Chapter 3

It always happened in the same way.

Mrs. Julius Beaufort gave a great ball every year. A ball was a grand evening dance party. On ball night she never failed to appear at the Opera first.

She chose an Opera night to show that she stood far above the cares of her house. Her servants could prepare the whole ball without her.

The Beauforts' house was one of the few in New York with a ball-room. It came before even Mrs. Manson Mingott's and the Headly Chiverses'.

Other families covered the drawing-room floor with rough cloth and moved the furniture upstairs. A drawing-room was a fine room for receiving guests. People now called that way fit only for small towns.

Their ball-room served no other purpose. For three hundred and sixty-four days a year it stood dark behind closed windows. Its gold chairs were piled in a corner. Its great hanging light slept in a bag. People felt this made up for whatever was regrettable in the Beaufort past.

Mrs. Archer loved to turn her social wisdom into short rules. She once said, "We all have our pet common people…" It was daring, but many proud hearts secretly agreed. The Beauforts were not exactly common. Some said they were even worse.

Mrs. Beaufort came from one of America's most honored families. Before her marriage she was the lovely Regina Dallas, of the South Carolina branch, a beauty without a penny.

Her cousin Medora Manson brought her into New York society. Poor Medora always did the wrong thing for the right reason.

People related to the Mansons and the Rushworths had a "droit de cité" in New York society. The French words meant a right to belong. So said Mr. Sillerton Jackson, who once spent time at the Tuileries, the French rulers' house in Paris.

But could a woman keep that right after marrying Julius Beaufort? And who, in fact, was Beaufort?

He passed as an Englishman. He was pleasant, good-looking, quick to anger, warm to guests, and quick with a joke. He came with letters from old Mrs. Manson Mingott's English son-in-law, a banker. He soon won an important place in business.

But he lived wildly, his tongue was bitter, and no one knew his past. Then Medora Manson announced that her cousin would marry him. It seemed one more unwise act in poor Medora's long record.

But unwise acts sometimes end as well as wise ones. Two years after the marriage, all agreed that young Mrs. Beaufort kept the finest house in New York. No one knew quite how the wonder was done.

She was lazy and quiet. Sharp tongues called her dull. But she dressed wonderfully, hung with pearls, costly white stones from the sea. Each year she seemed younger, fairer, more beautiful.

She sat like a queen in Beaufort's heavy house of brown stone. All the world came, and she never lifted her small ringed finger.

The knowing people said Beaufort himself did it all. He trained the servants and taught the cook new dishes. He told the gardeners which flowers to grow in the warm glass houses. He chose the guests and mixed the after-dinner drinks. He told his wife what to write in her little notes.

If so, he did it all in private. To the world he showed only a careless, welcoming rich man, walking into his own drawing-room like an invited guest.

"My wife's gloxinias are a wonder, aren't they?" he would say. "I believe she gets them out from Kew." Gloxinias were rare, costly flowers, and Kew was a famous garden near London.

Mr. Beaufort's secret, people agreed, was the way he carried things off. People whispered that his old English bank "helped" him leave England. He carried off that story like all the rest. New York was as strict about money as about good behavior.

He carried everything before him, and all New York into his house. For over twenty years, people said "we are going to the Beauforts'" with perfect security. It was the tone they used for Mrs. Manson Mingott's.

There was one added pleasure too. At the Beauforts' you got fine old wines and hot canvas-back ducks, a costly wild bird. At other houses you got warm Veuve Clicquot, a French wine with no year, and warmed-up food from Philadelphia.

Mrs. Beaufort, then, appeared in her box as usual, just before the Jewel Song, a song in Faust. Again as usual, she rose at the end of the third act. She drew her opera cloak, a long loose cover, around her lovely shoulders and disappeared.

All New York knew what that meant. In half an hour the ball would begin.

New Yorkers proudly showed the house to foreign visitors, above all on ball night.

The Beauforts were among the first in New York to own a red velvet carpet. A carpet was a rich floor cloth. Their own footmen rolled it down the steps, under their own cloth roof. A footman was a male servant in fine dress.

Other families hired theirs, with the supper and the chairs. The Beauforts also began a new custom. Ladies took off their cloaks in the hall. Before that, they went up to the bedroom of the lady of the house. There they fixed their hair by the gas flame.

Beaufort, people said, explained it his own way. Surely all his wife's friends had servants to dress their hair at home.

The house itself was boldly planned around its ball-room. Guests did not squeeze down a narrow passage to reach it, as at the Chiverses'.

Instead, they marched, slow and serious, down a long line of open drawing-rooms. First came the sea-green room, then the deep red, then the gold-yellow. Far ahead, candle-light shone in the polished floor.

Beyond that lay a conservatory, a glass room full of growing plants. There, costly flowers and tall green plants arched over seats of black and gold bamboo. Bamboo was a strong, hollow plant.

Newland Archer came in a little late, as suited a young man of his position. He left his coat with the footmen, whose legs wore fine silk. The silk was one of Beaufort's few small vanities.

He waited in the library, with its Spanish leather walls and rich furniture. A few men stood there, talking and pulling on their dancing-gloves. Then he joined the guests greeting Mrs. Beaufort at the door of the deep red room.

