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

and the ball room chairs. They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to the hostess’s bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all his wife’s friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly coiffées when they left home.
    Then the house had been boldly planned with a ball room, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the Chiverses‘) one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d’or), seeing from afar the many-candled lusters reflected in the polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their costly foilage over seats of black and gold bamboo.
    Newland Archer, as became a young man of his position, strolled in somewhat late. He had left his overcoat with the silk-stockinged footmen (the stockings were one of Beaufort’s new fatuities), had dawdled a while in the library hung with Spanish leather and furnished with Buhl and malachite, where a few men were chatting and putting on their dancing-gloves, and had finally joined the line of guests whom Mrs. Beaufort was receiving on the threshold of the crimson drawing room.
    Archer was distinctly nervous. He had not gone back to his club after the Opera (as the young bloods usually did), but the night being fine, had walked for some distance up Fifth Avenue before turning back in the direction of the Beauforts’ house. He was definitely afraid that the Mingotts might be going too far; that, in fact, they might have Granny Mingott’s orders to bring the Countess Olenska to the ball.
    From the tone of the club box he had perceived how grave a mistake that would be; and, though he was more than ever determined to “see the thing through,” he felt less chivalrously eager to champion his betrothed’s cousin than before their brief talk at the Opera.
    Wandering on to the bouton d‘or drawing room (where Beaufort had had the audacity to hang “Love Victorious,” the much-discussed nude of Bouguereau) f Archer found Mrs. Welland and her daughter standing near the ball-room door. Couples were already gliding over the floor beyond: the light of the wax candles fell on revolving tulle skirts, on girlish heads wreathed with modest blossoms, on the dashing aigrettes and ornaments of the young married women’s coiffures, and on the glitter of highly glazed shirt-fronts and fresh glace gloves.
    Miss Welland, evidently about to join the dancers, hung on the threshold, her lilies-of the-valley in her hand (she carried no other bouquet), her face a little pale, her eyes burning with a candid excitement. A group of young men and girls were gathered about her, and there was much handclasping, laughing and pleasantry, on which Mrs. Welland, standing slightly apart, shed the beam of a qualified approval. It was evident that Miss Welland was in the act of announcing her engagement, while her mother affected the air of parental reluctance considered suitable to the occasion.
    Archer paused a moment. It was at his express wish that the announcement had been made, and yet it was not thus that he would have wished to have his happiness known. To proclaim it in the heat and noise of a crowded ball room was to rob it of the fine bloom of privacy which should belong to things nearest the heart. His joy was so deep that his blurring of the surface left its essence untouched; but he would have liked to keep the surface pure too. It was something of a satisfaction to find that May Welland shared this feeling. Her eyes fled to his beseechingly, and their look said: “Remember, we’re doing this because it’s right.”
    No appeal could have found a more immediate response in Archer’s breast; but he wished that the necessity of their action had been represented by some ideal reason, and