CHAPTER TWELVE
Thecalamity that had befallen Roy cast a shadow upon the Durland household. Ethel stalked about with an insufferable air of outraged innocence. Roy had ruined the family; after all the sacrifices that had been made for him he had flung away his chance and was lost beyond redemption. She was merciless in her denunciation of her brother, and hardly less severe upon her mother for spoiling Roy and condoning his sin.
Grace exerted herself to the utmost to dispel the gloom. Not since her young girlhood had she felt so closely drawn to her mother, and she endeavored by every possible means to lighten her burdens. Mrs. Durland’s attempts to make the best of Roy’s predicament, even professing to see in what she called the boy’s new responsibilities a steadying force that would evoke his best efforts, were pathetic; but Grace encouraged all these hopes though in her heart she was far from optimistic as to her brother’s future.
“Sadie isn’t really a bad girl,” Mrs. Durland had reported on her return from Louisville. “Her family are not just what we would have wanted, but they are respectable and we ought to be grateful for that. Her father is employed in the railroad shops and they own their own home. Sadie’s an only child and it wasn’t necessary for her to go to work, but she was restless and didn’t want to stay at home. There’s a lot of that spirit among girls these days. Sadie’s really fond of Roy and I think she understands thatnow she must help him to make a man of himself. She and her mother appreciated our kindness and I think, Ethel, when you see Sadie——”
“When I see Sadie!” cried Ethel, choking at the name. “You don’t mean to say you’re going to bring her to this house!”
“Not now, of course; she wouldn’t want to come. But in time we’ll all know her. You must remember Ethel that she’s one of the family, your brother’s wife, and no matter how much we may regret the whole thing, we’ve got to stand by her just as we stand by Roy.”
“I don’t understand you, mother; I don’t understand you at all! It isn’t like you to pass over a thing like this, that’s brought shame and disgrace on the family. And to think—tothink—” she cried hysterically—“that you even consider bringing the shameless creature here to this house, with all its sacred associations that mean something to me if they don’t to the rest of you!”
“That’s right, Ethel,” said Grace ironically. “It’s perfectly grand of you to defend the family altar! I suppose when Sadie comes you’ll be for throwing her into the street and stoning her to death. And you’d be the only one who could cast the first stone!”
“Please be quiet, girls,” Mrs. Durland pleaded. “It doesn’t help any to fuss about things. You haven’t taken this as I hoped you would, Ethel. If we don’t stand together and help each other the family tie doesn’t amount to much. I had hoped you were going to feel better about Roy. We simply mustn’t let the dear boy think that just one misstep has ruined his life. We must try to believe that everything is for the best.”
“Certainly, mother,” said Grace. “That’s the onlyway to look at it. Ethel doesn’t mean to trouble you. She’ll come round all right.”
Ethel failed to confirm this sanguine prediction. She continued to sulk and when her mother proposed plans for assisting Roy when he finished at the law school she contributed to the discussion only the direst predictions of disaster.
“We all have a lot to be thankful for,” Mrs. Durland insisted. “It’s a blessing your father’s going to be in a position to help Roy. The first year will be the hardest for the boy, but after that he ought to be able to stand on his own feet. I’ve about decided that it would be better for him to open an office for himself right away and not go in with any one else. The more independent he feels the better. We must see what we can do about that.”
“I think we’d better talk it all over with John Moore before we decide about anything,” Grace suggested. “He knows all about Roy and certainly has shown himself a good friend.”
“John Moore!” sniffed Ethel, who had not forgiven John for meddling in Roy’s affairs.
“I hope you love yourself, Ethel; you certainly don’t love anybody else.” Grace remarked, and added, “Oh, yes, there’s Osgood! I forgot that you’re concentrating your affections on him.”
“I’m not afraid to see him at home; that’s more than you do with the men you run around with!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare introduce my friends to you; you might vamp them away from me!”
“Now girls——!”
Mrs. Durland sighed heavily; Mr. Durland, intent upon some computations he was making at the living room table, stirred uneasily. Grace had not been unmindful of the fact that after his first fortnight atKemp’s the elation with which he had undertaken his new labors had passed. He was now constructing an engine embodying his improvements on the Cummings-Durland motor and came home at night haggard and preoccupied. He seemed to resent inquiries as to his progress and after the first week Mrs. Durland, on a hint from Grace, ceased troubling him with questions. Grace herself was wondering whether, after all, the ideas that had attracted Trenton’s attention in her father’s patent claims might not fail to realize what was hoped of them. But her faith in Trenton’s judgment was boundless; with his long experience it was hardly possible that he could be deceived or that he would encourage expectations that might not be realized by the most exacting tests.
