Our best society

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — Our Domestic Peace is Broken i

II. — On the Brink of Society ii

Chapter I

LICE looked up from the typewriter where she f~\ was copying my story. “It does seem like a good chance, does n’t it?” she said.

“What?” I asked, turning from the page I had been correcting with my pen. Alice has a curious habit of blurting out things.

“Mrs. Van Zandt’s invitation, of course.”

“ I had forgotten it.” I returned to my revising. I enjoy revising my work when it has been typewritten: it almost seems as if it had been done by some one else.

By my tone I had tried to convey that the subject was closed; but Alice frequently ignores those little messages.

“Your experience thus far has been limited,” she went on, pretending to pore over my manuscript.

“How?” I asked.

i

“Socially,” she replied with patient conciseness. “The Van Zandts know everybody.”

“Then they must waste a lot of time,” I retorted.

“Everybody worth knowing.” Now you can’t keep on writing about literary people. They are not especially interesting anyway — in books.”

I put down my pen. “What is it you are driving at?”

“I am trying to make you see that we ought to go to the Van Zandts’ dinner-party.”

Alice turned to the machine. For several minutes I listened to the rapid clicking of the keys. Alice and I never quarrel ; but occasionally we do have subtle jars. They seem to me one of the most terrible refinements of civilisation.

At last I exclaimed: “Now don’t be silly.”

Alice stopped writing at once. She looked at me with astonishment in her face. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“ I see that you want to go to that dinner. I don’t want to go. But if you insist, I will go,” I conceded.

Alice started to turn back to the typewriter; but she checked herself. “I really don’t care about it at all, Edward. But I ’ve been thinking lately that the life we lead here is very limited.”

“It suits me all right,” I replied, folding my hands behind my head.

“It’s pleasant enough; but it doesn’t give you any material.”

“I hate this continual looking for material. If I did it all the time, I ’d never get any rest. Thank Heaven, I ’m not one of those fellows that carry their work round in their heads. I should think they ’d go mad.”

“With a good many of them it ’s a pose,” Alice acknowledged.

Suddenly it occurred to me to ask: “Are n’t you satisfied with this little apartment? ”

“You know I love it!” Alice indignantly exclaimed.

“So do I. And I love it all the more because it ’s in the slums.”

“But it is n’t in the slums, Edward.”

“It ’s so near there ’s not much difference.”

“We are just around the corner from Second Avenue, and some very nice people live there.”

“Why should we care whether we live near nice people or not? The people that we like come here to see us. If they did n’t like us, too, they would n’t take the trouble to travel ’way down to Twelfth Street.”

“The Van Zandts live downtown, you know,” Alice went on, “in Washington Square. It would be convenient for us to go.”

“Carriage?” I asked almost in a whisper.

“No!” Alice exclaimed.

“Walk?”

“Certainly, — er — that is, if you like.”

The moment of hesitancy alarmed me. “But it would be such a bore. I could n’t do any work the next morning.”

Alice rested her hands on the table, the fingers wide apart. She stared at them for a long time. “Have you ever read the Potiphar Papers, Edward?”

“By George William Curtis? Of course I have.”

“ Do you know what I think would be fine ? ” Alice drew her fingers together and separated them again.

“What?”

“To do something like what he did in those papers.” She looked up into my face and smiled. “You look a little like Curtis as he was at your age.”

I turned away impatiently.

“You do really. Haven’t you ever seen his picture as a young man? He used to let his hair fall over his forehead just as yours does.”

I resisted the impulse to brush back my hair.

“He was poor like you, too.”

I leaned forward and, before Alice realised what I was going to do, I gave her a kiss. “Poor!” I exclaimed.

Then Alice drew her chair nearer.

“It really is a splendid chance. Why, there are plenty of people here in New York who would crawl to Washington Square on their hands and knees to attend one of Mrs. Van Zandt’s dinner-parties. And to think that they should come ’way down here to call on us!”

