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Beatrice sprang up, letting Monster scramble unheeded to the floor. “Oh, you are trying to punish me!”––pretending mock horror. “Stevuns dear, don’t mind my not going! Plans are plans, you must learn to understand. And I’ll send her a lovely black waist and a plum pudding for her Christmas. Tell her I was laid up with one of my bad heads.... No? You won’t let me fib? Horrid old thing––come and kiss me!... Ah, you never refuse to kiss me, nice cave man with bad manners and muddy shoes, wanting to thump his strong dear fists on my little Chippendale tables––and grow so good and booky all in an instant. Forgets he was ever a bad pirate and robbed everyone until he could buy his Gorgeous Girl. Good-bye, story-book man, don’t let the old funeral frazzle you!”
Steve left the house, undecided whether he was taking things too seriously and ought to apologize for being rude to Beatrice or whether his intuitive impression was correct––that Beatrice was not the sort of person he had imagined but that he, per se, was to blame in the matter.
Steve chose to take a street car to the Faithful house. He shrank from creating the atmosphere of a generous and overbearing magnate whose chauffeur opened the door of his machine and waited for him to step majestically upon terra firma. He felt merely a sympathetic friend, for some reason, as he walked the three blocks from the street car through slush and ice, and realized that Mary Faithful trudged back and forth this same pathway twice a day.
Unexpectedly he met Mary at the door, rather white faced and grayer of eyes than usual, but the same sensible Mary who did not believe in any of the129customary agonies of grieving proper, as she afterward told him. The old house had not assumed a funereal air. There were flowers on the tables and the cheery fire crackled in the grate, and even the face of the dead woman seemed more content and optimistic than it had ever been in life.
Steve was not expected to go to the cemetery so he trudged back through the same slush to the street car. A fish-market doorway proved a haven during a long wait. He lounged idly against the doorway as if he were an unemployed person casting about for new fields of endeavour instead of the rushed young Midas whose office phone was ringing incessantly.
He was thinking about Mary Faithful’s pleasant manner, the atmosphere of the old-fashioned house, where there was no effort to be smart or gorgeous or to conceal its shabbiness. He hoped Mary would return to the office within the next few days. He wanted her more than he wanted any one else, but he told himself this was because he was selfish and she was a capable machine. No, that was not it, he decided a moment later as he looked in at the activities of the fish market with passing interest.
Mary no longer seemed a mere machine but a remarkable woman, a womanly woman, too. He liked the old house with its atrocious horsehair sofa and chair tidies and the Rogers group in the front bay window. The fire had been so elemental and soothing, so were the pots of flowers, the shabby piano, and even more shabby books. One could rest there, distributing whole flocks of newspapers where he would. The death awe had not been permitted to take a paramount place. How lucky Luke was, to have such a sister.
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Mary was about Beatrice’s age. At thirteen she had begun to earn her own living. At thirteen Beatrice had had a pony cart, a governess, a multitude of frocks, her midwinter trip to New York, where she saw all the musical comedies and gorged on chocolates and pastry.
The upshot of it was that Steve decided to call on Mary the following afternoon; it was only courtesy he told himself by way of an excuse. He wanted to talk to her––not of business but of life, of the shabby old house. Outwardly he wanted to ask if he might help her and what her plans were, but in reality he wanted her to help him. He no longer felt displeased that Beatrice had not come with him; he felt positive Mary would understand, that she would dismiss Trudy’s slight with proper scorn. Beatrice would have insisted upon arriving in state. By this time the bridge club with its Russian sweetmeats, its six-hundred-dollar china plates, the new afternoon frock, and the spoofing of Trudy must be well under way!
The fish market was not doing a land-office business. Stray purchasers approached and halted before the cashier’s cage. Steve began watching them. Suddenly he became aware of the gorgeous young woman presiding behind the wire cage, reluctantly pushing out change and accepting slips, completely preoccupied in her own thoughts, while a copy of theHigh Blood Pressure Weeklylay at one side. What attracted Steve was the horrible similarity between this young person and his own wife! Both had the same fluffed, frizzled hair and a gay light chiffon frock with gold trimmings. Though it was December the toothpick point of a white-kid slipper protruded from the cage. An imitation Egyptian131necklace called attention to the thin, powdered throat. The cashier was altogether a cheap copy of Beatrice’s general appearance. She had the same tiny, nondescript features and indolent expression in her eyes; she was most superior in her fashion of dealing with the customers, never deigning to speak or be spoken to. As soon as she spied Steve, however, she smiled an invitation to enter and become owner of half a whitefish or so.
