People came to the first of Mrs. James Bellingham's receptions with
the expectation of pleasure which the earlier receptions of the season
awaken even in the oldest and wisest. But they tried to dissemble their
eagerness in a fashionable tardiness. “We get later and later,” said
Mrs. Brinkley to John Munt, as she sat watching the slow gathering of
the crowd. By half-past eleven it had not yet hidden Mrs. Bellingham,
where she stood near the middle of the room, from the pleasant corner
they had found after accidentally arriving together. Mr. Brinkley had
not come; he said he might not be too old for receptions, but he was too
good; in either case he preferred to stay at home. “We used to come
at nine o'clock, and now we come at I'm getting into a quotation from
Mother Goose, I think.”
“I thought it was Browning,” said Munt, with his witticism manner.
Neither he nor Mrs. Brinkley was particularly glad to be together, but
at Mrs. James Bellingham's it was well not to fling any companionship
away till you were sure of something else. Besides, Mrs. Brinkley was
indolent and good-natured, and Munt was active and good-natured, and
they were well fitted to get on for ten or fifteen minutes. While they
talked she kept an eye out for other acquaintance, and he stood alert to
escape at the first chance. “How is it we are here so early--or rather
you are?” she pursued irrelevantly.
“Oh, I don't know,” said Munt, accepting the implication of his superior
fashion with pleasure. “I never mind being among the first. It's rather
interesting to see people come in--don't you think?”
“That depends a good deal on the people. I don't find a great variety in
their smirks and smiles to Mrs. Bellingham; I seem to be doing them all
myself. And there's a monotony about their apprehension and helplessness
when they're turned adrift that's altogether too much like my own. No,
Mr. Munt, I can't agree with you that it's interesting to see people
come in. It's altogether too autobiographical. What else have you to
suggest?”
“I'm afraid I'm at the end of my string,” said Munt. “I suppose we shall
see the Pasmers and young Mavering here to-night.”
Mrs. Brinkley turned and looked sharply at him.
“You've heard of the engagement?” he asked.
“No, decidedly, I haven't. And after his flight from Campobello it's the
last thing I expected to hear of. When did it come out?”
“Only within a few days. They've been keeping it rather quiet. Mrs.
Pasmer told me herself.”
Mrs. Brinkley gave herself a moment for reflection. “Well, if he can
stand it, I suppose I can.”
“That isn't exactly what people are saying to Mrs. Pasmer, Mrs.
Brinkley,” suggested Munt, with his humorous manner.
“I dare say they're trying to make her believe that her daughter is
sacrificed. That's the way. But she knows better.”
“There's no doubt but she's informed herself. She put me through my
catechism about the Maverings the day of the picnic down there.”
“Do you know them?”
“Bridge Mavering and I were at Harvard together.”
“Tell me about them.” Mrs. Brinkley listened to Munt's praises of his
old friend with an attention superficially divided with the people to
whom she bowed and smiled. The room was filling up. “Well,” she said at
the end, “he's a sweet young fellow. I hope he likes his Pasmers.”
“I guess there's no doubt about his liking one of them--the principal
one.”
“Yes, if she is the principal one.” There was an implication in
everything she said that Dan Mavering had been hoodwinked by Mrs.
Pasmer. Mature ladies always like to imply something of the sort in
these cases. They like to ignore the prime agency of youth and love, and
pretend that marriage is a game that parents play at with us, as if
we were in an old comedy; it is a tradition. “Will he take her home to
live?”
“No. I heard that they're all going abroad--for a year, or two at
least.”
“Ah! I thought so,” cried Mrs. Brinkley. She looked up with whimsical
pleasure in the uncertainty of an old gentleman who is staring hard at
her through his glasses. “Well,” she said with a pleasant sharpness, “do
you make me out?”
