The Age of Innocence Ch. 29: The Carriage Ride

Summary

Archer paces the gas-lit platform at Jersey City in a senseless school-boy happiness. He has the whole ferry crossing planned: Ellen on his arm, the two of them side by side under the snow, and a speech ready in eloquent order. Then the train staggers in, he sees her pale and surprised face at a window, and once again he has forgotten what she looks like. The speech goes with it. Soon she is asking whether this pretty carriage is May's.

The question stings, and he hits back with the one thing he had meant to bury: Riviere came to see him. He expects to shake her. She answers simply that yes, Riviere helped her get away, and she owes him a great debt. Her calm makes Archer feel stupidly conventional just when he thinks he is flinging convention away. He calls her the most honest woman he has ever met; she says she has had to look at the Gorgon, which does not blind you but dries up your tears. When the ferry bumps the slip and throws them together, it is Ellen who kisses him, and Ellen who says he ought not to have come.

Archer tells her he wants no stolen kiss but a world where words like "mistress" do not exist. Ellen asks where that country is. She has known people who tried to reach it and got out at Boulogne or Pisa or Monte Carlo, places only smaller and dingier than the world they left. They are near each other, she says, only if they stay far apart. Archer gropes for the coachman's bell, remembering how May rings to stop, and steps down onto the pavement. The carriage rolls on to Granny's. Archer stands on the corner and finds that the wind has frozen his tears.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Pausing Before the Counter-Sting

Have you ever answered a small sting with a bigger one, just to see the other person flinch? When Ellen asks whether the pretty carriage is May's, Archer blurts out that Riviere came to see him, hoping to shake her composure, and her plain answer leaves him the one who is shaken.

Before you reply to a remark that stings, ask yourself whether you want an answer from the other person or only a flinch.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Newland Archer

Archer rings for the carriage to stop, the way he remembers May doing, and walks home through the cold until the wind freezes his tears. He leaves not because Ellen has refused him, but because she has become real. A woman with a past and a clear view of her own is far harder to love than the image he carried.

Continue this thoughtThe Defence Breaks in the Carriage and at the Window

Coming Up in Chapter 30

That evening Archer comes down before dinner and finds the drawing-room empty. May, always the more punctual, is late. When she appears in her tightly laced dinner-dress she looks tired and almost faded, though her eyes keep their blue dazzle. She asks what became of him: Ellen arrived at Granny's alone.

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Chapter 29

The Carriage Ride Confrontation

His wife's dark blue brougham (with the wedding varnish still on it) met Archer at the ferry, and conveyed him luxuriously to the Pennsylvania terminus in Jersey City. It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the big reverberating station. As he paced the platform, waiting for the Washington express, he remembered that there were people who thought there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York. They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the building of ships…

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Theme-by-theme analyses that connect this book to modern life skills.

Deep diving the literary elements.

The Carriage Ride Confrontation

Summary

Why This Matters