 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. Red for LibriVox by Brenda Dane. CHAPTER XII. Old-fashioned New York dined at seven, and the habit of after-dinner calls, though derided in arches set, still generally prevailed. As the young man strolled up Fifth Avenue from Waverly Place, the long thoroughfare was deserted, but for a group of carriages standing before the Reggie Chiverses, where there was a dinner for the Duke, and the occasional figure of an elderly gentleman in heavy overcoat and muffler ascending a brownstone doorstep and disappearing into a gas-lit hall. Thus, as Archer crossed Washington Square, he remarked that old Mr. Dulac was calling on his cousins the Dagonettes, and turning down the corner of West Tenth Street, he saw Mr. Skipworth, of his own firm, obviously bound on a visit to the Miss Lannings. A little farther up Fifth Avenue, Beaufort appeared on his doorstep, darkly projected against a blaze of light, descended to his private broom, and rolled away to a mysterious and probably unmentionable destination. It was not an opera night, and no one was giving a party so that Beaufort's outing was undoubtedly of a clandestine nature. Archer connected it in his mind with a little house beyond Lexington Avenue, in which bereaved window-curtains and flower-boxes had recently appeared, and before whose newly painted door the canary-coloured broom of Miss Fanny Ring was frequently seen to wait. Beyond the small and slippery pyramid, which composed Mrs. Archer's world, lay the almost unmapped quarter inhabited by artists, musicians, and people who wrote. These scattered fragments of humanity had never shown any desire to be amalgamated with the social structure. In spite of odd ways they were said to be for the most part quite respectable, but they preferred to keep to themselves. Madora Manson, in her prosperous days, had inaugurated a literary salon, but it had soon died out, owing to the reluctance of a literary to frequent it. Others had made the same attempt, and there was a household of blankers, and intense and voluble mother, and three blousy daughters who imitated her, where one met Edwin Booth and Patti and William Winter, and the new Shakespearean actor George Rignold, and some of the magazine editors and musical and literary critics. Mrs. Archer and her group felt a certain timidity concerning these persons. They were odd. They were uncertain. They had things one didn't know about in the background of their lives and minds. Literature and art were deeply respected in the Archer set, and Mrs. Archer was always at pains to tell her children how much more agreeable and cultivated society had been when it included such figures as Washington Irving, Fitzgreen Halleck, and the poet of The Culprit Fay. The most celebrated authors of that generation had been gentlemen. Perhaps the unknown persons who succeeded them had gentlemanly sentiments, but their origin, their appearance, their hair, their intimacy with the stage and the opera made any old New York criterion inapplicable to them. When I was a girl, Mrs. Archer used to say, we knew everybody between the Battery and Canal Street, and only the people one knew had carriages, it was perfectly easy to place anyone then. Now one can't tell, and I prefer not to try. Only old Catherine Mingott, with her absence of moral prejudices, and in almost parvenu indifference to the subtler distinctions, might have bridged the abyss. But she had never opened a book, or looked at a picture, and cared for music only because it reminded her of gala nights at the Italian in the days of her triumph at the Tuileries. Possibly Beaufort, who was her match in daring, would have succeeded in bringing about a fusion, but his grand house and silk-stocking footmen were an obstacle to informal sociability. Moreover, he was as illiterate as old Mrs. Mingott and considered fellows who wrote as the mere paid purveyors of rich men's pleasures, and no one rich enough to influence his opinion had ever questioned it. Newland Archer had been aware of these things, ever since he could remember, and had accepted them as part of the structure of his universe. He knew that there were societies where painters and poets and novelists, and men of science, and even great actors, were as sought after as dukes, and he had often pictured to himself what it would have been to live in the intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of Mary Me, or Thackery, Browning, or William Morris. But such things were inconceivable in New York and unsettling to think of. Archer knew most of the fellows who wrote, the musicians and the painters. He met them at the century or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that were beginning to come into existence. He enjoyed them there, and was bored with them at the blankers, where they were mingled with fervid and dowdy women who passed them about like captured curiosities. And even after his most exciting talks with Ned Winsett, he always came away with the feeling that, if his world was small, so was theirs, and that the only way to enlarge either was to reach a stage of manners where they would naturally merge. He was reminded of this by trying to picture a society in which the Countess Olenska had lived and suffered, and also, perhaps, tasted mysterious joys. He remembered with what amusement she had told him that her grandmother Mingott and the Wellands objected to her living in a Bohemian quarter given over to people who wrote. It was not the peril, but the poverty that her family disliked, and that shade escaped her, and she supposed they considered literature compromising. She herself had no fears of it, and the books scattered about her drawing-room, a part of the house in which books were usually supposed to be out of place, though chiefly works of fiction had wedded Archer's interest, with such new names as those of Paul Bourget, Hoismans, and the Goncourt Brothers. Ruminating on these things as he approached her door, he was once more conscious of the curious way in which she reversed his values, and of the need of thinking himself into conditions incredibly different from any that he knew if he were to be of use in her present difficulty. Nastasia opened the door, smiling mysteriously. On the bench in the hall lay a sable lined overcoat, a folded opera hat of dull silk, with a gold J.B. on the lining, and a white silk muffler. There was no mistaking the fact that these costly articles were the property of Julius Beaufort. Archer was angry. So angry that he came near scribbling a word on his card and going away. Then he remembered that in writing to Madame Olenska he had been kept by excess of discretion from saying that he wished to see her privately. He had therefore no one but himself to blame if she had opened her doors to other visitors, and he entered the drawing-room with the dogged determination to make Beaufort feel himself in the way, and to outstay him. The banker stood, leaning against the mantel shelf which was draped with an old embroidery, held in place by brass candelabra containing church candles of yellowish wax. He had thrust his chest out, supporting his shoulders against the mantel, and resting his weight on one large patent leather foot. As Archer entered he was smiling, and looking down on his hostess who sat on a sofa placed at right angles to the chimney. A table banked with flowers formed a screen behind it, and against the orchids and azaleas which the young men recognized as tributes from the Beaufort Hothouses, Madame Olenska sat half reclined, her head propped on a hand, and her wide sleeve leaving the arm bare to the elbow. It was usual for ladies who received in the evening to wear what were called simple dinner dresses. A close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk slightly open in the neck with lace ruffles filling in the crack and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet, bordered about the chin and down the front with a glossy black fur. Archer remembered on his last visit to Paris seeing a portrait by a new painter, Carolus Duran, whose pictures were the sensation of the salon in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with her chin nestling in fur. There was something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing room and in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms, but the effect was undeniably pleasing. Lord love us three whole days at Scoitre Cliff, Beaufort was saying in his loud sneering voice as Archer entered the room. You'd better take all your furs and a hot water-bottle. Why is the house so cold? she asked, holding out her left hand to Archer, in a way mysteriously suggesting that she expected him to kiss it. No, but the Mrs. is, said Beaufort, nodding carelessly to the young man. But I thought her so kind. She came herself to invite me, Granny says I must certainly go. Granny would, of course, and I say it's a shame you're going to miss the little oyster supper I'd planned for you at Delmonico's next Sunday, with Campanini and Scalci and a lot of jolly people. She looked doubtfully from the banker to Archer. Ah, that does tempt me. Except the other evening at Mrs. Struthers I've not met a single artist since I've been here. What kind of artist? I know one or two painters, very good fellows I could bring to see you if you'd allow me, said Archer boldly. Painters? Are there painters in New York? asked Beaufort, in a tone implying that there could be none, since he did not buy their pictures. And Madame Olenska said to Archer with a grave smile. That would be charming. But I was really thinking of dramatic artists, singers, actors, musicians. My husband's house was always full of them. She said the words, my husband, as if no sinister associations were connected with them, and in a tone that seemed almost to sigh over the lost delights of her married life. Archer looked at her perplexedly, wondering if it were lightness or dissimulation that enabled her to touch so easily on the past, at the very