The Age of Innocence, Page 21

  XXI.

  The small bright lawn stretched away smoothly to the big bright sea.

  The turf was hemmed with an edge of scarlet geranium and coleus, andcast-iron vases painted in chocolate colour, standing at intervalsalong the winding path that led to the sea, looped their garlands ofpetunia and ivy geranium above the neatly raked gravel.

  Half way between the edge of the cliff and the square wooden house(which was also chocolate-coloured, but with the tin roof of theverandah striped in yellow and brown to represent an awning) two largetargets had been placed against a background of shrubbery. On theother side of the lawn, facing the targets, was pitched a real tent,with benches and garden-seats about it. A number of ladies in summerdresses and gentlemen in grey frock-coats and tall hats stood on thelawn or sat upon the benches; and every now and then a slender girl instarched muslin would step from the tent, bow in hand, and speed hershaft at one of the targets, while the spectators interrupted theirtalk to watch the result.

  Newland Archer, standing on the verandah of the house, looked curiouslydown upon this scene. On each side of the shiny painted steps was alarge blue china flower-pot on a bright yellow china stand. A spikygreen plant filled each pot, and below the verandah ran a wide borderof blue hydrangeas edged with more red geraniums. Behind him, theFrench windows of the drawing-rooms through which he had passed gaveglimpses, between swaying lace curtains, of glassy parquet floorsislanded with chintz poufs, dwarf armchairs, and velvet tables coveredwith trifles in silver.

  The Newport Archery Club always held its August meeting at theBeauforts'. The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet,was beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the lattergame was still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions,and as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses and graceful attitudesthe bow and arrow held their own.

  Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprisedhim that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactionsto it had so completely changed. It was Newport that had first broughthome to him the extent of the change. In New York, during the previouswinter, after he and May had settled down in the new greenish-yellowhouse with the bow-window and the Pompeian vestibule, he had droppedback with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal ofthis daily activity had served as a link with his former self. Thenthere had been the pleasurable excitement of choosing a showy greystepper for May's brougham (the Wellands had given the carriage), andthe abiding occupation and interest of arranging his new library,which, in spite of family doubts and disapprovals, had been carried outas he had dreamed, with a dark embossed paper, Eastlake book-cases and"sincere" arm-chairs and tables. At the Century he had found Winsettagain, and at the Knickerbocker the fashionable young men of his ownset; and what with the hours dedicated to the law and those given todining out or entertaining friends at home, with an occasional eveningat the Opera or the play, the life he was living had still seemed afairly real and inevitable sort of business.

  But Newport represented the escape from duty into an atmosphere ofunmitigated holiday-making. Archer had tried to persuade May to spendthe summer on a remote island off the coast of Maine (called,appropriately enough, Mount Desert), where a few hardy Bostonians andPhiladelphians were camping in "native" cottages, and whence camereports of enchanting scenery and a wild, almost trapper-like existenceamid woods and waters.

  But the Wellands always went to Newport, where they owned one of thesquare boxes on the cliffs, and their son-in-law could adduce no goodreason why he and May should not join them there. As Mrs. Wellandrather tartly pointed out, it was hardly worth while for May to haveworn herself out trying on summer clothes in Paris if she was not to beallowed to wear them; and this argument was of a kind to which Archerhad as yet found no answer.

  May herself could not understand his obscure reluctance to fall in withso reasonable and pleasant a way of spending the summer. She remindedhim that he had always liked Newport in his bachelor days, and as thiswas indisputable he could only profess that he was sure he was going tolike it better than ever now that they were to be there together. Butas he stood on the Beaufort verandah and looked out on the brightlypeopled lawn it came home to him with a shiver that he was not going tolike it at all.

  It was not May's fault, poor dear. If, now and then, during theirtravels, they had fallen slightly out of step, harmony had beenrestored by their return to the conditions she was used to. He hadalways foreseen that she would not disappoint him; and he had beenright. He had married (as most young men did) because he had met aperfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimlesssentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she hadrepresented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense ofan unescapable duty.

