Every year on the fifteenth of October Fifth Avenue opened its
shutters, unrolled its carpets and hung up its triple layer of
window-curtains.
By the first of November this household ritual was over, and society
had begun to look about and take stock of itself. By the fifteenth
the season was in full blast, Opera and theatres were putting forth
their new attractions, dinner-engagements were accumulating, and dates
for dances being fixed. And punctually at about this time Mrs. Archer
always said that New York was very much changed.
Observing it from the lofty stand-point of a non-participant, she was
able, with the help of Mr. Sillerton Jackson and Miss Sophy, to trace
each new crack in its surface, and all the strange weeds pushing up
between the ordered rows of social vegetables. It had been one of the
amusements of Archer's youth to wait for this annual pronouncement
of his mother's, and to hear her enumerate the minute signs of
disintegration that his careless gaze had overlooked. For New York, to
Mrs. Archer's mind, never changed without changing for the worse; and
in this view Miss Sophy Jackson heartily concurred.
Mr. Sillerton Jackson, as became a man of the world, suspended his
judgment and listened with an amused impartiality to the lamentations
of the ladies. But even he never denied that New York had changed; and
Newland Archer, in the winter of the second year of his marriage, was
himself obliged to admit that if it had not actually changed it was
certainly changing.
These points had been raised, as usual, at Mrs. Archer's Thanksgiving
dinner. At the date when she was officially enjoined to give thanks for
the blessings of the year it was her habit to take a mournful though
not embittered stock of her world, and wonder what there was to be
thankful for. At any rate, not the state of society; society, if it
could be said to exist, was rather a spectacle on which to call down
Biblical imprecations--and in fact, every one knew what the Reverend
Dr. Ashmore meant when he chose a text from Jeremiah (chap. ii.,
verse 25) for his Thanksgiving sermon. Dr. Ashmore, the new Rector of
St. Matthew's, had been chosen because he was very "advanced": his
sermons were considered bold in thought and novel in language. When he
fulminated against fashionable society he always spoke of its "trend";
and to Mrs. Archer it was terrifying and yet fascinating to feel
herself part of a community that was trending.
"There's no doubt that Dr. Ashmore is right: there _is_ a marked trend,"
she said, as if it were something visible and measurable, like a crack
in a house.
"It was odd, though, to preach about it on Thanksgiving," Miss Jackson
opined; and her hostess drily rejoined: "Oh, he means us to give thanks
for what's left."
Archer had been wont to smile at these annual vaticinations of his
mother's; but this year even he was obliged to acknowledge, as he
listened to an enumeration of the changes, that the "trend" was visible.
"The extravagance in dress--" Miss Jackson began. "Sillerton took me to
the first night of the Opera, and I can only tell you that Jane Merry's
dress was the only one I recognised from last year; and even that had
had the front panel changed. Yet I know she got it out from Worth only
two years ago, because my seamstress always goes in to make over her
Paris dresses before she wears them."
"Ah, Jane Merry is one of _us_," said Mrs. Archer sighing, as if it were
not such an enviable thing to be in an age when ladies were beginning
to flaunt abroad their Paris dresses as soon as they were out of the
Custom House, instead of letting them mellow under lock and key, in the
manner of Mrs. Archer's contemporaries.
"Yes; she's one of the few. In my youth," Miss Jackson rejoined,
"it was considered vulgar to dress in the newest fashions; and Amy
Sillerton has always told me that in Boston the rule was to put away
one's Paris dresses for two years. Old Mrs. Baxter Pennilow, who did
everything handsomely, used to import twelve a year, two velvet, two
satin, two silk, and the other six of poplin and the finest cashmere.
It was a standing order, and as she was ill for two years before she
died they found forty-eight Worth dresses that had never been taken out
of tissue paper; and when the girls left off their mourning they were
able to wear the first lot at the Symphony concerts without looking in
advance of the fashion."
"Ah, well, Boston is more conservative than New York; but I always
think it's a safe rule for a lady to lay aside her French dresses for
one season," Mrs. Archer conceded.
"It was Beaufort who started the new fashion by making his wife clap
her new clothes on her back as soon as they arrived: I must say at
times it takes all Regina's distinction not to look like ... like ..."
