Grace addressed herself sincerely to the business of bringing all the cheer possible to the home circle. She overcame her annoyance at being obliged to recount the details of her work, realizing that her mother spent her days at home and save for the small affairs of her club had little touch with the world beyond her dooryard. Ethel’s days in the insurance office were much alike and she lacked Grace’s gift for making a good story out of a trifling incident. Even Mr. Durland enjoyed Grace’s account of the whims and foibles of the women she encountered at Shipley’s. Grace reasoned that so long as she lived at home it would be a mistake not to make the best of things; but even in her fits of repentance she had not regretted her assertion of the right to go and come unquestioned.
In the week following she left the house on two evenings saying merely that she was going out. On one of these occasions she returned a book to the public library; on another she walked aimlessly for an hour. These unexplained absences were to determine whether her new won liberty was really firmly established. Nothing was said either by her mother or Ethel, though it was clear that they were mystified by her early return, though not to the point of asking where she had been. On a third evening she announced at the table that she had earned a good bonus that day and would celebrate by taking them all to the vaudeville. Mrs. Durland and Ethel gave plausibleexcuses for declining, but not without expressing their appreciation of the invitation in kind terms, and Grace and her father set off alone.
In her cogitations Grace was convinced that nothing short of a miracle could ever improve materially the family fortunes. They had the house free of encumbrance, but it needed re-roofing, and the furnishings were old and dingy. Mrs. Durland had worked out a budget by which to manage the family finances, and it was clear enough to Grace that what she and Ethel earned would just about take care of the necessary running expenses. Mrs. Durland had received for many years an income of five hundred dollars a year from her father’s estate, and this Grace learned had always been spent on the family. The last payment had been put away, Mrs. Durland explained to her daughters, to help establish Roy after he completed his law course. It was impressed upon Grace constantly that all the hopes of bettering the family conditions centered in Roy. Ethel shared, though in less degree, her mother’s confidence in the son of the house. Grace kept silent when Roy’s prospects were discussed, feeling that it would serve no purpose to express her feeling that Roy had no special talent for the law, and even if he had the Durlands were without family or business connections that could possibly assist him in establishing himself.
Grace’s meeting with Bob Cummings served to sharpen her sense of social differentiations. Her mother had always encouraged the idea that the Durlands were a family of dignity, entitled to the highest consideration; but stranded as they were in a neighborhoodthat had no lines of communication with polite society, Mrs. Durland now rarely received an invitation even to the houses of her old friends. Grace’s excursions in social science had made her aware of the existence of such a thing as class consciousness; but she had never questioned that she belonged to the favored element. The thought assailed her now that as a wage-earning girl she had a fixed social status from which there was little likelihood she would ever escape. The daughters of prominent families she waited on at Shipley’s were no better looking, no more intelligent and had no better social instincts than she possessed; but she was as completely shut off from any contact with them as though she were the child of a Congo chieftain. With all her romanticism she failed to picture the son of one of the first families making her acquaintance and introducing her to his family as the girl he meant to marry. Several young men with whom she became acquainted in Shipley’s had asked her to go to dances, or for Sunday drives. Irene sniffed when Grace reported these overtures.
“Oh, they’re nice fellows; but what have they got to offer? They’re never going to get anywhere. You can’t afford to waste your time on them.”
However, Grace accepted one of these invitations. The young man took her to a public dance hall where the music was good, but the patrons struck her as altogether uninspiring; and she resented being inspected by a police matron. She danced with her escort all evening, and then they went to a cafeteria for sandwiches and soda water.
Irene had warned Grace that such young fellows were likely to prove fresh; that they always expected to kiss a girl good-night, and might even be insulting;but this particular young man was almost pathetically deferential. Grace was ashamed of herself for not inviting him to call, but she shrank from encouraging his further attentions; he might very easily become a nuisance.
Again, she went to Rosemary Terrace, a dance and supper place on the edge of town, in company with a young man who carried a bottle on his hip to which he referred with proud complacency, as though it were the symbol of his freedom as an American citizen. The large dance hall was crowded; the patrons were clearly the worse for their indulgence in the liquor carried by their escorts; the dancing of many of the visitors was vulgar; the place was hot and noisy and the air heavy with tobacco smoke. Grace’s young man kept assuring her that the Rosemary was the sportiest place in town; you didn’t see any dead ones there. His desire to be thought a sport would have been amusing if he hadn’t so strenuously insisted upon explaining that he was truly of the great company of the elect to whom the laws of God and man were as nothing. When Grace asked to be taken home he hinted that there were other places presumably even less reputable, to which they might go. But he did not press the matter, when, reaching the Durland gate, he tried to kiss her and she, to mark the termination of their acquaintance, slapped him.
These experiences were, she reflected, typical of what she must look forward to unless she compromised with her conscience and accepted Irene’s philosophy of life.
