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“You’re so thin, and there are funny lilac shadows under your eyes. You can’t live on nerve energy forever. And I know your delicatessen suppers or else the rich orgies to which you are invited––not enough sleep––and always that eternal upstage pose!”
“Gay wears on me; he is growing strong, with never an ache or pain. I never used to have them but I’m all unnerved and weak. He hates me, Mary. Yes, he does.” She began a detailed recital of woes.
“Why not leave him?” Mary asked as there came a pause.
“Without any one else to marry?” Trudy’s eyes were wide open in surprise.
“Must you have someone waiting to pay your board bill?”
“I couldn’t go to work again.”
“I thought you worked rather hard right now.”
“That’s different. I’m working to have a good time. And I’m a wonder; everyone says so. The clubmen are so nice to me. Beatrice has done a great deal, even if Steve hates us and acts as if we were poison.... He isn’t happy.”
Mary knew she was flushing. “Tell me some more about yourself.”
But Trudy was not to be swerved from the other topic. “Beatrice makes fun of him and she flirts shamefully. She has half a dozen flames all the time. One was a common cabaret singer; she had him for tea when Steve wasn’t there. Now she is tired of him. You see, she had to have someone to take Gay’s place! I don’t think Steve flirts with any one; he isn’t that sort. He’s so intense he will break his heart in the old-fashioned way and then go and be a157socialist or something dreadful. They scarcely see each other, and of course Beatrice’s father thinks everything is lovely and they are both perfection. He just can’t see the truth. Steve is a cave man and Beatrice is a butterfly––I’m a fraud––and you’re just an old dear!
“Yes, I am a fraud,” she said, with sudden honesty. “I wouldn’t come to see you unless I wanted something. I want to talk to you with all barriers down. I wish you had ever done some terrible thing or were unhappy. I don’t know why, Mary dear; it’s not as horrid as it sounds. I think it’s because I want to know the real soul of you, and if you showed me how you met troubles and trials, you being so good, I’d be the better woman for it in meeting my problems.”
It was truly a tired, oldish Trudy speaking. In the last sentence Trudy had touched the greatest depths of which she was capable––causing Mary to hint of her one deep secret.
“You’re growing up, that’s all. And I’m not good––not a bit good. Why, Trudy, do you know I have had to fight hard––terribly hard about something? I’ve never told any one before. I can’t really tell what it is!”
“Over what? You saint in white blouses and crisp ties, always smiling and working and helping people! How have you battled? Tell me, tell me!”
Mary came over to the sofa and sat beside Trudy, holding the white, cold hands laden with foolish rings. “I loved and do love someone very much who never did and never will love me. I must be near that person daily, be useful to him, earn my own living by so doing––and I’ve made myself be content of heart in spite of it and not live on starved hopes158and jealous dreams.... You see, I’m quite human.”
Trudy drew her hands away. She had caused Mary to confirm her suspicions, and she was sorry she had done so. The better part of her knew that she had been admitted into the very sanctuary of the girl’s soul, and that the worst part of her, which usually dominated, was not worthy to be trusted with such a secret. She wished Mary had not said the words––since it changed everything and made a singularly pleasing weapon to use against Beatrice O’Valley should occasion rise. Mary was good––and it was safer to slander a good person than a bad one because there was less chance of a come-back. As she tried to make herself forget what she had just heard she knew that in the heat of anger or to gain some material goal she would use this effectual weapon without thinking and without remorse.
“Oh, my poor girl!” was all she said; and Mary, believing that Trudy so reverenced her secret that she was not going to stab it with clumsy words, kissed her and very practically set about getting a lunch.
Trudy went home taking some biscuit and half a cake with her, and by the time she reached the Touraine she was in a cheerful frame of mind once more. The relief of confession, the home food, and the knowledge of Mary’s secret had buoyed her up past caring for or considering Gay.
To her surprise Gay was at home, jubilant and repentant. He had won at pool and had also consumed some 1879 Burgundy, which conspired to make him adore his red-haired wife and tell her that he had quite deserved and enjoyed having his face smacked.
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The pool money in her safe keeping, visions of a new hat to wear at the next luncheon caused Trudy to equal his elation. Together they ate up Mary’s biscuits and cake and talked about Beatrice’s remodelling the Constantine mansion at the cost of many thousands.
“We could almost retire,” Trudy suggested; “but I’m afraid Steve will never give his consent.”
“Don’t worry. Bea would never let a little thing like a husband stand in the way of her progress.”
In March, just as Steve was returning, Beatrice and her aunt departed for a whirl in Florida, with a laconic invitation that Steve and his father-in-law follow them. Steve declined the invitation with alarming curtness.
Though Constantine worried in his peculiar way because Steve did not rush down to Florida to play with the rest of the snapping turtles Beatrice had about her heels he did not succeed in getting anything but a logical explanation as to a business rush from his son-in-law. More and more Steve was being saddled with Constantine’s end of the game as well as his own––and he did not know how to proceed with the double responsibility. So Constantine went to Florida alone, to find his daughter revelling in new frocks and flirtations, both of which she temporarily sidetracked while she made her father give his consent to having the house done over after the manner of a Frascati villa.
