The Age of Innocence Chapter 9 (2023)

THE COUNTESS OLENSKA HAD said “after five”; and at half after the hour Newland Archer rang the bell of the peeling stucco house with a giant wistaria throttling its feeble cast-iron balcony, which she had hired, far down West Twenty-third Street, from the vagabond Medora.

It was certainly a strange quarter to have settled in. Small dressmakers, bird-stuffers and “people who wrote” were her nearest neighbors; and farther down the disheveled street Archer recognized a dilapidated wooden house, at the end of a paved path, in which a writer and journalist called Winsett, whom he used to come across now and then, had mentioned that he lived. Winsett did not invite people to his house; but he had once pointed it out to Archer in the course of a nocturnal stroll, and the latter had asked himself, with a little shiver, if the humanities were so meanly housed in other capitals.

Madame Olenska’s own dwelling was redeemed from the same appearance only by a little more paint about the window-frames; and as Archer mustered its modest front he said to himself that the Polish Count must have robbed her of her fortune as well as of her illusions.

The young man had spent an unsatisfactory day. He had lunched with the Wellands, hoping afterward to carry off May for a walk in the Park. He wanted to have her to himself, to tell her how enchanting she had looked the night before, and how proud he was of her, and to press her to hasten their marriage. But Mrs. Welland had firmly reminded him that the round of family visits was not half over, and, when he hinted at advancing the date of the wedding, had raised reproachful eyebrows and sighed out “Twelve dozen of everything—hand-embroidered—”

Packed in the family landau they rolled from one tribal doorstep to another, and Archer, when the afternoon’s round was over, parted from his betrothed with the feeling that he had been shown off like a wild animal cunningly trapped. He supposed that his readings in anthropology caused him to take such a coarse view of what was after all a simple and natural demonstration of family feeling; but when he remembered that the Wellands did not expect the wedding to take place till the following autumn, and pictured what his life would be till then, a dampness fell upon his spirit.

“Tomorrow,” Mrs. Welland called after him, “we’ll do the Chiverses and the Dallases”; and he perceived that she was going through their two families alphabetically, and that they were only in the first quarter of the alphabet.

He had meant to tell May of the Countess Olenska’s request—her command, rather—that he should call on her that afternoon; but in the brief moments when they were alone he had had more pressing things to say. Besides, it struck him as a little absurd to allude to the matter. He knew that May most particularly wanted him to be kind to her cousin; was it not that wish which had hastened the announcement of their engagement? It gave him an odd sensation to reflect that, but for the Countess’s arrival, he might have been, if not still a free man, at least a man less irrevocably pledged. But May had willed it so, and he felt himself somehow relieved of further responsibility—and therefore at liberty, if he chose, to call on her cousin without telling her.

As he stood on Madame Olenska’s threshold curiosity was his uppermost feeling. He was puzzled by the tone in which she had summoned him; he concluded that she was less simple than she seemed.

The door was opened by a swarthy foreign-looking maid, with a prominent bosom under a gay neckerchief, whom he vaguely fancied to be Sicilian. She welcomed him with all her white teeth, and answering his inquiries by a head-shake of incomprehension led him through the narrow hall into a low firelit drawing room. The room was empty, and she left him, for an appreciable time, to wonder whether she had gone to find her mistress, or whether she had not understood what he was there for, and thought it might be to wind the clocks—of which he perceived that the only visible specimen had stopped. He knew that the southern races communicated with each other in the language of pantomime, and was mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible. At length she returned with a lamp; and Archer, having meanwhile put together a phrase out of Dante and Petrarch,q evoked the answer: “La signora è fuori; ma verrà subito”; which he took to mean: “She’s out—but you’ll soon see.”

What he saw meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded shadowy charm of a room unlike any room he had known. He knew that the Countess Olenska had brought some of her possessions with her—bits of wreckage, she called them—and these, he supposed, were represented by some small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze on the chimney-piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on the discolored wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in old frames.

Newland Archer prided himself on his knowledge of Italian art. His boyhood had been saturated with Ruskin, and he had read all the latest books: John Addington Symonds, Vernon Lee’s “Eu phorion,” the essays of P. G. Hamerton, and a wonderful new volume called “The Renaissance” by Walter Pater. He talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of Fra Angelicor with a faint condescension. But these pictures bewildered him, for they were like nothing that he was accustomed to look at (and therefore able to see) when he traveled in Italy; and perhaps, also, his powers of observation were impaired by the oddness of finding himself in this strange empty house, where apparently no one expected him. He was sorry that he had not told May Welland of Countess Olenska’s request, and a little disturbed by the thought that his betrothed might come in to see her cousin. What would she think if she found him sitting there with the air of intimacy implied by waiting alone in the dusk at a lady’s fireside?

