Chapter 11

Two weeks later, Newland Archer sat idle at the law firm of Letterblair, Lamson and Low. The head of the firm sent for him.

Old Mr. Letterblair sat troubled behind his great dark desk. Three generations of fine New York families trusted his legal advice. He touched his white face hair and untidy grey head.

Archer thought he looked like a doctor facing a sickness without a name.

"My dear sir," Mr. Letterblair began. "I have a small matter. I will not yet mention it to Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood."

The partners named on old law firms were long dead. In that sense, Mr. Letterblair was his own grandson.

He leaned back in his chair, his brow lined with worry. "For family reasons—" he went on.

Archer looked up.

"The Mingott family," said Mr. Letterblair with a smile and a small bow. "Mrs. Manson Mingott sent for me yesterday. Her granddaughter, the Countess Olenska, wants a divorce from her husband."

He beat his fingers on the desk. "I have certain papers. Since you will join the family, I want your advice first."

Archer felt blood beat in his head. He saw Ellen only once more, at the Opera. Her image faded as May returned to the front of his mind.

He heard no more after Janey mentioned the divorce. He thought it empty talk. Divorce almost troubled him as much as his mother.

He hated being pulled into the affair. Many Mingott men could do it, and he was not yet family.

He waited for the senior partner to continue. Mr. Letterblair unlocked a drawer and took out an envelope of papers. "If you will run your eye over these papers—"

Archer frowned. "I beg your pardon, sir. Because of my coming marriage, I would prefer that you consult Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood."

Mr. Letterblair looked surprised and a little hurt. It was unusual for a junior to refuse such an opening.

He bowed. "I respect your care, sir. But true care for others requires you to help."

"Indeed, the idea is not mine," he went on. "It comes from Mrs. Manson Mingott and her son. I have seen Lovell Mingott, and also Mr. Welland. They all named you."

Archer's anger rose. For two weeks, May's bright nature hid the weight of Mingott claims. Mrs. Mingott's order woke him.

So this large family felt it could command a future son-in-law. He hated the role.

"Her uncles ought to deal with this," he said.

"They have. The family has gone into the matter. They are against the Countess's idea. But she is firm, and she insists on a legal opinion."

The young man was silent. He still did not open the envelope in his hand.

"Does she want to marry again?"

"I believe people suggest it. But she denies it."

"Then—"

"Will you do me this kindness, Mr. Archer? First look through these papers. Afterward, when we have talked the case over, I will give you my opinion."

Archer went out unwillingly with the unwelcome papers.

After their last meeting, he let events free him from Ellen's weight. Their hour by her fire briefly drew them close.

Then the Duke of St. Austrey walked in with Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, and the Countess greeted them with joy. The moment broke, Archer felt, at just the right time.

Two days later, he watched her return to the van der Luydens' favor. A lady who thanked powerful men so well needed no help.

She needed neither his private comfort nor his public defense.

This thought made home life shine. May would never tell her private troubles to strange men. She seemed finer than ever.

He even gave way to her wish for a long engagement. He asked her to hurry, but she found the one answer that disarmed him.

"You know, your parents have always let you have your way, ever since you were a little girl," he argued.

She answered, with her clearest look, "Yes. And that is what makes it so hard to refuse. It is the very last thing they will ever ask of me as a little girl."

That was the old New York note. It was the kind of answer he wished to be always sure of in his wife. To a man raised on New York air, anything less clear than crystal can feel hard to breathe.

The papers, when he sat down to them, told him little in fact. But they dropped him into an air in which he choked. They were mostly letters between Count Olenski's lawyers and a French law firm. The Countess asked the French firm to settle her money matters.

There was also one short letter from the Count to his wife. Newland Archer read it and stood up. He pushed the papers back into their cover and returned to Mr. Letterblair's office.

"Here are the letters, sir. If you wish, I will see Madame Olenska," he said. His voice was tight.

"Thank you — thank you, Mr. Archer. Come and dine with me tonight, if you are free. We will go into the matter after dinner. Then, if you wish, you can call on our client tomorrow."

Newland Archer walked straight home that afternoon. It was a winter evening, and the air was clear as glass. A young, innocent moon hung above the roofs of the houses.

Archer wanted to fill his soul's lungs with that pure light. He wished to speak to no one until he sat down with Mr. Letterblair after dinner.

He could not decide in any other way. He must see Madame Olenska himself, so that her secrets were not laid open to other eyes.

A great wave of pity washed away his coldness and impatience. She stood before his mind with no protection, a figure to be pitied. She must be saved, at any cost, from wounding herself again in her wild rushes against fate.

He remembered something she once told him. Mrs. Welland asked to be spared anything "unpleasant" in the Countess's history. The thought that followed hurt him. Perhaps this very habit of mind kept the New York air so pure.

"Are we only Pharisees after all?" he wondered. The Pharisees were men in the Bible who looked pure outside but had no pity inside. He was puzzled by the war inside himself. He felt a natural hate for human wickedness, and an equally natural pity for human weakness.

For the first time, he saw how simple his own principles had always been. People called him a young man who was not afraid of risks. His secret love affair with poor silly Mrs. Thorley Rushworth was never quite secret enough. That gave him a pleasing air of adventure.

But Mrs. Rushworth was "that kind of woman." She was foolish, vain, and secret by nature. The secrecy and danger of the affair drew her far more than any charms of his own.

When that truth first dawned on him, it nearly broke his heart. Now it seemed the one saving point of the whole business.

