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

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

"Don't mind me--speak right out," she said with her good-natured twinkle. "You might think it wasn't my hair, but it is. The color's not, though, as you may be surprised to hear." The "surprised" was broadly satirical.

"I prefer natural hair," said I, "and gray hair is most becoming. It makes a woman look younger, not older."

"That's sensible," said she. "I never did care for bottled hair. I think it looks bad from the set-off, and gets worse. The widow Pfizer in our town got so that hers was bright green after she bottled it for two years, trying to catch old man Coakley. And after she caught him she bottled his, and it turned out green, too, after a while."

Mrs. Burke was delighted. "I might have known better," she observed, "but I found Mr. Burke bottling his beard, and he wanted me to; and it seemed to me that somehow bottled hair just fitted right in with all the rest of this foolishness here. How they would rear round at home if they knew what kind of a place Washington is! Why, I hear that up at the White House, when the President leaves the table for a while during meals, all the ladies--women, I mean--his wife and all of them, have to rise and stand till he comes back."

"Yes," I replied. "He's started that custom. I like ceremony, don't you?"

"No, I can't say that I do," she drawled. "Out home all the drones and pokes and nobodies are just crazy about getting out in feathers and red plush aprons and clanking and pawing round, trying to make out they're somebody. And I've always noticed that whenever anybody that is a somebody hankers after that sort of thing it's because he's got a streak of nobody in him. No, I don't like it in Cal Walters out home, and I don't like it in the President."

Her eyes began to twinkle. "First thing you know, the country'll turn loose a herd of steers from the prairies in this town, and--But, long as it's here, I suppose I've got to abide by it. So I'll do whatever you say. It'll be a poor do, without my trying to find fault."

And she's being as good as her word. She makes me tell her exactly what to do. She is so beautifully simple and ladylike in her frank confessions of her ignorance--just as the Queen of England would be if she were to land on the planet Mars and have to learn the ways--the surface ways, I mean. I've no doubt that outside of a few frills which silly people make a great fuss about, a lady is a lady from one end of the universe to the other.

I'm making the rounds of my friends with Mrs. Burke in this period of waiting for the season to begin. And she sits mum and keeps her eyes moving. She's rapidly picking up the right way to say things--that is, the self-assurance to say things in her own way. I took her among my friends first because I wanted her to realize that I was absolutely right in urging her to naturalness. There are so many in the different sets she'll be brought into contact with who are ludicrously self-conscious. Certainly, there's much truth in what she says about the new order. We Americans don't do the European sort of thing well, and, while the old way wasn't pretty to look at it, it was--it was our own. However, I'm merely a social secretary, dealing with what is, and not bothering my head about what ought to be. And as for the Burkes, they're here to take advantage of what is, not to revolutionize things.

Mr. Burke himself was the next member of the family at whom I got a chance with my great plans. When he had got it all out of me he began to pace up and down the floor, pulling at his whiskers, and evidently thinking. Finally he looked at me in a kindly, sharp way, and, in a voice I recognized at once as the voice of the Thomas Burke who had been able to pile up a fortune and buy into the Senate, said:

"I double your salary, Miss Talltowers. And I hope you understand that expense isn't to be considered in carrying out your program. I want you to act just as if this were all for yourself. And if we succeed I think you'll find I'm not ungenerous." And before I could try to thank him he was gone.

The last member was "Bucyrus." As I knew his parents wished to be alone with him at first I kept out of the way, breakfasting in my rooms, lunching and dining out a great deal. What little I saw of him I didn't like. He ignored me most of the time--and I, for one woman, don't like to be ignored by any man. When he did speak to me it was as they speak to the governess in families where they haven't been used to very much for very long. Perhaps this piqued me a little, but it certainly amused me, and I spoke to him in an humble, deferential way that seemed somehow to make him uneasy.

It was day before yesterday that he came into my office about an hour after luncheon. He tried to look very dignified and superior.

"Miss Talltowers," he said, "I must request you to refrain from calling me sir whenever you address me."

"I beg your pardon, sir," I replied meekly, "but I have never addressed you. I hope I know my place and my duty better than that. Oh, no, sir, I have always waited to be spoken to."

He blazed a furious red. "I must request you," he said, with his speech at its most fancy-work like, "not to continue your present manner toward me. Why, the very servants are laughing at me."

"Oh, sir," I said earnestly, "I'm sure that's not my fault." And I didn't spoil it by putting accent on the "that" and the "my."

