenish- yellow stone that the younger architects were beginning to
employ as a protest against the brownstone of which the uniform hue coated
New York like a cold chocolate sauce; but the plumbing was perfect. Archer would have liked to travel, to put off the housing
question; but, though the Wellands approved of an extended European
honeymoon (perhaps even a winter in Egypt), they were firm as to the need of
a house for the returning couple. The
young man felt that his fate was sealed: for the rest of his life he would
go up every evening between the cast-iron railings of that greenish- yellow
doorstep, and pass through a Pompeian vestibule into a hall with a
wainscoting of varnished yellow wood. But
beyond that his imagination could not travel. He knew the drawing-room above
had a bay window, but he could not fancy how May would deal with it. She
submitted cheerfully to the purple satin and yellow tuftings of the Welland
drawing-room, to its sham Buhl tables and gilt vitrines full of modern Saxe. He saw no reason to suppose that she would want anything
different in her own house; and his only comfort was to reflect that she
would probably let him arrange his library as he pleased--which would be, of
course, with "sincere" Eastlake furniture, and the plain new
bookcases without glass doors.
The
round-bosomed maid came in, drew the curtains, pushed back a log, and said
consolingly: "Verra--verra."
When she had gone Archer stood up and began to wander about.
Should he wait any longer? His position was becoming rather foolish.
Perhaps he had misunderstood Madame Olenska--perhaps she had not
invited him after all.
Down
the cobblestones of the quiet street came the ring of a stepper's hoofs;
they stopped before the house, and he caught the opening of a carriage door.
Parting the curtains he looked out into the early dusk.
A street- lamp faced him, and in its light he saw Julius Beaufort's
compact English brougham, drawn by a big roan, and the banker descending
from it, and helping out Madame Olenska.
Beaufort
stood, hat in hand, saying something which his companion seemed to negative;
then they shook hands, and he jumped into his carriage while she mounted the
steps.
When
she entered the room she showed no surprise at seeing Archer there; surprise
seemed the emotion that she was least addicted to.
"How
do you like my funny house?" she asked.
"To me it's like heaven."
As
she spoke she untied her little velvet bonnet and tossing it away with her
long cloak stood looking at him with meditative eyes.
"You've
arranged it delightfully," he rejoined, alive to the flatness of the
words, but imprisoned in the conventional by his consuming desire to be
simple and striking.
"Oh,
it's a poor little place. My
relations despise it. But at any rate it's less gloomy than the van der
Luydens'."
The
words gave him an electric shock, for few were the rebellious spirits who
would have dared to call the stately home of the van der Luydens gloomy.
Those privileged to enter it shivered there, and spoke of it as
"handsome." But
suddenly he was glad that she had given voice to the general shiver.
"It's
delicious--what you've done here," he repeated.
"I
like the little house," she admitted; "but I suppose what I like
is the blessedness of its being here, in my own country and my own town; and
then, of being alone in it." She
spoke so low that he hardly heard the last phrase; but in his awkwardness he
took it up.
"You
like so much to be alone?"
"Yes;
as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely."
She sat down near the fire, said:
"Nastasia will bring the tea presently," and signed to him
to return to his armchair, adding: "I
see you've already chosen your corner."
Leaning
back, she folded her arms behind her head, and looked at the fire under
drooping lids.
"This
is the hour I like best--don't you?"
A
proper sense of his dignity caused him to answer: "I was afraid you'd
forgotten the hour. Beaufort
must have been very engrossing."
She
looked amused. "Why--have
you waited long? Mr. Beaufort took me to see a number of houses-- since it
seems I'm not to be allowed to stay in this one." She appeared to dismiss both Beaufort and himself from her
mind, and went on: "I've
never been in a city where there seems to be such a feeling against living
in des quartiers excentriques. What
does it matter where one lives? I'm
told this street is respectable."
"It's
not fashionable."
"Fashionable!
Do you all think so much of that? Why not make one's own fashions?
But I suppose I've lived too independently; at any rate, I want to do
what you all do--I want to feel cared for and safe."
He
was touched, as he had been the evening before when she spoke of her need of
guidance.
"That's
what your friends want you to feel. New
York's an awfully safe place," he added with a flash of sarcasm.
