XVII
THERE was a knock on the front door. Ida, smoothing her hair, hastened to open it, glad of diversion. Ora stood there. For a moment the girls looked hard at each other, then burst into laughter.
“What’s up?” asked Ida. “You look——”
“My dear, it is I who should ask? Your face is crimson; you look as if you had just given someone a beating, and I met poor little Whalen, dusty, dishevelled, growling like a mad dog—he didn’t know me.”
“Well, I guess he won’t know himself for a while,” said Ida drily, leading the way into the parlour. “When he comes to he’ll have his work cut out to climb back to his little two-cent pedestal and fit on his battered halo.” She related the incident. “What do you know about that?” she demanded in conclusion. “Wouldn’t it come and get you?”
“I am afraid you have made an enemy. It is always best to let them down gently, save their pride—and—ah!—it isn’t customary to throw gentlemen out of the window!”
“Gentlemen!” snorted Ida. “He’s no gentleman. He not only kissed me with his horrid front teeth, but he insinuated that I was just languishing for him, the——” Once more Ida’s feelings overflowed in language not intended for print. “It made me so mad I’d have lammed him with the umbrella if we’d been in the hall.”
“Ida,” asked Ora abruptly, “would you have minded so much if he had been good-looking and attractive?”
“Well—perhaps—I guess in that case I’d simply have smacked him and let him get out quick by the front door. But I don’t want any man touching me. I’m a married woman.”
“But if you flirt and lead them on——”
“You said once yourself that American men understood the game and knew how to take their medicine.”
“I also said that they can fall more tiresomely in love than any other men. Of course the Whalens don’t count. But do you intend to go on making men fall in love with you and throwing them—metaphorically—out of the window?”
“Much chance I’ll get.”
“You’ll find plenty of chances in Europe. You are a remarkably beautiful woman. And Europeans take what we call flirting for shameless encouragement.”
“Well, I guess I’ll be getting experience of the world all right. And the Lord knows I’d like to be admired by men who have seen something. I can take care of myself, and Greg don’t need to worry.”
“I’ve no doubt of that. Of course you are awfully fond of Mr. Compton, aren’t you?” Ora spoke somewhat wistfully.
“Oh, yes; fond enough, fonder than a good many wives, I guess, for he’s kind and pleasant, and no earthly trouble about the house. But when a woman marries she gets a kid right there at the altar, and he’s her biggest kid till his false teeth drop out on his death-bed, and his great-grandchildren are feeding him through a tube. I don’t want any of the other sort of kids, and I guess I’m not what you call the maternal woman, but the Lord knows I’m a mother to Greg and a good one. I’d like to know what he’d do without me—that’s the only reason I hate leaving. He never thinks of changing his shoes when they’re wet, and half the time wouldn’t eat anything but his book if I didn’t put the stuff right in front of him.”
“Mark knows him almost as well as you do, and will look after him. My maid, who is practically my housekeeper, and an old family servant, will also keep a maternal eye on him.”
“He keeps himself tidy,” conceded Ida handsomely. “Wants clean things every day, but never knows where to find them. He’ll wander out into the kitchen where I’m cooking breakfast and ask where his socks are, and they always in the same drawer.”
“I fancy you’ve spoiled him.”
“Not I. I don’t hold with spoiling men. They’re born spoiled anyhow. I found Greg walking round in a dream when I married, and a pile of socks as high as the door knob he’d thrown away because they’d holes in them sotiny you could hardly see them. I darned every one, you bet, and he’s wearing them now, though he don’t know it. He’s like that, as dainty as a cat, and as helpless as a blind kitten. I am a wife and I know my duty,” concluded Ida virtuously.
“I certainly shall give Custer minute directions. I can’t have you worrying.”
“I’ll not worry, once I’m started. Don’t you fret! But what’s the matter with you, Ora? You look kinder excited, and kinder—well, harassed. How’s that out of the new pocket dictionary I’ve set up in my head?”
“I’ll soon have to look to my own vocabulary. Oh—I——”
“Something’s up. Spit it out. It’ll do you good.”
“Dear Ida! If you must use slang, do confine yourself to that which has passed through the mint of polite society. There is an abundance to choose from!”
