 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librivox.org. The Age of Innocence, a novel by Edith Wharton. Read for LibriVox by Brenda Dane. Chapter 21 The small bright lawn stretched away smoothly to the big bright sea. The turf was hemmed with an edge of scarlet geranium and coleus. And cast-iron vases painted in chocolate colour, standing at intervals along the winding path that led to the sea, looped their garlands of petunia and ivy geranium above the neatly raked gravel. Halfway between the edge of the cliff and the square wooden house, which was also chocolate-coloured but with a tin roof of the veranda striped in yellow and brown to represent an awning, two large targets had been placed against a background of shrubbery. On the other side of the lawn, facing the targets, was pitched a real tent with benches and garden seats about it. A number of ladies, in summer dresses and gentlemen in grey frock coats and tall hats, stood on the lawn or sat upon the benches. And every now and then a slender girl, in starched muslin, would step from the tent, bow in hand, and speed her shaft at one of the targets, while the spectators interrupted their talk to watch the result. Newland Archer, standing on the veranda of the house, looked curiously down upon this scene. On each side of the shiny painted steps was a large blue china flower pot on a bright yellow china stand. A spiky green plant filled each pot and below the veranda ran a wide border of blue hydrangeas, edged with more red geraniums. Behind him the French windows of the drawing rooms through which he had passed gave glimpses between swaying lace curtains of glassy parquet floors islanded with chintz poofs, dwarf armchairs, and velvet tables covered with trifles in silver. The Newport Archery Club always held its August meeting at the Beauforts. The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet, was beginning to be discarded in favor of lawn tennis. But the latter game was still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions. And as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses and graceful attitudes, the Beau and Arrow held their own. Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed. It was Newport that had first brought home to him the extent of the change in New York during the previous winter. After he and May had settled down in the new greenish-yellow house with the Beau window and the Pompeian vestibule, he had dropped back with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal of this daily activity had served as a link with his former self. Then there had been the pleasurable excitement of choosing a showy grey stepper for May's broom, the wellens had given the carriage, and the abiding occupation and interest of arranging his new library, which, in spite of family doubts and disapprovals, had been carried out as he had dreamed, with a dark embossed paper, East Lake bookcases and sincere armchairs and tables. At the century he had found Winsett again and at the Knickerbocker the fashionable young men of his own set, and what with the hours dedicated to the law and those given to dining out or entertaining friends at home, with an occasional evening at the opera or the play, the life he was living had still seemed a fairly real and inevitable sort of business. But Newport represented the escape from duty into an atmosphere of unmitigated holiday-making. Archer had tried to persuade May to spend the summer on a remote island off the coast of Maine, called, appropriately enough, Mount Desert, where a few hardy Bostonians and Philadelphians were camping in native cottages, and Winsett came reports of enchanting scenery and a wild, almost trapper-like existence amid woods and waters. But the wellens always went to Newport, where they owned one of the square boxes on the cliffs and their son-in-law could adduce no good reason why he and May should not join them there. As Mrs. Welland, rather, tartly pointed out, it was hardly worthwhile for May to have worn herself out trying on summer clothes in Paris if she was not to be allowed to wear them. And this argument was of a kind to which Archer had, as yet, found no answer. May herself could not understand his obscure reluctance to fall in with so reasonable and pleasant a way of spending the summer. She reminded him that he had always liked Newport in his bachelor days, and as this was indisputable he could only profess that he was sure he was going to like it better than ever now that they were going to be there together. But as he stood on the Beaufort veranda and looked out over the brightly-peopled morn, it came home to him, with a shiver, that he was not going to like it at all. It was not May's fault, poor dear. If now and then, during their travels, they had fallen slightly out of step, harmony had been restored by their return to the conditions she was used to. He had always foreseen that she would not disappoint him and he had been right. He had married, as most young men did, because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust. And she had represented peace, stability, comradeship and the steadying sense of an inescapable duty. He could not say that he had been mistaken in his choice, for she had fulfilled all that he had expected. It was undoubtedly gratifying to be the husband of one of the handsomest and most popular young married women in New York, especially when she was also one of the sweetest tempered and most reasonable of wives. And Archer had never been insensible to such advantages. As for the momentary madness which had fallen upon him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himself to regard it as the last of his discarded experiments. The idea that he could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying the Countess Olenska had become almost unthinkable and she remained in his memory simply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts. But all these abstractions and eliminations made of his mind a rather empty and echoing place and he supposed that was one of the reasons why the busy animated people on the Beaufort lawn shocked him, as if they had been children playing in a graveyard. He heard a murmur of skirts beside him and the Marchioness Manson fluttered out of the drawing-room window. As usual she was extraordinarily festooned and bedizzened with a limp leg-horned hat anchored to her head by many wingings of faded gauze and a little black velvet parasol on a carved ivory handle absurdly balanced over her much larger hat brim. My dear Newland, I had no idea that you and May had arrived. You yourself came only yesterday you say, ah, business, business, professional duties, I understand. Many husbands I know find it impossible to join their wives here except for the weekend. She cocked her head on one side and languished at him through screwed up eyes. But marriage is one long sacrifice, as I often used to remind my Ellen. Archer's heart stopped with the queer jerk which it had given once before and which seemed suddenly to slam a door between himself and the outer world. But this break of continuity must have been of the briefest, for he presently heard Medora answering a question he had apparently found voice to put. No, I'm not staying here, but with the blankers in their delicious solitude at Portsmouth. Beaufort was kind enough to send his famous trotters for me this morning, so that I might have at least a glimpse of one of Regina's garden parties. But this evening I go back to rural life. The blankers, dear original beings, have hired a primitive old farmhouse at Portsmouth where they gather about them representative people. She drooped slightly beneath her protecting brim and added with a faint blush. This week Dr. Agathon Carver is holding a series of inner thought meetings there. A contrast indeed to this gay scene of worldly pleasure, but then I have always lived on contrasts. To me the only death is monotony. I always say to Ellen, beware of monotony. It's the mother of all the deadly sins. But my poor child is going through a phase of exaltation of abhorrence of the world, you know. I suppose that she has declined all invitations to stay at Newport, even with her grandmother Mingid. I could hardly persuade her to come with me to the blankers if you will believe it. This life she leads is morbid, unnatural. She had only listened to me when it was still possible, when the door was still open, but shall we go down and watch this absorbing match? I hear your may is one of the competitors. Strolling towards them from the tent, Beaufort advanced over the lawn, tall, heavy, too tightly buttoned into a London frock coat with one of his own orchids in its buttonhole. Archer, who had not seen him for two or three months, was struck by the change in his appearance. In the hot summer light his floridness seemed heavy and bloated, and but for his erect, square-shouldered walk he would have looked like an overfed and overdressed old man. There were all sorts of rumors afloat about Beaufort. In the spring he had gone off on a long cruise to the West Indies in his new steam yacht, and it was reported that, at various points where he had touched, a lady resembling Miss Fanny Ring had been seen in his company. The steam yacht, built in the Clyde and fitted with tiled bathrooms and other unheard-of luxuries, was said to have cost him half a million, and the pearl necklace which he had presented to his wife on his return was as magnificent as such expiatory offerings are apt to be. Beaufort's fortune was substantial enough to stand the strain, and yet the disquieting rumors persisted, not only in Fifth Avenue but in Wall Street. Some people said he had speculated, unfortunately in railways, others, that he was being bled by one of the most insatiable members of her profession, and to every report of threatened insolvency Beaufort replied by a fresh extravagance. The building of a new row of Orchid houses. The purchase of a new string of racehorses. Or the addition of a new messionnaire or cabanal to his picture gallery. He advanced towards the Marchioness and Newland with his usual half-sneering