Part 23 (1/2)
The footman, who had a still bigger white favour on his lapel, wrapped May's white cloak about her, and Archer jumped into the brougham at her side. She turned to him with a triumphant smile and their hands clasped under her veil.
”Darling!” Archer said--and suddenly the same black abyss yawned before him and he felt himself sinking into it, deeper and deeper, while his voice rambled on smoothly and cheerfully: ”Yes, of course I thought I'd lost the ring; no wedding would be complete if the poor devil of a bridegroom didn't go through that. But you DID keep me waiting, you know! I had time to think of every horror that might possibly happen.”
She surprised him by turning, in full Fifth Avenue, and flinging her arms about his neck. ”But none ever CAN happen now, can it, Newland, as long as we two are together?”
Every detail of the day had been so carefully thought out that the young couple, after the wedding-breakfast, had ample time to put on their travelling-clothes, descend the wide Mingott stairs between laughing bridesmaids and weeping parents, and get into the brougham under the traditional shower of rice and satin slippers; and there was still half an hour left in which to drive to the station, buy the last weeklies at the bookstall with the air of seasoned travellers, and settle themselves in the reserved compartment in which May's maid had already placed her dove-coloured travelling cloak and glaringly new dressing-bag from London.
The old du Lac aunts at Rhinebeck had put their house at the disposal of the bridal couple, with a readiness inspired by the prospect of spending a week in New York with Mrs. Archer; and Archer, glad to escape the usual ”bridal suite” in a Philadelphia or Baltimore hotel, had accepted with an equal alacrity.
May was enchanted at the idea of going to the country, and childishly amused at the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where their mysterious retreat was situated. It was thought ”very English”
to have a country-house lent to one, and the fact gave a last touch of distinction to what was generally conceded to be the most brilliant wedding of the year; but where the house was no one was permitted to know, except the parents of bride and groom, who, when taxed with the knowledge, pursed their lips and said mysteriously: ”Ah, they didn't tell us--” which was manifestly true, since there was no need to.
Once they were settled in their compartment, and the train, shaking off the endless wooden suburbs, had pushed out into the pale landscape of spring, talk became easier than Archer had expected. May was still, in look and tone, the simple girl of yesterday, eager to compare notes with him as to the incidents of the wedding, and discussing them as impartially as a bridesmaid talking it all over with an usher. At first Archer had fancied that this detachment was the disguise of an inward tremor; but her clear eyes revealed only the most tranquil unawareness. She was alone for the first time with her husband; but her husband was only the charming comrade of yesterday. There was no one whom she liked as much, no one whom she trusted as completely, and the culminating ”lark” of the whole delightful adventure of engagement and marriage was to be off with him alone on a journey, like a grownup person, like a ”married woman,” in fact.
It was wonderful that--as he had learned in the Mission garden at St.
Augustine--such depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of imagination. But he remembered how, even then, she had surprised him by dropping back to inexpressive girlishness as soon as her conscience had been eased of its burden; and he saw that she would probably go through life dealing to the best of her ability with each experience as it came, but never antic.i.p.ating any by so much as a stolen glance.
Perhaps that faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their transparency, and her face the look of representing a type rather than a person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue or a Greek G.o.ddess. The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might have been a preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her look of indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor dull, but only primitive and pure. In the thick of this meditation Archer suddenly felt himself looking at her with the startled gaze of a stranger, and plunged into a reminiscence of the wedding-breakfast and of Granny Mingott's immense and triumphant pervasion of it.
May settled down to frank enjoyment of the subject. ”I was surprised, though--weren't you?--that aunt Medora came after all. Ellen wrote that they were neither of them well enough to take the journey; I do wish it had been she who had recovered! Did you see the exquisite old lace she sent me?”
He had known that the moment must come sooner or later, but he had somewhat imagined that by force of willing he might hold it at bay.
”Yes--I--no: yes, it was beautiful,” he said, looking at her blindly, and wondering if, whenever he heard those two syllables, all his carefully built-up world would tumble about him like a house of cards.
”Aren't you tired? It will be good to have some tea when we arrive--I'm sure the aunts have got everything beautifully ready,” he rattled on, taking her hand in his; and her mind rushed away instantly to the magnificent tea and coffee service of Baltimore silver which the Beauforts had sent, and which ”went” so perfectly with uncle Lovell Mingott's trays and side-dishes.
In the spring twilight the train stopped at the Rhinebeck station, and they walked along the platform to the waiting carriage.
”Ah, how awfully kind of the van der Luydens--they've sent their man over from Skuytercliff to meet us,” Archer exclaimed, as a sedate person out of livery approached them and relieved the maid of her bags.
”I'm extremely sorry, sir,” said this emissary, ”that a little accident has occurred at the Miss du Lacs': a leak in the water-tank. It happened yesterday, and Mr. van der Luyden, who heard of it this morning, sent a housemaid up by the early train to get the Patroon's house ready. It will be quite comfortable, I think you'll find, sir; and the Miss du Lacs have sent their cook over, so that it will be exactly the same as if you'd been at Rhinebeck.”
Archer stared at the speaker so blankly that he repeated in still more apologetic accents: ”It'll be exactly the same, sir, I do a.s.sure you--” and May's eager voice broke out, covering the embarra.s.sed silence: ”The same as Rhinebeck? The Patroon's house? But it will be a hundred thousand times better--won't it, Newland? It's too dear and kind of Mr. van der Luyden to have thought of it.”
And as they drove off, with the maid beside the coachman, and their s.h.i.+ning bridal bags on the seat before them, she went on excitedly: ”Only fancy, I've never been inside it--have you? The van der Luydens show it to so few people. But they opened it for Ellen, it seems, and she told me what a darling little place it was: she says it's the only house she's seen in America that she could imagine being perfectly happy in.”
”Well--that's what we're going to be, isn't it?” cried her husband gaily; and she answered with her boyish smile: ”Ah, it's just our luck beginning--the wonderful luck we're always going to have together!”
XX.
”Of course we must dine with Mrs. Carfry, dearest,” Archer said; and his wife looked at him with an anxious frown across the monumental Britannia ware of their lodging house breakfast-table.
In all the rainy desert of autumnal London there were only two people whom the Newland Archers knew; and these two they had sedulously avoided, in conformity with the old New York tradition that it was not ”dignified” to force one's self on the notice of one's acquaintances in foreign countries.
Mrs. Archer and Janey, in the course of their visits to Europe, had so unflinchingly lived up to this principle, and met the friendly advances of their fellow-travellers with an air of such impenetrable reserve, that they had almost achieved the record of never having exchanged a word with a ”foreigner” other than those employed in hotels and railway-stations. Their own compatriots--save those previously known or properly accredited--they treated with an even more p.r.o.nounced disdain; so that, unless they ran across a Chivers, a Dagonet or a Mingott, their months abroad were spent in an unbroken tete-a-tete.
But the utmost precautions are sometimes unavailing; and one night at Botzen one of the two English ladies in the room across the pa.s.sage (whose names, dress and social situation were already intimately known to Janey) had knocked on the door and asked if Mrs. Archer had a bottle of liniment. The other lady--the intruder's sister, Mrs. Carfry--had been seized with a sudden attack of bronchitis; and Mrs. Archer, who never travelled without a complete family pharmacy, was fortunately able to produce the required remedy.
Mrs. Carfry was very ill, and as she and her sister Miss Harle were travelling alone they were profoundly grateful to the Archer ladies, who supplied them with ingenious comforts and whose efficient maid helped to nurse the invalid back to health.
When the Archers left Botzen they had no idea of ever seeing Mrs.