At first fame was good to have, there was no mistaking it. For Thurley achieved delightful freedom by the magic of her success. She began to do all she had planned during her novice period, to try this or that sort of costume, to give “affairs,” if you please; she cultivated a hobby and a “phobia” and acquired a smart wire-haired terrier called “Taffy” whose picture was featured in all the leading newspapers and musical journals.
It did not take her long to readjust herself to this new life. Older, tired persons who had played godmother and godfather to her during her apprenticeship watched her in amusement. Not that Thurley ceased to apply herself to work; she was untiring in her efforts, for she felt she would never want to stop learning new and more difficult things. Nor did she stop knowing any one save those who could be of use to her. Instead there was exhibited a refreshing democracy of spirit which governed her likes and dislikes.
Bliss told Caleb, “She’s a pleasant little Trojan and one can see at a glance, save for amusing whims, she is as reliable as a grandfather’s clock.” And he told Thurley, who hovered about hoping for some personal understanding or praise,
“Just be sincere and everything else trues up—and don’t grow plump like Lissa, because banting is an awful bugbear.”
At which Thurley tossed her newly laurel-crownedhead and determined to try artifice to make him pay her attention. After all, these fads and fashions were merely antidotes to make her forget the thing she craved foremost—Bliss Hobart’s real friendship. So she ordered lavishly of whatsoever she chose, moving without delay into an apartment, with Miss Clergy tottering contentedly after. It was a personal triumph for Miss Clergy; with Thurley it was only the natural result of having been born a singer.
“I have my own ideas for my apartment,” she told Ernestine with patronage, even waving aside Lissa’s suggestions for a “love of a boudoir—just the place for proposals” and returning Mark’s offering of a gilt mirror because it did not harmonize with her color scheme!
“Let her play away, she’ll tire of it,” Sam Sparling said indulgently, when Polly dropped in at the theater to recount Thurley’s latest exploit, the purchase of antique Egyptian jewelry which she was to wear in “Aïda.”
“Have you seen her apartments?” asked Polly. “Not like Thurley at all. I associate her with real mahogany and open fireplaces—rose-garden things.”
“I’ll blow up that way to-morrow afternoon,” Sam promised.
Which he did—only to be amazed himself at the effect Thurley had managed to create. Her living room had a blue floor, a blue arch and lapis lazuli colored pedestals. There was a turquoise satin fire screen, a globe of blue Bristol glass and the walls and ceilings were done in rich, silver leaf paper with impossible gilt furniture set at futurist angles throughout the apartment. Apricot linen curtains threw a strange, mellow glow on the black dining-room, the walls being brocaded black velvet with red alabaster bowls on tripods and a riotous futurist frieze running about the room. Therewere side tables of audacious rose-red marble and the dining table and chairs were polished ebony while an onyx-like mantel boasted of silver bowls heaped with glass colored fruits.
Sam, who knew no restraint, came rapping boldly at the door of Thurley’s own room, after an astonished stroll through the apartment.
Achicmaid opened the door with the properly startled expression always registered in Caleb’s novels.
“I say, Thurley, you’ve done yourself proud,” Sam lounged in the doorway to view the white Empire furniture with elaborate gold scroll, the blue velvet hangings, the cabinet of slippers and hair ornaments arranged, no one knew why, not even Thurley herself, as if for display.
Thurley, who was preparing to take dinner at the Hotel Particular with half a dozen new and decidedly unconventional creatures, tried to look indignant.
“You’re a monster,” she said as she shook her finger at him in imitation of Lissa. At which Sam burst out laughing and vowed he would have her for his leading lady no matter if he had to send Bliss flying off yon cliff.
“You ridiculous child,” spoiling her dignity completely, “who in the world started you to shake fingers in old beaux’ faces? And dressing like the adventuress in ‘Lights o’ London’? Do put on your rumpled blue serge and let’s go for a drive!”
Thurley swept by him in indignation, Sam following and side-stepping her train. She wore a band of black jet in her carefully dressed hair and a gown of black to match, over which was a long cape of unspotted ermine.
She stood beside the piano to draw on her gloves. “It isn’t fair to scold in front of a new maid,” she said, “and contradict me or not, Sam, I am grown up. I can’tgo about like a flapper or keep on living in a hotel.”
“What does Miss Clergy say?” Sam balanced himself first on his toes and then sank back on his heels.
“She smiles, nods, agrees and never wants me to repay her. But, joy of joys, I can. For I’m going to be rich—really rich and I’m young; I have years in which to dash about without a thought as to rest or digestion. Don’t you approve?” She finished buttoning her gloves and proceeded to open a florist’s box critically to take notice of a corsage of yellow tea roses.
“Mark does send such ultra things,” she complained languidly. At which Sam Sparling nearly upset himself by overbalancing and then came up to take hold of her shoulders as if she were a small boy in need of a trouncing.
“Young lady, let an old beau give a word of advice. They say a word to the wise is sufficient and you were, formerly, wise and apple-cheeked and delicious. We all adored you. To-day I feel I ought to call you Lady Vere de Vere and tuck intriguing notes in that corsage, all that sort of thing ... my dear, play away, for it’s not to be wondered at, but don’t, oh, don’t, Thurley, let it supersede the real you. I remember Ernestine Christian had a whirl at it when she first came into prominence. Dear yes, jewels and furs that every woman envied—flirtations—a bit psychological were her flirtations as I remember; she particularly went in for Hindu poets and consuls. But flirtations, nevertheless! Then she used to give all manner of absurd parties—there was one in London that laid me up a fortnight. It began with ice cream and cordials and ended with the Lord Mayor of London’s own turtle soup—had it sent over by gold braided beadles and so on. You had to eat each course in a different spot. You were kept on the move, so tospeak. I remember munching my alligator pear somewhere near the Tower of London, only to be whisked off to Whitechapel to be set up directly with the neatest sort of a game plate! Well, she tired of playing that way and one day she appeared at my dressing room in a rough tweed suit and a felt hat saying,
“‘Sam, I’ve buttered buns in this hamper and pale, schoolboy sherry. Let’s walk until we’re so hungry that we’ll sit down and eat like beggars—and I can make a proper confession of what a fool I’ve been!’”
Thurley tried not to laugh and succeeded in commanding an unbecoming frown. “Well, you didn’t try to restrain her,” she insisted.
“Ernestine is a different type. I’m afraid you wouldn’t look at mere Hindu poets or consuls.”
“What of yourself?”
“Hands up, I confess. I had a passion for coaching tours and those horrible alderman-like banquets. I seemed to be tremendously popular with the buds—I was cad enough to keep all their letters for a long time. When they began to have grandchildren send me notes saying, ‘Granny says to ask if you remember the time you playedRomeoand so and so’—I stopped being such a great house, ordered health-last shoes and got a line on the really reliable sanitariums. But you, Thurley,”—The old-beau aspect of himself seemed dimmed; he appeared a fatherly old gentleman rich in experience and therefore wise in judgment. She felt like a naughty child who has been discovered while parading in her mother’s finery. She could not have told why, but she felt artificial, as if she should be on the stage of the opera house singing her heart away in some lavish rôle—asViolettain “Traviata” for instance—but not as Thurley Precore!
