“And so,” I said, “you are to come out.”
She was not the girl I took in to dinner, a circumstance which invested her with a perverted interest. It often is so. The fact might remind us of the wider paradox—the fascination of the people in whom we shouldn’t be interested. I have noticed the same thing in the matter of duties, even of agreeable duties. When I have a book to write, I always can think of the most beautiful things for the book that I am to write next after that.
I tried to express something of this idea to her while the man who brought her in was talking to a charming lady on his left.
“As a means of justifying yourself,” she said, “I should find your philosophy needlessly circuitous. I hate justifications.”
“Now don’t,” I pleaded, “don’t upset my theory that every one—even a woman—prefers to be justified, is justified, in his (I wish we had taken up that new pronoun thon’s) own sight before doing anything.”
“How stupid! Can’t you see that your justification takes all the fun for me out of your conversation? Now, if you couldn’t justify yourself there would be something in it.”
“But I haven’t said that I do.”
“O I can feel it! You have a justified tone.”
“What an infliction!” I moaned. “A justified tone must be worse than a sanctified one. Isn’t it enough that I simply can’t help talking to you?”
“Certainly not. If you weren’t immersed in theories you would know that to a woman nothing could ever be enough.”
“It sometimes seems so,” I assented. “You might have reminded me of that.”
“Evidently you are meditating a cynicism. I can hear the rumble of it in the distance.”
“No,” I said, “cynicisms do not rumble. That is profundity. I was going to say, when you did riot interrupt me, that you typify for me the spirit of the insatiable in the modern young woman.”
“And we are at a dinner, too,” she returned severely. “Your profundities are very rude.”
“As for that, an appetite has ceased to be awkward. It is very pleasant to think that a girl and gastronomy are no longer incongruous.”
“So nice of you to let us eat.”
“My dear, the era not only permits you to eat, but insists on your eating, and dotes on the spectacle. The American girl is not a disembodied sentiment. She is a splendid physical fact. But that is another matter. The interesting thing for me at the moment is the news that you are coming out. Let us talk about that.”
“An absurd topic. I can’t see anything interesting in that.”
“Which proves that you are insatiable. What could be more interesting?”
“O, it is interesting enough to me as a fact. It will be a comfort in some ways. But what is there to say of it? I am tired of not being out. Aunt Madeleine is tired of my not being out. So is papa.”
“Well,” I said, “I can see that it would be something to get off your mind.”
“O, it will be an immense relief, I can assure you. Not that I think there is anything in it. But it is something that one has to endure. I suspect that you regard it as something of a joke.”
“On the contrary, I regard it as an event of almost religious significance. If you would permit me to be sentimental I could say some rather pretty things about Coming Out as an institution. Débutanting is one of those incidents of civilized life which we all permit ourselves to contemplate with real enjoyment. I’m sure that your aunt will enjoy it.”
“But?—”
“I didn’t say ‘but’.”
“You looked it. There was a lurking ‘but’ in your tone, like the diminished seventh. But what?”
“I refuse to have a ‘but’ if I am to be challenged for it. A ‘but’ is sometimes a fragile thing.”
“Yes, and sometimes it is a buttress.”
“Not one that may not be shattered by a woman—even a very young woman.”
“You are intolerable.”
“And you are inquisitive—I mean acquisitive. And you know too much already.”
“Did that have anything to do with the ‘but?’”
“What?”
“That I know too much already?”
Perhaps I should have had to confess had not the lady whom I did take in to dinner demanded my attention at the moment. Presently the Débutante was saying: “Did you go to the Charity Ball?”
“Now you are having fun with me. Do I look like a charity baller?”
“Don’t sneer at the poor old Charity. It’s antique and has a grand march, but it’s a dear old affair.”
“I am not sneering. I never go to formidable dances. Now why did you ask me? Did you go?”
“No. I did last year. Aunt Madeleine has gone regularly for ten or fifteen years—and worn the same shade of velvet every time. This year I should have gone with her again, but Aunt Madeleine said it was too near my coming out.”
“I understand. That seems reasonable, too. Unless you were kept in a little I don’t see how you could come out.”
“I shouldn’t be here if I hadn’t promised Mrs. Amering in Paris that I would come. Aunt Madeleine was there and abetted me because she wanted to be nice to Mrs. Amering.”
“I fancy that your aunt is very good to you.”
