To disguise his own annoyance he asked how her grandmother was, and she answered that Mrs. Mingott was still improving, but had been rather disturbed by the last news about the Beauforts.
“What news?”
“It seems they’re going to stay in New York. I believe he’s going into an insurance business, or something. They’re looking about for a small house.”
The preposterousness of the case was beyond discussion, and they went in to dinner. During dinner their talk moved in its usual limited circle; but Archer noticed that his wife made no allusion to Madame Olenska, nor to old Catherine’s reception of her. He was thankful for the fact, yet felt it to be vaguely ominous.
They went up to the library for coffee, and Archer lit a cigar and took down a volume of Michelet. He had taken to history in the evenings since May had shown a tendency to ask him to read aloud whenever she saw him with a volume of poetry: not that he disliked the sound of his own voice, but because he could always foresee her comments on what he read. In the days of their engagement she had simply (as he now perceived) echoed what he told her; but since he had ceased to provide her with opinions she had begun to hazard her own, with results destructive to his enjoyment of the works commented on.
Seeing that he had chosen history she fetched her workbasket, drew up an armchair to the green-shaded student lamp, and uncovered a cushion she was embroidering for his sofa. She was not a clever needle-woman; her large capable hands were made for riding, rowing and open-air activities; but since other wives embroidered cushions for their husbands she did not wish to omit this last link in her devotion.
She was so placed that Archer, by merely raising his eyes, could see her bent above her work-frame, her ruffled elbow-sleeves slipping back from her firm round arms, the betrothal sapphire shining on her left hand above her broad gold wedding-ring, and the right hand slowly and laboriously stabbing the canvas. As she sat thus, the lamplight full on her clear brow, he said to himself with a secret dismay that he would always know the thoughts behind it, that never, in all the years to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a weakness, a cruelty or an emotion that might be found outside the bedroom doors or beyond that which she found in her French magazines. She had spent her poetry and girlish romance on their short courting: the function was exhausted because the need was past. Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother, and mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr. Welland. He laid down his book and stood up impatiently; and at once she raised her head.
“What’s the matter?”
“The room is stifling: I want a little air.”
He had insisted that the library curtains should draw backward and forward on a rod, so that they might be closed in the evening, instead of remaining nailed to a gilt cornice, and immovably looped up over layers of lace, as in the drawing-room; and he pulled them back and pushed up the sash, leaning out into the icy night. The mere fact of not looking at May, seated beside his table, under his lamp, the fact of seeing other houses, roofs, chimneys, of getting the sense of other lives outside his own, other cities beyond New York, and a whole world beyond his world, cleared his brain and made it easier to breathe.
After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few minutes he heard her say: “Newland! Do shut the window. You’ll catch your death.”
He pulled the sash down and turned back. “Catch my death!” he echoed; and he felt like adding: “But I’ve caught it already. I AM dead—I’ve been dead for months and months.”
And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild suggestion. What if it were SHE who was dead! If she were going to die—to die soon—and leave him free! The sensation of standing there, in that warm familiar room, and looking at her, and wishing her dead, was so strange, so fascinating and overmastering, that its enormity did not immediately strike him. He simply felt that chance had given him a new possibility to which his sick soul might cling. Yes, May might die—people did: young people, healthy people like herself: she might die, and set him suddenly free.
She glanced up, and he saw by her widening eyes that there must be something strange in his own.
“Newland! Are you ill?”
He shook his head and turned toward his armchair. She bent over her work-frame, and as he passed he laid his hand on her hair. “Poor May!” he said.
“Poor? Why poor?” she echoed with a strained laugh.
“Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you,” he rejoined, laughing also.
For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed over her work: “I shall never worry if you’re happy.”
“Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless I can open the windows!”
“In THIS weather?” she remonstrated; and with a sigh he buried his head in his book and did not notice when May rose from her chair, setting her needlework aside.
“Darling, look at me,” she said.
Newland looked up, surprised that she was standing before him. She had a lustful look in her eyes, although her face lacked its usual youthful vivacity.
“Not tonight, May,” he said wearily.
“It must be,” she said. She dropped to her knees, circled her arms around his calves, and laid her chin upon his lap. “I’ve missed you, Newland. I can’t remember how long it’s been.”
“You’re tired, and I am as well.”
“Then I will pleasure you.” She rose up slightly and slid her hands up his thighs to his loins.
He wanted to resist, although her strong, but delicate hands had a way of evoking his lust in spite of his conscious desires. Still, he tried to resist her advances, but was powerless to do so. Thusly does a woman control a man.
She grasped his jewels, caressed, and then moved to unfasten his trousers. She opened them and reached her hand inside to find his member, only half erect.
“You are tired, darling,” she said. “I will have to invigorate you.” With her fingertips, she circled the corona of his staff and danced her way along the sides, exploring the folds of his anatomy. His member soon swelled to full hardness as a result of her lurid touch.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
Newland drew in a long breath as she raised and lowered her fingers along the crease of his crown, firmly but gently at the same time. Then she moved an index finger to the opening of his shaft and spread the oily cream around it, circling playfully. She thrust her other hand farther inside his trousers and clasped his jewels, massaging them gently as she worked the crown, and before long, he was her captive, a prisoner of passion and lust.
