Chapter 2

During these few minutes, Newland Archer fell into strange confusion.

It was most annoying. Every man in the house was staring at one box. His future wife, May Welland, sat in it between her mother and aunt.

At first he could not name the lady in the Empire dress, the French style caught up under the breast. He could not guess why she excited those in the know.

Then light came, and with it a rush of anger. Surely not. The Mingotts would never try such a thing.

But they did. Without doubt, they did. The low voices behind him made it clear. The young woman was May Welland's cousin, the one the family called "poor Ellen Olenska."

She arrived from Europe only a day or two before. Miss Welland even told him, not as a wrong thing, that she visited poor Ellen at old Mrs. Mingott's.

Archer believed a family should stand together, and admired the Mingotts most for that. They firmly defended the few black sheep of their blameless line.

Nothing in the young man's heart was mean or small. He was glad his future wife could be kind to her unhappy cousin in private, free of false shame.

But to receive Countess Olenska in the family was one thing. To show her in public was another — at the Opera, of all places. And in the very box with the girl engaged to him, Newland Archer. Their engagement would be announced within a few weeks.

No. Archer felt just what old Sillerton Jackson felt. He did not think the Mingotts would try it.

Of course, whatever any man dared inside Fifth Avenue, old Mrs. Manson Mingott would dare. She was the Matriarch, the ruling mother of the Mingott line. Archer always admired that high and mighty old lady.

She began as only Catherine Spicer of Staten Island. Her father lost his good name in some unexplained way. She had neither money nor position to make people forget it.

Yet she married the head of the rich Mingott line. She married two daughters to foreigners: an Italian marquis, a man of high title, and an English banker.

Her most daring act came last. She built a large house of pale cream-colored stone near the Central Park, in wild ground few could reach. In those days, brown sandstone was the rule, like a gentleman's long coat in the afternoon.

The foreign daughters became a legend. They never came back to see their mother. Like many people of active mind and ruling will, she was heavy and hated to move. So she calmly stayed at home.

But the cream-colored house stood there, visible proof of her moral courage. People said it copied the grand private houses of old Paris families.

She sat calmly in it, like a queen, among furniture made before the American Revolution. Around her were treasures from the Tuileries, the Paris home of Louis Napoleon, where she shone in her middle years.

To her, living above Thirty-fourth Street was not strange. French windows that opened like doors, not up, were not strange either.

Everyone agreed, even Mr. Sillerton Jackson, that old Catherine never had beauty. To New York, beauty was the gift that explained every success and excused many failings.

Unkind people compared her to the earlier Catherine, the great ruler of Russia who shared her name. She won her way, they said, by strength of will and hardness of heart. People excused her proud, bold manner because her private life was so clean and correct.

Mr. Manson Mingott died when she was only twenty-eight. Nobody quite trusted the Spicers, so he "tied up" his money with extra care.

But the bold young widow went her way without fear. She mixed freely in foreign society. She married her daughters into heaven knows what corrupt and fashionable circles. Corrupt meant fine outside and bad at the heart.

She was at ease with men of high title and government messengers. She befriended "Papists," as people then called Roman Catholics. She entertained opera singers and was a close friend of Mme. Taglioni.

Yet no one ever heard one breath against her good name, as Sillerton Jackson was always first to say. It was the only point, he added, where she differed from the earlier Catherine.

In time, Mrs. Mingott untied her husband's money. For half a century she lived in rich comfort. But memories of hard early years made her careful with every dollar.

A dress or a piece of furniture had to be the best. But she could not make herself spend much on the short pleasures of the table.

So her food was as poor as Mrs. Archer's, for quite different reasons. Her wines did nothing to save it.

Her relatives said the poor table shamed the Mingott name, which stood for good living. But people still came, in spite of the cheap "made dishes" and the flat champagne. Champagne was a costly French wine full of small balls of air.

Her son Lovell kept the best cook in New York to repair the family name. When he protested about her table, his mother only laughed.

"What's the use of two good cooks in one family?" she used to say. "I've married the girls, and I can't eat rich food now."

As he thought of these things, Archer turned again to the Mingott box. Mrs. Welland and her sister-in-law faced their half-circle of critics with the true Mingott "aplomb." Aplomb was a perfect, calm sureness of manner. Old Catherine trained her whole family in it.

Only May Welland showed any sense of how serious the moment was. Her color was higher than usual, perhaps because she knew he was watching.

The cause of all the talk sat calmly in her corner, her eyes fixed on the stage. As she leaned forward, she showed a little more shoulder and breast than New York was used to seeing. At least, not on ladies with reasons to pass unnoticed.

