CHAPTER IX.
When she turned into Grand Street at nearly six o’clock she scarcely knew whether it was her own gate through which she passed or whether the house was in its right place or had vanished with the old associations; whether she walked up the wooden steps to a familiar door or floated on air to the portal of a castle in Spain.
Warrener had telephoned that he would not be home before midnight; she received the message with relief, although the name sounded with as much indifference to her as though she heard it for the first time that night.
She sat musing over her dinner, ate a little of it, left the table as soon as she could, and restlessly wandered through the rooms from one to the other, then upstairs to the “den,” where in the dark she threw herself full length on George’s hard leather lounge.
The walk of several miles must have caused these excited feelings, this glow; but she was conscious as well of a kind of suffering agitation. She had walked many miles in her life with no such exhilaration as this.
To natures such as hers, by temperament sluggish, an awakening is dangerous, and means revolution. She never had thought of love—that is, in connection with herself or anyone she knew. The idea that a married woman, a nice one—of course there were bad ones—could care for another man had never occurred to her. The word “love” she had never heard mentioned that she could recall. Men like Warrener do not talk of love; they avoid the word and its chaotic consequences. She had never said “I love you” in her life. Her wooing had consisted of a timid kiss or two, a decorous marriage into whose ceremony the word “love” had slipped unobserved, close to “honor” and “obey.” “Love,” in that sentence, meant that she submitted always with a sort of shame and humiliation to be a wife; “honor,” that neither of them would do anything criminal, of course—how should they? “Obey,” that she would keep house for George. These, had she been capable of pigeonholing her ideas, were the grooves into which she would have slipped her conceptions of wedded life.
It is not strange that a woman with a hostility to the laws of whose mysterious passion she knows nothing should refuse to linger in her thoughts on love when it is so mentally surrounded. Love stories she rarely read; she thought them silly and little less than sane. She couldn’t understand them—once or twice they had given her unhappy, lonely feelings, and she had not sought their pages again.
On the sofa, in the dark, after the first dazzling force of the feeling which suffused her and which she did not understand, she thought of her clothes! She wished she had worn another dress, her new beige and a pair of new boots. As she had nothing but Mrs. Bellamy’s afternoon dress with which to compare her wardrobe, she could not construct in her mind any new costume fitting to such an occasion. Her coquetry had not before been aroused. George did not care what she wore. “You’re all right in anything,” she could hear him say.
No, she didn’t believe she was all right. Mr. McAllister was, though. How elegantly he was dressed! His suit, his cravat, his hat and cane and gloves! She was astonished at the vividness with which his image came to her. He seemed to stand there smiling at her. It made her uneasy to think of him so clearly. George dressed nicer than most men, she had thought, but beside Mr. McAllister—why, he looked—he looked common! The word was growing to be very useful to her.
After a little the effect of the open air and the excitement overcame her reflections. She grew drowsy and fell into a light sleep. Her subjective self, more keen and sensitive than her objective, was released, and she dreamed, for a rare thing, dream after dream. Strange, unrestful visions. Mr. McAllister was wound in and out of them, tangled in their maze. She was trying to run away from him. He was beside her, and she was trying to push him away. Out of the indistinct and broken figures of sleep he became clearly defined—he put his arm about her and kissed her. As Gertrude felt the unwonted and confusing touch on her lips—the confusion of her senses—she sprang up with a cry. There was some one in the room.
“Don’t be scared, Gerty; it’s only me.”
“Oh!” she shuddered. “How you frightened me, George! What did you do it for?”
He turned up the light.
“Why, I couldn’t find you in our room or the spare room, so I came in here. Fell asleep waiting for me, did you?”
He stood there, tired and grimy, his hair mussed, his collar lacking its freshness.
“Well, you frightened me like anything,” she said, petulantly. “What did you do? Did you shake me?”
“No, I didn’t—I kissed you.”
She got up without reply and went past him into the spare room.
Warrener said nothing until his preparations for the night were made, then calling out: “Aren’t you coming to bed, Gertrude?” he went to the spare-room door. It was locked.
Used to little petulant exhibitions of temper whose pricks he had felt with no serious wound, tired out and rendered indifferent by the unremitting brain and nerve tension of his life, Warrener yielded passively, and, going into the other room with a sigh of fatigue, sought his deserted bed.
TO BE CONTINUED.
OCTOBER
IN trails of fire across the land
October flings with lavish hand
The glowing bittersweet.
With gems and gold the trees are brave,
While spices that the East might crave
Float up beneath my feet.
Rosalie Arthur.
AMERICA’S SOCIAL HOUSE OF PEERS
By Anne Rittenhouse
THE Dancing Assemblies of Philadelphia and the St. Cecilia Society of Charleston, South Carolina, are the two oldest subscription balls in the world. Their invitations for this winter mark three centuries in which the elect of the Quaker and the Huguenot cities have been invited to dance and to pay the fiddler.
The South Carolinians contend that their famous dance is older than the Philadelphia one. Both began in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the invitations went out through the rest of the century, the whole of the nineteenth, and through a half decade of the twentieth century.
The exact date of the first St. Cecilia is not quite authenticated, because the great fire which swept over Charleston in 1865 destroyed St. Andrew’s Hall, where the records of this dance were kept. The flames also melted the magnificent silver that had belonged to the society for over a hundred years.
The date of the first Dancing Assembly of Philadelphia is precisely fixed as 1749.
