A Luncheon-Party

A Luncheon-party (in Short Story Collection Vol. 060 )IMrs. Bergmann was a widow. She was American by birth and marriage, andEnglish by education and habits. She was a fair, beautiful woman, withlarge eyes and a white complexion. Her weak point was ambition, andambition with her took the form of luncheon-parties.It was one summer afternoon that she was seized with the great idea ofher life. It consisted in giving a luncheon-party which should be moreoriginal and amusing than any other which had ever been given in London.The idea became a mania. It left her no peace. It possessed her likevenom or like madness. She could think of nothing else. She racked herbrains in imagining how it could be done. But the more she was harassedby this aim the further off its realisation appeared to her to be. Atlast it began to weigh upon her. She lost her spirits and her appetite;her friends began to remark with anxiety on the change in her behaviourand in her looks. She herself felt that the situation was intolerable,and that success or suicide lay before her.One evening towards the end of June, as she was sitting in her lovelydrawing-room in her house in Mayfair, in front of her tea-table,on which the tea stood untasted, brooding over the question whichunceasingly tormented her, she cried out, half “I’d sell my soul to the devil if he would give me what I wish.”At that moment the footman entered the room and said there was agentleman downstairs who wished to speak with her.“What is his name?” asked Mrs. Bergmann.The footman said he had not caught the gentleman’s name, and he handedher a card on a tray.