Miss Jackson glanced around the table, caught Janey's bulging gaze, and
took refuge in an unintelligible murmur.
"Like her rivals," said Mr. Sillerton Jackson, with the air of
producing an epigram.
"Oh,--" the ladies murmured; and Mrs. Archer added, partly to distract
her daughter's attention from forbidden topics: "Poor Regina! Her
Thanksgiving hasn't been a very cheerful one, I'm afraid. Have you
heard the rumours about Beaufort's speculations, Sillerton?"
Mr. Jackson nodded carelessly. Every one had heard the rumours in
question, and he scorned to confirm a tale that was already common
property.
A gloomy silence fell upon the party. No one really liked Beaufort,
and it was not wholly unpleasant to think the worst of his private
life; but the idea of his having brought financial dishonour on his
wife's family was too shocking to be enjoyed even by his enemies.
Archer's New York tolerated hypocrisy in private relations; but in
business matters it exacted a limpid and impeccable honesty. It was a
long time since any well-known banker had failed discreditably; but
every one remembered the social extinction visited on the heads of the
firm when the last event of the kind had happened. It would be the
same with the Beauforts, in spite of his power and her popularity;
not all the leagued strength of the Dallas connection would save poor
Regina if there were any truth in the reports of her husband's unlawful
speculations.
The talk took refuge in less ominous topics; but everything they
touched on seemed to confirm Mrs. Archer's sense of an accelerated
trend.
"Of course, Newland, I know you let dear May go to Mrs. Struthers's
Sunday evenings--" she began; and May interposed gaily: "Oh, you know,
everybody goes to Mrs. Struthers's now; and she was invited to Granny's
last reception."
It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York managed its transitions:
conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all
good faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age.
There was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally
she) had surrendered the keys, what was the use of pretending that it
was impregnable? Once people had tasted of Mrs. Struthers's easy Sunday
hospitality they were not likely to sit at home remembering that her
champagne was transmuted Shoe-Polish.
"I know, dear, I know," Mrs. Archer sighed. "Such things have to be, I
suppose, as long as _amusement_ is what people go out for; but I've never
quite forgiven your cousin Madame Olenska for being the first person to
countenance Mrs. Struthers."
A sudden blush rose to young Mrs. Archer's face; it surprised her
husband as much as the other guests about the table. "Oh, _Ellen_--" she
murmured, much in the same accusing and yet deprecating tone in which
her parents might have said: "Oh, _the Blenkers_--."
It was the note which the family had taken to sounding on the
mention of the Countess Olenska's name, since she had surprised and
inconvenienced them by remaining obdurate to her husband's advances;
but on May's lips it gave food for thought, and Archer looked at her
with the sense of strangeness that sometimes came over him when she was
most in the tone of her environment.
His mother, with less than her usual sensitiveness to atmosphere, still
insisted: "I've always thought that people like the Countess Olenska,
who have lived in aristocratic societies, ought to help us to keep up
our social distinctions, instead of ignoring them."
May's blush remained permanently vivid: it seemed to have a
significance beyond that implied by the recognition of Madame Olenska's
social bad faith.
"I've no doubt we all seem alike to foreigners," said Miss Jackson
tartly.
"I don't think Ellen cares for society; but nobody knows exactly what
she does care for," May continued, as if she had been groping for
something noncommittal.
"Ah, well--" Mrs. Archer sighed again.
Everybody knew that the Countess Olenska was no longer in the good
graces of her family. Even her devoted champion, old Mrs. Manson
Mingott, had been unable to defend her refusal to return to her
husband. The Mingotts had not proclaimed their disapproval aloud: their
sense of solidarity was too strong. They had simply, as Mrs. Welland
said, "let poor Ellen find her own level"--and that, mortifyingly
and incomprehensibly, was in the dim depths where the Blenkers
prevailed, and "people who wrote" celebrated their untidy rites. It
was incredible, but it was a fact, that Ellen, in spite of all her
opportunities and her privileges, had become simply "Bohemian." The
fact enforced the contention that she had made a fatal mistake in not
returning to Count Olenski. After all, a young woman's place was under
her husband's roof, especially when she had left it in circumstances
that ... well ... if one had cared to look into them ...
