VWITH A CLUBWOMAN

She was a young woman of dainty exterior, with entirely modern appointments in the matter of clothes. She was as Burton would have wished her, “affable but not familiar,” capable of those impersonal confidences that mystify the foreigner and delude even the native. Her effect of being imminent yet so far away, of lurking behind a thin though definite barrier, occurred to me one day when I looked up at one of those emergency contrivances in a railway coach which bear the inscription: “In case of accident, breakthe glass.” She was intensely equipped. Vast resources gleamed behind the glass. I suppose the impression should have been one of security. Perhaps it actually was the impression that an accident would be a great pity.

It appeared that she had just been to another club meeting. As she always either had been or was just going, the situation occurred to me as entirely normal, unless we accept as a variation the fact that, although the twilight was just falling, she was going to no more that day.

The truth is that we were on the outskirts of one of those intellectual storm-centres for which there are various euphemisms but which are colloquially known as clubs. The hum and tinkle of a refreshment room filtered through a crowded doorway. It was Gentlemen’s Day, and this justified or at least resulted in a certain broader conviviality than was supposed to mark the ordinary refreshment hour, as it had resulted in imparting a touch of levity to the preceding meeting itself.

She herself reflected some of this unseriousness. Doubtless she would have reflected more had she not come from a purely feminine meeting to the tea end of this one.

“You are in deep thought,” she said, “which is very impolite, but I will file your application for forgiveness if you will tell me at once what you have been thinking.”

“I have been thinking,” I said, “that women like one another better than they used to.”

She was trying to put up her veil without setting down her tea, and she could only manage to mutter, “That isn’t saying much.”

“It is saying something pleasant.”

“A man is happy when he can say pleasant wise things to one who will find them pleasant and wise.”

“Now that is flippantly combative, and I don’t deserve it. I have not said anything mean.”

“If it comes to that,” she went on, “your remark seemed to me, or rather it seems to me now that I have had time to get it into perspective, like one of those unpleasant pleasant things that are the most irritating of all.”

“Do you object to my thinking that women like one another better than they used to?”

“No. I only object to your taunting us with it.”

“Will you please—”

“No, I will not explain. It should be obvious that we do not like Man to look down from his parapet and praise us for a purely human trait.”

“Heavens!” I exclaimed, “did I really look down from a parapet? I never should have suspected it. It never would have occurred to me that you would take offence at my simple gratification. Don’t you like to like one another?”

“Stop bantering,” she said in a different tone, with her cup raised, “and tell me whether you really think women are getting to like one another.”

“Think it? Is it not one of those things which we may know by observation?”

“I’m afraid you are deceived. You have inferredtoo much from the existence of women’s clubs. Women have a great many more opportunities to dislike each other than they used to have. Everything has become complicated. A man should understand. Nowadays there are a great many ways in which women can be disagreeable.”

“There certainly are a great many ways in which they can be agreeable.”

“There is a thorn under that rose, I fancy. I can feel that you have no comprehension of how difficult some things have become. Take the strain we were under this afternoon. Probably I shouldn’t tell you—”

“Then you certainly must.”

“—but we had a dreadful squabble over the question as to whether we should stop letting in the reporters. That question has been coming up at least once a year in the Artemis. It is a delicious sensation to be quoted in eight papers, but it is gall and wormwood to have the hat you wore because it was raining described in one. The other day we found out that those delicately satirical things in theDynamohave been written by the sweetest little girl you ever saw whom we always supposed was writing the lovely discriminating notices that appeared in theFlashlight. That turned the scale. We voted to be published no more.”

“What a beautiful story that will make for theDynamoto-morrow.”

“Do you think so? But then they will be through.”

“Perhaps.”

“O, we are going to be very strict! The trouble is that the newspaper people would take some detached part of our meeting and it would look so queer. You see they have a great many meetings to go to.”

“Just like the rest of you.”

“Yes, just like the rest of us; that’s the trouble. And that makes it so hard sometimes. I wanted Mrs. Trimwood to read her paper on ‘Children’s Playgrounds’ at the meeting to-day—it was my committee’s day—and she could read it only at the very last minute, because she wanted to read it at the Pocahontas first.”

“What was the subject of your meeting to-day?”

