“I like it a lot. I like to charm my eyes with it. It suits you exactly, but it’s young and there may be times when I’ll feel my age. Then the old furniture will rest me. Understand?”
“Yes,” said Fliss, quite truthfully.
So it was arranged. And sometimes when the crowd of people who flocked to Fliss’s house—an ever-increasing crowd, whether they came for Red Cross work or for amusement—were too noisy or too heterogeneous for Matthew’s taste, he undoubtedly found it sanctuary indeed. It kept him from getting tired of his home, too, kept him able to appreciate its color, its spirit, its accord with a gay, fashionable time. With all these things it was also always comfortable. Fliss could not cook, but she had discretion enough to hire a good cook, to spare no expense on her table, even though she conformed to war regulations outwardly, to have a housemaid who knew how to keep bedrooms fresh and clean and sweet smelling. Matthew’s home was orderly; he was subject to no discomforts and he had good food, as well as a wife who carried no flavor of the domestic side of living around with her. Matthew used to like to come into her room, morning or night, and see her, elaborate in negligees, always pretty, always light, always with a smile for him. He called her a good investment and he never criticized her expenditures.
Matthew came first. Fliss was thoroughly honest about that. She attended to his wants with ungrudging pleasure. Then came her next interest, the business that intrigued her greatly and aroused less kindliness and perhaps a slight feeling of revenge—establishing her position in Carrington society.
It was not nearly enough to be counted smart and fashionable by the public who read the society columns and sighed for them. Fliss could gain that end easily enough, but she wanted to be genuinely accepted by the inner circles as well—to have none of the finer lines of distinction drawn against her. She was armed with a thorough knowledge of the city. She knew who was merely rich and who combined riches with social standing approved not only in Carrington, but in New York, Florida, California. In those rather cruel years between her school and her marriage she had studied little else except the shadings of people’s importance. That was to stand her in good stead now, as was her consciousness of her own best weapons in any attack on social citadels—her frankness, her power of deference and her brilliance of manner.
She gave little parties that were very gay and bright and somehow different from other people’s little parties—probably because Fliss gave individual attention to each of her guests, in selection and entertainment. She struck the note between the amusing and the risqué and never wavered as she held it. People responded by forgetting that Fliss Allenby had anything to gain by playing her social game well, having too good a time in her company to keep recalling that her steps were premeditated.
To gain an end, she was willing to be bored indefinitely. She went to the war time charitable affairs of older women, if they were important enough, and made a bright spot of color in the company, always deferential to the elder ladies, a little simple in her talk (she avoided pretense of intellectuality like the plague and played up a certain ingenuousness of ignorance that aroused the protective, educative instinct in others). She gave Matthew’s money lavishly. She was backed by his real importance and the solidity of his war work. Also she was willing to spend any amount of time on planning her clothes. She was always different from every one else, never fading into the inconspicuous, but always managing to avoid being called cheap or tawdry, even when, like every one else, she made a fashion of economy.
In her own way she was soon unassailable. She became a figure on the social lists. She became important. Then, to crown her luck, just as the war was beginning to make Matthew always unsmiling, always worried; just as she was beginning to see that the world was veering shockingly towards pain and horror—the war was over suddenly. In the reaction from the seriousness, the reaction shared largely by people who had suffered from no strain, Fliss knew how to lead. She led. After more than two years of marriage she was still a person to brighten the public eye with interest. Matthew had taken her traveling several times and it had improved her confidence. She knew pretty largely now what people were talking about when they referred to things they had seen and places they had been outside of Carrington.
Forced out of the City Club one October day by an influx of visiting salesmen come to some convention, Dick Harrison met Fliss at the Lennox restaurant. It occurred to him as he nodded to her that he had not seen much of her lately and, taking a second look which was really due the green feathered turban which closed so piquantly down on her black fringe of hair, he saw that she was apparently alone and crossed at once to sit opposite her. She told him that she was alone and only down town at all because she had been delayed in her shopping.
“It’s an awfully busy week. There’s such a lot going on that if I don’t get my shopping done to-day I’ll not have another chance.”