It is remarkable that two such exclusive and elective balls, bound by such rigid rules, and so opposed to new members, should exist so long in the whirling change of American life.
In Europe limited subscription balls have not continued. Almach’s in London was the most famous, but it was swept out of existence by the rising tide of wealth and new people.
The Patriarchs’ of New York, while being governed by the same rules, and of the same character as these two existing balls, was not of great age, and was abandoned years ago without a murmur by a society that had outgrown anything so provincial as the subscription ball.
The St. Cecilia Society has continued its dances since the beginning, but the Philadelphia Assemblies were discontinued through the Civil War.
Many have prophesied the dissolution of both societies, but no one has seriously considered it. That these two balls continue to exist under the present status of society, with its moneyed kings buying admission everywhere, is a curious and contradictory phase of American life.
The fact that it is as difficult to enter each of them now as it was in the latter half of the eighteenth century is never comprehended by the newly rich or by the other millions of Americans who have not come in contact with the aristocratic exclusiveness of these two social institutions.
The St. Cecilia is more exclusive than the Assemblies for the reason that Charleston has had her social lines arranged since the first century of her existence. Wealth, power, genius, ambition, in a great horde are not knocking at the doors of that ultra-refined Carolina city for admission; but in a great city like Philadelphia unknown men become captains of industry overnight, and their wives wail for admission into the most fashionable function.
Tales that are told in broad social centers like New York, London and Berlin, of the exclusiveness of these two dances, are laughed at as the exaggerations of those with a gift greater for narrative than for fact.
In Charleston, when the St. Cecilia was begun, many years before the Revolution, the first subscription list almost settled the question of admission for the following centuries. On it were names more powerful in the seats of the nation’s mighty then than now.
Many were of Huguenot origin, others of the first English blood. Among the managers were signers of the Declaration of Independence, and names which still govern the social register of to-day in Carolina, such as Ravenel, Prioleau, Pringle, Drayton, Rhett, Huger, Middleton, Fraser, Legare, Porcher, Miles, Calhoun and Pinckney.
These are not even a quarter of the names that before and after the Revolution were an open sesame to American and European society.
As near as possible, the sixteen managers of the St. Cecilia have borne the same name as the original managers. When one died, another of the same name was put in his place, if he could be found in the United States. No innovation has been permitted in the management regarding admission, rules or customs of this delightful ball since its inception.
The person who is not on the list of the St. Cecilia is not “in society” in Charleston, and the rest of America accepts this judgment of the arbiters as regards Carolinians.
The aristocracy of the most exclusive city in America is on that list. By strangers, it is said to be the best managed ball in America. Everything moves like clockwork, because nothing is theoretical, nothing is experimental. It was arranged in the early days of elegance, when manners were supreme.
No one tries to break the rules, which are unique. Possibly the most peculiar one is the refusal of the managers to allow women to sit outside the ballroom with men. Stairway flirtations, cozy-corner tête-à-têtes, are simply not allowed. The rest of the civilized world may consider these elegant, the St. Cecilia does not. From this verdict there is no appeal.
One woman, known throughout American society as one of the potential leaders of the smart Newport set, thought herself above the traditions of the Carolina ball. She was a guest at this dance when in Charleston, and began the evening by sitting out dances in secluded corners outside the ballroom. Comment ran rife. The sixteen managers consulted together. The president, a man of great manner and unfailing elegance, took upon himself the duty to correct the New York woman.
Finding her in a secluded corner, as usual, he kindly informed her of the comment she brought upon herself by breaking the best-known rule of the society. She was inclined to be ungracious about it, and intimated that the managers were old fogies, and that any ball with such a tradition would be unbearable.
“It is done in London and New York,” she defiantly said.
“But not in Charleston, madam,” answered the president, as he offered her his arm, which he never removed until she took it. He then led her back to the ballroom and offered her a chair.
The St. Cecilia gives three balls each winter, and the men subscribers pay the expenses. It would be impossible to make them understand or approve of the method of the Philadelphia Assemblies, which charge women subscribers the full price of the ticket. In Charleston this would be considered not only ungallant, but, frankly, an exhibition of inferior breeding.
It is unlike a Southern ball in the fact that the young women arrive, enter the ballroom and return home with chaperons. No other method is considered among society people in Northern cities, where girls are not allowed to go alone with men to any place of entertainment, but in Southern cities this rule is transgressed with the full approval of society.
The reason for this is easily explained. Southern cities are small, and the aristocratic community really goes together to any social function, and there is no reason for surrounding a young girl with the conventions necessary in a city of millions of people and miles of crowded streets.
Before each dance the orchestra gives the signal for every girl to return to her chaperon. She cannot leave the man with whom she is talking to join the man to whom she is promised the next dance. This partner must go to her chaperon and await her return.
It is there he must claim the engagement. This is not optional. It is imperative. It would be considered the greatest breach of good behavior not to do it. In truth, no one thinks of its being unique, or of not doing it instinctively, because it is a tradition that has governed the dance since before the Revolution.
Surely there is not a man in the world who does not see its advantages. It prevents the possibility of being cornered with a girl through two or three dances, or being compelled to find her a partner in order to free himself to dance with some one else. In the slang of the day, it saves the man from being “stuck.”
The instant the orchestra begins this preliminary canter to the dance, every couple rises, and each girl expects her escort to leave her the moment she reaches her chaperon. For him to remain would be an exhibition of social awkwardness. A man can make as many engagements on one girl’s card as she will let him, but they must not follow each other.
