That evening when Archer came down before dinner he found the drawing-room empty.
He and May were dining alone, all the family engagements having been postponed since Mrs.Manson Mingott's illness; and as May was the more punctual of the two he was surprised that she had not preceded him.He knew that she was at home, for while he dressed he had heard her moving about in her room;and he wondered what had delayed her.
He had fallen into the way of dwelling on such conjectures as a means of tying his thoughts fast to reality.Sometimes he felt as if he had found the clue to his father-in-law's absorption in trifles; perhaps even Mr.Welland, long ago, had had escapes and visions, and had conjured up all the hosts of domesticity to defend himself against them.
When May appeared he thought she looked tired.
She had put on the low-necked and tightly-laced dinner-dress which the Mingott ceremonial exacted on the most informal occasions, and had built her fair hair into its usual accumulated coils; and her face, in contrast, was wan and almost faded.But she shone on him with her usual tenderness, and her eyes had kept the blue dazzle of the day before.
"What became of you, dear?" she asked."I was waiting at Granny's, and Ellen came alone, and said she had dropped you on the way because you had to rush off on business.There's nothing wrong?""Only some letters I'd forgotten, and wanted to get off before dinner.""Ah--" she said; and a moment afterward: "I'm sorry you didn't come to Granny's--unless the letters were urgent.""They were," he rejoined, surprised at her insistence.
"Besides, I don't see why I should have gone to your grandmother's.I didn't know you were there."She turned and moved to the looking-glass above the mantel-piece.As she stood there, lifting her long arm to fasten a puff that had slipped from its place in her intricate hair, Archer was struck by something languid and inelastic in her attitude, and wondered if the deadly monotony of their lives had laid its weight on her also.
Then he remembered that, as he had left the house that morning, she had called over the stairs that she would meet him at her grandmother's so that they might drive home together.He had called back a cheery "Yes!"and then, absorbed in other visions, had forgotten his promise.Now he was smitten with compunction, yet irritated that so trifling an omission should be stored up against him after nearly two years of marriage.He was weary of living in a perpetual tepid honeymoon, without the temperature of passion yet with all its exactions.If May had spoken out her grievances (he suspected her of many) he might have laughed them away; but she was trained to conceal imaginary wounds under a Spartan smile.
To disguise his own annoyance he asked how her grandmother was, and she answered that Mrs.Mingott was still improving, but had been rather disturbed by the last news about the Beauforts.
"What news?"
"It seems they're going to stay in New York.I believe he's going into an insurance business, or something.
They're looking about for a small house."The preposterousness of the case was beyond discussion, and they went in to dinner.During dinner their talk moved in its usual limited circle; but Archer noticed that his wife made no allusion to Madame Olenska, nor to old Catherine's reception of her.He was thankful for the fact, yet felt it to be vaguely ominous.
They went up to the library for coffee, and Archer lit a cigar and took down a volume of Michelet.He had taken to history in the evenings since May had shown a tendency to ask him to read aloud whenever she saw him with a volume of poetry: not that he disliked the sound of his own voice, but because he could always foresee her comments on what he read.In the days of their engagement she had simply (as he now perceived) echoed what he told her; but since he had ceased to provide her with opinions she had begun to hazard her own, with results destructive to his enjoyment of the works commented on.
Seeing that he had chosen history she fetched her workbasket, drew up an arm-chair to the green-shaded student lamp, and uncovered a cushion she was embroidering for his sofa.She was not a clever needle-woman; her large capable hands were made for riding, rowing and open-air activities; but since other wives embroidered cushions for their husbands she did not wish to omit this last link in her devotion.
She was so placed that Archer, by merely raising his eyes, could see her bent above her work-frame, her ruffled elbow-sleeves slipping back from her firm round arms, the betrothal sapphire shining on her left hand above her broad gold wedding-ring, and the right hand slowly and laboriously stabbing the canvas.As she sat thus, the lamplight full on her clear brow, he said to himself with a secret dismay that he would always know the thoughts behind it, that never, in all the years to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a weakness, a cruelty or an emotion.She had spent her poetry and romance on their short courting: the function was exhausted because the need was past.Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother, and mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr.Welland.
He laid down his book and stood up impatiently; and at once she raised her head.
"What's the matter?"
"The room is stifling: I want a little air."He had insisted that the library curtains should draw backward and forward on a rod, so that they might be closed in the evening, instead of remaining nailed to a gilt cornice, and immovably looped up over layers of lace, as in the drawing-room; and he pulled them back and pushed up the sash, leaning out into the icy night.
The mere fact of not looking at May, seated beside his table, under his lamp, the fact of seeing other houses, roofs, chimneys, of getting the sense of other lives outside his own, other cities beyond New York, and a whole world beyond his world, cleared his brain and made it easier to breathe.