smile. Hello, Medora. Did the Trotters do their business forty minutes, eh? Well, that's not so bad considering your nerves had to be spared. He shook hands with Archer, and then, turning back with him, placed himself on Mrs. Manson's other side and said, in a low voice, a few words which their companion did not catch. The Marchioness replied by one of her queer, foreign jerks and a, que vous levez, which deepened Beaufort's frown, but he produced a good semblance of a congratulatory smile as he glanced at Archer to say, you know, May's going to carry off the first prize. Ah, then it remains in the family, Medora rippled, and at that moment they reached the tent, and Mrs. Beaufort met them in a girlish cloud of mauve muslin and floating veils. May Welland was just coming out of the tent. In her white dress, with a pale green ribbon about the waist, and a wreath of ivy on her hat, she had the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had entered the Beaufort ballroom on the night of her engagement. In the interval, not a thought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through her heart, and though her husband knew that she had the capacity for both, he marveled afresh at the way in which experience dropped away from her. She had her bow and arrow in her hand, and placing herself on the chalkmark traced on the turf, she lifted the bow to her shoulder and took aim. The attitude was so full of a classic grace that a murmur of appreciation followed her appearance, and Archer felt the glow of proprietorship that so often cheated him into momentary well-being. Her rivals, Mrs. Reggie Chivers, the Merry Girls, and the diverse, rosy, Thorly's Dagonettes and Mingots, stood behind her in a lovely, anxious group, brown heads and golden, bent above the scores, and pale muslins and flower-wreathed hats, mingled in a tender rainbow. All were young and pretty, and bathed in summer bloom, but not one had the nymph-like ease of his wife when, with tense muscles and a happy frown, she bent her soul upon some feet of strength. Gadd, Archer heard Lawrence Lefford say, not one of a lot holds the bow as she does, and Beaufort retorted, yes, but that's the only kind of target she'll ever hit. Archer felt irrationally angry. His host's contemptuous tribute to May's niceness was just what a husband should have wished to hear said to his wife. The fact that a course-minded man found her lacking in attraction was simply another proof of her quality, yet the word sent a faint shiver through his heart. What if niceness carried to that supreme degree were only a negation? The curtain dropped before an emptiness. As he looked at May, returning flushed and calm from her final bullseye, he had the feeling that he had never yet lifted that curtain. She took the congratulations of her rivals and of the rest of the company with a simplicity that was her crowning grace. No one could ever be jealous of her triumphs, because she managed to give the feeling that she would have been just as serene if she had missed them. But when her eyes met her husband's, her face glowed with the pleasure she saw in his. Mr. Wellin's basket work pony carriage was waiting for them, and they drove off among the dispersing carriages, May handling the reins and Archer sitting at her side. The afternoon sunlight still lingered upon the bright lawns and shrubberies, and up-and-down Bellevue Avenue rolled a double line of victorias, dog carts, landows, and vis-à-vis, carrying well-dressed ladies and gentlemen away from the Beaufort Garden Party, or homeward, from their daily afternoon turn along the ocean drive. Shall we go see Granny? May suddenly proposed. I should like to tell her myself that I've won the prize. There's lots of time before dinner. Archer acquiesced, and she turned the ponies down Narragansett Avenue, crossed Spring Street, and drove out towards the Rocky Moorland beyond. In this unfashionable region Catherine the Great, always indifferent to precedent and thrifty of purse, had built herself in her youth a many-peaked and cross-beamed cottage ornée on a bit of cheap land overlooking the bay. Here, in a thicket of stunted oaks, her verandas spread themselves above the island dotted waters. A winding drive led up between iron stags and blue glass balls embedded in mounds of geraniums to a front door of a highly varnished walnut under a striped veranda roof. And behind it ran a narrow hall with a black and yellow star-pattern parquet floor, upon which opened four small square rooms with heavy flocked papers under ceilings on which an Italian house painter had lavished all the divinities of Olympus. One of these rooms had been turned into a bedroom by Mrs. Mingid when the burden of flesh descended on her, and in the adjoining one she spent her days enthroned in a large armchair between the open door and the window, and perpetually waving a palm-leaf fan which the prodigious projection of her bosom kept so far from the rest of her person that the air it set in motion stirred only the fringe of the Anda Macassar's on the chair arms. Since she had been the means of hastening his marriage, old Catherine had shown to Archer the cordiality which a service rendered excites toward the person served. She was persuaded that irrepressible passion was the cause of his impatience, and being an ardent admirer of impulsiveness, when it did not lead to the spending of money she always received him with a genial twinkle of complicity and a play of illusion to which May seemed fortunately impervious. She examined and appraised, with much interest, the diamond-tipped arrow which had been pinned on May's bosom at the conclusion of the match, remarking that in her day a filigree brooch would have been thought enough, but that there was no denying that Beaufort did things handsomely. Quite an heirloom, in fact, my dear, the old lady chuckled, you must leave it in fee to your eldest girl. She pinched May's white arm and watched the colour flood her face. Well, well, what if I said to make you shake out the red flag? Ain't there going to be any daughters, only boys, eh? Good gracious! Look at her blushing again all over her blushes! What can't I say that, either? Mercy me! When my children beg me to have all those gods and goddesses painted out overhead, I always say I'm too thankful to have somebody about me that nothing can shock. Archer burst into a laugh and May echoed it, crimson to the eyes. Well, now, tell me all about the party, please, my dears, for I shall never get a straight word about it out of that silly Madora. The Ancestress continued, and as May exclaimed, Aunt Madora, but I thought she was going back to Portsmouth. She answered placidly, so she is, but she's got to come here first to pick up Ellen. Oh, you don't know Ellen has come to spend the day with me, such falderol, her not coming for the summer, but I gave up arguing with young people about fifty years ago. Ellen! Ellen! She cried in her shrill old voice, trying to bend forward far enough to catch a glimpse of the lawn beyond the veranda. There was no answer, and Mrs. Mingott rapped impatiently with her stick on the shiny floor. A mulatto maid-servant in a bright turban, replying to the summons, informed her mistress that she had seen Miss Ellen, going down the path to the shore. And Miss Mingott turned to Archer, run down and fetch her like a good grandson. This pretty lady will describe the party to me, she said. And Archer stood up as if in a dream. He had heard the Countess Olenska's name pronounced often enough during the year and a half since they had last met, and was even familiar with the main incidents of her life in the interval. He knew that she had spent the previous summer at Newport, where she appeared to have gone a great deal into society, but that in the autumn she had suddenly sublet the perfect house, which Beaufort had been at such pains to find for her, and decided to establish herself in Washington. There, during the winter, he heard of her, as one always heard of pretty women in Washington, as shining in the brilliant diplomatic society that was supposed to make up for the social shortcomings of the administration. He had listened to these accounts, and to various contradictory reports on her appearance, her conversation, her point of view and her choice of friends, with the detachment, with which one listens to reminiscences of someone long since dead. Not till Madura suddenly spoke her name at the archery match had Ellen Olenska become a living presence to him again. The Marchioness's foolish lisp had called up a vision of a little firelit drawing room, and the sound of carriage wheels returning down the deserted street. He thought of a story he had read of some peasant children in Tuscany, lighting a bunch of straw in a wayside cavern, and revealing old, silent images in their painted tomb. The way to the shore descended from the bank on which the house was perched, to a walk above the water planted with weeping willows. Through their veil, Archer caught the glint of the lime rock, and the tiny house in which the heroic lighthousekeeper, Ida Lewis, was living her last venerable years. Beyond it lay the flat reaches and ugly government chimneys of Goat Island, the bay spreading northward in a shimmer of gold, to Prudence Island, with its low growth of oaks, and the shores of Connecticut faint in the sunset haze. From the willow walk projected a slight wooden pier, ending in a sort of pagoda-like summer house, and in the pagoda a lady stood, leaning against the rail. Her back to the shore. Archer stopped at the site as if he had waked from sleep. That vision of the past was a dream, and the reality was what awaited him in the house on the bank overhead. Was Mrs. Welland's pony carriage circling around and around the oval at the door? Was May sitting under the shameless Olympians and glowing with secret hopes? Was the Welland villa at the far end of Bellevue Avenue, and Mr. Welland already dressed for dinner and pacing the drawing-room floor? Watch in hand, with dyspeptic impatience, for it was one of the houses in which one always knew exactly what is happening at a given