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

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.”

 

II.

 

Newland Archer, during this brief episode, had

been thrown into a strange state of embarrassment.

 

It was annoying that the box which was thus attracting

the undivided attention of masculine New York

should be that in which his betrothed was seated

between her mother and aunt; and for a moment he

could not identify the lady in the Empire dress, nor

imagine why her presence created such excitement among

the initiated. Then light dawned on him, and with it

came a momentary rush of indignation. No, indeed; no

one would have thought the Mingotts would have tried

it on!

 

But they had; they undoubtedly had; for the low-toned comments behind him left no doubt in Archer’s

mind that the young woman was May Welland’s cousin,

the cousin always referred to in the family as “poor

Ellen Olenska.” Archer knew that she had suddenly

arrived from Europe a day or two previously; he had

even heard from Miss Welland (not disapprovingly)

that she had been to see poor Ellen, who was staying

with old Mrs. Mingott. Archer entirely approved of

family solidarity, and one of the qualities he most

admired in the Mingotts was their resolute championship

of the few black sheep that their blameless stock

had produced. There was nothing mean or ungenerous

in the young man’s heart, and he was glad that his

future wife should not be restrained by false prudery

from being kind (in private) to her unhappy cousin; but

to receive Countess Olenska in the family circle was a

different thing from producing her in public, at the

Opera of all places, and in the very box with the young

girl whose engagement to him, Newland Archer, was

to be announced within a few weeks. No, he felt as old

Sillerton Jackson felt; he did not think the Mingotts

would have tried it on!

 

He knew, of course, that whatever man dared (within

Fifth Avenue’s limits) that old Mrs. Manson Mingott,

the Matriarch of the line, would dare. He had always

admired the high and mighty old lady, who, in spite of

having been only Catherine Spicer of Staten Island,

with a father mysteriously discredited, and neither money

nor position enough to make people forget it, had

allied herself with the head of the wealthy Mingott line,

married two of her daughters to “foreigners” (an Italian

marquis and an English banker), and put the crowning

touch to her audacities by building a large house of

pale cream-coloured stone (when brown sandstone

seemed as much the only wear as a frock-coat in the

afternoon) in an inaccessible wilderness near the

Central Park.

 

Old Mrs. Mingott’s foreign daughters had become a

legend. They never came back to see their mother, and

the latter being, like many persons of active mind and

dominating will, sedentary and corpulent in her habit,

had philosophically remained at home. But the cream-coloured house (supposed to be modelled on the private

hotels of the Parisian aristocracy) was there as a

visible proof of her moral courage; and she throned in

it, among preRevolutionary furniture and souvenirs of

the Tuileries of Louis Napoleon (where she had shone

in her middle age), as placidly as if there were nothing

peculiar in living above Thirty-fourth Street, or in having

French windows that opened like doors instead of

sashes that pushed up.

 

Every one (including Mr. Sillerton Jackson) was agreed

that old Catherine had never had beauty—a gift which,

in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and

excused a certain number of failings. Unkind people

said that, like her Imperial namesake, she had won her

way to success by strength of will and hardness of

heart, and a kind of haughty effrontery that was somehow

justified by the extreme decency and dignity of her

private life. Mr. Manson Mingott had died when she

was only twenty-eight, and had “tied up” the money

with an additional caution born of the general distrust

of the Spicers; but his bold young widow went her way

fearlessly, mingled freely in foreign society, married her

daughters in heaven knew what corrupt and fashionable

circles, hobnobbed with Dukes and Ambassadors,

associated familiarly with Papists, entertained Opera

singers, and was the intimate friend of Mme. Taglioni;

and all the while (as Sillerton Jackson was the first to

proclaim) there had never been a breath on her reputation;

the only respect, he always added, in which she

differed from the earlier Catherine.

 

Mrs. Manson Mingott had long since succeeded in

untying her husband’s fortune, and had lived in affluence

for half a century; but memories of her early

straits had made her excessively thrifty, and though,

when she bought a dress or a piece of furniture, she

took care that it should be of the best, she could not

bring herself to spend much on the transient pleasures

of the table. Therefore, for totally different reasons, her

food was as poor as Mrs. Archer’s, and her wines did

nothing to redeem it. Her relatives considered that the

penury of her table discredited the Mingott name, which

had always been associated with good living; but people

continued to come to her in spite of the “made

dishes” and flat champagne, and in reply to the

remonstrances of her son Lovell (who tried to retrieve the

family credit by having the best chef in New York) she

used to say laughingly: “What’s the use of two good

cooks in one family, now that I’ve married the girls and

can’t eat sauces?”

