The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton [74]
Outside, Nastasia’s step crossed the hall, the outer door opened, and a moment later she came in carrying a telegram which she handed to the Countess Olenska.
“The lady was very happy at the flowers,” Nastasia said, smoothing her apron. “She thought it was her signor marito who had sent them, and she cried a little and said it was a folly.”
Her mistress smiled and took the yellow envelope. She tore it open and carried it to the lamp; then, when the door had closed again, she handed the telegram to Archer.
It was dated from St. Augustine, and addressed to the Countess Olenska. In it he read: “Granny’s telegram successful. Papa and Mamma agree marriage after Easter. Am telegraphing Newland. Am too happy for words and love you dearly. Your grateful May.”
Half an hour later; when Archer unlocked his own front-door, he found a similar envelope on the hall-table on top of his pile of notes and letters. The message inside the envelope was also from May Welland, and ran as follows: “Parents consent wedding Tuesday after Easter at twelve Grace Church eight bridesmaids please see Rector so happy love May.”
Archer crumpled up the yellow sheet as if the gesture could annihilate the news it contained. Then he pulled out a small pocket-diary and turned over the pages with trembling fingers; but he did not find what he wanted, and cramming the telegram into his pocket he mounted the stairs.
A light was shining through the door of the little hall-room which served Janey as a dressing room and boudoir, and her brother rapped impatiently on the panel. The door opened, and his sister stood before him in her immemorial purple flannel dressing-gown, with her hair “on pins.” Her face looked pale and apprehensive.
“Newland! I hope there’s no bad news in that telegram? I waited on purpose, in case—” (No item of his correspondence was safe from Janey.)
He took no notice of her question. “Look here—what day is Easter this year?”
She looked shocked at such unchristian ignorance. “Easter? Newland! Why, of course, the first week in April. Why?”
“The first week?” He turned again to the pages of his diary, calculating rapidly under his breath. “The first week, did you say?” He threw back his head with a long laugh.
“For mercy’s s sake what’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter except that I’m going to be married in a month.”
Janey fell upon his neck and pressed him to her purple flannel breast. “Oh Newland, how wonderful! I’m so glad! But, dearest, why do you keep on laughing? Do hush, or you’ll wake Mamma.”
BOOK TWO
19
THE DAY WAS FRESH, with a lively spring wind full of dust. All the old ladies in both families had got out their faded sables and yellowing ermines, and the smell of camphor from the front pews almost smothered the faint spring scent of the lilies banking the altar.
Newland Archer, at a signal from the sexton, had come out of the vestry and placed himself with his best man on the chancel step of Grace Church.
The signal meant that the brougham bearing the bride and her father was in sight; but there was sure to be a considerable interval of adjustment and consultation in the lobby, where the bridesmaids were already hovering like a cluster of Easter blossoms. During this unavoidable lapse of time the bridegroom, in proof of his eagerness, was expected to expose himself alone to the gaze of the assembled company; and Archer had gone through this formality as resignedly as through all the others which made of a nineteenth-century New York wedding a rite that seemed to belong to the dawn of history. Everything was equally easy—or equally painful, as one chose to put it—in the path he was committed to tread, and he had obeyed the flurried injunctions of his best man as piously as other bridegrooms had obeyed his own, in the days when he had guided them through the same labyrinth.
So far he was reasonably sure of having fulfilled all his obligations. The bridesmaids’ eight bouquets of white lilac and lilies-of-the-valley had been sent in due time, as well as the gold and sapphire sleeve-links of the eight ushers and the best man