Few things seemed more awful to Newland Archer than a crime against "Taste." Taste was a far-off god, and "Form" was only that god's visible servant.

Madame Olenska's pale, serious face, he thought, suited the occasion and her unhappy situation. But her dress had no tucker, a piece of fine cloth that covered a lady's chest. It sloped away from her thin shoulders, and the sight shocked and troubled him.

He hated to think of May Welland under the influence of a woman so careless of Taste.

"After all," said one of the younger men behind him, "after all, just what happened?" Everybody talked through the Mephistopheles and Martha scenes.

"Well, she left him. Nobody tries to deny that."

"He's an awful, cruel man, isn't he?" asked the young questioner, an open-faced Thorley, clearly ready to defend the lady.

"The very worst kind. I knew him at Nice," said Lawrence Lefferts, with the authority of a man who knew. "Half of his body cannot move. He is white-faced, with a cold smile that laughs at everything. A rather handsome head, but eyes with a lot of lashes."

Lashes were the small hairs along the edge of the eye.

"I'll tell you the sort," Lefferts went on. "When he wasn't with women, he was collecting old cups and plates. And he paid any price for both, I understand."

A general laugh followed, and the young defender said, "Well, then?"

"Well, then. She ran away with his secretary."

"Oh, I see." The young man's face fell.

"It didn't last long, though. A few months later she was living alone in Venice. I believe Lovell Mingott went out to bring her home. He said she was terribly unhappy. That's all very well, but showing her off at the Opera is another thing."

"Perhaps," said young Thorley, "she's too unhappy to be left at home."

A laugh with no respect answered him, and the youth went deep red. He tried to look as if he meant a joke with a second, hidden meaning.

Someone looked sideways at Archer. "Well, it's strange to have brought Miss Welland, anyhow," he said in a low voice.

"Oh, that's part of the campaign. Granny's orders, no doubt," Lefferts said with a laugh. "When the old lady does a thing, she does it completely."

The act was ending, and everyone in the box began to move. Suddenly Newland Archer felt he must act, and act firmly.

He wanted to be the first man into Mrs. Mingott's box. He wanted to declare his engagement to the waiting world. He wanted to stand by May through any trouble her cousin's strange situation might bring.

This sudden feeling swept his doubts away. It sent him hurrying through the red passages to the far side of the house.

As he entered the box, his eyes met Miss Welland's. He saw at once that she understood why he came, but she would not say it aloud. Both held the family's quiet pride too high for that.

Their world lived in an air of faint hints and pale, careful signs. They understood each other without a single word. That silence brought them closer than any explanation could.

Her eyes said, "You see why Mamma brought me." His eyes answered, "Nothing in the world could make me want you to stay away."

"You know my niece, Countess Olenska?" Mrs. Welland asked as she shook hands with her future son-in-law. A niece was a brother's or a sister's daughter.

Archer bowed without putting out his hand, as was the custom on meeting a lady. Ellen Olenska bent her head slightly. Her pale-gloved hands stayed folded on a huge fan of eagle feathers. An eagle was a great wild hunting bird.

Then he greeted Mrs. Lovell Mingott, a large fair-haired lady in a stiff dress that made small sounds.

He sat down beside May and said in a low voice, "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 pink as the dawn, and her eyes shone. "If you can make Mamma agree," she said. "But why should we change what is already settled?"

He answered only with his eyes. She smiled, still more sure of herself, and added, "Tell my cousin yourself. I give you leave. She says she used to play with you when you were children."

She pushed back her chair for him. Archer sat down at once by Countess Olenska's side, a little too openly. He wanted the whole house to see.

"We did use to play together, didn't we?" she asked, turning her serious eyes to his. "You were an awful boy. You kissed me once behind a door. But I was in love with your cousin Vandie Newland, and he never looked at me."

Her glance traveled around the great horse-shoe curve of boxes. "Ah, how this brings it all back to me," she said. "I see everybody here in knickerbockers and pantalettes." Those were children's clothes: boys' short, loose pants and girls' long white leg-coverings.

Her voice trailed with a light foreign sound. Her eyes came back to his face.

Their look was pleasant, but the young man was shocked. To him, that great curve of boxes was a high and serious court. At this very moment, it was trying her case. Nothing could be in worse taste than joking before one's judges.

So he answered, a little stiffly, "Yes, you have been away a very long time."

"Oh, centuries and centuries," she said. "So long that I'm sure I'm dead and buried, and this dear old place is heaven."

He could not say why, but this seemed to him even less respectful toward New York society.