The atmosphere of our home now steadily improved. The servants
began to respect us, where they had despised and had scarcely
troubled themselves to conceal their contempt. The cook sent up
more attractive--though I fear even less digestible--dishes. The
butler addressed me with a gratifying servility. The maids developed
unexpected talents, showing acquaintance with the needs and customs
of a fashionable household. The housekeeper’s soul dropped from its
theretofore insolently erect posture to all fours, and she attended
to her duties. Edna became sweet and gracious. Margot grew merry and
affectionate. All the result of Mrs. Armitage. We had been pariahs; we
were of the elect.
I saw and felt the change distinctly at the time. But it is only in
retrospect that I take the full measure--get its full humor--and pathos.
* * * * *
That Armitage dinner was _the_ event of Edna’s life. She had been born;
she had married; she had given birth--all memorable and important
occurrences. But this formal début in fashionable society topped
them as the peak tops the foothills. Having seen her quivering and
hysterical excitement when we were leaving the house, I feared a
breakdown. I marveled at her apparent calmness and ease as we entered
the dining room of the Armitages. Never had she looked so well. If Mrs.
Armitage had not been a self-satisfied beauty of the dark type she
might have demolished Edna’s dream in its very realizing. But no doubt
Edna, the shrewd, had duly measured Hilda Armitage and had discovered
that it was safe to make her proud of the woman she had taken under
protection and patronage.
There were but a dozen people in all at the dinner. It did not seem
to be much of an affair. The drawing-room was plain--nothing gaudy,
nothing costly looking. Our own dining room was much grander--to
our then uneducated taste. The guests were--just people--simple,
good-natured mortals, perfectly at their ease and putting us at our
ease. You would have wondered, after five minutes of that company,
how anyone could possibly find any difficulty in getting intimately
acquainted with them. But, as Edna knew at a glance, she and I were in
the midst of the innermost and smallest circle of the many circles one
within another that make up New York fashionable society. If on the
recommendation of the Armitages we should have the good fortune to be
accepted by that circle of circles, that circle within the circles,
there would be nothing of a social nature left for us to conquer in New
York. I was ignorant of all this at the time; had I known, I imagine
I should have remained tranquil. But Edna knew at a glance; she had
been studying these matters for years. It shows what force of character
she had that she conducted herself as if it were the most ordinary and
familiar occasion of her life. She had always said, even away back in
the days of the grand forty-dollars-a-month flat in Passaic, that she
belonged at the social top. She was undoubtedly right. The way she
acted when she arrived there proved it.
You do not often have the chance, gentle reader, to get so well
acquainted with any human being as I have enabled you to get with Edna.
Probably you do not even know yourself so well. Therefore I suspect
that you have a wholly false notion of her--think her in every way much
worse relatively than she was. Through your novels and through the
reports your dim eyes bring to your narrow and shallow mind, you have
acquired certain habits of judging your fellow beings.
You attach inflated importance to their unimportant surface
qualities--physical appearance, pleasant voice and manner--and to their
amiable little hypocrisies of apparent sweetness and generosity and
friendliness. You do not see the real person--the human being. You,
being by training a hypocrite and a believer in hypocrisies, scorn
human beings. Now I prefer them to the sort of people with whom you
and your false literature populate the world. In making you acquainted
with Edna--and the others in my story--I have not introduced you to bad
people, monsters, but to real beings of usual types, probably on the
whole superior to your smug self in all the good qualities. Had you
seen Edna in the Armitage house that evening you would have thought her
as incapable of calculation and snobbishness as--well, as any of the
others in that company whose whole lives were made up of calculation
and snobbishness. She--and they--looked so refined and elevated.
She--and they--talked so high-mindedly. I, who knew almost nothing at
that time except business, was listener rather than talker; and you may
be sure such a man as I, having such ignorance as mine to cover up, had
in years of practice become somewhat adept in that saving art for the
intelligent ignorant. But Edna----
She, the most expert of smatterers, fairly shone. With her beauty and
vivacity, her eloquent eyes and dazzling smile, and exquisite bare
shoulders, to aid her, she created an impression of brilliancy.