moment when she was risking her reputation in order to break with it. I do think, she went on addressing both men, that the imprevue adds to one's enjoyment. It's perhaps a mistake to see the same people every day. It's confoundedly dull anyhow. New York is dying of dullness, Beaufort grumbled. And when I try to liven it up for you, you go back on me. Come, think better of it, Sunday is your last chance, for Campanini leaves next week for Baltimore and Philadelphia, and I have a private room and a steinway, and they'll sing all night for me. Oh, how delicious! May I think it over and write to you to-morrow morning? She spoke amiably, yet with the least hint of dismissal in her voice. Beaufort evidently felt it, and being unused to dismissals, stood staring at her with an obstinate line between his eyes. Why not now? It's too serious a question to decide at this late hour. Do you call it late? She returned his glance coolly. Yes, because I still have to talk business with Mr. Archer for a little while. Ah! Beaufort snapped. There was no appeal from her tone, and with a slight shrug he recovered his composure, took her hand which he kissed with a practised air, and calling out from the threshold, I say, Newland, if you can persuade the Countess to stop in town, of course you're included in the supper. Left the room with his heavy important step. For a moment Archer fancied that Mr. Letterblair must have told her of his coming, but the irrelevance of her next remark made him change his mind. You know painters, then. You live in their milieu, she asked, her eyes full of interest. Oh, not exactly. I don't know that the arts have a milieu here, any of them. They're more like a very thinly settled outskirt. But you care for such things? Immensely. When I'm in Paris or London, I never miss an exhibition, I try to keep up. She looked down at the tip of the little satin boot that peeped from her long draperies. I used to care immensely too. My life was full of such things. But now I want to try not to. You want to try not to? Yes, I want to cast off all of my old life to become just like everybody else here. Archer reddened. You'll never be like everybody else, he said. She raised her straight eyebrows a little. Oh, don't say that! If you knew how I hate to be different! Her face had grown as somber as a tragic mask. She leaned forward, clasping her knee in her thin hands and looking away from him into remote, dark distances. I want to get away from it all, she insisted. He waited a moment and cleared his throat. I know. Mr. Letterblair has told me. Oh, that's the reason I've come. He asked me to… You see, I'm in the firm. She looked slightly surprised and then her eyes brightened. You mean you can manage it for me? I can talk to you instead of Mr. Letterblair. Oh, that will be so much easier. Her tone touched him and his confidence grew with his self-satisfaction. He perceived that she had spoken of business to Beaufort simply to get rid of him and to have routed Beaufort was something of a triumph. I am here to talk about it, he repeated. She sat silent, her head still propped by the arm that rested on the back of the sofa. Her face looked pale and extinguished as if dimmed by the rich red of her dress. She struck Archer all of a sudden as a pathetic and even pitiful figure. Now we're coming to hard facts, he thought, conscious in himself of the same instinctive recoil that he had so often criticized in his mother and her contemporaries. How little practice he had had in dealing with unusual situations Their very first vocabulary was unfamiliar to him and seemed to belong to fiction and the stage. In face of what was coming he felt as awkward and embarrassed as a boy. After a pause Madam Olenska broke out with unexpected vehemence. I want to be free. I want to wipe out all the past. I understand that. Her face warmed. Then you'll help me. First, he hesitated. Perhaps I ought to know a little more. She seemed surprised. You know about my husband, my life with him. He made a sign of ascent. Well, then what more is there? In this country are such things tolerated? I'm a Protestant. Our church does not forbid divorce in such cases. Certainly not. They were both silent again. And Archer felt the specter of Count Olenski's letter grimacing hideously between them. The letter filled only half a page and was just what he had described it to be in speaking of it to Mr. Letterblair, the vague charge of an angry blackard. But how much truth was behind it? Only Count Olenski's wife could tell. I've looked through the papers you gave to Mr. Letterblair, he said at length. Well, can there be anything more abominable? No. She changed her position slightly, screening her eyes with her lifted hand. Of course you know, Archer continued, that if your husband chooses to fight the case as he threatens to, yes, he can say things, things that might be un— and might be disagreeable to you. Say them publicly so that they would get about and harm you, even if— if? I mean, no matter how unfounded they were. She paused for a long interval, so long that, not wishing to keep his eyes on her shaded face, he had time to imprint on his mind the exact shape of her other hand, the one on her knee, and every detail of the three rings on her fourth and fifth fingers, among which he noticed a wedding ring did not appear. What harm could such accusations, even if he made them publicly, do me here? It was on his lips to exclaim, my poor child, far more harm than anywhere else. Instead he answered in a voice that sounded in his ears, like Mr. Letter Blair's. New York society is a very small world, compared with the one you've lived in, and it's ruled, in spite of appearances, by a few people with— well, rather old-fashioned ideas. She said nothing, and he continued, Our ideas about marriage and divorce are particularly old-fashioned. Our legislation favors divorce. Our social customs don't, never? Well, not if the woman, however injured, however irreproachable, has appearances in the least degree against her, has exposed herself by any unconventional actions to offensive insinuations. She drooped her head a little lower, and he waited again, intensely hoping for a flash of indignation, or at least a brief cry of denial. None came. A little travelling clock ticked purringly at her elbow, and a log broke in two, and sent up a shower of sparks. The whole hushed and brooding room seemed to be waiting silently with Archer. Yes, she murmured at length. That's what my family tell me. He winced a little. It's not unnatural. Our family, she corrected herself, and Archer coloured, for you'll be my cousin soon. She said gently. I hope so. And you take their view. He stood up at this. Wandered across the room, stared with void eyes at one of the pictures against the old red damask, and came back, irresolently, to her side. How could he say? Yes, if what your husband hints is true, or if you've no way of disproving it. Sincerely, she interjected as he was about to speak. He looked down into the fire. Sincerely, then, what should you gain that would compensate for the possibility, the certainty, of a lot of beastly talk? But my freedom. Is that nothing? It flashed across him at that instant that the charge in the letter was true, that she hoped to marry the partner of her guilt. How was he to tell her that, if she really cherished such a plan, the laws of the state were inexorably opposed to it? The mere suspicion that the thought was in her mind made him feel harshly and impatiently towards her. But aren't you free as air as it is, he returned? Who can touch you? Mr. Letter Blair tells me the financial question has been settled. Oh yes, she said indifferently. Well, then, is it worthwhile to risk what may be infinitely disagreeable and painful? Think of the newspapers. They're vileness. It's all stupid and narrow and unjust, but one can't make over society. No, she acquiesced. And her tone was so faint and desolate that he felt a sudden remorse for his own hard thoughts. The individual in such cases is nearly always sacrificed to what is supposed to be the collective interest. People cling to any convention that keeps the family together, protects the children, if there are any, he rambled on pouring out all the stock phrases that rose to his lips in his intense desire to cover over the ugly reality which her silence seemed to have laid bare. Since she would not, or could not, say the one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret. Better keep on the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a wound he could not heal. It's my business, you know, he went on, to help you see these things, as the people who are fondest of you see them. The Mingates, the Wellans, the Vandeloidens, all your friends and relations, if I didn't show you honestly how they judge such questions, it wouldn't be fair of me, would it? He spoke insistently, almost pleading with her in his eagerness to cover up that yawning silence. She said slowly, no, it wouldn't be fair. The fire had crumbled down to greyness, and one of the lamps made a gurgling appeal for attention. Madame Olenska rose, wound it up, and returned to the fire, but without resuming her seat. Her remaining on her feet seemed to signify that there was nothing more for either of them to say, and Archer stood up also. Very well. I will do what you wish, she said abruptly. The blood rushed to his forehead, and taken aback by the suddenness of her surrender, he caught her two hands awkwardly in his. I—I do want to help you, he said. You do help me. Good night, my cousin. He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless. She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat under the faint gas light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night, bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate. End of Chapter 12 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 13 It was a crowded night at Wallach's Theatre. The play was The Chokron, with Dion Bochiko in the title role, and