People of the Whirlpool | Page 9

particular
place until they become attached to it, live in half a dozen houses,
which seems to have a deteriorating effect upon their domesticity; just
as the Sultan, with fifty wives that may be dropped or replaced
according to will, cannot prize them as does the husband of only one.
"Your letters are so full of questions and wonderments about ways in
your mother's day, that they set me rambling in the backwoods of the
sixties, when women were sending their lovers to the Civil War, and
then bravely sitting down and rolling their own hearts up with the
bandages with which they busied their fingers. I suppose you are
wondering if I lost a lover in those days, or why I have not married, as I
am in no wise opposed to the institution, but consider it quite necessary
to happiness. The truth is, I never saw but two men whose tastes so
harmonized with mine that I considered them possible as companions,
and when I first met them neither was eligible, one being my own
father and the other yours! I shall have to list your queries, to be
answered deliberately, write my letters in sections, day by day, and

send them off packet-wise, like the correspondence of the time of
two-shilling post and hand messengers. To begin with, I will pick out
the three easiest:--
"1. What is it in particular that has so upset me on my home-coming?
"2. Do I think that I could break through my habits sufficiently to make
you a real country visit this spring or early summer, before the
mosquitoes come? (Confessing with your altogether out-of-date
frankness that there are mosquitoes, a word usually dropped from the
vocabulary of commuters and their wives, even though they live in
Staten Island or New Jersey.)
"3. Is the Sylvia Latham, to whom I have been a friendly chaperon
during my recent travels, related to the Lathams who are building the
finest house on the Bluffs? You have never seen the head of the house,
but his initials are S.J.; he is said to be a power in Wall Street, and the
family consists of a son and daughter, neither of whom has yet
appeared, although the house is quite ready for occupancy.
"(My German teacher has arrived.)"
* * * * *
"January 22d.
"1. Why am I upset? For several reasons, some of which have been
clouding the horizon for many years, others crashing up like a
thunder-storm.
"I have for a long time past noticed a certain apathy in the social
atmosphere of the little circle that formed my world. I gave up any
pretensions to general New York society after my father's death, which
came at a time when the social centre was splitting into several cliques;
distances increased, New Year's calling ceased, going to the country for
even midwinter holidays came in vogue, and cosmopolitanism finally
overcame the neighbourhood community interest of my girlhood.
People stopped making evening calls uninvited; you no longer knew
who lived in the street or even next house, save by accident; the cosey
row of private dwellings opposite turned to lodging houses and
sometimes worse; friends who had not seen me for a few months
seemed surprised to find me living in the same place. When I began to
go about again, one day Cordelia Martin (she was a Bleecker--your
father will remember her) met me in the street and asked me to come in
the next evening informally to dinner and meet her sister, an army

officer's wife, who would be there en route from one post to another,
and have an old-time game of whist.
"I went, glad to see old friends, and anticipating a pleasant evening. I
wore a new soft black satin gown slightly V in front, some of my best
lace, and my pearl ornaments; I even wondered if the latter were in
good taste at a family dinner. You know I never dwell much upon attire,
but it is sometimes necessary when it is in a way epoch making.
"A butler had supplanted Cordelia's usual cordial waitress; he presented
a tray for the card that I had not brought and said 'second story front.'
This seemed strange to me, as Cordelia herself had always come to the
stairway to greet me when the door opened.
"The 'second story front' had been done over into a picturesque but
useless boudoir, a wood floor polished like glass was dotted by white
fur islands; the rich velvet carpets, put down a few years before, had in
fact disappeared from the entire house. A maid, anything but cordial,
removed my wrap, looking me and it over very deliberately as she did
so. I wondered if by mistake I had been bidden to a grand