The Age of Innocence

he day was fresh, with a lively spring wind full of dust. All the old
ladies in both families had got out their faded sables and yellowing
ermines, and the smell of camphor from the front pews almost smothered
the faint spring scent of the lilies banking the altar.

Newland Archer, at a signal from the sexton, had come out of the vestry
and placed himself with his best man on the chancel step of Grace
Church.

The signal meant that the brougham bearing the bride and her father was
in sight; but there was sure to be a considerable interval of
adjustment and consultation in the lobby, where the bridesmaids were
already hovering like a cluster of Easter blossoms. During this
unavoidable lapse of time the bridegroom, in proof of his eagerness,
was expected to expose himself alone to the gaze of the assembled
company; and Archer had gone through this formality as resignedly as
through all the others which made of a nineteenth century New York
wedding a rite that seemed to belong to the dawn of history.
Everything was equally easy--or equally painful, as one chose to put
it--in the path he was committed to tread, and he had obeyed the
flurried injunctions of his best man as piously as other bridegrooms
had obeyed his own, in the days when he had guided them through the
same labyrinth.

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 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 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 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.

"Darling!" Archer said--and suddenly the same black abyss yawned before
him and he felt himself sinking into it, deeper and deeper, while his
voice rambled on smoothly and cheerfully: "Yes, of course I thought
I'd lost the ring; no wedding would be complete if the poor devil of a
bridegroom didn't go through that. But you DID keep me waiting, you
know! I had time to think of every horror that might possibly happen."

She surprised him by turning, in full Fifth Avenue, and flinging her
arms about his neck. "But none ever CAN happen now, can it, Newland,
as long as we two are together?"

Every detail of the day had been so carefully thought out that the
young couple, after the wedding-breakfast, had ample time to put on
their travelling-clothes, descend the wide Mingott stairs between
laughing bridesmaids and weeping parents, and get into the brougham
under the traditional shower of rice and satin slippers; and there was
still half an hour left in which to drive to the station, buy the last
weeklies at the bookstall with the air of seasoned travellers, and
settle themselves in the reserved compartment in which May's maid had
already placed her dove-coloured travelling cloak and glaringly new
dressing-bag from London.

The old du Lac aunts at Rhinebeck had put their house at the disposal
of the bridal couple, with a readiness inspired by the prospect of
spending a week in New York with Mrs. Archer; and Archer, glad to
escape the usual "bridal suite" in a Philadelphia or Baltimore hotel,
had accepted with an equal alacrity.

May was enchanted at the idea of going to the country, and childishly
amused at the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where
their mysterious retreat was situated. It was thought "very English"
to have a country-house lent to one, and the fact gave a last touch of
distinction to what was generally conceded to be the most brilliant
wedding of the year; but where the house was no one was permitted to
know, except the parents of bride and groom, who, when taxed with the
knowledge, pursed their lips and said mysteriously: "Ah, they didn't
tell us--" which was manifestly true, since there was no need to.

Once they were settled in their compartment, and the train, shaking off
the endless wooden suburbs, had pushed out into the pale landscape of
spring, talk became easier than Archer had expected. May was still, in
look and tone, the simple girl of yesterday, eager to compare notes
with him as to the incidents of the wedding, and discussing them as
impartially as a bridesmaid talking it all over with an usher. At
first Archer had fancied that this detachment was the disguise of an
inward tremor; but her clear eyes revealed only the most tranquil
unawareness. She was alone for the first time with her husband; but
her husband was only the charming comrade of yesterday. There was no
one whom she liked as much, no one whom she trusted as completely, and
the culminating "lark" of the whole delightful adventure of engagement
and marriage was to be off with him alone on a journey, like a grownup
person, like a "married woman," in fact.

It was wonderful that--as he had learned in the Mission garden at St.
Augustine--such depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of
imagination. But he remembered how, even then, she had surprised him
by dropping back to inexpressive girlishness as soon as her conscience
had been eased of its burden; and he saw that she would probably go
through life dealing to the best of her ability with each experience as
it came, but never anticipating any by so much as a stolen glance.

Perhaps that faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their
transparency, and her face the look of representing a type rather than
a person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue
or a Greek goddess. The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might
have been a preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her
look of indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor
dull, but only primitive and pure. In the thick of this meditation
Archer suddenly felt himself looking at her with the startled gaze of a
stranger, and plunged into a reminiscence of the wedding-breakfast and
of Granny Mingott's immense and triumphant pervasion of it.

May settled down to frank enjoyment of the subject. "I was surprised,
though--weren't you?--that aunt Medora came after all. Ellen wrote
that they were neither of them well enough to take the journey; I do
wish it had been she who had recovered! Did you see the exquisite old
lace she sent me?"

He had known that the moment must come sooner or later, but he had
somewhat imagined that by force of willing he might hold it at bay.

"Yes--I--no: yes, it was beautiful," he said, looking at her blindly,
and wondering if, whenever he heard those two syllables, all his
carefully built-up world would tumble about him like a house of cards.

"Aren't you tired? It will be good to have some tea when we
arrive--I'm sure the aunts have got everything beautifully ready," he
rattled on, taking her hand in his; and her mind rushed away instantly
to the magnificent tea and coffee service of Baltimore silver which the
Beauforts had sent, and which "went" so perfectly with uncle Lovell
Mingott's trays and side-dishes.

In the spring twilight the train stopped at the Rhinebeck station, and
they walked along the platform to the waiting carriage.

"Ah, how awfully kind of the van der Luydens--they've sent their man
over from Skuytercliff to meet us," Archer exclaimed, as a sedate
person out of livery approached them and relieved the maid of her bags.

"I'm extremely sorry, sir," said this emissary, "that a little accident
has occurred at the Miss du Lacs': a leak in the water-tank. It
happened yesterday, and Mr. van der Luyden, who heard of it this
morning, sent a housemaid up by the early train to get the Patroon's
house ready. It will be quite comfortable, I think you'll find, sir;
and the Miss du Lacs have sent their cook over, so that it will be
exactly the same as if you'd been at Rhinebeck."

Archer stared at the speaker so blankly that he repeated in still more
apologetic accents: "It'll be exactly the same, sir, I do assure
you--" and May's eager voice broke out, covering the embarrassed
silence: "The same as Rhinebeck? The Patroon's house? But it will be
a hundred thousand times better--won't it, Newland? It's too dear and
kind of Mr. van der Luyden to have thought of it."

And as they drove off, with the maid beside the coachman, and their
shining bridal bags on the seat before them, she went on excitedly:
"Only fancy, I've never been inside it--have you? The van der Luydens
show it to so few people. But they opened it for Ellen, it seems, and
she told me what a darling little place it was: she says it's the only
house she's seen in America that she could imagine being perfectly
happy in."

"Well--that's what we're going to be, isn't it?" cried her husband
gaily; and she answered with her boyish smile: "Ah, it's just our luck
beginning--the wonderful luck we're always going to have together!"