The next morning, when Archer got out of the Fall River train, he
emerged upon a steaming midsummer Boston. The streets near the station
were full of the smell of beer and coffee and decaying fruit and a
shirt-sleeved populace moved through them with the intimate abandon of
boarders going down the passage to the bathroom.
Archer found a cab and drove to the Somerset Club for breakfast. Even
the fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity to which
no excess of heat ever degrades the European cities. Care-takers in
calico lounged on the door-steps of the wealthy, and the Common looked
like a pleasure-ground on the morrow of a Masonic picnic. If Archer had
tried to imagine Ellen Olenska in improbable scenes he could not have
called up any into which it was more difficult to fit her than this
heat-prostrated and deserted Boston.
He breakfasted with appetite and method, beginning with a slice of
melon, and studying a morning paper while he waited for his toast
and scrambled eggs. A new sense of energy and activity had possessed
him ever since he had announced to May the night before that he had
business in Boston, and should take the Fall River boat that night and
go on to New York the following evening. It had always been understood
that he would return to town early in the week, and when he got back
from his expedition to Portsmouth a letter from the office, which fate
had conspicuously placed on a corner of the hall table, sufficed to
justify his sudden change of plan. He was even ashamed of the ease
with which the whole thing had been done: it reminded him, for an
uncomfortable moment, of Lawrence Lefferts's masterly contrivances for
securing his freedom. But this did not long trouble him, for he was not
in an analytic mood.
After breakfast he smoked a cigarette and glanced over the Commercial
Advertiser. While he was thus engaged two or three men he knew came in,
and the usual greetings were exchanged: it was the same world after
all, though he had such a queer sense of having slipped through the
meshes of time and space.
He looked at his watch, and finding that it was half-past nine got up
and went into the writing-room. There he wrote a few lines, and ordered
a messenger to take a cab to the Parker House and wait for the answer.
He then sat down behind another newspaper and tried to calculate how
long it would take a cab to get to the Parker House.
"The lady was out, sir," he suddenly heard a waiter's voice at his
elbow; and he stammered: "Out?--" as if it were a word in a strange
language.
He got up and went into the hall. It must be a mistake: she could not
be out at that hour. He flushed with anger at his own stupidity: why
had he not sent the note as soon as he arrived?
He found his hat and stick and went forth into the street. The city had
suddenly become as strange and vast and empty as if he were a traveller
from distant lands. For a moment he stood on the door-step hesitating;
then he decided to go to the Parker House. What if the messenger had
been misinformed, and she were still there?
He started to walk across the Common; and on the first bench, under
a tree, he saw her sitting. She had a grey silk sunshade over her
head--how could he ever have imagined her with a pink one? As he
approached he was struck by her listless attitude: she sat there as
if she had nothing else to do. He saw her drooping profile, and the
knot of hair fastened low in the neck under her dark hat, and the long
wrinkled glove on the hand that held the sunshade. He came a step or
two nearer, and she turned and looked at him.
"Oh"--she said; and for the first time he noticed a startled look on
her face; but in another moment it gave way to a slow smile of wonder
and contentment.
"Oh"--she murmured again, on a different note, as he stood looking down
at her; and without rising she made a place for him on the bench.
"I'm here on business--just got here," Archer explained; and, without
knowing why, he suddenly began to feign astonishment at seeing her.
"But what on earth are you doing in this wilderness?" He had really no
idea what he was saying: he felt as if he were shouting at her across
endless distances, and she might vanish again before he could overtake
her.
"I? Oh, I'm here on business too," she answered, turning her head
toward him so that they were face to face. The words hardly reached
him: he was aware only of her voice, and of the startling fact that not
an echo of it had remained in his memory. He had not even remembered
that it was low-pitched, with a faint roughness on the consonants.
"You do your hair differently," he said, his heart beating as if he had
uttered something irrevocable.
"Differently? No--it's only that I do it as best I can when I'm without
Nastasia."
"Nastasia; but isn't she with you?"
"No; I'm alone. For two days it was not worth while to bring her."
"You're alone--at the Parker House?"
She looked at him with a flash of her old malice. "Does it strike you
as dangerous?"
"No; not dangerous--"
"But unconventional? I see; I suppose it is." She considered a moment.
"I hadn't thought of it, because I've just done something so much more
unconventional." The faint tinge of irony lingered in her eyes. "I've
just refused to take back a sum of money--that belonged to me."
Archer sprang up and moved a step or two away. She had furled her
parasol and sat absently drawing patterns on the gravel. Presently he
came back and stood before her.
"Some one--has come here to meet you?"
"Yes."
"With this offer?"
She nodded.
"And you refused--because of the conditions?"
"I refused," she said after a moment.