 

Newland Archer, as he mused on these things, had

once more turned his eyes toward the Mingott box. He

saw that Mrs. Welland and her sister-in-law were facing

their semicircle of critics with the Mingottian APLOMB

which old Catherine had inculcated in all her tribe, and

that only May Welland betrayed, by a heightened colour

(perhaps due to the knowledge that he was watching

her) a sense of the gravity of the situation. As for

the cause of the commotion, she sat gracefully in her

corner of the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, and

revealing, as she leaned forward, a little more shoulder

and bosom than New York was accustomed to seeing,

at least in ladies who had reasons for wishing to pass

unnoticed.

 

Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful

than an offence against “Taste,” that far-off divinity of

whom “Form” was the mere visible representative and

vicegerent. Madame Olenska’s pale and serious face

appealed to his fancy as suited to the occasion and to

her unhappy situation; but the way her dress (which

had no tucker) sloped away from her thin shoulders

shocked and troubled him. He hated to think of May

Welland’s being exposed to the influence of a young

woman so careless of the dictates of Taste.

 

“After all,” he heard one of the younger men begin

behind him (everybody talked through the Mephistopheles-and-Martha scenes), “after all, just WHAT happened?”

 

“Well—she left him; nobody attempts to deny that.”

 

“He’s an awful brute, isn’t he?” continued the young

enquirer, a candid Thorley, who was evidently preparing

to enter the lists as the lady’s champion.

 

“The very worst; I knew him at Nice,” said

Lawrence Lefferts with authority. “A half-paralysed white

sneering fellow—rather handsome head, but eyes with

a lot of lashes. Well, I’ll tell you the sort: when he

wasn’t with women he was collecting china. Paying any

price for both, I understand.”

 

There was a general laugh, and the young champion

said: “Well, then–-?”

 

“Well, then; she bolted with his secretary.”

 

“Oh, I see.” The champion’s face fell.

 

“It didn’t last long, though: I heard of her a few

months later living alone in Venice. I believe Lovell

Mingott went out to get her. He said she was desperately

unhappy. That’s all right—but this parading her

at the Opera’s another thing.”

 

“Perhaps,” young Thorley hazarded, “she’s too

unhappy to be left at home.”

 

This was greeted with an irreverent laugh, and the

youth blushed deeply, and tried to look as if he had

meant to insinuate what knowing people called a “double

entendre.”

 

“Well—it’s queer to have brought Miss Welland,

anyhow,” some one said in a low tone, with a side-glance at Archer.

 

“Oh, that’s part of the campaign: Granny’s orders,

no doubt,” Lefferts laughed. “When the old lady does

a thing she does it thoroughly.”

 

The act was ending, and there was a general stir in

the box. Suddenly Newland Archer felt himself

impelled to decisive action. The desire to be the first man

to enter Mrs. Mingott’s box, to proclaim to the waiting

world his engagement to May Welland, and to see her

through whatever difficulties her cousin’s anomalous

situation might involve her in; this impulse had abruptly

overruled all scruples and hesitations, and sent him

hurrying through the red corridors to the farther side

of the house.

 

As he entered the box his eyes met Miss Welland’s,

and he saw that she had instantly understood his motive,

though the family dignity which both considered

so high a virtue would not permit her to tell him so.

The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of

faint implications and pale delicacies, and the fact that

he and she understood each other without a word

seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than

any explanation would have done. Her eyes said: “You

see why Mamma brought me,” and his answered: “I

would not for the world have had you stay away.”

 

“You know my niece Countess Olenska?” Mrs. Welland

enquired as she shook hands with her future son-in-law. Archer bowed without extending his hand, as

was the custom on being introduced to a lady; and

Ellen Olenska bent her head slightly, keeping her own

pale-gloved hands clasped on her huge fan of eagle

feathers. Having greeted Mrs. Lovell Mingott, a large

blonde lady in creaking satin, he sat down beside his

betrothed, and said in a low tone: “I hope you’ve told

Madame Olenska that we’re engaged? I want everybody