The Age of Innocence, Page 4

  IV.

  In the course of the next day the first of the usual betrothal visitswere exchanged. The New York ritual was precise and inflexible in suchmatters; and in conformity with it Newland Archer first went with hismother and sister to call on Mrs. Welland, after which he and Mrs.Welland and May drove out to old Mrs. Manson Mingott's to receive thatvenerable ancestress's blessing.

  A visit to Mrs. Manson Mingott was always an amusing episode to theyoung man. The house in itself was already an historic document,though not, of course, as venerable as certain other old family housesin University Place and lower Fifth Avenue. Those were of the purest1830, with a grim harmony of cabbage-rose-garlanded carpets, rosewoodconsoles, round-arched fire-places with black marble mantels, andimmense glazed book-cases of mahogany; whereas old Mrs. Mingott, whohad built her house later, had bodily cast out the massive furniture ofher prime, and mingled with the Mingott heirlooms the frivolousupholstery of the Second Empire. It was her habit to sit in a windowof her sitting-room on the ground floor, as if watching calmly for lifeand fashion to flow northward to her solitary doors. She seemed in nohurry to have them come, for her patience was equalled by herconfidence. She was sure that presently the hoardings, the quarries,the one-story saloons, the wooden green-houses in ragged gardens, andthe rocks from which goats surveyed the scene, would vanish before theadvance of residences as stately as her own--perhaps (for she was animpartial woman) even statelier; and that the cobble-stones over whichthe old clattering omnibuses bumped would be replaced by smoothasphalt, such as people reported having seen in Paris. Meanwhile, asevery one she cared to see came to HER (and she could fill her rooms aseasily as the Beauforts, and without adding a single item to the menuof her suppers), she did not suffer from her geographic isolation.

  The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middlelife like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plumpactive little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into somethingas vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted thissubmergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, inextreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almostunwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of whichthe traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation. Aflight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of astill-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by aminiature portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below, waveafter wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capaciousarmchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface ofthe billows.

  The burden of Mrs. Manson Mingott's flesh had long since made itimpossible for her to go up and down stairs, and with characteristicindependence she had made her reception rooms upstairs and establishedherself (in flagrant violation of all the New York proprieties) on theground floor of her house; so that, as you sat in her sitting-roomwindow with her, you caught (through a door that was always open, and alooped-back yellow damask portiere) the unexpected vista of a bedroomwith a huge low bed upholstered like a sofa, and a toilet-table withfrivolous lace flounces and a gilt-framed mirror.

  Her visitors were startled and fascinated by the foreignness of thisarrangement, which recalled scenes in French fiction, and architecturalincentives to immorality such as the simple American had never dreamedof. That was how women with lovers lived in the wicked old societies,in apartments with all the rooms on one floor, and all the indecentpropinquities that their novels described. It amused Newland Archer(who had secretly situated the love-scenes of "Monsieur de Camors" inMrs. Mingott's bedroom) to picture her blameless life led in thestage-setting of adultery; but he said to himself, with considerableadmiration, that if a lover had been what she wanted, the intrepidwoman would have had him too.

  To the general relief the Countess Olenska was not present in hergrandmother's drawing-room during the visit of the betrothed couple.Mrs. Mingott said she had gone out; which, on a day of such glaringsunlight, and at the "shopping hour," seemed in itself an indelicatething for a compromised woman to do. But at any rate it spared themthe embarrassment of her presence, and the faint shadow that herunhappy past might seem to shed on their radiant future. The visitwent off successfully, as was to have been expected. Old Mrs. Mingottwas delighted with the engagement, which, being long foreseen bywatchful relatives, had been carefully passed upon in family council;and the engagement ring, a large thick sapphire set in invisible claws,met with her unqualified admiration.

  "It's the new setting: of course it shows the stone beautifully, but itlooks a little bare to old-fashioned eyes," Mrs. Welland had explained,with a conciliatory side-glance at her future son-in-law.

