The Age of Innocence

all Street, the next day, had more reassuring reports of Beaufort's
situation. They were not definite, but they were hopeful. It was
generally understood that he could call on powerful influences in case
of emergency, and that he had done so with success; and that evening,
when Mrs. Beaufort appeared at the Opera wearing her old smile and a
new emerald necklace, society drew a breath of relief.

New York was inexorable in its condemnation of business irregularities.
So far there had been no exception to its tacit rule that those who
broke the law of probity must pay; and every one was aware that even
Beaufort and Beaufort's wife would be offered up unflinchingly to this
principle. But to be obliged to offer them up would be not only
painful but inconvenient. The disappearance of the Beauforts would
leave a considerable void in their compact little circle; and those who
were too ignorant or too careless to shudder at the moral catastrophe
bewailed in advance the loss of the best ball-room in New York.

Archer had definitely made up his mind to go to Washington. He was
waiting only for the opening of the law-suit of which he had spoken to
May, so that its date might coincide with that of his visit; but on the
following Tuesday he learned from Mr. Letterblair that the case might
be postponed for several weeks. Nevertheless, he went home that
afternoon determined in any event to leave the next evening. The
chances were that May, who knew nothing of his professional life, and
had never shown any interest in it, would not learn of the
postponement, should it take place, nor remember the names of the
litigants if they were mentioned before her; and at any rate he could
no longer put off seeing Madame Olenska. There were too many things
that he must say to her.

On the Wednesday morning, when he reached his office, Mr. Letterblair
met him with a troubled face. Beaufort, after all, had not managed to
"tide over"; but by setting afloat the rumour that he had done so he
had reassured his depositors, and heavy payments had poured into the
bank till the previous evening, when disturbing reports again began to
predominate. In consequence, a run on the bank had begun, and its
doors were likely to close before the day was over. The ugliest things
were being said of Beaufort's dastardly manoeuvre, and his failure
promised to be one of the most discreditable in the history of Wall
Street.

The extent of the calamity left Mr. Letterblair white and
incapacitated. "I've seen bad things in my time; but nothing as bad as
this. Everybody we know will be hit, one way or another. And what
will be done about Mrs. Beaufort? What CAN be done about her? I pity
Mrs. Manson Mingott as much as anybody: coming at her age, there's no
knowing what effect this affair may have on her. She always believed
in Beaufort--she made a friend of him! And there's the whole Dallas
connection: poor Mrs. Beaufort is related to every one of you. Her
only chance would be to leave her husband--yet how can any one tell her
so? Her duty is at his side; and luckily she seems always to have been
blind to his private weaknesses."

There was a knock, and Mr. Letterblair turned his head sharply. "What
is it? I can't be disturbed."

A clerk brought in a letter for Archer and withdrew. Recognising his
wife's hand, the young man opened the envelope and read: "Won't you
please come up town as early as you can? Granny had a slight stroke
last night. In some mysterious way she found out before any one else
this awful news about the bank. Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and the
idea of the disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a
temperature and can't leave his room. Mamma needs you dreadfully, and
I do hope you can get away at once and go straight to Granny's."

Archer handed the note to his senior partner, and a few minutes later
was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car, which he exchanged at
Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth
Avenue line. It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious vehicle
dropped him at old Catherine's. The sitting-room window on the ground
floor, where she usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure
of her daughter, Mrs. Welland, who signed a haggard welcome as she
caught sight of Archer; and at the door he was met by May. The hall
wore the unnatural appearance peculiar to well-kept houses suddenly
invaded by illness: wraps and furs lay in heaps on the chairs, a
doctor's bag and overcoat were on the table, and beside them letters
and cards had already piled up unheeded.

May looked pale but smiling: Dr. Bencomb, who had just come for the
second time, took a more hopeful view, and Mrs. Mingott's dauntless
determination to live and get well was already having an effect on her
family. May led Archer into the old lady's sitting-room, where the
sliding doors opening into the bedroom had been drawn shut, and the
heavy yellow damask portieres dropped over them; and here Mrs. Welland
communicated to him in horrified undertones the details of the
catastrophe. It appeared that the evening before something dreadful
and mysterious had happened. At about eight o'clock, just after Mrs.
Mingott had finished the game of solitaire that she always played after
dinner, the door-bell had rung, and a lady so thickly veiled that the
servants did not immediately recognise her had asked to be received.

The butler, hearing a familiar voice, had thrown open the sitting-room
door, announcing: "Mrs. Julius Beaufort"--and had then closed it again
on the two ladies. They must have been together, he thought, about an
hour. When Mrs. Mingott's bell rang Mrs. Beaufort had already slipped
away unseen, and the old lady, white and vast and terrible, sat alone
in her great chair, and signed to the butler to help her into her room.
She seemed, at that time, though obviously distressed, in complete
control of her body and brain. The mulatto maid put her to bed,
brought her a cup of tea as usual, laid everything straight in the
room, and went away; but at three in the morning the bell rang again,
and the two servants, hastening in at this unwonted summons (for old
Catherine usually slept like a baby), had found their mistress sitting
up against her pillows with a crooked smile on her face and one little
hand hanging limp from its huge arm.

The stroke had clearly been a slight one, for she was able to
articulate and to make her wishes known; and soon after the doctor's
first visit she had begun to regain control of her facial muscles. But
the alarm had been great; and proportionately great was the indignation
when it was gathered from Mrs. Mingott's fragmentary phrases that
Regina Beaufort had come to ask her--incredible effrontery!--to back up
her husband, see them through--not to "desert" them, as she called
it--in fact to induce the whole family to cover and condone their
monstrous dishonour.

