The Age of Innocence

When Archer walked down the sandy main street of St. Augustine to the house which had been pointed out to him as Mr. Welland’s, and saw May Welland standing under a magnolia with the sun in her hair, he wondered why he had waited so long to come.

Here was the truth, here was reality, here was the life that belonged to him; and he, who fancied himself so scornful of arbitrary restraints, had been afraid to break away from his desk because of what people might think of his stealing a holiday!

Her first exclamation was:  “Newland—­has anything happened?” and it occurred to him that it would have been more “feminine” if she had instantly read in his eyes why he had come.  But when he answered:  “Yes—­I found I had to see you,” her happy blushes took the chill from her surprise, and he saw how easily he would be forgiven, and how soon even Mr. Letterblair’s mild disapproval would be smiled away by a tolerant family.

Early as it was, the main street was no place for any but formal greetings, and Archer longed to be alone with May, and to pour out all his tenderness and his impatience.  It still lacked an hour to the late Welland breakfast-time, and instead of asking him to come in she proposed that they should walk out to an old orange-garden beyond the town.  She had just been for a row on the river, and the sun that netted the little waves with gold seemed to have caught her in its meshes.  Across the warm brown of her cheek her blown hair glittered like silver wire; and her eyes too looked lighter, almost pale in their youthful limpidity.  As she walked beside Archer with her long swinging gait her face wore the vacant serenity of a young marble athlete.

To Archer’s strained nerves the vision was as soothing as the sight of the blue sky and the lazy river.  They sat down on a bench under the orange-trees and he put his arm about her and kissed her.  It was like drinking at a cold spring with the sun on it; but his pressure may have been more vehement than he had intended, for the blood rose to her face and she drew back as if he had startled her.

“What is it?” he asked, smiling; and she looked at him with surprise, and answered:  “Nothing.”

A slight embarrassment fell on them, and her hand slipped out of his.  It was the only time that he had kissed her on the lips except for their fugitive embrace in the Beaufort conservatory, and he saw that she was disturbed, and shaken out of her cool boyish composure.

“Tell me what you do all day,” he said, crossing his arms under his tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.  To let her talk about familiar and simple things was the easiest way of carrying on his own independent train of thought; and he sat listening to her simple chronicle of swimming, sailing and riding, varied by an occasional dance at the primitive inn when a man-of-war came in.  A few pleasant people from Philadelphia and Baltimore were picknicking at the inn, and the Selfridge Merrys had come down for three weeks because Kate Merry had had bronchitis.  They were planning to lay out a lawn tennis court on the sands; but no one but Kate and May had racquets, and most of the people had not even heard of the game.

All this kept her very busy, and she had not had time to do more than look at the little vellum book that Archer had sent her the week before (the “Sonnets from the Portuguese”); but she was learning by heart “How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” because it was one of the first things he had ever read to her; and it amused her to be able to tell him that Kate Merry had never even heard of a poet called Robert Browning.

Presently she started up, exclaiming that they would be late for breakfast; and they hurried back to the tumble-down house with its pointless porch and unpruned hedge of plumbago and pink geraniums where the Wellands were installed for the winter.  Mr. Welland’s sensitive domesticity shrank from the discomforts of the slovenly southern hotel, and at immense expense, and in face of almost insuperable difficulties, Mrs. Welland was obliged, year after year, to improvise an establishment partly made up of discontented New York servants and partly drawn from the local African supply.

“The doctors want my husband to feel that he is in his own home; otherwise he would be so wretched that the climate would not do him any good,” she explained, winter after winter, to the sympathising Philadelphians and Baltimoreans; and Mr. Welland, beaming across a breakfast table miraculously supplied with the most varied delicacies, was presently saying to Archer:  “You see, my dear fellow, we camp—­we literally camp.  I tell my wife and May that I want to teach them how to rough it.”

Mr. and Mrs. Welland had been as much surprised as their daughter by the young man’s sudden arrival; but it had occurred to him to explain that he had felt himself on the verge of a nasty cold, and this seemed to Mr. Welland an all-sufficient reason for abandoning any duty.

“You can’t be too careful, especially toward spring,” he said, heaping his plate with straw-coloured griddle-cakes 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 death-blow.  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 over it.

“Don’t you want them to be real sooner?  Can’t I persuade you to break away now?”

She bowed her head, vanishing from him under her conniving hat-brim.

“Why should we dream away another year?  Look at me, dear!  Don’t you understand how I want you for my wife?”

For a moment she remained motionless; then she raised on him eyes of such despairing dearness that he half-released her waist from his hold.  But suddenly her look changed and deepened inscrutably.  “I’m not sure if I do understand,” she said.  “Is it—­is it because you’re not certain of continuing to care for me?”

