They sat silent, not looking at each other, but straight ahead at the people passing along the path. Finally she turned her eyes again to his face and said: “You’re not changed.”
He felt like answering: “I was, till I saw you again;” but instead he stood up abruptly and glanced about him at the untidy sweltering park.
“This is horrible. Why shouldn’t we go out a little on the bay? There’s a breeze, and it will be cooler. We might take the steamboat down to Point Arley.” She glanced up at him hesitatingly and he went on: “On a Monday morning there won’t be anybody on the boat. My train doesn’t leave till evening: I’m going back to New York. Why shouldn’t we?” he insisted, looking down at her; and suddenly he broke out: “Haven’t we done all we could?”
“Oh”—she murmured again. She stood up and reopened her sunshade, glancing about her as if to take counsel of the scene, and assure herself of the impossibility of remaining in it. Then her eyes returned to his face. “You mustn’t say things like that to me,” she said.
“I’ll say anything you like; or nothing. I won’t open my mouth unless you tell me to. What harm can it do to anybody? All I want is to listen to you,” he stammered.
She drew out a little gold-faced watch on an enamelled chain. “Oh, don’t calculate,” he broke out; “give me the day! I want to get you away from that man. At what time was he coming?”
Her colour rose again. “At eleven.”
“Then you must come at once.”
“You needn’t be afraid—if I don’t come.”
“Nor you either—if you do. I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you’ve been doing. It’s a hundred years since we’ve met—it may be another hundred before we meet again.”
She still wavered, her anxious eyes on his face. “Why didn’t you come down to the beach to fetch me, the day I was at Granny’s?” she asked.
“Because you didn’t look round—because you didn’t know I was there. I swore I wouldn’t unless you looked round.” He laughed as the childishness of the confession struck him.
“But I didn’t look round on purpose.”
“On purpose?”
“I knew you were there; when you drove in I recognised the ponies. So I went down to the beach.”
“To get away from me as far as you could?”
She repeated in a low voice: “To get away from you as far as I could.”
He laughed out again, this time in boyish satisfaction. “Well, you see it’s no use. I may as well tell you,” he added, “that the business I came here for was just to find you. But, look here, we must start or we shall miss our boat.”
“Our boat?” She frowned perplexedly, and then smiled. “Oh, but I must go back to the hotel first: I must leave a note—”
“As many notes as you please. You can write here.” He drew out a note-case and one of the new stylographic pens. “I’ve even got an envelope—you see how everything’s predestined! There—steady the thing on your knee, and I’ll get the pen going in a second. They have to be humoured; wait—” He banged the hand that held the pen against the back of the bench. “It’s like jerking down the mercury in a thermometer: just a trick. Now try—”
She laughed, and bending over the sheet of paper which he had laid on his note-case, began to write. Archer walked away a few steps, staring with radiant unseeing eyes at the passersby, who, in their turn, paused to stare at the unwonted sight of a fashionably-dressed lady writing a note on her knee on a bench in the Common.
Madame Olenska slipped the sheet into the envelope, wrote a name on it, and put it into her pocket. Then she too stood up.
They walked back toward Beacon Street, and near the club Archer caught sight of the plush-lined “herdic” which had carried his note to the Parker House, and whose driver was reposing from this effort by bathing his brow at the corner hydrant.
“I told you everything was predestined! Here’s a cab for us. You see!” They laughed, astonished at the miracle of picking up a public conveyance at that hour, and in that unlikely spot, in a city where cab-stands were still a “foreign” novelty.
Archer, looking at his watch, saw that there was time to drive to the Parker House before going to the steamboat landing. They rattled through the hot streets and drew up at the door of the hotel.
Archer held out his hand for the letter. “Shall I take it in?” he asked; but Madame Olenska, shaking her head, sprang out and disappeared through the glazed doors. It was barely half-past ten; but what if the emissary, impatient for her reply, and not knowing how else to employ his time, were already seated among the travellers with cooling drinks at their elbows of whom Archer had caught a glimpse as she went in?
He waited, pacing up and down before the herdic. A Sicilian youth with eyes like Nastasia’s offered to shine his boots, and an Irish matron to sell him peaches; and every few moments the doors opened to let out hot men with straw hats tilted far back, who glanced at him as they went by. He marvelled that the door should open so often, and that all the people it let out should look so like each other, and so like all the other hot men who, at that hour, through the length and breadth of the land, were passing continuously in and out of the swinging doors of hotels.
And then, suddenly, came a face that he could not relate to the other faces. He caught but a flash of it, for his pacings had carried him to the farthest point of his beat, and it was in turning back to the hotel that he saw, in a group of typical countenances—the lank and weary, the round and surprised, the lantern-jawed and mild—this other face that was so many more things at once, and things so different. It was that of a young man, pale too, and half-extinguished by the heat, or worry, or both, but somehow, quicker, vivider, more conscious; or perhaps seeming so because he was so different. Archer hung a moment on a thin thread of memory, but it snapped and floated off with the disappearing face—apparently that of some foreign business man, looking doubly foreign in such a setting. He vanished in the stream of passersby, and Archer resumed his patrol.
