Miss Blenker, shaking off the fumes of sleep, looked at him with increasing interest. “The house IS empty. Mother’s not here, or the Marchioness–or anybody but me.” Her glance became faintly reproachful. “Didn’t you know that Professor and Mrs. Sillerton are giving a garden-party for mother and all of us this afternoon? It was too unlucky that I couldn’t go; but I’ve had a sore throat, and mother was afraid of the drive home this evening. Did you ever know anything so disappointing? Of course,” she added gaily, “I shouldn’t have minded half as much if I’d known you were coming.”
Symptoms of a lumbering coquetry became visible in her, and Archer found the strength to break in: “But Madame Olenska–has she gone to Newport too?”
Miss Blenker looked at him with surprise. “Madame Olenska–didn’t you know she’d been called away?”
“Called away?–”
“Oh, my best parasol! I lent it to that goose of a Katie, because it matched her ribbons, and the careless thing must have dropped it here. We Blenkers are all like that . . . real Bohemians!” Recovering the sunshade with a powerful hand she unfurled it and suspended its rosy dome above her head. “Yes, Ellen was called away yesterday: she lets us call her Ellen, you know. A telegram came from Boston: she said she might be gone for two days. I do LOVE the way she does her hair, don’t you?” Miss Blenker rambled on.
Archer continued to stare through her as though she had been transparent. All he saw was the trumpery parasol that arched its pinkness above her giggling head.
After a moment he ventured: “You don’t happen to know why Madame Olenska went to Boston? I hope it was not on account of bad news?”
Miss Blenker took this with a cheerful incredulity. “Oh, I don’t believe so. She didn’t tell us what was in the telegram. I think she didn’t want the Marchioness to know. She’s so romantic-looking, isn’t she? Doesn’t she remind you of Mrs. Scott-Siddons when she reads `Lady Geraldine’s Courtship’? Did you never hear her?”
Archer was dealing hurriedly with crowding thoughts. His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen. He glanced about him at the unpruned garden, the tumble-down house, and the oak- grove under which the dusk was gathering. It had seemed so exactly the place in which he ought to have found Madame Olenska; and she was far away, and even the pink sunshade was not hers . . .
He frowned and hesitated. “You don’t know, I suppose– I shall be in Boston tomorrow. If I could manage to see her–”
He felt that Miss Blenker was losing interest in him, though her smile persisted. “Oh, of course; how lovely of you! She’s staying at the Parker House; it must be horrible there in this weather.”
After that Archer was but intermittently aware of the remarks they exchanged. He could only remember stoutly resisting her entreaty that he should await the returning family and have high tea with them before he drove home. At length, with his hostess still at his side, he passed out of range of the wooden Cupid, unfastened his horses and drove off. At the turn of the lane he saw Miss Blenker standing at the gate and waving the pink parasol.
XXIII.
The next morning, when Archer got out of the Fall River train, he emerged upon a steaming midsummer Boston. The streets near the station were full of the smell of beer and coffee and decaying fruit and a shirt- sleeved populace moved through them with the intimate abandon of boarders going down the passage to the bathroom.
Archer found a cab and drove to the Somerset Club for breakfast. Even the fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity to which no excess of heat ever degrades the European cities. Care-takers in calico lounged on the door-steps of the wealthy, and the Common looked like a pleasure-ground on the morrow of a Masonic picnic. If Archer had tried to imagine Ellen Olenska in improbable scenes he could not have called up any into which it was more difficult to fit her than this heat-prostrated and deserted Boston.