*****
Mrs. Warrener gracefully, if unnecessarily, rose to the presentation, and found her hand in that of the gentleman of the long black overcoat, who bowed, meeting her eyes with a smile very like one of recognition and friendliness.
“Slocum is not small to me. I was born and brought up here. The place one comes from always seems the most important in the world. Of course it may strike me as small before I get through with it, but I have not found it so yet.”
Entirely unable to cope with the conversation, ordinary as it was, carried on by the quick, soft voices in enunciation so new to her that the language seemed scarcely English—Mrs. Warrener looked at the speaker with less embarrassment because he put her at her ease. Dark, brilliant and distinguished, he did not, nevertheless, awe her as did Mrs. Bellamy’s beauty and pose. McAllister took a chair and sat down directly in front of the guest.
“I have seen Mrs. Warrener already—at golf. You were there yesterday? Didn’t you give me my ball?”
“Yes, I just walked up for a little exercise. It’s nice playing there in the afternoon now, since the snow has gone.”
“I don’t play, myself,” McAllister said, “but, as you say, it’s a nice walk.”
Mrs. Bellamy, after a word or two, leaned back in her chair with relief, and left to her brother the amenities, watching him and the guest.
After Mrs. Warrener had gone—and McAllister had seen her to the door and returned with his indolent step—as he stopped to light a fresh cigarette, his sister said:
“Well, had you any recollection about a village beauty such as your boyhood and sarsaparilla memories? And did Mrs. Warrener recall it—and is the result the same?”
McAllister turned his handsome, careless face to his sister.
“You think her a stupid little provincial, don’t you, Agnes?”
“I? Why, I asked you your opinion.”
“You don’t deny that you think that.”
“Her boots are frightful, and her hat was appalling.”
“Oh, come,” laughed her brother; “be fair!”
Mrs. McAllister gathered up her work—a piece of tapestry.
“You are unable,” she said, with some asperity, “to see any landscape without a woman in it, even for five days.”
“It’s a great compliment that you pay your sex. Let my weakness pass. Won’t you confess that this little village nobody has more good looks than we have seen in Rome for two winters?”
“Beauty—Paul!”
McAllister shrugged: “Decidedly. A face like a Greuze, perfect eyebrows—so perfect as to be almost suspicious; that inimitable droop of the eyes and the corners of the mouth—at once childlike and mature; and her coloring!”
“You are always finding the most impossible women, and telling me how paintable they are. Do you want to paint this little bore?”
“Somebody has painted her, and to perfection,” he said, with authority. “I will show you her likeness in the Louvre when we get back.”
He had thrust his hands in his pockets and begun to stroll up and down the room. As she watched him a shade crossed his sister’s face. The worsted ball Fanny had let fall her mother picked up and turned over in her hands.
“As you sat and talked to the poor little woman I watched you; she was fascinated by you—no, really! Her entire expression altered! She has never seen anyone like you before.” (“That’s what the drug-store man thought,” murmured McAllister.) “And I hope she won’t take to frequenting the Golf Club and other local festive places where she can see you.”
“Thanks, Agnes.”
McAllister laughed, and, taking from her hands the red worsted ball, idly unwound it.
“Don’t be foolish! If we are here for any purpose under heaven, let’s amuse ourselves and some of these people, too! I don’t intend to shut myself up like Noah in the ark, with only the passengers I took on board at Rome. Let’s have Mrs. Warrener to lunch; she’s a nice little creature; she’s immured in this hole, and she’s probably bored to death.”
“If sheisimmured,” murmured Mrs. Bellamy, “don’t let’s bring her out.”
McAllister had almost unwound the ball as he talked, and what was left of it rolled down under the table.
Here Bellamy came in, and McAllister took his indolent self away. “What have you been doing?” Mr. Bellamy asked his wife. She gathered up the worsted and said, impatiently: “I’ve been talking to my idle and destructive brother.”
It was six by the time Mrs. Warrener reached her own door. The aspect of Grand Street had changed. In the early twilight of the November afternoon the wooden houses bordering her street stood out clear-cut and fearlessly ugly. All the Felter children were playing in the yard, their piercing screams over their games of pleasure welcomed her ears. The little things, with red tam-o’-shanters on their heads, tore about hither and thither, calling in loud, penetrating voices.
Fanny Bellamy had said, “How do you do, Mrs. Wawenner,” in a voice like an angel bird’s. As Gertrude went up her steps she saw theSlocum Dailyon the mat. Usually she seized upon the paper eagerly, but to-night she did not even lift it from the stoop.
In answer to the bell, the maid-of-all-work, Eliza, ran to the door. It was washday, and she exuded soapsuds. In her uncombed and dusty hair, little flakes of soapsuds still clung; she wore a gingham apron, with which she wiped her steaming face as she let her mistress in. For the first time Mrs. Warrener saw Eliza with eyes from which the scales of custom had fallen, and the cordial smile extended by one maid’s mistress who is conscious that she is just so little better because she has as much to spend a week as the maid has a month, did not this evening light the lady’s face.
“Eliza, never go to the door again without a white apron.”
The woman stared blankly, and her silent astonishment further aggravated the mistress.
“And fix your hair,” she said, severely, “and keep the kitchen door shut.”
Dinner smells which for years unremarked had greeted Mrs. Warrener’s nostrils, odors of kitchen and soapsuds, sickened her to-night; but before she could turn to go upstairs her attention was forcibly called to account by Eliza, who, with arms akimbo, cried to her:
“If you ain’t satisfied with me, Mrs. Warrener, you can get another girl. I ain’t no common, ordinary servant to be spoke to like that.”
Mrs. Warrener turned about at the lower stair. “What are you, then?” she asked, sharply.
The woman drew a breath of rage.“What am I?” she shrieked. “Why, I’mhelp, that’s what I am! And I’ve got better clothes than you have upstairs.”