Dozens of men have sighed for this rule at other balls, but so far the St. Cecilia is the only one that had the courage to start it and the conviction to retain it.
Chaperons sit around the dancing floor on a slight platform on which are comfortable chairs. As all the girls return before each dance—not after it, mind you—the women rise to receive them.
The young women make supper engagements for the balls as the Northern girls do.
The president always leads the march to supper with the newest bride. Supper is served promptly at midnight, and the ball opens at the early hour of nine o’clock. The men arrive earlier, for the social conditions are such in the South that there are more men than women, and if they indulge in the foolish Eastern habit of arriving just before midnight, they haven’t a chance of finding a single partner through the evening.
The society owns its present napery and silver, which it bought with the first ready money that came in after the desperate financial straits of the terrible reconstruction.
It is as handsome as their splendid plate of antebellum days, which was destroyed by fire.
Both silver and napery bear the monogram of the society, and the linen was especially woven in Ireland. This gives the table an aristocratic air impossible when supper and silver are left to caterers.
The cook who prepares the supper is a gingerbread-colored genius. His cooking of wild duck still brings water to the mouths of those who have been asked to the feast.
The stranger might notice that the managers and a few older men are absent for some time after the guests have returned from supper to the ballroom for the two round dances. If they investigated they would find that the chosen few were regaling themselves with supper made up of even more epicurean dishes and rarer wines than the many had enjoyed.
This is the time for the colored cook to prove what he can do. Many a bonne bouche is served that goes into gastronomic history.
The most exciting moment of the supper room is the scramble of the men for a sugar figure which is placed on the top of a huge fancy structure of spun sugar. Each man tries to secure this souvenir for his partner.
No matter how large the list of the St. Cecilia has grown, the invitations always have been delivered by hand. This custom is a tradition that has come down since the days before a mail service was ever thought of. As all other traditions were kept up, so was this.
Edmund is the name of the darky who possibly for half a century has delivered these invitations from door to door. He has been almost as important as the St. Cecilia. He is a social register for Charleston “quality.” He is as proud of his descent, his position and his social superiority as though his ancestors had landed in the bay under the sturdy Lion of St. George or the Flying Fleur-de-Lys in the seventeenth century.
The society has never permitted the german to be danced at this ball, although it was introduced in other Southern cities several years before the Civil War. This is a prejudice well known to the Charlestonian, and ignorance of it once tripped up a social aspirant who talked too much.
A certain man of wealth made many an inducement for those in and out of power to have him invited as a guest to one of these balls while he was an usher at a fashionable wedding in Charleston. He did not succeed, but that did not prevent his talking glibly in his own city of the charm and defects of the St. Cecilia as though he had been there. A Charleston girl visiting in that city stood his criticism of her beloved St. Cecilia until he spoke of the cotillon.
“Strange,” she interrupted, “that you should have danced a german there. No set of managers has allowed this in one hundred and sixty years.”
During the hardships of the Civil War and privations of the reconstruction the men abandoned dress suits for these dances. They wore what they could find. Purple and fine linen had disappeared, and if the men who hadn’t patched gray uniforms could get whole suits of unbleached Macon Mills cloth, with buttons of gourd seeds in some cases, they were gay about it.
They danced as eagerly as they fought, and tripped the measures of the quadrille as cheerily as they charged under the stimulus of the rebel yell.
They carried their swords at their sides and their hearts on their sleeves, and as willingly offered their sentiments to the prettiest girl as they did their bodies to Federal bullets.
A part of the rare charm of the St. Cecilia dances lies in the presence of the grandmothers and grandfathers of the young set. Delightful old people are present who do not attend other entertainments. What would the St. Cecilians do without Mr. Smith? “Turkey-tail Smith,” as he has been called for decades; a nickname to which he does not object. Genial and kindly, he is a part of the atmosphere, always fanning himself and his partner with a turkey-tail fan.
Many a lovely bride treasures his gift of such a fan. Sad, sad the ignorance of the East and West where the people know not what love and laughter, what limpid eyes and charming mouths, are suggested by the turkey-tail fan of Dixie.
It is natural that around the Philadelphia Assemblies there should have gathered an atmosphere of anecdote. Its exclusiveness is so well known that it is an honor for the man of millions to belong to it, and his efforts, vain or successful, to enter this social sanctuary, have given the elect many a happy moment.
When the demure little group of worldlings gathered together at Hamilton’s Wharf to dance, they had no idea of the sorrow, the heartaches, the Titanic struggles, they were bequeathing to posterity.
In 1749 a few married men and fewer unmarried beaux subscribed forty shillings apiece for a series of dances to take place every Thursday night during the winter. In those early days the men paid all the expenses, and each subscriber had the privilege of taking some lady to each dance. Charming belles of the day went down to the wharf on the Delaware River on horseback, with riding habits over evening gowns.
The dancing began promptly at six o’clock and ended at eleven. The invitations were printed on the backs of playing cards, as these were the commonest bits of pasteboard in the Colonies. With the first Assembly distinct social lines were drawn, but, of course, nothing could equal or compare with the rigid rules that have governed the Assemblies for the last century, which, if they were not taken so seriously, might be absurd.
In those days no mechanic or tradesman of any line of work was allowed to be a subscriber; and no young man was allowed to bring a young lady out of the prescribed set.
After the Revolution an exceedingly keen social blow was given these exclusive little dances by President George Washington.
