纯真年代（中文导读英文版）(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：纪飞,王勋,（美）伊迪丝·华顿

出版社：清华大学出版社

格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT

纯真年代（中文导读英文版）试读：

前言

伊迪丝·华顿（Edith Wharton，1862—1937），美国20世纪初最伟大的作家之一。她出生于纽约一个富贵之家，幼年随父母旅居欧洲，11岁时回到美国。她自幼受欧洲文化的濡染，在父亲的图书室里阅读了大量古典文学名著，很早就开始写诗以及短篇小说。1885年与门当户对的波士顿人爱德华·华顿结婚，婚后一度中断了写作，但她的婚姻生活并不美满，并于1913年与丈夫离婚。她于1907年移居法国，后定居巴黎，将全部精力投入创作中。第一次世界大战期间，伊迪丝积极投身于社会救济活动，并因此获得法国政府颁发的荣誉勋章。她在法国去世，葬在凡尔赛。

伊迪丝·华顿从1880年开始发表小说，1889年第一部短篇小说集问世，获得了意外的成功。1905年出版长篇小说《快乐之家》，立即引起文坛瞩目，该书是当时美国最畅销的小说之一。1920年出版的《纯真年代》被许多评论家视为华顿最优秀的作品，她也因此获得了1921年的普利策小说奖。她是第一位荣膺这个奖项的女性作家。她笔耕不辍，堪称高产，一共写了19部中长篇小说，出版过11部短篇小说集，还有大量的非小说作品。除《快乐之家》和《纯真年代》之外，她的主要作品还有《伊坦·弗洛美》、《暗礁》、《乡村习俗》、《夏天》和《月亮的隐现》。伊迪丝·华顿与旅居欧洲的亨利·詹姆斯交往甚密，亨利·詹姆斯对她的小说创作产生了深刻的影响。

在华顿的众多作品中，《纯真年代》是典型代表，它是一部经久不衰的杰作，被认为是伊迪丝·华顿结构技巧最为完美的一部小说。作者从自己亲身经历与熟悉的环境中提炼素材，塑造人物，将作品题材根植于深厚的现实土壤中。尤其是通过博福特命运浮沉这一线索与主人公爱情悲剧的主线相互映衬，使一个看似寻常的爱情故事具备了深刻的社会现实意义。《纯真年代》描绘了旧纽约的上流社会风俗，故事背景设在19世纪70年代后期至20世纪初。纽约是华顿的故乡，也是曾经给她带来许多欢乐和痛苦的地方。从某个层面上来看，小说是对当时上层社会活动的忠实记录。小说细致入微地描绘了当时的戏剧观赏、正式晚宴、家庭舞会、订婚仪式、教堂婚礼、社交访问、游戏娱乐等活动，对于住房、衣着、摆设和家庭用品等也都做了详细的介绍，在小说结尾部分甚至还提到了当时问世不久的电灯与电话。更为重要的是，小说是对当时时代精神的刻画。华顿以其敏锐的观察力把握了那个时代的脉搏，也表达了对于自己曾置身其中的上流社会的矛盾心情和重新评价。

该书自1920年出版以来，一直畅销至今，被译成几十种语言。根据小说改编而成的电影也已成为电影史上最经典的名片之一。它是全世界公认的世界文学名著之一，同时也是在中国影响最大以及最受广大读者欢迎的美国文学作品之一。目前，在国内数量众多的《纯真年代》书籍中，主要的出版形式有两种，一种是中文翻译版，另一种是英文原版。而其中的英文原版越来越受到读者的欢迎，这主要是得益于中国人热衷于学习英文的大环境。从英文学习的角度来看，直接使用纯英文素材更有利于英文学习。考虑到对英文内容背景的了解有助于英文阅读，使用中文导读应该是一种比较好的方式，这也可以说是该书的第三种版本形式。采用中文导读而非中英文对照的方式进行编排，有利于国内读者改变对英文阅读依赖中文注释的习惯。基于以上原因，我们决定编译《纯真年代》，并采用中文导读英文版的形式出版。在中文导读中，我们尽力使其贴近原作的精髓，也尽可能地保留原作的故事主线。我们希望能够编出为当代中国读者所喜爱的经典读本。读者在阅读英文故事之前，可以先阅读中文导读内容，这样有利于了解故事背景，从而加快阅读速度。我们相信，该经典著作的引进对加强当代中国读者，特别是青少年读者的人文修养是非常有帮助的。

本书的主要内容由王勋、纪飞编译。参加本书故事素材搜集整理及编译工作的还有郑佳、刘乃亚、赵雪、熊金玉、李丽秀、熊红华、王婷婷、孟宪行、胡国平、李晓红、贡东兴、陈楠、邵舒丽、冯洁、王业伟、徐鑫、王晓旭、周丽萍、熊建国、徐平国、肖洁、王小红等。限于我们的科学、人文素养和英语水平，书中一定会有一些不当之处，我们衷心希望读者朋友批评指正。第一章　Chapter1导读

纽约的上流社会依然满足于冬天在剧院欣赏歌剧。某天晚上，克莉丝汀·尼尔森夫人开始了首场演出，一大群人为了领略她优美的歌声而云集于此。年轻人纽伦·阿切尔晚上七点便吃了晚餐，但在这个年代早早来到剧院是不合时宜的，等他到达剧院的时候，歌剧已经开演了。他迟到的另外一个原因是为了享受即将来临的快乐的遐想，这比获得真正的快乐更让人满足。女主角在台上认真地演唱着，纽伦·阿切尔视线慢慢移到曼森·明哥特太太的专用包厢，她由于身体原因早就不能来欣赏歌剧了，但她的家族成员仍会出席。今天出席的是她的儿媳洛维尔·明哥特太太和女儿韦兰太太，另外还有一位年轻的姑娘。阿切尔的目光转回舞台上的精彩布置：美丽的花园中间，尼尔森夫人的精彩演出《浮士德》正在上演，此时正在表演一段男主角求爱的场面，纽伦·阿切尔的脑海中想到了未来妻子的模样，他希望自己的妻子充满智慧，能够随机应变，成为最受欢迎的已婚女性。

正当纽伦·阿切尔沉醉于自己的想象中时，坐在一旁的劳伦斯·莱夫茨突然惊叫起来，他是一个在礼节和穿着方面具有权威的人，他之所以发出尖叫，是因为看到一个年轻女子走进了韦兰太太的包厢。一旁的老杰森先生是纽约家族问题的权威，他清楚近五十年来每一个家族的隐秘事情；当众人等着他讲述有关那位年轻女子的故事时，他只是说“想不到明哥特家族会做出这样的事情”。n a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson wassinging in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.OThough 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 coupéwas 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 a playful allusion to democratic principles）to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in the line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of one’s own coachman gleamed under the portico of the Academy.It was one of the great livery-stableman’s most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.

When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a cigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs.Archer allowed smoking.But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was“not the thing”to arrive early at the opera；and what was or was not“the thing”played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago.

The second reason for his delay was a personal one. He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation.This was especially the case when the pleasure was a delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were；and on this occasion the moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality that—well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima donna's stage-manager he could not have entered the Academy at a more significant moment than just as she was singing“He loves me—he loves me not—he loves me！—”and sprinkling the falling daisy petals with notes as clear as dew.

She sang, of course，“M'ama！”and not“he loves me，”since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences. This seemed as natural to Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his life was moulded：such as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a flower（preferably a gardenia）in his buttonhole.

“M'ama……non m'ama……，”the prima donna sang, and“M'ama！”with a final burst of love triumphant, as she pressed the dishevelled daisy to her lips and lifted her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of the little brown Faust-Capoul, who was vainly trying, in a tight purple velvet doublet and plumed cap, to look as pure and true as his artless victim.

Newland Archer, leaning against the wall at the back of the club box, turned his eyes from the stage and scanned the opposite side of the house. Directly facing him was the box of old Mrs.Manson Mingott, whose monstrous obesity had long since made it impossible for her to attend the Opera, but who was always represented on fashionable nights by some of the younger members of the family.On this occasion, the front of the box was filled by her daughter-in-law, Mrs.Lovell Mingott, and her daughter, Mrs.Welland；and slightly withdrawn behind these brocaded matrons sat a young girl in white with eyes ecstatically fixed on the stage-lovers.As Madame Nilsson's“M'ama！”thrilled out above the silent house（the boxes always stopped talking during the Daisy Song）a warm pink mounted to the girl's cheek, mantled her brow to the roots of her fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her breast to the line where it met a modest tulle tucker fastened with a single gardenia.She dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her knee, and Newland Archer saw her white-gloved finger-tips touch the flowers softly.He drew a breath of satisfied vanity and his eyes returned to the stage.

No expense had been spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be very beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the Opera Houses of Paris and Vienna. The foreground, to the footlights, was covered with emerald green cloth.In the middle distance symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet hoops formed the base of shrubs shaped like orange-trees but studded with large pink and red roses.Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses, and closely resembling the floral pen wipers made by female parishioners for fashionable clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath the rose-trees；and here and there a daisy grafted on a rose-branch flowered with a luxuriance prophetic of Mr.Luther Burbank's far-off prodigies.

In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the groundfloor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from the right wing.

“The darling！”thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the young girl with the lilies-of-the-valley.“She doesn't even guess what it's all about.”And he contemplated her absorbed youmg face with a thrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity.“We'll read Faust together.. by theItalian lakes……”he thought, somewhat hazily confusing the scene of his projected honeymoon with the masterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to reveal to his bride.It was only that afternoon that May Welland had let him guess that she“cared”（New York's consecrated phrase of maiden avowal），and already his imagination, leaping ahead of the engagement ring, the betrothal kiss and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at his side in some scene of old European witchery.

He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton.He meant her（thanks to his enlightening companionship）to develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of the“younger set，”in which it was the recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it.If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity（as he sometimes nearly did）he would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly-wise and as eager to please as the married lady whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years；without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred that unhappy being's life, and had disarranged his own plans for a whole winter.

How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out；but he was content to hold his view without analysing it, since he knew it was that of all the carefully-brushed, whitewaistcoated, buttonhole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their opera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product of the system. In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old New York gentility；he had probably read more, thought more, and even seen a good deal more of the world, than any other man of the number.Singly they betrayed their inferiority；but grouped together they represented“New York，”and the habit of masculine solidarity made him accept their doctrine on all the issues called moral.He instinctively felt that in this respect it would be troublesome—and also rather bad form—to strike out for himself.

“Well—upon my soul！”exclaimed Lawrence Lefferts, turning hisopera-glass abruptly away from the stage. Lawrence Lefferts was, on the whole, the foremost authority on“form”in New York.He had probably devoted more time than anyone else to the study of this intricate and fascinating question；but study alone could not account for his complete and easy competence.One had only to look at him, from the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his beautiful fair moustache to the long patent-leather feet at the other end of his lean and elegant person, to feel that the knowledge of“form”must be congenital in any one who knew how to wear such good clothes so carelessly and carry such height with so much lounging grace.As a young admirer had once said of him：“If anybody can tell a fellow just when to wear a black tie with evening clothes and when not to, it's Larry Lefferts.”And on the question of pumps versus patent-leather“Oxfords”his authority had never been disputed.

“My God！”he said；and silently handed his glass to old Sillerton Jackson.

Newland Archer, following Lefferts's glance, saw with surprise that hisexclamation had been occasioned by the entry of a new figure into old Mrs. Mingott's box.It was that of a slim young woman, a little less tall than May Welland, with brown hair growing in close curls about her temples and held in place by a narrow band of diamonds.The suggestion of this headdress, which gave her what was then called a“Josephine look，”was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown rather theatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large old-fashioned clasp.The wearer of this unusual dress, who seemed quite unconscious of the attention it was attracting, stood a moment in the centre of the box, discussing with Mrs.Welland the propriety of taking the latter's place in the front right-hand corner；then she yielded with a slight smile, and seated herself in line with Mrs.Welland's sister-in-law, Mrs.Lovell Mingott, who was installed in the opposite corner.