Grace had not changed her mind about going to Miss Reynolds’s dinner, though at times she had all but reconsidered her decision not to tell Trenton of the invitation. There was really no reason why she should not let him know of his wife’s impending visit to Indianapolis; what really stayed her hand when she considered mentioning the matter in one of her letters was a fear that he might advise her against going. Her curiosity as to Ward Trenton’s wife was acute and outweighed any fear of his possible displeasure when he learned—and of course Grace meant to tell him—that she had deliberately put herself in Mrs. Trenton’s way.
On Saturday evening the delivery of a gown she had picked out of Shipley’s stock to wear to the dinner made it necessary to explain why she had purchased it. It was the simplest of dinner gowns which shedrew from the box and held up for her mother’s and Ethel’s inspection.
“What earthly use can you have for that, Grace?” Ethel demanded.
Grace laid it across her mother’s knees and Mrs. Durland took a fold in her fingers to appraise the material.
“It’s certainly pretty. This is one of the new shades, isn’t it, Grace? It isn’t blue exactly——”
“They call it hydrangea blue, mother. Please hurry and say I’ll look scrumptious in it!”
“I don’t think I’d have chosen justthat,” remarked Ethel putting down a handkerchief she was embroidering, in flourishing script with the initials O. H., to eye the garment critically. “If I were in your place and could afford to spend what that must have cost I think I’d have got something in one of the more definite shades. You can’t really say whether that’s blue or pink.”
“That’s the artistic part of it, old dear,” replied Grace amiably. “It’s out of the new spring stock and considered very smart. Wake up, daddy! Tell me you don’t think I’m stung!”
“I guess my views about dresses wouldn’t help you much, Grace,” Durland remarked, glancing at the gown absently and returning to his interminable calculations.
“You’ll look sweet in it, Grace,” Mrs. Durland volunteered. “You think it isn’t cut too low?”
“It’s the very latest model, mother. I don’t believe you’ll think it too low when you see me in it. I tried it on at my lunch hour yesterday and a customer got her eye on it and did her best to coax me to let her have it. But I sold her another gown that cost twenty dollars more, so Shipley’s didn’t lose anything.”
“You get so many clothes, Grace,” Ethel interrupted again intent upon her embroidery. “I don’t just see what you can want with a dress like that.”
“Oh, this is for a special occasion. Miss Reynolds has asked me to dinner Tuesday. She’s entertaining for Mrs. Mary Graham Trenton, who’s to lecture here that night.”
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Mrs. Durland. “I read in the paper that Mrs. Trenton was to speak here. I’d never have thought of connecting her with Miss Reynolds!”
“They’ve never met, I think. A friend of Miss Reynolds’s in Boston wrote and asked her to see that Mrs. Trenton was properly looked after, so she’s putting her up and pulling off a dinner in her honor. I might say that she didn’t appear to be awfully keen about it. She’s asking Dr. Ridgely and Judge Sanders and Dr. Loomis with their ladies, so theology, law and medicine will be represented. She asked me, I suppose, because I happened to mention to her once that I had read Mrs. Trenton’s ‘Clues to a New Social Order.’ And it may be in her mind that as a poor working girl I represent the proletariat.”
“She may have thought that being a friend of Mr. Trenton’s it would be pleasant for Mrs. Trenton to meet you,” said Ethel sweetly.
“Thank you, sister, you’re certainly the little mind reader,” Grace replied.
“I’m sure it’s very kind of Miss Reynolds to ask you,” remarked Mrs. Durland hastily, fearing a clash between the sisters. “There are no finer people in town than the Sanders and I have always heard splendid things about Dr. Loomis and his wife. It’s a privilege to meet people like that. I hope you realize that a woman of Miss Reynolds’s position can haveher pick of the town. She’s certainly paying you a great compliment, Grace.”
“I don’t understand Miss Reynolds at all,” said Ethel. “She’s the last woman in the world you’d think would take a creature like Mary Graham Trenton into her house.”
“It’s because she is Miss Reynolds that she can do as she pleases,” replied Mrs. Durland conciliatingly. “And as she was asked by a friend to show some courtesy to Mrs. Trenton, she isn’t doing any more than any one else would do in the same circumstances. As I said when Grace first spoke of meeting Mr. Trenton, his wife’s a dangerous woman. It’s in her power to do a great deal of mischief in the world. I don’t believe Miss Reynolds has any patience with Mrs. Trenton’s ideas, and it can’t do Grace any harm to meet her. You ought to be glad, Ethel, that Miss Reynolds feels that Grace would fit into a select party like that.”
“I’ll be surprised if Dr. Ridgely goes to the dinner,” replied Ethel. “That woman is fighting everything the church stands for. If I had my way she wouldn’t be allowed to speak here.”