The Virginian, whose blood was of the finest in the land, was invited to dance at this Assembly on the same night that he was also invited to a dance given by the tradespeople. He chose the latter, and led the minuet with one of its prettiest young women.
A premium was put upon promptness in these old days by the managers, who gave to the women arriving first the distinction of dancing in the opening set. Those who came afterward were put in the second set, and so on.
They had another plan of letting the women draw numbers and dance in the sets which corresponded to the number they held. This was an unhappy way to manage a ball. Historians of the city life tell us that both of these customs were broken up through the rebellion of lovely young Polly Riche, who, with the man of her choice, insisted on dancing in any set she pleased.
The managers protested, but the young men sided with her, and the result was that the Assembly took on more freedom and, therefore, more pleasure.
These little dances had their serious troubles even then. The Quakers had nothing to do with them, of course, but did not make any serious comment upon them. Presbyterians loudly disapproved, but the Episcopalians, even the clergy, lent not only tolerance, but cordial indorsement.
The tiny list of subscribers has reached nearly a thousand in the twentieth century. Instead of the little room lit by wax candles on the Delaware River, and possibly filled with the fruity and salty odors from merchants’ ships, the dancers now gather in the gorgeous salons of the great new Bellevue Stratford Hotel. Instead of a few fiddlers, there is one of the greatest dancing orchestras in America. Instead of beginning at six o’clock and ending at midnight, the ball begins at twelve o’clock and ends at dawn.
It may be of interest to those who care for the cakes and ale to read the comparison between the “refreshments” served then and now.
In 1749 and throughout the next decade the supper consisted of nine shillings’ worth of milk biscuit and five gallons of rum, added to two hundred limes for a punch. And, mind you, this punch was served to only a few people.
The supper served this last winter was as follows:
CHAUD
Bonne Bouche Assembly
Gumbo Passe
Terrapin
Poulet de Grain Supérieur
Pommes de Terre Nouvelles Rissoles
Jambon de Virginie
———
FROID
Chaufroix de Grouse
Cœur de Laitue
Filet de Bœuf
Salade de Chapon
———
Pudding Montrose
Croquants Marrons Glacé
Bonbons
Café
Instead of forty shillings for eighteen dances, each subscriber now pays ten dollars for two. These two balls are given after New Year’s and before Lent, and because of their exclusiveness, remain the most unique function in Philadelphia life.
Old families who take admission into the Assemblies as a matter of course will tell you how stupid they are, how tiresome, how foolish the rules of admission are, and that really everybody can get in now; but you would almost have to take their own invitations away over their dead bodies.
As in Charleston, one sees at these balls men and women who rarely put on evening clothes except for these affairs. It is a witticism attributed to the dashing captain of the First City Troop of Philadelphia that when asked why he didn’t like the Assemblies, he responded: “I never could stand the smell of camphor and tar balls.”
If the rules were always consistently kept, there would not be such a happy fund of anecdote around the Assemblies. The five managers, who are called “czars” by the irreverent, do their best through the decades to use judgment and consistency for the admission of new members, but it is also true that some “queer” people have been admitted and that some of the most delightful, with pedigrees as old as the hills, have been kept out.
New rules have been constantly made in the attempt to meet new emergencies. Everything tends to the same aim, which is to keep out all new members except the children of parents who are already subscribers. And it is also true that peculiar rules, which in many cases are only known to the “czars” themselves, are made as an excuse to drop those who for certain reasons may not be considered desirable.
The inner Philadelphian will tell you that a number of “peculiar” people got in about fifteen years ago, when there was a year of laxity regarding admission. It was just after this epoch that some of the most influential financial powers in social life resigned from the management because they frankly said they could not withstand the pressure brought upon them by men closely associated with them in business who wanted invitations for their wives.
Most of these men who clamored for membership threatened to “squeeze” the managers of the Assemblies unless they could “pull the ropes” for these admission cards.
Even now there are many embarrassing situations between men of millions and poor men of social power. It is known that ambitious millionaires have gotten young men clerkships in their offices and then held over their heads dismissal or raise of salary according to their failure or success in obtaining for their wives and daughters the coveted prize.
Scandal after scandal has arisen in this way, and dozens of men have felt too nervous over such gossip to be seen much with their superiors in wealth who are well-known social climbers.
The newcomers are usually the most blatant about the rules and the traditions of the Assemblies. A certain couple in Philadelphia, who have lived much in the great centers of Europe and been presented at foreign courts, have been embittered for two decades because of the refusal of a succession of “czars” to allow them the privilege of the Assemblies.
Each new batch of managers were deftly and luxuriously entertained by the millionaire couple. Their palates were tickled, their financial interests promoted by subtle methods. But all was of no avail until a near relative of the couple, a man of national power, arrived home, bearing in his official cornucopia gifts for younger sons. In return, his relatives were finally invited to become members of the Assemblies.
At the first ball the lady went to the man in charge of the supper room, who was entirely new to the traditions of this dance, and between them they reserved a table.
In true hotel fashion he tipped the chairs over on a round table in the supper room. When two of the managers went to look over the arrangements an hour before supper, they found the chairs in this position. There was an indignant colloquy, and the head man was ordered never to do it again. But as his bribe was probably worth while, he fixed it so that when the grand march was over and the guests had arrived in the supper room, the newcomers were at once placed at the table for which they paid, although dozens of people who had belonged to the Assemblies as a matter of course had to await their chances.
Another story is told of this same couple. On their entrance to the ballroom, at their first appearance, they saw another couple, also from up the State, who were their rivals for exclusive Philadelphia favor, and also possessed of millions.