Mr. Sillerton Jackson had returned the opera-glass to Lawrence Lefferts.The whole of the club turned instinctively, waiting to hear what the old man had to say；for old Mr.Jackson was as great an authority on“family”as Lawrence Lefferts was on“form.”He knew all the ramifications of New York's cousinships, and could not only elucidate such complicated questions as that of the connection between the Mingotts（through the Thorleys）with the Dallasesof South Carolina, and that of the relationship of the elder branch of Philadelphia Thorleys to the Albany Chiverses（on no account to be confused with the Manson Chiverses of University Place），but could also enumerate the leading characteristics of each family；as, for instance, the fabulous stinginess of the younger lines of Leffertses（the Long Island ones）；or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish matches；or the insanity recurring in every second generation of the Albany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused to intermarry—with the disastrous exception of poor Medora Manson, who, as everybody knew……but then her mother was a Rushworth.

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.”第二章　Chapter2导读

纽伦·阿切尔刚开始没有认出那位年轻女子，当看到她坐在自己的未婚妻身边时，他明白了这是怎么回事，突然产生了愤怒之情。身后的窃窃私语让他足以确定这位年轻女子就是未婚妻的表姐——从欧洲回来的艾伦·奥伦斯卡。阿切尔看到未婚妻能够善待不幸的表姐感到很高兴，但是公开场合的接待让他不能忍受。老明哥特太太的举动总是让人难以捉摸，她现在虽然很富有，但她家的餐桌上依然很简单，尽管如此，亲戚朋友们还是相继拜访。

阿切尔看到未婚妻的脸色绯红，而那位表姐却优雅冷静地坐在那里。虽然阿切尔也很同情她的遭遇，但看到她那不合时宜的穿着，还是担心自己的未婚妻会受到影响。身后的人开始讨论那位可怜姑娘悲惨的婚姻生活，据说后来她竟然和秘书一起私奔了。歌剧一结束，阿切尔就希望能够当场宣布自己和梅订婚的消息，以帮助梅度过这样难堪的场面。当他走进包厢时，韦兰太太介绍了奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人给他认识。他找到机会低声请求梅允许自己在当晚的舞会上宣布订婚消息。在梅的示意下，阿切尔坐到了艾伦身边，艾伦竟然主动提起小时候阿切尔亲吻自己的事情，这让他觉得很尴尬。ewland Archer, during this brief episode, had been thrown into astrange state of embarrassment.N

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！

He knew, of course, that whatever man dared（within Fifth Avenue's limits）that old Mrs. Manson Mingott, the Matriarch of the line, would dare.He had always admired the high and mighty old lady, who, in spite of having been only Catherine Spicer of Staten Island, with a father mysteriously discredited, and neither money nor position enough to make people forget it, had allied herself with the head of the wealthy Mingott line, married two of her daughters to“foreigners”（an Italian marquis and an English banker），and put the crowning touch to her audacities by building a large house of pale cream-coloured stone（when brown sandstone seemed as much the only wear as a frock-coat in the afternoon）in an inaccessible wilderness near the Central Park.

Old Mrs. Mingott's foreign daughters had become a legend.They never came back to see their mother, and the latter being, like many persons of active mind and dominating will, sedentary and corpulent in her habit, had philosophically remained at home.But the cream-coloured house（supposed to be modelled on the private hotels of the Parisian aristocracy）was there as a visible proof of her moral courage；and she throned in it, among pre-Revolutionary furniture and souvenirs of the Tuileries of Louis Napoleon（where she had shone in her middle age），as placidly as if there were nothing peculiar in living above Thirty-fourth Street, or in having French windows that opened like doors instead of sashes that pushed up.

Every one（including Mr. Sillerton Jackson）was agreed that old Catherine had never had beauty—a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.Unkind people said that, like her Imperial namesake, she had won her way to success by strength of will and hardness of heart, and a kind of haughty effrontery that was somehow justified by the extreme decency and dignity of her private life.Mr.Manson Mingott had died when she was only twenty-eight, and had“tied up”the money with an additional caution born of the general distrust of the Spicers；but his bold young widow went her way fearlessly, mingled freely in foreign society, married her daughters in heaven knew what corrupt and fashionable circles, hobnobbed with Dukes and Ambassadors, associated familiarly with Papists, entertained Opera singers, and was the intimate friend of Mme.Taglioni；and all the while（as Sillerton Jackson was the first to proclaim）there had never been a breath on her reputation；the only respect, he always added, in which she differed from the earlier Catherine.

Mrs. Manson Mingott had long since succeeded in untying her husband's fortune, and had lived in affluence for half a century；but memories of her early straits had made her excessively thrifty, and though, when she bought a dress or a piece of furniture, she took care that it should be of the best, she could not bring herself to spend much on the transient pleasures of the table.Therefore, for totally different reasons, her food was as poor as Mrs.Archer's, and her wines did nothing to redeem it.Her relatives considered that the penury of her table discredited the Mingott name, which had always been associated withgood living；but people continued to come to her in spite of the“made dishes”and flat champagne, and in reply to the remonstrances of her son Lovell（who tried to retrieve the family credit by having the best chef in New York）she used to say laughingly：“What's the use of two good cooks in one family, now that I've married the girls and can't eat sauces？”

Newland Archer, as he mused on these things, had once more turned his eyes toward the Mingott box. He saw that Mrs.Welland and her sister-in-law were facing their semicircle of critics with the Mingottian aplomb which old Catherine had inculcated in all her tribe, and that only May Welland betrayed, by a heightened colour（perhaps due to the knowledge that he was watching her），a sense of the gravity of the situation.As for the cause of the commotion, she sat gracefully in her corner of the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, and revealing, as she leaned forward, a little more shoulder and bosom than New York was accustomed to seeing, at least in ladies who had reasons for wishing to pass unnoticed.

Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offence against“Taste，”that far-off divinity of whom“Form”was the mere visible representative and vicegerent. Madame Olenska's pale and serious face appealed to his fancy as suited to the occasion and to her unhappy situation；but the way her dress（which had no tucker）sloped away from her thin shoulders shocked and troubled him.He hated to think of May Welland's being exposed to the influence of a young woman so careless of the dictates of Taste.

“After all，”he heard one of the younger men begin behind him（everybody talked through the Mephistopheles-and-Martha scenes），“after all, just what happened？”

“Well—she left him；nobody attempts to deny that.”

“He's an awful brute, isn't he？”continued the young enquirer, a candid Thorley, who was evidently preparing to enter the lists as the lady's champion.

“The very worst；I knew him at Nice，”said Lawrence Lefferts with authority.“A half-paralysed white sneering fellow—rather handsome head, but eyes with a lot of lashes. Well, I'll tell you the sort：when he wasn't with women he was collecting china.Paying any price for both, I understand.”

There was a general laugh, and the young champion said：“Well, then—？”

“Well, then；she bolted with his secretary.”

“Oh, I see.”The champion's face fell.

“It didn't last long, though：I heard of her a few months later living alone in Venice. I believe Lovell Mingott went out to get her.He said she was desperately unhappy.That's all right—but this parading her at the Opera's another thing.”

“Perhaps，”young Thorley hazarded，“she's too unhappy to be left at home.”

This was greeted with an irreverent laugh, and the youth blushed deeply, and tried to look as if he had meant to insinuate what knowing people called a“double entendre.”

“Well—it's queer to have brought Miss Welland, anyhow，”someone said in a low tone, with a side-glance at Archer.

“Oh, that's part of the campaign：Granny's orders, no doubt，”Lefferts laughed.“When the old lady does a thing she does it thoroughly.”

The act was ending, and there was a general stir in the box. Suddenly Newland Archer felt himself impelled to decisive action.The desire to be the first man to enter Mrs.Mingott's box, to proclaim to the waiting world his engagement to May Welland, and to see her through whatever difficulties her cousin's anomalous situation might involve her in；this impulse had abruptly overruled all scruples and hesitations, and sent him hurrying through the red corridors to the farther side of the house.

As he entered the box his eyes met Miss Welland's, and he saw that she had instantly understood his motive, though the family dignity which both considered so high a virtue would not permit her to tell him so. The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done.Her eyes said：“You see why Mamma brought me，”and his answered：“I would not for the world have had you stay away.”

“You know my niece Countess Olenska？”Mrs. Welland enquired as she shook hands with her future son-in-law.Archer bowed without extending his hand, as was the custom on being introduced to a lady；and Ellen Olenska benther head slightly, keeping her own pale-gloved hands clasped on her huge fan of eagle feathers.Having greeted Mrs.Lovell Mingott, a large blonde lady in creaking satin, he sat down beside his betrothed, and said in a low tone：“I hope you've told Madame Olenska that we're engaged？I want everybody to know—I want you to let me announce it this evening at the ball.”

Miss Welland's face grew rosy as the dawn, and she looked at him with radiant eyes.“If you can persuade Mamma，”she said；“but why should we change what is already settled？”He made no answer but that which his eyes returned, and she added, still more confidently smiling：“Tell my cousin yourself：I give you leave. She says she used to play with you when you were children.”

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 horse-shoe 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.第三章　Chapter3导读

波弗家族拥有纽约罕见的舞厅住宅，但一年之中三百六十四天都处于封闭状态，只有一天举办舞会。波弗太太原名瑞吉娜，原本身无分文，却经表姐梅朵拉·曼森介绍到纽约，嫁进了最有名望的家族之一——波弗家族。波弗先生虽然看起来文质彬彬，热情风趣，在社交界有着重要的地位，但生性放荡，喜欢拈花惹草。婚后的波弗太太出人意料地越来越漂亮，而且把家里一切都布置得大方得体，所有仆役都亲自培训，家务活动都亲自指导。波弗先生的生意也很成功，虽然他的履历很神秘，但人们还是乐于拜访他家，就像乐于拜访明哥特太太家一样。

波弗太太习惯于在有歌剧的晚上举办舞会，她总是提前半个小时离场。她举办舞会的住宅设计得十分气派，人们可以直接走进客厅而不必穿越狭窄的过道，屋子深处是一间温室，地板上映射着蜡烛的光芒。纽伦·阿切尔来得比较晚，他担心奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人会被人带到舞会上。阿切尔正在欣赏着挂在客厅里的油画，有些裸体画也只有波弗家才敢挂在墙上。这时梅·韦兰正在不远处向众人宣布自己订婚的消息，阿切尔并没有感到高兴，虽然这是自己的意愿，但是看到自己的幸福被公之于众，感觉就像隐私被强行公开一样。他试图用订婚的消息来转移大家对奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人丑闻的关注。阿切尔拉着梅来到隐蔽处，匆匆地亲吻了她的嘴唇，之后两人在长椅上坐下，梅希望阿切尔能够亲自告诉艾伦他们订婚的消息，免得表姐以为大家排斥她。阿切尔说在舞会上并没有看到艾伦，听说是艾伦嫌自己的衣服不够漂亮所以没来参加，其实两人心里都清楚艾伦缺席的真正原因。t invariably happened in the same way.Mrs. Julius Beaufort, on the night of her annual ball, never failed Ito appear at the Opera；indeed, she always gave her ball on an Opera night in order to emphasise her complete superiority to household cares, and her possession of a staff of servants competent to organise every detail of the entertainment in her absence.

The Beauforts'house was one of the few in New York that possessed a ball-room（it antedated even Mrs. Manson Mingott's and the Headly Chiverses'）；and at a time when it was beginning to be thought“provincial”to put a“crash”over the drawingroom floor and move the furniture upstairs, the possession of a ball-room that was used for no other purpose, and left for three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the year to shuttered darkness, with its gilt chairs stacked in a corner and its chandelier in a bag；this undoubted superiority was felt to compensate for whatever was regrettable in the Beaufort past.

Mrs. 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 honoured 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 the 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 Englishman, 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 jewelled little finger.The knowing people said it was Beaufort himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new dishes, told the gardeners what hot-house 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 rumour 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 Cliquot 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 thatmeant 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 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 lustres reflected in the polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their costly foliage 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 few 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 Mingott's 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 thingthrough，”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）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 glacégloves.

