A Woman Ventures
9781465669032
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
WENTWORTH Bromfield was mourned by his widow and daughter with a depth that would have amazed him. For twenty-one years he had been an assistant secretary in the Department of State at Washington—a rather conspicuous position, with a salary of four thousand a year. Influential relatives representing Massachusetts in the House or in the Senate, and often in both, had enabled him to persist through changes of administration and of party control, and to prevail against the “pull” of many an unplaced patriot. Perhaps he might have been a person of consequence had he exercised his talents in some less insidiously lazy occupation. He had begun well at the law; but in return for valuable local services to the party, he got the offer of this political office, and, in what he came to regard as a fatal moment, he accepted it. His wife—he had just married—said that he was “going in for a diplomatic career.” He faintly hoped so himself, but the warnings of his common sense were soon verified. “Diplomatic career” proved to be a sonorous name for a decent burial of energy and prospects. He had drawn his salary year after year. He had gone languidly through his brief daily routine at the Department. He had been mildly fluttered at each Presidential election, and again after each inauguration. He had indulged in futile impulses to self-resurrection, in severe attacks of despondency. Then, at thirty-seven, he had grasped the truth—that he would remain an assistant secretary to the end of his days. Thenceforth aspirations and depressions had ceased, and his life had set to a cynical sourness. He read, he sneered, he ate, and slept. The Bromfields had a small additional income—Mrs. Bromfield’s twelve hundred a year from her father’s estate. This was most important, as it represented a margin above comfort and necessity, a margin for luxury and for temptation to extravagance. Mr. Bromfield was fond of good dinners and good wines, and he could not enjoy them at the expense of his friends without an occasional return. Mrs. Bromfield had been an invalid after the birth of Emily, long enough to form the habit of invalidism. After Emily passed the period when dress is not a serious item, they went ever more deeply into debt. While Mrs. Bromfield’s craze for doctors and drugs was in one view as much an extravagance as Mr. Bromfield’s club, in another view it was a valuable economy. It made entertaining impossible; it enabled Emily to go everywhere without the necessity for return hospitalities, and to “keep up appearances” generally. Many of their friends gave Mrs. Bromfield undeserved credit for shrewdness and calculation in her hypochondria.