Putting up her lorgnon, the lady remarked in a voice that could well be heard by the other couple: “How in the world did those people get here?”
The managers were fearful of dozens of intruders finding their way into the social sanctuary this winter, when the balls were transferred to the magnificent Bellevue Stratford, instead of being held in the old Academy of Music. A hotel has a dozen entrances, and they feared the “unwashed” might secure an entrance into the ballroom, or, what was worse, go into one of the boxes that surrounded the dancing floor and look on. This being suggested, there was tremendous commotion and confusion among the elect. Orders were given right and left, and the tortures of the Inquisition promised the doorkeeper if such a thing happened.
A certain well-known couple who are anxious not to mix with those who do not belong to the Assembly set were among the most ardent in their endeavors to impress upon all men that no strangers should be allowed through any entrance to boxes. The lady, wishing to see the scene from an elevated position, went up to one of the boxes during the ball and sat slightly back to get a commanding view, so she was not recognized at the distance. Suddenly she was discovered by the managers. Her husband was among the chief of those who insisted that peremptory action must be taken. The doorman was sent to eject her from the box or ask for her passport. He went with great hesitation, for the duty was not a pleasant one. To give him courage the husband of the lady followed, and he entered the box just as the colored man was ejecting his wife!
The five managers who are at the head of these balls do not assume the personal responsibility for the guests’ pleasure as do the sixteen managers of the St. Cecilia.
There is no one person of any especial force or command who is looked up to for detail.
When the late Ward McAllister, of New York, creator of the “Four Hundred,” which, among other trivialities, gave him fame, was a guest at one of the Assemblies, he was as pompous as usual and quite interested in the social mechanism of this famous ball, the like of which he had tried to create in the Patriarchs’, but couldn’t succeed.
He was walking with one of the well-known wits of Philadelphia, who was a power in Assembly affairs.
“I would like to meet the man at the head of everything,” said Mr. McAllister; “the one, you know, who has charge of the details. The Patriarchs have such a man.” He referred to himself, of course. “And I suppose there must be some one here who really takes charge, don’t you know. Have I met him? You have such a one, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes,” answered his companion; “I think I know whom you mean. We have such a man. It saves us all the trouble of detail. He is Holland, the colored caterer. He is out in the supper room now.”
Mr. McAllister was more fortunate in getting into the Assemblies than some other people who come from New York’s most distinguished families. An incident illustrates the extreme indifference to any rules outside of their own that the managers of the Assemblies have.
A beautiful Philadelphia girl was about to be married to the son of one of New York’s social leaders. The mother of the bride-elect was one of the most exclusive and aristocratic social figures in Philadelphia. Three days before the ball was given she was in New York at some of the pre-nuptial festivities, and when her prospective son-in-law’s family became interested in her stories of the Assemblies and expressed a desire to see such a ball, she cordially invited them over.
Eight of them came, with maids, valets and trunks of finery. The Philadelphia hostess wrote a note to one of the managers, asking for invitations, as these courtesies are extended to a few strangers each year who are the guests of a subscriber. The lady’s request was politely but firmly declined. She and her husband were amazed, indignant and puzzled. In all her experience as an exclusive society leader, she had never been “turned down” before. For generations, on both her own and her husband’s side, members of their families had served as managers of the Assemblies. Her husband went at once to his intimate friends on the committee and explained the situation. It was not necessary to explain who the New Yorkers were, for they also were among the exclusive families in America.
Nothing had any effect. Persuasion won over four of the managers by nightfall, but one remained obdurate, and one black ball is sufficient to veto anything.
The eight New Yorkers repacked their finery and returned home, absolutely turned down like the merest social adventurers by men who wouldn’t break a rule in order to be courteous.
And the sole reason of it all was this: The list of guests had closed on a fixed date, and no emergency could reopen it. The request was presented too late.
It is not against the rules to invite strangers, but they can’t be invited offhand. It would be like bestowing the Order of the Knight of the Garter casually. Each name presented by a subscriber must be investigated by the five managers, and then voted upon. The subscriber must guarantee to the committee that the stranger is not living in Philadelphia, or, if so, that the period of residence has not extended over two years. Philadelphians who are born and have lived here for generations, who go intimately with the smartest set, are declined admission while they are here, because their ancestors were not subscribers, but all they have to do is to move away for a year to any other city, and their friends here can get them invitations at once as “strangers.”
A woman who is not a subscriber may become one if she marries a subscriber. If she is a subscriber when unmarried and weds a man who is not a subscriber, she must forfeit the privilege of going, and not one of her children can be admitted, except a daughter who remarries into the subscribing set.
An outsider who can prove direct descent from an original subscriber and then has a “pull” with the managers can be admitted for membership. In the old days a man who married a woman subscriber could share her honors and go with her. The custom prevailed until one of the most popular girls in the Assembly married a man who, while personally liked, belonged to an ordinary family, whose financial ways had not been approved by Philadelphians for decades. The bridegroom came to the ball with his bride, because a rule was a rule; so the managers met and abolished the rule, but not the man. The groom, however, was not one of the strugglers who want to kick down other climbers. He is a man of humor as well as good sense, and he convulsed those who laugh at the pretensions of the Assemblies by his response to a discussion regarding the admission of another man who was not of the elect.
“Why can’t he get in?” said the groom. “I’m in.”