“You can go and put them on,” her mistress said, “and get another place.”
Too excited to realize what the predicament of being without a servant meant in a suburban town, Gertrude did nothing to propitiate, and Eliza left.
From the opposite windows the neighbors watched the departure with astonishment and much interest, for Eliza had been with the Warreners eight years. Her red face shone under her feathered hat at the hack window, and her eyes, when flaming passion was subdued, were full of tears.
As Gertrude, indifferently, and without a word of good-by, paid her her money, Eliza sniffled: “I’d of liked to say good-by to Mr. Warrener—he’sa gentleman.”
When he came in finally to a dinner kept hot on the stove for him, and served by his wife, she informed him:
“I’ve sent Eliza away.” He was stupefied, and could not believe his ears.
“Good gracious! What for?”
“She was impertinent.”
Too amazed to speak, he ate his soup in silence; saying at length, sympathetically: “You’ll have to go up to town to-morrow and get somebody.”
“I guess I will.”
“I’m sorry for you, Gerty. It will be work for you, and it’s no easy job to get servants for the country, especially general houseworkers.”
“That’s just it,” she agreed, meditatively. But the idea of going to town was an excitement to her for the first time, and she had a scheme already in her mind. If she could find them she would get a cook and laundress and an upstairs girl. She would economize somehow or other, and she guessed George wouldn’t mind.
The stagnant pool of Slocum was very considerably stirred by New York during the days when Mrs. Warrener was obliged to go in and out to look for her servants. For she had decided that Eliza should be replaced by two maids, one of whom should be dressed in apron and caps such as those worn by the trim person of whom she had caught a glimpse as she waited in Mrs. Bellamy’s drawing room.
When her husband came home one night, Gertrude was waiting for him in the window. She had had a hard day. Timid and abashed before the new and autocratic ladies for whom she felt no room in the house was good enough, she had vacillated on the verge of temper and tears. One of her characteristics was the complete control of her features and a passive exterior which hitherto no excitements had disturbed.
“George”—she drew her husband into the parlor—“I’ve got two girls.” She put her hand on the lapel of the overcoat he had as yet not taken off.
“Twogirls!” he echoed.
She was flushed and pretty—very pretty. He vaguely thought she was dressed up more than usual.
“I’m tired out!” she exclaimed. “Those intelligence offices are enough to wear you to death. I got two because—the work here is too much for any one girl.”
George looked around the microscopic room, and mentally saw, as well, the microscopic second floor.
“Eliza got through all right.”
Mrs. Warrener exclaimed: “Don’t talk to me of Eliza. She wasn’t fit to be seen.”
With the hope that the two servants together might not cost as much as one, he asked:
“What’s their wages?”
She hesitated.
“Why, I’d rather make it up some way—on a dress or a hat. They’re high. One twenty and the other twenty-five a month.”
“Gee whizz!” Warrener staggered back. “Why,” he gasped, “you’recrazy, Gert!”
Her hand fell back from the lapel of his coat. Tears of vexation and fatigue sprang to her eyes.
“Hush!She’sthere, in the dining room—she’ll hear you. I’mnotcrazy,I’m sick of living like a tenement house.”
The master was prevented from saying anything further by the entrance of a pert-faced girl in cap and apron, who said briskly:
“Dinner’s served.”
Standing there in Eliza’s place between the cheap portières, she represented a convulsion in the clerk’s household. He had never been thus invited to a meal in his own house before. He got off his coat and followed his wife in to dinner.
The little, cozy room possessed for the first time an element of unrest. In eight years it had not altered so much as this. At first Gertrude, with a washerwoman, did her own work; then Eliza came blithely and good-humoredly on the scene. She had grown to be like a friend. Warrener liked her. In her oven, which she had at length triumphantly overcome, she baked him certain favorite little breads much to his taste. She ironed his collars and shirts “just right.” He could say to her:
“Look here, Eliza, just run down to Pearce’s and get me a couple of cigars.” He could never order this bustling individual in cap and gown in this manner. “A tenement!” The word touched his contented pride in his little household; already the golden sunlight was beginning to slip from the wall. Change and progression were following the tired man close on his heels to his very door.
A fortnight went by after her call at the house on the hill before the event reverently hoped for by George Warrener’s wife transpired.
Mrs. Bellamy in her French automobile drove up Grand Street and called on Mrs. Warrener.
Gertrude was out, and when she came home and found the bit of pasteboard lying on the hatstand and realized that Mrs. Bellamy had been—and had gone!—a feeling of desolation swept over her such as might attack a lonely occupant of a desert island on rushing to his island’s edge to see a ship slip over the horizon.
The disappointed woman could think of nothing to follow this occurrence, no future after it. She felt deserted and very miserable.
The waitress who answered the bell her mistress rang appeared now to be superfluous—the extravagance this splurge represented occurred to Gertrude for the first time. What was the good of the servants after Mrs. Bellamy had been and gone! Since Mrs. Bellamy would never come again, Eliza might just as well be there with her blowzy hair, her blue apron and her kind, smiling face. Gertrude felt a homesickness for her as excitement died out of her limited sky.
Katy’s manner was less flaunting and insolent than usual. Mrs. Bellamy in her handsome clothes and the automobile had impressed her.
“When did the lady come?”
“About half an hour ago.”
“Was there anyone else?”
Mrs. Warrener would not let herself think just who there might have been.
“There was only a little girl in the motor car.”
“She didn’t leave any message?”
“No, ma’am.”
Well, it was all over, and she might as well make the best of it. She had got on all right enough before the Bellamys came; she guessed she could live without them, anyhow. She would keep the girls till George’s summer vacation, and then they could get another place. That this provision would leave them stranded in a bad season did not disturb her.