He got as pale as he had been red. "Are you trying to make it impossible for us to remain under the same roof?" he demanded. What a spoiled stupid!

"I'm sure, sir," said I, and I think my eyes must have shown what an unpleasant mood his hinted threat had put me in, "that I'm not even succeeding in making it impossible for us to remain in my private office at the same time. Do you understand me, or do you wish me to make my meaning--"

He had given a sort of snort and had rushed from the room.

At any rate, Mr. Bucyrus came striding back after half an hour, and, rather surlily but with a certain grudging manliness, said: "I beg your pardon, Miss Talltowers, for what I said. I am ashamed of my having forgotten myself and made that tyrannical speech to you."

"Thank you, sir," said I, without raising my eyes. "You are most gracious."

"And I hope," he went on, "that you will try to treat me as an equal."

He shifted uneasily, red and white by turns. "I think you understand me," he muttered.

He waved his arm impatiently. "Please don't!" he exclaimed rather imperiously. "I could have got my mother to--"

"I hope you won't complain of me to your mother," I pleaded.

He flushed and snorted, like a horse that is being teased by a fly it can reach with neither teeth, hoofs nor tail. "You know I didn't mean that. I'm not an utter cad--now, don't say, 'Aren't you, sir?'"

He was silent, stood biting his lips and looking out of the window. Presently, when I had resumed my work, he said in an endurable tone and manner: "I hope you will be kind enough to include me in that admirable social scheme of yours. Are those your books?"

I explained them to him as briefly as I could. I had no intention of making myself obnoxious, but on the other hand I did not, and do not purpose to go out of my way to be courteous to this silly of an overgrown, spoiled baby. He tried to be nice in praise of my system, but I got rid of him as soon as I had explained all that my obligations as social secretary to the family required. He thanked me as he was leaving and said, in his most gracious tone, "I shall see that my father raises your salary."

I fairly gasped at the impudence of this, but before I could collect myself properly to deal with him he was gone. Perhaps it was just as well. I must be careful not to be "sensitive"--that would make me as ridiculous as he is.

And that's the man Jim Lafollette is fairly smoking with jealousy of! He was dining at Rachel's last night, and Rachel put him next me. He couldn't keep off the subject of "that young Burke." Jessie overheard him after a while and leaned round and said to me, "How do you and young Mr. Burke get on?" in her "strictly private" manner--Jessie's strictly private manner is about as private as the Monument.

"Not badly," I replied, to punish Jim. "We're gradually getting acquainted."

Jim sneered under his mustache. "It's the most shameful scheme two women ever put up," he said, as if he were joking.

"Oh, has Jessie told you?" I exclaimed, pretending to be concealing my vexation.

"It's the talk of the town," he answered, showing his teeth in a grin that was all fury and no fun.

There may be women idiots enough to marry a man who warns them in advance that he's rabidly jealous, but I'm not one of them. Better a crust in quietness.

December 27. Three weeks simply boiling with business since I wrote here--and it seems not more than so many days. And all by way of preparation, for the actual season is still five days away.

For a fat woman to be tight is--revolting! My idea of misery is a fat woman in a tight waist and tight shoes. Yet fat women have a mania for wearing tight things, just as gaunt women yearn for stripes and short women for flounces. My first move in getting Mrs. Burke into shape--after doing away with that dreadful "bottled" hair--was to put her into comfortable clothes. The first time I got her into an evening dress of the right sort I was rewarded for all my trouble by her expression. She kissed me with tears in her eyes. "My dear," said she, "never before did I have a best dress that I wasn't afraid to breathe in for fear I'd bust out, back or front." Then I made her sit down before her long glass and look at herself carefully. She had the prettiest kind of color in her cheeks as she smiled at me and said: "If I'd 'a' looked like this when I was young I reckon Mr. Burke wouldn't 'a' been so easy in his mind when he went away from home, nor 'a' stayed so long. I always did sympathize with pretty women when they capered round, but now I wonder they ever do sober down. If I weighed a hundred pounds or so less I do believe I'd try to frisk yet."

And I do believe she could; for she's really a handsome woman. Why is it that the women who have the most to them don't give it a chance to show through, but get themselves up so that anybody who glances at them tries never to look again?

