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

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’s cat’s-eye scarf-pin;

Archer had sat up half the night trying to vary the

wording of his thanks for the last batch of presents

from men friends and ex-lady-loves; the fees for the

Bishop and the Rector were safely in the pocket of his

best man; his own luggage was already at Mrs. Manson

Mingott’s, where the wedding-breakfast was to

take place, and so were the travelling clothes into which

he was to change; and a private compartment had been

engaged in the train that was to carry the young couple

to their unknown destination—concealment of the spot

in which the bridal night was to be spent being one of

the most sacred taboos of the prehistoric ritual.

 

“Got the ring all right?” whispered young van der

Luyden Newland, who was inexperienced in the duties

of a best man, and awed by the weight of his responsibility.

 

Archer made the gesture which he had seen so many

bridegrooms make: with his ungloved right hand he

felt in the pocket of his dark grey waistcoat, and assured

himself that the little gold circlet (engraved

inside: Newland to May, April –, 187-) was in its

place; then, resuming his former attitude, his tall hat

and pearl-grey gloves with black stitchings grasped in

his left hand, he stood looking at the door of the

church.

 

Overhead, Handel’s March swelled pompously through

the imitation stone vaulting, carrying on its waves the

faded drift of the many weddings at which, with cheerful

indifference, he had stood on the same chancel step

watching other brides float up the nave toward other

bridegrooms.

 

“How like a first night at the Opera!” he thought,

recognising all the same faces in the same boxes (no,

pews), and wondering if, when the Last Trump sounded,

Mrs. Selfridge Merry would be there with the same

towering ostrich feathers in her bonnet, and Mrs. Beaufort

with the same diamond earrings and the same

smile—and whether suitable proscenium seats were

already prepared for them in another world.

 

After that there was still time to review, one by one,

the familiar countenances in the first rows; the women’s

sharp with curiosity and excitement, the men’s

sulky with the obligation of having to put on their

frock-coats before luncheon, and fight for food at the

wedding-breakfast.

 

“Too bad the breakfast is at old Catherine’s,” the

bridegroom could fancy Reggie Chivers saying. “But

I’m told that Lovell Mingott insisted on its being cooked

by his own chef, so it ought to be good if one can only

get at it.” And he could imagine Sillerton Jackson

adding with authority: “My dear fellow, haven’t you

heard? It’s to be served at small tables, in the new

English fashion.”

 

Archer’s eyes lingered a moment on the left-hand

pew, where his mother, who had entered the church on

Mr. Henry van der Luyden’s arm, sat weeping softly

under her Chantilly veil, her hands in her grandmother’s

ermine muff.

 

“Poor Janey!” he thought, looking at his sister, “even

by screwing her head around she can see only the

people in the few front pews; and they’re mostly dowdy

Newlands and Dagonets.”

 

On the hither side of the white ribbon dividing off

the seats reserved for the families he saw Beaufort, tall

and redfaced, scrutinising the women with his arrogant

stare. Beside him sat his wife, all silvery chinchilla and

violets; and on the far side of the ribbon, Lawrence

Lefferts’s sleekly brushed head seemed to mount guard

over the invisible deity of “Good Form” who presided

at the ceremony.

 

Archer wondered how many flaws Lefferts’s keen

eyes would discover in the ritual of his divinity; then he

suddenly recalled that he too had once thought such

questions important. The things that had filled his days

seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like the

wrangles of mediaeval schoolmen over metaphysical terms

that nobody had ever understood. A stormy discussion

as to whether the wedding presents should be “shown”

had darkened the last hours before the wedding; and it

seemed inconceivable to Archer that grownup people

should work themselves into a state of agitation over

such trifles, and that the matter should have been decided

(in the negative) by Mrs. Welland’s saying, with

indignant tears: “I should as soon turn the reporters

loose in my house.” Yet there was a time when Archer

had had definite and rather aggressive opinions on all

such problems, and when everything concerning the

manners and customs of his little tribe had seemed to

him fraught with world-wide significance.

 

“And all the while, I suppose,” he thought, “real

people were living somewhere, and real things happening

to them …”

 

“THERE THEY COME!” breathed the best man excitedly;

but the bridegroom knew better.

 

The cautious opening of the door of the church

meant only that Mr. Brown the livery-stable keeper

(gowned in black in his intermittent character of sexton)

was taking a preliminary survey of the scene before

marshalling his forces. The door was softly shut

again; then after another interval it swung majestically

open, and a murmur ran through the church: “The

family!”

 

Mrs. Welland came first, on the arm of her eldest

son. Her large pink face was appropriately solemn, and

her plum-coloured satin with pale blue side-panels, and

blue ostrich plumes in a small satin bonnet, met with

general approval; but before she had settled herself

with a stately rustle in the pew opposite Mrs. Archer’s

the spectators were craning their necks to see who was

coming after her. Wild rumours had been abroad the

day before to the effect that Mrs. Manson Mingott, in

spite of her physical disabilities, had resolved on being

present at the ceremony; and the idea was so much in

keeping with her sporting character that bets ran high

at the clubs as to her being able to walk up the nave

and squeeze into a seat. It was known that she had

insisted on sending her own carpenter to look into the

possibility of taking down the end panel of the front

pew, and to measure the space between the seat and

the front; but the result had been discouraging, and for

one anxious day her family had watched her dallying

with the plan of being wheeled up the nave in her

enormous Bath chair and sitting enthroned in it at the

foot of the chancel.