Then the car came and he leaped aboard. It seemed unbearable that a counterpart of Beatrice O’Valley was making change at Sullivan’s Fish Market––but more unbearable to realize that women in the position of Beatrice O’Valley dressed and rouged––and acted very often––in such a fashion that women in the position of Trudy and this cashier queen sought industriously to imitate them.
Luke showed his grief in the normal manner of any half-grown, true-blue lad, singularly thoughtful of his sister’s wishes, and mentioning everyone and everything except their mother and her death.
“We won’t give up having a home,” Mary told him the night of the funeral; “we’ll move into a smaller place so I can take care of it.”
“I guess I’ll work pretty hard at school,” was all he answered.
“Of course you will. I’m proud of you now, and if you work and show you deserve it I’ll help you through college.”
Luke shook his head. “Takes too long before I could get to earning real money. You ought to have it easy pretty soon.”
“I love my work. Besides, you will live your own132life, and so you must grow up and love someone and marry her. I can’t depend on any one but myself,” she added, a little bitterly.
Luke stared into the fire. Perhaps this tousle-haired, freckle-faced boy surmised his sister’s love-story. If so no one––least of all his sister––should ever hear of the facts from his lips.
“I’m never going to get married. I want to make a lot of money like Mr. O’Valley did––quick. Then we’ll go and live in Europe and maybe I’ll get a steam yacht and we’ll hunt for buried treasure,” he could not refrain from adding.
“All right, dear. Just work hard for now and be my pal; we’ll let the future take care of itself. Another thing––we want to have as merry a Christmas as if mother were with us. It’s the only thing to do or else we’ll find ourselves morbid and unable to keep going.”
Shamed tears were stoically refused entrance into Luke’s blue eyes. “I guess I’ll buy you a silver-backed comb and brush. I got some extra money.”
“Oh, Luke––dear!” Mary made the fatal error of trying to hug him. He wriggled away.
“Trudy never came near us,” he said, sternly.
Mary was silent.
“But Mr. O’Valley came like a regular–––”
“Don’t you think you ought to get to bed?” Mary changed the subject. “Sleep in the room next to mine if you like.”
“When are you coming upstairs?”
“Soon. I want to look over the letters.”
Luke rose and pretended a nonchalant stretching.
“Are you going to the office right away?”
“Not until New Year’s.”
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Something in the tired way she spoke evoked Luke’s pity and sent him away to smother his boy-man’s grief by promises of a glorious future in which his sister should live in the lap of luxury.
With its customary shock death had for the time being given Mary a false estimate of her mother and herself, the usual neurasthenic experience people undergo at such a time. It seemed, as she sat alone by the fire, that she must have been a strangely selfish and ungrateful child who misunderstood, neglected, and underestimated her mother, and she would be forced to live with reproachful memories the rest of her days. Each difference of opinion––and there had been little else––which had risen between them was magnified into brutal injustice on Mary’s part and righteous indignation on her mother’s. This state of mind would find a proper readjustment in time but that did not comfort Mary at the present moment. Her mother was dead, and when a mother is gone so is the home unless someone bravely slips into the absent one’s place without delay and assumes its responsibilities and credits. For Luke’s sake this was what Mary had resolved to do.
As she could not sleep she rummaged in a cabinet containing old letters and mementos, which added fuel to her self-reproach and misery. She had borne up until now. Mary had always been the sort who could meet a crisis. Reaction had set in and she felt weak and faulty, longing for a strong shoulder upon which to cry and be forgiven for her imagined shortcomings. As she read yellowed letters of bygone days and lives, finding the record of a baby sister who had lived only a few days and of whom she had been in ignorance, a scrap of her mother’s wedding134gown, old tintypes––she realized that her family was no more and that everyone needed a family, a group of related persons whose interests, arguments, events, and achievements are of particular benefit and importance each to the other and who unconsciously challenge the world, no matter what secret disagreements there may be, to disrupt them if they dare! Now only Luke and Mary comprised the family.
After midnight Mary battled herself into the commonsense attitude of going to bed. Wakening after the dreamless sleep of the exhausted she found low spirits and self-blame had somewhat diminished and though her state of mind was as serious as her gray eyes yet life was not utterly bereft of compensations.
Luke had thoughtfully risen early, clumsily tiptoeing about to get breakfast. Neighbours had furnished the customary donations of cake, pie, and doughnuts, which gave Luke the opportunity of spreading the breakfast table with these kingly viands and doing justice to them in no half-hearted fashion.