“They did it just because Mrs. Van Zandt took a fancy to you.”

Alice shook her head.

“Why, then?”

“Because I am married to you — because you are a personage now, Ned.”

“You know perfectly well that she was nice to you at Narragansett, before you married me. She used to take you out driving every day.”

“That was because she was bored. I was a fresh interest. But she ’d never have found me interesting in New York. It ’s you she ’s after, Ned, and we must go.”

“But the damage!” I lamented.

“It won’t cost anything.”

“We ’ll have to ask them to dine with us.”

“They won’t come. Besides, they wouldn’t expect it.”

“Then they are not receiving us on terms of equality. They want to patronise us.”

“How foolish you are, Ned! Can’t you see they ’ll feel honoured by your consenting to come?”

“My consenting?” I asked, bewildered.

“The other people will be glad to see you. Of course, they ’ll all have read your book.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“Because, after we accept, Mrs. Van Zandt will let them know you ’re coming, and they ’ll all rush off and get the book.”

“From the libraries,” I grunted.

“ Those people don’t bother to go to libraries. When they want a thing they never wait for it. They just send some one to buy it. That ’s the beauty of being acquainted with them. They meet so few authors that they never think of asking for autograph copies.”

“Expecting to get them for nothing,” I added.

“Really, it ’s very important that we should go to the Van Zandts’,” Alice continued briskly, as if the matter were settled. “We ’ll meet people who will ask us to their houses, and we ’ll see something of the great world. Then you can write about it. So few authors know society as it really is — especially among the younger writers.”

“My dear, you are becoming terribly commercial.”

“One has to be commercial in New York,” Alice replied gayly, “even when one is married to a literary man.”

During the next few moments Alice busied herself with her copying. But I knew that she would speedily return to the discussion. Finally she said: “Of course, all you ’d have to do would be to wear your evening clothes.”

“That dear old dress-suit!” I exclaimed.

“It was expensive, was n’t it?”

“Seventy-five dollars, just about twice as much as I could afford. But I suppose the most prudent man is apt to be extravagant when he ’s buying a wardrobe before he is married.”

“It looks all right.”

“Except that it ’s three years out of style.”

“Styles don’t change in dress-suits. Besides,” Alice went on, inconsistently, “no one would notice what you wore. People never expect literary men to be careful about their clothes.”

“That ’s all the more reason why I should wish to be careful. However, if you prefer to have me wear the old suit, I ’ll do it.”

“I think you ought to have a new suit, anyway, Ned. Suppose you should be asked to take part in an Authors’ Reading? How awful it would be to stand up in that old thing of yours — especially when all the other young men whose books are having big sales would be wearing the most extravagant clothes! People would say your books weren’t selling.”

'“But I can’t allow myself the luxury of a new dress-suit unless you get something new too,” I exclaimed with a feverish haste that made me realize how hard it was to be heroic.

“Oh,” Alice replied bravely, “I can fix up one of my old dresses, — one of those I had before I was married.”

At this moment I felt a sudden depression, why, I cannot explain. It was followed by a violent revulsion against that dinner-party. “Alice,” I said earnestly, “let ’s write to the Van Zandts that we can’t come. It will upset all our quiet little habits. It will get us into a world where we don’t really belong. As things are now, we have a world of our own, and it suits us both.”

To my astonishment Alice looked me full in the face and replied: “Please don’t get into that preaching way, Ned. Of course, I am willing to give up the old dinner-party. But it does seem a pity that you should miss the chance of doing the book.”

“Oh, hang the book! Life is more important than literature,” I sententiously exclaimed.

“But if you don’t go on making literature, I don’t see how we can live. So far as we are concerned there ’s no difference between them.”

“Well, it ’s very kind of you to call what I write literature, my dear girl.”