hour. What am I? A son-in-law, Archer thought. The figure at the end of the pier had not moved. For a long moment the young man stood, half-way down the bank, gazing at the bay furrowed with coming and going of sailboats, yacht launches, fishing-craft, and the trailing black coal barges hauled by noisy tugs. The lady in the summer house seemed to be held by the same sight. Beyond the gray bastions of Fort Adams, a long-drawn sunset was splintering up into a thousand fires, and the radiance caught the sail of a cat-boat as it beat out through the channel between a lime rock and the shore. Archer, as he watched, remembered the scene in Michaux-Gran, and Montague lifting aided diocese ribbon to his lips without her knowing that he was in the room. She doesn't know. She hasn't guessed. Should I know if she came up behind me, I wonder. He mused. And suddenly he said to himself, if she doesn't turn before the sail crosses the lime rock light, I'll go back. The boat was gliding out on the receding tide. It slid before the lime rock, blotted out Ida Lewis's little house, and passed along the turret in which the light was hung. Archer waited till a wide space of water sparkled between the last reef of the island and the stern of the boat. But still the figure in the summer house did not move. He turned and walked up the hill. I'm sorry you didn't find Ellen. I should have liked to see her again, may said, as they drove home through the dusk. But perhaps she wouldn't have cared. She seems so changed. Changed? echoed her husband in a colorless voice, his eyes fixed on the pony's twitching ears. So indifferent to her friends, I mean, giving up New York and her house, and spending her time with such queer people. Fancy how hideously uncomfortable she must be at the blankers. She says she does it to keep Aunt Medora out of mischief, to prevent her marrying dreadful people, but I sometimes think we've always bored her. Archer made no answer, and she continued with a tinge of hardness that he had never before noticed in her frank, fresh voice. After all, I wonder if she wouldn't be happier with her husband. He burst into a laugh. Sancta simplicitas, he exclaimed, and as she turned a puzzled frown on him, he added, I don't think I ever heard you say a cruel thing before. Cruel? Well, watching the contortions of the dam that is supposed to be a favorite sport of the angels, but I believe even they don't think people happier in hell. It's a pity she ever married abroad, then, said May, in the placid tone with which her mother met Mr. Welland's vagaries, and Archer felt himself gently relegated to the category of unreasonable husbands. They drove down Bellevue Avenue and turned in between the Chamfered Wooden gateposts surmounted by cast-iron lamps, which marked the approach to the Welland villa. Lights were already shining through its windows, and Archer, as the carriage stopped, caught a glimpse of his father-in-law, exactly as he had pictured him, pacing the drawing-room, watch in hand, and wearing the pained expression that he had long since found to be much more efficacious than anger. The young man, as he followed his wife into the hall, was conscious of a curious reversal of mood. There was something about the luxury of the Welland house and the density of the Welland atmosphere so charged with minute observances and exactions that always stole into his system like a narcotic. The heavy carpets, the watchful servants, the perpetually reminding tick of disciplined clocks, the perpetually renewed stack of cards and invitations on the hall table, and the whole chain of tyrannical trifles binding one hour to the next, and each member of the household to all the others made any less systemized and affluent existence seem unreal and precarious. But now it was the Welland house and the life he was expected to lead in it that had become unreal and irrelevant, and the brief scene on the shore, when he had stood, irresolute, halfway down the bank, was as close to him as the blood in his veins. All night he lay awake in the big chintz bedroom at May's side, watching the moonlight slant along the carpet, and thinking of Ellen Olenska driving home across the gleaning beaches behind Beaufort's trotters. End of Chapter 21 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librivox.org. The Age of Innocence, a novel by Edith Wharton. Read for LibriVox by Brenda Dane. Chapter 22 A Party For the Blankers Mr. Welland laid down his knife and fork and looked anxiously and incredulously across the luncheon table at his wife, who, adjusting her gold eyeglasses, read aloud in the tone of high comedy. Professor and Mrs. Emerson Sillerton request the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Welland's company at the meeting of the Wednesday afternoon club on 25 August at three o'clock punctually to meet Mrs. and the Mrs. Blanker. Red Gables, Catherine Street, RSVP. Good gracious, Mr. Welland gasped, as if a second reading had been necessary to bring the monstrous absurdity of the thing home to him. Poor Amy Sillerton, you can never tell what her husband will do next, Mrs. Welland's side. I suppose he's just discovered the Blankers. Professor Emerson Sillerton was a thorn in the side of Newport Society, and a thorn that could not be plucked out, for it grew on a venerable and venerated family tree. He was, as people said, a man who had every advantage. His father was Sillerton Jackson's uncle, his mother a penny-low of Boston. On each side there was wealth and position and mutual suitability. Nothing, nothing on earth obliged Emerson Sillerton to be an archaeologist, or indeed a professor of any sort, or to live in Newport in winter, or to any of the other revolutionary things that he did. But at least if he was going to break with tradition and flout society in the face, he need not have married poor Amy Dagonette, who had a right to expect something different, and money enough to keep her own carriage. No one in the Mingate set could understand why Amy Sillerton had submitted so tamely to the eccentricities of a husband who filled the house with long-haired men and short-haired women. And when he travelled took her to explore tombs in Yucatan, instead of going to Paris or Italy. But there they were, set in their ways, and apparently unaware that they were different from other people. And when they gave one of their dreary annual garden parties, every family on the cliffs, because of the Sillerton-Panelot-Dagonette connection, had to draw lots and sent an unwilling representative. It's a wonder, Mrs. Welland remarked, that they didn't choose the Cup Race Day. Do you remember two years ago they're giving a party for a black man on the day of Julia Mingates the Dansante? Luckily this time there's nothing else going on that I know of, for of course some of us will have to go. Mr. Welland sighed nervously. Some of us, my dear, more than one? Three o'clock is such a very awkward hour. I have to be here at half-past three to take my drops. It really is no use trying to follow Bencombe's new treatment if I don't do it systematically. And if I join you later, of course, I shall miss my drive. At the thought he laid down his knife and fork again, and a flush of anxiety rose to his finely wrinkled cheek. There's no reason why you should go at all, my dear, his wife answered, with a cheerfulness that had become automatic. I have some cards to leave at the other end of Bellevue Avenue, and I'll drop in about half-past three and stay long enough to make poor Amy feel that she hasn't been slighted. She glanced, hesitatingly at her daughter. And if Newland's afternoon is provided for, perhaps May can drive you out with the ponies and try their new russet harness. It was a principle in the Welland family that people's days and hours should be what Mrs. Welland called provided for. The melancholy possibility of having to kill time, especially for those who did not care for wist or solitaire, was a vision that haunted her as the specter of the unemployed haunts the philanthropist. Another of her principles was that parents should never, at least visibly, interfere with the plans of their married children. And the difficulty of adjusting this respect for May's independence with the exegency of Mrs. Welland's claims could be overcome only by the exercise of an ingenuity which left not a second of Mrs. Welland's own time unprovided for. Of course I'll drive with Papa. I'm sure Newland will find something to do, May said in a tone that gently reminded her husband of his lack of response. It was a cause of constant distress to Mrs. Welland that her son-in-law showed so little foresight in planning his days. Often, already during the fortnight that he had passed under her roof, when she inquired how he meant to spend his afternoon, he had answered paradoxically, oh, I think for a change I'll just save it instead of spending it. And once, when she and May had had to go on a long postponed round of afternoon calls, he had confessed to having lain all the afternoon under a rock on the beach below the house. Newland never seems to look ahead, Mrs. Welland once ventured to complain to her daughter, and May answered serenely, no, but you see it doesn't matter, because when there's nothing particular to do he reads a book. Oh yes, like his father, Mrs. Welland agreed, as if allowing for an inherited oddity. And after that the question of Newland's unemployment was tacitly dropped. Nevertheless, as the day for the Sillerton reception approached, May began to show a natural solicitude for his welfare, and to suggest a tennis match at the Chiverses, or a sale on Julius Bofrit's cutter as a mean of atoning for her temporary desertion. I shall be back by six, you know, dear. Papa never drives later than that, and she was not reassured till Archer said that he thought of hiring a runabout and driving up the island to a stud farm to look at a second horse for her broom. They had been looking for this horse for some time, and the suggestion was so acceptable that May glanced at her mother as if to say, you see, he knows how to plan out his time as well as any of us. The idea of the