XXXV.
People came to the first of Mrs. James Bellingham's receptions withthe expectation of pleasure which the earlier receptions of the seasonawaken even in the oldest and wisest. But they tried to dissemble theireagerness in a fashionable tardiness. "We get later and later," saidMrs. Brinkley to John Munt, as she sat watching the slow gathering ofthe crowd. By half-past eleven it had not yet hidden Mrs. Bellingham,where she stood near the middle of the room, from the pleasant cornerthey had found after accidentally arriving together. Mr. Brinkley hadnot come; he said he might not be too old for receptions, but he was toogood; in either case he preferred to stay at home. "We used to comeat nine o'clock, and now we come at I'm getting into a quotation fromMother 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, butat Mrs. James Bellingham's it was well not to fling any companionshipaway till you were sure of something else. Besides, Mrs. Brinkley wasindolent and good-natured, and Munt was active and good-natured, andthey were well fitted to get on for ten or fifteen minutes. While theytalked she kept an eye out for other acquaintance, and he stood alert toescape at the first chance. "How is it we are here so early--or ratheryou are?" she pursued irrelevantly.
"Oh, I don't know," said Munt, accepting the implication of his superiorfashion with pleasure. "I never mind being among the first. It's ratherinteresting to see people come in--don't you think?"
"That depends a good deal on the people. I don't find a great variety intheir smirks and smiles to Mrs. Bellingham; I seem to be doing them allmyself. And there's a monotony about their apprehension and helplessnesswhen 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 peoplecome in. It's altogether too autobiographical. What else have you tosuggest?"
"I'm afraid I'm at the end of my string," said Munt. "I suppose we shallsee 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 thelast 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 canstand 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 issacrificed. That's the way. But she knows better."
"There's no doubt but she's informed herself. She put me through mycatechism 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 hisold friend with an attention superficially divided with the people towhom she bowed and smiled. The room was filling up. "Well," she said atthe 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 principalone."
"Yes, if she is the principal one." There was an implication ineverything she said that Dan Mavering had been hoodwinked by Mrs.Pasmer. Mature ladies always like to imply something of the sort inthese cases. They like to ignore the prime agency of youth and love, andpretend that marriage is a game that parents play at with us, as ifwe were in an old comedy; it is a tradition. "Will he take her home tolive?"
"No. I heard that they're all going abroad--for a year, or two atleast."
"Ah! I thought so," cried Mrs. Brinkley. She looked up with whimsicalpleasure in the uncertainty of an old gentleman who is staring hard ather through his glasses. "Well," she said with a pleasant sharpness, "doyou make me out?"
"As nearly as my belief in your wisdom will allow," said the oldgentleman, as distinctly as his long white moustache and an apparentabsence of teeth behind it would let him. John Munt had eagerlyabandoned the seat he was keeping at Mrs. Brinkley's side, and hadlaunched himself into the thickening crowd. The old gentleman, who waslank and tall, folded himself down into it, He continued as tranquillyas if seated quite alone with Mrs. Brinkley, and not minding that hisvoice, with the senile crow in it, made itself heard by others. "I'malways surprised to find sensible people at these things of Jane's.They're most extraordinary things. Jane's idea of society is to turn aherd 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 Elementsor Divine Providence. You may come here and have a good time--if youcan 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'slike the indifference of fate; but it's rather rough on those who don'tunderstand 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 tothemselves. She's a kind woman--Jane is a very good-natured woman, and Ireally 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--absolutelynothing."
"Perhaps she does all they deserve for them. I don't know that any oneacquires merit by coming to an evening party; and it's impossible to bepersonally hospitable to everybody in such a crowd."
"Yes, I've sometimes taken that view of it. And yet if you ask astranger to your house, you establish a tacit understanding with himthat you won't forget him after you have him there. I like to go aboutand note the mystification of strangers who've come here with somenotion of a little attention. It's delightfully poignant; I suffer withthem; it's a cheap luxury of woe; I follow them through all the turnsand windings of their experience. Of course the theory is that, beingturned loose here with the rest, they may speak to anybody; but the factis, they can't. Sometimes I should like to hail some of these unfriendedspirits, but I haven't the courage. I'm not individually bashful, but Ihave a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon civilisation behind me. There oughtto be policemen, to show strangers about and be kind to them. I've justseen two pretty women cast away in a corner, and clinging to a smallwater-colour on the wall with a show of interest that would melt a heartof stone. Why do you come, Mrs. Brinkley? I should like to know. You'renot obliged to."
