The Age of Innocence

  XI.

  Some two weeks later, Newland Archer, sitting in abstracted idleness inhis 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 generationsof New York gentility, throned behind his mahogany desk in evidentperplexity. As he stroked his closeclipped white whiskers and ran hishand through the rumpled grey locks above his jutting brows, hisdisrespectful junior partner thought how much he looked like the FamilyPhysician annoyed with a patient whose symptoms refuse to be classified.

  "My dear sir--" he always addressed Archer as "sir"--"I have sent foryou to go into a little matter; a matter which, for the moment, Iprefer not to mention either to Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood." Thegentlemen he spoke of were the other senior partners of the firm; for,as was always the case with legal associations of old standing in NewYork, all the partners named on the office letter-head were long sincedead; and Mr. Letterblair, for example, was, professionally speaking,his own grandson.

  He leaned back in his chair with a furrowed brow. "For familyreasons--" he continued.

  Archer looked up.

  "The Mingott family," said Mr. Letterblair with an explanatory smileand bow. "Mrs. Manson Mingott sent for me yesterday. Hergrand-daughter the Countess Olenska wishes to sue her husband fordivorce. Certain papers have been placed in my hands." He paused anddrummed on his desk. "In view of your prospective alliance with thefamily I should like to consult you--to consider the case withyou--before taking any farther steps."

  Archer felt the blood in his temples. He had seen the Countess Olenskaonly once since his visit to her, and then at the Opera, in the Mingottbox. During this interval she had become a less vivid and importunateimage, receding from his foreground as May Welland resumed her rightfulplace in it. He had not heard her divorce spoken of since Janey'sfirst random allusion to it, and had dismissed the tale as unfoundedgossip. Theoretically, the idea of divorce was almost as distastefulto him as to his mother; and he was annoyed that Mr. Letterblair (nodoubt prompted by old Catherine Mingott) should be so evidentlyplanning to draw him into the affair. After all, there were plenty ofMingott men for such jobs, and as yet he was not even a Mingott bymarriage.

  He waited for the senior partner to continue. Mr. Letterblair unlockeda drawer and drew out a packet. "If you will run your eye over thesepapers--"

  Archer frowned. "I beg your pardon, sir; but just because of theprospective relationship, I should prefer your consulting Mr. Skipworthor Mr. Redwood."

  Mr. Letterblair looked surprised and slightly offended. It was unusualfor a junior to reject such an opening.

  He bowed. "I respect your scruple, sir; but in this case I believetrue delicacy requires you to do as I ask. Indeed, the suggestion isnot mine but Mrs. Manson Mingott's and her son's. I have seen LovellMingott; and also Mr. Welland. They all named you."

  Archer felt his temper rising. He had been somewhat languidly driftingwith events for the last fortnight, and letting May's fair looks andradiant nature obliterate the rather importunate pressure of theMingott claims. But this behest of old Mrs. Mingott's roused him to asense of what the clan thought they had the right to exact from aprospective 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 areopposed to the Countess's idea; but she is firm, and insists on a legalopinion."

  The young man was silent: he had not opened the packet in his hand.

  "Does she want to marry again?"

  "I believe it is suggested; but she denies it."

  "Then--"

  "Will you oblige me, Mr. Archer, by first looking through these papers?Afterward, when we have talked the case over, I will give you myopinion."

  Archer withdrew reluctantly with the unwelcome documents. Since theirlast meeting he had half-unconsciously collaborated with events inridding himself of the burden of Madame Olenska. His hour alone withher by the firelight had drawn them into a momentary intimacy on whichthe Duke of St. Austrey's intrusion with Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, and theCountess's joyous greeting of them, had rather providentially broken.Two days later Archer had assisted at the comedy of her reinstatementin the van der Luydens' favour, and had said to himself, with a touchof tartness, that a lady who knew how to thank all-powerful elderlygentlemen to such good purpose for a bunch of flowers did not needeither the private consolations or the public championship of a youngman of his small compass. To look at the matter in this lightsimplified his own case and surprisingly furbished up all the dimdomestic virtues. He could not picture May Welland, in whateverconceivable emergency, hawking about her private difficulties andlavishing her confidences on strange men; and she had never seemed tohim finer or fairer than in the week that followed. He had evenyielded to her wish for a long engagement, since she had found the onedisarming answer to his plea for haste.

