The Greatest Works of Edith Wharton - 31 Books in One Edition. Edith Wharton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ in his steam-yacht, he seized the opportunity to send down the table several striking items concerning the shallowness of the Mediterranean ports. Though, after all, he added, it didn’t matter; for when you’d seen Athens and Smyrna and Constantinople, what else was there? And Mrs. Merry said she could never be too grateful to Dr. Bencomb for having made them promise not to go to Naples on account of the fever.

      “But you must have three weeks to do India properly,” her husband conceded, anxious to have it understood that he was no frivolous globe-trotter.

      And at this point the ladies went up to the drawingroom.

      In the library, in spite of weightier presences, Lawrence Lefferts predominated.

      The talk, as usual, had veered around to the Beauforts, and even Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Selfridge Merry, installed in the honorary armchairs tacitly reserved for them, paused to listen to the younger man’s philippic.

      Never had Lefferts so abounded in the sentiments that adorn Christian manhood and exalt the sanctity of the home. Indignation lent him a scathing eloquence, and it was clear that if others had followed his example, and acted as he talked, society would never have been weak enough to receive a foreign upstart like Beaufort—no, sir, not even if he’d married a van der Luyden or a Lanning instead of a Dallas. And what chance would there have been, Lefferts wrathfully questioned, of his marrying into such a family as the Dallases, if he had not already wormed his way into certain houses, as people like Mrs. Lemuel Struthers had managed to worm theirs in his wake? If society chose to open its doors to vulgar women the harm was not great, though the gain was doubtful; but once it got in the way of tolerating men of obscure origin and tainted wealth the end was total disintegration—and at no distant date.

      “If things go on at this pace,” Lefferts thundered, looking like a young prophet dressed by Poole, and who had not yet been stoned, “we shall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers’ houses, and marrying Beaufort’s bastards.”

      “Oh, I say—draw it mild!” Reggie Chivers and young Newland protested, while Mr. Selfridge Merry looked genuinely alarmed, and an expression of pain and disgust settled on Mr. van der Luyden’s sensitive face.

      “Has he got any?” cried Mr. Sillerton Jackson, pricking up his ears; and while Lefferts tried to turn the question with a laugh, the old gentleman twittered into Archer’s ear: “Queer, those fellows who are always wanting to set things right. The people who have the worst cooks are always telling you they’re poisoned when they dine out. But I hear there are pressing reasons for our friend Lawrence’s diatribe:—typewriter this time, I understand… .”

      The talk swept past Archer like some senseless river running and running because it did not know enough to stop. He saw, on the faces about him, expressions of interest, amusement and even mirth. He listened to the younger men’s laughter, and to the praise of the Archer Madeira, which Mr. van der Luyden and Mr. Merry were thoughtfully celebrating. Through it all he was dimly aware of a general attitude of friendliness toward himself, as if the guard of the prisoner he felt himself to be were trying to soften his captivity; and the perception increased his passionate determination to be free.

      In the drawingroom, where they presently joined the ladies, he met May’s triumphant eyes, and read in them the conviction that everything had “gone off” beautifully. She rose from Madame Olenska’s side, and immediately Mrs. van der Luyden beckoned the latter to a seat on the gilt sofa where she throned. Mrs. Selfridge Merry bore across the room to join them, and it became clear to Archer that here also a conspiracy of rehabilitation and obliteration was going on. The silent organisation which held his little world together was determined to put itself on record as never for a moment having questioned the propriety of Madame Olenska’s conduct, or the completeness of Archer’s domestic felicity. All these amiable and inexorable persons were resolutely engaged in pretending to each other that they had never heard of, suspected, or even conceived possible, the least hint to the contrary; and from this tissue of elaborate mutual dissimulation Archer once more disengaged the fact that New York believed him to be Madame Olenska’s lover. He caught the glitter of victory in his wife’s eyes, and for the first time understood that she shared the belief. The discovery roused a laughter of inner devils that reverberated through all his efforts to discuss the Martha Washington ball with Mrs. Reggie Chivers and little Mrs. Newland; and so the evening swept on, running and running like a senseless river that did not know how to stop.

      At length he saw that Madame Olenska had risen and was saying goodbye. He understood that in a moment she would be gone, and tried to remember what he had said to her at dinner; but he could not recall a single word they had exchanged.

      She went up to May, the rest of the company making a circle about her as she advanced. The two young women clasped hands; then May bent forward and kissed her cousin.

      “Certainly our hostess is much the handsomer of the two,” Archer heard Reggie Chivers say in an undertone to young Mrs. Newland; and he remembered Beaufort’s coarse sneer at May’s ineffectual beauty.

      A moment later he was in the hall, putting Madame Olenska’s cloak about her shoulders.

      Through all his confusion of mind he had held fast to the resolve to say nothing that might startle or disturb her. Convinced that no power could now turn him from his purpose he had found strength to let events shape themselves as they would. But as he followed Madame Olenska into the hall he thought with a sudden hunger of being for a moment alone with her at the door of her carriage.

      “Is your carriage here?” he asked; and at that moment Mrs. van der Luyden, who was being majestically inserted into her sables, said gently: “We are driving dear Ellen home.”

      Archer’s heart gave a jerk, and Madame Olenska, clasping her cloak and fan with one hand, held out the other to him. “Goodbye,” she said.

      “Goodbye—but I shall see you soon in Paris,” he answered aloud—it seemed to him that he had shouted it.

      “Oh,” she murmured, “if you and May could come—!”

      Mr. van der Luyden advanced to give her his arm, and Archer turned to Mrs. van der Luyden. For a moment, in the billowy darkness inside the big landau, he caught the dim oval of a face, eyes shining steadily— and she was gone.

      As he went up the steps he crossed Lawrence Lefferts coming down with his wife. Lefferts caught his host by the sleeve, drawing back to let Gertrude pass.

      “I say, old chap: do you mind just letting it be understood that I’m dining with you at the club tomorrow night? Thanks so much, you old brick! Goodnight.”

      “It DID go off beautifully, didn’t it?” May questioned from the threshold of the library.

      Archer roused himself with a start. As soon as the last carriage had driven away, he had come up to the library and shut himself in, with the hope that his wife, who still lingered below, would go straight to her room. But there she stood, pale and drawn, yet radiating the factitious energy of one who has passed beyond fatigue.

      “May I come and talk it over?” she asked.

      “Of course, if you like. But you must be awfully sleepy—”

      “No, I’m not sleepy. I should like to sit with you a little.”

      “Very well,” he said, pushing her chair near the fire.

      She sat down and he resumed his seat; but neither spoke for a long time. At length Archer began abruptly: “Since you’re not tired, and want СКАЧАТЬ