The Age of Innocence, Chapter 82

歌手： Edith Wharton • 专辑：The Age of Innocence (unabridged) • 发布时间：2017-01-27 
She paused again,
a little breathless with the unwonted length of her speech,
and sat with her lips slightly parted
and a deep blush on her cheeks.

Archer, as he looked at her,
was reminded of the glow which had suffused her face
in the Mission Garden at St. Augustine.
He became aware of the same obscure effort in her,
the same reaching out toward something beyond the usual range of her vision.

“She hates Ellen,” he thought,
“and she’s trying to overcome the feeling,
and to get me to help her to overcome it.”

The thought moved him,
and for a moment
he was on the point of breaking the silence between them,
and throwing himself on her mercy.

“You understand,
don’t you,” she went on, “why the family have sometimes been annoyed?
We all did what we could for her at first;
but she never seemed to understand.
And now this idea of going to see Mrs. Beaufort,
of going there in Granny’s carriage!
I’m afraid she’s quite alienated the van der Luydens . . .”

“Ah,” said Archer with an impatient laugh.
The open door had closed between them again.

“It’s time to dress;
we’re dining out, aren’t we?”
he asked, moving from the fire.

She rose also,
but lingered near the hearth.
As he walked past her
she moved forward impulsively,
as though to detain him:
their eyes met,
and he saw that hers were of the same swimming blue
as when he had left her to drive to Jersey City.

She flung her arms about his neck
and pressed her cheek to his.

“You haven’t kissed me today,”
she said in a whisper;
and he felt her tremble in his arms.

End of Chapter 31

The AGE of INNOCENCE

BY EDITH WHARTON

BOOK II

Chapter 32

“At the Court of the Tuileries,”
said Mr. Sillerton Jackson with his reminiscent smile,
“such things were pretty openly tolerated.”

The scene was the van der Luydens’ black walnut dining-room in Madison Avenue,
and the time the evening after Newland Archer’s visit to the Museum of Art.
Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden
had come to town for a few days from Skuytercliff,
whither they had precipitately fled
at the announcement of Beaufort’s failure.
It had been represented to them that the disarray into which society had been thrown by this deplorable affair
made their presence in town more necessary than ever.
It was one of the occasions when,
as Mrs. Archer put it,
they “owed it to society” to show themselves at the Opera,
and even to open their own doors.

“It will never do, my dear Louisa,
to let people like Mrs. Lemuel Struthers
think they can step into Regina’s shoes.
It is just at such times that new people push in
and get a footing.
It was owing to the epidemic of chicken-pox
in New York the winter Mrs. Struthers first appeared
that the married men
slipped away to her house
while their wives were in the nursery.
You and dear Henry, Louisa,
must stand in the breach as you always have.”

Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden
could not remain deaf to such a call,
and reluctantly but heroically
they had come to town,
unmuffled the house,
and sent out invitations
for two dinners and an evening reception.

On this particular evening
they had invited Sillerton Jackson,
Mrs. Archer and Newland and his wife
to go with them to the Opera,
where Faust was being sung for the first time that winter.
Nothing was done without ceremony
under the van der Luyden roof,
and though there were but four guests
the repast had begun at seven punctually,
so that the proper sequence of courses
might be served without haste
before the gentlemen settled down to their cigars.

Archer had not seen his wife since the evening before.
He had left early for the office,
where he had plunged into an accumulation of unimportant business.
In the afternoon one of the senior partners
had made an unexpected call on his time;
and he had reached home so late
that May had preceded him to the van der Luydens’,
and sent back the carriage.

Now, across the Skuytercliff carnations
and the massive plate,
she struck him as pale and languid;
but her eyes shone,
and she talked with exaggerated animation.

The subject which had called forth Mr. Sillerton Jackson’s favourite allusion had been brought up
(Archer fancied not without intention) by their hostess.
The Beaufort failure,
or rather the Beaufort attitude since the failure,
was still a fruitful theme for the drawing-room moralist;
and after it had been thoroughly examined and condemned
Mrs. van der Luyden
had turned her scrupulous eyes on May Archer.

“Is it possible, dear, that what I hear is true?
I was told your grandmother Mingott’s carriage
was seen standing at Mrs. Beaufort’s door.”
It was noticeable
that she no longer called the offending lady by her Christian name.

May’s colour rose,
and Mrs. Archer put in hastily:
“If it was, I’m convinced
it was there without Mrs. Mingott’s knowledge.”

“Ah, you think—?”
Mrs. van der Luyden paused, sighed,
and glanced at her husband.

“I’m afraid,” Mr. van der Luyden said,
“that Madam Olenska’s kind heart
may have led her into the improvidence of calling on Mrs. Beaufort.”

“Or her taste for peculiar people,”
put in Mrs. Archer in a dry tone,
while her eyes dwelt innocently on her son’s.

“I’m sorry to think it of Madame Olenska,”
said Mr. van der Luyden;
and Mrs. Archer murmured:
“Ah, no dear—
and after you’d had her twice at Skuytercliff!”

It was at this point that Mr. Jackson seized the chance
to place his favourite allusion.

“At the Tuileries,” he repeated,
seeing the eyes of the company expectantly turned on him,
“the standard was excessively lax in some respects;
and if you’d asked where Morny’s money came from—!
Or who paid the debts of some of the Court beauties . . .”

“I hope, dear Sillerton,” said Mrs. Archer,
“you are not suggesting
that we should adopt such standards?”

“I never suggest,”
returned Mr. Jackson imperturbably.
“But Madame Olenska’s foreign bringing-up
may make her less particular—”

“Ah,” the two elder ladies sighed.

“Still,
to have kept her grandmother’s carriage at a defaulter’s door!”
Mr. van der Luyden protested;
and Archer guessed that he was remembering,
and resenting, the hampers of carnations he had sent to the little house in Twenty-third Street.

“Of course I’ve always said
that she looks at things quite differently,”
Mrs. Archer summed up.
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