Literary Love

by Gabrielle Vigot

  It would have been as difficult to discover any resemblance between the two situations as between the appearance of the persons concerned. Newland Archer could not pretend to anything approaching the young English actor’s romantic good looks, and Miss Dyas 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 parted as two who chose love, and of course, 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 a 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, although she had not shrunk from his affection, but rather welcomed it. The exciting fact was her having lived in an atmosphere so thick with drama 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 simplehearted 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. Mingott, 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 Mingott 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, trying to forget, thinking of his obligation to May, and he had tried to avoid being with her in company; but now their eyes met, and as Mrs. Beaufort recognised 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’s 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 her 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 the 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 colour rose, reluctantly and duskily. She rose from her chair and excused herself. “I must speak with a friend. I won’t be a minute,” she said quietly to Newland and the other gentlemen.

  Some moments passed and Newland’s curiosity was naturally heightened. With a nod, he excused himself from the box and went in search of the Countess, wondering if she had meant for him to follow. He traveled the length of the corridor, and down the stairs, but with the Countess nowhere in sight, he decided to return to the box to avoid any suspicion.

  As he brushed passed an open door, leading to a discrete hallway, he noticed a handkerchief lying on the floor. It wasn’t just any piece of cloth, but one embroidered with the Countess’s initials like the one he had seen in her lap the first evening he had met her. He entered the hallway and collected the item. But as he stood, he noticed an open door.

  He gingerly trod down the hallway and found the Countess standing inside a small sitting room. When he cleared his throat, she turned to him.

  “Newland? You followed me?”

  “It seems you’ve lost your handkerchief,” he said, his voice lowering.

  “So it has.”

  “May I?” He entered the room and returned the item to her. “Are you quite all right?”

  “Yes, I was to meet a friend for a private conversation. A woman I knew from Europe, although it appears that she has lost her way.”

  “To my fortune,” he said. He took a glance at his surroundings. “And this room is very private indeed. Very intimate.”

  “No Newland, we shouldn’t, not again.”

  He clasped her hand and brought it to his lips. “Yes,” he whispered. Then he took a step back and closed the door behind them. “I must have you. I’ve been desolate without you,” he said, returning to her side.

  “But you stayed away, avoided me. I thought the matter was settled.”

  He shook his head and lowered her to the sofa. He dropped to his knees and clasped her feet, bringing them to his face.

  “Please, Newland. Don’t. We shouldn’t.” But despite her words, she offered no physical resistance, but perhaps involuntarily parted her legs slightly.

  Then he raised the skirt of her dress to her lap and began kissing the length of her legs. He paused to spread her legs when he reached her thighs, and then crossed over to her inner thighs. She sighed helplessly at his touch, her body going limber, and so he continued upwardly, run
ning a slow tongue up to her loins. He slipped a few fingers inside her gold silk undergarment to find that despite her words of denial, her body was impassioned with her seductive cream, which overflowed. Pulling the garment to the side, her orchid was fully revealed, her crimson pearl bursting through its folds. He drew near to inhale her scent, and then slipped his tongue through her passion to taste the richness, which he savored as though it were the most heavenly of desserts.

  She moaned and began moving her hips desirously toward him, needing more of his loving touch. He slid his tongue upward to her pearl and with quick tender licks, ran his tongue in a circular motion over it, heightening her arousal.

  “Make love to me, Newland,” she finally whispered.

  He drew back and removed her undergarment. Then he turned her around so that she faced the sofa, with her hands resting upon its back. He raised her dress and positioned himself behind her. She raised her hips to him, undulating impatiently. He unfastened his trousers and prepared to enter her sheath. He wrapped a strong arm around her, and with the other hand, returned to caress her pearl.

  She sighed endlessly. But as soon as his manhood touched the opening to her sheath, she said, “Yes. I need you moving inside me now.”

  He massaged her pearl, circling it several times more, before slowly pushing his manhood inside her. When she was fully filled, they paused to savor the moment, sighing and basking in lust. It wasn’t long before they were both overcome with excitement and began moving with more urgency.

  “This was the Count’s favorite way to take me,” she said, unexpectedly.

  Newland’s thrusts slowed. “Ellen, I don’t want to …”

  “No, Newland, you’re different.” She thrust her hips back at him, encouraging him to resume the intensity of their lovemaking.

  The pleasure of her intimate chamber was too much for him, and he resumed.

  “The Count …” Her voice was breathless, hoarse with passion. “He was more animal than man. He treated me roughly, while you move like a lover.” She looked back at him.

  Newland did not want to hear the words, and yet her body and voice inflamed him.

  “I learned to love it, Newland, crave his ill-treatment of me, until I woke up and could stand it no more and escaped. I vowed never to allow a man to take me like this again … until you.”

  Newland stopped his movements and was about to withdraw from her sheath when she reached back with a hand and grabbed his hips.

  “Do not stop, I beg you,” she said. “With you, it’s different. With you, I am your lover. It’s wonderful. Please … let me feel your movements.” She thrust her hips back hard, twisted, and undulated them, caressing his manhood with the velvety walls of her chamber.

  He could not resist and began thrusting, as she preferred. “Harder, harder, Newland,” she said, panting and breathless. She suddenly thrust forward, raising her hips higher to allow him easier, deeper access to her intimate chamber. He continued to massage her pearl, round and round, until her body became taut, and then heaved and jerked uncontrollably.

  “Yes, yes, I swoon,” she cried as she announced her release. And in his next stroke inside her, he groaned and released his seed. His legs convulsed and buckled, and his body collapsed against the weight of hers. Together, they sighed as they felt the electrical impulse race through their limbs.

  “Ellen,” he whispered as he enveloped her tightly in his arms. “How I need you my darling.”

  “And I you,” she said.

  They lay in each other’s arms, comforted by their physical union.

  “I could stay here forever,” he said.

  “But we must return to the box before we are suspected.”

  “Let us forget the others.”

  “And disparage your good name?”

  He exhaled heavily. “Whoever cares?”

  She moved so that he had to let her rise. She straightened her hair and smoothed her skirts. “It was lovely, my darling. Lovely. I shall dream of you tonight when you are away from me.” She gently kissed his lips.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  But she turned and left the privacy of the room. When Newland returned to the box, their conversation continued exactly where they had left off before their leaving.

  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. Welland’s 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 hair-brushes 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 May’s accompanying her father. The reputation of the Mingotts’ 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 May’s 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 Mingott clan if he had suggested asking for a holiday in midwinter; and he accepted May’s 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 up, 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 uncle Lovell Mingott either; they really think she’s much worldlier and fonder of society than she 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 c
onspicuously 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 ingenuous May imagined. She had Beaufort at her feet, Mr. van der Luyden hovering above her like a protecting deity, and any number of candidates (Lawrence Lefferts 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 ingenuousness almost amounted to a gift of divination. Ellen Olenska was lonely and she was unhappy.

  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 toward the Beaufort box. The two men shook hands, and Winsett proposed a bock 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, although he would like to have, but he was more than slightly annoyed with this man. What the devil did Ned Winsett want with Ellen Olenska’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 neighbour 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 bareheaded, 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.”