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.
XXVII.
Wall Street, the next day, had more reassuring reports of Beaufort's situation.They were not definite, but they were hopeful.It was generally understood that he could call on powerful influences in case of emergency,and that he had done so with success; and that evening, when Mrs.Beaufort appeared at the Opera wearing her old smile and a new emerald necklace, society drew a breath of relief.
New York was inexorable in its condemnation of business irregularities.So far there had been no exception to its tacit rule that those who broke the law of probity must pay;and every one was aware that even Beaufort and Beaufort's wife would be offered up unflinchingly to this principle.But to be obliged to offer them up would be not only painful but inconvenient.The disappearance of the Beauforts would leave a considerable void in their compact little circle;and those who were too ignorant or too careless to shudder at the moral catastrophe bewailed in advance the loss of the best ball-room in New York.
Archer had definitely made up his mind to go to Washington.He was waiting only for the opening of the law-suit of which he had spoken to May,so that its date might coincide with that of his visit;but on the following Tuesday he learned from Mr.Letterblair that the case might be postponed for several weeks. Nevertheless,he went home that afternoon determined in any event to leave the next evening.The chances were that May, who knew nothing of his professional life,and had never shown any interest in it, would not learn of the postponement, should it take place,nor remember the names of the litigants if they were mentioned before her;and at any rate he could no longer put off seeing Madame Olenska.There were too many things that he must say to her.
On the Wednesday morning, when he reached his office, Mr. Letterblair met him with a troubled face.Beaufort, after all, had not managed to"tide over";but by setting afloat the rumour that he had done so he had reassured his depositors,and heavy payments had poured into the bank till the previous evening,when disturbing reports again began to predominate. In consequence, a run on the bank had begun,and its doors were likely to close before the day was over.The ugliest things were being said of Beaufort's dastardly manœuvre,and his failure promised to be one of the most discreditable in the history of Wall Street.
The extent of the calamity left Mr. Letterblair white and incapacitated."I've seen bad things in my time; but nothing as bad as this. Everybody we know will be hit,one way or another. And what will be done about Mrs. Beaufort?What _can_ be done about her?I pity Mrs. Manson Mingott as much as anybody: coming at her age,there's no knowing what effect this affair may have on her.She always believed in Beaufort--she made a friend of him!And there's the whole Dallas connection: poor Mrs. Beaufort is related to every one of you.Her only chance would be to leave her husband--yet how can any one tell her so?Her duty is at his side; and luckily she seems always to have been blind to his private weaknesses."
There was a knock, and Mr. Letterblair turned his head sharply. "What is it?I can't be disturbed."
A clerk brought in a letter for Archer and withdrew. Recognising his wife's hand,the young man opened the envelope and read: "Won't you please come up town as early as you can?Granny had a slight stroke last night. In some mysterious way she found out before any one else this awful news about the bank.Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and the idea of the disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a temperature and can't leave his room.Mamma needs you dreadfully, and I do hope you can get away at once and go straight to Granny's."
Archer handed the note to his senior partner,and a few minutes later was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car,which he exchanged at Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth Avenue line.It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious vehicle dropped him at old Catherine's.The sitting-room window on the ground floor, where she usually throned,was tenanted by the inadequate figure of her daughter, Mrs. Welland,who signed a haggard welcome as she caught sight of Archer; and at the door he was met by May.The hall wore the unnatural appearance peculiar to well-kept houses suddenly invaded by illness:wraps and furs lay in heaps on the chairs, a doctor's bag and overcoat were on the table,and beside them letters and cards had already piled up unheeded.
May looked pale but smiling: Dr. Bencomb, who had just come for the second time,took a more hopeful view, and Mrs. Mingott's dauntless determination to live and get well was already having an effect on her family.May led Archer into the old lady's sitting-room,where the sliding doors opening into the bedroom had been drawn shut,and the heavy yellow damask portières dropped over them; and here Mrs.Welland communicated to him in horrified undertones the details of the catastrophe.It appeared that the evening before something dreadful and mysterious had happened.At about eight o'clock, just after Mrs.Mingott had finished the game of solitaire that she always played after dinner,the door-bell had rung, and a lady so thickly veiled that the servants did not immediately recognise her had asked to be received.