It is the change in her appearance even more than all she's learned that has given her self-confidence. She feels at ease--and that puts her at ease, and puts everybody else at ease, too. It has reacted upon Mr. Burke. He has dropped brilliantine--perhaps "ma" gave him a quiet hint--and he has taken some lessons in dress from "Cyrus," who really gets himself up very well, considering that he has lived in Germany for three years. I should have hopes that "pa" would blossom out into something very attractive socially if he hadn't a deep-seated notion that he is a great joker. A naturally serious man who tries to be funny is about the most painful object in civilization. Still, Washington is full of statesmen and scholars who try to unbend and be "light," especially with "the ladies." Nothing makes me--or any other woman, I suppose--so angry as for a man to show that he takes me for a fool by making a grinning galoot of himself whenever he talks to me. Bucyrus is much that kind of ass. He alternates between solemnity and silliness.

I said rather pointedly to him the other night: "You men with your great, deep minds make a mistake in changing your manner when you talk with the women and the children. Nothing pleases us so much as to be taken seriously." But it didn't touch him. However, he's hardly to blame. He's spent a great many years round institutions of learning, and in those places, I've noticed, every one has a musty, fusty sense of humor. Probably it comes from cackling at classical jokes that have laughed themselves as dry as a mummy.

We've been giving a few entertainments--informal and not large, but highly important. I had two objects in mind: In the first place, to get Mr. and Mrs. Burke accustomed to the style of hospitality they've got to give if they're going to win out. In the second place, to get certain of the kind of people who are necessary to us in the habit of coming to this house--and those people are not so very hard to get hold of now; later they'll be engaged day and night.

For two weeks now I've had my two especial features going. One of them is for the men, the other for the women. And I can see already that they alone would carry us through triumphantly; for they've caught on.

My men's feature is a breakfast. I engaged a particularly good cook--the best old-fashioned Southern cook in Washington. Rachel had her, and I persuaded Mr. Derby to consent to giving her up to us, just for this season. Cleopatra--that's her name--has nothing to do but get together every morning by nine o'clock the grandest kind of an old-fashioned American breakfast. And I explained to Senator Burke that he was to invite some of his colleagues, as many as he liked, and tell them to come any morning, or every morning if they wished, and bring their friends.

I consult with Cleopatra every day as to what she's to have the next morning; and I think dear old father taught me what kind of breakfast men like. I don't give them too much, or they'd be afraid to come and risk indigestion a second time. I see to it that everything is perfectly cooked--and it's pretty hard for any man to get indigestion, even from corned beef hash and hot cornbread and buckwheat cakes with maple syrup, if it's perfectly cooked and is eaten in a cheerful frame of mind. No women are permitted at these breakfasts--just men, with everything free and easy, plenty to smoke, separate tables, but each large enough so that there's always room at any one of them for one more who might otherwise be uncomfortable. Even now we have from fifteen to twenty men--among them the very best in Washington. In the season we'll have thirty and forty, and our house will be a regular club from nine to eleven for just the right men.

My other big feature is an informal dance every Wednesday night. It's already as great a success in its way as the breakfasts are in theirs. I've been rather careful about whom I let Mrs. Burke invite to come in on Wednesdays whenever they like. The result is that everybody is pleased; the affairs seem to be "exclusive," yet are not. I know it will do the Burkes a world of good politically, because a certain kind of people who are important politically but have had no chance socially are coming to us on Wednesdays, and that's just the kind of people who are frantically flattered by the idea that they are "in the push."

Speaking of being "in the push," there are two ways of getting there if one isn't there. One is to worm your way in; the other is to make yourself the head and front of "the push." That's the way for those who have money and know how. And that's the way the Burkes are getting in--getting in at the front instead of at the rear.

It's most gratifying to see how Mr. Burke treats me. He always has been deferential, but he now shows that he thinks I have real brains. And since his breakfasts have become the talk of the town and are "patronized" by the men he's so eager to get hold of, he is even consulting me about his business. I am criticizing for him now a speech he's going to make on the canal question next month--a dreadfully dull speech, and I don't feel competent to tell him what to do with it. I think I'll advise him not to make it, tell him his forte is diplomacy--winning men round by personal dealing with them--which is the truth.

Young Mr. Burke--after a period of unbending--is now shyer than ever. I wondered why, until it happened to occur to me one day as I was talking with Jessie. I suddenly said to her: "Jessie, did you ever tell Nadeshda that you had planned to marry me to Cyrus Burke?"

She hopped about in her chair a bit, as uneasy as a bird on a swaying perch. Then she confessed that she "might have suggested before Nadeshda what a delightfully satisfactory thing it would be."

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