She “just couldn’t” go upstairs to indolently sit down and contemplate at once the stupid days to be! There were George’s socks to mend, but she turned about where she stood, gratefully remembering that there was also the meeting of a card club of which she was a member. It would at least keep her doing something, and she went out again and started toward Mrs. Turnbull’s.
Her feet were clad in shoes then in vogue, with thick, projecting soles and stubby ends. As her foot was ridiculously small, it looked less like a man’s—whichmasculinity it seems this heavy gear is intended to simulate—than like a sturdy little boy’s. Her short-length skirt showed a slender ankle in coarse black stockings, the skirt itself falling smoothly on her rounded hips; her coat lay smoothly across a flat back and shoulders, the small, supple waist was held in by a leather belt. Her collar, neither stiff enough nor high enough to be “smart,” was low enough to leave visible the back of her neck and the close growth of her hair. Men have been known more than once to follow a woman for the charm of the nape of her neck; that soft, pretty turn, the lovely part of the form where the head with more or less beauty—according to type—joins the shoulder and body.
Before Mrs. Warrener was within two blocks of her destination, she heard some one walking fast behind her, and not unnaturally turned to see who followed her with a step so decided in the lonely street.
It was Mr. McAllister.
The unexpectedness of this appearance on the afternoon when she had given up the idea of coming in contact with his like and circle again—the fact of meeting him in the open street, where there was no one but himself to critically observe her manner—gave her a shock of pleasure. She stammered: “How do you do?” and held out her hand to him with thegaucherieof a child.
“What a dreadfully fast walker you are!” McAllister was out of breath. “And it’s not the first time I’ve noticed it. You don’t know how I ran down the hill behind you that night at the Golf Club.”
He had never spoken to such a painful blush before, as surprise and flattered pleasure deepened in the woman’s cheeks.
“It’s a splendid speed,” he approved, “and it’s given you a most glorious color.”
As he walked along by her side she managed to say:
“Your sister called to day, and I was out.”
“That’s too bad!” he exclaimed heartily. “She will be so sorry. She wanted to take you out in the automobile—I lent it for the purpose. Where are you going, and at such a pace—may I know?”
“I’m going to a card party at Mrs. Turnbull’s—it’s right here.”
Her companion showed plainly his disappointment. “I thought you were out for a good walk, and that perhaps I might join you.”
More sorry than he, and thoroughly regretting having told her stupid errand, she slowed her pace.
“Can’t I come in with you—and play as well?”
She smiled nervously. “Oh, no, there are only ladies in the club.”
“Only!” he repeated. “What better could one want? But I should prefer it in the singular. Can’t you seriously take me in under your protection and introduce me? What do you play? Bridge? I can play bridge. It would amuse me hugely.” He saw that she did not understand his use of the word and changed it. “Entertain me—do, please.”
Mrs. Warrener had not much imagination, but she could imagine the faces of Mrs. Turnbull and her fellow club members at the sight of Mr. McAllister and herself together under any circumstances. He looked so tall—so laughing and at ease—his attitude as if he had known her all his life bewildered her; her embarrassment was not yet relieved, although her pleasure was growing.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, Mr. McAllister.”
“Do you like cards?” he demanded, with abrupt change of topic.
“Not much; I don’t play well.”
“I hate them, personally,” he admitted. “Why, then, do you go?”
As she made him wait for an answer he urged: “It’s a crime to sacrifice this afternoon in a hot, stuffy room before a lot of painted pasteboards. I don’t believe they expect you—do they?”
“Well, I don’t believe they do. I don’t often go. I just pay fines all the time.”
“Pay one this once, won’t you? Is this the house? Why, it’s a box, nothingmore. Don’t go and be shut up in it!”
Gertrude thought with a pang that Mrs. Turnbull’s was twice as large as her own house—she had envied her.
“Don’t you want to show me one of the walks around here? There must be lots of nice tramps. It will do you good.”
She had never been spoken to in her life like this before. Strange as it may seem, it is, nevertheless, true that she had never exchanged half a dozen words with any man but her husband in her life—that is, any man save the tradespeople, whom she always talked to as long as she could. She had once acknowledged to herself: “I guess I like men better than women—I’d rather talk to the grocer than to any of the stupid Slocum women. It’s common of me, but it’s true.”
McAllister’s voice was like a cradle—she seemed to rock in it.
“He’s perfectly elegant,” she said to herself; “so handsome and polite.”
She would have suffocated at the Turnbulls’; the same atmosphere that had latterly pervaded all of her own surroundings began to surround the unoffending little house whose porch and front gate were reached.
She nerved herself to look up at Mr. McAllister, and with some assurance met his smiling eyes.
“I’ll go along a little further; there’s a pretty walk over along the old Lackawanna Station.”
When she turned into Grand Street at nearly six o’clock she scarcely knew whether it was her own gate through which she passed or whether the house was in its right place or had vanished with the old associations; whether she walked up the wooden steps to a familiar door or floated on air to the portal of a castle in Spain.
Warrener had telephoned that he would not be home before midnight; she received the message with relief, although the name sounded with as much indifference to her as though she heard it for the first time that night.
She sat musing over her dinner, ate a little of it, left the table as soon as she could, and restlessly wandered through the rooms from one to the other, then upstairs to the “den,” where in the dark she threw herself full length on George’s hard leather lounge.
The walk of several miles must have caused these excited feelings, this glow; but she was conscious as well of a kind of suffering agitation. She had walked many miles in her life with no such exhilaration as this.
