CHAPTER VHER INHERITANCE
The worries of the night never lived over into the sunny day with Eveley, and when she arose the next morning and saw the amethyst mist lifting into sunshine, when she heard the sweet ecstatic chirping of little Mrs. Bride beneath, she smiled contentedly. The world was still beautiful, and love remained upon its throne.
She started a little early for her work as she was curious to see Angelo in the broad light of day. It seemed so unbelievable that those bright eyes and smiling lips had been in the elevator with her many times a week for many months, and that she had never even seen them.
So on the morning after her initiation into the intricacies of Americanization, she beamed upon him with almost sisterly affection.
“Good morning, Angelo. Isn’t this a wonderfulday? Whose secrets have you ferreted out in the night while I was asleep?”
Angelo flushed with pleasure, and shoved some earlier passengers back into the car to make room for her beside him.
“I thought you’d be too sick to come this morning,” he said, with his wide smile that displayed two rows of white and even teeth. “I thought it would take you twenty-four hours to get over us.”
“Oh, not a bit of it,” she laughed. “And I am equally glad to see that you are recovering from your attack of me.”
This while the elevator rose, stopping at each floor to discharge passengers.
At the fifth floor Eveley passed out with a final smile and a light friendly touch of her hand on Angelo’s arm.
This was the beginning of their strange friendship, which ripened rapidly. Her memory of that night in the Service League with the Irish-American Club was very hazy and dim. Except for the tangible presence and person of Angelo, she might easily have believed it was all a dream.
In spite of her deep conviction that she was not destined to any slight degree of success as an Americanizer, Eveley conscientiously studied books and magazines and attended lectures on the subject, only to experience deep grief as she realized that every additional book, and article, and lecture, only added to her disbelief in her powers of assimilation.
So deep and absolute was her absorption, that for some days she denied herself to her friends, and remained wrapped in principles of Americanization, which naturally caused them no pleasure. And when a morning came and she called a hasty meeting of her four closest comrades, voicing imperative needs and fervent appeals for help, she readily secured four promises of attendance in the Cloude Cote that evening at exactly seven-thirty.
At seven-forty-five Eveley sat on the floor beside the window impatiently tapping with the absurd tip of an absurd little slipper. Nolan had not come.
Kitty Lampton was there, balancing herselfdangerously with two cushions on the arm of a big rocker. Eveley called Kitty the one drone in her circle of friendship, for Kitty was born to golden spoons and lived a life of comfort and ease and freedom from responsibility in a great home with a doting father, and two attentive maids. Eileen Trevis was there, too, having arrived promptly on the stroke of seven-thirty. Eileen Trevis always arrived promptly on the stroke of the moment she was expected. She was known about town as a successful business woman, though still in the early thirties. The third of the group was Miriam Landis, whose inexcusable marriage to her handsome husband had seriously deranged the morale of the little quartet of comrades.
Eveley looked around upon them. “It is a funny thing, a most remarkably funny thing!” she said indignantly. “Every one says that girls are always late, and you three, except Eileen, are usually later than the average late ones. Yet here you are. And every one says that men are always prompt, and Nolan is certainly worse than the averageman in every conceivable way. But Nolan, where is he?”
“Well, go ahead and tell us the news anyhow,” said Kitty, hugging the back of the chair to keep from falling while she talked. “But if it is anything about that funny Americanization stuff, you needn’t tell it. I asked father about it, and he explained it fully, only he lost me in the first half of the first sentence. So I don’t want to hear anything more about it. And you don’t need to tell me any more ways of not doing my duty, either, for I am not doing it now as hard as I can.”
Miriam Landis leaned forward from the couch where she was lounging idly. “What is this peculiar little notion of yours about duty, Eveley?” she asked, smiling. “My poor child, all over town they are exploiting you and your silly notions. Even my dear Lem uses your disbelief in duty to excuse himself for being out five nights a week.”
“That is absurd,” said Eveley, flushing. “And they may laugh all they like. I do believe that duty has wrecked more homes and ruined more lives than—than vampires.”
Miriam smiled tolerantly. “Wait till you get married, sweetest,” she said softly. “If married women did not believe in duty, and do it, no marriage would last more than six months.”
“Well, I qualify myself, you know,” said Eveley excusingly. “I do think everybody has one duty—but only one—and it isn’t the one most people think it is.”
“For the sake of my immortal soul, tell me,” pleaded Kitty. “It was you who led me into the dutiless paths. Now lead me back.”
“Get up, Kitty, and don’t be silly,” said Eveley loftily. “This is not a driven duty, but a spontaneous one. And you don’t need to know what it is, for it comes naturally, or it doesn’t come at all. Isn’t that Nolan the most aggravating thing that ever lived? Eight o’clock. And he promised for seven-thirty.”
“Go on and tell us, Eveley,” said Eileen Trevis. “Maybe somebody is sick, and has to make a will, and he won’t be here all night.”
“Oh, I can’t tell it twice. You know how many questions Nolan always asks, and besidesI want to surprise you all in a bunch. Look, did I show you the new blouse I got to-day? I needed a new one to Americanize my Irish-Americans Saturday. It cost ten dollars, and perfectly plain—but I look like a sad sweet dream in it.”
Then the girls were absorbed in a discussion of the utter impossibility of bringing next month’s allowance or salary within speaking distance of last month’s bills, a subject which admitted of no argument but which interested them deeply. So after all they did not hear the rumble and creak of the rustic stairway, nor the quick steps crossing the garden on the roof of the sun parlor for Nolan was forgotten until his sharp tap on the glass was followed by the instant appearance of his head, and his pleasant voice said in tones of friendly raillery:
“Every time I climb those wabbly rattly-bangs that you call rustic stairs, I wonder that you have a friend to your name. Hello, Eveley.”
