The Age of Innocence
ex-lady-loves; the fees for the Bishop and the Rector were safely in
the pocket of his best man; his own luggage was already at Mrs. Manson
Mingott's, where the wedding-breakfast was to take place, and so were
the travelling clothes into which he was to change; and a private
compartment had been engaged in the train that was to carry the young
couple to their unknown destination--concealment of the spot in which
the bridal night was to be spent being one of the most sacred taboos of
the prehistoric ritual.
"Got the ring all right?" whispered young van der Luyden Newland, who
was inexperienced in the duties of a best man, and awed by the weight
of his responsibility.
Archer made the gesture which he had seen so many bridegrooms make:
with his ungloved right hand he felt in the pocket of his dark grey
waistcoat, and assured himself that the little gold circlet (engraved
inside: _Newland to May, April ——, 187—_) was in its place; then,
resuming his former attitude, his tall hat and pearl-grey gloves with
black stitchings grasped in his left hand, he stood looking at the door
of the church.
Overhead, Handel's March swelled pompously through the imitation stone
vaulting, carrying on its waves the faded drift of the many weddings
at which, with cheerful indifference, he had stood on the same chancel
step watching other brides float up the nave toward other bridegrooms.
"How like a first night at the Opera!" he thought, recognising all
the same faces in the same boxes (no, pews), and wondering if, when
the Last Trump sounded, Mrs. Selfridge Merry would be there with the
same towering ostrich feathers in her bonnet, and Mrs. Beaufort with
the same diamond earrings and the same smile--and whether suitable
proscenium seats were already prepared for them in another world.
After that there was still time to review, one by one, the familiar
countenances in the first rows; the women's sharp with curiosity
and excitement, the men's sulky with the obligation of having to
put on their frock-coats before luncheon, and fight for food at the
wedding-breakfast.
"Too bad the breakfast is at old Catherine's," the bridegroom could
fancy Reggie Chivers saying. "But I'm told that Lovell Mingott insisted
on its being cooked by his own chef, so it ought to be good if one can
only get at it." And he could imagine Sillerton Jackson adding with
authority: "My dear fellow, haven't you heard? It's to be served at
small tables, in the new English fashion."
Archer's eyes lingered a moment on the left-hand pew, where his mother,
who had entered the church on Mr. Henry van der Luyden's arm, sat
weeping softly under her Chantilly veil, her hands in her grandmother's
ermine muff.
"Poor Janey!" he thought, looking at his sister, "even by screwing her
head around she can see only the people in the few front pews; and
they're mostly dowdy Newlands and Dagonets."
On the hither side of the white ribbon dividing off the seats reserved
for the families he saw Beaufort, tall and redfaced, scrutinising the
women with his arrogant stare. Beside him sat his wife, all silvery
chinchilla and violets; and on the far side of the ribbon, Lawrence
Lefferts's sleekly brushed head seemed to mount guard over the
invisible deity of "Good Form" who presided at the ceremony.
Archer wondered how many flaws Lefferts's keen eyes would discover
in the ritual of his divinity; then he suddenly recalled that he
too had once thought such questions important. The things that had
filled his days seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like the
wrangles of mediaeval schoolmen over metaphysical terms that nobody
had ever understood. A stormy discussion as to whether the wedding
presents should be "shown" had darkened the last hours before the
wedding; and it seemed inconceivable to Archer that grown-up people
should work themselves into a state of agitation over such trifles,
and that the matter should have been decided (in the negative) by Mrs.
Welland's saying, with indignant tears: "I should as soon turn the
reporters loose in my house." Yet there was a time when Archer had had
definite and rather aggressive opinions on all such problems, and when
everything concerning the manners and customs of his little tribe had
seemed to him fraught with world-wide significance.
"And all the while, I suppose," he thought, "real people were living
somewhere, and real things happening to them ..."
"_There they come!_" breathed the best man excitedly; but the bridegroom
knew better.
The cautious opening of the door of the church meant only that Mr.
Brown the livery-stable keeper (gowned in black in his intermittent
character of sexton) was taking a preliminary survey of the scene
before marshalling his forces. The door was softly shut again; then
after another interval it swung majestically open, and a murmur ran
through the church: "The family!"
Mrs. Welland came first, on the arm of her eldest son. Her large pink
face was appropriately solemn, and her plum-coloured satin with pale
blue side-panels, and blue ostrich plumes in a small satin bonnet,
met with general approval; but before she had settled herself with a
stately rustle in the pew opposite Mrs. Archer's the spectators were
craning their necks to see who was coming after her. Wild rumours had
been abroad the day before to the effect that Mrs. Manson Mingott, in
spite of her physical disabilities, had resolved on being present at
the ceremony; and the idea was so much in keeping with her sporting
character that bets ran high at the clubs as to her being able to walk
up the nave and squeeze into a seat. It was known that she had insisted
on sending her own carpenter to look into the possibility of taking
down the end panel of the front pew, and to measure the space between
the seat and the front; but the result had been discouraging, and for
one anxious day her family had watched her dallying with the plan
of being wheeled up the nave in her enormous Bath chair and sitting
enthroned in it at the foot of the chancel.
