Part 26 (1/2)
Williams spoke with his customary contagious confidence. Selma noted that he was stouter and that his hair was becomingly streaked with gray.
Had not her attention been on the lookout for his wife she might have noticed that his eye wore a restless, strained expression despite his august banker's manner and showy gallantry. She did observe that the moment he had made way for Flossy he turned to Lyons and began to talk to him in a subdued tone under the guise of watching the procession.
The two women confronted each other with spontaneous forgetfulness of the past. There was a shade of haughtiness in Selma's greeting. She was prepared to respect her husband's policy and to ignore the circ.u.mstances under which they had parted, but she wished Flossy to understand that this was an act of condescension on her part as a Congressman's wife, whose important social status was beyond question. She was so thoroughly imbued with this sense of her indisputable superiority that she readily mistook Flossy's affability for fawning; whereas that young woman's ingenuous friendliness was the result of a warning sentence from Gregory when Selma and her husband were seen approaching--”Keep a check on your tongue, Floss. This statesman with a beard like a goat is likely to have a political future.”
”I felt sure it was you the other day,” Flossy said with smiling sprightliness, ”but I had not heard of your marriage to Mr. Lyons.”
”We were married at Benham six weeks ago. We are to live in Benham. We have bought the house there which belonged to Mr. Parsons. We have just returned from visiting the superb scenery of the Yosemite and the Rocky Mountains, and it made me prouder than ever of my country. If Congressman Lyons had not been obliged to be present at the opening of Congress, we should have spent our honeymoon in Europe.”
”Gregory and I pa.s.sed last summer abroad yachting. We crossed on a steamer and had our yacht meet us there. Isn't it a jam to-night?”
”There seem to be a great many people. I suppose you came on from New York on purpose for this reception?”
”Mercy, no. We are staying with friends, and we hadn't intended to come to-night. But we had been dining out and were dressed, so we thought we'd drop in and show our patriotism. It's destruction to clothes, and I'm glad I haven't worn my best.”
Selma perceived Flossy's eye making a note of her own elaborate costume, and the disagreeable suspicion that she was overdressed rea.s.serted itself. She had already observed that Mrs. Williams's toilette, though stylish, was comparatively simple. How could one be overdressed on such an occasion? What more suitable time for an American woman to wear her choicest apparel than when paying her respects to the President of the United States? She noticed that Flossy seemed unduly at her ease as though the importance of the ceremony was lost on her, and that they group of people with whom Flossy had been talking and who stood a little apart were obviously indulging in quiet mirth at the expense of some of those in the procession.
”Are the friends with whom you are staying connected with the Government?” Selma asked airily.
”Official people? Goodness, no. But I can point out to you who everybody is, for we have been in Was.h.i.+ngton frequently during the last three sessions. Gregory has to run over here on business every now and then, and I almost always come with him. To-night is the opportunity to see the queer people in all their glory--the woolly curiosities, as Gregory calls them. And a sprinkling of the real celebrities too,” she added.
Selma's inquiry had been put with a view to satisfy herself that Flossy's friends were mere civilians. But she was glad of an opportunity to be enlightened as to the names of her fellow-officials, though she resented Flossy's flippant tone regarding the character of the entertainment. While she listened to the breezy, running commentary by which Flossy proceeded to identify for her benefit the conspicuous figures in the procession she nursed her offended sensibilities.
”I should suppose,” she said, taking advantage of a pause, ”that on such an occasion as this everybody worth knowing would be present.”
Flossy gave Selma one of her quick glances. She had not forgotten the past, nor her discovery of the late Mrs. Littleton's real grievance against her and the world. Nor did she consider that her husband's caveat debarred her from the amus.e.m.e.nt of worrying the wife of the Hon.
James O. Lyons, provided it could be done by means of the truth ingenuously uttered. She said with a confidential smile--
”The important and the interesting political people have other opportunities to meet one another--at dinner parties and less promiscuous entertainments than this, and the Was.h.i.+ngton people have other opportunities to meet them. Of course the President is a dear, and everyone makes a point of attending a public reception once in a while, but this sort of thing isn't exactly an edifying society event. For instance, notice the woman in the pomegranate velvet with two diamond sprays in her hair. That's the wife of Senator Colman--his child wife, so they call her. She came to Was.h.i.+ngton six years ago as the wife of a member of the House from one of the wild and woolly States, and was notorious then in the hotel corridors on account of her ringletty raven hair and the profusion of rings she wore. She used to make eyes at the hotel guests and romp with her husband's friends in the hotel parlors, which was the theatre of her social activities. Her husband died, and a year ago she married old Senator Colman, old enough to be her grandfather, and one of the very rich and influential men in the Senate.
Now she has developed social ambition and is anxious to entertain. They have hired a large house for the winter and are building a larger one.
As Mrs. Polsen--that was her first husband's name--she was invited nowhere except to wholesale official functions like this. The wife of a United States Senator with plenty of money can generally attract a following; she is somebody. And it happens that people are amused by Mrs. Cohnan's eccentricities. She still overdresses, and makes eyes, and she nudges those who sit next her at table, but she is good-natured, says whatever comes into her head, and has a strong sense of humor. So she is getting on.”