“Inasmuch as you made the wabbliest pair of all, and since you climb them more thananybody else, you haven’t much room to talk,” returned Eveley tartly, drawing back the portières to admit his entrance, which was no laughing matter for a large man.
“You positively are the latest thing that ever was,” she went on, as he landed with a heavy thud.
“Me? Why, I am the soul of punctuality.”
“You may be the soul of it, but punctuality does not get far with a soul minus willing feet.”
“Anyhow, I am here, and that is something,” he said, making the rounds of the room to shake hands cordially with the other girls.
Eveley hopped up quickly on to the small desk—shoving the telephone off, knowing Nolan would catch it, as indeed he did with great skill, having been catching telephones and vases and books for Eveley for five full years. She clasped her hands together, glowing, and her friends leaned toward her expectantly.
“I have called you together,” she began in a high, slightly imperious voice, “my fourbest friends, counting Nolan, because I need advice.”
“Do you wish to retain me as counsellor?” asked Nolan, with a strong legal accent “My fee—”
“I do not wish to retain you in any capacity,” Eveley interrupted quickly. “My chief worry is how to dispose of you satisfactorily. And as for fees—Pouf! Anyhow, I need advice, good advice, deep advice, loving advice. So I have called you into solemn conclave, and because it is a most exceptional occasion I have prepared refreshments, good ones, sandwiches and coffee and cake—Did you bring the cake, Kit? And ice-cream—the drug-store is going to deliver it at ten, only the boy won’t climb the stairs; you’ll have to meet him at the bottom, Nolan. So I hope you realize that it is an affair of some moment, and not—Miriam Landis, are you asleep?”
Miriam flashed her eyes wide open, denial on her lips, but Kitty forestalled her. “That is a pose,” she explained. “Billy Ferris said, and I told Miriam he said it, that with hereyes closed, she is the loveliest thing in the world. And since then she walks around in her sleep half the time.”
Miriam turned toward her, still more indignant denial clamoring for utterance, but Eveley, accepting the explanation as reasonable, went quickly on.
“Now I want you to be very serious and thoughtful—can you concentrate better in the dark, Kit? Because I know at seances and things they turn off the lights, and—”
“Oh, let’s do. And we’ll all hold hands, and concentrate, and maybe we’ll scare up a ghost or something.” Then she looked around the room—four girls and Nolan—Nolan, who had edged with alacrity toward Eveley on the telephone desk—and Kitty shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, what’s the use? Never mind. Go on with the gossip, Eveley. I can think with the lights on.”
“The ice-cream will be here before we get started,” said Eileen Trevis suddenly.
Eveley clasped her hands again and smiled. “I have received a fortune. Somebody died—you needn’t advise me to wear mourning,either, Miriam. I never saw him in my life, and never even heard of him, and honestly I think he got me mixed up with somebody else and left the fortune to the wrong grand-niece, but anyhow it is none of my business, and since he is dead and the money is here, I suppose there is no chance of his discovering the mistake and making me refund it after it is spent.”
“A fortune,” gasped Kitty, tumbling off the arm of the chair and rushing to fling herself on the floor beside Eveley, warm arms embracing her knees.
“Root of all evil,” murmured Miriam, gazing into space through half-closed lids, and seeing wonderful visions of complexions and permanent curls and a manicure every day.
“How fortunate,” said Eileen in a voice pleased though still unruffled and even. “A fortune means safety and protection and—”
“Who the dickens has been butting into your affairs now?” demanded Nolan peevishly, and though the girls laughed, there was no laughter in his eyes and no smile on his lips.
“Well, since he calls me his great-niece, I suppose he is my grand-uncle.”
“How much, lovey, how much?” gurgled Kitty, at her side.
“Twenty-five hundred dollars,” announced Eveley ecstatically.
Nolan breathed again. “Oh, that isn’t so bad. I thought maybe some simp had left you a couple of millions or so.”
Eveley fairly glared upon him. “What do you mean by that? Why a simp? Why shouldn’t I be left a couple of millions as well as anybody else? Maybe you think I haven’t sense enough to spend a couple of millions.”
“And why did you require advice?” Eileen queried.
“Oh, yes.” Eveley smiled again. “Yes, of course. Now you must all think desperately for a while—I hate to ask so much of you, Nolan—but perhaps this once you won’t mind—I want you to tell me what to do with the money.”
This was indeed a serious responsibility. What to do with twenty-five hundred dollars?
“You do not feel it is your duty to spend the twenty-five hundred pounding Americanism into your Irish-American Wops?” asked Nolan facetiously.
Eveley took this good-naturedly. “Oh, I got off from work at four-thirty and went down to their field, and we had a celebration. We had ice-cream and candy and chewing gum, and I spent twenty-five dollars equipping them with balls and bats and since I was with them an hour and a quarter, I feel that I am entitled to the rest of the fortune myself.”
“Well, dearie,” said Eileen, “it is really very simple. Put it in a savings account, of course. Keep it for a rainy day. You may be ill. You may get married—”
“Can’t she get married without twenty-five hundred dollars?” asked Nolan, with great indignation. “She doesn’t expect to buy her own groceries when she gets married, does she?”
“She may have to, Nolan,” said Eileen gently. “One never knows what may happen after marriage. Getting married is no laughingmatter, and Eveley should be prepared for any exigency.”