Unfortunately for the managers, this new rule, which seemed so satisfactory, gave them a bad quarter of an hour for the next ball. The daughter of the chief and most distinguished manager married a man who was not a subscriber. The couple were at once refused an invitation for the next Assembly. This was quite too much for the father, who was willing to turn down some one else, but one of his own family—why—such a thing was never heard of. And so, in confusion and dismay, the managers had to secretly break their new rule, and invite this bride and groom, who have been going ever since.
When a male scion of one of the really great families married the daughter of an all-too-well-known sporting man, he and his wife were refused a subscription to the following balls.
“If he can’t go, neither can we,” wrote one hundred members of his family. This was too much for the managers again, and they meekly consented to let him enter.
When a girl who has not been able to go, no matter how charming and attractive she is, marries a subscriber, the one comment that sweeps over the church is: “Well, she can go to the Assemblies now.”
One mother, who all of her life had been ruled by this social law, wept when her daughter told her that she was going to marry a man out of the list. The girl was a healthy, straightforward, American type, who did everything athletic and copied the field and turf when she talked. The man she was to marry had every desirable quality, except his name on the Golden Book.
“You will break my heart by such a marriage,” wailed the mother; “the first of all our family to be denied the Assemblies. You must give this man up.”
“Give up a bully man for a stupid ball? Well, I guess not,” was the final answer of the frank daughter. And she married the man.
One of the momentous questions that cost the managers sleepless nights was a question of ancestors, caused by two débutantes. They were children of a couple who had married the second time. One, the wife’s daughter, was by a former husband, who didn’t belong to the Assemblies. The other was a daughter of the husband by a first wife, both of whom belonged to the Assemblies. The girls had been brought up together from childhood, and when they came out in society, the father asked for their invitations together. This precipitated one of the most momentous emergencies that the managers ever had to meet. This exact question had never come before the Assembly. All kinds of advice, social and legal, were asked, and the question convulsed society. Everyone debated it, and everyone took sides. After many meetings by the managers, the decision was reached that the stepdaughter of the father couldn’t be invited, but that the stepdaughter of the mother could.
And such a hold have the rules of the Assembly on Philadelphians, that nothing about this was considered unusual. Had it been a question of admittance by descent into the House of Peers, it couldn’t have been more important.
But if it were not for the peculiarity of these rules and customs which govern the two oldest balls in the world, it is doubtful if they would have become famous, or if they would have preserved, through the centuries, their unique charm, their peculiar social aroma.
We are a restless, easily wearied, ever-changing people. It is delightful to know that in the hurly-burly these two social affairs live out the traditions of our ancestors.
May they always copy their manners!
COUPLETS
’TIS strange that Youth himself the task would set
To learn the very things Age would forget!
We labor to possess a world of things,
And lose them through the toil their getting brings.
Who would but hold the earth in sober wit
Must never try to hold too much of it.
Lee Fairchild.
FALSE EQUIVALENTS
By H. F. Provost Battersby
THE house stood in the corner of a quiet square, a little south and west of the Green Park, and the room in which most of his evenings were spent was on the balcony floor. The balconies had blossomed. They burst in a wreath of color round the grim quadrangle in festal imitation of the spring, when the newer beauties and the May buds were coming out; but before Jim South’s windows were only a few green shrubs, which died hard through the summer. He always admired his neighbors’ decorations, without noticing the deficiencies of his own; yet that garland round the old dark fronts often seemed to him like roses on a faded face; there lurked a sort of shame behind the sweetness; it was almost a trifling with age.
The square was a kind of back eddy to the Palace Road, and held a strained hum from the traffic round it. The silence, which raised the rents, had attracted South; he used more of it, he said, than most of those who paid them, farming it himself.
He meant that he was less often an absentee than those about him, but his phrase suggested an alternative of occupation which did not exist; for never was a man with less of harness on his back. He lived solely for his own amusement; cropping life’s greenness in a slow, easy, ruminant fashion, and on a modest income. A cousin was his nearest relative.
He had a fire this evening, though half May was past, and his book had dropped from his hand, when the man who was owner, factotum and, with his wife, comptroller to that small household of bachelors, announced:
“Miss Rosamond Merlin!”
It was a girl who entered; a girl with a woman’s buoyant movement and pose; a woman with a girl’s footfall. She wore a cloak which was somewhat oppressively magnificent, and held out a hand to South, laughing, as he rose.
“Surprised?”
“Delighted!” he said.
She sighed as she dropped into his seat.
“I don’t suppose you are.”
He pushed a chair to the further side of the fireplace, and watched, while she drew off slowly her long gloves, with the flicker of curiosity which was always lambent on his face. It was like a color there.
The girl bent down, and spread out her arms to the glow. She let them fall on the front of her skirt, pressing it back from the little pink and gold slippers on the grate stone.
“What a man you are for fires!” she said.
“I like warmth.”
“In coals,” was her retort.
She looked up at him sideways, smiling.
“Why don’t you ask to see my frock?”
“Because I want to,” he said.
Her eyes brimmed with unbelief.
“You know you don’t care tuppence,” she said; but she threw the cloak at last from her shoulders, and leaned back in the chair, drooping an admiring eye. She was on her way to the great costume ball of the season, and forced from South a hazard at her masquerade.
“Apple blossom?” he ventured, and was complimented.
“Ah, you should see it standing up; but you’re not worth that. Look there!”
She spread out the phantom of a fan, shaped and painted as a tuft of its tinted bloom.
“Veynes gave it me,” she said.
“Oh, did he?”
