The Roman punch makes all the difference. As Mrs Archer explains, it means canvas-backs or terrapin, two soups, short sleeves and guests of matching importance, and May has ordered it for her first big dinner: a farewell to the Countess Olenska, with the van der Luydens staying over to attend. Archer finds his library tidied for the gentlemen's cigars and tells himself it is not for long. In the ten days since Ellen left for Washington, his only sign from her has been a key, returned in tissue paper to his office. He reads it as a move in a game whose trumps are still his: she is going to Europe but not to her husband, so nothing stops him following. Even Mr Letterblair's sly report of discreet enquiries into Ellen's past cannot shake him. He pushes the paper back unread.
Granny Mingott complains that Ellen has deserted her, and that same evening May announces the dinner with the invitations already written; Archer sees in her the embodied image of the Family. On the night, Ellen arrives pale, almost plain in rows of amber beads, and he has never loved her face more. She tells him they sail tomorrow in the Russia. At table she sits on his right, while the Wellands and Mingotts shower her with the approval they withheld for months. Then, in a flash made of broken gleams, Archer understands that every placid face at the table believes he and Ellen are lovers, and that the tribe has quietly arranged their separation.
This is the old New York way of taking life without effusion of blood. Archer feels like a prisoner in an armed camp and hears the talk of the Beauforts as a warning meant for him. He laughs out loud, startling Mrs van der Luyden, then makes stiff talk with Ellen about train journeys until his voice rises: he means to travel himself, and he calls down the table to Reggie Chivers about a trip round the world. Over the Archer Madeira, Lawrence Lefferts thunders that their children will end by marrying Beaufort's bastards, and Sillerton Jackson whispers that Lefferts has pressing private reasons for the speech. The talk runs past Archer like a senseless river.
In the drawing-room he catches the glitter of victory in May's eyes and understands, for the first time, that she shares the town's belief. At the door the van der Luydens claim Ellen for their landau, so there is no moment alone. "I shall see you soon in Paris," he says, so loudly it seems a shout, and she answers, "if you and May could come." Upstairs, Archer tells May he wants to go away, to India or Japan. She says he cannot, not unless he takes her, and tells him she is expecting a child. She told Ellen a fortnight ago. She was not sure then, but she told her she was.
Coming Up in Chapter 34
Newland Archer sits at the writing-table in his library in East Thirty-ninth Street, home from the opening of the new Metropolitan galleries. Someone there said, 'Why, this used to be one of the old Cesnola rooms,' and at once he was back on a hard leather divan, watching a slight figure in a sealskin cloak move away down the old Museum.
