She looked slightly surprised,and then her eyes brightened."You mean you can manage it for me?I can talk to you instead of Mr. Letterblair?Oh, that will be so much easier!"
Her tone touched him,and his confidence grew with his self-satisfaction.He perceived that she had spoken of business to Beaufort simply to get rid of him; and to have routed Beaufort was something of a triumph.
"I am here to talk about it," he repeated.
She sat silent, her head still propped by the arm that rested on the back of the sofa. Her face looked pale and extinguished, as if dimmed by the rich red of her dress. She struck Archer, of a sudden, as a pathetic and even pitiful figure.
"Now we're coming to hard facts," he thought,conscious in himself of the same instinctive recoil that he had so often criticised in his mother and her contemporaries. How little practice he had had in dealing with unusual situations!Their very vocabulary was unfamiliar to him,and seemed to belong to fiction and the stage.In face of what was coming he felt as awkward and embarrassed as a boy.
After a pause Madame Olenska broke out with unexpected vehemence:"I want to be free; I want to wipe out all the past."
"I understand that."
Her face warmed. "Then you'll help me?"
"First--" he hesitated--"perhaps I ought to know a little more. "
She seemed surprised."You know about my husband--my life with him?"
He made a sign of assent.
"Well--then--what more is there?In this country are such things tolerated?I'm a Protestant--our church does not forbid divorce in such cases. "
"Certainly not."
They were both silent again,and Archer felt the spectre of Count Olenski's letter grimacing hideously between them. The letter filled only half a page, and was just what he had described it to be in speaking of it to Mr. Letterblair: the vague charge of an angry blackguard. But how much truth was behind it?Only Count Olenski's wife could tell.
"I've looked through the papers you gave to Mr.Letterblair," he said at length.
"Well--can there be anything more abominable?"
"No."
She changed her position slightly,screening her eyes with her lifted hand.
"Of course you know," Archer continued,"that if your husband chooses to fight the case--as he threatens to--"
"Yes--?"
"He can say things--things that might be unpl--might be disagreeable to you:say them publicly, so that they would get about,and harm you even if--"
"If--?"
"I mean: no matter how unfounded they were."
She paused for a long interval; so long that,not wishing to keep his eyes on her shaded face,he had time to imprint on his mind the exact shape of her other hand,the one on her knee,and every detail of the three rings on her fourth and fifth fingers;among which, he noticed, a wedding ring did not appear.
"What harm could such accusations,even if he made them publicly, do me here?"
It was on his lips to exclaim:"My poor child--far more harm than anywhere else!" Instead, he answered,in a voice that sounded in his ears like Mr.Letterblair's: "New York society is a very small world compared with the one you've lived in. And it's ruled, in spite of appearances, by a few people with--well, rather old-fashioned ideas."
She said nothing, and he continued:"Our ideas about marriage and divorce are particularly old-fashioned.Our legislation favours divorce--our social customs don't. "
"Never?"
"Well--not if the woman, however injured,however irreproachable,has appearances in the least degree against her,has exposed herself by any unconventional action to--to offensive insinuations--"
She drooped her head a little lower,and he waited again,intensely hoping for a flash of indignation,or at least a brief cry of denial. None came.
A little travelling clock ticked purringly at her elbow,and a log broke in two and sent up a shower of sparks.The whole hushed and brooding room seemed to be waiting silently with Archer.
"Yes," she murmured at length,"that's what my family tell me."
He winced a little. "It's not unnatural--"
"_Our_ family," she corrected herself;and Archer coloured. "For you'll be my cousin soon," she continued gently.
"I hope so."
"And you take their view?"
He stood up at this, wandered across the room,stared with void eyes at one of the pictures against the old red damask,and came back irresolutely to her side.How could he say: "Yes,if what your husband hints is true,or if you've no way of disproving it?"
"Sincerely--" she interjected, as he was about to speak.
He looked down into the fire. "Sincerely,then--what should you gain that would compensate for the possibility--the certainty--of a lot of beastly talk?"
"But my freedom--is that nothing?"
It flashed across him at that instant that the charge in the letter was true,and that she hoped to marry the partner of her guilt.How was he to tell her that,if she really cherished such a plan,the laws of the State were inexorably opposed to it?The mere suspicion that the thought was in her mind made him feel harshly and impatiently toward her. "But aren't you as free as air as it is?" he returned. "Who can touch you?Mr. Letterblair tells me the financial question has been settled--"
"Oh, yes," she said indifferently.
"Well, then: is it worth while to risk what may be infinitely disagreeable and painful?Think of the newspapers--their vileness!It's all stupid and narrow and unjust--but one can't make over society. "
"No," she acquiesced;and her tone was so faint and desolate that he felt a sudden remorse for his own hard thoughts.
"The individual, in such cases,is nearly always sacrificed to what is supposed to be the collective interest:people cling to any convention that keeps the family together--protects the children, if there are any," he rambled on, pouring out all the stock phrases that rose to his lips in his intense desire to cover over the ugly reality which her silence seemed to have laid bare. Since she would not or could not say the one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret. Better keep on the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a wound he could not heal.