Chapter 13

It was a crowded night at Wallack's Theater.

The play was "The Shaughraun." Dion Boucicault acted the title part, and Harry Montague and Ada Dyas played the two lovers. The fine English company was famous then, and the play always filled the house.

High in the galleries, the cheap seats near the roof, people cheered with open hearts. In the stalls, the costly seats below, and in the boxes, people smiled a little. The play's feelings were old and over-used, they thought, and its tricks were cheap. But they enjoyed it just as much as the galleries did.

One scene, above all, held the house from floor to roof. In it, Harry Montague said a sad, almost wordless good-bye to Miss Dyas and turned to go.

The actress stood near the fireplace, looking down into the fire. She wore a plain gray dress of soft wool, cut without fashionable show. It followed her tall body and flowed about her feet. Around her neck was a narrow ribbon of black velvet, a thin band of cloth. Its ends fell down her back.

When her lover turned away, she rested her arms on the shelf above the fire. She bowed her face in her hands.

At the door, he stopped for a last look. Then he came quietly back, lifted one end of the ribbon, and kissed it. She never heard him and never moved. On that silent parting, the curtain came down.

Newland Archer always went to see "The Shaughraun" for the sake of that one scene. He saw the famous Croisette and Bressant act in Paris, and Madge Robertson and Kendal in London.

The good-bye of Montague and Ada Dyas seemed as fine as anything they did. Its quiet, wordless sadness moved him more than the loudest famous acting.

On this evening, the little scene touched him more sharply than ever. He could not say why. But it reminded him of his parting from Madame Olenska, after their private talk a week or ten days before.

The two partings were not alike, and the people were not alike. Archer was no match for the young English actor's romantic good looks. Miss Dyas was a tall, red-haired woman, large and grand in build. Her pale face was pleasantly ugly, nothing like Ellen Olenska's bright, living face.

Archer and Madame Olenska were not two lovers parting in heart-broken silence. They were a lawyer and his client. Their talk left the lawyer with the worst possible view of the client's case. Where, then, was the likeness that made his heart beat with strange excitement?

The answer seemed to lie in Madame Olenska herself. She had a mysterious power of suggesting tragic possibilities, terrible and sad turns of life. They lay far outside the daily run of things.

She hardly ever said a word to produce this feeling. It was simply part of her. Perhaps it came from her mysterious foreign past, or from something unusual in herself, some hidden fire.

Chance, Archer thought, played only a small part in people's lives. Far more depended on something inside each person, a pull that drew events toward them.

From the first, he felt this pull in Madame Olenska. She was quiet, almost still, and seemed to let life act on her. Yet she seemed exactly the kind of person that things happened to. It did not matter how she feared them or stepped out of their way.

And here lay the exciting fact. She had lived so long among storms of feeling that she never noticed her own power to raise them. Nothing seemed to surprise her, and that calm told its own story.

She seemed like a woman pulled out of a wild sea. The things she accepted as normal measured the things she refused to bear.

Archer left her that evening sure of one thing. Count Olenski's ugly charge was probably not empty air. The mysterious man in his wife's past, "the secretary," helped her escape. And most likely he did not go without his reward.

The life she ran from was more than anyone could bear. It was past speaking of, past believing. She was young, she was frightened, and she saw no way out. What could be more natural than warm thanks to the man who saved her?

The pity lay in what those thanks cost her. In the eyes of the law and the world, they set her on a level with her hateful husband.

Archer made her understand this, for it was his duty. He made her understand one thing more. She counted on kind, simple-hearted New York and its open arms. Yet New York, exactly, was the last place to forgive her.

To say this plainly, and then to watch her accept it, was deeply painful to him. He felt drawn to her by dark feelings: pity, and jealousy, the hurt of wanting someone for oneself.

She admitted her fault without words, and this put her in his hands. It brought her low, and at the same time made her dear.

He was glad the secret came to him and no one else. Better him than Mr. Letterblair's cold, searching eyes, or the uneasy faces of her family.

He took the next duty on himself. He told Mr. Letterblair and the family that she gave up the idea of a divorce. Her reason, he said, was that she saw the step was useless. With deep relief, they all turned their eyes away from the "unpleasantness" she spared them.

"I was sure Newland would manage it," Mrs. Welland said proudly of her future son-in-law.

Old Mrs. Mingott sent for him for a private talk. She praised his cleverness.

Then she added impatiently, "Silly goose! I told her myself what a silly idea it was. Wanting to pass herself off as Ellen Mingott, an old maid! An old maid was an unmarried woman growing old. And that when she has the luck to be a married woman and a Countess!"

These memories made his last talk with Madame Olenska burn bright in his mind. So, when the curtain fell on the two actors' parting, his eyes filled with tears. He stood up to leave the theater.

