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The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton CHAPTER I.
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in
Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
Though there was already talk of the ***, in remote metropolitan distances
"above the Forties," of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness and
splendour with those of the great European
capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the
shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy.
Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the
"new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the
sentimental clung to it for its historic
associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic
a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.
It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had
already learned to describe as "an exceptionally brilliant audience" had
gathered to hear her, transported through
the slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family landau,
or in the humbler but more convenient "Brown coupe."
To come to the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving as
in one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had the immense advantage of
enabling one (with a playful allusion to
democratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in the line, instead
of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of one's own coachman gleamed under
the portico of the Academy.
It was one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered
that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want
to get to it.
When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the curtain had just
gone up on the garden scene.
There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had
dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a
cigar in the Gothic library with glazed
black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house
where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking.
But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in
metropolises it was "not the thing" to arrive early at the opera; and what was or
was not "the thing" played a part as
important in Newland Archer's New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had
ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago.
The second reason for his delay was a personal one.
He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking
over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation.
This was especially the case when the pleasure was a delicate one, as his
pleasures mostly were; and on this occasion the moment he looked forward to was so rare
and exquisite in quality that--well, if he
had timed his arrival in accord with the prima donna's stage-manager he could not
have entered the Academy at a more significant moment than just as she was
singing: "He loves me--he loves me not--HE
LOVES ME!--" and sprinkling the falling daisy petals with notes as clear as dew.
She sang, of course, "M'ama!" and not "he loves me," since an unalterable and
unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French
operas sung by Swedish artists should be
translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking
audiences.
This seemed as natural to Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his life
was moulded: such as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in
blue enamel to part his hair, and of never
appearing in society without a flower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole.
"M'ama...non m'ama..." the prima donna sang, and "M'ama!", with a final burst of
love triumphant, as she pressed the dishevelled daisy to her lips and lifted
her large eyes to the sophisticated
countenance of the little brown Faust- Capoul, who was vainly trying, in a tight
purple velvet doublet and plumed cap, to look as pure and true as his artless
victim.
Newland Archer, leaning against the wall at the back of the club box, turned his eyes
from the stage and scanned the opposite side of the house.
Directly facing him was the box of old Mrs. Manson Mingott, whose monstrous obesity had
long since made it impossible for her to attend the Opera, but who was always
represented on fashionable nights by some of the younger members of the family.
On this occasion, the front of the box was filled by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lovell
Mingott, and her daughter, Mrs. Welland; and slightly withdrawn behind these
brocaded matrons sat a young girl in white
with eyes ecstatically fixed on the stagelovers.
As Madame Nilsson's "M'ama!" thrilled out above the silent house (the boxes always
stopped talking during the Daisy Song) a warm pink mounted to the girl's cheek,
mantled her brow to the roots of her fair
braids, and suffused the young slope of her breast to the line where it met a modest
tulle tucker fastened with a single gardenia.
She dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her knee, and
Newland Archer saw her white-gloved finger- tips touch the flowers softly.
He drew a breath of satisfied vanity and his eyes returned to the stage.
No expense had been spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be very beautiful
even by people who shared his acquaintance with the Opera houses of Paris and Vienna.
The foreground, to the footlights, was covered with emerald green cloth.
In the middle distance symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet
hoops formed the base of shrubs shaped like orange-trees but studded with large pink
and red roses.
Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses, and closely resembling the
floral pen-wipers made by female parishioners for fashionable clergymen,
sprang from the moss beneath the rose-
trees; and here and there a daisy grafted on a rose-branch flowered with a luxuriance
prophetic of Mr. Luther Burbank's far-off prodigies.
In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed
with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids
carefully disposed on each side of her
muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's impassioned wooing, and
affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he
persuasively indicated the ground floor
window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from the right wing.
"The darling!" thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the young girl with
the lilies-of-the-valley.
"She doesn't even guess what it's all about."
And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of possessorship in which
pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a tender reverence for her
abysmal purity.
"We'll read Faust together...by the Italian lakes..." he thought, somewhat hazily
confusing the scene of his projected honey- moon with the masterpieces of literature
which it would be his manly privilege to reveal to his bride.
It was only that afternoon that May Welland had let him guess that she "cared" (New
York's consecrated phrase of maiden avowal), and already his imagination,
leaping ahead of the engagement ring, the
betrothal kiss and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at his side in some
scene of old European witchery. He did not in the least wish the future
Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton.
He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to develop a social tact and
readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of
the "younger set," in which it was the
recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it.
If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he sometimes nearly did) he
would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly-wise and as eager
to please as the married lady whose charms
had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years; without, of course, any
hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred that unhappy being's life, and had
disarranged his own plans for a whole winter.
