“I came in to say hello. I’ve neglected you lately. But you have been so horrid about not coming to see my gardens that you deserve to be neglected.” Her dove-coloured eyes watched Mary closely. “Besides, I want to get something for Mr. O’Valley’s desk––as a surprise. You must help me because, as I have realized, you know so much more about him than I do.... There, am I not generous?”
“Very.” Mary surmised that something of greater importance lay behind the call than showing 255 off the satin costume or selecting a surprise for Steve.
“What do you suggest? I’m such a frivolous person my husband never tells me his affairs or wishes. The rugs might be in rags and he would never ask me to replenish. I understand now so much more clearly than ever before why business men and women are prone to fall in love with each other; they see each other so constantly under tests of each one’s abilities. They have to ask each other favours and grant them. Sometimes it is a loan of a pencil sharpener, more often it must be the aid of the other fellow’s brain to help solve a problem. And they are so shut away from my world. I’m just the pretty mischief-maker who squanders the dollars, and by and by, when self-pity sets in, they find there is a mutual bond of admiration and sympathy. Quite a step toward love, isn’t it? As I came in here to-day I could not help thinking of how beautifully you keep business house for my husband. Why, Mary Faithful, aren’t you afraid I am going to be jealous?” She was laughing, but the intention was to have the laugh blow away and the sting of the truth remain.
Mary knew this––and Beatrice knew that she did. So trying to make herself as formidable as a bunch of nettles Mary took heed to answer:
“I’m afraid you have been reading novels––the ones where the business woman grows paler and more interesting looking each day and somehow happens to be wearing a tempting little chiffon frock when the firm fails and the young and handsome junior partner takes refuge in her office and proceeds to brandish a gun and say farewell to the world. You see, you 256 don’t come down to play with us enough to know what prosaic rows there are over pencil sharpeners or who has spirited away the drinking cup or why the window must be six inches from the top because So-and-so has muscular rheumatism. I don’t think you are fair, Mrs. O’Valley, and I’m going to risk being quite unpopular by telling you that you have no right to say such things even in jest.”
Mary’s eyes were very honest and her face seemed even firmer of chin as she leaned her elbows on her desk, looking up at this pretty figurine in satin and plumes.
“Do you fancy it is any fun to go to work at thirteen or fourteen? To rush through breakfast to stand in a crowded car, to have to make your heart very small as the Chinese say, in order to appreciate the pennies and keep them until they become dollars––when all of you longs to play Lady Bountiful? To rub elbows with untruthful mischief-makers, coarse-mouthed foremen, impossible young fools who wish to flirt with you and whom you do not dare to rebuke too sharply; to take your hurried noon hour with little food and less fresh air and come back to the daily grind; to walk home or hang on to the tag end of a street-car strap and finally get to your room or your home so tired in body and mind that you wish you had no soul, protesting faintly against girls and women having to be in business?
“No, I don’t think you do realize. Or to run errands icy-cold days, down slushy streets or slippery hills? To carry great bundles of such daintiness as you are wearing and leave them at the doors of big houses such as your own, numbed, hungry, envious––and not understanding the wherefore of it? To 257 catch glimpses of warm halls, the sound of a piano playing in a flower-scented salon, to see girls your own age in dainty silk dresses sitting in the window and looking at you curiously as you go down the steps? Oh, I could tell you a great deal more, Mrs. O’Valley.”
“Well?”
“Eventually some of us survive and some do not––which is another story! Those of us who do, who endure such days that we may go to night school, and who wear mended gloves and queer hats, forgoing the cheap joys of our associates––we do forge ahead and grow grimmer of heart and graver of soul. We realize that we are earning everything we are getting––perhaps more––only we cannot get the recognition we deserve. We are quite different from what you stay-at-home women fancy. Tempting chiffon frocks and love affairs de luxe with handsome junior partners are farthest from our thoughts. We plan for lonely old age––a home and an annuity, a trip to Europe or some other Carcassonne of our thwarted selves. We revel in things as you women do––but we revel in them because people are shut away from us. You women shut away people that you may revel in things.