"But I find myself wondering sometimes," she continued, "where all the dull people in society were dug up. Sometimes after a long month of dinners I get desperate and almost wish I could renounce the world. Why, at the end of last winter I told my husband that we had not spent a single evening home since we got back from Florida, and we hadn't had a single pleasant evening, not one. He didn't think it was as bad as that, and perhaps it wasn't for him either, for I don't believe the women are as stupid as the men. Of course now and then there was a dinner I thought I should enjoy, but I never did. I'd see the clever man I'd have liked to talk to; I'd see him far down at the other end of the table, and that was all I did see of him. Some dreary old man would take me in, and then after dinner I'd have perhaps two or three little boys come up and try to pay compliments, and succeed in keeping away the men who might possibly have had something to say."
"And yet yours is the set that so many people seem to be trying so hard to enter," he suggested; "that is, if I understand aright what I read in New York novels."
"Yes," she answered, "I suppose that's the chief satisfaction we have—we know we are envied by the people who want to visit us, and to have us visit them. I suppose the desire to get into Society fills the emptiness in many a woman's life; it gives her something to live for."
"They don't seem to have much of the stern joy that foemen feel," Morton commented. "They take life desperately hard. Over there in the other corner I saw a handsome woman, and I overheard a man call her by name—she's the wife of Cyrus Poole, the Wall Street operator. And when I saw the unsatisfied aspiration in her face, I wondered whether she was one of those social strugglers I had read about."
"Mrs. Poole?" echoed Mrs. Suydam, indifferently. "I don't know her: I've met her, of course—one meets everybody—but I don't know her. She is good-looking, and she is in the thick of the social struggle. Upward and outward is her motto—Excelsior! They used to say that all last winter you could positively hear her climb. But then they have said that of so many people! She is clever, they say, and she entertains lavishly, so I shouldn't wonder if she succeeded sooner or later; and then she will be so disappointed."
Morton smiled. "From your account," he said, "the social struggle is rather a tragedy than a comedy; and I confess it has hitherto struck me as not without a suggestion of farce."
"It is absurd, isn't it?" she returned, smiling back. "And are we not a very snobbish lot? Jimmy declares that society in New York is almost as snobbish as it is in London even."
There was a moment of silence, and then Morton asked, a little stiffly, "How is Mr. Suydam? You know I have never had the pleasure of meeting him."
"Haven't you?" Mrs. Suydam responded. "You can see him soon. He's to drive George Western's coach. There they come now!"
A trumpet sounded; a gate in the railing at the Fourth Avenue end of the building was opened; and a coach was driven into the arena. A very stout man sat on the box alone.