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 hand-clasping, 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 this 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 not simply by poor Ellen Olenska. The group about Miss Welland made way for him with significant smiles, and after taking his share of the felicitations he drew his betrothed into the middle of the ball-room floor and put his arm about her waist.

“Now we shan't have to talk，”he said, smiling into her candid eyes, as they floated away on the soft waves of the Blue Danube.

She made no answer. Her lips trembled into a smile, but the eyes remained distant and serious, as if bent on some ineffable vision.“Dear，”Archer whispered, pressing her to him：it was borne in on him that the first hours of being engaged, even if spent in a ball-room, had in them something grave and sacramental.What a new life it was going to be, with this whiteness, radiance, goodness at one's side！

The dance over, the two, as became an affianced couple, wandered into the conservatory；and sitting behind a tall screen of tree-ferns and camellias Newland pressed her gloved hand to his lips.

“You see I did as you asked me to，”she said.

“Yes, I couldn't wait，”he answered smiling. After a moment he added：“Only I wish it hadn't had to be at a ball.”

“Yes, I know.”She met his glance comprehendingly.“But after all—even here we're alone together, aren't we？”

“Oh, dearest—always！”Archer cried.

Evidently she was always going to understand；she was always going to say the right thing. The discovery made the cup of his bliss overflow, and he went on gaily：“The worst of it is that I want to kiss you and I can't.”As he spoke he took a swift glance about the conservatory, assured himself of their momentary privacy, and catching her to him laid a fugitive pressure on her lips.To counteract the audacity of this proceeding he led her to a bamboo sofa in a less secluded part of the conservatory, and sitting down beside her broke a lily-of-the-valley from her bouquet.She sat silent, and the world lay like a sunlit valley at their feet.

“Did you tell my cousin Ellen？”she asked presently, as if she spoke through a dream.

He roused himself, and remembered that he had not done so. Some invincible repugnance to speak of such things to the strange foreign woman had checked the words on his lips.

“No—I hadn't the chance after all，”he said, fibbing hastily.

“Ah.”She looked disappointed, but gently resolved on gaining her point.“You must, then, for I didn't either；and I shouldn't like her to think—”

“Of course not. But aren't you, after all, the person to do it？”

She pondered on this.“If I'd done it at the right time, yes：but now that there's been a delay I think you must explain that I'd asked you to tell her at the Opera, before our speaking about it to everybody here. Otherwise she might think I had forgotten her.You see, she's one of the family, and she's been away so long that she’s rather—sensitive.”

Archer looked at her glowingly.“Dear and great angel！Of course I'll tell her.”He glanced a trifle apprehensively toward the crowded ball-room.“But I haven't seen her yet. Has she come？”

“No；at the last minute she decided not to.”

“At the last minute？”he echoed, betraying his surprise that she should ever have considered the alternative possible.

“Yes. She's awfully fond of dancing，”the young girl answered simply.“But suddenly she made up her mind that her dress wasn't smart enough for a ball, though we thought it so Iovely；and so my aunt had to take her home.”

“Oh, well—”said Archer with happy indifference. Nothing about his betrothed pleased him more than her resolute determination to carry to its utmost limit that ritual of ignoring the“unpleasant”in which they had both been brought up.

“She knows as well as I do，”he reflected，“the real reason of her cousin's staying away；but I shall never let her see by the least sign that I am conscious of there being a shadow of a shade on poor Ellen Olenska's reputation.”第四章　Chapter4导读

两人宣布订婚之后，便开始遵循礼节进行一系列的拜访。首先阿切尔和家人一起拜访了韦兰太太，之后又一起拜访了明哥特老太太。明哥特老太太的作风很大胆，她因为身体原因将卧室设在一层，进入客厅就能看到；家里的布置充满异国情调，像是小说里描写的发生不正当行为的场景。在阿切尔和梅拜访的时候，艾伦正好出去购物了，明哥特老太太对梅手上戴的戒指大加赞赏，这场拜访十分顺利。明哥特老太太问起两人婚礼的时间，阿切尔说希望越快越好，而韦兰太太则表示两个人需要多了解一段时间，明哥特老太太担心自己的身体状况不好，希望两人能够定下来在四月结婚。

当这次拜访进入尾声时，奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人回来了，同行的还有波弗先生。波弗先生说在路上遇到艾伦，经过她的允许陪同她一起回来了。阿切尔和梅正准备告辞，奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人略带疑问地朝阿切尔微笑，阿切尔解释说前一天晚上没有机会亲自告诉她自己和梅订婚的消息。奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人没有介意，她微笑起来的样子让阿切尔回忆起了孩提时代的事情。临别时，奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人邀请阿切尔改天去看望她。n the course of the next day the first of the usual betrothal visits wereexchanged. The New York ritual was precise and inflexible in Isuch matters；and in conformity with it Newland Archer first went with his mother and sister tocall on Mrs.Welland, after which he and Mrs.Welland and May drove out to old Mrs.Manson Mingott's to receive that venerable ancestress's blessing.

A visit to Mrs. Manson Mingott was always an amusing episode to the young man.The house in itself was already an historic document, though not, of course, as venerable as certain other old family houses in University Place and lower Fifth Avenue.Those were of the purest 1830，with a grim harmony of cabbage-rose-garlanded carpets, rosewood consoles, round-arched fire places with black marble mantels, and immense glazed book-cases of mahogany；whereas old Mrs.Mingott, who had built her house later, had bodily cast out the massive furniture of her prime, and mingled with the Mingott heirlooms the frivolous upholstery of the Second Empire.It was her habit to sit in a window of her sitting-room on the ground floor, as if watching calmly for life and fashion to flow northward to her solitary doors.She seemed in no hurry to have them come, for her patience was equalled by her confidence.She was sure that presently the hoardings, the quarries, the one-story saloons, the wooden green-houses in ragged gardens, and the rocks from which goats surveyed the scene, would vanish before the advance of residences as stately as her own—perhaps（for she was an impartial woman）even statelier；and that the cobble-stones over which the old clattering omnibuses bumped would be replaced by smooth asphalt, such as people reported having seen in Paris.Meanwhile, as everyone she cared to see came to her（and she could fill her rooms as easily as the Beauforts, and without adding a single item to the menu of her suppers），she did not suffer from her geographic isolation.

The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation.A flight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature portrait of the late Mr.Mingott；and around and below, wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of the billows.

The burden of Mrs. Manson Mingott's flesh had long since made it impossible for her to go up and down stairs, and with characteristic independence she had made her reception rooms upstairs and established herself（in flagrant violation of all the New York proprieties）on the ground floor of her house；so that, as you sat in her sittingroom window with her, you caught（through a door that was always open, and a looped-back yellow damask portière）the unexpected vista of a bedroom with a huge low bed upholstered like a sofa, and a toilet-table with frivolous lace flounces and a giltframed mirror.

Her visitors were startled and fascinated by the foreignness of this arrangement, which recalled scenes in French fiction, and architectural incentives to immorality such as the simple American had never dreamed of. That was how women with lovers lived in the wicked old societies, in apartments with all the rooms on one floor, and all the indecent propinquities that their novels described.It amused Newland Archer（who had secretly situated the love-scenes of Monsieur de Camors in Mrs.Mingott's bedroom）to picture her blameless life led in the stage-setting of adultery；but he said to himself, with considerable admiration, that if a lover had been what she wanted, the intrepid woman would have had him too.

To the general relief the Countess Olenska was not present in her grandmother's drawing-room during the visit of the betrothed couple. Mrs.Mingott said she had gone out；which, on a day of such glaring sunlight, and at the“shopping hour，”seemed in itself an indelicate thing for a compromised woman to do.But at any rate it spared them the embarrassment of her presence, and the faint shadow that her unhappy past might seem to shed on their radiant future.The visit went off successfully, as was to have been expected.Old Mrs.Mingott was delighted with the engagement, which, being long foreseen by watchful relatives, had been carefully passed upon in family council；and the engagement ring, a large thick sapphire set in invisible claws, met with her unqualified admiration.

“It's the new setting：of course it shows the stone beautifully, but it looks a little bare to old-fashioned eyes，”Mrs. Welland had explained, with a conciliatory sideglance at her future son-in-law.

“Old-fashioned eyes？I hope you don't mean mine, my dear？I like all the novelties，”said the ancestress, lifting the stone to her small bright orbs, which no glasses had ever disfigured.“Very handsome，”she added, returning the jewel；“very liberal. In my time a cameo set in pearls was thought sufficient.But it's the hand that sets off the ring, isn't it, my dear Mr.Archer？”and she waved one of her tiny hands, with small pointed nails and rolls of aged fat encircling the wrist like ivory bracelets.“Mine was modelled in Rome by the great Ferrigiani.You should have May's done：no doubt he'll have it done, my child.Her hand is large—it’s these modern sports that spread the joints—but the skin is white.—And when’s the wedding to be？”she broke off, fixing her eyes on Archer’s face.

“Oh—”Mrs. Welland murmured, while the young man, smiling at his betrothed, replied.“As soon as ever it can, if only you'll back me up, Mrs.Mingott.”

“We must give them time to get to know each other a little better, mamma，”Mrs. Welland interposed, with the proper affectation of reluctance；to which the ancestress rejoined：“Know each other？Fiddlesticks！Everybody in New York has always known everybody.Let the young man have his way, my dear；don't wait till the bubble's off the wine.Marry them before Lent；I may catch pneumonia any winter now, and I want to give the wedding-breakfast.”

These successive statements were received with the proper expressions of amusement, incredulity and gratitude；and the visit was breaking up in a vein of mild pleasantry when the door opened to admit the Countess Olenska, who entered in bonnet and mantle followed by the unexpected figure of Julius Beaufort.

There was a cousinly murmur of pleasure between the ladies, and Mrs. Mingott held out Ferrigiani's model to the banker.“Ha！Beaufort, this is a rare favour！”（She had an odd foreign way of addressing men by their surnames.）

“Thanks. I wish it might happen oftener，”said the visitor in his easy arrogant way.“I'm generally so tied down；but I met the Countess Ellen inMadison Square, and she was good enough to let me walk home with her.”

“Ah—I hope the house will be gayer, now that Ellen's here！”cried Mrs. Mingott with a glorious effrontery.“Sit down—sit down, Beaufort：push up the yellow armchair；now I've got you, I want a good gossip.I hear your ball was magnificent；and I understand you invited Mrs.Lemuel Struthers？Well—I've a curiosity to see the woman myself.”

She had forgotten her relatives, who were drifting out into the hall under Ellen Olenska's guidance. Old Mrs.Mingott had always professed a great admiration for Julius Beaufort, and there was a kind of kinship in their cool domineering way and their short-cuts through the conventions.Now she was eagerly curious to know what had decided the Beauforts to invite（for the first time）Mrs.Lemuel Struthers, the widow of Struthers's Shoe-polish, who had returned the previous year from a long initiatory sojourn in Europe to lay siege to the tight little citadel of New York.“Of course if you and Regina invite her the thing is settled.Well, we need new blood and new money—and I hear she's still very good-looking，”the carnivorous old lady declared.

In the hall, while Mrs. Welland and May drew on their furs, Archer saw that the Countess Olenska was looking at him with a faintly questioning smile.

“Of course you know already—about May and me，”he said, answering her look with a shy laugh.“She scolded me for not giving you the news last night at the Opera：I had her orders to tell you that we were engaged—but I couldn't, in that crowd.”

The smile passed from Countess Olenska's eyes to her lips：she looked younger, more like the bold brown Ellen Mingott of his boyhood.“Of course I know；yes. And I'm so glad.But one doesn't tell such things first in a crowd.”The ladies were on the threshold and she held out her hand.

“Good-bye；come and see me some day，”she said, still looking at Archer.

