She threw her purse down with an angry gesture.
“You are the crudest thing,” he said.
“I slapped you once for calling me a crude little fool––and the next time you try it I’ll do better than that!” She was unable to control her temper. “If you think being a bachelor and languishing in this place would keep you afloat you’re mistaken. It’s me––I’m the one that buys the bargains and runs the sewing machine half the night, sends out the bills and wheedles the salesmen into looking at you––to say nothing of doing the housekeeping, and keeping every good-looking woman afraid of me, yet polite. Why, if you were alone any real business man could come in here and start a shop and put you behind the bench overnight. You’re nothing! You never were. You lived on a dead man’s reputation until you married me, and now you’re living on a redheaded girl’s nerve. I’ll scold as shrilly as I like. If the neighbours hear, all the better!”
Trudy had lost control of herself. Besides, she was very tired. “Who told you to wear gray-velvet smocks in your drawing-room shop and to have soft ties poured down softer collars? You look a hundred per cent, better than when you hopped 222 round in a check suit that gave you a gameboard appearance. I did that. If I’d ever worked for O’Valley as I have for you, thinking I’d get a good time out of it somehow, I’d have had Mary Faithful on the run.”
She did not add the rest of her ideas––that Beatrice O’Valley, not contented with her store of possessions and avenues of interests, contemplated playing property doll with this half-portion little snob who stood before her in his ridiculous smock costume, half afraid and half sneering.
The interview concluded with Trudy’s going to the kitchen for some kind of a supper and Gay’s driving off post haste to see Beatrice.
When Steve returned from his hurried two-day trip he asked Beatrice if she realized the amount of money she was spending.
“Why should I?” she answered, aggrievedly. Steve looked unusually handsome this afternoon, and seemed to fit into the antique chair; and, in contrast to her contemplated property doll, Beatrice felt amiable and willing to play for favour. “I haven’t asked you for one quarter of it.”
“That’s the trouble––your father has gone on paying your bills, and you don’t seem to realize I am not an enormously rich man––and never will be, abnormal business conditions having ceased. We are back where we started, so to speak, and I don’t look for a time of unheralded prosperity for some days to come. I was figuring up while I was away, in detail; and here are the results.” He handed her a memorandum. “You see? I earn a splendid living and I have a neat nest egg not to be 223 despised. But I have no Italian-villa income. Your father has, so you came back to your father to take his money and I am merely a necessary accessory to the entire ensemble.” His voice was bitter.