Chapter 34

Newland Archer sat at the writing table in his library. His house still stood in East Thirty-ninth Street.

He just returned from a great official event. The Metropolitan Museum opened several grand new rooms. Great treasures from many ages filled them.

Fashionable crowds moved through those wide spaces. Each old object now had a careful scientific name. Suddenly, one small remark opened a door in Newland's memory.

"This was once one of the old Cesnola rooms," someone said.

The new museum disappeared. Newland sat again on a hard leather bench beside a steam heater. A small woman in a long dark fur coat moved away.

The old museum passage looked poor and almost empty. Ellen was leaving him there.

That clear picture woke many others. Newland looked around his library with new eyes. For more than thirty years, he came here to think alone.

The family also held all its serious talks here. Most real events in his life seemed to happen inside this room.

Almost twenty-six years earlier, May told him about their first child. She became red and spoke around the fact before naming it. Young women now would smile at such care.

Their oldest child was Dallas. He was too weak for church during his first winter. So their old friend, the Bishop of New York, came here.

He baptized Dallas in this room. Baptism welcomed a person into the church with water. That large and splendid Bishop once gave pride to all New York.

Later, Dallas took his first weak steps across this floor. He shouted, "Dad!" May and the nurse laughed behind the door.

Their second child, Mary, also brought her news here. She planned to marry one of Reggie Chivers's many sons. He was the dullest son, but also the safest.

Newland kissed Mary through her wedding veil in this room. Then they went downstairs to the waiting motor car. It carried them to Grace Church.

The rest of society changed under their feet. But a Grace Church wedding remained the same.

Newland and May always discussed their children's future in the library. They planned the studies of Dallas and his younger brother Bill.

Mary never cared for the fine skills expected from young ladies. But she loved sports and work for people in need. Her parents spoke often about both interests.

Dallas showed a loose interest in art. He was restless and wanted to know everything. At last, he joined the office of a rising architect.

An architect designed buildings. Such work showed how much young men changed.

Young men now escaped from law and business. They entered many new fields. Some worked in state politics or tried to improve city government.

Others studied archaeology, the search for old human objects and buildings. Some designed houses, parks, and wide areas of land.

They studied American buildings from before the Revolution. They learned the fine shapes used in the Georgian period. They also fought careless words.

People called every old-looking house "Colonial." These young experts strongly objected. Only rich food sellers outside the city seemed to own such false homes now.

One library memory stood above almost all the others. The Governor of New York once came from Albany. He ate dinner and spent the night.

During their talk, he turned suddenly toward Newland. His closed hand struck the table. His glasses shook as his face grew fierce.

"Forget men who make politics their private business," Theodore Roosevelt said. "The country needs men like you, Archer."

Politics was like a dirty horse house, he said. Good men must help clean it.

"Men like you." The words filled Newland with light. He quickly answered the call.

Years before, Ned Winsett gave him a similar message. Ned wanted him to lift his sleeves and enter the dirt. But Roosevelt cleaned with his own hands.

Following such a man felt impossible to refuse.

Now Newland was not sure the country needed men like him. At least, it did not need him in active public office.

He served one year in the New York State Assembly. Voters did not choose him again. He thankfully returned to quieter but useful city work.

Later, he sometimes wrote for weekly papers that supported change. Those papers tried to wake the country from its deep sleep.

His public record looked small. Yet young men from his old circle once expected almost nothing. Their lives offered money, sports, and society.

Beside that narrow road, Newland's work had some value. One brick mattered inside a strong wall.

He knew that he liked thought more than action. Fine objects and ideas always drew him. But he had important things to think about.

Great work gave him joy. A great man's friendship gave him strength and pride.

People now called him a good citizen. For many years, each new city, art, or charity plan asked for his opinion. Organizers wanted his name beside their work.

"Ask Archer," people said.

They asked him about the first school for children with damaged bodies. They asked him to improve the Museum of Art. He helped create the Grolier Club for lovers of fine books.