“But, Eileen, she won’t need her twenty-five hundred to get married. No decent fellow would marry a girl unless he could support her, and do it well, even luxuriously. You don’t suppose I would let my wife spend her twenty-five hundred—”
“If you mean me, I shall do whatever I like with my own money when I get married,” said Eveley quickly. “My husband will have nothing to say about it. You needn’t think for one minute—”
“I am not your husband, am I? I haven’t exactly proposed to you yet, have I?”
Eveley swallowed hard. “Certainly not. And probably never will. By the time you get around to it, getting married will be out of date, and none of the best people doing it any more.”
“You may not have asked her, Nolan,” said Eileen evenly. “And that is your business, of course. She will probably turn you down when you do ask her, just as she does everybody else. But—”
“Who has been asking her now?” he cried, with jealous interest.
“But while we are on the subject, I hope you will permit me to say that I think your principles are all wrong, and even dangerous. You think a man should wait a thousand years until he can keep a wife like a pet dog, on a cushion with a pink ribbon around her neck—”
“The dog’s neck, or the wife’s?”
“The dog’s—no, the wife’s—both of them,” she decided at last, with never a ruffle. “You want to wait until she is tired of loving, and too old to have a good time, and worn out with work. It isn’t right. It is not fair. It is unjust both to yourself, and to Eve—to the girl.”
“But, my dear child,” he said. Eileen was three years older than Nolan; but being a lawyer he called all women “child.” “My dear child, do you realize that my salary is eighteen hundred a year, and I get only a few hundred dollars in fees. Think of the cost of food these days, and of clothes, and amusements, to say nothing of rent! Do you thinkI would allow Eve—my wife, to go without the sweet things of—”
“You needn’t bring me in,” said Eveley loftily. “I have never accepted you, have I?”
“No, not exactly, I suppose, but—”
“Eveley,” said Miriam, suddenly sitting erect on the couch. “I have it.”
“Sounds like the measles,” said Kitty.
“I mean I know what to do with the money. Listen, dear. You do not want to go on slaving in an office until you are old and ugly. And Nolan is quite right, you certainly can not marry a grubby clerk in a law office.”
Nolan laughed at that, but Eveley sat up very straight indeed and fairly glowered at her unconscious friend on the couch.
“You must have the soft and lovely things of life, and the way to get them is to marry them. Now, sweet, you take your twenty-five hundred, be manicured and massaged and shampooed until you are glowing with beauty, buy a lot of lovely clothes, trip around like a lady, dance and play, and meet men—men with money—and there you are. You can look like a million dollars on yourtwenty-five hundred—and your looks will get you the million by marriage.”
“Miriam Landis, that is shameful,” said Nolan in a voice of horror. “It is disgraceful. I never thought to hear a woman, a married woman, a nice woman, utter such low and grimy thoughts. Could any such marriage be happy?”
“Well, Nolan,” said Miriam sadly, “I am not sure that any marriage can be happy, or was ever supposed to be. But women are such that they have to try it once. Eveley will be like all the rest. And if she has to try it, she had better try it with a million, than with eighteen hundred a year.”
“There is something in that, Miriam, certainly,” said Eveley thoughtfully. “What do you think, Eileen?”
“I think it is absurd. The notion that woman was born for marriage died long ago. Ridiculous! Woman is born for life, for service, for action, just as man is. Look at the married people you know. How many of them are happy? I do not wish to be personal, but I know very few married people,either men or women, who would not be glad to undo the marriage knot if it could be done easily and quietly without notoriety. They are not happy. But we are happy. Why? Because we work, we think, we feel, we live. We are not slaves to the contentment of man. Go on working, my dear. Keep your independence. But play safe. Put your money in the bank, or in some good investment, and let it safeguard your future. Then you can go your way serene.”
“That is certainly sound. Marriage isn’t the most successful thing in the world.”
“I should say not,” chimed Kitty. “Husbands are always tired of wives, their own, I mean, inside of five years.”
“Well, if it comes to that,” said Eveley honestly, “I suppose wives are tired of their own husbands, too. But they are so stubborn they won’t admit it. In their hearts I suppose they are quite as sick of their husbands as their husbands are of them.”
“Eve,” said Nolan anxiously, “where are you getting all these wicked notions? Marriage is the most sacred—”
“Institution. I know it. Every one says marriage is a sacred institution, and so is a church. But nobody wants to live with one permanently.”
“But, Eveley, the sanctity of the—”
“Home. Sure, we know it is sanctified. But monotonous. Deadly monotonous.”
“Eve,” and his voice was quite tragic, “don’t you feel that the divine sphere of—”
“Woman. You needn’t finish it, Nolan; we know it as well as you do. The divine sphere of woman is in the sanctified home keeping up the sacred institution of marriage while her husband—oh, tralalalalalala.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll go you,” cried Kitty suddenly, leaping up from the floor, and waving her hand. “Europe! You and I together.”
“She has come to,” said Eileen resignedly. “There’s an end of sensible talk for this evening.”
“Yes, Kit, what is it? I knew you would think of something good.”
“We’ll go to Europe, you and I. I think I can work dad to let me go. I can pretend to fall in love with the plumber, or somebody,and he’ll be glad to trot me off for a while. And he likes you, Eveley. He thinks you are so sensible.”
“Why, he hardly knows me,” cried Eveley, astonished.
“Yes, that is why. I tell him how sensible you are when you are not there, and when he gets home I hustle you out of his sight in a hurry. He likes me to have sensible friends.”
“And what shall we do with the money?”
