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

answer, and Mrs. Welland hastily declared: “Oh, of course not, darling. Your Granny would be the last person to wish it.” As Archer left the room with the telegram, he heard his mother-in-law add, presumably to Mrs. Lovell Mingott: “But why on earth she should make you telegraph for Ellen Olenska⁠—” and May’s clear voice rejoin: “Perhaps it’s to urge on her again that after all her duty is with her husband.”

The outer door closed on Archer and he walked hastily away toward the telegraph office.

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 eyebrows 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.” Everyone 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