“That’s no joke!” replied Grace good-naturedly. “But there are people, you know, who are not afraid of hearing radical ideas—a few broad-minded people who think it safer to let the cranks talk out in the open than to drive them into a cellar to touch off the gentle bomb.”
“Many people feel just that way, Ethel,” said Mrs. Durland.
Mrs. Durland’s disapproval of Mrs. Trenton and the ideas identified with that lady’s name was much softened by the fact that Grace was to be included in a formal dinner which Miss Reynolds had undoubtedlyarranged with care. And while Mary Graham Trenton might entertain and preach the most shocking ideas she was nevertheless one of the best known and most discussed women in America, besides being the inheritor of wealth and social position. Miss Reynolds’s marked liking for Grace afforded Mrs. Durland a satisfaction not wholly attributable to veneration for Miss Reynolds’s money or unassailable position as a member of a pioneer Indianapolis family. Grace’s unaccountable ways and her assertions of independence often brought alarm and dismay to the mother’s heart; but Grace was indubitably lovely to look at and the fine spirit in which she had accepted and met the curtailment of her course at the university excused many things. Grace had wits and she would go far, but the traveling would have to be on broad highways of her own choosing. It was not without twinges of heartache that Mrs. Durland realized that this dark-eyed daughter was peculiarly a child of the new order; that not by prayer, threat or cajolery could she be made to walk in old paths or heed the old admonitions. But there had been Morleys who were independent and forthright and Miss Reynolds’s invitation implied a recognition of Grace as a well-bred and intelligent girl.
Mrs. Durland, busily sewing, had been giving Grace such information as she possessed about the Sanderses, who were to be of Miss Reynolds’s company. Hardly less than the sons and daughters of Virginia and Kentucky, Mrs. Durland was possessed of a vast amount of lore touching the families of her native state. Mrs. Sanders was a Shelton of the old Bartholomew County family of that name. Some Shelton had once been engaged in business with a Morley who was a second cousin of Mrs. Durland. It was a tannery she thought,though it might have been a brickyard. And Sanders’s father had been a prominent citizen somewhere on the lower Wabash and had married into the Alston family of Vanderburgh County. Grace lent a sympathetic ear to this recital of ancient Hoosier history chiefly because her mother found so great a pleasure in reciting it. It was the cruelest of ironies that her mother, with all her adoration of the State and its traditions and her constant recurrence to the past glories of the Morleys, lived a life of self-denial apart from contemporaries capable of sharing her pride and pleasure in the old times.
The talk had wandered far from Grace’s dinner engagement when Ethel, who had been quietly plying her needle, took advantage of a lull to switch it back.
“I suppose you won’t feelquitelike a stranger with Mrs. Trenton,” she suggested. “Mr. Trenton has no doubt told his wife of his acquaintance with you.”
“No doubt he has,” Grace replied calmly. “In fact he told me he had written her about me.”
This was not wholly candid; Trenton had only said that he had written to his wife, pursuant to an understanding between them, that he had met a girl who greatly interested him. But Ethel’s remark occasioned Grace a moment of discomfort. In her last meeting with Trenton his wife had not been mentioned, but it was possible that by now he had made a complete confession of his unfaithfulness. Irene Kirby had frequently commented upon Trenton’s frankness; Grace chilled at the thought that he might already have told his story to Mrs. Trenton in the hope of hastening the day of his freedom.
The newspapers were devoting much space to Mrs. Trenton’s impending visit. On Saturday and Sunday her portrait adorned the society pages, accompanied bysketches of her life and activities in the feminist cause that did full justice to her distinguished ancestry and high social connections. In the Durland home Mrs. Trenton continued to be a fruitful subject of discussion. There were things which Ethel thought should be said to Mrs. Trenton. She even considered asking Dr. Ridgely to say them,—a proposition which Grace derided and Mrs. Durland did not encourage. Ethel was further inspired with the idea that a committee of the best women of the city should wait upon Mrs. Trenton and try to convince her of the dangerous character of the doctrines she was advocating.
“You’re taking it altogether too seriously,” said Grace. “I don’t suppose that woman’s ever made a single convert. About so many people have always held her ideas—about marriage and things like that. The real radicals probably look on her as a huge joke. A woman who visits at Newport and goes cruising on yachts doesn’t just put herself clear outside the social breastworks. There are other, women besides Mrs. Trenton who talk free love and birth control and things like that just for the excitement and the attention they get.”
“They should be locked up, every one of them!” Ethel declared. “I’m ashamed for our city that she can come here and be received by people you’d expect better things of, and be allowed to speak. The police should stop it!”