“Travel, travel, travel, and have a gay good time,” said Kitty blithely. “All over Europe. We’ll get some handsome clothes, and have the time of our lives as long as the money lasts, and then marry dukes or princes or something like that.”
“Two of you,” shouted Nolan furiously. “Well, Eve, it is a good thing you have one friend to give you really decent advice. Of all idiotic ideas. Buy fine clothes and marry a millionaire. Save it to pay for potatoes when you get a husband that can’t support you. Travel to Europe and marry some purple prince.”
“Why purple?” asked Eveley curiously.
“Do you mean clothed in purple and fine linen?”
“If you mean blood, it is blue,” said Kitty. “Blue-blooded princes. Whoever heard of a purple-blooded prince?”
“What did you mean anyhow, Nolan?” asked Eileen.
Driven into a corner, Nolan hesitated. He had said purple on the spur of the moment, chiefly because it sounded derogatory and went well with prince.
“What I really mean,” he began in a dispassionate legislative voice, “what I really mean is—purple in the face. You know, purple, splotchy skin, caused by eating too much rich food, drinking too much strong wine, playing cards and dancing and flirting.”
“Does flirting make you purple?” gasped Miriam. “It does not show on Lem yet.” And then she subsided quickly, hoping they had not noticed.
“Why, Nolan, I have danced for weeks and weeks at a stretch, evenings, I mean, when the service men were here,” said Kitty, “and I am not purple yet.”
“Oh, rats,” said Nolan. Then he brightened. “You have never seen a prince, so of course you do not understand. Wait till you see one. Then a purple prince will mean something in your young life.”
“I should not like to marry a purple creature,” said Eveley, wrinkling her nose distastefully. “I am too pink. And my blue eyes would clash with a purple husband, too. But maybe the dukes and lords are a different shade,” she finished hopefully.
Nolan turned his back, and lit a cigarette.
“Yes, you may smoke, Nolan, by all means. I always like my guests to be comfortable.”
“What is your advice then, Nolan? You are so scornful about our suggestions,” said Eileen quietly.
“I know what Nolan would like,” said Kitty spitefully. “He would advise Eveley to give him the money and make him her executor and appoint him her guardian. That would suit him to a T.”
“My poor infant, Eveley can not use an executor and a guardian at the same time.One comes in early youth, or old age, the other after death. An executor—” he began, clearing his throat as for a prolonged technical explanation.
Kitty plunged her fingers into her ears. “You stop that right now, Nolan Inglish. We came here to advise Eveley, not for you to practise on. If you begin that I shall go straight home—no, I mean I shall go out on the steps and wait for the ice-cream.”
“What do you advise, Nolan?” persisted Eileen.
“Well, my personal advice is, and I strongly urge it, and plead it, and it will make me very happy, and—?”
“He wants to borrow it,” gasped Kitty.
“Go on, Nolan,” urged Eveley eagerly.
“Put it in the bank on your checking account.”
“Put it—”
“Checking account?”
“Yes, indeed, right in your checking account.”
A slow scornful light dawned in Eileen’s eyes. “I see,” she said coldly. “Very selfish,very unprofessional, very unfriendly. He would have his lady love absolutely bankrupt, that he may endow her with all the goods of life.”
“Why, Nolan,” said Eveley weakly, lacking Eileen’s sharper perception, “don’t you know me well enough to realize that if I put it into my checking account it will be gone, absolutely and everlastingly gone, inside of six months, and not a thing to show for it?”
“Yes, I know it,” he admitted humbly.
“And still you advise it?”
“I do not advise it—I just want it,” he admitted plaintively.
Eveley sat quietly for a while, counting her fingers, her lips moving once in a while, forming such words as marriage, travel, princes and banks. Then she clapped her hands and beamed upon them.
“Lovely,” she cried. “Exquisite! Just what I wanted to do myself! You are dear good faithful friends, and wise, too, and you will never know how much your advice has helped me. Then it is all settled, isn’t it? And I shall buy an automobile.”
In a flash, she caught up a pillow, holding it out sharply in front of her, whirling it around like a steering wheel, while she pushed with both feet on imaginary clutches and brakes, and honked shrilly.
But her friends leaned weakly back in their chairs and stared. Then they laughed, and admitted it was what they had expected all the time.
CHAPTER VIA WRONG ADJUSTMENT
Eveley’s resolve to spend her fortune for an auto met with less resistance than she had anticipated. It seemed that every one had known all along that she would fool the money away on something, and a motor was far more reasonable than some things.
“I said travel,” said Kitty. “And we can travel in a car as well as on a train—more fun, too. And though it may cut us off from meeting a purple prince—a pretty girl with a car of her own is a combination no man can resist. And maybe if we are very patient and have good luck, we may save a millionaire from bandits, or rescue a daring aviator from capture by Mexicans.”
Miriam nodded, also, her eyes cloudy behind the dark lashes. “Very nice, dear. Get a lot of stunning motor things and—irresistible, simply irresistible. You must have ared leather motor coat. You will be adorable in one. But you’ll have to shake Nolan, dear. You stand no chance in the world if you are constantly herded by a disagreeable young lawyer, guardianing you from every truant glance.”
“It isn’t at all bad,” quickly interposed Eileen. “I believe that more than anything else in the world, a motor-car reconciles a woman to life without a husband. She gets thrills in plenty, and retains her independence at the same time.”
“Eileen,” put in Nolan sternly, “I am disappointed in you. A woman of your ability and experience trying to prejudice a young and innocent girl against marriage is—is—”
“You are awfully hard to suit, Nolan,” complained Eveley gently. “You shouted at Miriam and Kitty for advising a husband, and now you roar at Eileen for advising against one.”
