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

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

“He sent someone?”

“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 colour 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 steamboat 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 enamelled 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 colour 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.

“But I didn’t look round on purpose.”

“On purpose?”

“I knew you were there; when you drove in I recognised the ponies. So I went down to the beach.”

“To get away from me as far as you could?”

She repeated in a low voice: “To get away from you as far as I could.”

He laughed out again, this time in boyish satisfaction. “Well, you see it’s no use. I may as well tell you,” he added, “that the business I came here for was just to find you. But, look here, we must start or we shall miss our boat.”

“Our boat?” She frowned perplexedly, and then smiled. “Oh, but I must go back to the hotel first: I must leave a note⁠—”

“As many notes as you please. You can write here.” He drew out a notecase and one of the new stylographic pens. “I’ve even got an envelope⁠—you see how everything’s predestined! There⁠—steady the thing on your knee, and I’ll get the pen going in a second. They have to be humoured; wait⁠—” He banged the hand that held the pen against the back of the bench. “It’s like jerking down the mercury in a thermometer: just a trick. Now try⁠—”

She laughed, and bending over the sheet of paper which he had laid on his notecase, began to write. Archer walked away a few steps, staring with radiant unseeing eyes at the passersby, who, in their turn, paused to stare at the unwonted sight of a fashionably-dressed lady writing a note on her knee on a bench in the Common.

Madame Olenska slipped the sheet into the envelope, wrote a name on it, and put it into her pocket. Then she too stood up.

They walked back toward Beacon Street, and near the club Archer caught sight of the plush-lined “herdic” which had carried his note to the Parker House, and whose driver was reposing from this effort by bathing his brow at the corner hydrant.

“I told you everything was predestined! Here’s a cab for us. You see!” They laughed, astonished at the miracle of picking up a public conveyance at that hour, and in that unlikely spot, in a city where cabstands were still a “foreign” novelty.

Archer, looking at his watch, saw that there was time to drive to the Parker House before going to the steamboat landing. They rattled through the hot streets and drew up at the door of the hotel.

Archer held out his hand for the letter. “Shall I take it in?” he asked; but Madame Olenska, shaking her head, sprang out and disappeared through the glazed doors. It was barely half-past ten; but what if the emissary, impatient for her reply, and not knowing how