To natures such as hers, by temperament sluggish, an awakening is dangerous, and means revolution. She never had thought of love—that is, in connection with herself or anyone she knew. The idea that a married woman, a nice one—of course there were bad ones—could care for another man had never occurred to her. The word “love” she had never heard mentioned that she could recall. Men like Warrener do not talk of love; they avoid the word and its chaotic consequences. She had never said “I love you” in her life. Her wooing had consisted of a timid kiss or two, a decorous marriage into whose ceremony the word “love” had slipped unobserved, close to “honor” and “obey.” “Love,” in that sentence, meant that she submitted always with a sort of shame and humiliation to be a wife; “honor,” that neither of them would do anything criminal, of course—how should they? “Obey,” that she would keep house for George. These, had she been capable of pigeonholing her ideas, were the grooves into which she would have slipped her conceptions of wedded life.
It is not strange that a woman with a hostility to the laws of whose mysterious passion she knows nothing should refuse to linger in her thoughts on love when it is so mentally surrounded. Love stories she rarely read; she thought them silly and little less than sane. She couldn’t understand them—once or twice they had given her unhappy, lonely feelings, and she had not sought their pages again.
On the sofa, in the dark, after the first dazzling force of the feeling which suffused her and which she did not understand, she thought of her clothes! She wished she had worn another dress, her newbeigeand a pair of new boots. As she had nothing but Mrs. Bellamy’s afternoon dress with which to compare her wardrobe, she could not construct in her mind any new costume fitting to such an occasion. Her coquetry had not before been aroused. George did not care what she wore. “You’re all right in anything,” she could hear him say.
No, she didn’t believe she was all right. Mr. McAllister was, though. How elegantly he was dressed! His suit, his cravat, his hat and cane and gloves! She was astonished at the vividness with which his image came to her. He seemed to stand there smiling at her. It made her uneasy to think of him so clearly. George dressed nicer than most men, she had thought, but beside Mr. McAllister—why, he looked—he looked common! The word was growing to be very useful to her.
After a little the effect of the open air and the excitement overcame her reflections. She grew drowsy and fell into a light sleep. Her subjective self, more keen and sensitive than her objective, was released, and she dreamed, for a rare thing, dream after dream. Strange, unrestful visions. Mr. McAllister was wound in and out of them, tangled in their maze. She was trying to run away from him. He was beside her, and she was trying to push him away. Out of the indistinct and broken figures of sleep he became clearly defined—he put his arm about her and kissed her. As Gertrude felt the unwonted and confusing touch on her lips—the confusion of her senses—she sprang up with a cry. There was some one in the room.
“Don’t be scared, Gerty; it’s only me.”
“Oh!” she shuddered. “How you frightened me, George! What did you do it for?”
He turned up the light.
“Why, I couldn’t find you in our room or the spare room, so I came in here. Fell asleep waiting for me, did you?”
He stood there, tired and grimy, his hair mussed, his collar lacking its freshness.
“Well, you frightened me like anything,” she said, petulantly. “What did you do? Did you shake me?”
“No, I didn’t—I kissed you.”
She got up without reply and went past him into the spare room.
Warrener said nothing until his preparations for the night were made, then calling out: “Aren’t you coming to bed, Gertrude?” he went to the spare-room door. It was locked.
Used to little petulant exhibitions of temper whose pricks he had felt with no serious wound, tired out and rendered indifferent by the unremitting brain and nerve tension of his life, Warrener yielded passively, and, going into the other room with a sigh of fatigue, sought his deserted bed.
TO BE CONTINUED.
IN trails of fire across the landOctober flings with lavish handThe glowing bittersweet.With gems and gold the trees are brave,While spices that the East might craveFloat up beneath my feet.Rosalie Arthur.
IN trails of fire across the landOctober flings with lavish handThe glowing bittersweet.With gems and gold the trees are brave,While spices that the East might craveFloat up beneath my feet.Rosalie Arthur.
IN trails of fire across the landOctober flings with lavish handThe glowing bittersweet.
With gems and gold the trees are brave,While spices that the East might craveFloat up beneath my feet.
Rosalie Arthur.
America's Social House of Peers, by Anne Rittenhouse
T
THE Dancing Assemblies of Philadelphia and the St. Cecilia Society of Charleston, South Carolina, are the two oldest subscription balls in the world. Their invitations for this winter mark three centuries in which the elect of the Quaker and the Huguenot cities have been invited to dance and to pay the fiddler.
The South Carolinians contend that their famous dance is older than the Philadelphia one. Both began in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the invitations went out through the rest of the century, the whole of the nineteenth, and through a half decade of the twentieth century.
The exact date of the first St. Cecilia is not quite authenticated, because the great fire which swept over Charleston in 1865 destroyed St. Andrew’s Hall, where the records of this dance were kept. The flames also melted the magnificent silver that had belonged to the society for over a hundred years.
The date of the first Dancing Assembly of Philadelphia is precisely fixed as 1749.
It is remarkable that two such exclusive and elective balls, bound by such rigid rules, and so opposed to new members, should exist so long in the whirling change of American life.
In Europe limited subscription balls have not continued. Almach’s in London was the most famous, but it was swept out of existence by the rising tide of wealth and new people.
The Patriarchs’ of New York, while being governed by the same rules, and of the same character as these two existing balls, was not of great age, and was abandoned years ago without a murmur by a society that had outgrown anything so provincial as the subscription ball.
The St. Cecilia Society has continued its dances since the beginning, but the Philadelphia Assemblies were discontinued through the Civil War.
Many have prophesied the dissolution of both societies, but no one has seriously considered it. That these two balls continue to exist under the present status of society, with its moneyed kings buying admission everywhere, is a curious and contradictory phase of American life.
The fact that it is as difficult to enter each of them now as it was in the latter half of the eighteenth century is never comprehended by the newly rich or by the other millions of Americans who have not come in contact with the aristocratic exclusiveness of these two social institutions.
The St. Cecilia is more exclusive than the Assemblies for the reason that Charleston has had her social lines arranged since the first century of her existence. Wealth, power, genius, ambition, in a great horde are not knocking at the doors of that ultra-refined Carolina city for admission; but in a great city like Philadelphia unknown men become captains of industry overnight, and their wives wail for admission into the most fashionable function.