The affair, in short, was of the common kind. Most young men of his age went through such affairs and came out with calm consciences. A conscience is the inner voice that tells a person right from wrong.

They also came out with an unshaken belief. A deep and bottomless line, they felt, lay between two kinds of women. On one side stood the women a man loved and respected. On the other stood the women a man enjoyed — and pitied.

In this belief, their mothers, aunts, and other elderly lady relatives eagerly supported them. They all shared Mrs. Archer's view. When "such things happened," it was no doubt foolish of the man. But somehow it was always criminal of the woman.

All the elderly ladies Archer knew agreed. Any woman who loved unwisely must be a false and designing woman. The simple-minded man was powerless in her hands. The only cure was to marry him early to a nice girl, and then trust her to look after him.

Archer began to guess that in the old, complicated societies of Europe, love problems might be less simple. They might not sort so easily into two boxes. Rich societies, full of lazy show, must produce many more such situations.

There might even be a case of this kind. A woman, sensitive and reserved by nature, might still be drawn in. Circumstances, helplessness, and loneliness might pull her into a tie that the rules could never excuse.

When he reached home, he wrote a short note to the Countess Olenska. At what hour tomorrow could she receive him? He sent it by a messenger boy.

The boy soon returned with her answer. She was going to Skuytercliff the next morning, to stay over Sunday with the van der Luydens. But Archer would find her alone that evening, after dinner.

Her note was written on an untidy half-sheet of paper, with no date and no address. But her hand was firm and free.

At first, the idea of her weekend in the grand, silent loneliness of Skuytercliff amused him. Then another feeling came. There, of all places, she would most feel the chill of minds turned firmly away from the "unpleasant."

He was at Mr. Letterblair's at seven exactly, glad of the excuse to leave soon after dinner. He had already formed his own opinion from the papers. He did not want to go into the matter with his senior partner.

Mr. Letterblair's wife was dead, so the two men dined alone. They ate richly and slowly, in a dark, worn old room. On the walls hung two yellowing prints, "The Death of Chatham" and "The Coronation of Napoleon."

On the side table, between two fine old knife boxes, stood two glass bottles of wine. One held Haut Brion. The other held the old Lanning port, a strong sweet wine, once the gift of a client.

Tom Lanning, who wasted all he had, sold off that port a year or two before he died. His death in San Francisco was mysterious and shameful. Yet the public sale of his wine cellar hurt the family's pride even more.

First came a soft oyster soup. Oysters are small sea animals that live in shells. Then came fish with cucumbers, and a young roast turkey with small fried corn cakes. Last came wild duck, with sweet red fruit jelly and a celery cream.

Mr. Letterblair lunched on a sandwich and tea. But he dined slowly and deeply, and he insisted that his guest do the same.

At last the slow closing forms of the meal were done. The cloth was taken away, and cigars were lit. Mr. Letterblair leaned back, pushed the port toward Archer, and warmed his back at the coal fire.

"The whole family are against a divorce," he said. "And I think rightly."

At once, Archer felt himself on the other side of the argument. "But why, sir? If there ever was a case—"

"Well — what's the use? She is here, and he is there, and the whole Atlantic lies between them. She will never get back a dollar more of her money. She will get only what he has chosen to give back. Their heathen marriage settlements make sure of that."

A marriage settlement was a legal paper, made before a wedding, about the wife's money. By "heathen" Mr. Letterblair meant foreign and godless.

"As things go over there," he continued, "Olenski has acted generously. He could have turned her out without a penny, and he did not."

The young man knew this, and was silent.

"I understand, though," Mr. Letterblair went on, "that she cares nothing about the money. Therefore, as the family say, why not leave things quietly as they are?"

Archer came to the house an hour earlier in full agreement with this view. But now a selfish, well-fed, completely untouched old man put it into words. Suddenly it became the voice of the Pharisees — the voice of a society building walls against everything "unpleasant."

"I think that is for her to decide," Archer said.

"H'm. Have you considered the consequences, if she decides on a divorce?"

"You mean the threat in her husband's letter? What weight would that carry? It is no more than the vague charge of an angry blackguard, a man without honor."

"Yes. But it might make some unpleasant talk, if he really fights the case."

"Unpleasant—!" said Archer, exploding.

Mr. Letterblair looked at him with raised, questioning eyebrows. Archer saw that it was useless to explain what was in his mind. He bowed his head, and his senior went on, "Divorce is always unpleasant."

There was a waiting silence. "You agree with me?" Mr. Letterblair asked at last.

"Naturally," said Archer.

"Well then, I may count on you. The Mingotts may count on you. You will use your influence against the idea?"

Archer hesitated. "I cannot promise anything until I have seen the Countess Olenska," he said at last.

"Mr. Archer, I do not understand you. Do you want to marry into a family with a scandalous divorce case hanging over it?"

"I don't think that has anything to do with the case," Archer said.

Mr. Letterblair put down his glass of port. He fixed careful, worried eyes on his young partner.

Archer understood the danger. The task could still be taken from him, and for some dark reason he did not like that thought. The job was pushed on him against his will. Yet now he did not mean to give it up.

To guard against losing it, he must calm the old man before him. Mr. Letterblair had no imagination, but he was the legal conscience of the Mingotts.

"You may be sure, sir, that I will not commit myself until I have reported to you. I only meant that I would rather hear what Madame Olenska has to say first."

Mr. Letterblair nodded with approval. Such extreme caution was worthy of the best New York tradition. Then Archer glanced at his watch, excused himself with a word about another engagement, and took his leave.