"Madame Olenska is a great favourite with the gentlemen," said Miss
Sophy, with her air of wishing to put forth something conciliatory when
she knew that she was planting a dart.
"Ah, that's the danger that a young woman like Madame Olenska is always
exposed to," Mrs. Archer mournfully agreed; and the ladies, on this
conclusion, gathered up their trains to seek the carcel globes of the
drawing-room, while Archer and Mr. Sillerton Jackson withdrew to the
Gothic library.
Once established before the grate, and consoling himself for the
inadequacy of the dinner by the perfection of his cigar, Mr. Jackson
became portentous and communicable.
"If the Beaufort smash comes," he announced, "there are going to be
disclosures."
Archer raised his head quickly: he could never hear the name without
the sharp vision of Beaufort's heavy figure, opulently furred and shod,
advancing through the snow at Skuytercliff.
"There's bound to be," Mr. Jackson continued, "the nastiest kind of a
cleaning up. He hasn't spent all his money on Regina."
"Oh, well--that's discounted, isn't it? My belief is he'll pull out
yet," said the young man, wanting to change the subject.
"Perhaps--perhaps. I know he was to see some of the influential people
today. Of course," Mr. Jackson reluctantly conceded, "it's to be hoped
they can tide him over--this time anyhow. I shouldn't like to think
of poor Regina's spending the rest of her life in some shabby foreign
watering-place for bankrupts."
Archer said nothing. It seemed to him so natural--however tragic--that
money ill-gotten should be cruelly expiated, that his mind, hardly
lingering over Mrs. Beaufort's doom, wandered back to closer questions.
What was the meaning of May's blush when the Countess Olenska had been
mentioned?
Four months had passed since the midsummer day that he and Madame
Olenska had spent together; and since then he had not seen her. He knew
that she had returned to Washington, to the little house which she and
Medora Manson had taken there: he had written to her once--a few words,
asking when they were to meet again--and she had even more briefly
replied: "Not yet."
Since then there had been no farther communication between them, and he
had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned
among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the
scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he
brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him,
his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual
life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency,
blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view
as an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own
room. Absent--that was what he was: so absent from everything most
densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him
to find they still imagined he was there.
He became aware that Mr. Jackson was clearing his throat preparatory to
farther revelations.
"I don't know, of course, how far your wife's family are aware of what
people say about--well, about Madame Olenska's refusal to accept her
husband's latest offer."
Archer was silent, and Mr. Jackson obliquely continued: "It's a
pity--it's certainly a pity--that she refused it."
"A pity? In God's name, why?"
Mr. Jackson looked down his leg to the unwrinkled sock that joined it
to a glossy pump.
"Well--to put it on the lowest ground--what's she going to live on now?"
"Now--?"
"If Beaufort--"
Archer sprang up, his fist banging down on the black walnut-edge of the
writing-table. The wells of the brass double-inkstand danced in their
sockets.
"What the devil do you mean, sir?"
Mr. Jackson, shifting himself slightly in his chair, turned a tranquil
gaze on the young man's burning face.
"Well--I have it on pretty good authority--in fact, on old Catherine's
herself--that the family reduced Countess Olenska's allowance
considerably when she definitely refused to go back to her husband;
and as, by this refusal, she also forfeits the money settled on her
when she married--which Olenski was ready to make over to her if she
returned--why, what the devil do _you_ mean, my dear boy, by asking me
what _I_ mean?" Mr. Jackson good-humouredly retorted.
Archer moved toward the mantelpiece and bent over to knock his ashes
into the grate.
"I don't know anything of Madame Olenska's private affairs; but I don't
need to, to be certain that what you insinuate--"
"Oh, I don't: it's Lefferts, for one," Mr. Jackson interposed.
"Lefferts--who made love to her and got snubbed for it!" Archer broke
out contemptuously.
"Ah--_did_ he?" snapped the other, as if this were exactly the fact he
had been laying a trap for. He still sat sideways from the fire, so
that his hard old gaze held Archer's face as if in a spring of steel.
"Well, well: it's a pity she didn't go back before Beaufort's cropper,"
he repeated. "If she goes _now_, and if he fails, it will only confirm
the general impression: which isn't by any means peculiar to Lefferts,
by the way."
