The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (8 ebook reader .txt) 📗

“Oh, yes⁠—I reached him some time ago; but not by that route,” Winsett said with his dry smile.

The Marchioness shook her head reprovingly. “How do you know, Mr. Winsett? The spirit bloweth where it listeth.”

“List⁠—oh, list!” interjected Dr. Carver in a stentorian murmur.

“But do sit down, Mr. Archer. We four have been having a delightful little dinner together, and my child has gone up to dress. She expects you; she will be down in a moment. We were just admiring these marvellous flowers, which will surprise her when she reappears.”

Winsett remained on his feet. “I’m afraid I must be off. Please tell Madame Olenska that we shall all feel lost when she abandons our street. This house has been an oasis.”

“Ah, but she won’t abandon you. Poetry and art are the breath of life to her. It is poetry you write, Mr. Winsett?”

“Well, no; but I sometimes read it,” said Winsett, including the group in a general nod and slipping out of the room.

“A caustic spirit⁠—un peu sauvage. But so witty; Dr. Carver, you do think him witty?”

“I never think of wit,” said Dr. Carver severely.

“Ah⁠—ah⁠—you never think of wit! How merciless he is to us weak mortals, Mr. Archer! But he lives only in the life of the spirit; and tonight he is mentally preparing the lecture he is to deliver presently at Mrs. Blenker’s. Dr. Carver, would there be time, before you start for the Blenkers’ to explain to Mr. Archer your illuminating discovery of the Direct Contact? But no; I see it is nearly nine o’clock, and we have no right to detain you while so many are waiting for your message.”

Dr. Carver looked slightly disappointed at this conclusion, but, having compared his ponderous gold timepiece with Madame Olenska’s little travelling-clock, he reluctantly gathered up his mighty limbs for departure.

“I shall see you later, dear friend?” he suggested to the Marchioness, who replied with a smile: “As soon as Ellen’s carriage comes I will join you; I do hope the lecture won’t have begun.”

Dr. Carver looked thoughtfully at Archer. “Perhaps, if this young gentleman is interested in my experiences, Mrs. Blenker might allow you to bring him with you?”

“Oh, dear friend, if it were possible⁠—I am sure she would be too happy. But I fear my Ellen counts on Mr. Archer herself.”

“That,” said Dr. Carver, “is unfortunate⁠—but here is my card.” He handed it to Archer, who read on it, in Gothic characters:

Agathon Carver
The Valley of Love
Kittasquattamy, N. Y.

Dr. Carver bowed himself out, and Mrs. Manson, with a sigh that might have been either of regret or relief, again waved Archer to a seat.

“Ellen will be down in a moment; and before she comes, I am so glad of this quiet moment with you.”

Archer murmured his pleasure at their meeting, and the Marchioness continued, in her low sighing accents: “I know everything, dear Mr. Archer⁠—my child has told me all you have done for her. Your wise advice: your courageous firmness⁠—thank heaven it was not too late!”

The young man listened with considerable embarrassment. Was there anyone, he wondered, to whom Madame Olenska had not proclaimed his intervention in her private affairs?

“Madame Olenska exaggerates; I simply gave her a legal opinion, as she asked me to.”

“Ah, but in doing it⁠—in doing it you were the unconscious instrument of⁠—of⁠—what word have we moderns for Providence, Mr. Archer?” cried the lady, tilting her head on one side and drooping her lids mysteriously. “Little did you know that at that very moment I was being appealed to: being approached, in fact⁠—from the other side of the Atlantic!”

She glanced over her shoulder, as though fearful of being overheard, and then, drawing her chair nearer, and raising a tiny ivory fan to her lips, breathed behind it: “By the Count himself⁠—my poor, mad, foolish Olenski; who asks only to take her back on her own terms.”

“Good God!” Archer exclaimed, springing up.

“You are horrified? Yes, of course; I understand. I don’t defend poor Stanislas, though he has always called me his best friend. He does not defend himself⁠—he casts himself at her feet: in my person.” She tapped her emaciated bosom. “I have his letter here.”

“A letter?⁠—Has Madame Olenska seen it?” Archer stammered, his brain whirling with the shock of the announcement.

The Marchioness Manson shook her head softly. “Time⁠—time; I must have time. I know my Ellen⁠—haughty, intractable; shall I say, just a shade unforgiving?”

“But, good heavens, to forgive is one thing; to go back into that hell⁠—”

“Ah, yes,” the Marchioness acquiesced. “So she describes it⁠—my sensitive child! But on the material side, Mr. Archer, if one may stoop to consider such things; do you know what she is giving up? Those roses there on the sofa⁠—acres like them, under glass and in the open, in his matchless terraced gardens at Nice! Jewels⁠—historic pearls: the Sobieski emeralds⁠—sables⁠—but she cares nothing for all these! Art and beauty, those she does care for, she lives for, as I always have; and those also surrounded her. Pictures, priceless furniture, music, brilliant conversation⁠—ah, that, my dear young man, if you’ll excuse me, is what you’ve no conception of here! And she had it all; and the homage of the greatest. She tells me she is not thought handsome in New York⁠—good heavens! Her portrait has been painted nine times; the greatest artists in Europe have begged for the privilege. Are these things nothing? And the remorse of an adoring husband?”

As the Marchioness Manson rose to her climax her face assumed an expression of ecstatic retrospection which would have moved Archer’s mirth had he not been numb with amazement.

He would have laughed if anyone had foretold to him that his first sight of poor Medora Manson would have been in the guise of a messenger of Satan; but he was in no mood for laughing now, and she seemed to him to come straight out of the hell from which Ellen Olenska had just escaped.

“She knows nothing yet⁠—of all this?” he asked abruptly.

Mrs. Manson laid a purple finger on her lips. “Nothing directly⁠—but does she suspect? Who can tell? The truth is,