“Gad,” commented her father, during the heat of the argument, “I thought you were pretty well off as you were. Will Steve like it?”
“He doesn’t care what I do,” she hastened to assure him. “Of course he will––he ought to––I’m160paying for it. He’ll have as wonderful a home as there is in the United States. Alice’s will be a caricature by contrast. Gay says so. As soon as we go home I’m going to signal them to begin.”
“Well, don’t touch my room or I’ll burn down the whole plant,” her father warned. “And if I were you I’d tell Steve first––it’s only right.”
“But it’s my money,” she insisted.
“Yes, yes, I know––but you could pretend to consult him. Your mother and I never bought a toothpick that we hadn’t agreed on beforehand.”
“Dear old papa.” She kissed him graciously by way of dismissal.
So Steve received the letter announcing the plans a few days later. It was a semi-patronizing, semi-affectionate letter with a great many underlined words and superlative adjectives and intended to convey the impression that he was a mighty lucky chap to have married a fairy princess who would spend her ducats in rigging up an uncomfortable moth-eaten villa of the days of kingdom come.
As he finished it Gay appeared, having received a letter telling him to hurry ahead with the plans and contracts. Gay was rather obsequious in his manner since he did not know whether it was Steve or Beatrice who was to pay for this transformation.
“If my wife insists, go ahead––but don’t move your arts-and-crafts shop into my office. I’m not enough interested to see designs and so on. I never had time to be one of the leisure class, and I’m too old to be kidded into thinking I’m one of them now. But I did make a mistake,” he added, slowly, whether for Gay’s benefit or not no one could tell––“I thought the world owed me more than a living––that it owed161me a bargain. And there never was a bargain cheaply won that didn’t prove a white elephant in time.”
Gay’s one-cylinder brain did not follow the intricacies of the statement. He merely thought of Steve in more than usually profane terms––and concluded that Beatrice was paying the bill.
162CHAPTER XI
It was April before Steve found himself visiting with Mary Faithful again and admiring as heartily as Luke had admired the new apartment Mary had chosen for her family.
It had, to Steve’s mind, the same delightful air of freedom and attractive shabbiness that he had come to consider as essential for a true home. While Beatrice was launched on her new object in life––making the house into a villa, from upholstering a gondola in sky-blue satin and expecting people to use it as a sofa to having the walls frescoed with fat, pouting cherubs––Mary had selected funny old chairs and soft shades of blue cretonne found in the remnant department, queer pottery, Indian blankets, and a set of blue dishes which just naturally demanded to be heaped with good things and eaten before an open fire at Sunday-night supper.
The whole expense came within Mary’s economical pocketbook, yet it seemed to Steve to have the combined richness of a Persian palace and the geniality of a nursery on Christmas Eve.
He deliberately invented an excuse to call, some detail of work which, more easily than not, could have waited until the next day. He was not only using the detail of work as a means to visit Mary but as an excuse to escape a parlour lecture on “What astral vibrations does your given name bring you?” by a pale-faced young woman. The pale-faced163young woman boasted of an advanced soul and was making a snug bank account from the rich set in undertaking occult analyses of their names by which to decide whether or not the accompanying astral vibrations harmonized with their auras; and if they did not––and were therefore detrimental and hampering to spiritual development and material progress––she would evolve occult names for them which would be sort of spiritual bits of cheese in material mousetraps baiting and capturing all the good things of this world and the next.
Convinced that Beatrice was not the proper name for her the Gorgeous Girl had ordered a chart of cabalistic signs and mystical statements, the sum total of which was that Radia was the name the astral forces wished her to be called, and by using this name she would develop into a wonderful medium. She paid fifty dollars to discover that she ought to be called Radia and that her aura was of smoky lavender, denoting an advanced soul––according to the pale-faced young woman, who had tired of teaching nonsensical flappers, had no chance to marry, and had hit upon this as her means of painlessly extracting a littlejoie de vie.
Declining to learn his astral name Steve left Gaylord to mop up the astral vibrations. Beatrice did not mind his absence though he neglected to say that the work was to be done at Miss Faithful’s apartment and not at the office. Never having questioned Steve in such details Beatrice merely murmured inwardly that goat tending in one’s past strangely enough led to pigheadedness in later life. It was a relief to have him away, for if drawn into an argument he still thumped his fists. For everyday living164Beatrice preferred her own pet robins and angel-ducks, as she called the boys of the younger set, who flocked to flirt with her because she was extremely rich and pretty and they were in no danger of being matrimonially entangled.
Of course Gaylord ate up this occult-name affair. It was discovered that Gaylord’s was a most hampering name and had his parents only consulted the stars and named him Scintar––who knows to what heights he might not have risen? Trudy’s astral title should have been Urcia, which she now adopted, blushing deeply as she recalled the vulgar Babseley and Bubseley of former days. But when Aunt Belle was informed that Cinil was the cognomen needed to make her discover an Indian-summer millionaire waiting to bestow his heart upon her Mark Constantine had packed his bags and departed unceremoniously for Hot Springs.