But since he had come he meant to wait; and he sank into a chair and stretched his feet to the logs.

It was odd to have summoned him in that way, and then forgotten him; but Archer felt more curious than mortified. The atmosphere of the room was so different from any he had ever breathed that self-consciousness vanished in the sense of adven ture. He had been before in drawing rooms hung with red damask, with pictures “of the Italian school”; what struck him was the way in which Medora Manson’s shabby hired house, with its blighted background of pampas grass and Rogerss statuettes, had, by a turn of the hand, and the skillful use of a few properties, been transformed into something intimate, “foreign,” subtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and sentiments. He tried to analyze the trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and tables were grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot roses (of which nobody ever bought less than a dozen) had been placed in the slender vase at his elbow, and in the vague pervading perfume that was not what one put on handkerchiefs, but rather like the scent of some far-off bazaar, a smell made up of Turkish coffee and ambergris and dried roses.

His mind wandered away to the question of what May’s drawing room would look like. He knew that Mr. Welland, who was behaving “very handsomely,” already had his eye on a newly built house in East Thirty-ninth Street. The neighborhood was thought remote, and the house was built in a ghastly greenish-yellow stone that the younger architects were beginning to employ as a protest against the brownstone of which the uniform hue coated New York like a cold chocolate sauce; but the plumbing was perfect. Archer would have liked to travel, to put off the housing question; but, though the Wellands approved of an extended European honeymoon (perhaps even a winter in Egypt), they were firm as to the need of a house for the returning couple. The young man felt that his fate was sealed: for the rest of his life he would go up every evening between the cast-iron railings of that greenish-yellow doorstep, and pass through a Pompeian vestibule into a hall with a wainscoting of varnished yellow wood. But beyond that his imagination could not travel. He knew the drawing room above had a bay window, but he could not fancy how May would deal with it. She submitted cheerfully to the purple satin and yellow tuftings of the Welland drawing room, to its sham Buhl tables and gilt vitrines full of modern Saxe. He saw no reason to suppose that she would want anything different in her own house; and his only comfort was to reflect that she would probably let him arrange his library as he pleased—which would be, of course, with “sincere” Eastlake furniture, and the plain new book-cases without glass doors.

The round-bosomed maid came in, drew the curtains, pushed back a log, and said consolingly: “Verrà—verrà.” “ When she had gone Archer stood up and began to wander about. Should he wait any longer? His position was becoming rather foolish. Perhaps he had misunderstood Madame Olenska—perhaps she had not invited him after all.

Down the cobblestones of the quiet street came the ring of a stepper’s hoofs; they stopped before the house, and he caught the opening of a carriage door. Parting the curtains he looked out into the early dusk. A street-lamp faced him, and in its light he saw Julius Beaufort’s compact English brougham, drawn by a big roan, and the banker descending from it, and helping out Madame Olenska.

Beaufort stood, hat in hand, saying something which his companion seemed to negative; then they shook hands, and he jumped into his carriage while she mounted the steps.

When she entered the room she showed no surprise at seeing Archer there; surprise seemed the emotion that she was least addicted to.

“How do you like my funny house?” she asked. “To me it’s like heaven.”

As she spoke she untied her little velvet bonnet and tossing it away with her long cloak stood looking at him with meditative eyes.

“You’ve arranged it delightfully,” he rejoined, alive to the flatness of the words, but imprisoned in the conventional by his consuming desire to be simple and striking.

“Oh, it’s a poor little place. My relations despise it. But at any rate it’s less gloomy than the van der Luydens‘.”

The words gave him an electric shock, for few were the rebellious spirits who would have dared to call the stately home of the van der Luydens gloomy. Those privileged to enter it shivered there, and spoke of it as “handsome.” But suddenly he was glad that she had given voice to the general shiver.

“It’s delicious—what you’ve done here,” he repeated.

“I like the little house,” she admitted; “but I suppose what I like is the blessedness of its being here, in my own country and my own town; and then, of being alone in it.” She spoke so low that he hardly heard the last phrase; but in his awkwardness he took it up.

“You like so much to be alone?”