  "Old-fashioned eyes? I hope you don't mean mine, my dear? I like allthe novelties," said the ancestress, lifting the stone to her smallbright orbs, which no glasses had ever disfigured. "Very handsome,"she added, returning the jewel; "very liberal. In my time a cameo setin pearls was thought sufficient. But it's the hand that sets off thering, isn't it, my dear Mr. Archer?" and she waved one of her tinyhands, with small pointed nails and rolls of aged fat encircling thewrist like ivory bracelets. "Mine was modelled in Rome by the greatFerrigiani. You should have May's done: no doubt he'll have it done,my child. Her hand is large--it's these modern sports that spread thejoints--but the skin is white.--And when's the wedding to be?" shebroke off, fixing her eyes on Archer's face.

  "Oh--" Mrs. Welland murmured, while the young man, smiling at hisbetrothed, replied: "As soon as ever it can, if only you'll back meup, Mrs. Mingott."

  "We must give them time to get to know each other a little better,mamma," Mrs. Welland interposed, with the proper affectation ofreluctance; to which the ancestress rejoined: "Know each other?Fiddlesticks! Everybody in New York has always known everybody. Letthe young man have his way, my dear; don't wait till the bubble's offthe wine. Marry them before Lent; I may catch pneumonia any winternow, and I want to give the wedding-breakfast."

  These successive statements were received with the proper expressionsof amusement, incredulity and gratitude; and the visit was breaking upin a vein of mild pleasantry when the door opened to admit the CountessOlenska, who entered in bonnet and mantle followed by the unexpectedfigure of Julius Beaufort.

  There was a cousinly murmur of pleasure between the ladies, and Mrs.Mingott held out Ferrigiani's model to the banker. "Ha! Beaufort,this is a rare favour!" (She had an odd foreign way of addressing menby their surnames.)

  "Thanks. I wish it might happen oftener," said the visitor in his easyarrogant way. "I'm generally so tied down; but I met the CountessEllen in Madison Square, and she was good enough to let me walk homewith her."

  "Ah--I hope the house will be gayer, now that Ellen's here!" cried Mrs.Mingott with a glorious effrontery. "Sit down--sit down, Beaufort:push up the yellow armchair; now I've got you I want a good gossip. Ihear your ball was magnificent; and I understand you invited Mrs.Lemuel Struthers? Well--I've a curiosity to see the woman myself."

  She had forgotten her relatives, who were drifting out into the hallunder Ellen Olenska's guidance. Old Mrs. Mingott had always professeda great admiration for Julius Beaufort, and there was a kind of kinshipin their cool domineering way and their short-cuts through theconventions. Now she was eagerly curious to know what had decided theBeauforts to invite (for the first time) Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, thewidow of Struthers's Shoe-polish, who had returned the previous yearfrom a long initiatory sojourn in Europe to lay siege to the tightlittle citadel of New York. "Of course if you and Regina invite herthe thing is settled. Well, we need new blood and new money--and Ihear she's still very good-looking," the carnivorous old lady declared.

  In the hall, while Mrs. Welland and May drew on their furs, Archer sawthat the Countess Olenska was looking at him with a faintly questioningsmile.

  "Of course you know already--about May and me," he said, answering herlook with a shy laugh. "She scolded me for not giving you the newslast night at t
he Opera: I had her orders to tell you that we wereengaged--but I couldn't, in that crowd."

  The smile passed from Countess Olenska's eyes to her lips: she lookedyounger, more like the bold brown Ellen Mingott of his boyhood. "Ofcourse I know; yes. And I'm so glad. But one doesn't tell such thingsfirst in a crowd." The ladies were on the threshold and she held outher hand.

  "Good-bye; come and see me some day," she said, still looking at Archer.

  In the carriage, on the way down Fifth Avenue, they talked pointedly ofMrs. Mingott, of her age, her spirit, and all her wonderful attributes.No one alluded to Ellen Olenska; but Archer knew that Mrs. Welland wasthinking: "It's a mistake for Ellen to be seen, the very day after herarrival, parading up Fifth Avenue at the crowded hour with JuliusBeaufort--" and the young man himself mentally added: "And she oughtto know that a man who's just engaged doesn't spend his time calling onmarried women. But I daresay in the set she's lived in they do--theynever do anything else." And, in spite of the cosmopolitan views onwhich he prided himself, he thanked heaven that he was a New Yorker,and about to ally himself with one of his own kind.