In the carriage, on the way down Fifth Avenue, they talked pointedly ofMrs. Mingott, of her age, her spirit, and all her wonderful attributes.No one alluded to Ellen Olenska；but Archer knew that Mrs.Welland was thinking：“It's a mistake for Ellen to be seen, the very day after her arrival, parading up Fifth Avenue at the crowded hour with Julius Beaufort—”and the young manhimself mentally added：“And she ought to know that a man who's just engaged doesn't spend his time calling on married women.But I daresay in the set she's lived in they do—they never do anything else.”And, in spite of the cosmopolitan views on which he prided himself, he thanked heaven that he was a New Yorker, and about to ally himself with one of his own kind.第五章　Chapter5导读

老杰森先生在第二天晚上被阿切尔的母亲邀请到家里做客。阿切尔太太和女儿珍妮都不喜欢社交，但对八卦又很感兴趣，因此对流言蜚语了如指掌的杰森先生便成了很好的消息来源。杰森先生觉得阿切尔有时候对他的言语充满怀疑，因此他更愿意拜访时阿切尔不在家。

阿切尔太太和女儿都喜欢旅游，母女俩很相像，谈话风格也很类似。全家人都以阿切尔为精神支柱，阿切尔也深爱着母亲和妹妹。作为家里唯一的男人，阿切尔成为全家的权威。当晚母女俩很想听杰森先生谈论关于奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人的事情，但鉴于纽伦在场，他们不知该如何开口。后来他们谈起了那天晚上的舞会，不一会儿话题转到了奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人身上。阿切尔太太很少能够对事情满意，但唯独儿子的婚事她认为完美。她不希望奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人的出现给儿子的婚事惹麻烦，就像去明哥特太太家拜访时，她一直担心奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人会出现。阿切尔告诉母亲艾伦并没有出席舞会，阿切尔太太终于松了口气。在珍妮提起艾伦的穿着时，阿切尔太太回忆起当年艾伦穿着黑段子礼服参加成年礼是多么不合礼仪。阿切尔很不满意母亲和妹妹对艾伦的评价，他不认为艾伦因一桩倒霉的婚姻而要像罪犯一样缩头缩脑。他们又提到了帮助艾伦逃跑的秘书，提到了离婚，阿切尔直接说出希望艾伦离婚，这个想法激怒了母亲，他赶紧转移了话题。当晚餐结束之后，杰森先生和阿切尔单独在客厅里时，杰森先生说有人看到艾伦和那个秘书同居，阿切尔表示艾伦有权利这样做，他认为男女应该享受平等的待遇。he next evening old Mr.Sillerton Jackson came to dine with the Archers.T

Mrs. Archer was a shy woman and shrank from society；but she liked to be well informed as to its doings.Her old friend Mr.Sillerton Jackson applied to the investigation of his friends'affairs the patience of a collector and the science of a naturalist；and his sister, Miss Sophy Jackson, who lived with him, and was entertained by all the people who could not secure her much-sought-after brother, brought home bits of minor gossip that filled out usefully the gaps in his picture.

Therefore, whenever anything happened that Mrs. Archer wanted to know about, she asked Mr.Jackson to dine；and as she honoured few people with her invitations, and as she and her daughter Janey were an excellent audience, Mr.Jackson usually came himself instead of sending his sister.If he could have dictated all the conditions, he would have chosen the evenings when Newland was out；not because the young man was uncongenial to him（the two got on capitally at their club）but because the old anecdotist sometimes felt, on Newland's part, a tendency to weigh his evidence that the ladies of the family never showed.

Mr. Jackson, if perfection had been attainable on earth, would also have asked that Mrs.Archer's food should be a little better.But then New York, as far back as the mind of man could travel, had been divided into the two great fundamental groups of the Mingott's and Mansons and all their clan, who cared about eating and clothes and money, and the Archer-Newland-van-der-Luyden tribe, who were devoted to travel, horticulture and the best fiction, and looked down on the grosser forms of pleasure.

You couldn't have everything, after all. If you dined with the Lovell Mingott's you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines；at Adeline Archer's you could talk about Alpine scenery and“The Marble Faun”；and luckily the Archer Madeira had gone round the Cape.Therefore when a friendly summons came from Mrs.Archer, Mr.Jackson, who was a true eclectic, would usually say to his sister：“I've been a little gouty since my last dinner at the Lovell Mingotts'—it will do me good to diet at Adeline’s.”

Mrs. Archer, who had long been a widow, lived with her son and daughter in West Twenty-eighth Street. An upper floor was dedicated to Newland, and the two women squeezed themselves into narrower quarters below.In an unclouded harmony of tastes and interests they cultivated ferns in Wardian cases, made macramélace and wool embroidery on linen, collected American revolutionary glazed ware, subscribed to“Good Words，”and read Ouida’s novels for the sake of the Italian atmosphere.（They preferred those about peasant life, because of the descriptions of scenery and the pleasanter sentiments, though in general they liked novels about people in society, whose motives and habits were more comprehensible, spoke severely of Dickens, who“had never drawn a gentleman，”and considered Thackeray less at home in the great world than Bulwer—who, however, was beginning to be thought old-fashioned.）

Mrs. and Miss Archer were both great lovers of scenery.It was what they principally sought and admired on their occasional travels abroad；considering architecture and painting as subjects for men, and chiefly for learned persons who read Ruskin.Mrs.Archer had been born a Newland, and mother and daughter, who were as like as sisters, were both, as people said，“true Newlands”；tall, pale, and slightly round-shouldered, with long noses, sweet smiles and a kind of drooping distinction like that in certain faded Reynolds portraits.Their physical resemblance would have been complete if an elderly embonpoint had not stretched Mrs.Archer's black brocade, while Miss Archer's brown and purple poplins hung, as the years went on, more and more slackly on her virgin frame.

Mentally, the likeness between them, as Newland was aware, was less complete than their identical mannerisms often made it appear. The long habit of living together in mutually dependent intimacy had given them the same vocabulary, and the same habit of beginning their phrases“Mother thinks”or“Janey thinks，”according as one or the other wished to advance an opinion of her own；but in reality, while Mrs.Archer's serene unimaginativeness rested easily in the accepted and familiar, Janey was subject to starts and aberrations of fancy welling up from springs of suppressed romance.

Mother and daughter adored each other and revered their son and brother；and Archer loved them with a tenderness made compunctious and uncritical bythe sense of their exaggerated admiration, and by his secret satisfaction in it. After all, he thought it a good thing for a man to have his authority respected in his own house, even if his sense of humour sometimes made him question the force of his mandate.

On this occasion the young man was very sure that Mr. Jackson would rather have had him dine out；but he had his own reasons for not doing so.

Of course old Jackson wanted to talk about Ellen Olenska, and of course Mrs. Archer and Janey wanted to hear what he had to tell.All three would be slightly embarrassed by Newland's presence, now that his prospective relation to the Mingott clan had been made known；and the young man waited with an amused curiosity to see how they would turn the difficulty.

They began, obliquely, by talking about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers.

“It's a pity the Beauforts asked her，”Mrs. Archer said gently.“But then Regina always does what he tells her；and Beaufort—''

“Certain nuances escape Beaufort，”said Mr. Jackson, cautiously inspecting the broiled shad, and wondering for the thousandth time why Mrs.Archer's cook always burnt the roe to a cinder.（Newland, who had long shared his wonder, could always detect it in the older man's expression of melancholy disapproval.）

“Oh, necessarily；Beaufort is a vulgar man，”said Mrs. Archer.“My grandfather Newland always used to say to my mother：‘Whatever you do, don't let that fellow Beaufort be introduced to the girls.'But at least he's had the advantage of associating with gentlemen；in England too, they say.It's all very mysterious—”She glanced at Janey and paused.She and Janey knew every fold of the Beaufort mystery, but in public Mrs.Archer continued to assume that the subject was not one for the unmarried.

“But this Mrs. Struthers，”Mrs.Archer continued；“what did you say she was, Sillerton？”

“Out of a mine：or rather out of the saloon at the head of the pit. Then with Living Wax-Works, touring New England.After the police broke that up, they say she lived—”Mr.Jackson in his turn glanced at Janey, whose eyes began to bulge from under her prominent lids.There were still hiatuses for her in Mrs.Struthers's past.

“Then，”Mr. Jackson continued（and Archer saw he was wondering why no one had told the butler never to slice cucumbers with a steel knife），“then Lemuel Struthers came along.They say his advertiser used the girl's head for the shoe-polish posters；her hair's intensely black, you know—the Egyptian style.Anyhow, he—eventually—married her.”There were volumes of innuendo in the way the“eventually”was spaced, and each syllable given its due stress.

“Oh, well—at the pass we've come to nowadays, it doesn't matter，”said Mrs. Archer indifferently.The ladies were not really interested in Mrs.Struthers just then；the subject of Ellen Olenska was too fresh and too absorbing to them.Indeed, Mrs.Struthers's name had been introduced by Mrs.Archer only that she might presently be able to say：“And Newland's new cousin—Countess Olenska？Was she at the ball too？”

There was a faint touch of sarcasm in the reference to her son, and Archer knew it and had expected it. Even Mrs.Archer, who was seldom unduly pleased with human events, had been altogether glad of her son's engagement.（“Especially after that silly business with Mrs.Rushworth，”as she had remarked to Janey, alluding to what had once seemed to Newland a tragedy of which his soul would always bear the scar.）There was no better match in New York than May Welland, look at the question from whatever point you chose.Of course such a marriage was only what Newland was entitled to；but young men are so foolish and incalculable—and some women so ensnaring and unscrupulous—that it was nothing short of a miracle to see one's only son safe past the Siren Isle and in the haven of a blameless domesticity.

All this Mrs. Archer felt, and her son knew she felt；but he knew also that she had been perturbed by the premature announcement of his engagement, or rather by its cause；and it was for that reason—because on the whole he was a tender and indulgent master—that he had stayed at home that evening.“It's not that I don't approve of the Mingotts'esprit de corps；but why Newland's engagement should be mixed up with that Olenska woman's comings and goings I don’t see，”Mrs.Archer grumbled to Janey, the only witness of her slight lapses from perfect sweetness.

She had behaved beautifully—and in beautiful behaviour she wasunsurpassed—during the call on Mrs. Welland；but Newland knew（and his betrothed doubtless guessed）that all through the visit she and Janey were nervously on the watch for Madame Olenska's possible intrusion；and when they left the house together she had permitted herself to say to her son：“I'm thankful that Augusta Welland received us alone.”

These indications of inward disturbance moved Archer the more that he too felt that the Mingotts had gone a little too far. But, as it was against all the rules of their code that the mother and son should ever allude to what was uppermost in their thoughts, he simply replied：“Oh, well, there's always a phase of family parties to be gone through when one gets engaged, and the sooner it's over the better.”At which his mother merely pursed her lips under the lace veil that hung down from her grey velvet bonnet trimmed with frosted grapes.

Her revenge, he felt—her lawful revenge—would be to“draw”Mr. Jackson that evening on the Countess Olenska；and, having publicly done his duty as a future member of the Mingott clan, the young man had no objection to hearing the lady discussed in private—except that the subject was already beginning to bore him.

Mr. Jackson had helped himself to a slice of the tepid filet which the mournful butler had handed him with a look as sceptical as his own, and had rejected the mushroom sauce after a scarcely perceptible sniff.He looked baffled and hungry, and Archer reflected that he would probably finish his meal on Ellen Olenska.

Mr. Jackson leaned back in his chair, and glanced up at the candlelit Archers, Newlands and van der Luydens hanging in dark frames on the dark walls.

“Ah, how your grandfather Archer loved a good dinner, my dear Newland！”he said, his eyes on the portrait of a plump full-chested young man in a stock and a blue coat, with a view of a white-columned country-house behind him.“Well—well—well……I wonder what he would have said to all these foreign marriages！”

Mrs. Archer ignored the allusion to the ancestral cuisine and Mr.Jackson continued with deliberation：“No, she was not at the ball.”

“Ah—”Mrs. Archer murmured, in a tone that implied：“She had that decency.”

