Chapter 15

Newland Archer arrived at the Chiverses' on Friday evening. On Saturday he faithfully went through every duty of a week-end at Highbank.

In the morning he rode in the ice-boat with the lady of the house and the braver guests. In the afternoon he "went over the farm" with Reggie. Among the horses he heard long, serious speeches about the horse.

After tea he sat in a corner of the fire-lit hall with a young lady. When his engagement was announced, she called herself broken-hearted. Now she eagerly told him her own hopes of marrying.

About midnight he helped put a gold-fish in one visitor's bed. He dressed up a pretend thief in a nervous aunt's bathroom. He ended the night in a pillow-fight, from the children's rooms down to the lowest floor.

But on Sunday after lunch he borrowed a cutter and drove to Skuytercliff. A cutter was a light carriage that slid over the snow behind one horse.

People said the house at Skuytercliff was an Italian villa, a grand Italian country house. Those who never saw Italy believed it. So did some who saw it.

Mr. van der Luyden built the house in his youth. He was just home from the "grand tour," the long journey through Europe that rich young men made. He was waiting to marry Miss Louisa Dagonet.

It was a large square wooden house, its fitted board walls painted pale green and white. Its grand front stood behind tall posts in the old Greek style.

From its high ground, wide flat steps of grass went down, one under another. Stone rails and stone pots lined their edges, like an old printed picture. They ended at a small lake with a hard, man-made black edge. Rare trees hung their falling branches over the water.

Right and left rolled the famous grass, smooth and without one wild plant. Single trees stood on it, each of a different kind. Farther off rose long banks of grass, topped with costly figures of cast iron.

Below, where the ground dipped, stood the small stone house of the first Patroon. He built its four rooms in 1612, on land the old Dutch government gave him.

Against the white snow and the grey winter sky, the Italian villa rose up darkly. Even in summer the house kept its distance. The boldest bed of garden plants never dared come nearer than thirty feet to its terrible front.

Archer rang the bell. The long ring seemed to die away as in a mausoleum, a grand stone house for the dead. At last a butler came, as surprised as a man called up from his last sleep.

Happily, Archer was family. Even his sudden visit, against all custom, earned him the news. The Countess Olenska was out. Three quarters of an hour before, she drove to afternoon church service with Mrs. van der Luyden.

"Mr. van der Luyden is in, sir," the butler went on. "My feeling is that he is finishing his afternoon sleep, or reading yesterday's Evening Post. This morning, sir, I heard him say he meant to read it after lunch. If you like, sir, I might go to the library door and listen..."

But Archer thanked him and said he would go to meet the ladies. The butler, clearly relieved, closed the door on him in a slow and royal way.

A servant took the cutter. Archer cut through the park to the high road. The village of Skuytercliff was only a mile and a half away. But Mrs. van der Luyden never walked, so he must keep to the road to meet the carriage.

Then, on a foot-path that crossed the road, he saw a slight figure in a red cloak. A big dog ran in front of her. He hurried forward, and Madame Olenska stopped short with a smile of welcome.

"Ah, you've come!" she said. She drew her hand from her muff, a soft roll of fur for the hands.

The red cloak made her look bright and alive, like the Ellen Mingott of old days. He laughed as he took her hand. "I came to see what you were running away from," he answered.

Her face clouded over, but she answered, "Ah, well... you will see, presently."

The answer puzzled him. "Why? Do you mean that the thing has caught up with you?"

She shrugged, with a little movement like Nastasia's, and spoke in a lighter tone. "Shall we walk on? I'm so cold after the sermon. And what does it matter, now that you're here to protect me?" A sermon is the long talk given in church.

The blood rose to his face, and he caught a fold of her cloak. "Ellen, what is it? You must tell me."

"Oh, presently. Let's run a race first. My feet are freezing to the ground," she cried. She gathered up the cloak and flew away across the snow. The dog jumped around her with loud, challenging barks.

For a moment Archer stood delighted, watching the red flash fly like a falling star across the snow. Then he ran after her. They met, laughing and out of breath, at a small gate into the park.

She looked up at him and smiled. "I knew you'd come!"

"That shows you wanted me to," he answered. A joy far too great for their nonsense filled him. The white shine of the trees gave the air a strange, secret brightness. As they walked on over the snow, the ground seemed to sing under their feet.

"Where did you come from?" Madame Olenska asked.

He told her, and added, "It was because I got your note."

After a pause she said, with a small chill in her voice, "May asked you to take care of me."

"I didn't need any asking."

"You mean... I'm so clearly helpless, so unable to defend myself? What a poor thing you must all think me! But women here seem never to feel the need. No more than the happy ones in heaven."

He lowered his voice to ask, "What sort of a need?"

"Ah, don't ask me! I don't speak your language," she answered sharply.

The answer hit him like a blow. He stood still and looked down at her.

"What did I come for, if I don't speak yours?"

"Oh, my friend..." She laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Ellen," he begged, "why won't you tell me what's happened?"