"No," said Mrs. Brinkley, lowering her voice instinctively, as if tobring his down. "I suppose I come from force of habit I've been coming along 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 leisureclass, you know, that voluntarily turns night into day. Do you know whatI go about saying now?"
"Something amusing, I suppose."
"You'd better not be so sure of that. I've discovered a fact, or ratherI've formulated an old one. I've always been troubled how to classifypeople here, there are so many exceptions; and I've ended by broadlygeneralising them as women and men."
Mrs. Brinkley was certainly amused at this. "It seems to me that thereyou've been anticipated by nature--not to mention art."
"Oh, not in my particular view. The women in America represent thearistocracy which exists everywhere else in both sexes. You are born tothe patrician leisure; you have the accomplishments and the clothesand manners and ideals; and we men are a natural commonalty, born tobusiness, to newspapers, to cigars, and horses. This natural femalearistocracy of ours establishes the forms, usages, places, and times ofsociety. The epicene aristocracies of other countries turn night intoday in their social pleasures, and our noblesse sympathetically followstheir example. You ladies, who can lie till noon next day, come toJane's reception at eleven o'clock, and you drag along with you a herdof us brokers, bankers, merchants, lawye
rs, and doctors, who must be atour offices and counting-rooms before nine in the morning. The hours ofus work-people are regulated by the wholesome industries of thegreat democracy which we're a part of; and the hours of our wives anddaughters 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'tsleep in." The old man's voice broke in a tremor. "Ah, it's a bed oftorture! I spend many a wicked hour in mine, envying St. Lawrence hisgridiron. But what do you think of my theory?"
"It's a very pretty theory. My only objection to it is that it's tooflattering. You know I rather prefer to abuse my sex; and to be set upas a natural aristocracy--I don't know that I can quite agree tothat, even to account satisfactorily for being at your sister-in-law'sreception."
"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'tyou relax your severe sense of duty? Why need you insist upon being atyour offices every morning at nine? Why don't you fling off these habitsof lifelong industry, and be gracefully indolent in the interest of thehigher civilisation?"
Bromfield Corey looked round at her with a smile of relish for hersatire. Her husband was a notoriously lazy man, who had chosen to liverestrictedly upon an inherited property rather than increase it by thesmallest 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 toimply that it was all an effect of her manoeuvring, and that the youngpeople had nothing to do with it; this survival from European fictiondies hard. "Who is the young man?"
Mrs. Brinkley gave him an account of Dan Mavering as she had seen him atCampobello, and of his family as she just heard of them. "Mr. Munt wastelling 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 begoing to pieces every way. I don't call sixty-nine such a very greatage."
"Not at all!" cried Mrs. Brinkley. "I'm fifty-four myself, andBrinkley's sixty."
"But I feel a thousand years old. I don't see people, and when I do Idon't know 'em. My head's in a cloud." He let it hang heavily; thenhe lifted it, and said: "He's a nice, comfortable fellow, Munt is. Whydidn't he stop and talk a bit?"
"Well, Munt's modest, you know; and I suppose he thought he might be thethird that makes company a crowd. Besides, nobody stops and talks a bitat 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 aphotograph. I wonder who invented this sort of thing? Do you know," saidthe old man, "that I think it's rather worse with us than with any otherpeople? We're a simple, sincere folk, domestic in our instincts, notgregarious or frivolous in any way; and when we're wrenched awayfrom our firesides, and packed in our best clothes into Jane's gildedsaloons, we feel vindictive; we feel wicked. When the Boston beingabandons himself--or herself--to fashion, she suffers a depravation intosomething quite lurid. She has a bad conscience, and she hardens herheart with talk that's tremendously cynical. It's amusing," said Corey,staring round him purblindly at the groups and files of people surgingand eddying past the corner where he sat with Mrs. Brinkley.
"No; it's shocking," said his companion. "At any rate, you mustn't saysuch things, even if you think them. I can't let you go too far, youknow. These young people think it heavenly, here."
She took with him the tone that elderly people use with those older thanthemselves who have begun to break; there were authority and patronagein it. At the bottom of her heart she thought that Bromfield Coreyshould not have been allowed to come; but she determined to keep himsafe and harmless as far as she could.
From time to time the crowd was a stationary mass in front of them; thenit dissolved and flowed away, to gather anew; there were moments whenthe floor near them was quite vacant; then it was inundated again withsilken 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 theywere partners in the dance, and had come out of the ball-room betweendances. There was a good deal of nervous talk, politely subdued amongthem; but it was not the note of unearthly rapture which Mrs. Brinkley'sconventional claim had implied; it was self-interested, eager, anxious;and was probably not different from the voice of good society anywhere.
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