Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Edith Wharton

  He had the feeling of unexplained excitement with which, on halfholidays at school, he used to start off into the unknown. Taking his pair at an easy gait, he counted on reaching the stud-farm, which was not far beyond Paradise Rocks, before three o‘clock; so that, after looking over the horse (and trying him if he seemed promising) he would still have four golden hours to dispose of.

  As soon as he heard of the Sillerton’s party he had said to himself that the Marchioness Manson would certainly come to Newport with the Blenkers, and that Madame Olenska might again take the opportunity of spending the day with her grandmother. At any rate, the Blenker habitation would probably be deserted, and he would be able, without indiscretion, to satisfy a vague curiosity concerning it. He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-house. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food and drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her voice. He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.

  When he reached the stud-farm a glance showed him that the horse was not what he wanted; nevertheless he took a turn behind it in order to prove to himself that he was not in a hurry. But at three o‘clock he shook out the reins over the trotters and turned into the by-roads leading to Portsmouth. The wind had dropped and a faint haze on the horizon showed that a fog was waiting to steal up the Saconnet on the turn of the tide; but all about him fields and woods were steeped in golden light.

  He drove past gray-shingled farm-houses in orchards, past hay-fields and groves of oak, past villages with white steeples rising sharply into the fading sky; and at last, after stopping to ask the way of some men at work in a field, he turned down a lane between high banks of goldenrod and brambles. At the end of the lane was the blue glimmer of the river; to the left, standing in front of a clump of oaks and maples, he saw a long tumble-down house with white paint peeling from its clapboards.

  On the road-side facing the gateway stood one of the open sheds in which the New Englander shelters his farming implements and visitors “hitch” their “teams.” Archer, jumping down, led his pair into the shed, and after tying them to a post turned toward the house. The patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hay-field; but to the left an overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white, surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim.

  Archer leaned for a while against the gate. No one was in sight, and not a sound came from the open windows of the house: a grizzled Newfoundland dozing before the door seemed as ineffectual a guardian as the arrowless Cupid. It was strange to think that this place of silence and decay was the home of the turbulent Blenkers; yet Archer was sure that he was not mistaken.

  For a long time he stood there, content to take in the scene, and gradually falling under its drowsy spell; but at length he roused himself to the sense of the passing time. Should he look his fill and then drive away? He stood irresolute, wishing suddenly to see the inside of the house, so that he might picture the room that Madame Olenska sat in. There was nothing to prevent his walking up to the door and ringing the bell; if, as he supposed, she was away with the rest of the party, he could easily give his name, and ask permission to go into the sitting room to write a message.

  But instead, he crossed the lawn and turned toward the box-garden. As he entered it he caught sight of something bright-colored in the summer-house, and presently made it out to be a pink parasol. The parasol drew him like a magnet: he was sure it was hers. He went into the summer-house, and sitting down on the rickety seat picked up the silken thing and looked at its carved handle, which was made of some rare wood that gave out an aromatic scent. Archer lifted the handle to his lips.

  He heard a rustle of skirts against the box, and sat motionless, leaning on the parasol handle with clasped hands, and letting the rustle come nearer without lifting his eyes. He had always known that this must happen ...

  “Oh, Mr. Archer!” exclaimed a loud young voice; and looking up he saw before him the youngest and largest of the Blenker girls, blonde and blowsy, in bedraggled muslin. A red blotch on one of her cheeks seemed to show that it had recently been pressed against a pillow, and her half-awakened eyes stared at him hospitably but confusedly.

  “Gracious—where did you drop from? I must have been sound asleep in the hammock. Everybody else has gone to Newport. Did you ring?” she incoherently inquired.

  Archer’s confusion was greater than hers. “I—no—that is, I was just going to. I had to come up the island to see about a horse, and I drove over on a chance of finding Mrs. Blenker and your visitors. But the house seemed empty—so I sat down to wait.”

  Miss Blenker, shaking off the fumes of sleep, looked at him with increasing interest. “The house is empty. Mother’s not here, or the Marchioness—or anybody but me.” Her glance became faintly reproachful. “Didn’t you know that Professor and Mrs. Sillerton are giving a garden-party for mother and all of us this afternoon? It was too unlucky that I couldn’t go; but I’ve had a sore throat, and mother was afraid of the drive home this evening. Did you ever know anything so disappointing? Of course,” she added gaily, “I shouldn’t have minded half as much if I’d known you were coming.”

