The Age of Innocence

  XIII.

  It was a crowded night at Wallack's theatre.

  The play was "The Shaughraun," with Dion Boucicault in the title roleand Harry Montague and Ada Dyas as the lovers. The popularity of theadmirable English company was at its height, and the Shaughraun alwayspacked the house. In the galleries the enthusiasm was unreserved; inthe stalls and boxes, people smiled a little at the hackneyedsentiments and clap-trap situations, and enjoyed the play as much asthe galleries did.

  There was one episode, in particular, that held the house from floor toceiling. It was that in which Harry Montague, after a sad, almostmonosyllabic scene of parting with Miss Dyas, bade her good-bye, andturned to go. The actress, who was standing near the mantelpiece andlooking down into the fire, wore a gray cashmere dress withoutfashionable loopings or trimmings, moulded to her tall figure andflowing in long lines about her feet. Around her neck was a narrowblack velvet ribbon with the ends falling down her back.

  When her wooer turned from her she rested her arms against themantel-shelf and bowed her face in her hands. On the threshold hepaused to look at her; then he stole back, lifted one of the ends ofvelvet ribbon, kissed it, and left the room without her hearing him orchanging her attitude. And on this silent parting the curtain fell.

  It was always for the sake of that particular scene that Newland Archerwent to see "The Shaughraun." He thought the adieux of Montague and AdaDyas as fine as anything he had ever seen Croisette and Bressant do inParis, or Madge Robertson and Kendal in London; in its reticence, itsdumb sorrow, it moved him more than the most famous histrionicoutpourings.

  On the evening in question the little scene acquired an added poignancyby reminding him--he could not have said why--of his leave-taking fromMadame Olenska after their confidential talk a week or ten days earlier.

  It would have been as difficult to discover any resemblance between thetwo situations as between the appearance of the persons concerned.Newland Archer could not pretend to anything approaching the youngEnglish actor's romantic good looks, and Miss Dyas was a tallred-haired woman of monumental build whose pale and pleasantly uglyface was utterly unlike Ellen Olenska's vivid countenance. Nor wereArcher and Madame Olenska two lovers parting in heart-broken silence;they were client and lawyer separating after a talk which had given thelawyer the worst possible impression of the client's case. Wherein,then, lay the resemblance that made the young man's heart beat with akind of retrospective excitement? It seemed to be in Madame Olenska'smysterious faculty of suggesting tragic and moving possibilitiesoutside the daily run of experience. She had hardly ever said a wordto him to produce this impression, but it was a part of her, either aprojection of her mysterious and outlandish background or of somethinginherently dramatic, passionate and unusual in herself. Archer hadalways been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played asmall part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendencyto have things happen to them. This tendency he had felt from thefirst in Madame Olenska. The quiet, almost passive young woman struckhim as exactly the kind of person to whom things were bound to happen,no matter how much she shrank from them and went out of her way toavoid them. The exciting fact was her having lived in an atmosphere sothick with drama that her own tendency to provoke it had apparentlypassed unperceived. It was precisely the odd absence of surprise inher that gave him the sense of her having been plucked out of a verymaelstrom: the things she took for granted gave the measure of thoseshe had rebelled against.

  Archer had left her with the conviction that Count Olenski's accusationwas not unfounded. The mysterious person who figured in his wife'spast as "the secretary" had probably not been unrewarded for his sharein her escape. The conditions from which she had fled wereintolerable, past speaking of, past believing: she was young, she wasfrightened, she was desperate--what more natural than that she shouldbe grateful to her rescuer? The pity was that her gratitude put her,in the law's eyes and the world's, on a par with her abominablehusband. Archer had made her understand this, as he was bound to do;he had also made her understand that simplehearted kindly New York, onwhose larger charity she had apparently counted, was precisely theplace where she could least hope for indulgence.

  To have to make this fact plain to her--and to witness her resignedacceptance of it--had been intolerably painful to him. He felt himselfdrawn to her by obscure feelings of jealousy and pity, as if herdumbly-confessed error had put her at his mercy, humbling yet endearingher. He was glad it was to him she had revealed her secret, ratherthan to the cold scrutiny of Mr. Letterblair, or the embarrassed gazeof her family. He immediately took it upon himself to assure them boththat she had given up her idea of seeking a divorce, basing herdecision on the fact that she had understood the uselessness of theproceeding; and with infinite relief they had all turned their eyesfrom the "unpleasantness" she had spared them.

  "I was sure Newland would manage it," Mrs. Welland had said proudly ofher future son-in-law; and old Mrs. Mingott, who had summoned him for aconfidential interview, had congratulated him on his cleverness, andadded impatiently: "Silly goose! I told her myself what nonsense itwas. Wanting to pass herself off as Ellen Mingott and an old maid,when she has the luck to be a married woman and a Countess!"

  These incidents had made the memory of his last talk with MadameOlenska so vivid to the young man that as the curtain fell on theparting of the two actors his eyes filled with tears, and he stood upto leave the theatre.

