AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND.
Merchant of Venice; v.--2.
The fact that her mother was a Beauchester Mrs. Staggchase never
forgot, although she seldom spoke of it. It formed what she would have
called a background to her life, and gave her the liberty of doing many
things which would have been unallowable to persons of less
distinguished ancestry. It was, perhaps, in virtue of her Beauchester
blood, for instance, that she made the somewhat singular selection of
guests brought together at a luncheon which she gave in honor of Miss
Frances Merrivale when that young lady came to pay her a visit, at the
conclusion of her stay with Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson.
Miss Merrivale had been in doubt whether she could properly accept this
invitation, in view of the fact that her cousin's wife had neglected to
call upon her since her arrival in Boston. The reflection, however,
that this visit to the Staggchase's was the chief object of her
becoming Mrs. Sampson's guest at all had decided the young lady upon
overlooking considerations of etiquette, and from the flat of the widow
she had removed to the more aristocratic region of Back Bay.
Miss Frances had been shrewd enough to forestall all possible
objections by accepting the invitation before mentioning it to Mrs.
Sampson; and however deep the chagrin of that enterprising individual,
she was too astute to protest against the inevitable. Mrs. Sampson
even, in her secret heart, considered the advisability of calling upon
her late guest in her new quarters, but reluctantly abandoned the idea
as being likely, on the whole, to be productive of no good results
socially. That Miss Merrivale would probably forget her as quickly as
possible she was but too well assured, and it pretty exactly indicates
the position of the widow toward society that this prospective
ingratitude moved her to no indignation. It was so exactly the course
which in similar circumstances she herself would have pursued, that no
question of its propriety presented itself to her mind. Even the faint
air of conscious guilt with which the girl announced her intention did
not arouse in Mrs. Sampson any feeling of surprise or bitterness.
Society to her mind was a ladder, and being so, to climb it was but to
follow the use for which it was designed.
Miss Merrivale was of better stuff, and if not well bred enough to live
up to the obligations she had assumed by becoming Mrs. Sampson's guest,
she was at least conscious of them; and she said good-by with an air of
apologetic cordiality, quieting her conscience by the secret
determination some time to repay the widow's kindness in one way or
another, although she should be obliged to repudiate her socially. Had
she known Mrs. Staggchase better, and been aware how much she fell in
that lady's estimation by throwing Mrs. Sampson overboard, her decision
might have been different.
"She is coming, my dear," Mrs. Staggchase had said to her husband, on
receiving Miss Merrivale's acceptance of her invitation. "I shouldn't
have expected it of one of your family."
"You know we can't all be born Beauchesters," he had returned, with
good-natured sarcasm.
Once at Mrs. Staggchase's, Miss Merrivale began to see Boston society
under very different auspices. She had been at a luncheon at Ethel
Mott's, given in compliment to herself, where she had sat nearly
speechless for an hour and a half while half a dozen young ladies had
discussed the origin of evil with great volubility, and what seemed to
her, however it might have impressed metaphysicians, astounding
erudition and profundity. She had assisted at that sacred rite of
musical devotees, the Saturday night Symphony concert, where a handful
of people gathered to hear the music, and all the rest of the world
crowded for the sake of having been there. She had been taken by Miss
Mott to a select sewing-circle--that peculiar institution by means of
which exclusive Boston society keeps tally of the standing of all its
young women. She was somewhat bewildered, but enjoyed what might be
called a hallowed consciousness that she was doing exactly the right
thing; and it was, perhaps, only a delicate consciousness of the
fitness of things that made her answer all questions as to the time of
her arrival in Boston with the date of her coming to Mrs. Staggchase,
ignoring her previous visit to a woman of whose existence it was only
proper to assume her new acquaintances to be entirely unaware.
Fred Rangely was shrewdly and humorously appreciative of her attitude,
being the more keenly conscious of the exact situation because he
himself made a point of ignoring his acquaintance with Mrs. Sampson. He
had debated in his mind what change in his conduct was advisable now
that Miss Merrivale was visiting Mrs. Staggchase. He had astutely
decided that the latter, at least, would make no remarks about him to
her guest; and, in view of the fact that it was scarcely possible to
conceal his flirtation with the New Yorker from the penetration of her
hostess, he decided to content himself with hiding from the stranger
his devotion to his older friend. He still assured himself that his
serious intentions were directed toward Miss Mott, and he secretly
smiled to himself with the foolish over-confidence of a vain man, when,
from time to time, he heard allusions to the devotion of Thayer Kent to
Ethel. Kent had been in the field before Rangely presented himself as a
rival candidate for the damsel's good graces; and the novelist might
have been less confident had not personal interest blinded him to a
state of things which he would have apprehended easily enough where
another was concerned. The easy familiarity, born of long friendship
and perfect understanding, which Ethel showed toward Kent, Fred mistook
for indifference. His own sudden popularity had somewhat turned his
head, so that he failed to distinguish between the attentions shown to
the author and those bestowed upon the man, and constantly felt himself
to be making personal conquests when he was simply being lionized.
Mrs. Staggchase invited the guests for her luncheon before she spoke of
them to Miss Merrivale.
"I have asked Mrs. Bodewin Ranger," she explained, "although she is old
enough to be your grandmother, because she is the nicest old lady in
Boston, and it is a liberal education to meet her."