“Perhaps the Beauforts don't know her，”Janey suggested, with her artless malice.

Mr. Jackson gave a faint sip, as if he had been tasting invisible Madeira.“Mrs.Beaufort may not—but Beaufort certainly does, for she was seen walking up Fifth Avenue this afternoon with him by the whole of New York.”

“Mercy—”moaned Mrs. Archer, evidently perceiving the uselessness of trying to ascribe the actions of foreigners to a sense of delicacy.

“I wonder if she wears a round hat or a bonnet in the afternoon，”Janey speculated.“At the Opera I know she had on dark blue velvet, perfectly plain and flat—like a night-gown.”

“Janey！”said her mother；and Miss Archer blushed and tried to look audacious.

“It was, at any rate, in better taste not to go to the ball，”Mrs. Archer continued.

A spirit of perversity moved her son to rejoin：“I don't think it was a question of taste with her. May said she meant to go, and then decided that the dress in question wasn't smart enough.”

Mrs. Archer smiled at this confirmation of her inference.“Poor Ellen，”she simply remarked；adding compassionately：“We must always bear in mind what an eccentric bringing-up Medora Manson gave her.What can you expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at her coming-out ball？”

“Ah—don't I remember her in it！“said Mr. Jackson；adding：“Poor girl！”in the tone of one who, while enjoying the memory, had fully understood at the time what the sight portended.

“It's odd，”Janey remarked，“that she should have kept such an ugly name as Ellen. I should have changed it to Elaine.”She glanced about the table to see the effect of this.

Her brother laughed.“Why Elaine？”

“I don't know；it sounds more—more Polish，”said Janey, blushing.

“It sounds more conspicuous；and that can hardly be what she wishes，”said Mrs. Archer distantly.

“Why not？”broke in her son, growing suddenly argumentative.“Why shouldn't she be conspicuous if she chooses？Why should she slink about as if it were she who had disgraced herself？She's‘poor Ellen'certainly, because she had the bad luck to make a wretched marriage；but I don't see that that's a reason for hiding her head as if she were the culprit.”

“That, I suppose，”said Mr. Jackson, speculatively，“is the line the Mingotts mean to take.”

The young man reddened.“I didn't have to wait for their cue, if that's what you mean, sir. Madame Olenska has had an unhappy life：that doesn't make her an outcast.”

“There are rumours，”began Mr. Jackson, glancing at Janey.

“Oh, I know：the secretary，”the young man took him up.“Nonsense, mother；Janey's grown-up. They say, don't they，”he went on，“that the secretary helped her to get away from her brute of a husband, who kept her practically a prisoner？Well, what if he did？I hope there isn't a man among us who wouldn't have done the same in such a case.”

Mr. Jackson glanced over his shoulder to say to the sad butler：“Perhaps……that sauce……just a little, after all—”；then, having helped himself, he remarked：“I'm told she's looking for a house.She means to live here.”

“I hear she means to get a divorce，”said Janey boldly.

“I hope she will！”Archer exclaimed.

The word had fallen like a bombshell in the pure and tranquil atmosphere of the Archer dining-room. Mrs.Archer raised her delicate eye-brows in the particular curve that signified：“The butler—”and the young man, himself mindful of the bad taste of discussing such intimate matters in public, hastily branched off into an account of his visit to old Mrs.Mingott.

After dinner, according to immemorial custom, Mrs. Archer and Janey trailed their long silk draperies up to the drawing-room, where, while the gentlemen smoked below stairs, they sat beside a Carcel lamp with an engraved globe, facing each other across a rosewood work-table with a green silk bag under it, and stitched at the two ends of a tapestry band of field-flowers destined to adorn an“occasional”chair in the drawingroom of young Mrs.Newland Archer.

While this rite was in progress in the drawing-room, Archer settled Mr. Jackson in an armchair near the fire in the Gothic library and handed him a cigar.Mr.Jackson sank into the armchair with satisfaction, lit his cigar with perfect confidence（it was Newland who bought them），and stretching his thin old ankles to the coals, said：“You say the secretary merely helped her to get away, my dear fellow？Well, he was still helping her a year later, then；for somebody met'em living at Lausanne together.”

Newland reddened.“Living together？Well, why not？Who had the right to make her life over if she hadn't？I'm sick of the hypocrisy that would bury alive a woman of her age if her husband prefers to live with harlots.”

He stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar.“Women ought to be free—as free as we are，”he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.

Mr. Sillerton Jackson stretched his ankles nearer the coals and emitted a sardonic whistle.

“Well，”he said after a pause，“apparently Count Olenski takes your view；for I never heard of his having lifted a finger to get his wife back.”第六章　Chapter6导读

阿切尔回到房间，凝视着桌子上未婚妻的画像。奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人的出现动摇了阿切尔心中根深蒂固的规则。他清楚一个“正派”女子无论在什么时候，也不会要求所谓的自由。他想到了梅的性格和作风，想象着自己婚后的生活，也许自己的婚姻会变得和周围的人一样，成为利益联盟。像莱夫茨太太，丈夫在外面桃色新闻不断，她却始终坚称自己的丈夫是多么循规蹈矩，反而对波弗先生的放荡行为感到脸红。

阿切尔知道梅不是那样的傻瓜，但他也知道梅是属于掩饰自己真实想法的人，也是纽约规则的遵循者。阿切尔喜欢梅的优雅和智慧，她天真可爱，直爽幽默，但转而想到这些只不过是人为教化的产物，一切虚假让阿切尔感到压抑。他意识到这一切想法都是在奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人出现之后才有的，他不明白为何自己会受到这么大的影响。

几天后又有一件大事发生了，明哥特家向所有上流社会人士发出宴会邀请，可除了波弗一家和杰森先生，其余所有人都直截了当地拒绝了邀请，这让人很意外。他们都一致表示不愿与奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人见面，明哥特太太将这一消息告诉了韦兰，转而又告诉了阿切尔。阿切尔非常愤怒，希望母亲能够采取行动。阿切尔太太拗不过儿子，只好带着阿切尔找到范德路登先生家，虽然这一家族已经没落，但是他们作为贵族世家的影响是巨大的。hat evening, after Mr.Jackson had taken himself away, and theladies had retired to their chintz-curtained bedroom, Newland TArcher mounted thoughtfully to his own study.A vigilant hand had, as usual, kept the fire alive and the lamp trimmed；and the room, with its rows and rows of books, its bronze and steel statuettes of“The Fencers”on the mantelpiece and its many photographs of famous pictures, looked singularly home-like and welcoming.

As he dropped into his armchair near the fire his eyes rested on a large photograph of May Welland, which the young girl had given him in the first days of their romance, and which had now displaced all the other portraits on the table. With a new sense of awe he looked at the frank forehead, serious eyes and gay innocent mouth of the young creature whose soul's custodian he was to be.That terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything, looked back at him like a stranger through May Welland's familiar features；and once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas.

The case of the Countess Olenska had stirred up old settled convictions and set them drifting dangerously through his mind. His own exclamation：“Women should be free—as free as we are，”struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as non-existent.“Nice”women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were therefore—in the heat of argument—the more chivalrously ready to concede it to them.Such verbal generosities were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern.But here he was pledged to defend, on the part of his betrothed's cousin, conduct that, on his own wife's part, would justify him in calling down on her all the thunders of Church and State.Of course the dilemma was purely hypothetical；since he wasn't a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was absurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he were.But Newland Archer was too imaginative not to feel that, in his case and May's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable.What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a“decent”fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal？What if, for someone of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other？He reviewed his friends'marriages—the supposedly happy ones—and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess；and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were：a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.Lawrence Lefferts occurred to him as the husband who had most completely realised this enviable ideal.As became the high-priest of form, he had formed a wife so completely to his own convenience that, in the most conspicuous moments of his frequent love-affairs with other men's wives, she went about in smiling unconsciousness, saying that“Lawrence was so frightfully strict”；and had been known to blush indignantly, and avert her gaze, when someone alluded in her presence to the fact that Julius Beaufort（as became a“foreigner”of doubtful origin）had what was known in New York as“another establishment.”

Archer tried to console himself with the thought that he was not quite such an ass as Larry Lefferts, nor May such a simpleton as poor Gertrude；but the difference was after all one of intelligence and not of standards. In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs；as when Mrs.Welland, who knew exactly why Archer had pressed her to announce her daughter's engagement at the Beaufort ball（and had indeed expected him to do no less），yet felt obliged to simulate reluctance, and the air of having had her hand forced, quite as, in the books on Primitive Man that people of advanced culture were beginning to read, the savage bride is dragged with shrieks from her parents'tent.

The result, of course, was that the young girl who was the centre of this elaborate system of mystification remained the more inscrutable for her veryfrankness and assurance. She was frank, poor darling, because she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing to be on her guard against；and with no better preparation than this, she was to be plunged overnight into what people evasively called“the facts of life.”

The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance.（She had advanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the“Idyls of the King，”but not to feel the beauty of“Ulysses”and the“Lotus Eaters.”）She was straightforward, loyal and brave；she had a sense of humour（chiefly proved by her laughing at his jokes）；and he suspected, in the depths of her innocently-gazing soul, a glow of feeling that it would be a joy to waken.But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product.Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent；it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile.And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.

There was a certain triteness in these reflections：they were those habitual to young men on the approach of their wedding day. But they were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement of which Newland Archer felt no trace.He could not deplore（as Thackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing）that he had not a blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she was to give to him.He could not get away from the fact that if he had been brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find their way about than the Babes in the Wood；nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason（any, that is, unconnected with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of masculine vanity）why his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of experience as himself.

Such questions, at such an hour, were bound to drift through his mind；but he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision were due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Olenska. Here he was, at the very moment of his betrothal—a moment for pure thoughts and cloudless hopes—pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised all the special problems he would have preferred to let lie.“Hang Ellen Olenska！”he grumbled, as he covered his fire and began to undress.He could not really see why her fate should have the least bearing on his；yet he dimly felt that he had only just begun to measure the risks of the championship which his engagement had forced upon him.

A few days later the bolt fell.

The Lovell Mingotts had sent out cards for what was known as“a formal dinner”（that is, three extra footmen, two dishes for each course, and a Roman punch in the middle），and had headed their invitations with the words“To meet the Countess Olenska，”in accordance with the hospitable American fashion, which treats strangers as if they were royalties, or at least as their ambassadors.

The guests had been selected with a boldness and discrimination in which the initiated recognised the firm hand of Catherine the Great. Associated with such immemorial standbys as the Selfridge Merrys, who were asked everywhere because they always had been, the Beauforts, on whom there was a claim of relationship, and Mr.Sillerton Jackson and his sister Sophy（who went wherever her brother told her to），were some of the most fashionable and yet most irreproachable of the dominant“young married”set；the Lawrence Leffertses, Mrs.Lefferts Rushworth（the lovely widow），the Harry Thorteys, the Reggie Chiverses and young Morris Dagonet and his wife（who was a van der Luyden）.The company indeed was perfectly assorted, since all the members belonged to the little inner group of people who, during the long New York season, disported themselves together daily and nightly with apparently undiminished zest.

Forty-eight hours later the unbelievable had happened；everyone had refused the Mingotts'invitation except the Beauforts and old Mr. Jackson and his sister.The intended slight was emphasised by the fact that even the Reggie Chiverses, who were of the Mingott clan, were among those inflicting it；andby the uniform wording of the notes, in all of which the writers“regretted that they were unable to accept，”without the mitigating plea of a“previous engagement”that ordinary courtesy prescribed.

New York society was, in those days, far too small, and too scant in its resources, for everyone in it（including livery-stable-keepers, butlers and cooks）not to know exactly on which evenings people were free；and it was thus possible for the recipients of Mrs. Lovell Mingott's invitations to make cruelly clear their determination not to meet the Countess Olenska.

