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Archer
had not seen his wife since the evening before. He had left early for the office, where he had plunged into
an accumulation of unimportant business. In the afternoon one of the senior
partners had made an unexpected call on his time; and he had reached home so
late that May had preceded him to the van der Luydens', and sent back the
carriage.
Now,
across the Skuytercliff carnations and the massive plate, she struck him as
pale and languid; but her eyes shone, and she talked with exaggerated
animation.
The
subject which had called forth Mr. Sillerton Jackson's favourite allusion
had been brought up (Archer fancied not without intention) by their hostess.
The Beaufort failure, or rather the Beaufort attitude since the
failure, was still a fruitful theme for the drawing- room moralist; and
after it had been thoroughly examined and condemned Mrs. van der Luyden had
turned her scrupulous eyes on May Archer. "Is it possible, dear, that what I hear is true?
I was told your grandmother Mingott's carriage was seen standing at
Mrs. Beaufort's door." It
was noticeable that she no longer called the offending lady by her Christian
name.
May's
colour rose, and Mrs. Archer put in hastily: "If it was, I'm convinced
it was there without Mrs. Mingott's knowledge."
"Ah,
you think--?" Mrs. van der
Luyden paused, sighed, and glanced at her husband.
"I'm
afraid," Mr. van der Luyden said, "that Madame Olenska's kind
heart may have led her into the imprudence of calling on Mrs.
Beaufort."
"Or
her taste for peculiar people," put in Mrs. Archer in a dry tone, while
her eyes dwelt innocently on her son's.
"I'm
sorry to think it of Madame Olenska," said Mrs. van der Luyden; and
Mrs. Archer murmured: "Ah, my dear--and after you'd had her twice at
Skuytercliff!"
It
was at this point that Mr. Jackson seized the chance to place his favourite
allusion.
"At
the Tuileries," he repeated, seeing the eyes of the company expectantly
turned on him, "the standard was excessively lax in some respects; and
if you'd asked where Morny's money came from--!
Or who paid the debts of some of the Court beauties . . ."
"I
hope, dear Sillerton," said Mrs. Archer, "you are not suggesting
that we should adopt such standards?"
"I
never suggest," returned Mr. Jackson imperturbably. "But Madame
Olenska's foreign bringing-up may make her less particular--"
"Ah,"
the two elder ladies sighed.
"Still,
to have kept her grandmother's carriage at a defaulter's door!" Mr. van
der Luyden protested; and Archer guessed that he was remembering, and
resenting, the hampers of carnations he had sent to the little house in
Twenty-third Street.
"Of
course I've always said that she looks at things quite differently,"
Mrs. Archer summed up.
A
flush rose to May's forehead. She
looked across the table at her husband, and said precipitately:
"I'm sure Ellen meant it kindly."
"Imprudent
people are often kind," said Mrs. Archer, as if the fact were scarcely
an extenuation; and Mrs. van der Luyden murmured:
"If only she had consulted some one--"
"Ah,
that she never did!" Mrs. Archer rejoined.
At
this point Mr. van der Luyden glanced at his wife, who bent her head
slightly in the direction of Mrs. Archer; and the glimmering trains of the
three ladies swept out of the door while the gentlemen settled down to their
cigars. Mr. van der Luyden
supplied short ones on Opera nights; but they were so good that they made
his guests deplore his inexorable punctuality.
Archer,
after the first act, had detached himself from the party and made his way to
the back of the club box. From
there he watched, over various Chivers, Mingott and Rushworth shoulders, the
same scene that he had looked at, two years previously, on the night of his
first meeting with Ellen Olenska. He
had half- expected her to appear again in old Mrs. Mingott's box, but it
remained empty; and he sat motionless, his eyes fastened on it, till
suddenly Madame Nilsson's pure soprano broke out into "M'ama, non m'ama
. . . "
Archer
turned to the stage, where, in the familiar setting of giant roses and
pen-wiper pansies, the same large blonde victim was succumbing to the same
small brown seducer.
From
the stage his eyes wandered to the point of the horseshoe where May sat
between two older ladies, just as, on that former evening, she had sat
between Mrs. Lovell Mingott and her newly-arrived "foreign"
cousin. As on that evening, she
was all in white; and Archer, who had not noticed what she wore, recognised
the blue-white satin and old lace of her wedding dress.