“You’d even make me believe there was no Santa Claus,” she protested, the actress in her rallying to her support. “Don’t tell me to don a pinafore and become interested in botany! It’s such fun to play—and so new; none of you seem to realize that.” Here she trailed off into silence, busy with her own thoughts, Mark’s corsage slipping from her fingers.
She was remembering Dan and Lorraine and the day the child Thurley and Philena pledged to be missionaries, the advent into the Clergy mansion as a madcap mischief, the singing in Betsey’s parlor that momentous June day, the quarrel with Dan, the wonderful journey to the city with the ghost-lady, then Bliss ... here the thoughts ended and she found herself thanking Sam for returning her corsage.
“As for this sort of thing,” the old actor finished, pointing at the corsage, “you’ll have many of them—but choose wisely and for all time. Don’t waste time on worthless phantoms; remember ‘To-morrow feeds on yesterday.’ Even if you fancy you are merely playing at being a ‘grand lady,’ and that you yourself are unspoiled and truly great, think of the bon mot: ‘Imitation is sincerest flattery,’ and do not ape Lissa any more than you can help.”
“None of you understand,” she cried, rebelliously. “I shall do as I wish and live as I choose—as you have all done.”
“Look at us and take warning,” ended Sam promptly. “Well, if you get crowded to the wall, call on me. I’ll be about.” After this he went on his way undecided whether or not merely to admire Thurley as another dear charmer on whom his heart had undeniably been frittered away or to take her seriously as if she were a hope-to-die ward given into his guardianship.
Meanwhile, Thurley went on to the dinner party remembering Sam’s audacity with annoyance intermingled with delight. There was and always will be to every woman, if she is honest, a rare charm in being treated as a little girl. White-haired matrons delight in being named “girl” and being told by some one a trifle whiter of hair and more numerous of birthdays: “My child, what in the world are you dreaming of?” It is a harmless notion with which every woman is endowed.
Thurley was born more or less of a woman, so that Sam’s attitude appealed to her. But the peacock which is also in all women and the love of domination, remnant of glorious idol worship, made her reject his halfway offered protectorship.
It was wonderful to dress in rich fashion, to have Mark take her to some bohemian table d’hôte—like that of the Petispas Sisters—to know she would be the handsomest and best-dressed person there and that Lissa was helplessly furious at Mark’s new object of adoration, yet obliged to smile instead of snarl in Thurley’s presence. It was fun to read letters from unknown admirers, to have schoolgirls with vast ambitions and opinions of their abilities appeal to her, as well as embryo tenors from small towns who only needed a gracious, sisterly hand to guide them, and press agents out of a job who were capable of the greatest scheme for procuring public interest that ever alarm-clocked! Thurley was just realizing the parasites, so-called artistic, who beg, steal or demand their living from those who really work and earn one. She was beginning to classify the large army of restless rebel women who really delude themselves into believing they have a mission in life, badgering all those who simply do the work they were intended for. These women interested Thurley. She regarded themas one views a new member of the zoo, poking sticks at them through the bars when the guard is not alert.
She had listened to these creatures tell their woes with childish audacity; she liked their superlative mode of expression rendering their case hopelessly weak and insincere, she was amused by the comic opera fashion in which they dressed or the masculine over-emphasis in costume details. There were women of the pale, willowy type—“misunderstood” was their slogan. There were the bold, aggressive women who despised sentiment and who longed to prove to men that they were truly a non-essential race, who grew so enthusiastic over what they could do for one Thurley Precore as her advance agent, companion, secretary and so on that Thurley fully expected them to bark or walk up the wall, as she told Ernestine. There were women of the dreamy, neurotic type who never mentioned mother back in Oshkosh still cooking “three squares a day” for her houseful of boarders in order that Myrtle or Poincianna might have a winter in New York in which to study design! Design was right—but not as mother fancied it was!
Oftentimes Thurley felt she must stop playing a part—mischievous young person!—and say to these misguided rebel-dolls that they were fortunate in having just plain folks, to have any one really belonging to them—a vista of forbidden joys would open before her blue eyes as these “hysterical hikers,” as Bliss Hobart had named them, told her of how they had come away from the sordid, uninteresting atmosphere which strangled their inner selves and they were willing to go hungry—all the great ones had gone hungry—to deny the fleshpots if they might only achieve—might win the laurel! After the large flow of language when called upon to demonstratetheir abilities, they would warble in a reedy soprano:
The vi-o-let loves the pans-yFOR—the robin told me so-o-o—
The vi-o-let loves the pans-yFOR—the robin told me so-o-o—
The vi-o-let loves the pans-y
FOR—the robin told me so-o-o—
Or else they would use a coal-bin contralto to inform Thurley all about the Lost Chord and ask if they did not remind her of Clara Butts!
It was a merry life, because Thurley had not reached the stage of acknowledging that she had nerves. She revelled in this court of appeals from which the others fled.
Caleb had reached the neurasthenic stage where he wanted a periscope attached to his porch so he could spot approaching authors laden with a manuscript. Every time a young author did brave the portcullis and obtain an audience, only to ask Caleb if there really was not everything in a name—editors were so mean, anyhow, and every one said so, and if Caleb would permit his novel, which every one said wastheAmerican novel, too, to be printed under Caleb’s name and thus play a roaring joke on these haughty and unfair editors, why, he would go fifty-fifty on the royalties—every time this happened to Caleb, he promptly disappeared on a champagne debauch and refused to express any penitence whatsoever concerning it!
Or if Collin was held up by a young woman with a badly powdered nose and a thatch of flaxen hair hiding all her features save the nose and was asked if she could not be his inspiration, Collin lost no time in rewarding himself for the ordeal. His bags were packed, and his motor was at the gate, even if the president of a steel trust was due for a portrait sitting. Away he flew over hill anddale like a startled rabbit, reaching some rural inn where art consisted of framed lithographs, and here he lay in hiding until his disposition had sufficiently recovered to allow his return as a smiling, bow-tie-waving artist, brush poised for action!
Therefore the family regarded Thurley’s liking for the onslaught of hysterical hikers as a sort of puppy soap-chewing-and-distemper stage.
“Let it run its course, they all do,” Hobart said when it was reported to him. “She’ll grow weary of autographing photographs and of having every would-be genius from the wilds of Oregon try to crowd into a basket and land on her doorstep—a songbird foundling cuckooing its misunderstood little life!”
There was something about these women which faintly roused the reformer in Thurley. They were simply out of step, she insisted, her own little feet always marching to the bandwagon without question. They needed to be shown the inspiration which can be gained from mediocrity. Although they were humorous and a trifle pathetic, they were dangerous, to Thurley’s mind.