Meantime, Mary did not know just how to treat this imperious lonesome young man who came boldly into her household without apology or warning.
“You don’t know how often I’ve wanted to come and see you,” he said, unashamedly, delighted that Luke was out of the way and he could play in his fashion the same as Beatrice did in hers. “It isn’t business, really. I just wanted to talk to you. You assume so much formality at the office that though I admit it may be wise I miss the real you.”
“You mean you just trumped up an excuse–––”
Then Mary began to laugh.
“I do. The DeGraff muddle can wait. It’s nice to be able just to sprawl about––sprawl in a comfortable old chair. I like this little room. We165are being turned into an Italian villa, you know. I don’t quite see how I’ll ever live up to it.” As he spoke he took out a plebeian tobacco pouch and a nondescript pipe. “May I?”
“Do! Only you ought not to be here at all”––trying to be severe, and failing.
“Why not?”
“Because you think only of yourself and of what you wish,” she surprised him by answering. “Why not think of the other chap occasionally?”
He paused in the lighting of his pipe. “Oh––you mean my coming here.” He looked like an unjustly punished child without redress. “You mean to consign me to the gloom of the grill room or one of those slippery leather chairs in a far corner of the club? Come, you can’t say that. I won’t listen if you do. I just want to be friends with someone.”
With unsuspected coquetry she suggested: “Why not your wife?”
“We’re not friends––merely married.” He lit his pipe and flipped the match away. “Cheap to say, isn’t it? Don’t look at me like that; you make me quite conscience-stricken. You seem to be aiming at me as directly as a small boy aims his snowball. Why?”
“It wouldn’t do the slightest good to tell you what I think.”
“Yes, it would; someone must tell me. I’ve never been as lonesome in my life as now––when I’m a rich man and the husband of a very lovely woman. It sort of chills me to the marrow at first thought. I’ve been in a delirium, quite irresponsible. These last few months I’ve been coming down to earth. Only instead of getting my feet planted firmly on the sod166I think I’ve struck a quicksand bed. I say, lend us a hand.”
“Why ask me?”
“I don’t just know. I don’t think I shall ever be quite so sure of anything again. After all, a person has just so much capacity for joy and sorrow, and so much energy, and so much will power, allotted at birth; and if he chooses to go burn it all up in one fell swoop doing one thing––he is at liberty to do so; but he is not given any second helping. Isn’t that true? Quite a terrible thing to realize when you know you used up your joy allotment in anticipation––and it has been so much keener and finer than any of the realization. And all my energy went into making money the easiest way I could; but it does not pay.”
Mary clasped her hands tightly in her lap; she was afraid to let him see her joy at the long-awaited confession.
“Yet you ask me, a reliable machine, to help you in your perplexities?”
“I don’t think of you as a capable machine any more. I used to, that is true enough. I didn’t know or care whether your hair was red or your eyes green––but I know now that you have gray eyes, and–––”
“You really want to know my opinions?” she interrupted, breathlessly.
“As much as I used to seek out the stock reports.”
“Well––I think people who have planned as exactly as you and Mr. Constantine have planned always banish real principle at the start. After a time you are punished by having an almost fungous growth of sickly conscience––you don’t want to face167the truth of things, yet isolated incidents, sentimental memories, certain sights and definite statements annoy, haunt, heartbreak you! Still, you have lost your principle, the backbone of the soul, and the fungus-like growth of conscience is such a clumsy imitation––like a paper rose stuck in the ground. Mr. Constantine’s type––your type––is flourishing and multiplying among us, I fear, and such are the wishbone, or sickly conscience, and not the backbone, or sterling principle, of the nation. After all, fortunes alone do not make real gentility––thanks be! But you know as well as I that all the––the Gorgeous Girls and their kind and you and I and the next chap we meet belong to the great majority, and of that we have every right to be proud.
“Furthermore, we ought to hold to our place in the social scheme and be the backbone of the nation, keep our principle and not be nagged eternally by a sickly conscience after we have gone and sold our birthrights. Gorgeous Girls and their sort have the sole fortification of dollars, endless dollars, endless price tags; their whims bring whole wings of foreign castles floating across the ocean by the wholesale to be reassembled somewhere in good old helpless Illinois or New Jersey. And these people try to be everything but good old American stock––which is quite wrong, for their example causes spendthrifts and Bolsheviki to flourish without end.”
“Go on,” he said, almost sulkily, as she paused.
“I’ve watched it for thirteen years from the various angles of the working girl with an average amount of brain and disposition. When all is said and done you really have to work before you have earned the right to pass judgment––work––not read or patronize or168take someone else’s statements as final. Do you know how I used to identify the kinds of people that rode in the street cars with me?... From seven until eight there were the Frumps. The majority boasted of white kid boots or someone’s discarded near-electric-seal jacket, plumes in their hats, and an absence of warm woollens. And everyone yawned, between patting thin cheeks with soiled face chamois, ‘What d’ja do las’ night?’
