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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 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 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."
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