Perch of the Devil

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

It never occurred to Mark to be jealous of his passionless wife, although he would have asserted his authority if she had received men alone in the afternoon. But Ora paid a scrupulous deference to his wishes in all respects. She even taught herself to keep house, and her servants manners as well as the elements of edible cooking. This she regarded as her proudest feat, for she frankly hated the domestic details of life; although after three years in a “Block”,—a sublimated lodging house, peculiar to the Northwest—she enjoyed the space and privacy of her home. Mark told his friends that his wife was the most remarkable woman in Montana, rarely found fault, save in the purely mechanical fashion of the married male, and paid the bills without a murmur. Altogether it was a reasonably happy marriage.

Ora Blake’s attitude to life at this time was expressed in the buoyancy of her step, the haughty carriage of her head, the cool bright casual glance she bestowed upon the world in general. Her code of morals, ethics, manners, as well as her acceptance of the last set of conditions she would have picked from the hands of Fate, was summed up in two words: noblesse oblige. Of her depths she knew as little as Gregory Compton of his.

“This is Mrs. Compton, I am sure,” she said in her cool even voice, as she came up behind the elaborately unconscious and humming Ida. “I am Mrs. Blake.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Ida formally, extending a limp hand. “Come on inside.”

Mrs. Blake closed her eyes as she entered the parlour, but opened them before Ida had adjusted the blower to the grate, and exclaimed brightly:

“How clever of you to settle so quickly. I shouldn’t have dared to call for another fortnight, but Mr. Compton told my husband yesterday that you were quite in order. It was three months before I dared open my doors.”

“Well,” drawled Ida, rocking herself, “I guess your friends are more critical than mine. And I guess you didn’t rely wholly on Butte for your furniture. I had Ma’s old junk, and the rest cost me just two hundred dollars.”

“How very clever of you!” But although Mrs. Blake was doing her best to be spontaneous and impressed, Ida knew instantly that she had committed a solecism, and felt both angry and apprehensive. She was more afraid of this young woman than of her professor. Once more she wished that Mrs. Blake and the whole caboodle would leave her alone till she was good and ready.

Ora hastened on to a safer topic, local politics. Butte, tired of grafting politicians, was considering the experiment of permitting a Socialist of good standing to be elected mayor. Ida, like all women of the smaller Western towns, was interested in local politics, and, glad of the impersonal topic, gave her visitor intelligent encouragement, the while she examined her critically. She finally summed her up in the word “pasty”, and at that stage of Ora Blake’s development the description was not inapt. She took little or no interest in her looks, although she dressed well by instinct; and nature, supplemented by her mother, had given her style. But her hair was almost colourless and worn in a tight knot just above her neck, her complexion was weather-beaten, her lips rather pale, and her body very thin. But when men whose first glance had been casual turned suddenly, wondering at themselves, to examine that face so lacking in the potencies of colouring, they discovered that the eyes, deeply set and far apart, were of a deep dark blazing grey, that the nose was straight and fine, the ears small, the mouth mobile, with a slight downward droop at the corners; also that her hands and feet were very slender, with delicate wrists and ankles. Ida, too, noted these points, but wondered where her “charm” came from. She knew that Mrs. Blake possessed this vague but desirable quality, in spite of her dread reputation as a “high-brow”, and her impersonal attitude toward men.

Ruby had informed her that the men agreed she had charm if she would only condescend to exert it. “And I can feel it too,” she had added, “every time I do her nails—she never lets anyone do that hair of hers or give her a massage, which she needs, the Lord knows. But she’s got fascination, magnetism, whatever you like to call it, for all she’s so washed-out. Somehow, I always feel that if she’d wake up, get on to herself, she’d play the devil with men, maybe with herself.”