Tales that are told in broad socialcenters like New York, London and Berlin, of the exclusiveness of these two dances, are laughed at as the exaggerations of those with a gift greater for narrative than for fact.
In Charleston, when the St. Cecilia was begun, many years before the Revolution, the first subscription list almost settled the question of admission for the following centuries. On it were names more powerful in the seats of the nation’s mighty then than now.
Many were of Huguenot origin, others of the first English blood. Among the managers were signers of the Declaration of Independence, and names which still govern the social register of to-day in Carolina, such as Ravenel, Prioleau, Pringle, Drayton, Rhett, Huger, Middleton, Fraser, Legare, Porcher, Miles, Calhoun and Pinckney.
These are not even a quarter of the names that before and after the Revolution were an open sesame to American and European society.
As near as possible, the sixteen managers of the St. Cecilia have borne the same name as the original managers. When one died, another of the same name was put in his place, if he could be found in the United States. No innovation has been permitted in the management regarding admission, rules or customs of this delightful ball since its inception.
The person who is not on the list of the St. Cecilia is not “in society” in Charleston, and the rest of America accepts this judgment of the arbiters as regards Carolinians.
The aristocracy of the most exclusive city in America is on that list. By strangers, it is said to be the best managed ball in America. Everything moves like clockwork, because nothing is theoretical, nothing is experimental. It was arranged in the early days of elegance, when manners were supreme.
No one tries to break the rules, which are unique. Possibly the most peculiar one is the refusal of the managers to allow women to sit outside the ballroom with men. Stairway flirtations, cozy-cornertête-à-têtes, are simply not allowed. The rest of the civilized world may consider these elegant, the St. Cecilia does not. From this verdict there is no appeal.
One woman, known throughout American society as one of the potential leaders of the smart Newport set, thought herself above the traditions of the Carolina ball. She was a guest at this dance when in Charleston, and began the evening by sitting out dances in secluded corners outside the ballroom. Comment ran rife. The sixteen managers consulted together. The president, a man of great manner and unfailing elegance, took upon himself the duty to correct the New York woman.
Finding her in a secluded corner, as usual, he kindly informed her of the comment she brought upon herself by breaking the best-known rule of the society. She was inclined to be ungracious about it, and intimated that the managers were old fogies, and that any ball with such a tradition would be unbearable.
“It is done in London and New York,” she defiantly said.
“But not in Charleston, madam,” answered the president, as he offered her his arm, which he never removed until she took it. He then led her back to the ballroom and offered her a chair.
The St. Cecilia gives three balls each winter, and the men subscribers pay the expenses. It would be impossible to make them understand or approve of the method of the Philadelphia Assemblies, which charge women subscribers the full price of the ticket. In Charleston this would be considered not only ungallant, but, frankly, an exhibition of inferior breeding.
It is unlike a Southern ball in the fact that the young women arrive, enter the ballroom and return home with chaperons. No other method is considered among society people in Northern cities, where girls are not allowed to go alone with men to any place of entertainment, but in Southern cities this rule is transgressed with the full approval of society.
The reason for this is easily explained. Southern cities are small, and the aristocratic community really goestogether to any social function, and there is no reason for surrounding a young girl with the conventions necessary in a city of millions of people and miles of crowded streets.
Before each dance the orchestra gives the signal for every girl to return to her chaperon. She cannot leave the man with whom she is talking to join the man to whom she is promised the next dance. This partner must go to her chaperon and await her return.
It is there he must claim the engagement. This is not optional. It is imperative. It would be considered the greatest breach of good behavior not to do it. In truth, no one thinks of its being unique, or of not doing it instinctively, because it is a tradition that has governed the dance since before the Revolution.
Surely there is not a man in the world who does not see its advantages. It prevents the possibility of being cornered with a girl through two or three dances, or being compelled to find her a partner in order to free himself to dance with some one else. In the slang of the day, it saves the man from being “stuck.”
The instant the orchestra begins this preliminary canter to the dance, every couple rises, and each girl expects her escort to leave her the moment she reaches her chaperon. For him to remain would be an exhibition of social awkwardness. A man can make as many engagements on one girl’s card as she will let him, but they must not follow each other.
Dozens of men have sighed for this rule at other balls, but so far the St. Cecilia is the only one that had the courage to start it and the conviction to retain it.
Chaperons sit around the dancing floor on a slight platform on which are comfortable chairs. As all the girls return before each dance—not after it, mind you—the women rise to receive them.
The young women make supper engagements for the balls as the Northern girls do.
The president always leads the march to supper with the newest bride. Supper is served promptly at midnight, and the ball opens at the early hour of nine o’clock. The men arrive earlier, for the social conditions are such in the South that there are more men than women, and if they indulge in the foolish Eastern habit of arriving just before midnight, they haven’t a chance of finding a single partner through the evening.
The society owns its present napery and silver, which it bought with the first ready money that came in after the desperate financial straits of the terrible reconstruction.
It is as handsome as their splendid plate of antebellum days, which was destroyed by fire.
Both silver and napery bear the monogram of the society, and the linen was especially woven in Ireland. This gives the table an aristocratic air impossible when supper and silver are left to caterers.
The cook who prepares the supper is a gingerbread-colored genius. His cooking of wild duck still brings water to the mouths of those who have been asked to the feast.
The stranger might notice that the managers and a few older men are absent for some time after the guests have returned from supper to the ballroom for the two round dances. If they investigated they would find that the chosen few were regaling themselves with supper made up of even more epicurean dishes and rarer wines than the many had enjoyed.
This is the time for the colored cook to prove what he can do. Many abonne boucheis served that goes into gastronomic history.
