The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton [best 7 inch ereader txt] 📗

“You can’t be too careful, especially toward spring,” he said, heaping his plate with straw-coloured griddlecakes and drowning them in golden syrup. “If I’d only been as prudent at your age May would have been dancing at the Assemblies now, instead of spending her winters in a wilderness with an old invalid.”

“Oh, but I love it here, Papa; you know I do. If only Newland could stay I should like it a thousand times better than New York.”

“Newland must stay till he has quite thrown off his cold,” said Mrs. Welland indulgently; and the young man laughed, and said he supposed there was such a thing as one’s profession.

He managed, however, after an exchange of telegrams with the firm, to make his cold last a week; and it shed an ironic light on the situation to know that Mr. Letterblair’s indulgence was partly due to the satisfactory way in which his brilliant young junior partner had settled the troublesome matter of the Olenski divorce. Mr. Letterblair had let Mrs. Welland know that Mr. Archer had “rendered an invaluable service” to the whole family, and that old Mrs. Manson Mingott had been particularly pleased; and one day when May had gone for a drive with her father in the only vehicle the place produced Mrs. Welland took occasion to touch on a topic which she always avoided in her daughter’s presence.

“I’m afraid Ellen’s ideas are not at all like ours. She was barely eighteen when Medora Manson took her back to Europe⁠—you remember the excitement when she appeared in black at her coming-out ball? Another of Medora’s fads⁠—really this time it was almost prophetic! That must have been at least twelve years ago; and since then Ellen has never been to America. No wonder she is completely Europeanised.”

“But European society is not given to divorce: Countess Olenska thought she would be conforming to American ideas in asking for her freedom.” It was the first time that the young man had pronounced her name since he had left Skuytercliff, and he felt the colour rise to his cheek.

Mrs. Welland smiled compassionately. “That is just like the extraordinary things that foreigners invent about us. They think we dine at two o’clock and countenance divorce! That is why it seems to me so foolish to entertain them when they come to New York. They accept our hospitality, and then they go home and repeat the same stupid stories.”

Archer made no comment on this, and Mrs. Welland continued: “But we do most thoroughly appreciate your persuading Ellen to give up the idea. Her grandmother and her uncle Lovell could do nothing with her; both of them have written that her changing her mind was entirely due to your influence⁠—in fact she said so to her grandmother. She has an unbounded admiration for you. Poor Ellen⁠—she was always a wayward child. I wonder what her fate will be?”

“What we’ve all contrived to make it,” he felt like answering. “If you’d all of you rather she should be Beaufort’s mistress than some decent fellow’s wife you’ve certainly gone the right way about it.”

He wondered what Mrs. Welland would have said if he had uttered the words instead of merely thinking them. He could picture the sudden decomposure of her firm placid features, to which a lifelong mastery over trifles had given an air of factitious authority. Traces still lingered on them of a fresh beauty like her daughter’s; and he asked himself if May’s face was doomed to thicken into the same middle-aged image of invincible innocence.

Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!

“I verily believe,” Mrs. Welland continued, “that if the horrible business had come out in the newspapers it would have been my husband’s deathblow. I don’t know any of the details; I only ask not to, as I told poor Ellen when she tried to talk to me about it. Having an invalid to care for, I have to keep my mind bright and happy. But Mr. Welland was terribly upset; he had a slight temperature every morning while we were waiting to hear what had been decided. It was the horror of his girl’s learning that such things were possible⁠—but of course, dear Newland, you felt that too. We all knew that you were thinking of May.”

“I’m always thinking of May,” the young man rejoined, rising to cut short the conversation.

He had meant to seize the opportunity of his private talk with Mrs. Welland to urge her to advance the date of his marriage. But he could think of no arguments that would move her, and with a sense of relief he saw Mr. Welland and May driving up to the door.

His only hope was to plead again with May, and on the day before his departure he walked with her to the ruinous garden of the Spanish Mission. The background lent itself to allusions to European scenes; and May, who was looking her loveliest under a wide-brimmed hat that cast a shadow of mystery over her too-clear eyes, kindled into eagerness as he spoke of Granada and the Alhambra.

“We might be seeing it all this spring⁠—even the Easter ceremonies at Seville,” he urged, exaggerating his demands in the hope of a larger concession.

“Easter in Seville? And it will be Lent next week!” she laughed.

“Why shouldn’t we be married in Lent?” he rejoined; but she looked so shocked that he saw his mistake.

“Of course I didn’t mean that, dearest; but soon after Easter⁠—so that we could sail at the end of April. I know I could arrange it at the office.”

She smiled dreamily upon the possibility; but he perceived that to dream of it sufficed her. It was like hearing him read aloud out of his poetry books the beautiful things that could not possibly happen in real life.

“Oh, do go on, Newland; I do love your descriptions.”

“But why should they be only descriptions? Why shouldn’t we make them real?”

“We shall, dearest, of course; next year.” Her voice lingered