“Isn’t that perhaps the reason?”
“The reason—?”
“For their great influence; that they make themselves so rare.”
He coloured a little, stared at her—and suddenly felt the penetration of the remark. At a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed. He laughed, and sacrificed them.
Nastasia brought the tea, with handleless Japanese cups and little covered dishes, placing the tray on a low table.
“But you’ll explain these things to me—you’ll tell me all I ought to know,” Madame Olenska continued, leaning forward to hand him his cup.
“It’s you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I’d looked at so long that I’d ceased to see them.”
She detached a small gold cigarette-case from one of her bracelets, held it out to him, and took a cigarette herself. On the chimney were long spills for lighting them.
“Ah, then we can both help each other. But I want help so much more. You must tell me just what to do.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to reply: “Don’t be seen driving about the streets with Beaufort—” but he was being too deeply drawn into the atmosphere of the room, which was her atmosphere, and to give advice of that sort would have been like telling some one who was bargaining for attar-of-roses in Samarkand that one should always be provided with arctics for a New York winter. New York seemed much farther off than Samarkand, and if they were indeed to help each other she was rendering what might prove the first of their mutual services by making him look at his native city objectively. Viewed thus, as through the wrong end of a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant; but then from Samarkand it would.
A flame darted from the logs and she bent over the fire, stretching her thin hands so close to it that a faint halo shone about the oval nails. The light touched to russet the rings of dark hair escaping from her braids, and made her pale face paler.
“There are plenty of people to tell you what to do,” Archer rejoined, obscurely envious of them.
“Oh—all my aunts? And my dear old Granny?” She considered the idea impartially. “They’re all a little vexed with me for setting up for myself—poor Granny especially. She wanted to keep me with her; but I had to be free—” He was impressed by this light way of speaking of the formidable Catherine, and moved by the thought of what must have given Madame Olenska this thirst for even the loneliest kind of freedom. But the idea of Beaufort gnawed him.
“I think I understand how you feel,” he said. “Still, your family can advise you; explain differences; show you the way.”
She lifted her thin black eyebrows. “Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it so straight up and down—like Fifth Avenue. And with all the cross streets numbered!” She seemed to guess his faint disapproval of this, and added, with the rare smile that enchanted her whole face: “If you knew how I like it for just THAT—the straight-up-and-downness, and the big honest labels on everything!”
He saw his chance. “Everything may be labelled—but everybody is not.”
“Perhaps. I may simplify too much—but you’ll warn me if I do.” She turned from the fire to look at him. “There are only two people here who make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could explain things to me: you and Mr. Beaufort.”
Archer winced at the joining of the names, and then, with a quick readjustment, understood, sympathised and pitied. So close to the powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely in their air. But since she felt that he understood her also, his business would be to make her see Beaufort as he really was, with all he represented—and abhor it.
He answered gently: “I understand. But just at first don’t let go of your old friends’ hands: I mean the older women, your Granny Mingott, Mrs. Welland, Mrs. van der Luyden. They like and admire you—they want to help you.”
She shook her head and sighed. “Oh, I know—I know! But on condition that they don’t hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it in those very words when I tried… . Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!” She lifted her hands to her face, and he saw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob.
“Madame Olenska!—Oh, don’t, Ellen,” he cried, starting up and bending over her. He drew down one of her hands, clasping and chafing it like a child’s while he murmured reassuring words; but in a moment she freed herself, and looked up at him with wet lashes.
“Does no one cry here, either? I suppose there’s no need to, in heaven,” she said, straightening her loosened braids with a laugh, and bending over the tea-kettle. It was burnt into his consciousness that he had called her “Ellen”—called her so twice; and that she had not noticed it. Far down the inverted telescope he saw the faint white figure of May Welland—in New York. But he turned the telescope around and saw only Ellen.
He kneeled next to her, bringing her fingers to his lips.
“Dear Newland,” she said. “How kind you are to me.”
He kissed her hand. “My dear.
“But you must not worry over me. You have May to think of now.”
“May asked me to look after you, to see that you are taken care of.”
“I wouldn’t think her kindness extended so far.”
He brought her hand to his cheek, drew in her scent, and closed his eyes for a moment. No, he could not think of May now. Newland set her aside in his mind, and when he opened his eyes, he saw only the beautiful and free-spirited Countess.
“Let me comfort you,” he said, and lowered himself to a relaxed position at her feet.
“No, you shouldn’t.” But she did not shrink away, in fact she made no move to resist.
Newland released her hand and grasped the hem of her dress. He began to slowly lift her skirts, bringing them to the Countess’s lap. He caressed her legs, slowly working his hands down to her ankles. He grasped first one foot and then the other, and slipped off her dainty silk satin shoes. Returning to her, he massaged first the arches of her feet and then slowly moved his hands up the length of her legs. He reached her knees and passed them and then rested his hand on her inner thighs and squeezed.
“Newland, we shouldn’t,” she whispered, but there was no stopping him. He was intent on discovering her.
