At the Casino that night Kate Clephane, on the whole, was more bored than at the Rectory. After all, at the Merrimans’ there was a rather anxious atmosphere of kindliness, of a desire to help, and a retrospective piety about the war which had served them such a good turn, and of which they were still trying, in their tiny measure, to alleviate the ravages.
Whereas the Betterlys—
“What? Another begging-list? No, my dear Kate; you don’t! Stony-broke; that’s what I am, and so’s Harry—ain’t you, Harry?” Marcia Betterly would scream, clanking her jewelled bangles, twisting one heavy hand through her pearls, and clutching with the other the platinum-and-diamond wrist-bag on which she always jokingly pretended that Kate Clephane had her eye. “Look out, Sid, she’s a regular train-robber; hold you up at your own door. I believe she’s squared the police: if she hadn’t she’d ’a been run in long ago.... Oh, the war? What war? Is there another war on? What, that old one? Why, I thought that one was over long ago.... You can’t get anybody I know to talk about it even!”
“Guess we’ve got our work cut out paying for it,” added Horace Betterly, stretching a begemmed and bloated hand toward the wine-list.
“Well, I should say!” his wife agreed with him.
“Sid, what form of liquid refreshment?” And “Sid”, a puffy Chicago business man, grew pink in his effort to look knowing and not name the wrong champagne....
It was odd: during her drive with Mrs. Minity, at Madame Lanska’s, and again at the Rectory, Kate Clephane had meant to proclaim her great news—and she had not yet breathed a word of it. The fact was, it was too great; too precious to waste on Mrs. Minity’s inattention, too sacred to reveal to Madame Lanska’s bridge-players, and too glorious to overwhelm those poor women at the Rectory with. And now, in the glare and clatter of the Casino, with the Sids and Harrys exchanging winks, and the Mrs. Sids and Harrys craning fat necks to see the last new cocotte, or the young Prince about whom there were such awful stories—here, of all places, to unbare her secret, name her daughter: how could she ever have thought it possible?
Only toward the end of the long deafening dinner, when Marcia and Mrs. Sid began to make plans for a week at Monte Carlo, and she found herself being impressed into the party (as she had, so often and so willingly, before) did Mrs. Clephane suddenly find herself assuming the defensive.
“You can’t? Or you won’t? Now, you Kate-cat you,” Marcia threatened her with a scented cigarette, “own up now—what’s doing? What you onto this time? Ain’t she naughty? We ain’t grand enough for her, girls!” And then, suddenly, at a sign from Horace, and lowering her voice, but not quite enough to make the communication private: “See here, Kate darling—of course, you know, as our guest: why, of course, naturally.” While, on the other side, Mrs. Sid drawled: “What I want to know is: where else can anybody go at this season?”