“Well, we have to be dreadfully careful not to frighten people off. I announced it as ‘The Education of Little Children.’ That sounded well, and there was a good attendance. Of course there wouldn’t have been a handful if we had said ‘Kindergartens.’ You know they are a little tired of that.”

I was staring mutely into my cup.

“Oh, a man’s life is so simple!” she went on. “A man’s club jogs along with about the same membership year after year. With us it is different. Women form a club in a great thrill. They swear, like the soldiers, to fight together until they are all dead, wounded, or promoted. But things change. There are losses, not merely by death and marriage, but by the readjustment of enthusiasms.Take Mrs. Montreville. She was a good member of the Phidias until she joined the Breathing Class. She hasn’t time for anything now but breathing. It is much the same with Mrs. Farlowe. She took up with the Relaxing Club. You know how those relaxers go in for things. Poor woman! I never saw her look so drawn and tired as she has since she went into that. Mrs. Pellmore was sure that nothing would lure her from the Dames. But some one kidnapped her into the Ibsen Club, where they have the most charming times over heredity and microbes, and of course she has no room for us now.”

“I can see,” I said, “that this might make things very difficult.”

“Difficult! Why, the Progressive Woman is a perfect blur. There was a time when all clubs looked alike to women. Nowadays we have become discriminating and there is no peace. The competition is frightful. It is no longer a matter of wafers. You can’t lure them with things to eat. They want sensations.”

“It really is too bad,” I said. “You will have to organize a trust and fight these yellow clubs.”

“As for that, it is pretty hard to find a club without a streak of yellow in it. We’ve got to work in a vein of novelty somehow. They call it making the club attractive. The Phidias went in for Shakespeare at first. Then we found that in order to get new members we had to take up Browning too. That was well enough for a while.When the younger members got restless, we had Miss de Villeforte Volé lecture to us on ‘Degeneracy.’ This delighted everybody except Mrs. Bentwell, who lectures herself on ‘The Ascent of Man.’ After that we had some talks by Professor Prinks on the ‘Marriage Customs of Central Africa.’ There were some criticisms of this. We are bound to have objectors, and sub-objectors—women like Mrs. Prittle—do you know Mrs. Prittle? No? Well, Mrs. Prittle is one of those gorgeously upholstered women who rise with a tremendous rustling and ‘agree with what the last speaker has said.’ Just now there is a row on because some of them want to take up the North Pole.”

“What on earth do they want to do with that?” I demanded.

“I haven’t the least idea. Probably they haven’t. But they would tell you that there isn’t anything else left.”

“Anything else left?”

“You see, things last such a little while, at least with the quick clubs. Why, the Thursday Club did the ‘Origin of Species’ and ‘First Principles’ in one afternoon. We call ourselves very deliberate at the Phidias; that is to say, we never have more than one topic for a meeting; but we shall do Schopenhauer’s works to-morrow morning after our annual business meeting.”

Something in my look must have excited her suspicion, for she went on: “But I absolutely forbid your commiseration. Except for the strain ofthe competition, it all is very nice, I assure you. We have beautiful times.”

“Of course you do,” I hastened to say. “Even a man can see that. Do you suppose that a man who had done Sienkiewicz and d’Annunzio and Pestalozzi this afternoon, and was going to do Pythagoras, prison reform, the Brahmanas, the Zend-Avesta and bimetallism to-morrow morning, could look as well as you do?”

“I suppose,” she said, looking at me with her laughing, unperplexed eyes, “that we can do these things because we can do more with our subjective minds than you can.”

“So you have been at the Subjective Minds too?”

“One can’t get along at all nowadays without psychology. How should we ever have got back to ghost stories again without it? We had a delightful ghost afternoon at the Artemis. Then it all seems to come in well with the astral body business. Isn’t it a pity that we can’t be in several places at the same time?”

“You wouldn’t ask that the tea-drinking part of us should be in more than one place at a time?”

“Not necessarily. The tea-drinking part of us will look out for itself. Just now you had a far-away look. The other part of you was somewhere else—perhaps atyourclub.”

“No, no! I never was more completely present in my life.”

