WEIGHING DELIGHT AND DOLE.
Hamlet; i.—2.
"Oh, this is completely captivating," Mrs. Frostwinch said, as she sat down to luncheon in Edith Fenton's pretty dining-room, and looked at the large mound-like bouquet of richly tinted spring leaves which adorned the centre of the table. "That is the advantage of having brains. One always finds some delightful surprise or other at your house."
"Thank you," Edith returned, gayly; "but at your house one always has a delightful surprise in the hostess, so you are not forced to resort to makeshifts."
Helen Greyson, the third member of the party, smiled and shook her head.
"Really," she said, "is one expected to keep up to the level of elaborate compliment like that? I fear I can only sit by in admiring silence while you two go on."
"Oh, no," the hostess responded. "Mrs. Frostwinch is to talk to you.
That is what you people are here for. I am only to listen."
Edith had invited Helen and Mrs. Frostwinch to take luncheon with her, and she had really done it to bring these two more closely together. She was fond of them both, and the effect of her life in the world into which her marriage had introduced her had been to render her capable of judging both these women broadly. She admired them both, and while her feeling of affection had by circumstances been more closely cemented with Helen, she felt that a strong friendship was possible between herself and Mrs. Frostwinch should the lines of their lives ever fall much together.
The modern woman, particularly if she be at all in society, has generally to accept the possibilities of friendship in place of that gracious boon itself. The busy round of life to-day gives ample opportunity for judging of character, so that it is well nigh impossible not to feel that some are worthy of friendship, some especially gifted by nature with the power of inspiring it, while, on the other hand, there are those who repel or with whom the bond would be impossible. But friendship, however much it be the result of eternal fitness and the inevitable consequence of the meeting of two harmonious natures, is a plant of slow growth, and few things which require time and tranquillity for their nourishment flourish greatly in this age of restlessness and intense mental activity. The radical and unfettered Bohemian, or such descendants of that famous race as may be supposed still to survive, attempts to leap over all obstacles, to create what must grow, and to turn comradeship into friendship simply because one naturally grows out of the other; the more conservative and logical Philistine recognizes the futility of this attitude, and in his too careful consistency sometimes needlessly brings about the very same failure by pursuing the opposite course.
Edith was not of the women who naturally analyze their own feelings toward others over keenly, but one cannot live in a world without sharing its mental peculiarities. The times are too introspective to allow any educated person to escape self-examination. The century which produced that most appalling instance of spiritual exposure, the "Journal Intime" which it is impossible to read without blushing that one thus looks upon the author's soul in its nakedness, leaves small chance for self-unconsciousness. Edith could not help examining her mental attitude toward her companions, and it was perhaps a proof of the sweetness of her nature that she found in her thought nothing of that shortcoming in them, or reason for lack of fervor in friendship other than such as must come from lack of intercourse.
Perhaps some train of thought not far removed from the foregoing made her say, as the luncheon progressed,—