How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain itself in a harsh
world, he had never taken the time to think out; but he was content to hold his view
without analysing it, since he knew it was
that of all the carefully-brushed, white- waistcoated, button-hole-flowered gentlemen
who succeeded each other in the club box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and
turned their opera-glasses critically on
the circle of ladies who were the product of the system.
In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer felt himself distinctly the
superior of these chosen specimens of old New York gentility; he had probably read
more, thought more, and even seen a good
deal more of the world, than any other man of the number.
Singly they betrayed their inferiority; but grouped together they represented "New
York," and the habit of masculine solidarity made him accept their doctrine
on all the issues called moral.
He instinctively felt that in this respect it would be troublesome--and also rather
bad form--to strike out for himself.
"Well--upon my soul!" exclaimed Lawrence Lefferts, turning his opera-glass abruptly
away from the stage. Lawrence Lefferts was, on the whole, the
foremost authority on "form" in New York.
He had probably devoted more time than any one else to the study of this intricate and
fascinating question; but study alone could not account for his complete and easy
competence.
One had only to look at him, from the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his
beautiful fair moustache to the long patent-leather feet at the other end of his
lean and elegant person, to feel that the
knowledge of "form" must be congenital in any one who knew how to wear such good
clothes so carelessly and carry such height with so much lounging grace.
As a young admirer had once said of him: "If anybody can tell a fellow just when to
wear a black tie with evening clothes and when not to, it's Larry Lefferts."
And on the question of pumps versus patent- leather "Oxfords" his authority had never
been disputed. "My God!" he said; and silently handed his
glass to old Sillerton Jackson.
Newland Archer, following Lefferts's glance, saw with surprise that his
exclamation had been occasioned by the entry of a new figure into old Mrs.
Mingott's box.
It was that of a slim young woman, a little less tall than May Welland, with brown hair
growing in close curls about her temples and held in place by a narrow band of
diamonds.
The suggestion of this headdress, which gave her what was then called a "Josephine
look," was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown rather theatrically
caught up under her *** by a girdle with a large old-fashioned clasp.
The wearer of this unusual dress, who seemed quite unconscious of the attention
it was attracting, stood a moment in the centre of the box, discussing with Mrs.
Welland the propriety of taking the
latter's place in the front right-hand corner; then she yielded with a slight
smile, and seated herself in line with Mrs. Welland's sister-in-law, Mrs. Lovell
Mingott, who was installed in the opposite corner.
Mr. Sillerton Jackson had returned the opera-glass to Lawrence Lefferts.
The whole of the club turned instinctively, waiting to hear what the old man had to
say; for old Mr. Jackson was as great an authority on "family" as Lawrence Lefferts
was on "form."
He knew all the ramifications of New York's cousinships; and could not only elucidate
such complicated questions as that of the connection between the Mingotts (through
the Thorleys) with the Dallases of South
Carolina, and that of the relationship of the elder branch of Philadelphia Thorleys
to the Albany Chiverses (on no account to be confused with the Manson Chiverses of
University Place), but could also enumerate
the leading characteristics of each family: as, for instance, the fabulous stinginess
of the younger lines of Leffertses (the Long Island ones); or the fatal tendency of
the Rushworths to make foolish matches; or
the insanity recurring in every second generation of the Albany Chiverses, with
whom their New York cousins had always refused to intermarry--with the disastrous
exception of poor Medora Manson, who, as
everybody knew...but then her mother was a Rushworth.
In addition to this forest of family trees, Mr. Sillerton Jackson carried between his
narrow hollow temples, and under his soft thatch of silver hair, a register of most
of the scandals and mysteries that had
smouldered under the unruffled surface of New York society within the last fifty
years.
So far indeed did his information extend, and so acutely retentive was his memory,
that he was supposed to be the only man who could have told you who Julius Beaufort,
the banker, really was, and what had become
of handsome Bob Spicer, old Mrs. Manson Mingott's father, who had disappeared so
mysteriously (with a large sum of trust money) less than a year after his marriage,
on the very day that a beautiful Spanish
dancer who had been delighting thronged audiences in the old Opera-house on the
Battery had taken ship for Cuba.
But these mysteries, and many others, were closely locked in Mr. Jackson's breast; for
not only did his keen sense of honour forbid his repeating anything privately
imparted, but he was fully aware that his
reputation for discretion increased his opportunities of finding out what he wanted
to know.
The club box, therefore, waited in visible suspense while Mr. Sillerton Jackson handed
back Lawrence Lefferts's opera-glass.
For a moment he silently scrutinised the attentive group out of his filmy blue eyes
overhung by old veined lids; then he gave his moustache a thoughtful twist, and said
simply: "I didn't think the Mingotts would have tried it on."