“You had a good time?” said I, when we were in the motor for the home
journey.
“I never had as good a time in my life,” she exclaimed, her voice
tremulous with ecstasy. “Did I look well?”
“Never so well,” said I. “And you made a hit.”
“I was careful to cultivate the women,” said she. “I’ve got to get the
women.”
“You’ve got them,” I declared sincerely.
“You’re sure I didn’t make some of them jealous? Did you see any signs?”
“They liked you,” said I.
“I had to play my cards well,” pursued she. “It was a difficult
position. I was far and away the best looking woman there, with the
possible exception of Mrs. Armitage. Did you hear her call me Edna?”
“You and Mrs. Armitage look well together. You are of about the same
figure, and the contrast of coloring is very good.”
“That’s why we took to each other so quickly. Each of us sets off the
other.”
“How did you like Armitage?” I asked.
“Oh, well enough,” said she indifferently. “I hardly noticed him--or
the other men. I had my game to play. The men don’t count in the social
game. It’s the women. I shall be nervous until I find out whether I
really got them. They are such cats!--so mean and sly and jealous. I
_detest_ women!”
“I prefer men, myself,” said I.
“Men!” She laughed scornfully. “I think men are intolerable--American
men. They say foreigners are better. But American men--they know
nothing but dull business or politics. They have no breadth--no
idealism. The women are far superior to the men.”
I laughed. “No doubt you women are too good for us,” said I carelessly.
“We’re grateful that you don’t scorn us too much even to accept our
money.”
“How coarse that is! Don’t spoil the happiest evening of my life.”
We were at home, so she could escape from me. And I, for my part, was
as glad to be quit of her society as she could possibly have been to
get rid of me. I was beginning to realize that her conversation bored
me, that it had always bored me, that it was her sex and only her sex
that interested me. And latterly even this had lost its charm. Why?
I have observed--and perhaps you have observed it, too--that people
of wealth and position, unless they have very striking individuality
indeed, are usually utterly devoid of charm. It is difficult to become
interested in them, to establish any sort of sympathetic current.
And you will notice that fashionable functions are dull, essentially
dull; that the animation is artificial, is supplied from without by an
orchestra or entertainers, and fails to infect the company. It was long
before I discovered the explanation for this. I at first thought it was
the stupidity that comes from a surfeit of the luxuries and pleasures.
But I am now convinced that this familiar explanation is not the true
one; that the true one is the excessive, the really preposterous
self-centeredness of people of rank and wealth. From waking until
sleeping they are surrounded by hirelings and sycophants who think
and talk only of them. Thus the rich man or woman gets into the habit
of concentrating upon self. Now the essence of charm is giving--giving
oneself out in sympathetic interest in one’s fellows. How can people,
all whose faculties are trained to work in upon themselves--how can
they have charm? An egotist, one who _talks_ only of himself, may have
charm because he gives you the impression that he is trying to please
you, that he thinks you so important that he wishes you to be sensible
of his importance. But the egotist who, whatever he _talks_, _thinks_
only of himself--he is not only dull and bored but also a diffuser
of dullness and boredom. And that is how their servants and their
sycophants make the rich and the fashionable so dreary.
I imagine some such effect as this was being produced upon my wife
by her surroundings of luxury. I think that may account for her long
decreasing charm for me. At any rate, soon after she was well launched
on her Elysian sea of fashion--that is to say, soon after she ceased to
have any check of social seeking to restrain her from centering all her
thoughts and actions upon herself, she lost the last bit of her charm
for me. She became radiantly beautiful. Her face took on a serene and
refinedly assured expression that made her extravagantly admired on
every hand. She became gracious to me and almost as sweet as she had
been before we moved to New York. She even let me see that, if I so
desired, she would condescend to be on terms of wifely affection with
me again. But I did not so desire. I liked her. I admired her energy,
her toilets, and, quite impersonally, her aristocratic beauty. But
I was content to be a bachelor, and I was grateful when she began to
relieve me of the tediousness of going about in her train.