“Don’t you worry; I won’t disgrace you. But I must let out a tuck occasionally when we’re alone. Greg wouldn’t let me go to any of the Club dances, and I scarcely ever see Ruby or Pearl, they’re so busy—to say nothing of myself!”
“Very well,” said Ora, laughing. “Let me be your safety valve, by all means.”
“Fire away.”
“Oh—how am I to tell you—I scarcely know, myself——”
“I guess you’re waking up. Ruby, who knows human nature like a book——”
Ora half rose. “Have you been talking me over with Miss Miller?” she asked haughtily.
“Not much. Hardly seen her since we met. But you interest Butte, you know. I guess they talk you over good and plenty. It was only a few days before you called that the Miller girls visited with me all day, and they talked a lot about you. Ruby said that if you’d come to out of the sleeping beauty stage, you’d make things hum, and that her fingers just itched to get at your skin and hair.”
“She said that to me once; and I don’t mind telling you that I called her in some time ago.”
“Oh, I’m not a bat. I’ve seen you looking prettier every day, and there’s only one way to do it, when you’velet yourself go. I’ve had the benefit of Ruby’s advice for years, and I don’t propose to let myself go, not for a minute.”
“Right you are. And do live your life normally from day to day, developing normally. The awakening process, when the Nature that made you is no longer content to be a mere footstool for the mind, is almost as painful as coming to after drowning. I suddenly have become conscious of myself, as it were; I am interested in many more things—personal things—I seem to want far more of life than I did a few months ago——”
“In other words, you don’t know where you’re at.”
Ora laughed merrily. “My present condition could not be stated more patly!”
“Ora, I don’t want to pry into your confidence, and you’re not one to give much of that anyhow, but everybody in Butte knows that you’re not in love with Mark, and never were, nice as you treat him—only because you couldn’t be anything but a lady if you tried. Mrs. O’Neil, one day when she was having a massage, told Ruby all about your marriage. She said you were the most bewildered young thing she ever saw, and that Mark snapped you up before another young man could get a look at you. Now, I’ve known Mark all my life—he beaued my sister who died, for a year or two, and his mother’s cottage was just up the hill anyhow; and although he’s a good chap and a born hustler, and bound to get rich, he’s not the sort of man women fall in love with. You wouldn’t have fallen in love with him, if he’d been born a millionaire, and travelled and got Butte out of his system. And if your father had left you well off, you wouldn’t have looked at him. There’s men, bad and good—that’s to say, better—that women fall in love with, and there’s men bad and good that they don’t, not in a thousand years. Poor old Mark’s a Don’t all right. You ain’t angry at my saying all this, but Mark was like my own brother for years?”
“Oh, no, I am not angry. You are far too matter-of-fact. You might be discussing different grades of ore!”
“Well, that’s about it, and the poor ore can’t help itself, any more than the slag and gangue can, and Mark’s not either of those, you bet. He’s good metal, all right, only he didn’t come out of the Anaconda mine—What have you turned so red about? My! But you do blush easy!”
“It’s this—do you despise me—do you think I did wrong—Oh, I mean I have quite suddenly realised that I never should have married any man for so contemptible a reason. I should have gone to work——”
“Work? You?”
“Why not? Many a delicately nurtured woman has earned her bread.”
“The more fool she if she could get a man to earn it for her. That’s what they’re for. The Lord knows they pride themselves on the way they do it, being the stronger sex, and a lot more words. I guess I’d have married before Greg turned up if I’d met a man I was sure was going to make something of himself. You did just right to take a good husband and take him quick when you found yourself in a hole.”
“Yes—but——” Her blush deepened. “You see—” Ora never had had an intimate confidant. It was doubtful if she ever would have; not, at all events, a woman. But Ida, as she herself would have expressed it, could always see through a stone wall when there was a crack in it.
“Oh, shucks!” she said. “Don’t let that worry you. If you don’t feel that way first you do last, I guess. Most of us are bored to death, but women have stood it for a few thousand years, and I guess they can stand it for a few thousand more. We all of us have to pay high for anything we want. That’s about the size of it. Forget it.”
