Edith Wharton
Xingu
About the print version
Xingu
Wharton, Edith
Scribner's Magazine
New York
Dec. 1911
Note: Volume 50
Published: 1911
Wharton, Edith. "Xingu."
Scribner's Magazine 50 (Dec. 1911): 684-696.
I
MRS. BALLINGER is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it
were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an
association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of
erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four winters of lunching and debate,
had acquired such local distinction that the entertainment of distinguished
strangers became one of its accepted functions; in recognition of which it duly
extended to the celebrated "Osric Dane," on the day of her arrival in
Hillbridge, an invitation to be present at the next meeting.
The Club was to meet at Mrs. Ballinger's. The other members, behind her back,
were of one voice in deploring her unwillingness to cede her rights in favor of
Mrs. Plinth, whose house made a more impressive setting for the entertainment of
celebrities; while, as Mrs. Leveret observed, there was always the
picture-gallery to fall back on.
Mrs. Plinth made no secret of sharing this view. She had always regarded it
as one of her obligations to entertain the Lunch Club's distinguished guests.
Mrs. Plinth was almost as proud of her obligations as she was of her
picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one possession
implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up
to a standard as high as that which she had set herself. An all-round sense of
duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her opinion, all that
Providence exacted of the more humbly stationed; but the power which had
predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep footmen clearly intended her to maintain an
equally specialized staff of responsibilities. It was the more to be regretted
that Mrs. Ballinger, whose obligations to society were bounded by the narrow
scope of two parlour-maids, should have been so tenacious of the right to
entertain Osric Dane.
The question of that lady's reception had for a month past profoundly moved
the members of the Lunch Club. It was not that they felt themselves unequal to
the task, but that their sense of the opportunity plunged them into the
agreeable uncertainty of the lady who weighs the alternatives of a well-stocked
wardrobe. If such subsidiary members as Mrs. Leveret were fluttered by the
thought of exchanging ideas with the author of "The Wings of Death," no
forebodings of the kind disturbed the conscious adequacy of Mrs. Plinth, Mrs.
Ballinger and Miss Van Vluyck. "The Wings of Death" had, in fact, at Miss Van
Vluyck's suggestion, been chosen as the subject of discussion at the last club
meeting, and each member had thus been enabled to express her own opinion or to
appropriate whatever seemed most likely to be of use in the comments of the
others. Mrs. Roby alone had abstained from profiting by the opportunity thus
offered; but it was now openly recognised that, as a member of the Lunch Club,
Mrs. Roby was a failure. "It all comes," as Miss Van Vluyck put it, "of
accepting a woman on a man's estimation." Mrs. Roby, returning to Hillbridge
from a prolonged sojourn in exotic regions -- the other ladies no longer took
the trouble to remember where -- had been emphatically commended by the
distinguished biologist, Professor Foreland, as the most agreeable woman he had
ever met; and the members of the Lunch Club, awed by an encomium that carried
the weight of a diploma, and rashly assuming that the Professor's social
sympathies would follow the line of his scientific bent, had seized the chance
of annexing a biological member. Their disillusionment was complete. At Miss Van
Vluyck's first off-hand mention of the pterodactyl Mrs. Roby had confusedly
murmured: "I know so little about metres -- " and after that painful betrayal of
incompetence she had prudently withdrawn from farther participation in the
mental gymnastics of the club.
"I suppose she flattered him," Miss Van Vluyck summed up -- "or else it's the
way she does her hair."
The dimensions of Miss Van Vluyck's dining-room having restricted the
membership of the club to six, the non-conductiveness of one member was a
serious obstacle to the exchange of ideas, and some wonder had already been
expressed that Mrs. Roby should care to live, as it were, on the intellectual
bounty of the others. This feeling was augmented by the discovery that she had
not yet read "The Wings of Death." She owned to having heard the name of Osric
Dane; but that -- incredible as it appeared -- was the extent of her
acquaintance with the celebrated novelist. The ladies could not conceal their
surprise, but Mrs. Ballinger, whose pride in the club made her wish to put even
Mrs. Roby in the best possible light, gently insinuated that, though she had not
had time to acquaint herself with "The Wings of Death," she must at least be
familiar with its equally remarkable predecessor, "The Supreme Instant."
Mrs. Roby wrinkled her sunny brows in a conscientious effort of memory, as a
result of which she recalled that, oh, yes, she had seen the book at her
brother's, when she was staying with him in Brazil, and had even carried it off
to read one day on a boating party; but they had all got to shying things at
each other in the boat, and the book had gone overboard, so she had never had
the chance --
The picture evoked by this anecdote did not advance Mrs. Roby's credit with
the club, and there was a painful pause, which was broken by Mrs. Plinth's
remarking: "I can understand that, with all your other pursuits, you should not
find much time for reading; but I should have thought you might at least have
got up 'The Wings of Death' before Osric Dane's arrival."
Mrs. Roby took this rebuke good-humouredly. She had meant, she owned to
glance through the book; but she had been so absorbed in a novel of Trollope's
that --
"No one reads Trollope now," Mrs. Ballinger interrupted impatiently.
Mrs. Roby looked pained. "I'm only just beginning," she confessed.
"And does he interest you?" Mrs. Plinth inquired.
"He amuses me."
"Amusement," said Mrs. Plinth sententiously, "is hardly what I look for in my
choice of books."
"Oh, certainly, 'The Wings of Death' is not amusing," ventured Mrs. Leveret,
whose manner of putting forth an opinion was like that of an obliging salesman
with a variety of other styles to submit if his first selection does not suit.
"Was it meant to be?" enquired Mrs. Plinth, who was fond of asking questions
that she permitted no one but herself to answer. "Assuredly not."
"Assuredly not -- that is what I was going to say," assented Mrs. Leveret,
hastily rolling up her opinion and reaching for another. "It was meant to -- to
elevate."
Miss Van Vluyck adjusted her spectacles as though they were the black cap of
condemnation. "I hardly see," she interposed, "how a book steeped in the
bitterest pessimism can be said to elevate, however much it may instruct."
"I meant, of course, to instruct," said Mrs. Leveret, flurried by the
unexpected distinction between two terms which she had supposed to be
synonymous. Mrs. Leveret's enjoyment of the Lunch Club was frequently marred by
such surprises; and not knowing her own value to the other ladies as a mirror
for their mental complacency she was sometimes troubled by a doubt of her
worthiness to join in their debates. It was only the fact of having a dull
sister who thought her clever that saved her from a sense of hopeless
inferiority.
"Do they get married in the end?" Mrs. Roby interposed.
"They -- who?" the Lunch Club collectively exclaimed.
"Why, the girl and man. It's a novel, isn't it? I always think that's the one
thing that matters. If they're parted it spoils my dinner."
Mrs. Plinth and Mrs. Ballinger exchanged scandalised glances, and the latter
said: "I should hardly advise you to read 'The Wings of Death,' in that spirit.
For my part, when there are so many books that one has to read, I wonder how any
one can find time for those that are merely amusing."
"The beautiful part of it," Laura Glyde murmured, "is surely just this --
that no one can tell how 'The Wings of Death' ends.
Osric Dane, overcome by the dread significance of her own meaning, has
mercifully veiled it -- perhaps even from herself -- as Apelles, in representing
the sacrifice of Iphigenia, veiled the face of Agamemnon."
"What's that? Is it poetry?" whispered Mrs. Leveret nervously to Mrs. Plinth,
who, disdaining a definite reply, said coldly: "You should look it up. ...
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