And then Alice went on to describe the maid’s work-room, which was also of polished hardwood, and dust-proof, and had a balcony for brushing clothes, and wires upon which to hang them, and hot and cold water, and a big ironing-table and an electric stove. “But there can’t be much work to do,” laughed the girl, “for she never wears a gown more than two or three times. Just think of paying several thousand dollars for a costume, and giving it to your poor relations after you have worn it only twice! And the worst of it is that Mrs. Landis says it’s all nothing unusual; you’ll find such arrangements in every home of people who are socially prominent. She says there are women who boast of never appearing twice in the same gown, and there’s one dreadful personage in Boston who wears each costume once, and then has it solemnly cremated by her butler!”
“It is wicked to do such things,” put in old Mrs. Montague, when she had heard this tale through. “I don’t see how people can get any pleasure out of it.”
“That’s what I said,” replied Alice.
“To whom did you say that?” asked Montague. “To Mrs. Landis?”
“No,” said Alice, “to a cousin of hers. I was downstairs waiting for her, and this girl came in. And we got to talking about it, and I said that I didn’t think I could ever get used to such things.”
“What did she say?” asked the other.
“She answered me strangely,” said the girl. “She’s tall, and very stately, and I was a little bit afraid of her. She said, ‘You’ll get used to it. Everybody you know will be doing it, and if you try to do differently they’ll take offence; and you won’t have the courage to do without friends. You’ll be meaning every day to stop, but you never will, and you’ll go on until you die.’”
“What did you say to that?”
“Nothing,” answered Alice. “Just then Mrs. Landis came in, and Miss Hegan went away.”
“Miss Hegan?” echoed Montague.
“Yes,” said the other. “That’s her name—Laura Hegan. Have you met her?”
CHAPTER VIII
The Horse Show was held in Madison Square Garden, a building occupying a whole city block. It seemed to Montague that during the four days he attended he was introduced to enough people to fill it to the doors. Each one of the exquisite ladies and gentlemen extended to him a delicately gloved hand, and remarked what perfect weather they were having, and asked him how long he had been in New York, and what he thought of it. Then they would talk about the horses, and about the people who were present, and what they had on.
He saw little of his brother, who was squiring the Walling ladies most of the time; and Alice, too, was generally separated from him and taken care of by others. Yet he was never alone—there was always some young matron ready to lead him to her carriage and whisk him away to lunch or dinner.
Many times he wondered why people should be so kind to him, a stranger, and one who could do nothing for them in return. Mrs. Billy Alden undertook to explain it to him, one afternoon, as he sat in her box. There had to be some people to enjoy, it appeared, or there would be no fun in the game. “Everything is new and strange to you,” said she, “and you’re delicious and refreshing; you make these women think perhaps they oughtn’t to be so bored after all! Here’s a woman who’s bought a great painting; she’s told that it’s great, but she doesn’t understand it herself—all she knows is that it cost her a hundred thousand dollars. And now you come along, and to you it’s really a painting—and don’t you see how gratifying that is to her?”
“Oliver is always telling me it’s bad form to admire,” said the man, laughing.
“Yes?” said the other. “Well, don’t you let that brother of yours spoil you. There are more than enough of blase people in town—you be yourself.”
He appreciated the compliment, but added, “I’m afraid that when the novelty is worn off, people will be tired of me.”
“You’ll find your place,” said Mrs. Alden—“the people you like and who like you.” And she went on to explain that here he was being passed about among a number of very different “sets,” with different people and different tastes. Society had become split up in that manner of late—each set being jealous and contemptuous of all the other sets. Because of the fact that they overlapped a little at the edges, it was possible for him to meet here a great many people who never met each other, and were even unaware of each other’s existence.
And Mrs. Alden went on to set forth the difference between these “sets”; they ran from the most exclusive down to the most “yellow,” where they shaded off into the disreputable rich—of whom, it seemed, there were hordes in the city. These included “sporting” and theatrical and political people, some of whom were very rich indeed; and these sets in turn shaded off into the criminals and the demi-monde—who might also easily be rich. “Some day,” said Mrs. Alden “you should get my brother to tell you about all these people. He’s been in politics, you know, and he has a racing-stable.”
And Mrs. Alden told him about the subtle little differences in the conventions of these various sets of Society. There was the matter of women smoking, for instance. All women smoked, nowadays; but some would do it only in their own apartments, with their women friends; and some would retire to an out-of-the-way corner to do it; while others would smoke in their own dining-rooms, or wherever the men smoked. All agreed however, in never smoking “in public”—that is, where they would be seen by people not of their own set. Such, at any rate, had always been the rule, though a few daring ones were beginning to defy even that.
Such rules were very rigid, but they were purely conventional, they had nothing to do with right or wrong: a fact which Mrs. Alden set forth with her usual incisiveness. A woman, married or unmarried, might travel with a man all over Europe, and every one might know that she did it, but it would make no difference, so long as she did not do it in America. There was one young matron whom Montague would meet, a raging beauty, who regularly got drunk at dinner parties, and had to be escorted to her carriage by the butler. She moved in the most exclusive circles, and every one treated it as a joke. Unpleasant things like this did not hurt a person unless they got “out”—that is, unless they became a scandal in the courts or the newspapers. Mrs. Alden herself had a cousin (whom she cordially hated) who had gotten a divorce from her husband and married her lover forthwith and had for this been ostracized by Society. Once when she came to some semi-public affair, fifty women had risen at once and left the room! She might have lived with her lover, both before and after the divorce, and every one might have known it, and no one would have cared; but the convenances declared that she should not marry him until a year had elapsed after the divorce.
One thing to which Mrs. Alden could testify, as a result of a lifetime’s observation, was the rapid rate at which these conventions, even the most essential of them, were giving way, and being replaced by a general “do as you please.” Anyone could see that the power of women like Mrs. Devon, who represented the old regime, and were dignified and austere and exclusive, was yielding before the onslaught of new people, who were bizarre and fantastic and promiscuous and loud. And the younger sets cared no more about anyone—nor about anything under heaven, save to have a good time in their own harum-scarum ways. In the old days one always received a neatly-written or engraved invitation to dinner, worded in impersonal and formal style; but the other day Mrs. Alden had found a message which had been taken from the telephone: “Please come to dinner, but don’t come unless you can bring a man, or we’ll be thirteen at the table.”