van der Luyden's orchids had been conspicuously...
van der Luyden's orchids had been conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and knobby silverNewland Archer's drawing-room was generally thought a great successA gilt bamboo jardiniere, in which the primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to the bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze reduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and arm-chairs of pale brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames; and tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the palms "I don't think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted up," said May, rising flushed from her struggle, and sending about her a glance of pardonable prideThe brass tongs which she had propped against the side of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband's answer; and before he could restore them Mrvan der Luyden were announced The other guests quickly followed, for it was known that the van der Luydens liked to dine punctuallyThe room was nearly full, and Archer was engaged in showing to MrsSelfridge Merry a small highly-varnished Verbeckhoven "Study of Sheep," which MrWelland had given May for Christmas, when he found Madame Olenska at his side She was excessively pale, and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser and heavier than everPerhaps that, or the fact that she had wound several rows of amber beads about her neck, reminded him suddenly of the little Ellen Mingott he had danced louis vuitton diaper bags with at children's parties, when Medora Manson had first brought her to New York The amber beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps unbecoming: her face looked lustreless and almost ugly, and he had never loved it as he did at that minuteTheir hands met, and he thought he heard her say: "Yes, we're sailing tomorrow in the Russia?"; then there was an unmeaning noise of opening doors, and after an interval May's voice: "Newland! Dinner's been announcedWon't you please take Ellen in?" Madame Olenska put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing-roomAll the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on his sleeve, and he said to himself: "If it were only to see her hand again I should have to follow her? It was only at an entertainment ostensibly offered to a "foreign visitor" that Mrsvan der Luyden could suffer the diminution of being placed on her host's leftThe fact of Madame Olenska's "foreignness" could hardly have been more adroitly emphasised than by this farewell tribute; and Mrsvan der Luyden accepted her displacement with an affability which left no doubt as to her approvalThere were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the gucci bangle watch tribeThere was nothing on earth that the Wellands and Mingotts would not have done to proclaim their unalterable affection for the Countess Olenska now that her passage for Europe was engaged; and Archer, at the head of his table, sat marvelling at the silent untiring activity with which her popularity had been retrieved, grievances against her silenced, her past countenanced, and her present irradiated by the family approvalvan der Luyden shone on her with the dim benevolence which was her nearest approach to cordiality, and Mrvan der Luyden, from his seat at May's right, cast down the table glances plainly intended to justify all the carnations he had sent from Skuytercliff Archer, who seemed to be assisting at the scene in a state of odd imponderability, as if he floated somewhere between chandelier and ceiling, wondered at nothing so much as his own share in the proceedingsAs his glance travelled from one placid well-fed face to another he saw all the harmless-looking people engaged upon May's canvas-backs as a band of dumb conspirators, and himself and the pale woman on his right as the centre of their conspiracyAnd then it came over him, in a vast flash made up of many broken gleams, that to all of them he and Madame Olenska were lovers, lovers in the extreme sense peculiar to "foreign" vocabulariesHe guessed himself to have been, for months, the centre of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears; he understood that, by means as yet unknown to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had chanel classic handbag been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything, or had ever imagined anything, and that the occasion of the entertainment was simply May Archer's natural desire to take an affectionate leave of her friend and cousin It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them As these thoughts succeeded each other in his mind Archer felt like a prisoner in the centre of an armed campHe looked about the table, and guessed at the inexorableness of his captors from the tone in which, over the asparagus from Florida, they were dealing with Beaufort and his wife"It's to show me," he thought, "what would happen to ME?" and a deathly sense of the superiority of implication and analogy over direct action, and of silence over rash words, closed in on him like the doors of the family vault He laughed, and met Mrsvan der Luyden's startled eyes "You think it laughable?" she said with a pinched smile"Of course poor Regina's idea of remaining in New York has its ridiculous side, I suppose;" and Archer muttered: "Of course At this point, he became conscious that Madame Olenska's other neighbour had been engaged for some time with the lady on his rightAt the same moment he saw that May, serenely enthroned between Mrvan der Luyden and MrSelfridge Merry, had dior logo cast a quick glance down the tableIt was evident that the host and the lady on his right could not sit through the whole meal in silenceHe turned to Madame Olenska, and her pale smile met him"Oh, do let's see it through," it seemed to say "Did you find the journey tiring?" he asked in a voice that surprised him by its naturalness; and she answered that, on the contrary, she had seldom travelled with fewer discomforts "Except, you know, the dreadful heat in the train," she added; and he remarked that she would not suffer from that particular hardship in the country she was going to "I never," he declared with intensity, "was more nearly frozen than once, in April, in the train between Calais and Paris She said she did not wonder, but remarked that, after all, one could always carry an extra rug, and that every form of travel had its hardships; to which he abruptly returned that he thought them all of no account compared with the blessedness of getting awayShe changed colour, and he added, his voice suddenly rising in pitch: "I mean to do a lot of travelling myself before long A tremor crossed her face, and leaning over to Reggie Chivers, he cried out: "I say, Reggie, what do you say to a trip round the world: now, next month, I mean? I'm game if you are?" at which MrsReggie piped up that she could not think of letting Reggie go till after the Martha Washington Ball she was getting up for the Blind Asylum in Easter week; and her husband placidly observed that by that time he would have to be practising for the International Polo costume jewelry chanel matchNo comments:
No trackbacks:
You will need to enable javascript to generate a trackback link