“Yes; as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely.” She sat down near the fire, said, “Nastasia will bring the tea presently,” and signed to him to return to his armchair, adding: “I see you’ve already chosen your corner.”

Leaning back, she folded her arms behind her head, and looked at the fire under drooping lids.

“This is the hour I like best—don’t you?”

A proper sense of his dignity caused him to answer: “I was afraid you’d forgotten the hour. Beaufort must have been very engrossing.”

She looked amused. “Why—have you waited long? Mr. Beaufort took me to see a number of houses—since it seems I’m not to be allowed to stay in this one.” She appeared to dismiss both Beaufort and himself from her mind, and went on: “I’ve never been in a city where there seems to be such a feeling against living in des quartiers excentriques. What does it matter where one lives? I’m told this street is respectable.”

“It’s not fashionable.”

“Fashionable! Do you all think so much of that? Why not make one’s own fashions? But I suppose I’ve lived too independently; at any rate, I want to do what you all do—I want to feel cared for and safe.”

He was touched, as he had been the evening before when she spoke of her need of guidance.

“That’s what your friends want to feel. New York’s an awfully safe place,” he added with a flash of sarcasm.

“Yes, isn’t it? One feels that,” she cried, missing the mockery. “Being here is like—like—being taken on a holiday when one has been a good little girl and done all one’s lessons.”

The analogy was well meant, but did not altogether please him. He did not mind being flippant about New York, but disliked to hear any one else take the same tone. He wondered if she did not begin to see what a powerful engine it was, and how nearly it had crushed her. The Lovell Mingotts’ dinner, patched up in extremis out of all sorts of social odds and ends, ought to have taught her the narrowness of her escape; but either she had been all along unaware of having skirted disaster, or else she had lost sight of it in the triumph of the van der Luyden evening. Archer inclined to the former theory; he fancied that her New York was still completely undifferentiated, and the conjecture nettled him.

“Last night,” he said, “New York laid itself out for you. The van der Luydens do nothing by halves.”

“No: how kind they are! It was such a nice party. Every one seems to have such an esteem for them.”

The terms were hardly adequate; she might have spoken in that way of a tea-party at the dear old Miss Lannings‘.

“The van der Luydens,” said Archer, feeling himself pompous as he spoke, “are the most powerful influence in New York society. Unfortunately—owing to her health—they receive very seldom.”

She unclasped her hands from behind her head, and looked at him meditatively.

“Isn’t that perhaps the reason?”

“The reason—?”

“For their great influence; that they make themselves so rare.”

He colored a little, stared at her—and suddenly felt the penetration of the remark. At a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed. He laughed, and sacrificed them.

Nastasia brought the tea, with handleless Japanese cups and little covered dishes, placing the tray on a low table.

“But you’ll explain these things to me—you’ll tell me all I ought to know,” Madame Olenska continued, leaning forward to hand him his cup.

“It’s you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I’d looked at so long that I’d ceased to see them.”

She detached a small gold cigarette-case from one of her bracelets, held it out to him, and took a cigarette herself. On the chimney were long spills for lighting them.

“Ah, then we can both help each other. But I want help so much more. You must tell me just what to do.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to reply: “Don’t be seen driving about the streets with Beaufort—” but he was being too deeply drawn into the atmosphere of the room, which was her atmosphere, and to give advice of that sort would have been like telling someone who was bargaining for attar-of-roses in Samarkand that one should always be provided with arctics for a New York winter. New York seemed much farther off than Samarkand, and if they were indeed to help each other she was rendering what might prove the first of their mutual services by making him look at his native city objectively. Viewed thus, as through the wrong end of a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant; but then from Samarkand it would.

A flame darted from the logs and she bent over the fire, stretching her thin hands so close to it that a faint halo shone about the oval nails. The light touched to russet the rings of dark hair escaping from her braids, and made her pale face paler.

“There are plenty of people to tell you what to do,” Archer rejoined, obscurely envious of them.

“Oh—all my aunts? And my dear old Granny?” She considered the idea impartially. “They’re all a little vexed with me for setting up for myself—poor Granny especially. She wanted to keep me with her; but I had to be free—” He was impressed by this light way of speaking of the formidable Catherine, and moved by the thought of what must have given Madame Olenska this thirst for even the loneliest kind of freedom. But the idea of Beaufort gnawed him.

“I think I understand how you feel,” he said. “Still, your family can advise you; explain differences; show you the way.”

