The Relentless City

by E. F. Benson

Mrs. Palmer's house-party, which was to be with her during the week of the 'Revels,' as they were called, had arrived at Mon Repos the same afternoon. Mon Repos had been taking its rest in its usual relentless manner, and Bertie Keynes and Mrs. Massington were beginning to get into training. It had dawned on them both very soon that they were engaged in the exercise of the most strenuous mental and physical activity that their dawdling English lives had ever known. The whole party breakfasted together in a marquee on the lawn, and from that moment till after the ensuing midnight were engaged ohne rast with a prodigious quantity of hast in a continuous social effort. Bathing, boating, bridge (the two latter simultaneously) lasted till lunch; these and similar pursuits, all executed in the dazzling light, in the dazzling crowd, and largely to the dazzling sound of a band, went on without pause till dinner, after which was a short one-act play in the theatre, followed by a 'quiet dance.' After one day of it Mrs. Massington's quick perceptions made discoveries which she communicated to Bertie.

'You are here to play up,' she said, 'and not to amuse yourself. Don't drink any wine at lunch, and very little at dinner.'

'Then I shall die,' said Bertie.

'No, you will not; you will feel much less tired. The whole day is a stimulant, so why take more? Besides, alcohol produces a reaction. That doesn't matter in England, because we sit down and react; here you can't. Also don't attempt to sparkle in conversation. Here they sparkle naturally—at least, they open their mouths and let it come—whereas in England we tend rather to shut our mouths unless we want to say something. But you are being a great success. Go away now; I am going to rest for three minutes before I dress for dinner.'

Bertie lingered a moment at the door of her room.

'They are awfully kind,' he said. 'If only I was stronger, I should enjoy it enormously.'

'I am enjoying it,' said she; 'it suits me. You will, too, if you take my advice.'

'I feel more inclined to take to drink,' said he.

But the fact once grasped that life at Mon Repos was not a holiday, but hard, relentless work of a most exacting kind, they began forthwith to settle down to it and grapple with it. At once the difficulty and charm of it absorbed them. It was a continual piece of acting; whatever your mood, you had to assume a species of reckless gaiety, and all day long feverishly and seriously engage in things that were originally designed to be relaxations, but which the ingenuity of social life had turned into instruments of the profession. None of those present particularly cared for bridge, boating, or bathing in themselves; they would not have boated or bathed alone, or played bridge even with a dummy, but they used these relaxations as a means of accomplishing social efforts. Such a life cannot be undertaken frivolously, though it is purely frivolous; twenty years of it ages its devotees more than thirty years of hard and reasonable brain-work, and though they find it intensely fascinating, yet they know they have to pay for their pleasure, and grow quickly old in its service. Indeed, it might almost be classed as a dangerous trade; and if the pursuit of wealth is a relentless task, not less so is its expenditure as a means of social success. Certainly Mrs. Palmer worked quite as hard as her husband.

Three days passed thus, and it was now the afternoon of the first day of the Revels. In consequence, the telegraph and telephone lines down to Port Washington were congested with messages, for the greater part of the evening papers in New York had kept their first page open for them, and nothing could be sent to press until it was known in what manner the first afternoon would be spent. A good deal, of course, was ready to be set up, for the list of the guests was public property, and their dresses could be, even if imagined only, described; but as long as the lagoon on the shore held its secret, the page could not be made up. It was known also that there would be a ball at Mon Repos in the evening, and that the walls of the ball-room were to be covered—literally covered, as a paper covers a wall—with roses. But for the secret of the lagoon the papers had to wait, since it had been inviolably kept. Another event, too, hardly less momentous, hung in the balance, for only two days before the reigning Prince of Saxe-Hochlaben, a dissolute young man of twenty-five, with a limp, a past, and no future, had arrived like a thunderbolt in New York.