The blow was unexpected；but the Mingotts, as their way was, met it gallantly. Mrs.Lovell Mingott confided the case to Mrs.Welland, who confided it to Newland Archer；who, aflame at the outrage, appealed passionately and authoritatively to his mother；who, after a painful period of inward resistance and outward temporising, succumbed to his instances（as she always did），and immediately embracing his cause with an energy redoubled by her previous hesitations, put on her grey velvet bonnet and said：“I'll go and see Louisa van der Luyden.”

The New York of Newland Archer's day was a small and slippery pyramid, in which, as yet, hardly a fissure had been made or a foothold gained. At its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs.Archer called“plain people”；an honourable but obscure majority of respectable families who（as in the case of the Spicers or the Leffertses or the Jacksons）had been raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans.People, Mrs.Archer always said, were not as particular as they used to be；and with old Catherine Spicer ruling one end of Fifth Avenue, and Julius Beaufort the other, you couldn't expect the old traditions to last much longer.

Firmly narrowing upward from this wealthy but inconspicuous substratum was the compact and dominant group which the Mingotts, Newlands, Chiverses and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined them to be the very apex of the pyramid；but they themselves（at least those of Mrs.Archer's generation）were aware that, in the eyes of the professional genealogist, only a still smaller number of families could lay claim to that eminence.

“Don't tell me，”Mrs. Archer would say to her children，“all this modern newspaper rubbish about a New York aristocracy.If there is one, neither theMingotts nor the Mansons belong to it；no, nor the Newlands or the Chiverses either.Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were just respectable English or Dutch merchants, who came to the colonies to make their fortune, and stayed here because they did so well.One of your great-grandfathers signed the Declaration, and another was a general on Washington's staff, and received General Burgoyne's sword after the battle of Saratoga.These are things to be proud of, but they have nothing to do with rank or class.New York has always been a commercial community, and there are not more than three families in it who can claim an aristocratic origin in the real sense of the word.”

Mrs. Archer and her son and daughter, like everyone else in New York, knew who these privileged beings were：the Dagonets of Washington Square, who came of an old English county family allied with the Pitts and Foxes；the Lannings, who had intermarried with the descendants of Count de Grasse, and the van der Luydens, direct descendants of the first Dutch governor of Manhattan, and related by prerevolutionary marriages to several members of the French and British aristocracy.

The Lannings survived only in the person of two very old but lively Miss Lannings, who lived cheerfully and reminiscently among family portraits and Chippendale；the Dagonets were a considerable clan, allied to the best names in Baltimore and Philadelphia；but the van der Luydens, who stood above all of them, had faded into a kind of super-terrestrial twilight, from which only two figures impressively emerged；those of Mr. and Mrs.Henry van der Luyden.

Mrs. Henry van der Luyden had been Louisa Dagonet, and her mother had been the granddaughter of Colonel du Lac, of an old Channel Island family, who had fought under Cornwallis and had settled in Maryland, after the war, with his bride, Lady Angelica Trevenna, fifth daughter of the Earl of St.Austrey.The tie between the Dagonets, the du Lacs of Maryland, and their aristocratic Cornish kinsfolk, the Trevennas, had always remained close and cordial.Mr.and Mrs.van der Luyden had more than once paid long visits to the present head of the house of Trevenna, the Duke of St.Austrey, at his country-seat in Cornwall and at St.Austrey in Gioucestershire；and his Grace had frequently announced his intention of some day returning their visit（without the Duchess, who feared the Atlantic）.

Mr. and Mrs.van der Luyden divided their time between Trevenna, their place in Maryland, and Skuytercliff, the great estate on the Hudson which had been one of the colonial grants of the Dutch government to the famous first Governor, and of which Mr.van der Luyden was still“Patroon.”Their large solemn house in Madison Avenue was seldom opened, and when they came to town they received in it only their most intimate friends.

“I wish you would go with me, Newland，”his mother said, suddenly pausing at the door of the Brown coupé.“Louisa is fond of you；and of course it’s on account of dear May that I’m taking this step—and also because, if we don’t all stand together, there’ll be no such thing as Society left.”第七章　Chapter7导读

范德路登太太向来少言寡语，但为人很友善。她听完阿切尔太太的叙述之后没有给出意见，而是表示需要和丈夫商量一下。阿切尔常常疑惑，这对四十多年的夫妻，为何到现在还需要商量才能解决问题。范德路登太太吩咐仆人，等范德路登先生读完报，请他过来一趟。不一会儿范德路登先生走了进来，他和大家打了招呼就坐在扶手椅上。阿切尔太太又讲述了一遍发生的事情，并认为这一切都是劳伦斯·莱夫茨搞的鬼，她希望范德路登一家能够多出去走走，以便了解更多的事情。范德路登夫妇满足于自己隐居的生活，一向受不了别人的批评，纽伦意识到母亲犯了错误，赶紧帮忙解围。

范德路登先生考虑到一旦纽伦结婚后，奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人也将成为自己的亲戚。他听完纽伦有关目前上流社会的谈论，决定以欢迎下周即将到来的奥斯特雷公爵为由举行宴会，并邀请奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人参加。阿切尔太太表示感谢，然后和纽伦一起告辞了。几小时后，人人都知道奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人接到了范德路登夫妇的邀请。is.Henry van der Luyden listened in silence to her cousin Mrs.Archer's narrative.M

It was all very well to tell yourself in advance that Mrs. van der Luyden was always silent, and that, though non-committal by nature and training, sheMrs.was very kind to the people she really liked. Even personal experience of these facts was not always a protection from the chill that descended on one in the high-ceilinged white-walled Madison Avenue drawing-room, with the pale brocaded armchairs so obviously uncovered for the occasion, and the gauze still veiling the ormolu mantel ornaments and the beautiful old carved frame of Gainsboroughl's“Lady Angelica du Lac.”

Mrs. van der Luyden's portrait by Huntington（in black velvet and Venetian point）faced that of her lovely ancestress.It was generally considered“as fine as a Cabanel，''and, though twenty years had elapsed since its execution, was still“a perfect likeness.”Indeed the Mrs.van der Luyden who sat beneath it listening to Mrs.Archer might have been the twin-sister of the fair and still youngish woman drooping against a gilt armchair before a green rep curtain.Mrs.van der Luyden still wore black velvet and Venetian point when she went into society—or rather（since she never dined out）when she threw open her own doors to receive it.Her fair hair, which had faded without turning grey, was still parted in flat overlapping points on her forehead, and the straight nose that divided her pale blue eyes was only a little more pinched about the nostrils than when the portrait had been painted.She always, indeed, struck Newland Archer as having been rather gruesomely preserved in the airless atmosphere of a perfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in glaciers keep for years a rosy life-in-death.

Like all his family, he esteemed and admired Mrs. van der Luyden；but he found her gentle bending sweetness less approachable than the grimness of some of his mother's old aunts, fierce spinsters who said“No”on principle before they knew what they were going to be asked.

Mrs. van der Luyden's attitude said neither yes nor no, but always appeared to incline to clemency till her thin lips, wavering into the shadow of a smile, made the almost invariable reply：“I shall first have to talk this over with my husband.”

She and Mr. van der Luyden were so exactly alike that Archer often wondered how, after forty years of the closest conjugality, two such merged identities ever separated themselves enough for anything as controversial as a talking-over.But as neither had ever reached a decision without prefacing it bythis mysterious conclave, Mrs.Archer and her son, having set forth their case, waited resignedly for the familiar phrase.

Mrs. van der Luyden, however, who had seldom surprised any one, now surprised them by reaching her long hand toward the bell-rope.

“I think，”she said，“I should like Henry to hear what you have told me.”

A footman appeared, to whom she gravely added：“If Mr. van der Luyden has finished reading the newspaper, please ask him to be kind enough to come.”

She said“reading the newspaper”in the tone in which a Minister's wife might have said：“Presiding at a Cabinet meeting”—not from any arrogance of mind, but because the habit of a life-time, and the attitude of her friends and relations, had led her to consider Mr. van der Luyden's least gesture as having an almost sacerdotal importance.

Her promptness of action showed that she considered the case as pressing as Mrs. Archer；but, lest she should be thought to have committed herself in advance, she added, with the sweetest look：“Henry always enjoys seeing you, dear Adeline；and he will wish to congratulate Newland.”

The double doors had solemnly reopened and between them appeared Mr. Henry van der Luyden, tall, spare and frock-coated, with faded fair hair, a straight nose like his wife's and the same look of frozen gentleness in eyes that were merely pale grey instead of pale blue.

Mr. van der Luyden greeted Mrs.Archer with cousinly affability, proffered to Newland low-voiced congratulations couched in the same language as his wife's, and seated himself in one of the brocade armchairs with the simplicity of a reigning sovereign.

“I had just finished reading The Times，”he said, laying his long finger-tips together.“In town my mornings are so much occupied that I find it more convenient to read the newspapers after luncheon.”

“Ah, there's a great deal to be said for that plan—indeed I think my uncle Egmont used to say he found it less agitating not to read the morning papers till after dinner，”said Mrs. Archer responsively.

“Yes：my good father abhorred hurry. But now we live in a constant rush，”said Mr.van der Luyden in measured tones, looking with pleasant deliberationabout the large shrouded room which to Archer was so complete an image of its owners.

“But I hope you had finished your reading, Henry？”his wife interposed.

“Quite—quite，”he reassured her.

“Then I should like Adeline to tell you—”

“Oh, it's really Newland's story，”said his mother smiling；and proceeded to rehearse once more the monstrous tale of the affront inflicted on Mrs. Lovell Mingott.

“Of course，”she ended，“Augusta Welland and Mary Mingott both felt that, especially in view of Newland's engagement, you and Henry ought to know.”

“Ah—”said Mr. van der Luyden, drawing a deep breath.

There was a silence during which the tick of the monumental ormolu clock on the white marble mantelpiece grew as loud as the boom of a minute-gun. Archer contemplated with awe the two slender faded figures, seated side by side in a kind of viceregal rigidity, mouthpieces of some remote ancestral authority which fate compelled them to wield, when they would so much rather have lived in simplicity and seclusion, digging invisible weeds out of the perfect lawns of Skuytercliff, and playing Patience together in the evenings.

Mr. van der Luyden was the first to speak.

“You really think this is due to some—some intentional interference of Lawrence Lefferts's？”he enquired, turning to Archer.

“I'm certain of it, sir. Larry has been going it rather harder than usual lately—if cousin Louisa won't mind my mentioning it—having rather a stiff affair with the postmaster's wife in their village, or someone of that sort；and whenever poor Gertrude Lefferts begins to suspect anything, and he's afraid of trouble, he gets up a fuss of this kind, to show how awfully moral he is, and talks at the top of his voice about the impertinence of inviting his wife to meet people he doesn't wish her to know.He’s simply using Madame Olenska as a lightning-rod；I’ve seen him try the same thing often before.”

“The Leffertses！—”said Mrs. van der Luyden.

“The Leffertses！—”echoed Mrs. Archer.“What would uncle Egmont have said of Lawrence Lefferts's pronouncing on anybody's social position？It shows what Society has come to.”

“We'll hope it has not quite come to that，”said Mr. van der Luyden firmly.

“Ah, if only you and Louisa went out more！”sighed Mrs. Archer.

But instantly she became aware of her mistake. The van der Luydens were morbidly sensitive to any criticism of their secluded existence.They were the arbiters of fashion, the Court of last Appeal, and they knew it, and bowed to their fate.But being shy and retiring persons, with no natural inclination for their part, they lived as much as possible in the sylvan solitude of Skuytercliff, and when they came to town, declined all invitations on the plea of Mrs.van der Luyden's health.

Newland Archer came to his mother's rescue.“Everybody in New York knows what you and cousin Louisa represent. That's why Mrs.Mingott felt she ought not to allow this slight on Countess Olenska to pass without consulting you.”

Mrs. van der Luyden glanced at her husband, who glanced back at her.

“It is the principle that I dislike，”said Mr. van der Luyden.“As long as a member of a well-known family is backed up by that family it should be considered—final.”

“It seems so to me，”said his wife, as if she were producing a new thought.