“From eight to nine came the Funnies; and the majority had white kid boots and flimsy silk frocks cut as low as our grandmothers’ party gowns, and plumes in their hats and silver vanity cases. Their main topics of conversation were: ‘He said,’ and ‘She said,’ and ‘I don’t care if I’m late. I’m going to quit anyway!’
“From nine until noon came the Frills––the wives of modest-salaried men who cannot motor, yet write to out-of-town relatives that they do so.
“And every one of those Frumps, Funnies, and Frills apes the Gorgeous-Girl kind––white kids for shopping, low-cut pumps in January, bizarre coat, chiffon waist disclosing a thin little neck fairly panting for protection, rouged cheeks, and a plume in her hat––and not a cent of savings in the bank!
“Now there’s something wrong when we’ve come to this, and the wrong does not lie with these people but with those they imitate––Gorgeous Girls, new-rich with sickly consciences and lack of principle and common sense; and these Gorgeous Girls in turn take their styles, slang phrases, and modes of recreation, as well as theories of life from the boldest dancer, the most sensational chorus girl––and it’s wrong and not what America should be called upon to endure.169And it all reverts back in a sense to you busy, unprincipled, yet conscience-stricken American business men who write checks for these Gorgeous Girls––and the heathen in Africa––and wonder why golf doesn’t bring your blood pressure down to normal––when your grandfather had such a wonderful constitution at eighty-four! Don’t you know that get-rich-quick people always pay a usurer’s interest on the suddenly accumulated principle?”
“Keep on,” he said in the same surly tone.
“And when I go downtown and view the weary, unwashed females and the overly ambitious painted ones, people in impossible bargain shoes and summer furs; fat men in plaid suits and Alpine hats; undernourished children being dragged along by unthinking adults; stray dogs wistfully sniffing at passers-by in hopes of finding a permanent friend; tired, blind work horses standing in the sun and resignedly being overloaded for the day’s haul; fire sales of fur coats; candy sales of gooey hunks; a jewellery special of earrings warranted to betray no tarnish until well after Christmas; brokers’ ads and vaudeville billboards and rows upon rows of awful, huddled-up, gardenless homes with families lodged somewhere between the first and twelfth stories––the general chasing after nothing, saving nothing and, saddest of all, the complacent delusion that they have achieved something well worth while––it makes me willing to earn and learn as I do.”
“Don’t leave me in the quicksand. What can we do about it?”
“Make that sort of American woman realize that she is more needed in the home and can accomplish more with that as her goal than in any other place in170the world. You don’t know all my dreams for the American woman––don’t you think that this Gorgeous Girl parasitical type is a result of the Victorian revolt? Too late for themselves the Victorian matrons said: ‘Our daughters shall never slave as we have done; they shall be ladies––and have careers, too, bless their hearts.’ The Victorian matrons were emerging from the unfair conditions of ignorance and drudgery and they could realize only one side of the argument––that all work and no play made Jill quite a stupid girl.
“But we must grasp the other side of the matter––that all play and no work make her simply impossible; that culture and self-sufficiency can go hand in hand. The American woman really is––and must continue to be––the all-round, regular fellow of the feminine world. Then she will not only teach a great and needed truth to her backward European sisters but she will produce a great future race. American women have tried frivolity in nearly every form and they have worked seriously likewise; they have intruded into men’s professions and careers and in cases have beaten men at their own game. They have successfully broken down the narrow prejudice and limitations which the Victorian era tried making immortal under the title of sentiment––but after they have had the reward of victory and the knowledge of the game, why not be square, as they really are, and do the part the Great Plan meant them to do? Be women first––let the career take the woman if need be, but always thank the good Lord if it needn’t be.”
“And to think you have been working for me,” Steve said, softly.
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“I know that culture and enjoyment of life may be yoked with so-called drudgery. I know, too, that women are retiring not in defeat but with honour and victory in its truest sense when they step out of business life back to their homes. Nor are they empty-handed like the Victorian matrons; but with the energy of tried and true warriors, the ballot in one hand, the child led by the other, they are in a position to right old wrongs, for they have won new rights. They will be able to put into practice in their homes all they have gleaned from the sojourn in the world; the ill-given service of unfitted menials will disappear, as will waste and nerve-racking detail.
“And love must be the leavener of it all––with all her progress and her ability, trained talents and clever logic, the American woman must not and will not renounce her romance––for it is part of God’s very promise of immortality.”
“How often may I come here?” he begged.
Mary shook her head. “You’ve got me started, as Luke says, and I’m hard to check. But have you never thought that out of all the world the American woman is the only woman who cooks and serves her dinner if it is necessary, adjourns to her parlour afterward and discusses poetry and politics and the latest style hat with her guests? For she has learned how to possess true democracy, not rebellion, courage and not hysterical threats to play the rebel, the slacker.
“And now I’ll make you a cup of coffee. And never let me catch you here again!”
When Luke arrived home he found Steve O’Valley basking in the big chair he was wont to occupy, though it was past ten o’clock and he had anticipated172questions from Mary as to his tardiness. Instead he found a very rosy-cheeked, almost sunrise-eyed sister who stammered her greeting as the flustered Mr. O’Valley found his hat and the neglected business portfolio and took his leave.