  Symptoms of a lumbering coquetry became visible in her, and Archer found the strength to break in: “But Madame Olenska—has she gone to Newport too?”

  Miss Blenker looked at him with surprise. “Madame Olenska—didn’ t you know she’d been called away?”

  “Called away?”

  “Oh, my best parasol! I lent it to that goose of a Katie, because it matched her ribbons, and the careless thing must have dropped it here. We Blenkers are all like that ... real Bohemians!” Recovering the sunshade with a powerful hand she unfurled it and suspended its rosy dome above her head. “Yes, Ellen was called away yesterday: she lets us call her Ellen, you know. A telegram came from Boston: she said she might be gone for two days. I do love the way she does her hair, don’t you?” Miss Blenker rambled on.

  Archer continued to stare through her as though she had been transparent. All he saw was the trumpery parasol that arched its pinkness above her giggling head.

  After a moment he ventured: “You don’t happen to know why Madame Olenska went to Boston? I hope it was not on account of bad news?”

  Miss Blenker took this with a cheerful incredulity. “Oh, I don’t believe so. She didn’t tell us what was in the telegram. I think she didn’t want the Marchioness to know. She’s so romantic-looking, isn’t she? Doesn’t she remind you of Mrs. Scott-Siddons when she reads Lady Geraldine’s Courtship?aj Did you never hear her?”

  Archer was dealing hurriedly with crowding thoughts. His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen. He glanced about him at the unpruned garden, the tumble-down house, and the oak-grove under which the dusk was gathering. It had seemed so exactly the place in which he ought to have found Madame Olenska ; and she was far away, and even the pink sunshade was not hers ...

  He frowned and hesitated. “You don’t know, I suppose—I shall be in Boston tomorrow. If I could manage to see—”

  He felt that Miss Blenker was losing interest in him, though her smile persisted. “Oh, of course; how lovely of you! She’s staying at the Parker House; it must be horrible there in this weather.”

  After that Archer was but inter
mittently aware of the remarks they exchanged. He could only remember stoutly resisting her entreaty that he should await the returning family and have high tea with them before he drove home. At length, with his hostess still at his side, he passed out of range of the wooden Cupid, unfastened his horses and drove off. At the turn of the lane he saw Miss Blenker standing at the gate and waving the pink parasol.

  23

  THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN Archer got out of the Fall River train, he emerged upon a steaming mid-summer Boston. The streets near the station were full of the smell of beer and coffee and decaying fruit, and a shirt-sleeved populace moved through them with the intimate abandon of boarders going down the passage to the bath-room.

  Archer found a cab and drove to the Somerset Club for breakfast. Even the fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity to which no excess of heat ever degrades the European cities. Caretakers in calico lounged on the doorsteps of the wealthy, and the Common looked like a pleasure-ground on the morrow of a Masonic picnic. If Archer had tried to imagine Ellen Olenska in improbable scenes he could not have called up any into which it was more difficult to fit her than this heat-prostrated and deserted Boston.

  He breakfasted with appetite and method, beginning with a slice of melon, and studying a morning paper while he waited for his toast and scrambled eggs. A new sense of energy and activity had possessed him ever since he had announced to May the night before that he had business in Boston, and should take the Fall River boat that night and go on to New York the following evening. It had always been understood that he would return to town early in the week, and when he got back from his expedition to Portsmouth a letter from the office, which fate had conspicuously placed on a corner of the hall table, sufficed to justify his sudden change of plan. He was even ashamed of the ease with which the whole thing had been done: it reminded him, for an uncomfortable moment, of Lawrence Lefferts’s masterly contrivances for securing his freedom. But this did not long trouble him, for he was not in an analytic mood.

  After breakfast he smoked a cigarette and glanced over the Commercial Advertiser. While he was thus engaged two or three men he knew came in, and the usual greetings were exchanged: it was the same world after all, though he had such a queer sense of having slipped through the meshes of time and space.

  He looked at his watch, and finding that it was half-past nine got up and went into the writing-room. There he wrote a few lines, and ordered a messenger to take a cab to the Parker House and wait for the answer. He then sat down behind another newspaper and tried to calculate how long it would take a cab to get to the Parker House.