“What havoc they could raise!” she said to Hobart one afternoon. “They would be capable of playing gnome at sane and settled doorways and calling, ‘Leave your tasks—come out—come out,’ and a great many would follow them. They are seething with discontent and they have the determination which keeps them going, yet they do not tell themselves the truth; they magnify home wrongs and future glories and their own possibilities. And I think,” she added with a frank smile, “they have either never been loved by any one or else loved some one who did not love them. It’s a form of romantic insanity which causes them to denounce love when all the while they crave it—insane persons always turn onthe ones who love them best. So these dear, queer girls and women, trying to avoid routine work and home folks, just need to have Cupid take their telephone number and he could accomplish the miracle of miracles.”
Chuckling, Hobart had taken his leave. The next afternoon he surprised Thurley with a call, handing her a bouquet of charming wine-colored, white-specked blossoms surrounded by cool fern.
She did not thank him; instead she flushed and the blue eyes grew two shades deeper blue.
“I thought you’d be terribly set up over an old-fashioned ‘bow pot.’” Hobart was rather mystified.
“I am; you chose cleverly.” Thurley hated herself for betraying displeasure.
“Why don’t you like Early Morning Brides? They used to be my mother’s favorite; she sent to America for seed and we had one walk lined with them.” Hobart looked like the small boy who had blundered into delivering the love note to the green grocer and the green grocer’s order to the loved one!
Thurley’s face had cleared magically. “Oh, is that the name you know them by?” dimples twinkling in her cheeks. “I—I thought it something else.”
“What?” determined to solve the mystery.
“A silly name, very likely I’m wrong—anyway, you’re a dear and here they go into my best vase and on to my best table!”
Later in the day Hobart took time to retrace his steps to the old florist. He asked if Early Morning Brides had ever been known by another name.
“Well, some do call ’em Old Maids’ Pincushion,” the man told him, “but I’m one as has no liking for the name!”
During the winter Thurley tired of the hysterical hikers, since they increased in number. They did not bother with such persons as Lissa or Mark or Polly. And Hobart, who was acknowledged to be the personification of public opinion, was immune from the pest. By degrees Thurley realized why Lissa was not bothered—because Lissa herself was a hysterical hiker developed to the stage of a near-genius; such transformations are too often wrought these days. Like recognizing like, she was severely let alone. As for Mark—when Thurley thought of him she found herself sitting down in a nearby chair, deaf to the world about her. There was no denying that if Lissa’s theories regarding artists’ privileges were true and her theories of life ethical, her exponent of them, Mark, was a sorry example. Mark was rapidly becoming a selfish neurasthenic; his better self died hard, it is true, but dying it was. Although the actress part of Thurley delighted in the unwise excitement of a flirtation with some one else’s property, the real Thurley looked askance at the changes being swiftly wrought in the boy, his over-emphasis on petty detail concerning his comfort, his ill humor at minor happenings which were not as he had wished, his sluggishness regarding work—the critics began to hint he was too bulky of figure. More and more did he bask in Lissa’s salon, drink and eat unwisely, taking her raggings about the “so-great-nobody” with humorous unconcern, quite positive of his own power to fascinate and offset Lissa’s tempers.
Foppish dress, lack of humdrum duties, home ties—there had been an aunt, Thurley learned, who had raised him and of whom he was now ashamed. She lived meekly retired in the little white house in Connecticut and Mark sent her money, the easiest thing in the world to send, and her name was never mentioned. His press agent had a most fetching story about his mother’s being a Turkish girl who escaped from a harem and his father a Grecian nobleman and Mark’s having been educated in Moscow and Berlin, whereas, in the real heart of the man, there was the spirit which could be reverent and proud of his aunt’s toil-worn hands with prominent purplish veins and knotted fingers, of the simple white house and the everyday living which had given him the constitution to endure the not-everyday living he now embraced.
When Thurley’s press agent had woven similar romances concerning herself, she refused to let them appear, saying with a simplicity worthy of an older, wiser woman, “I am Thurley Precore, an American. You may tell of the box-car wagon and those funny things of my childhood and my decision not to marry but have a career, but please do not tell what is an untruth,” at which the press agent had elaborated these details until they were scarcely to be recognized and printed the story surrounded by a string of heartbroken and despairing bachelors of every type who were wailing that life meant nothing as long as this newdivahad chosen a career instead of love.
One March afternoon, after Thurley had created a new furore asSentain “The Flying Dutchman,” her social engagements crowding her with a vengeance, three things occurred the same muggy, windy day which impressed themselves mightily on her mind.
She had had Mark in for tea, clandestinely, since Lissa was giving a musical and had invited both of them. Miss Clergy had gone for her usual drive and Thurley had donned corn-colored silk with silver trimmings and a new set of cameo jewelry to exercise her powers of fascination.
Ernestine was on tour and Polly Harris had temporarily disappeared from the horizon, particularly Thurley’s, because the latter had innocently had the bad taste to try to help her openly. Collin was in Washington to paint the president’s portrait and Caleb in Europe rapidly burning up the earnings of his last year’s book.
The opera season was near completion and Thurley and Miss Clergy were casting about where to spend the summer, the press agents urging some unusual spot which should furnish them with autumn copy—a submarine boat or the Sahara desert! The naming of a cigar for her and an invitation to sing at the dedication of a great church had been the events of the week while banners up and down Fifth Avenue announced that she had made a record of her “Aïda” aria, “O, ciel assuerri” for a prominent talking machine company. As the loveliest and youngest singer of her day, with Europe flirting with her managers to hear her and America plying her with dollars to keep her at home, Thurley wondered how it would seem to have some new pink-and-white-cheeked girl with an even greater voice than hers, bluer eyes and brighter hair, come slipping into the opera field as she had done. She wondered if she could be half as gracious as these tired-faced men and women who welcomed and hated and pitied her all in one!
She glanced sideways in a glass and added mentally,“You’ve a long road ahead, anyway,” while Mark droned on in impossible platitudes.
A maid brought a card and Thurley read the name, Hortense Quinby. Underneath was written, “Please see me, very vital.”
“Run along, Mark,” she commanded. “You’ve told pretty fibs long enough. Do go to Lissa’s recital. You must stop travelling on such thin ice as long as you are determined to be a slug.”
“That’s no fair.” Mark tried to take her hands but she drew away.
“How do you like these cameos?” she demanded.
“Let me get you lovelier things. There ought to be jewels just for you and no one else—a Thurley design in pale gold—”
“Spare me! There is a front-laced Precore corset, a Thurley ginger-ale and a Thurley Precore perfecto cigar, as well as a Thurley perfume and vanishing cream—why torture me any further?”
“Because I like you. I don’t know why I don’t say love you,” his handsome face flushing, “but you’re not the sort to say that to unless a chap has earned the right. How a pair of eyes can change everything one has made up his mind to say!”
“I’ll cover them with my hands,” she teased.
“No, they’d shine through at me—true blue always does. So I’ll just say like—and make you admit you return the sentiment. If it’s only liking each other, Thurley, there’s no harm!”
“I like you, but I don’t approve of you,” she admitted, “and I’d rather you didn’t come to see me when you ought to be with Lissa.”
“If she had some one she liked better than me, shewould not remember such a word as loyalty,” he began impulsively.
“No fair—run along and do take some exercises. You look aldermanic.”