  In doing so, he turned to the side of the house behind him, and saw thelady of whom he was thinking seated in a box with the Beauforts,Lawrence Lefferts and one or two other men. He had not spoken with heralone since their evening together, and had tried to avoid being withher in company; but now their eyes met, and as Mrs. Beaufort recognisedhim at the same time, and made her languid little gesture ofinvitation, it was impossible not to go into the box.

  Beaufort and Lefferts made way for him, and after a few words with Mrs.Beaufort, who always preferred to look beautiful and not have to talk,Archer seated himself behind Madame Olenska. There was no one else inthe box but Mr. Sillerton Jackson, who was telling Mrs. Beaufort in aconfidential undertone about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's last Sundayreception (where some people reported that there had been dancing).Under cover of this circumstantial narrative, to which Mrs. Beaufortlistened with her perfect smile, and her head at just the right angleto be seen in profile from the stalls, Madame Olenska turned and spokein a low voice.

  "Do you think," she asked, glancing toward the stage, "he will send hera bunch of yellow roses tomorrow morning?"

  Archer reddened, and his heart gave a leap of surprise. He had calledonly twice on Madame Olenska, and each time he had sent her a box ofyellow roses, and each time without a card. She had never before madeany allusion to the flowers, and he supposed she had never thought ofhim as the sender. Now her sudden recognition of the gift, and herassociating it with the tender leave-taking on the stage, filled himwith an agitated pleasure.

  "I was thinking of that too--I was going to leave the theatre in orderto take the picture away with me," he said.

  To his surprise her colour rose, reluctantly and duskily. She lookeddown at the mother-of-pearl opera-glass in her smoothly gloved hands,and said, after a pause: "What do you do while May is away?"

  "I stick to my work," he answered, faintly annoyed by the question.

  In obedience to a long-established habit, the Wellands had left theprevious week for St. Augustine, where, out of regard for the supposedsusceptibility of Mr. Welland's bronchial tubes, they always spent thelatter part of the winter. Mr. Welland was a mild and silent man, withno opinions but with many habits. With these habits none mightinterfere; and one of them demanded that his wife and daughter shouldalways go with him on his annual journey to the south. To preserve anunbroken domesticity was essential to his peace of mind; he would nothave known where his hair-brushes were, or how to provide stamps forhis letters, if Mrs. Welland had not been there to tell him.
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  As all the members of the family adored each other, and as Mr. Wellandwas the central object of their idolatry, it never occurred to his wifeand May to let him go to St. Augustine alone; and his sons, who wereboth in the law, and could not leave New York during the winter, alwaysjoined him for Easter and travelled back with him.

  It was impossible for Archer to discuss the necessity of May'saccompanying her father. The reputation of the Mingotts' familyphysician was largely based on the attack of pneumonia which Mr.Welland had never had; and his insistence on St. Augustine wastherefore inflexible. Originally, it had been intended that May'sengagement should not be announced till her return from Florida, andthe fact that it had been made known sooner could not be expected toalter Mr. Welland's plans. Archer would have liked to join thetravellers and have a few weeks of sunshine and boating with hisbetrothed; but he too was bound by custom and conventions. Littlearduous as his professional duties were, he would have been convictedof frivolity by the whole Mingott clan if he had suggested asking for aholiday in mid-winter; and he accepted May's departure with theresignation which he perceived would have to be one of the principalconstituents of married life.

  He was conscious that Madame Olenska was looking at him under loweredlids. "I have done what you wished--what you advised," she saidabruptly.

  "Ah--I'm glad," he returned, embarrassed by her broaching the subjectat such a moment.

  "I understand--that you were right," she went on a little breathlessly;"but sometimes life is difficult ... perplexing..."

  "I know."

  "And I wanted to tell you that I DO feel you were right; and that I'mgrateful to you," she ended, lifting her opera-glass quickly to hereyes as the door of the box opened and Beaufort's resonant voice brokein on them.

  Archer stood up, and left the box and the theatre.

  Only the day before he had received a letter from May Welland in which,with characteristic candour, she had asked him to "be kind to Ellen" intheir absence. "She likes you and admires you so much--and you know,though she doesn't show it, she's still very lonely and unhappy. Idon't think Granny understands her, or uncle Lovell Mingott either;they really think she's much worldlier and fonder of society than sheis. And I can quite see that New York must seem dull to her, thoughthe family won't admit it. I think she's been used to lots of thingswe haven't got; wonderful music, and picture shows, andcelebrities--artists and authors and all the clever people you admire.Granny can't understand her wanting anything but lots of dinners andclothes--but I can see that you're almost the only person in New Yorkwho can talk to her about what she really cares for."

  His wise May--how he had loved her for that letter! But he had notmeant to act on it; he was too busy, to begin with, and he did notcare, as an engaged man, to play too conspicuously the part of MadameOlenska's champion. He had an idea that she knew how to take care ofherself a good deal better than the ingenuous May imagined. She hadBeaufort at her feet, Mr. van der Luyden hovering above her like aprotecting deity, and any number of candidates (Lawrence Lefferts amongthem) waiting their opportunity in the middle distance. Yet he neversaw her, or exchanged a word with her, without feeling that, after all,May's ingenuousness almost amounted to a gift of divination. EllenOlenska was lonely and she was unhappy.