“The only trouble with you, Ned, is that you ’re too literary. That ’s what I want you to know the Van Zandts for,”

I noticed that there was a quaver in Alice’s voice; but it did not prepare me for the scene that followed. With bewilderment I saw her face flush, and her eyes fill with tears. A moment later she had covered her face with her hands and was sobbing violently.

“Oh, my poor Alice!’’ I exclaimed, and I walked over and put my arms around her. She drew away from me. At last she broke out: “You never do what I want you to do. Here I am, all day long, shut up in this old flat. You work in the morning and I can’t speak to you. At luncheon you are so tired that you have n’t a word to say. All you can do is eat. And then, in the afternoon, you go out to the club or to see editors, and you don’t get back till dinner-time.”

“But our evenings, Alice,” I gasped. “Think how pleasant they are.”

“After being shut up in the house all day? You ’d better stay at home some time and see how you ’ll like it then. I must have a little variety in my life. I ’ve always had it — till I was married — and I do get so sick of those literary people who come here and talk about themselves and about the books they have written or the books they ’re going to write, till one o’clock in the morning! I ’ve actually sat for hours listening to them without saying one word myself.”

“That ’s because you ’re so sympathetic,” I helplessly exclaimed. “It does them a lot of good to talk their ideas over with you. They ’ve told me so themselves. That ’s what most of them come for.”

“But when I ’m not in the room they keep at it just the same ; and when a lot of them are in your den together it ’s a perfect struggle among them to see which can talk most about himself. They hate to hear about one another’s things.”

“Oh, come now, Alice, I don’t think you ’re quite fair.”

“You know perfectly well I ’m fair. You ’ve often told me I am the fairest-minded woman you ’ve ever known. And I ’ve heard you ridicule literary people for being so egotistical. But when you are among them, you ’re just as bad as any of them.”

“I suppose I am,” I humbly acknowledged.

Alice rose with quiet dignity. Her face, a moment before wet with tears, now gave not the slightest indication that she had been crying except that her eyes looked unusually bright and pretty. It is marvellous, the way she can conceal the ravages of grief.

“After all, I think you are right,” she said in a low voice. “ When a woman marries a literary man, she enjoys privileges that other women can’t have. So she ought to be prepared to make sacrifices. I am sorry for what I said. Besides, I only wished to go to the Van Zandts’ for your sake. It would be no pleasure for me. But I see now that I was wrong. It would be giving up too much that is essential to your comfort.” She walked to the door leading to the hall. “Let us not speak of it again.”

These words gave me a fierce desire to prolong the discussion; but somehow I found I could not move from my seat. I felt as if I had been unjustly

IO convicted of an offence I could not understand. I knew only that it was serious. For a long time I smoked my pipe, glancing from time to time at Alice’s empty chair. I was getting a hard punishment, and I could think of no philosophy to soften it. It was accompanied by a consciousness, with which Alice alone had the power to inspire me, of serious trouble to come.

Chapter II

F OR two days Alice did not mention the Van Zandts’ invitation. On the second evening I said to her: “Have you written to those people in Washington Square?”

“Not yet,” Alice replied.

“But what will they think of us?”

“You didn’t say anything about it.” Alice sat at my desk, and, taking the note-paper that she keeps for her special uses, she wrote rapidly. I looked over her shoulder and read :

“My dear Mrs. Van Zandt:

“It is so kind of you to ask us to dine with you, and we are sorry that we are engaged for the ninth

“Alice!”

“Well?”

“What engagement?”

“The usual one — to stay at home.”

“What ’s the use of lying about it?”

“Do you call that lying?” she asked, with a smile that convicted me of a long line of offences. She drew from her box another sheet and I watched her with curiosity.

ii

“My dear Mrs. Van Zandt:

“It is so kind of you to ask us to dine with you.”

Alice looked up. “That isn’t quite truthful, either, is it, from your point of view?”

“Well, I ’ll concede that,” I replied, waving my hand, and Alice began to write again.