“Well, she can’t ruin the town with one lecture,” Grace replied good-naturedly. “The Twentieth Century Club brings all sorts of lunatics here and the members are about the most conservative people in town. You couldn’t change the minds of any of them any more than you could knock over the soldiers’ monument with a feather duster.”
Grace got excused from the store at five o’clock on Tuesday to give herself ample time to prepare for the dinner.
“That’s the prettiest gown you ever wore, dear,” Mrs. Durland exclaimed when Grace was fully arrayed. “I’m glad you didn’t have your hair marcelled; that little natural wave is prettier than anything the hairdresser could do. Carried straight away from your forehead as you’ve got it gives just the right effect. I guess Miss Reynolds needn’t be ashamed of you. You’ve got the look of breeding, Grace; nobody could fail to see that. Just be careful not to talk too much, not even if Mrs. Trenton says brash things you feel like disputing with her. And if you get a chance to speak to Judge Sanders without appearing to drag it in you might say you’re the great-granddaughter of Josiah B. Morley. Little things like that do count, you know.”
“Yes, of course,” Grace assented, as she studied the hang of her skirt before the mirror.
Ethel came in and seated herself on the bed to watch Grace’s preparations. Osgood Haley had walked home with her and she was in the mood of subdued exaltation to which the young man’s company frequently brought her. She apologized to her mother for being late; she and Osgood had prolonged the walk by taking a turn in the park but she would make up to her for the delay by doing all of the supper work.
“That dress really is becoming to you, Grace,” she said in a fervor of magnanimity. “It sets you off beautifully. You must tell us all about the party. I hope you won’t let anything I said about Mrs. Trentonspoil the evening for you. You know I’m always glad when any happiness comes to you.”
“Thank you, Ethel; I guess I’ll live through the ordeal,” said Grace from her dressing table where she had seated herself to administer the final touches to her toilet. Zealous to be of service, Ethel and her mother watched her attentively, offering suggestions to which Grace in her absorption murmured replies or ignored. Ethel brought from her room a prized lace-bordered handkerchief which she insisted that Grace should carry. Her generosity was spoiled somewhat by the self-sacrificing air with which it was tendered. To help others was really the great joy of life, Ethel quoted Haley as saying, adding that she constantly marveled at Osgood’s clear vision of the true way of life. Grace accepted the handkerchief, with difficulty concealing a smile at the change in Ethel wrought by Haley’s talk.
The car Miss Reynolds had sent was at the door and Mrs. Durland and Ethel went down to see Grace off. They gave her a final looking over before helping her into her coat. The veil she had drawn over her head required readjustment; it was a serious question whether there was not an infinitesimal spot on one of her slippers.
“Oh, they’ve got to take me as I am!” said Grace, finally. “There isn’t time to dress all over again.”
“I’ll wait up for you, dear,” said Mrs. Durland. “I’ll be anxious to know all about the dinner.”
Grace was again torn by doubts as the car bore her swiftly toward Miss Reynolds’s. She tried to convince herself that she was not in the least interested in Mrs. Trenton; that she was no more concerned with her than she would have been with any other woman she might meet in the house of a friend. But these attemptsto minimize her curiosity as to Trenton’s wife failed miserably. It was impossible to think of the meeting with her lover’s wife as a trifling incident. The newspaper portraits of Mrs. Trenton rose vividly before her and added to her discomfort. She feared that she might in some way betray herself. When the car stopped she felt strongly impelled to postpone her entrance in the hope of quieting herself by walking round the block; but to be late to a dinner was, she knew, an unpardonable sin. Summoning all her courage she ran up the walk to the door, which opened before she could ring.
“First room to the right upstairs,” said the colored butler.
The white maid helped her off with her wrap and stood by watching her with frank admiration as she surveyed herself before a long mirror. In Grace’s perturbed state of mind the presence of the girl was a comfort.
“Do I look all right?” she asked.
“You look lovely, Miss; just like a beautiful picture.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Grace, smiling gratefully into the girl’s eyes. “Am I very late?”
“No, Miss, Dr. and Mrs. Ridgely haven’t come yet.”
A clock on the mantle began striking the half hour as Grace left the room. She went down slowly with a curious sense of being an unbidden guest in a strange house.
From the stair she caught a glimpse of a man in evening dress in the room below. She had attended few functions in her life where men wore evening dress and the staring expanse of shirt front intensified her sense of breathing an alien atmosphere.
As she stood in the drawing room doorway the figures within dimmed and she put out her hand to steady herself. Then the wavering mists that blurred her vision cleared as Miss Reynolds came quickly forward and caught her hands.
