XVI
ORA discerned certain changes in Ida as the three reunited friends, with so many pleasant memories in common, talked gaily at luncheon. It was not only that she was a trifle thinner but there were shadows in her eyes that gave them troubled depths. The curves of her mouth also were less assured, and her strong, rather large, but beautiful hands had a restless movement. Ora, whose imagination was always ready to spring from the leash and visualise a desired conclusion, pictured Ida, if not already in love with this good-looking and delightful Englishman, as circling close; neglected and mortified, she longed for the opportunity to live her life with him; in short was champing the bit.
Ora led the conversation—no great adroitness was necessary—to the many divorces pending in Butte at the moment. Ida sniffed. Ora asserted gaily that they were merely a casual result of an era of universal progress and individualism; one of the commonplaces of modern life that hardly called for comment. “You are so up to date in everything else, my dear,” she concluded, “that I wonder you cling to such old middle-class prejudices.”
“I guess there are a few conservatives and brakes left in this country,” said Ida, drily. “I may look back with horror at the time when I chewed gum and walked out of a restaurant with a toothpick in my mouth, but Ma hammered most of my good old-fashioned prejudices into my back with the broom-handle, and I’m no more likely to forget her opinion of divorce—the poor get it sometimes as well as the rich—than the bastings I got if I played hookey from school, or sneaked out after dark alone with a beau.”
“My mother was exactly the same,” said Ora, with that charming spontaneity which so often robbed her words of the subtle insult of condescension, or the more cryptic of irony. “If I hadn’t happened to be a book-worm andhad indulged in clandestine love affairs I should have been shut up on bread and water. And she had all a Southern woman’s horror of divorce. But, dear Ida! That was in the dark ages. We live in the most enlightened and individualistic era of the world’s history. I have kept my eyes and ears open ever since. Nor do I believe for a moment that we are getting any worse—we merely have achieved a more well-bred indifference toward other people’s affairs. One can hear a scandal a minute in large towns and small, if one has nothing better to do than listen; but whereas in our mothers’ time a woman was dropped if she was ‘talked about,’ today we don’t turn a hair at anything short of a quite superlative divorce court scandal—not even about girls; always provided that they continue to dress well, and keep on being charming and spending money.”
“That is about the most cynical thing I ever heard you say.”
“The truth always sounds cynical. You laugh at me for dreaming and being an idealist, but I never have shut my mind to facts as you do.”
“I don’t even blink the old facts. I don’t like them, that’s all. I don’t say, of course, that if I were married to a brute who came home drunk and beat me—but this swapping husbands like horses—well, I’m content to be a brake as long as there’s any wheel to freeze to. You know I’m not hitting at you,” she added hastily. “I’d give you the moon if you wanted it; but I put you in a class by yourself, that’s all.”
“Oh,” cried Ora, laughing. “Let us change the subject before you prove that your logic turns feminine at the crucial test. Heavens! How hideous Butte is. We drove——”
“Hideous? Butte?” demanded Ida indignantly.
“Oh, you see it through the glamour of a triumphal progress. Wait until the novelty has worn off. How do you find it?” she asked Mowbray, who had relished his excellent luncheon and admired his ally’s tactics.
“Rippin’ air. Nearly took a header out of the window this mornin’ thinkin’ I had wings. But as for looks—those mountains in the distance are not half-bad, but the foreground is—er—a little ragged—and—new—you know.” He smiled into Ida’s warning eyes. “Really,dear lady, I can understand that you were keen on gettin’ home again, because home is home, don’t you know. But beauty—tell me just where you do find it.”
Ida tossed her head. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and mine beholds it. That is enough for me. Now, run along to the Club. I haven’t seen Ora for ages. You may come back for tea.”
She led the way up to her bedroom and they made themselves comfortable and lit their cigarettes.
“Odd as it would seem,” said Ida, “to those east and west of us who have an idea that Butte has been on one prolonged spree since she was really a camp, I have to enjoy my occasional cigarette on the sly. A few of the younger women smoke, when they have locked the doors and pulled the blinds down—and of course The Bunch does; but the majority—and those that never bat an eyelash at cocktails and champagne—think it indecent for a woman to smoke. Funny world.”
“Butte is a provincial hole. As there are no strangers present you needn’t bother to defend it. I’ve just had a brilliant idea. Why don’t you divorce Mr. Compton and marry Mowbray?”
“Aw!” Ida dropped her cigarette and burned a hole in her skirt. “Are you raving crazy?”
“I thought I was advancing a peculiarly level-headed suggestion——”
“None of it in mine!”
“But, my dear Ida, you will tire inevitably of this old camp. The glamour of all this return in a gilded chariot drawn by the cheering populace will wear off in about six months. So will your own novelty for them. It is all indescribably cheap, anyhow. If you send Mowbray away now, he will try to forget you, and forgetting is man’s peculiar accomplishment. You will have missed a great opportunity. You and Mr. Compton are manifestly indifferent to each other. Seize your chance, dear—not only for happiness, but for a splendid social position, before——”
Ora paused. Ida was glaring ahead of her with her heavy black brows pushed low over her flaming eyes. Her lips were drawn back over her sharp little teeth. Her nostrils were distended. She looked like some magnificent beast of the jungle stalking her prey.
“By God!” she whispered, her whole body heaving, “I’ll have him back. I was a fool before I left, and maybe I shouldn’t have left him at all. It’s never safe to leave a man. But when I do get him back he’ll be glad of all I’ve learned. He’s like a lunatic with a fixed idea just now—but wait.”
Ora felt cold and numb. She tried to rise, and wondered if the shock had paralysed her. She managed to articulate: “You love him then?”
But not even to Ora could Ida make any such admission; she who always had flouted both sentiment and passion! She recovered herself and tossed her head.
“Love! Who cares about love? Do you think I’m the sort of woman a man can throw down for a mine? I wouldn’t stand it even it were another woman—but ore! It makes me sick. I won’t be thrown down. And I’ll get him back!”
Ora too had recovered herself. She lit another cigarette. “I’m so glad you don’t care, dear. No man is worth agonising over, as you so often have said yourself. Forgive the doubt. I should have remembered that you were far too clever and worldly-wise for that sort of thing. That is the main reason that I am willing to marry Valdobia: I can be fond of him, like him always, be grateful for his companionship, but he can’t tear my heart out.”
“I thought you told me when you came back that you were mad about him?”
“Oh, I fancy I was strung up that day. When I am excited I always exaggerate. But do think over what I have said about Mowbray. And it would be heavenly to have you in Europe.”
“My mind’s made up. I guess I’m American to my core and marrow. Titles will never seem natural to me, and I guess we’ll both live to see them so tangled up with democracy that those that are left will look like old labels on new cans. No has-beens in mine. Oh, chuck it! What’s this I hear about little Whalen—that he’s resigned from the High and been out in the mountains prospecting since the beginning of Spring? I’ve only seen him once since I came back and then he looked like a viper that had been stepped on.”
“I met him the other day when I was out walking. He bought a claim of one of the prospectors that swarmed outthere as soon as they heard of the Primo and the Perch strikes. He wore overalls and a beard. I scarcely knew him. He talked rather wildly about the hill he has located on being another Perch of the Devil.”
“I guess Gregory is responsible for that and a good many other wild dreams. I hear that a lot of young men are coming out from the East this Summer to prospect in those hills. Well, they’ll succeed or fail according to their luck mostly. Let’s go out. You’ve got two hours before your train goes—but if you’ve got a list a yard long——”
And the two sallied forth in perfect peace to shop.