“But to be perfectly frank, my husband ”

“Now, Alice!” I protested. “You know better than that.”

“Than what?” she asked, biting her pen.

“Calling me your husband. It sounds — ” I hesitated, and Alice supplied a word — “Common?”

“Well, not exactly. But wouldn’t my name do better?”

Alice drew in her under-lip and took a fresh sheet. “It is expensive knowing the Van Zandts,” she commented lightly.

“You might practise on some of my copy -paper,” I growled, but Alice paid no attention.

“My dear Mrs. Van Zandt:

“It is so kind of you to ask us to dine with you.”

“Before we get through,” I remarked, “Mrs. Van Zandt will be established in our minds as the kindest person in the world.”

“But Edward ”

she wrote.

“Now look here!” I said in a loud voice. “It’s absurd to call me Edward. She ’s never seen me.”

“They all call one another by their first names.”

“Won’t ‘Mr. Foster’ do?”

“It would sound provincial to Mrs. Van Zandt. At Narragansett I once heard her ridicule some woman in the hotel, a ‘tradesman’s wife,’ she called her, for always referring to her husband as Mr. Smith, or whatever his old name was.”

“Well, I ’m glad we are n’t going to have anything to do with people who have such silly prejudices.”

“You have a good many yourself — just like them. In your stories you always call your men by their last names. You ’d have a fit if you discovered that by some slip you ’d called one of them by his first name.”

“But I don’t want to seem familiar with my characters, or to pet them, or anything like that. I want to be impersonal.”

“Well, you are, dear Ned. But that ’s a prejudice too. Mrs. Van Zandt thinks it ’s a silly affectation for a woman to call her husband by the name she ’d never give him if she were speaking to him.”

“I suppose there ’s something in that,” I acknowledged, determined, if possible, to look at the matter in a broad way.

“That is only one of many things you ’d learn by going into society. Now, if you were writing a story about rich people here in New York, people like the Van Zandts, you ’d make them write and do and say a great many things that they ’d positively shudder at. That ’s why they think nearly all the society novels are so absurd.”

“Write what you please,” I remarked, not very pleasantly I ’ll admit, and Alice continued:

“ finds it impossible to go out in the evening and keep on with his literary work.”

“Now I can’t have that!”

Alice placed another sheet on the blotter. “Very well, you dictate the letter and I ’ll write it.”

“It ’s absurd, dragging in my business. It ’s simply brag.”

“Dictate and I ’ll write,” Alice commanded.

“My dear Mrs. Van Zandt,” I said, trying to keep my temper. The effort produced an explosion. “You and your damned old dinner can go to the devil.”

Alice brushed back her hair to indicate how sorely tried a woman she was. “You might be sensible,” she remarked with a simulation of divine patience.

“I am willing to go to the dinner,” I finally heard myself saying, in a voice utterly unlike my own.

Alice did not reply.

“I will do anything,” I exclaimed desperately, “to put an end to this situation.”

“Who created it?” Alice asked, without moving.

“I suppose you think I did,” I challenged. But Alice was in too heroic a mood to heed.

“I am willing to take all the blame,” she said. “ I ought to have known better than to aspire to anything outside of our routine.”

I sat at the table and seized a sheet of paper. It was my turn now to be silent. When I had finished writing I tossed the sheet over to Alice, feeling that I had made a masterly stroke.

“That won’t do at all,” she said wearily.

“Why not?”

“It would be insulting to treat Mrs. Van Zandt in that impersonal way, after she took the trouble to send me a nice note.” Alice smiled faintly, and I reached over for the sheet and read aloud:

“ ‘Mr. and Mrs. Edward Foster accept with pleasure Mrs. Nicholas Van Zandt ’s kind invitation for dinner on the ninth of this month.’ ”

I shook my head despairingly. “It sounds to me terribly correct.”

“That ’s the trouble,” Alice remarked with easy authority.

“As if we could be too correct with those people!”