“It isn’t the husband I object to—it is their cold-blooded scheme to go out and pick one up. Woman should be sought—”
“Well, when Eveley gets a car she’ll besought fast enough,” said Kitty shrewdly. “She hasn’t suffered from any lack of admirers as it is, but when she goes motoring on her own—ach, Louie.”
“Then you approve of the car, do you, Nolan?”
“Well, since I can not think of any quicker or pleasanter way of spending the money,” he said slowly, “I may say that I do, unequivocally.”
“Why unequivocally?”
“What’s it mean, anyhow?” demanded Kitty.
“Can’t you talk English, Nolan?” asked Eveley, in some exasperation. “You started off as if you were in favor, but now heaven only knows what you mean.”
“Get your car, my poor child, by all means. Get your car. But a dictionary is what you really need.”
The rest of the evening they were enthusiastic almost to the point of incoherency. Kitty was in raptures over an exquisite red racer she had seen on the street. Miriam described Mary Pickford’s rose-upholstered car,and applied it to Eveley’s features. Nolan developed a surprisingly intimate knowledge of carburetors, horse-powers and cylinders.
When at last they braved the rustic stairway, homeward bound, with exclamatory gasps and squeals, gradually drifting away into silence, Eveley sat down on the floor to take off her shoes—a most childish habit carried over into the years of age and wisdom—and was immediately wrapped in happy thoughts where stunning motor clothes and whirring engines and Nolan’s pleasant eyes were harmoniously mingled. And when at last she started up into active consciousness again, and rushed pellmell to bed, mindful of her responsibility as a business girl, sleep came very slowly. And when it came at last, it was a chaotic jumble of excited dreams and tossings.
The life of the bride and groom in the nest beneath Eveley’s Cloud Cote had progressed so sweetly and smoothly that Eveley had come to feel it was quite a friendly dispensation of Providence that permitted her to liveone story up from Honeymooning. So the next morning, in the midst of the confusion that came from dressing and getting her breakfast and reading motor ads in the morning paper at the same time, she was utterly electrified to hear a sudden sharp cry of anguish from little Mrs. Bride beneath—a cry accompanied by sounds caused by nothing in the world but a passionate and hysterical pounding of small but violent feet upon the floor.
“Oooooh, oooooh, don’t talk to me, Dody, I can’t bear it. I can’t, I can’t. Ooooh, I wish I were dead. Go away, go away this instant and let me die. Oh, I shall run away, I shall kill myself! Oooooh!”
“Dearie, sweetie, don’t,” begged Mr. Groom distractedly. “Lovie, precious, please.” And his voice faded off into tender inarticulate whispers.
For a long second Eveley was speechless. Then she said aloud, very grimly, “Hum. It has begun. I suppose I may look for flat-irons and rolling-pins next. Hereafter they are Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Married People.”
After long and patient, demonstrative pleading on his part, Mrs. Severs was evidently restored to a semblance of reason and content, and quiet reigned for a while until the slam of the door indicated that Mr. Severs had heeded the call of business.
Almost immediately there came a quick creaking of the rustic stairs and a light tap on Eveley’s window.
“Come in,” she called pleasantly. “I sort of expected you. You will excuse me, won’t you, for not getting up, but I have only fifteen minutes to finish my breakfast and catch the car.”
“You are awfully businesslike, aren’t you?” asked Mrs. Severs admiringly. “Yes, I will have a cup of coffee, thanks. I need all the stimulation I can get.”
She was pale, and her eyes were red-rimmed, Eveley noted commiseratingly.
“We are expecting an addition to our family this afternoon, Miss Ainsworth,” she began, her chin quivering childishly.
“Mercy!” gasped Eveley.
“Our father-in-law,” added Mrs. Seversquickly. “Dody’s father. He is coming to live with us.”
“Oh!” breathed Eveley. “Won’t that be lovely?”
Mrs. Severs burst into passionate weeping. “It won’t be lovely,” she sobbed. “It will be ghastly.” She sat up abruptly and wiped her eyes. “He is the most heart-breaking thing you ever saw, and he doesn’t like me. He doesn’t approve of dimples, and he says I am soft. And he has the most desperate old chum you ever saw, a perfect wreck with red whiskers, and they get together every night and play pinochle and smoke smelly old pipes, and he won’t have curtains in his bedroom, and he is crazy about a phonograph, and he won’t eat my cooking.”
“I should think you would like that,” said Eveley. “Maybe he will cook for himself.”
“That is just it,” wailed Mrs. Severs. “He does. He cooks the smelliest kind of corn beef and cabbage, and eats liver by the—by the cow, and has raw onions with every meal. And he drinks tea by the gallon. And hecooks everything himself and piles it on his plate like a mountain and carries it to the table and sits there and eats it right before company and everybody.”
“I don’t see how Mr. Severs ever came to have a father like that,” said Eveley in open surprise.
“Well, the funny thing about it is that he would really be very nice if he wasn’t so outrageous. And he swears terribly. He says ‘Holy Mackinaw’ at everything. But he loves Dody. They lived together for years, and it nearly killed him when Dody got married. And Dody said, ‘You will live with us of course, father,’ and so we expected it. But he went off for a visit after we were married—he and the red-whiskered friend, and we sort of thought—we kind of hoped—miracles do happen, you know—and so I just kept believing that something would turn up to save us. But it didn’t. Dody got a letter this morning, and he will be here this afternoon. Oh, I wish I were dead.”
“Is he terribly poor?”
“Mercy, no! He’s got plenty of money.Lots more than we have. Enough to live anywhere he pleases.”
