"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, sympathised 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 burnt 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 "Gia--gia"--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, nor 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 unnoticing
elders.
He was not sorry for the denouement 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 enquired, pointing to the roses.
The florist assured him that they would.