THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, Part Four, Edith Wharton

the Age of Innocence the classic novel by Edith Warton part 4 book two 19 the day was fresh with a lively spring Wind full of dust all the old ladies in both families had got out their faded Sables and yellowing M and the smell of camper from the front pews almost smothered the faint spring scent of the lies banking the altar Newland Archer at a signal from the sexon had come out of the vest and placed himself with his best man on the chancel step of Grace Church the signal meant that the broam bearing the bride and her father was in sight but there was sure to be a considerable interval of adjustment and consultation in the lobby where the Bridesmaids were already hovering like a cluster of Easter blossoms during this unavoidable lapse of time the bridegroom improved of his eagerness was expected to expose himself alone to the Gaze of the assembled company and Archer had gone through this formality as resignedly as through all the others which made of a 19th century New York wedding a right that seemed to belong to the dawn of History everything was equally easy or equally painful as one chose to put it in the path he was committed to tread and he had obeyed the flurried injunctions of his best man as piously as other other bridegrooms had obeyed his own in the days when he had guided them through the same Labyrinth so far he was reasonably sure of having fulfilled all his obligations the bridesmaid's eight bouquets of white lilac and lies of the valley had been sent in due time as well as the gold and Sapphire sleeve Links of the eight ushers and the best man's cat ey scarf pin Archer had sat up half the night trying to vary the wording of his thanks for the last batch of Pres from men friends and ex-lady loves the fees for the bishop and the Rector were safely in the pocket of his best man his own luggage was already at Mrs Manson Mings where the wedding breakfast was to take place and so were the Traveling clothes into which he was to change and a private compartment had been engaged in the train that was to carry the young couple to their unknown destination concealment of the spot in which the bridal night was to be spent being one of the most sacred Tabo of the prehistoric ritual got the ring all right whispered young vanderen Newland who was inexperienced in the duties of a best man and AED by the weight of his responsibility Archer made the gesture which he had seen so many bridegroom's make with his ungloved right hand he felt in the pocket of his dark gray waste coat and assured himself that the little gold ciret engraved inside Newland to May April one 187 was in its place then resuming his former attitude his tall hat and pearl gry gloves with black stitchings grasped in his left hand he stood looking at the door of the church overhead handle's March swelled pompously through the imitation Stone vaulting carrying on its waves The Faded drift of the many weddings at which with cheerful indifference he had stood on the same chancel step watching other Brides float up the Nave toward other bridegrooms how like a first night at the Opera he thought recognizing all the same faces in the same boxes no pews and wondering if when the last Trump sounded Mrs Selfridge Mary would be there with the same towering ostrich feathers in her Bonnet and Mrs buett with the same diamond earrings and the same smile and where the suitable prenium seats were already prepared for them in another world world after that there was still time to review One By One The Familiar countenances in the first rows the women's sharp with curiosity and excitement the men's sulky with the obligation of having to put on their frock coats before lunch and and fight for food at the wedding breakfast too bad the breakfast is at Old Katherine's the bridegroom could fancy Reggie chivers saying but I'm told that lavel mingot insisted on its being cooked by his own Chef so it ought to be good if if one can only get at it and he could imagine silon Jackson adding with authority my dear fellow haven't you heard it's to be served at small tables in the new English fashion Archer's eyes lingered a moment on the leftand Pew where his mother who had entered the church on Mr Henry vaner lien's arm sat weeping softly under her shantell veil her hands in her grandmother's IR muff poor Janie he thought looking at his sister even by screwing her head around she can see only the people in the few front pews and their mostly dowy nands and dagonets on the hither side of the white ribbon dividing off the seats reserved for the families he saw bord tall and red-faced scrutinizing the women with his arrogant stare beside him Sat his wife all silvery chinchilla and violets and on the far side of the ribbon Lawrence leers's sleekly brushed head seemed to mount guard over the invisible deity of good form who presided at the ceremony Archer wondered how many flaws Le's Keen eyes would discover in the ritual of his divinity then he suddenly recalled that he too had once thought such questions important the things that had filled his days seemed now like a nursery parody of life or like the r angles of medieval schoolmen over metaphysical terms that nobody had ever understood a stormy discussion as to whether the wedding presence should be shown had darkened the last hours before the wedding and it seemed inconceivable to Archer that grown-up people should work themselves into a state of agitation over such Trifles and that the matter should have been decided in the negative by Mrs Wellen saying with indignant tears I should as soon turned the reporters loose in my house yet there was a time when Archer had had definite and rather aggressive opinions on all such problems and when everything concerning the manners