"I don't know; it sounds more--more Polish," said Janey, blushing.
"It sounds more conspicuous; and that can hardly be what she wishes,"
said Mrs. Archer distantly.
"Why not?" broke in her son, growing suddenly argumentative. "Why
shouldn't she be conspicuous if she chooses? Why should she slink
about as if it were she who had disgraced herself? She's 'poor Ellen'
certainly, because she had the bad luck to make a wretched marriage;
but I don't see that that's a reason for hiding her head as if she were
the culprit."
"That, I suppose," said Mr. Jackson, speculatively, "is the line the
Mingotts mean to take."
The young man reddened. "I didn't have to wait for their cue, if that's
what you mean, sir. Madame Olenska has had an unhappy life: that
doesn't make her an outcast."
"There are rumours," began Mr. Jackson, glancing at Janey.
"Oh, I know: the secretary," the young man took him up. "Nonsense,
mother; Janey's grown-up. They say, don't they," he went on, "that the
secretary helped her to get away from her brute of a husband, who kept
her practically a prisoner? Well, what if he did? I hope there isn't a
man among us who wouldn't have done the same in such a case."
Mr. Jackson glanced over his shoulder to say to the sad butler:
"Perhaps ... that sauce ... just a little, after all--"; then, having
helped himself, he remarked: "I'm told she's looking for a house. She
means to live here."
"I hear she means to get a divorce," said Janey boldly.
"I hope she will!" Archer exclaimed.
The word had fallen like a bombshell in the pure and tranquil
atmosphere of the Archer dining-room. Mrs. Archer raised her delicate
eye-brows in the particular curve that signified: "The butler--" and
the young man, himself mindful of the bad taste of discussing such
intimate matters in public, hastily branched off into an account of his
visit to old Mrs. Mingott.
After dinner, according to immemorial custom, Mrs. Archer and Janey
trailed their long silk draperies up to the drawing-room, where, while
the gentlemen smoked below stairs, they sat beside a Carcel lamp with
an engraved globe, facing each other across a rosewood work-table with
a green silk bag under it, and stitched at the two ends of a tapestry
band of field-flowers destined to adorn an "occasional" chair in the
drawing-room of young Mrs. Newland Archer.
While this rite was in progress in the drawing-room, Archer settled Mr.
Jackson in an armchair near the fire in the Gothic library and handed
him a cigar. Mr. Jackson sank into the armchair with satisfaction, lit
his cigar with perfect confidence (it was Newland who bought them),
and stretching his thin old ankles to the coals, said: "You say the
secretary merely helped her to get away, my dear fellow? Well, he was
still helping her a year later, then; for somebody met 'em living at
Lausanne together."
Newland reddened. "Living together? Well, why not? Who had the right
to make her life over if she hadn't? I'm sick of the hypocrisy that
would bury alive a woman of her age if her husband prefers to live with
harlots."
He stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar. "Women ought to
be free--as free as we are," he declared, making a discovery of which
he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.
Mr. Sillerton Jackson stretched his ankles nearer the coals and emitted
a sardonic whistle.
"Well," he said after a pause, "apparently Count Olenski takes your
view; for I never heard of his having lifted a finger to get his wife
back."