Read Online The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton - Free Book Online Page A

not with naked Cupids and humming-birds on a sky-blue ground, and that basement dining-rooms were unknown to the fashionable. So much she had picked up almost at once from Jinny and Jinny’s school-friends; and when she called on Mrs. Parmore to enquire about the English governess, the sight of the Parmore house, small and simple as it was, completed her disillusionment.
    But it was too late to change. The Colonel, who was insensitive to details, continued to be proud of his house; even when the Elmsworths, suddenly migrating from Brooklyn, had settled themselves in Fifth Avenue, he would not admit his mistake, or feel the humiliation of the contrast. And yet what a difference it made to a lady to be able to say “Fifth Avenue” in giving her address to Black, Starr and Frost, or to Mrs. Connelly, the fashionable dress-maker! In establishments like that they classed their customers at once, and “Madison Avenue” stood at best for a decent mediocrity.
    Mrs. St. George at first ascribed to this unfortunate locality her failure to make a social situation for her girls; yet after the Elmsworths had come to Fifth Avenue she noted with satisfaction that Lizzy and Mabel were not asked out much more than Virginia. Of course, Mr. Elmsworth was an obstacle; and so was Mrs. Elmsworth’s laugh. It was difficult—it was even painful—to picture the Elmsworths dining at the Parmores’ or the Eglintons’. But the St. Georges did not dine there either. And the question of ball-going was almost as discouraging. One of the young men whom the girls had met at Saratoga had suggested to Virginia that he might get her a card for the first Assembly; but Mrs. St. George, when sounded, declined indignantly, for she knew that in the best society girls did not go to balls without their parents.
    These subscription balls were a peculiar source of bitterness to Mrs. St. George. She could not understand how her daughters could be excluded from entertainment for which one could buy a ticket. She knew all about the balls from her hair-dresser, the celebrated Katie Wood. Katie did everybody’s hair, and innocently planted dagger after dagger in Mrs. St. George’s anxious breast by saying: “If you and Jinny want me next Wednesday week for the first Assembly you’d better say so right off, because I’ve got every minute bespoke already from three o’clock on,” or: “If you’re invited to the opening night of the Opera, I might try the new chignon with the bunch of curls on the left shoulder,” or, worse still: “I suppose Jinny belongs to the Thursday Evening Dances, don’t she? The débutantes are going to wear wreaths of apple-blossom or rose-buds a good deal this winter—or forget-me-nots would look lovely, with her eyes.”
    Lovely, indeed. But if Virginia had not been asked to belong, and if Mrs. St. George had vainly tried to have her own name added to the list of the Assembly balls, or to get a box for the opening night of the Opera, what was there to do but to say indifferently: “Oh, I don’t know if we shall be here—the Colonel’s thinking a little of carrying us off to Florida if he can get away”—knowing all the while how much the hair-dresser believed of that excuse, and also aware that, in speaking of Miss Eglinton and Miss Parmore, Katie did not call them by their Christian names....
    Mrs. St. George could not understand why she was subjected to this cruel ostracism. The Colonel knew everybody—that is, all the gentlemen he met down town, or at his clubs, and he belonged to many clubs. Their dues were always having to be paid, even when the butcher and the grocer were clamouring. He often brought gentlemen home to dine, and gave them the best champagne and Madeira in the cellar; and they invited him back, but never included Mrs. St. George and Virginia in their invitations.
    It was small comfort to learn one day that