That ideal is constantly expanding these days. In America no one is classed by birth or profession. All is to make, and the women with their marvellous powers of absorption do the shaping. In a thousand ways they learn "how to live as other people do,"—in magazines and on bill boards, in the theatre, the churches, the trains, the illustrated novel. Suggestions how to live!
Meantime upstairs in the mansard room of the old house Falkner was figuring over stresses and strains of an unemotional sort. When past midnight he shoved the papers into the drawer, a familiar thought coursed through his brain: somehow he must sell himself at a dearer price. Living was not cheap even in Torso, and the cost of living was ever going higher, so the papers said and the wives. There were four of them now, a fifth to come in a few months. There should be a third servant, he knew, if they were to live "like other people." With a gesture that said, "Oh, Hell!" he jumped from his chair and took down a volume of verse from the pine shelf above the mantel and lighted a cigarette. For a few minutes he might lose himself and forget the fret of life, in the glowing pictures of things not seen.
The book dropped from his hand. He had carried it in his mountain kit, had read it to Bessie when they were engaged. She had listened, flattered, looking at him and smoothing his hair. But after marriage she confessed flatly that she was not "literary." So they had read together a book of travels, then a novel, then a magazine, and latterly nothing. Taking another cigarette, the man read on, and before his tired eyes rose the purple peaks of the Rockies, the shining crests of snow, the azure sky. And also a cabin in a green meadow beside a still mountain lake, and a woman fair and tall and straight, with blue eyes and a caressing hand,—a child on one arm. But Bessie was sleeping downstairs. Putting out his light, the man went to bed.
The man on horseback riding up the trail to look into the girl's eyes that summer afternoon!
CHAPTER VII
The two young wives quickly became very intimate. They spent many mornings together "reading," that is, they sat on the cool west veranda of the Lanes's house, or less often on the balcony at the Falkners's, with a novel turned down where their attention had relaxed, chatting and sewing. Isabelle found Bessie Falkner "cunning," "amusing," "odd," and always "charming." She had "an air about her," a picturesque style of gossip that she used when instructing Isabelle in the intricacies of Torso society. Isabelle also enjoyed the homage that Bessie paid her.
Bessie frankly admired Isabella's house, her clothes, her stylish self, and enjoyed her larger experience of life,—the Washington winter, Europe, even the St. Louis horizon,—all larger than anything she had ever known. Isabelle was very nearly the ideal of what she herself would have liked to be. So when they had exhausted Torso and their households, they filled the morning hours with long tales about people they had known,—"Did you ever hear of the Dysarts in St. Louis? Sallie Dysart was a great belle,—she had no end of affairs, and then she married Paul Potter. The Potters were very well-known people in Philadelphia, etc." Thus they gratified their curiosity about lives, all the interesting complications into which men and women might get. Often Bessie stayed for luncheon, a dainty affair served on a little table which the maid brought out and set between them. Sometimes Bessie had with her the baby girl, but oftener not, for she became exacting and interfered with the luncheon.
Bessie had endless tidbits of observation about Torsonians. "Mrs. Freke was a cashier in a Cleveland restaurant when he married her. Don't you see the bang in her hair still? … Mrs. Griscom came from Kentucky,—very old family. Tom Griscom, their only son, went to Harvard,—he was very wild. He's disappeared since…. Yes, Mrs. Adams is common, but the men seem to like her. I don't trust her green eyes. Mr. Darnell, they say, is always there. Oh, Mr. Adams isn't the one to care!"
Often they came back to Darnell,—that impetuous, black-haired young lawyer with his deep-set, fiery eyes, who had run away with his wife.
"She looks scared most of the time, don't you think? They say he drinks. Too bad, isn't it? Such a brilliant man, and with the best chances. He ran for Congress two years ago on the Democratic ticket, and just failed. He is going to try again this next fall, but his railroad connection is against him…. Oh, Sue Darnell,—she is nobody; she can't hold him—that's plain."