The butler, hearing a familiar voice, had thrown open the sitting-room door, announcing: "Mrs.Julius Beaufort"--and had then closed it again on the two ladies. They must have been together,he thought, about an hour. When Mrs. Mingott's bell rang Mrs.Beaufort had already slipped away unseen, and the old lady, white and vast and terrible,sat alone in her great chair, and signed to the butler to help her into her room. She seemed,at that time, though obviously distressed, in complete control of her body and brain.The mulatto maid put her to bed, brought her a cup of tea as usual,laid everything straight in the room, and went away;but at three in the morning the bell rang again, and the two servants,hastening in at this unwonted summons (for old Catherine usually slept like a baby),had found their mistress sitting up against her pillows with a crooked smile on her face and one little hand hanging limp from its huge arm.
The stroke had clearly been a slight one,for she was able to articulate and to make her wishes known;and soon after the doctor's first visit she had begun to regain control of her facial muscles.But the alarm had been great; and proportionately great was the indignation when it was gathered from Mrs.Mingott's fragmentary phrases that Regina Beaufort had come to ask her--incredible effrontery!--to back up her husband, see them through--not to "desert" them,as she called it--in fact to induce the whole family to cover and condone their monstrous dishonour.
"I said to her: 'Honour's always been honour, and honesty honesty, in Manson Mingott's house,and will be till I'm carried out of it feet first,'" the old woman had stammered into her daughter's ear, in the thick voice of the partly paralysed."And when she said: 'But my name, Auntie--my name's Regina Dallas,' I said:'It was Beaufort when he covered you with jewels,and it's got to stay Beaufort now that he's covered you with shame.'"
So much, with tears and gasps of horror, Mrs. Welland imparted,blanched and demolished by the unwonted obligation of having at last to fix her eyes on the unpleasant and the discreditable."If only I could keep it from your father-in-law: he always says: 'Augusta, for pity's sake,don't destroy my last illusions'--and how am I to prevent his knowing these horrors?" the poor lady wailed.
"After all, Mamma, he won't have _seen_ them," her daughter suggested; and Mrs. Welland sighed: "Ah,no; thank heaven he's safe in bed. And Dr.Bencomb has promised to keep him there till poor Mamma is better,and Regina has been got away somewhere."
Archer had seated himself near the window and was gazing out blankly at the deserted thoroughfare.It was evident that he had been summoned rather for the moral support of the stricken ladies than because of any specific aid that he could render.Mr. Lovell Mingott had been telegraphed for,and messages were being despatched by hand to the members of the family living in New York;and meanwhile there was nothing to do but to discuss in hushed tones the consequences of Beaufort's dishonour and of his wife's unjustifiable action.
Mrs. Lovell Mingott, who had been in another room writing notes, presently reappeared,and added her voice to the discussion. In _their_ day, the elder ladies agreed,the wife of a man who had done anything disgraceful in business had only one idea:to efface herself, to disappear with him. "There was the case of poor Grandmamma Spicer;your great-grandmother, May. Of course," Mrs. Welland hastened to add,"your great-grandfather's money difficulties were private--losses at cards,or signing a note for somebody--I never quite knew, because Mamma would never speak of it.But she was brought up in the country because her mother had to leave New York after the disgrace,whatever it was: they lived up the Hudson alone, winter and summer, till Mamma was sixteen.It would never have occurred to Grandmamma Spicer to ask the family to'countenance' her,as I understand Regina calls it; though a private disgrace is nothing compared to the scandal of ruining hundreds of innocent people. "
"Yes, it would be more becoming in Regina to hide her own countenance than to talk about other people's," Mrs. Lovell Mingott agreed. "I understand that the emerald necklace she wore at the Opera last Friday had been sent on approval from Ball and Black's in the afternoon. I wonder if they'll ever get it back?"
Archer listened unmoved to the relentless chorus.The idea of absolute financial probity as the first law of a gentleman's code was too deeply ingrained in him for sentimental considerations to weaken it.An adventurer like Lemuel Struthers might build up the millions of his Shoe Polish on any number of shady dealings;but unblemished honesty was the _noblesse oblige_ of old financial New York. Nor did Mrs.Beaufort's fate greatly move Archer. He felt, no doubt,more sorry for her than her indignant relatives;but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity,should be indissoluble in misfortune. As Mr. Letterblair had said,a wife's place was at her husband's side when he was in trouble;but society's place was not at his side, and Mrs.Beaufort's cool assumption that it was seemed almost to make her his accomplice.The mere idea of a woman's appealing to her family to screen her husband's business dishonour was inadmissible,since it was the one thing that the Family, as an institution, could not do.
