III
December 27. Three weeks simply boiling with business since I wrote here—and it seems not more than so many days. And all by way of preparation, for the actual season is still five days away.
I can hardly realize that Mrs. Burke is the same person I looked at so dubiously two days less than a month ago. Truly, the right sort of us Americans are wonderful people. To begin with her appearance: her hair isn't "bottled," as she called it, any more. It's beautiful iron-gray, and softens her features and permits all the placid kindliness and humor of her face to show. Then there's her dress—gracious, how tight-looking she was! A thin woman can, and should, wear close things. But no woman who wishes to look like a lady must ever wear anything tight. To be tight in one's clothes is to be tight in one's talk, manner, thought—and that means—well, common. What an expressive word "common" is, yet I'm sure I couldn't define it.
For a fat woman to be tight is—revolting! My idea of misery is a fat woman in a tight waist and tight shoes. Yet fat women have a mania for wearing tight things, just as gaunt women yearn for stripes and short women for flounces. My first move in getting Mrs. Burke into shape—after doing away with that dreadful "bottled" hair—was to put her into comfortable clothes. The first time I got her into an evening dress of the right sort I was rewarded for all my trouble by her expression. She kissed me with tears in her eyes. "My dear," said she, "never before did I have a best dress that I wasn't afraid to breathe in for fear I'd bust out, back or front." Then I made her sit down before her long glass and look at herself carefully. She had the prettiest kind of color in her cheeks as she smiled at me and said: "If I'd 'a' looked like this when I was young I reckon Mr. Burke wouldn't 'a' been so easy in his mind when he went away from home, nor 'a' stayed so long. I always did sympathize with pretty women when they capered round, but now I wonder they ever do sober down. If I weighed a hundred pounds or so less I do believe I'd try to frisk yet."
And I do believe she could; for she's really a handsome woman. Why is it that the women who have the most to them don't give it a chance to show through, but get themselves up so that anybody who glances at them tries never to look again?
It is the change in her appearance even more than all she's learned that has given her self-confidence. She feels at ease—and that puts her at ease, and puts everybody else at ease, too. It has reacted upon Mr. Burke. He has dropped brilliantine—perhaps "ma" gave him a quiet hint—and he has taken some lessons in dress from "Cyrus," who really gets himself up very well, considering that he has lived in Germany for three years. I should have hopes that "pa" would blossom out into something very attractive socially if he hadn't a deep-seated notion that he is a great joker. A naturally serious man who tries to be funny is about the most painful object in civilization. Still, Washington is full of statesmen and scholars who try to unbend and be "light," especially with "the ladies." Nothing makes me—or any other woman, I suppose—so angry as for a man to show that he takes me for a fool by making a grinning galoot of himself whenever he talks to me. Bucyrus is much that kind of ass. He alternates between solemnity and silliness.
I said rather pointedly to him the other night: "You men with your great, deep minds make a mistake in changing your manner when you talk with the women and the children. Nothing pleases us so much as to be taken seriously." But it didn't touch him. However, he's hardly to blame. He's spent a great many years round institutions of learning, and in those places, I've noticed, every one has a musty, fusty sense of humor. Probably it comes from cackling at classical jokes that have laughed themselves as dry as a mummy.
We've been giving a few entertainments—informal and not large, but highly important. I had two objects in mind: In the first place, to get Mr. and Mrs. Burke accustomed to the style of hospitality they've got to give if they're going to win out. In the second place, to get certain of the kind of people who are necessary to us in the habit of coming to this house—and those people are not so very hard to get hold of now; later they'll be engaged day and night.
For two weeks now I've had my two especial features going. One of them is for the men, the other for the women. And I can see already that they alone would carry us through triumphantly; for they've caught on.