Reluctantly, he rose. “Why see every stray female from nowhere? I used to when I took life and art seriously. It grew to be a bore and I never see any one now. Even if the Jap does steal more than his wages, I keep him because he knows how never to open the door for any one but the laundry and the liquor agents.”
“I see them because it is a novelty, as people see me because I am one,” she said soberly. “Some day the people and I will stop both customs.... Good-by, Mark—my apologies to Lissa and I shall see her soon.”
Hortense Quinby proved to be a “hysterical hiker”—one concluded that from her pale, rather quick face and over-severe mode of hair-dressing. She had an untrimmed floppy hat, a bright green walking suit that had seen better days and a severe, gentlemanly cravat throttling her chin. There was an attempt to have a professional air by carrying a leather portfolio, but one could not have told whether she was a travelling manicure or secretary to a professor on Egyptology!
She was not a young woman nor was she middle-aged; perhaps the look of discontent in her dark eyes shadowed her really admirable features. She lost no time in making her wants known; one could see that she had been met with many rebuffs in similar situations and so, like the door to door canvasser she had learned to say the most in the least time!
“Miss Precore,” she began in her tense voice, artificially accented here and there with a dash of pseudo-New York, “I am Hortense Quinby, I live in GreenwichVillage, and perhaps I should say Istarvein Greenwich Village. I have watched your rise into fame, not with envy but with admiration and respect. You are young, beautiful, talented; you have the world in the palm of your little hand. I do not ask you to be anything unreasonable—but I do implore your help. Let me become essential to you in some capacity—a secretary, a housekeeper, a maid—I hold myself above no office if it concerns the right person. I play accompaniments fairly well—not as well as you would wish for public appearances but for your practice-hour. I am one of those who have failed,” here a deep-seated sigh. “I came from a small town in the middle part of the state about ten years ago; every one thought I had great literary ability as well as musical. But there was no one to help me get across—perhaps when one’s talents are divided one is to be pitied.”
She said all this, scarcely pausing. Now she stopped to breathe.
“Really, Miss Quinby, I have every one I need,” Thurley said gently.
“But I have not,” returned Miss Quinby to her amazement. “Be generous, lovely young thing, be generous to us who have failed. I am not asking for fame—merely to become associated with it.” She held out her hands dramatically. “Do not send me back to be ground down again!”
“I don’t need you,” Thurley protested, most perturbed.
“I need you. My life cannot be lived as are thousands of women’s lives, bounded by the price of calico and two weeks’ vacation in a lake cottage. I have a soul above pots and pans—a fearless soul, capable of enduring all things to achieve my aim. Let me be yourinspiration—you think I could not?” The restless eyes were dangerous and somewhat vindictive.
Miss Quinby proceeded to enumerate her abilities and the capacities in which she had served. As nearly as Thurley could understand a comic opera singer stranded in Miss Quinby’s home town had heard her sing and idly encouraged the girl. Some one financed the comic opera singer on to New York and she thought no more of the incident. Not so with Hortense Quinby. From the moment she had been told she had “a voice” and a “future” and “get out of this hole, my dear”—everything in her present scheme of things had been abandoned. She came to New York only to find the opera singer absorbed in her own difficulties and to battle alone with her “voice” and her “future” and her having left “the dreadful hole.”
She had tried magazine work; rejection slips enough to have papered the boarding house were the result. She had, sadly enough, a glimmer of the divine spark which led her on a madcap chase during which the best years of girlhood were wasted. She became socialist and follower of long-haired, East Side gentlemen’s magazines which the authorities usually made a bonfire of, locking up the long-haired gentlemen. She was prominent in visiting them in the Tombs and giving out dangerous statements to the press, in hopes, really, of being locked up herself and thus appearing as a martyr. There are so many would-be martyrs, self-inflicted benefactors of the public. But it is sometimes as hard work to gain persecution and as futile as the task of the men who are paid seven dollars a day to trace the history of seven cents. So Hortense Quinby had found it. No one listened to her nor locked her up and admitted sob sisters to write down her ravings in the good old-fashioned dot-and-asteriskstyle. But, great Beatrice Fairfax, this was not all wherein she had suffered! Thurley was, by turns, amused, bored, thoughtful and finally mentally depressed as the recital of the past flowed on in reels.
She had started a paper herself, only to have it fail in a dismal way. There was not enough of danger in it to have the postal authorities take the matter up. She had lived among the East Side fanatics, had been second housemaid in a rich New Yorker’s family, hoping to observe the scandals of the leisure class and publish them later on. Evidently, she had been unable to divulge glorious scandals, she had a cast off hat of one of the daughters of the family, a decent sort of room and better food than Greenwich Village had offered and the third day she was kindly dismissed for general lack of qualifications. She had tried playing accompaniments, had done china painting, suped in Broadway comedies, had done everything that a woman troubled by a “liberated soul” could do and yet she had not made herself invaluable to any one really worth the while. She wanted to attach herself to Thurley, a sort of figurative third-rail affair, the inspiration and strength of Thurley’s youthful self.
Thurley, bewildered from the outpouring and wishing some one would come and spirit her away, weakly said she could come in to take some dictation for correspondence once a week or do other minor tasks.
“Until I prove myself essential,” insisted Miss Quinby. “When that day comes—”
At which Thurley named a day and hour and wearily rang the bell to have her shown out.
Hortense Quinby’s visit left her with a headache and no zest for her supper. The opera that night was to be “The Magic Flute,” and Thurley was at her best asPamina. She loved the rôle and rehearsals had proceededin excellent fashion. But the interview with Hortense had given her a fearful sense as to her own future. Would she, in turn, become furtive, restless, eager to seize upon some other new and lovely creature, with a sort of vampirish desire to have youth by feeding on youth?
She went to her room without ringing for her maid and slipped out of her brilliant afternoon frock. She rummaged in her clothes room crowded with new gorgeousness until she found a rough tweed suit and a boyish hat. Taking a swagger stick and whistling for Taffy, she wilfully disappeared out of the apartment at just the hour her schedule called for rest, facial massage and toasted wafers with hot milk!
It was rainy, and the air was unnaturally warm, the wind having died down. Her throat doctor would have come after her in an ambulance had he known she was sauntering along the river drive, pausing to look at the blinking lights on the boats or at the dark, beautiful uncertainty of what lay on the other shore.
Was she beginning to have nerves? Thurley spoke sharply to Tally, warning him to heel her or she would disown him. Nerves! She who had never in her life been prey to so much as a headache, who had laughed at throat washes and precaution against eye strain, who audaciously cracked nuts with her firm, white teeth and declared she did not know how it would feel to be even a trifle indisposed!
Not the strain of training nor the début, the unnatural life of the opera stage nor the atmosphere of crowds and tired, jaded artists who knew, too well, how it felt to be muchly indisposed had made such inroads on her Viking-like constitution as this queer woman who bounded in on her coquettish serenity and fairly startled a yes outof her. Thurley felt trip-hammer pulses beating in her forehead. She wanted to wander on and on until the dark became permanent and the traffic scarce and she was dog-tired as she used to be when she was at the end of one of her tramps with Dan and they sat under a tree to get rested up, kissing each other a shocking number of times ... strange this woman should so affect her.
