第94章

After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few minutes he heard her say: "Newland! Do shut the window.You'll catch your death."He pulled the sash down and turned back."Catch my death!" he echoed; and he felt like adding: "But I've caught it already.I AM dead--I've been dead for months and months."And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild suggestion.What if it were SHE who was dead! If she were going to die--to die soon--and leave him free!

The sensation of standing there, in that warm familiar room, and looking at her, and wishing her dead, was so strange, so fascinating and overmastering, that its enormity did not immediately strike him.He simply felt that chance had given him a new possibility to which his sick soul might cling.Yes, May might die--people did: young people, healthy people like herself:

she might die, and set him suddenly free.

She glanced up, and he saw by her widening eyes that there must be something strange in his own.

"Newland! Are you ill?"

He shook his head and turned toward his arm-chair.

She bent over her work-frame, and as he passed he laid his hand on her hair."Poor May!" he said.

"Poor? Why poor?" she echoed with a strained laugh.

"Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you," he rejoined, laughing also.

For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed over her work: "I shall never worry if you're happy.""Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless Ican open the windows!"

"In THIS weather?" she remonstrated; and with a sigh he buried his head in his book.

Six or seven days passed.Archer heard nothing from Madame Olenska, and became aware that her name would not be mentioned in his presence by any member of the family.He did not try to see her; to do so while she was at old Catherine's guarded bedside would have been almost impossible.In the uncertainty of the situation he let himself drift, conscious, somewhere below the surface of his thoughts, of a resolve which had come to him when he had leaned out from his library window into the icy night.The strength of that resolve made it easy to wait and make no sign.

Then one day May told him that Mrs.Manson Mingott had asked to see him.There was nothing surprising in the request, for the old lady was steadily recovering, and she had always openly declared that she preferred Archer to any of her other grandsons-in-law.May gave the message with evident pleasure: she was proud of old Catherine's appreciation of her husband.

There was a moment's pause, and then Archer felt it incumbent on him to say: "All right.Shall we go together this afternoon?"His wife's face brightened, but she instantly answered:

"Oh, you'd much better go alone.It bores Granny to see the same people too often."Archer's heart was beating violently when he rang old Mrs.Mingott's bell.He had wanted above all things to go alone, for he felt sure the visit would give him the chance of saying a word in private to the Countess Olenska.He had determined to wait till the chance presented itself naturally; and here it was, and here he was on the doorstep.Behind the door, behind the curtains of the yellow damask room next to the hall, she was surely awaiting him; in another moment he should see her, and be able to speak to her before she led him to the sick-room.

He wanted only to put one question: after that his course would be clear.What he wished to ask was simply the date of her return to Washington; and that question she could hardly refuse to answer.

But in the yellow sitting-room it was the mulatto maid who waited.Her white teeth shining like a keyboard, she pushed back the sliding doors and ushered him into old Catherine's presence.

The old woman sat in a vast throne-like arm-chair near her bed.Beside her was a mahogany stand bearing a cast bronze lamp with an engraved globe, over which a green paper shade had been balanced.There was not a book or a newspaper in reach, nor any evidence of feminine employment: conversation had always been Mrs.Mingott's sole pursuit, and she would have scorned to feign an interest in fancywork.

Archer saw no trace of the slight distortion left by her stroke.She merely looked paler, with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of her obesity; and, in the fluted mob-cap tied by a starched bow between her first two chins, and the muslin kerchief crossed over her billowing purple dressing-gown, she seemed like some shrewd and kindly ancestress of her own who might have yielded too freely to the pleasures of the table.

She held out one of the little hands that nestled in a hollow of her huge lap like pet animals, and called to the maid: "Don't let in any one else.If my daughters call, say I'm asleep."The maid disappeared, and the old lady turned to her grandson.

"My dear, am I perfectly hideous?" she asked gaily, launching out one hand in search of the folds of muslin on her inaccessible bosom."My daughters tell me it doesn't matter at my age--as if hideousness didn't matter all the more the harder it gets to conceal!""My dear, you're handsomer than ever!" Archer rejoined in the same tone; and she threw back her head and laughed.