Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Edith Wharton

  But a big dinner, with a hired chef and two borrowed footmen, with Roman punch, roses from Henderson‘s, and menus on gilt-edged cards, was a different affair, and not to be lightly undertaken. As Mrs. Archer remarked, the Roman punch made all the difference; not in itself but by its manifold implications—since it signified either canvas-backs or terrapin, two soups, a hot and a cold sweet, full décolletage with short sleeves, and guests of a proportionate importance.

  It was always an interesting occasion when a young pair launched their first invitations in the third person, and their summons was seldom refused ever by the seasoned and sought-after. Still, it was admittedly a triumph that the van der Luydens, at May’s request, should have stayed over in order to be present at her farewell dinner for the Countess Olenska.

  The two mothers-in-law sat in May’s drawing room on the afternoon of the great day, Mrs. Archer writing out the menus on Tiffany’s thickets gilt-edged bristol, while Mrs. Welland superintended the placing of the palms and standard lamps.

  Archer, arriving late from his office, found them still there. Mrs. Archer had turned her attention to the namecards for the table, and Mrs. Welland was considering the effect of bringing forward the large gilt sofa, so that another “corner” might be created between the piano and the window.

  May, they told him, was in the dining room inspecting the mound of Jacqueminot roses and maidenhair in the center of the long table, and the placing of the Maillard bonbons in openwork silver baskets between the candelabra. On the piano stood a large basket of orchids which Mr. van der Luyden had had sent from Skuytercliff. Everything was, in short, as it should be on the approach of so considerable an event.

  Mrs. Archer ran thoughtfully over the list, checking off each name with her sharp gold pen.

  “Henry van der Luyden—Louisa—the Lovell Mingotts—the Reggie Chiverses—Lawrence Lefferts and Gertrude—(Yes, I suppose May was right to have them)—the Selfridge Merrys, Sillerton Jackson, Van Newland and his wife (How time passes! It seems only yesterday that he was your best man, Newland)—and Countess Olenska—yes, I think that’s all ...”

  Mrs. Welland surveyed her son-in-law affectionately. “No one can say, Newland, that you and May are not giving Ellen a handsome send-off.”

  “Ah, well,” said Mrs. Archer, “I understand May’s wanting her cousin to tell people abroad that we’re not quite barbarians.”

  “I’m sure Ellen will appreciate it. She was to arrive this morning, I believe. It will make a most charming last impression. The evening before sailing is usually so dreary,” Mrs. Welland cheerfully continued.

  Archer turned toward the door, and his mother-in-law called to him: “Do go in and have a peep at the table. And don’t let May tire herself too much.” But he affected not to hear, and sprang up the stairs to his library. The room looked at him like an alien countenance composed into a polite grimace; and he perceived that it had been ruthlessly “tidied,” and prepared by a judicious distribution of ashtrays and cedar-wood boxes, for the gentlemen to smoke in.

  “Ah, well,” he thought, “it’s not for long—” and he went on to his dressing room.

  Ten days had passed since Madame Olenska’s departure from New York. During those ten days Archer had had no sign from her but that conveyed by the return of a key wrapped in tissue-paper, and sent to his office in a sealed envelope addressed in her hand. This retort to his last appeal might have been interpreted as a classic move in a familiar game; but the young man chose to give it a different meaning. She was still fighting against her fate; but she was going to Europe, and she was not returning to her husband. Nothing, therefore, was to prevent his following her; and once he had taken the irrevocable step, and had proved to her that it was irrevocable, he believed she would not send him away.

  This confidence in the future had steadied him to play his part in the present. It had kept him from writing to her, or betraying, by any sign or act, his misery and mortification. It seemed to him that in the deadly silent game between them the trumps were still in his hands; and he waited.

  There had been, nevertheless, moments sufficiently difficult to pass; as when Mr. Letterblair, the day after Madame Olenska’s departure, had sent for him to go over the details of the trust which Mrs. Manson Mingott wished to create for her granddaughter. For a couple of hours Archer had examined the terms of the deed with his senior, all the while obscurely feeling that if he had been consulted it was for some reason other than the obvious one of his cousinship: and that the close of the conference would reveal it.

  “Well, the lady can’t deny that it’s a handsome arrangement,” Mr. Letterblair had summed up, after mumbling over a summary of the settlement. “In fact I’m bound to say she’s been treated pretty handsomely all round.”

  “All round?” Archer echoed with a touch of derision. “Do you refer to her husband’s proposal to give her back her own money?”

  Mr. Letterblair’s bushy eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. “My dear sir, the law’s the law; and your wife’s cousin was married under the French law. It’s to be presumed she knew what that meant.”

  “Even if she did, what happened subsequently—” But Archer paused. Mr. Letterblair had laid his pen-handle against his big corrugated nose, and was looking down it with the expression assumed by virtuous elderly gentlemen when they wish their youngers to understand that virtue is not synonymous with ignorance.

