Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (14 page)

“You’re marrying into her family.”

“Oh, family—family!” he jeered.

“Newland—don’t you care about Family?”

“Not a brass farthing.”

“Nor about what Cousin Louisa van der Luyden will think?”

“Not the half of one—if she thinks such old maid’s rubbish.”

“Mother is not an old maid,” said his virgin sister with pinched lips.

He felt like shouting back: “Yes, she is, and so are the van der Luydens, and so we all are, when it comes to being so much as brushed by the wing-tip of Reality.” But he saw her long gentle face puckering into tears, and felt ashamed of the useless pain he was inflicting.

“Hang Countess Olenska! Don’t be a goose, Janey—I’m not her keeper.”

“No; but you
did
ask the Wellands to announce your engagement sooner so that we might all back her up; and if it hadn’t been for that, cousin Louisa would never have invited her to the dinner for the Duke.”

“Well—what harm was there in inviting her? She was the best-looking woman in the room; she made the dinner a little less fune real than the usual van der Luyden banquet.”

“You know cousin Henry asked her to please you: he persuaded cousin Louisa. And now they’re so upset that they’re going back to Skuytercliff tomorrow. I think, Newland, you’d better come down. You don’t seem to understand how mother feels.”

In the drawing room Newland found his mother. She raised a troubled brow from her needlework to ask: “Has Janey told you?”

“Yes.” He tried to keep his tone as measured as her own. “But I can’t take it very seriously.”

“Not the fact of having offended cousin Louisa and cousin Henry?”

“The fact that they can be offended by such a trifle as Countess Olenska’s going to the house of a woman they consider common.”

“Well, who is; but who has good music, and amuses people on Sunday evenings, when the whole of New York is dying of inanition.”

“Good music? All I know is, there was a woman who got up on a table and sang the things they sing at the places you go to in Paris. There was smoking and champagne.”

“Well—that kind of thing happens in other places, and the world still goes on.”

“I don’t suppose, dear, you’re really defending the French Sunday?”

“I’ve heard you often enough, mother, grumble at the English Sunday when we’ve been in London.”

“New York is neither Paris nor London.”

“Oh, no, it’s not!” her son groaned.

“You mean, I suppose, that society here is not as brilliant? You’re right, I daresay; but we belong here, and people should respect our ways when they come among us. Ellen Olenska especially: she came back to get away from the kind of life people lead in brilliant societies.”

Newland made no answer, and after a moment his mother ventured: “I was going to put on my bonnet and ask you to take me to see cousin Louisa for a moment before dinner.” He frowned, and she continued: “I thought you might explain to her what you’ve just said: that society abroad is different ... that people are not as particular, and that Madame Olenska may not have realized how we feel about such things. It would be, you know, dear,” she added with an innocent adroitness, “in Madame Olenska’s interest if you did.”

“Dearest mother, I really don’t see how we’re concerned in the matter. The Duke took Madame Olenska to Mrs. Struthers‘s—in fact he brought Mrs. Struthers to call on her. I was there when they came. If the van der Luydens want to quarrel with anybody, the real culprit is under their own roof.”

“Quarrel? Newland, did you ever know of cousin Henry quar reling? Beside, the Duke’s his guest; and a stranger too. Strangers don’t discriminate: how should they? Countess Olenska is a New Yorker, and should have respected the feelings of New York.”

“Well, then, if they must have a victim, you have my leave to throw Madame Olenska to them,” cried her son, exasperated. “I don’t see myself—or you either—offering ourselves up to expiate her crimes.”

“Oh, of course you see only the Mingott side,” his mother answered, in the sensitive tone that was her nearest approach to anger.

The sad butler drew back the drawing room portières and announced: “Mr. Henry van der Luyden.”

Mrs. Archer dropped her needle and pushed her chair back with an agitated hand.

“Another lamp,” she cried to the retreating servant, while Janey bent over to straighten her mother’s cap.

Mr. van der Luyden’s figure loomed on the threshold, and Newland Archer went forward to greet his cousin.

“We were just talking about you, sir,” he said.

