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Grace’s meeting with Bob Cummings served to sharpen her sense of social differentiations. Her mother had always encouraged the idea that the Durlands were a family of dignity, entitled to the highest consideration; but stranded as they were in a neighborhood that had no lines of communication with polite society, Mrs. Durland now rarely received an invitation even to the houses of her old friends. Grace’s excursions in social science had made her aware of the existence of such a thing as class consciousness; but she had never questioned that she belonged to the favored element. The thought assailed her now that as a wage-earning girl she had a fixed social status from which there was little likelihood she would ever escape. The daughters of prominent families she waited on at Shipley’s were no better looking, no more intelligent and had no better social instincts than she possessed; but she was as completely shut off from any contact with them as though she were the child of a Congo chieftain. With all her romanticism she failed to picture the son of one of the first families making her acquaintance and introducing her to his family as the girl he meant to marry. Several young men with whom she became acquainted in Shipley’s had asked her to go to dances, or for Sunday drives. Irene sniffed when Grace reported these overtures.
“Oh, they’re nice fellows; but what have they got to offer? They’re never going to get anywhere. You can’t afford to waste your time on them.”
However, Grace accepted one of these invitations. The young man took her to a public dance hall where the music was good, but the patrons struck her as altogether uninspiring; and she resented being inspected by a police matron. She danced with her escort all evening, and then they went to a cafeteria for sandwiches and soda water.
Irene had warned Grace that such young fellows were likely to prove fresh; that they always expected to kiss a girl good-night, and might even be insulting; but this particular young man was almost pathetically deferential. Grace was ashamed of herself for not inviting him to call, but she shrank from encouraging his further attentions; he might very easily become a nuisance.
Again, she went to Rosemary Terrace, a dance and supper place on the edge of town, in company with a young man who carried a bottle on his hip to which he referred with proud complacency, as though it were the symbol of his freedom as an American citizen. The large dance hall was crowded; the patrons were clearly the worse for their indulgence in the liquor carried by their escorts; the dancing of many of the visitors was vulgar; the place was hot and noisy and the air heavy with tobacco smoke. Grace’s young man kept assuring her that the Rosemary was the sportiest place in town; you didn’t see any dead ones there. His desire to be thought a sport would have been amusing if he hadn’t so strenuously insisted upon explaining that he was truly of the great company of the elect to whom the laws of God and man were as nothing. When Grace asked to be taken home he hinted that there were other places presumably even less reputable, to which they might go. But he did not press the matter, when, reaching the Durland gate, he tried to kiss her and she, to mark the termination of their acquaintance, slapped him.
These experiences were, she reflected, typical of what she must look forward to unless she compromised with her conscience and accepted Irene’s philosophy of life.
She had replied immediately to Trenton’s letter from St. Louis with a brief note which she made as colorless as possible. She knew that it was for her to decide whether to see more of him or drop the acquaintance. He was not a man to force his attentions upon any young woman if he had reason to think them unwelcome. Hearing nothing from him for several days she had decided that he had settled the matter himself when she received a note explaining that he had been very busy but would start East the next day. He hoped she would dine with him on Thursday night and named the Indianapolis hotel where her reply would reach him.
“Don’t turn him down!” exclaimed Irene when Grace told her Trenton was coming. “He wouldn’t ask you if he didn’t want you. Tommy skipped for New York last night so it’s a safe bet that Ward’s stopping on purpose to see you.”
“I don’t know—” began Grace doubtfully.
“Oh, have a heart! There’s no harm in eating dinner with a married man in a hotel where you’d get by even if all your family walked in and caught you! Of course Tommy can’t appear with me at any public place here at home, but it’s different with you and Ward. He doesn’t know a dozen people in town.”
“I wouldn’t want to offend him,” Grace replied slowly, a prey to uncertainty; but she withheld her acceptance until the morning of the day of Trenton’s arrival.