173CHAPTER XII
To keep down the rising tide of overweight Beatrice abandoned the occult method of having a good time and turned her interest to new creeds containing continual bogus joy and a denial of the vicarious theory of life. But when she discovered that optimism was no deterrent to the oncoming tide of flesh she began a vigorous course in face bleaching, reducing, massage, and electrical treatments, with Trudy playing attentive friend and confidante and secretly chuckling over the Gorgeous Girl’s fast-appearing double chin and her disappearing waistline.
The extensive work of making the house into an Italian villa kept Beatrice from brooding too much over herembonpoint. She enjoyed the endless conferences with the decorators, drapers, artists, and who-nots, with Gay’s suave, flattering little self always at her elbow, his tactful remarks about So-and-so being altogether too thin, and the wonderful nutritive value of chocolate.
“Bea will look like a fishwife when she is forty,” he told Trudy soon after the villa was under way and the first anniversary drew near. “She eats as much candy in a week as an orphan asylum on Christmas Day. Why doesn’t someone tell her to stop?”
Gay felt rather kindly toward Beatrice, for his commissions from the villa transformation made him secure for some time to come; Alice Twill’s idea of a174French château, however, had blown up unexpectedly.
“Well, why don’t people tell you that you look an utter fool with that extra-intelligent edition of tortoise-shell glasses that you wear?” Trudy retorted. Gay was her husband and her property as long as she saw fit to stay his wife, and she did not approve of his constant attendance on the Gorgeous Girl. Even her deliberate retaliation by flirting with the gouty-toe brigade did not make amends. She had moments of depression similar to the time she had learned Mary’s secret. But she did not go back to Mary in the same abandoned spirit. It would never do. If she were not careful she would begin to think for herself and want to take to sensible shoes and a real job, hating herself so utterly that she could never have any more good times. So she saw Mary only at intervals and tried to do nice trifles for her. Trudy was thinner than ever and she had an annoying cough. She still used a can opener as an aide-de-camp in housekeeping and laughed at snow flurries in her low shoes and gauze-like draperies.
It delighted her to have Beatrice become heavy of figure––it almost gave her a hold on her, she fancied––for Beatrice sighed with envy at Trudy’s one hundred and ten pounds and used Trudy as an argument for eating candy.
“Trudy eats candy, lots of it, and she stays thin,” she told Steve.
“Yes; but she works and you don’t. You don’t even pay a gymnasium instructor for daily perseverance, for you could do exercises yourself if you wanted. You sleep late and keep the house like the equator,” he continued.
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Beatrice looked at him in scorn. “Do I ever please you?”
“You married me,” he said, gallantly.
“When I did that I was thinking about pleasing only you, I’m afraid,” was his reward. “I wish you would study French––you have such a queer education you can’t help having queer ideas. And you can’t always go along with such funny views and be like papa. There isn’t room for two in the same family.”
“Do you know the Bible?” he demanded.
Beatrice giggled.
“There you are! You think I haven’t studied in my own fashion. Well, if you did know the Bible intellectually, and Milton–––”
“It sounds like a correspondence-school course. Don’t, Stevuns! Do you know the latest dance from Spain––thepaso-doble? Of course you don’t. You don’t know any of the romance of the Ming Dynasty or how to tell a Tanagra figurine from a plaster-of-paris shepherdess. You haven’t read a single Russian novel; you just glare and stare when they’re mentioned. You won’t play bridge, you can’t sing or make shadow pictures or imitate any one. Good gracious, now that you’ve made a fortune––enjoy it!”
Steve was silent. It was not only futile to argue––it was nerve-racking. Besides, he had found someone else with whom argument was a rare joy and a personal gain––Mary Faithful. At frequent intervals he had won a welcome at the doorway of the little apartment. He almost wished that Beatrice would find it out and row about it, leaving him in peace. He had not yet assumed unselfish views as176to the matter. He was no longer in love with his wife but he was not yet in love with Mary. Instead he was passing through that interlude, whose brevity has made the world doubt its existence, known as platonic friendship. Platonic friendship does exist but it is like tropical twilight––the one whirlwind second in which brilliant sunshine and blue skies dip down and the stars and the moon dash up––and then the trick is done!
But like the thief who audaciously walks by the house of his victim, Steve was never accused of anything worse than using his leisure time to frequent those low restaurants where they serve everything on a two-inch-thick platter. Which, he had retorted, was a relief from eating turtle steak off green-glass dinner plates.
The first wedding anniversary was a rather disappointing affair since Beatrice had to remodel her wedding gown in order to wear it. That fact alone was distressing. And at the eleventh hour Steve was called out of town, which left Beatrice in the hands of her angel-duck brigade, who all felt it their duty to paint Steve in terms of reproach.
“Now Steve felt just as badly about going as you do to have him away,” her father said by way of clumsy consolation. “And he bought you a mighty handsome gift.”
