“She came down here, she wrote me, when she wanted to find out about something or other. I’ve forgotten just what.”
Steve smiled. “Yes, for nearly a week Mrs. O’Valley managed to create a furore among her own set. Before she came here she ordered an entire new outfit of clothes––business togs. There were queer hats and shirt waists and things.” He laughed at the remembrance. “Then she had to practise getting up early; that took a lot of time. Meanwhile, Miss Sartwell did your work just as we planned. It was found necessary to postpone her business career still further because of an out-of-door pageant 187 that required her services as a nymph. She caught cold at rehearsal and enjoyed a week of indoors.
“Then Gay turned up with a whole flock of new decorators for the d–––for the villa thing, and I was left without aid from the ennuied for another ten days. Jill Briggs had a wedding anniversary and relied on Beatrice’s aid. Of course she could not refuse, and Trudy, who, by the way, has come on very rapidly, persuaded Beatrice to take a booth at a charity kettledrum.
“So after several weeks my wife appeared on my business horizon and hung that mirror up and had those other things moved in and then she discovered that the impudent girls were all copying her coats and hats and stuff and even used her sort of perfume, and she decided that her duty lay not in making me a competent secretary but in reforming these extravagant young persons so that she could wear a model gown in comfort and not see it copied within a month. It was quite an experience for her; she was here about five days. Miss Sartwell just moved her desk out there and we managed nicely. Beatrice also had a private teacher for typewriting and so on, but she gave it all up because she felt the confinement and long hours made her head ache and she gained weight. She fled in haste. Sorry she had to do so, but under the circumstances it was better to jeopardize my business career than her own figure!”
“Aren’t you a little unfair?” Mary said, seriously.
“Am I? I never thought so. Wait––I must finish the tale. For a whole week after being my business partner she tried what she called holiness as a cosmetic, and became high-church and quite trying. At the end of that time she felt a veritable dynamo of 188 nerves and scandal and proceeded to become a liberated and advanced woman. You’ll soon enough see what I mean. She doesn’t run to short-haired ladies with theories so much as to hollow-eyed gentlemen embroidering cantos in the drawing room and trying to make the world safe for poetry. De-luxe adventuresses strike her as harmonious just now. You’ll hear about one Sezanne del Monte who is staying in town and living off of Bea and her set.”
“The woman who is divorced every season––and stars in musical comedy?”
“The same. Sezanne is now writing the intimate story of her life; sort of heart throbs instead of punctuation marks––lots of asterisks, you know, separating the paragraphs. Beatrice is going to finance the publication of it and Gay is going to be the sales manager. Yes, it’s funny, but a blamed nuisance when you come home and you find yourself wandering through a crowd of Sezanne del Montes and Gays and Trudys, all bent on playing parlour steeplechase, and you can’t find a plain chair to sit down or eat a plain meal or read a newspaper. It’s more than a blamed nuisance––it’s cause for a trial by jury,” he added, whimsically. “Now what’s wrong?”––watching Mary’s face.
“It isn’t cricket to tell all this.”
Somehow the old struggle began with renewed energy in Mary’s heart, the puritanical part saying: “Forget you ever thought twice of this man”; and the dreamer part urging: “You have earned the right to love him. She has not. Just be fair––merely fair. You have the right; don’t let your opportunity slip by.”