Lady Betty Across the Water. C. N. Williamson
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snubbing some people and preening herself to others.
"My deah," said Sally (I'm to call her "Sally" now; it's been understood between us for some time), "my deah, you're a poor, innocent child, and I reckon you've been brought up in darkness, without even so much as hearing of the Four Hundred."
"What are the Four Hundred? Are they a kind of Light Brigade, like the Six Hundred?" I asked. "Or is it a sort of governing body like—like the Council of Three?"
She laughed so much at this, with her charming, velvety laugh, that I grew quite nervous, for it's embarrassing to have said something funny when you've meant to be rather intelligent. But soon she took pity on me. "You perfect love," she said; "that's really too sweet. It deserves to be put into Life, or something. And yet you're not so far wrong, when one comes to think of it. The Four Hundred is a kind of governing body; only I believe it's really reduced to Two Hundred now. They govern New York; and Newport; and Lennox; and Bar Harbour; and several other places which are considered very nice and important."
"Oh! Are they Republicans or Democrats?" I enquired, sure that I really was being intelligent at last, for I'd heard Stan say that, in America, the Republican party was rather like our Conservatives, and the Democrats like the Liberals; and I'd remembered because I believe I should be very much interested in politics if only I understood more about them. But Sally seemed to think that question funny, too.
"They can be either, my poor lamb," she exclaimed; "and they can be almost anything else they like, if only they're just awfully, dreadfully rich, and can manage to scrape up a family crest. It used to be the crest that counted, with the man who invented the Four Hundred; but since his day, that idea has got buried under heaps and heaps of gold, and pearls and diamonds; especially pearls. In those places I was telling you about, you don't exist unless you're in the Four Hundred, which is now being sifted down to Two Hundred, and will probably be Seventy-five in a year or two. You may have the bluest blood in America in your veins; you may be simply smeared with ancestors, but if you haven't managed to push forward in a clever, indescribable way, neither they nor you will ever be noticed, and your grey hairs will go down to the grave in the Wrong Set. Now do you understand why my cousin Katherine makes narrow eyes for some people, and broad smiles for others?"
"Ye-es, I suppose I do," I answered. "Only—we are quite different at home. I haven't been about at all yet, but I know; because some things are in the air. How did Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox ever have the poor Wrong Setters for acquaintances, though?"
"Because (she'd kill me if she heard this) she has only lately got into the Right Set herself, and after trouble enough to give an ordinary woman nervous prostration. That kind of thing does give it to a lot of women—especially if they fail. But Cousin Katherine very seldom fails. She almost always carries things through. If you knew anything about America in general, and New York in particular, you'd be able to realise what a hard time she's had, when I tell you that till her husband died she lived west of Chicago. To get into the Four Hundred if you've lived west of Chicago, (unless you're Californian, which is getting to be fashionable), is just like having to climb over one of those great, high walls of yours in England, bristling with nails or broken glass."
"My goodness!" I exclaimed. "How funny! Fancy if people who live in Surrey should glare at people who live in Devonshire."
"That's different. You see, Chicago is new."
"But so is all America, isn't it?" I asked, stupidly. "What difference can a hundred or so years make?"
"We haven't begun to think in centuries yet, on our side of the water, my deah." (She has the most delicious way of saying "my deah," and all her "r's" are soft like that; only it's too much trouble to write them for nobody but myself to see.) "Anyhow, it is so, between New York and Chicago people—that is, the people who count in Society with a big S: and it was a great triumph for my cousin to become the Three-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth in the Four Hundred. She did it by buying a Russian Prince."
"Buying a——"
"Yes, love, he was going to the highest bidder, and she bought him. That is, she entertained him so gorgeously and did so many nice things for him, that he posed as her property; and as everyone was dying to meet him, it made her. She'd been working killingly hard before that, for a whole year after taking her house on Fifth Avenue and building her cottage at Newport, but it was buying the Prince which did the trick. On the strength of that episode and its consequences, she went to Europe with very nice introductions, and as you know, deah, she has made some valuable as well as pleasant friends. To live up to them and her reputation, she will have to be busy for a while dropping a lot of old acquaintances."
"How horrid!" I couldn't help exclaiming, though Mrs. Ess Kay was going to be my hostess.
"Yes, it seems rather miserable to me, because I'm a weak, lazy, Southern thing, who would be right down sick, if I had to hurt any human being's feelings. Yet perhaps it looks fair to her. She's so ambitious, and she's worked so hard, she has deserved to succeed. As for poor me, she just regularly mesmerises me all through. She mesmerised me into coming up from Kentucky and visiting her this spring; then she mesmerised me into going with her to Europe. But I'm not sorry I went, for I've had a right good time."
"I'm so glad you went," said I, "because if you hadn't I shouldn't have met you. I'm sure I should love Kentucky if all the people there are like you. But these things you've been saying seem so odd. Do you mean to tell me that the people who lead Society in New York want to keep their set limited to a certain number, and refuse to know others, even if they're extraordinarily clever and interesting?
"They don't like them to be too clever, because they call such people 'queer'—that is, unless they happen to be 'lions' of some sort from England or other places abroad. Then, so long as they're not American, they welcome them with open arms."
"I'm glad Society isn't like that in England," I said. "There the real people—the people who have the right to make social laws, you know—are delighted with anyone who can amuse them. Of course, deep down in our hearts, we may be proud if we have old names, which have been famous for hundreds of years in one way or another; but we are so used, after all those centuries, to being sure of ourselves, that we just take our position for granted, and don't think much more about it. If people who haven't got quite the same position are gentlefolk, and amusing, or clever, or beautiful, or anything like that which really matters, why, we're only too pleased with them."
"That's all the difference in the world! You've been 'sure of yourselves for centuries.' You've said the last word, my deah. 'Out of the mouths of babes'—but Cousin Katherine's finished gushing to that silly old Mrs. Van der Windt. We mustn't dare discuss these things from our point of view any more. I reckon she would faint."
There are a good many young men on board, and some of them seemed to be quite devoted to Mrs. Ess Kay the first day out; but she was cold to them all, I couldn't think why, as some of them seemed very nice, and she had always appeared rather to like being with men. I asked Sally about it, but she laughed, and said I might perhaps solve the mystery for myself when we were at Newport, if I remembered it then.
I never heard of such breakfasts and luncheons as they have on this ship, and the first menu I saw surprised me so much, that I couldn't believe they really had and could produce all those things if anybody was inconsiderate enough to ask for them. I hardly supposed there were so many things to eat in the world. But the captain heard me exclaiming to Sally, so he smiled, and told me to test the menu by ordering a bit of everything on it; he'd guarantee that nothing would be missed out. This was at breakfast the second day; and when he saw that I ate several dear little round things, shaped like cream-coloured doyleys, which are called pancakes (though they aren't a bit like ours) with some perfectly divine stuff named maple syrup, he said my taking such a fancy to American products was a sign that I should marry an American. What nonsense! As if I would dream of marrying, especially a foreigner. But for all that, pancakes and maple syrup are delicious. I've had them every day since for breakfast, after finishing a great orange four times the natural size, which isn't really an orange, because it's a grape fruit. You have it on your plate cut in two halves,