XIII

XIII

SEVERAL weeks passed before Ora sent for Miss Ruby Miller. She was busier during those weeks than she had been for many months. Ida came every other day at one o’clock and remained until five. They carved wood in the attic, and looked at pictures or read in the library during the hour and a half that included tea. Ida confessed that during the latter interval she was so bored sometimes she could scream, but added that she would stick it out if she yawned every tooth in her head loose. One thing that never bored her was the picture of Ora—her working blouse changed for a dainty house gown—presiding at the tea-table. She studied every detail, every gesture; she even cultivated a taste for tea, which heretofore she had regarded as fit for invalids only, like jellies and cup-custard.

Ora’s alternate days and many of her evenings were filled with social duties. Butte was indulging in one of its hurricanes of festivity. Mrs. O’Hagan, who lived in the largest and finest house on the West Side, gave a series of dinner dances. Mrs. Burke, who owned the big ugly red house of appalling architecture built by Judge Stratton in the eighties, gave several entertainments in honour of two young visitors from Denver. Mrs. Maginnis, who lived in another palatial residence far west and far from the old Stratton house—which in its day had expressed the extreme limit of the city, as of fashion—gave a ball as brilliant as anything Ora had seen in a distant hemisphere. Flowers may be scarce in Butte, but flowers and palms may be imported by the carload from Helena, and the large rooms looked like an oasis in the grey desert of Butte. Every woman wore a ball gown made by some one of the great reiterative masters, and there were no wall flowers; for, although the tango had not yet set the whole world dancing, the women of Montana never had interpreted grey hairs as a signal to retire.

It was on the day after this ball that Ora had telephoned to Miss Miller. “Can you give me an hour or two tomorrow?” she asked.

“Sure. Can I come early? I’ve got fourteen heads to dress for the Cameron ball, and most of them want a facial too?”

“A what?”

“Face massage, and touchin’ up generally.”

“Oh.”

“It’s fine. Makes you feel as good as you look. What did you want me to do?”

“Ob, shampoo my hair. I want to consult you about it, too—and manicure.”

“Well, I’ll bring the creams along, and if you want a massage I’ll be ready.”

Ora had succeeded in making Miss Miller propose what she had quite made up her mind to try, and she rang off with a smile. The evening before she had thought herself the plainest woman at the party, and the effect of this discouraging conclusion had been to kill her animation and sag her shoulders until she knew she must look as dowdy as she felt. For the first time she realised how a blighted vanity may demoralise the proudest intellect. It was time to get a move on, as her new but rapidly developing friend would put it.

Ora was very proud of her work. She gave Professor Whalen due credit, and knew that Ida toiled at her exercises, but doubted if the uninspiring pedant would have been retained had it not been for the sense of emulation, slightly tinctured by jealousy, she managed to rouse in her new boon companion when they were together. But Ida was now exercising something of her latent force of character, determined to make the most of advantages for which she knew many a sudden-rich woman would “give her eye teeth.” She would polish up “good and plenty” before her husband made his strike; and waste no precious time on the inside of her skull when she had the cash to spend on its outside.

After the first week she dropped no more g’s, her grammar rapidly improved, and although she never would be a stylist, nor altogether forswear slang, not only because the ready-made phrase appealed to her unliterary mind, but because its use was ingrained, she reserved it more andmore for those that best could appreciate it. As it annoyed Professor Whalen excessively, she went afield for new phrases “for the fun of seeing him wriggle.”

On the other hand, whenever she felt in the mood, she gazed at him with penitent languid eyes, promised never to use slang again, and amused herself racking other nerves. She knew just how far to go and “turned him off,” or “switched him back on to the track” before any real harm was done. Some day she might let him make a scene just for the fun of the thing, but not until she was “good and ready.”

Her feeling for Ora was more difficult to define. Sometimes she almost loved her, not only inspired by gratitude, but because Ora’s personal magnetism was intensified by every charm of refinement, vivacity, mental development, as well as by a broad outlook on life and a sweetness of manner which never infuriated her by becoming consciously gracious. At other times she hated her, for she knew that no such combination ever could be hers. Ora was a patrician born of patricians. She might go to the devil, preside over one of the resorts down on The Flat, take to drink and every evil way, and still would she be patrician. Herself might step into millions and carry her unsullied virtue to her grave and she never would be the “real thing.” For the first time she understood that being “a lady” had little to do with morals or behaviour. Nothing irritates the complacent American more than the sudden appreciation of this fact.

“But I guess I’ll be as good as some others,” Ida consoled herself. “After all, I don’t see so many Ora Blakes lying round loose. People don’t bother much these days if your clothes make their mouth water and your grammar don’t queer you.”

Gregory, when he had time to think about it—he read even at the breakfast and dinner-table, and had an assay plant in the cellar—was charmed with her improvement, and told her abruptly one day that if she kept faithfully to her tasks until November he would give her the thousand dollars he had received under the will of his aunt. “And you can do what you like with it,” he added. “I shan’t ask you. That’s the way I enjoyed money when I was a kid, and I guess women are much the same.”

“A thousand dollars!” Ida was rigid, her mouth open.“Geewhil—I beg pardon—My! But you are good!” She paused to rearrange her thoughts, which were in danger of flying off into language her husband was paying to remodel. “Can I really do anything with it I like?”

“You can.” He smiled at her bright wide-open eyes and flaming cheeks.

“I ain’t—haven’t said anything about it as I didn’t think it would be any sort of use, but Ora is going to Europe in the fall, and she told me Mark was going to try to persuade you to let me go with her. Now I can go on my thousand dollars, if you don’t mind. Mark wants you to stay with him.”

“He spoke to me about it—I had forgotten. There couldn’t be a better arrangement. This is the time for you to go to Europe—while your mind is still plastic.”

“You don’t seem to mind my going a little bit.” Rapture gave place to suspicion. Ida was not born with faith in man.

“My dear child! What good am I to you now? You might be keeping house for a deaf mute. All I need is the right kind of food and a comfortable bed. I’ll get both at Mark’s. Next year you would see even less of me than you do now. We get our last and most practical drilling in ore-dressing, metallurgy, power-utilisation, and geology. We shall be off half the time on geological expeditions, visits to mines in other parts of the state, smelters, the most up-to-date of the cyanide mills. So you see how much I shall be at home. Go to Europe and enjoy yourself.”

“All right. I’ll go. You bet. And I’ll not miss a trick. There’ll never be a thousand dollars better spent.”

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