His advice supported New York's new public Library. It also helped begin a group for music played by a few people.

His days were full. He filled them with good, decent acts. Perhaps a man should ask for nothing more.

Still, Newland knew he missed something. He missed the one perfect flower of life.

Now it seemed almost impossible for him to win it. Feeling endless pain would be like mourning a lost game of chance. His game held one hundred million tickets.

Only one ticket won the great prize. The chance was always against him.

When he thought about Ellen Olenska, his thoughts were calm and far away. She seemed like a loved woman in a book or painting. She became the shape of everything he missed.

That weak, thin picture stayed with him. Because of it, he never truly wanted another woman.

People called Newland a faithful husband. He remained one.

Then May died suddenly. Their youngest child became sick with pneumonia.

May cared for Bill through the illness. It passed from him to her and took her life.

Newland mourned May honestly. Their long marriage taught him something. A marriage could be a dull duty and still hold honor.

Without honor, it became only a fight between ugly wants.

Newland looked around the library. He respected his own past and felt its loss. The old ways held real good after all.

Dallas changed much of the room. He hung fine English prints on the walls. He brought graceful English wood cabinets and chosen blue-and-white dishes.

Soft electric lamps now gave a pleasant light.

But Newland never allowed Dallas to remove his old Eastlake writing table. May's first photograph still stood beside his ink.

There she was in the Mission garden. May looked tall, full, and light. Her white summer dress held its hard, clean shape.

A wide straw hat moved above her hair. Orange trees stood behind her. Newland still saw the young woman from that day.

In many ways, May stayed at that same height through life. She sometimes fell below it, but never far. She was giving, faithful, and never tired of duty.

Yet she had almost no imagination. She could not grow with a changing world. The world of her youth broke apart and formed again.

May never truly saw the change.

Her bright blindness kept everything near her looking the same. The children learned to hide their ideas from her. Newland hid his own ideas too.

From the beginning, father and children shared a gentle falsehood. They all pretended that nothing changed. None of them planned this family act.

May died believing that the world was good. She imagined many loving and peaceful homes like her own.

She could leave it without fear. Newland would teach Dallas the same values and limits. Those ideas shaped both parents' lives.

After Newland's death, Dallas would teach them to little Bill. May trusted Mary as fully as she trusted herself.

May pulled Bill back from death. Then she gave her own life.

She entered the Archer family tomb at St. Mark's in peace. Mrs. Archer already rested there. She was safe from every frightening new change.

May never even noticed most of those changes.

Across from May's picture stood one of Mary. Mary Chivers was tall and fair like her mother. But current fashion gave her a very different shape.

Her waist looked wide, and her chest looked flat. Her shoulders fell forward a little. Mary performed great acts of strength in sports.

May could never do them inside her narrow dress. A blue band once went easily around May's tiny waist.

The difference between the women meant more than fashion. May's life was held as tightly as her body.

Mary followed custom as much as her mother did. She was no more clever. Yet her life was larger, and her opinions were kinder.

The new ways held real good too.

The telephone made a small sound. Newland turned from the pictures. He lifted the speaking part beside him.

How far New York had come. Once, only a boy in a coat with metal buttons carried quick messages. His running legs were the city's fastest link.

"Chicago wants you," a voice said.

The call must be Dallas. His building office sent him to Chicago. He needed to discuss a palace beside the lake.

A young man with millions wanted it built. He also had strong ideas. Dallas's office always sent him to such people.

"Hello, Dad. Yes, it is Dallas. Can you sail next Wednesday?"

Dallas named the Mauretania. He meant the coming Wednesday. His client wanted him to study Italian gardens before choosing a plan.

Dallas must cross on the next ship. He also needed to return by June first.

His voice broke into a joyful, knowing laugh. They must move quickly.

"Dad, I need your help. Please come."

Dallas sounded as if he sat in the library. He might be resting in his favorite chair near the fire.

Usually, that closeness would not surprise Newland. Long-distance calls were now common. Electric light also seemed ordinary.

