III
Mosely, manager at the time, was some five or six years older than Nathan,—a typical young New Yorker. His people were wealthy. His mother was somewhat of a society woman. Her son had “taken up” the woolen business and secured his present position through the influence of his father,—a retired banker and semi-invalid who was intimately acquainted with the Thornes.
“Wife with you?” asked Mosely, as one afternoon’s consultation drew to a close. “Fine! Mother has a dinner affair on to-morrow night—not very big—just a few friends. Say, you and your wife run up and I’ll introduce you to a few fellows you’ll be doing business with if you get my place.”
With the limitations of the provincial, Nathan was at once panic-stricken.
Mosely did not add or explain that he intended to ask his mother to lay two more covers because he wanted to discern how far Nat had the ability to associate with certain metropolitan types which would be absolutely requisite to his success in the contemplated position.
Nathan reluctantly accepted and hurried to the hotel to advise Milly.
Milly was panic-stricken also,—but worse, far worse. She went weak all over and had to sit down. Then she declared it was impossible for her to go, she didn’t have a thing to wear. And when Nathan said she could have what money she desired to get anything she wanted, she came out flat-footed and confessed that she was “afraid to run with the swells” because she’d never know how to act and they might laugh at her.
“Very well,” sighed Nathan. “But I must go—as a matter of business. You can go to a movie.”
“What! Leave me all the evening alone in New York? And you off to a tony party, enjoying yourself?”
“But what else is there to do? If you don’t want to go and don’t want to stay at home, just what do you want?”
“I don’t want you to go, either. You could sneak out of it and go with me to a show. I don’t believe I’ll ever get my fill of shows in New York.”
“Unfortunately I feel I ought to go, Milly. You’ve always talked about wanting to meet high-caste people and now when the chance is open, you’re half-frightened to death.”
“You’re frightened too!”
“I’ll not deny it—not frightened so much as nervous. But it’s a chance to go and learn something and show me what I lack. Those people can’t eat me and I intend to take it. If I’ve got to learn, now’s as good a time as any to start in.”
Milly gave a nasty little chuckle.
“And to think that once I thought you was my hero,” she observed, “as far above me in class as the stars!”
“We won’t go into that, Milly. Do you care to go with me to this dinner to-morrow night or do you not?”
“I’ll go,” snapped Milly, “but you needn’t blame me if I put my foot in it.”
“Milly, did it ever strike you that you’re not trying to help me very much as my wife—to get on, I mean—holding up your end?”
“I’m no different than I was when you married me! Kindly remember that!”
“How can I forget it, Milly?”
“You needn’t give me none o’ your nasty slurs—like your Pa was always throwin’ your mother. Oh, I know all about ’em! Your mother told me and I seen enough of him at the shop to know she warn’t far wrong!”
“Let’s not quarrel, Milly. If you’re going to the dinner you’ll need some clothes—something new.”
“You bet I will!” cried Milly defiantly, then added as though the expense might make Nathan think better of the rash engagement, “It’ll cost you all of fifty dollars, Mr. Man!”
“Milly, this thing may mean a lot to me. I want you to appear extra attractive. Fifty dollars! I’m going to give you two hundred and fifty dollars and I want to see you ‘dress to kill!’ Find a masseuse first and have her doll you up and then go over in Fifth Avenue and splurge!—for once—splurge!”
Two hundred and fifty dollars! Milly nearly had a spasm. She remained struck voiceless as Nathan actually handed over the money with a vague idea that some such sum would be necessary. Like many poor males, Nathan held the subconscious notion that all that was necessary to dress a woman “to kill” was money.
And Milly? She swore she was being robbed when a masseuse had worked over her an hour and a half and charged her ten dollars, though she was not wholly displeased with the resultant change in her appearance. But when she walked into Martinets, Incorporated, with an aplomb she did not feel and discovered that “the cheapest dress they had” cost two hundred and sixty dollars, her nerve fled and so did Milly. Over on Sixth Avenue she bought something “perfectly stunning” for seventeen dollars and ninety-eight cents,—a difference of two hundred and forty-two dollars and two cents by traveling one block. Which only went to prove how much money you could save in New York when you only knew where to shop!