“But I have one quite as lovely,” Beatrice objected. “It was unpardonable of him to go, even if there was a strike and a fire. Let the police arrest everybody.”
She laid aside the gift, a glittering head-dress in the form of platinum Mercury wings set with diamonds, fitting close to the head and giving a decided177Brunnhilde effect. “I hate duplicates; I always want something different and novel.”
“It’s a good thing I gave you a check,” said her father.
“Yes, because Gay can always find me something”––brightening. “And tell me, how is the salon fresco coming on?”
Her father held up his hands in protest. “Ask something easy. A mob of workmen and sleek gentlemen that tiptoe about like undertakers’ assistants––that’s all I know. But not one of them touches my room!”
“All right, papa.” She kissed him prettily. “And as I’m dead for sleep and aunty is snoring in her chair, suppose you wake her up and run along?”
Summoning Aunt Belle, who was approaching the Mrs. Skewton stage of wanting a continuous rose-curtain effect, Beatrice stood at the window with unusual affection to wave the last of her guests a good-bye.
She sat up until daylight, to her maid’s dismay, still in her remodelled wedding gown. She was thinking chaotic, rebellious, ridiculous nothings, punctuated with uneven ragged thoughts about matching gloves to gowns or getting potted goose livers at the East-Side store Trudy had just recommended. The general trend of her reverie was the dissatisfaction not over this first year of married life but at the twenty-seven years as a Gorgeous Girl, the disappointment at not having some vital impelling thing to do, which should of course supply a good time as well as a desirable achievement. The inherited energy was demanding an outlet. She recalled the evening’s entertainment––a paper chase with every room left littered and disordered,178her lace flounce badly torn, her head thumping with pain, the latest dances, the inane music, the scandal whispered between numbers, the elaborate supper and favours, the elaborate farewells––and the elaborate lies about the charm of the hostess and the good time.
She began to envy Steve as well as Trudy, Steve in his hotel busy with Labour delegates, wrangling, demanding, threatening, winning or losing as the case might be. She, too, must do something. She had finished with another series of adventures––that of being a mad butterfly. It was shelved with the months of a romantic, parasitical existence misnaming jealous monopoly as love, an existence which all at once seemed as long ago as another lifetime.
She would now be an advanced woman, intellectual, daring; she would allow her stunted abilities to have definite expression. Either she would find a new circle of friends or else swerve the course of the present circle into an atmosphere of Ibsen, Pater, advanced feminine thought, and so on––with Egyptology as a special side line. She would even become an advocate of parlour socialism, perhaps. She would encourage languid poets and sarcastic sex novelists with matted hair and puff satin ties. She would seek out short-haired mannish women with theories and oodles of unpublished short stories, and feed them well, opening her house for their drawing-room talks. She would be a lion tamer! She was done with sighing and tears, belonging to the first stage of Glorious Girlism; and with pouting and flirting, which belonged to the second––she would now make them roar, herself included!
At noon the next day she sought Mary Faithful179in her office, to everyone’s surprise. To her own astonishment she discovered her husband busily engaged in conversation with some members of the Board of Trade, his travelling bag on a side table.
“I didn’t bother to telephone you or wire––I got in at eight this morning and came right up here. I knew you’d not be up,” he added, curtly. “Would you mind waiting in Miss Faithful’s office until I’m at liberty?”
Beatrice was forced to consent graciously and pass into the other room, where Mary was giving dictation.
When Mary finished she offered Beatrice a magazine but the Gorgeous Girl declined it and began in petulant fashion:
“I’ve been thinking about you, Miss Faithful, and I do envy you. Do you know why? You have more of my husband than I have; that was what I came to tell you. For business is his very life and you are his business partner. I only have the tired remnant that occasionally wanders homeward.”
Mary wondered what Beatrice would say if she knew of the supper talks she had had with the tired remnant, who flung discretion to the winds and clamoured for invitations as keenly as he had once begged for the Gorgeous Girl’s kisses.
“Oh, no, that’s not true. You see–––” she began, but she simply could not finish the lie.
“I’ve decided that if business is more important to my husband than his wedding anniversary I shall be of importance to him in his business,” she continued. “Be careful––you’ve a rival looming ahead.”
Steve opened the door and nodded for his wife to come in. Mary was left with rather unsteady nerves and a pessimistic attitude to round out her day. Beatrice’s180hint had had an unpleasant petty sound that she did not quite understand. She wished she had never allowed Steve to draw her out of her businesslike attitude. However, when she learned that he had very unexpectedly called off work for the rest of the day to do his wife’s bidding she told herself she was needlessly alarmed, though it was always a rash thing to try exchanging her heartache for a temporary joyful mirage!
The next evening, when Mary was in the throes of explaining this thing in guarded fashion to Steve and Steve was arguing angrily and begging for his welcome, Trudy Vondeplosshe happened in unexpectedly and very much rejoiced inwardly at finding this delightful little tête-à-tête in full progress.
Of course the couple gave business and the recent strike as an alarming necessity for a private conference, and then Steve scuttled away, leaving Mary to try to look unconscious and change the subject to Trudy’s new hat. But ever mindful of Mary’s confession Trudy was not to be swerved from the topic.