My substitute was an architect, Leon MacIlvane by name--a handsome
young fellow of about my wife’s age, though he thought her much
younger, despite Margot’s age and appearance. With his poetic dark eyes
and classic features, and rich, deep voice, MacIlvane had long been
a favorite with the young married women of the Armitage set. He was
indeed a valuable asset. The rich unmarried men were not especially
interesting; also, they were needed by the marriageable girls.
MacIlvane, not a marrying man and never making any mother uneasy by so
much as an interested glance at a daughter intended for a rich husband,
devoted himself to married women.
“I do not care for girls,” he said to me. “They are too colorless.”
“Why bother with women at all?” said I. “Aren’t they all colorless?
What do they know about life? What experience have they had?”
“An intelligent woman’s mind is the complement of an intelligent man’s
mind,” said he, as if this trite old fallacy were a brilliant discovery
of his own making. “Women stimulate me, give me ideas.”
“Oh, I see,” said I practically. “Business. Yes, an architect does deal
chiefly with the women.”
“I didn’t mean that,” said he, showing as much anger as he dared show
the husband of the woman to whom he had attached himself.
“Where’s the harm in it?” said I encouragingly. “You’ve got to make a
living--haven’t you? It’s good sense for a business man to cultivate
his customers.”
He, the poseur and the small man, hated this plain truthful way of
dealing with his profession. Like all chaps of that kidney he thought
only of himself and of appearances, and sought to degrade a noble
profession to the base uses of his vanity. In fact, he had begun with
my wife because of the orders he hoped to get--for, he suspected
that once she looked about her in the fashionable world from the new
viewpoint of a fashionable person, she would want changes in her house
to make it less vividly grand. He believed she would let Hilda Armitage
educate her; and Hilda, unlike most of her friends, liked the quiet
kinds of ostentation and costliness. And he guessed correctly. He was
well paid for undertaking to replace me as escort--so far as I could
be replaced without causing scandal--and, thank heaven, that was very
far in the New York of busy and bored husbands, detesting the gaudy
gaddings their wives loved.
Soon he was serving my wife for other reasons than pay. I saw something
of him from time to time, and I presently began to note a change in his
manner toward me--a formal politeness, an exaggeration of courtesy. I
spoke to Armitage about it. Armitage and I had become the most intimate
of friends--knocked about together in the evenings, were more closely
associated than ever in business.
“Bob,” said I to Armitage, “what ails that ass, MacIlvane? He treats
me as if he were in love with my wife.”
Armitage laughed. “That’s it,” said he. “My wife’s spaniel, Courtleigh,
who writes poetry, treats me the same way. Get any anonymous letters
yet?”
“Two,” said I.
“Servants,” said he. “I suppose you burnt them? You didn’t show them to
your wife?”
“Heavens, no,” replied I. “Why unsettle her? Why upset a pleasant
arrangement? My wife finds MacIlvane useful. I find him invaluable. He
saves me hours of time. He spares me hours of boredom.”
“My feeling about Courtleigh,” said Armitage. “And both those chaps are
comfortably trustworthy.”
“I hadn’t thought of MacIlvane in that way,” said I. “I know my
wife--and that’s enough.”
Armitage reflected with an amused smile on his face. Finally, he
said: “I don’t suppose there ever were since the world began so
thoroughly trustworthy women as these American women of the fashionable
crowd--those that have very rich husbands--and only those, of course,
are really fashionable. They may flirt a little, but never anything
serious--never anything that’d give their husbands an excuse for
throwing them out--and lose them their big houses and big incomes and
social leadership.”
I had not thought of these aspects of the matter. I based my feeling of
security solely on my knowledge of my wife’s intense self-absorption.
All the springs of sentiment--except the shallow spring of highfaluting
talk--had dried up in her. She would listen to MacIlvane’s flatteries
as long as he cared to pour them out. But if he ever tried to get her
to think of _him_, she would feel outraged.
“I suppose,” pursued Armitage, “we’d be tremendously amused if we
could overhear those chaps talking to our wives about us. They don’t
dare presume to the extent of mentioning our names. But they hand
out generalities of roasting--how stupid most American men are, how
superior the women are, what a tragic condescension for a wonderful
American woman to have to live with a man who couldn’t appreciate her.”