Miss Archer

“ Willett had even gone so far as to suggest that the ladies must be tired of reading aloud, possibly Miss Lilian might relieve one or other, and possibly, hope whispered, both. Harris, who would have welcomed that presence and possibility as he would no other, had ventured nothing beyond the expression of a hope that Miss Archer was quite well.
As for Miss Archer herself, what man can say just what thoughts, emotions, hopes and fears were rioting in that gentle and innocent, yet troubled heart. A very unheroic little heroine is this of ours. ”

“ Marcia Arnold, who was seated before her desk, intent on the book she held in her hand, raised her eyes and regarded the quartette with a displeased frown. Then she addressed them in peremptory tones.
"Please make less noise, girls. Your voices can be plainly heard in Miss Archer's office and she is too busy now to be disturbed." This last with a view to discouraging any attempt on their part to see the principal.
"We didn't come to see Miss Archer," was Geraldine Macy's calm retort. "We came to see you about Miss Dean's and Miss Stevens' invitations for the dance. They haven't received them." ”

“ I am really not so very poverty-stricken and I was never a servant of Miss Archer’s. She is my god-mother. I came to visit her, but decided to stay in Sanford and go to high school. I played at being a servant just for fun. That’s all.”
It was indeed “all” so far as Veronica wished 313 the majority of her classmates to know. That afternoon, however, Marjorie, Jerry and Constance gathered in Miss Archer’s living room to hear the more intimate details of the affair from Veronica’s lips. ”

“ Archer's black brocade, while Miss Archer's brown and purple poplins hung, as the years went on, more and more slackly on her virgin frame.
Mentally, the likeness between them, as Newland was aware, was less complete than their identical mannerisms often made it appear. The long habit of living together in mutually dependent intimacy had given them the same vocabulary, and the same habit of beginning their phrases "Mother thinks" or "Janey thinks," according as one or the other wished to advance an opinion of her own ”

“ She was anxious that Miss Archer should learn to know and love Mary.
"I will put you in Marjorie's hands," declared Miss Archer, after a few moments' pleasant conversation. "She will take you to the study hall and see that you are made to feel at home. We wish our girls to look upon their school as their second home, considering they spend so much of their time here. Please tell your mother, Marjorie," she added, as the two girls turned to leave the room, "that I shall try to call on her this week." ”

“ The stranger again lost herself in puzzled contemplation of the paper. Hearing an approaching footfall she made a quick move toward the center of the office, raising her eyes sharply to greet a girl who had come in quest of Miss Archer. Promptly disposing of the seeker, she returned to her task. Several times after that she was interrupted by the entrance of various students, whom she received coolly and dismissed with, “Not here. I don’t know when Miss Archer will return.” Marjorie noted idly that with every fresh arrival, the young woman continued to move well away from the desk. ”

“ Archer turned to the stage, where, in the familiar setting of giant roses and pen-wiper pansies, the same large blonde victim was succumbing to the same small brown seducer.
From the stage his eyes wandered to the point of the horseshoe where May sat between two older ladies, just as, on that former evening, she had sat between Mrs. Lovell Mingott and her newly-arrived "foreign" cousin. As on that evening, she was all in white; and Archer, who had not noticed what she wore, recognised the blue-white satin and old lace of her wedding dress. ”

“ A pleasant glow dilated Archer's heart. There was nothing extraordinary in the tale: any woman would have done as much for a neighbour's child. But it was just like Ellen, he felt, to have rushed in bareheaded, carrying the boy in her arms, and to have dazzled poor Mrs. Winsett into forgetting to ask who she was.
"That is the Countess Olenska—a granddaughter of old Mrs. Mingott's." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rukh retorted with a short, ugly laugh, “know what to think.” Kneeling—there was nothing of supplication about it—with one knee on the throne, he caught her shoulders in his delicate, sinewy olive hands, and turned her face to him. “Come, look me in the eyes,” he ordered, “and tell me that you honestly intend to fulfill your bargain! . . . I knew it!” For her eyes had flinched. “You are playing with me! But the confiding barbarian is not so simple as you imagine. No woman has ever tried to fool me that has not repented it. ”

“ The bare vaulting of trees along the Mall was ceiled with lapis lazuli, and arched above snow that shone like splintered crystals. It was the weather to call out May's radiance, and she burned like a young maple in the frost. Archer was proud of the glances turned on her, and the simple joy of possessorship cleared away his underlying perplexities.
"It's so delicious—waking every morning to smell lilies-of-the-valley in one's room!" she said. ”

“ Then she returned to the drawing-room, where Archer, on re-entering it, found her standing by the mantelpiece, examining herself in the mirror. It was not usual, in New York society, for a lady to address her parlour-maid as "my dear one," and send her out on an errand wrapped in her own opera-cloak; and Archer, through all his deeper feelings, tasted the pleasurable excitement of being in a world where action followed on emotion with such Olympian speed. ”