and customs of his little tribe had seemed to him fraught with Worldwide significance and all the while I suppose he thought real people were living somewhere and real things happening to them there they come breathed the best man excitedly but the bridegroom knew better the cautious opening of the door of the church meant only that Mr Brown The Livery stable Keeper gowned in Black in his intermittent character of Sexton was taking a preliminary survey of the scene before marshalling his forces the door was softly shut again then after another interval it swung majestically open and a murmur ran through the church the family Mrs Welland came first on the arm of her eldest son her large pink face was appropriately solemn and her plum colored satin with pale blue side panels and blue ostrich plumes in a small satin Bonnet met with General approval but before she had settled herself with a stately rustle in the Pew opposite Mrs archers The Spectators were craning their necks to see who was coming after her wild rumors had been abroad the day before to the effect that Mrs man mingot in spite of her physical disabilities had resolved on being present at the ceremony and the idea was so much in keeping with her sporting character that bets ran high at the clubs as to her being able to walk up the Nave and squeeze into a seat it was known that she had insisted on sending her own Carpenter to look into the possibility of taking down the end panel of the front Pew and to measure the space between the seat and the front but the result had been discouraging and for one anxious day her family had watched her dallying with the plan of being wheeled up the Nave in her enormous bath chair and sitting enthroned in it at the foot of the chancel the idea of this monstrous exposure of her person was so painful to her relations that they could have covered with gold the ingenious person who suddenly discovered that the chair was too wide to pass between the iron uprights of the awning which extended from the church door to the curbstone the IDE IDE of doing away with this awning and revealing the bride to the Mob of dress makers and newspaper reporters who stood outside fighting to get near the joints of the canvas exceeded even old Katherine's courage though for a moment she had weighed the possibility why they might take a photograph of my child and put it in the papers Mrs Welland exclaimed when her mother's last plan was hinted to her and from this Unthinkable indecency the clan recoiled with a collective shudder the ancestress had had to give in but her concession was bought only by the promise that the wedding breakfast should take place under her roof though as the Washington Square connection said with the Well's house in Easy reach it was hard to have to make a special price with brown to drive one to the other end of nowhere though all these transactions had been widely reported by The Jacksons a sporting minority still clung to the belief that old Catherine would appear in church and there was a distinct lowering of the temperature when she was found to have been replaced by her daughter-in-law Mrs LEL mingot had the high color and glassy stare induced in ladies of her age and habit by the effort of getting into a new dress but once the disappointment occasioned by her mother-in-law's non-appearance had subsided it was agreed that her black chantilli over lilac satin with a bonnet of Palmer violets formed the happiest contrast to Mrs Well's blue and Plum color far different was the impression produced by the gaunt and mincing lady who followed on Mr Ming's arm in a wild dishevelment of stripes and fringes and floating scarves and as this last Apparition glided into view Archer's heart contracted and stopped beating he had taken it for granted that the maranes Manson was still in Washington where she had gone some four weeks previously with her niece Madame Alena it was generally understood that their abrupt departure was due to Madame Alena's desire to remove her aunt from the baleful eloquence of Dr agathon Carver who had nearly succeeded in enlisting her as a recruit for the valley of love and in the circumstances no one had expected either of the ladies to return for the wedding for a moment Archer stood with his eyes fixed on madora fantastic figure straining to see who came behind her but the little procession was at an end for all the Lesser members of the family had taken their seats and the eight tall ushers Gathering themselves together like birds or insects preparing for some migratory maneuver were already slipping through the side doors into the lobby newand I say she's here the best man whispered Arch aroused himself with a start a long time had apparently passed since his heart had stopped beating for the white and Rosy procession was in fact halfway up the the Nave the bishop the Rector and two white-winged assistants were hovering about the flower banked Altar and the first chords of the Spore Symphony were strewing their flowerlike notes before the bride Archer opened his eyes but could they really have been shut as he imagined and felt his heart beginning to resume its usual task the music the scent of the lies on the altar the vision of the cloud of tle and orange blossoms floating nearer and nearer the sight of Mrs Archer's face suddenly convulsed with happy sobs the low benedictory murmur of the rector's voice the ordered evolutions of the eight pink bridesmaids and the eight black ushers all these sights sounds and Sensations so familiar in themselves so unutterably strange and meaningless in his new relation to them were confusedly mingled in his brain my God he thought have I got the ring and once more he went through the bridegroom's convulsive gesture then in a moment may was beside him such Radiance streaming from