Perch of the Devil

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

V

BUTTE long since had made up its mind as to the social future of Mrs. Gregory Compton. That Ida’s mother had been a laundress and her father a miner concerned the ladies of Butte as little as many similar outcroppings of family history peculiar not only to Montana but to all regions of recent exploitation and rapid growth.

In the hearty welcome extended to the newcomer, with either the money or the personality to command its attention, Butte more nearly resembles London than any other city in the world. To pasts she is indifferent, provided they are not resurrected as models for a present: she asks no questions of a pretty, amiable, amusing woman who pays her the compliment of sojourning in her midst, so long as the lady exercises an equal reticence—assuming reticence to be her virtue—and plays the social game with savoir faire. Distractions on that high perch are few, social life ebbs oftener than it flows, many of the large houses are closed for the greater part of the year, and only the very young, who care not where they are so long as they may dance, find life in an overgrown mining camp as satisfactory as their elders find New York.

But the hospitality of Butte is genuine and founded largely upon common sense. Most of the women composing its society have enjoyed wealth for many years: they have travelled extensively; and if they continue to make their homes in Butte it is solely on account of their own business interests or those of their men. They argue that to deprive themselves of even the casual diversion, assuming the exclusive airs of large and resourceful communities, would merely put them on a level with thousands of other small towns slowly stagnating, be unworthy of their worldly experience, and of the large free spirit of the Northwest which has pervaded that isolated camp since they came with their husbands or fathers to take a hand in its history.

As for Mrs. Gregory Compton all they knew of her in her present stage of development was favourable, although several had a lively remembrance of the rosy black-haired Ida Hook delivering her excellent mother’s laundry work at their back door, and receiving more or less of her “cheek.” But they had heard, at the time, of her lessons with Professor Whalen, and of Ora Blake’s coincident interest. Of her social advantages and triumphs in Europe the press had kept them informed; she returned to Butte, in fact, as one new-born. Moreover, she now owned one of the finest houses in the city for entertaining, they knew that she had elected to shine in Butte rather than in London (that Mecca of so many quick-rich women without position in their own country); and above all she was the wife of Gregory Compton, the man in whom Montana was beginning to feel assured it could take an unequivocal pride, not only for his diabolical cleverness, but because he was as “straight” as the Twentieth Century in the United States of America would permit. Butte felt devoutly grateful to Ida for being and returning, and, with that utter lack of affectation that characterised it, began calling two days after her arrival.

Ida would have been glad to have had Ora’s support and advice during this ordeal—which caused her far more apprehension than ducal week-ends. But she summoned all her acquired knowledge and tact, fortified it with her native and supreme confidence in herself, and made no mistakes. Butte was charmed with the severe rich gowns that set off her haughty head and warmly colored face and the long, flowing, yet stately lines of her beautiful figure; charmed also with a manner that was both simple and dignified. She showed no enthusiasm at being taken up so promptly, neither did she quite accept it as a matter of course. If her talk ranged freely over common acquaintance in London, the Paris dressmakers of the season, the new opera, the plays of the moment in New York, it was without glibness, and she took a firm hold on the older and more important women of the community by confiding to them that she should not make her first venture in the difficult art of entertaining until her friend Mrs. Blake returned to help her through the novitiate. Many of the younger women were the wives of Amalgamated officials and attorneys, or of men in a relationship to that mighty power but one degree further removed; but the men individually were too broad-minded to cherish a personal grudge against Compton, and they were, moreover, quite as eager as their mates to meet his handsome wife.

During the ensuing fortnight Ida dined out every night, went to a bridge party every afternoon, as well as to several luncheons, teas, and dances. She wore a different costume every time she appeared in public; but although there was at the moment nothing in Butte to compare with her gowns she never produced the effect of outshining the other women by anything but her beauty and individual style. In short her success was so immediate and so final that, although she liked these ladies of her native town even better than she had anticipated, her rapid conquest soon lost its novelty, and she wished that Ora would return; not only because she missed her increasingly, but because to entertain in her great house would give her a new and really poignant excitement, and lift her definitely from the ranks of the merely received.

Gregory telephoned every few days, and never twice at the same hour. When she found herself restlessly awaiting the ring of the instrument, she dashed out of the house angrily and took a walk. If she found upon her return that he had called her up, she felt that he had given her the excuse to telephone to him, and she soon learned at what hours she could find him either in his cabin or down in the mine, where he had a booth. She was furious at what she called her raging female vanity, and if she could have found another man to assuage it she would not have hesitated to press him into service at whatever cost to himself. But, as happens more often than not, there was not an unmarried man in Butte old enough to be worthy of a fastidious woman’s notice. She would have yawned in the face of “Brownies”, and, although more than one roving husband would have placed himself at her disposal, she was the last woman to court scandal or even gossip. She longed for the advent of Lord John Mowbray, whose gayety would distract her mind, and whose devotion make her forget that she was a neglected wife. She could throw dust into the eyes of Butte by pretending to be his matrimonial sponsor.

But for the first time she wished that she had children. The great house seemed to demand the patter of small feet, the slamming of doors, a row of naughty faces peering over the banister of the second floor. It was terribly silent. And yet she had felt settled down in that house at once, so long had one of its kind been the object of her unswerving desire; its atmosphere already seemed to hang listless with ennui. She subscribed to both the state and city suffrage fund, for she felt a new sympathy for women who were trying to fill their lives, and sincerely hoped they would invent some game that would make them independent of men.

Seventeen days after her return she was sitting in the library, trying to forget her solitary luncheon in a novel when she heard the front doorbell ring. Her servants were amiable but not too competent, and she waited impatiently and in vain for one of them to answer the summons. She restrained the impulse to open the door herself. This was now an obsolete custom among her new acquaintance; although having the front door shut in one’s face while the colored maid took one’s card to the lady of the stately mansion was hardly an improvement, and this had been her experience a day or two ago. She rang the bell in the library. Still there was no sign of life from the high-priced young women who doubtless were gossipping over the back fence. Ida’s curiosity overcame her. The hour was too early for callers. It might be a cable. She stole to the front door and peered through its curtain of Honiton lace. Then she gave a war whoop which would have horrified her servants—who, careless as they were, stood in awe of her—flung the door open, caught Ora in her arms and almost carried her into the library.