The Butterfly House | Page 7

Slade rather stupidly. She did not quite know how to define Alice.
"Lives here in this little place? Not all the year?" rejoined Mrs. Snyder.
"Fairbridge is a very good place to live in all the year," replied Mrs. Slade rather stiffly. "It is near New York. We have all the advantages of a great metropolis without the drawbacks. Fairbridge is a most charming city, and very progressive, yes, very progressive."
Mrs. Slade took it rather hardly that Mrs. Snyder should intimate anything prejudicial to Fairbridge and especially that it was not good enough for Alice Mendon, who had been born there, and lived there all her life except the year she had been in college. If anything, she, Mrs. Slade, wondered if Alice Mendon were good enough for Fairbridge. What had she ever done, except to wear handsome costumes and look handsome and self-possessed? Although she belonged to the Zenith Club, no power on earth could induce her to discharge the duties connected herewith, except to pay her part of the expenses, and open her house for a meeting. She simply would not write a paper upon any interesting and instructive topic and read it before the club, and she was not considered gifted. She could not sing like Leila MacDonald and Mrs. Arthur Wells. She could not play like Mrs. Jack Evarts. She could not recite like Sally Anderson.
Mrs. Snyder glanced across at Alice, who looked very graceful and handsome, although also, to a discerning eye, a little sulky, and bored with a curious, abstracted boredom.
"She is superb," whispered Mrs. Snyder, "yes, simply superb. Why does she live here, pray?"
"Why, she was born here," replied Mrs. Slade, again stupidly. It was as if Alice had no more motive power than a flowering bush.
Mrs. Snyder's bow of mirth widened into a laugh. "Well, can't she get away, even if she was born here?" said she.
However, Mrs. George B. Slade's mind travelled in such a circle that she was difficult to corner. "Why should she want to move?" said she.
Mrs. Snyder laughed again. "But, granting she should want to move, is there anything to hinder?" she asked. She wasn't a very clever woman, and was deciding privately to mimic Mrs. George B. Slade at some future occasion, and so eke out her scanty remuneration. She did not think ten dollars and expenses quite enough for such a lecture as hers.
Mrs. Slade looked at her perplexedly. "Why, yes, she could I suppose," said she, "but why?"
"What has hindered her before now?"
"Oh, her mother was a helpless invalid, and Alice was the only child, and she had been in college just a year when her father died, then she came home and lived with her mother, but her mother has been dead two years now, and Alice has plenty of money. Her father left a good deal, and her cousin and aunt live with her. Oh, yes, she could, but why should she want to leave Fairbridge, and--"
Then some new arrivals approached, and the discussion concerning Alice Mendon ceased. The ladies came rapidly now. Soon Mrs. Slade's hall, reception-room, and dining-room, in which a gaily-decked table was set, were thronged with women whose very skirts seemed full of important anticipatory stirs and rustles. Mrs. Snyder's curved smile became set, her eyes absent. She was revolving her lecture in her mind, making sure that she could repeat it without the assistance of the notes in her petticoat pocket.
Then a woman rang a little silver bell, and a woman who sat short but rose to unexpected heights stood up. The phenomenon was amazing, but all the Fairbridge ladies had seen Miss Bessy Dicky, the secretary of the Zenith Club, rise before, and no one observed anything remarkable about it. Only Mrs. Snyder's mouth twitched a little, but she instantly recovered herself and fixed her absent eyes upon Miss Bessy Dicky's long, pale face as she began to read the report of the club for the past year.
She had been reading several minutes, her glasses fixed firmly (one of her eyes had a cast) and her lean, veinous hands trembling with excitement, when the door bell rang with a sharp peremptory peal. There was a little flutter among the ladies. Such a thing had never happened before. Fairbridge ladies were renowned for punctuality, especially at a meeting like this, and in any case, had one been late, she would never have rung the bell. She would have tapped gently on the door, the white-capped maid would have admitted her, and she, knowing she was late and hearing the hollow recitative of Miss Bessy Dicky's voice, would have tiptoed upstairs, then slipped delicately down again and into a place near the door.
But now it was different. Lottie opened the door, and a masculine voice was heard. Mrs. Slade had