The other guests were Mrs. Frostwinch, Ethel Mott, and Elsie Dimmont.
"Elsie Dimmont," Mrs. Staggchase observed, "needs to be looked after.
She is either going to make a fool of herself by marrying that odious
Dr. Wilson or she is allowing herself to be made a fool of by him,
which is quite as bad."
Secretly Mrs. Staggchase, for all her Beauchester blood, had a good
deal of sympathy for the girl who was defying her family in receiving
the attentions of a man of no antecedents, although, having done the
same thing herself, she was the more strongly bound outwardly to
discountenance any such insubordination.
Guests may be selected on the principle of harmony of taste and
feeling, or simply with an eye to variety; in the present instance it
was distinctly the latter method which had obtained; and it was perhaps
to be regarded as no mean triumph of social civilization that a harmony
apparently so perfect resulted from the strange combination which the
hostess had brought about. Whether from a secret intention of rebuking
Miss Dimmont for her associations with one socially so impossible as
Chauncy Wilson, or with the less amiable design of disciplining Miss
Merrivale for her friendship with Mrs. Sampson, the hostess adroitly
and deliberately turned the conversation to social themes, and thence
on to what perhaps were best described as the proprieties of caste.
She was too clever a woman to do this crudely, and indeed would have
seemed to any but the most acute observer to follow the conversation
rather than to lead it. Ethel and Elsie chatted briskly of the current
gossip of the day, and it was Mrs. Bodewin Ranger who was skilfully led
on to strike the keynote of the talk by saying,--
"Doesn't it seem to you that the modern fashion of admitting artists
into society is mixing up things terribly? Nowadays one is always
meeting queer people everywhere, and being told that they are writers
or painters."
The fine old lady smiled so genially that one seeing her benign
countenance framed in its beautiful snowy curls, must know her well to
realize that in truth she meant exactly what she said. Mrs.
Frostwinch's answering smile was not without a tinge of sarcasm,--
"It is worse than that," she said. "You even meet actors in quite
respectable houses."
"Oh, actors!" threw in Ethel Mott, briskly; "nowadays they even go
below the level of humanity and invite those things called
elocutionists."
"But of course," ventured Miss Merrivale, wishing to put herself on
record and striking a false note, as usually happens in such cases,
"one doesn't really know these people. They are only brought in to
amuse."
"One never knows undesirable people, my dear," Mrs. Staggchase
responded, without the faintest shadow of the sarcastic intent which
her guest yet secretly felt in her words.
"Bless me!" broke in Elsie Dimmont, with characteristic explosiveness.
"What an abandoned creature I must be! I am actually going to the
Fenton's to dine to-night."
"Mr. Fenton," Mrs. Bodewin Ranger responded, in her soft voice, "is a
gentleman by birth, and his wife was a Caldwell; her mother was a
Calvin, you know."
Ethel Mott laughed.
"And so he passes," she said, "in spite of his being an artist. How
pleased he would be if he knew it."
"It would be worth while to tell him," Mrs. Frostwinch interpolated,
"just to hear his comments."
"We owe Arthur Fenton more scores than we can ever settle," observed
the hostess, "for the things he says about women. He said to me the
other day that the society of lovely woman is always a delight except
when a man was in earnest about something."
"I said to him, one night," added Elsie Dimmont, "that Kate West wasn't
in her first youth. 'Oh, no!' he said, 'her third or fourth at least.'"
The others smiled, except Mrs. Ranger.
"Poor Kate!" she said; "all you girls seem to dislike her somehow. Mrs.
West was a somebody from Washington," she added, reflectively, as if
she unconsciously sought in the girl's pedigree some explanation of her
unpopularity.
"Is it so dreadful to come from Washington?" asked Miss Merrivale; and
then wondered if she ought to have said it.
"It is not the coming from Washington," was Mrs. Frostwinch's reply,
delivered in the same faintly satirical manner which she had maintained
throughout the discussion; "it is the being merely a somebody instead
of having a definite family name behind her."
"It is all very well for you to make fun of my old-fashioned notions,
Anna," Mrs. Ranger returned, good-naturedly. "You think just as I do."
"I should be sorry not to think as you do about everything," was the
answer. "And, to be perfectly honest, I can't help being a little
ashamed that a cousin of mine has gone on to the stage. She was always
dreadfully headstrong."
"Has she talent?" asked Mrs. Staggchase.
"Yes, she has talent; but is anything short of genius an excuse for
taking to the boards?"
"I wish I could act," put in Miss Dimmont, emphatically. "I'd go on to
the stage in a minute."
Mrs. Ranger looked shocked and grieved as well.
"My dear," she said, "you can't realize what you are saying. The stage
has always been a hotbed of immorality from the very beginning of
theatrical art, and nothing can reform it."
"Reform it," echoed Mrs. Staggchase, suavely; "we don't want to reform
it. Nothing would so surely ruin the actor's art as the reformation of
his morals."
"Oh, my dear!" remonstrated Mrs. Ranger.
"Really, Diana," Mrs. Frostwinch said, good-naturedly, "your sentiments
are too shocking for belief."
"But she doesn't mean them," added Mrs. Ranger.
"I am sorry to shock anybody," the hostess responded, "but I really do
mean what I say. Not that I can see," she added, "that society can
afford to be too squeamish on the question of morals."