第27章

"Sameness--sameness!" he muttered, the word running through his head like a persecuting tune as he saw the familiar tall-hatted figures lounging behind the plate-glass; and because he usually dropped in at the club at that hour he had gone home instead.He knew not only what they were likely to be talking about, but the part each one would take in the discussion.The Duke of course would be their principal theme; though the appearance in Fifth Avenue of a golden-haired lady in a small canary-coloured brougham with a pair of black cobs (for which Beaufort was generally thought responsible) would also doubtless be thoroughly gone into.Such "women" (as they were called) were few in New York, those driving their own carriages still fewer, and the appearance of Miss Fanny Ring in Fifth Avenue at the fashionable hour had profoundly agitated society.Only the day before, her carriage had passed Mrs.Lovell Mingott's, and the latter had instantly rung the little bell at her elbow and ordered the coachman to drive her home."What if it had happened to Mrs.van der Luyden?" people asked each other with a shudder.

Archer could hear Lawrence Lefferts, at that very hour, holding forth on the disintegration of society.

He raised his head irritably when his sister Janey entered, and then quickly bent over his book (Swinburne's "Chastelard"--just out) as if he had not seen her.She glanced at the writing-table heaped with books, opened a volume of the "Contes Drolatiques," made a wry face over the archaic French, and sighed: "What learned things you read!""Well--?" he asked, as she hovered Cassandra-like before him.

"Mother's very angry."

"Angry? With whom? About what?"

"Miss Sophy Jackson has just been here.She brought word that her brother would come in after dinner: she couldn't say very much, because he forbade her to: he wishes to give all the details himself.He's with cousin Louisa van der Luyden now.""For heaven's sake, my dear girl, try a fresh start.It would take an omniscient Deity to know what you're talking about.""It's not a time to be profane, Newland....Mother feels badly enough about your not going to church..."With a groan he plunged back into his book.

"NEWLAND! Do listen.Your friend Madame Olenska was at Mrs.Lemuel Struthers's party last night: she went there with the Duke and Mr.Beaufort."At the last clause of this announcement a senseless anger swelled the young man's breast.To smother it he laughed."Well, what of it? I knew she meant to."Janey paled and her eyes began to project."You knew she meant to--and you didn't try to stop her? To warn her?""Stop her? Warn her?" He laughed again."I'm not engaged to be married to the Countess Olenska!" The words had a fantastic sound in his own ears.

"You're marrying into her family."

"Oh, family--family!" he jeered.

"Newland--don't you care about Family?"

"Not a brass farthing."

"Nor about what cousin Louisa van der Luyden will think?""Not the half of one--if she thinks such old maid's rubbish.""Mother is not an old maid," said his virgin sister with pinched lips.

He felt like shouting back: "Yes, she is, and so are the van der Luydens, and so we all are, when it comes to being so much as brushed by the wing-tip of Reality."But he saw her long gentle face puckering into tears, and felt ashamed of the useless pain he was inflicting.

"Hang Countess Olenska! Don't be a goose, Janey--I'm not her keeper."

"No; but you DID ask the Wellands to announce your engagement sooner so that we might all back her up; and if it hadn't been for that cousin Louisa would never have invited her to the dinner for the Duke.""Well--what harm was there in inviting her? She was the best-looking woman in the room; she made the dinner a little less funereal than the usual van der Luyden banquet.""You know cousin Henry asked her to please you:

he persuaded cousin Louisa.And now they're so upset that they're going back to Skuytercliff tomorrow.Ithink, Newland, you'd better come down.You don't seem to understand how mother feels."In the drawing-room Newland found his mother.She raised a troubled brow from her needlework to ask:

"Has Janey told you?"

"Yes." He tried to keep his tone as measured as her own."But I can't take it very seriously.""Not the fact of having offended cousin Louisa and cousin Henry?""The fact that they can be offended by such a trifle as Countess Olenska's going to the house of a woman they consider common.""Consider--!"

"Well, who is; but who has good music, and amuses people on Sunday evenings, when the whole of New York is dying of inanition.""Good music? All I know is, there was a woman who got up on a table and sang the things they sing at the places you go to in Paris.There was smoking and champagne.""Well--that kind of thing happens in other places, and the world still goes on.""I don't suppose, dear, you're really defending the French Sunday?""I've heard you often enough, mother, grumble at the English Sunday when we've been in London.""New York is neither Paris nor London."

"Oh, no, it's not!" her son groaned.