“I see it all,” said Eveley ominously. “You won’t be happy with him, and he won’t be happy with you, but you are all putting up with it because it is your—duty.”
“Yes, that is it, of course.”
Eveley poured herself another cup of coffee and drank it rapidly, without cream, and only one lump of sugar. “I am upset,” she said at last. “This has simply shattered the day for me. Excuse me, you’ll have to hurry, I only have five minutes left. I haven’t explained my belief and principles to you—you being young and newly married and needing all the illusions possible—but I do not believe in duty.”
“Gracious,” gasped the bride. “You don’t?”
“Absolutely not. No human being should do his duty under any conceivable circumstances. You see, there are two kinds, the pleasurable ones, and the painful ones. Pleasurable duties are done, not because they are duties, but because they are pleasurable.So they do not count. And a painful duty can not be a duty or it would not be painful. My idea is, that there must be a happy adjustment of every necessity, so when a duty is painful, it is the wrong adjustment. You and your father-in-law are giving yourselves pain because it is the wrong adjustment.”
“It sounds very clever.”
“It is the only beautiful plan of life,” said Eveley modestly.
“And then we would not have to live with father at all?”
“Most certainly not.”
“It certainly is a glorious theory,” said the bride enthusiastically. “You explain it to Dody, will you? He is positively death on duty, especially when it is painful. He’d do his duty if it killed him and me, burned the house down and started a revolution.”
“I have to go now,” said Eveley. “Excuse me for rushing you off, but I am late already. I’ll explain it to you another time.”
Very skilfully she piloted her caller out the window and down the rustic steps.
“Remember this,” she said as they reachedthe bottom. “As long as duty is painful, it is not a duty and can not be. Now find another adjustment. That is the end of it.” And she started on a quick trot for the corner.
“But father will be here this afternoon just the same,” called Mrs. Severs after her in mournful tones.
Being very businesslike, Eveley made a set of notes about the case on her way down-town.
Liver and cabbage.
Raw onions.
Smelly pipe.
Red-whiskered friend.
Pinochle.
Hates dimples. (I’ll keep my left side turned his way.)
Money enough to live on.
Crazy about Dody—christened Andrew.
Dody believes in duty.
“Of course it is up to me to save them,” she decided cheerfully, and was quite happy at the prospect of an engagement in her campaign. “But I can’t neglect gettingmy car, even to save human nature from its duty,” she added. And then her mind wandered from the duties of brides, to the pleasures of young motorists.
Her plan of expenditure was most lucid. She would invest eighteen hundred dollars in a car, and spend two hundred for clothes “to sustain the illusion.” Nolan did not understand exactly what she meant by that, but on general principles was convinced it was something reprehensible and sneered at it. The other five hundred was to be deposited in the bank as a guarantee for future tires and gasoline and repairs. Nolan said that according to his information it would be wiser to buy a second-hand car for five hundred, and keep the eighteen hundred for tires and gas and repairs.
But Nolan was a struggling young lawyer—even more struggling than young—and the girls were accustomed to his pessimistic murmurs, and gave them no heed at all.
Although Eveley had determined to confine herself to eighteen hundred dollars for the car, she was not morally above acceptingdemonstrations of cars entailing twice, and even thrice, that expenditure. “For,” she said, “for all I know somebody else may die and leave me some more, and then I can get an expensive one. And besides, I feel it is my duty—oh, no, I mean I feel it would be lots of fun, as a conscientious and enthusiastic motorist to know the good points of every car.”
So Nolan assured her of his complete support and assistance in her search, even to the detriment of his labors at the law office, where he hoped one day to be a member of considerable standing. Nolan had two fond dreams—to become a regular member of the firm, and to marry Eveley. They were closely related, one to the other. If he could not marry Eveley, he had no desire for a partnership nor anything else but speedy death. But until he had the partnership, he felt himself morally obligated to deny himself Eveley in the flesh. For he was one of those unique, old-fashioned creatures who feels that man must offer position and affluence as well as love to the lady of his choice. So it was nomere mercenary madness on his own account that kept Nolan living a life of gentle and economic obscurity, patient struggling for a foothold on the ladder of fame in his profession.
He knew better than to propose to Eveley. He realized that if they were once formally and blissfully engaged, he, being only mortal man with human frailties, could never resist the charm of complete possession, and he foresaw that betrothal would end in speedy marriage to the death of his determination to bring his goddess glory.
Thus Nolan’s lips were sealed—on the subject of marriage. “Though goodness knows, he has plenty to say about everything else,” Eveley sometimes complained rather plaintively. And his attentions took the form of a more or less pleasant watch-dog constancy, and an always more and never less persistence in warding off other suitors not handicapped by his own scruples in regard to matrimony.
CHAPTER VIIPAINFUL DUTY
When Eveley arrived home late that night she smiled to observe that all the down-stairs windows were wide open to the breeze, and in the corner bedroom, apportioned to Father-in-law, the curtains were down. At the back of the house she found Father-in-law himself, with the proverbial whiskered friend, critically inspecting her rustic steps through the clouds of smoke from their pipes which they removed to facilitate their interested stares as she approached.
“How do you do?” she cried brightly. “You are Mr. Severs, Senior, aren’t you? Welcome home! And this is your friend, I know.” She shook hands with them both, with great cordiality. She must disarm them, before she could begin working them into a proper adjustment with life. “I am Eveley Ainsworth. Are you admiring mysteps? I am very eccentric and temperamental and all that, and I have to live alone. I do not like being crowded in with other folks. I like to do as I please, and not bother with anybody else.”