The sun streamed through the starched window curtains, and even the empty rocking-chair seemed serene in the relief from its morbid burden. Christmas was only a few days away. Mary decided that they should have a truly Christmas dinner, and that the words she had bravely spoken as a three-year-old runaway, found a mile from home and offered assistance by kindly strangers, should become quite true: “Not anybody need take care of myself,” Mary had declared in dauntless fashion.
Later in the day Luke went to the office because Mary thought it best. So when Steve called he135found her alone, the same cheery fire burning in the grate, the same posies blooming in their window pots, and the smell of homemade bread pervading the house, Mary in a soft gray frock presiding over the walnut secretary.
“I’m sorry not to be at the office,” she began, thinking he had come to persuade her to return. “Sit down. Well––you see,” indicating the stacks of addressed envelopes––“I really can’t come back until after the New Year. Do you mind? There is a great deal to be seen to here, and I feel I’ve earned the right to loaf for a week. I want particularly to make the holidays happy for Luke.”
“Of course you do. Besides, you never had your vacation.”
“We’ll call this a vacation and I’ll work extra hard to prove to you that it was worth the granting.” Still she did not understand that he wanted to talk to her for the very comfort of her companionship, to enjoy the fire, the smell of homemade bread, the atmosphere of shabby, lovely, everyday plain living.
“We’ll decide that later. I came to see just––you. Surprised? I wanted to ask if there is anything I can do for you. I want to help if I may.”
“I’ve no exact plans. Just a definite idea of finding a small apartment and making it as homey as possible. I loathe apartments usually,” she added, impulsively, “but we must have a home and I can’t assume a whole house. We will take our old things and fix them over, and the worst of them we’ll pass on to someone needing them badly enough not to mind what they are.” She was quite frank in admitting the tortured walnut and the engravings.
“I’m glad you are not going to break up and136board––though it’s none of my business. I brought some fruit. Do you mind?” He had been trying to hide behind the chair a mammoth basket of fruit.
“No. How lovely of you and Mrs. O’Valley!”
“It was not possible for Mrs. O’Valley to come yesterday,” he forced himself to say. “She was very sorry and is going to call on you later.”
“Thank you,” Mary answered, briefly.
“You have a nice old place here. Mind if I stroll about and stare? I have very seldom been in rooms like this one. An orphan asylum, a ranch, a hall bedroom, star boarder, a club, a better club, the young palace––is my record. How different you seem in your home, Miss Faithful. Perhaps it’s the dress. I like soft gray–––” he caught himself in time.
Mary was blushing. She called his attention to some wood carving her father had done. Presently Steve changed the subject back to himself.
“You don’t know how I’d like a slice of homemade bread,” he pleaded. “Must I turn up my coat collar and go stand at the side door?”
“I made it because Luke had eaten nothing but pie and cake. You really don’t want just bread?”
“I do––two slices, thick, stepmother size, please.”
It seemed quite unreal to Mary as she was finally prevailed upon to bring in the tea wagon with the bread and jam trimmings to accompany the steaming little kettle.
“Man alive,” sighed Steve, stretching out leisurely, “I came to console you and I’m being consoled and fed––in body and mind––made fit for work.... I say, what do you think of letting the Boston merger be made public at the banquet137on–––” He began a budget of business detail upon which Mary commented, agreeing or objecting as she felt inclined.
It was so easy to become clear-headed about work––details became adjusted with magical speed––when one had a gray-eyed girl with a tilted freckled nose sitting opposite. The soft gray dress played a prominent part, too, even if the Gorgeous Girl would have been amused at its style and material. Besides this, there was the wood fire, the easy-chair with gay Turkey-red cushions designed for use and not admiration, and no yapping spaniel getting tangled up in one’s heels.
Before they realized it twilight arrived, and simultaneously they began to be self-conscious and formal, telling themselves that this would never do, no, indeed! Dear me, what queer things do happen all in a day! Still, it would always be a splendid thing to remember.
Certainly it was more edifying than to confront a nervous Gorgeous Girl who had discovered that her maid had been reading her personal notes.
“I sprinkled talcum powder on them and the powder is all smudged away, so Jody has been spying. She is packing her things now and I shall refuse any references. But who will ever take such good care of me, Steve? And please get dressed; we are invited to the Marcus Baynes for dinner. They have a wonderful poet from Greenwich Village who is spending the holidays with them––long hair, green-velvet jacket, cigar-box ukulele, and all. A darling! And I am going to take Monster because he does black-and-white sketches and I want one of my ittey, bittey dirl.” And so on.
