The Age of Innocence

" party for the Blenkers--the Blenkers?"

Mr. Welland laid down his knife and fork and looked anxiously and
incredulously across the luncheon-table at his wife, who, adjusting her
gold eye-glasses, read aloud, in the tone of high comedy:

"Professor and Mrs. Emerson Sillerton request the pleasure of Mr. and
Mrs. Welland's company at the meeting of the Wednesday Afternoon Club
on August 25th at 3 o'clock punctually. To meet Mrs. and the Misses
Blenker.

"Red Gables, Catherine Street. R. S. V. P."

"Good gracious--" Mr. Welland gasped, as if a second reading had been
necessary to bring the monstrous absurdity of the thing home to him.

"Poor Amy Sillerton--you never can tell what her husband will do next,"
Mrs. Welland sighed. "I suppose he's just discovered the Blenkers."

Professor Emerson Sillerton was a thorn in the side of Newport society;
and a thorn that could not be plucked out, for it grew on a venerable
and venerated family tree. He was, as people said, a man who had had
"every advantage." His father was Sillerton Jackson's uncle, his
mother a Pennilow of Boston; on each side there was wealth and
position, and mutual suitability. Nothing--as Mrs. Welland had often
remarked--nothing on earth obliged Emerson Sillerton to be an
archaeologist, or indeed a Professor of any sort, or to live in Newport
in winter, or do any of the other revolutionary things that he did.
But at least, if he was going to break with tradition and flout society
in the face, he need not have married poor Amy Dagonet, who had a right
to expect "something different," and money enough to keep her own
carriage.

No one in the Mingott set could understand why Amy Sillerton had
submitted so tamely to the eccentricities of a husband who filled the
house with long-haired men and short-haired women, and, when he
travelled, took her to explore tombs in Yucatan instead of going to
Paris or Italy. But there they were, set in their ways, and apparently
unaware that they were different from other people; and when they gave
one of their dreary annual garden-parties every family on the Cliffs,
because of the Sillerton-Pennilow-Dagonet connection, had to draw lots
and send an unwilling representative.

"It's a wonder," Mrs. Welland remarked, "that they didn't choose the
Cup Race day! Do you remember, two years ago, their giving a party for
a black man on the day of Julia Mingott's the dansant? Luckily this
time there's nothing else going on that I know of--for of course some
of us will have to go."

Mr. Welland sighed nervously. "'Some of us,' my dear--more than one?
Three o'clock is such a very awkward hour. I have to be here at
half-past three to take my drops: it's really no use trying to follow
Bencomb's new treatment if I don't do it systematically; and if I join
you later, of course I shall miss my drive." At the thought he laid
down his knife and fork again, and a flush of anxiety rose to his
finely-wrinkled cheek.

"There's no reason why you should go at all, my dear," his wife
answered with a cheerfulness that had become automatic. "I have some
cards to leave at the other end of Bellevue Avenue, and I'll drop in at
about half-past three and stay long enough to make poor Amy feel that
she hasn't been slighted." She glanced hesitatingly at her daughter.
"And if Newland's afternoon is provided for perhaps May can drive you
out with the ponies, and try their new russet harness."

It was a principle in the Welland family that people's days and hours
should be what Mrs. Welland called "provided for." The melancholy
possibility of having to "kill time" (especially for those who did not
care for whist or solitaire) was a vision that haunted her as the
spectre of the unemployed haunts the philanthropist. Another of her
principles was that parents should never (at least visibly) interfere
with the plans of their married children; and the difficulty of
adjusting this respect for May's independence with the exigency of Mr.
Welland's claims could be overcome only by the exercise of an ingenuity
which left not a second of Mrs. Welland's own time unprovided for.

"Of course I'll drive with Papa--I'm sure Newland will find something
to do," May said, in a tone that gently reminded her husband of his
lack of response. It was a cause of constant distress to Mrs. Welland
that her son-in-law showed so little foresight in planning his days.
Often already, during the fortnight that he had passed under her roof,
when she enquired how he meant to spend his afternoon, he had answered
paradoxically: "Oh, I think for a change I'll just save it instead of
spending it--" and once, when she and May had had to go on a
long-postponed round of afternoon calls, he had confessed to having
lain all the afternoon under a rock on the beach below the house.

