“It would never have got me Mrs. Armitage’s friendship,” said she
loftily.
“You think so?” said I amiably. “All right, if it pleases you.
But--take my advice, my dear--enjoy yourself to the limit with
highfaluting _talk_ about the worthlessness of money and that sort
of rot. But don’t for a minute lose your point of view and convince
yourself.”
“Thank God I’ve got a vein of refinement, of idealism in my nature,”
said Edna. “I wouldn’t have as sordid an opinion of human nature as you
have for anything in the world.”
“You can afford not to have it, my dear,” said I. “So long as I know
the truth, and so make the necessary money to keep us going, you are
free to indulge your lovely delusions. Have your beautiful, unmercenary
friendship with Mrs. Armitage and the other ladies. I’ll continue
to make it financially worth their husbands’ while to encourage the
friendships.”
“I thought so!” cried she. “You believe Mrs. Armitage has taken me up
for business reasons.”
“If you had been some poor woman--” I began mildly.
“Don’t be absurd!” cried my wife. “How could there be an equal and
true friendship between Mrs. Armitage and a woman with none of the
surroundings of a lady, and with no means of gratifying the tastes
of a lady? But that doesn’t mean that Mrs. Armitage is a low, sordid
woman. She has a beautiful nature. Money is merely the background of
high society. It simply gives ladies and gentlemen the opportunity
to set the standards of dress and manners and taste. And of course
they’re careful whom they associate with. Who wants to be annoyed
by adventurers and climbers and all sorts of dreadful mercenary,
self-seeking people?”
“Who, indeed?” said I.
It gently appealed to my sense of the ridiculous, to see my wife thus
changed in a twinkling into a defender and exponent of fashionable
society. It was so deliciously feminine, as fantastically humorless,
her sincere belief in the poppycock she was reeling off--the twaddle
with which Mrs. Armitage had doubtless stuffed her. The sordidness,
the vulgarity, the meanness, the petty cruelty, the snobbishness of
fashionable people--all forgotten in a moment, hastily covered deep
with the gilt and the tinsel of hypocritical virtues. What an amusing
ass the human animal is! How stupidly unconscious of its own motives!
How eagerly it attributes to itself all kinds of high motives for the
ordinary, or scrubby, or downright mean actions--and attributes the
same motives to its fellow asses, to make its own pretenses the more
plausible! An amusing ass--but it would be more amusing if it were not
so monotonously solemn, but laughed at itself occasionally.