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His body, very constantly, was engaged at the front in shooting, in riding, in golfing, in walking, over the fine diagonals of meadow-paths or round the pocketed corners of billiard-tables; it sufficiently, on the whole, in fact, bore the brunt of bridge-playing, of breakfasting, lunching, tea-drinking, dining, and of the nightly climax over the bottigliera, as he called it, of the bristling tray; it met, finally, to the extent of the limited tax on lip, on gesture, on wit, most of the current demands of conversation and expression.
I put down my book and tried to think of some excuse for staying home, in case it was my bridge-playing friends of the afternoon wanting me to come back to the club. A strange voice called from the other end of the wire. "Mr. Thompson?" "Yes." "There has been an accident to your brother-in-law's car." "What? Where? Who is this talking?" I shouted breathlessly.
You talk fair you dangle your filthy money under their eyes you promise this and you promise that.... And then you throw away your toys.... They come back to us covered with disgrace, heart-broken, marked forever, and fit to be no man's wife.... That's your respect and honor. That's your decency.... Leave our women alone.... Go to your bridge-playing, silly, husband-swapping society women.
And if I've got anything to say my two nephews will vote for him; and I think I have, with my two heirs." "Ladies, it fills my heart with joy to " "Votes! Why what would the powder-puffing, short-skirted, bridge-playing women of this town do with the vote if they had it? Wear it around their necks on a gold chain?" "Well spoken, Mrs. Smith, if "
Cards she managed to avoid after dinner, and stood by Quarrier's chair for half an hour, absently watching the relentless method and steady adherence to rule which characterised his Bridge-playing, the eager, unslaked brutality of Mortimer, the set, selfish face of his pretty wife, the chilled intensity of Miss Caithness.
Mary Rose had eaten two pieces of coffee cake and drunk a glass of ginger ale and Jenny Lind had had a crumb of coffee cake which seemed to be all she cared for. Mrs. Schuneman had told Mary Rose a great secret, that Lottie was going to be married to the brother of one of her bridge-playing friends and that Mary Rose might come to the wedding. Mary Rose was so excited she could scarcely speak.
She didn't want to be stuck down among frumps and dowds, she said. West Kensington was all very well for women who were churchy, given up to good works, but she wanted to be in a lively, social, bridge-playing set; and she moped and pined so in our quiet life that I gave in and we moved to a much smarter locality."
What did bridge-playing mothers care about their daughters' happiness so long as they were able to procure for them rich men who could give them fine houses, servants, and automobiles? It was all hideous and ghastly, when viewed thus sanely, and Virginia shuddered as she thought of it. To such degradation as this she would never sink. Never would she marry a man whom she did not truly love.
Under a different set of circumstances those of the war, for instance, so far as concerns a section of the group of which we are speaking there has been a pitiful relapse into mere boredom, cynicism, and inactivity; remote from the passions of the crowd, and unable to give service to a cause in which they disbelieve, some of our cleverest men have provided an English parallel with the vodka-drinking, bridge-playing, and unutterably tired community of highly-developed intellects which Tchekoff describes so brilliantly.
If you didn't die, but married DeWitt, you would go on through life petted and babied, bridge-playing and going out to lectures, childless, incompetent, self-satisfied and an utter failure! "Now I think that humans owe everything to life and that women owe the most of all because they make the race. The more nature has done for them, the more they owe.
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