The Age of Innocence | Page 9

our pet common people--" and
though the phrase was a daring one, its truth was secretly admitted in
many an exclusive bosom. But the Beauforts were not exactly common;
some people said they were even worse. Mrs. Beaufort belonged indeed
to one of America's most honoured families; she had been the lovely
Regina Dallas (of the South Carolina branch), a penniless beauty
introduced to New York society by her cousin, the imprudent Medora
Manson, who was always doing the wrong thing from the right motive.
When one was related to the Mansons and the Rushworths one had a
"droit de cite" (as Mr. Sillerton Jackson, who had frequented the
Tuileries, called it) in New York society; but did one not forfeit it in
marrying Julius Beaufort?
The question was: who was Beaufort? He passed for an Englishman,
was agreeable, handsome, ill-tempered, hospitable and witty. He had
come to America with letters of recommendation from old Mrs.

Manson Mingott's English son-in-law, the banker, and had speedily
made himself an important position in the world of affairs; but his
habits were dissipated, his tongue was bitter, his antecedents were
mysterious; and when Medora Manson announced her cousin's
engagement to him it was felt to be one more act of folly in poor
Medora's long record of imprudences.
But folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom, and two years
after young Mrs. Beaufort's marriage it was admitted that she had the
most distinguished house in New York. No one knew exactly how the
miracle was accomplished. She was indolent, passive, the caustic even
called her dull; but dressed like an idol, hung with pearls, growing
younger and blonder and more beautiful each year, she throned in Mr.
Beaufort's heavy brown-stone palace, and drew all the world there
without lifting her jewelled little finger. The knowing people said it
was Beaufort himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new
dishes, told the gardeners what hot-house flowers to grow for the
dinner-table and the drawing-rooms, selected the guests, brewed the
after-dinner punch and dictated the little notes his wife wrote to her
friends. If he did, these domestic activities were privately performed,
and he presented to the world the appearance of a careless and
hospitable millionaire strolling into his own drawing-room with the
detachment of an invited guest, and saying: "My wife's gloxinias are a
marvel, aren't they? I believe she gets them out from Kew."
Mr. Beaufort's secret, people were agreed, was the way he carried
things off. It was all very well to whisper that he had been "helped" to
leave England by the international banking-house in which he had been
employed; he carried off that rumour as easily as the rest--though New
York's business conscience was no less sensitive than its moral
standard--he carried everything before him, and all New York into his
drawing- rooms, and for over twenty years now people had said they
were "going to the Beauforts'" with the same tone of security as if they
had said they were going to Mrs. Manson Mingott's, and with the added
satisfaction of knowing they would get hot canvas-back ducks and
vintage wines, instead of tepid Veuve Clicquot without a year and
warmed-up croquettes from Philadelphia.
Mrs. Beaufort, then, had as usual appeared in her box just before the
Jewel Song; and when, again as usual, she rose at the end of the third

act, drew her opera cloak about her lovely shoulders, and disappeared,
New York knew that meant that half an hour later the ball would begin.
The Beaufort house was one that New Yorkers were proud to show to
foreigners, especially on the night of the annual ball. The Beauforts had
been among the first people in New York to own their own red velvet
carpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own footmen, under
their own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the ball-room
chairs. They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take
their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to the hostess's
bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the gas-burner;
Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all his wife's
friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly coiffees when
they left home.
Then the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that,
instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the
Chiverses') one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing-
rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or), seeing from
afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry, and
beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns
arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo.
Newland Archer,