The “perfectly stunning” creation was an afternoon dress of cerise taffeta, gorgeously strung over the front with spangles. Milly went on the theory that shine and “class” were synonymous,—“class” being Milly’s favorite word and “shine” Milly’s favorite idea of beauty. And if the lights of Mrs. Percival Mosely’s dining room didn’t shine on Milly’s frock it was going to be through no fault of the goods whereof the said frock was constructed. Milly also bought a dark bottle-green fan on the principle that colors show off best by contrast.
Truly Milly was a “queen” when the adjustments were finally completed. She wondered if she could go through with it.
The Moselys lived in the East Fifties, two blocks off The Avenue,—a rather coldly impersonal house with a gray-stone front. At seven-forty-five Milly permitted Nathan to help her alight from the taxi. In fact, his help was extremely welcome. For Milly’s knees had turned to tallow long before Nathan had “hooked her up”, not knowing whether he exactly approved of Milly’s purchases or not. The fan shocked him so badly that he absolutely forbade her carrying it. Likewise he made her dispense with the twenty-cent aigrette she had purchased to add “class” to her hair. On the whole, Milly did not object to dispensing with these things, although she did wonder what she was going to do with her hands.
When he had finally drawn off and looked at his wife, Nat knew there was something vaguely wrong somewhere. But the time was going and if they delayed longer they would be late. Milly insisted it was fashionable to arrive late. Nevertheless, her husband believed in being punctual at so critical a time to himself. As for Nathan, he had bought his first suit of dinner clothes and, exceptional to recount, the fellow felt strangely at home in them.
A second-man in full house livery tended the door,—the butler being busy with last touches on the table. Nathan tried to nudge Milly to go ahead. But Milly was too terror-stricken and shrank in his rear. The husband instinctively felt foolish stumbling ahead with Milly tagging after like a poor relation he could not shake off. But she clung to his arm as though she might lose him.
The house-man conducted Nathan to the smoking room, raising his Celtic eyebrows when Milly followed, as in a daze. The smoking room had been set aside for the gentlemen’s street clothes.
“This way, madam, please,” he corrected, with a cough to hide his smile. And with an expression of despair, Milly was borne away to where a maid took her in charge at the end of the hall in a dressing-room set apart for the ladies.
Mrs. Mosely had her drawing-room lighted with shaded lamps and adorned with flowers. The curtains had been drawn and the piano opened. Milly furtively watched for Nathan to appear and then almost ran across the broad hall to join him. She clutched her husband again and “tagged after him” despite the man’s quick whisper to go ahead. “I’m afraid,” she choked. “You go ahead!” So Nathan and his wife moved into the big drawing-room and Milly’s daze continued,—as though she were following her husband into the glories of heaven.
Mosely senior, being bedridden, was not in evidence. Young Mosely was assisting his mother in receiving. He caught sight of Nathan and moved slightly forward with an outstretched hand. Milly dodged him and crept behind her husband.
“Glad to see you, Forge,” was the young man’s easy greeting.
“Meet my wife,” suggested Nat, wondering if it was the right thing to say, or rather, the right way to say it.
“I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Forge.”
“Pleezeter meecher,” lisped Milly from a safe position halfway around her husband’s back.
“I want to present you to my mother,” went on Fred Mosely. “Mother, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Forge. Mr. Forge is the one I spoke of—possibly taking my place at the office.”
Mrs. Mosely was a remarkable woman. Her coiffure was a classic. Despite her sixty years, her face had an onyx beauty, unwittingly reflected in her voice. She wore silver-satin and cobweb lace. Her shrewd eye appraised both new arrivals and grasped the young country wife’s distress at once. Regardless of who or what her guests might be, first, last and foremost they were her guests always and must be put at their ease. The fine, hard old society matron extended a blue-veined hand.
Milly shifted her clutch on Nat from her right hand to her left. But she didn’t let go of him. He might fly through the windows, up through the ceiling, down through the floor or explode in her face, if she failed to hang on to him. She gave the hostess the hand thus disengaged. Thereafter the next three minutes were one phonographic repetition of “pleezeter-meechers”—as though the needle had slipped on a scratched record and hiccoughed the word over and over again. Six other men and six other women smiled quietly but affected not to notice.