It
was the custom, in old New York, for brides to appear in this costly garment
during the first year or two of marriage: his mother, he knew, kept hers in
tissue paper in the hope that Janey might some day wear it, though poor
Janey was reaching the age when pearl grey poplin and no bridesmaids would
be thought more "appropriate."
It
struck Archer that May, since their return from Europe, had seldom worn her
bridal satin, and the surprise of seeing her in it made him compare her
appearance with that of the young girl he had watched with such blissful
anticipations two years earlier.
Though
May's outline was slightly heavier, as her goddesslike build had foretold,
her athletic erectness of carriage, and the girlish transparency of her
expression, remained unchanged: but for the slight languor that Archer had
lately noticed in her she would have been the exact image of the girl
playing with the bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her betrothal evening. The fact seemed an additional appeal to his pity: such
innocence was as moving as the trustful clasp of a child. Then he remembered the passionate generosity latent under
that incurious calm. He
recalled her glance of understanding when he had urged that their engagement
should be announced at the Beaufort ball; he heard the voice in which she
had said, in the Mission garden: "I
couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong--a wrong to some one
else;" and an uncontrollable longing seized him to tell her the truth,
to throw himself on her generosity, and ask for the freedom he had once
refused.
Newland
Archer was a quiet and self-controlled young man. Conformity to the discipline of a small society had become
almost his second nature. It
was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic and conspicuous,
anything Mr. van der Luyden would have deprecated and the club box condemned
as bad form. But he had become suddenly unconscious of the club box, of Mr.
van der Luyden, of all that had so long enclosed him in the warm shelter of
habit. He walked along the
semi-circular passage at the back of the house, and opened the door of Mrs.
van der Luyden's box as if it had been a gate into the unknown.
"M'ama!"
thrilled out the triumphant Marguerite; and the occupants of the box looked
up in surprise at Archer's entrance. He
had already broken one of the rules of his world, which forbade the entering
of a box during a solo.
Slipping
between Mr. van der Luyden and Sillerton Jackson, he leaned over his wife.
"I've
got a beastly headache; don't tell any one, but come home, won't you?"
he whispered.
May
gave him a glance of comprehension, and he saw her whisper to his mother,
who nodded sympathetically; then she murmured an excuse to Mrs. van der
Luyden, and rose from her seat just as Marguerite fell into Faust's arms.
Archer, while he helped her on with her Opera cloak, noticed the
exchange of a significant smile between the older ladies.
As
they drove away May laid her hand shyly on his.
"I'm so sorry you don't feel well.
I'm afraid they've been overworking you again at the office."
"No--it's
not that: do you mind if I open the window?" he returned confusedly,
letting down the pane on his side. He
sat staring out into the street, feeling his wife beside him as a silent
watchful interrogation, and keeping his eyes steadily fixed on the passing
houses. At their door she caught her skirt in the step of the carriage, and
fell against him.
"Did
you hurt yourself?" he asked, steadying her with his arm.
"No;
but my poor dress--see how I've torn it!" she exclaimed.
She bent to gather up a mud-stained breadth, and followed him up the
steps into the hall. The
servants had not expected them so early, and there was only a glimmer of gas
on the upper landing.
Archer
mounted the stairs, turned up the light, and put a match to the brackets on
each side of the library mantelpiece. The
curtains were drawn, and the warm friendly aspect of the room smote him like
that of a familiar face met during an unavowable errand.
He
noticed that his wife was very pale, and asked if he should get her some
brandy.
"Oh,
no," she exclaimed with a momentary flush, as she took off her cloak.
"But hadn't you better go to bed at once?" she added, as he
opened a silver box on the table and took out a cigarette.
Archer
threw down the cigarette and walked to his usual place by the fire.
"No;
my head is not as bad as that." He
paused. "And there's something I want to say; something important--that
I must tell you at once."
She
had dropped into an armchair, and raised her head as he spoke.
"Yes, dear?" she rejoined, so gently that he wondered at
the lack of wonder with which she received this preamble.
"May--"
he began, standing a few feet from her chair, and looking over at her as if
the slight distance between them were an unbridgeable abyss.