Even a five-day trip across the Atlantic caused little wonder.

But Dallas's laugh still felt like a miracle. It crossed forests, rivers, mountains, and wide grasslands. It passed loud cities and millions of busy strangers.

The laugh carried a message across all those miles. Dallas must return by June first. He would marry Fanny Beaufort on June fifth.

Dallas's voice began again.

"Think about it? No, sir. You must say yes now. Give me one reason against it."

Newland had none.

"I knew it," Dallas said. "Then we agree. Please call the Cunard ship office tomorrow morning."

Newland should book the journey home from Marseilles. Dallas then gave the true reason for his hurry.

"Dad, this will be our last time together like this."

Newland agreed.

"Good," Dallas cried. "I knew you would."

The Chicago call ended. Newland rose and walked around the library.

Dallas was right. It would be their last journey of this kind. Father and son would share other times after the wedding.

They were close friends by nature. Fanny Beaufort would probably not stand between them. Newland expected her to join their friendship.

Still, change remained change. Newland liked his future daughter-in-law. Yet he wanted this last chance alone with his son.

Nothing stopped him except one deep fact. He lost the habit of travel.

May disliked leaving home without a proper reason. The children might need the sea or mountains. Those purposes made sense to her.

She saw no other reason to leave East Thirty-ninth Street. Their comfortable rooms at the Wellands' Newport home offered enough change.

After Dallas finished his studies, May decided on six months abroad. The whole family made the old tour. They crossed England, Switzerland, and Italy.

For no clear reason, their time felt limited. So they left France out.

Dallas became angry. He wanted Rheims and Chartres, with their great old churches. Instead, the family made him stare at Mont Blanc.

Mary and Bill wanted to climb mountains. They already followed Dallas through many English churches. During those visits, they could hardly stop themselves from sleeping.

May always tried to treat the children equally. She balanced their love of action against Dallas's love of art.

She did suggest a private choice for Newland. He could spend two weeks in Paris. Then he could meet them beside the Italian lakes.

Newland refused.

"We will stay together," he said.

May's face grew bright. He set a good example for Dallas.

May died almost two years before the telephone call. Afterward, no reason held Newland to his old routine.

His children urged him to travel. Mary believed foreign picture rooms would help him. She did not understand how, which made her trust the cure more.

But habit and memory held Newland firmly. New things now caused a quick, frightened movement inside him.

As he reviewed his life, he saw a deep track. He walked inside it for years. Duty made him unable to do anything except more duty.

At least, men of his time accepted that result.

They drew hard lines between right and wrong. Honest and dishonest acts stood far apart. So did proper and improper people.

Those lines left almost no space for surprise.

Sometimes a man's imagination rises above daily life. It looks down on all the long turns of fate. Newland's mind rose that night.

He wondered about everything.

What remained of the small world that raised and tied him? He recalled Lawrence Lefferts's angry warning in this same room.

"Soon our children will marry Beaufort's children born outside marriage."

That was exactly what Dallas planned. Newland's oldest son was the pride of his life. Nobody expressed surprise or blame.

Even Aunt Janey accepted Fanny.

Janey still looked exactly like the older young woman she once was. She opened the soft pink cloth around her mother's jewels. Her hands shook as they always did.

She carried old green stones and tiny pearls to the future bride.

Fanny did not want a new set from a Paris shop. She cried out over the old jewels' beauty. Wearing them would make her feel like a small Isabey painting.

Fanny Beaufort came to New York at eighteen. Her parents were dead. She won the city's heart as Ellen did thirty years before.

But people did not fear or distrust Fanny. They accepted her with joy. She was pretty, amusing, and skilled.

What else could anyone want?

No one searched through her father's past. Few cared about the facts of her birth. Only older people remembered Beaufort's business failure.

They also remembered what followed Regina's death. Beaufort quietly married Fanny Ring. He left America with his new wife and their little girl.

The girl received her mother's beauty.