stud farm and the broom horse had germinated in Archer's mind on the very day when the Emerson Sillerton invitation had first been mentioned, but he had kept it to himself, as if there were something clandestine in the plan and discovery might prevent its execution. He had, however, taken the precaution to engage in advance a runabout with a pair of old livery-stable trotters that could still do their eighteen miles on level roads, and at two o'clock hastily deserting the luncheon table he sprang into a light carriage and drove off. The day was perfect. A breeze from the north drove little puffs of white cloud across an ultramarine sky with a bright sea running under it. Bellevue Avenue was empty at that hour, and after dropping the stable lad at the corner of Mill Street, Archer turned down the old beach road and drove across Eastman's Beach. He had the feeling of unexplained excitement, with which, on half-holidays at school, he used to start off into the unknown. Taking his pair at an easy gate, he counted on reaching the stud farm, which was not far beyond Paradise Rocks, before three o'clock, so that, after looking over the horse, and trying him if he seemed promising, he would still have four golden hours to dispose of. As soon as he heard of the Sillerton's party he had said to himself that the Marchioness Manson would certainly come to Newport with the blankers, and that Madame Olenska, might again, take the opportunity of spending the day with her grandmother. At any rate, the blanker habitation would probably be deserted, and he would be able, without, in discretion, to satisfy a vague curiosity concerning it. He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again. But ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay, he had wanted, irrationally, and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure, as he had watched the real one in the summer house. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant, undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food and drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska, or to hear her voice. He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty. When he reached the stud farm, a glance showed him that the horse was not what he wanted. Nevertheless, he took a turn behind it in order to prove to himself that he was not in a hurry. But at three o'clock he shook out the reins over the trodders, and turned into the by-roads leading to Portsmouth. The wind had dropped, and a faint haze on the horizon showed that a fog was waiting to steal up the saconnette on the turn of the tide. But all about him, fields and woods, were steeped in golden light. He drove past gray shingled farmhouses in orchards, past hayfields and groves of oak, past villages with white steeples rising sharply into the fading sky. And at last, after stopping to ask the way of some men at work in a field, he turned down a lane between high banks of goldenrod and brambles. At the end of a lane was the blue glimmer of the river. To the left, standing in front of a clump of oaks and maples, he saw a long, tumbledown house with white paint peeling from its clappards. On the roadside facing the gateway stood one of the open sheds in which the New Englander shelters his farming implements, and visitors hitch their teams. Archer, jumping down, led his pair into the shed, and after tying them to a post, turned towards the house. The patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hayfield, but to the left an overgrown box garden full of dahlias and rusty rose bushes encircled a ghostly summer house of trellis work that had once been white, surmounted by a wooden cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim. Archer leaned for a while against the gate. No one was in sight, and not a sound came from the open windows of the house. A grizzled Newfoundland, dozing before the door seemed as ineffectual a guardian as the arrowless cupid, it was strange to think that this place of silence and decay was the home of the turbulent blinkers yet Archer was sure that he was not mistaken. For a long time he stood there. He was content to take in the scene and gradually falling under its drowsy spell, but at length he roused himself to the sense of the passing time. Should he look his fill and then drive away? He stood, irresolute, wishing suddenly to see the inside of the house so that he might picture the room that Madame Olenska sat in. There was nothing to prevent his walking up to the door and ringing the bell. If, as he supposed, she was away with the rest of the party he could easily give his name and ask permission to go into the sitting room to write a message. But instead he crossed Belon and turned towards the box garden. As he entered it, he caught sight of something bright-colored in the summer house and presently made it out to be a pink parasol. Archer drew him like a magnet. He was sure it was hers. He went into the summer house and, sitting down on the rickety seat, picked up the silken thing and looked at its carved handle, which was made of some rare wood that gave out an aromatic scent. Archer lifted the handle to his lips. He heard a rustle of skirts against the box and sat motionless, leaning on the parasol handle with clasped hands and, letting the rustle come nearer without lifting his eyes, he had always known that this must happen. Oh, Mr. Archer! exclaimed a loud, young voice, and, looking up, he saw before him the youngest and largest of the blanker girls, blond and blousy, in bedraggled muslin. A red blotch on one of her cheeks seemed to show that it had recently been pressed against a pillow, and her half-awakened eyes stared at him hospitably but confusedly. Gracious! Where did you drop from? I must have been sound asleep in the hammock. Everybody else has gone to Newport. Did you ring? She incoherently inquired. Archer's confusion was greater than hers. I—no—that is, I was just going to. I had to come up to the island to see about a horse and I drove over on the chance of finding Mrs. Blanker and your visitors, but the house seemed empty so I sat down to wait. Miss Blanker, shaking off the fumes of sleep, looked at him with increasing interest. The house is empty. Mother's not here, or the Marchioness, or anybody but me. Her glance became faintly reproachful. Didn't you know that Professor and Mrs. Sillerton are giving a garden party for Mother and all of us this afternoon? It was too unlucky I couldn't go, but I've had a sore throat and Mother was afraid of the drive home this evening. Did you ever know anything so disappointing? Of course, she added gaily. I shouldn't have minded half as much if I'd known you were coming. Symptoms of a lumbering coquetry became visible in her and Archer found the strength to break in. But Madame Olenska—has she gone to Newport, too? Miss Blanker looked at him with surprise. Madame Olenska—didn't you know she'd been called away? Called away? Oh, my best parasol! I lent it to that goose of a Katie because it matched her ribbons and the careless thing must have dropped it here. We Blankers are all like that, real Bohemians. Recovering the sunshade with a powerful hand, she unfurled it and suspended its rosy dome above her head. Yes, Ellen was called away yesterday. She lets us call her Ellen, you know. A telegram came from Boston. She said she might be gone for two days. I do love the way she does her hair, don't you? Miss Blanker rambled on. Archer continued to stare through her as though she had been transparent. All he saw was the trumpery parasol that arched its pinkness above her giggling head. After a moment he ventured, You don't happen to know why Madame Olenska went to Boston. I hope it was not on account of bad news. Miss Blanker took this with a cheerful incredulity. Oh, I don't believe so. She didn't tell us what was in the telegram. I think she didn't want the Marchionesse to know. She's so romantic-looking, isn't she? Doesn't she remind you of Mrs. Scott Sidden's when she reads Lady Geraldine's courtship? Did you never hear her? Archer was dealing hurriedly with crowding thoughts. His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him. And passing down its endless emptiness, he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen. He glanced about him at the unpruned garden, the tumbledown house, and the oak grove under which the dusk was gathering. It had seemed so exactly the place in which he ought to have found Madame Olenska. And she was far away. And even the pink sunshade was not hers. He frowned and hesitated. You don't know, I suppose. I shall be in Boston tomorrow. If I could just manage to see— He felt that Miss Blanker was losing interest in him, though her smile persisted. Oh, of course! How lovely of you! She's staying at the Parker House. It must be horrible there in this weather. After that Archer was, but intermittently aware of the remarks they exchanged. He could only remember stoutly resisting her entreaty that he should await the returning family and have a high tea with them before he drove home. At length, with his hostess still at his side, he passed out of range of the wooden cupid, unfastened his horses, and drove off. At the turn of the lane he saw Miss Blanker standing at the gate and waving the pink parasol. End of Chapter 22 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit www.librivox.org The Age of Innocence A novel by Edith Wharton Read for LibriVox by Brenda Dane Chapter 23 The next morning, when Archer got out of the Fall River train, he emerged upon a steaming Midsummer Boston. The streets near the station were full of the smell of beer and coffee and decaying fruit, and a shirt-sleeve populace moved through them with the intimate abandon of borders going down the passage to the bathroom. Archer found a cab and drove to the Somerset Club for breakfast. Even the fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity, to which no excessive heat ever degrades the European cities. Caretakers in Calico lounged on the doorsteps of the wealthy, and the common looked like a pleasure-ground on the morrow of a Masonic picnic. If Archer had tried to