“Very sensible, I’m sure,” said Father-in-law.
“Sure,” echoed the whiskered one breezily.
“That was the first little seed,” she chuckled to herself, as she ran blithely up the stairs. Later, when she heard Mrs. Severs in the room beneath, she went to the head of the inner stairway and called down to her.
“Come up a minute. I want to see you.”
Mrs. Severs lost no time. “My husband says it is simply absurd,” she began breathlessly. “He says people have to do their duty. He says a thing is right or wrong, and that settles it. We are all father has in the world, and Dody says it is plainly our duty to keep him with us. He says a fellow would be taking an awful chance to marry you, if that is a sample of your principles. Don’t you believe in any duty, Miss Ainsworth?”
“Only one,” said Eveley with great firmness.
“Oh, what is that?” came the eager query.
“That,” was the dignified reply, “is something that doesn’t enter into this case at all, and doesn’t need to be discussed.”
“Well, Dody says—”
“Dody may be a very sweet husband, but he is not progressive. His idea is old, outworn and antedeluvian. Simply musty. Now, this is my plan—the plan of progress according to new ideas which means happiness for all. Father-in-law and the whiskered friend are born for each other. They are affinities, and soul-mates, and everything. I saw it at the first glance. We’ll get them a little cottage off somewhere beyond the odor of onions, and they can revel in liver and pipes to their hearts’ content.”
“Impossible! Whiskers has a wife of his own.”
“What?” Eveley was much disconcerted. “Well, maybe she will get a divorce so her husband can marry your father—I mean—maybe it won’t stick, you know.”
“It’s been sticking for forty years, and I suppose it will go on forever. You see she doesn’t have him around much and so she probably forgets how he is. He is always out with father, and she is asleep when he gets home.”
“Well, don’t worry about it. He had no business being married, for it was a lovely plan—but it can’t be helped now. Never mind.”
“Listen,” said Mrs. Severs suddenly. “Hear the sizzling. That’s onions. Didn’t I tell you? I was going to have chicken croquettes and creamed peas, with lettuce salad and fruit jello. But how can Dody and I sit down to a decent meal with the whole house reeking with tobacco and onions?”
“Never mind, dear. We’ll find the adjustment in time. Just try to be patient.”
For another night, and another day, Eveley puzzled and pondered—during intervals of studying motor folders and reading advertisements. And the next evening she found Mrs. Severs wringing her hands on the front porch.
“What is it?” she asked anxiously. “Did he kill himself?”
“No such luck,” wailed Mrs. Severs. “He won’t sleep in the bedroom because he says it is too shady under all those vines, and he has moved himself out into the living-room on the couch. He says there is no sense having a house all cluttered up with rooms anyhow, he doesn’t believe in it. He says two rooms are enough for anybody. You can cook and eat in the kitchen, and sit and sleep in the other room, and anything more is just plain tony.”
“I tell you what,” suggested Eveley brightly. “Be mean to him. Be real snippy and bossy. Don’t let him have his own way. You just fire him right back into the bedroom. Tell him you are head of this house, and he’s got to mind. Then he’ll be only too glad to move out and then you’ll have some peace.”
“I can’t,” moaned Mrs. Severs. “He’s really kind of nice if he wasn’t so awful. I couldn’t be mean to Dody’s father. And Dody would not let me if I wanted to.”
“Well, don’t worry,” said Eveley automatically. “I am still working. We will try every different adjustment, and in time we shall hit the right one. Just keep happy and—”
“Keep happy,” wailed Mrs. Severs. “Don’t be sarcastic, Miss Ainsworth, please. I never expect to be happy again.”
Then she went home, and Eveley called Nolan on the telephone.
“You must come immediately and have supper with me. And stop on the way and get a small steak, and ask the drug-store to deliver a pint of ice-cream at six-thirty sharp. And you might bring a nice tomato if you can remember, and I shall have everything else ready. We won’t have much to-night, just steak and salad and ice-cream. I need professional advice.”
Nolan never dreamed of refusing an invitation of any sort whatever from Eveley, and he started immediately, gathering up the dinner on his way. As he put his foot on the lowest step of the rustic stair, Eveley’s head thrust itself suddenly from between the curtains.
“There is a proper adjustment,” she said, in a stern voice. “Just keep your mind on that. Painful duty is no duty, and can not be. There is a right adjustment—and we must find it.”
Nolan continued warily up the rickety stair, greeting her at the top cordially.
“Hello, Eveley. My, the coffee smells good. I am hungry as a bear, too. I saw you out last night with that sad-eyed Buddy soldier, and I do not approve of it. I shall deem it my duty to administer a proper adjustment of his facial characteristics if he doesn’t mind his own business. The ice-cream will be here at six-thirty sharp. How is Kitty? You have flour on your ears. Shall I fix the tomatoes?”
“I did not bring you here in a social capacity to discuss personal matters,” said Eveley coldly. “I told you yesterday that my home is saddened by the grotesque figure of maladjustment stalking in our midst under his usual guise of Duty. As I have explained so many times, there is bound to be a happy adjustment. But this time I can not figure it out. Now I call on you.”
“Retainer’s fee, one hundreds dollars. Payable, of course, in advance.”
“Oh, well, it is not strictly legal. Let’s just talk it over nicely as dear good friends, and if you have an idea I can absorb it. Nolan, Eileen said she saw you at lunch to-day with a woman.”
“Eileen? How is Eileen? I haven’t seen her for days. Let’s have a party soon, and invite Kitty and Eileen and Miriam and me, and you give us a midnight supper here in the Cote, will you?”