  He could not say that he had been mistaken in his choice, for she hadfulfilled all that he had expected. It was undoubtedly gratifying tobe the husband of one of the handsomest and most popular young marriedwomen in New York, especially when she was also one of thesweetest-tempered and most reasonable of wives; and Archer had neverbeen insensible to such advantages. As for the momentary madness whichhad fallen upon him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himselfto regard it as the last of his discarded experiments. The idea thathe could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying the CountessOlenska had become almost unthinkable, and she remained in his memorysimply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.

  But all these abstractions and eliminations made of his mind a ratherempty and echoing place, and he supposed that was one of the reasonswhy the busy animated people on the Beaufort lawn shocked him as ifthey had been children playing in a grave-yard.

  He heard a murmur of skirts beside him, and the Marchioness Mansonfluttered out of the drawing-room window. As usual, she wasextraordinarily festooned and bedizened, with a limp Leghorn hatanchored to her head by many windings of faded gauze, and a littleblack velvet parasol on a carved ivory handle absurdly balanced overher much larger hatbrim.

  "My dear Newland, I had no idea that you and May had arrived! Youyourself came only yesterday, you say? Ah,business--business--professional duties ... I understand. Manyhusbands, I know, find it impossible to join their wives here exceptfor the week-end." She cocked her head on one side and languished athim through screwed-up eyes. "But marriage is one long sacrifice, as Iused often to remind my Ellen--"

  Archer's heart stopped with the queer jerk which it had given oncebefore, and which seemed suddenly to slam a door between himself andthe outer world; but this break of continuity must have been of thebriefest, for he presently heard Medora answering a question he hadapparently found voice to put.

  "No, I am not staying here, but with the Blenkers, in their delicioussolitude at Portsmouth. Beaufort was kind enough to send his famoustrotters for me this morning, so that I might have at least a glimpseof one of Regina's garden-parties; but this evening I go back to rurallife. The Blenkers, dear original beings, have hired a primitive oldfarm-house at Portsmouth where they gather about them representativepeople ..." She drooped slightly beneath her protecting brim, andadded with a faint blush: "This week Dr. Agathon Carver is holding aseries of Inner Thought meetings there. A contrast indeed to this gayscene of worldly pleasure--but then I have always lived on contrasts!To me the only death is monotony. I always say to Ellen: Beware ofmonotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins. But my poor child isgoing through a phase of exaltation, of abhorrence of the world. Youknow, I suppose, that she has declined all invitations to stay atNewport, even with her grandmother Mingott? I could hardly persuadeher to come with me to the Blenkers', if you will believe it! The lifeshe leads is morbid, unnatural. Ah, if she had only listened to mewhen it was still possible ... When the door was still open ... Butshall we go down and watch this absorbing match? I hear your May isone of the competitors."

  Strolling toward them from the tent Beaufort advanced over the lawn,tall, heavy, to
o tightly buttoned into a London frock-coat, with one ofhis own orchids in its buttonhole. Archer, who had not seen him fortwo or three months, was struck by the change in his appearance. Inthe hot summer light his floridness seemed heavy and bloated, and butfor his erect square-shouldered walk he would have looked like anover-fed and over-dressed old man.

  There were all sorts of rumours afloat about Beaufort. In the springhe had gone off on a long cruise to the West Indies in his newsteam-yacht, and it was reported that, at various points where he hadtouched, a lady resembling Miss Fanny Ring had been seen in hiscompany. The steam-yacht, built in the Clyde, and fitted with tiledbath-rooms and other unheard-of luxuries, was said to have cost himhalf a million; and the pearl necklace which he had presented to hiswife on his return was as magnificent as such expiatory offerings areapt to be. Beaufort's fortune was substantial enough to stand thestrain; and yet the disquieting rumours persisted, not only in FifthAvenue but in Wall Street. Some people said he had speculatedunfortunately in railways, others that he was being bled by one of themost insatiable members of her profession; and to every report ofthreatened insolvency Beaufort replied by a fresh extravagance: thebuilding of a new row of orchid-houses, the purchase of a new string ofrace-horses, or the addition of a new Meissonnier or Cabanel to hispicture-gallery.

  He advanced toward the Marchioness and Newland with his usualhalf-sneering smile. "Hullo, Medora! Did the trotters do theirbusiness? Forty minutes, eh? ... Well, that's not so bad,considering your nerves had to be spared." He shook hands with Archer,and then, turning back with them, placed himself on Mrs. Manson's otherside, and said, in a low voice, a few words which their companion didnot catch.