The sound of his voice echoed uncannily through the homelike hush,
and he repeated: "There is
something I've got to tell you . . . about myself . . ."
She
sat silent, without a movement or a tremor of her lashes. She was still extremely pale, but her face had a curious
tranquillity of expression that seemed drawn from some secret inner source.
Archer
checked the conventional phrases of self-accusal that were crowding to his
lips. He was determined to put
the case baldly, without vain recrimination or excuse.
"Madame
Olenska--" he said; but at the name his wife raised her hand as if to
silence him. As she did so the
gaslight struck on the gold of her wedding-ring,
"Oh,
why should we talk about Ellen tonight?" she asked, with a slight pout
of impatience.
"Because
I ought to have spoken before."
Her
face remained calm. "Is it
really worth while, dear? I
know I've been unfair to her at times--perhaps we all have.
You've understood her, no doubt, better than we did: you've always
been kind to her. But what does
it matter, now it's all over?"
Archer
looked at her blankly. Could it
be possible that the sense of unreality in which he felt himself imprisoned
had communicated itself to his wife?
"All
over--what do you mean?" he asked in an indistinct stammer.
May
still looked at him with transparent eyes.
"Why-- since she's going back to Europe so soon; since Granny
approves and understands, and has arranged to make her independent of her
husband--"
She
broke off, and Archer, grasping the corner of the mantelpiece in one
convulsed hand, and steadying himself against it, made a vain effort to
extend the same control to his reeling thoughts.
"I
supposed," he heard his wife's even voice go on, "that you had
been kept at the office this evening about the business arrangements.
It was settled this morning, I believe."
She lowered her eyes under his unseeing stare, and another fugitive
flush passed over her face.
He
understood that his own eyes must be unbearable, and turning away, rested
his elbows on the mantel- shelf and covered his face. Something drummed and clanged furiously in his ears; he could
not tell if it were the blood in his veins, or the tick of the clock on the
mantel.
May
sat without moving or speaking while the clock slowly measured out five
minutes. A lump of coal fell
forward in the grate, and hearing her rise to push it back, Archer at length
turned and faced her.
"It's
impossible," he exclaimed.
"Impossible--?"
"How
do you know--what you've just told me?"
"I
saw Ellen yesterday--I told you I'd seen her at Granny's."
"It
wasn't then that she told you?"
"No;
I had a note from her this afternoon.--Do you want to see it?"
He
could not find his voice, and she went out of the room, and came back almost
immediately.
"I
thought you knew," she said simply.
She
laid a sheet of paper on the table, and Archer put out his hand and took it
up. The letter contained only a
few lines.
"May
dear, I have at last made Granny understand that my visit to her could be no
more than a visit; and she has been as kind and generous as ever.
She sees now that if I return to Europe I must live by myself, or
rather with poor Aunt Medora, who is coming with me. I am hurrying back to
Washington to pack up, and we sail next week.
You must be very good to Granny when I'm gone--as good as you've
always been to me. Ellen.
"If
any of my friends wish to urge me to change my mind, please tell them it
would be utterly useless."
Archer
read the letter over two or three times; then he flung it down and burst out
laughing.
The
sound of his laugh startled him. It
recalled Janey's midnight fright when she had caught him rocking with
incomprehensible mirth over May's telegram announcing that the date of their
marriage had been advanced.
"Why
did she write this?" he asked, checking his laugh with a supreme
effort.
May
met the question with her unshaken candour.
"I suppose because we talked things over yesterday--"
"What
things?"
"I
told her I was afraid I hadn't been fair to her-- hadn't always understood
how hard it must have been for her here, alone among so many people who were
relations and yet strangers; who felt the right to criticise, and yet didn't
always know the circumstances." She paused. "I knew you'd been the one friend she could always count
on; and I wanted her to know that you and I were the same--in all our
feelings."
She
hesitated, as if waiting for him to speak, and then added slowly:
"She understood my wishing to tell her this.
I think she understands everything."
She
went up to Archer, and taking one of his cold hands pressed it quickly
against her cheek.
"My
head aches too; good-night, dear," she said, and turned to the door,
her torn and muddy wedding- dress dragging after her across the room.
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