her that it sent a faint warmth through his numbness and he straightened himself and smiled into her eyes dearly beloved we are gathered together here the Rector began the ring was on her hand The Bishop's benediction had been given the Bridesmaids were a poised to resume their place in the procession and the organ was showing preliminary symptoms of breaking out into the Mendelson March without which no newly wedded couple had ever emerged upon New York your arm I say give her your arm young Newland nervously hissed and once more Archer became aware of having been a drift far off in the unknown what was it that had sent him there he wondered perhaps the glimpse of among the anonymous Spectators in the transcept of a dark coil of hair under a hat which a moment later revealed itself as belonging to an unknown lady with a long nose so laughably unlike the person whose image she had evoked that he asked himself if he were becoming subject to hallucinations and now he and his wife were pacing slowly down the Nave carried forward on the light Mendelson ripples the spring day beckoning to them through widely open opened doors and Mrs Well's chestnuts with big white favors on their frontlets cting and showing off at the far end of the canvas tunnel the footman who had a still bigger white favor on his lapel wrapped May's white cloak about her and Archer jumped into the broam at her side she turned to him with a triumphant smile and their hands clasped under her veil darling Archer said and suddenly the same black abyss yawned before for him and he felt himself sinking into it deeper and deeper while his voice rambled on smoothly and cheerfully yes of course I thought I'd lost the ring no wedding would be complete if the poor devil of a bridegroom didn't go through that but you did keep me waiting you know I had time to think of every horror that might possibly happen she surprised him by turning in full Fifth Avenue and flinging her arms about his neck but none ever can happen now can it new as long as we two are together every detail of the day had been so carefully thought out that the young couple after the wedding breakfast had ample time to put on their traveling clothes Des send the wide mingot stairs between laughing bridesmaids and weeping parents and get into the Bro h under the traditional shower of rice and satin slippers and there was still half an hour left in which to drive to the station by the last weeklys at the bookstall with the air of seasoned Travelers and settle themselves in the reserved compartment in which May's maid had already placed her dovec colored traveling cloak and glaringly new dressing bag from London the old duac aunts at Reinbeck had put their house at the disposal of the bridal couple with a Readiness inspired by the prospect of spending a week in New York with Mrs Archer and Archer glad to escape the usual Bridal Suite in a Philadelphia or Baltimore Hotel had accepted with an equal alacrity May was enchanted at the idea of going to the country and childishly amused at the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where their mysterious retreat was situated it was thought very English to have a country house lent to one and the fact gave a last Touch of Distinction to what was generally ConEd to be the most brilliant wedding of the year but where the house was no one was permitted to know except the parents of bride and groom who when taxed with the knowledge pursed their lips and said mysteriously ah they didn't tell us which was manifestly true since there was no need to once they were settled in their compartment and the train shaking off the endless wooden suburbs had pushed out into the pale landscape of spring talk became easier than Archer had expected May was still in look and tone the simple girl of yesterday eager to compare notes with him as to the incidents of the wedding and discussing them as impartially as a bridesmaid talking it all over with an usher at first Archer had fancied that this Detachment was the disguise of an inward Tremor but her Clear Eyes revealed only the most tranquil unawareness she was alone for the first time with her husband but her husband was only the Charming comrade of yesterday today there was no one whom she liked as much no one whom she trusted as completely and the culminating lck of the whole delightful adventure of Engagement and marriage was to be off with him alone on a journey like a grown-up person like a married woman in fact it was wonderful that as he had learned in the mission Garden at St Augustine such depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of imagination but he remembered how even then she had surprised him by dropping back to inexpressive girlishness as soon as her conscience had been eased of its burden and he saw that she would probably go through life dealing to the best of her ability with each experience as it came but never anticipating any by so much as a stolen glance perhaps that faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their transparency and her face the look of representing a type rather than a person as if she might have been chosen to pose for a civic virtue or a Greek goddess the blood that ran so close to her fair skin might have been a preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element yet her look of indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor dull but only primitive and pure in the thick of this meditation Archer suddenly felt himself looking at her with the startled gaze of a stranger and plunged into a reminiscence of the wedding breakfast and of Granny mingot immense and triumphant pervasion of it may settled down to Frank enjoyment of the subject I was surprised though weren't you that aunt madora came after all Ellen wrote that they were neither of them