“As nearly as my belief in your wisdom will allow,” said the old
gentleman, as distinctly as his long white moustache and an apparent
absence of teeth behind it would let him. John Munt had eagerly
abandoned the seat he was keeping at Mrs. Brinkley's side, and had
launched himself into the thickening crowd. The old gentleman, who was
lank and tall, folded himself down into it, He continued as tranquilly
as if seated quite alone with Mrs. Brinkley, and not minding that his
voice, with the senile crow in it, made itself heard by others. “I'm
always surprised to find sensible people at these things of Jane's.
They're most extraordinary things. Jane's idea of society is to turn a
herd of human beings loose in her house, and see what will come of it.
She has no more sense of hospitality or responsibility than the Elements
or Divine Providence. You may come here and have a good time--if you
can get it; she won't object; or you may die of solitude and inanition;
she'd never know it. I don't know but it's rather sublime in her. It's
like the indifference of fate; but it's rather rough on those who don't
understand it. She likes to see her rooms filled with pretty dresses,
but she has no social instincts and no social inspiration whatever.
She lights and heats and feeds her guests, and then she leaves them to
themselves. She's a kind woman--Jane is a very good-natured woman, and I
really think she'd be grieved if she thought any one went away unhappy,
but she does nothing to make them at home in her house--absolutely
nothing.”
“Perhaps she does all they deserve for them. I don't know that any one
acquires merit by coming to an evening party; and it's impossible to be
personally hospitable to everybody in such a crowd.”
“Yes, I've sometimes taken that view of it. And yet if you ask a
stranger to your house, you establish a tacit understanding with him
that you won't forget him after you have him there. I like to go about
and note the mystification of strangers who've come here with some
notion of a little attention. It's delightfully poignant; I suffer with
them; it's a cheap luxury of woe; I follow them through all the turns
and windings of their experience. Of course the theory is that, being
turned loose here with the rest, they may speak to anybody; but the fact
is, they can't. Sometimes I should like to hail some of these unfriended
spirits, but I haven't the courage. I'm not individually bashful, but I
have a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon civilisation behind me. There ought
to be policemen, to show strangers about and be kind to them. I've just
seen two pretty women cast away in a corner, and clinging to a small
water-colour on the wall with a show of interest that would melt a heart
of stone. Why do you come, Mrs. Brinkley? I should like to know. You're
not obliged to.”
“No,” said Mrs. Brinkley, lowering her voice instinctively, as if to
bring his down. “I suppose I come from force of habit I've been coming a
long time, you know. Why do you come?”
“Because I can't sleep. If I could sleep, I should be at home in bed.”
A weariness came into his thin face and dim eyes that was pathetic,
and passed into a whimsical sarcasm. “I'm not one of the great leisure
class, you know, that voluntarily turns night into day. Do you know what
I go about saying now?”
“Something amusing, I suppose.”
“You'd better not be so sure of that. I've discovered a fact, or rather
I've formulated an old one. I've always been troubled how to classify
people here, there are so many exceptions; and I've ended by broadly
generalising them as women and men.”
Mrs. Brinkley was certainly amused at this. “It seems to me that there
you've been anticipated by nature--not to mention art.”
“Oh, not in my particular view. The women in America represent the
aristocracy which exists everywhere else in both sexes. You are born to
the patrician leisure; you have the accomplishments and the clothes
and manners and ideals; and we men are a natural commonalty, born to
business, to newspapers, to cigars, and horses. This natural female
aristocracy of ours establishes the forms, usages, places, and times of
society. The epicene aristocracies of other countries turn night into
day in their social pleasures, and our noblesse sympathetically follows
their example. You ladies, who can lie till noon next day, come to
Jane's reception at eleven o'clock, and you drag along with you a herd
of us brokers, bankers, merchants, lawyers, and doctors, who must be at
our offices and counting-rooms before nine in the morning. The hours of
us work-people are regulated by the wholesome industries of the
great democracy which we're a part of; and the hours of our wives and
daughters by the deleterious pleasures of the Old World aristocracy.
That's the reason we're not all at home in bed.”
“I thought you were not at home in bed because you couldn't sleep.”
“I know it. And you've no idea how horrible a bed is that you can't
sleep in.” The old man's voice broke in a tremor. “Ah, it's a bed of
torture! I spend many a wicked hour in mine, envying St. Lawrence his
gridiron. But what do you think of my theory?”
