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

room next to the hall, she was surely awaiting him; in another moment he should see her, and be able to speak to her before she led him to the sickroom.

He wanted only to put one question: after that his course would be clear. What he wished to ask was simply the date of her return to Washington; and that question she could hardly refuse to answer.

But in the yellow sitting-room it was the mulatto maid who waited. Her white teeth shining like a keyboard, she pushed back the sliding doors and ushered him into old Catherine’s presence.

The old woman sat in a vast throne-like armchair near her bed. Beside her was a mahogany stand bearing a cast bronze lamp with an engraved globe, over which a green paper shade had been balanced. There was not a book or a newspaper in reach, nor any evidence of feminine employment: conversation had always been Mrs. Mingott’s sole pursuit, and she would have scorned to feign an interest in fancywork.

Archer saw no trace of the slight distortion left by her stroke. She merely looked paler, with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of her obesity; and, in the fluted mobcap tied by a starched bow between her first two chins, and the muslin kerchief crossed over her billowing purple dressing-gown, she seemed like some shrewd and kindly ancestress of her own who might have yielded too freely to the pleasures of the table.

She held out one of the little hands that nestled in a hollow of her huge lap like pet animals, and called to the maid: “Don’t let in anyone else. If my daughters call, say I’m asleep.”

The maid disappeared, and the old lady turned to her grandson.

“My dear, am I perfectly hideous?” she asked gaily, launching out one hand in search of the folds of muslin on her inaccessible bosom. “My daughters tell me it doesn’t matter at my age⁠—as if hideousness didn’t matter all the more the harder it gets to conceal!”

“My dear, you’re handsomer than ever!” Archer rejoined in the same tone; and she threw back her head and laughed.

“Ah, but not as handsome as Ellen!” she jerked out, twinkling at him maliciously; and before he could answer she added: “Was she so awfully handsome the day you drove her up from the ferry?”

He laughed, and she continued: “Was it because you told her so that she had to put you out on the way? In my youth young men didn’t desert pretty women unless they were made to!” She gave another chuckle, and interrupted it to say almost querulously: “It’s a pity she didn’t marry you; I always told her so. It would have spared me all this worry. But who ever thought of sparing their grandmother worry?”

Archer wondered if her illness had blurred her faculties; but suddenly she broke out: “Well, it’s settled, anyhow: she’s going to stay with me, whatever the rest of the family say! She hadn’t been here five minutes before I’d have gone down on my knees to keep her⁠—if only, for the last twenty years, I’d been able to see where the floor was!”

Archer listened in silence, and she went on: “They’d talked me over, as no doubt you know: persuaded me, Lovell, and Letterblair, and Augusta Welland, and all the rest of them, that I must hold out and cut off her allowance, till she was made to see that it was her duty to go back to Olenski. They thought they’d convinced me when the secretary, or whatever he was, came out with the last proposals: handsome proposals I confess they were. After all, marriage is marriage, and money’s money⁠—both useful things in their way⁠ ⁠… and I didn’t know what to answer⁠—” She broke off and drew a long breath, as if speaking had become an effort. “But the minute I laid eyes on her, I said: ‘You sweet bird, you! Shut you up in that cage again? Never!’ And now it’s settled that she’s to stay here and nurse her Granny as long as there’s a Granny to nurse. It’s not a gay prospect, but she doesn’t mind; and of course I’ve told Letterblair that she’s to be given her proper allowance.”

The young man heard her with veins aglow; but in his confusion of mind he hardly knew whether her news brought joy or pain. He had so definitely decided on the course he meant to pursue that for the moment he could not readjust his thoughts. But gradually there stole over him the delicious sense of difficulties deferred and opportunities miraculously provided. If Ellen had consented to come and live with her grandmother it must surely be because she had recognised the impossibility of giving him up. This was her answer to his final appeal of the other day: if she would not take the extreme step he had urged, she had at last yielded to half-measures. He sank back into the thought with the involuntary relief of a man who has been ready to risk everything, and suddenly tastes the dangerous sweetness of security.

“She couldn’t have gone back⁠—it was impossible!” he exclaimed.

“Ah, my dear, I always knew you were on her side; and that’s why I sent for you today, and why I said to your pretty wife, when she proposed to come with you: ‘No, my dear, I’m pining to see Newland, and I don’t want anybody to share our transports.’ For you see, my dear⁠—” she drew her head back as far as its tethering chins permitted, and looked him full in the eyes⁠—“you see, we shall have a fight yet. The family don’t want her here, and they’ll say it’s because I’ve been ill, because I’m a weak old woman, that she’s persuaded me. I’m not well enough yet to fight them one by one, and you’ve got to do it for me.”

“I?” he stammered.

“You. Why not?” she jerked back at him, her round eyes suddenly as sharp as penknives. Her hand fluttered