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Certainly it was more pleasing than to have a shamed and confused Trudy elegantly attired come dashing in with a jar of vanishing cream as a peace offering, presumably to smooth out any wrinkles of grief, and to explain hastily that it looked like a lack of feeling not to be at the funeral but most certainly it was not––no, indeed; it was just tending to business. She was sure Mary realized how essential it was not to offend the Gorgeous Girl. How dreadful it was for poor Mary. She, Trudy, had cried her old eyes out thinking about it. Did Mary get the flowers she and Gay sent? She wished she could do something nice for Mary. How would she like to have a black-satin dress made at cost price? No? She wasn’t going to wear mourning! Well, it was very brave but it would certainly look queer and cause talk.... Gay’s moustache was coming on beautifully and no one at the bridge club had dared to spoof her!
At least there was some excuse for the delivery on Christmas Day of a parcel addressed to Miss Mary Faithful. It contained Steve’s card, some wonderful new books with an ivory paper knife slipped between them. And when Mary wrote to thank him she found herself inclosing a demure new silver dime, explaining:
“I must give you a coin because you gave me a knife, and unless I did so the old superstition might come true––and cut our ‘business affections’ right straight in two!”
139CHAPTER IX
Mary returned to the office with a premeditatedly formal air toward Steve. She had taken a New Year’s resolution to refrain from letting an impulsive expression of sympathy assume false meanings in her heart. On the other hand, Steve felt a boor for having sent the books. He was so used to being called cave man and told not to do this or say that that he now pictured himself an awkward villain who had best confine himself to writing checks and growling at the business world.
He almost dreaded seeing Mary lest she show she considered the gift improper despite her delightful little note of thanks. This demeanour, however, was of short duration. They became their real selves before the morning passed, the medium being the question of keeping John Gager, an old clerk pressed into service during the war period and now superfluous.
“Are you going to let him go?” Mary reproached Steve.
“I think so; he’s a doddering nuisance they tell me.”
“But he’s old and he has always served so faithfully. I don’t think it’s right to send him away now. He does do what is expected of him.”
Mary’s vacation had somewhat dimmed her business sagacity.
“I suppose; but we’ll be doddering idiots some day,140too. No one will keep us. No one can expect to be carried along indefinitely.”
“It’s the first time I have ever asked you to do such a thing,” she insisted, fearlessly. “To see him trying to act as fit as twenty-five, wearing juvenile shirts and ties, struggling to be brisk, slangy, to oblige everyone and step along, you know. Oh, don’t turn him away just yet; he is honest and he tries. I can’t tell him, and can’t you see his old face quiver when he opens his envelope and finds the dismissal slip?”
Steve’s resolutions faded like mist before the sun. He found himself saying: “You ought to be a little sister to the poor. I guess we’ll keep Gager for a while. He doesn’t smoke cigarettes all day and try to lie about it. How did you like those books?” he added, boyishly.
Mary laid a finger on her lips. “Sh-h-h. It’s business. But I did like them––so would you.”
“I’d read them if I had an easy-chair and some homemade bread and tea. Do you know what I had to do for my Christmas Day?”
“Please––I’d rather not–––”
“I must tell someone, and ask if I’m all wrong about it,” he said, half humorously, half in earnest. “I told my father-in-law in part and it struck him as a huge joke. He purpled with laughing and said: ‘Gad, she’ll always have her way!’” Steve was thinking out loud. He was realizing that Constantine was not even conscious he had raised his daughter to be a rebel doll and he, apparently an honourable citizen, encouraged and upheld her in her doctrine.
“Well, what did you have to do?” Mary asked in spite of herself.
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“I had to officiate at Monster’s Christmas tree, which was in the boudoir, laden with the treasures of the four corners. I presented a diamond-studded gold purse and a sable cape to my wife and received a diamond-studded cigar knife––I have two others––and a mink-lined coat in return. I was dragged to a half-dozen different houses to deliver presents and collect the same, and witness the tragedy of Bea’s receiving a vanity case she had given someone else two years before and which had evidently been going the rounds. It was a bit disconcerting to have it turn up.
“I had a ponderous seven-course dinner at Mr. Constantine’s, during which I had to kiss Aunt Belle under the mistletoe and pretend to be elated, hear several yards of grand opera torn off on the new talking machine in its nine-hundred-dollar Chinese case, take my father-in-law to the club, return to find Trudy and Gay having a Yuletide word with my wife. Trudy brought a concoction of purple chiffon, jet beads, and exploded hen which was entitled a breakfast jacket, and in return she drew down a pair of silver candlesticks.
