VII
IDA was out when her prospective tutor called, and she was deeply impressed by the card she found under the door: “Mr. William Cullen Whalen,” it was inscribed.
It was the custom of the gentlemen of her acquaintance to express their sense of good fellowship even upon the formal pasteboard. “Mr. Matt Dance,” “Mr. Phil Mott,” “Mr. Bill Jarvis,” the legends read. Ida felt as if she were reciting a line from the Eastern creed as her lips formed again and again the suave and labial syllables on her visitor’s card. She promptly determined to order cards for her husband on the morrow—he was so remiss as to have none—and they should be engraved, in small Roman letters: “Mr. Gregory Verrooy Compton.”
“And believe me,” she announced to her green dining-room, as she sat down before her husband’s desk, “that is some name.”
Her note to Professor Whalen, asking him to call on the following afternoon at two o’clock, was commendably brief, so impatient was she to arrive at the signature, “Mrs. Gregory Verrooy Compton;” little conceiving the effect it would have upon Mr. Whalen’s fastidious spine.
He called at the hour named, and Ida invited him into the dining-room. It was here that Gregory read far into the night, and she vaguely associated a large table with much erudition. Moreover, she prided herself upon her economy in fuel.
Mr. Whalen sat in one of the hard, upright chairs, his stick across his knee, his gloves laid smartly in the rolling brim of his hat, studying this new specimen and wondering if she could be made to do him credit. He was surprised to find her so beautiful, and not unrefined in style—if only she possessed the acumen to keep her ripe mouth shut. In fact he found her quite the prettiest woman he had seen in Butte, famous for pretty women; and—and—he searchedconscientiously for the right word, and blushed as he found it—the most seductive. Ida was vain of the fact that she wore no corset, and that not the least of her attractions was a waist as flexible as an acrobat’s. What flesh she had was very firm, her carriage was easy and graceful, the muscles of her back were strong, her lines long and flowing; she walked and moved at all times with an undulating movement usually associated with a warmer temperament. But nature often amuses herself bestowing the semblance and withholding the essence; Ida, calculating and contemptuous of the facile passions of men, amused herself with them, confident of her own immunity.
It was now some time since she had enjoyed the admiration of any man but her husband, and his grew more and more sporadic, was long since dry of novelty. Like most Western husbands, he would not have permitted her to make a friend of any other man, nor even to receive the casual admirer when he was not at home. Ida was full of vanity, although she would have expressed her sudden determination to captivate “little Whalen” merely as a desire to keep her hand in. He was the only man upon whom she was likely to practise at present (for Gregory would have none of the Club dances), and vanity can thirst like a galled palate. She had “sized him up” as a “squirt” (poor Ida! little she recked how soon she was to be stripped of her picturesque vocabulary), but he was “a long sight better than nothing.”
After they had exhausted the nipping weather, and the possibility of a Chinook arriving before night—there was a humming roar high overheard at the moment—she lowered her black eyelashes, lifted herself against the stiff back of her chair with the motion of a snake uncoiling, raised her thick white lids suddenly, and murmured:
“Well, so you’re goin’ to polish me off? Tell me all my faults! Fire away. I know you’ll make a grand success of it. Lord knows (her voice became as sweet as honey), you’re different enough from the other men in this jay town.”
Mr. Whalen felt as if he were being drenched with honey dew, for he was the type of man whom women take no trouble to educate. But as that sweet unmodulated voice stole about his ear porches he drew himself up stiffly, conscious of a thrill of fear. To become enamoured of thewife of one of these forthright Westerners, who took the law into their own hands, was no part of his gentle programme; but he stared at her fascinated, never having felt anything resembling a thrill before. Moreover, like all people of weak passions, more particularly that type of American that hasn’t any, he took pride in his powers of self-control. In a moment he threw off the baleful influence and replied drily.
“I think the lessons would better be oral for a time. Do—do I understand that I am to correct your individual method of expression?”
“That’s it, I guess.”
“And you won’t be offended?” Mr. Whalen’s upper teeth were hemispheric, but he had cultivated a paternal and not unpleasing smile. Even the pale blue orbs, fixed defiantly upon the siren, warmed a trifle.
“Well. I don’t s’pose I’ll like bein’ corrected better’n the next, but that’s what I’m payin’ for. Now that my husband’s studyin’ for a profession, I guess I’ll be in the top set before so very long. There’s Mrs. Blake, for instance—her husband told Mr. Compton she’d call this week. Is she all that she’s cracked up to be?”
“Mrs. Blake has had great advantages. She might almost be one of our own products, were it not for the fact that she—well—seems deliberately to wish to be Western.” He found himself growing more and more confused under the steady regard of those limpid shadowy eyes—set like the eyes of a goddess in marble, and so disconcertingly shallow. He pulled himself up sharply. “Now, if I may begin—you must not sign your notes, ‘Mrs. Gregory Verrooy Compton’——”
Ida’s eyes flashed wide open. “Why not, I’d like to know? Isn’t it as good a name as yours?”
