The Age of Innocence

On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.

Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distances “above the Forties,” of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the “new people” whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.

It was Madame Nilsson’s first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had already learned to describe as “an exceptionally brilliant audience” had gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family landau, or in the humbler but more convenient “Brown coupé.” To come to the Opera in a Brown coupé was almost as honourable a way of arriving as in one’s own carriage; and departure by the same means had the immense advantage of enabling one (with

She made way for him by pushing back her chair, and promptly, and a little ostentatiously, with the desire that the whole house should see what he was doing, Archer seated himself at the Countess Olenska’s side.

“We did use to play together, didn’t we?” she asked, turning her grave eyes to his. “You were a horrid boy, and kissed me once behind a door; but it was your cousin Vandie Newland, who never looked at me, that I was in love with.” Her glance swept the horseshoe curve of boxes. “Ah, how this brings it all back to me⁠—I see everybody here in knickerbockers and pantalettes,” she said, with her trailing slightly foreign accent, her eyes returning to his face.

Agreeable as their expression was, the young man was shocked that they should reflect so unseemly a picture of the august tribunal before which, at that very moment, her case was being tried. Nothing could be in worse taste than misplaced flippancy; and he answered somewhat stiffly: “Yes, you have been away a very long time.”

“Oh, centuries and centuries; so long,” she said, “that I’m sure I’m dead and buried, and this dear old place is heaven;” which, for reasons he could not define, struck Newland Archer as an even more disrespectful way of describing New York society.

“I want you to talk to me about May,” she said.

Instead of answering her he asked: “You knew the Duke before?”

“Oh, yes⁠—we used to see him every winter at Nice. He’s very fond of gambling⁠—he used to come to the house a great deal.” She said it in the simplest manner, as if she had said: “He’s fond of wildflowers”; and after a moment she added candidly: “I think he’s the dullest man I ever met.”

This pleased her companion so much that he forgot the slight shock her previous remark had caused him. It was undeniably exciting to meet a lady who found the van der Luydens’ Duke dull, and dared to utter the opinion. He longed to question her, to hear more about the life of which her careless words had given him so illuminating a glimpse; but he feared to touch on distressing memories, and before he could think of anything to say she had strayed back to her original subject.

“May is a darling; I’ve seen no young girl in New York so handsome and so intelligent. Are you very much in love with her?”

Newland Archer reddened and laughed. “As much as a man can be.”

She continued to consider him thoughtfully, as if not to miss any shade of meaning in what he said, “Do you think, then, there is a limit?”

“To being in love? If there is, I haven’t found it!”

But Archer, thanking him, said that he would go and meet the ladies; and the butler, obviously relieved, closed the door on him majestically.

A groom took the cutter to the stables, and Archer struck through the park to the high road. The village of Skuytercliff was only a mile and a half away, but he knew that Mrs. van der Luyden never walked, and that he must keep to the road to meet the carriage. Presently, however, coming down a footpath that crossed the highway, he caught sight of a slight figure in a red cloak, with a big dog running ahead. He hurried forward, and Madame Olenska stopped short with a smile of welcome.

“Ah, you’ve come!” she said, and drew her hand from her muff.

The red cloak made her look gay and vivid, like the Ellen Mingott of old days; and he laughed as he took her hand, and answered: “I came to see what you were running away from.”

Her face clouded over, but she answered: “Ah, well⁠—you will see, presently.”

The answer puzzled him. “Why⁠—do you mean that you’ve been overtaken?”

She shrugged her shoulders, with a little movement like Nastasia’s, and rejoined in a lighter tone: “Shall we walk on? I’m so cold after the sermon. And what does it matter, now you’re here to protect me?”

The blood rose to his temples and he caught a fold of her cloak. “Ellen⁠—what is it? You must tell me.”

She started up, and freeing herself from him moved away to the other side of the hearth. “Ah, don’t make love to me! Too many people have done that,” she said, frowning.

Archer, changing colour, stood up also: it was the bitterest rebuke she could have given him. “I have never made love to you,” he said, “and I never shall. But you are the woman I would have married if it had been possible for either of us.”

“Possible for either of us?” She looked at him with unfeigned astonishment. “And you say that⁠—when it’s you who’ve made it impossible?”

He stared at her, groping in a blackness through which a single arrow of light tore its blinding way.

“I’ve made it impossible⁠—?”

“You, you, you!” she cried, her lip trembling like a child’s on the verge of tears. “Isn’t it you who made me give up divorcing⁠—give it up because you showed me how selfish and wicked it was, how one must sacrifice one’s self to preserve the dignity of marriage⁠ ⁠… and to spare one’s family the publicity, the scandal? And because my family was going to be your family⁠—for May’s sake and for yours⁠—I did what you told me, what you proved to me that I ought to do. Ah,” she broke out with a sudden laugh, “I’ve made no secret of having done it for you!”