well enough to take the journey I do wish it had been she who had recovered did you see the Exquisite Old Lace she sent me he had known that the moment must come sooner or later but he had somewhat imagined that by force of willing he might hold it at Bay yes I no yes it was beautiful he said looking at her blindly and wondering if whenever he heard those two syllables all his carefully builtup world would tumble about him like a house of cards aren't you tired it will be good to have some tea when we arrive I'm sure the aunts have got everything beautifully ready he rattled on taking her hand in his and her mind Rush away instantly to the Magnificent tea and coffee service of Baltimore silver which the bits had sent and which went so perfectly with Uncle LEL Ming's trays and side dishes in the spring Twilight the train stopped at the Reinbeck station and they walked along the platform to the waiting Carriage a how awfully kind of the van delans they've sent their man over from skycliff to meet us Archer exclaimed as a sedate person out of livery approached them and relieved the ma of her bags I'm extremely sorry sir said this Emissary that a little accident has occurred at the Miss DX a leak in the water tank it happened yesterday and Mr Vander Leiden who heard of it this morning sent a housemaid up by the early train to get the patroon's house ready it will be quite comfortable I think you'll find sir and the Miss duac have sent their cook over so that it will be exactly the same as if you'd been at Ryan Beck Archer stared at the speaker so blankly that he repeated in still more apologetic accents it'll be exactly the same sir I do assure you and May's eager voice broke out covering the embarrassed silence the same as Reinbeck the patroon's house but it will be a 100,000 times better won't it newand it's too dear and kind of Mr vanderen to have thought of it and as they drove off with the maid beside The Coachman and their shining Bridal bags on the seat before them she went on excitedly only fancy I've never been inside it have you the Vander ludens show it to so few people but they opened it for Ellen it seems and she told me what a darling little place it was she says it's the only house she's seen in America that she could imagine being perfectly happy in well that's what we're going to be isn't it cried her husband gay and she answered with her boyish smile ah it's just our luck beginning the wonderful luck we're always going to have together 20 of course we must dine with Mrs carfrey dearest Archer said and his wife looked at him with an anxious frown across the Monumental britania wear of their lodging house Breakfast Table in all the Rainy desert of autumnal London there were only two people whom the Newland archers knew and these two they had sedulously avoided in Conformity with the old New York tradition that it was not dignified to force oneself on the notice of one's acquaintances in foreign countries Mrs Archer and Janie in the course of their visits to Europe had so unflinchingly lived up to this principle and met the friendly advances of their fellow Travelers with an air of such impenetrable Reserve that they had almost achieved the record of never having exchanged a word with a foreigner other than those employed in hotels and Railway stations their own compatriots save those previously known or properly accredited they treated with an even more pronounced disdain so that unless they ran across a Shivers a dagonet or a mingot their months abroad was spent in an unbroken Teta tet but the utmost precautions are sometimes unavailing and one night at botson one of the two English ladies in the room across the passage whose names dress and social situation were already intimately known to Janie had knocked on the door and asked if Mrs Archer had a bottle of linament the other lady the intruder's sister Mrs carfrey had been seized with a sudden attack of bronchitis and Mrs Archer who never traveled without a complete Family Pharmacy was fortunately able to produce the required remedy Mrs Carrey was very ill and as she and her sister Miss Harley were traveling alone they were profoundly grateful to the Archer ladies who supplied them with ingenious Comforts and whose efficient maid helped to nurse the invalid back to health when The Archers left bson they had no idea of ever seeing Mrs carfrey and Miss Harley again nothing to Mrs Archer's mind would have been more undignified than to force oneself on the notice of a foreigner to whom one had happened to render an accident service but Mrs carfrey and her sister to whom this point of view was unknown and who would have found it utterly incomprehensible felt themselves linked by an eternal gratitude to the delightful Americans who had been so kind at botson with touching Fidelity They seized every chance of meeting Mrs Archer and Janie in the course of their Continental travels and displayed a supernatural acuteness in finding out when they were to pass through London on their way way to or from the states the intimacy became indisoluble and Mrs Archer and Janie whenever they are lighted at Brown's Hotel found themselves awaited by two affectionate friends who like themselves cultivated ferns in wardian cases made mcra lace read the Memoirs of the baroness bunson and had views about the occupants of the leading London pulpits as Mrs Archer said it made another thing of London to know Mrs carfrey and Miss Harley and by the time that newand became engaged the tie between the families was so firmly established that it was thought only right to send a wedding invitation to the two English ladies who sent in return a pretty bouquet of pressed Alpine flowers underg glass and on the dock when newand and his wife sailed for England Mrs Archer's last word had been you must take May to