She began thinking in irregular fashion, indicative of her tired brain, of the different persons with whom the new life had brought close and necessary contact ... Madame Coleno, the great Wagnerian contralto, strong and fine by birthright but with the ungovernable temper which caused her to turn on little Edith Hooker, the English girl who was her lyric soprano, slapping her face and tearing at her hair until some one interfered. She wondered if the madhouse would be this famous woman’s last abode. Some said she had run amuck through drink, others heartbreak, a few whispered insanity was in the family. Then there was Escola, the silver-throated tenor! She shook her tired head in disapproval. Escola, who was a merciless tyrant, cared for by his wife as if he were an infant in arms and who rewarded her with a new breach of promise suit as a payment! The patient wife, an Italian peasant as every one knew, made no protest, but continued her round of preparing mustard footbaths and making native dishes Escola demanded, lighting her candles before her little shrine for her master’s success!
... Now it was Dan Ruffio, the bass—what an outcast from society in Birge’s Corners he would be, openly defiant of conventions, always storming and blustering about, sneering at him or her who obeyed the law, ridiculing, fond of cruel practical joking of a low calibre, lovingno one save himself, yet appearing on the stage as the most tender of lovers, the gentlest of patriarchs! And when Thurley attended the first supper party given by a famous ballet dancer, she had been genuinely and lastingly shocked at not only the conversation but the manners observed by all,—it was not the gluttony of Lissa’s parties that had been in evidence but an almost sinister fashion of wasting food and demanding bizarre, unhealthful dishes.
Nor could she forget Wimple O’Horo, who had made violent love to her and pouted when repulsed! What a wishy-washy, unreal boor he was when one knew him from behind the footlights, what a dashing, light hearted cavalier he appeared when viewed on the other side! Thurley’s lips curved in scorn as she recalled his favorite pastime of reading aloud mash notes and the signed names as well. Some said that he conducted a highbrow form of blackmail when he needed extra money with which to gamble.
There had been a director’s party where throwing egg-nogs had been the chief sport, regardless of costumes; a hundred and one such incidents and new, distressing personalities kept recurring to Thurley as she stood there, quite sure she was tired of it all, of even her own deliciously decent and attractive way of spending her first earned dollars and making the most of blue eyes, curving scarlet lips and bright brown hair.
She remembered what Polly had told her regarding her future progress.
“There are three steps of becoming truly mundane. First, you buy things in a store. Next, you purchase articles in a shop. Lastly, you acquire treasures in an establishment!”
With a sense of disappointment at having nothingwhich she might anticipate, Thurley realized she had reached the last stage. Only yesterday she had “acquired” a tapestry treasure from a haughty “establishment,” the proprietor bowing her in and out with formal regard!
She leaned over a stone parapet, gazing at the fog, the occasional rain drops making her cheeks cool and refreshed, although Taffy crouched unwillingly beside her and wondered why this adorable but unreasonable mistress of his walked through mud when her car waited for her signal, to say nothing of his own self being hideously bespotted and, therefore, in line for odious bathing.
Some one jostled near her, looked at her sharply for a moment and then said in an alarmed tone,
“My dear little girl, what a risk on such a night! Not an hour before you’re due in your dressing-room—tell me, what is it?”
It was Bliss Hobart in an equally grotesque get-up, a checkered raincoat and hat winning him the title of Mackintosh of Mackintosh.
Thurley turned and held out her hands, the swagger stick falling with an unjust thump on Taffy’s long-suffering back.
“I’m so glad—I’m lonesome and queer. I need to be set right,” she protested so wistfully that Hobart kept holding on to her hands, the darkness keeping her from spying how tender an expression was in his eyes.
“What’s it all about? I’ve just run out of secrets, so do tell me. Let’s walk on, not stand in this damp. Let me see your boots—are they stout enough? Stand under this lamplight until I disprove your fib—ah-ha, they arenotstout enough. I shall call a cab.”
“Please don’t. I’ll run away and you’ll have to driveTaffy about. I must walk or I cannot sing to-night—I want to walk miles and miles—”
“They’ll miss you and be throwing a scare into Gasoti that you’ve been kidnapped. It’s ‘The Magic Flute,’ too, one of your best ... please, Thurley, just walk along until you’ve told me the worst and then we’ll get a cab—”
“What of yourself?” she asked, suddenly feeling elated and quite fit.
He halfway unbuttoned his coat, showing an expanse of white shirt bosom. “Full dress for a banquet at which I’m to speak. I took a turn along here to get myself in trim ... tell me, what about your fancies?”
Thurley’s eyes were like stars. She caught hold of his arm as if he had been Dan and began to talk. It seemed the most wonderful yet natural thing in the world to tell him everything. The harsh critic, the impersonal man of affairs vanished; he was a good pal walking unselfishly in the rain and under such self-sacrificing conditions that it would be an unusual woman who could not furnish him with a complete line of new secrets!
When she finished, having begun with Mark’s flirtation and her own hint of nerves and ending with this Hortense Quinby and the muddle she was in about the morals of the “songbirds,” Hobart said with a jolly laugh that set her nerves quite right,
“When you get jammed, always remember the most delectable sport in the world is to let fools take you for an even greater fool. As I told you many months ago, be yourself and everything swings into line. Come over to-morrow at ten; there are one or two flaws in your ‘Rigoletto’ song, ‘Caro Nome’—didn’t know I kept such close track of some one, did you?... Hi, cabby—yes,no, just the lady and the terrier, the Terror will proceed alone, but twice as happy because he paused before a certain dark outline ... good-by, to-morrow at ten and, remember, stouter boots the next time it rains.”
With a feeling of disappointment that he did not join her, yet exhilarated and impatient for the morning, Thurley leaned back in the cab and hugged the aggrieved Taffy.
She sang so well that night the critics bemoaned the lack of new adjectives with which to do her credit, her dressing-room was crowded with visitors, social leaders who had left their boxes to besiege her with invitations. Miss Clergy sat supreme in a corner of the dressing-room, engrossed in old-style crewel work which she had learned as a girl.
“And no man will ever break your heart,” she said in fond delusion.
Thurley vanished. During the entire opera she had thought of the fact that Bliss Hobart really worried because she had not worn stouter boots ... it was so “comfy” to know some one worried about such things. If only the men who thought ahead about all the little things for a woman were not so universally inclined to forbid a woman’s thinking ahead about the big ones....
When spring convinced Birge’s Corners it had come to stay and housewives mended screens and painted porch steps, and indulged in that blight on civilization, house-cleaning, there came a better, finer understanding between Dan and Lorraine.
Since their New York wedding journey with Thurley Precore’s début the really great event, there had been a constrained sort of relationship. When two persons admit to themselves they are not happy and it was a mistake to have married, yet are making the best of it and trying to trick the world into thinking them the personification of bliss, the relationship is more hopeless than if each jogs on his own way admitting his discontent and lack of satisfaction. The latter course contains a ray of hope in the fact that systematic deceit and repression have not yet obtained a clutch.