  “The lady was out, sir,” he suddenly heard a waiter’s voice at his elbow; and stammered: “Out?” as if it were a word in a strange language.

  He got up and went into the hall. It must be a mistake: she could not be out at that hour. He flushed with anger at his own stupidity : why had he not sent the note as soon as he arrived?

  He found his hat and stick and went forth into the street. The city had suddenly become as strange and vast and empty as if he were a traveler from distant lands. For a moment he stood on the door-step hesitating; then he decided to go to the Parker House. What if the messenger had been misinformed, and she were still there?

  He started to walk across the Common; and on the first bench, under a tree, he saw her sitting. She had a gray silk sunshade over her head—how could he ever have imagined her with a pink one? As he approached he was struck by her listless attitude: she sat there as if she had nothing else to do. He saw her drooping profile, and the knot of hair fastened low in the neck under her dark hat, and the long wrinkled glove on the hand that held the sunshade. He came a step or two nearer, and she turned and looked at him.

  “Oh!” she said; and for the first time he noticed a startled look on her face; but in another moment it gave way to a slow smile of wonder and contentment.

  “Oh!” she murmured again, on a different note, as he stood looking down at her; and without rising she made a place for him on the bench.

  “I’m here on business—just got here,” Archer explained; and, without knowing why, he suddenly began to feign astonishment at seeing her. “But what on earth are you doing in this wilderness?” He had really no idea what he was saying: he felt as if he were shouting at her across endless distances, and she might vanish again before he could overtake her.

  “I? Oh, I’m here on business too,” she answered, turning her head toward him so that they were face to face. The words hardly reached him: he was aware only of her voice, and of the startling fact that not an echo of it had remained in his memory. He had not even remembered that it was low-pitched, with a faint roughness on the consonants.

  “You do your hair differently,” he said, his heart beating as if he had uttered something irrevocable.

  “Differently? No—its only that I do it as best I can when I’m without Nastasia.”

  “Nastasia; but isn’t she with you?”

  “No; I’m alone. For two days it was not worth while to bring her.”

  “You’re alone—at the Parker House?”

  She looked at him with a flash of her old malice. “Does it strike you as dangerous?”

  “No; not dangerous—”

  “But unconventional? I see; I suppose it is.” She considered a moment. “I hadn’t thought of it, because I’ve just done something so much more unconventional.” The faint tinge of irony lingered in her eyes. “I’ve just refused to take back a sum of money—that belonged to me.”

  Archer sprang up and moved a step or two away. She had furled her parasol and sat absently drawing patterns on the gravel. Presently he came back and stood before her.

  “Some one—has come here to meet you?”

  “Yes.”

  “With this offer?”

  She nodded.

  “And you refused—because of the conditions?”

  “I refused,” she said after a moment.

  He sat down by her again. “What were the conditions?”

  “Oh, they were not onerous: just to sit at the head of his table now and then.”

  There was another interval of silence. Archer’s heart had slammed itself shut in the queer way it had, and he sat vainly groping for a word.

  “He wants you back—at any price?”

  “Well—a considerable price. At least the sum is considerable for me.”

  He paused again, beating about the question he felt he must put.

  “It was to meet him here that you came?”

  She stared, and then burst into a laugh. “Meet him—my husband ? Here? At this season he’s always at Cowes or Baden.”ak

  “He sent some one?”

  “Yes.”

  “With a letter?”

  She shook her head. “No; just a message. He never writes. I don’t think I’ve had more than one letter from him.” The allusion brought the color to her cheek, and it reflected itself in Archer’s vivid blush.

  “Why does he never write?”

  “Why should he? What does one have secretaries for?”

  The young man’s blush deepened. She had pronounced the word as if it had no more significance than any other in her vocabulary. For a moment it was on the tip of his tongue to ask: “Did he send his secretary, then?” But the remembrance of Count Olenski’s only letter to his wife was too present to him. He paused again, and then took another plunge.

  “And the person?”

  “The emissary? The emissary,” Madame Olenska rejoined, still smiling, “might, for all I care, have left already; but he has insisted on waiting till this evening ... in case ... on the chance ...”

  “And you came out here to think the chance over?”

  “I came out to get a breath of air. The hotel’s too stifling. I’m taking the afternoon train back to Portsmouth.”

  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 steam-boat 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 enameled 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 color 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.