He turned, and at the back of the house he saw the very lady in his thoughts. She sat in a box with the Beauforts, Lawrence Lefferts, and one or two other men.

He had not spoken with her alone since that evening. He even tried to avoid meeting her in company. But now their eyes met. At the same moment, Mrs. Beaufort saw him and made her lazy little sign of invitation. It was impossible not to go to their box.

Beaufort and Lefferts made room for him. He exchanged a few words with Mrs. Beaufort, who always preferred to look beautiful rather than talk. Then he took a seat behind Madame Olenska.

Only one other guest was there, old Mr. Sillerton Jackson. He was telling Mrs. Beaufort, in a low secret voice, about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's last Sunday party. Some people reported that there was dancing.

Mrs. Beaufort listened with her perfect smile. She held her head at just the right angle, so the stalls could see her face from the side.

Under cover of this long story, Madame Olenska turned and spoke in a low voice.

"Do you think," she asked, glancing toward the stage, "he will send her a bunch of yellow roses tomorrow morning?"

Archer's face went red, and his heart gave a jump of surprise. He had called at her house only twice. Each time he sent her a box of yellow roses, and each time without his card. She never spoke of the flowers, and he supposed she never guessed who sent them.

Now she knew. And she tied his gift to the tender parting on the stage. The thought filled him with a troubled pleasure.

"I was thinking of that too," he said. "I was going to leave the theater, to carry the picture away with me."

To his surprise, her color rose, slowly and darkly, as if against her will. She looked down at the little opera-glass in her smoothly gloved hands. Its case shone like the inside of a sea shell. After a pause she said, "What do you do while May is away?"

"I stick to my work," he answered, a little angry at the question.

The week before, the Wellands went south to St. Augustine, in Florida. It was an old family habit. Every year they spent the end of winter there. The reason was Mr. Welland's chest, which everyone supposed to be weak.

Mr. Welland was a mild and silent man. He had no opinions but many habits, and no one might touch them. One habit demanded that his wife and daughter always travel south with him. A quiet, unbroken home life was necessary to his peace of mind.

Without Mrs. Welland, he would not know where his hair-brushes were, or how to get stamps for his letters.

All the family loved one another dearly, and Mr. Welland was the center of this love. So his wife and May never thought of letting him go alone. His two sons worked in the law and could not leave New York in winter. They joined him at Easter and traveled back with him.

Archer could not question May's going with her father. The Mingotts' family doctor owed his great name to one famous illness. That was the attack of pneumonia that Mr. Welland never had. Pneumonia is a dangerous illness of the lungs. So his demand for St. Augustine stood firm as rock.

The first plan was to announce May's engagement only after her return from Florida. The news came out sooner. But no one could expect that to change Mr. Welland's plans.

Archer wanted badly to join them. A few weeks of sun and boating with May — the thought was sweet. But he too was bound by custom and rules.

His duties at the law office were light. Even so, if he asked for a holiday in mid-winter, the whole Mingott family would call him idle and unserious. So he accepted May's going quietly, without a fight. He saw that this quiet accepting would be one of the main parts of married life.

He felt that Madame Olenska was watching him with half-lowered eyes. "I have done what you wished — what you advised," she said suddenly.

"Ah, I'm glad," he answered. It troubled him that she opened the subject in such a place.

"I understand now that you were right," she went on, a little out of breath. "But sometimes life is difficult... confusing..."

"I know."

"And I wanted to tell you that I do feel you were right. And that I am thankful to you," she ended. At that moment, the door of the box opened, and Beaufort's deep voice broke in on them. She lifted her opera-glass quickly to her eyes.

Archer stood up, left the box, and left the theater.

Only the day before, he received a letter from May Welland. In her open, honest way, she asked him to "be kind to Ellen" while they were away.

Her letter said: "She likes you and admires you so much. And you know, though she does not show it, she is still very lonely and unhappy. I do not think Granny understands her, and uncle Lovell Mingott does not either.

"They really believe she loves parties and society far more than she does. And I can see that New York must seem dull to her, though the family will not admit it.

"I think she is used to many things we have not got: wonderful music, picture shows, and famous people. Artists, authors, all the clever people you admire. Granny cannot understand her wanting anything but dinners and clothes. But you are almost the only person in New York who can talk to her about what she cares for."

His wise May. How he loved her for that letter. But he did not mean to act on it. He was too busy, for one thing. And as an engaged man, he did not care to play too openly the part of Madame Olenska's defender.

He believed she could guard herself far better than the innocent May imagined. Beaufort was at her feet. Mr. van der Luyden watched over her from on high, like a protecting god. And other men waited at a middle distance for their chance, Lawrence Lefferts among them.

Yet every time he saw her or spoke with her, he felt the truth of May's letter. May's innocent eyes, it seemed, held a power of seeing hidden things. Ellen Olenska was lonely, and she was unhappy.