Ahead of him, in the winter night, loomed a big unlit house.As he drew near he thought how often he had seen it blazing with lights, its steps awninged and carpeted, and carriages waiting in double line to draw up at the curbstone.It was in the conservatory that stretched its dead-black bulk down the side street that he had taken his first kiss from May; it was under the myriad candles of the ball-room that he had seen her appear, tall and silver-shining as a young Diana.
Now the house was as dark as the grave, except for a faint flare of gas in the basement, and a light in one upstairs room where the blind had not been lowered.
As Archer reached the corner he saw that the carriage standing at the door was Mrs.Manson Mingott's.What an opportunity for Sillerton Jackson, if he should chance to pass! Archer had been greatly moved by old Catherine's account of Madame Olenska's attitude toward Mrs.Beaufort; it made the righteous reprobation of New York seem like a passing by on the other side.But he knew well enough what construction the clubs and drawing-rooms would put on Ellen Olenska's visits to her cousin.
He paused and looked up at the lighted window.No doubt the two women were sitting together in that room: Beaufort had probably sought consolation elsewhere.
There were even rumours that he had left New York with Fanny Ring; but Mrs.Beaufort's attitude made the report seem improbable.
Archer had the nocturnal perspective of Fifth Avenue almost to himself.At that hour most people were indoors, dressing for dinner; and he was secretly glad that Ellen's exit was likely to be unobserved.As the thought passed through his mind the door opened, and she came out.Behind her was a faint light, such as might have been carried down the stairs to show her the way.She turned to say a word to some one; then the door closed, and she came down the steps.
"Ellen," he said in a low voice, as she reached the pavement.
She stopped with a slight start, and just then he saw two young men of fashionable cut approaching.There was a familiar air about their overcoats and the way their smart silk mufflers were folded over their white ties; and he wondered how youths of their quality happened to be dining out so early.Then he remembered that the Reggie Chiverses, whose house was a few doors above, were taking a large party that evening to see Adelaide Neilson in Romeo and Juliet, and guessed that the two were of the number.They passed under a lamp, and he recognised Lawrence Lefferts and a young Chivers.
A mean desire not to have Madame Olenska seen at the Beauforts' door vanished as he felt the penetrating warmth of her hand.
"I shall see you now--we shall be together," he broke out, hardly knowing what he said.
"Ah," she answered, "Granny has told you?"While he watched her he was aware that Lefferts and Chivers, on reaching the farther side of the street corner, had discreetly struck away across Fifth Avenue.It was the kind of masculine solidarity that he himself often practised; now he sickened at their connivance.
Did she really imagine that he and she could live like this? And if not, what else did she imagine?
"Tomorrow I must see you--somewhere where we can be alone," he said, in a voice that sounded almost angry to his own ears.
She wavered, and moved toward the carriage.
"But I shall be at Granny's--for the present that is,"she added, as if conscious that her change of plans required some explanation.
"Somewhere where we can be alone," he insisted.
She gave a faint laugh that grated on him.
"In New York? But there are no churches...no monuments.""There's the Art Museum--in the Park," he explained, as she looked puzzled."At half-past two.I shall be at the door..."She turned away without answering and got quickly into the carriage.As it drove off she leaned forward, and he thought she waved her hand in the obscurity.
He stared after her in a turmoil of contradictory feelings.
It seemed to him that he had been speaking not to the woman he loved but to another, a woman he was indebted to for pleasures already wearied of: it was hateful to find himself the prisoner of this hackneyed vocabulary.
"She'll come!" he said to himself, almost contemptuously.
Avoiding the popular "Wolfe collection," whose anecdotic canvases filled one of the main galleries of the queer wilderness of cast-iron and encaustic tiles known as the Metropolitan Museum, they had wandered down a passage to the room where the "Cesnola antiquities"mouldered in unvisited loneliness.
They had this melancholy retreat to themselves, and seated on the divan enclosing the central steam-radiator, they were staring silently at the glass cabinets mounted in ebonised wood which contained the recovered fragments of Ilium.
"It's odd," Madame Olenska said, "I never came here before.""Ah, well--.Some day, I suppose, it will be a great Museum.""Yes," she assented absently.
She stood up and wandered across the room.Archer, remaining seated, watched the light movements of her figure, so girlish even under its heavy furs, the cleverly planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the way a dark curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above the ear.His mind, as always when they first met, was wholly absorbed in the delicious details that made her herself and no other.Presently he rose and approached the case before which she stood.Its glass shelves were crowded with small broken objects--hardly recognisable domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles--made of glass, of clay, of discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.
"It seems cruel," she said, "that after a while nothing matters...any more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labelled: `Use unknown.'""Yes; but meanwhile--"
"Ah, meanwhile--"