The mulatto maid called Mrs. Lovell Mingott into the hall,and the latter came back in a moment with a frowning brow.
"She wants me to telegraph for Ellen Olenska. I had written to Ellen, of course, and to Medora;but now it seems that's not enough. I'm to telegraph to her immediately,and to tell her that she's to come alone."
The announcement was received in silence. Mrs. Welland sighed resignedly,and May rose from her seat and went to gather up some newspapers that had been scattered on the floor.
"I suppose it must be done," Mrs. Lovell Mingott continued, as if hoping to be contradicted;and May turned back toward the middle of the room.
"Of course it must be done," she said. "Granny knows what she wants,and we must carry out all her wishes. Shall I write the telegram for you, Auntie?If it goes at once Ellen can probably catch tomorrow morning's train." She pronounced the syllables of the name with a peculiar clearness,as if she had tapped on two silver bells.
"Well, it can't go at once. Jasper and the pantry-boy are both out with notes and telegrams."
May turned to her husband with a smile. "But here's Newland, ready to do anything. Will you take the telegram, Newland?There'll be just time before luncheon."
Archer rose with a murmur of readiness, and she seated herself at old Catherine's rosewood "Bonheur du Jour," and wrote out the message in her large immature hand.When it was written she blotted it neatly and handed it to Archer.
"What a pity," she said, "that you and Ellen will cross each other on the way!--Newland," she added, turning to her mother and aunt,"is obliged to go to Washington about a patent law-suit that is coming up before the Supreme Court.I suppose Uncle Lovell will be back by tomorrow night,and with Granny improving so much it doesn't seem right to ask Newland to give up an important engagement for the firm--does it?"
She paused, as if for an answer, and Mrs. Welland hastily declared:"Oh, of course not, darling.Your Granny would be the last person to wish it." As Archer left the room with the telegram,he heard his mother-in-law add, presumably to Mrs. Lovell Mingott:"But why on earth she should make you telegraph for Ellen Olenska--" and May's clear voice rejoin:"Perhaps it's to urge on her again that after all her duty is with her husband."
The outer door closed on Archer and he walked hastily away toward the telegraph office.
XXVIII.
"Ol--ol--howjer spell it, anyhow?" asked the tart young lady to whom Archer had pushed his wife's telegram across the brass ledge of the Western Union office.
"Olenska--O-len-ska," he repeated, drawing back the message in order to print out the foreign syllables above May's rambling script.
"It's an unlikely name for a New York telegraph office; at least in this quarter," an unexpected voice observed; and turning around Archer saw Lawrence Lefferts at his elbow,pulling an imperturbable moustache and affecting not to glance at the message.
"Hallo, Newland: thought I'd catch you here. I've just heard of old Mrs. Mingott's stroke;and as I was on my way to the house I saw you turning down this street and nipped after you. I suppose you've come from there?"
Archer nodded, and pushed his telegram under the lattice.
"Very bad, eh?" Lefferts continued. "Wiring to the family, I suppose. I gather it _is_ bad, if you're including Countess Olenska."
Archer's lips stiffened; he felt a savage impulse to dash his fist into the long vain handsome face at his side.
"Why?" he questioned.
Lefferts, who was known to shrink from discussion,raised his eye-brows with an ironic grimace that warned the other of the watching damsel behind the lattice.Nothing could be worse "form" the look reminded Archer,than any display of temper in a public place.
Archer had never been more indifferent to the requirements of form;but his impulse to do Lawrence Lefferts a physical injury was only momentary.The idea of bandying Ellen Olenska's name with him at such a time, and on whatsoever provocation,was unthinkable. He paid for his telegram, and the two young men went out together into the street.There Archer, having regained his self-control, went on: "Mrs. Mingott is much better:the doctor feels no anxiety whatever"; and Lefferts, with profuse expressions of relief,asked him if he had heard that there were beastly bad rumours again about Beaufort....
That afternoon the announcement of the Beaufort failure was in all the papers.It overshadowed the report of Mrs. Manson Mingott's stroke,and only the few who had heard of the mysterious connection between the two events thought of ascribing old Catherine's illness to anything but the accumulation of flesh and years.
