Half loaves

by Margaret Culkin Banning

THERE was a well-bred society in Carrington—new perhaps in the sense that Carrington itself was young, but though the aggregate society might be new, most of its members were not novices in the enjoyment of beautiful things or in the traditions of manners. They came from a great many places in the United States, settling in Carrington for the “business reasons” of their sons or husbands or sons-in-law, and they went back whence they had come, on visits, establishing valuable rapports between the cities of their genesis and the one of their habitation. The women went to New York to shop, if their incomes were large enough, and, also, Carrington had its spring colony in California and its winter colony in Florida. All these interchanges were useful. They made of the mid-western city a place less provincial and less conglomerate. Carrington could indeed bear its social head with more pride and real distinction than many a larger place, overrun by parvenus. Bluffing was difficult. A newcomer always found persons who knew people of consequence in his former city, persons from his college who would easily place him. Yet, for all that, where bluffing was not involved to the point of being obnoxious, Carrington was tolerant and allowed the newcomer every chance to make good; was not too cruel in its comments, too exacting as to previous records. It had the laxities of the great world and many of the fine distinctions of the smaller worlds which revolve around the life of old cities. On the whole, a gracious place—the kind of place that Europeans too rarely credit to the United States.

Cecily was high enough on the social ladder to be unconscious of any rungs to climb. And it had never been suggested at the Convent of the Sacred Heart that it was a modern and edifying pursuit to watch people swarming up from the ground and struggling to maintain a foothold on that ladder. So it never occurred to her that it meant a great deal to Fliss Horton to meet her, or that Fliss marked the day that she did meet her as a red-letter one of social success.

Cecily had been singing at a musicale at the home of one of her mother’s friends. She had sung two short songs in French and she had been both worried and diffident about her performance. Still she did it admirably and looked delightful, dressed in a soft silk velvet dress of black, with only a silver cord to set off the exquisite lines of the frock and of her slenderness. Fliss had been invited to the musicale. Invitations came with reasonable ease to these semi-charitable affairs and they could be made extremely useful. She listened to Cecily singing, but her heart was in her eyes instead of her ears, watching Cecily’s clothes and undoubtedly shrewdly guessing at their cost, for Fliss shopped much with her lips in places where she could not at all afford to buy. Later she met Cecily and told her how much she had enjoyed the singing. Cecily actually blushed with pleasure.

“I was frightfully nervous,” she said. “It was the first time I had ever sung anything in French without going over it with one of the French nuns, you see. You imagine you are sure of your French until you have to do something like that, absolutely on your own. Then you get so scared for fear some one who really knows French will be listening.”

“I don’t know much about it, but it certainly sounded beautiful and you didn’t seem the least bit frightened.”

Cecily smiled her thanks again and they moved off together, talking. There were more older than younger people at the musicale and Fliss was quick to seize on the other girl’s temporary lack of companionship. She herself was looking very pretty—less overdressed than usual—and though any of the older women might have criticized the high tan kid shoes and the tight, short tan suit-dress, Cecily only admired its effect and found herself interested in the new girl, who, it appeared, lived in town, not far from her own house, who was the friend of other girls she knew—as Fliss skillfully brought out—and who had an air of piquancy about her that was very interesting and even charming. What Fliss thought about did not matter. She was working hard to make an impression, to be remembered if an occasion should arise on which she would want Cecily to remember her. And there was a certain effectiveness in the conversation between herself and the beautifully dressed convent girl, of which Fliss was far too clever an artist to be unconscious. Cecily might make her suffer in a way by the contrast—but it would always be “in a way.”

It was late afternoon and a few men came in, most of them calling for their wives by previous arrangement, with two or three who recognized the occasion as a social one or had been called upon especially to come with their checkbooks and charitable consciences. Bachelors came, too—past the age of fearing such feminine social affairs, most of them—and then one who came unexpectedly, for no expressed reason. The older ladies beamed at the sight of him; the dark eyes of Fliss took on a more excited radiance; and the slow color crept up into Cecily’s cheeks as a tall figure singled itself out from the rest and Dick Harrison made his way—his popular, friendly way—across the room to her. He was good looking. Every one admitted that his brown hair, which would curl even at thirty, and his athletic figure were in his favor. But Cecily was beginning to see more than that. She had been meeting him for a month now at one place and at another—dances, dinners, theater parties. Dick was always an addition to any party, always desirable—she had quickly discovered that people thought that. Partly it was because he was wealthy and handsome; and because Carrington and Carrington’s affairs were closely identified with all his interests; he was truly a favorite son. No mother frowned upon any attentions he paid her daughter unless she felt they were over-slight, and few daughters were altogether indifferent. Dick was excused for dalliance with years of freedom, because as a bachelor he was so desirable.

As for Dick himself, he had a good time and believed in his business, which had to do with promotion of mining interests and the development of the city, and had fairly tolerant political views, and lived with his worldly-minded mother in a thoroughly pleasant house which seemed to him far pleasanter than any of the apartments of most of his married contemporaries. He had no desire to get married at all. That is, he had had no desire until he met Cecily. He met her one night at her mother’s house, and after that he sat back and let all the conventional things happen to him, enjoying each one of them extremely. He thought about her continually; he arrayed a new ideal of woman with all of her attributes; he freshened up all the old phrases about purity and love—about men not being fit for decent women. He could not keep his mind off possible scenes in which he and she participated alone and he blushed hotly and secretly at them—and recurred to them. He wanted to do all the things that men have ever done to win women, and to enjoy his winning of her.

So he had seen Cecily even oftener than she guessed and he had aroused a little whirlpool of comment around himself and her which he rather gloried in. In the eyes of the city there was no possible objection to any love-making which he might see fit to carry on, except a possible reservation that a girl of nineteen was very young for marriage. But with these two young people there was so much to make marriage easy that it was hard to make an objection out of youth, especially when Dick’s ten extra years were added to Cecily’s youth. Dick’s mother was highly in favor of seeing her son married. Even Cecily’s mother——.

Cecily’s mother said very little. She put Dick next to herself at dinner whenever he came to the house and talked to him about all kinds of subjects, always making him talk a little more than she herself. She did not mention him to Cecily except incidentally and not at all as a subject for discussion. Now, as she saw him cross the room to her daughter, she crossed too, most casually. That to the mixed glory and discomfiture of poor Fliss.