Harry Montague and Ada Dias as the lovers. The popularity of the admirable English company was at its height, and The Chokron always packed the house. In the galleries, the enthusiasm was unreserved. In the stalls and boxes, people smiled a little at the hackneyed sentiments and clap-trap situations, and enjoyed the play as much as the galleries did. There was one episode in particular that held the house from floor to ceiling. It was that in which Harry Montague, after a sad, almost monosyllabic scene of parting with Miss Dias, bat her goodbye and turn to go. The actress, who was standing near the mantelpiece and looking down into the fire, wore a grey cashmere dress without fashionable loopings or trimmings molded to her tall figure and flowing in long lines about her feet. Around her neck was a narrow, black velvet ribbon with the ends falling down her back. When her wooer turned from her, she rested her arms against the mantel shelf and bowed her face in her hands. On the threshold he paused to look at her, then he stole back, lifted one of the ends of velvet ribbon, kissed it, and left the room without her hearing him or changing her attitude. And on this silent parting the curtain fell. It was always for the sake of that particular scene that Newland Archer went to see the chocron. He thought via due of Montague and Ada Dias as fine as anything he'd ever seen Quassette and Prussant to in Paris or Madge Robertson and Kendall in London. In its reticence, its dumb sorrow, it moved him more than the most famous histrionic outpourings. On the evening in question the little scene acquired an added poignancy by reminding him, he could not have said why, of his leave-taking of Madame Olenska after their confidential talk a week or ten days earlier. It would have been as difficult to discover any resemblance between the two situations as between the appearance of the person's concerned. Newland Archer could not pretend to anything approaching the young English actor's romantic good looks and Miss Dias was a tall red-haired woman of monumental build whose pale and pleasantly ugly face was utterly unlike Ellen Olenska's vivid countenance. Nor were Archer and Madame Olenska two lovers parting in heartbroken silence. They were client and lawyer, separating after a talk which had given the lawyer the worst possible impression of the client's case. Wherein, then, lay the resemblance that made the young man's heart beat with a kind of retrospective excitement. It seemed to be in Madame Olenska's mysterious faculty of suggesting tragic and moving possibilities outside the daily run of experience. She had hardly ever said a word to him to produce this impression. But it was part of her, either a projection of her mysterious and outlandish background or of something inherently dramatic, passionate and unusual in herself. Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots, compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them. This tendency he had felt from the first in Madame Olenska. The quiet, almost passive young woman struck him as exactly the kind of person to whom things were bound to happen, no matter how much she shrank from them and went out of her way to avoid them. The exciting fact was her having lived in an atmosphere so thick with trauma that her own tendency to provoke it had apparently passed unperceived. It was precisely the odd absence of surprise in her that gave him the sense of her having been plucked out of a very maelstrom. The things she took for granted gave the measure of those she had rebelled against. Archer had left her with the conviction that Count Olenska's accusation was not unfounded. The mysterious person who figured in his wife's past as the secretary had probably not been unrewarded for his share in her escape. The conditions from which she had fled were intolerable, past speaking of past believing. She was young, she was frightened, she was desperate. What more natural than that she should be grateful to her rescuer. The pity was that her gratitude put her in the law's eyes and the world's on a par with her abominable husband. Archer had made her understand this as he was bound to do. He had also made her understand that simple-hearted, kindly New York, on whose larger charity she had apparently counted was precisely the place where she could least hope for indulgence. To have to make this fact plain to her and to witness her resigned acceptance of it had been intolerably painful to him. He felt himself drawn to her by obscure feelings of jealousy and pity as if her dumbly confessed error had put her at his mercy, humbling, yet endearing her. He was glad it was to him she had revealed her secret rather than to the cold scrutiny of Mr. Letterblair or the embarrassed gaze of her family. He immediately took it upon himself to assure them both that she had given up her idea of seeking a divorce, basing her decision on the fact that she had understood the uselessness of the proceeding. And with infinite relief they had all turned their eyes from the unpleasantness she had spared them. I was sure Newland would manage it. Mrs. Welland had said proudly of her future son-in-law. And old Mrs. Mingid, who had summoned him for a confidential interview, had congratulated him on his cleverness and added, impatiently, silly goose, I told her myself what nonsense it was. Wanting to pass herself off as Ellen Mingid and an old maid when she has the luck to be a married woman and a countess. These incidents had made the memory of his last talk with Madame Olenska so vivid to the young man that as the curtain fell on the parting of the two actors, his eyes filled with tears and he stood up to leave the theatre. In doing so, he turned to the side of the house behind him and saw the lady of whom he was thinking seated in a box with the Beauforts, Lawrence Lefferts and one or two other men. He had not spoken with her alone since their evening together and had tried to avoid being with her in company. But now their eyes met and as Mrs. Beaufort recognized him at the same time and made her languid little gesture of invitation, it was impossible not to go into the box. Beaufort and Lefferts made way for him and after a few words with Mrs. Beaufort who always preferred to look beautiful and not have to talk, Archer seated himself behind Madame Olenska. There was no one else in the box but Mr. Sillerton Jackson who was telling Mrs. Beaufort in a confidential undertone about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers' last Sunday reception where some people reported that there had been dancing. Under cover of this circumstantial narrative to which Mrs. Beaufort listened with her perfect smile and her head at just the right angle to be seen in profile from the stalls, Madame Olenska turned and spoke in a low voice. Do you think, she asked, glancing toward the stage, he will send her a bunch of yellow roses tomorrow morning. Archer reddened and his heart gave a leap of surprise. He had called only twice on Madame Olenska and each time he had sent a box of yellow roses and each time without a card. She had never before made any allusion to the flowers and he supposed she had never thought of him as the sender. Now her sudden recognition of the gift and her associating it with a tender leave-taking on the stage filled him with an agitated pleasure. I was thinking of that too. I was going to leave the theatre in order to take the picture away with me, he said. To his surprise her color rose reluctantly and duskily. She looked down at the mother of Pearl Opera Glass in her smoothly gloved hands and said, after a pause, What do you do while May is away? I stick to my work, he answered, faintly annoyed by the question. In obedience to a long-established habit the Wellands had left the previous week for St. Augustine, where, out of regard for the supposed susceptibility of Mr. Wellands' bronchial tubes, they always spent the latter part of the winter. Mr. Welland was a mild and silent man with no opinions but with many habits. With these habits none might interfere, and one of them demanded that his wife and daughter should always go with him on his annual journey to the south. To preserve an unbroken domesticity was essential to his peace of mind he would not have known where his hairbrushes were or how to provide stamps for his letters, if Mrs. Welland had not been there to tell him. As all the members of the family adored each other and as Mr. Welland was the central object of their idolatry, it never occurred to his wife and May to let him go to St. Augustine alone. And his sons, who were both in the law and could not leave New York during the winter, always joined him for Easter and travelled back with him. It was impossible for Archer to discuss the necessity of Mays accompanying her father. The reputation of the Mingates family physician was largely based on the attack of pneumonia, which Mr. Welland had never had, and his insistence on St. Augustine was therefore inflexible. Originally it had been intended that Mays' engagement should not be announced till her return from Florida, and the fact that it had been made known sooner could not be expected to alter Mr. Welland's plans. Archer would have liked to join the travellers. And have a few weeks of sunshine and boating with his betrothed. But he, too, was bound by custom and conventions. Little arduous as his professional duties were, he would have been convicted of frivolity by the whole Mingate clan if he had suggested asking for a holiday in midwinter. And he accepted Mays' departure with the resignation which he perceived would have to be one of the principal constituents of married life. He was conscious that Madame Olenska was looking at him under lowered lids. I have done what you wished, what you advised, she said abruptly. Ah, I'm glad, he returned, embarrassed by her broaching the subject at such a moment. I understand that you were right, she went on a little breathlessly, but sometimes life is difficult, perplexing, I know. And