“Anyway, see how nice it would be if that other part of you could be off comfortably somewherewhile this part was here, holding an empty cup, and preserving the outward appearance of listening to a young woman prattle about the momentous concerns of life.... Oh, there’s Mrs. Crasker! Do you know her? No? You should. She would tell you the most interesting things. She organized the Zodiac Club last spring and we all were studying the signs for a month or two. It really was wonderful. She told me that as I was a Pisces girl I must marry in the sign of Virgo or Capricorn. It was immensely interesting to study all your friends that way, to see why they shouldn’t have married the one they did. But of course you never could make a club that would stay put on such a basis as that. There was no way of dodging the facts. One may forget one’s age, but one can not elude one’s birthday. And there is no way of shifting it. When the woman whom we elected Vice President turned out by her birthday to be under the sign of—Taurus, was it?—it upset her to find that she must be inordinately fond of dress, that she would do anything for clothes, and so on. Why, it was like turning the X-ray on us. And we found that we all were wearing the wrong colors. The deeper we got into the thing the more impossible it began to seem that we ever should club well together, however much the awful discoveries might be expected to affect the general question of friendship.”

“I will forgive you everything,” I said, “if you will entertain and enlighten me with an answer toa momentous question, namely: How are clubs to be explained—by which, of course, I mean feminine clubs.”

For answer to this she gave a little laugh which at first I was at a loss to explain. Then I saw she was looking across the room toward a tall, rather heavy woman encased in black jet.

“There is a woman,” she finally said, “who might give you one answer to that question.”

“Do you mean that now you are going to give me her answer?”

“I could only guess at that. But I might tell you a story.”

“About her?”

“About her.”

“That wouldn’t be gossip, would it?”

“Oh, no! it would be history. You know her name is Ellen—Ellen Brotcher. She was a Miss Gatt. I’m sure she always has wished that she was a Louise-Florence-Petronille-Tardien d’Escavelles or a Julie-Jeanne-Eléonore de Lespinasse. She was very ambitious. That is to say, she thought she was—coaxed herself to believe that she was. It all began by her taking up French; perhaps I should say, taking up a little French professor, a funny little man who looked like a waiter and talked like the man at the silk-counter. I don’t want to be mean about him, either, for he is a nice enough man, I understand; but he began to seem very funny somehow, after Mrs. Brotcher took him up. First they organized a Cercle Français,at which they started out to talk nothing but French, but at which they presently settled down to hearing the Professor read La Fontaine, which, as you might fancy, began to seem like a tepid form of dissipation after a while. Nothing but the splendid enthusiasm of Mrs. Brotcher kept the thing going as long as it did go. When the Cercle melted away, Mrs. Brotcher seems to have made her great resolve, which was to have asalon. Now, I know that that sort of thing has been tried before, but really no one that you ever heard of ever went into the business as desperately as Mrs. Brotcher. She trained for it in every way that a woman could train for such a thing, and I haven’t the least doubt but that she saw a refulgent success very clearly outlined before her. Other people have started Americanized versions of thesalonidea. Mrs. Brotcher believed that the idea would go if it was done more closely after the true French pattern. She had studied the whole matter and knew what she was about. She knew all the traditions of the Hôtel de Rambouillet and of the Hôtel de Scudéry. She knew all about the methods of Mme. de Sévigné, of the Grande Mademoiselle and the Duchesse de Longueville. And she made up her mind to have Samedis. That night seemed about the best night on which to hope for busy men, and the men she would have to depend upon would be so much busier than any that ever had filled the Salon Helvétique. She wanted to have Sunday nights—are you listening?”

“Listening? Can’t you see that I am absorbed?”

“She wanted to have Sunday nights, but her mother is an anti-Briggs Presbyterian, and she thought it would be best not to tempt Providence—her sister-in-law afterward told me this herself.”

“Just like a sister-in-law.”

“Besides, her husband always went to something or other that he belonged to on Sunday night—yes, I know it was very bad form from asalonstandpoint to consider him at all; but you see she didn’t want it to look as if she had picked out the night when hehadto be away. And the Samedis did sound well. The first Samedi was a great success. Mrs. Brotcher wore a light mauve princess dress that was made for the occasion. She got together fifteen or twenty men somehow, and an elderly French woman, a rather lively widow with a sense of humor that would have been useful to Mrs. Brotcher, gave some admirable assistance in managing the crowd. By a happy stroke the French professor brought with him a young Frenchman who called himself the Comte de Trouvel, or something of that sort. Ed Tranton, who was there, and who didn’t miss anything, said that it was killing to see Mrs. Brotcher, who remained seated, motion the count to a seat on thefauteuilbeside her. Her plan for sitting like a sovereign was really quite wise for her. She is a trifle heavy, and her awkwardness has the finish that comes with a little Delsarte. Her method of sitting down always makes me think of a hotel bus backing to a carriageblock. You never could appreciate the fun of this unless I gave you some of these details.”