imagine Ellen Olenska in improbable scenes, he could not have called up any into which it was more difficult to fit her than this heat-prostrated and deserted Boston. He breakfasted with appetite and method, beginning with a slice of melon, and studying a morning paper while he waited for his toast and scrambled eggs. A new sense of energy and activity had possessed him ever since he had announced to May the night before that he had business in Boston and should take the Fall River boat that night and go on to New York the following evening. It had always been understood that he would return to town early in the week, and when he got back from his expedition to Portsmouth a letter from the office, which fate had conspicuously placed on a corner of the hall table, sufficed to justify his sudden change of plan. He was even ashamed of the ease with which the whole thing had been done. It reminded him for an uncomfortable moment of Lawrence Lefferts's masterly contrivances for securing his freedom. But this did not long trouble him, for he was not in an analytic mood. After breakfast he smoked a cigarette and glanced over the commercial advertiser. While he was thus engaged, two or three men he knew came in, and the usual greetings were exchanged. It was the same world after all, though he had such a queer sense of having slipped through the meshes of time and space. He looked at his watch, and finding that it was half past nine, got up and went into the writing room. There he wrote a few lines and ordered a messenger to take a cab to the Parker House and wait for the answer. He then sat down behind another newspaper and tried to calculate how long it would take a cab to get to the Parker House. The lady was out, sir. He suddenly heard a waiter's voice at his elbow and stammered, out? As if it were a word in a strange language. He got up and went into the hall. It must be a mistake. She could not be out at that hour. He flushed with anger at his own stupidity. Why had he not sent the note as soon as he arrived? He found his hat and stick and went forth into the street. The city had suddenly become as strange and vast and empty as if he were a traveller from distant lands. For a moment he stood on the doorstep, hesitating. Then he decided to go to the Parker House. What if the messenger had been misinformed and she were still there? He started to walk across the common and on the first bench under a tree he saw her sitting. She had a grey silk sunshade over her head. How could he ever have imagined her with a pink one? As he approached he was struck by her listless attitude. She sat there as if she had nothing else to do. He saw her drooping profile and the knot of hair fastened low in the neck under her dark hat and the long wrinkled glove on the hand that held the sunshade. He came a step or two nearer and she turned and looked at him. Oh! she said. And for the first time he noticed a startled look on her face. But in another moment it gave way to a slow smile of wonder and contentment. Oh! she murmured again on a different note as he stood looking down at her and without rising she made a place for him on the bench. I'm here on business, just got here, Archer explained, and without knowing why he suddenly began to feign astonishment at seeing her. But what on earth are you doing in this wilderness? He had really no idea what he was saying. He felt as if he were shouting at her across endless distances and she might vanish again before he could overtake her. I? Oh! I'm here on business, too, she answered, turning her head towards him so that they were face to face. The words hardly reached him. He was aware only of her voice and of the startling fact that not an echo of it had remained in his memory. He had not even remembered that it was low-pitched with a faint roughness on the consonants. You do your hair differently, he said, his heart beating as if he had uttered something irrevocable. Differently? Oh no, it's only that I do it as best I can when I'm without Nastasia. Nastasia, but isn't she with you? No, I'm alone. For two days it was not worthwhile to bring her. You're alone at the Parker House? She looked at him with a flash of her old malice. Does it strike you as dangerous? No, not dangerous, but unconventional, I see. I suppose it is. She considered a moment. I haven't thought of it because I've just done something so much more unconventional. The faint tinge of irony lingered in her eyes. I've just refused to take back a sum of money that belonged to me. Archer sprang up and moved a step or two away. She had furled her parasol and sat absently drawing patterns on the gravel. Presently he came back and stood before her. Someone has come here to meet you. Yes, with this offer. She nodded. And you refused because of the conditions. I refused, she said, after a moment. He sat down by her again. What were the conditions? Oh, they were not onerous, just to sit at the head of his table now and then. There was another interval of silence. Archer's heart had slammed itself shut in the queer way it had, and he sat vainly groping for a word. He wants you back. At any price? Well, a considerable price. At least the sum is considerable for me. He paused again, beating about the question he felt he must put. It was to meet him here that you came? She stared and then burst into a laugh. Meet him, my husband, here. At this season he's always at cows or bottom. He sent someone. Yes. With a letter? She shook her head. No, just a message. He never writes. I don't think I've had more than one letter from him. The illusion brought the color to her cheek, and it reflected itself in Archer's vivid blush. Why does he never write? Why should he? What does one have secretaries for? The young man's blush deepened. She had pronounced the word as if it had no more significance than any other in her vocabulary. For a moment it was on the tip of his tongue to ask, did he send his secretary then? But the remembrance of Count Olenski's only letter to his wife was too present to him. He paused again and then took another plunge, and the person, the emissary, the emissary, Madame Olenski rejoined, still smiling, might, for all I care, have left already. But he has insisted on waiting till this evening, in case, on the chance, and you came out here to think the chance over. I came out to get a breath of air. The hotel's too stifling. I'm taking the afternoon train back to Portsmouth. They sat, silent, not looking at each other, but straight ahead at the people passing along the path. Finally she turned her eyes again to his face and said, You're not changed. He felt like answering. I was, till I saw you again. But instead he stood up abruptly and glanced about him at the untidy, sweltering park. This is horrible. Why shouldn't we go out a little on the bay? There's a breeze and it will be cooler. We might take the steamboat down to Point Arleigh. She glanced up at him hesitatingly and he went on. On a Monday morning there won't be anybody on the boat. My train doesn't leave till evening. I'm going back to New York. Why shouldn't we? He insisted, looking down at her and suddenly he broke out. Haven't we done all we could? Oh! She murmured again. She stood up and reopened her sunshade, glancing about her as if to take counsel of the scene and reassure herself of the impossibility of remaining in it. Then her eyes returned to his face. You mustn't say things like that to me, she said. I'll say anything you like or nothing. I won't open my mouth unless you tell me to. What harm can it do anybody? All I want is to listen to you. She drew out a little gold-faced watch on an enameled chain. Oh! Don't calculate, he broke out. Give me the day. I want to get you away from that man. At what time was he coming? Her color rose again. At eleven? Then you must come at once. You needn't be afraid if I don't come. Nor you either if you do. I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met. It may be another hundred before we meet again. She still wavered. Her anxious eyes on his face. Why didn't you come down to the beach to fetch me? The day I was at Granny's, she asked. Because you didn't look around. Because you didn't know I was there. I swore I wouldn't unless you looked round. He laughed as the childishness of the confessions struck him. But I didn't look on purpose. On purpose? I know you were there. When you drove in I recognized the ponies, so I went down to the beach. To get away from me as far as you could. She repeated in a low voice. To get away from you as far as I could. He laughed out again, this time in boyish satisfaction. Well, you see, it's no use. I may as well tell you, he added, that the business I came here for was just to find you. But look here. We must start or we shall miss our boat. Our boat? She frowned perplexedly and then smiled. Oh, but I must go back to the hotel first. I must leave a note. As many notes as you please, you can write here. He drew out a note case and one of the new stylographic pens. I've even got an envelope. You see how everything's predestined? There. Steady the thing on your knee and I'll get the pen going in a second. They have to be humoured. Wait. He banged the hand that held the pen against the back of the bench. It's like jerking down the mercury in a thermometer. Just a trick. Now try. She laughed and bending over the sheet of paper which he had laid on his note case began to write. Archer walked away a few steps, staring with radiant, unseeing eyes at the passersby who, in their turn, paused to stare at the unwanted sight of a fashionably dressed lady writing a note on her knee on a bench in the common. Madame Olenska slipped the sheet into the envelope, wrote a name on it and put it into her pocket. Then she too stood up. They walked back towards Beacon Street and near the club Archer caught sight of the plush-lined herdic which had carried his note to the Parker House and whose driver was reposing from this effort by bathing his brow at the corner hydrant. I told you everything was predestined. Here's a cab for us, you see. They laughed, astonished at the miracle of picking up a public