I wanted to tell you that I do feel you were right, and that I'm grateful to you. She ended lifting her opera glass quickly to her eyes as the door of the box opened and Beaufort's resonant voice broke in on them. Archer stood and left the box and the theatre. Only the day before he had received a letter from May Welland in which, with characteristic candour, she had asked him to be kind to Ellen in their absence. She likes you and admires you so much, and you know, though she doesn't show it, she's still very lonely and unhappy. I don't think Granny understands her, or Lovell Mingate either, they really think she's much worldlier and fonder of society than she really is. And I can quite see that New York must seem dull to her, though the family won't admit it. I think she's been used to lots of things we haven't got, wonderful music and picture shows and celebrities, artists and authors and all the clever people you admire. Granny can't understand her wanting anything but lots of dinners and clothes, but I can see that you're almost the only person in New York who can talk to her about what she really cares for. His wise May. How he had loved her for that letter. But he had not meant to act on it, he was too busy to begin with, and he did not care as an engaged man to play too conspicuously the part of Madame Olenska's champion. He had an idea that she knew how to take care of herself, a good deal better than the ingenious May imagined. She had Beaufort at her feet, Mr. Vandeloiden hovering above her like a protecting deity and any number of candidates, Lawrence Leffert among them, waiting their opportunity in the middle distance. Yet he never saw her or exchanged a word with her without feeling that, after all, May's ingeniousness almost amounted to a gift of divination. Ellen Olenska was lonely. And she was unhappy. End of chapter 13. 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. Red for LibriVox, by Brenda Dane. Chapter 14 As he came out into the lobby Archer ran across his friend, Ned Winsett, the only one among what Janey called his clever people, with whom he cared to probe into things a little deeper than the average level of club and chop house banter. He had caught sight across the house of Winsett's shabby round-shouldered back and had once noticed his eyes turned towards the Beaufort box. The two men shook hands and Winsett proposed a balk at a little German restaurant around the corner. Archer, who was not in the mood for the kind of talk they were likely to get there, declined on the plea that he had work to do at home and Winsett said, Oh well, so have I for that matter and I'll be the industrious apprentice too. They strolled along together and presently Winsett said, Look here, what I'm really after is the name of the dark lady in that swell box of yours. With the Beauforts, wasn't she? The one your friend Lefferts seems so smitten by. Archer, he could not have said why, was slightly annoyed. What the devil did Ned Winsett want with Eleanor Lenska's name? And above all, why did he couple it with Lefferts's? It was unlike Winsett to manifest such curiosity, but, after all, Archer remembered he was a journalist. It's not for an interview, I hope, he laughed. Well, not for the press. Just for myself, Winsett rejoined. The fact is, she's a neighbor of mine. Queer quarter for such a beauty to settle in. And she's been awfully kind to my little boy who fell down her area chasing his kitten and gave himself a nasty cut. She rushed in bare-headed carrying him in her arms, with his knee all beautifully bandaged, and was so sympathetic and beautiful that my wife was too dazzled to ask her name. A pleasant glow dilated Archer's heart. There was nothing extraordinary in the tale. Any woman would have done just as much for a neighbor's child. But it was just like Ellen, he thought, to have rushed in bare-headed, carrying the boy in her arms and to have dazzled poor Mrs. Winsett into forgetting to ask who she was. That is the Countess Olenska, a granddaughter of old Mrs. Minkitz. A Countess, whistled Nend Winsett. Well, I didn't know Countesses were so neighborly. Minkitz ain't. They would be if you'd let them. Ah, well, it was their old interminable argument as to the obstinate unwillingness of the clever people to frequent the fashionable. And both men knew there was no use in prolonging it. I wonder, Winsett broke off, how a Countess happens to live in our slum. Because she doesn't care a hang where she lives, or about any of our little social signposts, said Archer, with a secret pride in his own picture of her. Hmm. Been in bigger places, I suppose, the other commented. Well, here's my corner. He slouched off across Broadway, and Archer stood looking after him, and musing on his last words. Nend Winsett had those flashes of penetration. They were the most interesting thing about him, and always made Archer wonder why they had allowed him to accept failure so solidly at an age when most men are still struggling. Archer had known that Winsett had a wife and child, but he had never seen them. The two men always met at the century, or at some haunt of journalists and theatrical people, such as the restaurant where Winsett had proposed to go for a balk. He had given Archer to understand that his wife was an invalid, which might be true of the poor lady, or might merely mean that she was lacking in social gifts, or in evening clothes, or in both. Winsett himself had a savage abhorrence of social observances. Archer, who dressed in the evening because he thought it cleaner and more comfortable to do so, and who had never stopped to consider that cleanliness and comfort are two of the costliest items in the modest budget, regarded Winsett's attitude as part of the boring bohemian pose that always made fashionable people who changed their clothes without talking about it, and were not forever harping on the number of servants one kept, seemed so much simpler and less self-conscious than the others. Nevertheless, he was always stimulated by Winsett, and whenever he caught sight of the journalist's lean, bearded face and melancholy eyes, he would rout him out of his corner and carry him off for a long talk. Winsett was not a journalist by choice. He was a pure man of letters, untimely born in a world that had no need of letters. But after publishing one volume of brief and exquisite literary appreciations, of which one hundred and twenty copies were sold, thirty given away, and the balance eventually destroyed by the publishers, as per contract, to make room for more marketable material, he had abandoned his real calling and taken a sub-editorial job on a women's weekly, where fashion plates and paper patterns alternated with New England love stories and advertisements of temperance drinks. On the subject of Heath Fires, as the paper was called, he was inexhaustibly entertaining, but beneath his fun lurked the sterile bitterness of the still young man who has tried and given up. His conversation always made Archer take the measure of his own life and feel how little it contained. But Winsett's, after all, contained still less, and though their common fund of intellectual interests and curiosities made their talks exhilarating, their exchange of views usually remained within the limits of a pensive, dilettantism. The fact is, life isn't much of a fit for either of us, Winsett had once said. I'm down and out, nothing to be done about it. I've got only one where to produce and there's no market for it here and won't be in my time. But you're free and you're well off. Why don't you get into touch? There's only one way to do it. Go into politics. Archer threw back his head and laughed. There one saw at a flash the unbridgeable difference between men like Winsett and the others. Archer's kind. Everyone in polite circles knew that, in America, a gentleman couldn't go into politics. But since he could hardly put it that way to Winsett, he answered evasively, look at the career of the honest man in American politics. They don't want us. Who's they? Why don't you all get together and be they yourselves? Archer's laugh lingered on his lips in a slightly condescending smile. It was useless to prolong the discussion. Everybody knew the melancholy fate of the few gentlemen who had risked their clean linen in municipal or state politics in New York. The day was passed when that sort of thing was possible. The country was in possession of the bosses and the emigrant and decent people had to fall back on sport or culture. Culture, yes, if we had it, but there are just a few little local patches dying out here and there for lack of, well, hoeing and cross-fertilizing the last remnants of the old European tradition that your forebears brought with them. But you're an epitiful little minority, you've got no center, no competition, no audience. You're like the pictures on the walls of a deserted house, the portrait of a gentleman. You'll never amount to anything, any of you, till you roll up your sleeves and get right down into the muck. That or emigrate, God, if I could emigrate, Archer mentally shrugged his shoulders and turned the conversation back to books where Winsit, if uncertain, was always interesting. Emigrate, as if a gentleman could abandon his own country. One could no more do that than one could roll up one's sleeves and go down into the muck. A gentleman simply stayed at home and abstained. But you couldn't make a man like Winsit see that, and that was why the New York of literary clubs and exotic restaurants, though a first shake made it seem more of a kaleidoscope, turned out in the end to be a smaller box, with a more monotonous pattern than the assembled atoms of Fifth Avenue. The next morning Archer scoured the town in vain from more yellow roses. In consequence of this search he arrived late at the office, perceived that his doing so made no difference whatever to anyone, and was filled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his life. Why should he not be, at that very moment, on the