Introductions completed, the various groups returned to their intercourse. Nathan and Milly stood apart, looking uncomfortable and feeling worse. Nathan at length shook himself free of Milly’s blood-binding clutch. Milly found her wits long enough to gasp hoarsely in her husband’s ear, “Gee, ain’t it swell, Natie! Lookit! They got a coon orchestra!” Then a moment later, “You stick by me, Natie! Don’t you go lettin’ ’em set me off by myself away with folks I don’t know!”
“They’ll probably have place cards, Milly. This isn’t any Vermont church supper.”
“Place cards! What’s them?”
But Mrs. Mosely had noted Milly and Nathan standing alone, and remarked to a gorgeous creation in old-gold georgette and (to Milly) shocking shoulders:
“For pity’s sake, Cynthia, go rescue that poor little girl in the afternoon dress. Put her at her ease, or she’ll ruin my party!”
So before Nat could explain about place cards, the girl Cynthia interrupted.
“Oh, Mrs. Forge!” she cried, “do let me show you the new study by Roerich that Mrs. Mosely just secured at the Aldine Galleries. I’m sure you’ll be interested.”
Milly shrank from the onslaught as though Cynthia What-ever-her-last-name-was had jabbed the deadly muzzle of an automatic into her midriff. She sent a desperate appeal to Nathan with her eyes as though Nathan should speak up and put the Cynthia person in her place with, “No thank you, Madame; my wife has absolutely no interest in Roerich—or any one or anything else but her husband.” But Nathan did nothing or the sort. He even looked relieved. Relieved until he saw his wife moving down the big library beside the old-gold gown. Milly wasn’t only a frump: she was a monstrosity! That flaming cerise with those awful spangles! Could it be possible that Milly had paid two hundred and fifty dollars for that? Where was Milly’s taste, anyway? Must he not only support his wife and shelter and feed her and educate her,—but turn modiste as well? It was sickening!
Cerise Taffeta and Old-Gold Georgette brought up before a large canvas at the northern end of the library. Milly duly recognized that it was a picture because it was bounded by a gold frame and had a shade of inverted lights above it.
“Have you ever seen any of Roerich’s work before?” queried the Cynthia person. She was amused in a way, but it was a painful amusement.
“No,” gulped Milly.
“This is called the ‘Rain Princess,’” went on Old Gold Georgette. “You know, I dearly love Roerich. He has so much tartaric virility—such bold, wide sweep and atmosphere. His brown steppes, his blue seas, and his purple mountains seem to come from a borderland——”
“Yes,” gulped Milly. “It—it—ain’t painted very plain, is it?”
“Roerich is always the colorist, the emotionalist. And in the East, form ever remains subservient to color, you know.”
“I like paintin’s,” averred Milly, “where you can tell what you’re lookin’ at. There was an artist come to Paris one time. He painted pictures in the window of The Modern Bargain Store—painted ’em right while you watched—houses and trees and things. He asked ten dollars apiece for ’em. But it did seem a pity to pay him so much—he did ’em so quick.”
“Paris, France?” demanded the puzzled Cynthia.
“Lord, No! Paris, Vermont.”
“Oh!” said the other quickly.
“Me,—I go in for sepia,” confided Milly, gaining a bit of self-confidence and evincing the volubility of the provincial once started. “I’m doing my sitting room in browns and such. I got a print of St. Cecilia at Michalman’s. He lemme have it for seven dollars because the frame was scratched. But you never’d notice unless you looked close. And it was a fifteen-dollar picture!”
“How interesting!” murmured the other in slight distress.
“Oh, I know how to buy, once I have the money to buy with! I got a whole set of that funny furniture with the twisted legs to Blake Whipple’s for our dining room. Only fifty-nine dollars! It was marked a hundred and fifteen but Whipple lemme have it because he got stuck with it. Folks in our town ain’t much on stylish stuff. They want chairs that has good strong legs, made to be set on and not much else.”
“Undoubtedly!”
“Madam, dinner is served,” came a somewhat sonorous voice off toward the left. A butler in complete evening livery—a rare and an awesome sight for Milly whose only contact with butlers had been in the motion pictures—stood by the dining-room door. Instantly the hum of conversation ceased.
