The Slaves of Society: A Comedy in Covers

A Comedy in Covers
By THE MAN WHO HEARD SOMETHING
NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS 1900
Copyright, 1900, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
THE SLAVES OF SOCIETY
“After all,” sighed the marchioness, as she conveyed a three-cornered piece of muffin from the silver chafing-dish to her mouth, and nibbled delicately at one of the corners—“after all, what are we but slaves of society?”
Mr. Despencer extended a hand almost as white and slender as the marchioness’s own, and abstracted a small cube of sugar from the porcelain basin, of the thinness and transparency of a sea-shell, on the marchioness’s silver tray, while he meditated a becoming response.
“Yes,” he exclaimed, giving his head a slow, mournful movement from side to side, “you are right. We are no better off than prisoners on the treadmill. Even you are but a bird of paradise held captive in a gilded cage.”
The bird of paradise removed the piece of muffin from its beak to turn a pair of bright, steel-blue eyes on the speaker, gazing at him for some moments as though in doubt whether to accept this beautiful sentiment as a tribute or to rebuke it as a familiarity.
The cage so feelingly referred to was one of a set of drawing-rooms on the first floor of a mansion in Berkeley Square—that is to say, in the heart of that restricted area within which society requires its bond-servants to reside during the spring and early summer. The gilding consisted in a mural decoration of the very latest and most artistic design, representing a number of Japanese dragons going through a kind of dragon drill, apparently adapted to develop their tail muscles according to the system of Mr. Sandow; in curtains of lemon-colored silk on each side of the window and other curtains of lemon-colored plush across the doorways; in a carpet of that rich but chaotic pattern which has been compared to the poetical style of the late Robert Montgomery, and in a thicket of fantastic and inconvenient chairs, of china-laden cabinets and palms in Satsuma jars, which would have rendered it extremely hazardous for the gymnastic dragons to have come down from the walls and transferred their exercises to the floor of the apartment.