I.
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
s