People later heard about Beaufort in Constantinople. After that, he lived in Russia. Twelve years later, American travelers met him in Buenos Aires.

He received them with great style. He worked there for a large insurance company. He and his wife died as rich and respected people.

One day, their daughter returned to New York without parents. Mrs. Jack Welland brought her. Mr. Jack Welland became the girl's legal guardian.

That link made Fanny almost a cousin to the Archer children. Nobody wondered when Dallas announced their engagement.

Nothing showed the world's long journey more clearly.

People were too busy now to study their neighbors. They worked for public change and followed strange new ideas. They chased both serious plans and foolish pleasures.

The past of one person mattered little. Society now seemed like a great turning glass toy. All its colored pieces moved together on one level.

Soon Newland looked from a Paris hotel window. The grand, happy streets spread below him. His heart beat with a young man's fear and hope.

It had not moved that way for years. First it jumped hard under his wider coat. The next moment, his chest felt empty and his head hot.

Did Dallas's heart act this way near Fanny? Newland decided that it did not. The young heart worked just as strongly, but to another beat.

Dallas announced his engagement with easy calm. He never doubted his family's approval.

Young people now expected to receive what they wanted. Newland's generation expected to lose it.

But he wondered about one thing. Could a joy promised in advance ever make the heart beat so wildly?

It was their second day in Paris. Spring sunlight held Newland at the open window. The wide silver Place Vendôme lay below.

Newland made almost no demands about the trip. But he refused one of the huge new hotels in Paris.

"Of course," Dallas agreed. "I will find a pleasant old place. We can try the Bristol."

Newland could not answer. Kings and rulers lived at the Bristol for a hundred years. Now Dallas called it a charming old inn.

Visitors chose it for its small problems and old local feeling.

During his first impatient years, Newland often imagined returning to Paris. Later, his personal dream faded. He pictured the city only as Ellen's home.

At night, he sat alone after the family slept. He imagined spring breaking into light along roads of chestnut trees. Flowers and white stone figures filled public gardens.

Flower carts carried lilacs, light purple spring flowers with a sweet smell. The great river rolled under its bridges. Art, study, and pleasure filled every wide street.

Now the real Paris opened before him. Its beauty made him shy. He felt old-fashioned and unequal to it.

He seemed like one small gray mark. The man in his old dreams looked great, brave, and without limits.

Dallas's hand came down warmly on his shoulder.

"Hello, Father. This is a real view, is it not?"

They watched the city together in silence.

Then Dallas spoke again. "I have a message. Countess Olenska expects us at half past five."

He said it as lightly as a train time. They were leaving for Florence the next evening. Ellen's name seemed like another simple travel fact.

Newland looked at his son. A playful, sharp light moved in Dallas's eyes. It reminded Newland of old Catherine Mingott.

"Did I forget to tell you?" Dallas asked.

Fanny made him promise three things in Paris. He must buy the music for Debussy's newest songs. He must visit the Grand-Guignol theater.

He must also see Madame Olenska.

Ellen was very kind to Fanny years before. Mr. Beaufort sent his daughter from Buenos Aires to the Assomption school. Fanny knew nobody in Paris.

Ellen took her out during school holidays. She was also a close friend of the first Mrs. Beaufort. And Ellen was family, of course.

Dallas called her that morning. He said that he and his father had two days in Paris. They wished to see her.

Newland continued to stare. "You told Ellen that I am here?"

"Of course. Why not?"

Dallas's brows rose with a playful question. Newland gave no answer. Dallas placed one arm through his father's arm.

The gentle pressure invited trust.

"Father, what was she like?" Dallas asked.

Newland's face grew warm under his son's open look.

"Tell me the truth. You and Ellen were great friends. Was she very beautiful?"

"Beautiful? I do not know. She was different."

"There it is," Dallas cried. "That is always the answer. She is different, and no one knows why."

Dallas felt exactly that way about Fanny.

Newland stepped back and freed his arm. "About Fanny? My dear boy, I hope she is different. But I do not see the link."

