Chapter 10

The next day, Archer got May to walk in the Park after lunch. She usually went to church with her parents on Sunday afternoons. But Mrs. Welland let her miss it.

That morning, she made May accept a long engagement. May needed time to prepare her trousseau. A trousseau was her store of hand-made clothes for marriage. It must hold the proper dozens of everything.

The day was lovely. Bare trees arched over the Mall like a church roof. Between them, the sky was deep blue. Snow shone like broken glass.

The weather brought out May's brightness. She burned like a young maple tree in the cold. A maple had bright red leaves in the fall. People looked at her, and Archer felt proud. The joy of owning her cleared his deeper worries.

"It's so sweet — waking every morning to smell lilies-of-the-valley in one's room!" she said.

"Yesterday they came late. I had no time in the morning —"

"But you remember them yourself each day," she said. "That makes me love them more. A fixed order would bring them like a music teacher, always on time. Gertrude Lefferts's flowers came that way before her marriage."

"Ah, they would!" Archer laughed. He looked at her fresh face, round as a fruit.

He felt safe enough to say more. "I saw fine yellow roses yesterday. I sent them to Madame Olenska. Was that right?"

"How dear of you! She loves flowers. But she said nothing about your roses at lunch today."

"Mr. Beaufort sent orchids, rare flowers with strange shapes. Henry van der Luyden sent sweet carnations from Skuytercliff."

May went on: "Flowers surprise her. Don't people send them in Europe? She thinks it a pretty custom."

"No wonder my roses looked small next to Beaufort's," Archer said. Then he remembered the missing card. He was sorry he spoke.

He wanted to mention his visit to Ellen. But her silence stopped him. His own silence made the visit feel secret.

He pushed the thought away and spoke of their future. He complained about the long engagement.

"If you call it long!" said May. "Isabel Chivers and Reggie were engaged for two years. Grace and Thorley for nearly a year and a half. Why isn't it good enough, just as we are?"

Every well-taught girl asked that old question. He felt ashamed for finding it childish. At almost twenty-two, when would May speak for herself?

"Never, I suppose, if we won't let them," he thought. He remembered his wild words to Mr. Sillerton Jackson: "Women ought to be as free as we are —"

Soon he must take the cloth from May's eyes. But her mothers before her all lived with covered eyes. They entered the family grave that way.

A small cold ran through him. His science books described Kentucky cave-fish. These fish stopped growing eyes because they lived in dark caves.

What if May opened her eyes and saw only blank space?

"We might have it much better," he said. "We might be really together, all the time. We might travel."

Her face lit up. "That would be lovely," she said. She would love to travel. But her mother would not understand their wanting to do things so differently.

"But the wish to do things differently is the whole reason!" he said.

"Newland! You're so original!" she cried, full of joy.

His heart sank. He spoke like every young man in his place. Habit and training gave May her answers. She even called him original.

"Original!" he said. "We're all as alike as paper figures cut from the same folded sheet. We're like patterns painted over and over on one wall. Can't you and I go our own way, May?"

He stopped and faced her. Her bright, clear eyes showed simple wonder.

"Why — shall we run away together and be married?" she laughed.

"If you would —"

"You do love me, Newland! I'm so happy."

"But then — why not be happier?"

"We can't behave like the people in stories, though, can we?"

"Why not — why not — why not?"

His pressing tired her. She knew they could not, but needed a reason. "I'm not clever enough to argue. But that would be vulgar, wouldn't it?"

She knew that one word would end the subject.

"Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar?"

The question clearly shook her. "Of course I should hate it," she answered, a little sharply. "And so would you."

He stood silent, beating his stick against his boot. May felt sure that her way of closing the discussion was the right one.

She went on happily: "I showed Ellen my ring. She saw nothing so beautiful in the rue de la Paix. That is the street of Paris's finest shops. I love your fine taste, Newland!"

The next afternoon, Archer sat smoking in his study. He had left his law office without visiting his club.

He felt low and feared doing the same things at the same hours.

"Sameness, sameness!" ran through his head like a song. He pictured the same tall hats behind the club window. That sameness drove him home.

He knew the men's subjects and what each would say. The Duke would come first.

They would also discuss a gold-haired lady in a yellow brougham with black horses. People thought Beaufort paid for it.

Few such "women" drove in New York. Miss Fanny Ring's Fifth Avenue visit shook society.

The day before, her carriage passed Mrs. Lovell Mingott's. Mrs. Mingott rang her bell and went home. People feared this happening to Mrs. van der Luyden.