"Yes,
isn't it? One feels that,"
she cried, missing the mockery. "Being
here is like--like--being taken on a holiday when one has been a good little
girl and done all one's lessons."
The
analogy was well meant, but did not altogether please him.
He did not mind being flippant about New York, but disliked to hear
any one else take the same tone. He
wondered if she did not begin to see what a powerful engine it was, and how
nearly it had crushed her. The
Lovell Mingotts' dinner, patched up in extremis out of all sorts of social
odds and ends, ought to have taught her the narrowness of her escape; but
either she had been all along unaware of having skirted disaster, or else
she had lost sight of it in the triumph of the van der Luyden evening.
Archer inclined to the former theory; he fancied that her New York
was still completely undifferentiated, and the conjecture nettled him.
"Last
night," he said, "New York laid itself out for you.
The van der Luydens do nothing by halves."
"No:
how kind they are! It was such
a nice party. Every one seems to have such an esteem for them."
The
terms were hardly adequate; she might have spoken in that way of a tea-party
at the dear old Miss Lannings'.
"The
van der Luydens," said Archer, feeling himself pompous as he spoke,
"are the most powerful influence in New York society.
Unfortunately--owing to her health--they receive very seldom."
She
unclasped her hands from behind her head, and looked at him meditatively.
"Isn't
that perhaps the reason?"
"The
reason--?"
"For
their great influence; that they make themselves so rare."
He
coloured a little, stared at her--and suddenly felt the penetration of the
remark. At a stroke she had
pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed.
He laughed, and sacrificed them.
Nastasia
brought the tea, with handleless Japanese cups and little covered dishes,
placing the tray on a low table.
"But
you'll explain these things to me--you'll tell me all I ought to know,"
Madame Olenska continued, leaning forward to hand him his cup.
"It's
you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that
I'd ceased to see them."
She
detached a small gold cigarette-case from one of her bracelets, held it out
to him, and took a cigarette herself. On
the chimney were long spills for lighting them.
"Ah,
then we can both help each other. But
I want help so much more. You
must tell me just what to do."
It
was on the tip of his tongue to reply:
"Don't be seen driving about the streets with Beaufort--"
but he was being too deeply drawn into the atmosphere of the room, which was
her atmosphere, and to give advice of that sort would have been like telling
some one who was bargaining for attar-of-roses in Samarkand that one should
always be provided with arctics for a New York winter. New York seemed much farther off than Samarkand, and if they
were indeed to help each other she was rendering what might prove the first
of their mutual services by making him look at his native city objectively.
Viewed thus, as through the wrong end of a telescope, it looked
disconcertingly small and distant; but then from Samarkand it would.
A
flame darted from the logs and she bent over the fire, stretching her thin
hands so close to it that a faint halo shone about the oval nails.
The light touched to russet the rings of dark hair escaping from her
braids, and made her pale face paler.
"There
are plenty of people to tell you what to do," Archer rejoined,
obscurely envious of them.
"Oh--all
my aunts? And my dear old
Granny?" She considered
the idea impartially. "They're
all a little vexed with me for setting up for myself--poor Granny
especially. She wanted to keep
me with her; but I had to be free--"
He was impressed by this light way of speaking of the formidable
Catherine, and moved by the thought of what must have given Madame Olenska
this thirst for even the loneliest kind of freedom.
But the idea of Beaufort gnawed him.
"I
think I understand how you feel," he said. "Still, your family can advise you; explain differences;
show you the way."
She
lifted her thin black eyebrows. "Is
New York such a labyrinth? I
thought it so straight up and down-- like Fifth Avenue.
And with all the cross streets numbered!"
She seemed to guess his faint disapproval of this, and added, with
the rare smile that enchanted her whole face:
"If you knew how I like it for just THAT-- the straight-up-and-downness,
and the big honest labels on everything!"
He
saw his chance. "Everything
may be labelled-- but everybody is not."
"Perhaps.
I may simplify too much--but you'll warn me if I do."
She turned from the fire to look at him. "There are only two
people here who make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could
explain things to me: you and Mr. Beaufort."