“What has that to do with it? Ah—yes—you don’t quite understand. It is not the custom—in what we call society—to sign in that manner—it is a regrettable American provincialism. If you really wish to learn——”
“Fire away,” said Ida sullenly.
“Sign your own name—may I ask what it is?”
“My name was Ida Maria Hook before I married.”
“Ida is a beautiful and classic name. We will eliminate the rest. Sign yourself Ida Compton—or if you wish to be more swagger, Ida Verrooy Compton——”
“Land’s sake! We’d be laughed clean out of Montana.”
“Yes, there is a fine primitive simplicity about many things in this region,” replied Mr. Whalen, thinking of his spats and silk hat. “But you get my point?”
“I get you.”
“Oh!—We’ll have a little talk later about slang. And you mustn’t begin your letters, particularly to an acquaintance, ‘Dear friend.’ This is an idealistic and—ah—bucolic custom, but hardly good form.”
He was deeply annoyed at his lack of fluency, but Ida once more was deliberately “upsetting” him. She smiled indulgently.
“I guess I like your new-fangled notions. I’ll write all that down while you’re thinkin’ up what to say next.”
She leaned over the table and wrote slowly that he might have leisure to admire her figure in profile. But he gazed sternly out of the window until she swayed back to the perpendicular and demanded,
“What next? Do you want me to say băth and căn’t?”
“Oh, no, I really shouldn’t advise it, not in Butte. I don’t wish to teach you anything that will add to the discomforts of life—so long as your lines are cast here. Just modify the lamentably short Americanaa bit.” And he rehearsed her for a few moments.
“Fine. I’ll try it on Greg—Mr. Compton. If he laughs I’ll know I’m too good, but if he only puckers his eyebrows and looks as if somethin’ queer was floatin’ round just out of sight, then I’ll know I’ve struck the happy medium. I’ll be a real high-brow in less than no time.”
“You certainly are surprisingly quick,” said Professor Whalen handsomely. “In a year I could equip you for our centres of culture, but as I remarked just now it would not be kind to transform you into an exotic. Now, suppose we read a few pages of this grammar——”
“I studied grammar at school,” interrupted Ida haughtily. “What do you take Butte for, anyhow. It may be a mining camp, and jay enough compared with your old Boston, but I guess we learn something mor’n the alphabet at all these big red brick schoolhouses we’ve got—Montana’s famous for its grand schoolhouses——”
“Yes, yes, my dear Mrs. Compton. But, you know, one forgets so quickly. And then so many of you don’tstay in school long enough. How old were you when you left?”
“Fifteen. Ma wouldn’t let me go to the High.”
“Precisely. Well, I will adhere to my original purpose, and defer books until our next lesson. Perhaps you would like me to tell you something more of our Eastern methods of speech—not only words, but—er—syntax——”
“Oh, hang your old East! You make me feel downright patriotic.”
Professor Whalen was conscious that it was a distinct pleasure to make those fine eyes flash. “One would think we were not all Americans,” he said with a smile.
“Well, I guess you look upon America as East and West too. Loads of young surveyors and mining men come out here to make their pile, and at first Montana ain’t good enough to black their boots, but it soon takes the starch out of ’em. No use puttin’ on dog here. It don’t work.”
“Oh, I assure you it’s merely a difference of manner—of—er tradition. We—and I in particular—find your West most interesting—and significant. I—ah—regard it as the great furnace under our civilization.”
“And we are the stokers! I like your impudence!”
He had no desire to lose this remunerative pupil, whose crude mind worked more quickly than his own. She was now really angry and he made a mild dive in search of his admitted tact.
“My dear lady, you put words into my mouth that emanate from your own clever brain, not from my merely pedantic one. Not only have I the highest respect for the West, and for Montana in particular, but please remember that the contempt of the East for the West is merely passive, negative, when compared with the lurid scorn of the West for the East. ‘Effete’ is its mildest term of opprobrium. I doubt if your ‘virile’ Westerner believes us to be really alive, in a condition to inhabit aught but a museum. Your men when they ‘make their pile’, or take a vacation, never dream of going to Boston, seldom, indeed, to Europe. They take the fastest train for New York—and by no means with a view to exploring that wilderness for its oases of culture——”
“Well, I guess not!” cried Ida, her easy good nature restored. “All-night restaurants, something new in the way of girls—‘chickens’ and ‘squabs’—musical shows,watchin’ the sun rise—that’s their little old New York. They always come home shakin’ themselves like a Newfoundland puppy, or purrin’ like a cat full of cream, but talkin’ about the Great Free West, God’s Own Country, and the Big Western Heart. I’ve a friend who does manicurin’, and she knows ’em like old shoes.”
Whalen, who had a slight cultivated sense of humor, laughed. “You are indeed most apt and picturesque, dear Mrs. Compton. But—while I think of it—you mustn’t drop your finalgs. That, I am told, is one of the fashionable divagations of the British aristocracy. But with us it is the hallmark of the uneducated. Now, I really have told you all you can remember for one day, and will take my leave. It is to be every other day, I understand. On Wednesday, then, at two?”