see Mrs carfrey nuland and his wife had had no idea of obeying this injunction but Mrs carfrey with her usual acuteness had run them down and sent them an invitation to dine and it was over this invitation that may Archer was wrinkling her brows across the tea and muffins It's all very well for you newand you know them but I shall feel so shy among a lot of people I've never met and what shall I wear newand leaned back in his chair and smiled at her she looked handsomer and more Diana likee than ever the moist English air seemed to have deepened the bloom of her cheeks and softened the slight hardness of her virginal features or else it was simply the Inner Glow of Happiness shining through like a light Under Ice where dearest I thought a trunk full of things had come from Paris last week yes of course I meant to say that I Shan know which to wear she pouted a little I've never dined out in London and I don't want to be ridiculous he tried to enter into her perplexity but don't English women dress just like everybody else in the evening Newland how can you ask such funny questions when they go to the theater in Old ball dresses and beheads well perhaps they wear new ball dresses at home but at any rate Mrs carfrey and Miss Hall won't they'll wear caps like my mother and Shaws very soft Shaws yes but how will the other women be dressed not as well as you dear he rejoined wondering what had suddenly developed in her Jan's morbid interest in clothes she pushed back her chair with a sigh that's dear of you newand but it doesn't help me much he had an inspiration why not wear your wedding dress that can't be wrong can it oh dearest if I I only had it here but it's gone to Paris to be made over for next winter and worth hasn't sent it back oh well said Archer getting up look here the fog's lifting if we made a dash for the National Gallery we might manage to catch a glimpse of the pictures the Newland archers were on their way home after a three months wedding tour which may in writing to her girlfriends vaguely summarized as Blissful they had not gone to the Italian on reflection Archer had not been able to picture his wife in that particular setting her own inclination after a month with the Paris dress makers was for mountaineering in July and swimming in August this plan they punctually fulfilled spending July at Interlaken and gindel vald and August at a little place called etrat on the Normandy Coast which someone had recommended as quaint and quiet once or twice in the mountains Arch had pointed Southward and said there's Italy and may her feet in a genan bed had smiled cheerfully and replied it would be lovely to go there next winter if only you didn't have to be in New York but in reality traveling interested her even less than he had expected she regarded it once her clothes were ordered as merely an enlarged opportunity for walking riding swimming and trying her hand at the fascinating new new game of lawn tennis and when they finally got back to London where they were to spend a fortnite while he ordered his clothes she no longer concealed the eagerness with which she looked forward to sailing in London nothing interested her but the theaters and the shops and she found the theaters less exciting than the Paris CAF shanton where under the blossoming horse chestnuts of the shs Elis she had had the novel experience of looking down from the Restaurant Terrace on an audience of two cots and having her husband interpret to her as much of the songs as he thought suitable for bridal ears Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage it was less trouble to conform with the tradition and treat May exactly as all his friends treated their wives than to try to put into practice the theories with which his untrammeled bachelorhood had DED there was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free and he had long since discovered that May's only use of the Liberty she supposed herself to possess would be to lay it on the altar of her wely adoration her innate dignity would always keep her from making the gift abjectly and a day might even come as it once had when she would find strength to take it all together back if she thought she were doing it for his own good but with a conception of marriage so uncomplicated and incurious as hers such a crisis could be brought about only by something visibly outrageous in his own conduct and the finess of her feeling for him made that Unthinkable whatever happened he knew she would always be loyal gallant and unresentful and that pledged him to the practice of the same virtues all this tended to draw him back into his old habits of mind if her Simplicity had been the Simplicity of pettiness he would have chafed and rebelled but since the lines of her character though so few were on the same fine mold as her face she became the tutill Divinity of all his old traditions and reverences such qualities were scarcely of the kind to enliven foreign travel though they made her so easy and pleasant a companion but he saw at once how they would fall into place in their proper setting he had no fear of being oppressed by them for his artistic and intellectual life would go on as it always had outside the domestic Circle and within it there would be nothing small and stifling coming back to his wife would never be like entering a stuffy room after a in the open and when they had children the vacant Corners in both their lives would be filled all these things went through his mind during their long slow drive from May fair to South Kensington Where Mrs carfrey and her sister lived Archer too would have preferred to escape their friends Hospitality in Conformity with the family tradition he had always traveled as a sightseer and looker on affecting a hay unconsciousness of the presence of his fellow