sands of St. Augustine with May Welland? No one was deceived by his pretense of professional activity. In old-fashioned legal firms like that of which Mr. Letterblair was the head, and which were mainly engaged in the management of large estates and conservative investments. There were always two or three young men, fairly well off, and without professional ambition who, for a certain number of hours of each day, sat at their desks, accomplishing trivial tasks or simply reading the newspapers, though it was supposed to be proper for them to have an occupation, the crude fact of money-making was still regarded as derogatory, and the law, being a profession, was accounted a more gentlemanly pursuit than business. But none of these young men had much hope of really advancing in his profession, or any earnest desire to do so, and over many of them the green mold of the perfunctory was already perceptibly spreading. It made Archer shiver to think that it might be spreading over him too. He had, to be sure, other tastes and interests. He spent his vacations in European travel, cultivated the clever people May spoke of, and generally tried to keep up, as he had somewhat wistfully put it to Madame Olenska. But once he was married, what would become of this narrow margin of life in which his real experiences were lived? He had seen enough of other young men who had dreamed his dream, though perhaps less ardently, and who had gradually sunk into the placid and luxurious routine of their elders. From the office he sent a note by messenger to Madame Olenska asking if he might call that afternoon and begging her to let him find a reply at his club. But at the club he found nothing, nor did he receive any letter the following day. This unexpected silence mortified him beyond reason. And though the next morning he saw a glorious cluster of yellow roses behind a florist's window-pane, he left it there. It was only on the third morning that he received a line by post from the Countess Olenska. To his surprise it was dated from Skeuter Cliff, whether the van der Leudens had promptly retreated after putting the duke on board his steamer. I ran away. The writer began abruptly, without the usual preliminaries. The day after I saw you at the play and these kind friends have taken me in, I wanted to be quiet and think things over. You were right in telling me how kind they were. I feel myself so safe here. I wish that you were here with us. She ended with a conventional, your sincerely, and without any illusion to the date of her return. The tone of the note surprised the young man. What was Madame Olenska running away from? And why did she feel the need to be safe? His first thought was of some dark menace from abroad. Then he reflected that he did not know her epistolary style and that it might run to picturesque exaggeration. Women always exaggerated, and moreover, she was not wholly at her ease in English, which she often spoke as if she were translating from the French. Chemisuit of a day. Put in that way, the opening sentence immediately suggested that she might merely have wanted to escape from a boring round of engagements, which was very likely true for he judged her to be capricious and easily wearied of the pleasure of the moment. It amused him to think of the vandaloidans having carried her off to Scoitre Cliff on a second visit, and this time for an indefinite period. The doors of Scoitre Cliff were rarely and grudgingly open to visitors, and a chilly weekend was the most ever offered to the few thus privileged. But Archer had seen in his last visit to Paris the delicious play of La Biche, Le Voyage de Monsieur Perichon, and he remembered Monsieur Perichon's dogged and undiscouraged attachment to the young man whom he'd pulled out of the glacier. The vandaloidans had rescued Madame Olenska from a doom almost as icy, and though there were many other reasons for being attracted to her, Archer knew that beneath them all lay the gentle and obstinate determination to go on rescuing her. He felt a distinct disappointment on learning that she was away, and almost immediately remembered that only the day before, he had refused an invitation to spend the following Sunday with the Reggie Chiverses at their house on the Hudson a few miles below Scoitre Cliff. He had had his fill long ago of the noisy friendly parties at Highbank, with coasting, ice boating, slaying, long tramps in the snow, and a general flavour of mild flirting and milder practical jokes. He had just received a box of new books from his London bookseller, and had preferred the prospect of a quiet Sunday at home with his spoils. But he now went into the club writing room, wrote a hurried telegram, and told the servant to send it immediately. He knew that Mrs. Reggie didn't object to her visitors suddenly changing their minds, and that there was always a room to spare in her elastic house. End of Chapter 14 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 15 Newland Archer arrived at the Chiverses on Friday evening, and on Saturday went conscientiously through all the rites appertaining to a weekend at Highbank. In the morning he had a spin in the ice boat with his hostess and a few of the hardier guests. In the afternoon he went over the farm with Reggie and listened, in the elaborately appointed stables, to long and impressive disquisitions on the horse. After tea he talked in a corner of the firelit hall with a young lady who had professed herself, broken-hearted when his engagement was announced, but was now eager to tell him of her own matrimonial hopes. And finally, about midnight, he assisted in putting a goldfish in one visitor's bed, dressed up a burglar in the bathroom of a nervous aunt, and saw in the small hours by joining in a pillow fight that ranged from the nurseries to the basement. But on Sunday, after luncheon, he borrowed a cutter and drove over to Skeuter Cliff. People had always been told that the house at Skeuter Cliff was an Italian villa. Those who had never been to Italy believed it, so did some who had. The house had been built by Mr. van der Leuden in his youth, on his return from the Grand Tour, and in anticipation of his approaching marriage with Miss Louisa Dagonette. It was a large, square, wooden structure, with tongue-engroved walls painted pale green and white, a Corinthian portico, and fluted pilasters between the windows. From the high ground on which it stood, a series of terraces bordered by balustrades and urns descended in the steel engraving style to a small irregular lake, with an asphalt edge overhung by rare weeping conifers. To the right and left, the famous weedless lawns, studded with specimen trees, each of a different variety, rolled away to long ranges of grass, crested with elaborate cast iron ornaments. And below, in a hollow, lay the four-roomed stone house, which the first patroon had built on the land granted him in 1612. Against the uniform sheet of snow and the grayish winter sky, the Italian villa loomed up rather grimly. Even in summer it kept its distance, and the boldest coleus bed had never ventured nearer than thirty feet from its awful front. Now as Archer rang the bell, the long tinkle seemed to echo through a mausoleum, and the surprise of the butler, who at length responded to the call, was as great as though he had been summoned from his final sleep. Happily Archer was of the family, and therefore, irregular though his arrival was, entitled to be informed that the Countess Olenska was out, having driven to afternoon service with Mrs. van der Leuden exactly three-quarters of an hour earlier. Mr. van der Leuden, the butler continued, is in, sir, but my impression is that he is either finishing his nap or else reading yesterday's evening post. I heard him say, sir, on his return from church this morning, that he intended to look through the evening post after luncheon. If you like, sir, I might go to the library door and listen. But Archer, thanking him, said that he would go and meet the ladies, and the butler, obviously relieved, closed the door on him majestically. A groom took the cutter to the stables, and Archer struck through the park to the high road. The village of Scoitre Cliff was only a mile and a half away, but he knew that Mrs. van der Leuden never walked, and that he must keep to the road to meet the carriage. Presently, however, coming down a footpath that crossed the highway, he caught sight of a slight figure in a red cloak with a big dog running ahead. He hurried forward, and Madame Olenska stopped short with a smile of welcome. Ah, you've come! she said, and drew her hand from her mouth. The red cloak made her look gay and vivid, like the Ellen Mingott of old days, and he laughed as he took her hand and answered, I came to see what you were running away from. Her face clouded over, but she answered, ah, well, you will see, presently. The answer puzzled him. Why, do you mean that you've been overtaken? She shrugged her shoulders with a little movement, like Nastasia's, and rejoined in a lighter tone. Shall we walk on? I'm so cold after the sermon. What does it matter now you're here to protect me? The blood rose to his temples, and he caught a fold of her cloak. Ellen, what is it? You must tell me. Oh, presently, let's run a race first. My feet are freezing to the ground, she cried, and gathering up the cloak she fled away across the snow, the dog leaping about her with challenging barks. For a moment Archer stood watching, his gaze delighted by the flash of the red meteor against the snow, then he started after her and they met, panting and laughing, at a wicket that led into the park. She turned up at him and smiled. I knew you'd come. That shows you wanted me to, he returned, with a disproportionate joy in their nonsense. The white glitter of the trees filled the air with its own mysterious brightness, and as they walked over the snow the ground seemed to sing under their feet. Where did you come from? Madam Olenska asked. He told her and added, it was because I got your note. After a pause she said with a just perceptible chill in her voice. May ask you to take care of me. I didn't need any asking. You mean I'm so evidently helpless and defenseless. What a poor thing you must all think me. But women here seem not, seem never to feel the need any more than the blessed in heaven. He lowered his voice to ask, what sort of need? Oh, don't ask me. I don't speak your language, she retorted petulently. The answer smote him like a blow and he stood still in the path looking down at her. What did I come for if I don't speak yours? Oh, my friend. She laid her hand lightly on his arm and he pleaded earnestly, Ellen, why won't you tell me what's happened? She shrugged again. Does anything ever happen in heaven? He was silent and they walked on a few yards without exchanging a word. Finally she said, I will tell you but where, where, where one can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house with all the doors wide open and always a servant bringing tea or a log for the fire or the newspaper. Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by oneself? You're so shy and yet you're so public. I always feel as if I were in the convent again or on the stage before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds. Oh, you don't like us, Archer exclaimed. They were walking past the house of the old patroon with its squat walls and small square windows compactly grouped around a central chimney. The shutters stood wide and through one of the newly washed windows Archer caught the light of a fire. Why, the house is open, he said. She stood still. No, only for today at least. I wanted to see it and Mr. van der Leuden had the fire lit and the windows open so that we might stop there on the way back from church this morning. She ran up the steps and tried the door. It's still unlocked. What luck! Come in and we can have a quiet talk. Mrs. van der Leuden has driven over to see her old aunts at Rheinbeck and we shan't be missed at the house for another hour. He followed her into the narrow passage. His spirits, which had dropped at her last words, rose with an irrational leap. The homely little house stood there, its panels and brasses shining in the firelight as if magically created to receive them. A big bed of embers still gleamed in the kitchen chimney under an iron pot hung from an ancient crane. Rush-bottomed armchairs faced each other across the tiled hearth and rows of delft plates stood on shelves against the walls. Archer stooped over and threw a log upon the embers. Madam Olenska, dropping her cloak, sat down in one of the chairs. Archer leaned against the chimney and looked at her. You're laughing now, but when you wrote me you were unhappy, he said. Yes, she paused. But I can't feel unhappy when you're here. I shan't be here long, he rejoined, his lips stiffening with the effort to say just so much, and no more. No, I know, but I'm improvident, I live in the moment when I'm happy. The word stole through him like a temptation, and to close his senses to it, he moved away from the hearth and stood gazing out at the black tree-balls against the snow. But it was as if she too had shifted her place. And he still saw her, between himself and the trees, drooping over the fire with her indolent smile. Archer's heart was beating insubordinately. What if it were from him that she had been running away, and if she had waited to tell him so till they were here alone together in this secret room? Ellen, if I'm really a help to you, if you really wanted me to come, tell me what's wrong, tell me what it is you're running away from, he insisted. He spoke without shifting his position, without even turning to look at her. If the thing was to happen, it was to happen in this way, with the whole width of the room between them, and his eyes still fixed on the outer snow. For a long moment she was silent, and in that moment Archer imagined her, almost heard her, stealing up behind him, to throw her light arms around his neck, while he waited, soul and body throbbing with the miracle to come. His eyes mechanically received the image of a heavily coated man, with his fur collar turned up, who was advancing along the path to the house. The man was Julius Beaufort. Archer cried, bursting into a laugh. Madam Olenska had sprung up and moved to his side, slipping her hand into his, but, after a glance through the window, her face paled, and she shrank back. So that was it, Archer said derisively. I didn't know he was here, Madam Olenska murmured. Her hand still clung to Archer's, but he drew away from her and walking into the passage, through open the door of the house. Hello Beaufort, this way. Madam Olenska was expecting you, he said. During his journey back to New York the next morning, Archer relived, with a fatiguing vividness his last moments at Scoitre Cliff. Beaufort, though clearly annoyed at finding him with Madam Olenska, had, as usual, carried off the situation high-handedly. His way of ignoring people whose presence inconvenienced him actually gave them, if they were sensitive to it, a feeling of invisibility, of non-existence. Archer, as the three strolled back through the park, was aware of this odd sense of disembodiment, and, humbling as it was to his vanity, it gave him the ghostly advantage of observing, unobserved. Beaufort had entered the little house, with his usual, easy assurance, but he could not smile away the vertical line between his eyes. It was fairly clear that Madam Olenska had not known that he was coming, though her words to Archer had hinted at the possibility. At any rate, she had evidently not told him where she was going when she left New York and her unexplained departure had exasperated him. The ostensible reason of his appearance was the discovery, the very night before, of a perfect little house, not in the market, which was really just the thing for her, but would be snapped up instantly if she didn't take it, and he was loud in mock reproaches for the dance she had led him in running away, just as he had found it. If only this new dodge for talking along a wire had been a little bit nearer perfection I might have told you all this from town, and been toasting my toes before the club fire at this minute, instead of tramping after you through the snow, he grumbled, disguising a real irritation under the pretense of it. And at this opening Madam Olenska twisted the talk away to the fantastic possibility that they might one day actually converse with each other from street to street, or even incredible dream from one town to another. This struck from all three allusions to Edgar Poe and Jules Fern, and such platitudes as naturally rise to the lips of the most intelligent when they are talking against time, and dealing with a new invention in which it would seem ingenuous to believe too soon. And the question of the telephone carried them safely back to the big house. Mrs. van der Leuiden had not yet returned, and Archer took his leave, and walked off to fetch the cutter while Beaufort followed the Countess Olenska indoors. It was probable that, little as the van der Leuiden's encouraged unannounced visits, he could count on being asked to dine and sent back to the station to catch the nine o'clock train. But more than that he would certainly not get, for it would be inconceivable to his hosts that a gentleman traveling without luggage should wish to spend the night, and distasteful to them to propose it to a person with whom they were on terms of such limited cordiality as Beaufort. Beaufort knew all this, and must have foreseen it, and his taking the long journey for so small a reward gave the measure of his impatience. He was undeniably in pursuit of the Countess Olenska, and Beaufort had only one object in view in his pursuit of pretty women. His dull and childless home had long since pauled on him, and in addition to more permanent consolations he was always in quest of amorous adventures in his own set. This was the man from whom Madame Olenska was avowedly flying. The question was whether she had fled because his importunities displeased her, or because she did not wholly trust herself to resist them. Unless, indeed, all her talk of flight had been a blind and her departure no more than a maneuver. Archer did not really believe this, little as he had actually seen of Madame Olenska. He was beginning to think that he could read her face, and if not her face, her voice, and both had betrayed annoyance and even dismay at Beaufort's sudden appearance. But, after all, if this were the case, was it not worse than if she had left New York for the express purpose of meeting him? If she had done that, she ceased to be an object of interest. She threw in her lot with the vulgarist of dissemblers, a woman engaged in a love affair with Beaufort, classed herself irretrievably. No, it was worse a thousand times if, judging Beaufort and probably despising him, she was yet drawn to him by all that gave him an advantage over the other men about her. His habit of two continents and two societies, his familiar association with artists and actors and people generally in the world's eye and his careless contempt for local prejudices. Beaufort was vulgar. He was uneducated. He was purse-proud. But the circumstances of his life and a certain native shrewdness made him better worth talking to than many men, morally and socially his betters, whose horizon was bounded by the battery and the Central Park. How should anyone coming from a wider world not feel the difference and be attracted by it? Madame Olenska, in a burst of irritation, had said to Archer that he and she did not talk the same language, and the young man knew that in some respects this was true. But Beaufort understood every turn of her dialect and spoke it fluently. His view of life, his tone, his attitude were merely a coarser reflection of those revealed in Count Olenski's letter. This might seem to be his disadvantage with Count Olenski's wife, but Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it, but