“My dear child, I didn’t hear you come down! I’m glad to see you,—even relieved!” she added in a whisper. “How perfectly adorable you are!” Grace had not dared lift her eyes to the group of guests who stood across the room talking animatedly, and as Miss Reynolds, with her arm about Grace’s waist, moved toward them she was arrested by a young man who had just entered and stood waiting to present himself.
“Oh, Mr. Atwood! Miss Durland, Mr. Atwood.” Jimmie Atwood put out his hand, smiling joyfully.
“Good luck, I call this! It’s perfectly bully to meet you again, Miss Durland.”
“You two are acquainted?” Miss Reynolds exclaimed delightedly. “That’s splendid, for you’re to take Miss Durland in.”
“Mr. Atwood’s equal to the most difficult situations,” said Grace, meeting his eyes, which were responding to the mirth in her own as both recalled the night they had met at McGovern’s.
“Ah! You have a secret of some kind!” said Miss Reynolds. “Far be it from me to intrude but you’ve got to meet the other guests.”
Jimmie Atwood’s appearance had lessened the tension for Grace and quite composedly she found herself confronting a tall slender woman who stepped forward to meet the newcomers.
“Mrs. Trenton, Miss Durland—and Mr. Atwood.”
Mrs. Trenton gave each a quick little nod, murmuring:
“I’m very glad, indeed.”
The Ridgelys at this moment arrived followed by two unattached men. Townsend, a young physician who was looked upon as a coming man, and Professor Grayling, whose courses in sociology Grace had taken at the University. He was, she learned, a remote connection of Miss Reynolds’s and had been summoned from Bloomington to add to the representative character of the company.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me you knew Miss Reynolds?” Grayling demanded, as he and Grace were left to themselves for a moment during the progress of further introductions.
“Oh, I didn’t meet her till after I left college. I know why you’re invited; you’re here to do the heavy high-brow work! I remember that you once expressed views on the writings of the guest of honor.”
“Did I? If I become quarrelsome tonight throw a plate or something at me.” Grace had always admired Grayling; he was saying now that she had been his star student and that he missed her from his classes.
“I’d really counted on making you an instructor in my department but you left without saying good-bye; and here I find you launched upon a high social career—it’s a distinct loss to social science!”
“If you knew just where and how I met Miss Reynolds you wouldn’t think me in danger of becoming a social butterfly!” laughed Grace, her assurance mounting. Grayling was smiling quizzically into her eyes; he would never know how grateful she was for these few minutes with him. The rest of the company were grouped about Mrs. Trenton, who had lately been in Washington and was expressing heropinions, which were not apparently complimentary, of the public men she had met there.
“I’m Number Eighteen at Shipley’s,” said Grace, finding that Grayling was giving her his complete attention. “Miss Reynolds was my first customer.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “You’re collecting data! I see it all! There will be a treatise, perhaps a large tome, on your experiences in the haunts of trade. Perhaps you’ll allow me to write the preface. We thought down at the University you’d got tired of us, but I see that you’d grown beyond our feeble aid. I’m infinitely relieved!”
“Stop kidding me!” said Grace, glancing about to make sure they were not overheard. “I’m a shop girl, trying to earn an honest living.”
Atwood came up as dinner was announced and when they reached the table Grace found that Grayling was to sit at her left. Mrs. Trenton’s place was a little to her right on the further side, an arrangement that made it possible for Grace to observe her without falling within the direct line of her vision.
Grace, turning to Atwood, who frankly declared his purpose to monopolize her, found it possible to study at leisure the woman about whom she had so constantly speculated. Mrs. Trenton was, she surmised, nearly the forty years to which Trenton himself confessed and there was in her large gray-blue eyes something of the look of weariness to be found in the eyes of people who live upon excitement and sensation. Her hair had a reddish tinge and the gray had begun to show in it. She bore every mark which to a sophisticated feminine inspection announces that a woman has a particular care for her appearance. She gave an impression of smoothness and finish. She wore a string of pearls and on her left hand a largepearl set in diamonds, but no wedding ring, a fact which Grace interpreted as signifying that in this fashion the author of “Clues to a New Social Order,” let the world know her indifference to the traditional symbol by which womankind advertise their married state. She found herself wondering whether Ward Trenton had given his wife the necklace or the ring with the diamond-encircled pearl. Mrs. Trenton’s gown had the metropolitan accent; it was the product unmistakably of one of those ultra smart New York dressmakers whose advertisements Grace had noted from time to time in magazines for women.