Mr. van der Luyden seemed overwhelmed by the announcement. He drew off his gloves to shake hands with the ladies, and smoothed his tall hat shyly, while Janey pushed an armchair forward, and Archer continued: “And the Countess Olenska.”

Mrs. Archer paled.

“Ah—a charming woman. I have just been to see her,” said Mr. van der Luyden, complacency restored to his brow. He sank into the chair, laid his hat and gloves on the floor beside him in the old-fashioned way, and went on: “She has a real gift for arranging flowers. I had sent her a few carnations from Skuytercliff, and I was astonished. Instead of massing them in big bunches as our head-gardener does, she had scattered them about loosely, here and there ... I can’t say how. The Duke had told me: he said: ‘Go and see how cleverly she’s arranged her drawing room.’ ” And she has. I should really like to take Louisa to see her, if the neighborhood were not so unpleasant.“

A dead silence greeted this unusual flow of words from Mr. van der Luyden. Mrs. Archer drew her embroidery out of the basket into which she had nervously tumbled it, and Newland, leaning against the chimney-place and twisting a humming-bird-feather screen in his hand, saw Janey’s gaping countenance lit up by the coming of the second lamp.

“The fact is,” Mr. van der Luyden continued, stroking his long gray leg with a bloodless hand weighed down by the Patroon’s great signet-ring, “the fact is, I dropped in to thank her for the very pretty note she wrote me about my flowers; and also—but this is between ourselves, of course—to give her a friendly warning about allowing the Duke to carry her off to parties with him. I don’t know if you’ve heard—”

Mrs. Archer produced an indulgent smile. “Has the Duke been carrying her off to parties?”

“You know what these English grandees are. They’re all alike. Louisa and I are very fond of our cousin—but it’s hopeless to expect people who are accustomed to the European courts to trouble themselves about our little republican distinctions. The Duke goes where he’s amused.” Mr. van der Luyden paused, but no one spoke. “Yes—it seems he took her with him last night to Mrs. Lemuel Struthers’s. Sillerton Jackson has just been to us with the foolish story, and Louisa was rather troubled. So I thought the shortest way was to go straight to Countess Olenska and explain—by the merest hint, you know—how we feel in New York about certain things. I felt I might, without indelicacy, because the evening she dined with us she rather suggested ... rather let me see that she would be grateful for guidance. And she
was.”

Mr. van der Luyden looked about the room with what would have been self-satisfaction on features less purged of the vulgar passions. On his face it became a mild benevolence which Mrs. Archer’s countenance dutifully reflected.

“How kind you both are, dear Henry—always! Newland will particularly appreciate what you have done because of dear May and his new relations.”

She shot an admonitory glance at her son, who said: “Immensely, sir. But I was sure you’d like Madame Olenska.”

Mr. van der Luyden looked at him with extreme gentleness. “I never ask to my house, my dear Newland,” he said, “any one whom I do not like. And so I have just told Sillerton Jackson.” With a glance at the clock he rose and added: “But Louisa will be waiting. We are dining early, to take the Duke to the Opera.”

After the portières had solemnly closed behind their visitor a silence fell upon the Archer family.

“Gracious—how romantic!” at last broke explosively from Janey. No one knew exactly what inspired her elliptic comments, and her relations had long since given up trying to interpret them.

Mrs. Archer shook her head with a sigh. “Provided it all turns out for the best,” she said, in the tone of one who knows how surely it will not. “Newland, you must stay and see Sillerton Jackson when he comes this evening: I really shan’t know what to say to him.”

“Poor mother! But he won’t come—” her son laughed, stooping to kiss away her frown.

11

SOME TWO WEEKS LATER, Newland Archer, sitting in abstracted idleness in his private compartment of the office of Letterblair, Lamson and Low, attorneys-at-law, was summoned by the head of the firm.

Old Mr. Letterblair, the accredited legal adviser of three generations of New York gentility, was throned behind his mahogany desk in evident perplexity. As he stroked his close-clipped white whiskers and ran his hand through the rumpled gray locks above his jutting brows, his disrespectful junior partner thought how much he looked like the Family Physician annoyed with a patient whose symptoms refuse to be classified.

