“Ah,” said Archer with an impatient laugh.
The open door had closed between them again.
“It’s time to dress; we’re dining
out, aren’t we?” he asked, moving from
the fire.
She rose also, but lingered near the hearth.
As he walked past her she moved forward impulsively,
as though to detain him: their eyes met, and
he saw that hers were of the same swimming blue as
when he had left her to drive to Jersey City.
She flung her arms about his neck and pressed her
cheek to his.
“You haven’t kissed me today,” she
said in a whisper; and he felt her tremble in his
arms.
“At the court of the Tuileries,” said
Mr. Sillerton Jackson with his reminiscent smile,
“such things were pretty openly tolerated.”
The scene was the van der Luydens’ black walnut
dining-room in Madison Avenue, and the time the evening
after Newland Archer’s visit to the Museum of
Art. Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden had come to
town for a few days from Skuytercliff, whither they
had precipitately fled at the announcement of Beaufort’s
failure. It had been represented to them that
the disarray into which society had been thrown by
this deplorable affair made their presence in town
more necessary than ever. It was one of the
occasions when, as Mrs. Archer put it, they “owed
it to society” to show themselves at the Opera,
and even to open their own doors.
“It will never do, my dear Louisa, to let people
like Mrs. Lemuel Struthers think they can step into
Regina’s shoes. It is just at such times
that new people push in and get a footing. It
was owing to the epidemic of chicken-pox in New York
the winter Mrs. Struthers first appeared that the
married men slipped away to her house while their
wives were in the nursery. You and dear Henry,
Louisa, must stand in the breach as you always have.”
Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden could not remain deaf
to such a call, and reluctantly but heroically they
had come to town, unmuffled the house, and sent out
invitations for two dinners and an evening reception.
On this particular evening they had invited Sillerton
Jackson, Mrs. Archer and Newland and his wife to go
with them to the Opera, where Faust was being sung
for the first time that winter. Nothing was done
without ceremony under the van der Luyden roof, and
though there were but four guests the repast had begun
at seven punctually, so that the proper sequence of
courses might be served without haste before the gentlemen
settled down to their cigars.
Archer had not seen his wife since the evening before.
He had left early for the office, where he had plunged
into an accumulation of unimportant business.
In the afternoon one of the senior partners had made
an unexpected call on his time; and he had reached
home so late that May had preceded him to the van der
Luydens’, and sent back the carriage.