Mrs. Trenton had entered into a discussion with Dr. Ridgely of the industrial conditions created by the war; and she was repeating what some diplomat had said to her at a dinner in Washington. Her head and shoulders moved almost constantly as she talked, and her hands seemed never idle, playing with her beads or fingering a spoon she had unconsciously chosen as a plaything. She laughed frequently, a quick, nervous, mirthless little laugh, while her eyes stared vacantly, as though she were not fully conscious of what she said or what was being said to her. She spoke crisply, with the effect of biting off her words. Grace was interested in her mastery of the broada, which western folk profess to scorn but nevertheless envy in pilgrims from the fabled East. Her voice and enunciation reminded Grace of the speech an English woman who had once lectured at the University.
“Oh, that!”
This was evidently a pet expression, uttered with a shrug and a lifting of the brows. It meant much or nothing as the hearer chose to take it. Grace had read much about the neurotic American woman and Mrs. Trenton undoubtedly expressed the type. It wasdifficult to think of her as Ward Trenton’s wife. The two were irreconcilably different. Grace’s mind wearied in the attempt to correlate them, but she gained ease as the moments sped by. By the time the meat course was served the talk had become general. Every one wished to hear Mrs. Trenton and she met in a fashion of her own the questions that were directed at her. Evidently she was used to being questioned and she answered indifferently, sometimes disdainfully, or turned the question upon the inquirer.
Atwood was exerting himself to hold Grace’s attention. He had never heard of Mary Graham Trenton till Miss Reynolds’s invitation sent him to the newspapers for information. He was not sure now that he knew just how she came to be a celebrity and with Grace beside him he didn’t care.
“I’ve been wild to see you ever since that night we put on the little sketch at Mac’s,” he said confidingly. “You were perfectly grand; never saw a finer piece of good sportsmanship. I met Evelyn the next day and we’ve talked about it ever since when we’ve been alone. But old Bob is certainly sore! He’s really a good fellow, you know; but he was off his game that night. You scored big with Evelyn. She was really hurt when you refused her invitation to dinner. I was to be in the party—begged for an invitation; I swear I did! Please let me pull a party pretty soon—say at the Country Club, and ask the Cummingses. Really I’m respectable! I’ve got regular parents and aunts and everything.”
“We’ll have to consider that. Please listen; this is growing interesting.”
“My point, Mrs. Trenton,” Professor Grayling was saying, “is just this: Your reform programme only touches the top of the social structure without regardto the foundation and the intermediate framework. In your ‘Clues to a New Social Order’ you consider how things might be—a happy state of things if the transition could be effected suddenly. Granting that what you would accomplish is desirable or essential to the general happiness of mankind, we can’t just pick out the few things we are particularly interested in and set them up alone. They’d be sure to topple over.”
“Oh, that!” Mrs. Trenton replied; and then as though aware that something more was expected of her she went on: “But a lot of changes have come in—in what you scientific economists would call the less important things. Just now I’m laying stress on an equal wage for men and women for the same labor. That I think more important than such things as more liberal divorce laws, though I favor both. As to divorce”—she gave her characteristic shrug,—“we all know that more liberal laws came as the result of changing conditions—the new attitude toward marriage and all that. We’re in the midst of a tremendous social evolution.”
“May I come in right here for a moment, Mrs. Trenton?” asked Dr. Ridgely. “You plead in your book for a change of existing laws to make marriage dissoluble at the will or whim of the contracting parties; children to be turned over to the State—a direct blow at the family. Do you really think that desirable?” he ended smilingly.
“Dear me! That idea didn’t originate with me,” she replied. “I merely went into it a little more concretely perhaps.”
Again, her curious vacant stare, followed in an instant by a gesture, the slightest lifting and closing of one of her graceful hands as though her thoughts,having ranged infinity, had brought back something it was not necessary in her immediate surroundings to disclose.
“But,” the minister insisted, “would such a solution be wise? Do you, honestly, think it desirable?”
“It’s coming; it’s inevitable!” she answered quickly.
“How many women can you imagine driving up to a big barracks and checking their babies? How strong is the maternal instinct?” asked Judge Sanders.
“Most mothers don’t know how to care for their children,” said Mrs. Trenton, bending forward to glance at the speaker. Sanders was a big man with a great shock of iron-gray hair. He was regarding Mrs. Trenton with the bland smile that witnesses always found disconcerting.
“Well, that may be true,” he said, “but the poor old human race has survived their ignorance a mighty long time.”
The laughter at this retort was scattering and tempered by the obvious fact that Mrs. Trenton was not wholly pleased by it.
Jimmie Atwood was hoping that there would be a row. A row among high-brows would be something to talk about when he went to the University Club the next day for lunch and an afternoon of sniff.
“The idea is, I take it,” he said with his funny squeak, “that there would be no aunts or in-laws; just plain absolute freedom for everybody. Large marble orphan asylums all over the country. Spanking machines and everything scientific!”
“You’ve got exactly the right idea,” cried Mrs. Trenton.