“It's a very pretty theory. My only objection to it is that it's too
flattering. You know I rather prefer to abuse my sex; and to be set up
as a natural aristocracy--I don't know that I can quite agree to
that, even to account satisfactorily for being at your sister-in-law's
reception.”
“You're too modest, Mrs. Brinkley.”
“No, really. There ought to be some men among us--men without morrows.
Now, why don't you and my husband set an example to your sex? Why don't
you relax your severe sense of duty? Why need you insist upon being at
your offices every morning at nine? Why don't you fling off these habits
of lifelong industry, and be gracefully indolent in the interest of the
higher civilisation?”
Bromfield Corey looked round at her with a smile of relish for her
satire. Her husband was a notoriously lazy man, who had chosen to live
restrictedly upon an inherited property rather than increase it by the
smallest exertion.
“Do you think we could get Andy Pasmer to join us?”
“No, I can't encourage you with that idea. You must get on without Mr.
Pasmer; he's going back to Europe with his son-in-law.”
“Do you mean that their girl's married?”
“No-engaged. It's just out.”
“Well, I must say Mrs. Pasmer has made use of her time.” He too liked to
imply that it was all an effect of her manoeuvring, and that the young
people had nothing to do with it; this survival from European fiction
dies hard. “Who is the young man?”
Mrs. Brinkley gave him an account of Dan Mavering as she had seen him at
Campobello, and of his family as she just heard of them. “Mr. Munt was
telling me about them as you came up.”
“Why, was that John Munt?”
“Yes; didn't you know him?”
“No,” said Corey sadly. “I don't know anybody nowadays. I seem to be
going to pieces every way. I don't call sixty-nine such a very great
age.”
“Not at all!” cried Mrs. Brinkley. “I'm fifty-four myself, and
Brinkley's sixty.”
“But I feel a thousand years old. I don't see people, and when I do I
don't know 'em. My head's in a cloud.” He let it hang heavily; then
he lifted it, and said: “He's a nice, comfortable fellow, Munt is. Why
didn't he stop and talk a bit?”
“Well, Munt's modest, you know; and I suppose he thought he might be the
third that makes company a crowd. Besides, nobody stops and talks a bit
at these things. They're afraid of boring or being bored.”
“Yes, they're all in as unnatural a mood as if they were posing for a
photograph. I wonder who invented this sort of thing? Do you know,” said
the old man, “that I think it's rather worse with us than with any other
people? We're a simple, sincere folk, domestic in our instincts, not
gregarious or frivolous in any way; and when we're wrenched away
from our firesides, and packed in our best clothes into Jane's gilded
saloons, we feel vindictive; we feel wicked. When the Boston being
abandons himself--or herself--to fashion, she suffers a depravation into
something quite lurid. She has a bad conscience, and she hardens her
heart with talk that's tremendously cynical. It's amusing,” said Corey,
staring round him purblindly at the groups and files of people surging
and eddying past the corner where he sat with Mrs. Brinkley.
“No; it's shocking,” said his companion. “At any rate, you mustn't say
such things, even if you think them. I can't let you go too far, you
know. These young people think it heavenly, here.”
She took with him the tone that elderly people use with those older than
themselves who have begun to break; there were authority and patronage
in it. At the bottom of her heart she thought that Bromfield Corey
should not have been allowed to come; but she determined to keep him
safe and harmless as far as she could.
From time to time the crowd was a stationary mass in front of them; then
it dissolved and flowed away, to gather anew; there were moments when
the floor near them was quite vacant; then it was inundated again with
silken trains. From another part of the house came the sound of music,
and most of the young people who passed went two and two, as if they
were partners in the dance, and had come out of the ball-room between
dances. There was a good deal of nervous talk, politely subdued among
them; but it was not the note of unearthly rapture which Mrs. Brinkley's
conventional claim had implied; it was self-interested, eager, anxious;
and was probably not different from the voice of good society anywhere.