When she had mentioned his call to her family, they had all urged her to “make a play for him” and angle for a proposal of marriage.
“He must be nuts about you ’r else he wouldn’t always come back for more,” Mabel had said. “I’ll bet you’re always freezin’ him out, that’s the trouble. You’ll be a fool ’f you don’t try to land him this time. He’s loaded with jack, and he’s got a rep, and he’s not so bad-lookin’ at that. What more d’you want, I’d like to know—you’re no Ziegfeld Follies girl yourself.”
Now, as she sat and polished her finger-nails, Blanche wondered whether it might not be best to marry Campbell after all. Most of his past glamor to her had been rubbed away, and she saw him as a second-rate actor, always laughing to hide what he wanted to get from a girl, and drinking and spending his money because he wanted people to believe that he was much more important than he really was, and caring nothing for the “fine” part of life which she had begun to realize—books, and paintings, and such things. Still, if she married him he would give her a leisure and an independence in which she could find out whether anything was in her or not, and whether she was gifted for something better than marcelling hair or punching registers. Then she would be able to sit most of the day and just read and think, or maybe go to some school and learn something, and meet new kinds of people. How could she ever make something out of herself if she had to work hard every day, and give half of her limited dollars to her family, and listen to their naggings and pesterings? Of course, she did not love Campbell, and the thought of continuous physical relations with him was not as pleasant as it had once been—somehow, when you began to “see through” a man’s blusterings and boastings, his hands and his kisses lost part of their thrill—but still, he was physically agreeable to her, and it might be idle to hope for more than that from any man. He wouldn’t talk about the new things that she was interested in, or sympathize with her desires for knowledge and expression, but when, oh, when, would she ever find a man who had these responses? Such men lived and moved in a different world, and were hardly likely to meet, or to care for, a questioning Beauty Parlor girl—they could easily procure women who were more their equals. Besides, it was silly to sit and mope around and wait for your “ideal” to arrive. You might wind up by becoming a dull old maid, with nothing accomplished.
The one thing that counseled against marriage to Campbell was her unfounded but instinctive distrust of him. She could never rid herself of the feeling that he was secretly cruel and heartless, and that there was something “phony” about all of his smiles and laughters, and that he was not nearly as intelligent as he seemed to be, but knew how to manipulate an all-seeing pose.
The Beauty Parlor was a sweetly smirking, pink and whitish, overdraped place, trying so hard to look femininely dainty and insipidly refined and still preserve something of a business-like air. Cream-colored satin panels were nailed to the walls and pink rosebud arrangements shaded all of the electric lights except the green-shaded, practical ones placed beside the tables and the chairs where the work was done. There were Persian rugs on the hardwood floor, and amateurishly piquant batiks, and the reek of cheap incense and dryly dizzy perfume was in the air. Outside of three prosaic, ordinary barber-chairs, the place had several dressing-tables with long mirrors, enameled in shades of ivory and pink with thin, curved legs. Bottles of perfume and jars of paste and powder were scattered over the place, and many framed photographs of actresses were on the walls, most of them signed: “With affection (or with regards) to my dear friend, Madame Jaurette” (some of them had cost Madame a nice penny). These picture-testimonials had a potent effect upon the Beauty Parlor’s clientele, owing to the humorous misconception on the part of many women that actresses and society queens alone are acquainted with the mysteries and abracadabras of remaining physically young, beautiful, and unwrinkled. Photographs of society women were much more difficult for Madame to procure—money was of no avail in their case, ah, mais non!—but she did have one of Mrs. Frederick Van Armen, one of the reigning upper-hostesses of the day, which she had secured after a year of plotting, and of pleading notes.
The entire shop had an air of sex running to an artificial restoration place to repair the ravages of time, or to add an irresistible exterior to its youth, but there was something hopeless and thickly pathetic attached to the atmosphere. It was sex that had lost its self-confidence and its unashamed hungers—sex that hunted for tiny glosses and protections, and had a partly mercenary fear and precision in all of its movements.
Blanche’s thoughts of Campbell were interrupted by the advent of the proprietress, Madame Jaurette, and a young patroness. Madame was fat, and too short for her weight, but through the use of brassieres, bodices, reducing exercises, and diets, she had kept her curves from emulating a circus side-show effect. It was a strain on her nerves, however, and she had that persecuted but uncomplaining look on her face. Like a great many middle-class, nearly middle-aged French women, with very moderate educations, she was a preposterous mixture of dense cupidities and romantic sentiments, and while the cupidities had their way with her most of the time, they were always apt to be knocked galley-west by some gentleman with an aquiline nose, or the destitution of some weeping girl. She had a round, almost handsome face, with the wretched hint of a double chin that was never allowed to go any further, and bobbed, black hair—it didn’t become her but it had to be mutilated for business reasons—and she dressed in dark, lacy, expensive gowns.
“Ah, Ma’m’selle Palmaire, you will take so good care of Mees White, she is vairy fine lady,” she babbled. “Mees White, she always have Nanette to feex her hair, but Nanette she is here no more. Ma’m’selle Palmaire, she is really ex-pert, Mees White. She will geeve you, what you call it?—the curl that won’ come off!”
“’F I’m so good, why don’t you raise my wages once in a while,” Blanche thought to herself, but she said: “Sure, I guess I know my work all right. I’ll do the best I can for her.”
The patroness was a slim girl with a disproportionately plump bosom, a dumbly child-like, near-pretty face, and a great shock of blonde, bobbed hair. As Blanche heated the curling-irons, the other girl said: “It’s just the hardest thing to keep my hair wavy. It never does last more than two or three days. I’ll spend a fortune on it before I’m through.”