The discussion was raging hotly round the table, all but two of the men, and all but four of the women deriding astrology, palmistry, Buddhism, spiritualism; and the respective devotees of these cults deriding each the others. “Cut it out,” said Mrs. Ridgie finally. “We’ll have ‘rough house’ here the first thing you know.”
Everyone laughed. They liked slang, and Mrs. Ridgie’s was the boldest and quaintest. When the men and women were separated, “metaphysics” was again attempted by both. But the men who did not believe summarily laughed it down in the smoking room. “Those fads are all well enough for the women,” said Kennefick. “They’ve got to do something to pass the time, and they won’t do anything serious, or, if they do, they make a joke of it. But our men, Lord Frothingham”—he was addressing himself to the Earl, whose spiritualistic views he had not heard and did not suspect—“are too busy for such nonsense.”
“That’s a libel on the woman,” said Thayer—his fad was a militant socialism that had a kindly eye for a red flag. “It’s only women of the so-called fashionable class who go in for such silliness. The great mass of American women have something better to do.”
“That’s a libel on the women of the better class,” retorted Kennefick. “Precious few of them are so silly.”
“If it isn’t that it’s something else equally idle,” said Thayer. Except Frothingham he was the best dressed man in the room. “I’ve no time for idlers.”
“Why don’t you give your money away and shoulder a pick?” asked Kennefick teasingly.
“I’m not fit even to wield a pick”—Thayer was one of the ablest lawyers in Massachusetts—“and I’d give my money away if I could without doing more harm than good. There are two kinds of parasites—the plutocrats and the paupers. I’m ‘agin’ ’em both. And, as for spiritualism, I will admit that I don’t think we know enough about mind or the relations of mind and matter to dogmatise as you fellows have been doing.”
Kennefick winked at Frothingham as if saying: “Another proof that Thayer’s a crank.”
When Frothingham was beside Cecilia in the drawing room she said: “Would you like to go to Mrs. Ramsay?”
“Yes—will you take me?” he replied.