Read Ebook: The Social Secretary by Phillips David Graham Seymour Ralph Fletcher Illustrator Underwood Clarence F Illustrator

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Ebook has 366 lines and 27418 words, and 8 pages

--Jessie from whom his Majesty at the White House hides when he knows she's coming for an impossible favor--she was no match for Jessie and she knew it. She wiped the sweat from her face and stammered: "I hope we'll suit each other, Miss--" In her embarrassment she had forgotten my name.

Mrs. Burke brightened. "The Senator won't be here to-day," she drawled, in a tone which always suggests to me that, after all, life is a smooth, leisurely matter with plenty of time for everything except work. "As he was leaving for the Capitol this morning, he says to me, says he: 'You women had better fight it out alone.'"

Jessie saved the luncheon--or, at least, thought she was saving it. Mrs. Burke and I had only to listen and eat. I caught her looking at me several times, and then I saw shrewdness in her eyes--good-natured, but none the less penetrating for that. And I knew I should like her, and should get on with her. At last our eyes met and we both smiled. After that she somehow seemed less crowded and foreign in her tight, fine clothes. I saw she was impatient for Jessie to go the moment luncheon was over, but it was nearly three o'clock before we were left alone together. There fell an embarrassed silence--for both of us were painfully conscious that nothing had really been settled.

"When do you wish me to come--if you do wish it at all?" I asked, by way of making a beginning.

"When do you think you could come?" she inquired nervously.

"Then you do wish to give me a trial? I hope you won't feel that Mrs. Carteret's precipitate way binds you."

She gave me a shrewd, good-natured look. "I want you to come," she said. "I wanted it from what I'd heard of you--I and Mr. Burke. I want it more than ever, now that I've seen you. When can you come?"

"To-morrow--to-morrow morning?"

"Come as early as you like. The salary is--is satisfactory?"

"Mrs. Carteret said--but I'm sure--you can judge better--whatever--" I stuttered, red as fire.

Mrs. Burke laughed. "I can see you ain't a great hand at business. The salary is two thousand a year, with a three months' vacation in the time we're not at Washington. Always have a plain understanding in money matters--it saves a lot of mean feelings and quarrels."

"Very well--whatever you think. I don't believe I'm worth much of anything until I've had a chance to show what I can do."

"Well, Tom--Mr. Burke--said two thousand would be about right at the set-off," she drawled in her calming tone. "So we'll consider that settled."

"Yes," I gasped, with a big sigh of relief. "I suppose you wish me to take charge of your social matters--relieve you of the burdensome part of entertaining?"

"I just wish you could," she said, with a great deal of humor in her slow voice. "But I've got to keep that--it's the trying to make people have a good time and not look and act as if they were wondering why they'd come."

"I don't know. As nearly as I can make out, they never had a real, natural good time in their lives. They wear the Sunday, go-to-meeting clothes and manners the whole seven days. I'll never get used to it. I can't talk that kind of talk. And if I was just plain and natural, they'd think I was stark crazy."

"Did you ever try?"

She lifted her hands in mock-horror. "Mercy, no! Tom--Mr. Burke--warned me."

She colored. "He does," she said, her eyes twinkling. "He was here two winters--this is my first. I've a kind of feeling that he really don't know, but he's positive and--I've had nobody else to talk about it with. I'm a stranger here--not a friend except people who--well, I can guess pretty close to what they say behind my back." She laughed--a great shaking of as much of her as was not held rigid by that tight corset. "Not that I care--I like a joke myself, and I'm a good deal of a joke among these grand folks. Only, I do want to help Tom, and not be a drag." She gave me a sudden, sharp look. "I don't know why I trust you, I'm sure."

"Because I'm your confidential adviser," said I, "and it's always well to keep nothing from a confidential adviser." The longer I looked and listened, the larger possibilities I saw in her. My enthusiasm was rising.

"We're going to have a lot of fun," said I encouragingly--as if she were twenty-four and I fifty, instead of it being the other way. "You'll soon learn the ropes."

"I'm so glad you use slang," she drawled, back in her chair and comfortably settled. "My, but Tom'll be scandalized. He's made inquiries about you and has made up his mind that whatever you say is right. And I almost believed he knew the trails. I might 'a' known! He's a man, you see, and always was stiff with the ladies. You ought to 'a' seen the letter he wrote proposing to me. You see, I'm kind of fat and always was. Mother used to tease me because I hadn't any beaux except Tom, who wouldn't come to the point. She said: 'Lizzie, you'll never have a man make real love to you.' And she was right. When Tom proposed he wrote very formal-like--not a sentimental word. And when we were married and got better acquainted, I teased him about it, and tried to get him to make love, real book kind of love. But not a word! But he's fond of me--we always have got on fine, and his being no good at love-talk is just one of our jokes."