Archer could almost hear Lawrence Lefferts, at that very hour, explaining how society was falling to pieces.

His sister Janey came in. He raised his head, not pleased. Then he bent quickly over his book, as if he did not see her. The book was Swinburne's "Chastelard" — just out.

Janey looked at the writing-table, covered with books. She picked up one of them, the "Contes Drolatiques," a book of funny old French stories. She made a face at the strange old French. "What learned things you read!" she said.

"Well — ?" he asked. She hung there before him like Cassandra. In the old Greek stories, Cassandra always came with news of trouble.

"Mother's very angry."

"Angry? With whom? About what?"

"Miss Sophy Jackson has just been here. She brought word that her brother will come in after dinner. She couldn't say very much, because he told her not to. He wishes to give all the details himself. He's with cousin Louisa van der Luyden now."

"Good God, my dear girl — begin again at the beginning. Only God himself could know what you're talking about."

"This is no time to make jokes about God, Newland.... Mother feels bad enough already about your not going to church..."

With a sound of deep suffering, he sank back into his book.

"Newland! Do listen. Your friend Madame Olenska was at Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's party last night. She went there with the Duke and Mr. Beaufort."

At those last words, a wild anger, without sense or reason, rose in the young man's breast. To press it down, he laughed. "Well, what of it? I knew she meant to go."

Janey went pale, and her eyes went wide. "You knew she meant to — and you didn't try to stop her? To warn her?"

"Stop her? Warn her?" He laughed again. "I'm not engaged to be married to the Countess Olenska!" The words sounded wild and strange in his own ears.

"You're marrying into her family."

"Oh, family — family!" he said with a hard laugh.

"Newland — don't you care about Family?"

"Not one penny's worth."

"Not even about what cousin Louisa van der Luyden will think?"

"Not one half-penny's worth — if what she thinks is such old maid's foolishness."

An old maid was an older woman who never married.

"Mother is not an old maid," said his unmarried sister, her lips pressed thin.

He wanted to shout back at her: "Yes, she is. The van der Luydens are too. We all are, the moment Reality brushes us with the very tip of its wing." But he saw her long, gentle face beginning to break into tears. He felt ashamed of giving her pain for nothing.

"Oh, hang Countess Olenska! Don't be silly, Janey — I'm not her keeper."

"No. But you did ask the Wellands to announce your engagement early, so that we might all support her. Cousin Louisa invited her to the dinner for the Duke only because of that."

"Well — what harm was there in inviting her? She was the best-looking woman in the room. She made the dinner a little more alive than most van der Luyden dinners."

"You know cousin Henry asked her only to please you. He made cousin Louisa agree. And now they're so upset that they're going back to Skuytercliff tomorrow. Newland, I think you'd better come down. You don't seem to understand how mother feels."

Newland found his mother in the drawing-room. She raised a troubled face from her work and asked: "Has Janey told you?"

"Yes." He tried to keep his voice as quiet and level as her own. "But I can't take it very seriously."

"Not even the fact that cousin Louisa and cousin Henry are hurt and angry?"

"The fact that they can be angry over such a small thing," he said. "Countess Olenska went to the house of a woman they consider common. That is all."

"Consider — !"

"Well, she is common. But she has good music, and she gives people something to enjoy on Sunday evenings. And that is when the whole of New York is dying of emptiness."

"Good music? All I know is this. A woman got up on a table. She sang the things they sing in the places you go to in Paris. There was smoking, and there was champagne."

"Well — things of that kind happen in other places, and the world still goes on."

"I don't suppose, dear, that you are really defending the French Sunday?"

"I've heard you complain often enough about the English Sunday, mother, when we've been in London."

"New York is neither Paris nor London."

"Oh, no, it is not!" said her son heavily.

"You mean, I suppose, that society here is not as brilliant? I dare say you're right. But we belong here. When people come among us, they should respect our ways. Ellen Olenska most of all — she came back to get away from the life people lead in brilliant societies."

Newland made no answer. After a moment his mother tried again. "I was going to put on my hat," she said. "I meant to ask you to take me to see cousin Louisa for a moment before dinner."

His face darkened, and she went on: "I thought you might explain to her what you've just said. That society abroad is different. That people there are not as particular. Perhaps Madame Olenska does not know how we feel about such things."

"It would be, you know, dear," she added with innocent skill, "for Madame Olenska's own good if you did."