  The Marchioness replied by one of her queer foreign jerks, and a "Quevoulez-vous?" which deepened Beaufort's frown; but he produced a goodsemblance of a congratulatory smile as he glanced at Archer to say:"You know May's going to carry off the first prize."

  "Ah, then it remains in the family," Medora rippled; and at that momentthey reached the tent and Mrs. Beaufort met them in a girlish cloud ofmauve muslin and floating veils.

  May Welland was just coming out of the tent. In her white dress, witha pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath of ivy on her hat, shehad the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had entered the Beaufortball-room on the night of her engagement. In the interval not athought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through herheart; and though her husband knew that she had the capacity for bothhe marvelled afresh at the way in which experience dropped away fromher.

  She had her bow and arrow in her hand, and placing herself on thechalk-mark traced on the turf she lifted the bow to her shoulder andtook aim. The attitude was so full of a classic grace that a murmur ofappreciation followed her appearance, and Archer felt the glow ofproprietorship that so often cheated him into momentary well-being.Her rivals--Mrs. Reggie Chivers, the Merry girls, and divers rosyThorleys, Dagonets and Mingotts, stood behind her in a lovely anxiousgroup, brown heads and golden bent above the scores, and pale muslinsand flower-wreathed hats mingled in a tender rainbow. All were youngand pretty, and bathed in summer bloom; but not one had the nymph-likeease of his wife, when, with tense muscles and happy frown, she benther soul upon some feat of strength.

  "Gad," Archer heard Lawrence Lefferts say, "not one of the lot holdsthe bow as she does"; and Beaufort retorted: "Yes; but that's the onlykind of target she'll ever hit."

  Archer felt irrationally angry. His host's contemptuous tribute toMay's "niceness" was just what a husband should have wished to hearsaid of his wife. The fact that a coarseminded man found her lackingin attraction was simply another proof of her quality; yet the wordssent a faint shiver through his heart. What if "niceness" carried tothat supreme degree were only a negation, the curtain dropped before anemptiness? As he looked at May, returning flushed and calm from herfinal bull's-eye, he had the feeling that he had never yet lifted thatcurtain.

  She took the congratulations of her rivals and of the rest of thecompany with the simplicity that was her crowning grace. No one couldever be jealous of her triumphs because she managed to give the feelingthat she would have been just as serene if she had missed them. Butwhen her eyes met her husband's her face glowed with the pleasure shesaw in his.

  Mrs. Welland's basket-work pony-carriage was waiting for them, and theydrove off among the dispersing carriages, May handling the reins andArcher sitting at her side.

  The afternoon sunlight still lingered upon the bright lawns andshrubberies, and up and down Bellevue Avenue rolled a double line ofvictorias, dog-carts, landaus and "vis-a-vis," carrying well-dressedladies and gentlemen away from the Beaufort garden-party, or homewardfrom their daily afternoon turn along the Ocean Drive.

  "Shall we go to see Granny?" May suddenly proposed. "I should like totell her myself that I've won the prize. There's lots of time beforedinner."

  Archer acquiesced, and she turned the ponies down Narragansett Avenue,crossed Spring Street and drove out toward the rocky moorland beyond.In this unfashionable region Catherine the Great, always indifferent toprecedent and thrifty of purse, had built herself in her youth amany-peaked and cross-beamed cottage-orne on a bit of cheap landoverlooking the bay. Here, in a thicket of stunted oaks, her verandahsspread themselves above the island-dotted waters. A winding drive ledup between iron stags and blue glass balls embedded in mounds ofgeraniums to a front door of highly-varnished walnut under a stripedverandah-roof; and behind it ran a narrow hall with a black and yellowstar-patterned parquet floor, upon which opened four small square roomswith heavy flock-papers under ceilings on which an Italianhouse-painter had lavished all the divinities of Olympus. One of theserooms had been turned into a bedroom by Mrs. Mingott when the burden offlesh descended on her, and in the adjoining one she spent her days,enthroned in a large armchair between the open door and window, andperpetually waving a palm-leaf fan which the prodigious projection ofher bosom kept so far from the rest of her person that the air it setin motion stirred only the fringe of the anti-macassars on thechair-arms.

