"But you'll never understand either of us, if you do mean well; you're too good, that's what's the matter with you. That's why I feel—so much more at home—with Miss Curtis, and the doctor, especially the doctor. Honestly, you can't imagine how blue I was. I wanted to—well, I didn't know—whatever I was going to do, but this bucked me up. Imagine, mammie! I'd like to see a doctor like Doctor Stevenson, only more so—the best surgeon in Chicago—so that people would just HAVE to have her operate to save them; and then I wish she'd just go on living with all the men she wanted to—and snap her finger at the whole bunch of them. I'm going into business. The doctor said for me not to invest a cent with the boss; she was the one that looked him up, and found he'd failed in New York. I told her I hadn't any capital of my own, and I don't give a damn what anybody suspects me of!"
Martha was wearing long thin jade earrings, and she gave her head a little jerk as she announced her intentions. She had on a green hat, of a hard color. Could it be just the shadow of that green over her eyes that made them seem ringed and bitter?
"Oh, very well. But how about Christmas? You'll have a few days off, I suppose?"
"No, I won't have any. I'm going into this business. I've got to stick at it. Look here, mammie, if you'll stay for dinner, I'll get Mrs. Blacksley from my shop to meet us some place. I didn't want to take you to the shop, for I knew her husband was to have dinner with us. He's an idiot, but she's all right. I get along with her; she's divorced one husband. If she'd consult me, I'd tell her to divorce another."
Mrs. Blacksley, Martha said, seldom spent even thirty cents on her dinner. For that reason they awaited her in the Drake Café, and planned to nourish her weariness with a thick rich dinner, and beefsteaks were the one thing you could get better in Chicago than anywhere else in the world, Martha declared, ignoring magnificently her inexperience in most other places in the world. Mrs. Blacksley joined them there.
She joined them languidly, softly. She threw off a short black fur coat, and a little black hat, carelessly, as if all the other women in the crowded room were sitting bareheaded. She stood up for a moment, regardless perhaps of the attention she was attracting. She had on a little soft black wool frock, full skirted, with the waist fitted cunningly over her delicate breast. It was a right little frock; it was a bit too devilishly right for her.
It made Emily think, even as Mrs. Blacksley chose to sit with her back to the room: "Well, if what helps Martha in her friends is a scandalous past or a compromising present, this woman is going to be very useful to her." Nothing less like those utilitarian mentors of Hyde Park could a girl have happened upon. Mrs. Blacksley was still young—but her eyes had a past. Her lips had a history; her smooth hair, drawn back so severely from those beautiful temples, so cleverly from those little ears, had a beguiling present challenge. Surely, for fifty generations, those gray eyes had been looking cynically at eager lovers. Her mouth was soft and lovely; lips like hers must have kissed only with mental reservations for centuries. She was exotic, she was alluring. She had divorced one husband, had she? She aroused a question then, immediately. How many men had wanted to be her second?
She said to Martha, later, as they were going together to her train—she spoke suddenly, struck by an interesting thought:
"Look here, isn't the doctor's name Isobel?"
"Yes. Why?"