“You want to try not to?”
“Yes: I want to cast off all 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. “Ah, don’t say that. If you knew how I hate to be different!”
Her face had grown as sombre 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.”
“Ah?”
“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, 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 criticised in his mother and her contemporaries. How little practice he had had in dealing with unusual situations! Their very 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 Madame 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 assent.
“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 spectre of Count Olenska’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 blackguard. But how much truth was behind it? Only Count Olenska’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 unpl—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. Letterblair’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 favours 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 action to—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 continued 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 irresolutely 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, and 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 toward her. “But aren’t you as free as air as it is?” he returned. “Who can touch you? Mr. Letterblair tells me the financial question has been settled—”
“Oh, yes,” she said indifferently.
“Well, then: is it worth while to risk what may be infinitely disagreeable and painful? Think of the newspapers—their 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 to see these things as the people who are fondest of you see them. The Mingotts, the Wellands, the van der Luydens, 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. He looked into her eyes. “You’re cold,” he said.
“It’s nothing.”
“Let me put another log on the fire.”
“Please don’t trouble yourself, I’ll ring for the help.”
Newland walked to a stack of wood and placed a few more on the fire, poking and stirring the ambers. When the fire intensified, he turned and faced the Countess. She looked away. He walked over to her, took her hand, and seated her down next to him on the sofa. His feelings were mixed. He wanted her to be free of the Count, but he didn’t want her to suffer humiliation.
Her perfume was sensuous, the sweet fragrance of gardenia. Whenever he smelled the gardenia flower, visions of her flooded his brain, and his body thrilled.
“You really should go. I’m suddenly so tired,” she said.
Newland brought the back of her hand to his mouth and slowly placed his lips against it. Her skin was soft, so lovely, so quintessentially feminine. Touching her was intoxicating.
“Newland, we shouldn’t, not again.”
She said the words, but the look in her eyes said that she wanted more. He grasped her other hand and brought it to his lips.
“I want you,” he said.
“We mustn’t. You’re—?”
“Don’t,” he said, drawing her into his arms. He never wanted a woman more in his life. She made him feel alive, feel like the man he had always wanted to be. He felt not only passion, but also a thirst for life, and she was his ever-flowing fountain.
“If you truly cared for me, you would leave now,” she said. “You have May to think of.”
“I’m going to look after you, Ellen.”
“But you can’t. You have obligations to—”
He took her face in his hands and stared longingly into her eyes. A log tumbled in the fireplace, making a sudden clatter. Ellen’s eyes began to flutter as though she were swooning in response to his captivating stare. Newland had never looked so deeply into a woman’s eyes. He’d never felt as though he touched the soul of another until this moment.
Her lips parted to speak. But all she could do was whisper his name.
He leaned forward, with eyes closed, and gently pressed his lips against hers. As he began to kiss her more, he felt a wetness fall from her cheeks to his mouth, and then he tasted the tears. After kissing them away, he drew back and said, “Ellen, don’t cry. I’ll always be here for you.”
She began to shake her head no. “How could we live like this?”
“How could we not live?”
Presently, her weeping stopped, and she searched his eyes. Overwhelmed, she kissed him passionately. He slipped his tongue to her mouth, and together they tasted the sweetness of each other’s devoted affection.
When he broke from the kiss, he brushed his lips across her cheeks and down her neck, drinking in her fragrance and basking in her velvety skin.
She moaned with pleasure. He opened her robe and found that she was bare breasted. Her delicate bosom were creamy and full, and her nipples the color of a light pink rose. He slid his hands to her breasts, grasping one in each hand, luxuriating in the tenderness of her skin. When he danced his fingertips across her nipples, she sighed and rolled her head back. And the more he massaged, the more erect her nipples became. Newland was overwhelmed with desire. He wanted to ravage Ellen, join with her, be inside of her.
He squeezed the tips of her nipples and she suddenly released an impassioned moan, breathing his name through a rushed whisper. Then he lowered his mouth to one of her breasts, and took the whole of it into his mouth. He slowly pulled forward, circling his tongue around her flesh to taste her sweetness, and then stopped at the nipple to suck, softly at first. But the more her passions intensified, the harder he sucked, rolling the tip of her nipple across his tongue. He had dreamed about this from the moment he had imagined making love to her. But this celestial encounter far exceeded anything that he had imagined. Her scent, her elegant and subtle movements, the touch of her skin against his mouth and tongue, aroused him so completely that he felt as if he were tasting a piece of heaven itself.
