Bobbie, General Manager: A Novel

by Olive Higgins Prouty

"Not in bed?" he asked gently and leaned down and kissed me. "Edith was downstairs when I came in and we've been talking. I don't know but what we ought to keep two maids, Bobbie dear," Will said, and I felt as if I had been struck. Will went over and lit the gas. "I guess we might as well postpone our theatre party for next Thursday," he went on. "I think, after all, we'd better go to the Grahams' dinner. By the way," he broke off, "didn't you get an invitation to the Omsteds' affair last week?"

"No, Will, I didn't," I said dully.

"Perhaps you'll find time to pay back a few of those calls some time pretty soon, Bobbie dear," he said to me. And that morning about four A. M. I cried myself to sleep.

Edith went to the dinner too. She had Will telephone and fix it up someway. I don't know how nor I didn't ask. I was very miserable, very unhappy. My heart was heavier than it had been for a whole year. "Will wasn't satisfied, Will wasn't proud, Will was ashamed of me," rang in my ears from morning till night. During the few days that still must be lived before Thursday the sixth at seven o'clock, Edith exhibited the usual kindness and gentle consideration of any victor over the vanquished. I didn't make another plea. I was as resigned as a fatalist, and as unmurmuring as a stoic. I wrote my acceptance at Edith's dictation without a word, and silently fought the tears that came to my eyes, as I sealed the envelope.

"O Bobbie," said Will gently, "don't worry so about it, dear. You weren't so frightened about your own wedding."

"Exactly," said Edith. "And I've had dinners at The Homestead just as grand as this. You're simply out of training. People won't notice you so much as you think anyhow. Just act slowly, and don't try to talk. That's all. I'll be there and you can 'lean on me, grandpa.' You'll be all right," she assured me grandly.

I couldn't explain to Will and Edith how I felt about that dinner at the Grahams'. They wouldn't understand. Of course I had been to Edith's parties at The Homestead, but then I was simply Lucy Vars; and now I was Mrs. William Ford Maynard. Everybody in Hilton had accepted Lucy Vars long ago as a queer, quiet sort of shy little mouse, and treated her as such. She was used to it. But here, no one had as yet discovered Mrs. William Ford Maynard. She had been living for six, beautiful, unmolested months in idyllic secretion. But she had been run down at last, she must give herself up like a hunted convict, and by Thursday at midnight all of Dr. Maynard's learned associates would know just what sort of insignificant little person he had married. Oh, if only for Will's sake I had been born clever and brilliant; if only I had possessed a little of Edith's style; Ruth's savoir faire. Do you wonder then, that I trembled in anticipation of this occasion? Ruth's coming-out party, my wedding, a dozen dinners of Edith's, were as doll's tea-parties as compared to this, when Mrs. William Ford Maynard must come forth from her hiding-place and meet this test of a searching inspection.

I shall never forget the faint, sickening feeling inside of me as we stood waiting for admittance before the big colonial house. We must have been the last ones to arrive. A babble of voices in the drawing-room at the left greeted us as we entered. We walked up the old colonial stairway, and into a big bedroom at the top with a black walnut bedroom set. I noticed that even in my fright.

"Mercy, child, don't take off your gloves," whispered Edith to me.

"I hate them," I said, and ripped my arms bare. I wore a light blue silk dress with a Dutch neck, in spite of Edith in her low-cut ball-gown plastered over with glittering black spangles. My hair was done in its usual everyday knot at the back of my neck, bobbed up in the last five minutes after Ruth's sixth attempt at dressing it in the "new way." Edith looked like a fashion-plate: she had a perfect figure; her neck is marvellous; she wore diamonds and a string of pearls.