  “My dear sir, I’ve no wish to extenuate the Count’s transgressions; but—but on the other side ... I wouldn’t put my hand in the fire ... well, that there hadn’t been tit for tat ... with the young champion ...” Mr. Letterblair unlocked a drawer and pushed a folded paper toward Archer. “This report, the result of discreet inquiries ...” And then, as Archer made no effort to glance at the paper or to repudiate the suggestion, the lawyer somewhat flatly continued: “I don’t say it’s conclusive, you observe; far from it. But straws show ... and on the whole it’s eminently satisfactory for all parties that this dignified solution has been reached.”

  “Oh, eminently,” Archer assented, pushing back the paper.

  A day or two later, on responding to a summons from Mrs. Manson Mingott, his soul had been more deeply tried.

  He had found the old lady depressed and querulous.

  “You know she’s deserted me?” she began at once; and without waiting for his reply: “Oh, don’t ask me why! She gave so many reasons that I’ve forgotten them all. My private belief is that she couldn’t face the boredom. At any rate that’s what Augusta and my daughters-in-law think. And I don’t know that I altogether blame her. Olenski’s a finished scoundrel; but life with him must have been a good deal gayer than it is in Fifth Avenue. Not that the family would admit that: they think Fifth Avenue is Heaven with the Rue de la Paix thrown in. And poor Ellen, of course, has no idea of going back to her husband. She held out as firmly as ever against that. So she’s to settle down in Paris with that fool Medora ... Well, Paris is Paris; and you can keep a carriage there on next to nothing. But she was as gay as a bird, and I shall miss her.” Two tears, the parched tears of the old, rolled down her puffy cheeks and vanished in the abysses of her bosom.

  “All I ask is,” she concluded, “that they shouldn’t bother me any more. I must really be allowed to digest my gruel ...” And she twinkled a little wistfully at Archer.

  It was that evening, on his return home, that May announced her intention of giving a farewell dinner to her cousin. Madame Olenska’s name had not been pronounced between them since the night of her flight to Washington; and Archer looked at his wife with surprise.

  “A dinner—why?” he interrogated.

  Her color rose. “But you like Ellen—I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “It’s awfully nice—your putting it in that way. But I really don’t see—”

  “I mean to do it, Newland,” she said, quietly rising and going to her desk. “Here are the invitations all written. Mother helped me—she agrees that we ought to.�
�� She paused, embarrassed and yet smiling, and Archer suddenly saw before him the embodied image of the Family.

  “Oh, all right,” he said, staring with unseeing eyes at the list of guests that she had put in his hand.

  When he entered the drawing room before dinner May was stooping over the fire and trying to coax the logs to burn in their unaccustomed setting of immaculate tiles.

  The tall lamps were all lit, and Mr. van der Luyden’s orchids had been conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and knobby silver. Mrs. Newland Archer’s drawing room was generally thought a great success. A gilt bamboo jardinière, in which the primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to the bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze reduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and armchairs of pale brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames; and tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the palms.

  “I don’t think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted up,” said May, rising flushed from her struggle, and sending about her a glance of pardonable pride. The brass tongs which she had propped against the side of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband’s answer; and before he could restore them Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden were announced.

  The other guests quickly followed, for it was known that the van der Luydens liked to dine punctually. The room was nearly full, and Archer was engaged in showing to Mrs. Selfridge Merry a small highly varnished Verboeckhovenar “Study of Sheep,” which Mr. Welland had given May for Christmas, when he found Madame Olenska at his side.

  She was excessively pale, and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser and heavier than ever. Perhaps that, or the fact that she had wound several rows of amber beads about her neck, reminded him suddenly of the little Ellen Mingott he had danced with at children’s parties, when Medora Manson had first brought her to New York.

  The amber beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps unbecoming: her face looked lusterless and almost ugly, and he had never loved it as he did at that minute. Their hands met, and he thought he heard her say: “Yes, we’re sailing tomorrow in the Russia—” then there was an unmeaning noise of opening doors, and after an interval May’s voice: “Newland! Dinner’s been announced. Won’t you please take Ellen in?”

  Madame Olenska put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on his sleeve, and he said to himself: “If it were only to see her hand again I should have to follow her—”

  It was only at an entertainment ostensibly offered to a “foreign visitor” that Mrs. van der Luyden could suffer the diminution of being placed on her host’s left. The fact of Madame Olenska’s “foreignness” could hardly have been more adroitly emphasized than by this farewell tribute; and Mrs. van der Luyden accepted her displacement with an affability which left no doubt as to her approval. There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. There was nothing on earth that the Wellands and Mingotts would not have done to proclaim their unalterable affection for the Countess Olenska now that her passage for Europe was engaged; and Archer, at the head of his table, sat marveling at the silent untiring activity with which her popularity had been retrieved, grievances against her silenced, her past countenanced, and her present irradiated by the family approval. Mrs. van der Luyden shone on her with the dim benevolence which was her nearest approach to cordiality, and Mr. van der Luyden, from his seat at May’s right, cast down the table glances plainly intended to justify all the carnations he had sent from Skuytercliff.

