In addition to this forest of family trees, Mr. Sillerton
Jackson carried between his narrow hollow temples,
and under his soft thatch of silver hair, a register
of most of the scandals and mysteries that had smouldered
under the unruffled surface of New York society within
the last fifty years. So far indeed did his
information extend, and so acutely retentive was his
memory, that he was supposed to be the only man who
could have told you who Julius Beaufort, the banker,
really was, and what had become of handsome Bob Spicer,
old Mrs. Manson Mingott’s father, who had disappeared
so mysteriously (with a large sum of trust money)
less than a year after his marriage, on the very day
that a beautiful Spanish dancer who had been delighting
thronged audiences in the old Opera-house on the Battery
had taken ship for Cuba. But these mysteries,
and many others, were closely locked in Mr. Jackson’s
breast; for not only did his keen sense of honour
forbid his repeating anything privately imparted,
but he was fully aware that his reputation for discretion
increased his opportunities of finding out what he
wanted to know.
The club box, therefore, waited in visible suspense
while Mr. Sillerton Jackson handed back Lawrence Lefferts’s
opera-glass. For a moment he silently scrutinised
the attentive group out of his filmy blue eyes overhung
by old veined lids; then he gave his moustache a thoughtful
twist, and said simply: “I didn’t
think the Mingotts would have tried it on.”
II.
Newland Archer, during this brief episode, had been
thrown into a strange state of embarrassment.
It was annoying that the box which was thus attracting
the undivided attention of masculine New York should
be that in which his betrothed was seated between
her mother and aunt; and for a moment he could not
identify the lady in the Empire dress, nor imagine
why her presence created such excitement among the
initiated. Then light dawned on him, and with
it came a momentary rush of indignation. No,
indeed; no one would have thought the Mingotts would
have tried it on!
But they had; they undoubtedly had; for the low-toned
comments behind him left no doubt in Archer’s
mind that the young woman was May Welland’s cousin,
the cousin always referred to in the family as “poor
Ellen Olenska.” Archer knew that she had
suddenly arrived from Europe a day or two previously;
he had even heard from Miss Welland (not disapprovingly)
that she had been to see poor Ellen, who was staying
with old Mrs. Mingott. Archer entirely approved
of family solidarity, and one of the qualities he
most admired in the Mingotts was their resolute championship
of the few black sheep that their blameless stock
had produced. There was nothing mean or ungenerous
in the young man’s heart, and he was glad that
his future wife should not be restrained by false
prudery from being kind (in private) to her unhappy
cousin; but to receive Countess Olenska in the family
circle was a different thing from producing her in
public, at the Opera of all places, and in the very
box with the young girl whose engagement to him, Newland
Archer, was to be announced within a few weeks.
No, he felt as old Sillerton Jackson felt; he did
not think the Mingotts would have tried it on!