beings once only just after Harvard he had spent a few gay weeks at Florence with a band of queer europeanized Americans dancing all night night with titled ladies in palaces and gambling half the day with the rakes and dandies of the fashionable Club but it had all seemed to him though the greatest fun in the world as unreal as a carnival these queer Cosmopolitan women deep in complicated love affairs which they appeared to feel the need of retailing to everyone they met and the Magnificent young officers and elderly died wits who were the subjects or the recipients of their confidences were too different from the people Archer had grown up among too much like expensive and rather malodorous Hot House Exotics to detain his imagination long to introduce his wife into such a society was out of the question and in the course of his travels no other had shown any marked eagerness for his company not long after their arrival in London he had run across the Duke of St austri and the Duke instantly and cordially recogn recognizing him had said look me up won't you but no proper spirited American would have considered that a suggestion to be acted on and the meeting was without a sequel they had even managed to avoid May's English Aunt the Banker's wife who was still in Yorkshire in fact they had purposely postponed going to London till the autumn in order that their arrival during the season might not appear pushing and snobbish to these unknown relatives probably there'll be nobody at Mrs car fries London's a desert at this season and you've made yourself much too beautiful Archer said to May who sat at his side in the handsome so spotlessly Splendid in her sky blue cloak edged with swans down that it seemed Wicked to expose her to the London Grime I don't want them to think that we dress like Savages she replied with a scorn that Pocahontas might have resented and he was struck again by the religious rence of even the most unworldly American women for the social advantages of dress it's their armor he thought their defense against the unknown and their Defiance of it and he understood For the First Time The earnestness with which may who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her hair to charm him had gone through the solemn right of selecting and ordering her extensive wardrobe he had been right in expecting the party at Mrs carries to to be a small one besides their Hostess and her sister they found in the long chilly drawing room only another shwed lady a genial vicar who was her husband a silent lad whom Mrs Carrey named as her nephew and a small dark gentleman with Lively eyes whom she introduced as his tutor pronouncing a French name as she did so into this dimly lit and dim featured group May Archer floated like a swan with the sunset on her she seemed larger fairer more voluminously rustling than her husband had ever seen her and he perceived that the rosiness and rustling were the tokens of an extreme and infantile shyness what on Earth will they expect me to talk about her helpless eyes implored him at the very moment that her dazzling Apparition was calling forth the same anxiety in their own bosoms but Beauty even when distrustful of itself awakens confidence in the manly heart and the Vicor and the French named tutor were soon manifesting to May their desire to put her at her ease in spite of their best efforts however the dinner was a languishing affair Archer noticed that his wife's way of showing herself at her ease with foreigners was to become more uncompromisingly local in her references so that though her loveliness was an encouragement to admiration her conversation was a chill to repar the Vicor soon abandoned the struggle but the tutor who spoke the most fluent and accomplished English gallantly continued to pour it out to her until the ladies to the Manifest relief of all concerned went up to the drawing room the Vicor after a glass of Port was obliged to hurry away to a meeting and the shy nephew who appeared to be an invalid was packed off to bed but Archer and the tutor continued to sit over their wine and suddenly Archer found himself talking as he had not done since his last Symposium with Ned winset the carry nephew it turned out had been threatened with consumption and had had to leave Harrow for Switzerland where he had spent two years in the milder air of Lake Lemon being a bookish youth he had been entrusted to miss Rivier who had brought him back to England and was to remain with him till he went up to Oxford the following spring and miss Rivier added with Simplicity that he should then have to look out for another job it seemed impossible Archer thought that he should be long without one so varied were his interests and so many his gifts he was a man of about 30 with a thin ugly face May would certainly have called him commonl looking to which the play of his ideas gave an intense expressiveness but there was nothing frivolous or cheap in his animation his father who had died young young had filled a small diplomatic post and it had been intended that the son should follow the same career but an insatiable taste for letters had thrown the young man into journalism then into authorship apparently unsuccessful and at length after other experiments and vicisitudes which he spared his listener into tutoring English youths in Switzerland before that however he had lived much in Paris frequented the gonor grer being advised by mopas not to attempt to write even that seemed to Archer a dazzling honor and had often talked with mer in his mother's house he had obviously always been desperately poor and anxious having a mother and an unmarried sister to provide for and it was apparent that his literary Ambitions had failed his situation in fact seemed materially speaking no more brilliant than Ned