“I had no idea，”Mr. van der Luyden continued，“that things had come to such a pass.”He paused, and looked at his wife again.“It occurs to me, my dear, that the Countess Olenska is already a sort of relation—through Medora Manson's first husband.At any rate, she will be when Newland marries.”He turned toward the young man.“Have you read this morning's Times, Newland？”

“Why, yes, sir，”said Archer, who usually tossed off half a dozen papers with his morning coffee.

Husband and wife looked at each other again. Their pale eyes clung together in prolonged and serious consultation；then a faint smile fluttered over Mrs.van der Luyden's face.She had evidently guessed and approved.

Mr. van der Luyden turned to Mrs.Archer.“If Louisa's health allowed her to dine out—I wish you would say to Mrs.Lovell Mingott—she and I wouldhave been happy to—er—fill the places of the Lawrence Leffertses at her dinner.”He paused to let the irony of this sink in.“As you know, this is impossible.”Mrs.Archer sounded a sympathetic assent.“But Newland tells me he has read this morning's Times；therefore he has probably seen that Louisa's relative, the Duke of St.Austrey, arrives next week on the Russia.He is coming to enter his new sloop, the Guinevere, in next summer's International Cup Race；and also to have a little canvasback shooting at Trevenna.”Mr.van der Luyden paused again, and continued with increasing benevolence：“Before taking him down to Maryland we are inviting a few friends to meet him here—only a little dinner—with a reception afterward.I am sure Louisa will be as glad as I am if Countess Olenska will let us include her among our guests.”He got up, bent his long body with a stiff friendliness toward his cousin, and added：“I think I have Louisa's authority for saying that she will herself leave the invitation to dine when she drives out presently：with our cards—of course with our cards.”

Mrs. Archer, who knew this to be a hint that the seventeen-hand chestnuts which were never kept waiting were at the door, rose with a hurried murmur of thanks.Mrs.van der Luyden beamed on her with the smile of Esther interceding with Ahasuerus；but her husband raised a protesting hand.

“There is nothing to thank me for, dear Adeline；nothing whatever. This kind of thing must not happen in New York；it shall not, as long as I can help it，”he pronounced with sovereign gentleness as he steered his cousins to the door.

Two hours later, everyone knew that the great C-spring barouche in which Mrs. van der Luyden took the air at all seasons had been seen at old Mrs.Mingott's door, where a large square envelope was handed in；and that evening at the Opera Mr.Sillerton Jackson was able to state that the envelope contained a card inviting the Countess Olenska to the dinner which the van der Luydens were giving the following week for their cousin, the Duke of St.Austrey.

Some of the younger men in the club box exchanged a smile at this announcement, and glanced sideways at Lawrence Lefferts, who sat carelessly in the front of the box, pulling his long fair moustache, and who remarked with authority, as the soprano paused：“No one but Patti ought to attempt the Sonnambula7.''第八章　Chapter8导读

奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人从小便失去了双亲，后来被姑妈梅朵拉·曼森收养。可这位姑妈自己的生活也漂浮不定，人们都为那位可爱的小女孩的不幸感到惋惜。当小艾伦在双亲去世后初次来到纽约时，人们惊讶地发现她竟然还穿着深红色的衣服，戴着项链。她表现得无畏无惧，而且喜欢发表一些早熟的言论。等到艾伦稍微长大后，梅朵拉带着她离开了纽约。后来人们听说艾伦嫁给了一位波兰贵族，据说还拥有豪华的住宅和游艇。几年之后，梅朵拉再次回到纽约，此时她的第三任丈夫也去世了，她穷困潦倒。人们原本还纳闷艾伦怎么没帮帮她，后来才知道艾伦的婚姻也很不幸福。

终于，范德路登家举办了宴会，纽伦·阿切尔看着奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人踏进了客厅，她的迟到再次违背了纽约的礼仪，可她看上去一点也不慌张，虽然整个人很消瘦，但全身散发出神秘的美和毫不做作的自信。范德路登夫妇尽全力让整个宴会显得很隆重，金银餐具和东印度公司的瓷器都摆了出来。奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人成为整个宴会上最年轻的女子，奥斯特雷公爵走到她身边，热烈地交谈起来，可奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人突然起身，径直走到阿切尔身边，这又违背了纽约社交界的礼节。艾伦告诉阿切尔她觉得公爵是个很愚蠢的男人，这惹得阿切尔哈哈大笑，他从没有见过这么敢言的女子。他们谈起了梅，阿切尔流露出自己对梅深深的爱。不一会儿，梅和母亲走进了客厅，马上就被一大群人围住了。奥伦斯卡夫人用羽毛扇轻轻地碰了碰阿切尔，希望他能够多陪自己一会儿。此时范德路登先生走了过来，阿切尔站起身准备离开，奥伦斯卡夫人约他第二天五点后见面。t was generally agreed in New York that the Countess Olenska had“lost her looks”.I

She had appeared there first, in Newland Archer's boyhood, as a brilliantly pretty little girl of nine or ten, of whom people said that she“ought to be painted.”Her parents had been continental wanderers, and after a roaming babyhood she had lost them both, and been taken in charge by her aunt, Medora Manson, also a wanderer, who was herself returning to New York to“settle down.”

Poor Medora, repeatedly widowed, was always coming home to settle down（each time in a less expensive house），and bringing with her a new husband or an adopted child；but after a few months she invariably parted from her husband or quarrelled with her ward, and, having got rid of her house at a loss, set out again on her wanderings. As her mother had been a Rushworth, and her last unhappy marriage had linked her to one of the crazy Chiverses, New York looked indulgently on her eccentricities；but when she returned with her little orphaned niece, whose parents had been popular in spite of their regrettable taste for travel, people thought it a pity that the pretty child should be in such hands.

Everyone was disposed to be kind to little Ellen Mingott, though her dusky red cheeks and tight curls gave her an air of gaiety that seemed unsuitable in a child who should still have been in black for her parents. It was one of the misguided Medora's many peculiarities to flout the unalterable rules that regulated American mourning, and when she stepped from the steamer her family were scandalised to see that the crape veil she wore for her own brother was seven inches shorter than those of her sisters-inlaw, while little Ellen was in crimson merino and amber beads, like a gipsy foundling.

But New York had so long resigned itself to Medora that only a few old ladies shook their heads over Ellen's gaudy clothes, while her other relations fell under the charm of her high colour and high spirits. She was a fearless and familiar little thing, who asked disconcerting questions, made precocious comments, and possessed outlandish arts, such as dancing a Spanish shawl dance and singing Neapolitan lovesongs to a guitar. Under the direction of her aunt（whose real name was Mrs.Thorley Chivers, but who, having received a Papal title, had resumed her first husband's patronymic, and called herself the Marchioness Manson, because in Italy she could turn it into Manzoni）the little girl received an expensive but incoherent education, which included“drawing from the model，”a thing never dreamed of before, and playing the piano in quintets with professional musicians.

Of course no good could come of this；and when, a few years later, poor Chivers finally died in a mad-house, his widow（draped in strange weeds）again pulled up stakes and departed with Ellen, who had grown into a tall bony girl with conspicuous eyes. For some time no more was heard of them；then news came of Ellen's marriage to an immensely rich Polish nobleman of legendary fame, whom she had met at a ball at the Tuileries, and who was said to have princely establishments in Paris, Nice and Florence, a yacht at Cowes, and many square miles of shooting in Transylvania.She disappeared in a kind of sulphurous apotheosis, and when a few years later Medora again came back to New York, subdued, impoverished, mourning a third husband, and in quest of a still smaller house, people wondered that her rich niece had not been able to do something for her.Then came the news that Ellen's own marriage had ended in disaster, and that she was herself returning home to seek rest and oblivion among her kinsfolk.

These things passed through Newland Archer's mind a week later as he watched the Countess Olenska enter the van der Luyden drawing-room on the evening of the momentous dinner. The occasion was a solemn one, and he wondered a little nervously how she would carry it off.She came rather late, one hand still ungloved, and fastening a bracelet about her wrist；yet she entered without any appearance of haste or embarrassment the drawing-room in which New York's most chosen company was somewhat awfully assembled.

In the middle of the room she paused, looking about her with a grave mouth and smiling eyes；and in that instant Newland Archer rejected the general verdict on her looks. It was true that her early radiance was gone.The red cheeks had paled；she was thin, worn, a little older-looking than her age, which must have been nearly thirty.But there was about her the mysteriousauthority of beauty, a sureness in the carriage of the head, the movement of the eyes, which, without being in the least theatrical, struck his as highly trained and full of a conscious power.At the same time she was simpler in manner than most of the ladies present, and many people（as he heard afterward from Janey）were disappointed that her appearance was not more“stylish”—for stylishness was what New York most valued.It was, perhaps, Archer reflected, because her early vivacity had disappeared；because she was so quiet—quiet in her movements, her voice, and the tones of her low-pitched voice.New York had expected something a good deal more resonant in a young woman with such a history.

The dinner was a somewhat formidable business. Dining with the van der Luydens was at best no light matter, and dining there with a Duke who was their cousin was almost a religious solemnity.It pleased Archer to think that only an old New Yorker could perceive the shade of difference（to New York）between being merely a Duke and being the van der Luydens'Duke.New York took stray noblemen calmly, and even（except in the Struthers set）with a certain distrustful hauteur；but when they presented such credentials as these they were received with an old-fashioned cordiality that they would have been greatly mistaken in ascribing solely to their standing in Debrett.It was for just such distinctions that the young man cherished his old New York even while he smiled at it.

The van der Luydens had done their best to emphasise the importance of the occasion. The du Lac Sèvres and the Trevenna GeorgeⅡplate were out；so was the van der Luyden“Lowestoft’’（East India Company）and the Dagonet Crown Derby.Mrs.van der Luyden looked more than ever like a Cabanel, and Mrs.Archer, in her grandmother’s seed-pearls and emeralds, reminded her son of an Isabey miniature.All the ladies had on their handsomest jewels, but it was characteristic of the house and the occasion that these were mostly in rather heavy old-fashioned settings；and old Miss Lanning, who had been persuaded to come, actually wore her mother’s cameos and a Spanish blonde shawl.

The Countess Olenska was the only young woman at the dinner；yet, as Archer scanned the smooth plump elderly faces between their diamond necklaces and towering ostrich feathers, they struck him as curiously immaturecompared with hers. It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.

The Duke of St. Austrey, who sat at his hostess's right, was naturally the chief figure of the evening.But if the Countess Olenska was less conspicuous than had been hoped, the Duke was almost invisible.Being a well-bred man he had not（like another recent ducal visitor）come to the dinner in a shooting-jacket；but his evening clothes were so shabby and baggy, and he wore them with such an air of their being homespun, that（with his stooping way of sitting, and the vast beard spreading over his shirt-front）he hardly gave the appearance of being in dinner attire.He was short, round-shouldered, sunburnt, with a thick nose, small eyes and a sociable smile；but he seldom spoke, and when he did it was in such low tones that, despite the frequent silences of expectation about the table, his remarks were lost to all but his neighbours.

When the men joined the ladies after dinner the Duke went straight up to the Countess Olenska, and they sat down in a corner and plunged into animated talk. Neither seemed aware that the Duke should first have paid his respects to Mrs.Lovell Mingott and Mrs.Headly Chivers, and the Countess have conversed with that amiable hypochondriac, Mr.Urban Dagonet of Washington Square, who, in order to have the pleasure of meeting her, had broken through his fixed rule of not dining out between January and April.The two chatted together for nearly twenty minutes；then the Countess rose and, walking alone across the wide drawing-room, sat down at Newland Archer's side.

It was not the custom in New York drawing-rooms for a lady to get up and walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of another. Etiquette required that she should wait, immovable as an idol, while the men who wished to converse with her succeeded each other at her side.But the Countess was apparently unaware of having broken any rule；she sat at perfect ease in a corner of the sofa beside Archer, and looked at him with the kindest eyes.