The most exciting moment of the supper room is the scramble of the men for a sugar figure which is placed on the top of a huge fancy structure of spun sugar. Each man tries to secure this souvenir for his partner.
No matter how large the list of the St. Cecilia has grown, the invitations always have been delivered by hand. This custom is a tradition that has come down since the days before a mailservice was ever thought of. As all other traditions were kept up, so was this.
Edmund is the name of the darky who possibly for half a century has delivered these invitations from door to door. He has been almost as important as the St. Cecilia. He is a social register for Charleston “quality.” He is as proud of his descent, his position and his social superiority as though his ancestors had landed in the bay under the sturdy Lion of St. George or the Flying Fleur-de-Lys in the seventeenth century.
The society has never permitted the german to be danced at this ball, although it was introduced in other Southern cities several years before the Civil War. This is a prejudice well known to the Charlestonian, and ignorance of it once tripped up a social aspirant who talked too much.
A certain man of wealth made many an inducement for those in and out of power to have him invited as a guest to one of these balls while he was an usher at a fashionable wedding in Charleston. He did not succeed, but that did not prevent his talking glibly in his own city of the charm and defects of the St. Cecilia as though he had been there. A Charleston girl visiting in that city stood his criticism of her beloved St. Cecilia until he spoke of thecotillon.
“Strange,” she interrupted, “that you should have danced a german there. No set of managers has allowed this in one hundred and sixty years.”
During the hardships of the Civil War and privations of the reconstruction the men abandoned dress suits for these dances. They wore what they could find. Purple and fine linen had disappeared, and if the men who hadn’t patched gray uniforms could get whole suits of unbleached Macon Mills cloth, with buttons of gourd seeds in some cases, they were gay about it.
They danced as eagerly as they fought, and tripped the measures of the quadrille as cheerily as they charged under the stimulus of the rebel yell.
They carried their swords at their sides and their hearts on their sleeves, and as willingly offered their sentiments to the prettiest girl as they did their bodies to Federal bullets.
A part of the rare charm of the St. Cecilia dances lies in the presence of the grandmothers and grandfathers of the young set. Delightful old people are present who do not attend other entertainments. What would the St. Cecilians do without Mr. Smith? “Turkey-tail Smith,” as he has been called for decades; a nickname to which he does not object. Genial and kindly, he is a part of the atmosphere, always fanning himself and his partner with a turkey-tail fan.
Many a lovely bride treasures his gift of such a fan. Sad, sad the ignorance of the East and West where the people know not what love and laughter, what limpid eyes and charming mouths, are suggested by the turkey-tail fan of Dixie.
It is natural that around the Philadelphia Assemblies there should have gathered an atmosphere of anecdote. Its exclusiveness is so well known that it is an honor for the man of millions to belong to it, and his efforts, vain or successful, to enter this social sanctuary, have given the elect many a happy moment.
When the demure little group of worldlings gathered together at Hamilton’s Wharf to dance, they had no idea of the sorrow, the heartaches, the Titanic struggles, they were bequeathing to posterity.
In 1749 a few married men and fewer unmarried beaux subscribed forty shillings apiece for a series of dances to take place every Thursday night during the winter. In those early days the men paid all the expenses, and each subscriber had the privilege of taking some lady to each dance. Charming belles of the day went down to the wharf on the Delaware River on horseback, with riding habits over evening gowns.
The dancing began promptly at six o’clock and ended at eleven. The invitations were printed on the backs of playing cards, as these were the commonest bits of pasteboard in the Colonies. With the first Assembly distinct social lines were drawn, but, of course,nothing could equal or compare with the rigid rules that have governed the Assemblies for the last century, which, if they were not taken so seriously, might be absurd.
In those days no mechanic or tradesman of any line of work was allowed to be a subscriber; and no young man was allowed to bring a young lady out of the prescribed set.
After the Revolution an exceedingly keen social blow was given these exclusive little dances by President George Washington.
The Virginian, whose blood was of the finest in the land, was invited to dance at this Assembly on the same night that he was also invited to a dance given by the tradespeople. He chose the latter, and led the minuet with one of its prettiest young women.
A premium was put upon promptness in these old days by the managers, who gave to the women arriving first the distinction of dancing in the opening set. Those who came afterward were put in the second set, and so on.
They had another plan of letting the women draw numbers and dance in the sets which corresponded to the number they held. This was an unhappy way to manage a ball. Historians of the city life tell us that both of these customs were broken up through the rebellion of lovely young Polly Riche, who, with the man of her choice, insisted on dancing in any set she pleased.
The managers protested, but the young men sided with her, and the result was that the Assembly took on more freedom and, therefore, more pleasure.
These little dances had their serious troubles even then. The Quakers had nothing to do with them, of course, but did not make any serious comment upon them. Presbyterians loudly disapproved, but the Episcopalians, even the clergy, lent not only tolerance, but cordial indorsement.
The tiny list of subscribers has reached nearly a thousand in the twentieth century. Instead of the little room lit by wax candles on the Delaware River, and possibly filled with the fruity and salty odors from merchants’ ships, the dancers now gather in the gorgeous salons of the great new Bellevue Stratford Hotel. Instead of a few fiddlers, there is one of the greatest dancing orchestras in America. Instead of beginning at six o’clock and ending at midnight, the ball begins at twelve o’clock and ends at dawn.
It may be of interest to those who care for the cakes and ale to read the comparison between the “refreshments” served then and now.
In 1749 and throughout the next decade the supper consisted of nine shillings’ worth of milk biscuit and five gallons of rum, added to two hundred limes for a punch. And, mind you, this punch was served to only a few people.
