The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (the speed reading book TXT) 📗
- Author: Edith Wharton
- Performer: 0375753206
Book online «The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (the speed reading book TXT) 📗». Author Edith Wharton
So far he was reasonably sure of having fulfilled all
his obligations. The bridesmaids’ eight bouquets of white
lilac and lilies-of-the-valley had been sent in due time,
as well as the gold and sapphire sleeve-links of the
eight ushers and the best man’s cat’s-eye scarf-pin;
Archer had sat up half the night trying to vary the
wording of his thanks for the last batch of presents
from men friends and 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 grownup 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 manoeuvre, 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
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