But Dan and Lorraine had returned to the wonderful new house and, in a pathetic, truthful talk, realized that all life stretched before them in unending monotony unless they wished that much dreaded and unusual of happenings in Birge’s Corners—especially for a minister’s daughter—a divorce!
“Perhaps I did wrong to marry you,” Dan said, the first day of their return. “The Birge temper in a new fashion. I wanted to hurt some one else because I was hurt ... a pretty cheap way to do, wasn’t it?”
They were in the living-room where wedding presents were in huddled groups, for Lorraine brooked no interference such as a “settler” to which many brides aresubjected. Everything was shiny new, unbecomingly so; the rugs were scarcely adjusted to the slippery floors, there was an air of dampness because the initial furnace fire was scarcely under headway, price marks were still pasted on the electric fixtures, there was something yet to be done with the landing baseboard as there always is something to be done after one has moved into the supposedly most complete house in the world.
No evidence of family life had been introduced into this new and loveless house which was at once the envy and curiosity of the village. Their trunks were unpacked in the front bedroom; the sun parlor waited for Lorraine’s taste in furnishing; a thousand and one details which Dan had dreamed that Thurley would settle with her rapturous enthusiasm now awaited Lorraine’s common sense commands. Lorraine suggested nothing of the girl to Dan; she was a woman, narrow in viewpoint and her comprehensions, pretty in a doll sense, without imagination or artistic taste, some one who would do her share in the hill climbing, who would keep house to the degree of dusting even the tops of the window ledges where no one possibly could look for dust without the aid of a stepladder, but guiltless of exuberance of youth and love of romance.
“I knew you always loved Thurley,” Lorraine answered fearlessly. “You knew I always loved you. If Thurley would not marry you and you asked me in her stead, I felt that you would better be married. You might have done some ugly, cheap things, Dan, if you had not been engaged to me. I love you enough to make myself—content, by keeping your house and having your name. I know I’m not Thurley,” she smiled wistfully, “but I’ll always be Lorraine. Some day you may come to care a little more.”
“Oh, ’Raine, you care as much as that?”
“I can’t say it as I’d like,” was her answer.
Dan had gone over to take her gently in his arms. “I’m not good enough for you,” he mumbled, laying his head on her shoulder for a long, silent moment.
Nothing more was said, no mention made of the wild-rose siren who shadowed their happiness. Each understood life was to go on in even fashion. Lorraine would gain her joy and satisfaction from being Dan’s wife, with the pleasure of possessions; she was born to be a housewife and would have been depressed and useless in any other channel. Dan was born to dominate, to be successful in whatsoever he undertook, tyrannical, aggressive, honest and without fear. Dan would find his peace of mind in his business, more and more engrossed in it each month, in the town’s development. Each impersonally would be able to endure the strain of personal unhappiness.
To be able to entertain all the social clubs in the big, sunny parlors with over-stuffed tapestry furniture, the baby grand player, three parlor lamps, a large engraving of “Daniel in the Lion’s Den,” to say nothing of the American oriental rugs and the mahogany grandfather’s clock that played the Canterbury quarters—that was a genuine satisfaction to Lorraine Birge. True, she would have been more happy as the loved wife of Dan Birge, even had they lived as did his rumored ancestor—a trapper’s roving, wild life. But that not being the case, Lorraine had the convenient ability to transfer her happiness into things, into becoming a hospitable young matron who followed conventional ways with amusing docility.
To have chicken salad made of real chicken and not a hint of veal, coffee with endless whipped cream and loafsugar, fresh peach ice cream and angel food for the refreshment of her Bible class was a positive joy to Lorraine; to be able to help Mary How, the girl who had been “unfortunate,” was a greater joy; to see that the struggling little church had a new carpet and a leather upholstered chair for the minister, to give a set of new anthems to the choir—such things as these dulled the doubts in her heart.
“She must be happy and he must be glad he married her,” was the consensus of opinion. “She spends as much as a queen and Sunday she had on the fourth new dress since she came home a bride, to say nothing of hats.”
“Dan Birge give her pa an overcoat with real Astrakhan collar and cuffs on it and you never see him now without he’s got a cigar stuck in his mouth—do you think it looks well for a minister? Some say they don’t like it. Lorraine’s got a la va-leer necklace and a bracelet watch and a diamond ring besides her engagement ring and she hires a woman to wash and clean.... She better go slow or the money will build her right up. I remember how she washed every mite of clothes she and her pa had.”
“What about their electric cleaner, that’s pretty high-toned? And she had finger bowls, yes, finger bowls when the out-of-town men took dinner there. Ali Baba says they’re going to buy a seven-passenger car—of course it’s nobody’s business and they certainly do a lot of good but they better be careful or they will find themselves so up in G that there would be no living with them ... my Milly says Dan Birge is going to make his clerks wear black dresses with white collars—now did you ever! I guess Lia Fine and Mercedes Rains won’t. Lia just got herself a red alpaca made with white braid—nowwhat does Dan want to go and do such things for?”
“I dunno, anybody that wanted to marry Thurley Precore is likely to try ’most anything,” the subject here changing to Thurley and her rumored fame, the great event concerning Abby Clergy’s recovery and adoption of Thurley.
So Dan and Lorraine developed a pleasant politeness in their personal relationships as if they had been married a great many years and, perforce, discovered that to be polite was the easiest way to proceed!
Nor would it be quite fair to say that, in time, Dan did not become used to his well ordered home and excellent meals, cooked to please himself first and others afterwards, the even-tempered, pretty wife who always smiled when he smiled and who would absent herself whenever she suspected that he wanted to be alone, to rummage in the den in masculine disorder, using a cushion for his feet as well as his head or to go into the pantry in trail of half a pie and ruthlessly crumb the parlor rugs while he ate it, listening to his favorite rag-time roll on the player piano. Dan was unconscious of the heinous offense committed, because no complaint was ever made. So surely as Lorraine knew that Thurley ruled in her husband’s heart, so surely did Dan rule in Lorraine’s heart, and she had schooled herself in ways of becoming essential to his comfort if not to his affections.
Dan’s clothes were mended, never a rip nor tear nor missing button was in evidence. If he was late for dinner, “It keeps warm so nicely in that jewel of an oven,” or if he ’phoned at the last moment that he would not be home, the telephone operator, June Myers, was forced to report that Lorraine said as sweetly as if she wasbeing asked to a party, “Oh, surely, Dan, I understand—well, have a good time, won’t you?”
“Little mother-drudge” was Ali Baba’s name for her when he and Betsey would argue with Hopeful as to the situation. Hopeful, true to her name, tried to convince herself and every one else that joy reigned in the new house with the iron deer guarding the grass plot, that things were better as they were. But Ali Baba and Betsey gave battle that Thurley was the girl Dan loved and Lorraine was merely making the best of it.