“O, Aunt Madeleine is a dear. But she is a trying paradox. You see, she wants to bring me up—and out—properly. But she likes to play at being radical, and sometimes I have to remind her that she is too reckless with me. She has spasms of conservative severity that really are very funny. Then her rigor relents and she takes it to heart if I don’t do something rampant. When she is in this mood she packs me off somewhere by myself. ‘You have too much of me,’ she says. That was how I came to go out on the Texas ranch last year. Uncle Billy Sandrix had expected both of us to come, and you should have seen him stare when I rode up to the ranch house on a crazy Indian pony, a week before he was to come and meet us at Fort Worth. ‘What the devil,’ he said,—and that was all that he could say. I had a refulgent time there. The next evening, while Uncle Billy was telling me about one of his horses, a young fellow rode up and asked if he might stop there. Uncle Billy said ‘Certainly.’ That was just like Uncle Billy. The young man stabled his horse, and coming over to Uncle Billy, asked, ‘Where shall I sleep?’ Something in the way he said it must have riled Uncle Billy, or a broad English accent may have struck his funny side. Anyway, he said, ‘Why, I don’t care. This pasture has only twenty thousand acres. It’s the smallest in the outfit, but you are welcome to sleeping room anywhere.’ This was just like Uncle Billy, too. The young man nodded and turned away; and we both thought he had been seriously offended. Presently Uncle Billy went out to look for him. But he was not to be seen. The next morning we found that the stranger had slept in the open, had harnessed at daylight and ridden away, leaving his thanks with one of the men. This hurt Uncle Billy and he tore after the stranger, ran him down in an hour, trotted him back, told him he had lots of sand, and wouldn’t let him go for two weeks. It turned out that the young man was the son of an English peer, who had run away from home. He didn’t tell me that until the end of the second week.”
“Yes; I daresay that at the end of the second week he was telling you everything.”
“Well, he was a lovely fellow, and really a very good rider for an Englishman. Even Uncle Billy liked his riding. I met him afterward in London, and he was very nice. It was delicious to hear him give me advice.”
“Advice?”
“Yes; he talked to me like a father and I laughed at him like a sister. It actually grieved him when I sometimes went out alone. You see, I couldn’t always make Aunt Madeleine go with me. It worried him that I didn’t like his clothes. They simply didn’t fit and I said so. Then he patiently outlined his theory that it was bad art to have the clothes follow the figure. The American, he thought, dressed too timidly. The effect of the American’s clothes was too sweet. ‘A man should look superior to his clothes,’ he maintained. ‘And so,’ I said, ‘you have inferior clothes. How can a man better indicate his superiority to his clothes, how can he better dominate them, than by making them fit him?’ a remark which seemed to convince him that I was hopeless. At all events, he confessed that he’d never before had a girl find fault with his clothes.”
“I can fancy his being cut up about it. Do you do that sort of thing often?”
“If you mean find fault with a man’s clothes, no; if you mean tease a man for being too serious, yes.”
“I see; you are serious only when the man isn’t. Tell me: how do you find men in the average,—too serious?”
“At the wrong time—yes.”
“When you are older, my dear, you will find them less serious.”
“Which will prove what I say, that they are serious at the wrong time. Why should they be serious with me?”
“To be candid, it is all I can do to remain flippant enough.”
“That is brutal.”
“You inspire me with the most serious thoughts.”
“That sounds like the charming curé I met in Provence. We had a delightful time at a country house, a romantic old vine-covered place where everybody you met was a character out of Balzac—when he is nice—or out of Daudet anywhere. Of course there had to be a curé, and he struck me like some book curé brought up to date. My, but he was handsome! with a romantic splash of gray at the temples. Why, a woman would tell her age to such a confessor! He knew a great deal about America. What he didn’t know he wanted me to tell him.”
“I hope you completed his knowledge.”
“He asked me if all American girls knew so much. I said that most of them knew much more; that I was an ignoramus who had been educated in three countries; who learned things to please her aunt and forgot them to please her father. It was funny to see how puzzled he was. First he was amiably gallant with me. Then he grew interrogatory, then sage. ‘My child,’ he said (it sounded just like a book), ‘you seem to have anticipated life.’ What do you suppose he was driving at? Then he went on, with a sort of grieved look, ‘You know too much.’ ‘And is this my reward,’ I demanded, ‘for being so good and answering all your questions?’ He laughed then, showing the loveliest teeth you ever saw. ‘I did not expect such answers,’ he said. When I told him afterward that we were going to Monte Carlo and then to the Grand Prix (papa was with us), he looked at me as if he was wondering what I would do with them.”