 

The idea of this monstrous exposure of her person

was so painful to her relations that they could have

covered with gold the ingenious person who suddenly

discovered that the chair was too wide to pass between

the iron uprights of the awning which extended from

the church door to the curbstone. The idea of doing

away with this awning, and revealing the bride to the

mob of dressmakers and newspaper reporters who stood

outside fighting to get near the joints of the canvas,

exceeded even old Catherine’s courage, though for a

moment she had weighed the possibility. “Why, they

might take a photograph of my child AND PUT IT IN THE

PAPERS!” Mrs. Welland exclaimed when her mother’s

last plan was hinted to her; and from this unthinkable

indecency the clan recoiled with a collective shudder.

The ancestress had had to give in; but her concession

was bought only by the promise that the wedding-breakfast should take place under her roof, though (as

the Washington Square connection said) with the

Wellands’ house in easy reach it was hard to have to make

a special price with Brown to drive one to the other

end of nowhere.

 

Though all these transactions had been widely

reported by the Jacksons a sporting minority still clung

to the belief that old Catherine would appear in church,

and there was a distinct lowering of the temperature

when she was found to have been replaced by her

daughter-in-law. Mrs. Lovell Mingott had the high colour

and glassy stare induced in ladies of her age and

habit by the effort of getting into a new dress; but once

the disappointment occasioned by her mother-in-law’s

non-appearance had subsided, it was agreed that her

black Chantilly over lilac satin, with a bonnet of Parma

violets, formed the happiest contrast to Mrs. Welland’s

blue and plum-colour. Far different was the impression

produced by the gaunt and mincing lady who followed

on Mr. Mingott’s arm, in a wild dishevelment of stripes

and fringes and floating scarves; and as this last apparition

glided into view Archer’s heart contracted and

stopped beating.

 

He had taken it for granted that the Marchioness

Manson was still in Washington, where she had gone

some four weeks previously with her niece, Madame

Olenska. It was generally understood that their abrupt

departure was due to Madame Olenska’s desire to remove

her aunt from the baleful eloquence of Dr. Agathon

Carver, who had nearly succeeded in enlisting her as a

recruit for the Valley of Love; and in the circumstances

no one had expected either of the ladies to return for

the wedding. For a moment Archer stood with his eyes

fixed on Medora’s fantastic figure, straining to see who

came behind her; but the little procession was at an

end, for all the lesser members of the family had taken

their seats, and the eight tall ushers, gathering themselves

together like birds or insects preparing for some

migratory manoeuvre, were already slipping through

the side doors into the lobby.

 

“Newland—I say: SHE’S HERE!” the best man whispered.

 

Archer roused himself with a start.

 

A long time had apparently passed since his heart

had stopped beating, for the white and rosy procession

was in fact half way up the nave, the Bishop, the

Rector and two white-winged assistants were hovering

about the flower-banked altar, and the first chords of

the Spohr symphony were strewing their flower-like

notes before the bride.

 

Archer opened his eyes (but could they really have

been shut, as he imagined?), and felt his heart beginning

to resume its usual task. The music, the scent of

the lilies on the altar, the vision of the cloud of tulle

and orange-blossoms floating nearer and nearer, the

sight of Mrs. Archer’s face suddenly convulsed with

happy sobs, the low benedictory murmur of the Rector’s

voice, the ordered evolutions of the eight pink

bridesmaids and the eight black ushers: all these sights,

sounds and sensations, so familiar in themselves, so

unutterably strange and meaningless in his new relation

to them, were confusedly mingled in his brain.

 

“My God,” he thought, “HAVE I got the ring?”—and

once more he went through the bridegroom’s convulsive

gesture.

 

Then, in a moment, May was beside him, such radiance

streaming from her that it sent a faint warmth

through his numbness, and he straightened himself and

smiled into her eyes.

 

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here,” the

Rector began …

 

The ring was on her hand, the Bishop’s benediction

had been given, the bridesmaids were a-poise to resume

their place in the procession, and the organ was showing

preliminary symptoms of breaking out into the

Mendelssohn March, without which no newly-wedded

couple had ever emerged upon New York.

 

“Your arm—I SAY, GIVE HER YOUR ARM!” young

Newland nervously hissed; and once more Archer became

aware of having been adrift far off in the unknown.

What was it that had sent him there, he

wondered? Perhaps the glimpse, among the anonymous

spectators in the transept, of a dark coil of hair under a

hat which, a moment later, revealed itself as belonging

to an unknown lady with a long nose, so laughably unlike

the person whose image she had evoked that he