“After that we dressed in all our grandeur for the fancy-dress ball at Colonel Tatlock’s, Beatrice as Juliet and I as the young and dashing Romeo! Shivering in our finery we drove to the Tatlock’s to make fools of ourselves until three A. M. and shiver home again with aching heads and a handful of damaged cotillion favours. About the same sort of thing happened on New Year’s.” He laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound, inviting a response.
Beatrice dashed in, to Mary’s relief, to bestow––over142a week late––a Christmas present of perfume and a black-silk waist.
“Mr. O’Valley has explained how rushed I have been with my classes,” she began, prettily, “but I have thought of you in all your sorrow. I lost my dear mother when I was too young to remember her, still it means a bond between us.... Oh, you are not wearing black? Dear me, that’s too bad.... Well, you may have to go to somebody’s funeral where you feel you want to wear it––a black waist is always useful.”
She managed to carry Steve off to look at a set of pink glass sherbet cups she was to give her father for his birthday, and Mary was conscious of a certain pity for the Gorgeous Girl––prompted not so much by her present state of affairs as her inevitable future.
The last of January Steve was called away on a business trip through the Middle West. Beatrice had no desire to go with him; she said she simply could not conceive of having a good time in Indiana and Illinois, and what was the sense in bearing with him in his misery? But she was quite willing Steve should stay away as long as he was needed by business entanglements. In fact, Beatrice now betrayed a certain driving quality in trying to make him feel that as their honeymoon was ended and everyone had entertained for them it was high time Steve must retire from social life to a degree, and outdo her own father in the making of a vast fortune. She seldom begged him to ride with her or come home to luncheon to fritter away the best part of the afternoon in a pursuit of silver-pheasant ornaments for the dinner table. That phase of her selfishness was at an end. It was when Steve demanded the luxury of merely143staying at home with no chattering peacocks of women and asinine, half-tipsy men playing with each other until early morning that Beatrice refused her consent.
She did not wish any personal domestic life, Steve decided after several experiences along these lines. She could not see the pleasure in a Sunday afternoon hike; walking to see a sunset was absurd! All very well to be whisked by at twenty miles an hour and give a careless nod at the setting golden sphere, but to trudge through wintry roads and up an icy hill and stand, frozen and fagged, weighted down by sweaters, to–––Dear me, Steve really needed to see a doctor! Perhaps he had better start to play golf with papa!
Meals tête-à-tête caused her spirits to droop, and she soon fell into the habit of waiting until Steve was away or having her luncheon in her room. She was seldom up for breakfast, and when he protested against this hotel-like custom she would say: “I don’t expect you to appreciate my viewpoint and my wishes, but at least be well-bred enough to tolerate them!”
He was on the point of reminding her that his viewpoint and wishes were treated only with argument and ridicule––but as usual he refrained. Silence on the part of one who knows he is in the right yet chooses apparently to yield the point in question is a significant milestone on the road of separation. An argument with Beatrice meant one of two outcomes: A violent scene of temper and overwrought nerves with tears as the conquering slacker’s weapon or a long, sulky period of tenseness which made him take refuge in his office and his club.
He wondered sometimes how it was he had never144before realized the true worth of his wife, how he had been so madly infatuated and adoring of her slightest whim during the years of earning his fortune and the brief period of their formal engagement. Almost reluctantly the anæsthesia of unreality and distorted values was disappearing, leaving Steve with but one conclusion: That it had been his own conceited fault, and therefore he deserved scant pity from either himself or the world at large.
Mark Constantine, whose activities lessened each month, due to ill health, began prowling about Steve’s office at unexpected hours, cornering him for prosy talks and conferences, under which Steve writhed in helpless surrender. Since he realized the true meaning of his marriage he began placing the blame on the culprit––Beatrice’s father. As he did so he wondered if it was possible that Constantine did not realize the havoc he had wrought. His wealth and Steve’s speedily accumulated fortune via hides and government razors suddenly seemed stupid, inane; and he no longer felt a sense of pride at what he had accomplished. He never wanted to hear details of Constantine’s more gradual and bitter rise in the world; there was certain to be slimy spots of which Steve in his new frame of mind could no longer approve. He was weary of hearing about money, just as his good sense caused him to be weary of socialistic prattling and absurd pleas for Bolshevism. It seemed to him that the dollar standard was the paramount means both magnate and socialist used to value inanimate and animate objects. He longed for a new unit of measure.
He was keen on business trips. At least he could have the freedom of his hotel and could roam about145without being pointed out as the Gorgeous Girl’s husband, the lucky young dog and so on. Neither would he be dragged from this house to that to sit on impossible futurist chairs while young things of thirty-nine clad in belladonna plasters and jet sequins gathered about to tell him what perfectly wonderful times their class in cosmic consciousness was having.