She lifted her thin black eyebrows. “Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it so straight up and down—like Fifth Avenue. And with all the cross streets numbered!” She seemed to guess his faint disapproval of this, and added with the rare smile that enchanted her whole face: “If you knew how I like it for just that—the straight-up-and-downness, and the big honest labels on everything!”

He saw his chance. “Everything may be labeled—but everybody is not.”

“Perhaps. I may simplify too much—but you’ll warn me if I do.” She turned from the fire to look at him. “There are only two people here who make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could explain things to me: you and Mr. Beaufort.”

Archer winced at the joining of the names, and then, with a quick readjustment, understood, sympathized and pitied. So close to the powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely in their air. But since she felt that he understood her also, his business would be to make her see Beaufort as he really was, with all he represented—and abhor it.

He answered gently: “I understand. But just at first don’t let go of your old friends’ hands: I mean the older women, your Granny Mingott, Mrs. Welland, Mrs. van der Luyden. They like and admire you—they want to help you.”

She shook her head and sighed. “Oh, I know—I know! But on condition that they don’t hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it in those very words when I tried ... Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!” She lifted her hands to her face, and he saw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob.

“Madame Olenska!—Oh, don‘t, Ellen,” he cried, starting up and bending over her. He drew down one of her hands, clasping and chafing it like a child’s while he murmured reassuring words; but in a moment she freed herself, and looked up at him with wet lashes.

“Does no one cry here, either? I suppose there’s no need to, in heaven,” she said, straightening her loosened braids with a laugh, and bending over the tea-kettle. It was burned into his consciousness that he had called her “Ellen”—called her so twice; and that she had not noticed it. Far down the inverted telescope he saw the faint white figure of May Welland—in New York.

Suddenly Nastasia put her head in to say something in her rich Italian.

Madame Olenska, again with a hand at her hair, uttered an exclamation of assent—a flashing “Già—già”—and the Duke of St. Austrey entered, piloting a tremendous black-wigged and red-plumed lady in overflowing furs.

“My dear Countess, I’ve brought an old friend of mine to see you—Mrs. Struthers. She wasn’t asked to the party last night, and she wants to know you.”

The Duke beamed on the group, and Madame Olenska advanced with a murmur of welcome toward the queer couple. She seemed to have no idea how oddly matched they were, or what a liberty the Duke had taken in bringing his companion—and to do him justice, as Archer perceived, the Duke seemed as unaware of it himself.

“Of course I want to know you, my dear,” cried Mrs. Struthers in a round rolling voice that matched her bold feathers and her brazen wig. “I want to know everybody who’s young and interesting and charming. And the Duke tells me you like music—didn’t you, Duke? You’re a pianist yourself, I believe? Well, do you want to hear Sarasate play tomorrow evening at my house? You know I’ve something going on every Sunday evening—it’s the day when New York doesn’t know what to do with itself, and so I say to it: ‘Come and be amused.”’ And the Duke thought you’d be tempted by Sarasate. You’ll find a number of your friends.“

Madame Olenska’s face grew brilliant with pleasure. “How kind! How good of the Duke to think of me!” She pushed a chair up to the tea-table and Mrs. Struthers sank into it delectably. “Of course I shall be too happy to come.”

“That’s all right, my dear. And bring your young gentleman with you.” Mrs. Struthers extended a hail-fellow hand to Archer. “I can’t put a name to you-but I’m sure I’ve met you—I’ve met everybody, here, or in Paris or London. Aren’t you in diplomacy? All the diplomatists come to me. You like music too? Duke, you must be sure to bring him.”

The Duke said “Rather” from the depths of his beard, and Archer withdrew with a stiffly circular bow that made him feel as full of spine as a self-conscious school-boy among careless and un-noticing elders.

He was not sorry for the dénouement of his visit: he only wished it had come sooner, and spared him a certain waste of emotion. As he went out into the wintry night, New York again became vast and imminent, and May Welland the loveliest woman in it. He turned into his florist’s to send her the daily box of lilies-of-the-valley which, to his confusion, he found he had forgotten that morning.

As he wrote a word on his card and waited for an envelope he glanced about the embowered shop, and his eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses. He had never seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse was to send them to May instead of the lilies. But they did not look like her—there was something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty. In a sudden revulsion of mood, and almost without knowing what he did, he signed to the florist to lay the roses in another long box, and slipped his card into a second envelope, on which he wrote the name of the Countess Olenska; then, just as he was turning away, he drew the card out again, and left the empty envelope on the box.

“They’ll go at once?” he inquired, pointing to the roses.

The florist assured him that they would.