  Since she had been the means of hastening his marriage old Catherinehad shown to Archer the cordiality which a service rendered excitestoward the person served. She was persuaded that irrepressible passionwas the cause of his impatience; and being an ardent admirer ofimpulsiveness (when it did not lead to the spending of money) shealways received him with a genial twinkle of complicity and a play ofallusion to which May seemed fortunately impervious.

  She examined and appraised with much interest the diamond-tipped arrowwhich had been pinned on May's bosom at the conclusion of the match,remarking that in her day a filigree brooch would have been thoughtenough, but that there was no denying that Beaufort did thingshandsomely.

  "Quite an heirloom, in fact, my dear," the old lady chuckled. "Youmust leave it in fee to your eldest girl." She pinched May's white armand watched the colour flood her face. "Well, well, what have I saidto make you shake out the red flag? Ain't there going to be anydaughters--only boys, eh? Good gracious, look at her blushing againall over her blushes! What--can't I say that either? Mercy me--whenmy children beg me to have all those gods and goddesses painted outoverhead I always say I'm too thankful to have somebody about me thatNOTHING can shock!"

  Archer burst into a laugh, and May echoed it, crimson to the eyes.

  "Well, now tell me all about the party, please, my dears, for I shallnever get a straight word about it out of that silly Medora," theancestress continued; and, as May exclaimed: "Cousin Medora? But Ithought she was going back to Portsmouth?" she answered placidly: "Soshe is--but she's got to come here first to pick up Ellen. Ah--youdidn't know Ellen had come to spend the day with me? Such fol-de-rol,her not coming for the summer; but I gave up arguing with young peopleabout fifty years ago. Ellen--ELLEN!" she cried in her shrill oldvoice, trying to bend forward far enough to catch a glimpse of the lawnbeyond the verandah.

  There was no answer, and Mrs. Mingott rapped impatiently w
ith her stickon the shiny floor. A mulatto maid-servant in a bright turban,replying to the summons, informed her mistress that she had seen "MissEllen" going down the path to the shore; and Mrs. Mingott turned toArcher.

  "Run down and fetch her, like a good grandson; this pretty lady willdescribe the party to me," she said; and Archer stood up as if in adream.

  He had heard the Countess Olenska's name pronounced often enough duringthe year and a half since they had last met, and was even familiar withthe main incidents of her life in the interval. He knew that she hadspent the previous summer at Newport, where she appeared to have gone agreat deal into society, but that in the autumn she had suddenlysub-let the "perfect house" which Beaufort had been at such pains tofind for her, and decided to establish herself in Washington. There,during the winter, he had heard of her (as one always heard of prettywomen in Washington) as shining in the "brilliant diplomatic society"that was supposed to make up for the social short-comings of theAdministration. He had listened to these accounts, and to variouscontradictory reports on her appearance, her conversation, her point ofview and her choice of friends, with the detachment with which onelistens to reminiscences of some one long since dead; not till Medorasuddenly spoke her name at the archery match had Ellen Olenska become aliving presence to him again. The Marchioness's foolish lisp hadcalled up a vision of the little fire-lit drawing-room and the sound ofthe carriage-wheels returning down the deserted street. He thought ofa story he had read, of some peasant children in Tuscany lighting abunch of straw in a wayside cavern, and revealing old silent images intheir painted tomb ...

  The way to the shore descended from the bank on which the house wasperched to a walk above the water planted with weeping willows.Through their veil Archer caught the glint of the Lime Rock, with itswhite-washed turret and the tiny house in which the heroic light-housekeeper, Ida Lewis, was living her last venerable years. Beyond it laythe flat reaches and ugly government chimneys of Goat Island, the bayspreading northward in a shimmer of gold to Prudence Island with itslow growth of oaks, and the shores of Conanicut faint in the sunsethaze.