Archer
winced at the joining of the names, and then, with a quick readjustment,
understood, sympathised and pitied. So
close to the powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more
freely in their air. But since
she felt that he understood her also, his business would be to make her see
Beaufort as he really was, with all he represented--and abhor it.
He
answered gently: "I
understand. But just at first
don't let go of your old friends' hands: I mean the older women, your Granny
Mingott, Mrs. Welland, Mrs. van der Luyden.
They like and admire you--they want to help you."
She
shook her head and sighed. "Oh,
I know--I know! But on
condition that they don't hear anything unpleasant.
Aunt Welland put it in those very words when I tried. . . .
Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer?
The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only
ask one to pretend!" She lifted her hands to her face, and he saw her
thin shoulders shaken by a sob.
"Madame
Olenska!--Oh, don't, Ellen," he cried, starting up and bending over
her. He drew down one of her
hands, clasping and chafing it like a child's while he murmured reassuring
words; but in a moment she freed herself, and looked up at him with wet
lashes.
"Does
no one cry here, either? I
suppose there's no need to, in heaven," she said, straightening her
loosened braids with a laugh, and bending over the tea- kettle.
It was burnt into his consciousness that he had called her
"Ellen"--called her so twice; and that she had not noticed it.
Far down the inverted telescope he saw the faint white figure of May
Welland--in New York.
Suddenly
Nastasia put her head in to say something in her rich Italian.
Madame
Olenska, again with a hand at her hair, uttered an exclamation of assent--a
flashing "Gia-- gia"--and the Duke of St. Austrey entered,
piloting a tremendous blackwigged and red-plumed lady in overflowing furs.
"My
dear Countess, I've brought an old friend of mine to see you--Mrs.
Struthers. She wasn't asked to
the party last night, and she wants to know you."
The
Duke beamed on the group, and Madame Olenska advanced with a murmur of
welcome toward the queer couple. She
seemed to have no idea how oddly matched they were, nor what a liberty the
Duke had taken in bringing his companion--and to do him justice, as Archer
perceived, the Duke seemed as unaware of it himself.
"Of
course I want to know you, my dear," cried Mrs. Struthers in a round
rolling voice that matched her bold feathers and her brazen wig.
"I want to know everybody who's young and interesting and
charming. And the Duke tells me you like music--didn't you, Duke?
You're a pianist yourself, I believe?
Well, do you want to hear Sarasate play tomorrow evening at my house?
You know I've something going on every Sunday evening--it's the day
when New York doesn't know what to do with itself, and so I say to it:
`Come and be amused.' And
the Duke thought you'd be tempted by Sarasate.
You'll find a number of your friends."
Madame
Olenska's face grew brilliant with pleasure. "How kind!
How good of the Duke to think of me!" She pushed a chair up to
the tea-table and Mrs. Struthers sank into it delectably.
"Of course I shall be too happy to come."
"That's
all right, my dear. And bring
your young gentleman with you." Mrs.
Struthers extended a hail- fellow hand to Archer. "I can't put a name to you--but I'm sure I've met
you--I've met everybody, here, or in Paris or London.
Aren't you in diplomacy? All
the diplomatists come to me. You
like music too? Duke, you must
be sure to bring him."
The
Duke said "Rather" from the depths of his beard, and Archer
withdrew with a stiffly circular bow that made him feel as full of spine as
a self-conscious school-boy among careless and unnoticing elders.
He
was not sorry for the denouement of his visit: he only wished it had come
sooner, and spared him a certain waste of emotion.
As he went out into the wintry night, New York again became vast and
imminent, and May Welland the loveliest woman in it. He turned into his florist's to send her the daily box of
lilies-of-the-valley which, to his confusion, he found he had forgotten that
morning.
As
he wrote a word on his card and waited for an envelope he glanced about the
embowered shop, and his eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses.
He had never seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse was
to send them to May instead of the lilies.
But they did not look like her--there was something too rich, too
strong, in their fiery beauty. In
a sudden revulsion of mood, and almost without knowing what he did, he
signed to the florist to lay the roses in another long box, and slipped his
card into a second envelope, on which he wrote the name of the Countess
Olenska; then, just as he was turning away, he drew the card out again, and
left the empty envelope on the box.
"They'll
go at once?" he enquired, pointing to the roses.
The
florist assured him that they would.
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