winits but he had lived in a world in which as he said no one who loved dears need hunger mentally as it was precisely of that love that poor wiset was starving to death Archer looked with a sort of vicarious Envy at this eager impecunious young man who had fared so richly in his poverty you see mure it's worth everything isn't it to keep one's intellectual Liberty not to enslave one's powers of appreciation one's critical Independence it was because of that that I abandoned Journal ISM and took to so much duller work tutoring and private secretaryship there is a good deal of drudgery of course but one preserves one's moral Freedom what we call in French one's Quantas swwa and when one hears good talk one can join in it without compromising any opinions but one's own or one can listen and answer it inwardly ah good conversation there's nothing like it is there the air of ideas is the only air worth breathing and so I have never regretted giving up either diplomacy or journalism two different forms of the same self abdication he fixed his Vivid eyes on Archer as he lit another cigarette voyz Vu M to be able to look life in the face that's worth living in a Garret for isn't it but after all one must earn enough to pay for the Garret and I confess that to grow old as a private tutor or a private anything is almost as chilling to the imagination as a second secretary ship at Bucharest sometimes I feel I must make a plunge an immense plunge do you suppose for instance there would be any opening for me in America in New York arer looked at him with startled eyes New York for a young man who had frequented the gon course and FL be and who thought the life of ideas the only one worth living he continued to stare at Miss iier perplexedly wondering how to tell him that his very superiorities and advantages would be the shest hindrance to Success New York New York but must it be especially New York he stammered utterly unable to imagine what lucrative opening his native City could offer to a young man to whom good conversation appeared to be the only necessity a sudden flush Rose under missio Rivier sow skin I I thought it your Metropolis is not the intellectual life more active there he rejoined then as if fearing to give his hearer the impression of having asked a favor he went on hastily one throws out random suggestions more to oneself than to others in reality I see no immediate Prospect and rising from his seat he added without a trace of constraint but Mrs Carrey will think that I ought to be taking you upstairs during the Homewood Drive Archer pondered deeply on this episode his hour with Mr Rivier had put new air into his lungs and his first impulse had been to invite him to dine the next day but he was beginning to understand why married men did not always immediately yield to their first impulses that young tutor is an interesting fellow we had some awfully good talk after dinner about books and things he threw out tentatively in the handsome May roused herself from one of the dreamy silences into which he had read so many meanings before 6 months of marriage had given him the key to them the little Frenchman wasn't he dreadfully common she questioned coldly and he guessed that she nursed a secret disappointment at having been invited out in London to meet a clergyman and a French tutor the disappointment was not occasioned by the sentiment ordinarily defined as snobbishness but by old New York sense of what was to it when it risked its dignity in foreign lands if May's parents had entertained the car fries in Fifth Avenue they would have offered them something more substantial than a Parson and a school Master but Archer was on edge and took her up common common where he queried and she returned with unusual Readiness why I should say anywhere but in his school room those people are always awkward in society but then she added disarm ly I suppose I shouldn't have known if he was clever Archer disliked her use of the word clever almost as much as her use of the word common but he was beginning to fear his tendency to dwell on the things he disliked in her after all her point of view had always been the same it was that of all the people he had grown up among and he had always regarded it as necessary but negligible until a few months ago he had never known a nice woman who looked at life differently and if a man married it must necessarily be among the nice ah then I won't ask him to dine he concluded with a laugh and may echoed bewildered goodness ask the car fres tutor well not on the same day with the car fries if you prefer I shouldn't but I did rather want another talk with him he's looking for a job in New York her surprise increased with her indifference he almost fancied that she suspected ected him of being tainted with foreignness a job in New York what sort of a job people don't have French tutors what does he want to do chiefly to enjoy good conversation I understand her husband retorted perversely and she broke into an appreciative laugh oh newand how funny isn't that French on the whole He was glad to have the matter settled for him by her refusing to take seriously his wish to invite missure Rivier another after dinner talk would have made it difficult to avoid the question of New York and the more Archer considered it the less he was able to fit Miss Rivier into any conceivable picture of New York as he knew it he perceived with a flash of chilling Insight that in future many problems would be thus negatively solved for him but as he paid the handsome and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first 6 months were always the most difficult in marriage after that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other's angles he reflected but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep for for for