It was while she was talking of this child’s death with Trudy that the latter glimpsed the handwriting on the wall, and with scantily concealed enmity determined to beat Beatrice at her own game.
“Jill is going away for the winter, poor thing,” Beatrice said. “I don’t blame her; it would be too horrible to have to stay and see all his things about. And it’s the second child she’s lost. Goodness me, 216 she has spent hundreds on baby specialists and nurses! Well, you know yourself, Trudy––you’ve seen how wonderful she has been. This boy’s death has so distressed her that she has decided to have two nurses stay with the children instead of one. Mighty sweet of her, as it all comes out of Jill’s pocketbook and not her husband’s. She says she cannot think of leaving them with one person, and she must go away because her nerves are frazzled.
“She is going to the West Indies with an artist friend, and they are going to make a marvellous collection of water-colour paintings of birds and flowers, a sort of memorial to the boy. Jill says she will sell them and give the proceeds for the crèche charity. Well, that is all very well for Jill to do; she has a real heartache to live down. But when you have no earthly reason to go and paint wild birds and flowers and you are bored to distraction with everything––” She shrugged her shoulders.
“Meaning yourself?” asked Trudy. “Really?”––delighted that this was so.
“Are you ever bored?”
“Only enough to be fashionable. You see I have to live Gay’s life and career and my own at the same time.” Instinctively Trudy knew this caused envy in her hostess’s heart for a multitude of reasons. “Gay never amounted to anything until we were married”––she paused for this to take full effect––“and I enjoy playing the game. I have grown fond of makeshifts and make-believes and hedging, bluffing, stalling, jumping mental hurdles––it’s fun––it keeps you alive and never weighing more than a hundred and ten pounds.”
Trudy rose to go. She was a chic little vixen in a 217 fantastic costume of black velvet with a jacket of blush pink. No one but Trudy could have worn such a thing––a semi-Dick-Whittington effect––and have gotten away with it. Though she was physically very tired from sewing late the night before, and mal-nourished because she was too indolent to bother to cook, Trudy looked quite fit for a long stretch of hard running.
“Why don’t you diet seriously?” she purred. “It’s only right for your true friends to tell you. The double chin is permanent, I’m afraid.” She shook her shapely little head, to Beatrice’s inward rage.
As Beatrice sat looking up at this impertinent little person she suddenly became angered to think she had ever bothered with an ex-office girl or permitted Gaylord to coax her into being nice to his wife. And if this impossible person could bring Gaylord into the ranks of prosperity in a short time, making everyone accept her, what couldn’t she, Beatrice O’Valley, do with Gay if she tried––seriously tried? He would not linger beside Trudy if Beatrice gave him to understand there was a place for him at her own hearth. She knew Gaylord too well; he suddenly assumed the figurative form of a goal, as she had once assumed to Steve––a play pastime––in the true sense. A real man would not play off property doll in the hands of any woman, not excepting his own wife; which Beatrice realized. Living with a cave man had taught her many things. Yet it would be rare fun to have a property doll all one’s own, different from the impersonal, harmless herd of boys and poets, a really innocent pastime if you considered it in the eyes of man-written law. What a lark––to switch Gay from this cheap, red-haired 218 little woman, dominate his life, suddenly assert her starved abilities, and make him become far greater than anything Trudy had ever been able to do! It would cause such a jolly row and excitement and pep everyone up. Pet and flatter him and show Trudy that after all she had only been an incompetent clerk in Steve’s office!
“Perhaps I will diet,” was all she said, smiling sweetly. “And tell Gay he must come see me to-morrow. I have a plan that I want to tell him––and no one else. Besides, there is a flaw in the last pair of candlesticks he bought for me.”