  Archer, who seemed to be assisting at the scene in a state of odd imponderability, as if he floated somewhere between chandelier and ceiling, wondered at nothing so much as his own share in the proceedings. As his glance traveled from one placid well-fed face to another he saw all the harmless-looking people engaged upon May’s canvas-backs as a band of dumb conspirators, and himself and the pale woman on his right as the center of their conspiracy. And then it came over him, in a vast flash made up of many broken gleams, that to all of them he and Madame Olenska were lovers, lovers in the extreme sense peculiar to “foreign” vocabularies. He guessed himself to have been, for months, the center of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears, he understood that, by means as yet unknown to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything, or had ever imagined anything, and that the occasion of the entertainment was simply May Archer’s natural desire to take an affectionate leave of her friend and cousin.

  It was the old New York way, of taking life “without effusion of blood”; the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,” except the behavior of those who gave rise to them.

  As these thoughts succeeded each other in his mind Archer felt like a prisoner in the center of an armed camp. He looked about the table and guessed at the inexorableness of his captors from the tone in which, over the asparagus from Florida, they were dealing with Beaufort and his wife. “It’s to show me,” he thought, “what would happen to me—” and a deathly sense of the superiority of implication and analogy over direct action, and of silence over rash words, closed in on him like the doors of the family vault.

  He laughed, and met Mrs. van der Luyden’s startled eyes.

  “You think it laughable?” she said with a pinched smile. “Of course poor Regina’s idea of remaining in New York has its ridiculous side, I suppose,” and Archer muttered: “Of course.”

  At this point, he became conscious that Madame Olenska’s other neighbor had been engaged for some time with the lady on his right. At the same moment he saw that May, serenely enthroned between Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge Merry, had cast a quick glance down the table. It was evident that the host and the lady on his right could not sit through the whole meal in silence. He turned to Madame Olenska, and her pale smile met him. “Oh, do let’s see it through,” it seemed to say.

  “Did you find the journey tiring?” he asked in a voice that surprised him by its naturalness; and she answered that, on the contrary, she had seldom traveled with fewer discomforts.

  “Except, you know, the dreadful heat in the train,” she added; and he remarked that she would not suffer from that particular hardship in the country she was going to.

  “I never,” he declared with intensity, “was more nearly frozen than once, in April, in the train between Calais and Paris.”

  She said she did not wonder, but remarked that, after all, one could always carry an extra rug, and that every form of travel had its hardships; to which he abruptly returned that he thought them all of no account compared with the blessedness of getting away. She changed color, and he added, his voice suddenly rising in pitch: “I mean to do a lot of traveling myself before long.” A tremor crossed her face, and leaning over to Reggie Chivers, he cried out: “I say, Reggie, what do you say to a trip round the world: now, next month, I mean? I’m game if you are—” at which Mrs. Reggie piped up that she could not think of letting Reggie go till after the Martha Washington ball she was getting up for the Blind Asylum in Easter week; and her husband placidly observed that by that time he would have to be practicing for the International Polo match.

  But Mr. Selfridge Merry had caught the phrase “round the world,” and having once circled the globe in his steam-yacht, he seized the opportunity to send down the t
able several striking items concerning the shallowness of the Mediterranean ports. Though, after all, he added, it didn’t matter; for when you’d seen Athens and Smyrna and Constantinople, what else was there? And Mrs. Merry said she could never be too grateful to Dr. Bencomb for having made them promise not to go to Naples on account of the fever.

  “But you must have three weeks to do India properly,” her husband conceded, anxious to have it understood that he was no frivolous globe-trotter.

  And at this point the ladies went up to the drawing room.

  In the library, in spite of weightier presences, Lawrence Lefferts predominated.

  The talk, as usual, had veered around to the Beauforts, and even Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge Merry, installed in the honorary armchairs tacitly reserved for them, paused to listen to the younger man’s philippic.

  Never had Lefferts so abounded in the sentiments that adorn Christian manhood and exalt the sanctity of the home. Indignation lent him a scathing eloquence, and it was clear that if others had followed his example, and acted as he talked, society would never have been weak enough to receive a foreign upstart like Beaufort—no, sir, not even if he’d married a van der Luyden or a Lanning instead of a Dallas. And what chance would there have been, Lefferts wrathfully questioned, of his marrying into such a family as the Dallases, if he had not already wormed his way into certain houses, as people like Mrs. Lemuel Struthers had managed to worm theirs in his wake? If society chose to open its doors to vulgar women the harm was not great, though the gain was doubtful; but once it got in the way of tolerating men of obscure origin and tainted wealth the end was total disintegration—and at no distant date.