Mr. Jackson glanced over his shoulder to say to the
sad butler: “Perhaps . . . that sauce .
. . just a little, after all—“; then,
having helped himself, he remarked: “I’m
told she’s looking for a house. She means
to live here.”
“I hear she means to get a divorce,” said
Janey boldly.
“I hope she will!” Archer exclaimed.
The word had fallen like a bombshell in the pure and
tranquil atmosphere of the Archer dining-room.
Mrs. Archer raised her delicate eye-brows in the
particular curve that signified: “The
butler—” and the young man, himself
mindful of the bad taste of discussing such intimate
matters in public, hastily branched off into an account
of his visit to old Mrs. Mingott.
After dinner, according to immemorial custom, Mrs.
Archer and Janey trailed their long silk draperies
up to the drawing-room, where, while the gentlemen
smoked below stairs, they sat beside a Carcel lamp
with an engraved globe, facing each other across a
rosewood work-table with a green silk bag under it,
and stitched at the two ends of a tapestry band of
field-flowers destined to adorn an “occasional”
chair in the drawing-room of young Mrs. Newland Archer.
While this rite was in progress in the drawing-room,
Archer settled Mr. Jackson in an armchair near the
fire in the Gothic library and handed him a cigar.
Mr. Jackson sank into the armchair with satisfaction,
lit his cigar with perfect confidence (it was Newland
who bought them), and stretching his thin old ankles
to the coals, said: “You say the secretary
merely helped her to get away, my dear fellow?
Well, he was still helping her a year later, then;
for somebody met ’em living at Lausanne together.”
Newland reddened. “Living together?
Well, why not? Who had the right to make her
life over if she hadn’t? I’m sick
of the hypocrisy that would bury alive a woman of
her age if her husband prefers to live with harlots.”
He stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar.
“Women ought to be free—as free as
we are,” he declared, making a discovery of
which he was too irritated to measure the terrific
consequences.
Mr. Sillerton Jackson stretched his ankles nearer
the coals and emitted a sardonic whistle.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “apparently
Count Olenski takes your view; for I never heard of
his having lifted a finger to get his wife back.”
That evening, after Mr. Jackson had taken himself
away, and the ladies had retired to their chintz-curtained
bedroom, Newland Archer mounted thoughtfully to his
own study. A vigilant hand had, as usual, kept
the fire alive and the lamp trimmed; and the room,
with its rows and rows of books, its bronze and steel
statuettes of “The Fencers” on the mantelpiece
and its many photographs of famous pictures, looked
singularly home-like and welcoming.