He did not care to be seen watch in hand within view of the hotel, and his unaided reckoning of the lapse of time led him to conclude that, if Madame Olenska was so long in reappearing, it could only be because she had met the emissary and been waylaid by him. At the thought Archer’s apprehension rose to anguish.
“If she doesn’t come soon I’ll go in and find her,” he said.
Newland continued to pace until he found himself pushing his way through the hotel doors. He walked the length of the foyer, and to his good fortune, caught a glimpse of the fabric of his Ellen’s dress as she rounded the bend in the staircase. Gliding quickly, he followed her upstairs and was upon her just as she turned the key in the lock of her door.
“Ellen,” he said breathily.
For the second time that morning, her face revealed surprise. “Newland.”
“You were so long that I started to worry about—”
“Forgive me, I had only to stop at the desk, and the attendant …” She glanced down the hallway in both directions, and then pushed open the door to her room. “Come in, quickly, before we are seen.”
Newland hurried inside and stood waiting as she secured the latch.
“You shouldn’t have come up here,” she said. “What if we are seen?”
“But we were not. And now …” He stepped forward and drew her into his arms. They stared lovingly into one another’s eyes, their chests heaving with excited breath. “Do you know how I’ve longed to simply hold you in my arms? That alone would be enough.”
“And I have dreamed the same,” she said.
He lifted her chin. “Look at me. I stand before you. Can’t you see how you complete me?”
“Newland—”
He leaned forward and kissed her, tasting the tears that had fallen from her eyes. He tightened his grasp around her so that their hearts pulsated against each other’s flesh. The kiss deepened and their bodies writhed to match its intensity.
Every urge in
Newland’s body called upon him to ravish her. Then his rational mind regained control and he suddenly pulled away, rethinking his actions.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You were right. I shouldn’t have followed you here.”
She narrowed the distance between them. “But you are here.”
“I should not have compromised you. And yet, I may still.”
“It was I who opened the door.”
“But I who entered.”
“We both entered and for one reason alone.”
Newland wanted to say, “I entered because I love you. I am helplessly drawn to you with no control over my mind or body.” But he said nothing, because her loving expression communicated that she understood this already. Words were unnecessary.
The Countess pulled her headpiece away, tossed it to the side chair, and loosened her hair, letting it fall to one the side of her neck and cascade down to her bosom. Her smile had changed from one bespeaking chaste affection, to one conveying unbridled lust. Her eyes were hooded, almost predatory, intent on consuming her prey.
“You are here,” she said. “Just as you intended.”
“We might miss the boat.”
“There will be another,” she said in a raspy whisper.
The residue of Newland’s sense of propriety waned. His manly desires all at once waxed victorious over his rational mind. Her allure had ensnared him, and he needed only to fall into her arms. He reached for his waistcoat and slowly began unbuttoning it. When it opened, he flung it to the chair. He approached her and once again began kissing her with irresistible desire. She quickly unbuttoned his shirt, and before long, they had undressed one another, still kissing. Soon they stood together naked as they both had so longed to be. Newland felt her silky flesh meld into his own, and his rampant manhood throbbed between them, announcing the pleasure of their forthcoming encounter.
Their bodies swayed gently as they explored the lines and curves of each other; they moaned softly as their hands crossed the erogenous regions of pleasure. Newland broke the kiss, and with his lips, caressed her cheeks. Then he lowered his face to her neck, where he buried his mouth in her tresses. Her skin was smoother than the finest silk, and her feminine scent was divine. He reached down and clasped her bosoms in his hands, and then lowered his head and took the full of a breast into his mouth, tasting her. Pulling forward, he found the erect tip waiting for his tongue, and made erotic circles and licks around it.
She moaned languidly, and he continued pleasuring her, moving to the other breast before he sunk lower to his knees. He grasped her thighs, opened her legs, and placed a leg upon one of his shoulders. He drew in a protracted breath as he basked in the glory of her scent and then tasted the honey of her dripping flower. When she began to writhe, he grasped her bottom cheeks and moved her to the precise position he desired.
“Oh, Newland. How you complete me,” she whispered, her voice straining, adrift in the ocean of their raw passion.
He slid his tongue down her slit and through her cream, tasting her and luxuriating in the divinity of man’s desire. He might have remained right there forever, except his throbbing manhood demanded more. He rose, and lifted her into his arms, cradling her near. He kissed her as he walked to the bed, and without turning the coverings down, he laid her down, and joined her so that they were side by side.
She wrapped a leg around his waist and pulled herself near so that their bodies once again melded into one. Then she maneuvered herself so that his member rested against her intimate folds and began grinding her hips slowly so that his crown slid through her cream. They shared the same breath, hot with desire, but took a moment to absorb the whole of each other’s being.
Newland thought to say, “I love you, Ellen, more than life.” But any words that he might have said would only diminish their moment of ecstasy.
She parted her lips as her eyelids fluttered, and then she slowly closed her eyes, grinding her hips so that his crown sat at the opening of her sheath. She stopped without taking him inside, and instead waited to let him enter at the moment he chose.