Mary Faithful was keen to have him go. She dreaded any furthering of the personal understanding between them. When one has become master of a heartache and thoroughly demonstrated that mastery it is not sensible to let it verge toward a heart throb, even if one is positive of the ability to change it back at will into the hopeless ache. It is like unhandcuffing a prisoner and saying: “Sprint a bit, I can catch up to you.”
On the other hand, Beatrice had any number of activities to take up her time. Her period of being a romantic parasite––the world called it a sweet bride––was ended. She was now bent on becoming as mad and ruthless a butterfly as there ever was, and to the accomplishment of her aim she did not purpose to stint herself in any way. She still drew her own allowance from her father and accepted extra checks for extra things necessary for her welfare and popularity.
More than once Steve counted the monthly expenditures, with the same result––Beatrice was living on her father’s income quite as much as on his own. Her position was not unlike that of people who say to their prosperous neighbours possessing a motor car: “We’ll furnish the lunch and the gasolene, and you take us to the picnic grounds!” Constantine still owned the figurative motor car, or the substantial146end of Beatrice’s expenses, while Steve furnished the lunch and the gasolene, trying to delude himself that he was supporting his wife. Beatrice’s clothes were beyond his income, for he was not yet a millionaire. Neither could he afford the affairs which she gave, with favours of jewellery; nor the trips here and there in private cars.
Furnishing the lunch and gasolene and perhaps a possible tire or so does not give one the sense of ownership that having the motor car gives; nor was it Steve’s notion of being the possessor of a home. He spoke to Beatrice about it, only to be kissed affectionately and scolded prettily by way of answer; or else to have those eternal omnipresent tears reproach him for being cross “when papa wants me to have things and he has no one else in the world to spend all his money on.”
After a few attempts he gave it up but resolved to make his fortune equal to his father-in-law’s, as Beatrice wished. He saw no other way out of the situation. To do so in his present interests was impossible––he had fancied that half a million was a fair sum to offer a Gorgeous Girl––but he saw it was only a nibble at the line. He must outdo Constantine. He cast about for some unsuspected fields of effort, this time to strike out into work of which Constantine was ignorant. He began to resent the fact that after his lucky strike on the exchange he had played copy cat and gone mincing into the hide-and-leather business, using Constantine’s good will as his stepping stone. The same was true of the stock bought in the razor factory; he had merely paid for the stock; he did not know the steps of progress necessary to the business.
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This time he would prove his own merit, he would not take Constantine into his confidence. Unknown to any one save Mary, Steve selected a new-style talking machine to promote. He knew as much about talking machines as Beatrice knew about cooking a square meal. But Steve had lost his clear-headedness and he thought, as do most get-rich-quick men, that, possessed of the Midas touch, he could come in contact with nothing but gold.
He began backing the inventor and looking round for a factory site. He sought it away from Hanover, for he wanted it to be a complete surprise. He begrudged his father-in-law’s knowing anything of it. He went into the enterprise rather heavily––but it did not worry him, for he was quite sure he possessed the luck eternal, and he must support his own wife. Side speculating was the only way he thought it possible to do so.
Meanwhile, Beatrice found Trudy to be both a good foil and a dangerous enemy, one who was not to be ridiculed or set aside. Trudy had never stopped working since the day Beatrice climbed the rear stairs of the Graystone and had been bullied into buying the vanishing cream. Beatrice scarcely knew the various steps which Trudy had climbed in a figurative sense, dragging Gay after her, grumbling and sneering but quite willing to be dragged.
“You see, aunty,” she explained one stormy February afternoon while they were having a permanent wave put in their hair, “Trudy is so obliging and useful, and I’m sorry for her. She tries to do so many nice things for me that I never have a chance to become offended. I’ve tried! But she just won’t break away. And I like to tease Steve by knowing148her, Steve is such a bear when he doesn’t like people. Rude is a mild term. He particularly hates Gay. Now Gay is quite a dear and he always played nicely with me. I should hate to lose him––so how can I offend his wife; particularly when she takes so well with older men?”
Aunt Belle sniffed. “Men old enough to be her father––you’d think they would appreciate mellowed love instead of a selfish little chicken.”