She stroked the length of his staff several times, squeezing each time before lowering her lips to his crown and brushing them across its surface. He groaned in spite of himself, and when she heard his, she herself moaned lightly, and then parted her lips so that she could swirl her tongue around the top of his crown and along his folds. And all the while, she fondled his jewels, which hardened and retracted in pleasure.
Newland felt his hips begin to undulate as his desire grew. She quickly pulled away, and he groaned again, this time in loss. She pulled down the bodice of her dress, exposing her breasts, which she cupped in her hands. She lowered her breasts to his staff, placed it between her cleavage, and began rubbing the shaft up and down between her bosom. She took the exposed head between her lips and sucked as she used her breasts to pleasure him. Her mouth and tongue were like velvet, heavenly, and the more gratification he craved the more pleasure she delivered. When he looked down, he saw her pinching her own nipples between her fingers. Her eyes were half closed; her expression was free, filled with bliss.
She circled her tongue around the corona more rapidly and then released his member from between her breasts. She took the engorged crown of his staff into her mouth and began to suck, pulling and circling with her tongue. And after she completed her play, pleasuring him until he writhed and groaned with no control of his own, she slowly began mo
ving the length of his staff inside her mouth. She let him ride the length of her tongue, and when he filled her oral cavity, as pleasurable as her orchid, she began rocking him in and out of her mouth, continuing to suck as she rolled her lips toward his intricate folds. And each time her lips met his crown, she swirled her tongue round and round before consuming the length of it once again.
May moaned and writhed herself, lost in the pleasure of satisfying her man. And the hotter the heat grew between them, the more excited Newland became until he could sustain no further play. His hips thrust, and the next time she drew him inside her, when she pulled, sucking hard, he was undone. He pushed inside her mouth again, groaned deep from within his chest, and spilled his seed on her tongue. His body shuddered, his hips quaked, and he collapsed in a pure hedonistic orgasm.
May slowly pulled forward, withdrawing his staff from her mouth. With her dancing blue eyes, she looked up to meet his just as he opened them. She curled her lips into a sweet smile, swallowed, and then licked her lips with an expression of satisfaction.
“Oh Newland, you’re divine, my dearest.”
“Stand up, my dear,” he said. “And raise your skirt.”
May did as he asked. Then he edged forward on his chair, and slipped her undergarment down to her mid thighs. With a hand, he clasped one of her bottom cheeks, and with the other, he quickly slipped his fingers through her intimate folds, where he discovered her creamy delights. Once again, he began to feel aroused. He slid his fingers back and forth, and then dipped a finger inside her vessel, thrusting it in and out several times before sliding his fingers forward to find her inflamed pearl.
“Ah, Newland,” she said, moaning loudly the moment he touched it. “Yes. There.” She reached for his shoulders and steadied herself as she lost herself in carnal lust. Obliging her, he continued to circle his fingers round and round her pearl. Her hips loosened and began undulating to the rhythm of his touch.
“I must return the favor, dear May,” he said, marveling at the lioness his wife was in the bedroom in comparison, sadly, to the harridan she had become outside it. He leaned over and began tonguing her orchid, while lowering his fingers to her fountain of lust. He pushed one finger into her sheath and the other into her nether hole, which was moist from her cream. With a bit of maneuvering, he buried both of his fingers to the hilt, all the while licking her pearl.
“Ah, yes, husband, you know how to please me,” she said hoarsely.
She began to purr and sing as her head lolled from one shoulder to the other. And before long, her hips were beating to a grind that begged for satisfaction. It wasn’t long before she leaned forward and took control of the dance. She moved her hips back and forth, letting his tongue now slide the length of her folds while keeping the focus upon stimulating her pearl. She moved faster, faster, until her body tightened, and in a quivering thrust, she cried out in pleasure and released.
“Yes, oh yes, Newland. You’re …” She gasped for breath.
He felt both her fiery orifices tighten around his fingers, spasm, and when her body finally relaxed, he slowly withdrew his fingers.
“You’re such a dear. I could never live without you.”
Six or seven days passed. Archer heard nothing from Madame Olenska, and became aware that her name would not be mentioned in his presence by any member of the family. He did not try to see her; to do so while she was at old Catherine’s guarded bedside would have been almost impossible. In the uncertainty of the situation he let himself drift, conscious, somewhere below the surface of his thoughts, of a resolve which had come to him when he had leaned out from his library window into the icy night. The strength of that resolve made it easy to wait and make no sign.
Then one day May told him that Mrs. Manson Mingott had asked to see him. There was nothing surprising in the request, for the old lady was steadily recovering, and she had always openly declared that she preferred Archer to any of her other grandsons-in- law. May gave the message with evident pleasure: she was proud of old Catherine’s appreciation of her husband.
There was a moment’s pause, and then Archer felt it incumbent on him to say: “All right. Shall we go together this afternoon?”