He gently drew her legs apart so that he might slide his hands higher. She feigned resistance for a moment and then relented, sighing as he opened her legs wider. Yielding fully to his insistent touch, she leaned into the back of her chair, closed her eyes, and let him continue. When he pulled her skirt up higher, he quickly realized that she wore no undergarment.
“Ellen?”
She opened her eyes and gazed into his, flashing a lascivious grin. “I enjoy the freedom.”
Returning the smile, he said, “So I see.” And when she closed her eyes again, he returned his gaze to her feminine fount of passion. He slipped his hands underneath her derrière, squeezed, and then gently pulled her body closer to him. All he could think about was kissing her and tasting from her well of passion. Opening her legs, her delicate flower unfolded to him. The view was exquisite. Her pearl was bulging, enticing him, but he would make her wait.
He placed his mouth on her thigh and began kissing her along the erogenous flesh of her inner leg. Her body quivered at his touch, and he felt her skin rippling when he tasted her flesh. Still, he would not claim his prize, but moved slowly and deliberately, lingering with his tongue as he slid higher toward her intimate orchid.
He raised one of her legs and placed it over his shoulder as he continued to kiss her inner thigh. When he reached her curls, he brushed his lips across her feminine petals and over to her other leg. Raising her leg, he slid a slow tongue down and back up her inner thigh, and then rested the leg on his shoulder.
He slid his hands underneath her derrière and regarded her crimson flower. With a deep breath, he filled his senses with her impassioned perfume. He groaned qu
ietly as he exhaled. Then he rolled a light tongue across her feminine folds, stopping to twirl his tongue on her pearl.
She rolled her head from side to side, her breath quickening. “Yes, Newland, just that, right there,” she whispered.
But he lowered his tongue to the opening of her sheath and swirled his tongue round and round, tasting the fruits of her rich cream, and then, sliding through the folds of her intimate form, he danced upward to her pearl again.
Her hips undulated with a slow heated grind, keeping rhythm with the touch of his tongue. She placed her hands upon his head and guided him downward, so his tongue moved slightly lower. She began to pant, slowly at first, but before long, her breath gave way and she began to moan, sometimes verbally instructing him how to enhance her pleasure, as if he had been her lover from the beginning of time. He had never known a woman so open about her desires, so willing to ask him to please her.
He reached to touch her flower and quickly slid a finger inside her sheath, where he began stroking the velvety upper wall. She began to move more ardently, and so he responded to her desire by sliding another finger inside her, which caused her to spread her legs wider.
He drew back to watch her move as he continued to pleasure her more. Then he glanced up to see her face. Her lips were pouted in a near kiss; her expression was one of pure heavenly pleasure.
“Make love to me, Newland. I need you inside of me.”
He could not resist her. He eased himself from her, rose up, and unfastened his trousers. He brought his erect member to her folds, stroked it through her cream once or twice, and then slipped his crown inside her sheath. He hesitated, dipping in and out of her, not yet filling her.
She wrapped her legs around his back and pulled him toward her. “Make love to me.”
Slowly, he began to slide the length of his shaft inside of her, both of them sighing harmoniously as he made his way toward filling her sheath. Once she was fully engaged, he stopped, and together they took another moment to savor the richness of their overflowing desire.
But when she moved her hips desirously toward him, Newland began to stroke his member in and out of her. No woman could compare to her, not the way she made him feel when he was inside of her. She enveloped him—mind, body, and soul. She embodied passion, elegance, and grace. She was a soft, tender creature unafraid to embrace her femininity, but also free and open about her desires. And he might have stayed right there, making soft, passionate love to her forever, except that his manly desires took over when she began squeezing and massaging his manhood with her vessel. Her mouth parted and her breath hastened. Her sighs turned to heated moans. Her hips began to thrust more urgently; she was tightening, tightening. Her breath caught and released several times, she was near, very close to cresting.
Undone by her passion, Newland closed his eyes and began the sprint, thrusting vigorously until he could last no longer.
“Deeper, Newland! Faster! Oh, yes, I’m going to …”
Her breath caught a final time as she crested, sighing with great resolution. Overwhelmed, he exploded at the same moment, releasing his seed and filling her vessel. A moment later, he took her into his arms and kissed her.
“You are the loveliest,” he said, opening his eyes to meet hers. “The loveliest. How shall I ever …?”
“Dearest, sweetest man,” she said. “Nothing has changed, it will be our secret.”
He leaned forward and kissed her again. Both of them sighed with incomparable pleasure.
Suddenly Nastasia put her head inside the door to say something in her rich Italian. The Countess dismissed her servant for two minutes.
“We must be quick. It seems that I have more company,” she said.
Newland quickly dressed himself as the Countess lowered her dress and smoothed her ruffled hair.
Madame Olenska, again with a hand at her hair, uttered an exclamation of assent—a flashing “Gia—gia”—and the Duke of St. Austrey entered, piloting a tremendous blackwigged and red-plumed lady in overflowing furs.
“My dear Countess, I’ve brought an old friend of mine to see you—Mrs. Struthers. She wasn’t asked to the party last night, and she wants to know you.”