“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 ofgambling—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！”

She glowed with sympathy.“Ah—it's really and truly a romance？”

“The most romantic of romances！”

“How delightful！And you found it all out for yourselves—it was not in the least arranged for you？”

Archer looked at her incredulously.“Have you forgotten，”he asked with a smile，“that in our country we don't allow our marriages to be arranged for us？”

A dusky blush rose to her cheek, and he instantly regretted his words.

“Yes，”she answered，“I'd forgotten. You must forgive me if I sometimes make these mistakes.I don't always remember that everything here is good that was—that was bad where I've come from.”She looked down at her Viennese fan of eagle feathers, and he saw that her lips trembled.

“I'm so sorry，”he said imputsively；“but you are among friends here, you know.”

“Yes—I know. Wherever I go I have that feeling.That's why I came home.I want to forget everything else, to become a complete American again, like theMingotts and Wellands, and you and your delightful mother, and all the other good people here tonight.Ah, here's May arriving, and you will want to hurry away to her，”she added, but without moving；and her eyes turned back from the door to rest on the young man's face.

The drawing-rooms were beginning to fill up with after-dinner guests, and following Madame Olenska's glance Archer saw May Welland entering with her mother. In her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just alight from the chase.

“Oh，”said Archer，“I have so many rivals；you see she's already surrounded. There's the Duke being introduced.”

“Then stay with me a little longer，”Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress.

“Yes, let me stay，”he answered in the same tone, hardly knowing what he said；but just then Mr. van der Luyden came up, followed by old Mr.Urban Dagonet.The Countess greeted them with her grave smile, and Archer, feeling his host's admonitory glance on him, rose and surrendered his seat.

Madame Olenska held out her hand as if to bid him good-bye.

“Tomorrow, then, after five—I shall expect you，”she said；and then turned back to make room for Mr. Dagonet.

“Tomorrow—”Archer heard himself repeating, though there had been no engagement, and during their talk she had given him no hint that she wished to see him again.

As he moved away he saw Lawrence Lefferts, tall and resplendent, leading his wife up to be introduced；and heard Gertrude Lefferts say, as she beamed on the Countess with her large unperceiving smile：“But I think we used to go to dancingschool together when we were children—。”Behind her, waiting their turn to name themselves to the Countess, Archer noticed a number of the recalcitrant couples who had declined to meet her at Mrs. Lovell Mingott's.As Mrs.Archer remarked：when the van der Luydens chose, they knew how to give a lesson.The wonder was that they chose so seldom.

The young man felt a touch on his arm and saw Mrs. van der Luyden looking down on him from the pure eminence of black velvet and the familydiamonds.“It was good of you, dear Newland, to devote yourself so unselfishly to Madame Olenska.I told your cousin Henry he must really come to the rescue.”

He was aware of smiling at her vaguely, and she added, as if condescending to his natural shyness：“I've never seen May looking lovelier. The Duke thinks her the handsomest girl in the room.”第九章　Chapter9导读

第二天阿切尔过得有些郁闷，他原本打算单独和梅到公园散步，顺便说服她早日成婚，可这遭到韦兰太太的坚决反对。下午五点半，阿切尔来到了奥伦斯卡夫人的住处。开门的是奥伦斯卡夫人的外国女佣，她听不懂阿切尔说话，阿切尔独自欣赏起整个屋子的摆设，这间屋子和平时看到的屋子有很大区别。他突然想到应该把前来拜访的事情告诉梅，不然被梅知道会产生误会的。他独自坐在屋子里，怀疑奥伦斯卡夫人是不是忘记了和自己的约定。他打量着整个客厅的布置，想象着梅的客厅会是什么样子：按照梅的想法也许会和别人的客厅没什么两样，顶多图书室会按自己的爱好来装饰。

阿切尔等待了很长时间，正当他准备放弃时，听到门前响起了马蹄声。他透过窗户看到波弗先生扶着奥伦斯卡夫人下车，随后波弗先生跳上马车离去了。奥伦斯卡夫人走进屋内，看到阿切尔一点也不惊讶。她边解开帽子边谈起了自己的小屋，并批评范德路登家的住宅过于阴沉，这让阿切尔大吃一惊，因为从来没有人敢说出这样的话，即使他们心里这样想过。奥伦斯卡夫人告诉阿切尔，刚才波弗先生带着自己去看了几所房子，因为别人都认为她现在的住处不妥。她又开始对纽约人们的看法表示不满，阿切尔认为她似乎还不知道事实的真相，要不是范德路登夫妇出手相助，她早就成了众人排斥的对象，可她的言行举止还是没有收敛。这时仆人送上了茶水，奥伦斯卡夫人希望阿切尔可以把一些她不了解的情况告诉她，她说即使自己的老祖母也经常向她提各种要求。阿切尔说那些亲戚都很乐意提供帮助。奥伦斯卡夫人摇了摇头，她明白那些人只是要求自己假装遵循礼节，而不管她愉快与否，她痛苦地哭了起来。阿切尔激动地拉着她的手，直呼她的名字，希望能够给她些安慰。阿切尔透过窗户，仿佛依稀看到了梅的身影。此时仆人突然通告，公爵带着斯特拉瑟斯太太一起前来拜访，于是阿切尔退到一边，在他们聊得正欢的时候离开了。

走在路上，阿切尔突然想到了梅，赶紧走到花店，吩咐帮忙送去每天都会送的铃兰；当目光落在一簇黄玫瑰上时，他下意识地买下送给了奥伦斯卡伯爵夫人，没有任何字迹，只留了空信封在匣子上。he Countess Olenska had said“after five”；and at half after the hourNewland Archer rang the bell of the peeling stucco house with Ta giant wisteria throttling its feeble cast-iron balcony, which she had hired, far down West Twenty-third Street, from the vagabond Medora.

It was certainly a strange quarter to have settled in. Small dress-makers, birdstuffers and“people who wrote”were her nearest neighbours；and further down the dishevelled street Archer recognised a dilapidated wooden house, at the end of a paved path, in which a writer and journalist called Winsett, whom he used to come across now and then, had mentioned that he lived.Winsett did not invite people to his house；but he had once pointed it out to Archer in the course of a nocturnal stroll, and the latter had asked himself, with a little shiver, if the humanities were so meanly housed in other capitals.

Madame Olenska's own dwelling was redeemed from the same appearance only by a little more paint about the window-frames；and as Archer mustered its modest front he said to himself that the Polish Count must have robbed her of her fortune as well as of her illusions.

The young man had spent an unsatisfactory day. He had lunched with the Wellands, hoping afterward to carry off May for a walk in the Park.He wanted to have her to himself, to tell her how enchanting she had looked the night before, and how proud he was of her, and to press her to hasten their marriage.But Mrs.Welland had firmly reminded him that the round of family visits was not half over, and, when he hinted at advancing the date of the wedding, had raised reproachful eye-brows and sighed out：“Twelve dozen of everything—hand-embroidered—”

Packed in the family landau they rolled from one tribal doorstep to another, and Archer, when the afternoon's round was over, parted from his betrothed with the feeling that he had been shown off like a wild animal cunningly trapped. He supposed that his readings in anthropology caused him to take such a coarse view of what was after all a simple and natural demonstration of family feeling；but when he remembered that the Wellands did not expect the wedding to take place till the following autumn, and pictured what his life would be till then, a dampness fell upon his spirit.

“Tomorrow，”Mrs. Welland called after him，“we'll do the Chiverses and the Dallases”；and he perceived that she was going through their two families alphabetically, and that they were only in the first quarter of the alphabet.

He had meant to tell May of the Countess Olenska's request—her command, rather—that he should call on her that afternoon；but in the brief moments when they were alone he had had more pressing things to say. Besides, it struck him as a little absurd to allude to the matter.He knew that May most particularly wanted him to be kind to her cousin；was it not that wish which had hastened the announcement of their engagement？It gave him an odd sensation to reflect that, but for the Countess's arrival, he might have been, if not still a free man, at least a man less irrevocably pledged.But May had willed it so, and he felt himself somehow relieved of further responsibility—and therefore at liberty, if he chose, to call on her cousin without telling her.

As he stood on Madame Olenska's threshold curiosity was his uppermost feeling. He was puzzled by the tone in which she had summoned him；he concluded that she was less simple than she seemed.

The door was opened by a swarthy foreign-looking maid, with a prominent bosom under a gay neckerchief, whom he vaguely fancied to be Sicilian. She welcomed him with all her white teeth, and answering his enquiries by a head-shake of incomprehension led him through the narrow hall into a low firelit drawing-room.The room was empty, and she left him, for an appreciable time, to wonder whether she had gone to find her mistress, or whether she had not understood what he was there for, and thought it might be to wind the clocks—of which he perceived that the only visible specimen hadstopped.He knew that the southern races communicated with each other in the language of pantomime, and was mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible.At length she returned with a lamp；and Archer, having meanwhile put together a phrase out of Dante and Petrarch, evoked the answer：“La signoraèfuori；ma verràsubito”；which he took to mean：“She’s out—but you’ll soon see.”

What he saw, meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded shadowy charm of a room unlike any room he had known. He knew that the Countess Olenska had brought some of her possessions with her—bits of wreckage, she called them—and these, he supposed, were represented by some small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze on the chimney-piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on the discoloured wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in old frames.

Newland Archer prided himself on his knowledge of Italian art. His boyhood had been saturated with Ruskin, and he had read all the latest books：John Addington Symonds, Vernon Lee's“Euphorion，”the essays of P.G.Hamerton, and a wonderful new volume called The Renaissance by Walter Pater.He talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of Fra Angelico with a faint condescension.But these pictures bewildered him, for they were like nothing that he was accustomed to look at（and therefore able to see）when he travelled in Italy；and perhaps, also, his powers of observation were impaired by the oddness of finding himself in this strange empty house, where apparently no one expected him.He was sorry that he had not told May Welland of Countess Olenska's request, and a little disturbed by the thought that his betrothed might come in to see her cousin.What would she think if she found him sitting there with the air of intimacy implied by waiting alone in the dusk at a lady's fireside？

But since he had come he meant to wait；and he sank into a chair and stretched his feet to the logs.

It was odd to have summoned him in that way, and then forgotten him；but Archer felt more curious than mortified. The atmosphere of the room was so different from any he had ever breathed that self-consciousness vanished in the sense of adventure.He had been before in drawing-rooms hung with reddamask, with pictures“of the Italian school”；what struck him was the way in which Medora Manson's shabby hired house, with its blighted background of pampas grass and Rogers statuettes, had, by a turn of the hand, and the skilful use of a few properties, been transformed into something intimate，“foreign，”subtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and sentiments.He tried to analyse the trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and tables were grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot roses（of which nobody ever bought less than a dozen）had been placed in the slender vase at his elbow, and in the vague pervading perfume that was not what one put on handkerchiefs, but rather like the scent of some far-off bazaar, a smell made up of Turkish coffee and ambergris and dried roses.

His mind wandered away to the question of what May's drawing-room would look like. He knew that Mr.Welland, who was behaving“very handsomely，”already had his eye on a newly built house in East Thirty-ninth Street.The neighbourhood was thought remote, and the house was built in a ghastly greenish-yellow stone that the younger architects were beginning to employ as a protest against the brownstone of which the uniform hue coated New York like a cold chocolate sauce；but the plumbing was perfect.Archer would have liked to travel, to put off the housing question；but, though the Wellands approved of an extended European honeymoon（perhaps even a winter in Egypt），they were firm as to the need of a house for the returning couple.The young man felt that his fate was sealed：for the rest of his life he would go up every evening between the cast-iron railings of that greenish-yellow doorstep, and pass through a Pompeian vestibule into a hall with a wainscoting of varnished yellow wood.But beyond that his imagination could not travel.He knew the drawing-room above had a bay window, but he could not fancy how May would deal with it.She submitted cheerfully to the purple satin and yellow tuftings of the Welland drawing-room, to its sham buhl tables and gilt vitrines full of modern Saxe.He saw no reason to suppose that she would want anything different in her own house；and his only

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