It was fine to hear her drawl it out--I knew that she was sure to make a hit, if only I could get her under way, could convince her that it's nice to be natural if you're naturally nice.

"Tom" came in from the Senate and I soon saw that, though she was a "really" lady, of the only kind that is real--the kind that's born right, he was a made gentleman, and not a very successful job. He was small and thin and dressed with the same absurd stiff care with which he had made her dress. He had a pointed reddish beard and reddish curls, and he used a kind of scent that smelt cheap though it probably wasn't. He was very precise and distant with me--how "Lizzie's" eyes did twinkle as she watched him. I saw that she was "on to" Tom with the quickness with which a shrewd woman always finds out, once she gets the clue.

"Have you had Miss Talltowers shown her rooms, Mrs. Burke?" he soon inquired.

"Why, no, pa," replied Mrs. Burke. "I forgot it clear." As she said "pa" he winced and her eyes danced with fun. She went on to me: "You don't mind our calling each other pa and ma before you, do you, Miss Talltowers? We're so used to doing it that, if you minded it and we had to stop, we'd feel as if we had company in the house all the time."

I didn't dare answer, I was so full of laughter. For "pa" looked as if he were about to sink through the floor. She led me up to my rooms--a beautiful suite on the third floor. "We took the house furnished," she explained as we went, "and I feel as if I was living in a hotel--except that the servants ain't nearly so nice. I do hope you'll help me with them. Tom wanted me to take a housekeeper, but those that applied were such grand ladies that I'd rather 'a' done all my own work than 'a' had any one of them about. Perhaps we could get one now, and you could kind of keep her in check."

"I think it'd be better to have some one," I replied. "I've had some experience in managing a house." I couldn't help saying it unsteadily--not because I miss our house; no, I'm sure it wasn't that. But I suddenly saw the old library and my father looking up from his book to smile lovingly at me as I struggled with the household accounts. Anyhow, deep down I'm glad he did know so little about business and so much about everything that's fine. I'd rather have my memories of him than any money he could have left me by being less of a father and friend and more of a "practical" man.

Mrs. Burke looked at me sympathetically--I could see that she longed to say something about my changed fortunes, but refrained through fear of not saying the right thing. I must teach her never to be afraid of that--a born lady with a good heart could never be really tactless. She went to the front door with me, opening it for me herself to the contemptuous amusement of the tall footman. We shook hands and kissed--I usually can't bear to have a woman kiss me, but I'd have felt badly if "ma" Burke hadn't done it.

When I got back to Rachel's and burst into the drawing-room with a radiant face, I heard a grunt like a groan. It was from Jim in the twilight near Rachel at the tea-table. "I'm going out to service to-morrow," said I to Rachel. "So you're to be rid of your visitor at last."

December 6. Last Monday morning young Mr. Burke--Cyrus, the son and heir--arrived, just from Germany. The first glimpse I had of him was as he entered the house between his father and his mother, who had gone to the station to meet him. I got myself out of the way and didn't come down until "ma" Burke sent for me. I liked the way she was sitting there beaming--but then, I like almost everything she does; she's such a large, natural person. She never stands, except on her way to sit just as soon as ever she can. "I never was a great hand for using my feet," she said to me on my second day, "and I don't know but about as much seems to 'a' come to find me as most people catch up with by running their legs off." I liked the way her son was hovering about her. And I liked the way "pa" Burke hovered round them both, nervous and pulling at his whiskers and trying to think of things to say--if he only wouldn't use brilliantine, or whatever it is, on his whiskers!

Neither of us said anything memorable, and presently he went away to his room, his mother going up with him. His father followed to the foot of the stairs, then drifted away to his study where he could lie in wait for Cyrus on his way down. Pretty soon his mother came into the "office" they've given me--it's just off the drawing-room so that I can be summoned to it the instant any one comes to see Mrs. Burke.

I was glad when she hurried away at the sound of Cyrus in the hall. For a huge lot of work there'll be for me to do until I get things in some sort of order. I've opened a regular set of books to keep the social accounts in. Of course, nobody who goes in for society, on the scale we're going into it, could get along without social bookkeeping as big as a bank's. I pity the official women in the high places who can't afford secretaries; they must spend hours every night posting and fussing with their account-books when they ought to be in bed asleep.

On my second day here "pa" Burke explained what his plans were. "We wish to make our house," said he, "the most distinguished social center in Washington, next to the White House--and very democratic. Above all, Miss Talltowers, democratic."