The supper served this last winter was as follows:
CHAUDBonne Bouche AssemblyGumbo PasseTerrapinPoulet de Grain SupérieurPommes de Terre Nouvelles RissolesJambon de Virginie———FROIDChaufroix de GrouseCœur de LaitueFilet de BœufSalade de Chapon———Pudding MontroseCroquantsMarrons GlacéBonbonsCafé
Instead of forty shillings for eighteen dances, each subscriber now pays ten dollars for two. These two balls are given after New Year’s and before Lent, and because of their exclusiveness, remain the most unique function in Philadelphia life.
Old families who take admission into the Assemblies as a matter of course will tell you how stupid they are, how tiresome, how foolish the rules of admission are, and that really everybody can get in now; but you would almost have to take their own invitations away over their dead bodies.
As in Charleston, one sees at these balls men and women who rarely put on evening clothes except for these affairs. It is a witticism attributed to the dashing captain of the First City Troop of Philadelphia that when asked why he didn’t like the Assemblies, he responded: “I never could stand the smell of camphor and tar balls.”
If the rules were always consistently kept, there would not be such a happy fund of anecdote around the Assemblies. The five managers, who are called “czars” by the irreverent, do their best through the decades to use judgment and consistency for the admission of new members, but it is also true that some “queer” people have been admitted and that some of the most delightful, with pedigrees as old as the hills, have been kept out.
New rules have been constantly made in the attempt to meet new emergencies. Everything tends to the same aim, which is to keep out all new members except the children of parents who are already subscribers. And it is also true that peculiar rules, which in many cases are only known to the “czars” themselves, are made as an excuse to drop those who for certain reasons may not be considered desirable.
The inner Philadelphian will tell you that a number of “peculiar” people got in about fifteen years ago, when there was a year of laxity regarding admission. It was just after this epoch that some of the most influential financial powers in social life resigned from the management because they frankly said they could not withstand the pressure brought upon them by men closely associated with them in business who wanted invitations for their wives.
Most of these men who clamored for membership threatened to “squeeze” the managers of the Assemblies unless they could “pull the ropes” for these admission cards.
Even now there are many embarrassing situations between men of millions and poor men of social power. It is known that ambitious millionaires have gotten young men clerkships in their offices and then held over their heads dismissal or raise of salary according to their failure or success in obtaining for their wives and daughters the coveted prize.
Scandal after scandal has arisen in this way, and dozens of men have felt too nervous over such gossip to be seen much with their superiors in wealth who are well-known social climbers.
The newcomers are usually the most blatant about the rules and the traditions of the Assemblies. A certain couple in Philadelphia, who have lived much in the great centers of Europe and been presented at foreign courts, have been embittered for two decades because of the refusal of a succession of “czars” to allow them the privilege of the Assemblies.
Each new batch of managers were deftly and luxuriously entertained by the millionaire couple. Their palates were tickled, their financial interests promoted by subtle methods. But all was of no avail until a near relative of the couple, a man of national power, arrived home, bearing in his official cornucopia gifts for younger sons. In return, his relatives were finally invited to become members of the Assemblies.
At the first ball the lady went to the man in charge of the supper room, who was entirely new to the traditions of this dance, and between them they reserved a table.
In true hotel fashion he tipped the chairs over on a round table in the supper room. When two of the managers went to look over the arrangements an hour before supper, they found the chairs in this position. There was an indignant colloquy, and the head man was ordered never to do it again. But as his bribe was probably worth while, he fixed it so that when the grand march was over and the guests had arrived in the supper room, the newcomers were at once placed at the table for which they paid, although dozens of people who had belonged to the Assemblies as a matter of course had to await their chances.
Another story is told of this same couple. On their entrance to the ballroom, at their first appearance, theysaw another couple, also from up the State, who were their rivals for exclusive Philadelphia favor, and also possessed of millions.
Putting up her lorgnon, the lady remarked in a voice that could well be heard by the other couple: “How in the world did those people get here?”
The managers were fearful of dozens of intruders finding their way into the social sanctuary this winter, when the balls were transferred to the magnificent Bellevue Stratford, instead of being held in the old Academy of Music. A hotel has a dozen entrances, and they feared the “unwashed” might secure an entrance into the ballroom, or, what was worse, go into one of the boxes that surrounded the dancing floor and look on. This being suggested, there was tremendous commotion and confusion among the elect. Orders were given right and left, and the tortures of the Inquisition promised the doorkeeper if such a thing happened.
A certain well-known couple who are anxious not to mix with those who do not belong to the Assembly set were among the most ardent in their endeavors to impress upon all men that no strangers should be allowed through any entrance to boxes. The lady, wishing to see the scene from an elevated position, went up to one of the boxes during the ball and sat slightly back to get a commanding view, so she was not recognized at the distance. Suddenly she was discovered by the managers. Her husband was among the chief of those who insisted that peremptory action must be taken. The doorman was sent to eject her from the box or ask for her passport. He went with great hesitation, for the duty was not a pleasant one. To give him courage the husband of the lady followed, and he entered the box just as the colored man was ejecting his wife!
The five managers who are at the head of these balls do not assume the personal responsibility for the guests’ pleasure as do the sixteen managers of the St. Cecilia.
There is no one person of any especial force or command who is looked up to for detail.
When the late Ward McAllister, of New York, creator of the “Four Hundred,” which, among other trivialities, gave him fame, was a guest at one of the Assemblies, he was as pompous as usual and quite interested in the social mechanism of this famous ball, the like of which he had tried to create in the Patriarchs’, but couldn’t succeed.
He was walking with one of the well-known wits of Philadelphia, who was a power in Assembly affairs.
“I would like to meet the man at the head of everything,” said Mr. McAllister; “the one, you know, who has charge of the details. The Patriarchs have such a man.” He referred to himself, of course. “And I suppose there must be some one here who really takes charge, don’t you know. Have I met him? You have such a one, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes,” answered his companion; “I think I know whom you mean. We have such a man. It saves us all the trouble of detail. He is Holland, the colored caterer. He is out in the supper room now.”
