The Age of Innocence | Page 7

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