  "You know, when it comes to the point, your parents have always let youhave your way ever since you were a little girl," he argued; and shehad answered, with her clearest look: "Yes; and that's what makes itso hard to refuse the very last thing they'll ever ask of me as alittle girl."

  That was the old New York note; that was the kind of answer he wouldlike always to be sure of his wife's making. If one had habituallybreathed the New York air there were times when anything lesscrystalline seemed stifling.

  The papers he had retired to read did not tell him much in fact; butthey plunged him into an atmosphere in which he choked and spluttered.They consisted mainly of an exchange of letters between Count Olenski'ssolicitors and a French legal firm to whom the Countess had applied forthe settlement of her financial situation. There was also a shortletter from the Count to his wife: after reading it, Newland Archerrose, jammed the papers back into their envelope, and reentered Mr.Letterblair's office.

  "Here are the letters, sir. If you wish, I'll see Madame Olenska," hesaid in a constrained voice.

  "Thank you--thank you, Mr. Archer. Come and dine with me tonight ifyou're free, and we'll go into the matter afterward: in case you wishto call on our client tomorrow."

  Newland Archer walked straight home again that afternoon. It was awinter evening of transparent clearness, with an innocent young moonabove the house-tops; and he wanted to fill his soul's lungs with thepure radiance, and not exchange a word with any one till he and Mr.Letterblair were closeted together after dinner. It was impossible todecide otherwise than he had done: he must see Madame Olenska himselfrather than let her secrets be bared to other eyes. A great wave ofcompassion had swept away his indifference and impatience: she stoodbefore him as an exposed and pitiful figure, to be saved at all costsfrom farther wounding herself in her mad plunges against fate.

  He remembered what she had told him of Mrs. Welland's request to bespared whatever was "unpleasant" in her history, and winced at thethought that it was perhaps this attitude of mind which kept the NewYork air so pure. "Are we only Pharisees after all?" he wondered,puzzled by the effort to reconcile his instinctive disgust at humanvileness with his equally instinctive pity for human frailty.

  For the first time he perceived how elementary his own principles hadalways been. He passed for a young man who had not been afraid ofrisks, and he knew that his secret love-affair with poor silly Mrs.Thorley Rushworth had not been too secret to invest him with a becomingair of adventure. But Mrs. Rushworth was "that kind of woman";foolish, vain, clandestine by nature, and far more attracted by thesecrecy and peril of the affair than by such charms and qualities as hepossessed. When the fact dawned on him it nearly broke his heart, butnow it seemed the redeeming feature of the case. The affair, in short,had been of the kind that most of the young men of his age had beenthrough, and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbedbelief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved andrespected and those one enjoyed--and pitied. In this vie
w they weresedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts and other elderly femalerelatives, who all shared Mrs. Archer's belief that when "such thingshappened" it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow alwayscriminal of the woman. All the elderly ladies whom Archer knewregarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulousand designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches.The only thing to do was to persuade him, as early as possible, tomarry a nice girl, and then trust to her to look after him.

  In the complicated old European communities, Archer began to guess,love-problems might be less simple and less easily classified. Richand idle and ornamental societies must produce many more suchsituations; and there might even be one in which a woman naturallysensitive and aloof would yet, from the force of circumstances, fromsheer defencelessness and loneliness, be drawn into a tie inexcusableby conventional standards.

  On reaching home he wrote a line to the Countess Olenska, asking atwhat hour of the next day she could receive him, and despatched it by amessenger-boy, who returned presently with a word to the effect thatshe was going to Skuytercliff the next morning to stay over Sunday withthe van der Luydens, but that he would find her alone that eveningafter dinner. The note was written on a rather untidy half-sheet,without date or address, but her hand was firm and free. He was amusedat the idea of her week-ending in the stately solitude of Skuytercliff,but immediately afterward felt that there, of all places, she wouldmost feel the chill of minds rigorously averted from the "unpleasant."

