About a year and a half after my wife achieved her ambition, I began to feel that she was spiritually bearing down upon me in pursuance of some new secret plan.
During the year and a half she had been playing the fashionable social game with the strenuous enthusiasm which only a woman—I had almost said only an American woman—seems able to inject into the pursuit of objects that are of no consequences whatsoever. And, in spite of the useful MacIlvane I had been compelled to assist her far more than was to my liking. I went about enough to get a thorough insight into fashionableness—and a profound distaste for it. Of the many phases, ludicrous, repellent, despicable, pitiful, there was one that made a deep impression upon me. It amazed me to find that the “best” class of people was, if possible, more vulgarly snobbish than the class from which I had come—even than the “Brooklyn bounders.” I could not comprehend—I cannot comprehend—how those who have had the best opportunities are no more intelligent, no broader of mind than those who have had no opportunities at all. The ignorance, the narrowness of the men and women of the comfortable classes!—the laziness of their minds!—the shallow cant about literature, art and the like! Really, intelligence, activity of mind, seems confined to the few who are pushing upward; and the masses of mankind in all classes seem contented each class with its own peculiar wallow of ignorance.
But to Edna’s secret plan. If you are a married man you will at once understand what I mean when I speak of having a vague sensation of being borne down upon. She said nothing; she did nothing. But I knew she was making ready to ask something to which she believed she could get my consent only by the use of all her tact and skill and charm—for she did not know her charms had ceased to charm, but thought them more potent than ever. I waited with patience and composure; and in due time she began cautious open approaches.
“Margot is almost ready to come out,” said she.
“Money?” said I, smiling.
She rebuked this coarseness amiably. “Everybody isn’t always thinking of money, dear,” said she.
“But why talk to me about anything else? That’s my only department in the family.”
She deigned a smile for my pleasantry, then went on in her usual serious way: “I wish to consult you about her education.”
“Oh—finish as you’ve begun,” said I. “I suppose it’s the best that can be done for a girl.”
“But I can’t find what I want,” said she, with an expression of sweet maternal solicitude. “I’ve always been determined Margot should have the best education any girl in the whole world could get.”