The "smart set" of Elsinore was composed of the twelve women that could
afford to lose most at bridge. Mrs. Balfame, who could ill afford to
lose anything, but who was both a scientific and a lucky player,
insisted upon moderate stakes. The other members of this inner exclusive
circle were the wives of two bankers, three contractors, two prosperous
merchants, one judge, one doctor, and two commuters who made their
incomes in New York and slept in Elsinore. These ladies made it a point
of honor to dine at seven, dress smartly and appropriately for all
occasions, attend everything worth while to which they could obtain
entrance in New York, pay an occasional visit to Europe, read the new
novels and attend the symphony concerts. It is superfluous to add that
the very foundation of the superior social status of each was a large
house of the affluent type peculiar to the prosperous annexes of old
communities, half brick and half wood, shallow, characterless,
impersonal; and a fine car with a limousine top. The house stood in the
midst of a lawn sloping to the street, unconfined by even the box hedge
and undivided from the neighbouring grounds. The garage, little less
pretentious than the mansion, also faced the street, for all to see.
There was hardly a horse left in Elsinore; taxi cabs awaited the
traveller at the station, and people that could not afford handsome cars
purchased and enjoyed the inexpensive runabout.
Mrs. Balfame had segregated her smart set for strategic reasons, but
that did not mean that both she and they were not kindness itself to the
less favoured. Obviously, an imposing party cannot be given by twelve
families alone, especially when almost half their number are childless.
On all state occasions the list of invited numbered several hundred, in
that town of some five thousand inhabitants.
It said much for the innate nobility of these wealthier dames of
Elsinore, who read the New York society papers quite as attentively as
they did the war news, that they submitted without a struggle to the
dominance of a woman who never had possessed a car and whose husband's
income was so often diverted from its natural course; but Mrs. Balfame
not only outclassed them in inflexibility of purpose, but her family was
as old as Brabant County; the Dawbarns had never been in what might be
called the cavalry regiment, consisting of those few chosen ones living
in old colonial houses set in large estates and with both roots and
branches in the city of New York; but no one disputed their right to be
called Captains of the infantry. And Mrs. Balfame, sole survivor in the
direct line, had two wealthy cousins in Brooklyn.
Once in a while Dr. Anna, a privileged character, and born at least in
Brabant County, took a hand at bridge, but she was a poor player, and,
upon the rare occasions when she found time to spend a Saturday
afternoon at the Country Club, preferred to rest in a deep chair and
watch the young folks flirt and dance until the informal supper was
ready. Never had she tripped a step, but she loved youth, and it gave
her an acute old maid's delight to observe the children grow up;
snub-nosed, freckled-faced awkward school girls develop at a flying leap
into slim American prettiness, enhanced with every late exaggeration of
style. She also approved heartily, on hygienic grounds, of the friends
of her own generation dancing, even in public, if their partners were
not too young and their forms too cumbersome.
Mrs. Balfame and Dr. Anna arrived at the Club shortly after four
o'clock. Young people swarmed everywhere, within and without; perhaps
twenty older matrons were sitting on the veranda knitting those
indeterminate toilette accessories for the Belgians which always seemed
to be about to halt at precisely the same stage of progress.
Mrs. Balfame, who had set the fashion, had not brought her needles
to-day. She went directly to the card room; but her partner for the
tournament not having arrived, she entertained her impatient friends
with a recent domestic episode.
"I have a German servant, you know," she said, removing her wraps and
taking her seat at the table. "A good creature and a hard worker, but
leaden-footed and dull beyond belief. Still, I suppose even the dullest
peasant has spite in her make-up. I have been reading tomes of books on
the war, as you learned from painful experience yesterday; most of them,
as it happened--a good joke on Anna that, as she gave me the list--quite
antagonistic to Germany. One day when Frieda should have been dusting I
caught her scowling over the chapter heads of one of them. Of course she
reads English--she has been here several years. Day before yesterday,
when I was knitting, she asked me whom I was knitting for, and I told
her--for the Belgians, of course. She asked me in a sort of growl why I
didn't knit for the homeless in East Prussia--it seems that is where she
comes from and she has been having letters full of horrors. I seldom
bandy words with a servant, for you can't permit the slightest
familiarity in this country if you want to get any work out of them. But
as she scowled as if she would like to explode a shrapnel under me, and
as she is the third I have had in the last five months, I said
soothingly that the newspaper correspondents had neglected the eastern
theatre of war, but had harrowed our feelings so about the Belgians that
we felt compelled to do what we could for them. Then I asked her--I was
really curious--if she had no sympathy for those thousands of afflicted
women and children, merely because they were the victims of the Germans.
She has a big soft face with thick lips, little eyes, and a rudimentary
nose; generally as expressionless as such a face is bound to be. But
when I asked her this question it suddenly seemed to turn to wood--not
actively cruel; it merely expressed the negation of all human sympathy.
She turned without a word and slumped--pardon the expression--out of the
room. But the breakfast was burned this morning--I had to cook another
for poor David--and I know she did it on purpose. I am afraid I shall
have to let her go."
"I would," said Mrs. Battle, wisely. "She is probably a spy and quite
clever."
"Yes, but such a worker!" Mrs. Balfame sighed reminiscently. "And when
you have but one servant--"
The tardy partner bustled in and the game began.