“Thanks, dear, you console me.” Ora smiled with closed eyes, but she was thrilled with a sudden inexplicable longing; like other of her recent sensations, it puzzled and alarmed her.
“Ora!” exclaimed Ida suddenly. “There’s one thing that’s just as sure as death and taxes; and knowing men and knowing life don’t help women one little bit. It’s this: A woman’s got to have her love affair sooner or later. If she marries for love she’s pretty safe, for ten or fifteen years, anyhow. But if she doesn’t, well, she’ll get it in the neck sooner or later—and it’ll be about the time she begins to sit up and take notice. She’s a regular magnet then, too. So watch out.”
Ora opened her eyes. They looked like steel. “I have never given a thought to love. There is nothing I wantless. I shall continue to make Mark as good a wife as I know how to be——”
“Oh, I’m not saying you’ll go off the hooks, like some I could mention in your own bunch, but if the man comes along you’ll fall in love all right. Might as well try to stop a waterfall from jumping over the rocks. I’m not so dead sure I do know what you’d do. Pride, and high breeding, and duty would pull one way, but—well, I guess when you marble women get waked up good and plenty, what they call roused, you’re the worst kind. A considerable number of other things would pull from the opposite direction, and one of them would be the man.”
“Ida!” said Ora, aghast. “How do you know so much? Your opportunities have been very limited.”
“Oh, have they? Wasn’t I born and brought up in a mining camp? Butte is some education, believe me. I ran straight all right, not only because the sporting life had no charms for me but because I figured on moving over one of these days to Millionaire Gulch. But it wasn’t for want of opportunity, and the same opportunities were handed over by men of your crowd—or fixin’ to be. Besides, some women are born wise that way, I guess, and I’m one of ’em. You’ve been living in a sort of self-made heaven all your life, with only books for inhabitants. I could put you wise every day in the week.”
“It is true that although I saw a good deal of life while my mother lived so much in the world, and always have been deeply interested in the work of the psychological novelists, particularly the Europeans—I—well, I never applied it to my—never thought much about it until lately. I do not seem to know myself the least little bit.”
“I guess it’ll be me—Oh, Lord, I—taking you to Europe, not you me. I’ll see that you don’t get into mischief, for I’d hate like the dickens to have you go to pieces over any man. Not one of them that ever lived since Adam is worth it. They’re all right to marry, all things being equal, but to sacrifice your life for, nixie. Any style of man you are partial to? I’ll keep his sort off with a broom.”
“I’ve never gone so far as even to think——”
“Every woman has her style in men,” said Ida firmly. “I heard of a woman once who had three husbands and each one had a wart on his nose.”
“Oh, you are funny! I have heard that a woman falls in love with a type, not with the man, and, like all epigrams, that one contains a half-truth. I had two or three girlish fancies; one was an Austrian officer, another a French nobleman—and not impecunious—he wasn’t a fortune hunter. The third was a New Yorker who fell in love with my cousin and married her. I had a few heart spasms over him, in particular; possibly because he was quite out of reach. It is true that they were all more of or less of a type—tall and thin and dark, with something very keen and clever and modern in their lean—rather hard faces.”
“Hi!” cried Ida.
“What is the matter? You look at me as if you had seen a ghost.”
Ida threw back her head and laughed, showing her sharp little white teeth, and straining her throat until the firm flesh looked thin and drawn, over too strong muscles. “Oh, Lord! I was just thinking what a lot of trouble I’m in for, playing dragon to my lily-white lady. I guess about half the men in the world are brunettes, fat or lean. Say, are you going to the Prom? It’s only a month off.”
“I hadn’t thought about it. Probably. I have been asked to be a patroness, and Mark is sure to want to go. Have you decided what to wear?”
“Ma gave me a coral-red silk when I married, and I’m going to make it over and veil it with black net.”
“Splendid!” cried Ora warmly. “Bring it up to the house. Mrs. Finley is really an excellent seamstress. We’ll all take a hand. It will be great fun. And you will look stunning.”
“What will you wear?”
“I expect some gowns from my New York dressmaker in a few days. It will depend upon the state of my complexion, I fancy.”