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Mrs. Balfame

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[Pg 37] <h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> The "smart set" of Elsinore was composed of the twelve women that could afford to lose most at bridge. Mrs. Balfame, who could ill afford to lose anything, but who was both a scientific and a lucky player, insisted upon moderate stakes. The other members of this inner exclusive circle were the wives of two bankers, three contractors, two prosperous merchants, one judge, one doctor, and two commuters who made their incomes in New York and slept in Elsinore. These ladies made it a point of honor to dine at seven, dress smartly and appropriately for all occasions, attend everything worth while to which they could obtain entrance in New York, pay an occasional visit to Europe, read the new novels and attend the symphony concerts. It is superfluous to add that the very foundation of the superior social status of each was a large house of the affluent type peculiar to the prosperous annexes of old communities, half brick and half wood, shallow, characterless, impersonal; and a fine car with a limousine top. The house stood in the midst of a lawn sloping to the street, unconfined by even the box hedge and undivided from the neighbouring grounds. The garage, little less pretentious than the mansion, also faced the street, for all to see. There was hardly a horse left in Elsinore; taxi cabs awaited the traveller at the station, and people that could not afford handsome cars purchased and enjoyed the inexpensive runabout. [Pg 38] Mrs. Balfame had segregated her smart set for strategic reasons, but that did not mean that both she and they were not kindness itself to the less favoured. Obviously, an imposing party cannot be given by twelve families alone, especially when almost half their number are childless. On all state occasions the list of invited numbered several hundred, in that town of some five thousand inhabitants. It said much for the innate nobility of these wealthier dames of Elsinore, who read the New York society papers quite as attentively as they did the war news, that they submitted without a struggle to the dominance of a woman who never had possessed a car and whose husband's income was so often diverted from its natural course; but Mrs. Balfame not only outclassed them in inflexibility of purpose, but her family was as old as Brabant County; the Dawbarns had never been in what might be called the cavalry regiment, consisting of those few chosen ones living in old colonial houses set in large estates and with both roots and branches in the city of New York; but no one disputed their right to be called Captains of the infantry. And Mrs. Balfame, sole survivor in the direct line, had two wealthy cousins in Brooklyn. Once in a while Dr. Anna, a privileged character, and born at least in Brabant County, took a hand at bridge, but she was a poor player, and, upon the rare occasions when she found time to spend a Saturday afternoon at the Country Club, preferred to rest in a deep chair and watch the young folks flirt and dance until the informal supper was ready. Never had she tripped a step, but she loved youth, and it gave her an acute old maid's delight to observe the children[Pg 39] grow up; snub-nosed, freckled-faced awkward school girls develop at a flying leap into slim American prettiness, enhanced with every late exaggeration of style. She also approved heartily, on hygienic grounds, of the friends of her own generation dancing, even in public, if their partners were not too young and their forms too cumbersome. Mrs. Balfame and Dr. Anna arrived at the Club shortly after four o'clock. Young people swarmed everywhere, within and without; perhaps twenty older matrons were sitting on the veranda knitting those indeterminate toilette accessories for the Belgians which always seemed to be about to halt at precisely the same stage of progress. Mrs. Balfame, who had set the fashion, had not brought her needles to-day. She went directly to the card room; but her partner for the tournament not having arrived, she entertained her impatient friends with a recent domestic episode. "I have a German servant, you know," she said, removing her wraps and taking her seat at the table. "A good creature and a hard worker, but leaden-footed and dull beyond belief. Still, I suppose even the dullest peasant has spite in her make-up. I have been reading tomes of books on the war, as you learned from painful experience yesterday; most of them, as it happened—a good joke on Anna that, as she gave me the list—quite antagonistic to Germany. One day when Frieda should have been dusting I caught her scowling over the chapter heads of one of them. Of course she reads English—she has been here several years. Day before yesterday, when I was knitting, she asked me whom I was knitting for, and I[Pg 40] told her—for the Belgians, of course. She asked me in a sort of growl why I didn't knit for the homeless in East Prussia—it seems that is where she comes from and she has been having letters full of horrors. I seldom bandy words with a servant, for you can't permit the slightest familiarity in this country if you want to get any work out of them. But as she scowled as if she would like to explode a shrapnel under me, and as she is the third I have had in the last five months, I said soothingly that the newspaper correspondents had neglected the eastern theatre of war, but had harrowed our feelings so about the Belgians that we felt compelled to do what we could for them. Then I asked her—I was really curious—if she had no sympathy for those thousands of afflicted women and children, merely because they were the victims of the Germans. She has a big soft face with thick lips, little eyes, and a rudimentary nose; generally as expressionless as such a face is bound to be. But when I asked her this question it suddenly seemed to turn to wood—not actively cruel; it merely expressed the negation of all human sympathy. She turned without a word and slumped—pardon the expression—out of the room. But the breakfast was burned this morning—I had to cook another for poor David—and I know she did it on purpose. I am afraid I shall have to let her go." "I would," said Mrs. Battle, wisely. "She is probably a spy and quite clever." "Yes, but such a worker!" Mrs. Balfame sighed reminiscently. "And when you have but one servant—" The tardy partner bustled in and the game began. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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