The whole of New York was darkened by the tale of Beaufort's dishonour. There had never, as Mr.Letterblair said, been a worse case in his memory, nor, for that matter,in the memory of the far-off Letterblair who had given his name to the firm.The bank had continued to take in money for a whole day after its failure was inevitable;and as many of its clients belonged to one or another of the ruling clans,Beaufort's duplicity seemed doubly cynical. If Mrs.Beaufort had not taken the tone that such misfortunes (the word was her own) were"the test of friendship," compassion for her might have tempered the general indignation against her husband.As it was--and especially after the object of her nocturnal visit to Mrs.Manson Mingott had become known--her cynicism was held to exceed his;and she had not the excuse--nor her detractors the satisfaction--of pleading that she was"a foreigner." It was some comfort (to those whose securities were not in jeopardy) to be able to remind themselves that Beaufort _was_;but, after all, if a Dallas of South Carolina took his view of the case,and glibly talked of his soon being "on his feet again," the argument lost its edge,and there was nothing to do but to accept this awful evidence of the indissolubility of marriage.Society must manage to get on without the Beauforts,and there was an end of it--except indeed for such hapless victims of the disaster as Medora Manson,the poor old Miss Lannings, and certain other misguided ladies of good family who,if only they had listened to Mr. Henry van der Luyden ...
"The best thing the Beauforts can do," said Mrs. Archer,summing it up as if she were pronouncing a diagnosis and prescribing a course of treatment,"is to go and live at Regina's little place in North Carolina.Beaufort has always kept a racing stable, and he had better breed trotting horses.I should say he had all the qualities of a successful horsedealer." Every one agreed with her,but no one condescended to enquire what the Beauforts really meant to do.
The next day Mrs. Manson Mingott was much better:she recovered her voice sufficiently to give orders that no one should mention the Beauforts to her again,and asked--when Dr. Bencomb appeared--what in the world her family meant by making such a fuss about her health.
"If people of my age _will_ eat chicken-salad in the evening what are they to expect?" she enquired; and, the doctor having opportunely modified her dietary,the stroke was transformed into an attack of indigestion.But in spite of her firm tone old Catherine did not wholly recover her former attitude toward life.The growing remoteness of old age, though it had not diminished her curiosity about her neighbours,had blunted her never very lively compassion for their troubles;and she seemed to have no difficulty in putting the Beaufort disaster out of her mind.But for the first time she became absorbed in her own symptoms,and began to take a sentimental interest in certain members of her family to whom she had hitherto been contemptuously indifferent.
Mr. Welland, in particular, had the privilege of attracting her notice.Of her sons-in-law he was the one she had most consistently ignored;and all his wife's efforts to represent him as a man of forceful character and marked intellectual ability (if he had only "chosen") had been met with a derisive chuckle. But his eminence as a valetudinarian now made him an object of engrossing interest, and Mrs. Mingott issued an imperial summons to him to come and compare diets as soon as his temperature permitted; for old Catherine was now the first to recognise that one could not be too careful about temperatures.
Twenty-four hours after Madame Olenska's summons a telegram announced that she would arrive from Washington on the evening of the following day.At the Wellands', where the Newland Archers chanced to be lunching,the question as to who should meet her at Jersey City was immediately raised;and the material difficulties amid which the Welland household struggled as if it had been a frontier outpost,lent animation to the debate. It was agreed that Mrs.Welland could not possibly go to Jersey City because she was to accompany her husband to old Catherine's that afternoon,and the brougham could not be spared, since, if Mr.Welland were "upset" by seeing his mother-in-law for the first time after her attack,he might have to be taken home at a moment's notice.The Welland sons would of course be "down town," Mr.Lovell Mingott would be just hurrying back from his shooting,and the Mingott carriage engaged in meeting him; and one could not ask May,at the close of a winter afternoon, to go alone across the ferry to Jersey City,even in her own carriage. Nevertheless,it might appear inhospitable--and contrary to old Catherine's express wishes--if Madame Olenska were allowed to arrive without any of the family being at the station to receive her. It was just like Ellen, Mrs. Welland's tired voice implied, to place the family in such a dilemma. "It's always one thing after another," the poor lady grieved, in one of her rare revolts against fate; "the only thing that makes me think Mamma must be less well than Dr. Bencomb will admit is this morbid desire to have Ellen come at once, however inconvenient it is to meet her."
The words had been thoughtless, as the utterances of impatience often are; and Mr. Welland was upon them with a pounce.