Archer sprang up from his seat.  “My God—­perhaps—­I don’t know,” he broke out angrily.

May Welland rose also; as they faced each other she seemed to grow in womanly stature and dignity.  Both were silent for a moment, as if dismayed by the unforeseen trend of their words:  then she said in a low voice:  “If that is it—­is there some one else?”

“Some one else—­between you and me?” He echoed her words slowly, as though they were only half-intelligible and he wanted time to repeat the question to himself.  She seemed to catch the uncertainty of his voice, for she went on in a deepening tone:  “Let us talk frankly, Newland.  Sometimes I’ve felt a difference in you; especially since our engagement has been announced.”

“Dear—­what madness!” he recovered himself to exclaim.

She met his protest with a faint smile.  “If it is, it won’t hurt us to talk about it.”  She paused, and added, lifting her head with one of her noble movements:  “Or even if it’s true:  why shouldn’t we speak of it?  You might so easily have made a mistake.”

He lowered his head, staring at the black leaf-pattern on the sunny path at their feet.  “Mistakes are always easy to make; but if I had made one of the kind you suggest, is it likely that I should be imploring you to hasten our marriage?”

She looked downward too, disturbing the pattern with the point of her sunshade while she struggled for expression.  “Yes,” she said at length.  “You might want—­ once for all—­to settle the question:  it’s one way.”

Her quiet lucidity startled him, but did not mislead him into thinking her insensible.  Under her hat-brim he saw the pallor of her profile, and a slight tremor of the nostril above her resolutely steadied lips.

“Well—?” he questioned, sitting down on the bench, and looking up at her with a frown that he tried to make playful.

She dropped back into her seat and went on:  “You mustn’t think that a girl knows as little as her parents imagine.  One hears and one notices—­one has one’s feelings and ideas.  And of course, long before you told me that you cared for me, I’d known that there was some one else you were interested in; every one was talking about it two years ago at Newport.  And once I saw you sitting together on the verandah at a dance—­ and when she came back into the house her face was sad, and I felt sorry for her; I remembered it afterward, when we were engaged.”

Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat clasping and unclasping her hands about the handle of her sunshade.  The young man laid his upon them with a gentle pressure; his heart dilated with an inexpressible relief.

“My dear child—­was that it?  If you only knew the truth!”

She raised her head quickly.  “Then there is a truth I don’t know?”

He kept his hand over hers.  “I meant, the truth about the old story you speak of.”

“But that’s what I want to know, Newland—­what I ought to know.  I couldn’t have my happiness made out of a wrong—­an unfairness—­to somebody else.  And I want to believe that it would be the same with you.  What sort of a life could we build on such foundations?”

Her face had taken on a look of such tragic courage that he felt like bowing himself down at her feet.  “I’ve wanted to say this for a long time,” she went on.  “I’ve wanted to tell you that, when two people really love each other, I understand that there may be situations which make it right that they should—­should go against public opinion.  And if you feel yourself in any way pledged . . . pledged to the person we’ve spoken of . . . and if there is any way . . . any way in which you can fulfill your pledge . . . even by her getting a divorce . . .  Newland, don’t give her up because of me!”

His surprise at discovering that her fears had fastened upon an episode so remote and so completely of the past as his love-affair with Mrs. Thorley Rushworth gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view.  There was something superhuman in an attitude so recklessly unorthodox, and if other problems had not pressed on him he would have been lost in wonder at the prodigy of the Wellands’ daughter urging him to marry his former mistress.  But he was still dizzy with the glimpse of the precipice they had skirted, and full of a new awe at the mystery of young-girlhood.

For a moment he could not speak; then he said:  “There is no pledge—­no obligation whatever—­of the kind you think.  Such cases don’t always—­present themselves quite as simply as . . .  But that’s no matter . . .  I love your generosity, because I feel as you do about those things . . .  I feel that each case must be judged individually, on its own merits . . . irrespective of stupid conventionalities . . .  I mean, each woman’s right to her liberty—­” He pulled himself up, startled by the turn his thoughts had taken, and went on, looking at her with a smile:  “Since you understand so many things, dearest, can’t you go a little farther, and understand the uselessness of our submitting to another form of the same foolish conventionalities?  If there’s no one and nothing between us, isn’t that an argument for marrying quickly, rather than for more delay?”

She flushed with joy and lifted her face to his; as he bent to it he saw that her eyes were full of happy tears.  But in another moment she seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself.  It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped back into the usual, as a too-adventurous child takes refuge in its mother’s arms.

Archer had no heart to go on pleading with her; he was too much disappointed at the vanishing of the new being who had cast that one deep look at him from her transparent eyes.  May seemed to be aware of his disappointment, but without knowing how to alleviate it; and they stood up and walked silently home.