She had replied immediately to Trenton’s letter from St. Louis with a brief note which she made as colorless as possible. She knew that it was for her to decide whether to see more of him or drop the acquaintance.He was not a man to force his attentions upon any young woman if he had reason to think them unwelcome. Hearing nothing from him for several days she had decided that he had settled the matter himself when she received a note explaining that he had been very busy but would start East the next day. He hoped she would dine with him on Thursday night and named the Indianapolis hotel where her reply would reach him.
“Don’t turn him down!” exclaimed Irene when Grace told her Trenton was coming. “He wouldn’t ask you if he didn’t want you. Tommy skipped for New York last night so it’s a safe bet that Ward’s stopping on purpose to see you.”
“I don’t know—” began Grace doubtfully.
“Oh, have a heart! There’s no harm in eating dinner with a married man in a hotel where you’d get by even if all your family walked in and caught you! Of course Tommy can’t appear with me at any public place here at home, but it’s different with you and Ward. He doesn’t know a dozen people in town.”
“I wouldn’t want to offend him,” Grace replied slowly, a prey to uncertainty; but she withheld her acceptance until the morning of the day of Trenton’s arrival.
When she reached the Hotel Sycamore at seven o’clock he was waiting for her at the entrance.
“On time to the minute!” he exclaimed. “I took you at your word that you’d rather not have me call for you.”
“Thanks; but it was easier this way,” she answered.
He had been so much in her thoughts, and she hadconsidered him from so many angles that at first she was shy in his presence. But by the time they were seated in the dining room her diffidence was passing. He appeared younger than at The Shack, but rather more distinguished; it might have been the effect of his dinner coat; and she noticed that he was the only man in the room who had dressed for dinner.
“You’ve been busy of course and I’ve been up to my eyes in work,” he said; “so we’ll dismiss business. Shall we talk of the weather or see what we can do to save the world from destruction!”
“Oh, I’ve had a lot of ideas about things since I saw you,” she said. “Half of them were right and half wrong.”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, “our old friend conscience!”
“Yes,” she replied, meeting his gaze squarely. “I’ve been trying to decide a thousand questions, but I’ve got nowhere!”
“Terrible! But I’m glad to find that you’re so human; most of us are like that. Honest, now, you weren’t at all sure you wanted to see me tonight!”
“No,” she assented under his smiling gaze; “I didn’t send the answer to your note till nearly noon!”
“So I noticed from the hotel stamp on the envelope! But I’d have been very much disappointed if you’d refused.”
His tone was too serious for comfort. She felt that she must have a care lest he discover the attraction he had for her.
“Oh, you’d have got over it! You know you would. You needn’t have dined alone—Tommy’s out of town, but there’s Irene!”
“Much as I admire Irene she would be no substitute! I was sincerely anxious to see you again, if only to make sure you were still on earth.”
“Oh, I have no intention of leaving it!”
She was finding it easy to be flippant with him. Whatever liking he had for her was no doubt due to the seriousness she had manifested in their talk at The Shack. And the effect of that talk had been to awaken a sympathy and interest on both sides; in her case she knew that it was trifle more than that. She was sorry now that she had kissed him; she was puzzled that she had ever had the courage to do it, though it was such a kiss as she might have given any man older than herself in the same circumstances. She had heard of women, very young women, who were able to exert a strong influence upon men much older than themselves. She felt for the first time the power of sex—at least she had never before thought of it in the phrases that now danced through her brain. If he was annoyed not to find her as interesting and agreeable as at The Shack he was successful in concealing his disappointment. He continued to be unfailingly courteous, meeting her rejoinders with characteristic mockeries until she began to feel ashamed of her lack of friendliness. He deserved better of her than this.
“We’re going to the theatre; did you know that?” he asked toward the end of the dinner. “And we’re going to be fashionably late.”
“‘Stolen Stars!’ Oh, that’s perfectly marvelous,” she exclaimed. “I’ve been just dying to see it!”
“Then it’s lucky that you can live and see it!” Through the performance the thought kept recurring to her that he meant to be kind. No one had ever been so kind or shown her so flattering a deference as Ward Trenton. She was proud to be sitting beside him. When the lights went up after the first act a buzz of talk in one of the boxes drew her attention, and she caught a glimpse of Bob Cummings. At the samemoment he saw her and bowed. There were six in the party and she decided that Bob’s wife was the young woman he most rarely addressed. Evelyn was not beautiful; she was gratified to have Trenton’s confirmation of her opinion on this point when she directed his attention to the box party.
“I’ll be here for several days,” said Trenton when they reached the Durland house and he stood for a moment on the doorstep. “Could you give me another evening? Tomorrow night I’m tied up with a business appointment, but may we say day after tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she assented, “but isn’t there danger of seeing too much of me?”
“I’ll take the risk!” he said. “And thank you ever so much.”
She fell asleep glad that she was to see him again.