It was not long before Newland was overcome. He closed his eyes and pushed inside of her luscious glove of pleasure, sliding to the depth of their love. Once inside her, he opened his eyes and admired the sublime expression of beauty and desire that radiated like a celestial light from her visage. Then he closed his eyes again and began making love to her.
Their bodies glided as though they were performing the perfect symphony of love, playing on and on …
Then he took control and rolled on top of her so that they could finish in each other’s arms. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist and circled her arms around his back, so that their bodies were bonded together as one. Their hips continued to meet, his member thrusting in and out of her rich and passionate cream, until the moment closed in upon them. Her body tightened, her lips parted, and her breath flowed across his neck, sending shivers up his spine.
“Oh, my dearest,” she cried as she thrust her hips forward, squeezing his member as she released. “Yes.”
Newland felt a current of electricity shoot down his spine, cross his loins, and then burst through his manhood. With a cataclysmic jolt, he spilled his seed, filling her with his greatest joy.
They collapsed into one another’s arms, rolled to their sides, and began laughing with complete satisfaction.
When they dressed, Newland left the room before she did, so as to avoid any appearance of impropriety and waited for her outside the hotel on the sidewalk. His heart was filled with insurmountable joy and the day was only beginning. He would have her all to himself. Alone.
The doors swung open again and she was at his side once again. They got into the herdic, and as it drove off he took out his watch and saw that she had been absent just three minutes from the moment he left her side. In the clatter of loose windows that made talk impossible they bumped over the disjointed cobblestones to the wharf.
Seated side by side on a bench of the half-empty boat they found that they had hardly anything to say to each other, or rather that what they had to say communicated itself best in the blessed silence of their release and their isolation. They had made love and now life was utterly complete just as Newland had dreamed it should be. If this day lasted forever, he would not complain.
As the paddle-wheels began to turn, and wharves and shipping to recede through the veil of heat, it seemed to Archer that everything in the old familiar world of habit was receding also. He longed to ask Madame Olenska if she did not have the same feeling: the feeling that they were starting on some long voyage from which they might never return. But he was afraid to say it, or anything else that might disturb the delicate balance of her trust in him. In reality he had no wish to betray that trust. There had been days and nights when the memory of their kiss had burned and burned on his lips; the day before even, on the drive to Portsmouth, the thought of her had run through him like fire; but now that she was beside him, and they were drifting forth into this unknown world, they seemed to have reached the kind of deeper nearness that a touch may sunder.
As the boat left the harbour and turned seaward a breeze stirred about them and the bay broke up into long oily undulations, then into ripples tipped with spray. The fog of sultriness still hung over the city, but ahead lay a fresh world of ruffled waters, and distant promontories with lighthouses in the sun. Madame Olenska, leaning back against the boat-rail, drank in the coolness between parted lips. She had wound a long veil about her hat, but it left her face uncovered, and Archer was struck by the tranquil gaiety of her expression. One that he had seen only earlier as she lay in his arms. She seemed to take their adventure as a matter of course, and to be neither in fear of unexpected encounters, nor (what was worse) unduly elated by their possibility.
In the bare dining-room of the inn, which he had hoped they would have to themselves, they found a strident party of innocent-looking young men and women—school-teachers on a holiday, the landlord
told them—and Archer’s heart sank at the idea of having to talk through their noise.
“This is hopeless—I’ll ask for a private room,” he said; and Madame Olenska, without offering any objection, waited while he went in search of it. The room opened on a long wooden verandah, with the sea coming in at the windows. It was bare and cool, with a table covered with a coarse checkered cloth and adorned by a bottle of pickles and a blueberry pie under a cage. No more guileless-looking cabinet particulier ever offered its shelter to a clandestine couple: Archer fancied he saw the sense of its reassurance in the faintly amused smile with which Madame Olenska sat down opposite to him. A woman who had run away from her husband—and reputedly with another man—was likely to have mastered the art of taking things for granted; but something in the quality of her composure took the edge from his irony. By being so quiet, so unsurprised and so simple she had managed to brush away the conventions and make him feel that to seek to be alone was the natural thing for two old friends who had so much to say to each other…
Chapter 6
They lunched slowly and meditatively, with mute intervals between rushes of talk; for, the spell once broken, they had much to say, and yet moments when saying became the mere accompaniment to long duologues of silence. Archer kept the talk from his own affairs, not with conscious intention but because he did not want to miss a word of her history; and leaning on the table, her chin resting on her clasped hands, she talked to him of the year and a half since they had met.
She had grown tired of what people called “society”; New York was kind, it was almost oppressively hospitable; she should never forget the way in which it had welcomed her back; but after the first flush of novelty she had found herself, as she phrased it, too “different” to care for the things it cared about—and so she had decided to try Washington, where one was supposed to meet more varieties of people and of opinion. And on the whole she should probably settle down in Washington, and make a home there for poor Medora, who had worn out the patience of all her other relations just at the time when she most needed looking after and protecting from matrimonial perils.
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