"Newland never seems to look ahead," Mrs. Welland once ventured to
complain to her daughter; and May answered serenely: "No; but you see
it doesn't matter, because when there's nothing particular to do he
reads a book."

"Ah, yes--like his father!" Mrs. Welland agreed, as if allowing for an
inherited oddity; and after that the question of Newland's unemployment
was tacitly dropped.

Nevertheless, as the day for the Sillerton reception approached, May
began to show a natural solicitude for his welfare, and to suggest a
tennis match at the Chiverses', or a sail on Julius Beaufort's cutter,
as a means of atoning for her temporary desertion. "I shall be back by
six, you know, dear: Papa never drives later than that--" and she was
not reassured till Archer said that he thought of hiring a run-about
and driving up the island to a stud-farm to look at a second horse for
her brougham. They had been looking for this horse for some time, and
the suggestion was so acceptable that May glanced at her mother as if
to say: "You see he knows how to plan out his time as well as any of
us."

The idea of the stud-farm and the brougham horse had germinated in
Archer's mind on the very day when the Emerson Sillerton invitation had
first been mentioned; but he had kept it to himself as if there were
something clandestine in the plan, and discovery might prevent its
execution. He had, however, taken the precaution to engage in advance
a runabout with a pair of old livery-stable trotters that could still
do their eighteen miles on level roads; and at two o'clock, hastily
deserting the luncheon-table, he sprang into the light carriage and
drove off.

The day was perfect. A breeze from the north drove little puffs of
white cloud across an ultramarine sky, with a bright sea running under
it. Bellevue Avenue was empty at that hour, and after dropping the
stable-lad at the corner of Mill Street Archer turned down the Old
Beach Road and drove across Eastman's Beach.

He had the feeling of unexplained excitement with which, on
half-holidays at school, he used to start off into the unknown. Taking
his pair at an easy gait, he counted on reaching the stud-farm, which
was not far beyond Paradise Rocks, before three o'clock; so that, after
looking over the horse (and trying him if he seemed promising) he would
still have four golden hours to dispose of.

As soon as he heard of the Sillerton's party he had said to himself
that the Marchioness Manson would certainly come to Newport with the
Blenkers, and that Madame Olenska might again take the opportunity of
spending the day with her grandmother. At any rate, the Blenker
habitation would probably be deserted, and he would be able, without
indiscretion, to satisfy a vague curiosity concerning it. He was not
sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since
he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted,
irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and
to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the
real one in the summer-house. The longing was with him day and night,
an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man
for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not
see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was
not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her
voice. He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the
spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it,
the rest of the world might seem less empty.

When he reached the stud-farm a glance showed him that the horse was
not what he wanted; nevertheless he took a turn behind it in order to
prove to himself that he was not in a hurry. But at three o'clock he
shook out the reins over the trotters and turned into the by-roads
leading to Portsmouth. The wind had dropped and a faint haze on the
horizon showed that a fog was waiting to steal up the Saconnet on the
turn of the tide; but all about him fields and woods were steeped in
golden light.

He drove past grey-shingled farm-houses in orchards, past hay-fields
and groves of oak, past villages with white steeples rising sharply
into the fading sky; and at last, after stopping to ask the way of some
men at work in a field, he turned down a lane between high banks of
goldenrod and brambles. At the end of the lane was the blue glimmer of
the river; to the left, standing in front of a clump of oaks and
maples, he saw a long tumble-down house with white paint peeling from
its clapboards.

On the road-side facing the gateway stood one of the open sheds in
which the New Englander shelters his farming implements and visitors
"hitch" their "teams." Archer, jumping down, led his pair into the
shed, and after tying them to a post turned toward the house. The
patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hay-field; but to the left
an overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled
a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white,
surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but
continued to take ineffectual aim.

Archer leaned for a while against the gate. No one was in sight, and
not a sound came from the open windows of the house: a grizzled
Newfoundland dozing before the door seemed as ineffectual a guardian as
the arrowless Cupid. It was strange to think that this place of
silence and decay was the home of the turbulent Blenkers; yet Archer
was sure that he was not mistaken.

For a long time he stood there, content to take in the scene, and
gradually falling under its drowsy spell; but at length he roused
himself to the sense of the passing time. Should he look his fill and
then drive away? He stood irresolute, wishing suddenly to see the
inside of the house, so that he might picture the room that Madame
Olenska sat in. There was nothing to prevent his walking up to the
door and ringing the bell; if, as he supposed, she was away with the
rest of the party, he could easily give his name, and ask permission to
go into the sitting-room to write a message.

