The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (story read aloud TXT) 📕

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 honeymoon 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, buttonhole-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 bosom 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