She shrugged again. "Does anything ever happen in heaven?"

He said nothing, and they walked a few yards in silence. Finally she said, "I will tell you. But where, where, where? One can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house." A seminary is a school for church students.

"All the doors stand wide open," she went on. "And always a servant is bringing tea, or a log for the fire, or the newspaper! Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be alone?"

"You're so shy, and yet you're so public. I always feel I am in the convent again. Or on the stage, before a terribly polite audience that never claps." A convent is a house where women live shut away, for God.

"Ah, you don't like us!" Archer cried.

They were walking past the old Patroon's house, with its low thick walls and small square windows. The shutters stood wide open. Through one newly washed window Archer caught the light of a fire.

"Why, the house is open!" he said.

She stood still. "No, only for today. I wanted to see it. So Mr. van der Luyden told the servants to light the fire and open the windows. Then we could stop here this morning, on the way back from church."

She ran up the steps and tried the door. "What luck, it's still unlocked! Come in for a quiet talk. Mrs. van der Luyden has driven over to Rhinebeck to see her old aunts. No one will miss us at the great house for another hour."

He followed her into the narrow passage. Her last words made his spirits drop. But now they rose again with a wild leap.

The plain little house stood there, its wood panels and bright metal shining in the firelight. It seemed made by magic to receive them. In the kitchen fireplace red coals still glowed under an iron pot on an old iron arm.

Chairs with seats of twisted dried grass faced each other across the fire. On the wall shelves stood rows of Delft plates, fine painted plates from Holland. Archer threw a log upon the coals.

Madame Olenska dropped her cloak and sat in one of the chairs. Archer leaned against the fireplace and looked at her.

"You're laughing now. But when you wrote me, you were unhappy," he said.

"Yes." She paused. "But I can't feel unhappy when you're here."

"I won't be here long," he answered. His lips felt stiff with the effort to say just so much and no more.

"No, I know. But I am improvident. I live in the moment when I'm happy." An improvident person saves nothing for the days ahead.

The words ran through him like a warm, dangerous call. To shut it out, he moved away and stood looking at the black trees against the snow.

But she seemed to move with him. He still saw her, between himself and the trees, bending low over the fire with her lazy smile. His heart was beating hard, like a servant who will not obey. What if she was running away from him? What if she waited to tell him so here, in this secret room?

"Ellen, if I'm really a help to you... if you really wanted me to come... tell me what's wrong. Tell me what you are running away from," he said, pressing her.

He spoke without moving, without turning to look at her. If the thing was going to happen, it must happen in this way. The whole width of the room would lie between them. His eyes would stay fixed on the snow outside.

For a long moment she was silent. Archer imagined her coming softly up behind him, to throw her light arms around his neck. He waited, body and soul shaking with the wonder to come.

But his eyes, without his will, took in another picture. A man in a heavy coat, with his fur collar turned up, was walking up the path to the house. The man was Julius Beaufort.

"Ah!" Archer cried, and burst out laughing.

Madame Olenska sprang up to his side and slipped her hand into his. But after one look through the window her face went pale, and she drew back.

"So that was it?" Archer said, with a short, unkind laugh.

"I didn't know he was here," Madame Olenska said in a low voice. Her hand still held Archer's. But he pulled away from her, walked out into the passage, and threw open the door.

"Hello, Beaufort. This way! Madame Olenska was expecting you," he said.

On the journey back to New York next morning, Archer lived those last moments again and again. The memory was painfully bright and tired him out.

Beaufort was clearly annoyed at finding him with Madame Olenska. But, as usual, he carried it off in his high, lordly way. Beaufort simply ignored people whose presence was in his way. If they were sensitive, they felt unseen, as if they did not exist.

As the three walked back through the park, Archer felt this strange ghost-feeling. It was a blow to his vanity. But it also gave him a ghost's advantage. He could watch, and no one watched him.

Beaufort walked into the little house with his usual easy, sure manner. But he could not smile away the deep line between his eyes. Clearly Madame Olenska did not know he was coming. True, her words to Archer half pointed that way.

Plainly she did not tell him where she was going when she left New York. That silence made him angry.

His stated reason was a discovery. Just the night before, he found a "perfect little house." It was not openly for sale, and just the thing for her. If she did not take it at once, someone else would. He blamed her loudly, half in play, for running away just when he found it.

"That new trick of talking along a wire is not yet quite perfect," he said. "If it worked a little better, I need not be here at all. I could be warming my toes by the club fire at this minute. Instead I am dragging myself after you through the snow."

His anger sounded like a joke, but it was real. At this opening, Madame Olenska turned the talk another way. She spoke of the wild dream that people might one day talk from street to street. They might even talk from one town to another. Who could believe such a thing?

That set all three talking about Edgar Poe and Jules Verne. They said the easy, empty things that even intelligent people say at such times. No one wants to look simple by believing in a new machine too soon.