But instead, he crossed the lawn and turned toward the box-garden. As
he entered it he caught sight of something bright-coloured in the
summer-house, and presently made it out to be a pink parasol. The
parasol drew him like a magnet: he was sure it was hers. He went into
the summer-house, and sitting down on the rickety seat picked up the
silken thing and looked at its carved handle, which was made of some
rare wood that gave out an aromatic scent. Archer lifted the handle to
his lips.

He heard a rustle of skirts against the box, and sat motionless,
leaning on the parasol handle with clasped hands, and letting the
rustle come nearer without lifting his eyes. He had always known that
this must happen ...

"Oh, Mr. Archer!" exclaimed a loud young voice; and looking up he saw
before him the youngest and largest of the Blenker girls, blonde and
blowsy, in bedraggled muslin. A red blotch on one of her cheeks seemed
to show that it had recently been pressed against a pillow, and her
half-awakened eyes stared at him hospitably but confusedly.

"Gracious--where did you drop from? I must have been sound asleep in
the hammock. Everybody else has gone to Newport. Did you ring?" she
incoherently enquired.

Archer's confusion was greater than hers. "I--no--that is, I was just
going to. I had to come up the island to see about a horse, and I
drove over on a chance of finding Mrs. Blenker and your visitors. But
the house seemed empty--so I sat down to wait."

Miss Blenker, shaking off the fumes of sleep, looked at him with
increasing interest. "The house IS empty. Mother's not here, or the
Marchioness--or anybody but me." Her glance became faintly
reproachful. "Didn't you know that Professor and Mrs. Sillerton are
giving a garden-party for mother and all of us this afternoon? It was
too unlucky that I couldn't go; but I've had a sore throat, and mother
was afraid of the drive home this evening. Did you ever know anything
so disappointing? Of course," she added gaily, "I shouldn't have
minded half as much if I'd known you were coming."

Symptoms of a lumbering coquetry became visible in her, and Archer
found the strength to break in: "But Madame Olenska--has she gone to
Newport too?"

Miss Blenker looked at him with surprise. "Madame Olenska--didn't you
know she'd been called away?"

"Called away?--"

"Oh, my best parasol! I lent it to that goose of a Katie, because it
matched her ribbons, and the careless thing must have dropped it here.
We Blenkers are all like that ... real Bohemians!" Recovering the
sunshade with a powerful hand she unfurled it and suspended its rosy
dome above her head. "Yes, Ellen was called away yesterday: she lets
us call her Ellen, you know. A telegram came from Boston: she said she
might be gone for two days. I do LOVE the way she does her hair, don't
you?" Miss Blenker rambled on.

Archer continued to stare through her as though she had been
transparent. All he saw was the trumpery parasol that arched its
pinkness above her giggling head.

After a moment he ventured: "You don't happen to know why Madame
Olenska went to Boston? I hope it was not on account of bad news?"

Miss Blenker took this with a cheerful incredulity. "Oh, I don't
believe so. She didn't tell us what was in the telegram. I think she
didn't want the Marchioness to know. She's so romantic-looking, isn't
she? Doesn't she remind you of Mrs. Scott-Siddons when she reads 'Lady
Geraldine's Courtship'? Did you never hear her?"

Archer was dealing hurriedly with crowding thoughts. His whole future
seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless
emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever
to happen. He glanced about him at the unpruned garden, the
tumble-down house, and the oak-grove under which the dusk was
gathering. It had seemed so exactly the place in which he ought to
have found Madame Olenska; and she was far away, and even the pink
sunshade was not hers ...

He frowned and hesitated. "You don't know, I suppose--I shall be in
Boston tomorrow. If I could manage to see her--"

He felt that Miss Blenker was losing interest in him, though her smile
persisted. "Oh, of course; how lovely of you! She's staying at the
Parker House; it must be horrible there in this weather."

After that Archer was but intermittently aware of the remarks they
exchanged. He could only remember stoutly resisting her entreaty that
he should await the returning family and have high tea with them before
he drove home. At length, with his hostess still at his side, he
passed out of range of the wooden Cupid, unfastened his horses and
drove off. At the turn of the lane he saw Miss Blenker standing at the
gate and waving the pink parasol.