“My dear sir—” he always addressed Archer as “sir”—“I have sent for you to go into a little matter; a matter which, for the moment, I prefer not to mention either to Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood.” The gentlemen he spoke of were the other senior partners of the firm; for, as was always the case with legal associations of old standing in New York, all the partners named on the office letterhead were long since dead; and Mr. Letterblair, for example, was, professionally speaking, his own grandson.

He leaned back in his chair with a furrowed brow. “For family reasons—” he continued.

Archer looked up.

“The Mingott family,” said Mr. Letterblair with an explanatory smile and bow. “Mrs. Manson Mingott sent for me yesterday. Her granddaughter the Countess Olenska wishes to sue her husband for divorce. Certain papers have been placed in my hands.” He paused and drummed on his desk. “In view of your prospective alliance with the family I should like to consult you—to consider the case with you—before taking any further steps.”

Archer felt the blood in his temples. He had seen the Countess Olenska only once since his visit to her, and that at the Opera, in the Mingott box. During this interval she had become a less vivid and importunate image, receding from his foreground as May Welland resumed her rightful place in it. He had not heard her divorce spoken of since Janey’s first random allusion to it, and had dismissed the tale as unfounded gossip. Theoretically, the idea of divorce was almost as distasteful to him as to his mother; and he was annoyed that Mr. Letterblair (no doubt prompted by old Catherine Mingott) should be so evidently planning to draw him into the affair. After all, there were plenty of Mingott men for such jobs, and as yet he was not even a Mingott by marriage.

He waited for the senior partner to continue. Mr. Letterblair unlocked a drawer and drew out a packet. “If you will run your eye over these papers—”

Archer frowned. “I beg your pardon, sir; but just because of the prospective relationship, I should prefer your consulting Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood.”

Mr. Letterblair looked surprised and slightly offended. It was unusual for a junior to reject such an opening.

He bowed. “I respect your scruple, sir; but in this case I believe true delicacy requires you to do as I ask. Indeed, the suggestion is not mine but Mrs. Manson Mingott’s and her son’s. I have seen Lovell Mingott; and also Mr. Welland. They all named you.”

Archer felt his temper rising. He had been somewhat languidly drifting with events for the last fortnight, and letting May’s fair looks and radiant nature obliterate the rather importunate pressure of the Mingott claims. But this behest of old Mrs. Mingott’s roused him to a sense of what the clan thought they had the right to exact from a prospective son-in-law; and he chafed at the role.

“Her uncles ought to deal with this,” he said.

“They have. The matter has been gone into by the family. They are opposed to the Countess’s idea; but she is firm, and insists on a legal opinion.”

The young man was silent: he had not opened the packet in his hand.

“Does she want to marry again?”

“I believe it is suggested; but she denies it.”

“Then—”

“Will you oblige me, Mr. Archer, by first looking through these papers? Afterward, when we have talked the case over, I will give you my opinion.”

Archer withdrew reluctantly with the unwelcome documents. Since their last meeting he had half-unconsciously collaborated with events in ridding himself of the burden of Madame Olenska. His hour alone with her by the firelight had drawn them into a momentary intimacy on which the Duke of St. Austrey’s intrusion with Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, and the Countess’s joyous greeting of them, had rather providentially broken. Two days later Archer had assisted at the comedy of her reinstatement in the van der Luydens’ favor, and had said to himself, with a touch of tartness, that a lady who knew how to thank all-powerful elderly gentlemen to such good purpose for a bunch of flowers did not need either the private consolations or the public championship of a young man of his small compass. To look at the matter in this light simplified his own case and surprisingly furbished up all the dim domestic virtues. He could not picture May Welland, in whatever conceivable emergency, hawking about her private difficulties and lavishing her confidences on strange men; and she had never seemed to him finer or fairer than in the week that followed. He had even yielded to her wish for a long engagement, since she had found the one disarming answer to his plea for haste.