The Duke beamed on the group, and Madame Olenska advanced with a murmur of welcome toward the queer couple. She seemed to have no idea how oddly matched they were, nor what a liberty the Duke had taken in bringing his companion—and to do him justice, as Archer perceived, the Duke seemed as unaware of it himself.
“Of course I want to know you, my dear,” cried Mrs. Struthers in a round rolling voice that matched her bold feathers and her brazen wig. “I want to know everybody who’s young and interesting and charming. And the Duke tells me you like music—didn’t you, Duke? You’re a pianist yourself, I believe? Well, do you want to hear Sarasate play tomorrow evening at my house? You know I’ve something going on every Sunday evening—it’s the day when New York doesn’t know what to do with itself, and so I say to it: `Come and be amused.’ And the Duke thought you’d be tempted by Sarasate. You’ll find a number of your friends.”
Madame Olenska’s face grew brilliant with pleasure. “How kind! How good of the Duke to think of me!” She pushed a chair up to the tea-table and Mrs. Struthers sank into it delectably. “Of course I shall be too happy to come.”
“That’s all right, my dear. And bring your young gentleman with you.” Mrs. Struthers extended a hail-fellow hand to Archer. “I can’t put a name to you—but I’m sure I’ve met you—I’ve met everybody, here, or in Paris or London. Aren’t you in diplomacy? All the diplomatists come to me. You like music too? Duke, you must be sure to bring him.”
The Duke said “Rather” from the depths of his beard, and Archer withdrew with a stiffly circular bow that made him feel as full of spine as a self-conscious schoolboy among careless and unnoticing elders.
He was not sorry for the denouement of his visit: he only wished it had come sooner, and spared him a certain waste of emotion. As he went out into the wintry night, New York again became vast and imminent, and May Welland the loveliest woman in it. He turned into his florist’s to send her the daily box of lilies-of-the-valley which, to his confusion, he found he had forgotten that morning.
As he wrote a word on his card and waited for an envelope he glanced about the embowered shop, and his eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses. He had never seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse was to send them to May instead of the lilies. But they did not look like her—there was something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty. In a sudden revulsion of mood, and almost without knowing what he did, he signed to the florist to lay the roses in another long box, and slipped his card into a second envelope, on which he wrote the name of the Countess Olenska; then, just as he was turning away, he drew the card out again, and left the empty envelope on the box.
“They’ll go at once?” he enquired, pointing to the roses.
The florist assured him that they would.
Chapter 10
The next day he persuaded May to escape for a walk in the Park after luncheon. As was the custom in old-fashioned Episcopalian New York, she usually accompanied her parents to church on Sunday afternoons; but Mrs. Welland condoned her truancy, having that very morning won her over to the necessity of a long engagement, with time to prepare a hand-embroidered trousseau containing the proper number of dozens.
The day was delectable. The bare vaulting of trees along the Mall was ceiled with lapis lazuli, and arched above snow that shone like splintered crystals. It was the weather to call out May’s radiance, and she burned like a young maple in the frost. Archer was proud of the glances turned on her, and the simple joy of possessorship cleared away his underlying perplexities.
“It’s so delicious—waking every morning to smell lilies-of-the-valley in one’s room!” she said.
“Yesterday they came late. I hadn’t time in the morning—”
“But your remembering each day to send them makes me love th
em so much more than if you’d given a standing order, and they came every morning on the minute, like one’s music-teacher—as I know Gertrude Lefferts’s did, for instance, when she and Lawrence were engaged.”
“Ah—they would!” laughed Archer, amused at her keenness. He looked sideways at her fruit-like cheek and felt rich and secure enough to add: “When I sent your lilies yesterday afternoon I saw some rather gorgeous yellow roses and packed them off to Madame Olenska. Was that right?”
“How dear of you! Anything of that kind delights her. It’s odd she didn’t mention it: she lunched with us today, and spoke of Mr. Beaufort’s having sent her wonderful orchids, and cousin Henry van der Luyden a whole hamper of carnations from Skuytercliff. She seems so surprised to receive flowers. Don’t people send them in Europe? She thinks it such a pretty custom.”
“Oh, well, no wonder mine were overshadowed by Beaufort’s,” said Archer irritably. Then he remembered that he had not put a card with the roses, and was vexed at having spoken of them. He wanted to say: “I called on your cousin yesterday,” but hesitated. If Madame Olenska had not spoken of his visit it might seem awkward that he should, although she had assured him that their moment of intimacy would remain their secret. Yet not to do so gave the affair an air of mystery that he disliked, and if May ever learned what happened, they would all be ruined. To shake off the question he began to talk of their own plans, their future, and Mrs. Welland’s insistence on a long engagement.
“If you call it long! Isabel Chivers and Reggie were engaged for two years: Grace and Thorley for nearly a year and a half. Why aren’t we very well off as we are?” she said.
It was the traditional maidenly interrogation, and he felt ashamed of himself for finding it singularly childish. No doubt she simply echoed what was said for her; but she was nearing her twenty-second birthday, and he wondered at what age “nice” women began to speak for themselves.
“Never, if we won’t let them, I suppose,” he mused, and recalled his mad outburst to Mr. Sillerton Jackson: “Women ought to be as free as we are—”
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