“I’m glad Beatrice was not with me,” she said, sweetly, “for like all heartless flirts she is jealous––ashamed of Steve half of the time and mad about him the other half. I’d try to have the business all transacted at the office. You used to. And Beatrice says business isn’t half as brisk as it was then.”
The upshot of the matter resulted in Mary’s applying for a two-months’ leave of absence. Spent in the Far North woods with Luke it would make common sense win over starved dreams.
“I think I’ve earned it,” was all she said to Steve.
“A year ago I went away and you stayed. Of181course you have earned it. But I am going to miss you.”
The day before she left––it was well into July before she could conscientiously see her way clear to go––she received a plaid steamer rug. There was no card attached to the gift, and when she was summoned to Steve’s apartment to inform him about some matters, Steve having a slight attack of grippe, she was so formal to both Steve and Beatrice, who stayed in the room, making them very conscious of her apricot satin and cream-lace presence, that Beatrice remarked later:
“It’s a fortunate thing that she isn’t going to visit the North Pole; she’d be so chilly when she returned you’d have to wrap the entire office in a warming pad. I was thinking this morning that with the way she lives and manages she must have saved some money. Do you know if she has––and how much? I hope you won’t pay her her salary while she is gone. It’s no wonder she can afford nervous prostration if you do!”
“I didn’t know she had it,” Steve said, dully.
“Whatever it is, then, that makes her take all this time. The way employees act, walking roughshod in their rights! And now, deary, hurry and get well, for I’ve a wonderful surprise for you.” She knelt beside the couch and patted his cheek. “I’m going to be your private secretary during her absence––yes, I am. As soon as I finish making the mannikins for the knitting bags at the kermis. Then I’m going to try to take her place––well, a tiny part of her place to start with, and work into the position gradually. Yes, I am. I’m determined to try it. I’ve worried and worried to decide what to do with myself.”
182
Worry was Beatrice’s sole form of prayer. Steve wondered if what Mary had recently said to him could be true, at least in his own case. She had said that defeat at thirty should be an incentive––only after fifty could it be counted a definite disaster.
183CHAPTER XIII
“You don’t know how I’ve missed you,” Steve told Mary upon her return. “Don’t I look it?” he added, wistfully.
Mary had appeared at the office late one September afternoon rather than appear the following morning as a model of exact punctuality. She had had to force herself to remain away until her leave of absence expired. It was Luke who rejoiced in the freedom of the woods and the green growing things in which his sister had tried to take consolation, telling herself they would revive her common sense and banish absurd notions concerning Steve O’Valley. It was Luke who rejoiced at catching the largest trout of the season, who never wearied of hayrack rides and corn roasts and bonfires with circles of ghostlike figures enduring the smoke and the damp and the rapid-fire gossiping and giggling. Luke had returned with a healthy coat of tan and a large correspondence list, pledging himself to revisit the spot every season.
But Mary felt defeated in the very purpose of her holiday. The atmosphere of weary school-teachers trying to appear as golden-haired flappers foot-loose for a romance; the white shoes always drying outside tents or along window sills; the college professors eternally talking about their one three-months’ tour of Europe; the mosquitoes; the professional invalid, the inevitable divorcee; the woman with literary ambitions and a typewriter set in action on184the greenest, most secluded spot for miles about; the constant snapshotting of everything from an angleworm to a group of arm-entwined bathers about to play splash-me; the cheap talk and aping of such Gorgeous Girls as Beatrice Constantine––all this on one side, and a great and eternal loneliness for Steve on the other.
It was small wonder that defeat was the result. And yet in her heart of hearts Mary was glad that it was so. There is something splendid and breathless in trying to shut away a forbidden rapture, and being unable to do so; in telling oneself one will never try repression again but will shamelessly acknowledge the forbidden rapture and register a desire to thrill to it whenever possible.
Besides the irritations of the summer camp Mary had been forced to leave Hanover remembering Steve as ill, worried over business; of Beatrice’s hinting that she would usurp her place. There had been so many womanly trifles she would have done for Steve had she been in Beatrice’s position––a linen cover for the water glass; a soft shade on the window instead of the glaring white-and-gold-striped affair; exile for that ubiquitous spaniel; home cooking, with old-fashioned milk toast and real coffee of a forefather’s day.
Strange how such homey trifles persist in the mind of a commercial nun through two months of supposed enjoyment and liberty. In the same way incongruous associations of ideas spring into the brain with no apparent reason at all causing fossilized professors to write essays-under-glass that elucidate matters not in the slightest.
So Mary returned to the office two days ahead of185time, her heart thumping so loudly that she thought Miss Lunk would surely detect the sound. She deliberately dressed herself in a demure new suit and a becoming black-winged hat which made her seem as if delightfully arrayed for afternoon tea. And it was with a charming timidity that she tiptoed into the office.