“It was at the Grant.”
“I did not see Eileen, but of course I was busy. Was she alone? We had a nice luncheon—grilled pork chops and country gravy. The gravy was good—no lumps. It made me think of yours.”
“My gravy is not always lumpy,” she said with a frown. “It just happened that way the last two times because I was called to the telephone while I was making it.”
“Oh, sure, that’s all right.”
He carefully adjusted her chair at the table, and drew his own close beside it, pullinghis plate and silverware half-way around the table from where Eveley had placed them.
“You look sweeter than ever, to-night, Eve. But I hope the gravy is not lumpy.”
“She wore a black dress and white gloves, and a black hat.”
“Eileen did? Was it a new dress?”
“No, the one with you.”
“Sure enough, I believe she did. A georgette dress, beaded in front. Quite pretty. But there was a rip in her glove. She showed it to me herself. She said she did it on the car, but it looked like an old rip to me.”
“And after luncheon you went away in her car, didn’t you?”
“Her uncle’s car. Just for a short run through the park, and then she dropped me at the office. Quite a pleasant woman. She was so polite to me, and treated me with such gentle deference. It was quite a change. It made me think of you.”
Eveley put down her fork. “Who was it?”
“Bartlett’s niece from San Francisco. Visiting here. He had promised to take her forluncheon, but at the last minute Graves came in and they were busy, so he turned her over to me.”
“I do not see why you are always the one to take their nieces and daughters out for luncheon. This is the fourth time in two months. I believe you do it on purpose. Why should they always pick on you?”
“Partly because of my beauty, perhaps, and my charming manners as well as my generally winsome demeanor in the presence of ladies. I suppose Eileen also informed you that this niece is Mrs. Harmon Delavan, and has three children in addition to a husband.”
“Oh, Nolan, how you do burble along. I didn’t bring you here to discuss Bartlett’s relatives. Now get down to business. How can we adjust the honeymooners and the father-in-law—though honestly I think he is great fun myself, and would a whole lot rather live with him than with Dody. Only he does not fit in with the honeymoon scheme of life.”
“Well,” said Nolan dreamily, “why don’t you marry him, and bring him up here?”
“Oh, Nolan, you are clever. I never thought of that.”
At the evident delight in her voice, Nolan stared.
“Not to me, goosey, he would never consent, for I have a dimple and he does not approve of them. So far I have kept it on the off side, and he has not noticed, but I couldn’t always turn the left side to a husband, could I?”
“Well, then—”
“Marry him to somebody else, of course. I can’t just decide who—but there will be some one. You are such a help, Nolan. Now let’s not bother with the duties of our neighbors, but have a good time. To-morrow I shall find him a wife.” Then she leaned toward Nolan, refilling his cup, and said gurglingly, “Was he working awfully hard at the stupid old office?”
“Eveley, just one thing, while we are on our duties,” he said, catching her hand. “You have made one exception, always, but you have never told me what it is. And it is so unlike you to except anything when youget started. What is the one duty that is justified and necessary?”
Eveley promptly pulled her hand away. “That,” she said, “is purely personal. It will not do any one any good to talk about it. So it is all sealed up on the inside.”
“And I shall never know what your one duty in life is?” he asked, with mock pleading, but real curiosity.
“It may hit you sometime—harder than anybody else,” she said, laughing. “But in the meantime let’s talk of other things.”
As soon as Mr. Severs had started to work the next morning, without the tender farewells, for the presence of Father-in-law placed an instinctive veto on such demonstrations—Eveley kicked briskly on the floor as a summons, and Mrs. Severs answered.
“Eveley?” she called up to the ceiling.
And Eveley shouted down to the floor of her room, “Come up—I’ve got it.”
At that Mrs. Severs fairly flew up the stairs.
Eveley caught her on the landing, and whirled her around the room in a triumphantdance, stopping at last so abruptly that Mrs. Severs was almost precipitated to the floor.
“Now listen. I’ve got it. The proper adjustment, that will make you all happy and prove my theory.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” chanted Mrs. Severs ecstatically.
“He must get married.”
“But—”
“Now don’t interrupt. Let me finish. Of course he has no notion of such a thing, but leave it to me. We shall marry him off before he knows it. We must find the woman first. Out at Chula Vista there are a lot of beautiful elderly ladies in the Home who are all alone and would be only too glad to have a cozy home and a—a—pleasant husband and—all that. So we’ll go out on Saturday afternoon and look them over and pick out a good one. Then I’ll invite her to visit me for a week, and you and I will both be busy so Father-in-law will have to entertain her, and she’ll cut out old Whiskers in no time at all.”
Eveley flung out her hands jubilantly.
Mrs. Severs showed no enthusiasm. “That is what I wanted to tell you. He can’t. He is already married.”
Eveley dropped into a chair. “Married!” she stammered. “You told me Dody’s mother was dead.”
“She is, of course. But what I did not tell you is this. Three years ago while Dody was in France, father must have sort of lost his mind or something, for without a minute’s warning, he up and married somebody—a woman, of course. When Dody got home from the war she was not there, and when he asked about her, father just sort of laughed and looked sheepish, and said, ‘Oh, she’s gone on a visit.’ ‘Where to?’ Dody asked. ‘Oh, somewhere around,’ said father. ‘Is she coming back?’ asked Dody. ‘Holy Mackinaw, I hope not,’ said father, and that is the last we ever heard of her. But of course he is still married.”
It was a hard blow, but Eveley rallied at last, though slowly. “Don’t worry,” she said monotonously. “There is another adjustment. Just keep happy—and give me time.”