Archer turned toward the door,and his mother-in-law called to him:"Do go in and have a peep at the table.And don't let May tire herself too much." But he affected not to hear,and sprang up the stairs to his library.The room looked at him like an alien countenance composed into a polite grimace; and he perceived that it had been ruthlessly"tidied," and prepared, by a judicious distribution of ash-trays and cedar-wood boxes, for the gentlemen to smoke in.
"Ah, well," he thought,"it's not for long--" and he went on to his dressing-room.
Ten days had passed since Madame Olenska's departure from New York.During those ten days Archer had had no sign from her but that conveyed by the return of a key wrapped in tissue paper, and sent to his office in a sealed envelope addressed in her hand. This retort to his last appeal might have been interpreted as a classic move in a familiar game; but the young man chose to give it a different meaning. She was still fighting against her fate; but she was going to Europe, and she was not returning to her husband. Nothing, therefore, was to prevent his following her; and once he had taken the irrevocable step, and had proved to her that it was irrevocable, he believed she would not send him away.
This confidence in the future had steadied him to play his part in the present.It had kept him from writing to her, or betraying,by any sign or act, his misery and mortification.It seemed to him that in the deadly silent game between them the trumps were still in his hands; and he waited.
There had been, nevertheless,moments sufficiently difficult to pass; as when Mr.Letterblair, the day after Madame Olenska's departure,had sent for him to go over the details of the trust which Mrs.Manson Mingott wished to create for her granddaughter.For a couple of hours Archer had examined the terms of the deed with his senior, all the while obscurely feeling that if he had been consulted it was for some reason other than the obvious one of his cousinship; and that the close of the conference would reveal it.
"Well, the lady can't deny that it's a handsome arrangement," Mr. Letterblair had summed up,after mumbling over a summary of the settlement."In fact I'm bound to say she's been treated pretty handsomely all round. "
"All round?" Archer echoed with a touch of derision."Do you refer to her husband's proposal to give her back her own money?"
Mr. Letterblair's bushy eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch."My dear sir, the law's the law;and your wife's cousin was married under the French law.It's to be presumed she knew what that meant."
"Even if she did, what happened subsequently--." But Archer paused. Mr.Letterblair had laid his pen-handle against his big corrugated nose,and was looking down it with the expression assumed by virtuous elderly gentlemen when they wish their youngers to understand that virtue is not synonymous with ignorance.
"My dear sir, I've no wish to extenuate the Count's transgressions;but--but on the other side ...I wouldn't put my hand in the fire... well,that there hadn't been tit for tat ...with the young champion...." Mr.Letterblair unlocked a drawer and pushed a folded paper toward Archer."This report, the result of discreet enquiries..." And then, as Archer made no effort to glance at the paper or to repudiate the suggestion, the lawyer somewhat flatly continued: "I don't say it's conclusive, you observe; far from it. But straws show... and on the whole it's eminently satisfactory for all parties that this dignified solution has been reached."
"Oh, eminently," Archer assented,pushing back the paper.
A day or two later, on responding to a summons from Mrs.Manson Mingott, his soul had been more deeply tried.
He had found the old lady depressed and querulous.
"You know she's deserted me?" she began at once; and without waiting for his reply:"Oh, don't ask me why!She gave so many reasons that I've forgotten them all.My private belief is that she couldn't face the boredom.At any rate that's what Augusta and my daughters-in-law think.And I don't know that I altogether blame her.Olenski's a finished scoundrel;but life with him must have been a good deal gayer than it is in Fifth Avenue.Not that the family would admit that:they think Fifth Avenue is Heaven with the rue de la Paix thrown in.And poor Ellen, of course,has no idea of going back to her husband.She held out as firmly as ever against that.So she's to settle down in Paris with that fool Medora....Well, Paris is Paris;and you can keep a carriage there on next to nothing.But she was as gay as a bird, and I shall miss her." Two tears, the parched tears of the old,rolled down her puffy cheeks and vanished in the abysses of her bosom.
"All I ask is," she concluded,"that they shouldn't bother me any more.I must really be allowed to digest my gruel...." And she twinkled a little wistfully at Archer.
It was that evening, on his return home,that May announced her intention of giving a farewell dinner to her cousin.Madame Olenska's name had not been pronounced between them since the night of her flight to Washington; and Archer looked at his wife with surprise.
"A dinner--why?" he interrogated.
Her colour rose. "But you like Ellen--I thought you'd be pleased. "
"It's awfully nice--your putting it in that way.But I really don't see--"
"I mean to do it, Newland," she said,quietly rising and going to her desk."Here are the invitations all written.Mother helped me--she agrees that we ought to." She paused, embarrassed and yet smiling,and Archer suddenly saw before him the embodied image of the Family.
"Oh, all right," he said,staring with unseeing eyes at the list of guests that she had put in his hand.
When he entered the drawing-room before dinner May was stooping over the fire and trying to coax the logs to burn in their unaccustomed setting of immaculate tiles.
The tall lamps were all lit, and Mr.van der Luyden's orchids had been conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and knobby silver. Mrs. Newland Archer's drawing-room was generally thought a great success. A gilt bamboo _jardinière_, in which the primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to the bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze reduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and arm-chairs of pale brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames; and tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the palms.
"I don't think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted up," said May, rising flushed from her struggle,and sending about her a glance of pardonable pride.The brass tongs which she had propped against the side of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband's answer; and before he could restore them Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden were announced.
The other guests quickly followed,for it was known that the van der Luydens liked to dine punctually.The room was nearly full,and Archer was engaged in showing to Mrs.Selfridge Merry a small highly-varnished Verbeckhoven "Study of Sheep," which Mr. Welland had given May for Christmas,when he found Madame Olenska at his side.
She was excessively pale,and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser and heavier than ever.Perhaps that, or the fact that she had wound several rows of amber beads about her neck, reminded him suddenly of the little Ellen Mingott he had danced with at children's parties, when Medora Manson had first brought her to New York.