The beauty doctor, who had spent the greater share of the day at the Constantine house, suppressed a smile and stored up the remark for her next customer.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Beatrice murmured as she consulted a hand glass. “I am beginning to wish I had married a man about papa’s age. It would have been much jollier in some ways. Steve is so strenuous and rude. A cave man is fun to be engaged to and keep a record about in your chapbook––but when you marry him it is a different matter. I remember how thrilled and enthusiastic about Steve I used to be when he was working for papa and living in a hall bedroom. I knew he adored me yet had to keep his place, and I used to dream about him and wonder if he really would keep his word and make a fortune so he could marry me. But now he has done it–––” She shrugged her shoulders.
“I wouldn’t be too disappointed. Elderly men usually have wheel chairs and diets after a little, and you’d feel it your duty to play nurse.”
“Oh, it’s far better to be disappointed in one’s husband than one’s friends,” Beatrice agreed. “I know that. For you can manage to see very little149of your husband; but your friends––deary me, they your very existence.”
“Does Trudy ever mention the days she worked in Steve’s office?”
“Yes. Clever little thing, she knows enough to admit it prettily every now and then, so there is nothing to badger her about. She has even trained Gay to talk of it occasionally. She has done wonders for him; one of the clubmen is backing him to go into the interior-decorating business. Of course he will make good because everyone will feel morally obliged to go there. So the Vondeplosshes on the strength of this have moved to the Touraine, a different sort of apartment house, I assure you. They are entertaining, if you please; everyone asks them everywhere. Gay is painting garlands of old-fashioned flowers in panels for Jill’s boudoir. I think I’ll have the same thing done in mine.”
“Gay is painting them?”
“Oh, no. Some limp artist who could never get the commission for himself. Gay stands about in a natty blue-serge effect and takes the credit and the check. What’s new?”––turning to the beauty doctor. “I’m as dull as the Dead Sea.”
Miss Flinks informed them of a labour revolt in the West.
“Horrid creatures, always wanting more! Well, they won’t get it. I think Steve is ridiculous with his banquets and bonuses and all, and upon my word, Mary Faithful has as good an Oriental rug in her office as I have in my house. Tell us something really important, Miss Flinks.”
Retrieving her error the beauty doctor whispered a scandal concerning the newly married Teddy Markhams,150who had had such a violent quarrel the week before that Mrs. Teddy had pushed the piano halfway out the window and police had rushed to the scene thinking it might be another bomb explosion.
“How ripping!”
Beatrice was all animation, and she gave Miss Flinks no peace until she learned all the details, and the rumour about the actress who had rented an expensive town house for the season and a débutante who was being rushed to a retreat to prevent her marriage to a gypsy violinist who had already taught her the drug habit.
Trudy telephoned the latter part of the afternoon, and as it was a gray, blowy day with nothing special to do to revive one’s spirits Beatrice urged her to come in for tea––tea to be cocktails and buttered toast.
Within a few moments she appeared––a symphony of blonde broadcloth set in black furs, very charming and chic, and so solicitous about Aunt Belle’s recently removed mole and the scar left by the electric needle, and so admiring of the two newly beautified ladies that they were quite won in spite of themselves.
“Were you near here when you telephoned?” Beatrice asked, curiously. “You weren’t ten minutes getting here and you look as spick and span as if you had stepped out of a bandbox.”
“Look outside and you’ll see that Gay and I have had a true case of auto-intoxication!”
Outside the window there proved to be a smart, selfish roadster, battleship-gray with vivid scarlet trimmings.
“Well!” Beatrice said in astonishment. At this identical moment she began to envy Trudy. She was151really ashamed of the fact, nor did she understand why she should envy this bankrupt yet progressive little nobody in her homemade bargain-remnant costume. The reason was that Beatrice’s latent abilities longed to be doing something, achieving something, capturing, inventing, destroying, earning if need be––but doing something. The daughter of Mark and Hannah Constantine could not help but have the germ of great ability within her, sluggish and spoiled as it might be; and it must perforce duly manifest itself from time to time. Beatrice realized that Trudy felt a greater joy and satisfaction in displaying this not-paid-for cheap machine––having sat up half the night to make the shirred curtains––than Beatrice ever could feel in her tapestry-lined, orchid-adorned limousine. So she began to envy Trudy just as Trudy envied her. Trudy had done nothing but struggle to be able to live, as she termed it; Beatrice had never been allowed to struggle!
“We owe for all but the left back tire,” Trudy said before any one had the chance to hint of the fact; “but Gay has to have it for his new business, and it is such a joy! I hope you approve, Beatrice. And what a darling gown!”
There was nothing left for Beatrice but to order the cocktails and toast, and for Aunt Belle to agree smilingly with Trudy’s clever suggestions.