"Oh, she won't go back now: less than ever!" Archer had no sooner said
it than he had once more the feeling that it was exactly what Mr.
Jackson had been waiting for.
The old gentleman considered him attentively. "That's your opinion,
eh? Well, no doubt you know. But everybody will tell you that the few
pennies Medora Manson has left are all in Beaufort's hands; and how
the two women are to keep their heads above water unless he does,
I can't imagine. Of course, Madame Olenska may still soften old
Catherine, who's been the most inexorably opposed to her staying; and
old Catherine could make her any allowance she chooses. But we all know
that she hates parting with good money; and the rest of the family have
no particular interest in keeping Madame Olenska here."
Archer was burning with unavailing wrath: he was exactly in the state
when a man is sure to do something stupid, knowing all the while that
he is doing it.
He saw that Mr. Jackson had been instantly struck by the fact that
Madame Olenska's differences with her grandmother and her other
relations were not known to him, and that the old gentleman had drawn
his own conclusions as to the reasons for Archer's exclusion from
the family councils. This fact warned Archer to go warily; but the
insinuations about Beaufort made him reckless. He was mindful, however,
if not of his own danger, at least of the fact that Mr. Jackson was
under his mother's roof, and consequently his guest. Old New York
scrupulously observed the etiquette of hospitality, and no discussion
with a guest was ever allowed to degenerate into a disagreement.
"Shall we go up and join my mother?" he suggested curtly, as Mr.
Jackson's last cone of ashes dropped into the brass ashtray at his
elbow.
On the drive homeward May remained oddly silent; through the darkness,
he still felt her enveloped in her menacing blush. What its menace
meant he could not guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the fact
that Madame Olenska's name had evoked it.
They went upstairs, and he turned into the library. She usually
followed him; but he heard her passing down the passage to her bedroom.
"May!" he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a slight
glance of surprise at his tone.
"This lamp is smoking again; I should think the servants might see that
it's kept properly trimmed," he grumbled nervously.
"I'm so sorry: it shan't happen again," she answered, in the firm
bright tone she had learned from her mother; and it exasperated Archer
to feel that she was already beginning to humour him like a younger Mr.
Welland. She bent over to lower the wick, and as the light struck up on
her white shoulders and the clear curves of her face he thought: "How
young she is! For what endless years this life will have to go on!"
He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding
blood in his veins. "Look here," he said suddenly, "I may have to go to
Washington for a few days--soon; next week perhaps."
Her hand remained on the key of the lamp as she turned to him slowly.
The heat from its flame had brought back a glow to her face, but it
paled as she looked up.
"On business?" she asked, in a tone which implied that there could
be no other conceivable reason, and that she had put the question
automatically, as if merely to finish his own sentence.
"On business, naturally. There's a patent case coming up before
the Supreme Court--" He gave the name of the inventor, and went on
furnishing details with all Lawrence Lefferts's practised glibness,
while she listened attentively, saying at intervals: "Yes, I see."
"The change will do you good," she said simply, when he had finished;
"and you must be sure to go and see Ellen," she added, looking him
straight in the eyes with her cloudless smile, and speaking in the
tone she might have employed in urging him not to neglect some irksome
family duty.
It was the only word that passed between them on the subject; but in
the code in which they had both been trained it meant: "Of course you
understand that I know all that people have been saying about Ellen,
and heartily sympathise with my family in their effort to get her to
return to her husband. I also know that, for some reason you have not
chosen to tell me, you have advised her against this course, which
all the older men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree
in approving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Ellen
defies us all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which
Mr. Sillerton Jackson probably gave you, this evening, the hint that
has made you so irritable.... Hints have indeed not been wanting; but
since you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you this
one myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind can
communicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand
that I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in Washington, and are
perhaps going there expressly for that purpose; and that, since you
are sure to see her, I wish you to do so with my full and explicit
approval--and to take the opportunity of letting her know what the
course of conduct you have encouraged her in is likely to lead to."
Her hand was still on the key of the lamp when the last word of this
mute message reached him. She turned the wick down, lifted off the
globe, and breathed on the sulky flame.
"They smell less if one blows them out," she explained, with her bright
housekeeping air. On the threshold she turned and paused for his kiss.