The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (the speed reading book TXT) 📗
- Author: Edith Wharton
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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.”
“Consider—!”
“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 realised 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’s quarrelling? Besides, 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
portieres 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 glove 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
neighbourhood 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 grey 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 portieres 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.
XI.
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, throned behind
his mahogany desk in evident perplexity. As he
stroked his closeclipped white whiskers and ran his
hand through the rumpled grey 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 letter-head 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 farther steps.”
Archer felt the blood in his temples. He had seen the
Countess Olenska only once since his visit to her, and
then 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?”
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