“Ye-es, he did. Are you sorry for Veynes?”
“I!—why?”
“Oh, do be sensible!—you’re not that much of a fool;—because I’ve got him, or he’s got me, whichever you like. Don’t you think it’s bad for him?”
“It might be worse,” South said.
“Thank you. It might, you know; ’specially with Veynes. Oh, I say, do you mind my coming here?”
“I can mind nothing else for days,” he laughed. “Why?”
“I thought your man looked a sort of piled-up disapproval when he let me in.”
“For us all?”
“Yes; and for himself.”
“For himself! Why?”
“Oh, he’s probably seen my face too often in shop windows to care to see it here. You’re all deadly respectable, aren’t you?”
“The whole square is; we’ve taken life policies in propriety. Money, art and titles, and all of it married.”
She gave a little wince at that, but asked if he would offer her some coffee. South was famous in a small way for making it, and his friends, when out of humor with the world, would come and watch the brown liquid bubble through the valves of some strange machine of copper and nacreous glass he had picked up in the East, and regain their “values” over a cup.
He pushed a hanging kettle across the flame, and knelt down by his visitor to stir the fire.
“Turkish?” he inquired.
“That’s the gritty stuff, isn’t it? No, the other; and black. Why is your hair so long?”
“Is it? I’ve forgotten it. What is this on your shoe?”
“The gold?”
“Yes.”
“Letters.”
“What?”
“R. E. V.”
“A monogram?”
“Yes.”
“Whose?”
“Nobody’s.”
She swept her train across her little feet and laughed at him.
“Are you learning to be inquisitive?” she inquired.
South did not say. He lifted the kettle from its crutch, and set the cafetière in action.
Rosamond screwed her chair round to the table, and spread her arms upon it, resting her cheek on one of them to watch his proceedings.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked, presently.
The bubbles in the dim glass tubes ran to and fro half a minute before he replied.
“To know what?”
“About my slippers.”
“Oh, curiosity,” he shrugged.
She tilted her face further over on her white forearm, and her eyes came round to his.
“I thought you hadn’t any?” she said.
His “Only about trifles” was meant unkindly; but she refused to take offense.
“I suppose that’s a compliment to my number threes,” she smiled; “so I’d explain the letters on them if I could; but they came from Veynes with the fan, so I can only guess—perhaps they stand for the motto of his house.”
“Probably,” he assented, grimly. “Regina ex vulgo, or something of the sort. Are you going to adopt it?”
“To adopt what?”
“The motto of his house.”
She rose without replying, and walked to an antique mirror which covered a corner of the room. She faced it with a sigh of satisfaction, and then turned slowly round upon her toes till her shoulders were reflected. Her head was flung back out of the lamp light which yellowed her breast, and the gold of her coiled hair floated over her in the darkness like a misty moon.
She stood, poised doubtfully for some time, pinching her little waist downward with both hands.
“Do you think it shows too much?” she inquired, presently, without moving.
South looked up from the table.
“For what?” he said.
“For what do you mean?”
“For my taste, or for yours, or for Veynes’, or for modesty—or what?”
“For yours, if you like.”
“For mine, yes! I don’t mean that I see too much of you, but it’s so tremendously announced; it’s squeezed into one’s eye.”
“And for modesty?”
“Oh, modesty doesn’t depend on clothes, any more than purity did on fig leaves. Eve only began to sew when she had lost hers. Come and drink your coffee.”
She came, after some further observation, and sipped in silence from the cup he handed her. He had a dozen questions on his tongue, but could not or would not put them; the girl seemed too independent. He mentioned finally the current report that they were to see her in the new piece at the Variety.
“Well, you’re not,” she said. “It’s a dancing part, and I’m going to act when I go back to the boards.”
“Why?”
“Because I can.”
“That would seem to be as good a reason the other way.”
“You know,” she scoffed.
“I do; I saw you three times.”
“Three!—some men saw me thirty.”
“I dare say. I couldn’t afford it.”
“The price of a seat?”
“No, the solace of one; the one you’re in; it’s almost a housewife in its economies.”
“Economies?”
“Yes, economies of content. It guarantees that while I stay in its arms. I think I buy it cheap.”
“Content! I wouldn’t take it as a gift; it’s a despair with a trousseau, a sort of bridal and sanctified kind of funk. Oh, content’s a miserable thing.”
South laughed.
“Well,” he said, “it’s not often offered with a ring. Will you take another cup?”
She pushed hers toward him and asked if he had any brandy in the house.
South nodded at a liquor stand, but suggested crème de menthe.
“It’s not for me,” she explained, “but for my driver—he’s got an awful cough; I’ve been listening to it up here all the time. Could you send him a glass?”
South laid his hand on the bell.
“What driver?” he said.
“The man on my hansom; he’s been waiting for me.”
“Why do you keep him?”
“I don’t. Veynes does.”
“Is Veynes in the cab?”
“No, no, silly!—it’s Veynes’ hansom; he sent it round for me. The driver of Veynes’ hansom has a cough, you have some brandy, and I want you to send it down by your man to the driver, that his cough may be stayed. Now do you understand?”
“No, I do not,” he said; but he did as she desired.
“I suppose that is a fresh indiscretion,” she remarked, as the man retired.
“I suppose it is,” he replied, “but the freshness need not count for much among so many. Is Veynes coming here for you?”