With his hand, he continued to massage the other breast, until he moved through her cleavage, where he lingered with his tongue and explored her every curve. Then he moved to the other side, where he again took the full breast into his mouth and pulled forward. He stopped at the nipple to suck lightly and then pulled back so that only his tongue touched the tip. He teased it, driving her wild, but did not take it into his mouth this time. Instead, he swirled his tongue in sensuous circles around the bud, feeling the nipple grow ever more erect. He circled his tongue around the nub tenderly, a rhythmic dance, all the while squeezing her other breast with his hand.
He basked in utter pleasure as he moved his mouth from one of her breasts to the other. As her arousal intensified to white heat, her hips undulated with desire. He opened her robe completely; she was fully naked, exposed to him. Her feminine form was framed by delicate curls of light brown. Craving more, Newland gently opened one of her legs, and slowly lowered his face down her torso. He stopped to circle his tongue at her navel, her body trembling at his touch. And then, he moved farther below and traced the lines of her hip with his mouth and tongue, inhaling her amatory feminine scent. He slipped a hand lower and between her legs, gently squeezing her loins before sliding his fingers through her cream.
“Wonderful,” she said the moment he touched her feminine folds. When he began caressing her pearl, she began to moan. The more he played, the more intensely her hips undulated.
“Deeper,” she said, and with the other hand he slipped deeper inside her creamy vessel and began strumming his finger in sweet rhythm with her movements.
“Ah-h, Newland,” she said, her hips thrusting almost violently.
When he slipped another finger inside, continuing to stroke while also massaging her pearl, her body suddenly quivered, and then trembled. A few moments later, with a tumultuous quaver, she thrust her body forward, and he knew that she had crested. He gently danced his fingertips across her sensitive pearl as she continued to shudder, longer and more intensely than any woman he had ever known. And finally, her body melted under the pull of her climax.
The logs in the fireplace suddenly tumbled, and one rolled from the fireplace.
The Countess opened her eyes. “Newland! Do something.”
He turned and saw a burning log on the Persian carpet. Jumping to his feet, he found the poker from the fireplace set. He pushed the log back in the direction of the fireplace, but now the rug was aflame.
The Countess gathered her robe and hurried to a vase of flowers. She tossed the roses from it, and returned to the burning rug to throw the water on it. Instantly, the fire on the carpet was extinguished. But the log kept burning, threatening to set fire to the lace curtain. Newland struggled to move the log back into the fireplace without igniting another fire. The Countess grabbed a shovel from the fireplace set and handed it to him. With both instruments, he managed to scoop up the log and returned it to the fireplace.
The Countess kneeled next to the carpet and expelled a frustrated breath. “I suppose it’s not so awfully bad.”
He kneeled beside her. “It was my fault. I should have secured the logs.”
She kissed his cheek as if dismissing him. “No, not at all. I’m only glad you were here.”
“Can I see you to—?”
“It’s late, Newland. Perhaps we’ve had enough excitement for the day. Though you were lovely to stay and keep me company.”
“I assure you it was all my pleasure.”
She smiled sweetly at him and stood. Then she drew them away from the fi
replace and toward the door.
“You are the loveliest,” he said, turning back to her at the door. She kissed his cheek again, and then he turned to the door leading into the hall, where he found his coat and hat under the faint gaslight of the hall, and without further ado, plunged outside into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate.
Chapter 13
It was a crowded night at Wallack’s theatre.
The play was “The Shaughraun,” with Dion Boucicault in the title role and Harry Montague and Ada Dyas as the lovers. The popularity of the admirable English company was at its height, and the Shaughraun 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 Dyas, bade her goodbye, and turned to go. The actress, who was standing near the mantelpiece and looking down into the fire, wore a gray cashmere dress without fashionable loopings or trimmings, moulded 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 mantelshelf 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 Shaughraun.” He thought the adieux of Montague and Ada Dyas as fine as anything he had ever seen Croisette and Bressant do in Paris, or Madge Robertson and Kendal 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 from Madame Olenska after their confidential talk and lovemaking a week or ten days earlier.
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