1921 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Archiwum

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"Mind? Why should I?" He made a last effort to collect himself. "But that was a fortnight ago, wasn't it? I
thought you said you weren't sure till today."
Her colour burned deeper, but she held his gaze. "No; I wasn't sure then--but I told her I was. And you see I
was right!" she exclaimed, her blue eyes wet with victory.
XXXIV.
Newland Archer sat at the writing-table in his library in East Thirty-ninth Street.
He had just got back from a big official reception for the inauguration of the new galleries at the Metropolitan
Museum, and the spectacle of those great spaces crowded with the spoils of the ages, where the throng of
fashion circulated through a series of scientifically catalogued treasures, had suddenly pressed on a rusted
spring of memory.
"Why, this used to be one of the old Cesnola rooms," he heard some one say; and instantly everything about
him vanished, and he was sitting alone on a hard leather divan against a radiator, while a slight figure in a
long sealskin cloak moved away down the meagrely- fitted vista of the old Museum.
The vision had roused a host of other associations, and he sat looking with new eyes at the library which, for
over thirty years, had been the scene of his solitary musings and of all the family confabulations.
It was the room in which most of the real things of his life had happened. There his wife, nearly twenty-six
years ago, had broken to him, with a blushing circumlocution that would have caused the young women of the
new generation to smile, the news that she was to have a child; and there their eldest boy, Dallas, too delicate
to be taken to church in midwinter, had been christened by their old friend the Bishop of New York, the ample
magnificent irreplaceable Bishop, so long the pride and ornament of his diocese. There Dallas had first
staggered across the floor shouting "Dad," while May and the nurse laughed behind the door; there their
second child, Mary (who was so like her mother), had announced her engagement to the dullest and most
reliable of Reggie Chivers's many sons; and there Archer had kissed her through her wedding veil before they
went down to the motor which was to carry them to Grace Church--for in a world where all else had reeled
on its foundations the "Grace Church wedding" remained an unchanged institution.
It was in the library that he and May had always discussed the future of the children: the studies of Dallas and
his young brother Bill, Mary's incurable indifference to "accomplishments," and passion for sport and
philanthropy, and the vague leanings toward "art" which had finally landed the restless and curious Dallas in
the office of a rising New York architect.
The young men nowadays were emancipating themselves from the law and business and taking up all sorts of
new things. If they were not absorbed in state politics or municipal reform, the chances were that they were
going in for Central American archaeology, for architecture or landscape-engineering; taking a keen and
learned interest in the prerevolutionary buildings of their own country, studying and adapting Georgian types,
and protesting at the meaningless use of the word "Colonial." Nobody nowadays had "Colonial" houses
except the millionaire grocers of the suburbs.
Information about Project Gutenberg 160
But above all--sometimes Archer put it above all--it was in that library that the Governor of New York,
coming down from Albany one evening to dine and spend the night, had turned to his host, and said, banging
his clenched fist on the table and gnashing his eye-glasses: "Hang the professional politician! You're the kind
of man the country wants, Archer. If the stable's ever to be cleaned out, men like you have got to lend a hand
in the cleaning."
"Men like you--" how Archer had glowed at the phrase! How eagerly he had risen up at the call! It was an
echo of Ned Winsett's old appeal to roll his sleeves up and get down into the muck; but spoken by a man who
set the example of the gesture, and whose summons to follow him was irresistible. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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