“Mercy, no!” she laughed. “He wouldn’t quite understand it; it doesn’t occur to him that a girl who kicks her skirts about at so much a week can ever want anything of a man but flattery and new frocks. A good deal of dullness goes with a title, you know.”
“If by dullness you mean bewilderment, I might be a duke. Will you explain?”
“Why I’m here?”
“Oh, no, I understand that; you’ve tried to make me envy Tantalus before; but why you’ve forgotten your prudence and your promises—I used to believe in both—and what has become of your chaperon; and how deep Lord Veynes is in it.”
She left all but the last question unanswered, and said, looking from him toward the fire:
“He wants me to marry him.”
She missed the quick spring of his eyes to her face, but she met them the next moment.
“Am I to congratulate you?” he inquired.
“You might have said him,” she remarked; “however, it’s good of you not to jump—but you always could sit still. I know you’re saying something nasty inside of you; mayn’t I hear it?”
“I don’t think I am,” he replied. “I was wondering precisely where I came in?”
“You come in here,” she laughed, with halting mirth; “you’re the oracle; you roll out the future in a hollow voice; you say what you think.”
He shook his head.
“No, I forgot,” she ran on, “you never do; you say what you think some one else will think of what you wouldn’t say if you thought it; isn’t that it? You explained it to me once, but it wasn’t clear. Well, say that! Say something! You’ve known Veynes longer than I have; say he’s not good enough for me!”
“Oh, that’s understood,” he murmured.
“By Veynes?”
“By Veynes just at present, probably. I meant by you and me.”
“Oh, you!” she flouted. “You mightn’t think yourself good enough.”
It was a curious challenge for a man’s matrimonial amen. The woman thirsting for love and eager to drink it; the man thirsty and afraid. She did not see the sudden change in his eyes, as though a flame went through them. She was looking the other way. But she heard the parry of his low “I should not” to her thrust. It pierced like the white pinch of frost, it ran cold even into her voice.
“Ah, you’re too modest,” she rallied, so briskly that he did not notice the shiver in her throat. “Besides, you’re rather cowed by my frock; but how about the family?”
“Veynes’?”
“Yes.”
“There’s only Lord Egham.”
“Only Lord Egham! No sisters, mothers, aunts—nothing? Oh, come, that’s better. And what is he like?”
“He’s a dear old gentleman who dotes on his son.”
“Then he’d take me badly?”
“I fancy so.”
“Why?”
“Ah, that’s a big question. Perhaps his education was defective.”
“I dare say. He’s an earl, isn’t he?”
“Yes, the Earl of Egham, sits as Viscount Alderly.”
“I see; and some day I might be a countess?”
“You might.”
“That’s a bribe; I like the word awfully; it sounds good; it’s like a stare to say it—the countess!—but I fancy it would be rather dreadful being one—that is, if you weren’t born to it—in the cast all along, don’t you know. Of course, then you could do what you liked; but if you’d only been made one, and made from a dancing girl, you’d have to be proper, just to show how easy it came! And I think it would be dull,” she drawled. “What do you say?”
“Nothing,” he affirmed.
“Not even to save poor Veynes from his fate? You could save him.”
He looked slowly across at her face, which lay back idly under the yellow light, and she held her eyes squarely to his, as a maid holds a mirror to her mistress. He might search them for reflections, but he would see nothing more. In point of fact, he looked for some time without troubling their surface.
“Marry him,” he said.
“And the earl?”
“Oh, you must treat him kindly, and show him what an excellent countess you can make.”
“Shall I?”
“I fancy not. You’re too human, you see; this warm, kind world is too near your heart. The great lady has nothing there but her corset; and the world—her little cold world—at her fingers’ ends, in a descending scale of chilliness. Besides, you’re too pretty.”
“To be a countess?”
“No, to be made one. You can’t melt beauty for new molds without breaking the old, you know; something goes.”
“And yet you say—marry him.”
“Well, I won’t say it,” he replied.
She had turned her head away, and was stretching over her shoulders for her wrap.
“I’m going,” she said.
He rose to put it round her, and caught the reflection in the glass of her averted eyes. They were shining with tears.
She held out her hand, shook his shortly, and went toward the door.
“You needn’t come down,” she said, as he followed her.
“No, but I will.”
“No, you won’t; I don’t want you.”
There was something more imperative in her decree than its tone—a sob; that stopped him at the open door.
The sound of her feet ceased from the stair, the front door slammed, and he walked across to the window, waiting there till the noisy motion of her hansom ebbed into the dull roar of the streets.
He stayed even longer, and the May sky had lost its last memory of the day ere he sat down again before his dying fire.
The girl’s gay audacity seemed to linger like an odor in the room; made pungent, as it were, by that sob. He had not noticed it before. Conscious audacity it was not; for she wore her beauty as a sort of decoration, the star of some regal order, which sanctioned the fine animal magnificence with which she had set the obligations of nobility behind those of good looks, and doubted if the charmed circle of coronets might not prove too dull for her endurance; putting, without a tinge of affectation, nature’s creations before those of dead kings.
But it was not of her vivid exuberance that South was thinking; he had inhaled that before, and the intoxication of it was dissolved. But those sly touches of humility, too faint to be felt through the written record of her words, dropped lids, and looks, and pauses, so unlike her, pressed still as a hand upon his lifted arm. Yet he told himself he had understood them, without the compulsion of her tears.
At least he understood this: that she had thrown the weight of her beauty without avail against the ease and freedom of his unwedded days. Yet it left him with a pricking sense—not of repentance—but that repentance might confront, might even confound, him.