Part 70

Every social group in which there is much leisure has its own smart set. There may be a million dollars a year to spend. There may be only a few thousands. But there is always a smart set.

How suddenly its smartness may follow its leisure, how accurately its plunge into luxury may duplicate the suddenness of modern luxury itself, you may observe with your own eyes almost anywhere.

You see a little crowd of women come into the Mandarin Tea Room of the St. DuBarry in Novellapolis in the fresh West. When they remove their automobile veils you see that they were once, and very recently, the nicest sort of members of the sewing circle and the W. C. T. U. of Lone Tree Crossing.

When the waiter comes along with their cocktails and they begin to sip them out of their tea-cups, you wake up with a jerk to realize that it's half-past three in the afternoon and the evening has begun.

How rapid it all is!

There's Margaret Simpson. A few years ago you might have seen her pumping the water for Jim's breakfast, cleaning the lamps, and picking bugs off the potato vines.

Jim came to town. He struck it poor. Then he struck it rich. He owns a bunch of moving-picture places. He manufactures a patented bottle-stopper. He's a pavement contractor. His wife has just as much leisure as any duchess.

The duchess has her individual estate and resources, which make it possible for her to lead an almost complete social life within her own walls. But never mind! Margaret has the Down-town District, cooperatively owned, cooperatively maintained, magnificently equipped with bright boudoirs in the rest-rooms of the department stores, with wonderful conservatories where one may enter and gaze and pay no more attention to the florist than to one's own gardener, with sumptuous drawing-rooms, like the Purple Parlor of the St. DuBarry, with body-servants in the beauty-shops, with coachmen on the taxi-cabs, with seclusion in the Ladies' Department of the Novellapolis Athletic Club--an infinitely resourceful estate, which Margaret knows as intimately as the duchess knows hers.

This morning she hunted down a new reduction plant on the eighteenth floor of the Beauty Block and weighed in at 185 on the white enamel scales, and after an hour of Thermo-Vibro-Magneto-Magenta-Edison-Company-light-therapy weighed out at 182-6.

At luncheon she ate only puree of tomatoes, creamed chicken-and-sweetbreads, Boston brown bread and butter, orange punch and Lady Baltimore cake, severely cutting out the potatoes.

After luncheon she spent an hour in a tiny room which had mirrors all around it and a maid (as trim and French-accented as any maid any duchess could have) and a couple of fitters and a head fitter. It ended up with: "Do you mean to tell me that after all the reducing and dieting I've been doing I can't wear under a twenty-seven? It's ridiculous. I tell you what. Measure me for a made-to-order. These stock sizes all run large. If it's made-to-order I can wear a twenty-six as easy as anybody."

Then she met up with her friends at the St. DuBarry.

You watch the waiter bring another round of drinks and you perceive that the evening is well under way and that the peak of the twenty-four hours is being disputatiously approached.

It appears that Perinique's is a swell place to dine, but that the cheese is bad. The cheese is good right here at the St. DuBarry, but they don't know how to toast the biscuits. At the Grunewurst the waiters are poor. At Max's the soup is always cold. The mural decorations at the Prince Eitel are so gloomy they give you a chill.

Despair settles down on the scene. There seems to be no likelihood that there will be any dinner at all anywhere. A ray of light penetrates with the inquiry whether you saw the way Jim looked at Dora last night. If I was you, Margaret, and MY husband looked at Dora like that, I--. . . No wonder Dora's husband divorced her. . . . The trouble with Margaret is she's too good to Jim. If she had any sense she could make him so jealous he'd stand on his head for her. . . . Why don't you tell Ned to cut in there and pay a little attention to Marge? . . . Oh, Ned's no good. . . . Well, I'll tell MY HUSBAND--. . . Don't you do it: I started my husband once on a thing like that and he--. . . That's right. Ned's not married. Let him do it. . . . Somebody ought to. . . . Call Ned on the 'phone. . . . We'll eat at the Royal Gorge and I'll put 'em side by side. . . . I'LL sit next to Jim and point it out to him. . . . Say, Marge, it's a good thing you've got on your white broadcloth and those willow plumes. . . . You can get 'em at Delatour's now for twenty-five dollars. . . . Say, I called Ned on the 'phone and what do you think? He's got an engagement for to-night. . . . Say, here's Dora now.

Dora: "Got to sweep right along. Goin' to buzz out to the Inland Inn for dinner with Ned."

Talk of nerve!

Exit Dora.

Enter Stern Moralist. Points gaunt finger at ex-members of Lone Tree Crossing Sewing Circle. Says: "Back to your kitchens, women, and get supper for your husbands."

Onlookers: "Great!"

Enter husbands, about to dine with the women right there, or at some other place where dinner is cooked and ready.

Stern Moralist turns to husbands.

Does he? Why not?

Stern Moralist: "Back to the woodshed and chop the kindling for your wife to get supper with."

Onlookers: "Police! Arrest that man! He's crazy."

Stern Moralist, being propelled down corridor: "Well, if the way to restore women to womanliness is to make them do drudgery which they can hire somebody else to do, why isn't----"

His voice dies away.

Jim asks where Dora is. Loud chorus tells him. Details of Dora's divorce begin to fly about. Harry orders a round of drinks. Somebody praises the drawn butter sauce at the Suddington. This is met with the merits of the pineapple parfait at the La Fontaine. Jim thinks Dora's divorce was her husband's fault. Margaret gets up and goes back to the Purple Parlor and cries. Bessie begins to tell Jim how attentive Ned is to Margaret. This is so helpful that Jim gets up to find Margaret and tell her what he thinks of her. Finds her crying and thinks she is crying because Ned is away with Dora. Terrible row in Purple Parlor. Bessie starts in to explain. Everybody stands about in couples explaining. Waiter runs around trying to find gen'l'man to pay for undrunk drinks. Poor Frank, being the only member of the party who hasn't been drinking, is so sober that he pays. He finally corrals the whole crowd into a couple of taxi-cabs. They go down the street with everybody's head out of the cab-window and everybody's voice saying "The Suddington," "The Grunewurst," "Max's," "The Royal Gorge," "Perinique's."