So the question of the telephone carried them safely back to the big house. The telephone was that new machine for talking along a wire.

Mrs. van der Luyden was not yet back. Archer said his goodbye and walked off to fetch the cutter. Beaufort followed the Countess Olenska indoors.

The van der Luydens did not love surprise visits. But Beaufort could probably count on being asked to dinner. Then he would be sent back to the station for the nine o'clock train. More than that he would certainly not get.

To his hosts, a gentleman traveling with no bags could not possibly wish to stay the night. And they liked Beaufort too little to offer him a bed. Even the offer would feel unpleasant.

Beaufort knew all this, and surely saw it coming. Yet he still made the long journey for so small a reward. That showed how little he could bear to wait. Beyond doubt, he was chasing the Countess Olenska. And when Beaufort chased a pretty woman, he wanted only one thing.

His quiet, childless home bored him for years. Besides his more lasting comforts, he always looked for love adventures in his own circle. This was the man from whom, by her own words, Madame Olenska was flying.

Now came the question. Did she fly because his attentions were hateful to her? Or because she did not trust herself to say no to him? Or was all her talk of flight only a screen, and her leaving a clever move?

Archer did not really believe that. So far he saw little of Madame Olenska. But he began to think he could read her face, and if not her face, her voice. Both showed that she was annoyed, even afraid, when Beaufort suddenly appeared.

But if that was true, was it not far worse than if she left on purpose to meet him? If she did, she stopped being interesting. She threw in her lot with the lowest kind of false women. A woman who had a love affair with Beaufort "classed" herself. She showed what she was, forever.

No, it was a thousand times worse if she judged Beaufort and was still drawn to him. She probably even looked down on him. Yet everything that set him apart gave him power over the men around her.

He was at home in two worlds, on both sides of the ocean. He moved easily among artists and actors and people the whole world watched. And he cared nothing for the narrow rules of one small place.

Beaufort was vulgar, he was uneducated, he was proud of his money. But his way of life, and a certain natural sharpness, made him better company than many finer men.

Those finer men, better in morals and higher in society, saw nothing beyond the Battery and the Central Park. How could a woman from a wider world not feel the difference and be drawn by it?

That afternoon, in a burst of temper, Madame Olenska told Archer that they did not speak the same language. Archer knew that in some ways it was true.

But Beaufort understood every turn of her speech, and spoke it easily. His view of life, his tone, his manner, were all of one piece with Count Olenski's letter. Only they were rougher.

That might seem a weakness in the eyes of Count Olenski's wife. But Archer was too intelligent to think so.

A young woman like Ellen Olenska would not simply turn from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly at war with that past. But what once charmed her in it would charm her still, even against her will.

So, with painful fairness, the young man built the case for Beaufort, and for his victim, the one he hunted. A longing to open her eyes was strong in him. At moments he imagined that all she asked was to have them opened.

That evening he unpacked his box of books from London, full of things he wanted. There was a new book by Herbert Spencer. There were new fine stories by Alphonse Daudet, who wrote so many.

There was also "Middlemarch," a new story the reviews called most interesting. He refused three dinners to stay home with this feast.

But though he turned the pages with a book-lover's deep joy, he did not know what he read. One book after another dropped from his hand. Suddenly, among them, he came upon a small book of poems called "The House of Life." He ordered it only because the name drew him.

He took it up and fell into a world unlike any he knew from books. It was so warm, so rich, and so deeply tender. It gave new beauty to the oldest and simplest of human passions. That beauty would not let him go.

All night, through those magic pages, he followed the dream of a woman. She had the face of Ellen Olenska.

In the morning he woke and looked out at the brownstone houses across the street. He thought of his desk in Mr. Letterblair's office, and of the family's own seat in Grace Church. Then his hour at Skuytercliff seemed as far from real life as his dreams of the night.

"Mercy, how pale you look, Newland!" said Janey over the breakfast coffee-cups. And his mother added, "Newland, dear, I've noticed lately that you've been coughing. I do hope you're not working yourself too hard?"

For both ladies were sure of one thing. Under the iron rule of his older partners, his days passed in heavy, endless office work. He never thought it necessary to tell them the truth.

The next two or three days dragged by heavily. Everyday life tasted like the dust of a dead fire in his mouth. At moments he felt that his future was burying him alive.

He heard nothing of the Countess Olenska, and nothing of the perfect little house. He met Beaufort at the club, but they only nodded across the card-tables.

On the fourth evening he found a note waiting for him at home. "Come late tomorrow: I must explain to you. Ellen." These were the only words it held.

The young man was dining out that evening. He pushed the note into his pocket, smiling a little at its French turn of phrase, the "to you." After dinner he went to a play. He came home after midnight. Then he took out her note and read it slowly, many times.

There were several ways to answer, and through a long, restless night he weighed each one. When morning came, he decided. He would throw some clothes into a portmanteau, a big traveling bag. Then he would jump on a boat leaving that very afternoon for St. Augustine.