conveyance at that hour, and in that unlikely spot, in a city where cab stands were still a foreign novelty. Archer, looking at his watch, saw that there was time to drive to the Parker House before going to the steamboat landing. They rattled through the hot streets and drew up at the door of the hotel. Archer held out his hand for the letter. Shall I take it in? he asked. But Madame Olenska, shaking her head, sprang out and disappeared through the glazed doors. It was barely half past ten. But what if the emissary, impatient for her reply and not knowing how else to employ his time, were already seated among the travellers with cooling drinks at their elbows of whom Archer had caught a glimpse as she went in? He waited, pacing up and down before the herdic. A Sicilian youth with eyes like Nastasias offered to shine his boots and an Irish matron to sell him peaches, and every few moments the doors opened to let out hot men with straw hats tilted far back who glanced at him as they went by. He marvelled that the door should open so often and that all the people it let out should look so like each other and so like all the other hot men who at that hour, through the length and breadth of the land, were passing continuously in and out of the swinging doors of hotels. And then suddenly came a face that he could not relate to the other faces. He caught but a flash of it, for his pacing's had carried him to the farthest point of his beat, and it was interning back to the hotel that he saw in a group of typical countenances. The lank and weary, the round and surprised, valanturn-jawed and mild, this other face that was so many more things at once and things so different. It was that of a young man, pale too and half extinguished by the heat or worry or both, but somehow quicker, vivider, more conscious, or perhaps seeming so because he was so different. Archer hung a moment on a thin thread of memory, but it snapped and floated off with a disappearing face, apparently that of some foreign businessman looking doubly foreign in such a setting. He vanished in the stream of passers by, and Archer resumed his patrol. He did not care to be seen, watch in hand within view of the hotel, and his unaided reckoning of the lapse of time led him to conclude that if Madame Olenska was so long and reappearing, it could only be because she had met the emissary, and Benway laid by him. At the thought, Archer's apprehension rose to anguish. If she doesn't come soon, I'll go in and find her, he said. The doors swung open again, and she was at his side. They got into the herdick, and as it drove off he took out his watch and saw that she had been absent just three minutes. In the clatter of loose windows that made talk impossible, they bumped over the disjointed cobblestones to the wharf. Seated side by side on a bench of the half-empty boat, they found that they had hardly anything to say to each other, or rather that what they had to say communicated itself best in the blessed silence of their release and their isolation. As the paddle wheels began to turn, and warbs and shipping to recede through the veil of heat, it seemed to Archer that everything in the old familiar world of habit was receding also. He longed to ask Madame Olenska if she did not have the same feeling, the feeling that they were starting on some long voyage from which they might never return. But he was afraid to say it, or anything else that might disturb the delicate balance of her trust in him. In reality, he had no wish to betray that trust. There had been days and nights when the memory of their kiss had burned and burned on his lips, the day before even on the drive to Portsmouth. The thought of her had run through him like fire. But now that she was beside him, and they were drifting forth into this unknown world, they seemed to have reached the kind of deeper nearness that a touch may thunder. As the boat left the harbor and turned seaward, a breeze stirred about them, and the bay broke up into long, oily undulations, then into ripples, tipped with spray. The fog of sultriness still hung over the city, but ahead lay a fresh world of ruffled waters with lighthouses in the sun. Madame Olenska, leaning back against the boat rail, drank in the coolness between parted lips. She had wound a long veil about her hat, but it left her face uncovered and archer was struck by the tranquil gaiety of her expression. She seemed to take their adventure as a matter of course, and to be neither in fear of unexpected encounters nor, what was worse, unduly elated by their possibility. In the bare dining-room of the inn, which he had hoped they would have to themselves, they found a strident party of innocent-looking young men and women. Schoolteachers on a holiday, the landlord told them, and archer's heart sank at the idea of having to talk through their noise. This is hopeless. I'll ask for a private room, he said. And Madame Olenska, without offering any objection, waited while he went in search of it. The room opened on a long wooden veranda, with a sea coming in at the windows. It was bare and cool, with a table covered with a coarse-checkered cloth, and adorned by a bottle of pickles and a blueberry pie under a cage. No more guileless-looking cabinet particular ever offered its shelter to a clandestine couple. Archer fancied he saw the sense of its reassurance in the faintly amused smile with which Madame Olenska sat down opposite to him. A woman who had run away from her husband, and reputedly with another man, was likely to have mastered the art of taking things for granted. But something in the quality of her composure took the edge from his irony, by being so quiet, so unsurprised, and so simple. She had managed to brush away the conventions and make him feel that to seek to be alone was the natural thing for two old friends, who had so much to say to each other. End of Chapter 23 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit www.librivox.org. The Age of Innocence A novel by Edith Wharton Read for LibriVox by Brenda Dane Chapter 24 They lunged slowly and meditatively with mute intervals between rushes of talk. For the spell once broken they had much to say, and yet moments when saying became the mere accompaniment to long duologues of silence. Archer kept the talk from his own affairs, not with conscious intention, but because he did not want to miss a word of her history. And leaning on the table, her chin resting on her clasped hands, she talked to him of the year and a half since they had met. She had grown tired of what people called society. New York was kind, it was almost oppressively hospitable. She should never forget the way in which it had welcomed her back. But after the first flush of novelty, she had found herself, as she phrased it, too different to care for the things it cared about. And so she had decided to try Washington, where one was supposed to meet more varieties of people and of opinion. And on the whole she should probably settle down in Washington and make a home there for poor Medora, who had worn out the patience of all her other relations just at the time when she most needed looking after and protecting from matrimonial perils. But Dr. Carver, aren't you afraid of Dr. Carver? I hear he's been staying with you at the Blankers. She smiled. Oh, the Carver danger is over. Dr. Carver is a very clever man. He wants a rich wife to finance his plans. And Medora is simply a good advertisement as a convert. A convert to what? To all sorts of new and crazy social schemes. But do you know they interest me more than the blind conformity to tradition, somebody else's tradition, that I see among our own friends. It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country. She smiled across the table. Do you suppose Christopher Columbus would have taken all that trouble just to go to the opera with the Selfridge Marys? Archer changed color. And Beaufort? Do you say these things to Beaufort? He asked abruptly. I haven't seen him for a long while. But I used to. And he understands. Oh, it's what I've always told you. You don't like us. And you like Beaufort because he's so unlike us. He looked about the bare room and out at the bare beach and the row of stark white village houses strung along the shore. We're damnably dull. We've no character, no color, no variety. I wonder, he broke out, why you don't go back. Her eyes darkened and he expected an indignant rejoinder. But she sat silent as if thinking over what he had said and he grew frightened lest she should answer that she wondered too. At length she said, I believe it's because of you. It was impossible to make the confession more dispassionately or in a tone less encouraging to the vanity of the person addressed. Archer reddened to the temples but dared not move or speak. It was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock about it if it were left undisturbed. At least, she continued, it was you who made me understand that under the dullness there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate that even those I most cared for in my other life look cheap in comparison. I don't know how to explain myself, she drew together her troubled brows, but it seems as if I'd never before understood with how much that is hard and shabby and base the most exquisite pleasures may be paid for. Exquisite pleasures. It's something to have had them, he felt like retorting, but the appeal in her eyes kept him silent. I want, she went on, to be perfectly honest with you and with myself. For a long time I've hoped this chance would come that I might tell you how you've helped me, what you've made of me, Archer sat staring beneath frowning brows. He interrupted her with a laugh and what do you make out that you've made of me? She paled a little. Of you? Yes, I'm of your making much more than you ever were of mine. I'm the man who married one woman because another one told him to. Her paleness turned to a fugitive flush. I thought, you promised you were not to say such things today. Ah, how like a woman, none of you will ever see a bad business through. She lowered her voice. Is it a bad business? For