If a maid pleased her Beatrice pampered her until she became overbearing, and there would be a scene in which the maid would be told to pack her things and depart without any prospect of a reference; and someone else would be rushed into her place, only 112 to have the same experience. Beatrice was like most indulged and superfluously rich women, both unreasonable and foolishly lenient in her demands. She had no schedule, no routine, no rules either for herself or others. She had been denied the chance of developing and discovering her own limitations and abilities. She expected her maids and her friends to be at her beck and call twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four, she would not accept an excuse of being unfitted by illness for some task or of not knowing how to do any intricate, unheard-of thing which suddenly it occurred to her must be done.
When a servant would plead her case Beatrice always told her that for days at a time she left her alone in her beautiful home with nothing to do but keep it clean and eat up all her food and very likely give parties and use her talking machine and piano––which was quite true––and that she must consider this when she was asked to stay on duty until three or four o’clock in the morning or be up at five o’clock with an elaborate breakfast for Beatrice and her friends just returning from a fancy-dress ball.
On a sunny day she often sent the maids driving in her car, and if a blizzard came up she was certain to ask them to walk downtown to match yarn for her, not even offering car fare. She would borrow small sums and stamps from them and deliberately forget to pay them back, at the same time giving her cook a forty-dollar hat because it made her own self look too old. She had never had any one but herself to rely upon for discipline, and whenever she wanted anything she had merely to ask for it. When anything displeased her it was removed without question.
American business men do not always toil until 113 they are middle-aged for the reward of being made a fool by a chorus girl or an adventuress. That belongs to yellow-backed penny-dreadfuls and Sunday supplement tales of breach-of-promise suits. More often the daughter of the business man is both the victim and the vampire of his own shortsighted neglectfulness. The business man expresses it as “working like a slave to give her the best in the land.” And sometimes, as in the case of Steve O’Valley, it is his own wife instead of a blonde soul mate who lures him to destruction in six installments.
When Beatrice first knew of Gaylord’s return she was inclined to pay no attention to his wife, despite her remarks to Steve. Then Gaylord telephoned, and she had him up for afternoon tea, during which he told her all about it. He was very diplomatic in his undertaking. He pictured Trudy as a diamond in the rough, and in subtle, careful fashion gave Beatrice to understand that just as she had married a diamond in the rough––with a Virginia City grandfather and a Basque grandmother and the champion record of goat tending––so he, too, had been democratic enough to put aside precedent and marry a charming, unspoiled little person with both beauty and ability, and certainly he was to be congratulated since he had been married for love alone, Truletta knowing full well his unfortunate and straitened circumstances.... Yes, her people lived in Michigan but were uncongenial. Still, there was good blood in the family only it was a long ways back, probably as far back as the age of spear fighting, and he relied upon Beatrice, his old playmate, to sympathize with and uphold his course.
Secretly annoyed that the tables had been so skillfully 114 turned, yet not willing to admit it to this bullying morsel, Beatrice was obliged to say she would call upon his wife and ask them for dinner the following week.
Gaylord fairly floated home, to find Trudy remodelling a dress, scraps of fur and shreds of satin on the floor.
“Babseley, she’s coming to call to-morrow!” he said, joyfully, hanging up his velours hat and straddling a little gilt chair.
“Really? I wish we had a better place. I feel at a disadvantage. If it were a man I wouldn’t mind, I could act humble and brave––that sort of dope. But it never goes with a woman; you have to bully a rich woman, and I’m wondering if I can.”
“I did,” he said, his pale eyes twinkling with delight. “It was easy, too. I dragged in O’Valley’s orphan-asylum days and all, and how we both married diamonds in the rough. Woof, how she squirmed!” He rose and went to the absurd little buffet, pouring out two glasses of “red ink” and gulping down one of them. “I wish I had O’Valley’s money; I’d put away a houseful of this stuff. I’m going to dig up a few bottles at the club––in case of illness.” Trudy did not want her glass, so he drank that as well.