Archer was silent, and Mr. Jackson obliquely continued: “It’s a pity–it’s certainly a pity–that she refused it.”
“A pity? In God’s name, why?”
Mr. Jackson looked down his leg to the unwrinkled sock that joined it to a glossy pump.
“Well–to put it on the lowest ground–what’s she going to live on now?”
“Now–?”
“If Beaufort–”
Archer sprang up, his fist banging down on the black walnut-edge of the writing-table. The wells of the brass double-inkstand danced in their sockets.
“What the devil do you mean, sir?”
Mr. Jackson, shifting himself slightly in his chair, turned a tranquil gaze on the young man’s burning face.
“Well–I have it on pretty good authority–in fact, on old Catherine’s herself–that the family reduced Countess Olenska’s allowance considerably when she definitely refused to go back to her husband; and as, by this refusal, she also forfeits the money settled on her when she married–which Olenski was ready to make over to her if she returned–why, what the devil do YOU mean, my dear boy, by asking me what I mean?” Mr. Jackson good-humouredly retorted.
Archer moved toward the mantelpiece and bent over to knock his ashes into the grate.
“I don’t know anything of Madame Olenska’s private affairs; but I don’t need to, to be certain that what you insinuate–”
“Oh, I don’t: it’s Lefferts, for one,” Mr. Jackson interposed.
“Lefferts–who made love to her and got snubbed for it!” Archer broke out contemptuously.
“Ah–DID he?” snapped the other, as if this were exactly the fact he had been laying a trap for. He still sat sideways from the fire, so that his hard old gaze held Archer’s face as if in a spring of steel.
“Well, well: it’s a pity she didn’t go back before Beaufort’s cropper,” he repeated. “If she goes NOW, and if he fails, it will only confirm the general impression: which isn’t by any means peculiar to Lefferts, by the way.
“Oh, she won’t go back now: less than ever!” Archer had no sooner said it than he had once more the feeling that it was exactly what Mr. Jackson had been waiting for.
The old gentleman considered him attentively. “That’s your opinion, eh? Well, no doubt you know. But everybody will tell you that the few pennies Medora Manson has left are all in Beaufort’s hands; and how the two women are to keep their heads above water unless he does, I can’t imagine. Of course, Madame Olenska may still soften old Catherine, who’s been the most inexorably opposed to her staying; and old Catherine could make her any allowance she chooses. But we all know that she hates parting with good money; and the rest of the family have no particular interest in keeping Madame Olenska here.”
Archer was burning with unavailing wrath: he was exactly in the state when a man is sure to do something stupid, knowing all the while that he is doing it.
He saw that Mr. Jackson had been instantly struck by the fact that Madame Olenska’s differences with her grandmother and her other relations were not known to him, and that the old gentleman had drawn his own conclusions as to the reasons for Archer’s exclusion from the family councils. This fact warned Archer to go warily; but the insinuations about Beaufort made him reckless. He was mindful, however, if not of his own danger, at least of the fact that Mr. Jackson was under his mother’s roof, and consequently his guest. Old New York scrupulously observed the etiquette of hospitality, and no discussion with a guest was ever allowed to degenerate into a disagreement.
“Shall we go up and join my mother?” he suggested curtly, as Mr. Jackson’s last cone of ashes dropped into the brass ashtray at his elbow.
On the drive homeward May remained oddly silent; through the darkness, he still felt her enveloped in her menacing blush. What its menace meant he could not guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the fact that Madame Olenska’s name had evoked it.
They went upstairs, and he turned into the library. She usually followed him; but he heard her passing down the passage to her bedroom.
“May!” he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a slight glance of surprise at his tone.