The Age of Innocence, Page 29

  XXIX.

  His wife's dark blue brougham (with the wedding varnish still on it)met Archer at the ferry, and conveyed him luxuriously to thePennsylvania terminus in Jersey City.

  It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the bigreverberating station. As he paced the platform, waiting for theWashington express, he remembered that there were people who thoughtthere would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which thetrains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York.They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted thebuilding of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, theinvention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephoniccommunication without wires, and other Arabian Night marvels.

  "I don't care which of their visions comes true," Archer mused, "aslong as the tunnel isn't built yet." In his senseless school-boyhappiness he pictured Madame Olenska's descent from the train, hisdiscovery of her a long way off, among the throngs of meaninglessfaces, her clinging to his arm as he guided her to the carriage, theirslow approach to the wharf among slipping horses, laden carts,vociferating teamsters, and then the startling quiet of the ferry-boat,where they would sit side by side under the snow, in the motionlesscarriage, while the earth seemed to glide away under them, rolling tothe other side of the sun. It was incredible, the number of things hehad to say to her, and in what eloquent order they were formingthemselves on his lips ...

  The clanging and groaning of the train came nearer, and it staggeredslowly into the station like a prey-laden monster into its lair.Archer pushed forward, elbowing through the crowd, and staring blindlyinto window after window of the high-hung carriages. And then,suddenly, he saw Madame Olenska's pale and surprised face close athand, and had again the mortified sensation of having forgotten whatshe looked like.

  They reached each other, their hands met, and he drew her arm throughhis. "This way--I have the carriage," he said.

  After that it all happened as he had dreamed. He helped her into thebrougham with her bags, and had afterward the vague recollection ofhaving properly reassured her about her grandmother and given her asummary of the Beaufort situation (he was struck by the softness ofher: "Poor Regina!"). Meanwhile the carriage had worked its way outof the coil about the station, and they were crawling down the slipperyincline to the wharf, menaced by swaying coal-carts, bewildered horses,dishevelled express-wagons, and an empty hearse--ah, that hearse! Sheshut her eyes as it passed, and clutched at Archer's hand.

  "If only it doesn't mean--poor Granny!"

  "Oh, no, no--she's much better--she's all right, really. There--we'vepassed it!" he exclaimed, as if that made all the difference. Her handremained in his, and as the carriage lurched across the gang-plank ontothe ferry he bent over, unbuttoned her tight brown glove, and kissedher palm as if he had kissed a relic. She disengaged herself with afaint smile, and he said: "You didn't expect me today?"

  "Oh, no."

  "I meant to go to Washington to see you. I'd made all myarrangements--I very nearly crossed you in the train."

  "Oh--" she exclaimed, as if terrified by the narrowness of their escape.

  "Do you know--I hardly remembered you?"

  "Hardly remembered me?"

  "I mean: how shall I explain? I--it's always so. EACH TIME YOU HAPPENTO ME ALL OVER AGAIN."

  "Oh, yes: I know! I know!"

  "Does it--do I too: to you?" he insisted.

  She nodded, looking out of the window.

  "Ellen--Ellen--Ellen!"

  She made no answer, and he sat in silence, watching her profile growindistinct against the snow-streaked dusk beyond the window. What hadshe been doing in all those four long months, he wondered? How littlethey knew of each other, after all! The precious moments were slippingaway, but he had forgotten everything that he had meant to say to herand could only helplessly brood on the mystery of their remoteness andtheir proximity, which seemed to be symbolised by the fact of theirsitting so close to each other, and yet being unable to see eachother's faces.

  "What a pretty carriage! Is it May's?" she asked, suddenly turning herface from the window.

  "Yes."

  "It was May who sent you to fetch me, then? How kind of her!"

  He made no answer for a moment; then he said explosively: "Yourhusband's secretary came to see me the day after we met in Boston."

  In his brief letter to her he had made no allusion to M. Riviere'svisit, and his intention had been to bury the incident in his bosom.But her reminder that they were in his wife's carriage provoked him toan impulse of retaliation. He would see if she liked his reference toRiviere any better than he liked hers to May! As on certain otheroccasions when he had expected to shake her out of her usual composure,she betrayed no sign of surprise: and at once he concluded: "He writesto her, then."

  "M. Riviere went to see you?"

  "Yes: didn't you know?"

  "No," she answered simply.

  "And you're not surprised?"

  She hesitated. "Why should I be? He told me in Boston that he knewyou; that he'd met you in England I think."

  "Ellen--I must ask you one thing."

  "Yes."

  "I wanted to ask it after I saw him, but I couldn't put it in a letter.It was Riviere who helped you to get away--when you left your husband?"

  His heart was beating suffocatingly. Would she meet this question withthe same composure?

  "Yes: I owe him a great debt," she answered, without the least tremorin her quiet voice.

  Her tone was so natural, so almost indifferent, that Archer's turmoilsubsided. Once more she had managed, by her sheer simplicity, to makehim feel stupidly conventional just when he thought he was flingingconvention to the winds.

  "I think you're the most honest woman I ever met!" he exclaimed.

  "Oh, no--but probably one of the least fussy," she answered, a smile inher voice.

  "Call it what you like: you look at things as they are."