“Did you go to Monte Carlo?”
“Yes; but I didn’t think much of the game. I liked the little game at San Antonio better, though Aunt Madeleine made only a weak protest at Monaco, after raising a great row in Texas. And it was the same way about slumming. Aunt Madeleine thought it was quite romantic in Naples, but was completely depressed at the vulgarity of going to Pell Street. Papa doesn’t care particularly to have me go unless he takes me himself; and he is more logical. He says that all slums smell alike to him. Do you know that very unexpectedly I had a good time at Mentone. Think of it! The very name sounds drowsy. Nobody ever cuts up at Mentone. I could only think of ‘Ordered South’ and so on. But there was a count there—a Count de—de—I forget now; it was an impossible name anyway; and he was so funny. He was more than serious. He was gloomy. He was more than gloomy. He was Gloom. You should have seen him! I shouldn’t have missed him for anything. He was prodigious—and so stunning looking.”
“You must have had a very good time.”
“I did. But you can’t imagine what luck I fell into; for there was a Pittsburg girl there, a Miss Gruge, who was—well, she had been ticketed for a title and a lot of money. Then her folks decided to let her go for a title without money, then for money related to a title. And they have kept on marking the poor thing down. You know how it will be. At some special sale she will go for away below cost. It is pitiful. And this Marked Down Girl and her mother simply bothered the Count to death. The more they pestered him the gloomier the Count got with me. I was afraid to cheer him up; it would have ended everything, and the fun of riling Miss Gruge and her mother was too good. Well, one day when Aunt Madeleine had a headache he blurted out a proposal. ‘My dear Count,’ I said, ‘how absurd! Can’t you see that I am only a child? Why, I am not even in society. I’m not to be considered at all. For Heaven’s sake don’t let papa hear of this!’ As you might suppose, this made the Count even gloomier than ever. O, I hated to leave him!”
“I’m afraid you are a trifle cruel.”
“It isn’t cruelty; it’s a sense of humor.”
“You will be punished some day when you meet the man who has the right sense of humor. Perhaps he will have a dash of romantic gray, and fine teeth, and be maddeningly unserious—”
“O, I have met him already!”
“Indeed?”
“At Washington. Papa had some legislative business there. The only way to get the thing through was to camp there, he said, and we camped there for a whole winter. I was afraid at first that it was going to be wretchedly dull. And it was, for a few weeks, until papa got his bearings, for meanwhile Aunt Madeleine had started to live up to her theory that if you got into the House set first your chances for the Senate and Cabinet sets were nothing at all. One afternoon at Mrs. Senator Pritter’s, I met an army man who is just the sort you have been threatening me with. Of course he only pretended to be unserious, but I gave him the credit of the pretence. One of the women had whispered to me that the ring was going to defeat him for a promotion. When I asked him what the ring had against him, he was almost serious for a moment, and to tell you the truth, I almost liked him that way. ‘Who told you about the ring?’ he asked me. ‘My sources of information cannot be divulged,’ I said. ‘But why don’t you get it anyhow?’ He shook his head. ‘Let us talk about the weather.’ I wouldn’t let him off that way. ‘I like fighters,’ I persisted. ‘Why don’t you get everybody to work for you? Isn’t that the way it’s done?’ ‘Will you work for me?’ he asked. ‘You’re laughing at me,’ I said, ‘but I will work for you.’ Now you will laugh too, but I got eight senators to speak to the President about the Lieutenant, and he was promoted after all. When I saw him again, he was dreadfully serious, and made a great mess of thanking me. Afterward he wrote me a nice letter from Manila. All that got me quite interested in Washington.”
“Washington is quite an entertaining game—when you win.”
“I don’t ask to win always—if I like the game. It’s only in games I don’t like that I insist on winning.... What are you so quiet about?”
“I was thinking ... how nice it was that you were coming out.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“My dear, don’t flutter forth into this too-serious world in a distrustful mood.”
“I never have moods; I only have tenses.”
“And it is mostly the present tense. And yet you surely have begun to think about the future.”
“In another minute you will be giving me advice.”
“No; not exactly that, though I might ask yours.... Why, here’s the coffee!”
“When shall it be?... When shall you ask?”
“After you have come out.”