They “went out” as befitted young married people and entertained in turn. But Dan paid no heed to Lorraine’s friends. Perhaps he was conscious of their thoughts. He managed to stay away whenever Lorraine had in “a bunch” and when they attended dancing parties or automobile picnics, he always left the women and drifted with the men to smoke or talk business even when the men would have chosen to play a little.
Dan was determined to keep up the deceit to himself as much as to Lorraine. He gave her all she asked for—but he never thought of a surprise, a reward, a consolation posy when rain prevented a drive or a bruised finger was the result of trying to hammer a nail in straight. None of the tender trifles fell to her lot. And the old, fiery Dan, who was “bound to be hung,” as the village had prophesied, went his way in his own fashion, brooking neither interference nor questioning.
When the new and high-priced talking machine was sent up to the house the day before Christmas, Lorraine had hesitated before she read the titles of the records. She fully expected to see “Sung by Thurley Precore” on the greater share of them. But Dan had chosen with stoic consideration and Thurley’s voice was never recreatedto fill their rooms with glorious but unwelcome sound.
Nor did any one mention Thurley to Dan. A few of the old-timers would say when occasion offered, “You got a pretty fine little wife,” and Dan would nod cheerfully and answer,
“Bet I have!” And here the matter ended.
Once, Lorraine’s father, who had wisely chosen to live apart from his son-in-law’s splendor, called on Lorraine during Dan’s absence out of town and said in his slow way,
“Well, my girl, have you anything to tell me?”
Lorraine was engaged in making “over-drapes” for the spare room which was to be in pink. She was the sort who could smother a heartache in making over-drapes and planning color schemes as reflected in candle-shades, braided rugs and embroidered bed-shams.
“Tell you what, father?” she did not look at him.
“Is he happy?” the old man added, which surprised her for she thought he would have asked if she was happy.
“I hope so,” she told him, laying aside the over-drapes.
“You’re a good girl, Lorraine, and you are doing your part. If God sees fit, some day you will be happy, too.”
They said no more about the matter. After he left and Lorraine, like all wives whose husbands are out of town, was eating her cold lunch off the kitchen table, she neglected her meal to wonder about the prophecy. It seemed to her, rank little atheist, that it was not God who was to see fit half as much as a girl named Thurley Precore!
When Dan returned—he had been in New York—shewondered if he had heard Thurley sing and had sent her flowers or tried to see her. As she thanked him for her present, a violet silk sunshade, she wondered if it was a sop to conscience. A cruel regiment of doubts threatened to defeat her loyal resolutions. But she made no comment nor did Dan. They talked of the summer garden, the proposed automobile trip with some other young people, the addition to Dan’s store and the splendid way in which his business was going.
“Don’t, for cat’s sake, take that Spooner girl with us!” Dan said testily, as they returned to the vacation subject. “She hangs around here all the time. What in the world do you see in her anyway?”
“Nothing, but I’m sorry for her, she’s so unhappy.”
“What’s she unhappy about? A great, big, strapping girl who ought to be at work! She makes fudge while her mother irons her dresses, every one says so.”
“Oh, Dan!” pleaded Lorraine.
“Ever since she’s moved here from Pike she has camped on our doorstep. She makes me nervous with that whining voice and that giggle.” Here Dan gave excellent imitations of each. “She rouges like a burlesque actress and dresses her hair in curls.”
“Oh, poor Cora Spooner was terribly in love with an actor. He was in a stock company at Pike and he did encourage her—”
“Tell that to the marines,” Dan said testily, going to the talking machine and putting on a lively band record. “I can’t help that. I notice it didn’t affect her appetite. Why don’t she get a job?”
“Well, there’s nothing in her line here,” Lorraine’s forehead wrinkled anxiously. She was afraid Dan would forbid Cora’s coming to the house, which command wouldbe absolute. Cora Spooner brought a certain zest into Lorraine’s existence. She was a rather handsome girl of twenty-three or four with no intention of working for her living if it could be otherwise arranged. Her mother, whose small pension and capital enabled her to “get along,” was Cora’s chief bugbear. Cora was a bundle of discontent and weird notions, trying to play the bird in the gilded cage rôle and complain that Birge’s Corners was nothing but a prison. She soon discovered that Lorraine’s car was good to ride about in, her food the best to be had; it was jolly to stay in the pink spare room with the over-drapes and crystal candlesticks instead of her own forlorn cottage. Besides, her mother did not understand her; fancy wanting any one to be a stenographer or school teacher when heaven only knew that Cora was born for romance, adventure! She had a good notion to cut her hair short and masquerade about the country as a boy,—men always had such good times. Cora had had a half dozen beaux who always dropped her after a certain length of time, saying she was “soft” and lazy and her mother ought to make her work, and turning their attentions to plain-faced girls who could cook and who had a little money in the bank!
Cora dressed in the extreme of fashion, badgering Dan for advance style sheets and asking him to order things for her for which she could not pay, wearing them about with a selfconscious mannikin air. When orange silk stockings and white kid boots were the vogue, Cora stepped forth in the most blazing of orange stockings and the snowiest of white kid boots, her skirts just reaching below the knee. When the matter was mentioned to her mother, she said with a weak smirk that Cora was her pa all over again. Every one said if she could have the training she would make a great actress.
Birge’s Corners, having had one genius develop in its humble and unappreciative midst, frowned upon this suggestion—it is not always the most pleasing nor convenient event to have a genius arise from one’s backyard!
“I guess Cora will marry well,” Mrs. Spooner used to say, “so I don’t mind doing the work and keeping her hands white—have you ever noticed them? Dear me, I should think Mrs. Birge would keep a maid instead of slaving so. Cora says she works like a little Turk. They say he has a lot of money.... I wish there were some brothers in his family.”
So Cora went her selfish way, awaiting the arrival of a rich bachelor who was to besiege her with attentions. She used to prey on Lorraine’s sympathy and lack of experience by her tales of being misunderstood and abused. Cora was shrewd in shallow fashion, highly emotional, jealous, small-minded and given to extreme views of anything which happened to appeal to her for the moment. She was a bad asset to the village since she could arouse discontent and rebellion quickly among her associates. She had a way of unsettling every one and then withdrawing from the situation without leaving a solution.
The neighbors said she raged and fought with her mother over the question of money and that she always came out victor. In public, she was devotion itself, although she was ashamed of her mother’s appearance and managed to keep her in the house most of the time. “Mamma has heart trouble” was her tender explanation, although mamma was probably ironing ruffled petticoats or cleaning white kid boots at the very moment Cora pensively explained the maternal maladies!
Lorraine regarded Cora as a story-book sort of person, marvelling at her daring and style. Cora openly had tried to bewitch Dan and, being curtly shown shewas of no more consequence than Mr. Toots, began systematically and painstakingly to “knock” him to every one except his wife.
“Poor little Lorraine—little slave, she is—I go to see her because I’m so sorry for her, yes, he’s terribly mean—oh,awful! I’ve heard some things, but of course it wouldn’t be right to repeat them,” and so on, all the time borrowing Lorraine’s pin money and eating up her dinners, riding in her car and making Lorraine introduce her to every man, married or unmarried, who stopped over in the village long enough to visit the Birges.
