Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton Page B

and
reached for what Maisie Bruss called the night–list: an upright
porcelain tablet on which the secretary recorded, for nocturnal
study, the principal "fixtures" of the coming day.
    Today they were so numerous that Miss Bruss's tight script had
hardly contrived to squeeze them in. Foremost, of course, poor
Exhibit A, moved on from yesterday; then a mysterious appointment
with Amalasuntha, just before lunch: something urgent, she had
hinted. Today of all days! Amalasuntha was so tactless at times.
And then that Mahatma business: since Dexter was inflexible, his
wife had made up her mind to appeal to the Lindons. It would be
awkward, undoubtedly—and she did so hate things that were awkward.
Any form of untidiness, moral or material, was unpleasant to her;
but something must be done, and at once. She herself hardly knew
why she felt so apprehensive, so determined that the matter should
have no sequel; except that, if anything DID go wrong, it would
upset all her plans for a rest–cure, for new exercises, for all
sorts of promised ways of prolonging youth, activity and
slenderness, and would oblige her to find a new Messiah who would
tell her she was psychic.
    But the most pressing item on her list was her address that very
afternoon to the National Mothers' Day Association—or, no; wasn't
it the Birth Control League? Nonsense! That was her speech at the
banquet next week: a big affair at the St. Regis for a group of
International Birth–controllers. Wakeful as she felt, she must be
half asleep to have muddled up her engagements like that! She
extinguished the lamp and sank hopefully to her pillow—perhaps now
sleep would really come. But her bed–lamp seemed to have a double
switch, and putting it out in the room only turned it on in her
head.
    Well, she would try reciting scraps of her Mothers' Day address:
she seldom spoke in public, but when she did she took the affair
seriously, and tried to be at once winning and impressive. She and
Maisie had gone carefully over the typed copy; and she was sure it
was all right; but she liked getting the more effective passages by
heart—it brought her nearer to her audience to lean forward and
speak intimately, without having to revert every few minutes to the
text.
    "Was there ever a hearth or a heart—a mother's heart—that wasn't
big enough for all the babies God wants it to hold? Of course
there are days when the mother is so fagged out that she thinks
she'd give the world if there were nothing at all to do in the
nursery, and she could just sit still with folded hands. But the
only time when there's nothing at all for a mother to do in the
nursery is when there's a little coffin there. It's all quiet
enough THEN … as some of us here know…" (Pause, and a few
tears in the audience.) "Not that we want the modern mother to
wear herself out: no indeed! The babies themselves haven't any use
for worn–out mothers! And the first thing to be considered is what
the babies want, isn't it?" (Pause—smiles in the audience)…
    What on earth was Amalasuntha coming to bother her about? More
money, of course—but she really couldn't pay all that wretched
Michelangelo's debts. There would soon be debts nearer home if
Lita went on dressing so extravagantly, and perpetually having her
jewellery reset. It cost almost as much nowadays to reset jewels
as to buy new ones, and those emeralds…
    At that hour of the morning things did tend to look ash–coloured;
and she felt that her optimism had never been so sorely strained
since the year when she had had to read Proust, learn a new dance–
step, master Oriental philosophy, and decide whether she should
really bob her hair, or only do it to look so. She had come
victoriously through those ordeals; but what if worse lay ahead?
    Amalasuntha, in one of Mrs. Manford's least successfully made–over
dresses, came in looking shabby and humble—always a bad sign. And
of course it was Michelangelo's debts. Racing, baccara, and a
woman … a