  "Ah--I've had to. I've had to look at the Gorgon."

  "Well--it hasn't blinded you! You've seen that she's just an old bogeylike all the others."

  "She doesn't blind one; but she dries up one's tears."

  The answer checked the pleading on Archer's lips: it seemed to comefrom depths of experience beyond his reach. The slow advance of theferry-boat had ceased, and her bows bumped against the piles of theslip with a violence that made the brougham stagger, and flung Archerand Madame Olenska against each other. The young man, trembling, feltthe pressure of her shoulder, and passed his arm about her.

  "If you're not blind, then, you must see that this can't last."

  "What can't?"

  "Our being together--and not together."

  "No. You ought not to have come today," she said in an altered voice;and suddenly she turned, flung her arms about him and pressed her lipsto his. At the same moment the carriage began to move, and a gas-lampat the head of the slip flashed its light into the window. She drewaway, and they sat silent and motionless while the brougham struggledthrough the congestion of carriages about the ferry-landing. As theygained the street Archer began to speak hurriedly.

  "Don't be afraid of me: you needn't squeeze yourself back into yourcorner like that. A stolen kiss isn't what I want. Look: I'm not eventrying to touch the sleeve of your jacket. Don't suppose that I don'tunderstand your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between usdwindle into an ordinary hole-and-corner love-affair. I couldn't havespoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'mlooking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a greatflame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered,and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every nowand then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sitperfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in mymind, just quietly trusting to it to come true."

  For a moment she made no reply; then she asked, hardly above a whisper:"What do you mean by trusting
to it to come true?"

  "Why--you know it will, don't you?"

  "Your vision of you and me together?" She burst into a sudden hardlaugh. "You choose your place well to put it to me!"

  "Do you mean because we're in my wife's brougham? Shall we get out andwalk, then? I don't suppose you mind a little snow?"

  She laughed again, more gently. "No; I shan't get out and walk,because my business is to get to Granny's as quickly as I can. Andyou'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities."

  "I don't know what you mean by realities. The only reality to me isthis."

  She met the words with a long silence, during which the carriage rolleddown an obscure side-street and then turned into the searchingillumination of Fifth Avenue.

  "Is it your idea, then, that I should live with you as yourmistress--since I can't be your wife?" she asked.

  The crudeness of the question startled him: the word was one that womenof his class fought shy of, even when their talk flitted closest aboutthe topic. He noticed that Madame Olenska pronounced it as if it had arecognised place in her vocabulary, and he wondered if it had been usedfamiliarly in her presence in the horrible life she had fled from. Herquestion pulled him up with a jerk, and he floundered.

  "I want--I want somehow to get away with you into a world where wordslike that--categories like that--won't exist. Where we shall be simplytwo human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to eachother; and nothing else on earth will matter."

  She drew a deep sigh that ended in another laugh. "Oh, my dear--whereis that country? Have you ever been there?" she asked; and as heremained sullenly dumb she went on: "I know so many who've tried tofind it; and, believe me, they all got out by mistake at waysidestations: at places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte Carlo--and itwasn't at all different from the old world they'd left, but only rathersmaller and dingier and more promiscuous."

  He had never heard her speak in such a tone, and he remembered thephrase she had used a little while before.

  "Yes, the Gorgon HAS dried your tears," he said.

  "Well, she opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say that she blindspeople. What she does is just the contrary--she fastens their eyelidsopen, so that they're never again in the blessed darkness. Isn't therea Chinese torture like that? There ought to be. Ah, believe me, it'sa miserable little country!"

  The carriage had crossed Forty-second Street: May's sturdybrougham-horse was carrying them northward as if he had been a Kentuckytrotter. Archer choked with the sense of wasted minutes and vain words.

  "Then what, exactly, is your plan for us?" he asked.

  "For US? But there's no US in that sense! We're near each other onlyif we stay far from each other. Then we can be ourselves. Otherwisewe're only Newland Archer, the husband of Ellen Olenska's cousin, andEllen Olenska, the cousin of Newland Archer's wife, trying to be happybehind the backs of the people who trust them."

  "Ah, I'm beyond that," he groaned.

  "No, you're not! You've never been beyond. And I have," she said, ina strange voice, "and I know what it looks like there."

  He sat silent, dazed with inarticulate pain. Then he groped in thedarkness of the carriage for the little bell that signalled orders tothe coachman. He remembered that May rang twice when she wished tostop. He pressed the bell, and the carriage drew up beside thecurbstone.

  "Why are we stopping? This is not Granny's," Madame Olenska exclaimed.

  "No: I shall get out here," he stammered, opening the door and jumpingto the pavement. By the light of a street-lamp he saw her startledface, and the instinctive motion she made to detain him. He closed thedoor, and leaned for a moment in the window.

  "You're right: I ought not to have come today," he said, lowering hisvoice so that the coachman should not hear. She bent forward, andseemed about to speak; but he had already called out the order to driveon, and the carriage rolled away while he stood on the corner. Thesnow was over, and a tingling wind had sprung up, that lashed his faceas he stood gazing. Suddenly he felt something stiff and cold on hislashes, and perceived that he had been crying, and that the wind hadfrozen his tears.

  He thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked at a sharp pace downFifth Avenue to his own house.