Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Edith Wharton Read Free Book Online

Archer, who was fond of coining her social philosophy into axioms, had once said: “We all have 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 honored 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 Rushworths, one had a “droit de cité” (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 En glishman, 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 jeweled little finger. The knowing people said it was Beaufort himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new dishes, told the gardeners what hothouse 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 rumor 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