”Getting on among society people?” said Selma drily.
Flossy's eyes twinkled. ”Society people is the generic name used for them in the newspapers. I mean that she is making friends among the women who live in the quarter where I pa.s.sed you the other day.”
Selma frowned. ”It is not necessary, I imagine, to make friends of that cla.s.s in order to have influence in Was.h.i.+ngton,--the best kind of influence. I can readily believe that people of that sort would interest most of our public women very little.”
”Very likely. I don't think you quite understand me, Mrs. Lyons, or we are talking at cross purposes. What I was trying to make clear is that political and social prominence in Was.h.i.+ngton are by no means synonimous. Of course everyone connected with the government who desires to frequent Was.h.i.+ngton society and is socially available is received with open arms; but, if people are not socially available, it by no means follows that they are able to command social recognition merely because they hold political office,--except perhaps in the case of wives of the Cabinet, of the Justices of the Supreme Court, or of rich and influential Senators, where a woman is absolutely bent on success and takes pains. I refer particularly to the wives, because a single man, if he is reasonably presentable and ambitious, can go about more or less, even if he is a little rough, for men are apt to be scarce. But the line is drawn on the women unless they are--er--really important and have to be tolerated for official reasons. Now every woman who is not _persona grata_, as the diplomats say, anywhere else, is apt to attend the President's reception in all her finery, and that's why I suggested that this sort of thing isn't exactly an edifying social event. It's amusing to come here now and then, just as it's amusing to go to a menagerie. You see what I mean, don't you?” Flossy asked, plying her feathery fan with blithe nonchalance and looking into her companion's face with an innocent air.
”I understand perfectly. And who are these people who draw the line?”
”It sometimes happens,” continued Flossy abstractedly, without appearing to hear this inquiry, ”that they improve after they've been in Was.h.i.+ngton a few years. Take Mrs. Baker, the Secretary of the Interior's wife, receiving to-night. When her husband came to Was.h.i.+ngton three years ago she had the social adaptability of a solemn horse. But she persevered and learned, and now as a Cabinet lady she unbends, and is no longer afraid of compromising her dignity by wearing becoming clothes and smiling occasionally. But you were asking who the people are who draw the line. The nice people here just as everywhere else; the people who have been well educated and have fine sensibilities, and who believe in modesty, and unselfishness and thorough ways of doing things. You must know the sort of people I mean. Some of them make too much of mere manners, but as a cla.s.s they are able to draw the line because they draw it in favor of distinction of character as opposed to--what shall I call it?--haphazard custom-made ethics and social deportment.”
Flossy spoke with the artless prattle of one seeking to make herself agreeable to a new-comer by explaining the existing order of things, but she had chosen her words as she proceeded with special reference to her listener's case. There was nothing in her manner to suggest that she was trifling with the feelings of the wife of Hon. James O. Lyons, but to Selma's sensitive ear there was no doubt that the impertinent and unpatriotic tirade had been deliberately aimed at her. The closing words had a disagreeably familiar sound. Save that they fell from seemingly friendly lips they recalled the ban which Flossy had hurled at her at the close of their last meeting--the ban which had decided her to declare unwavering hostility against social exclusiveness. Its veiled reiteration now made her nerves tingle, but the personal affront stirred her less than the conclusion, which the whole of Flossy's commentary suggested, that Was.h.i.+ngton--Was.h.i.+ngton the hearth-stone of American ideals, was contaminated also. Flossy had given her to understand that the houses which she had a.s.sumed to be occupied by members of the Government were chiefly the residences of people resembling in character those whom she had disapproved of in New York. Flossy had intimated that unless a woman were hand in glove with these people and ready to lower herself to their standards, she must be the wife of a rich Senator to be tolerated. Flossy had virtually told her that a Congressman's wife was n.o.body. Could this be true? The bitterest part of all was that it was evident Flossy spoke with the a.s.surance of one uttering familiar truths.
Selma felt affronted and bitterly disappointed, but she chose to meet Mrs. Williams's innocent affability with composure; to let her see that she disagreed with her, but not to reveal her personal irritation. She must consider Lyons, whose swift political promotion was necessary for her plans. It was important that he should become rich, and if his relations with the firm of Williams & Van Horne tended to that end, no personal grievance of her own should disturb them. Even Flossy had conceded that the wives of the highest officials could not be ignored.
”I fear that we look at these matters from too different a standpoint to discuss them further,” she responded, with an effort at smiling ease.
”Evidently you do not appreciate that to the majority of the strong women of the country whose husbands have been sent to Was.h.i.+ngton as members of the Government social interests seem trivial compared with the great public questions they are required to consider. These women doubtless feel little inclination for fas.h.i.+onable and--or--frivolous festivities, and find an occasion like this better suited to their conception of social dignity.”
A reply by Flossy to this speech was prevented by the interruption of Lyons, who brought up Mr. Horace Elton for introduction to his wife.