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
wisteria 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
dress-makers, bird-stuffers and "people who wrote" were her nearest
neighbours; and further down the dishevelled street Archer recognised
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 eye-brows 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 enquiries
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 clock--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, evoked the answer: "La signora e
fuori; ma verra 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
discoloured 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 "Euphorion," 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 Angelico
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 travelled 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 adventure. 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 Rogers statuettes,
had, by a turn of the hand, and the skilful use of a few properties,
been transformed into something intimate, "foreign," subtly suggestive
of old romantic scenes and sentiments. He tried to analyse 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 neighbourhood 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 bookcases without glass
doors.
The round-bosomed maid came in, drew the curtains, pushed back a log,
and said consolingly: "Verra--verra." 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 you 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 coloured 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 some one 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!"