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The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton CHAPTER XXVIII.
"Ol-ol--howjer spell it, anyhow?" asked the tart young lady to whom Archer had pushed
his wife's telegram across the brass ledge of the Western Union office.
"Olenska--O-len-ska," he repeated, drawing back the message in order to print out the
foreign syllables above May's rambling script.
"It's an unlikely name for a New York telegraph office; at least in this
quarter," an unexpected voice observed; and turning around Archer saw Lawrence Lefferts
at his elbow, pulling an imperturbable
moustache and affecting not to glance at the message.
"Hallo, Newland: thought I'd catch you here.
I've just heard of old Mrs. Mingott's stroke; and as I was on my way to the house
I saw you turning down this street and nipped after you.
I suppose you've come from there?"
Archer nodded, and pushed his telegram under the lattice.
"Very bad, eh?" Lefferts continued.
"Wiring to the family, I suppose.
I gather it IS bad, if you're including Countess Olenska."
Archer's lips stiffened; he felt a savage impulse to dash his fist into the long vain
handsome face at his side.
"Why?" he questioned. Lefferts, who was known to shrink from
discussion, raised his eye-brows with an ironic grimace that warned the other of the
watching damsel behind the lattice.
Nothing could be worse "form" the look reminded Archer, than any display of temper
in a public place.
Archer had never been more indifferent to the requirements of form; but his impulse
to do Lawrence Lefferts a physical injury was only momentary.
The idea of bandying Ellen Olenska's name with him at such a time, and on whatsoever
provocation, was unthinkable. He paid for his telegram, and the two young
men went out together into the street.
There Archer, having regained his self- control, went on: "Mrs. Mingott is much
better: the doctor feels no anxiety whatever"; and Lefferts, with profuse
expressions of relief, asked him if he had
heard that there were beastly bad rumours again about Beaufort....
That afternoon the announcement of the Beaufort failure was in all the papers.
It overshadowed the report of Mrs. Manson Mingott's stroke, and only the few who had
heard of the mysterious connection between the two events thought of ascribing old
Catherine's illness to anything but the accumulation of flesh and years.
The whole of New York was darkened by the tale of Beaufort's dishonour.
There had never, as Mr. Letterblair said, been a worse case in his memory, nor, for
that matter, in the memory of the far-off Letterblair who had given his name to the
firm.
The bank had continued to take in money for a whole day after its failure was
inevitable; and as many of its clients belonged to one or another of the ruling
clans, Beaufort's duplicity seemed doubly cynical.
If Mrs. Beaufort had not taken the tone that such misfortunes (the word was her
own) were "the test of friendship," compassion for her might have tempered the
general indignation against her husband.
As it was--and especially after the object of her nocturnal visit to Mrs. Manson
Mingott had become known--her cynicism was held to exceed his; and she had not the
excuse--nor her detractors the
satisfaction--of pleading that she was "a foreigner."
It was some comfort (to those whose securities were not in jeopardy) to be able
to remind themselves that Beaufort WAS; but, after all, if a Dallas of South
Carolina took his view of the case, and
glibly talked of his soon being "on his feet again," the argument lost its edge,
and there was nothing to do but to accept this awful evidence of the indissolubility
of marriage.
Society must manage to get on without the Beauforts, and there was an end of it--
except indeed for such hapless victims of the disaster as Medora Manson, the poor old
Miss Lannings, and certain other misguided
ladies of good family who, if only they had listened to Mr. Henry van der Luyden...
"The best thing the Beauforts can do," said Mrs. Archer, summing it up as if she were
pronouncing a diagnosis and prescribing a course of treatment, "is to go and live at
Regina's little place in North Carolina.
Beaufort has always kept a racing stable, and he had better breed trotting horses.
I should say he had all the qualities of a successful horsedealer."
Every one agreed with her, but no one condescended to enquire what the Beauforts
really meant to do.
The next day Mrs. Manson Mingott was much better: she recovered her voice
sufficiently to give orders that no one should mention the Beauforts to her again,
and asked--when Dr. Bencomb appeared--what
in the world her family meant by making such a fuss about her health.
"If people of my age WILL eat chicken-salad in the evening what are they to expect?"
she enquired; and, the doctor having opportunely modified her dietary, the
stroke was transformed into an attack of indigestion.
But in spite of her firm tone old Catherine did not wholly recover her former attitude
toward life.
The growing remoteness of old age, though it had not diminished her curiosity about
her neighbours, had blunted her never very lively compassion for their troubles; and
she seemed to have no difficulty in putting the Beaufort disaster out of her mind.
But for the first time she became absorbed in her own symptoms, and began to take a
sentimental interest in certain members of her family to whom she had hitherto been
contemptuously indifferent.
Mr. Welland, in particular, had the privilege of attracting her notice.
Of her sons-in-law he was the one she had most consistently ignored; and all his
wife's efforts to represent him as a man of forceful character and marked intellectual
ability (if he had only "chosen") had been met with a derisive chuckle.
But his eminence as a valetudinarian now made him an object of engrossing interest,
and Mrs. Mingott issued an imperial summons to him to come and compare diets as soon as
his temperature permitted; for old
Catherine was now the first to recognise that one could not be too careful about
temperatures.
Twenty-four hours after Madame Olenska's summons a telegram announced that she would
arrive from Washington on the evening of the following day.