Archer was clearly nervous. He did not go back to his club after the Opera, as fashionable young men did. The night was fine, and he walked far up Fifth Avenue before turning back toward the Beauforts'.

He was afraid the Mingotts might go too far. Granny Mingott might order them to bring the Countess Olenska to the ball.

The talk in the club box showed him how serious a mistake that would be. He was more determined than ever to "see the thing through." But after their short talk at the Opera, he felt less warm about defending his future wife's cousin.

He walked on to the gold-yellow room. The much-discussed "Love Victorious" hung there, a painting by the French painter Bouguereau. Only Beaufort was bold enough to hang this painting of a person with no clothes. Near the ball-room door, Archer found Mrs. Welland and her daughter.

Couples were already moving smoothly over the floor beyond. The light of the wax candles fell on thin, floating skirts. It fell on girls' heads with modest flowers, and on married women's tall feathers and bright stones. It shone on stiff white shirt-fronts and fresh gloves.

May Welland stood at the door, clearly about to join the dancers. She held her lilies-of-the-valley and no other flowers. Her face was a little pale. Her eyes shone, honest and excited.

Young men and girls stood around her. There was much taking of hands, laughing, and light joking. Mrs. Welland stood a little apart, and her smile approved just enough, and no more.

It was clear that May was announcing her engagement. Her mother put on the look of gentle unwillingness thought proper for such a moment.

Archer paused a moment. He himself asked May to announce it. Yet this was not how he wished his happiness known. Announcing it in the heat and noise of a crowded ball-room stole its first fine bloom. Things so near the heart should stay quiet and private.

His joy was too deep for this to touch its center. But he wished the outside could stay pure too. It pleased him that May felt the same. Her eyes flew to his, quietly begging. Their look said, "Remember, we are doing this because it is right."

Nothing could reach Archer's heart faster than that. But he wished for a higher reason for their haste — some fine, ideal reason, not simply poor Ellen Olenska.

The group opened to let him in, with smiles full of meaning. He took his share of the good wishes. Then he drew May to the middle of the floor and put his arm around her.

"Now we won't have to talk," he said, smiling into her honest eyes. They floated away on the soft waves of the Blue Danube, the famous dance music.

She made no answer. Her lips trembled into a smile, but her eyes stayed distant and serious. They seemed fixed on some far-off sight with no name.

"Dear," Archer whispered, pressing her close. Even in a ball-room, he felt, the first hours of being engaged held something deep, almost like church. What a new life it would be, with this whiteness, this light, this goodness at his side.

The dance ended. As an engaged couple should, they walked slowly into the conservatory. They sat behind a tall screen of green plants and costly flowers. There Newland pressed her gloved hand to his lips.

"You see, I did as you asked me to," she said.

"Yes. I couldn't wait," he answered, smiling. After a moment he added, "Only I wish it did not have to happen at a ball."

"Yes, I know." She met his glance with full understanding. "But after all, even here we are alone together, aren't we?"

"Oh, dearest, always!" Archer cried.

So she was always going to understand. She was always going to say the right thing. The discovery made his cup of joy run over.

He went on happily, "The worst of it is that I want to kiss you, and I can't."

As he spoke, he glanced around. No one could see them. He caught her to him and touched his lips to hers for a moment.

To balance this bold act, he led her to a bamboo sofa in a more open corner. He sat beside her and broke one lily-of-the-valley from her flowers. She sat silent, and the world lay at their feet like a valley full of sunlight.

"Did you tell my cousin Ellen?" she asked after a while, as if she spoke through a dream.

He came back to himself. He had not told her. At the Opera, a strong feeling stopped the words on his lips. He could not speak of such things to the strange foreign woman.

"No. I didn't have the chance after all," he said. It was a quick, small lie.

"Ah." Her face fell, but she was gently set on getting her way. "Then you must, for I didn't tell her either. I wouldn't like her to think…"

"Of course not. But aren't you, after all, the right person to do it?"

She thought about it. "At the right time, yes, it was mine to do. But there was a delay. So now you must explain. Tell her that I asked you to speak to her at the Opera, before we told everyone here."

"If you don't, she may think I forgot her. You see, she is one of the family. She has been away so long that she is rather… easily hurt."

Archer looked at her with shining eyes. "You dear, great angel! Of course I'll tell her." To him she truly seemed an angel, a pure spirit from God.

He glanced, a little worried, toward the crowded ball-room. "But I haven't seen her yet. Has she come?"

"No. At the last minute she decided not to come."

"At the last minute?" he repeated, surprised. He never imagined that she would think of coming at all.

"Yes. She loves dancing," May answered simply. "But suddenly she decided that her dress was not fine enough for a ball. We thought it lovely. But she made up her mind, and so my aunt took her home."

"Oh, well…" said Archer. He was happy and did not care.

Nothing about May pleased him more. She was firmly set on the great rule of their world, never to notice anything "unpleasant." Both were raised in it, and she would carry it to its farthest point.

"She knows as well as I do," he thought, "the real reason why her cousin stayed away. But I will never show it by the smallest sign. She must never guess that I know of the shadow on poor Ellen Olenska's good name."