The New Rythum

Having nibbled a cakeat Sherry’s, and left a card in Madison Avenue on the Archbishop of New York(who was yet again, it seemed, a father), Mrs Rosemerchant told Lionel to dropher beneath the elm trees in CentralPark.  Turning into Fifty-ninth Street, however, she altered her mind, anddirected him to a house on Fifth Avenue a littlebeyond the synagogue.  Skirting the Park, enchanting now, decked in the very earliest buds of spring, the car slackened speed before anedifice in brown stone, constructed on the lines of achâteau François Ier. 

    

    Assemblingsimultaneously in a batch together several equipages were obstructing the roadway just ahead.  Blocking herwindscreen, she recognized Bertie Waldorf’shandsome English horses of Tetrarch grey, with their white and silver harness, and theclosed limousine of Mrs Stella Mandarin Dove. Evidently the committee of the Animals Subscription-ball in aid of the ‘AdaBeamish Maternity-home Extension’ was rallying loyally to the president, Mrs Otto van Cotton.

     ‘It’s remarkable alwayshow Selina can compel attendance,’ Mrs Rosemerchantreflected,alighting between a couple of smiling Sphinxes, bearing a monogram and thedevice:  Take Nature as it comes.

     Following leisurely in the wake of severalvanishing backs, she found herself beneath a Renaissance rotunda, bare but for an antique statue or two, and avast block fan in miniature mosaics that comprised the floor: from theadjoining reception rooms came a convivial hum of voices.

    RepudiatingBirth-control, believing that men and women shouldmultiply and increase, the ‘Ada Beamish’ appeal found in Mrs Van Cotton an idealsupporter.  

    An altercation of thechoice of cotillion favours was in progress asMrs Rosemerchant was announced.

 ‘For the fifth figurelet us provide vanity bags for the gentlemen and moustache-brushes for the ladies,’ a bald, clean-shaven man in horn-rimmed glasseshad just launched the suggestion.

     ‘Give me to know, Baron, which favour goes to which?’

     ‘Say, everybody, why not whips?’  The proposal fell from the lips of a woman of almostfearsome beauty, recalling Medusa, with her longtrembling ear-rings and dark-parted hair.  

         ‘First, give me to know, dear, what we all would do withthem? . . .? . . .?

         Welcomed rapturously by her hostess, Mrs Rosemerchant lost the reply.

BirthControl: Lloyd Terrell (aka Charmers), 1970  (Link)