Mr. McAllister was more fortunate in getting into the Assemblies than some other people who come from New York’s most distinguished families. An incident illustrates the extreme indifference to any rules outside of their own that the managers of the Assemblies have.
A beautiful Philadelphia girl was about to be married to the son of one of New York’s social leaders. The mother of the bride-elect was one of the most exclusive and aristocratic social figures in Philadelphia. Three days before the ball was given she was in New York at some of the pre-nuptial festivities, and when her prospective son-in-law’s family became interested in her stories of the Assemblies and expressed a desire to see such a ball, she cordially invited them over.
Eight of them came, with maids, valets and trunks of finery. The Philadelphia hostess wrote a note to one of the managers, asking for invitations, asthese courtesies are extended to a few strangers each year who are the guests of a subscriber. The lady’s request was politely but firmly declined. She and her husband were amazed, indignant and puzzled. In all her experience as an exclusive society leader, she had never been “turned down” before. For generations, on both her own and her husband’s side, members of their families had served as managers of the Assemblies. Her husband went at once to his intimate friends on the committee and explained the situation. It was not necessary to explain who the New Yorkers were, for they also were among the exclusive families in America.
Nothing had any effect. Persuasion won over four of the managers by nightfall, but one remained obdurate, and one black ball is sufficient to veto anything.
The eight New Yorkers repacked their finery and returned home, absolutely turned down like the merest social adventurers by men who wouldn’t break a rule in order to be courteous.
And the sole reason of it all was this: The list of guests had closed on a fixed date, and no emergency could reopen it. The request was presented too late.
It is not against the rules to invite strangers, but they can’t be invited offhand. It would be like bestowing the Order of the Knight of the Garter casually. Each name presented by a subscriber must be investigated by the five managers, and then voted upon. The subscriber must guarantee to the committee that the stranger is not living in Philadelphia, or, if so, that the period of residence has not extended over two years. Philadelphians who are born and have lived here for generations, who go intimately with the smartest set, are declined admission while they are here, because their ancestors were not subscribers, but all they have to do is to move away for a year to any other city, and their friends here can get them invitations at once as “strangers.”
A woman who is not a subscriber may become one if she marries a subscriber. If she is a subscriber when unmarried and weds a man who is not a subscriber, she must forfeit the privilege of going, and not one of her children can be admitted, except a daughter who remarries into the subscribing set.
An outsider who can prove direct descent from an original subscriber and then has a “pull” with the managers can be admitted for membership. In the old days a man who married a woman subscriber could share her honors and go with her. The custom prevailed until one of the most popular girls in the Assembly married a man who, while personally liked, belonged to an ordinary family, whose financial ways had not been approved by Philadelphians for decades. The bridegroom came to the ball with his bride, because a rule was a rule; so the managers met and abolished the rule, but not the man. The groom, however, was not one of the strugglers who want to kick down other climbers. He is a man of humor as well as good sense, and he convulsed those who laugh at the pretensions of the Assemblies by his response to a discussion regarding the admission of another man who was not of the elect.
“Why can’theget in?” said the groom. “I’m in.”
Unfortunately for the managers, this new rule, which seemed so satisfactory, gave them a bad quarter of an hour for the next ball. The daughter of the chief and most distinguished manager married a man who was not a subscriber. The couple were at once refused an invitation for the next Assembly. This was quite too much for the father, who was willing to turn down some one else, but one of his own family—why—such a thing was never heard of. And so, in confusion and dismay, the managers had to secretly break their new rule, and invite this bride and groom, who have been going ever since.
When a male scion of one of the really great families married the daughter of an all-too-well-known sporting man, he and his wife were refused a subscription to the following balls.
“If he can’t go, neither can we,”wrote one hundred members of his family. This was too much for the managers again, and they meekly consented to let him enter.
When a girl who has not been able to go, no matter how charming and attractive she is, marries a subscriber, the one comment that sweeps over the church is: “Well, she can go to the Assemblies now.”
One mother, who all of her life had been ruled by this social law, wept when her daughter told her that she was going to marry a man out of the list. The girl was a healthy, straightforward, American type, who did everything athletic and copied the field and turf when she talked. The man she was to marry had every desirable quality, except his name on the Golden Book.
“You will break my heart by such a marriage,” wailed the mother; “the first of all our family to be denied the Assemblies. You must give this man up.”
“Give up a bully man for a stupid ball? Well, I guess not,” was the final answer of the frank daughter. And she married the man.
One of the momentous questions that cost the managers sleepless nights was a question of ancestors, caused by two débutantes. They were children of a couple who had married the second time. One, the wife’s daughter, was by a former husband, who didn’t belong to the Assemblies. The other was a daughter of the husband by a first wife, both of whom belonged to the Assemblies. The girls had been brought up together from childhood, and when they came out in society, the father asked for their invitations together. This precipitated one of the most momentous emergencies that the managers ever had to meet. This exact question had never come before the Assembly. All kinds of advice, social and legal, were asked, and the question convulsed society. Everyone debated it, and everyone took sides. After many meetings by the managers, the decision was reached that the stepdaughter of the father couldn’t be invited, but that the stepdaughter of the mother could.
And such a hold have the rules of the Assembly on Philadelphians, that nothing about this was considered unusual. Had it been a question of admittance by descent into the House of Peers, it couldn’t have been more important.
But if it were not for the peculiarity of these rules and customs which govern the two oldest balls in the world, it is doubtful if they would have become famous, or if they would have preserved, through the centuries, their unique charm, their peculiar social aroma.
We are a restless, easily wearied, ever-changing people. It is delightful to know that in the hurly-burly these two social affairs live out the traditions of our ancestors.
May they always copy their manners!