A rapier stab of fright pierced Milly’s vitals. Where was Nathan and would he wait for her? The wife abandoned the Cynthia person abruptly and frantically tried to pick her husband from the seven men all dressed alike. Horror of horrors!—Nathan was talking to that stout girl in silver-gray; she had a hand on his arm and they were moving toward the dining room.
Milly had a wild impulse to flee. She would have flown if she had dared search out the dressing-room alone. In her pitiful panic young Mosely approached her.
“May I take you in, Mrs. Forge?” he asked easily.
“I guess so,” the girl responded dazedly.
Mosely held out his arm but Milly did not essay to take it. The idea of such presumption! He should have taken her arm, of course. All the fellows had done it at the Saturday night dances in Foresters Hall before she was married. So in a cold sweat and flaming fright, somehow she moved toward the great double doors. Soft music started playing behind a bank of palms on the landing.
Milly forgot her terror for an instant at sight of that “wonderful” table. The overhead chandeliers had been extinguished. Shaded candle lamps were so concentrated that every part of the cloth was in radiant light. Upon the centerpiece of drawn work a low crystal bowl held a gay mixture of blossoms, mostly small roses. Milly wondered where the food was, what they intended to eat. All she saw in evidence were a few nuts and some “soup plates filled with cracked ice.” Then she came back to her dilemma. The “crowd” was wandering about the table, looking over the napery and silverware, horribly ill-bred, Milly thought. Then she grasped that they were reading names on “little cardboard signs” as she told her mother afterward. Inertia took Milly forward. With a little jolt she came upon her own name. It startled her.
She sat down at once and then got up again—hastily.
She expected that Nathan’s place would be beside her own; Mrs. Mosely would have fixed it that way if she knew anything. But apparently Mrs. Mosely didn’t know anything, because Milly found herself between two disturbingly strange men, one a “bald-headed old fool” and “a tall, sleek young man with a trick mustache who looked like Charley Chaplin.”
Milly beheld that she “was in for a sickening evening.” She wished that awful Mrs. Mosely had at least put one woman beside her.
Guests finally took their seats when Mrs. Mosely had taken hers—up in Paris a hostess was always the last seated and more usually out in the kitchen, looking after things—and then Milly got her first shock of that evening of shocks when she shook out her napkin and found some one had hidden a roll in it. Down on the floor went the roll and Milly had quite a time recovering. The fat gentleman told her not to mind and to leave it for the servants to recover later. But Milly remarked, not without some heat, that “somebody might step on it and work it into the carpet”, and the roll episode being closed, she faced her “plate of cracked ice.”
In the next five minutes Milly discovered oyster cocktail and rather approved of oyster cocktail; when she had held back to see which spoon the Cynthia person employed and how she employed it, finding it to be a fork,—“pickle fork, at that!” thought Milly. “And one for everybody!” Then Milly “caught on” as to where the food was. As fast as you disposed of one course the servants took your empty plate and brought another. Great idea, but what an awful lot of dishes you had to have. And think of the job of washing them afterward!
During the soup, Milly located Nathan. She was a little surprised at Nathan. He was proceeding cautiously but did not appear at all distressed. Nathan, in fact, looked as though he were actually enjoying himself. He had the stout girl in silver-gray on one side and a tall, cold-faced Amazon in black upon the other. And he was carrying on conversation with both. Milly felt rather proud of Nathan. Never until this moment had she noticed how well he parted his hair. Maybe she had not done so poorly in marrying Nathan, after all.
A maid distributed plates from the left and after her came another, laying knives and forks softly in their proper places. Then a manservant presented the various dishes, and until Milly noticed that the others were not doing it, she took the big dish from the servant’s hand as she helped herself,—a proceeding which perturbed that worthy greatly.
The fellow with the trick mustache essayed several attempts at conversation which Milly answered in monosyllables. Then the fat man at her right turned to her with a suddenness which almost made her upset her water glass and asked:
“Have you seen Barrymore in ‘Peter Ibbetson’ yet, Mrs. Forge?”