“Clubs for women and clubs for men; everybody would live in a club. Thatwouldbe jolly!” Atwoodcontinued, delighted that he had gained the attention of the guest of honor.
“Has anybody here,” began Grayling, “ever watched a bunch of college boys listening to a phonograph record of Patti singing ‘Home, Sweet Home?’ Well, I have and you could cut the gloom with a knife. Home is still sweet to most of us.”
“I’d be awfully sorry to miss the weddings we have at the parsonage,” said Mrs. Ridgely;—“trusting young souls who pop in at all hours to be married. They’re allsurethey’re going to live happy forever after. Miss Durland, it’s your generation that’s got to solve the problem. Maybe you have the answer.”
“Oh, I think weddings arebeautiful!” Grace answered, feeling the eyes of the company upon her. The girlish ardor she threw into her words won her a laugh of sympathy.
“Don’t let them intimidate you,” said Mrs. Trenton with an indulgent smile. “Miss Reynolds has been telling me that you’re a University girl and you ought to be sound on the great questions if Professor Grayling hasn’t spoiled you!”
“No one could spoil Grace,” Grayling protested.
Grace pondered, anxious for Miss Reynolds’s sake to say nothing stupid. She was the youngest member of the company; they were merely trying in a friendly spirit to bring her into the talk and no wise deliverance would be expected of her.
“I wouldn’t dare speak for all my generation,” she said, “but somethinghasoccurred to me. Our elders scold us too much! It isn’t at all pleasant to be told that we’re terribly wicked; that we haven’t any of the fine qualities of our parents and grandparents. We hear nothing except how times havechanged; well, we didn’t change them! I positively refuse to be held responsible for changing anything! I took the world just as I found it.”
She had spoken quickly, with the ring of honest protest in her voice, and she was abashed when Judge Sanders clapped his hands in approval.
“That’s the truest word I’ve heard on that subject,” he said heartily. “The responsibility is on us old folks if our children are not orderly, disciplined, useful members of society.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” added Dr. Ridgely.
“Aren’t you the Miss Durland that John Moore talks about?” Mrs. Sanders asked. “I thought so! Isn’t John a wonderful fellow? Since he went into Mr. Sanders’s office we’ve seen him a good deal at our house. He’s so simple and honest and gives promise of great things.”
“I’m very stupid,” said Sanders; “I didn’t realize that I had met the paragon Moore brags about so much; but I might have known it!”
He began describing Moore, and told the whole table how, as trustee of the University, he had become acquainted with the young man and was so struck by his fine qualities that he had taken him into his office. He related some of the familiar anecdotes of Moore and called upon Grace for others. Grace told her stories well, wholly forgetting herself in her enthusiasm. Suddenly her gaze fell upon Mrs. Trenton, whose lips were parted in a smile of well-bred inattention. Grace became confused, stammered, cut short a story she was telling illustrative of John’s kindness to a negro student whom he had nursed through a long illness. Apparently neither John nor his philanthropic impulses interested the author of “Clues to a New Social Order”; or she was irritated at being obliged to relinquishfirst place at the table. Miss Reynolds, quick to note the bored look on her guest’s face, tactfully brought her again into the foreground. Grace was startled a moment later, when, as the talk again became general, Sanders remarked:
“I believe I’ve met your husband, Mrs. Trenton. He’s a friend of Mr. Thomas Kemp, one of our principal manufacturers.”
“Yes?” she replied carelessly. “I think I’ve heard Mr. Trenton speak of an Indianapolis client of that name. He visits your city I know, on professional employments. Indeed his business keeps him in motion most of the time; but I can’t complain; I’m a good deal of a gad-about myself! I wired for Mr. Trenton’s address to his New York office the other day, hoping I might be able to see him somewhere. It’s possible he may turn up here. There’s a case for you, Dr. Ridgely! The reason my marriage is so successful is because of the broad freedom Mr. Trenton and I allow each other. We haven’t met since—Heaven knows when!”
A slight hint of bravado in her tone suggested an anxiety to establish herself in the minds of the company as the possessor of a wider freedom and a nobler tolerance than other wives. The other wives at the table were obviously embarrassed if not displeased by her declaration. It seemed to Grace that the air of the room chilled perceptibly.