“ It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped back into the usual, as a too-adventurous child takes refuge in its mother's arms.
Archer had no heart to go on pleading with her; he was too much disappointed at the vanishing of the new being who had cast that one deep look at him from her transparent eyes. May seemed to be aware of his disappointment, but without knowing how to alleviate it; and they stood up and walked silently home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For he had kept no valet at Cambridge. A turban newly wound he wore on his head, but his low-cut pumps, his well-creased trousers, were quite European, and so were the silk braces that held them up to the waist line of his immaculate shirt. His waistcoat and dinner jacket still lay on a chair, but his studs were in, his collar was on, and his white tie was beautifully done—if he had tied it himself, his evening tie did him great credit. And he had. The Raja of Rukh was deft-fingered—he could dress himself from skin to button-hole rose without worry or accident ”

“ It was undoubtedly gratifying to be the husband of one of the handsomest and most popular young married women in New York, especially when she was also one of the sweetest-tempered and most reasonable of wives; and Archer had never been insensible to such advantages. As for the momentary madness which had fallen upon him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himself to regard it as the last of his discarded experiments. ”

“ Archer always said that New York was very much changed.
Observing it from the lofty stand-point of a non-participant, she was able, with the help of Mr. Sillerton Jackson and Miss Sophy, to trace each new crack in its surface, and all the strange weeds pushing up between the ordered rows of social vegetables. It had been one of the amusements of Archer's youth to wait for this annual pronouncement of his mother's, and to hear her enumerate the minute signs of disintegration that his careless gaze had overlooked. For New York, to Mrs. Archer's mind, never changed without changing for the worse ”

“ Mrs. Archer sighed. "Such things have to be, I suppose, as long as amusement is what people go out for; but I've never quite forgiven your cousin Madame Olenska for being the first person to countenance Mrs. Struthers."
A sudden blush rose to young Mrs. Archer's face; it surprised her husband as much as the other guests about the table. "Oh, Ellen—" she murmured, much in the same accusing and yet deprecating tone in which her parents might have said: "Oh, the Blenkers—." ”

“ As Madame Nilsson's "M'ama!" thrilled out above the silent house (the boxes always stopped talking during the Daisy Song) a warm pink mounted to the girl's cheek, mantled her brow to the roots of her fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her breast to the line where it met a modest tulle tucker fastened with a single gardenia. She dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her knee, and Newland Archer saw her white-gloved finger-tips touch the flowers softly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It seemed to Archer to be crushing him down like his own grave-stone; in all the wide future he saw nothing that would ever lift that load from his heart. He did not move from his place, or raise his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went on staring into utter darkness.
"At least I loved you—" he brought out.
On the other side of the hearth, from the sofa-corner where he supposed that she still crouched, he heard a faint stifled crying like a child's. He started up and came to her side.
"Ellen! What madness! Why are you crying? Nothing's done that can't be undone. ”

“ There is a tramp of feet, a shout, the door bursts open—the dear mistress is in her husband's arms—the little ones are clinging to him. "Take care of my leg, darlings," he says; "the bone has not grown too strong just yet, and I doubt if ever I shall bend the knee again. As to Franz here, he, as you see, has his arm in a sling yet. He caught me up in the wood, me and Hofer. Ah! that dear Hofer, he was in hospital, just getting over a sabre cut in the cheek when I was taken there, and he has been my good nurse ever since." ”

“ Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed. It was Newport that had first brought home to him the extent of the change. In New York, during the previous winter, after he and May had settled down in the new greenish-yellow house with the bow-window and the Pompeian vestibule, he had dropped back with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal of this daily activity had served as a link with his former self. ”

“ And they catch the throb of her heart beneath the impenetrable mask, and respond and are grateful. Mrs. Crespin was not one of these.
There is a third class—a very powerful and beautiful class, which includes some of the other two: women who follow the drum, sometimes to Simla and other pleasant, cool hill places, sometimes to desolate, sun-baked spots where the ice often gives out, and nothing ever happens, and who take it all, and the make-shifts of outlandish frontier stations with quiet good humor; women whose courage and unselfishness are very fine, and very womanly. ”

“ There was a silence during which the tick of the monumental ormolu clock on the white marble mantelpiece grew as loud as the boom of a minute-gun. Archer contemplated with awe the two slender faded figures, seated side by side in a kind of viceregal rigidity, mouthpieces of some remote ancestral authority which fate compelled them to wield, when they would so much rather have lived in simplicity and seclusion, digging invisible weeds out of the perfect lawns of Skuytercliff, and playing Patience together in the evenings. ”

“ He saw chiefly the good in every one. She saw the bad, as quickly and surely as she did the good; and her sense of justice leaned to severity rather than to mercy. She had been as devoted to Philip as he to her. But he had deserved it. A faulty husband would have had short shrift with Helen Reynolds, whose “sweetly pretty” face and soft, rippling, girlish hair enhoused a relentless judgment, an exigeant taste and unwavering determination. ”