“Dear Ned, that shows how simple you are. It also shows that you have n’t caught their tone. But, of course, how could you ? ” she went on laughing.

“I would n’t be so superior if I were you, just because I ’d rubbed up against people like the Van Zandts for a few weeks at a summer hotel.”

Alice, as I at once perceived, felt so secure in her advantage that she would not take offence. In the most cheerful manner she drew another sheet from her box of note-paper and, as she wrote, I looked over her shoulder.

“Dear Mrs. Van Zandt:

“Your dear little note must have come just after Edward and I left for the country and we have just i6 returned to find it waiting for us. It will give us both great pleasure to dine with you on the ninth.

“Sincerely yours,

“Alice Foster.”

“Whew!” I said, and Alice took up an envelope and wrote the address.

“It is much less deceitful to tell a whopper than to twist the truth,” Alice remarked indifferently. “Now,” she went on, “please drop this in the box at once, Edward. It ’s dreadful to think that we ’ve kept Mrs. Van Zandt waiting so long.”

I walked down the stairs, feeling a strange heaviness of body. I wondered vaguely if men usually knew when they were henpecked. As I was about to drop the letter into the box, it occurred to me that dropping or not dropping the letter might change the whole course of my life. How often had I observed that great issues were directed by the most trifling causes! After going out in the chilly autumn night, however, it seemed easier to drop the letter than not to drop it.

As soon as I returned to the apartment, Alice threw her arms around my neck. “ I knew you hated the thought of going and you did it just for me. But we shall get heaps of material — heaps.”

“That ’s an awful way of looking at the matter,” I replied, gloomily. “It seems like spying.”

“Then a writer is spying all the time.”

“And I often feel uncomfortable about it.”

“But think of all the good it does. Think of all your books teach. Have n’t you always said that a story was valuable only so far as it gave a criticism i7 of life and helped people to understand life better and to live better. That ’s what your books do.”

“Oh,” I lamented, “I sometimes think it would be better to join the Salvation Army at once!”

“Then you ’d never reach the rich,” Alice gleefully remarked. “It ’s just your luck to be one of the few who are able to help the poor millionaires.”

“When is the old dinner?” I asked, less for the sake of securing the information than to show that I still felt ugly.

“Just a week from to-night,” Alice replied.

I have reason to recall this answer. It stands for a lost week in our life. I wonder if all people have similar periods. I know that all writers do. Every morning when I went to my desk the thought of that dinner-party would keep me for a long time from getting to work. When, finally, I did succeed in making a start, it would be unsatisfactory, and I would tear up what I had written, only to sit in despair and make another futile attempt. Then, too, Alice would do what she had never done before — burst in and interrupt me on every occasion to discuss the same subject, her clothes. On the day after we accepted the invitation she went straight to the dressmaker’s. I might as well confess that on the same day I conferred with my tailor. I tried to face the situation heroically; we must do the right thing, no matter what the cost might be. Not for one moment did I lose my temper, and as for Alice, she had the serenity of one whose ways were busy enough to create a sense of importance. It was not until, in an absent-minded way, she asked me if I had i8 ordered the carriage, that I became really aroused to what we were doing. I was astonished when I heard myself saying, as if some one inside of me had spoken : “Shall we have two horses and an outrider?”

“We ’ll have a coup6,” said Alice.

“Not a brougham?” I asked, merely to go on being sarcastic.

From that moment until we entered the coup6, there was a coldness between Alice and me. I believe that no one else would have noticed it. In fact, we seemed unusually considerate of each other and affectionate. But, somehow, it was a painful time. I felt relieved when I saw Alice seated beside me as we whirled up the street. Suddenly my hand stole toward hers. In response to my pressure, she gave a quick little squeeze.

“Do you think it ’s been worth while?” I asked, and she replied, her eyes filling with tears:

“You have n’t said one word about my gown.”