"He don't mean that he wants us to do our own work and send out the wash," drawled "ma" Burke, who was sitting by. "But democratic, with fourteen servants in livery."

"Exactly," he replied in a dubious tone. "But I wish to maintain the--the dignities, as it were."

I saw he was afraid I might get the idea he wanted something like those rough-and-tumble public maulings of the President that they have at the White House. I hastened to reassure him; then I explained my plan. I had drawn up a system somewhat like those the President's wife and the Cabinet women and the other big entertainers have. I'm glad the Burkes haven't any daughters. If they had I'd certainly need an assistant. As it is, I'm afraid I'll worry myself hollow-eyed over my books.

First, there's the Ledger--a real, big, thick office ledger with almost four hundred accounts in it, each one indexed. Of course, there aren't any entries as yet. But there soon will be--what we owe various people in the way of entertainment, what they've paid, and what they owe us.

Second, there's my Day-Book. It contains each day's engagements so that I can find out at a glance just what we've got to do, and can make out each night before going to bed or early each morning the schedule for Mrs. Burke for the day, and for Senator Burke and the son, I suppose, for the late afternoon and the evening.

Fourth, there's our Ball-and-Big-Dinner Book. That's got a list of all the young men and another of all the young women. And I'm making notes against the names of those I don't know very well or don't know at all--notes about their personal appearance, eligibility, capacities for dancing, conversation, and so forth and so on. If you're going to make an entertainment a success you've got to know something more or less definite about the people that are coming, whom to ask to certain things and whom not to ask. Take a man like Phil Harkness, or a girl like Nell Witton, for example. Either of them would ruin a dinner, but Phil shines at a ball, where silence and good steady dancing are what the girls want. As for Nell, she's possible at a ball only if you can be sure John Rush or somebody like him is coming--somebody to sit with her and help her blink at the dancers and be bored. Then there's the Sam Tremenger sort of man--a good talker, but something ruinous when he turns loose in a ball-room and begins to batter the women's toilets to bits. He's a dinner man, but you can't ask him when politics may be discussed--he gets so violent that he not only talks all the time, but makes a deafening clamor and uses swear words--and we still have quiet people who get gooseflesh for damn.

Then there's--let me see, what number--oh, yes--fifth, there's my Acceptance-and-Refusal Book. It's most necessary, both as a direct help and as an indirect check on other books. Then, too, I want it to be impossible to send the Burkes to places they've said they wouldn't go, or for them to be out when they've asked people to come here. Those things usually happen when you've asked some of those dreadful people that everybody always forgets, yet that are sure to be important at some critical time.

Sixth, there's my Book of Home Entertainments--a small book but most necessary, as arranging entertainments in the packed days of the Washington season isn't easy.

Seventh, there's the little book with the list of entertainments other people are going to give. We have to have that so that we can know how to make our plans. And in it I'm going to keep all the information I can get about the engagements of the people we particularly want to ask. If I'm not sharp-eyed about that I'll fail in one of my principal duties, which is getting the right sort of people under this roof often enough during the season to give us "distinction."

Ninth--that's my book for press notices. It's empty now, but I think "pa" Burke will be satisfied long before the season is over.

Quite a library isn't it? How simple it must be to live in a city like New York or Boston where one bothers only with the people of one set and has practically no bookkeeping beyond a calling list. And here it's getting worse and worse each season.

Let me see, how many sets are there? There's the set that can say must to us--the White House and the Cabinet and the embassies. Then there's the set we can say must to--a huge, big set and, in a way, important, but there's nobody really important in it. Then there's the still wider lower official set--such people as the under-secretaries of departments, the attach?s of embassies, small congressmen and the like. Then there's the old Washington aristocracy--my particular crowd. It doesn't amount to "shucks," as Mrs. Burke would say, but everybody tries to be on good terms with it, Lord knows why. Finally, there's the set of unofficial people--the rich or otherwise distinguished who live in Washington and must be cultivated. And we're going to gather in all of them, so as not to miss a trick.

The first one of the Burkes to whom I showed my books and explained myself in full was "ma" Burke. She looked as if she had been taken with a "misery," as she calls it. "Lord! Lord!" she groaned. "Whatever have I got my fool self into?"

"From morning till morning again," I corrected. "The men sleep in Washington. But the women with social duties have no time for sleep--only for naps."

"I reckon it'll hardly be worth while to undress for bed," she said grimly. "I'm going to have the bed taken out of my room. It'd drive me crazy to look at it. Such a good bed, too. I always was a great hand for a good bed. I've often said to pa that you can't put too much value into a bed--and by bed I don't mean headboard and footboard, nor canopy nor any other fixings. What do you think of my hair?"

I was a bit startled by her sudden change of subject. I waited.

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