"Dearest mother, I really don't see how this concerns us. The Duke took Madame Olenska to Mrs. Struthers's house. In fact, he first brought Mrs. Struthers to call on her. I was there when they came. If the van der Luydens want to fight with anybody, the real guilty one is under their own roof."

"Fight? Newland, did you ever once know cousin Henry to fight with anyone? Besides, the Duke is his guest. And a stranger, too."

"Strangers cannot see our fine differences — how should they? But Countess Olenska was born a New Yorker, and she owed respect to the feelings of New York."

"Well, then, if they must punish somebody, you may throw Madame Olenska to them," her son cried, out of patience. "I don't see myself — or you either — offering ourselves up to pay for her crimes."

"Oh, of course you see only the Mingott side," his mother answered. Her voice was hurt, and a hurt voice was the nearest she ever came to anger.

The sad servant drew back the heavy cloth that hung across the doorway. He announced: "Mr. Henry van der Luyden."

Mrs. Archer dropped her work and pushed back her chair with a hand that shook.

"Another lamp!" she called after the servant, while Janey bent over to straighten her mother's cap.

Mr. van der Luyden's tall figure filled the doorway, and Newland Archer went forward to greet his cousin.

"We were just talking about you, sir," he said.

The news troubled Mr. van der Luyden. He removed his glove and smoothed his tall hat. Janey offered a chair. Archer added, "And about the Countess Olenska."

Mrs. Archer went pale.

"Ah — a charming woman. I have just been to see her," said Mr. van der Luyden, calm and pleased once more. He sank into the chair and laid his hat and gloves on the floor beside him, in the old-fashioned way.

"She has a real gift for arranging flowers," he went on. "I sent her a few carnations from Skuytercliff, and what she did with them surprised me very much. She did not pack them into big heavy bunches, as our head gardener does. She spread them about loosely, here and there ... I can't say how."

"The Duke told me about it," he said. "He said: 'Go and see how cleverly she has arranged her drawing-room.' And she has. I should really like to take Louisa to see her. But the part of the town where she lives is so — unpleasant."

A dead silence met this unusual flow of words. Mrs. Archer's hands shook over her work. Newland turned a humming-bird feather screen. The second lamp lit Janey's open mouth.

Mr. van der Luyden smoothed his long grey leg with one bloodless hand. He wore the great ring of the old Patroon. The Patroon was the old Dutch head of the family.

"The fact is," he said, "I called to thank her for the pretty note she wrote me about my flowers. And also — but this stays between ourselves, of course — to give her a friendly warning. She must not let the Duke carry her off to parties with him. I don't know if you've heard —"

Mrs. Archer gave a soft, forgiving smile. "Has the Duke been carrying her off to parties?"

"You know what these great English gentlemen are. They're all alike. Louisa and I are very fond of our cousin. But men used to the courts of Europe never trouble themselves about our little republican ways. A republican country is a country with no king."

"The Duke goes where the fun is," he added. Mr. van der Luyden paused, but no one spoke.

"Yes — it seems he took her with him last night to Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's. Sillerton Jackson has just been to us with the foolish story, and Louisa was rather troubled."

"So I thought the shortest way was to go straight to Countess Olenska myself. I explained — with the lightest touch, you know — how we feel in New York about certain things."

"I felt I could speak without rudeness. At our dinner, she seemed to welcome a guiding hand. And she was glad."

Mr. van der Luyden looked pleased with himself. Yet on his pure face, pride became gentle kindness. Mrs. Archer's face reflected it.

"How kind you both are, dear Henry — always!" she said. "Newland will value what you have done more than anyone, because of dear May and his new family."

She shot a warning look at her son, who said: "Very much indeed, sir. But I was sure you'd like Madame Olenska."

Mr. van der Luyden looked at him with great gentleness. "My dear Newland, I never ask anyone to my house whom I do not like," he said. "And I have just told Sillerton Jackson the same thing."

With a look at the clock, he rose. "But Louisa will be waiting. We are having an early dinner, for we are taking the Duke to the Opera."

The heavy cloth closed slowly behind their visitor, and a silence fell on the Archer family.

"Goodness — how romantic!" The words burst from Janey at last. No one ever knew quite where her strange, half-finished comments came from. Her family long ago stopped trying to understand them.

Mrs. Archer shook her head slowly. "If only it all ends well," she said. Her voice was the voice of one who knows quite well that it will not. "Newland, you must stay and see Sillerton Jackson when he comes this evening. I really will not know what to say to him."

"Poor mother! But he won't come —" her son laughed, bending down to kiss the trouble from her forehead.