Milly had not seen Barrymore in “Peter Ibbetson.” In the first place she had not the slightest notion who Barrymore was and in the second place she had not the slightest idea of what he should be doing in “Peter Ibbetson” or any one else, and how he managed it.
“Who’s Barrymore?” demanded Milly.
“My dear woman! Is it possible you don’t know the Barrymores?”
“One can’t know everybody,” remarked Milly witheringly. She considered this neat and sophisticated, wishing at the same time she had bought a dress with a low neck. She had as good shoulders as any one in the room. Besides, this was New York. She would buy a “low neck”—a “very low neck”—next day. She was glad she still had almost two hundred dollars left of Nat’s money.
“But the Barrymores, Mrs. Forge. I mean Lionel and John.”
“Are they brothers—or something?”
“Yes,” collapsed the stout man. “Brothers? Oh, yes! Certainly!”
“And who’s Peter Ibbet’s Son?”
“Peter Ibbetson—Ibbetson! A play, you know—at the Republic.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Milly. “You’re talkin’ about a show. What kind of show is it? Funny?”
“No. I wouldn’t call it funny. Although first night was rather amusing. One of the back drops caught somehow at the dark-change in the last act. Some of the scenery was in distressing danger of coming down on Barrymore’s bed.”
“That oughta been a riot,” observed Milly. She felt her self-confidence returning again. She was, as it were, getting along famously. “We had a show like that once at the Opera House up to Paris. Some of the scenery fell flat and knocked the orchestra leader clean into the first violin. They couldn’t ring down the curtain. They couldn’t do nothin’. Just beller! Funniest part was, what different folks was doin’ behind the scenes when the thing went over. One man was changin’ his pants. He got outter sight awful quick!”
The fat man roared. But the real reason for that roar entirely missed Milly. He wasn’t such a bad sort, after all.
Mrs. Mosely observed that Milly had sprung a highly entertaining bon mot and was amusing her near-by table companions greatly. She leaned forward. The fat gentleman, in fact, was growing purple in the face and giving alarming symptoms of sliding under the table.
“Really, Mrs. Forge, you must tell us the joke,” suggested the hostess.
“Yes, please do!” pleaded a few feminine voices.
The attention of the diners thus being focused on herself, Milly colored scarlet and felt her scalp take fire. Conversation ceased. They were waiting.
“I—I—this—this man and I—were talking about—a show that come to Paris one night,” stammered Milly. “That’s our home town—Paris! Up in Vermont, you know!”
“I understand,” smiled Mrs. Mosely. Her onyx voice was at its best. “And what happened?”
“Some of the scenery fell flat and knocked the piano player clean into the first violin. They couldn’t ring down the curtain. They couldn’t do nothing—on the stage, I mean—just holler. But the funniest part was what different folks happened to be doing at the moment the thing flopped over. One man was—one man was——”
“Yes, my dear!”
“One man was changing his pants!” gulped Milly. And waited for the explosion of applauding merriment.
But instead of an explosion of applauding merriment came a ghastly silence. Mrs. Mosely tried to smile but turned a queer pea-green. The stout girl beside Nathan looked wildly around the table and jabbed her fork quickly into a morsel of roast. One of the men made a weird noise,—it sounded as though he had swallowed a worm, a long, upholstered, fuzzy one. A little red-haired girl giggled. And poor Nathan! Nathan was suddenly out on the bounding billows of a raging main looking avidly for a particularly inviting spot in which to drown with neatness and despatch.
“How very interesting!” remarked Mrs. Mosely. She turned to her ever-present help in time of trouble,—the Old Gold Georgette. “Cynthia, my dear,” she suggested, “and suppose you tell us that other amusing anecdote about De Carter when he tried to find Mr. Whitesmith at the Hermitage, and ran into the character actor who looked just like him, you know!”
Cynthia caught her cue and the cogs of the universe moved again. But it had been a hideous ten seconds while it lasted.
Milly was the last to finish her food at each course and the dinner dragged in consequence. She never noted she was holding up the dinner. She essayed other conversation with the stout man after a time, waving choice morsels on her fork as she did so, before putting them into her mouth. Her knife leaned against her plate, or sprawled at rakish angles from other dishes. She felt, however, that those present had not appreciated the delicious comedy in her anecdote. “High-brow,” she snapped to herself. She decided she detested Mrs. Mosely, and as for the Cynthia person’s anecdote, it wasn’t funny at all.