what had charmed her in it would still charm her, even though it were against her will. Thus, with a painful impartiality, did the young man make out the case for Beaufort and for Beaufort's victim. A longing to enlighten her was strong in him, and there were moments when he imagined that all she asked was to be enlightened. That evening he unpacked his books from London. The box was full of things he had been waiting for impatiently, a new volume of Herbert Spencer, another collection of the prolific Alphonse Daudet's Brilliant Tales, and a novel called Middle March, as to which there had lately been interesting things said in the reviews. He had declined three dinner invitations in favour of this feast, but though he turned the pages with the sensuous joy of the book-lover, he did not know what he was reading, and one book after another dropped from his hand. Suddenly among them he lit on a small volume of verse which he had ordered because the name had attracted him, the House of Life. He took it up and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books, so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably tender, but it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary of human passions. All through the night he pursued through those enchanted pages the vision of a woman who had the face of Eleanor Lenska. But when he woke the next morning and looked out at the brownstone houses across the street, and thought of his desk in Mr. Letterblair's office, and the family pew in Grace Church, his hour in the park of Scoitre Cliff became as far outside the pale of probability as the visions of the night. Mercy, how pale you look, Newland! Janey commented over the coffee-cups at breakfast, and his mother added, Newland dear, I've noticed lately that you've been coughing. I do hope you're not letting yourself be overworked, for it was the conviction of both ladies that, under the iron despotism of his senior partners, the young man's life was spent in the most exhausting professional labours. And he had never thought it necessary to un-deceive them. The next two or three days dragged by heavily. The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future. He heard nothing of the Countess Lenska or of the perfect little house, and though he met Beaufort at the club, they merely nodded at each other, across the wist tables. It was not until the fourth evening that he found a note awaiting him on his return home. Come late to-morrow, I must explain to you, Ellen. Those were the only words it contained. The young man who was dining out thrust the note into his pocket, smiling a little at the Frenchness of the to-you. After dinner he went to a play, and it was not until his return home after midnight that he drew Madame Lenska's missive out again and re-read it slowly a number of times. There were several ways of answering it, and he gave a considerable thought to each one during the watches of an agitated night, that on which, when morning came, he finally decided was to pitch some clothes into a portman too, and jump on board a boat that was leaving, that very afternoon, per St. Augustine, end of Chapter 15. 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 16 When Archer walked down the sandy main street of St. Augustine, to the house which had been pointed out to him as Mr. Wellands, and saw May Welland standing under a magnolia with a son in her hair, he wondered why he had waited so long to come. Here was truth. Here was reality. Here was the life that belonged to him. And he, who fancied himself so scornful of arbitrary restraints, had been afraid to break away from his desk because of what people might think of his stealing a holiday. Her first exclamation was, Newland, has anything happened? And it occurred to him that it would have been more feminine if she had instantly read in his eyes why he had come. But when he answered, Yes, I found I had to see you. And he saw how easily he would be forgiven, and how soon, even Mr. Letter Blair's mild disapproval would be smiled away by a tolerant family. Early as it was, the main street was no place for any but formal greetings, and Archer longed to be alone with May and to pour out all his tenderness and his impatience. It still lacked an hour to the late Welland breakfast time, and instead of asking him to come in, she proposed that they should walk out to an old orange garden beyond the town. She had just been for a row on the river, and the son that netted the little waves with gold seemed to have caught her in its meshes. Across the warm brown of her cheek, her blown hair glittered like silver wire, and her eyes, too, looked lighter, almost pale in their youthful impidity. As she walked beside Archer with her long swinging gait, her face wore the vacant serenity of a young marble athlete. To Archer's strained nerves, the vision was as soothing as the sight of the blue sky and the lazy river. They sat down on a bench under the orange trees, and he put his arm about her and kissed her. It was like drinking at a cold spring with the sun on it. But his pressure may have been more vehement than he intended, for the blood rose to her face, and she drew back as if he had startled her. What is it, he asked, smiling, and she looked at him with surprise and answered, nothing. A slight embarrassment fell on them, and her hand slipped out of his. It was the only time that he had kissed her own lips, except for their fugitive embrace in the Beaufort conservatory, and he saw that she was disturbed and shaken out of her cool boyish composure. Tell me what you do all day, he said, crossing his arms under his tilted back head, and pushing his hat forward to scream the sun-dazzle. To let her talk about familiar and simple things was the easiest way of carrying on his own independent train of thought, and he sat listening to her simple chronicle of swimming, sailing, and riding, varied by an occasional dance at the primitive inn when a man of war came in. A few pleasant people from Philadelphia and Baltimore were picnicking at the end, and the Selfridge Marys had come down for three weeks because Kate Mary had bronchitis. They were planning to lay out a lawn tennis court on the sands, but no one but Kate and May had rackets, and most of the people had not even heard of the game. All this kept her very busy, and she had not had time to do more than look at the little vellum book that Archer had sent her the week before—the Sonnets from the Portuguese—but she was learning by heart how they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix, because it was one of the first things he had ever read to her, and it amused her to be able to tell him that Kate Mary had never even heard of a poet called Robert Browning. Presently she started up, exclaiming that they would be late for breakfast, and they hurried back to the Tumbledown House with its paintless porch, an unpruned hedge of plumbago and pink geraniums, where the wellans were installed for the winter. Mr. Wellan's sensitive domesticity shrank from the discomforts of the slovenly southern hotel, and at immense expense, and in face of almost insuperable difficulties, Mrs. Wellan was obliged, year after year, to improvise an establishment partly made up of discontented New York servants and partly drawn from the local African supply. The doctors want my husband to feel that he is in his own home, otherwise he would be so wretched that the climate would not do him any good, she explained, winter after winter, to the sympathizing Philadelphians and Baltimoreans. And Mr. Wellan, beaming across a breakfast table miraculously supplied with the most varied delicacies, was presently saying to Archer, you see, my dear fellow, we camp, we literally camp, I tell my wife and may that I want to teach them how to rough it. Mr. and Mrs. Wellan had been as much surprised as their daughter by the young man's sudden arrival, but it had occurred to him to explain that he had felt himself on the verge of a nasty cold, and this seemed to Mr. Wellan an all-sufficient reason for abandoning any duty. You can't be too careful, especially towards spring, he said, heaping his plate with straw-colored griddle-cakes and drowning them in golden syrup. If I'd only been as prudent at your age, May would have been dancing at the assemblies now, instead of spending her winters in a wilderness with an old invalid. Oh, but I love it here, Papa, you know I do. If only Wellan could stay, I should like it a thousand times better than New York. Newland must stay till he has quite thrown off his cold, said Mrs. Wellan indulgently, and the young man laughed and said, he supposed there was such a thing as one's profession. He managed, however, after an exchange of telegrams with the firm, to make his cold last a week, and it shed an ironic light on the situation to know that Mr. Letterblair's indulgence was partly due to the satisfactory way in which his brilliant young junior partner had settled the troublesome matter of the Olensky divorce. Mr. Letterblair had let Mrs. Wellan know that Mr. Archer had rendered an invaluable service to the whole family, and that old Mrs. Manson Mingott had been particularly pleased. And one day when May had gone for a drive with her father in the only vehicle a place produced, Mrs. Wellan took occasion to touch on a topic which she had always avoided in her daughter's presence. I'm afraid Ellen's ideas are not at all like ours. She was barely 18 when Medora Manson took her back to Europe. You remember the excitement when she appeared in black at her coming out ball. Another of Medora's fads. Really this time it was almost prophetic. That must have been at least 12 years ago, and since then Ellen has never been to America. No wonder she is completely Europeanized. But European society is not given to divorce. Countess Olenska thought she would be conforming to American ideas in asking for her freedom. It was the first time that the young man had pronounced her name since he left Skuyter Cliff and he felt