第43章

"What did I come for, if I don't speak yours?""Oh, my friend--!" She laid her hand lightly on his arm, and he pleaded earnestly: "Ellen--why won't you tell me what's happened?"She shrugged again."Does anything ever happen in heaven?"He was silent, and they walked on a few yards without exchanging a word.Finally she said: "I will tell you--but where, where, where? One can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house, with all the doors wide open, and always a servant bringing tea, or a log for the fire, or the newspaper! Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by one's self? You're so shy, and yet you're so public.Ialways feel as if I were in the convent again--or on the stage, before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds.""Ah, you don't like us!" Archer exclaimed.

They were walking past the house of the old Patroon, with its squat walls and small square windows compactly grouped about a central chimney.The shutters stood wide, and through one of the newly-washed windows Archer caught the light of a fire.

"Why--the house is open!" he said.

She stood still."No; only for today, at least.I wanted to see it, and Mr.van der Luyden had the fire lit and the windows opened, so that we might stop there on the way back from church this morning." She ran up the steps and tried the door."It's still unlocked--what luck! Come in and we can have a quiet talk.Mrs.van der Luyden has driven over to see her old aunts at Rhinebeck and we shan't be missed at the house for another hour."He followed her into the narrow passage.His spirits, which had dropped at her last words, rose with an irrational leap.The homely little house stood there, its panels and brasses shining in the firelight, as if magically created to receive them.A big bed of embers still gleamed in the kitchen chimney, under an iron pot hung from an ancient crane.Rush-bottomed arm-chairs faced each other across the tiled hearth, and rows of Delft plates stood on shelves against the walls.Archer stooped over and threw a log upon the embers.

Madame Olenska, dropping her cloak, sat down in one of the chairs.Archer leaned against the chimney and looked at her.

"You're laughing now; but when you wrote me you were unhappy," he said.

"Yes." She paused."But I can't feel unhappy when you're here.""I sha'n't be here long," he rejoined, his lips stiffening with the effort to say just so much and no more.

"No; I know.But I'm improvident: I live in the moment when I'm happy."The words stole through him like a temptation, and to close his senses to it he moved away from the hearth and stood gazing out at the black tree-boles against the snow.But it was as if she too had shifted her place, and he still saw her, between himself and the trees, drooping over the fire with her indolent smile.Archer's heart was beating insubordinately.What if it were from him that she had been running away, and if she had waited to tell him so till they were here alone together in this secret room?

"Ellen, if I'm really a help to you--if you really wanted me to come--tell me what's wrong, tell me what it is you're running away from," he insisted.

He spoke without shifting his position, without even turning to look at her: if the thing was to happen, it was to happen in this way, with the whole width of the room between them, and his eyes still fixed on the outer snow.

For a long moment she was silent; and in that moment Archer imagined her, almost heard her, stealing up behind him to throw her light arms about his neck.

While he waited, soul and body throbbing with the miracle to come, his eyes mechanically received the image of a heavily-coated man with his fur collar turned up who was advancing along the path to the house.

The man was Julius Beaufort.

"Ah--!" Archer cried, bursting into a laugh.

Madame Olenska had sprung up and moved to his side, slipping her hand into his; but after a glance through the window her face paled and she shrank back.

"So that was it?" Archer said derisively.

"I didn't know he was here," Madame Olenska murmured.Her hand still clung to Archer's; but he drew away from her, and walking out into the passage threw open the door of the house.

"Hallo, Beaufort--this way! Madame Olenska was expecting you," he said.

During his journey back to New York the next morning, Archer relived with a fatiguing vividness his last moments at Skuytercliff.

Beaufort, though clearly annoyed at finding him with Madame Olenska, had, as usual, carried off the situation high-handedly.His way of ignoring people whose presence inconvenienced him actually gave them, if they were sensitive to it, a feeling of invisibility, of nonexistence.Archer, as the three strolled back through the park, was aware of this odd sense of disembodiment;and humbling as it was to his vanity it gave him the ghostly advantage of observing unobserved.

Beaufort had entered the little house with his usual easy assurance; but he could not smile away the vertical line between his eyes.It was fairly clear that Madame Olenska had not known that he was coming, though her words to Archer had hinted at the possibility;at any rate, she had evidently not told him where she was going when she left New York, and her unexplained departure had exasperated him.The ostensible reason of his appearance was the discovery, the very night before, of a "perfect little house," not in the market, which was really just the thing for her, but would be snapped up instantly if she didn't take it; and he was loud in mock-reproaches for the dance she had led him in running away just as he had found it.