"Father, do not be ancient. Was Ellen once your Fanny?"

Dallas belonged completely to the new age. He was May and Newland's first child. Yet they never taught him to hide his thoughts.

"Why create secrets?" Dallas always asked. "Secrets only make people search harder."

Now Newland saw love under his son's joking eyes.

"My Fanny?" Newland repeated.

"The woman for whom you would have thrown everything away. But you did not."

"I did not," Newland said with serious weight.

"No, dear old Father. You belong to another time. But Mother said something."

"Your mother?"

Dallas spoke about the day before May died. She asked him to come alone. Newland remembered.

May said the children were safe with their father. They would always be safe. Once, she asked Newland to give up what he wanted most.

He gave it up for her.

Newland received the strange news in silence. His eyes stayed on the crowded, sunny square.

At last, he spoke very softly. "She never asked me."

"No, I forgot," Dallas said. "People in your time never asked each other anything. You never told each other anything either."

They sat and watched. Then they guessed what moved under the surface.

"Your whole world was like a home where no one could hear or speak," Dallas joked. "Still, you knew more private thoughts than we do."

His generation was too busy to discover even its own thoughts.

Dallas stopped and studied his father. "You are not angry, are you? If you are, let us make peace over lunch at Henri's."

He had to hurry to Versailles after lunch.

Newland did not go with him. He chose to walk alone through Paris. A lifetime of closed memories and regrets broke open at once.

After some time, he no longer blamed Dallas for speaking. A hard metal band seemed to leave his heart.

Someone guessed his pain after all. Someone felt pity for him.

The fact that May understood moved him beyond words. Dallas could not fully understand that part. To him, the story was only sad waste.

Newland wanted love and failed to take it. His strength went nowhere. Was that truly the whole meaning?

He sat for a long time on a bench in the Champs Élysées. The river of Paris life moved past him. He kept asking the question.

Ellen waited only a few streets and hours away.

She never returned to her husband. Count Olenski died several years before. Ellen changed nothing in her way of life afterward.

Nothing now kept Ellen and Newland apart.

That afternoon, he would see her.

Newland rose and crossed the Place de la Concorde. He walked through the Tuileries gardens to the Louvre. Ellen once said she often visited that museum.

He wanted to spend the waiting hours where she recently might have stood.

For more than an hour, he moved from room to room. Afternoon light filled the great spaces. One old painting after another opened before him.

He half remembered their beauty. Now it returned with great power. Long sounds of beauty seemed to fill his heart.

His life was too hungry after all.

He stopped before a bright painting by Titian. Suddenly, he heard his own thought.

"But I am only fifty-seven."

Then he turned away.

It was too late for the hot summer dreams of youth. But perhaps a quiet harvest still waited. Friendship and close understanding might grow beside Ellen.

He could rest inside the blessed quiet of her presence.

Newland returned to the hotel. Dallas met him there. Together, they crossed the Place de la Concorde again.

They walked over the bridge toward the Chamber of Deputies.

Dallas knew nothing about his father's thoughts. He talked quickly about Versailles. Before today, he saw it only once during a crowded holiday.

On that earlier trip, he tried to see everything May's Swiss plan denied him. Now praise and certain judgment raced from his mouth together.

Newland listened and felt less able to express himself. Dallas was not without feeling. But he moved through life with ease and trust.

He faced fate as an equal, not a master.

That was the difference. Young people felt equal to things. They knew their way.

Dallas spoke for the new age. It removed all the old signs beside the road. It also removed the warning signs of danger.

Suddenly, Dallas stopped and caught his father's arm.

"Oh, look," he cried.

They entered the great open space before the Invalides. New leaves covered the trees. Above them floated Mansart's golden dome.

The long gray building lay beneath it. Every line of afternoon light seemed to rise into the dome. It hung like a clear sign of France's glory.

Newland knew Ellen lived near one of the roads from the Invalides. He imagined her area as quiet and dark. He forgot the great light at its center.