May? He stood in the window drumming against the raised sash and feeling in every fiber the wistful tenderness with which she had spoken her cousin's name. For that's the thing we've always got to think of, haven't we? By your own showing, she insisted. My own showing, he echoed, his blank eyes still on the sea. Or if not, she continued pursuing her own thought with a painful application. If it's not worth while to have given up, to have missed things so that others may be saved from disillusionment and misery, then everything I came home for, everything that made my other life seem by contrast so bare and so poor, because no one there took account of them. All these things are a sham or a dream. He turned around without moving from his place. And in that case there's no reason on earth why you shouldn't go back? He concluded for her. Her eyes were clinging to him desperately. Oh, is there no reason? Not if you staked your all on the success of my marriage. She made no answer and he went on. What's the use? You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring, that's all. Oh, don't say that when I'm enduring it, she burst out, her eyes filling. Her arms had dropped along the table, and she sat with her face abandoned to his gaze, as if in the recklessness of a desperate peril. The face exposed her as much as if it had been her whole person with a soul behind it. Archer stood dumb, overwhelmed by what it suddenly told him. You too. Oh, all this time. You too. For answers she let the tears on her lids overflow and run slowly downward. Half the width of the room was still between them, and neither made any show of moving. Archer was conscious of a curious indifference to her bodily presence. He would hardly have been aware of it if one of the hands she had flung out on the table had not drawn his gaze, as on the occasion when, in the little twenty-third street house, he had kept his eye on it in order not to look at her face. Now his imagination spun about the hand, as if about the edge of a vortex. But still he made no effort to draw nearer. He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them, but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to be superficially satisfied. His one terror was to do anything which might efface the sound and impression of her words, his one thought, that he should never again feel quite alone. But after a moment the sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in, yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well have been half the world apart. What's the use? When will you go back, he broke out, a great hopeless, how on earth can I keep you crying out to her beneath his words? She sat motionless with lowered lids. Oh, I shan't go yet. Not yet. Sometime then, sometime that you already foresee. At that she raised her clearest eyes. I promise you, not as long as you hold out. Not as long as we can look straight at each other like this. He dropped into his chair. What her answer really said was, if you lift a finger you'll drive me back, back to all the abominations you know of and all the temptations you have guessed. He understood it as clearly as if she had uttered the words and the thought kept him anchored to his side of the table in a kind of moved and sacred submission. What a life for you, he groaned. Oh, as long as it's part of yours and mine a part of yours, she nodded. And that's to be all for either of us. Well, it is all, isn't it? At that he sprang up forgetting everything but the sweetness of her face. She rose too, not as if to meet him or to flee from him, but quietly, as though the worst of the task were done and she had only to wait. So quietly that as he came closer her outstretched hands acted not as a check, but as a guide to him. They fell into his while her arms extended but not rigid, kept him far enough off to let her surrendered face say the rest. They may have stood in that way for a long time or only for a few moments, but it was long enough for her silence to communicate all she had to say. And for him to feel that only one thing mattered. He must do nothing to make this meeting their last. He must leave their future in her care asking only that she should keep fast hold of it. Don't... Don't be unhappy. She said with a break in her voice as she drew her hands away and he answered you won't go back. You won't go back as if it were one possibility he could not bear. I won't go back. She said and turning away she opened the door and led the way into the public dining room. The strident school teachers were gathering up their possessions preparatory to a straggling flight to the wharf. Across the beach lay the white steamboat at the pier and over the sunlit waters Boston loomed in a line of haze. End of Chapter 24 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit www.librivox.org The Age of Innocence A novel by Edith Wharton Read for LibriVox by Brenda Dane Chapter 25 Once more on the boat and in the presence of others Archer felt a tranquility of spirit that surprised as much as it sustained him. The day, according to any current valuation had been a rather ridiculous failure. He had not so much as touched Madame Olenska's hand with his lips or extracted one word from her that gave promise of further opportunities. Nevertheless for a man sick with unsatisfied love and parting for an indefinite period from the object of his passion he felt himself almost humiliatingly calm and comforted. It was the perfect balance she had held between their loyalty to others and their honesty to themselves that had so stirred and yet tranquilized him. A balance not artfully calculated as her tears and her faltering showed but resulting naturally from her unabashed sincerity. It filled him with a tender awe now the danger was over and I think the fates that no personal vanity no sense of playing apart before sophisticated witnesses had tempted him to tempt her. Even after they had clasped hands for goodbye at the full river station and he had turned away alone the conviction remained with him of having saved out of their meeting much more than he had sacrificed. He wandered back to the club and went and sat alone in the deserted library turning and turning over in his thoughts every separate second of their hours together. It was clear to him and it grew more clear under closer scrutiny that if she should finally decide on returning to Europe returning to her husband it would not be because her old life tempted her even on the new terms offered No, she would go only if she felt herself becoming a temptation to archer a temptation to fall away from the standard they had both set up her choice would be to stay near him as long as he did not ask her to come nearer and it depended on himself to keep her just there safe but secluded in the train these thoughts were still with him they enclosed him in a kind of golden haze through which the faces about him looked remote and indistinct he had a feeling that if he spoke to his fellow travelers they would not understand what he was saying in this state of abstraction he found himself the following morning waking to the reality of a stifling September day in New York the heat withered faces in the long train passed him and he continued to stare at them through the same golden blur but suddenly as he left the station one of the faces detached itself came closer and forced itself upon his consciousness it was he instantly recalled the face of the young man he had seen the day before passing out of the Parker house and had noted as not conforming to type an American hotel face the same thing struck him now and again he became aware of a dim stir of former associations the young man stood looking about him with the dazed air of the foreigner flung upon the harsh mercies of American travel then he advanced towards Archer lifted his hat and said in English surely, monsieur, we met in London to be sure in London Archer grasped his hand with curiosity and sympathy so you did get here after all, he exclaimed casting a wondering eye on the astute and haggard little countenance of young Carfrey's French tutor oh, I got here, yes monsieur Riviere smiled with drawn lips but not for long I returned the day after tomorrow he stood grasping his light valise in one neatly gloved hand and gazing anxiously perplexedly almost appealingly into Archer's face I wonder, monsieur since I've had the good luck to run across you if I might I was just going to suggest it come to luncheon, won't you? downtown, I mean if you'll look me up in my office I'll take you to a very decent restaurant in that quarter monsieur Riviere was visibly touched you're too kind but I was only going to ask if you would tell me how to reach some sort of conveyance there are no porters and no one here seems to listen I know, our American stations must surprise you when you ask for a porter they give you chewing gum but if you'll come along I'll extricate you and you really must lunch with me, you know the young man after a just perceptible hesitation replied with profuse thanks and in a tone that did not carry he was already engaged but when they had reached the comparative reassurance of the street he asked if he might call that afternoon Archer at ease in the mid-summer leisure of the office fixed an hour and scribbled his address which the Frenchman pocketed with reiterated thanks and a wide flourish of his hat a horse car received him and Archer walked away punctually at the hour monsieur Riviere appeared moved out but still unmistakably drawn and serious Archer was alone in his office and the young man before accepting the seat he preferred began abruptly I believe I saw you sir yesterday in Boston the statement was insignificant enough and Archer was about to frame an ascent when his words were checked by something mysterious yet illuminating in his visitors consistent gaze it is extraordinary very extraordinary monsieur Riviere continued that we should have met in the circumstances in which I find myself what circumstances Archer asked wondering a little crudely if he needed money monsieur Riviere continued to study him with tentative eyes I