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 erection, 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 stage-lovers. 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."