the color rise to his cheek. Mrs. Wellan smiled compassionately. That is just like the extraordinary things that foreigners invent about us. They think we dine at two o'clock and countenance divorce. That is why it seems to me so foolish to entertain them when they come to New York. They accept our hospitality and then they go home and repeat the same stupid stories. Archer made no comment on this and Mrs. Wellan continued, But we do most thoroughly appreciate your persuading Ellen to give up the idea. Her grandmother and her uncle Lovell could do nothing with her. Both of them have written that her changing her mind was entirely due to your influence. In fact she said so to her grandmother. She has an unbounded admiration for you, poor Ellen. She always was a wayward child. I wonder what her fate will be. What we've all contrived to make it, he felt like answering. If you'd all of you rather she should be Beaufort's mistress than some decent fellow's wife, you've certainly gone the right way about it. He wondered what Mrs. Wellan would have said if he had uttered the words instead of merely thinking them. He could picture the sudden decomposure of her firm placid features to which a lifelong mastery over trifles had given an air of facetious authority. Trace is still lingered on them of fresh beauty, like her daughters, and he asked himself if May's face was doomed to thicken in the same middle-aged image of invincible innocence. Oh no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience. I verily believe, Mrs. Wellan continued, that if the horrible business had come out in the newspapers it would have been my husband's death blow. I don't know any of the details, I only ask not to, as I told poor Ellen when she tried to talk to me about it. Having an invalid to care for, I have to keep my mind bright and happy. But Mr. Wellan was terribly upset. He had a slight temperature every morning while we were waiting to hear what had been decided. It was the horror of his girl's learning that such things were possible, but of course, dear Newland, you felt that too. We all knew that you were thinking of May. I'm always thinking of May, the young man rejoined, rising to cut short the conversation. He had meant to seize the opportunity of his private talk with Mrs. Wellan to urge her to advance the date of his marriage. But he could think of no arguments that would move her and with a sense of relief he saw Mr. Wellan and May driving up to the door. His only hope was to plead again with May. And on the day before his departure he walked with her to the ruinous garden of the Spanish mission. The background lent itself to illusions to European scenes, and May, who was looking her loveliest under a wide-brimmed hat that cast a shadow of mystery over her two clear eyes, kindled into eagerness as he spoke of Crenata and the Alhambra. We might be seeing it all this spring, even the Easter ceremonies at Seville, he urged, exaggerating his demands in the hope of a larger concession. Easter in Seville, and it will be lent next week, she laughed. Why shouldn't we be married in lent, he rejoined, but she looked so shocked that he saw his mistake. Of course I didn't mean that, dearest, but soon after Easter, so that we could sail at the end of April, I know I could arrange it at the office. She smiled dreamily upon the possibility. But he perceived that to dream of it, sufficed her. It was like hearing him read aloud out of his poetry books, the beautiful things that could not possibly happen in real life. Oh, Duquan Newland, I do love your descriptions. But why should they be only descriptions? Why shouldn't we make them real? We shall, dearest, of course, next year. Her voice lingered over it. Don't you want them to be real sooner? Can't I persuade you to break away now? She bowed her head, vanishing from him completely under her conniving hat brim. Why should we dream away another year? Look at me, dear, don't you understand how I want you for my wife? For a moment she remained motionless. Then she raised on him eyes of such despairing clearness that he half released her waist from his hold. But suddenly her look changed and deepened inscrutably. I'm not sure if I do understand, she said. Is it because you're not certain of continuing to care for me? Archer sprang up from his seat. My God! Perhaps I don't know! he broke out angrily. May well and rose also. As they faced each other, she seemed to grow in womanly stature and dignity. Both were silent for a moment, as if dismayed by the unforeseen trend of their words. Then she said in a low voice, If that is it, is there someone else? Someone else. Between you and me. He echoed her words slowly as though they were only half intelligible, and he wanted time to repeat the question to himself. She seemed to catch the uncertainty of his voice, for she went on in a deepening tone. Let us talk, frankly, Newland. Sometimes I felt a difference in you, especially since our engagement has been announced. Dear, what madness! he recovered himself to exclaim. She met his protest with a faint smile. If it is, it won't hurt us to talk about it. She paused and added, lifting her head with one of her noble movements. Or even if it's true, why shouldn't we speak of it? You might so easily have made a mistake. He lowered his head, staring at the black leaf pattern on the sunny path at their feet. Mistakes are always easy to make, but if I had made one of the kind you suggest, is it likely that I should be imploring you to hasten our marriage? She looked downward too, disturbing the pattern with a point of her sunshade while she struggled for expression. Yes, she said at length. You might want, once and for all, to settle the question. It's one way. Her quiet lucidity startled him, but did not mislead him into thinking her insensible. Under her hat-brim he saw the pallor of her profile and the slight tremor of the nostril above her resolutely steadied lips. Well, he questioned, sitting down on the bench, and looking up at her with a frown that he tried to make playful. She dropped back into her seat and went on. You mustn't think that a girl knows as little as her parents imagine. One hears, and one notices, one has one's own feelings and ideas. And of course, long before you told me that you cared for me, I'd known that there was someone else you were interested in. Everyone was talking about it two years ago at Newport. And once I saw you sitting together on the veranda at a dance, and when she came back into the house, her face was sad, and I felt sorry for her. I remembered it afterwards, when we were engaged. Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat clasping and unclasping her hands about the handle of her sunshade. The young man laid his upon them with a gentle pressure. His heart dilated with an inexpressible relief. My dear child, was that it? If you only knew the truth! She raised her head quickly. Then there is a truth I don't know. He kept his hand over hers. I meant the truth about the old story you speak of. But that's what I want to know, Nuland, what I ought to know. I couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong, an unfairness to somebody else, and I want to believe that it would be the same with you. What sort of life could we build on such foundations? Her face had taken on a look of such tragic courage that he felt like bowing himself down at her feet. I've wanted to say this for a long time, she went on. I wanted to tell you that when two people really love each other, I understand that there may be situations which make it right that they should should go against public opinion. And if you feel yourself in any way pledged, pledged to the person we've spoken of, and if there is any way, any way in which you can fulfill your pledge, even by her getting a divorce, Nuland don't give her up because of me. His surprise at discovering that her fears had fastened upon an episode so remote and so completely of the past as his love affair with Mrs. Thorley Rushworth gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view. There was something superhuman in an attitude so recklessly unorthodox, and if other problems had not pressed on him, he would have been lost in wonder at the prodigy of the Welland's daughter urging him to marry his former mistress. But he was still dizzy with the glimpse of the precipice they had skirted, and full of a new awe at the mystery of young girlhood, for a moment he could not speak. And then he said, There is no pledge, no obligation, whatever, of the kind you think. Such cases don't always present themselves quite as simply as, but that's no matter. I love your generosity because I feel as you do about those things, I feel that each case must be judged individually on its own merits. Irrespective of stupid conventionalities, I mean each woman's right to her liberty. He pulled himself up, startled by the turn his thoughts had taken and went on looking at her with a smile. Since you understand so many things, dearest, can't you go a little further and understand the uselessness of our submitting to another form of the same foolish conventionalities? If there's no one and nothing between us, isn't that an argument for marrying quickly, rather than for more delay? She flushed with joy and lifted her face to his. As he bent to it, he saw that her eyes were full of happy tears. But in another moment she seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous girlhood, and he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others and that she had none for herself. It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped back into the usual as a two adventurous child takes refuge in its mother's arms. Archer had no heart to go on pleading with her. He was too much disappointed at the vanishing of the new being who had cast that one deep look at him from her transparent eyes. May seem to be aware of his disappointment, but without knowing how to alleviate it. And they stood up and walked silently home. End of chapter 16