She had decided to present a variety of people to the Lanes. Isabelle and she had never been intimate, and Conny had a woman's desire to show an accomplished superiority to the rich friend, who had been inclined to snub her in boarding school. Conny was eminently skilful in "combinations." Every one that composed her circle or even entered it might some day be of use in creating what is called "publicity." That, as Cornelia Woodyard felt, was the note of the day. "You must be talked about by the right people, if you want to be heard, if you want your show!" she had said to Cairy. Thanks to Lane's rapid rise in the railroad corporation, Isabelle had come legitimately within the zone of interest.
After she had settled this matter to her satisfaction, she turned to some house accounts and made various calculations. It was a wonder to every one who knew them how the Woodyards "could do so much on what they had." As a matter of fact, with the rising scale of living, it required all Conny's practical adroitness to make the household come out nearly even. Thanks to a great-aunt who admired Percy, they had been able to buy this house and alter it over, and with good business judgment it had been done so that the property was now worth nearly a third more than when they took it. But a second man-servant had been added, and Conny felt that she must have a motor; she pushed away the papers and glanced up, thinking, planning.
The Senator and she had talked investments the last time they had met. She had a little money of her own. If the old fox would only take it and roll it up into a big snowball! Isabelle, now, with all that wealth! Conny pursed her lips in disgust to think that so much of the ammunition of war had fallen into such incompetent hands. "Yes," she said to herself, "the Senator must show me how to do it." Perhaps it flitted vaguely through her mind that Percy might object to using stock market tips from the Senator. But Percy must accept her judgment on this matter. They could not go on any longer with only twenty thousand a year.
Turning out the lights, she went to her bedroom. It was very plain and bare, with none of the little toilette elegances or chamber comforts that women usually love. Conny never spent except where it showed saliently. Her evening gowns were sometimes almost splendid, but her dressing gowns were dowdy, and poor little Bessie Falkner spent twice as much on lingerie.
Having discharged the duties of her day, her mind returned to Cairy, to his work for Gossom, to his appealing self, and her lips relaxed in a gentle smile. Hers was a simple nature, the cue once caught. She had come of rather plain people, who knew the worth of a dollar, and had spent their lives saving or investing money. The energy of the proletariat had been handed to her undiminished. The blood was evident in the large bones, the solid figure, and tenacious fingers, as well as in the shrewdness with which she had created this household. It was her instinct to push out into the troubled waters of the material world. She never weakened herself by questioning values. She knew—what she wanted.
Nevertheless, as she reached up her hand to turn out the night light, she was smiling with dreamy eyes, and her thoughts were no longer practical!
CHAPTER XXVII
When Isabelle emerged from the great hotel and turned down the avenue to walk to the office of Dr. Potts, as he required her to do every day, she had a momentary thrill of exultation. Descending the gentle incline, she could see a good part of the city extending into a distant blue horizon before her. The vast buildings rose like islands in the morning mist. It reminded her, this general panorama, of the awe-compelling spaces of the Arizona canon into which she had once descended. Here were the same irregular, beetling cliffs, the same isolated crags, with sharply outlined lower and minor levels of building. The delicate blue, the many grays of storm and mist gave it color, also. But in place of the canon's eternal quiet,—the solitude of the remote gods,—this city boiled and hummed. That, too,—the realization of multitudinous humanity,—made Isabelle's pulses leap.
In spite of her poor health, she had the satisfaction of at last being here, in the big hive, where she had wished to be so long. She was a part of it, a painfully insignificant mite as yet, but still a part of it. Hitherto New York had been a sort of varied hotel, an entertainment. Now it was to be her scene, and she had begun already to take possession. It had all come about very naturally, shortly after her father's death. While she was dreading the return to St. Louis, which must be emptier than ever without the Colonel, and she and her mother were discussing the possibility of Europe, John's new position had come. A Western road had made him an offer; for he had a splendid record as a "traffic getter." The Atlantic and Pacific could not lose him; they gave him the third vice-presidency with headquarters in New York and general charge of traffic. Thus the Lanes' horizon shifted, and it was decided that the first year in the city they should spend in a hotel with Mrs. Price. Isabelle's health was again miserable; there had been the delayed operation; and now she was in the care of the famous Potts, trying to recover from the operation, from the old fatigue and the recent strains, "to be made fit."
The move to New York had not meant much to Lane. He had spent a great deal of his time there these last years, as well as in Washington, Pittsburg,—in this city and that,—as business called him. His was what is usually regarded as a cosmopolitan view of life,—it might better be called a hotel-view. Home still meant to him the city where his wife and child were temporarily housed, but he was equally familiar with half a dozen cities. Isabelle, too, had the same rootless feeling. She had spent but a short time in any one place since she had left her father's house to go to St. Mary's. That is the privilege or the curse of the prosperous American. Life thus becomes a shifting panorama of surfaces. Even in the same city there are a dozen spots where the family ark has rested, which for the sake of a better term may be called "homes." That sense of rooted attachment which comes from long habituation to one set of physical images is practically a lost emotion to Americans….