“You are living up to your notion of it as history.”

“If you are notveryappreciative the historian—”

“I am listening.”

“Ed Tranton says that more of the men talked to the lively French widow than seemed to him to be exactly symmetrical, but Mrs. Brotcher did not appear to care so long as she had the count. When Ed Tranton got into the Brotcher group, Mrs. Brotcher was saying to the count with a flip of her fan—I can justseeit!—that she didn’t consider his behavior quitepropre. The count roared and cast a longing glance toward the widow as if he couldn’t wait the chance to tell her. Poor Mrs. Brotcher meantconvenableorcomme il faut, of course. I doubt whether she ever knew why the count seemed so much amused. To her the evening was a brilliant, an epoch-making occasion. During the following week she greatly elaborated her plan. Her sister-in-law says that she felt the need of having one or two stars every night, like the count, who had enthusiastically promised to come again on the following Saturday. Mrs. Brotcher had cried over Mme. Roland and made up her mind to keep out of politics, though I fancy she did not see any immediate danger in any politics that was at all possible to hersalon. Her idea was to go in for as much literary effect as she couldget with a sprinkling of counts, colonels, professors, and judges. Naturally things couldn’t be as picturesque as when women wore high-waisted gowns and men imitated Napoleon. It was too bad not to have an abbé. I’m sure she wanted an abbé, in a circle ofbeaux esprits. Apetit souperwas planned for the second Saturday,—they had plain refreshments the first night. Well, the second Samedi came and with it the Professor, who apologized for the indisposition of the count, and little Dawlin of theDynamo, who was to read somevers de société. That was all. The heart-breaking thing was that Brotcher, who had found it impossible to be present on the first occasion, appeared at the second Samedi to see what sort of an affair asalonwas. Mrs. Brotcher wilted; but she revived somehow and appears to have expected great things of the third Samedi, which came with the Professor again, and Dawlin, and a Judge Troot, who had been asked alone, but who brought his wife. It was pitiful. Brotcher grinned over it, and told Mrs. Brotcher, it seems, that he thought she had better give up trying to be ‘saloon-keeper.’ But Mrs. Brotcher was hard to crush. She complained that so many of the nice men were married, and that you couldn’t get them very well without their wives, who quite plainly were impossible to asalon. On the other hand, the single men who were worth having seemed to be wedded to clubs. Evenpetits souperswould not fetch them. It was not for two or three months that Mrs. Brotchergave up her dream. I believe the failure was a real grief to her, and she has thrown herself into clubs as if to blot out the past.”

When Women Wore High-waisted Gowns

And Men Imitated Napoleon.

“Well,” I said, “that seems to me a better explanation of why we do not havesalonsthan of why we do have women’s clubs. There were men’s clubs at the time of thesalons; and I think we may say that thesalonsstopped before the feminine clubs began.”

“Have women taken up with one another because they had to? Is that what you are going to ask? No; we have taken up with one another in this modified sort of way for the same reason that the blacksmith whipped the parson—because we wanted to and because we could. Thesalonnever kept many women busy, but the decay of thesalonwas one more reason why there should be women’s clubs. The logical thing was bound to happen sometime: clubs for men, clubs for women, clubs for both—society being in a sort of way the club for both.”

“That is logical,” I admitted. “That is to say, it has a nicely balancing sound, which is the same thing. Then there is a fine balance in other ways, as we may observe every day. We have a dozen men to one woman in political boards, and a dozen women to one man at prayer-meeting. In each case the minority undergoes a trying test.”

She laughed an unresentful laugh.

“I hope you won’t think me irreverent,” I said, “in suggesting that the same test is imposed uponall clubs alike: What is our condition when we leave them?”

“In that case,” she answered, rising. “I’m afraid we shall be obliged to decide that this club may not have been entirely good for you.”

To which, naturally, I did not agree.

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