His wife’s face brightened, but she instantly answered: “Oh, you’d much better go alone. It bores Granny to see the same people too often.”
Archer’s heart was beating violently when he rang old Mrs. Mingott’s bell. He had wanted above all things to go alone, for he felt sure the visit would give him the chance of saying a word in private to the Countess Olenska. He had determined to wait till the chance presented itself naturally; and here it was, and here he was on the doorstep. Behind the door, behind the curtains of the yellow damask room next to the hall, she was surely awaiting him; in another moment he should see her, and be able to speak to her before she led him to the sick-room.
He wanted only to put one question: after that his course would be clear. What he wished to ask was simply the date of her return to Washington; and that question she could hardly refuse to answer.
But in the yellow sitting-room it was the mulatto maid who waited. Her white teeth shining like a keyboard, she pushed back the sliding doors and ushered him into old Catherine’s presence.
The old woman sat in a vast throne-like armchair near her bed. Beside her was a mahogany stand bearing a cast bronze lamp with an engraved globe, over which a green paper shade had been balanced. There was not a book or a newspaper in reach, nor any evidence of feminine employment: conversation had always been Mrs. Mingott’s sole pursuit, and she would have scorned to feign an interest in fancywork.
Archer saw no trace of the slight distortion left by her stroke. She merely looked paler, with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of her obesity; and, in the fluted mob-cap tied by a starched bow between her first two chins, and the muslin kerchief crossed over her billowing purple dressing-gown, she seemed like some shrewd and kindly ancestress of her own who might have yielded too freely to the pleasures of the table.
She held out one of the little hands that nestled in a hollow of her huge lap like pet animals, and called to the maid: “Don’t let in any one else. If my daughters call, say I’m asleep.”
The maid disappeared, and the old lady turned to her grandson.
“My dear, am I perfectly hideous?” she asked gaily, launching out one hand in search of the folds of muslin on her inaccessible bosom. “My daughters tell me it doesn’t matter at my age—as if hideousness didn’t matter all the more the harder it gets to conceal!”
“My dear, you’re handsomer than ever!” Archer rejoined in the same tone; and she threw back her head and laughed.
“Ah, but not as handsome as Ellen!” she jerked out, twinkling at him maliciously; and before he could answer she added: “Was she so awfully handsome the day you drove her up from the ferry?”
He laughed, and she continued: “Was it because you told her so that she had to put you out on the way? In my youth young men didn’t desert pretty women unless they were made to!” She gave another chuckle, and interrupted it to say almost querulously: “It’s a pity she didn’t marry you; I always told her so. It would have spared me all this worry. But who ever thought of sparing their grandmother worry?”
Archer wondered if her illness had blurred her faculties; but suddenly she broke out: “Well, it’s settled, anyhow: she’s going to stay with me, whatever the rest of the family say! She hadn’t been here five minutes before I’d have gone down on my knees to keep her—if only, for the last twenty years, I’d been able to see where the floor was!”
Archer listened in silence, and she went on: “They’d talked me over, as no doubt you know: persuaded me, Lovell, and Letterblair, and Augusta Welland, and all the rest of them, that I must hold out and cut off her allowance, till she was made to see that it was her duty to go back to Olenska. They thought they’d convinced me when the secretary, or whatever he was, came out with the last proposals: handsome proposals I confess they were. After
all, marriage is marriage, and money’s money—both useful things in their way … and I didn’t know what to answer—” She broke off and drew a long breath, as if speaking had become an effort. “But the minute I laid eyes on her, I said: `You sweet bird, you! Shut you up in that cage again? Never!’ And now it’s settled that she’s to stay here and nurse her Granny as long as there’s a Granny to nurse. It’s not a gay prospect, but she doesn’t mind; and of course I’ve told Letterblair that she’s to be given her proper allowance.”
The young man heard her with veins aglow; but in his confusion of mind he hardly knew whether her news brought joy or pain. He had so definitely decided on the course he meant to pursue that for the moment he could not readjust his thoughts. But gradually there stole over him the delicious sense of difficulties deferred and opportunities miraculously provided. If Ellen had consented to come and live with her grandmother it must surely be because she had recognised the impossibility of giving him up. This was her answer to his final appeal of the other day: if she would not take the extreme step he had urged, she had at last yielded to half-measures. He sank back into the thought with the involuntary relief of a man who has been ready to risk everything, and suddenly tastes the dangerous sweetness of security.
“She couldn’t have gone back—it was impossible!” he exclaimed.
“Ah, my dear, I always knew you were on her side; and that’s why I sent for you today, and why I said to your pretty wife, when she proposed to come with you: `No, my dear, I’m pining to see Newland, and I don’t want anybody to share our transports.’ For you see, my dear—” she drew her head back as far as its tethering chins permitted, and looked him full in the eyes—”you see, we shall have a fight yet. The family don’t want her here, and they’ll say it’s because I’ve been ill, because I’m a weak old woman, that she’s persuaded me. I’m not well enough yet to fight them one by one, and you’ve got to do it for me.”
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