"I said to her: 'Honour's always been honour, and honesty honesty, in
Manson Mingott's house, and will be till I'm carried out of it feet
first,'" the old woman had stammered into her daughter's ear, in the
thick voice of the partly paralysed. "And when she said: 'But my
name, Auntie--my name's Regina Dallas,' I said: 'It was Beaufort when
he covered you with jewels, and it's got to stay Beaufort now that he's
covered you with shame.'"

So much, with tears and gasps of horror, Mrs. Welland imparted,
blanched and demolished by the unwonted obligation of having at last to
fix her eyes on the unpleasant and the discreditable. "If only I could
keep it from your father-in-law: he always says: 'Augusta, for pity's
sake, don't destroy my last illusions'--and how am I to prevent his
knowing these horrors?" the poor lady wailed.

"After all, Mamma, he won't have SEEN them," her daughter suggested;
and Mrs. Welland sighed: "Ah, no; thank heaven he's safe in bed. And
Dr. Bencomb has promised to keep him there till poor Mamma is better,
and Regina has been got away somewhere."

Archer had seated himself near the window and was gazing out blankly at
the deserted thoroughfare. It was evident that he had been summoned
rather for the moral support of the stricken ladies than because of any
specific aid that he could render. Mr. Lovell Mingott had been
telegraphed for, and messages were being despatched by hand to the
members of the family living in New York; and meanwhile there was
nothing to do but to discuss in hushed tones the consequences of
Beaufort's dishonour and of his wife's unjustifiable action.

Mrs. Lovell Mingott, who had been in another room writing notes,
presently reappeared, and added her voice to the discussion. In THEIR
day, the elder ladies agreed, the wife of a man who had done anything
disgraceful in business had only one idea: to efface herself, to
disappear with him. "There was the case of poor Grandmamma Spicer;
your great-grandmother, May. Of course," Mrs. Welland hastened to add,
"your great-grandfather's money difficulties were private--losses at
cards, or signing a note for somebody--I never quite knew, because
Mamma would never speak of it. But she was brought up in the country
because her mother had to leave New York after the disgrace, whatever
it was: they lived up the Hudson alone, winter and summer, till Mamma
was sixteen. It would never have occurred to Grandmamma Spicer to ask
the family to 'countenance' her, as I understand Regina calls it;
though a private disgrace is nothing compared to the scandal of ruining
hundreds of innocent people."

"Yes, it would be more becoming in Regina to hide her own countenance
than to talk about other people's," Mrs. Lovell Mingott agreed. "I
understand that the emerald necklace she wore at the Opera last Friday
had been sent on approval from Ball and Black's in the afternoon. I
wonder if they'll ever get it back?"

Archer listened unmoved to the relentless chorus. The idea of absolute
financial probity as the first law of a gentleman's code was too deeply
ingrained in him for sentimental considerations to weaken it. An
adventurer like Lemuel Struthers might build up the millions of his
Shoe Polish on any number of shady dealings; but unblemished honesty
was the noblesse oblige of old financial New York. Nor did Mrs.
Beaufort's fate greatly move Archer. He felt, no doubt, more sorry for
her than her indignant relatives; but it seemed to him that the tie
between husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity, should be
indissoluble in misfortune. As Mr. Letterblair had said, a wife's
place was at her husband's side when he was in trouble; but society's
place was not at his side, and Mrs. Beaufort's cool assumption that it
was seemed almost to make her his accomplice. The mere idea of a
woman's appealing to her family to screen her husband's business
dishonour was inadmissible, since it was the one thing that the Family,
as an institution, could not do.

The mulatto maid called Mrs. Lovell Mingott into the hall, and the
latter came back in a moment with a frowning brow.

"She wants me to telegraph for Ellen Olenska. I had written to Ellen,
of course, and to Medora; but now it seems that's not enough. I'm to
telegraph to her immediately, and to tell her that she's to come alone."

The announcement was received in silence. Mrs. Welland sighed
resignedly, and May rose from her seat and went to gather up some
newspapers that had been scattered on the floor.

"I suppose it must be done," Mrs. Lovell Mingott continued, as if
hoping to be contradicted; and May turned back toward the middle of the
room.

"Of course it must be done," she said. "Granny knows what she wants,
and we must carry out all her wishes. Shall I write the telegram for
you, Auntie? If it goes at once Ellen can probably catch tomorrow
morning's train." She pronounced the syllables of the name with a
peculiar clearness, as if she had tapped on two silver bells.

"Well, it can't go at once. Jasper and the pantry-boy are both out
with notes and telegrams."

May turned to her husband with a smile. "But here's Newland, ready to
do anything. Will you take the telegram, Newland? There'll be just
time before luncheon."

Archer rose with a murmur of readiness, and she seated herself at old
Catherine's rosewood "Bonheur du Jour," and wrote out the message in
her large immature hand. When it was written she blotted it neatly and
handed it to Archer.

"What a pity," she said, "that you and Ellen will cross each other on
the way!--Newland," she added, turning to her mother and aunt, "is
obliged to go to Washington about a patent law-suit that is coming up
before the Supreme Court. I suppose Uncle Lovell will be back by
tomorrow night, and with Granny improving so much it doesn't seem right
to ask Newland to give up an important engagement for the firm--does
it?"

She paused, as if for an answer, and Mrs. Welland hastily declared:
"Oh, of course not, darling. Your Granny would be the last person to
wish it." As Archer left the room with the telegram, he heard his
mother-in-law add, presumably to Mrs. Lovell Mingott: "But why on
earth she should make you telegraph for Ellen Olenska--" and May's
clear voice rejoin: "Perhaps it's to urge on her again that after all
her duty is with her husband."

The outer door closed on Archer and he walked hastily away toward the
telegraph office.