Many are the women, in all parts of the earth, who have sought to climb into the world of fashion by the broad and apparently easy stairway of charity. But most of them have failed because they were unaware of the secret of that stairway, an unsuspected secret which I shall proceed to point out. It seems, as I have said, a particularly easy stairway—broad, roomy, with invalid steps. It is, in fact, a moving stairway so cunningly contrived that she—it is usually she—who ascends keeps in the same place. She goes up, but at exactly her ascending rate the stairway goes down. She sees other women making apparently no more effort than she ascending rapidly, and presently entering the earthly heaven at the top. Yet there she stands, marking time, moving not one inch upward, and there she will stand until she wearies, relaxes her efforts, and finds herself rapidly descending. But how do the women who ascend accomplish it? I do not know. You must ask them. I only know the cause of the failure of the women who do not ascend. If I knew why the others succeeded I should not tell it. I would not deprive fashionable women of the joy of occupying a difficult height from which they can indulge themselves in the happiness of sneering and spitting down at their lowlier sisters. And I have no sympathy with the aspirations or the humiliations of those lowlier sisters.
My energetic and aspiring wife presently found herself on this stairway, with no hint as to its secret, much less as to the way of overcoming its peculiarity. She toiled daily in Holy Cross. She subscribed to everything, she helped in everything. She was the proud recipient of the rector’s loud praises as his “most devoted, least worldly, most spiritual helper.” But—not an invitation of the kind she wanted. Everyone was “just lovely” to her. Whenever any charitable or spiritual matter was to be discussed, no matter how grand and exclusive the house in which the discussion was to be held, there was my wife in a place of honor, eagerly consulted—and urged to subscribe. But nothing unworldly. They understood how spiritual she was, did those sweet, good people. They knew Saint Edna wished no social frivolities—no dinners or theater parties, no bridge or dancing.
She was a wise lady. She hid her burning impatience. She smiled and purred when she yearned to scowl and scratch. She waited, and prayed for some lucky accident that would swing her across the invisible, apparently nonexistent but actually impassable dead line. She had expected snubs and cold shoulders. Never a snub, never a cold shoulder. Always smiles and gracious handshakings and amiable familiarities, but those always of the kind that serve to accentuate caste distinction instead of removing it. For the first time in her life, I think, she was completely stumped. She could combat obstacles. She might even have found a way to fight fog. But how ridiculous to make struggles and thrust out fists when there is nothing but empty, sunny air!
She held church lunches and dinners at our house—of course, had me on duty at the dinners. All in vain. The distinction between the spiritual and the temporal remained in force. The grand people came, acted as if they were delighted, complimented her on her house, on her hospitality, went away, to invite her to similar dreary functions at their houses. And my, how it did cost her! No wonder Holy Cross made a pet of her and elected me to the board of vestrymen.
Once in a while she would find something in her net, so slyly cast, so softly drawn. She would have a wild spasm of joy; then the something would turn out to be another climber like herself. Those climbers avoided each other as devils dodge the font of holy water. The climber she would have caught would be one who, ignorant of the intricacies of New York society, was under the impression that the Mrs. Godfrey Loring so conspicuous in Holy Cross must be a social personage. They would examine each other—at a series of joyous entertainments each would provide for the other, would discover their mutual mistake—and— You know the contemptuous toss with which the fisherman rids himself of a bloater; you know the hysterical leap of the released bloater back into the water.
But how it was funny! My wife did not take me into her confidence as to her social struggles. She maintained with me the same sweet, elegant exterior of spiritual placidity with which she faced the rest of the world. Nevertheless, in a dim sort of way I had some notion of what she was about—though, as I was presently to discover, I was wholly mistaken in my idea of her progress.
“What has happened to Mrs. Lestrange?” I said to her one evening at dinner. “Is she ill?”
She cast a quick, nervous glance in the direction of the butler. I, looking at him by way of a mirror, thought I saw upon his aristocratic countenance a faint trace of that insolent secret glee which fills servants when their betters are humiliated before them. “Mrs. Lestrange?” she said carelessly. “Oh, I see her now and then.”
“But you’ve been inseparable until lately,” said I. “A quarrel, I suppose?”
“Not at all,” said my wife tartly.