She found herself resenting Mrs. Trenton’s manner of speaking of her husband. Trenton, she remembered, had always spoken of his wife in kind terms. On the evening of their first meeting at The Shack he had chivalrously taken upon himself the responsibility for the failure of his marriage. He had spoken of Mrs. Trenton as a charming woman, but Gracethought her singularly charmless. She was at no pains to make herself agreeable to the company Miss Reynolds had assembled in her honor. One thing was clear and Grace derived a deep satisfaction from the reflection,—Mrs. Trenton not only didn’t love her husband, but she was incapable of loving any one but herself. Grace, having accepted the invitation to meet Mrs. Trenton with a sense that there was something a little brazen in her going when Miss Reynolds believed her to be a clean-hearted, high-minded girl, in bitterness of spirit yielded to a mood of defiance. This woman had no right to be a burden and a hindrance to the man she had married. It was her fault if he found in another the love and the companionship she had denied or was incapable of giving him.
The Twentieth Century Club had made the occasion a guest night and the hall was well filled when Miss Reynolds’s party arrived. Places had been reserved for them near the platform but Grace slipped into a seat by the door with Atwood and Grayling.
“Thank you for this!” exclaimed Atwood. “I always sleep at lectures and I won’t be so conspicuous back here.”
Mrs. Trenton, introduced by the president as one of the foremost women of her time, laid a sheaf of notes on the reading desk and began her address. Her subject was “Woman’s New Freedom,” and she summarized the long struggle for suffrage before indicating the questions to which women should now devote themselves to complete their victory. She recited the familiar arguments against child labor and thoughtexisting laws should be extended and strengthened; and she pleaded for equal pay for equal work for women. She advocated uniform marriage and divorce laws on a basis of the widest freedom. There was no slavery so hideous as that of marriages where the tie becomes irksome. She favored birth control on the ground that a woman is entitled to be the judge of her fitness and ability to bear and raise children. She advocated state maternity hospitals with provision for the care of all children by the state where parents lack the means or the intelligence to rear them. She was not a socialist, she protested, though there were many socialistic ideas which she believed could profitably be adopted under the present form of government. Her “Clues to a New Social Order,” she explained, contemplated the fullest recognition of the rights of the individual. She expressed her impatience of the multiplication of laws to make mankind better; the widest liberty was essential to all progress.
Grace had listened with the strictest attention. Once or twice Grayling whispered some comment and Atwood, deeply bored, inquired midway of the address whether the first inning wasn’t nearly over. At the conclusion the president, following the club’s custom, said that Mrs. Trenton would be glad to answer any questions, but the only person who took advantage of the invitation was an elderly gentleman who asked Mrs. Trenton whether she didn’t think the Eighteenth Amendment marked a great moral advance for the nation.
“On the contrary, a decided retreat,” Mrs. Trenton replied, so incisively that the meeting closed amid general laughter.
“Was it the event of a life-time?” Atwood asked Grayling.
“Old stuff! Miss Durland could have taken the lady’s material and made a better story of it.”
“A doubtful compliment!” said Grace. “Come along; we must say good-night to Miss Reynolds.”
They went forward to where the other guests stood waiting while the club president introduced to Mrs. Trenton such of the members as wished to meet her.
“Don’t forget that I’m taking you home,” said Atwood. “That’s my reward for coming.”
Grace had hoped to avoid speaking to Mrs. Trenton again but as Miss Reynolds’s other guests were bidding her good-night she couldn’t very well escape it.
“Ah, you stayed to the bitter end!” Mrs. Trenton exclaimed with a forced brightening of her face. The hand she gave Grace was cold, and the look of weariness in her eyes was intensified. “I wish we might have you as a convert. No hope, I suppose?”
She turned away with a smile to greet the next in line.
“It wasn’t so shocking after all,” remarked Miss Reynolds, as Grace bade her good-night. “I’ll always remember this, Grace. You helped a lot—you’d have helped a lot even if you hadn’t said a word! I was so proud of you, dear.”
When she reached home Grace found her mother and Ethel waiting up for her and she sat down in the living room to recount the events of the evening. Mrs. Trenton, she said, was not so terrible; she dismissed her lightly and concentrated upon the other guests at the dinner. She was at pains to give the impression that she had thoroughly enjoyed herself, particularly her meeting with Professor Grayling. The fact, carelessly mentioned, that Jimmie Atwood had brought her home immediately obscured everything else. Mrs. Durland wished to be sure that Jimmiewas the son of the George Rogers Atwood who had made a fortune in the stove business; Ethel thought he was only a nephew and that Jimmie’s father operated coal mines somewhere near Terre Haute. Grace, unable to assist in determining this momentous matter, left them and sought the seclusion of her room.
As she closed the door she was oppressed by an overmastering fatigue; she felt that innumerable, mocking, menacing hands were plucking at her. The jealousy that had assailed her fitfully all evening now tore at her heart. A vast loneliness, as of some bleak unhorizoned waste, settled upon her. She locked her door and spread out on her dressing table the sheets of Trenton’s last letter, which had reached her that morning, and read them over as she brushed her hair.