From the way Mrs. Mount held her head it was evidently her intention of
passing us with a mere bow. But to show how kind Mumsie is, she
exclaimed: “Oh, Mrs. Mount, thank you so much for the lettuce, and
things.”
It was very well done, just as if speaking to her had been an
afterthought. We all stopped; Mumsie and she shook hands, and I’m sure I
beamed.
Mrs. Mount gazed across the street for a moment ere she replied: “It was
nothing, really, it was nothing; I’m always only too glad to help
anything Mrs. Lien or you are arranging. What would the poor do without
Mrs. Lien? I have my own troubles it is true,” she continued without
pause in her drawling voice, “chasing around these horrid shops for
corsets, corsets! Do you know, really, it is too awful for words. Those
I can get here are quite impossible, and the others have not arrived
from Paris.” Mrs. Mount accompanied her words by protruding her chin
after the manner I had observed Mumsie affect.
“Too bad,” murmured Mumsie sympathetically.
“Do you know, really it is.” She spoke as if every other word were in
capitals. “I always get mine from Paris,” and with a most pronounced
sigh, “but they cost a hundred francs a pair, twenty dollars a pair!”
With the closing of this speech she turned and regarded me, and Mumsie
introduced me.
“Nice looking little girl, a bud?” Mrs. Mount was pleased to say. “Well,
my dear, you will have a good time, if you make friends with the right
people; make it a rule, only the right people.”
“That’s very———” I began. I wanted to let her see I appreciated what
she was saying; but she went on in her loud, slow voice:
“Isn’t Christmas a bore? I have just bought some things for some reduced
gentle people. One has to look after the unfortunate of one’s own class
you know really—old mother and three old maids—so sad you know.”
“I’m sure———”
“Yes, I suppose it is kind, but we all have to do it. But I must go, Sir
Thomas and Lady Billings are coming to dinner to-night, and I must call
at the florists, and goodness knows what else—Christmas prices too.”
“Your own———”
“My own conservatories don’t seem able to produce the flowers these
professionals can; do you know, really, my gardener is supposed to be an
expert from England. Now, Miss Travers,” she turned to me, “do take my
tip and know only nice people. They are the only people who live, really
they are. Good-bye Mrs. Somers. Mr. Somers well? Glad to hear it. We
never see him now: I know he is not fond of society, so strange!”
I said: “Good-bye Mrs. Mount. I’m delighted to have met you,” in my best
attempt at the proper manner. I wanted to make a good impression. Mumsie
seemed amused, I wonder why.
As we walked on I felt I had one foot on the ladder; the position was
improved. At last I knew a leading lady in society.
“Well, Elsie, what do you think of her?” Mumsie asked.
“I think she is most interesting,” I replied.
We trudged home.
As we came up the steps the door opened, and a great man seemed to fall
on Mumsie. “Here I am again, Auntie, to bother you and shock your
friends over Christmas!”
Mumsie beamed more than ever.
“Elsie, this is Jack, Mr. Bang! Jack, this is Miss Travers.”
“Hullo, Little Partner,” he cried. That was his greeting. Familiar I
call it. He grasped my hand in his great paw. “I’ve heard of you and
your father: I judge you are in town on a bit of a spree,” and Mr. Bang
grinned.
Perhaps my surprise at this remark showed in my face, for he remarked:
“There is more than one kind of intoxication, you know,” whereat Mumsie
gave him a loving tap on the shoulder, and said,
“Don’t begin lecturing her too soon, Jack,” and turning to me, “Elsie,
don’t take what he may say to you too seriously. He is worse than your
uncle.”
“Very well, Auntie,” replied the reproved one; “I’ll remember that.” And
we entered the house.
Of course, at dinner I told Uncle I had met Mrs. Mount, and, of course,
Uncle asked what I thought of her.
“I could not quite make her out,” I replied, which was quite true. With
all her mighty ways I did not altogether like her. She was rather too
high and mighty.
“Let me tell you something, Elsie,” said Uncle in his fatherly way. “It
is my guess that her ladyship was not hunting corsets at all, nor was
she making purchases for impoverished ladies; she was really talking for
effect.”
“Uncle, how ungenerous of you!” I exclaimed.
“I know for a fact that Sir Thomas Billings is in Toronto to-day, so she
is _not_ entertaining him this evening.”
“Oh!” I cried, flabbergasted.
“When you know more of the world, little niece—” he said.
“When you know more of the world, Little Partner,” this from Mr. Bang.
“But Uncle how do people tolerate such a fraud?” I put in.
“Tolerate! why people like it: it never deceives: it only amuses. Mrs.
Mount and her sayings have amused us for twenty years.”
“Disgusting!” I felt annoyed.
“I suppose your experience has not been large enough to teach you
philosophy enough for that,” put in Mr. Bang. Like his cheek to be
patronizing me!
“The public taste for cheap notorieties, little people with a big noise,
is on a par with its taste for literature and the drama,” said Mr. Bang,
and the tone he used was bitter. As I am some day going to write a book,
I thought I might as well find out more of this, so I turned to him and
asked: “Do you really think so?”
“Certainly, the fact is plain as the nose on your—er—on my face. The
man who cultivates a sound literary style and thinks the public will buy
his books because of it, is not very far from the pawn shop.” (How
vulgar!) “So, too, the young man or maiden who seeks to impress society
with good manners would do better to tie his or her head in a wet
blanket and cultivate a knowledge of what’s what.”
“Elsie, Jack thinks all society people fools,” laughed Mumsie.
“So they are!” stormed the young man. “Look how much trash on paper
finds a ready market, while genius may be starving. Look at the social
columns of our newspapers and see how nonentities find prominence.”