Before Steve had asked her opinion she had given one swift look about the two offices, and she was glad that they looked as they did. It would have been disappointing to have found them spick and span and quite self-sufficient, without a hint that Mary Faithful was missed or irreplaceable.
Evidences of Beatrice’s brief sojourn in the business world still remained––an elaborate easy-chair with rose pillows, a thermos bottle and cut-glass tumbler, a curlicue French mirror slightly awry and, on her desk, a gay-bordered silk handkerchief, a silver-mesh bag, and a great amount of cluttered notations; all of which proved that the understudy secretary had not yet mastered the law of efficiency.
It seemed amusing to Mary. She thought: “How stupid! How can she––when the wicker basket is the one logical place for–––”
Then she spied Steve’s desk, bearing a suggestion of the same disorder about it. When she spoke his name and he started up, holding out both hands, she saw a queer, bright look in his eyes, as if he, too, were trying to convince himself that everything was all right.
“So you really missed me?”
“Missed you! Heaven alone can record the unselfish struggle I endured to let you play. I give you my word.”
He wheeled up a chair for her, just as he used to186wheel up a chair for Beatrice, and sitting opposite him Mary heard an almost womanish enumeration of petty troubles and disturbances, a pathetic threat as to the avalanche of work which would await her in the morning.
“And now I will be polite enough to ask if you had a good time?”
“Very! And Mrs. O’Valley?”
It was so horrid to have to pretend when each knew the other was pretending; and as they pretended to the world in general, what a relief and blessed lightening of tension it would have been to have said merely an honest: “We don’t care about Mrs. Gorgeous Girl or any one else. We are quite content with each other. True, this is still platonic friendship––with one of us––but all tropical twilight is of short duration. It won’t be platonic much longer. So let’s talk about ourselves all we like!”
But being thoroughbred young persons they felt it was not the thing even to think frankly.
“She is well,” Steve said, briefly.
“She came down here, she wrote me, when she wanted to find out about something or other. I’ve forgotten just what.”
Steve smiled. “Yes, for nearly a week Mrs. O’Valley managed to create a furore among her own set. Before she came here she ordered an entire new outfit of clothes––business togs. There were queer hats and shirt waists and things.” He laughed at the remembrance. “Then she had to practise getting up early; that took a lot of time. Meanwhile, Miss Sartwell did your work just as we planned. It was found necessary to postpone her business career still further because of an out-of-door pageant187that required her services as a nymph. She caught cold at rehearsal and enjoyed a week of indoors.
“Then Gay turned up with a whole flock of new decorators for the d–––for the villa thing, and I was left without aid from theennuiedfor another ten days. Jill Briggs had a wedding anniversary and relied on Beatrice’s aid. Of course she could not refuse, and Trudy, who, by the way, has come on very rapidly, persuaded Beatrice to take a booth at a charity kettledrum.
“So after several weeks my wife appeared on my business horizon and hung that mirror up and had those other things moved in and then she discovered that the impudent girls were all copying her coats and hats and stuff and even used her sort of perfume, and she decided that her duty lay not in making me a competent secretary but in reforming these extravagant young persons so that she could wear a model gown in comfort and not see it copied within a month. It was quite an experience for her; she was here about five days. Miss Sartwell just moved her desk out there and we managed nicely. Beatrice also had a private teacher for typewriting and so on, but she gave it all up because she felt the confinement and long hours made her head ache and she gained weight. She fled in haste. Sorry she had to do so, but under the circumstances it was better to jeopardize my business career than her own figure!”
“Aren’t you a little unfair?” Mary said, seriously.
“Am I? I never thought so. Wait––I must finish the tale. For a whole week after being my business partner she tried what she called holiness as a cosmetic, and became high-church and quite trying. At the end of that time she felt a veritable dynamo of188nerves and scandal and proceeded to become a liberated and advanced woman. You’ll soon enough see what I mean. She doesn’t run to short-haired ladies with theories so much as to hollow-eyed gentlemen embroidering cantos in the drawing room and trying to make the world safe for poetry. De-luxe adventuresses strike her as harmonious just now. You’ll hear about one Sezanne del Monte who is staying in town and living off of Bea and her set.”
“The woman who is divorced every season––and stars in musical comedy?”
“The same. Sezanne is now writing the intimate story of her life; sort of heart throbs instead of punctuation marks––lots of asterisks, you know, separating the paragraphs. Beatrice is going to finance the publication of it and Gay is going to be the sales manager. Yes, it’s funny, but a blamed nuisance when you come home and you find yourself wandering through a crowd of Sezanne del Montes and Gays and Trudys, all bent on playing parlour steeplechase, and you can’t find a plain chair to sit down or eat a plain meal or read a newspaper. It’s more than a blamed nuisance––it’s cause for a trial by jury,” he added, whimsically. “Now what’s wrong?”––watching Mary’s face.
“It isn’t cricket to tell all this.”
Somehow the old struggle began with renewed energy in Mary’s heart, the puritanical part saying: “Forget you ever thought twice of this man”; and the dreamer part urging: “You have earned the right to love him. She has not. Just be fair––merely fair. You have the right; don’t let your opportunity slip by.”