Lorraine did not press the matter of taking Cora on the vacation, although Cora had managed to invite herself!
“There is melancholia in our family,” she told Lorraine. “Oh, yes, several suicides—terrible, isn’t it? I try not to brood but I am a daughter of the sun, I crave love and life. How could I be content in this pokey place? Oh, Lorraine, I look upon you as a sister—do be good to me,” at which Lorraine’s gullible little self would be utterly won over and she would bake Cora’s favorite cake and make her a crêpe de chine waist and ask over, braving Dan’s wrath, some drummer who might be in search of a wife as well as a buyer for his dustless mops!
But there was another person who had come into The Corners since Thurley had left it and whom Dan regarded as every one’s enemy. He had said publicly that it was a patriotic duty to have this person, Owen Pringle, although he spelled it Oweyne and had a book plate, shot at sunrise, velvet smoking-jacket, hair parted in the middle and all!
As the record ended, Dan flung himself on the sofa,remarking, “I wish Cora and Owen would get married—ye gods, do you get it?” He chuckled. “I’d hand them a chest of small silver if they did. How about it—can’t you get Owen interested?”
“Oh, Cora wouldn’t consider him,” Lorraine said seriously.
Dan chuckled more than ever. “If you had a sense of humor, you’d have a lot of fun, but you take these people at face value. Now Owen clerked for me a month and disorganized the whole shop. I’ll tell you right now that unless he cuts out his nonsense and goes back to the livery stable from which he sprang, I’m going to get him away from here.”
“But his shop is artistic,” Lorraine murmured.
At which Dan tossed a sofa pillow good-naturedly her way. He proceeded, in his slangy fashion, to tell her that this Owen Pringle who had appeared from nowhere some months before and tried his best to create a real, true leisure class in the village was nothing short of several kinds of a fool; that when a full-grown man with apparently nothing the matter with him tries to make his living by starting a shop and spelling it shoppe, and has a wistaria tea room and an art department where you purchase impossible penwipers made of cherry-colored silk, baby bootees and old ladies’ knitted throws, smart Christmas cards telling about everything but Christmas, and writing paper that resembled butchers’ wrappings, as well as crazy old wooden stuff painted bright red and green and labelled “window ledges” or “door stops”and, horror of horrors, a millinery department which this Oweyne conducted himself, making hats resembling Weber and Fields,—it is time to employ violence! But this was not the worst of his offenses. Oh, no—he had tried to organize a country club and persuade hard-working,honest men to play golf instead of raising potatoes and instituted the polo craze, thereby demoralizing all the decent, well-broken delivery horses in the township. He lived at Dan’s old suite at the Hotel Button and gave chafing-dish parties and thought up smart sayings ahead of time. He wanted to organize a stock company and play “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” but Cora Spooner and June Meyers were the only two who had out and out joined, so the project was abandoned “for lack of funds and interest.”
Owen always wore Palm Beach suits and hats draped with Roman scarfs. He was given to a dash of garlic in his salad dressing, believed the dead returned, read French novels and was undeniably seen sitting in the window of his shoppe sewing maline on hat frames and actually trying them on himself for the effect.
At first he was a novelty, but since tea and nasturtium-leaf sandwiches do not appeal to the male population, only females clustered together in his shoppe and bought his nonsense or defended him.
Owen, too, had speedily discovered the advantage of having Mrs. Daniel Birge as a patroness. Despite Dan’s ridicule, she came to the shoppe to buy a hat and thus set the stride for the younger set, while Owen managed to be invited to dinner and to be present on the most interesting of the automobile trips.
“As a member of the idle rich, Owen would have shone,” concluded Dan, “but in life his best getaway would be to become president of the Erie Canal.” Then seeing Lorraine’s real confusion, he said good-naturedly, “If they amuse you, go on, honey, drag the whole lot up here—you have to listen to them,” drifting into an unsociable nap and leaving Lorraine occupied with her thoughts.
Dan’s other two particular pests and Lorraine’s friends were Josie Donaldson and Hazel Mitchell. Josie Donaldson’s father was next to Dan the richest man in the village and Josie the natural and fearful result of being the only child of such a plutocrat.
She was a precocious young person with the boast that she could do anything she set out to do, if she could do it her way, backed up by admiring throngs of relatives. She had framed the first dollar bill she ever earned (?) for some minor service in her father’s hardware store, had worn the patience of the newspaper editors to a thread by asking for a job as a reporter only to take a few days off, after she was hired, to give a party or write a new poem. Dan called her poems “Josie’s dope,” as they appeared from time to time in a box border with the heading, “Birge’s Corners’ Muse.”
There were many familiar phrases in these poems which increased in number as time went on, but being Josie Donaldson’s, they were passed without question and editor after editor would warn his new and optimistic successor, “When that Donaldson girl comes in here for a job just tie the can on from the start. It is cheap at half the price to be rid of her. You’ll know her. She’s fat and dresses like a circus rider, carries a bolt of baby ribbon around so as to tie up any poems she may happen to write en route. She’ll cry if you correct her spelling and she was never known to get any one’s initials right in her life, not even her own family’s. Fudge ought to be her life work. She’s made love to every fellow in the burg and, when they escape, she wants to start a backbiting contest in the paper. Her pa and ma think Josie is one, two, three, all right, and they have enlarged photographs of her at every stage—from writhing on the fur rug clad in a smile to her graduating dress clasping the valedictoryessay. She writes her father’s ads and I’m darned if I can tell whether he wants to run a special sale of sprinkling cans at seventy-nine cents per or whether hell’s broken loose in Hoboken! Don’t let her get across—not even for a week or you’ll have galloping brain fever.”
Josie also attached herself to Lorraine, who read her poems and made her fudge galore. She told Lorraine her troubles, that a girl with brains, and particularly a girl with literary ability, was never popular with boys; they wanted silly, little wasp-waisted dolls and she was just too hurt for words—so there.
Lorraine was also sorry for Josie and she let her ravage her sugar barrel and pile on to her best chaise longue to lie and pout and eat candy, trying to find a new word to rhyme with “death.”
The other offender was Dan’s own stenographer, Hazel Mitchell. Dan, who looked upon the world with a larger vision than did most of the Corners, had a contempt and lack of interest in Lorraine’s “grafters.” Had he loved Lorraine as he had loved Thurley there would have been many a battle on the subject until he had shown Lorraine the broader vision and comprehension. As it was, he was content to let well enough alone, unless he was called upon to entertain the “grafters” and endure their chatter.
Hazel Mitchell was a slender, wan-eyed girl—“moon face” was Dan’s considerate name for her. She was, so he said, eternally recombing her hair when he wanted to give some dictation and always feeling whether or not her waist and skirt were properly interlocked, or running off to visit the male clerk in the men’s furnishings or “just slipping” up to Owen Pringle’s shoppe to try on a new hat!
Hazel operated her actions on the theory that “pityis akin to love” and if she could make every one sufficiently sorry for her the day was won. This she managed to do with less consideration for the truth and the common sense of her audience than one might have suspected.