I was annoyed at this tirade, and the tone it was uttered in, the
bitterness. “Do you mean to say,” I added, “that no clever people find
eminence in society; how about the great Disraeli, is he not supposed to
be the original of ‘Vivian Grey’?”
“That was England: this is Canada. Society in England is more catholic
than here.”
I felt this was getting a little beyond me, so I doubled back. “Don’t
you think,” I asked, “if some of your masters of literary style could
produce a ‘best seller’ they would do so, and don’t you also think that
some of your bright examples of good manners would be only too glad to
occupy outstanding positions in society?”
“Absurd! Absurd!” stormed Mr. Bang. “A man of letters, a master of
style, cannot write trash. I’m told that Conrad once tried to do it—and
he couldn’t. Also it is impossible for a man of brains and good manners
to attain eminence in the rushing society here. There is too little real
recompense for the strain required. Vulgarity has no true
attractiveness.”
“Don’t good manners count for anything?” I asked meekly. Jack—I mean
Mr. Bang—smiled a smile of pitying tolerance.
“I once had an Englishman remark to me that he found the ruder he was to
people here the more they esteemed him. He was a man of education and
intelligence. I give you his opinion for what it is worth.”
“I can’t believe that,” I exclaimed.
“It is quite in keeping with the bluff of our social-climbers,” said
Uncle.
They both were against me. I looked to Mumsie, but she shook her head,
as if to say, “Where are they leading the child?”
“I can tell you it is unsafe even to offer a passing civility to a
society lady one does not know. I met a girl once carrying golf clubs;
we were members of the same club, I politely offered to relieve her of
the load. She declined.”
“Poor Jack,” murmured Mumsie.
“The poor girl thought that if she accepted my civility I would make it
the basis of acquaintance, and we had not been introduced. She did not
know if I might belong to her set or not. As for the value she placed
upon herself one may pity her.”
“But, Mr. Bang,—” I began, thinking that something could be said,
surely, from the girl’s point of view.
“There is no but about it,” he interrupted, rudely. “I can read these
people like a book ———”
“It’s the schools that do it,” Uncle cut in. “Our girls’ schools are too
much under the domination of such monstrosities, fed with those
delusions and snobberies. We need to educate our educationalists.” I
could see that his feeling, too, was strong.
“The world is all wrong,” laughed Mumsie, satirically.
“Anyhow, the girls’ schools are wrong,” retorted Uncle. “Get at the
inner workings of those institutions, and you find one or two brats of
the _Nouveaux Riches_, at the head of the strongest clique, making life
hell for the other girls, who won’t toady to them. The result is the
school becomes a breeding ground for the society ‘bug’, as we have it in
America. The rich girls have the biggest hampers, extravagant clothes,
the most money to spend; and are encouraged to show off to the full. The
girls’ school is the nursery-bed of worldliness.”
“And the boys’ schools?” asked Mumsie.
“Much the same: the natural cad once he enters a fraternity house, dons
a smoking jacket, sticks a pipe in his mouth and thinks he is a superior
being. The whole system—for boys and girls—is rotten and wrong.”
“I may say,” put in my fellow guest, “that close on the time I asked
Miss Fashion if I might carry her golf-sticks I met a poor woman
carrying a valise. I took it from her. She was grateful. The moral is
that one may help the old and homely, but not the young and gay.”
“The old need help more than the strong,” said Uncle.
“That reminds me of the story of the Irishman in the street-car, who
gave up his seat to a wizened old maid,” said Mumsie. “‘Thank you very
much,’ said she. ‘Not at all, not at all,’ replied Paddy. ‘Some people
they gets up only when a good-looking girl wants a seat, but I don’t,
sez I to meself sez I, Pat, it’s the sex ye should honour, not the
individual. Not at all mum, not at all’.”
The joke was new to me and I laughed. The men creatures brightened up
too. So I gained new courage and asked: “The boys and girls of the old
families,—what of them?”
“Ah, now, Elsie,” said Uncle, “you are touching upon the really sad
phase of the question. The spectacle of the son or daughter of
self-respecting people fawning on the vulgar-rich is unspeakably
deplorable, and, unfortunately, becoming more common day by day.”
“Agreed, Uncle,” cried Mr. Bang, “and even more apparent in conservative
old England.”
“The kingdom of the mind,—that’s putting it briefly—weakens before the
spell of the motor and the dizzy whirl,” continued Uncle.
“The only remedy is War,”[1] said Mr. Bang, and seemed to glare at me.
“War!” I exclaimed, “how awful!” and I glanced from the one to the
other.
Mumsie shook her head despairingly and rose from the table. As we left
the dining-room Uncle put his arm over my shoulder. “I hope my ideas
don’t frighten you,” he said. “You are to enjoy life.” Dear Uncle!
Two experiences I have had to-day, making the acquaintance of Mrs.
Mount, and meeting Mr. Bang. Were my relations with them reversed, were
I to meet Mr. Bang only occasionally or not at all, and live in the same
house as Mrs. Mount, I feel I should be happier. That shows what I think
of Jack Bang’s social fears.
I don’t know what to make of Mr. Bang, except that I think I do not like
him. Why Uncle and he do not like society is because society does not
like them, and society does not like them because—they take life too
seriously.
But, I may as well record my impression of this interfering visitor. Mr.
Bang is fully six feet tall and his shoulders broad. His hair and small
moustache are black; his face square, clean-cut, and certainly powerful.
In repose his face is thoughtful, sometimes even abstracted. I will put
down what he says, for what it may be worth, to use his own words. I’m
afraid he will be a kill-joy.
I will tell Mumsie confidentially, I am writing a book; and if Uncle
learns I am writing, the fact I have already confided in her will save
me from embarrassment. Again Mr. Bang called me Little Partner as he
said good-night—I suppose I am still a child in his eyes. How dare he!
[1] This passage was written in January, 1914.