  From the willow walk projected a slight wooden pier ending in a sort ofpagoda-like summer-house; and in the pagoda a lady stood, leaningagainst the rail, her back to the shore. Archer stopped at the sightas if he had waked from sleep. That vision of the past was a dream,and the reality was what awaited him in the house on the bank overhead:was Mrs. Welland's pony-carriage circling around and around the oval atthe door, was May sitting under the shameless Olympians and glowingwith secret hopes, was the Welland villa at the far end of BellevueAvenue, and Mr. Welland, already dressed for dinner, and pacing thedrawing-room floor, watch in hand, with dyspeptic impatience--for itwas one of the houses in which one always knew exactly what ishappening at a given hour.

  "What am I? A son-in-law--" Archer thought.

  The figure at the end of the pier had not moved. For a long moment theyoung man stood half way down the bank, gazing at the bay furrowed withthe coming and going of sailboats, yacht-launches, fishing-craft andthe trailing black coal-barges hauled by noisy tugs. The lady in thesummer-house seemed to be held by the same sight. Beyond the greybastions of Fort Adams a long-drawn sunset was splintering up into athousand fires, and the radiance caught the sail of a catboat as itbeat out through the channel between the Lime Rock and the shore.Archer, as he watched, remembered the scene in the Shaughraun, andMontague lifting Ada Dyas's ribbon to his lips without her knowing thathe was in the room.

  "She doesn't know--she hasn't guessed. Shouldn't I know if she came upbehind me, I wonder?" he mused; and suddenly he said to himself: "Ifshe doesn't turn before that sail crosses the Lime Rock light I'll goback."

  The boat was gliding out on the receding tide. It slid before the LimeRock, blotted out Ida Lewis's little house, and passed across theturret in which the light was hung. Archer waited till a wide space ofwater sparkled between the last reef of the island and the stern of theboat; but still the figure in the summer-house did not move.

  He turned and walked up the hill.

  "I'm sorry you didn't find Ellen--I should have liked to see heragain," May said as they drove home through the dusk. "But perhaps shewouldn't have cared--she seems so changed."

  "Changed?" echoed her husband in a colourless voice, his eyes fixed onthe ponies' twitching ears.

  "So indifferent to her friends, I mean; giving up New York and herhouse, and spending her time with such queer people. Fancy howhideously uncomfortable she must be at the Blenkers'! She says shedoes it to keep cousin Medora out of mischief: to prevent her marryingdreadful people. But I sometimes think we've always bored her."

  Archer made no answer, and she continued, with a tinge of hardness thathe had never before noticed in her frank fresh voice: "After all, Iwonder if she wouldn't be happier with her husband."

  He burst into a laugh. "Sancta simplicitas!" he exclaimed; and as sheturned a puzzled frown on him he added: "I don't think I ever heardyou say a cruel thing before."

  "Cruel?"

  "Well--watching the contortions of the damned is supposed to be afavourite sport of the angels; but I believe even they don't thinkpeople happier in hell."

  "It's a pity she ever married abroad then," said May, in the placidtone with which her mother met Mr. Welland's vagaries; and Archer felthimself gently relegated to the category of unreasonable husbands.

  They drove down Bellevue Avenue and turned in between the chamferedwooden gate-posts surmounted by cast-iron lamps which marked theapproach to the Welland villa. Lights were already shining through itswindows, and Archer, as the carriage stopped, caught a glimpse of hisfather-in-law, exactly as he had pictured him, pacing the drawing-room,watch in hand and wearing the pained expression that he had long sincefound to be much more efficacious than anger.

  The young man, as he followed his wife into the hall, was conscious ofa curious reversal of mood. There was something about the luxury ofthe Welland house and the density of the Welland atmosphere, so chargedwith minute observances and exactions, that always stole into hissystem like a narcotic. The heavy carpets, the watchful servants, theperpetually reminding tick of disciplined clocks, the perpetuallyrenewed stack of cards and invitations on the hall table, the wholechain of tyrannical trifles binding one hour to the next, and eachmember of the household to all the others, made any less systematisedand affluent existence seem unreal and precarious. But now it was theWelland house, and the life he was expected to lead in it, that hadbecome unreal and irrelevant, and the brief scene on the shore, when hehad stood irresolute, halfway down the bank, was as close to him as theblood in his veins.

  All night he lay awake in the big chintz bedroom at May's side,watching the moonlight slant along the carpet, and thinking of EllenOlenska driving home across the gleaming beaches behind Beaufort'strotters.