Trudy never came to see Beatrice unless she gained some material point or had one in view, and the point she had come to gain this afternoon was of no small importance. In her own fashion she managed to inform her hostess that Gay had received an order from––well, it was a tremendous secret and he would be terribly cross if he knew she told even her dearest152Bea and her sweet Aunt Belle, but she just couldn’t help it––he had an order from Alice Twill, who thought she was going to beat everyone in town to the greatest sensation of the year: To have the barn of a Twill mansion remodelled, decorated and so on, from coal bin to cupola, until it was an exact copy of a French palace––she really forgot just which one. ... Yes, Alice’s aunt in Australia had died and left her everything; Alice said she was not going to wait until she was on crutches before she spent it. Gay was simply out of his head trying to plan the thing and Alice was to move to a hotel for several weeks until a newly furnished wing was ready to be inhabited.
There was no reason why New York persons should have their homes like palaces and châteaux and so on, and turn their noses up at upstate residences. Alice was going to show them. And––this very subtly––Gay had said that if only Beatrice could have the authority to redecorate her father’s home into an Italian villa Alice Twill would be the loser when comparisons were made––since the Constantine house had twice the possibilities and so on, and Beatrice twice the taste. And what an achievement it would be; a distinct civic improvement!... Yes, Gay was working with the best firms in New York, and there was no doubt of his success in the enterprise.
Before she left, Trudy had almost secured Beatrice’s promise that the Constantine house should be made into an Italian villa and that, if she so decided, Gay should have the commission. There was a place at Frascati she had always admired, and they could use some ideas from a show place in Florida.
153
Had Trafalgar terminated differently Napoleon would have been no more surprised or jubilant than Trudy, who fairly skidded home to the new and more pretentious apartment, where she found Gay in one of his sneering, sulky moods and quite angry to think Trudy was carrying the day.
“How do I know Alice Twill will really come across?” he began. “And I suppose you’ve got the machine covered with mud, too. Anyway, what do I know about decorating? I work on my reputation and everyone’s sympathies and I’m in fear all the time some real decorator will turn up and show my hand or else refuse to work under me and split commissions. You’re too damned optimistic.”
“If I wasn’t optimistic where would we be? Starving,” she said with no attempt at politeness. Common courtesies between them had long since been dispensed with. “I’ve gotten you nearly everything you have, and if you’ll do as I say I’ll go right on getting things for you. But you’re lazy and jealous––that’s what’s the matter.”
He gave a sneering little laugh. “Why, you poor nobody, people only tolerate you because of me. They roar behind your back.”
“Do they? They pity me because I’m married to such a weak fish! Men are nice to you because of me––and there isn’t a woman I’ve met that I have not made afraid of me. Beatrice hasn’t the will power of a slug; you can hand her flattery in chunks as big as boulders and she swallows them without choking. It’s her husband who sees through us.”
“What––the goat tender? Oh, beg pardon––treading on someone else’s toes. Or didn’t they have goats in Michigan?”
154
“We’ll never hang together another year,” she said, recklessly. “The first chance I have to exchange you for a real man your day is over.”
“You think any one else would marry you?”
“I don’t think. I just go ahead grabbing everything I can, and when a person has to grab for someone else as well as herself it keeps them moving.”
“You’re a crude and impossible little fool.”
Without warning Trudy’s hand shot out, and on Gay’s cheek rested a red mark for the greater part of the evening.
A half hour later he was trying to apologize, having bucked himself up to it with brandy, in order to borrow enough money to play pool with that same evening.
155CHAPTER X
After Gay left, Trudy put on her things and trudged over to Mary’s house. Gay had driven off in the car and she was glad he had. Like Steve the day of the funeral, she did not wish to drive but to have the nervous outlet of walking.
Trudy was seldom angry. But when she found Mary in the old library, the same true-blue, good-looking thing with just a little coldness of manner as Trudy tried to enthuse over her, Trudy felt ashamed. And she was angry far more often than she was ashamed.
“Where is Luke?” she asked, taking off her things and lying down wearily on the sofa. “Oh, Mary mine, you don’t know how good it is to be here again, to be able to talk––really talk to someone.”
“Luke is at basketball–––” Mary began, stopping as she discovered that Trudy was in tears. “Why, what is it?” as Trudy sobbed the harsh, long sobs of a tormented and frail mind.
“You ought to hate me––selfish, insincere hypocrite––cheat––liar. Oh, I hate myself! I hate him, and Bea, and all of them! They aren’t worth your blessed little finger. Mary, Mary, please stay quite contrary and never change. Never get to be a Gorgeous Girl, will you? ... Nerves, I suppose; and I haven’t had the right things to eat.” She sat up and began smoothing her injured flounces.