“I want you to help me--for Margot’s sake, for your own sake,” she went
on in a kind of exaltation. “Margot is coming on. She’ll be out in less
than three years. We’ve got to make a position for her.”
“I thought, up there at Miss Ryper’s she was----”
“That shows how little interest you take!” cried Edna. “Don’t you know
what is happening? Why, already the fashionable girls at her school are
beginning to shy off from her----”
“Don’t be absurd!” laughed I. “That simply could not be. She’s lovely,
sweet, attractive in every way. Any girls anywhere would be proud to
have her as a friend.”
“How _can_ you be so ignorant of the world!” cried Edna in a frenzy
of exasperation. “Oh, you’ll drive me mad with your stupidity! Can’t
you realize how _low_ fashionable people are. The girls who were
her friends so long as they were all mere children are now taking a
positive delight in snubbing her, because she’s so pretty and will be
an heiress. It gives them a sense of power to treat her as an inferior,
to make her suffer.”
I flung away the cigar and sat up in the chair. “How long has this been
going on?” I demanded.
“Nearly a year,” replied my wife. “It began as soon as she lost her
childishness and developed toward a woman. I’m glad I’ve roused you
at last. So long as she was a mere baby they liked her--invited her
to their children’s parties--came to hers. But now they’re dropping
her. Oh, it’s maddening! They are so sweet and smooth, the vile little
daughters of vile mothers!”
“Incredible!” said I. “Surely not those sweet, well-mannered girls
I’ve seen here at her parties? _They_ couldn’t do that sort of thing.
Why, what do those babies know about social position and such nonsense?”
“What do they know? What _don’t_ they know?” cried Edna, trembling
with rage at her humiliation and at my incredulity. “You _are_ an
innocent! There ought to be a new proverb--innocent as a married man.
Why, nowadays the children begin their social training in the cradle.
They soon learn to know a nurse or a butler from a lady or a gentleman
before they learn to walk. They hear the servants talk. They hear their
parents talk. Except innocent you everyone nowadays thinks and talks
about these things.”
“But Margot--our Margot--she doesn’t know!” I said with conviction.
Edna laughed harshly. “Know? What kind of mother do you think I am? Of
course she knows. Haven’t I been teaching her ever since she began to
talk? Why do you suppose I’ve always called her the little duchess?”
“She suggests a superior little person,” said I, groping vaguely.
“She suggests a superior person because I gave her that name and
brought her up to look and act and feel the part. She expects to be a
real duchess some day--” Edna reared proudly, and her voice rang out
confidently as she added--“and she shall be!”
I stared at her. It seemed to me she must be out of her mind. Oh, I was
indeed innocent, gentle reader.
“I’ve always treated her as a duchess, and have made the servants do
it, and have trained her to treat them as if she were a duchess.” A
proud smile came into her face, transforming it suddenly back to its
loveliness. “The first time I ever read about a duchess--read, knowing
what I was reading about--I decided that I would have a daughter and
that she should be a duchess.”
At any previous time such a sally would have made me laugh. But not
then, for I saw that she meant it profoundly, and for the first time I
was realizing what had been going on in my family, all unsuspected by
me.
“But first,” proceeded Edna, “she shall have the highest social
position in New York. And you must help if I am to succeed.” The
fury burst into her face again. “Those little wretches, snubbing
her!--dropping her! I’ll make them pay for it.”
“Do you mean to tell me that Margot realizes all this?” said I.
“Poor child, she’s wretched about it. Only yesterday she said to me:
‘Mamma, is it true that you and papa are very common, and that we
haven’t anything but a lot of stolen money? One of the girls got mad at
me because I was so good-looking and so proud, and taunted me with it.’”
“Incredible!” said I, dazed.
“She’s horribly unhappy,” Edna went on. “And it cuts her to the heart
to be losing all her dearest friends. I did my duty and taught her
which girls to cultivate, and she was intimate only with the right sort
of New York girls.”
“I expect she has been indiscreet,” said I. “They’ve found out why she
made friends with them and----”
“You will drive me crazy!” cried Edna. “_Can’t_ you understand? All
the mothers and the governesses--all the grown people in respectable
families teach the children. Those mothers who don’t teach it directly
see that it’s taught by the governesses, or else select the proper
friends for their little girls and see that they drop any who aren’t
proper.”
I dropped back in my chair. I was stunned. It seemed to me I had never
heard anything quite so infamous in my life. And as I reflected on what
she had said I wondered that I had not realized it before. I recalled
a hundred significant facts that had come out in talks I had had with
men, women, and children in this fashionable world from which we were
excluded, yet with which we were in constant and close communication.
“The question is, what are _you_ going to do,” proceeded Edna.