  He was at Mr. Letterblair's punctually at seven, glad of the pretextfor excusing himself soon after dinner. He had formed his own opinionfrom the papers entrusted to him, and did not especially want to gointo the matter with his senior partner. Mr. Letterblair was awidower, and they dined alone, copiously and slowly, in a dark shabbyroom hung with yellowing prints of "The Death of Chatham" and "TheCoronation of Napoleon." On the sideboard, between fluted Sheratonknife-cases, stood a decanter of Haut Brion, and another of the oldLanning port (the gift of a client), which the wastrel Tom Lanning hadsold off a year or two before his mysterious and discreditable death inSan Francisco--an incident less publicly humiliating to the family thanthe sale of the cellar.

  After a velvety oyster soup came shad and cucumbers, then a youngbroiled turkey with corn fritters, followed by a canvas-back withcurrant jelly and a celery mayonnaise. Mr. Letterblair, who lunched ona sandwich and tea, dined deliberately and deeply, and insisted on hisguest's doing the same. Finally, when the closing rites had beenaccomplished, the cloth was removed, cigars were lit, and Mr.Letterblair, leaning back in his chair and pushing the port westward,said, spreading his back agreeably to the coal fire behind him: "Thewhole family are against a divorce. And I think rightly."

  Archer instantly felt himself on the other side of the argument. "Butwhy, sir? If there ever was a case--"

  "Well--what's the use? SHE'S here--he's there; the Atlantic's betweenthem. She'll never get back a dollar more of her money than what he'svoluntarily returned to her: their damned heathen marriage settlementstake precious good care of that. As things go over there, Olenski'sacted generously: he might have turned her out without a penny."

  The young man knew this and was silent.

  "I understand, though," Mr. Letterblair continued, "that she attachesno importance to the money. Therefore, as the family say, why not letwell enough alone?"

  Archer had gone to the house an hour earlier in full agreement with Mr.Letterblair's view; but put into words by this selfish, well-fed andsupremely indifferent old man it suddenly became the Pharisaic voice ofa society wholly absorbed in barricading itself against the unpleasant.

  "I think that's for her to decide."

  "H'm--have you considered the consequences if she decides for divorce?"

  "You mean the threat in her husband's letter? What weight would thatcarry? It's no more than the vague charge of an angry blackguard."

  "Yes; but it might make some unpleasant talk if he really defends thesuit."

  "Unpleasant--!" said Archer explosively.

  Mr. Letterblair looked at him from under enquiring eyebrows, and theyoung man, aware of the uselessness of trying to explain what was inhis mind, bowed acquiescently while his senior continued: "Divorce isalways unpleasant."

  "You agree with me?" Mr. Letterblair resumed, after a waiting silence.

  "Naturally," said Archer.

  "Well, then, I may count on you; the Mingotts may count on you; to useyour influence against the idea?"

  Archer hesitated. "I can't pledge myself till I've seen the CountessOlenska," he said at length.

  "Mr. Archer, I don't understand you. Do you want to marry into afamily with a scandalous divorce-suit hanging over it?"

  "I don't think that has anything to do with the case."

  Mr. Letterblair put down his glass of port and fixed on his youngpartner a cautious and apprehensive gaze.

  Archer understood that he ran the risk of having his mandate withdrawn,and for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect. Now that the jobhad been thrust on him he did not propose to relinquish it; and, toguard against the possibility, he saw that he must reassure theunimaginative old man who was the legal conscience of the Mingotts.

  "You may be sure, sir, that I shan't commit myself till I've reportedto you; what I meant was that I'd rather not give an opinion till I'veheard what Madame Olenska has to say."

  Mr. Letterblair nodded approvingly at an excess of caution worthy ofthe best New York tradition, and the young man, glancing at his watch,pleaded an engagement and took leave.