The idea of this monstrous exposure of her person was so painful to her
relations that they could have covered with gold the ingenious person
who suddenly discovered that the chair was too wide to pass between
the iron uprights of the awning which extended from the church door to
the curbstone. The idea of doing away with this awning, and revealing
the bride to the mob of dressmakers and newspaper reporters who stood
outside fighting to get near the joints of the canvas, exceeded even
old Catherine's courage, though for a moment she had weighed the
possibility. "Why, they might take a photograph of my child and _put it
in the papers_!" Mrs. Welland exclaimed when her mother's last plan was
hinted to her; and from this unthinkable indecency the clan recoiled
with a collective shudder. The ancestress had had to give in; but her
concession was bought only by the promise that the wedding-breakfast
should take place under her roof, though (as the Washington Square
connection said) with the Wellands' house in easy reach it was hard to
have to make a special price with Brown to drive one to the other end
of nowhere.
Though all these transactions had been widely reported by the Jacksons
a sporting minority still clung to the belief that old Catherine would
appear in church, and there was a distinct lowering of the temperature
when she was found to have been replaced by her daughter-in-law.
Mrs. Lovell Mingott had the high colour and glassy stare induced
in ladies of her age and habit by the effort of getting into a new
dress; but once the disappointment occasioned by her mother-in-law's
non-appearance had subsided, it was agreed that her black Chantilly
over lilac satin, with a bonnet of Parma violets, formed the happiest
contrast to Mrs. Welland's blue and plum-colour. Far different was
the impression produced by the gaunt and mincing lady who followed on
Mr. Mingott's arm, in a wild dishevelment of stripes and fringes and
floating scarves; and as this last apparition glided into view Archer's
heart contracted and stopped beating.
He had taken it for granted that the Marchioness Manson was still in
Washington, where she had gone some four weeks previously with her
niece, Madame Olenska. It was generally understood that their abrupt
departure was due to Madame Olenska's desire to remove her aunt from
the baleful eloquence of Dr. Agathon Carver, who had nearly succeeded
in enlisting her as a recruit for the Valley of Love; and in the
circumstances no one had expected either of the ladies to return for
the wedding. For a moment Archer stood with his eyes fixed on Medora's
fantastic figure, straining to see who came behind her; but the little
procession was at an end, for all the lesser members of the family had
taken their seats, and the eight tall ushers, gathering themselves
together like birds or insects preparing for some migratory manœuvre,
were already slipping through the side doors into the lobby.
"Newland--I say: _she's here!_" the best man whispered.
Archer roused himself with a start.
A long time had apparently passed since his heart had stopped beating,
for the white and rosy procession was in fact half way up the nave, the
Bishop, the Rector and two white-winged assistants were hovering about
the flower-banked altar, and the first chords of the Spohr symphony
were strewing their flower-like notes before the bride.
Archer opened his eyes (but could they really have been shut, as he
imagined?), and felt his heart beginning to resume its usual task. The
music, the scent of the lilies on the altar, the vision of the cloud of
tulle and orange-blossoms floating nearer and nearer, the sight of Mrs.
Archer's face suddenly convulsed with happy sobs, the low benedictory
murmur of the Rector's voice, the ordered evolutions of the eight
pink bridesmaids and the eight black ushers: all these sights, sounds
and sensations, so familiar in themselves, so unutterably strange and
meaningless in his new relation to them, were confusedly mingled in his
brain.
"My God," he thought, "_have_ I got the ring?"--and once more he went
through the bridegroom's convulsive gesture.
Then, in a moment, May was beside him, such radiance streaming from her
that it sent a faint warmth through his numbness, and he straightened
himself and smiled into her eyes.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here," the Rector began ...
The ring was on her hand, the Bishop's benediction had been given,
the bridesmaids were a-poise to resume their place in the procession,
and the organ was showing preliminary symptoms of breaking out into
the Mendelssohn March, without which no newly-wedded couple had ever
emerged upon New York.
"Your arm--_I say, give her your arm!_" young Newland nervously hissed;
and once more Archer became aware of having been adrift far off in the
unknown. What was it that had sent him there, he wondered? Perhaps the
glimpse, among the anonymous spectators in the transept, of a dark coil
of hair under a hat which, a moment later, revealed itself as belonging
to an unknown lady with a long nose, so laughably unlike the person
whose image she had evoked that he asked himself if he were becoming
subject to hallucinations.
And now he and his wife were pacing slowly down the nave, carried
forward on the light Mendelssohn ripples, the spring day beckoning to
them through widely opened doors, and Mrs. Welland's chestnuts, with
big white favours on their frontlets, curvetting and showing off at the
far end of the canvas tunnel.
The footman, who had a still bigger white favour on his lapel, wrapped
May's white cloak about her, and Archer jumped into the brougham at her
side. She turned to him with a triumphant smile and their hands clasped
under her veil.