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?