have come not to look for employment as I spoke of doing when we last met but on a special mission ah Archer exclaimed in a flash the two meetings had connected themselves in his mind he paused to take in the situation thus suddenly lighted up for him and monsieur Riviere also remained silent as if aware that what he had said was enough a special mission Archer at length repeated the young Frenchman opening his palms raised them slightly and the two men continued to look at each other across the office desk till Archer roused himself to say do sit down whereupon monsieur Riviere bowed took a distant chair and again waited it was about this mission that you wanted to consult me Archer finally asked monsieur Riviere bent his head not in my own behalf on that score I I have fully dealt with myself I should like if I may to speak to you about the Countess Olenska Archer had known for the last few minutes that the words were coming but when they came they sent the blood rushing to his temples as if he'd been caught by a bent back branch in a thicket and on whose behalf he said do you wish to do this monsieur Riviere met the question sturdily well I might say on hers if it did not sound like a liberty shall I say instead on behalf of abstract justice Archer considered him ironically in other words you are Count Olenski's messenger he saw his blush more darkly reflected in monsieur Riviere's sallow countenance and not to you monsieur if I come to you it is on quite other grounds what right have you in the circumstances to be on any other ground Archer retorted if you're an emissary you're an emissary the young man considered my mission is over as far as the Countess Olenska goes it has failed I can't help that Archer rejoined on the same note of irony no but you can help monsieur Riviere paused turned his hat about in his still carefully gloved hands looked into its lining and then back at Archer's face you can help monsieur I am convinced to make it equally a failure with her family Archer pushed back his chair and stood up will he exclaimed he stood with his hands in his pockets staring down wrathfully at the little Frenchman whose face though he too had risen was still an inch or two below the line of Archer's eyes monsieur Riviere pale to his normal hue paler than that his complexion could hardly turn why the devil Archer explosively continued should you have thought I suppose you are appealing to me on the grounds of my relationship to Madame Olenska that I should take a view contrary to the rest of her family the change of expression in monsieur Riviere's face was for a time his only answer his look passed from timidity to absolute distress for a young man of his usually resourceful mean it would have been difficult to appear more disarmed and defenseless oh monsieur I can't imagine Archer continued why you should have come to me when there are others so much nearer to the Countess still less why you thought I should be more accessible to the arguments I suppose you were sent over with monsieur Riviere took this onslaught with a disconcerting humility the arguments I want to present to you monsieur are my own and not those I was sent over with then I see still less reason for listening to them monsieur Riviere again looked into his hat as if considering whether these last words were not a sufficiently broad hint to put it on and be gone then he spoke with sudden decision monsieur will you tell me one thing is it my right to be here that you question or do you perhaps believe the whole matter to be already closed his quiet insistence made Archer feel the clumsiness of his own bluster monsieur Riviere had succeeded in imposing himself Archer reddening slightly dropped into his chair again and signed to the young man to be seated I beg your pardon but why isn't the matter closed monsieur Riviere glanced back at him with anguish you do then agree with the rest of the family that in the face of the new proposals I have brought it is hardly possible for Madame Olenska not to return to her husband good God Archer exclaimed and his visitor gave out a low murmur of confirmation before seeing her I saw at Count Olenski's request Mr. Lovell-Mingott with whom I had several talks before going to Boston I understand that he represents his mother's view and that Mrs. Manson Mingott's influence is great throughout her family Archer sat silent with a sense of clinging to the edge of a sliding precipice the discovery that he had been excluded from a share in these negotiations and even from the knowledge that they were on foot caused him a surprise hardly dulled by the acuter wonder of what he was learning he saw in a flash he was pleased to consult him it was because some deep tribal instinct warned them that he was no longer on their side and he recalled with a start of comprehension a remark of May's during their drive home from Mrs. Manson Mingott's on the day of the archery meeting perhaps after all Ellen would be happier with her husband even in the tumult of his new discoveries Archer remembered his indignant exclamation and the fact that since then his wife had never named Madame Olenska to him her careless illusion had no doubt been the straw held up to see which way the wind blew the result had been reported to the family and thereafter Archer had been tacitly omitted from their councils and admired the tribal discipline which made May bow to this decision she would not have done so he knew had her conscience protested but she probably shared the family view that Madame Olenska would be better off as an unhappy wife than as a separated one and that there was no use in discussing the case with Newland who had an awkward way of suddenly not seeming to take the most fundamental things for granted Archer looked up and met his visitors anxious gaze don't you know, monsieur is it possible you don't know that the family began to doubt if they have the right to advise the Countess to refuse her husband's last proposals the proposals you brought the proposals I brought it was on Archer's lips to exclaim that whatever he knew or did not know was no concern of monsieur Riviere's but something in the humble and yet courageous tenacity of monsieur Riviere's gaze made him reject this conclusion and he met the young man's question with another what is your object in speaking to me of this he had not to wait a moment for the answer to beg you, monsieur all the force I am capable of not to let her go back oh don't let her, monsieur Riviere exclaimed Archer looked at him with increasing astonishment there was no mistaking the sincerity of his distress or the strength of his determination he had evidently resolved to let everything go by the board but the supreme need of thus putting himself on record Archer considered may I ask if this is the line you took with the Countess Olenska monsieur Riviere reddened but his eyes did not falter no, monsieur I accepted my mission in good faith I really believed for reasons I need not trouble you with that it would be better for Madame Olenska to recover her situation her fortune the social consideration that her husband's standing gives her so I suppose you could hardly have accepted such a mission otherwise I should not have accepted it well then Archer paused again and their eyes met in another protracted scrutiny oh, monsieur after I had seen her after I had listened to her I knew she was better off here you knew monsieur I discharged my mission faithfully I put the Count's arguments I stated his offers without adding any comment of my own the Countess was good enough to listen patiently she carried her goodness so far as to see me twice she considered impartially all I had come to say and it was in the course of these two talks that I changed my mind that I came to see things differently may I ask what led to this change simply seeing the change in her it's your revere replied the change in her then you knew her before the young man's colour again rose I used to see her in her husband's house I have known Count Olenski for many years you can imagine that he would not have sent a stranger on such a mission Archer's gaze wandering away to the blank walls of the office rested on a hanging calendar surmounted by the rugged features of the United States that such a conversation should be going on anywhere within the millions of square miles subject to his rule seemed as strange as anything the imagination could invent the change what sort of change oh, Monsieur, if I could tell you Monsieur Riviere paused Tenet the discovery I suppose of what I've never thought of before and that if you're an American of her kind of your kind things that are accepted in certain other societies or at least put up with as part of a general convenient give and take become unthinkable simply unthinkable if Madame Olenski's relations understood what these things were their opposition to her returning would no doubt be as unconditional as her own but they seemed to regard her husband's wish to have her back as proof of an irresistible longing for domestic life Monsieur Riviere paused and then added whereas it's far from being as simple as that Archer looked back to the President of the United States and then down at his desk and the papers scattered on it for a second or two he could not trust himself to speak during this interval he heard Monsieur Riviere's chair pushed back and then when he glanced up again he saw that his visitor was as moved as himself thank you Archer said simply there is nothing to thank me for Monsieur it is I rather Monsieur Riviere broke off as if speech for him too were difficult I should like though he continued in a firmer voice to add one thing you asked me I am at this moment I return to him a few months ago for reasons of private necessity such as may happen to anyone who has persons ill and older persons dependent on him but from the moment that I have taken the step of coming here to say these things to you I consider myself discharged and I shall tell him so on my return and give him the reasons that's all Monsieur take this step thank you Archer said again and their hands met end of chapter 20