Now that gold became Ellen's light.

She lived in it for almost thirty years. Newland knew almost nothing about those years. The rich air already felt too strong for him.

Yet it also woke every part of his mind.

He thought of the theaters Ellen visited. He imagined the paintings she studied and the grand old houses she entered. What people shared her dinners?

What ideas moved without rest around her? French life mixed talk, images, questions, and ancient manners.

He remembered M. Rivière. The young Frenchman once praised good conversation above everything.

Newland did not see or hear about him for almost thirty years. That fact measured Newland's ignorance of Ellen's life.

More than half a lifetime stood between them. Ellen spent those years among unknown people. Newland could only weakly imagine their society.

He would never fully understand its rules.

During those years, Newland lived with his young memory of Ellen. But Ellen surely had real people beside her.

Perhaps she kept a memory of him too. It might rest like a holy object in a chapel. A chapel was a small place for prayer.

She could not go there and pray every day.

They crossed the Place des Invalides. Then they followed a road beside the great building.

The area was quiet after all. Yet its rich history remained everywhere. Paris could leave such beauty to a few people who hardly noticed.

Daylight softened into a golden mist. Yellow electric lights began to shine. Few people crossed the small square they entered.

Dallas stopped and looked up.

"This must be the house," he said.

He put one arm through Newland's. This time, Newland did not pull away. Father and son stood together before the building.

It was modern and had no special beauty. Many windows crossed its wide cream face. Pleasant balconies opened above the street.

One high balcony hung above the round tops of chestnut trees. Its cloth sun covers were still down. The sun seemed to have left only moments before.

"Which floor is hers?" Dallas wondered.

He went to ask the man at the entrance. Then he returned.

"The fifth floor. It must be the home behind those sun covers."

Newland did not move. He looked at the high windows. Their long journey seemed to end here.

After some time, Dallas spoke. "It is almost six."

Newland looked toward an empty bench under the trees.

"I think I will sit there for a moment."

"Are you ill?" Dallas asked.

"No, I feel perfectly well. But please go upstairs without me."

Dallas stood before him in open confusion.

"Father, do you mean that you will not come at all?"

"I do not know," Newland said slowly.

"If you stay here, Ellen will not understand."

"Go, my boy. Perhaps I will follow."

Dallas studied him in the falling light.

"What can I possibly tell her?"

Newland smiled. "My dear boy, you always know what to say."

"Very well. I will say that you are old-fashioned. You chose five flights of stairs because you dislike the lift."

Newland smiled again. "Say only that I am old-fashioned. That is enough."

Dallas looked at him once more. Then he moved his hands in disbelief. He disappeared through the high covered doorway.

Newland sat on the bench. He kept his eyes on the balcony and its cloth covers.

He counted the needed time. A lift would carry Dallas to the fifth floor. Dallas would ring, enter the hall, and walk into the drawing room.

Newland pictured his son's quick, sure step. He saw the young man's warm smile. People often said Dallas was like his father.

Was that true?

Then Newland imagined the other people in Ellen's room. At this social hour, she probably had several visitors.

Among them sat a dark-haired woman with a pale face. She would look up quickly. She would half rise and offer a long, thin hand.

Three rings would shine on it.

Perhaps she sat in a sofa corner near the fire. Azaleas might rise behind her on a table. Azaleas were bright flowers from small bushes.

"She is more real to me here than upstairs," Newland heard himself say.

He feared losing the last sharp edge of that reality. Going upstairs might weaken it. The fear held him to the bench.

One minute followed another.

Newland sat there for a long time. Evening thickened around the square. His eyes never left Ellen's balcony.

At last, light filled the high windows.

A moment later, a servant stepped onto the balcony. He raised the cloth covers. Then he closed the window shutters, the wooden covers over the glass.

Newland watched the final line of light disappear.

It seemed like the signal he waited for.

He rose slowly from the bench.

Then Newland Archer walked back alone to his hotel.