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

not returning to Count Olenski. After all, a young woman’s place was under her husband’s roof, especially when she had left it in circumstances that⁠ ⁠… well⁠ ⁠… if one had cared to look into them⁠ ⁠…

“Madame Olenska is a great favourite with the gentlemen,” said Miss Sophy, with her air of wishing to put forth something conciliatory when she knew that she was planting a dart.

“Ah, that’s the danger that a young woman like Madame Olenska is always exposed to,” Mrs. Archer mournfully agreed; and the ladies, on this conclusion, gathered up their trains to seek the carcel globes of the drawing-room, while Archer and Mr. Sillerton Jackson withdrew to the Gothic library.

Once established before the grate, and consoling himself for the inadequacy of the dinner by the perfection of his cigar, Mr. Jackson became portentous and communicable.

“If the Beaufort smash comes,” he announced, “there are going to be disclosures.”

Archer raised his head quickly: he could never hear the name without the sharp vision of Beaufort’s heavy figure, opulently furred and shod, advancing through the snow at Skuytercliff.

“There’s bound to be,” Mr. Jackson continued, “the nastiest kind of a cleaning up. He hasn’t spent all his money on Regina.”

“Oh, well⁠—that’s discounted, isn’t it? My belief is he’ll pull out yet,” said the young man, wanting to change the subject.

“Perhaps⁠—perhaps. I know he was to see some of the influential people today. Of course,” Mr. Jackson reluctantly conceded, “it’s to be hoped they can tide him over⁠—this time anyhow. I shouldn’t like to think of poor Regina’s spending the rest of her life in some shabby foreign watering-place for bankrupts.”

Archer said nothing. It seemed to him so natural⁠—however tragic⁠—that money ill-gotten should be cruelly expiated, that his mind, hardly lingering over Mrs. Beaufort’s doom, wandered back to closer questions. What was the meaning of May’s blush when the Countess Olenska had been mentioned?

Four months had passed since the midsummer day that he and Madame Olenska had spent together; and since then he had not seen her. He knew that she had returned to Washington, to the little house which she and Medora Manson had taken there: he had written to her once⁠—a few words, asking when they were to meet again⁠—and she had even more briefly replied: “Not yet.”

Since then there had been no farther communication between them, and he had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absentminded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own room. Absent⁠—that was what he was: so absent from everything most densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him to find they still imagined he was there.

He became aware that Mr. Jackson was clearing his throat preparatory to farther revelations.

“I don’t know, of course, how far your wife’s family are aware of what people say about⁠—well, about Madame Olenska’s refusal to accept her husband’s latest offer.”

Archer was silent, and Mr. Jackson obliquely continued: “It’s a pity⁠—it’s certainly a pity⁠—that she refused it.”

“A pity? In God’s name, why?”

Mr. Jackson looked down his leg to the unwrinkled sock that joined it to a glossy pump.

“Well⁠—to put it on the lowest ground⁠—what’s she going to live on now?”

“Now⁠—?”

“If Beaufort⁠—”

Archer sprang up, his fist banging down on the black walnut-edge of the writing-table. The wells of the brass double-inkstand danced in their sockets.

“What the devil do you mean, sir?”

Mr. Jackson, shifting himself slightly in his chair, turned a tranquil gaze on the young man’s burning face.

“Well⁠—I have it on pretty good authority⁠—in fact, on old Catherine’s herself⁠—that the family reduced Countess Olenska’s allowance considerably when she definitely refused to go back to her husband; and as, by this refusal, she also forfeits the money settled on her when she married⁠—which Olenski was ready to make over to her if she returned⁠—why, what the devil do you mean, my dear boy, by asking me what I mean?” Mr. Jackson good-humouredly retorted.

Archer moved toward the mantelpiece and bent over to knock his ashes into the grate.

“I don’t know anything of Madame Olenska’s private affairs; but I don’t need to, to be certain that what you insinuate⁠—”

“Oh, I don’t: it’s Lefferts, for one,” Mr. Jackson interposed.

“Lefferts⁠—who made love to her and got snubbed for it!” Archer broke out contemptuously.

“Ah⁠—did he?” snapped the other, as if this were exactly the fact he had been laying a trap for. He still sat sideways from the fire, so that his hard old gaze held Archer’s face as if in a spring of steel.

“Well, well: it’s a pity she didn’t go back before Beaufort’s cropper,” he repeated. “If she goes now, and if he fails, it will only confirm the general impression: which isn’t by any means peculiar to Lefferts, by the way.”

“Oh, she won’t go back now: less than ever!” Archer had no sooner said it than he had once more the feeling that it was exactly what Mr. Jackson had been waiting for.

The old gentleman considered him attentively. “That’s your opinion, eh? Well, no doubt you know. But everybody will tell you that the few pennies Medora Manson has left are all in Beaufort’s hands; and how the two women are to keep their heads above water unless he does, I can’t imagine. Of course, Madame Olenska may still soften old Catherine, who’s been the most inexorably opposed to her staying; and old Catherine could make her any allowance she chooses. But we all know that she hates parting with good money; and the rest of the family have no particular interest in keeping Madame Olenska here.”

Archer was burning with unavailing wrath: he was exactly in the state when a man is sure to do