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 pre-Revolutionary 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 to know--I want you to let me
announce it this evening at the ball."
Miss Welland's face grew rosy as the dawn, and she looked at him with
radiant eyes. "If you can persuade Mamma," she said; "but why should we
change what is already settled?" He made no answer but that which his
eyes returned, and she added, still more confidently smiling: "Tell my
cousin yourself: I give you leave. She says she used to play with you
when you were children."
She made way for him by pushing back her chair, and promptly, and a
little ostentatiously, with the desire that the whole house should see
what he was doing, Archer seated himself at the Countess Olenska's side.
"We _did_ use to play together, didn't we?" she asked, turning her
grave eyes to his. "You were a horrid boy, and kissed me once behind a
door; but it was your cousin Vandie Newland, who never looked at me,
that I was in love with." Her glance swept the horse-shoe curve of
boxes. "Ah, how this brings it all back to me--I see everybody here in
knickerbockers and pantalettes," she said, with her trailing slightly
foreign accent, her eyes returning to his face.
Agreeable as their expression was, the young man was shocked that they
should reflect so unseemly a picture of the august tribunal before
which, at that very moment, her case was being tried. Nothing could
be in worse taste than misplaced flippancy; and he answered somewhat
stiffly: "Yes, you have been away a very long time."
"Oh, centuries and centuries; so long," she said, "that I'm sure
I'm dead and buried, and this dear old place is heaven;" which, for
reasons he could not define, struck Newland Archer as an even more
disrespectful way of describing New York society.