“All your gowns seem beautiful t6 me,” I said, and, as I spoke, I realised that I was literary rather than truthful. I occasionally find literature getting into my speech just as in daily life actors impersonate characters they have played.

“I don’t believe you’ve noticed the gown.” Alice kept her eyes fixed on the carriage window. “I just walked around the room, hoping you ’d speak of it. You were so mean that I would n’t tell you what I thought of your dress suit.”

“That was because I was nervous, dear. I was afraid of being late. You know I love you in those white fleecy things. And it ’s so simple, too.”

“It ’s the first low-necked gown I ’ve had since I was married.”

Alice had touched on a dangerous subject: the difference in her worldly condition before marriage and since. After a few moments an indescribable influence forced me to speak.

“I should have been just as pleased if they had n’t cut it so low.”

“But it is n’t much more than open at the neck.” Alice declared, turning her face toward me. “Wait till you see what the other women will wear.”

“ I can’t see how that will help the matter.”

Then Alice shot her keenest shaft. “It will be a compensation for all I ’ve gone through for you to attend this dinner-party if the experience will only make you a little less provincial.”

I leaned back in my seat and Alice sat bolt upright. We did not speak again until we reached Washington Square; but when we started to leave the carriage Alice broke out: “Now you must be very careful about the way you behave, Ned. Don’t talk too much. Be reserved. They ’ll like you better. If you are very quiet, they ’ll think you ’re deep. And, above all things, don’t talk shop. If they try to make you do it, talk of something else. And be careful not to air any of your pet theories. Don’t let them draw you into an argument. That would be simply awful. Be reserved! ” she summed up.

Before I could touch the bell, the door opened and we passed into the hall, the atmosphere of which, heavy with furnace heat and with the odor of flowers, seemed to smite our faces. Alice walked straight up-stairs, and I meekly followed. There are moments, I suppose in the lives of all married men, when they feel like slaves.

Alice turned into one of the large rooms facing the Square, and I entered the room at the opposite side of the hall.

Chapter III

I T was not until I had removed my coat in front of the mirror and placed it carefully on the bed, that I was able to take an intelligent interest in my surroundings. It was one of those terribly overornamented rooms characteristic of an earlier period in New York when taste was not the saleable commodity that it has become in recent years. The walls were covered with a shining yellow paper — Alice has since told me it was satin — with a ridiculous flowerdesign. On the walls, however, were some good pictures — paintings, chiefly, — that is, the names on the frames I recognised as good. I make no claim to be anything of an art critic: if I had my choice, even with plenty of money, I would n’t have a painting in a gilt frame in the house. However, as Alice frequently remarks in my presence, that comment is of no importance. The hangings at the windows I liked; they were of some plain yellow stuff, without design, and they harmonised with the hue of the wall-paper. Of the furniture in the room, the bed interested me most. It was one of those big mahogany four-posters, and over the yellow silk coverlet had been spread a piece of filmy lace. The other furniture ought to have been mahogany, but it was not. It was conglomerate both as to material and color, and the effect, though it suggested wealth and an old-fashioned taste, was curiously disturbing. Beside the bed I noticed a table with a rack containing books. “Ha!” I said to my. elf. “Now we will judge what the tastes of these rich people are like.” I went over to the table stealthily, as if I were doing something that reflected on my manners, and I looked over the titles of the books. They were all novels, two by Conan Doyle, one by Marie Corelli, and “When Knighthood Was in Flower.” I gasped and turned away.

As I was examining the pictures, two young fellows came laughing up the stairs and dashed into the room. One was blond and rosy-cheeked and innocentlooking ; the other had dark, close-cropped hair and a small moustache over his full lips. They both glanced at me and then they proceeded to tear off their overcoats as if eager to rush down-stairs again.

“I wonder what my fate will be to-night,” said the dark one.

“I ’ll bet that I take out Letty Henderson,” the blond replied. “I ’ve taken her out five times in three weeks.”