At the conclusion of the dinner Mrs. Mosely led the way into the drawing-room and left the men to cigars. The big double doors between the two apartments were then closed. Again Milly was “thrown on her own.” And——
She wished to Gawd she were home!
If this were high life in the brilliant metropolis, give her good old Paris, where folks ate their food naturally and talked about subjects a body could understand: the weather, perhaps, the latest film at the Olympic, what bargains Michalman was showing in his basement, how many chops Bud Jones gave for a dollar. What fun was there sitting around like a lot of “dummies at a wake”, nibbling at a very little food in slathers of dishes, having so many forks it took all the joy out of eating to remember to use the right one, and made one’s head ache beside?
What enjoyment was there for a woman to be stuck between two men whom she just knew wanted to talk business, and be stiff and uncomfortable and starched and nerve-racked to death for two mortal hours? Then a séance in the big room afterward and music on the piano that sounded like the player trying to see how many chords she could touch per minute or how many trick combinations of sounds she could manufacture on the keyboard? As for Milly, give her “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet”, or “Alexander’s Rag Time Band.”
No, Milly didn’t like society. One agonizing evening was enough. She would be a nervous wreck in two months if she had to endure it night after night as a program. This thing she decided emphatically off in a corner by herself. Nathan was not going to take any job where a steady menu of this sort of thing might be necessary. Not if she could help it,—and she flattered herself that she could and she would.
Milly was almost in tears when she finally culled out her husband.
“I wanner go home!” she almost cried. “And if you won’t come with me, I’ll go alone!” That a lady and gentleman were talking with Nathan made no difference to Milly. She had enough. She wanted to go home. She meant what she said.
Nathan excused himself as adroitly as he could. And Milly “sashayed” from the drawing-room, straight to the dressing-room door.
“We must say good night to Mrs. Mosely,” said Nathan, before he started for his own wraps.
“Oh, you can do it for me! I don’t ever want to speak to her again! I think she’s horrid! She asked me that joke about the pants and then made me feel like thirty cents when I told it.”
“But, Milly, it’ll be almost insult to walk out this way; ordinary courtesy demands you come with me and bid her good night. Don’t you want to be courteous?”
“Not to such as her! No! She’s too much of a high-brow! She makes me sick! You can tell her I said so!”
Milly got her street clothes and put them on in the hallway,—as she might have “gone off mad” at a surprise party up home when some one present had “slapped her face.”
Nathan went to Mrs. Mosely and apologized for his wife’s indisposition. “She’s taken suddenly ill,” he explained, “and I must hurry to the hotel with her at once.”
Milly was anything but ill when they went down the steps at last and headed west in the invigorating night air toward the Avenue. Milly continued her comment anent Mrs. Mosely and all Mrs. Mosely’s guests, comparing them to sundry “honest-to-God” folks up in Paris. Nathan was at last stung to remark:
“That was a rotten break you made! I should think your own intuitive good taste would have told you that those people think along a little higher plane than a stage hand changing his pants. That might be excellent humor for your father up in Gridley’s tannery. But in a New York drawing-room——”
“Well, Gridley’s tannery and Paris and my father are good enough for me! And you needn’t think you’re so all-fired high-brow, either. It wasn’t only a few years ago you was helpin’ skin cows right alongside my father.”
“I didn’t do it from choice. I was made to do it.”
“I suppose you’ll be telling me next that a continual bill of fare of the ‘class’ we had to-night is what you’d ‘like from choice’?”
“Certainly it is! You bet it is! And I intend to have it—if it’s possible to get.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Nathan Forge, you’ll have it without me! If that’s ‘high-brow’, then gimme the ‘flats,’ where people live natural and enjoy themselves!”
“What do you mean—you’ll have it without me?”
“Just what I said. I’ll go back to Ma—for good. Oh, I guess I can earn my own living again! I did it once, remember. You used to say I was the smartest girl in the box-shop—once!” And Milly began to sob openly as she trotted along by Nathan’s side. Pedestrians on the Avenue turned and stared.