Ladies Must Live

								

sudden and usually ephemeral friendships were based on mutual
attraction. The fact that for years her friends had been the small
group of the momentarily fashionable required, in her eyes, no
explanation. So simple was her creed that she believed people were
fashionable for the same reason that they were her friends, because
“they were so nice.”
During the short period of their existence, Mrs. Ussher gave to
these friendships the utmost loyalty and devotion. She agonized
over the financial, domestic and romantic troubles of her friends;
she sat up till the small hours, talking to them like a schoolgirl;
during the height of their careers she organized plots for their
assistance; and even when their stars were plainly on the decline,
she would often ask them to lunch, if she happened to be alone.
Many people, we know, are prone to make friends with the rich and
great. Mrs. Ussher’s genius consisted in having made friends with
them before they were either. When you hurried to her with some
account of a newly discovered treasure--a beauty or a conversable
young man--she would always say: “Oh, yes, I crossed with her two
years ago,” or “Isn’t he a dear?--he was once in Jack’s office.”
The strange thing was these statements were always true; the
subjects of them confessed with tears that “dear Mrs. Ussher” or
“darling Laura” was the kindest friend they had ever had.
Her house party was therefore likely to be notable.
First, there was of course Mrs. Almar--of course without her
husband. There is only one thing, or perhaps two, to be said for
Nancy Almar--that she was very handsome and that she was not a
hypocrite, no more than a pirate is a hypocrite who comes aboard
with his cutlass in his teeth. Mrs. Almar’s cutlass was always in
her teeth, when it was not in somebody’s vitals.
She had smooth, jet-black hair, done close to her pretty head,
a clear white-and-vermilion complexion, and a good figure, not
too tall. She said little, but everything she did say, she most
poignantly meant. If, while you were talking to her, she suddenly
cried out: “Ah, that’s really good!” there was no doubt you had had
the good fortune to amuse her; while if she yawned and left you in
the midst of a sentence there was no question that she was bored.
She hated her husband--not for the conventional reason that she had
married him. She hated him because he was a hypocrite, because he
was always placating and temporizing.
For instance, he had said to her as she was about to start for the
Usshers’:
“I hope you’ll explain to them why I could not come.”
There had never been the least question of Mr. Almar’s coming, and
she turned slowly and looked at him as she asked:
“You mean that I would not have gone if you had?”
He did not seem annoyed.
“No,” he said, “that I’m called South on business.”
“I shan’t tell them that,” she said, slowly wrapping her furs about