At the Wellands', where the Newland Archers chanced to be lunching, the question as to
who should meet her at Jersey City was immediately raised; and the material
difficulties amid which the Welland
household struggled as if it had been a frontier outpost, lent animation to the
debate.
It was agreed that Mrs. Welland could not possibly go to Jersey City because she was
to accompany her husband to old Catherine's that afternoon, and the brougham could not
be spared, since, if Mr. Welland were
"upset" by seeing his mother-in-law for the first time after her attack, he might have
to be taken home at a moment's notice.
The Welland sons would of course be "down town," Mr. Lovell Mingott would be just
hurrying back from his shooting, and the Mingott carriage engaged in meeting him;
and one could not ask May, at the close of
a winter afternoon, to go alone across the ferry to Jersey City, even in her own
carriage.
Nevertheless, it might appear inhospitable- -and contrary to old Catherine's express
wishes--if Madame Olenska were allowed to arrive without any of the family being at
the station to receive her.
It was just like Ellen, Mrs. Welland's tired voice implied, to place the family in
such a dilemma.
"It's always one thing after another," the poor lady grieved, in one of her rare
revolts against fate; "the only thing that makes me think Mamma must be less well than
Dr. Bencomb will admit is this morbid
desire to have Ellen come at once, however inconvenient it is to meet her."
The words had been thoughtless, as the utterances of impatience often are; and Mr.
Welland was upon them with a pounce.
"Augusta," he said, turning pale and laying down his fork, "have you any other reason
for thinking that Bencomb is less to be relied on than he was?
Have you noticed that he has been less conscientious than usual in following up my
case or your mother's?"
It was Mrs. Welland's turn to grow pale as the endless consequences of her blunder
unrolled themselves before her; but she managed to laugh, and take a second helping
of scalloped oysters, before she said,
struggling back into her old armour of cheerfulness: "My dear, how could you
imagine such a thing?
I only meant that, after the decided stand Mamma took about its being Ellen's duty to
go back to her husband, it seems strange that she should be seized with this sudden
whim to see her, when there are half a
dozen other grandchildren that she might have asked for.
But we must never forget that Mamma, in spite of her wonderful vitality, is a very
old woman."
Mr. Welland's brow remained clouded, and it was evident that his perturbed imagination
had fastened at once on this last remark.
"Yes: your mother's a very old woman; and for all we know Bencomb may not be as
successful with very old people.
As you say, my dear, it's always one thing after another; and in another ten or
fifteen years I suppose I shall have the pleasing duty of looking about for a new
doctor.
It's always better to make such a change before it's absolutely necessary."
And having arrived at this Spartan decision Mr. Welland firmly took up his fork.
"But all the while," Mrs. Welland began again, as she rose from the luncheon-table,
and led the way into the wilderness of purple satin and malachite known as the
back drawing-room, "I don't see how Ellen's
to be got here tomorrow evening; and I do like to have things settled for at least
twenty-four hours ahead."
Archer turned from the fascinated contemplation of a small painting
representing two Cardinals carousing, in an octagonal ebony frame set with medallions
of onyx.
"Shall I fetch her?" he proposed. "I can easily get away from the office in
time to meet the brougham at the ferry, if May will send it there."
His heart was beating excitedly as he spoke.
Mrs. Welland heaved a sigh of gratitude, and May, who had moved away to the window,
turned to shed on him a beam of approval.
"So you see, Mamma, everything WILL be settled twenty-four hours in advance," she
said, stooping over to kiss her mother's troubled forehead.
May's brougham awaited her at the door, and she was to drive Archer to Union Square,
where he could pick up a Broadway car to carry him to the office.
As she settled herself in her corner she said: "I didn't want to worry Mamma by
raising fresh obstacles; but how can you meet Ellen tomorrow, and bring her back to
New York, when you're going to Washington?"
"Oh, I'm not going," Archer answered. "Not going?
Why, what's happened?" Her voice was as clear as a bell, and full
of wifely solicitude.
"The case is off--postponed." "Postponed?
How odd!
I saw a note this morning from Mr. Letterblair to Mamma saying that he was
going to Washington tomorrow for the big patent case that he was to argue before the
Supreme Court.
You said it was a patent case, didn't you?" "Well--that's it: the whole office can't
go. Letterblair decided to go this morning."
"Then it's NOT postponed?" she continued, with an insistence so unlike her that he
felt the blood rising to his face, as if he were blushing for her unwonted lapse from
all the traditional delicacies.
"No: but my going is," he answered, cursing the unnecessary explanations that he had
given when he had announced his intention of going to Washington, and wondering where
he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.
It did not hurt him half as much to tell May an untruth as to see her trying to
pretend that she had not detected him.
"I'm not going till later on: luckily for the convenience of your family," he
continued, taking base refuge in sarcasm.
As he spoke he felt that she was looking at him, and he turned his eyes to hers in
order not to appear to be avoiding them.
Their glances met for a second, and perhaps let them into each other's meanings more
deeply than either cared to go.
"Yes; it IS awfully convenient," May brightly agreed, "that you should be able
to meet Ellen after all; you saw how much Mamma appreciated your offering to do it."
"Oh, I'm delighted to do it."
The carriage stopped, and as he jumped out she leaned to him and laid her hand on his.
"Good-bye, dearest," she said, her eyes so blue that he wondered afterward if they had
shone on him through tears.
He turned away and hurried across Union Square, repeating to himself, in a sort of
inward chant: "It's all of two hours from Jersey City to old Catherine's.
It's all of two hours--and it may be more."